Why Should Americans be Optimistic Even In This Political Climate?

We are on the eve of another election and many people are struggling to find hope. My guest today Paul Johnson former mayor talks about why he is optimistic about the future of America. Paul E. Johnson Jr. became the youngest mayor of Phoenix, Arizona, at 30 years old.  As mayor, he and his administration were showcased in the New York Times, Forbes, and People, among other national media outlets, for efforts leading to the Bertelsmann Award honoring Phoenix as the "Best Run City in the World." 

Transcript

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 1:07

well my guest today is paul johnson paul welcome to the show how are you doing today paul

[paul_johnson]: 1:14

doing great key thanks for having me on the on your program

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 1:18

it's so good to have you on i like to give my guests kind of a nice warm up question at least i think it's a warm up question some question whether that is easier or not so i'll just say it's a warm up question but give us the best advice you a receipt

[paul_johnson]: 1:32

oh you know

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 1:33

oh

[paul_johnson]: 1:33

the best advice i ever received i had a dinner with tip o neil and ronald regan when i was thirty years old i was mayor of the city of phoenix m it was a huge event for me i mean obviously these were two super stars in their field and i was i was mayor which was like nothing compared to them but i got to listen to

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 1:52

yeah

[paul_johnson]: 1:52

them for i don't know about an hour and a half going back and forth on stories and by the way it was unbelievable the person from the right and the left how much they really enjoyed one another's time and like talk and how kind they were to one another it was just an enjoyable event also sitting at the table was a guy by the name of pierre challenger pierre challenger if you go back in history he was the speech writer for china kennedy so in any event tip o neil and and ronald regan ended up leaving the table early uh and tiponel they both had advice for me remember tips advice was i thought you know i've thought about it a lot since then which was he talked about sam rayburn and others who while they were in congress they had done incredible things and he said that when sam rayburn was standing up in front of an audience at the end of his life and this after he had been involved in to and changing the world and everything else they said okay do you have any regrets and he said that sam rayburn said to him yeah he said you know he says i've been involved in all these great things says i wish that i had a nine year old to go fishing with and sometimes keeping it in perspective in your life is important and the advice was given to me by pierre challenger was fascinating he said after they left he goes that ronald regan he said he's just like f kennedy i said what would mean just like on kennedy that does not make sense to me because oh no look he said he says i love john f kennedy and he says and i love john's philos he said i he said president ragon and president kennedy both are optimus both have an incredible belief in our country and who we are and what it is that we're able to do they just have a different approach a trying to get there he said look the greatest thing that you can represent overwhelmingly it's hope said try to be hopeful give people hope give them a sense that maybe it's going to be okay and all the things they're worrying about for all the worries they've had as the great one said is even extended our life but for one day

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 3:59

i love that because that was one of my goals in life is we have so many things that divide us as a nation we have so many things that keep us down at the end of the day the one thing that keeps us getting up the next day is hope

[paul_johnson]: 4:12

hm

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 4:13

if we don't have hope if we fail to have realized that it's a big part of what keeps us moving as people is get up in the morning with a hopeful idea that something good is going to happen if you get up with the opposite you that nothing is only going to happen you're gonna run into those things so i like to think of it like if i start out with hope chances are something good will happen trout today

[paul_johnson]: 4:33

hm yep i agree with that

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 4:37

so we're gonna get little deeper into your background so artist gets to know you more so tell us something about yourself that most people don't know

[paul_johnson]: 4:46

gosh

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 4:46

yeah

[paul_johnson]: 4:47

well i think most people don't know a lot about me the different things about me but you know i'll give you a couple of things i'm a parent of three children two boys and a girl and i have fourteen grandchildren my dad and his brother hitchhike to arizona from mckesport pensylvania when they were seven and eleven years old their mom had died my mom and her sister worked in the cabbage fields in a place called levine arizona the two brothers when they got to their later team years met the two sisters they both got both bought houses on the same street both had nine kids that nine of us grew up in a house it was about nine hundred square feet our parents didn't have a lot of money one was a construction worker one was a waitress but you know i been very fortunate and a lot of good things have happened to me in my life and you know preciate the tax payers and god every day that i possibly can but you know one of the things that i learned from them is to be able to put things into perspective and to recognize that it doesn't matter if you're living in a trailer if you have family and people around you that you love and people that you that you love you've already cut out the eighty percent of the best part of life

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 6:06

well that's really i love that story so as you think about your life in your journey who were people that were inspirations to you always think those those people do a lot to shape our character and our situations who are people that hate helps shape who you are

[paul_johnson]: 6:22

oh you know

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 6:23

what

[paul_johnson]: 6:24

i've been shaped by lots of different people so i would say my mom and my dad had a big influence on me my brothers and my sisters did my dad one of the things that he always said that was one of my favorite piece of advice i remember he grew a construction company a dry wall company and one day i went to the door and there was a guy there at the door he had dry wall mud all over his pants who was totally dirty and filthy i knew him he had been in jail in his past and he said as paul here which was my dad's name paul also and i said sure i said just men i closed the door my dad came up and he goes to i said sam or goes where is it goes out the front door why didn't you let him in so he goes over to the front door he lets im in he talks to him he takes care of the things that he needs he says paul go get him a nice tea go get him a nice tea and he leaves my dad says to me he it's hot outside why did you make him stay outside like you dad guy's filthy as a terrible record i go why do we want him in our house say son so pay attention to me on this he said if there's somebody south of you then there must be people north of you he's nobody north and south just east and west a different part of the journey trying to get across the horizon treat them all the same and it was shameful as a bit ashamed of what i had done after listening

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 7:52

a

[paul_johnson]: 7:52

to him but i remember that advice all the time when i start thinking there are people north and south of me

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 8:01

that's a powerful image because you think about how that could have gone differently because your dad could have said oh great job and you would have never thought anything about it and you would have probably continued to treat people that same way that influence how you saw people and that's a powerful witness at that moment in your life

[paul_johnson]: 9:14

hm it's it's just recognizing that we're all in a little different part of our journey and you know when you get done with it at the end of the day it doesn't atter how much money you have how much power

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 9:24

oh

[paul_johnson]: 9:25

you have it still comes down to the same things we find meaning i'm a big fan of victor frankell i don't know if you've listened

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 9:33

yeah

[paul_johnson]: 9:33

to frankell in the past but you know this is a guy that was in a concentration camp he had gone through horrific things in his life he said that when they walked into the line into a witch they took

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 9:43

a

[paul_johnson]: 9:43

nine people to the lap one to the right he was the one that went to the right his family went to the left he said i thought i was the one that they were going to kill i didn't realize within hours that my family they'd all be dead he didn't know that the entire time was there but he had also created a thing called logo therapy which was to help out people who had committed suicide before and he began to put those practices into place to try help people find meaning one of my favorite stories that he talks about is that there was this guy who was he said people were right at the edge of their life some of them eighty ninety pants and he said literally they could just die from a bit of bad news he said one guy was had a dream that they were going to be saved um like march twenty seventh and so he began to prepare for it he was up he was excited everything was just an incredible on march twenty seventh with midnight struck he said he died about ten minutes later lost hope lost faith and when you're at that much of an edge it's all that's left is that will to live he said he worked with different people in that concentration camp and when they would go out to work he said they would they would look for the sunset he says they just wait for sunset and hey had to keep working they couldn't be seen stopping or talking but when that sunset would happen all their eyes would lift up and they watch that sunset just five minutes said we loved that sunset we talk about those sunsets he said it's the three places where you find meaning it's in what you create it's in what and who you love and it's in struggle and you know we we i think sometimes we're in search of happiness but happiness is elusive it just is you know something bad happens to your parents you're not going to be happy if you're gonna go through a tough time in your life finding happiness is difficult but finding meaning is possible

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 11:41

i love that i always told people that you know happiness is depending upon you said your circumstances

[paul_johnson]: 11:46

m

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 11:46

but contentment you can be content and no matter what your circumstances are because that's something that really comes from god that that sense of like you said a sense of meaning and mission in your life comes from god and god says you know here is where you are and here's what you have to be thankful so you can be thankful like if you you can see the sunset that's all you have to look forward to because your your your journey is not based on what this world around you presents to you so it's great point

[paul_johnson]: 12:13

hm yes i agree

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 12:15

so i love your story you became mayor at thirty can you just tell us your story how that journey to become mayor and kind of what happened happened because i think it's a fascinating story

[paul_johnson]: 12:26

um so when i was twenty three years old twenty four years old in the i was a democrat today i'm a registered independent i kind of gave up on the two political parties i think their way to devicive but i was a democrat at the time and i ran in a district was three to one republican that three to one republican district by the way was in the year of ronald regan so you know it was if i had any sense i'd never run in that district i might not run but if i had any any sense that is not the district i run in now i was lucky it was a non partisan seat meaning i was running for city council and of course what you do is you get these lists and you go out and knock on doors now much different than in a partisan primary where you only knock on democratic doors if you're a democrat and only not on republican doors if you're republican use instead you're running in electra where everybody can vote on you so you knock on everybody's door um during that process i met you know democrats that would talk about their schools or race or issues with their park and then i mean republicans and republicans would talk about their business or they talk about the economy or they talk about the budget it wasn't difficult to begin to understand that those two things were connected right that they were our ability to be able to pay for social programs which i think are very important right i came out of a poor neighborhood i think being able to help kids who were in poor neighborhoods are a poor thing but that's connect to our economy doing well i utilized that to run from air that concept to run from air and it worked it the public was looking for more of a middle ground especially in a non partisan al and and they like the concept of tying those two things together so at twenty nine or thirty years old i became mayor of the largest city in the united states i accounted as a blessing i learned credible amount about our community about politics about how things work um you know i said to you earlier the thing i learned the most is how much i don't know you know i'm only one human being i've only walked one path i can't pretend to tell you that i have the answers to all the secrets in the universe but but i learned a lot along the way i'm sixty three and been in bill yes i've had my own company for a number of years i built out a nation wide health care company also i was mayor and you know i spent a lot of time working with family members and i had a mentoring pro grand point i'm giving to you is i can bring that experience to bear but i can't tell you that it is necessarily right for everybody

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 15:02

i love that something you said was interesting to me so you you're able to find middle ground you ran from mayor and you realized that there were issues that were important to both both both groups as i look at our society today especially our political society there seems to be two extremes and the people in the middle which seems to be the majority of the country it's left out because of dandy politics as someone who's kind of served in that role can you kind of give us the root cause of where did the where did the divide start and how the the politics the divide gain for us as a country

[paul_johnson]: 15:40

i'll give you my opinion but i'd like to hear yours back as i said the

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 15:44

sure

[paul_johnson]: 15:45

you know i can only give you an opinion on that i can't give you the

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 15:49

right

[paul_johnson]: 15:49

want so let's start with this to me if you ask me like what is the most important thing that i think needs to happen americans need to regain their sense of agency they've they're dealing in this environment where we have perfected business and perfected the media and perfected social marketing social media so on any given night on any given night if you watch the news they are being bombarded by fox news m s n b c c n n with this incredibly bad negative news i remember when i was growing up i used to run home every day about nine years old now team sixty ape when we were going to the moon and i could tell you the name of every single astor not i could tell you the names of their spouses i could tell you the name of some of the engineers that were inside of nassa i watched the takeoff listen to the down weighted with trepidation when when the space capital turned around and when the landing happened and then when they came back home we were so proud of who we were now i watched the news today the other day i had to go home actually a couple of months ago i had to work on a spread sheet so i go home i turn on c n n i start listening to it i turned the volume down so i can work on my spread sheet and on gosh right capital break in and the and what's going on with trump and i'm listening i keep turning it up finding myself caught turning up so i thought you know i've been doing this now for two days because it took me about a week to get the bread cheat done do it from a three o'clock until eight o'clock and for two solid days it was like just blasting me with neat i thought we'll turn on to fox the only thing i heard when i was listening to fox was how all these millions of immigrants theoretically were coming into the country and the damage that they were causing right for two days right being bombarded with that message on thursday on thursday i got this little tiny piece of c n n where william shatter had just gone up into a space module and come back down to he was crying right the guy who was on star track he was talking about it they didn't do the takeoff they didn't do who these people were they didn't talk about how the private sector finding this now it was a huge event in mankind it's too positive you see what happens is and by the way i had a consultant who told me this who i was i decided to run in a partisan primary for governor and her advice was hey look you're trying to appeal to the center what we've got to do is we've got to go out and ignite our base and what we have to do to ignite our base is we have to make them hate opposition have to make them hate the opposition and she said there's a course set of values that if you terrify them on those values it will work they will not listen to the other side because the human being is driven by a negative bias where were instinctively where we have this kind of flight or flight mechanism inside of us that when we're faced with a problem and we were faced with a threat we either run or we fight right to be able to think thoughts have to get to that wonder portion of the human brain called the neo cortex and in that portion of the brain you have rationality you can find optimism there's there's innovation and creativity come from that but if that negative portion of the brain is in aged and it says be afraid nothing gets to that neo cortex it's very difficult to rationally think things through with the american public is being bombarded with negative which is by the nightly news by social media you know they get into social media they drive them down these rabbit holes of negativity and conspiracy theories political parties who want to try to break the public up into different segments political candidates you have to start with this turn it off it's too much just too much by the way in politics i've spent a long time there ten years it's the place we go to resolve our problems of course it's negative we're bringing in groups and there's friction between the two and somebody has to say well i'm going to go this way where i'm going to go that way unfortunately there's no incentive today inside the system to try to drive to a center so let me give you some numbers maybe this will help you if you run in a primary democratic primary republican primary about seventy percent of the people who could vote or register to voe today forty four per cent of the american public is independent so by thirty per cent democrat thirty percent of republican so times the seventy per cent of the people that are registered by thirty per cent that gets you to twenty percent of the public in the primary election high turnouts thirty five per cent times thirty five per cent by the twenty one person you're doing about six or seven per cent of the public is going to vote in the democratic primary six percent in the republican primary i can tell you i've pulled them they're much more extreme the general action and then when you go to congress there are four hundred and thirty five congressmen only thirty five of them have competitive races all the rest are decided in the primary now i would tell you we need to look at changing that system that by the way no where in the constitution doesn't talk about running elections in duson primaries that is not in the constitution right that was not the design of the founders but something that has evolved we have elections in this country that aren't partisan the elections school elections and you can begin to change that platform but before we get there and before we blame the media for all of our problems and before we blame others i don't know if you a soldier nits and alexander soldier nits and if you've ever looked at him he wrote a book called the golagargapellio he was a communist and he went to fight for russia he ended up being put in a gyp german prisoner of war camp and then after being in a german prisoner of war camp he came back and he made some communications with people back at home about how bad the communist had treated people and so he ended up going to the google right to spend another ten years of his life in the good he got to the good luck he could have spent his time there ting about how terrible hitler was how terrible stolen was how terrible he was treated but instead he said you know what i'm gonnaevaluate myself first instead of evaluating them i'm evaluate who i am look inside he wasn't really happy with what he saw he came to the conclusion that inside of each one of us is some good and some evil that in the worst person in the world there's some good and in the best person in the world there's some evil they both exist he said that he had been when he was a private he was taken to a place where the coolaxs which were farmers had owned their property and where they were faring he says not you can't own property and have communism work so we had to take them off of their property he says when you take people off of their property they usually are quiet about it they get upset you so my job was to take them to siberia said he took seventy thousand people to siberia and they all died now in those good lags and in siberia we know that the russians killed potentially tens of millions of people soldier said sixty million people but he said need to be accountable and he said what happened was i allowed an ideology to take that evil inside of me and export it to those colas and to say no no no i'm doing this because i'm a communist and they're evil because they're property owners says an once i allowed ideology to do that to me i felt absolved the things that i had done wrong and he said and i'm not absolved i have to be responsible for who i am that to me is the single greatest lesson that we have to pay attention to if we want our agency back look at everybody else start by looking inside of you think about the things that you've done you know one of my sins i've done this more than once i'd get mad of people who might be on the trump side and i'd say something like well you got that from fox news okay now what does that really mean right what am i really think oh you're not smart enough to get your news where i get my news from right here's the

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 24:32

right

[paul_johnson]: 24:32

issue am i making that problem better or worse making it worth how about starting with

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 24:39

yeah

[paul_johnson]: 24:39

this be accountable for me and then try to love them

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 24:43

a

[paul_johnson]: 24:44

martin luther king is one of my heroes overwhelmingly one of my heroes right because in phoenix we had a a governor had got rid of martin luther king day said the first thing i'm going to do his governor is get rid of the martin luther king day which was what he did he made all types of races comments as he was governor and when you got rid of it it was kind of my job to go back in and get it put in back into place unfortunately we had the n f l who decided to get involved because we lost the election the first election the n f l got involved and they said hey we're going to pull the super bo out of phoenix and we're gonna pull it out of phoenix because it's a race is place now i knew we needed to go back and do it again and i knew that my public would be inflamed and angry about the idea that the n f l was doing that and it wasn't going to help so the first thing i did as i went after the guy who in the philadelphia eagles who really wanted out of phoenix because he didn't make as much money being here but i called his cardealership in philadelphia guess what this cardealership was open on luther king day right so i said hey you want to be the moral watch dog at the n f l why don't you start with your own accountability in this which created like a huge problem inside of philadelphia form but once i got my public off of them and then understanding i was going to defend them here's what i did by the way this was a true story i went out to a neighborhood there was a little boy inside this neighorhood you go out and put the thing on top of the car that would make the thing make it look like a police car and the kids loved it all right when i go out there the light up but they could talk out of the horn and everything else so there was a group of kids were around my car and one of the little boys came over he was about eight or nine years old and he said may he said do you think that people voted against martin luther king day because he was black now this little boy was black also and i said no i don't think that's what happened i think that it was about two things being on the battle i gave all the excuses that we were really good at being able to make in politics right but i said to the public hey here's one little boy who is wondering whether or not his opportunity is going to be the same in our community because of the color of his skin saint about the super bowl has nothing to do with the super bowl they shouldn't have gotten involved with it but we can't say that to him we can't do that that's not right i believe there is an immense ability inside of all of us to love other people and that's what martin luther king was talking about right he talked about the three different types of love the one type was this romantic and the other type of love which was called the fly love i believe it was called which the name of philadelphia but it's a brotherly love he took all this from the greeks but the last one was a gopi and a god is how do you love people that you don't even know when they walked up on that bridge he convinced people that when they say racial lures to you you call them brother when they beat you you don't shoot back because if you don't do that number one the public is watching this and they're going to go oh now i know who's wrong i can see who the bad guy is but if you fight back all of a sudden the public says i'm not sure who started this fight but the second thing is the other side they don't know how to deal with love there is no defense to love here's all kinds of defenses to hate there's no defense club and martin luther king gave us that as his gift and it was an incredible gift and something that we should learn from today if we want to find division start our self start with how we're dealing with our brothers and our sisters you know if you if you want to know what it is at you should call somebody who's a trump person or for that matter a progressive liberal brother sister friend there's all types of things right listen try to understand where they're coming from try to understand their pathway don't be so judgemental and if you want to be judgemental start by looking intern first

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 28:54

i love that and i think what you point out is what i remember another guest on my show we were talking about politics he was talking about how he's writing a book now about george washington how how we've law his sense of honor in politics he says we need to get back to and i love what you just said we need to get back to the philios love the we can't start with a copy in politics that's that's a bridge too far right now probably if we could just start with brotherly love and realize that at the end of the day we can we can shake hands and we can disagree and not be disagreeable um and it would be a much better witness to to the world around us but it seems like now we're so concerned about winning um and that's both sides and i remember talking to someone else a pastor said you know the problem that the church has is we we're not in the winning business we're in the gap business we're in the sacrificial love business so we're used to losing we're used to being in the goolog so to speak we're used to saying we have to look for the sunshine in life have to look for that hope in life and not be so concerned about being on the winning side of an argument or the winning side of a political discussion any more i i love that and i love the idea of agency really being getting back to empowering the individual and to me i think we we've lost that yes yeah i love that so you kind of gave us a little pre view of what you're working on now so tell us a little bit more yeah tell us a ittle bit more about what what your next project is a oh yeah yeah a yeah my god oh exactly a i a oh yeah yeah the open primary thing is interesting to me because i hear from the partisans like we can't do that because we we have this process that we go and we get out our voters if we go to open primary and then there's there's there's no there's no there's no partisanism so i i can already hear the push back on some people going what a horrible idea is an open primary right they can't dominate who wants to play right this has been a great care but i want to ask you kind of as one of my closing questions is what do you want your legacy to be i oh a yeah yeah that is awesome so wore can listers find you on social media and connect with you oh yeah oh i yeah oh well mayor johnson thank you so much for your time and i really this was a great conversation and thank you for being on because i think you re you're going to be a blessing to the audience from what you had to share today well thank you i appreciate that oh