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And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN, the Axviles, with your host, David Axelrod.

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This big day here at the Axviles. Thanks to all of you who have been faithful listeners in the five months we've been doing this podcast.

We've now partnered with CNN, and are a part of the CNN podcast network.

And who better to kick off this new partnership than John Huntsman, the former governor of Utah, Ambassador to China.

A guy who started off aspiring to become a rock musician and ended up as a candidate for President of the United States.

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John Huntsman, you probably think I invited you here because you're a former governor, a former ambassador,

because you're a leader of this no labels movement in American, publicist, former presidential, can I? No.

I invited you here as part of our series on high school dropouts. It made good.

I thought it was only because you have good food here, David, but I'm happy to talk about the former.

Well, we do have that. We do have that. That's essential.

I'm interested. I want to talk a little bit about how you came to be interested in politics, and interested in public service.

But we should talk a little bit about how you grew up.

You did drop out of high school. It wasn't a log cabin story, so we shouldn't kid anybody about that.

You came from a very prominent and wealthy family, but you wanted to be a rock star.

That's right. That's right. I had, in fact, politics started in high school for me.

I grew up in California, born in the Navy. My dad was finishing his NROTC scholarship.

Then he took a job in the Nixon administration, so we went from California back to Washington in 1970.

It was my first real exposure to politics. That was a heck of a time.

It was a middle of Vietnam. It was a tumultuous time.

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