And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN, the Axviles, with your

host, David Axelrod.

The night of the disastrous 2010 midterm elections, I got a call from President Obama.

The first thing he asked me was, how did Tom Perry-Ello do?

Tom Perry-Ello was a freshman congressman from Virginia, but in one short term in Congress

had impressed everyone in Washington with the vibrancy of his ideas, his willingness to

think differently, and his courage on many issues that ultimately cost him his seat in

that election.

Tom has been a fellow at the Institute of Politics the spring, and that gave me a chance

to sit down with him and talk to him about some deep thinking he's doing, about where

we need to go as a country.

Tom Perry-Ello, great to be with you, great to have you at the Institute of Politics.

You've been a wonderful fellow here, this quarter, but I owe our listeners a disclaimer

right at this start, which is that, when I, in the two years I was in Washington, you

were in Congress.

You were like my favorite guy.

You were my favorite guy because you were from a difficult district in Virginia for Democrats,

and you were willing to take on the big things that we were working on, the Affordable Care

Act, climate change, and some of these other issues may well have cost you your tenure in

Congress.

But now's my chance to ask you, where the hell did you come from?

Well, it was a great two years, and the program here at IOP has really been great.

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