Deep Dive with Jeff Flake on Thinking Twice

Kelly Corrigan (0:07)

Welcome to Kelly Corrigan Wonders, I'm Kelly Corrigan, and today I'm wondering what it's like inside the doors of Congress, for real.

What is the actual work of legislating and compromising and trying to get something done for the greater good? My guest is former US Senator from Arizona, Jeff Flake. He was the ambassador to Turquay and is the founding director of the Institute of Politics at Arizona State University. Jeff served 18 years in Congress, 12 in the House and six in the Senate, and he's no longer running for anything, which means he can speak very openly. Going into this sit down with Jeff, I wanted to understand what it actually takes to legislate, not the version we see on cable TV, but the late nights and the compromises nobody likes, the relationships across the aisle that used to be normal and are increasingly rare. He's spent his whole career trying to figure out how to work with people you often disagree with to get things done for the greater good. Here's my conversation with Jeff Flake.

So you were in Congress for 18 years, and I want to spend the first half of our conversation just talking deeply about what it's like to be in Congress. For you, but for everyone. So I have never talked to a senator, and I've definitely never talked to a former senator, which seems much more exciting than talking to a tongue tied.

Jeff Flake (1:41)

Yeah. Speak freely.

Kelly Corrigan (1:43)

That's right. I want a person who can speak freely. So can you talk a little bit about why you even wanted to run?

Because so few people do now. And then what that experience was like, and then your early days in the House.

Jeff Flake (1:57)

Well, I ran in 2000

I was 36 years old. So I had a bit of a career before that. I'd always been around politics, doing public policy. I ran a think tank, the Goldwater Institute, for seven years in Arizona. Then we were in DC before that, worked some on Capitol Hill and went to Africa for a year, the year that Namibia got its independence from South Africa. So for a political junkie, that's nirvana to be there when a country has its first elections, writes its constitution. And so I was bit with a political bug early on, but didn't think that I would run for elected office myself until I did.

Kelly Corrigan (2:38)

Did you have an animating issue? Yeah.

Jeff Flake (2:40)

Well, at the Goldwater Institute, we dealt with state issues, mostly fiscal policy, tax policy, welfare policy, education, and we kept butting up against the federal government.

You know, the state could only do so much, and then there were federal government issues. But I also, I love foreign policy. I served a Mormon mission in South Africa and Zimbabwe when I was just 19, and I just fell in love with Africa politics, and particularly given what was going on during the 1980s in Africa, with the Cold War still on and the proxy wars between the Soviet Union and the US. I was backing certain countries, them backing others. That fascinated me. So I liked some of the domestic policy issues dealt at the state level, but I missed the foreign policy issues, and that's why I wanted to go back to Congress.

Kelly Corrigan (3:33)

Do you think you fell in love with politics in Africa because there's so much potential and so much change, and you got to see it?

Jeff Flake (3:41)

Well, that, and it was just a fascinating time to be in one South Africa during the end of apartheid. It was still going on there. But then to be in Zimbabwe for six months when it had just become independent and had just started in its journey. And so I kind of saw it from two different angles, and then to be in Namibia later when it became independent. So yeah, those issues just fascinated me. These new democracies, particularly with the Cold War ending in 1990, Namibia's elections were the same week the Berlin Wall came down. And so the old socialist communist model was gone.

And that has benefited countries like Namibia significantly because they've had a different model to follow.

That was what was called the end of history at that point when liberal democracies were supposed to win out all over the world. It didn't last as long as we had hoped. Yeah.

Kelly Corrigan (4:38)

Do you think it would change many Americans' sense of cynicism and screw it and there's no hope if they were to see a democracy be born the way you did?