 Hi folks, welcome to the future of democracy. My name is Sam Gill, and in this show, what we try to do is take a look at some of the big ideas, big trends, big controversies that are really animating our democracy, our national conversation, and take you a little deeper than you might be able to get just hearing a debate on cable news or reading one article. And this month, we are teaming up with the Miami Book Fair to host an amazing set of conversations with authors, with artists focused on different topics about what they think about the future of democracy. And this is all leading up to the 37th annual Miami Book Fair from November 15 to 22nd. The Book Fair is an incredible collection of authors and an incredible collection of books, a really vital conversation about ideas. If you're interested, please go to MiamiBookFairOnline.com or follow them at Miami Book Fair. If you're not interested, then you're not paying attention to the incredible authors they're going to have. This year, Natalie Portman, the actress is going to be a part of the Miami Book Fair. Bill Nye, the science guy is going to be part of the Miami Book Fair. And you can hear every single presentation, every single talk for free, but only if you tune in from November 15 to 22nd. One of the sets of authors that we got to talk to is a husband and wife team. It's Susan Glasser and Peter Baker. Susan Glasser is, of course, staff writer at the New Yorker, she writes a weekly column on Washington. Peter Baker is the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, and they have both written an incredible book about James Baker III. It's called The Man Who Ran Washington, The Life and Times of James Baker III. Had a chance to sit down with them, get the inside story on this incredible world-defining figure in Washington, and what his career and what his legacy means for democracy today. I hope you enjoy the conversation. Susan, Peter, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks so much. We're delighted to be with you. So first question to me is why James Baker, why now? Well, look, we were thinking about James Baker seven years ago. So it's not even just now, right? We started the book in 2013. And one of the reasons we were doing it, we were struck by, first of all, there had been no biography of James Baker, even though he was Secretary of State, at really the most interesting and consequential time in our foreign affairs in our lifetime. That by itself meant he was a worthy subject. But we also thought that his story was a story of Washington more generally, even before Trump came on the scene back in 2013. You know, there's a lot of dysfunction in Washington. It wasn't working the way it had in the past. We thought the Baker story could help us understand a little bit about what Washington was like then, what it's like now. What, you know, writing about someone who's so close to being contemporary, as certainly for Washington, for Washington hands, what, what surprised you? Like he's not exactly an unknown figure. What did you uncover that was surprising to you as reporters or as long time Washington observers? Well, look, first of all, any time, you know, you have a chance to dive into a life, and especially one as consequential as this. I mean, you know, just understanding Washington from the end of Watergate to the end of the Cold War, it was an opportunity for us to look on at events that we had not covered. Certainly we were, you know, around, but we weren't actually old enough to cover all these events. And I think, you know, what you come away with is a renewed appreciation for the fact that history really is much less inevitable than it can seem in hindsight. And especially some of those events at the end of the Cold War, you know, it was much more touch and go, much more influenced by a whole constellation of individual choices that Baker and George H. W. Bush made in those key moments. For example, the fall of the Berlin Wall was a big surprise to Jim Baker and other people. His own State Department had sent him a memo a few months earlier saying, you know, as much as we might like it, unification of Germany remains a pipe dream, a beautiful fantasy. And so there was no playbook for that. And in fact, had it happened a few months later, it was only the next summer that Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and the whole world's attention turned to the Middle East. In the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev was facing challenges from hardliners that ultimately led to a coup. Imagine, you know, if it hadn't, if it played out differently. And Baker faced opposition not only from the Soviets, but Margaret Thatcher and the British were violently against it. Francois Mitterrand was against it. There were skeptics back in Washington. So, you know, I think for us, it was an exercise in looking at how much does individual agency matter in the context of, you know, the broader macro forces of history. One of the things that really struck me in reading the book is it feels like James Baker never trained for his next job, you know, whatever the next job was. And sometimes in almost farcical ways. I mean, you guys point out, you know, he's Treasury Secretary without studying economics. He becomes a campaign manager in almost unbelievable circumstances, really, as you read it. What is it, what were the attributes, having looked at the whole of the life that you think enabled him, because he didn't just take the jobs he thrived in most of these jobs in ways that are documented, in ways that become empirical almost in their force. What was it about him, do you think? Yeah, it's not something I would recommend to everybody. Just try to not study for things before you do them. But look, it happened to work for him because he had a particularly unique skill set, obviously. And I think he applied the same skills that he had learned as a lawyer in Houston to all these different positions. And it was the way he approached them that made the difference. He didn't have, you're right, a big background in geopolitics or strategy or whatever. He couldn't have talked to you about the Treaty of Westphalia, like Kissinger might have. But he had a sense for how to get people on the other side of the table to do things he wanted them to do while making them walk away from the table feeling like they had got something themselves. And that was a skill that translated whether it would be in negotiating with Congress over budgets and tax deals and social security and whether the same with negotiating with central bankers about currency rates as Secretary of the Treasury or the big questions as Secretary of State in terms of reunifying Germany and nuclear arms treaties and Middle East peace. So he took the same skill set, even if he didn't have the knowledge background to each of these particular missions. Something that sort of, you know, we're like in this current moment, we have an almost overwrought discourse about the value of humility in politics, particularly seeing its absence. And, you know, I guess just sort of following this thread, like it doesn't, he doesn't lack for confidence. He doesn't lack for sort of a sense that he belongs, but there's a different kind of humility straight to me, which is he doesn't enter all of these situations with a clear orthodoxy about the way to get something done. He's humble in the sense that he sees that there's a space for learning. He needs to learn and to understand that one of the things that you document and maybe you could talk more about is when he takes over on the floor fight in the Ford nomination in 1976, he's commissioning all these analyses from other experts about different sorts of questions. How does, what is, what is, what was his process for entering these sorts of situations? This is such a good question. First of all, I think you're right about just to emphasize the incredible sort of improbability or unlikeliness of, you know, we looked at this and realized, of course, during the book, that he was sort of the world's most successful mid-career switch. You know, he didn't even make it to Washington until he was 40 years old. And within one year he goes from an obscure position in the Commerce Department, not the center of the action at that time or any other, and manages to become running President Ford's campaign in large part, by the way, because of his performance doing the delegate count at the 1976 convention, as you just mentioned, and he, you know, turns out to have a real knack for that. He also, by the way, learned that BSing the press is not a way either to victory or to credibility with a national press corps. Reagan's campaign manager, you know, was offering up inflated and inaccurate vote totals and, you know, saw his credibility take a real hit, whereas Baker, you know, the nickname for him on the walkie-talkies was the miracle man and, you know, he managed to pull it off. But to your point about his appetite for information was voracious. And I think that is a key aspect of the success of many people in Washington. It's underrated and not being able to look at a problem for what it is and not what you wish it to be. And, you know, it's funny because right now we're in this sort of age of magical thinking, you know, the coronavirus will somehow, you know, just disappear. I don't know if the people saying that believe that or not. If they do, then we're really in trouble, I would say. And, you know, what's interesting about Baker was that he was, according to those who work closely with him, absolutely unsentimental when it came to business, you know, and the business of politics. He didn't want to know what you felt. He wanted to know what there was. And, you know, that meant he was rigorous in seeking information and also, by the way, in hiring people who would tell him the truth and who were also A-plus people. And, you know, that's one thing, more insecure types, whether it's in Washington or in other businesses, right? They are confident enough maybe to surround themselves with top flight people, but Baker had the opposite point of view. And I think that served him very well in those jobs. You know, another sort of narrative of leadership is being driven by conviction. And one of the other things that struck me in the, I keep calling it like the early life, but as you point out, it's into his mid-40s, which just for folks who are listening, I mean, it's just a fascinating life before, even before he comes to Washington, filled with tragedy and change. But the, it really struck me, he doesn't, to me, read like he has much of an orthodoxy. Like he's very, very pregnant. He's not really an ardent Republican at a time where that is, that's not a popular, that's not a sort of a popular ideological set in the social circles that he's in, in Texas. And he's also has these amazing stories of his gentility. Like he's led more by having strong relationships and making deals is the way it reads to me, that he's led by sort of a deep sense of conviction about two or three ideas. What is there, is he more pragmatist than principle? Is pragmatism his principle? What's at the core of his sort of moral leadership? Yeah, that's a great question. Look, you've heard the book Art of the Deal. Well, this is the real deal maker, right? This is the guy who actually makes deals and knows how to negotiate. And you're right. That means he's a pragmatist. That means he is willing to toss aside orthodoxy at times in order to get what he wants. It doesn't mean he doesn't have some, a core. I think he is a conservative small C. He's from Texas. His instincts would lean on the, on the conservative side. He wasn't a flag flyer. He wasn't a part of the Reagan revolution in the sense of, you know, having an ideological fervor to remake government per se. He was the guy who took Reagan's vision and translated it into reality. He was the engineer, not the architect, right? So that is, again, that doesn't mean he wasn't loyal to Reagan's vision, but he tossed aside the parts of Reagan's vision that he thought weren't practical that weren't going to actually work. So when Reagan promised to get rid of the department of education, Baker knew that was kind of a loser. He had a democratic house when he took over. So why waste energy on it? Focus instead on the economic program, the tax cuts, things he could get through, which are conservative. So it wasn't that he wasn't, didn't have any principles. It was just that he was just driven by what could be done. And he always said that Reagan told him, you know, I'd rather get 80% of what I want rather than fly my flag and going over the cliff. And that Reagan was more of a pragmatist than people thought as well. What, so I want to ask a couple of questions of kind of what the legacy of James Baker is in our politics was sort of actually in conceptually. So one is more conceptual and it's picking up on, Peter, what you were just talking about, which is we're, we're in a moment where it's very confusing to figure out when are, when are we, when are we critiquing leadership right now on the basis of personal political virtue versus leaders as proxies for institutional political virtue? Like COVID is a clear example of this. Like what is so distressing to so many people about Donald Trump isn't just what he seems to be saying and thinking, but it leads to a general distress about are there any institutions we can count on that are going to give us expertise and guidance at a time where we feel that we, that we needed stability at a time we feel that we need it. How do you think about James Baker in this context? Is he an institutionalist or is he embodying a set of personal virtues around pragmatism and accomplishment that ultimately are able to animate and drive the kinds of change that, that he and Reagan and his colleagues are seeking during the 80s. You know what I would say is that he is fundamentally an institutionalist and you know he was a believer in a certain definition, call it an ideology if you want, but a certain definition of American leadership both at home and in the world that relied upon the idea of institutions, for example, alliances. You know we just did an event with him and he stated again that he believes that's at the core of his view of American foreign policy is the idea that it leads at the head of a table and there need to be other people at that table. And he was, you know, very adamant about that. I think that also the institutions of Washington worked at a time and in a way at that time that they no longer do. And so, you know, in his period at the Heights, you know it was after the debacle of Watergate. In fact you could argue that, you know, it was that sort of neutron bomb of Watergate taking out the existing Republican leadership that gave him the opportunity to come to Washington for President Ford and to rise so quickly. So, you know, he wasn't there for that implosion. He was there for the period of essentially the renewal and restoration of American institutions that lasted for the next couple of decades. And of course, because he broadly speaking had success in them, he tends to be a believer in these institutions and a cheer leader for them to this day. You know, Peter and I were just discussing there's a certain paradox and I think we don't know, even after many years of working on this book, you know, because Trump is such a challenge to the modern Republican Party, what is the role of character that he assesses in terms of the Oval Office and the White House? You know, his best friend was George H. W. Bush, who I think by all accounts may or may not have been a great politician, but he, you know, certainly was more or less a good man, you know, who brought a value set that Baker endorsed to the White House. And, you know, we've had great presidents of bad character before, and we've had bad presidents of bad character. And I would say that Baker is... And we had good presidents of good character. Hopefully. But what's interesting is that I would say that's not Baker's interest. He doesn't want to talk to you about character. I would add, by the way, on institutions, you point to institutions, you would not see a Baker undermining the credibility, public credibility of the CDC, or the intelligence agencies, or the Pentagon, or the FBI, or the courts, or the judges. It just wouldn't be his stuff. It doesn't mean that he wouldn't see them in a bureaucratic way, understand that they were bureaucratic players that he might not necessarily agree with, but he wouldn't publicly undermine their legitimacy in the way what we're seeing today with the Trump administration. Well, this is sort of what I'm getting at, right? I mean, like the... And Trump is the epitome of this, but he's not the only performative politician out there. There is this... There is a set of behaviors that are about undermining the legitimacy and the warrants in the logic of institutions, and then a set of behaviors that are just irresponsible, and they're commingling in a lot of public discourse, it strikes me. And so it becomes very... So it strikes me like... The person I was thinking about reading the book actually was Anthony Fauci, which is that it's not only that he's... Also clearly a committed institutionalist. Just, I mean, like, you know, for decades, he's been running... He's been committed to the idea of a sub-department within the National Institutes of Health, but also that he epitomizes these personal characteristics that are both praiseworthy, but also recall for us, to your point, like what good institutions do. Good institutions are reliable. Good institutions tell the truth. Good institutions are focused on result, not partial interest. So we almost want to read these characteristics out of them. I mean, to what extent were you guys caught up in that? To what extent were you trying to kind of, like, read out of James Baker just a nostalgia for an era in which institutional commitment was... had bipartisan adherence, if not allegiance? Well, look, I mean, you know, this is a guy who's firmly rooted in, you know, a definition of America that, you know, may not exist, but we sort of wanted to, right? But it can't be an exercise in nostalgia. And I don't think the book is either. You know, it's a study in power. It's not a celebration of it. And his own ambivalence about Trump and, you know, his both disdain for Trump, but inability to fully renounce him, I think it tells you a lot about what the modern Republican Party is and has become. And, you know, for a while, we kept sort of asking the same question over and over again, looking for a different answer. I think we came to understand that the answer was helpful for us in understanding our subject and in understanding the politics of today. So let me, I want to another question on those lines about not letting this be a hagiography of a moment, much less of a person. There's sort of two narratives right now that seem to me to pass in the night a little bit and that contradict each other. And so one of them is a very dominant narrative in Washington, certainly, that we've mentioned in this discussion is says like the era of comedy and dealmaking is dead. You know, whatever, whatever it was, it's gone. And polarization and performance have instead taken over as the, as the ascendant virtues of institutional politics at the federal level. And then there's sort of another narrative that's, that's really rearing its head right now, which says that comedy and dealmaking are tools of entrenched white male power. And, and you guys note at your pains to note that James Baker is like the American product of privilege in a way, not necessarily economically always or in the sort of most overwhelming sense, although the family was not hard up for money at all, but very much of privilege is status. And that's something that was a part of his life even before he makes this, this career shift. What's your view on how he fits into these two narratives of power? Yeah, that's a great question actually. I think you're right about a lot of putting it that way. I think I would say a couple of things. One is that, you know, we just saw yesterday the president of the United States throw up his hand and say, no COVID relief deal. And I'm going to bother to cry until after the election. We haven't had one since April. Millions of people are out of work, millions of businesses are suffering. And here we've gone six months without the federal government coming to a deal because they couldn't criticize their differences, partisan, ideological, whatever they are. I can't imagine Jim Baker allowing six months to go by without making a deal on something seen as so critical as this relief package. Remember, this is Baker Harsh. I mean, a ruthless partisan and electioneered, but he sat down in 1983 with the Democrats and they revamped the social security system to put it on a stronger financial footing for years to come. He sat down with the Democrats in 1986 and rewrote the entire tax code. Nobody's done that on a bipartisan basis since then. He sat down in 1989 with the Democrats and saw the contra wars, which your younger viewers might not remember, but was basically a debilitating, you know, force in the 1980s for Reagan administration. So he believed in getting stuff done. Now, is that a function of privilege? Yes. In the sense that he is, he is obviously a figure of the status quo. His family is aristocracy in Houston. He was not a revolutionary figure. He wouldn't be a movement figure on either the left or the right. So he was in that sense of stability force more than more than a change agent. But there's something, there's something he said for actually getting stuff done, even if you're not, you know, throwing out the whole system. And if you don't have so security on a better footing, if you don't get rid of the contra wars, if you don't have a COVID relief package, there are consequences to that. There's a great, just for folks listening, there's a great story when he first runs for office, kind of badly actually, and he refuses to let himself be conscripted into the culture in sort of the early days of the culture wars. And it's, and it drives his advisors crazy and you guys document it really, really wonderfully. So just a last question. And I'd love to hear from both of you. I want to resist the question. I'm sure everyone's asking you, which is the, you know, WWJBD question. What would, what would, what would James Baker do now, but Oscar version of, because I'm still a partial hack. So what of the Baker epic that you document? Do you want to see more of in politics today? And what of that epic? Do you want to see less of in politics today? And I'd love to hear from each of you. Look, we're so lucky to be, you know, journalists and chroniclers, you know, it's our job to, you know, make shout from the chief seats and, you know, not have to make difficult decisions, right? I mean, that's, that's the truth of the matter. There are so many layers to the dysfunction right now. And obviously it predated the Trump era and it will post date the Trump era whenever that is over. And, you know, there are plenty of people who read our book and say, you know, it was the Jim Bakers in the world who were the precursors and the forerunners of the modern Republican party. And they want to talk about the 1988 campaign against Michael Dukakis and that's legitimate. You know, there are antecedents of our dysfunction that go back a very, very long time. You know, what I would say was that for somebody who always has been a glass half full person until maybe the last few years about, you know, our politics about history, that, you know, there is a certain optimism that comes from understanding that individual women and men of good character placed in positions of power is far, far better than the alternative. And that they do make a difference and that you don't know when exactly that moment is going to be. And that as shocking and surprising as everything that's happened the last few years, none of it was inevitable. And what comes next is not inevitable. I really did come back out of this with that idea about our politics really renewed. And, you know, I keep coming back to simple things. For example, while Baker was not a big ideologue in 1981, Ronald Reagan had the chance to name the first woman on the Supreme Court and they were determined to do that. And of course he did do so and it became a big part of his legacy. It was Jim Baker. We learned in doing this who actually was the person who pushed Sandra Day O'Connor for the Supreme Court. And even at the time the Reagan conservatives were furious that, you know, the hardcore Reagan East is who already viewed Baker with great suspicion because he was an outsider to their circle and he came in, you know, because he was seen as highly confident, which he was, but he wasn't really trusted by them. And, you know, he wasn't just an empty tactician, you know, carrying out somebody else's design. He physically blocked them from having a meeting with Ronald Reagan in the Oval Office to torpedo O'Connor's nomination. And, you know, there were an awful lot of five to four decisions with her name on it. And so, you know, individuals make a difference. Peter? Oh yeah, gosh, I don't know that I can prove on that at all. It's a hard act to follow. She's right that we don't take a position as journalists. I don't anyway as a reporter, she's a columnist, she's a little bit more freedom than I do, but we don't generally take a position on who's right, who's wrong or how to, you know, what policy choices should be made. I would say that one thing though, that as a journalist, I think I could say is there was a fundamental respect for the role that journalism plays. You know, they, the Reagan people got mad at journalists, just like every presidency I've covered. I've covered four now. Everybody got mad at journalists as part of the system. We are adversarial in the sense of our job to present information they don't want us to present. And yet it was still professional, you know, the Baker could talk to reporters, even though he assumed that they were liberal and not Reagan supporters because he felt like it was still better to communicate a message and get information out and not vilify people just on the basis of being reporters. And we see today this whole enemies of the people stuff, you know, straight out of the Stalinist playbook is a corrosive. It's corrosive for our society to try to question, you know, the very veracity of the institutions that bring people information and help them participate in their own democracy. So I say that's one thing that I look back on that era and wouldn't mind a little more of. Well, the authors are Susan Glasser of Peter Baker. The book is the man who ran Washington, the life and times of James A. Baker, the third. If you're learning who Peter and Susan are here, you are living under a rock. But just in case Susan is at SVG one and in the New Yorker, Peter is at Peter Baker and NYT and in the New York Times. Thank you so much for joining us. Hey, thanks for having us. All right, folks, every single one of these conversations is going to be released leading up to the 37th annual Miami Book Fair. It runs from November 15 to 22nd. Every conversation is free during that period. Check out Miami Book Fair.com or go to Twitter at Miami Book Fair. And remember, the future of democracy runs every Thursday live at 1pm Eastern. You can learn more at kf.org slash fd show. You can also follow the FD podcast at Spotify, Apple, Stitcher or wherever you follow podcasts. That's also where we'll be releasing every single one of these exclusive conversations in partnership with the Miami Book Fair. And of course, feel free to send a question at any time to me on Twitter at the Sam Gill. Thanks so much for listening.