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And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN Audio, the Axe Files, with

your host David Axelrod.

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Gene Spirling has been in and around the making of American economic policy for three decades.

He was a young aide to Bill Clinton in the early 90s and ultimately became the director

of the National Economic Council.

Later in the Clinton administration, it was a role he would reprise in the Barack Obama

administration in the years of recovery from the economic crisis of 2008 and 2009.

Now he's written a book called Economic Dignity that seems particularly appropriate to the

challenges of this time when the COVID-19 virus has caused us to induce the deepest economic

crisis that we've faced since the Great Depression.

I sat down with Gene the other day to talk about all of this and his own extraordinary journey

that included a stint as a script writer and consultant for the West Wing.

Here's that conversation.

Gene Spirling, great to see you again, great old friend.

You've written this book called Economic Dignity and it seems as if it was written for this

moment in some ways.

But before I get to that, I want to talk about your own journey, some of which I knew and

much of which I didn't.

Some of it came to light just the other day because you lost your mom, Doris, who was a legendary

figure in Ann Arbor as an educator and as an education innovator.

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