Mark Paul grew up in the Midwest before traveling west for college. He never left, and became an expert in California politics, covering the capital for 24 years for the Oakland Tribune and the Sacramento Bee. Now, as a New America Foundation senior fellow, he’s working on a book on political reform in the state, writing “in a room, surrounded by a lifetime’s worth of books.” Learn more about him below.
Q. What do you wake up to?
A. Morning edition on NPR, which is a bad way these days to start the day because it’s such doom and gloom most of the time.
Q. What music have you listened to today?
A. Neil Young and Nellie McKay.
Q. What’s your favorite word?
A. Yes.
Q. What comforts you?
A. The sound of the wind and the rain which we have too little of.
Q. What inspires you?
A. I’m inspired by the drive of immigrants in California, and how they’re renewing what’s best about America.
Q. How would you describe yourself in five words or fewer?
A. Skeptical, sometimes cynical, always hopeful.
Q. If you could live in any time, past, present or future, which would you choose?
A. I’d like to be able to see how all this turns out, and how our kids do with what we give them.
Q. What is your favorite alcoholic beverage?
A. Red wine.
Q. What is your greatest extravagance?
A. Software and computer stuff. I’m sort of a geek.
Q. If you could take only one more journey, where would you go?
A. I think my wife would kill me if I didn’t say Italy.
Q. What profession would you like to practice in your next life?
A. I’d like to build custom houses.
Q. Whose talent would you like to have?
A. To write like John Updike.
Q. What is your favorite holiday and why?
A. Thanksgiving, because it’s a time for all of us to remember that we do have a lot to be thankful for.
Q. What is your fondest childhood memory?
A. Getting to come home from the hospital when I had polio. I had been in the hospital for five months.
Q. What is your most prized material possession?
A. My books.
Q. What promise do you make to yourself that you break the most often?
A. To exercise.
Q. Who is the one person living or dead that you would love to have a beer with?
A. Nobody more than Peter Schrag, the writer who I worked with for 20 years.
*Photo by Aaron Salcido.