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

host, David Axelrod.

Ray Mabis first on the national scene in the 80s as the youngest governor in America,

Governor of Mississippi, a new age Democrat who was determined to usher his state into the

21st century.

He finished his public career with eight years as Secretary of the Navy in which he thought

about what the Navy needed to be in the 21st century.

He came by the Institute of Politics recently to talk about all this and we sat down for

this conversation.

Ray Mabis, great to see you again and to see you here at the Institute of Politics.

Great to be here, David.

You have an incredible story and you've traveled millions of miles around this planet.

Many of them logged in the service of the country, some of them on other expeditions.

But it all started in a small town in Mississippi, so I want to hear a little bit about that and

how you, let's chart this journey.

Okay.

I was born and grew up in a town with about a thousand people, Akerman, Mississippi.

My family's been there for since the 1830s and I just picked my parents really carefully.

My dad and his brother owned the hardware store and they were all, my dad, his brother

and his sister were all born around the turn of the 20th century.

He was a much older dad, almost 51 I was born.

But one was born in 1894, 1896 and 1901 and at a time when not many people finished high school,

...