Finding The Common Ground. A Conversation with Congressman Ro Khanna

My guest is Congressman Ro Khanna, who represents California's 17th Congressional District, which is located in the heart of Silicon Valley. The congressman is serving in his first term and currently sits on the House budget and the Armed Services committees. Listen To The Podcast:   Now I know what you might be thinking dream think doers, you might be thinking wait, we don't talk politics on Dream, Think, Do. That is true, but I didn't invite the congressman on the podcast to talk about politics. Recently I met Ro at an event we were both at, and we realized we have a heart, we both have a heart for rural America. Ro is actually working hard on some really innovative strategies to bring high tech jobs to small towns instead of sending them kind of over places in the world. As you guys know, I come from a small town and I believe that some of the biggest and best ideas come from small towns. So we had a connection. Plus, I'm just fascinated with the guy. He's got an incredible story. I'll let you know here a bit more. Mitch: Now Representative Khanna was born in Philadelphia to a middle class family. His parents emigrated to the U.S. in the 70s from India in search of an opportunity and a better life for their family, for their kids. His father was a chemical engineer. His mother was a substitute teacher. Now this guy is no schlepp okay. He got his BA in economics from the University of Chicago, and received his law degree from Yale University. Not bad. From there Ro went on to such things as teaching economics at Stanford, as well as teaching law at Santa Clara University and American Jurisprudence at San Francisco State University. I could go on and on, but I'm just going to bullet point some things because we'll come back to them. Mitch: But one, this is some of the cool stuff that he's done that stands out to me. He provided pro bono legal counsel to Hurricane Katrina victims. He wrote a book called Entrepreneurial Nation, Why Manufacturing Is Still Key to America's Future. He served in President Barrack Obama's administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary to the U.S. Department of Commerce. Get this, this is staggering, this is horrifying, since he's been in office he's attended over 1,900 events. That number's probably even gone up since I got this data, and he's responded to over 70,000 personal correspondence. Sheesh! So, he's getting stuff done. No matter where you land politically, that's an impressive list, and he's a good guy. I'm leaving a lot out, I could go longer, but after meeting Ro I wanted you guys to hear from him because I wanted to get in his head a little bit and hear about his journey and hear how he's getting all this stuff done too. Mitch: Let's get to this. Congressman Khanna, welcome to Dream, Think, Do. Ro Khanna: Thank you. I'm so excited about this. I love your podcast. It's all about inspiration at a time I think we could use more of that, so thanks for having me on. It's a real honor. Mitch: Absolutely. I love it. Okay so I just read off some of your accomplishments. I hope it made you blush a little bit. You can share it [crosstalk 00:03:06] and all that. Ro Khanna: They leave out all the failures. I've always wondered about the introduction. If someone could just do an introduction of all your failures at some point. Mitch: Exactly. You're right. And then you're just like ugh. Ro Khanna: They didn't mention that I lost my first election 19% to 72%, or I lost my second time, or something. They conveniently omit all your failures. Mitch: Yeah, that's a different Wikipedia page right. I love it. Well I appreciate you listing some of those off too. We'll go after some of that just later too because I do think, I mean you've battled back from different things too and I love that. But okay so I see this list, I see you're in the House of Representatives, you're doing it, what were you like as a kid? I mean were you,