POLITICO caught up with former green jobs 'czar' Van Jones. Answer This: Van Jones

Until he resigned in 2009 from his position as the White House’s special adviser for green jobs, few Americans had heard of Van Jones.

To supporters, he was a passionate and powerful environmental advocate. Detractors — led by Glenn Beck — billed him as a left-wing radical. But since leaving the White House, Jones has hardly disappeared into the woodwork. He’s signed on as a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and as a visiting fellow at Princeton University.


This summer, he’s spearheaded the launch of Rebuild the Dream along with MoveOn.org. The organization aims to “Say no to right-wing attacks on the middle class,” according to its website. Fortunately, Jones said “Yes” to POLITICO’s latest “Answer This” interview:

Tell us your favorite joke.

I just love it when my first grader tries to tell me a joke from school or something. The problem is, he doesn’t really understand how jokes are supposed to work yet. So he just winds up getting everything twisted and mangled, and by the time he finishes with it, it literally doesn’t make any sense at all. But he doesn’t know that. So he will look at me with these big, bright eyes — like, “Get it? Get it?” — and then he will just break out laughing, like it is the funniest thing ever. And then I start laughing, too, because the joke is so bad, but he is just cracking himself up, so happy. Then he runs to tell his mom the same bad, nonjoke, and he must think he is the next Richard Pryor or something. I love that.

When’s the last time you used profanity?

Thirty seconds ago? I gotta work on that one.

How many hours of sleep do you get on average?

Not enough. Sometimes only three or four hours. After six, I almost always wake up.

Describe your level of ambition.

I am attracted only to ambitious causes, ambitious goals. I believe we can bring back the best of the American Dream — and make it available to everyone, this time. I believe we can create millions of clean energy jobs in America — and attack global warming and the global recession in the process. I believe we can make “liberty and justice for all” an American reality and not just an American ideal. I am committed to those goals. So myself, personally, I want to do as well as I possibly can, in helping us get there. I am hard on myself. I push myself. I study other leaders. I want to improve.

You’re president of the United States for enough time to make only one executive decision. What is it?

Appoint a green jobs czar!

Preferably someone with a colorful past from Oakland, Calif. Hey, what could possibly go wrong? Seriously, I would enforce EPA rules against planet-baking carbon pollution to the max. If I had a second decision, I would bring our troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan. We could use that $3 billion a week to fix America. And we need those young men and women to help with the nation-building here.

What’s a common and accepted practice for Americans nowadays that you think we’ll look back on with regret?

Cellphones. Cancer in a box, I bet. You know how we look at old movies, and everyone is smoking, and we say: “Look at those idiots.” Twenty years from now, people will look at us mashing these cellphones against the sides of our skulls and say the same thing. But I still use mine 24/7!

What is your favorite body part (on yourself) and why?

My cheekbones. They are just like my father’s. He died in 2008, and I miss him every day.

What would you attempt to do if you knew that you could not fail?

Create a science fantasy juggernaut like “Star Wars,” “Lord of the Rings” or “Harry Potter” — and try to bend the culture in a new direction.



What type of products do you never go cheap on, for the sake of quality?

Pens. When it is time to really think and really write — you must start with a blank piece of paper and a great pen.

Describe a few pet peeves of yours.

Cynics. People who are constantly focused on obstacles rather than opportunities. For Christ’s sake, move to another country! We are Ameri-CANS, not Ameri-CANTs. Anything is possible.

How often do you Google yourself?

I get all the alerts in a batch at the end of the day. All I can say is: There must be some other guy named Van Jones out there. And some right-wing bloggers have it in for that guy, something bad.



What do you know now that you wish someone had told you 10 years ago?

It might sound corny, but the mind, body, spirit, emotional health — it is all one system. You can’t perform well for long in one area unless you are attending to the others, too. Repressed issues become expressed issues, under pressure. If you want to play at the highest levels of this game, you gotta be learning how to love yourself more and more, how to take better care of yourself, all the way around. Respect the game, 360, and the game will respect you. Corny, but true.

What childhood event shaped or scarred you most?

Just being a nerdy, scrawny, bully magnet as a kid. All the way through college, I made Steve Urkel look like a body builder — but it taught me real compassion for the little guy.

Would you rather … live without music or live without TV?

Haven’t had a TV since I left home in 1990.

… be gossiped about or never talked about at all?

Easy one! Remember that song: “Never Forget (So Much Things to Say)”? Bob Marley says about haters: “Let them keep talking / ‘Cause none of them walking /And while they keep talking / Ima keep walking!” That’s it, in a nutshell, baby.



Think of one of your least favorite people in Washington and, without naming him or her, describe what makes that person so unappealing.

Just a small, insecure person, trying to climb that ladder. No heart. No love. All calculation. All cynicism. How can anyone be so smug and superior about being so small?



Let your mother know how much she means to you, in the form of a haiku.

Never learned much about haikus. I think of them as little raps, from another place and time, right? OK. So try this one: “Yo, Mom, I love you! Kiss you! Hug you! Look what your boy do! I come through! I TOLD you! I’m BOLD, too!”

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