A Long Talk With John Hickenlooper

[brooklynite]

New York Magazine

Well, a friend back in Denver referred to me as an extreme moderate,” says John Hickenlooper, the former Colorado governor who’s now running for president, sitting on a hotel restaurant barstool overlooking 57th Street on a recent Friday morning. The Democrat, who’s in town to raise money and hit the TV circuit before returning to the campaign trail — he was on CBS earlier in the morning, and will fly to New Hampshire in a few hours — is trying to gain traction in the crowded primary field as one of the more middle-of-the-road options. But Hickenlooper is also trying to get enough attention so that he can share his unusual life story: After being laid off from a job as a geologist, Hickenlooper opened a brewpub, the Wynkoop, in Denver, before serving two terms as mayor, then governor. He’s been trying not to get sucked into some of the thornier national debates along the way: A few days before our conversation, he stumbled over Joe Scarborough’s question of whether he considered himself a proud capitalist, amid the now-familiar 2020 version of socialism version capitalism. Then again, just a few days later he came out against the Green New Deal.

I’ve been struck by how many different times I’ve read now that you’re a fan of, and have read and reread, Machiavelli’s The Prince.
You get a chance to have the real truth.

Hit me.
Um, so I’d never read The Prince — I had in college, I kind of half-read it. But when I became mayor, I got roasted by the I Have a Dream Foundation, and one of the people who roasted me was my chief of staff, who’s very smart — [now-senator] Michael Bennet — who had read it a number of times. And he went through and said, “John Hickenlooper is so successful as mayor, [but] he’s kind of a naïve person from business, trying to be successful. And let’s examine how closely he resembles the advice that Machiavelli gives in The Prince.” It was insanely funny. But that’s when, basically, I thought, “Huh, this is something. I gotta watch The West Wing, and I gotta read The Prince.”

Okay, so is it true that you’ve studied it closely, or has this all been blown wildly out of proportion?
No, I read it. I’m a very slow reader, I’m moderately dyslexic. So over the course of six months I read it. I was also reading Team of Rivals. I was reading, you know, a bunch of stuff right when I first became mayor. I never read a bunch of political stuff when I was in the restaurant business. I read mostly about marketing and, like, sales. And cuisine.

Did you have a pre-presidential campaign reading list?
Again, I am such a slow reader. I did try and listen to “Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me!” where they talk to some political figures and put them in a funny light. David Axelrod has The Axe Files. I listen to some of those. You know, Pod Save America. Different perspectives on politics. But mostly, I don’t even get to listen to too many podcasts, just because when I’m in a car driving somewhere, I’m usually on the phone talking to somebody, or I’m sending texts.

[msongs]

1. talking on the phone and sending texts while driving. nt

[sdfernando]

2. That jumped out at me as well. /nt

[JI7]

3. yup, just no to him

[mobeau69]

4. Damn. I'm sticking with the gay guy.

[Bettie]

5. Well, he's not last on my list

he's above Williamson, Gabbard, and Gillibrand.

But, not my first choice by a long shot.

Texting while driving is dangerous and a poor example to set. (Not the reason he's low on my list, just an observation.)

[rogue emissary]

6. Wasn't even considering him, but

loved his answer on Clinton.

So what did you learn from Secretary Clinton herself, and from the ’16 experience? You spent some time with her, she went out to Colorado a few times.

She is one of the smartest policy experts on almost anything. Things that I go do deep dives in. On apprenticeships, and how we’re going to train the workforce of the future, she could go back into the 1980s and go back to the whole evolution of workforce programs in both the federal government and various state governments. Um, but I also saw that, you know, trying to answer all the policy things in the campaign is, it’s a burden. It means you give these long speeches that not everybody buys into.

You know, let’s be honest. Secretary Clinton had a foreign government hack into her email and publicize it. Well, WikiLeaks hacked into it. The foreign government went in and tried to, you know, take down her campaign through, you know, fake news and bots and all that social media effort. She had the FBI actually come out and make allegations ten days before the election, that turned out to be baseless. No one’s ever had that, you know, not to mention billions of dollars in attack ads that had been going on for several years against her. And she still won the popular vote, and she had gotten close to winning the Electoral College. People are quick to criticize her, but, you know, I think by a lot of measures, despite all those obstacles, she almost won.So I’m not gonna criticize her.