Donna Shalala

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, no, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's going to tell you the truth.

How do I present this with a class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

Yeah.

Aka Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

Welcome to the ticket.

I'm Isaac Dover.

I haven't been on a plane since March.

In fact, one of the last flights I was on, the day after Super Tuesday, was from Miami.

And when I got on the plane, I tweeted, The end of the most intense phase of the primary campaign travel coincides quite well with the coronavirus panic and travel restrictions.

That was March.

Over four months later, the coronavirus panic is still here.

So are the travel restrictions.

But in that time, Donna Shalala has been making that trip between Miami and Washington a lot.

She's a freshman member of the House, so she has votes to cast in Congress and work to do back in her Florida district.

But she's not your ordinary House freshman.

She's 79 years old, elected in the 2018 wave as the second oldest House freshman in history.

She came to the job job after an incredible career.

She was an early Peace Corps volunteer.

She helped start the now enormous Democratic fundraising group Emily's List.

She had top roles at several colleges and, under Bill Clinton, was the longest serving Health and Human Services Secretary in history.

That last job is a big part of why I wanted to talk with her for this episode.

When she's talking about what the administration can do to help with pandemic response and preparedness, it's not just as a legislator spitballing ideas or as a Florida politician outraged at how the governor there has handled this.

When we spoke, I asked her about vaccines, and she had a suggestion that totally surprised me and is definitely born of the mindset of someone who thinks about getting results on a big government scale.

I think you'll find it interesting.

Remember, the best way to support our podcast is by subscribing to the podcast in your feed and also by going to theatlantic.com/slash support us.

And please send me your thoughts and suggestions about what more you'd like to hear by emailing me at isaac at theatlantic.com.

And now, my conversation with Donna Shalala.

Hi, Congresswoman.

Hi, how are you?

I'm all right.

Thanks for you.

Is it nice to be back in Washington?

You know, it's a break from Miami, and I brought my new dog back with me.

Oh, wow.

He's a rescue dog.

I don't think he's feeling well this morning.

He seems to be sleeping a lot.

His name is Fauci.

Was his name Fauci before?

No, no, no.

I named him Fauci.

He was found, he ran into an Italian restaurant in my district after two months of wandering around on the streets.

So they said, give him an Italian name.

And I thought, Fauci.

So when was this?

Well, I picked him up two weeks ago, but he had been in foster care for a couple of months, get rid of his worms and all sorts of things that were wrong.

He had to be neutered, too.

And I wonder

how Dr.

Fauci will feel about that.

I don't know.

I texted him.

Did he respond?

No.

No, he usually responds, you know, if it's not an emergency, he'll respond at some point.

Right.

I guess you know him for years already.

Yes.

Yeah, he worked for me for eight years.

Yeah, I know him very well.

So

everybody laughs when I walk him around the Capitol when I say, here, Fauci.

it's either a compliment or or a really bad insult but I'm

not as a compliment

it's a COVID-19 dog somebody to not social distance with in these times I guess exactly

well so let's let's start with this you're 79 you live in Florida you live in Miami

are you

scared day to day with what's going on?

Well, I'm terrified for my community and for the country.

I'm not personally scared, but I'm just terrified that we haven't gotten control of this virus.

The lack of leadership at the national level, at the state level, in the case of Florida.

This balance between opening up and knocking out the virus is not a fair balance because first you have to knock out the virus before you can open up.

And I care a lot about the economy in my community.

It's been devastated.

I represent the beaches, the hotels, the restaurants, the cruise lines, downtown Miami.

I mean, we're totally dependent on crowds.

So I'm literally terrified about our ability to come back in the short term and our ability to save lives.

I was in Florida and in Miami on Super Tuesday on March 3rd.

And I have gotten periodically emails from the hotel that I was staying at saying, we're looking forward to having people back.

I mean, it's just such a the impact on Miami from all of this must be just immense, the number of people who aren't traveling there.

Well, just think of it this way.

Miami Beach has 90,000 residents and last year they had 10 million visitors.

You can't sustain an economy on 90,000 residents, not one built for millions of visitors.

You haven't felt an impact in sort of thinking about how to change your day-to-day life?

I mean, all of our lives have changed, but you haven't felt worried about it?

I mean, I just think, and I

am violating a rule that my mother told me in pointing out your age again, but you are in the higher risk category just because of your age.

No, I think the answer is I'm careful.

I obey the rules.

I wash my hands.

I practice social distancing.

I wear a mask, and that's all I can do.

I mean, I can't sit around worrying about it because I'm in a high-risk group.

I can't not do my job, but much of my job is on Zoom now as it is for my younger colleagues.

Right.

During the height of the Democratic primary campaign, the presidential campaign, I was on an airplane at least once a week, usually two or three times a week.

I haven't been on an airplane since March 10th.

You just flew back from Florida to Washington.

How was that?

Did it feel safe on the flight?

Did it feel like the airline was taking it seriously?

Well, I flew American.

They were taking it seriously.

I know that the airlines have some of the best ventilation systems in the country.

They did that to protect their personnel during the smoking period when they were abolishing smoking.

They had to clear the air in their planes.

So I actually, once you get on the plane with everybody with a mask on with that ventilation system, I feel pretty safe.

Though I did buy the seat next to me with my miles, the plane was not that busy.

Coming back the last time, every seat was taken.

I bought the seat next to me as much in case my dog got ornery in his

carrier, which he did.

So he slept on the seat next to me, but there wasn't anyone in the other seat either because the plane wasn't that busy.

But the flight that was not socially distanced must have felt a little bit odd.

It did.

It felt a little odd.

I was mildly uncomfortable, but not fearful.

And I can't explain that other than I've lived a long life and

mostly fearlessly.

Well, let's talk about that for a minute.

You have had one of the most extensive careers in public service.

You

were an undersecretary at Housing and Urban Development.

You were chancellor and president at a bunch of different universities and schools all around the country.

You're health and services secretary.

You're the Clinton Foundation CEO.

And then in 2018, you decided that what you really want to do is be a freshman member of Congress.

Can you explain that decision?

It was irrational.

I just got pissed off at what was going on in Washington.

It was March.

There were already five or six candidates in the race that had been in the race for a year.

And

I simply decided they could not flip the seat.

We had a chance because my predecessor had stepped down after 30 years, a Republican,

and I didn't think they were going to be able to flip the seat and I was just discouraged by what was going on in Washington and the chance of getting the House back depended a lot on people that were willing to step up and flip seats.

So I decided to do it.

And since you got to Washington, have you been encouraged by what's been going on there?

I've been encouraged by my colleagues.

I've been encouraged by our leadership.

I'm not encouraged by the president or the Republicans who constantly do not have an independent voice.

You know, we've done our work and it's not Congress.

It's the President of the United States.

The Senate will not move unless they know the President's going to sign a bill.

So the negotiation is not really with the Senate.

They negotiate among themselves, the Republicans, but with the administration, with the President of the United States.

And, you know, he has to put his thumb up or thumb down.

I mean, there was one day during the CARES Act in which we had were ready to vote, but the Republicans wouldn't vote until they got a tweet from the president telling him that he would sign the bill.

Well, he tweeted at midnight.

And we sat around until midnight.

It was absolutely ridiculous.

I must say, my Republican colleagues thought it was ridiculous as well.

They were saying that to you at the time?

Yes.

Not so privately.

They were as frustrated as we were.

I mean, we had done our job.

We had the bill.

We had the votes as long as the president agreed to sign it.

But the Republicans would not vote until they saw the president's thumbs up in a tweet.

I mean, who in the heck runs a railroad that way?

I mean, waiting for the Senate is like that Samuel Beckett play, waiting for Godot.

They never show up unless the president tells them to show up.

But when I talk to Republican colleagues, they're fearful of the president.

They're afraid the president will campaign against them and they'll lose their seats.

And what do you say to them?

I say, you got to be kidding.

What is worth a seat, life or death?

Because that's what we're facing now.

I wonder what you make of your governor, Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida, who

started out the response to the pandemic by downplaying it

and essentially seems like acting on the assumption that it wouldn't really hit Florida.

And he got a lot of praise from political allies for not doing the kind of shutdowns that other places did,

certainly in the Northeast, New York, New Jersey.

And now

in the last few weeks, the numbers from Florida are just astounding.

The number of infections is blowing past other nations just in Florida.

What's going on there, do you think?

I mean, he just follows the president, and he's a weak governor.

I said the other day, why do people run for office if they're not prepared to make tough decisions?

He's meek.

He's just not prepared to do what's necessary.

And he's under the thumb of the economic interests, which are starting to back away a little because they're starting to recognize that unless we get control of the virus in Florida, we can't bring any part of the economy back, including bringing the schools back.

But basically, he thinks his future is tied to Donald Trump.

And that's a big mistake because we didn't, the people of the state didn't elect him to follow the president when it wasn't in the interest of the people of the state.

So he is personally responsible for a number of unnecessary deaths and sickness in our state because he hasn't exerted strong leadership.

You were Health and Human Services Secretary for eight years.

That's the longest that anybody's ever held that job.

It was in the 1990s under Bill Clinton.

These days, people have been paying more attention to what that job is, what that department does.

Can you just walk through what it is to be Health and Human Services Secretary?

Sometimes people don't understand exactly what goes into that portfolio and what doesn't.

Well, it's a large portfolio.

When I had it, I had Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Public Health Service, the Food and Drug Administration, the CDC, the National Institutes of Health, plus all of childcare, the welfare system, programs for the disabled.

It's a huge, it's the largest of the domestic departments, and it has a larger budget.

than the Defense Department has.

So it's a powerful agency, but it's also a federated agency.

And the role of the Secretary is to make sure that the scientists talk to each other.

In the middle of the AIDS crisis, I worked with Tony Fauci for eight years, careful coordination between the CDC and the NIH and the Public Health Service and the FDA was critical.

And that's the role of the Secretary.

We, in fact, developed the strategy, the pandemic strategy.

and got the first money for it, including money for the stockpile.

We developed the stockpile, but it wasn't maintained by subsequent administrations.

We also developed a strategy in which we never let political appointees talk about public health.

In fact, Tony will tell you that I made them all put their white coats on for press conferences because the public trusts docs in white coats.

And they were the only people that spoke.

I might introduce them, but I never said any substance.

Was the idea, though, a pandemic just something that was off in the distance?

Because I think there, for a lot of people, they had sort of seen a movie or something, and it wasn't ever like this could be real.

But it obviously...

No, we thought it was going to be real.

We did think, like everybody else, that it was going to be a flu pandemic.

And I went around and saw all the appropriations chairs.

on the defense side before we left warning them that this could be bioterrorism as well.

In fact, the only way we got any money money was by suggesting that the pandemic would also be connected with bioterrorism because no one would, their eyes would glaze over when you talked about public health infrastructure.

It's such a stunning thing to think about for me that like every couple of days at this rate, more Americans die of the coronavirus than died in the September 11th attacks and how much of the country

and our way of life was changed because of what happened in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks and how for so many people they're facing this virus that's killing at a much higher and more consistent rate.

It's just under 3,000 people and September 11th and over 140,000 people so far with the pandemic and still counting.

But the desire seems to be to figure out how to just live life for a lot of folks.

Well, we just have to live with it.

Just got to deal with it.

You know, the people in my district don't want to live with it.

They want to get back to work and they want our leaders to do what they need to do to help control the virus.

They want a strategy to starve the virus.

They see other states and other countries that have been able to manage this and they're asking the question, what has happened to our leadership?

We wouldn't have gotten to this point if I was secretary because I would be working for a president that would have taken hold by now.

And we would have starved the virus down.

We would have had contacted tracing after we did that.

Everybody would be doing what they needed to do, wearing a mask, practicing social distancing.

I mean, we would not be in this situation.

Six months in, we would not be in this situation.

We would not be losing people because we had a shortage of beds.

We would never have let that happen.

I don't know a president that would have let that happen.

Okay, we're going to take a short break and we'll be back with more with Donna Shalala in a moment.

Bundle and safe with Expedia.

You were made to follow your favorite band and from the front row, we were made to quietly save you more.

Expedia, made to travel.

Savings vary and subject to availability.

Flight inclusive packages are at all protected.

We are where we are in this, which is a deep, deep hole.

If, and this is a pretty wild hypothetical here, I understand, but if you got a call from Secretary Azar, who is now the Health and Human Services Secretary,

or from someone else looking for advice and said, Donna, at some point we're going to have a vaccine.

What do you think we should do to make sure that the vaccine

gets distributed well?

What would you tell them?

You know, I would tell them that in September September and October, we need to do a dry run with a flu vaccine.

We now inoculate about 45% of the population.

To really get control of the virus, once you have a vaccine, you need to inoculate probably 70% of the population.

So I would tell him, get ready now for a huge effort to get everybody their flu shot.

for two reasons.

Number one, we need a dry run to make sure we have the infrastructure for distributing the new COVID-19 vaccine because we know how we now distribute the flu vaccine and we have the capacity to distribute the COVID-19 vaccine, but we need to do a dry run.

And the reason, one of the reasons to get people their flu vaccines is we don't want people dying from the flu and mixing them up with COVID-19 patients in the hospitals.

So we have to run a major national campaign, explain to the American people that they have to get their flu vaccine now, because that will help us when we get a COVID-19 vaccine online, and it will save lives, not only the lives lost to the flu, but it will save lives in our hospitals so that we don't jam up our hospitals.

That's what I would tell them.

Do you have faith that we'll be able to pull that off?

Well, I've convinced the Appropriations Committee to put money in for that flu campaign and for the publicity surrounding it but that's what i would do we have a distribution system i'm not worried about the distribution system we have the drugstores and the doctors offices and the hospitals and the community health centers and the walmarts uh we have places where we can give the shots what we need to do is to do a dry run

to make sure it runs smoothly and we can do that because we need to get the flu shots out in the fall.

You haven't heard that before, right?

I have not.

That's an interesting and seems somewhat reasonable idea.

My flu shot, I was always getting at my office the last couple of jobs I've had.

So I don't know that that's possible.

I mean, we send in, I used to do that at the department.

When I discovered that my executives weren't getting their flu shots, I had a nurse come in.

and shoot them all up and I did it in all the universities that I was at.

And many universities are going to require the flu shot this fall.

So we may be moving, but we need to be about 70%.

You were the second oldest freshman ever elected.

Both Biden and Trump have kind of thrown accusations at each other for not being fully there mentally.

Trump especially has really pushed on that, coming right up to accusing Biden of dementia.

There is an age component of that, obviously.

Is that offensive when you hear that go on?

Oh, sure, it's ageism.

But it's offensive to me when people are dying in nursing homes, unnecessarily, because we haven't put the testing and the other resources in to save a whole generation of people.

It's offensive to me when the president beats up or tries to beat up Tony Fauci.

and is literally trying to destroy the Centers for Disease Control, the great public health agency of the world.

You have been part of so many different generations of political activism.

You were

there as one of the Peace Corps volunteers early.

You were a founder of Emily's List,

which is now such an ingrained institution in politics and certainly in Democratic politics.

You were there in the Clinton years, then as part of the 2018 wave of Democrats flipping seats are there now.

How does this generation compare?

What's it feel like to be part of this generation of what activism looks like and what political engagement looks like?

You know, what you missed was that I've spent most of my career with young people.

That's true.

I didn't mean to skip over that.

So I love this generation.

I love the fact that they have lost themselves in a very significant issue.

I love the fact that they're willing to take on the establishment.

I have enormous respect for young people.

In fact,

I tell the story of

one of my more lefty colleagues who decided that we should try to get a 16-year-old voting age.

And they approached me and I said, sure, I said, if we can get kids to vote at 16, at least to start thinking about it, they'll vote at 18.

And maybe we can build up a generation of young people that realize that every election is about them.

So they asked me whether I would help whip on the floor.

And some of my colleagues said there's no chance that this democratic establishment is going to take on 16 year olds.

And so I started to whip on the floor and I went over to John Lewis and I said, Mr.

Lewis, he said, John.

I said, okay, John, I said, I believe that we should vote for 16-year-olds to allow them to vote.

And he said, give me your case.

And I said, you know, if we get them to vote at 16, I said, and then I said to him, but the elections are all about them.

And therefore, they ought to participate in the elections.

And he said, I'm in.

He said, I'll vote for it.

And he turned to everybody around him, which were members of the Black Caucus and said, we're going to vote for this.

We got 136 votes.

The only votes I couldn't whip were those that had teenagers.

I still laugh about that.

They all looked at me like, you got to be kidding.

So you started your whipping with John Lewis.

I started my whipping with John Lewis.

I figured he was because he was everybody's touchstone.

Certainly on voting issues.

Well, on voting issues and on decency and on young people.

And he really believed in young people.

And, you know, I made some friends that day with people that were further to the left than I was because I was willing to take on the issue.

I believe in young people.

I believe in this generation.

I've believed in every generation that has come behind me.

They're wonderful young people and they're committed to public service.

They want to make this country better and I think they will.

And the one thing I've learned from young people is to listen.

And in that process, I've become a better legislator, a better human being, and a better leader.

I had a youth advisory committee.

I've always had one when I'm in Congress, but when I was in the Department of Health and Human Services, and I talked to every intern group, there was a big joke that any intern group that asked to see the Secretary, I would see them because I missed young people so much.

Since you brought up John Lewis, maybe we'll actually close with this.

He

had been through a lot in his life, and the one thing that I...

It just sticks with me that I always heard him say every time that I would hear him speak at any kind of event is he would say something along the lines of, We're going to be okay.

We're going to be all right, we're going to get better.

We have to work for it, but we're going to get better.

You think we're going to be okay?

Yes, I do.

Sure, we're going to be okay.

We're going to have gone through some very hard times, but we're going to be okay.

We're Americans, we're resilient, we've been through hard times in our history.

I just have faith in the people in my community and the people in our country.

Yeah, the best is yet to come.

Well, we went from your dog to a story about John Lewis that was a pretty great story.

I was not expecting that one, so you surprised me, Congresswoman.

All right.

Thanks for taking the time.

This is really great.

We appreciate it.

Talk to you soon.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

That'll do it for this week for the ticket, Politics from the Atlantic.

Thanks to Kevin Townsend for producing and editing this episode, and to Catherine Wells, the executive producer for Atlantic Podcasts.

Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

By the way, Congresswoman Shalala sent me a photo of her dog, Fauci.

I'll tweet that out so you can see.

He's very cute, though.

He's breaking some rules in the photo.

And another reminder: go to theatlantic.com/slash support us to subscribe.

Doing that helps support the show and all our work here at the Atlantic.

Thanks for listening, and stay safe.