At a moment when members of the opposite party rarely appear together on television, most political interviews are fleeting<\/a> and the election may have doomed the last digital town square<\/a>, David Axelrod\u2019s podcast was an oasis.<\/p>\n

Now, after a remarkable 605 shows over more than nine years, Axelrod is concluding his program by interviewing his fellow Chicagoan<\/a>, Rahm Emanuel.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sad to see \u201cThe Axe Files\u201d go, in part because it\u2019s more essential now than ever.<\/p>\n

Yes, it was respectful and it generated more light than heat. There were no food fights. But I come to praise Axe, not bury him in a shroud of bygone-day nostalgia for civil discourse.<\/p>\n

What made the program so compelling \u2014 and unique in this period \u2014 was that he had candid, deeply personal and extended interviews with the leading figures in both parties. Where else can that combination be found today?
political interviews are fleeting<\/a>
I should disclose here that Axelrod also had on a range of figures from the media, along with other walks of life, and I sat for a session in 2016. That\u2019s the right word because the show was always equal parts therapy session and journalistic inquiry.<\/p>\n

Axelrod doesn\u2019t have psychiatric training \u2014 that I know of \u2014 but he was once a superb political reporter for the Chicago Tribune. He\u2019s got ink in his DNA and that came through in every program, when he\u2019d try to make news or at least prompt reflection. I could always tell he hated the shows where his guests showed up with talking points. (Been there!)<\/p>\n

These were no interrogations, though. Axelrod usually began the interviews by asking people about their backgrounds \u2014 \u201ctell me about your folks\u201d \u2014 and where they grew up. The son of an immigrant, Axelrod would invariably find common ground with those only a generation or two removed from freedom\u2019s flame, no matter their politics.<\/p>\n

Which gets to why the show was so vital. He revealed people as fully-formed, complex and, yes, contradictory humans. If you were looking for a cartoon caricature of the red or blue tribe to confirm your preferences, well, you had plenty of other options.<\/p>\n

Axelrod is a partisan and is deeply alarmed with President-elect Donald Trump\u2019s restoration. But I know he was proud of how many Republicans said yes, in some cases reluctantly, and sat down for a probing interview with a former Democratic strategist and the architect of Barack Obama\u2019s political rise.<\/p>\n

If we\u2019re being honest, these Republicans agreed in part because Axelrod is an elite figure on the American political scene and the invitation conferred a level of status on the invitee. He has been in the proverbial smoke-filled room \u2014 plus even some in Illinois that weren\u2019t proverbial \u2014 and political practitioners of all stripes respected that background.<\/p>\n

Yet Republicans also said yes because Axelrod is, to borrow a word from his faith tradition, a mensch.<\/p>\n

He\u2019d challenge his guests but never sandbag them. The point was for people to tell their stories, reveal something of themselves and get on to the difficult business of discussing what politics is today. It was fitting that two of Axelrod\u2019s final interviews were with two of the most prominent GOP figures from this year\u2019s campaign: Trump co-campaign manager<\/a> Chris LaCivita and BLN commentator Scott Jennings, who has become something of an Axelrod prot\u00e9g\u00e9<\/a> (in the personal, not political, sense, if you\u2019re listening Kentucky Republican primary voters).<\/p>\n

Who were these two figures so many people read about or heard about this year? Well, if you listen to their \u201cAxe Files\u201d appearances you\u2019ll know a great deal about what shaped them.<\/p>\n

There was something else that made the show, like all the best podcasts, so captivating: Axelrod respected his audience\u2019s intelligence. This was not 101-level stuff. If you can\u2019t understand why<\/a> his having 90-year-old Abner Mikva, the legendary Chicago lawmaker and jurist<\/a>, on the podcast just months before Mikva\u2019s passing was so poignant, perhaps the show wasn\u2019t for you.<\/p>\n

To be unsubtle about it: The jump from so much of the TV news blather that passes as political insight to podcasts like the Axe Files was akin to the aughts and teens transition from laugh-track broadcast TV sitcoms to premium shows like The Sopranos<\/i> and Breaking Bad<\/i>. Who could go back? Who would want to?<\/p>\n

Take Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who\u2019s a fixture of TV news. Well, you know what Sanders isn\u2019t discussing in a seven-minute interview? How there were three names not discussed in his Brooklyn boyhood home: Hitler, Stalin and Walter O\u2019Malley, who moved the Dodgers to Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

Oh, and that he also wouldn\u2019t have had the same voting record on guns had he represented his boyhood home rather than rural Vermont.<\/p>\n

Sanders revealed as much in 2015 when he was Axelrod\u2019s first guest<\/a>. He also discussed his student civil rights activism at the University of Chicago, Axelrod\u2019s alma mater and home to the Institute of Politics he founded.<\/p>\n

$\"Axelrod$ <\/p>\n

\u201cThat pod set the tone,\u201d Axelrod told me this week.<\/p>\n

He also got the late Sen. John McCain to talk revealingly<\/a> about all the time McCain spent visiting, chatting and reading Arizona news clips with an ailing Mo Udall, the former Arizona lawmaker who spent his final days confined in a nursing home. Unstated, because it doesn\u2019t have to be, can you imagine a prominent Republican showing up every week to comfort a prominent Democrat gripped by disease?<\/p>\n

Axelrod knows politics ain\u2019t beanbag, and even though he\u2019s out of the campaign business he\u2019s close enough to it that he still pays a price for some grudges. Which is why you won\u2019t find the current president in the Axe File archives: President Joe Biden was the only major Democratic contender in 2020 to skip the show, a snub rooted in the (now-revived!) hostilities between Bidenworld and Obama\u2019s orbit.<\/p>\n

But if Axelrod\u2019s proximity to the top echelons of politics had some side effects on his bookings, his prominence also ensured some of his best gets.<\/p>\n

My favorite, by far, was the remarkable 2016 conversation<\/a> he had with a basketball legend, the gone-too-soon Bill Walton. I found Walton to be a great American character \u2014 his devotion to the Grateful Dead<\/a>, the West and John Wooden needs no elaboration \u2014 and Axelrod met his match that day. Do yourself a favor and take in their chat. You\u2019ll get through it and feel exhausted and satisfied \u2014 like you just played in a game of three-on-three against Big Red.<\/p>\n

I listened to it, like I did many of Axelrod\u2019s pods, on a long drive. The good ones passed the time. The great ones left me feeling like I had pulled up a chair at his table at Manny\u2019s Deli<\/a> and was eavesdropping over two people shooting the shit over half a Reuben and bowl of matzo ball soup.<\/p>\n

Which is not to say Axelrod showed up like Larry King talking to Kato Kaelin, unprepared and just asking whatever came to mind while taking a few calls from Walla Walla and beyond to fill the hour.<\/p>\n

Axelrod read deeply about his guests and often surprised them with how much he knew about their backgrounds. It took hours of work, so I get why he wants to wrap it up with over 600 under his belt. Especially when he has a separate podcast \u2014 speaking of kibitzing \u2014 with Mike Murphy and John Heilemann, Hacks on Tap<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019ll miss the \u201cAxe Files\u201d and I know others will, too.<\/p>\n

As he introduced Emanuel on his final show, Axelrod said his goal had been to offer \u201cone small antidote to the coarse nature of today\u2019s politics and social media culture that so often reduces people to negative caricatures and robs us of our common humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mission accomplished, brother.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"