Paul Begala on Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, and the Lost Art of Empathy

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Paul Begala on Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, and the Lost Art of Empathy

Long before Paul Begala made his career in politics—before his multiple stints as an analyst on CNN, before he served as an adviser to President Bill Clinton in the White House—he was a Willie nerd. It started when he was ten years old, after his dad moved the family from New Jersey to Missouri City, Texas, to take an oil patch sales job. It grew in the eighties, when he studied government and law at the University of Texas at Austin, in the Cap…