 Hello and welcome to the first Lowy Institute Live event of 2021. A warm welcome to everyone joining us from Australia and to those who are zooming in from overseas. I'm Michael Fully Love, the Executive Director of the Lowy Institute. President Biden has now been in office for more than a fortnight. Most of his cabinet is in place and we're starting to see the outlines of the new administration. But Donald Trump hasn't yet left the stage. He's returned to Mar-a-Lago, but his impeachment trial in the Senate begins on Monday. So there's a lot going on. And to help us make sense of it all, I'm delighted to have as my guests today two of Washington's most interesting, informed and influential commentators. David Ignatius is a prize-winning foreign affairs columnist at the Washington Post. Over the course of four decades, he's written about America's foreign relations, intelligence issues and the world. On the side, he's also written 11 spy novels, which I recommend highly. In 2016, David was the Lowy Institute's Distinguished International Fellow here in Australia, a fellowship that has also been held by Biden Administration officials Jake Sullivan and Kurt Campbell. Amy Walter is one of the best informed political journalists and analysts in Washington. As a national editor of the Cook Political Report, she provides analysis of the issues, trends and events that shape the political environment. She's also a regular contributor to the PBS NewsHour. So welcome, David and Amy. Great to be with you. Glad to be here. Alright, some brief housekeeping. I'm going to have a conversation with David and Amy for about 40 minutes. I'm going to start off on the politics of the day and then move on to foreign policy. And then I'm going to put to David and Amy some questions that have been submitted by our audience members. So Amy, I'm going to begin with you. And I want to go back in time and just review the events of the last couple of months over Christmas. But the dust has settled. What do you, what did you make of the 2020 election? There was a lot of discussion about how close it was, whether it was stolen and so on. How comprehensive a victory in historical terms did Joe Biden win in November? Well, first of all, thank you so much for the invitation and I am sorry that we have to do this remotely someday soon. Hopefully we'll be able to cross our oceans and borders and see each other again. And you're right, Michael, it's, it's so much more to me interesting to go back and look at an election because trying to do it in live time as we saw especially this year is challenging. It was especially challenging in this last election because so many people voted by absentee or voted early that we didn't have the final vote counts on election night or the day after the election, which is part of the reason of course. And it's the thing that the president points to as to why the election was rigged or was unfair to him, which of course all of those have been debunked and those claims are untrue. But I think what we learned about our country after the election are a couple of things, and we will learn more actually in the next month or so. Once we get the voter files. So all the voters who voted their update those updated lists are usually done by February or March. You have even more detailed analysis, but but just broadly speaking, we are still an incredibly polarized country. And Donald Trump did more, I think to sort of highlight it he didn't create it, but he certainly made the divisions deeper, more substantial, and potentially, and this is what we're really waiting to see is how long lasting they will be. What's interesting if you look back at, at, at history as you pointed out Michael, you know, Biden won by a record number or got more votes than any president in history at $81 million. Donald Trump coming in with the second most votes in history at $74 million, but his four point win so overall is a four point win over Donald Trump was similar to Barack Obama's. And Barack Obama won his reelection by four points, but unlike President Obama didn't win as many states. And he didn't have any coattails down ballot, whether for the Senate or the House in fact, Democrats lost, it looks like it will be 12 seats in the house so they're barely hanging on to their majority there. What I also know is that, while the 7 million number that's the gap between the popular vote margin is impressive. It was about 44,000 votes that separated Donald Trump and Joe Biden in the key battleground states like Wisconsin Georgia Arizona, had those votes gone the other way. I sort of shutter because of what this would have looked like. We would have had a 269 269 tie in the electoral college which would have meant that the presidential race would be decided by the US House representative so if we think we're divided and we're not going to summarize now just imagine what that would have looked like. But even as Donald Trump so it was incredibly close on the one hand, it wasn't very close on the popular vote on the other. And the other interesting thing is for all of the talk that Donald Trump had had been giving throughout his time as the silent majority there are all these Americans who support me but they're not coming out to tell people about it but they'll come out and vote. He still is the only president in American history, at least polling history so recent history to never hit a 50% job approval rating. He, as terms of the popular vote, he went from 45.9% of the popular vote in 2016 to just 46.9% in 2020. So all of these new voters came in. And yet, and he got a record number of votes, and yet he really barely moved to the needle at the, at the state level, he only performed five, less than a half percent better in Michigan, about a half percent better in Virginia, a little over a point better in Arizona so it in many ways it feels as if we are kind of running in place. There's so much tumult there were so much craziness that was the year 2020. And at the end what we found was we, we got something of a status quo in the sense of a, a president who was obviously he was unsuccessful, but he did not bring down the rest of his party in the way that many had expected. All right, very interesting and I'll come back to some of those issues a little bit later. David, let me bring you in. We got a result in the election, but instead of the normal transition we had something like an interregnum I guess I would say. Omar President Trump refused to concede defeat. He cast doubt on the integrity of the electoral process as Amy said. And finally he incited an insurrection at the Capitol on the 6th of January even to repeat that now reminds me how remarkable it is. David, you've covered the news from all over the world for four decades, including who's from all over the world. It looks like there was an attempted coup or an insurrection in any case in your country on the 6th of January. What were your reflections on it at the time and what kind of impact. Do you think it's had on international perceptions of the United States. Well, I think Michael at the period of the two months after election day through January 6 were as scary a time as I can remember. If it were overseas, you would speak about an attempt to seize the power ministries, the way in which the Secretary of Defense was replaced in the way in which people who were passionate political wireless for Trump were put in key positions in the Defense Department. The attempts were told to release highly sensitive classified information that Trump thought would bolster his case. I think that was a period where if it was another country, you would you would call it flatly an attempted coup. And as I look back, I feel a deep sense of gratitude to the people who kept us from going over the edge at a time when Donald Trump was pushing very hard with millions of passionate supporters behind him. And the heroes for me in many cases are Republicans, they're Republican judges, Supreme Court justices, state election officials, the secretaries of state in each state who monitored the election. And the person who was responsible for election security at the Department of Homeland Security got fired for saying publicly, this was the most straightforward, least fraudulent election that he could remember, which for the results got fired for it but stood up for principle. I was struck by the way in which the military under General Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff made clear from the beginning that they would not allow the military to be manipulated, not allow the military to be drawn into political role supporting Trump. And I also was amazed by the behavior of some officials who had been sometimes disturbingly pro-Trump supportive of the worst of Trump's instincts like Attorney General William Barr standing up in the end saying no, I refuse to support the declassification of the information that you want out. No, I refuse to stand behind your challenge of the election results. There are other cases, the former White House counsel, Pat Cipollone is another example of somebody who in the first impeachment debate was reliably pro-Trump, but in the end from what my sources tell me played quite a courageous role in drawing limits for Trump. Obviously, you'd add to that the Georgia officials, the governor, other officials who refused Trump's demands, threats really to alter the Georgia vote results, find me 11,000 votes was what Trump said in the phone call that we remember. So this period, as you said, should be worrying to people overseas to look at America. But I think they should be reassured by all the things that happened behind the scenes. In a way, as frightening as Trump's assault on our democracy was, my takeaway is that we learned a lot about our resilience and we learned that in a pinch, Republican officials who were facing sometimes physical threats stood up for what they thought was right. All right, Amy, in the aftermath of those riots, the House of Representatives voted to impeach President Trump for an unprecedented second time. And attention now turns to Donald Trump's trial in the Senate, which is set to begin on Monday. Let me ask you two questions. First of all, was it a good idea for Democrats to impeach the president for a second time? And secondly, for those of our viewers who are not watching it minute by minute, just give us a sense of what this trial will look like next week and what is the most likely outcome? So, as David pointed out, and I think it's, you know, it was only a month ago and already like so much of this last year, you know, you can't quite remember, was it a month ago? Was it a year ago? Was it yesterday? Right? So much has happened, we just are overwhelmed with the amount of news and the amount of once in a lifetime events in just a short period of time. But the assault on the Capitol has struck, especially members who work in that building in a way that was actually unifying for a short period of time. And I think even privately what you would hear from Republicans was how horrible it was, how terrible it was, how much they blamed the president and his rhetoric. And so in that moment, it wasn't surprising to see the House deciding that that impeachment is the way to go. And at one point, Michael, it looked as if you might get a bunch of Republicans actually going along. Going back into those days post, post riot when, you know, more and more stories were coming out, more and more video was getting released. And you had the leader of the Republicans in the Senate coming out and suggesting very openly that he would support an impeachment, the third ranking Republican in the House saying she was going to support impeachment. So it looked like there might be some momentum there. And then that momentum sort of hit a wall and this has been the story really of America in the last four years which is we go through these incredible moments that we think, Okay, certainly here's the breaking point. This is the point at which all Americans come together and say, All right, that's it. We're not going to stand for this, or Republicans are going to stand up and say, Okay, no, can't stand behind the president anymore. And we watched it throughout the 2016 election right thing after thing that Donald Trump would say and those of us in the press would say, Well, okay, this, this is the time when when Republicans will walk away. And it, it didn't happen, obviously, while he was a candidate while he was president you would see some dips but then they would always come back. And as such we've seen that too. And with the Capitol riots that essentially the the allegiance to the president is is much about the fear that many of these Republicans have of their base that when they listen to the folks and their home districts and their home states who say, You blame the president for this. This isn't his fault. This is about a lot of other things. Sure, it was a terrible horrible thing that happened. But why would you impeach the president this is just Democrats playing politics. And so the farther away we get from the actual event the easier it has been for Republicans to sort of compartmentalize this and make this a procedural argument rather than an argument on the actual facts. So when you ask what this trial is going to look like. We don't really know exactly what it's going to look like at the president himself has gone through a number of lawyers are ready. So these are brand new lawyers that he has brought on board within the last week. So that's not much time to get yourself ready for this but it seems as if they're going to make again a procedural case that not only did. The president, you know, he was not directly giving orders to attack the Capitol, but you're going to hear from a lot of Republicans in the Senate who are sitting in as jurors that, you know, this is really unconstitutional this idea of impeaching someone who's no longer in office. And at the end of the day, I think what we will end up seeing is a trial going forward that's going to be much shorter than the first one. It could be obviously a lot more emotionally charged because of the fact that, well, the issue itself is much more emotionally charged. But that if there are five Republicans who vote to impeach that would be probably the most that we're likely to see. And so the question then comes, it keeps coming out. We keep coming back to this which is okay well isn't that now the end of Donald Trump's sort of shadow over the party. Once we get through impeachment. You no longer has Twitter. He's no longer sitting in the Capitol he doesn't have the poll that he once did. And yet the repercussions for not supporting Donald Trump keep coming. That these members who voted for impeachment are finding themselves being censured by their local parties will be primaried the third ranking House member list Cheney. She held on to her leadership position but 60 members of her own party voted to oust her. So, even as he's not there. Donald Trump that the the Trump ism remains. All right David, maybe with a sigh of relief let me move on to the incumbent president the new president. He's not paying a lot of attention to the impeach to the impeachment trial in the Senate he's getting on with governing. David let me ask you a general question what kind of president do you think Joe Biden will be if you were to reach for historical parallels is there another president you think he might resemble. I mean I'm struck that he's an older gentleman. I wonder if, for example, he might focus on the picture items and leave some of the detail work to the cabinet and the staff for example, in the way that Ronald Reagan did is that a reasonable analogy what kind of president will Joe Biden make. I think Reagan is is is an interesting analogy, a genial older guy gift of gab sort of charm of the morning and back slapping people sometimes make a comparison to Harry Truman. I think there's there's something that Harry Truman was was a man who was underestimated just not seen as in any way up to the job being present but surprised on the upside. What I've been struck by about Biden is that the expectations about him were so low during the campaign and to be honest his energy was so low as a candidate to really. I mean, Trump's comment about campaigning from the basement wasn't all that off the mark. But he's had an extraordinary first two weeks it's it's been the best scripted and managed a rollout of the presidency that I can remember the personnel choices generally were good. He put together a cabinet of people. He was comfortable with in many cases who we'd worked with for for decades. You could just see today when he went to State Department we'll talk about this later, just how close he is personally with with Tony Blinken the Secretary of State. So it was a comfort level cabinet as I described it in one column, but I'm also struck by how tightly and efficiently manage this White House is Biden opted for a very strong chief of staff and Ron claim, who is somebody that your viewers probably know very little about but if I were to identify somebody who's really responsible for the success of these first two weeks it would be Ron claim. Things have happened every day, just as planned every day has been the rollout of a new set of policies a series of executive orders. This is an administration that is doing messaging with great skill I remind me of the early Obama period. They obviously coordinate I'm sure each of the press people get on the phone every morning and coordinate what the what the message will be. Jake Sullivan put together an unusually strong National Security Council staff is Asia expert Kurt Campbell, a former Lowy Institute fellow is by nearly everybody's account in the US the person who's really the wisest strategist. Kurt has come in according to Asia Asia policy, similarly for the Middle East, Brett McGurk, a person who's widely respected is going to be running policy finally I'd note in the unlikely, but but probably quite brilliant personnel decisions, the decision to put Bill Burns, former deputy deputy secretary of state, universally respected as a foreign foreign service officer to put him in as head of the CIA was unconventional he has no intelligence background but was immediately embraced at the agency I'm told and widely in Washington so it's just been a, again, maybe there's an advantage to being underestimated, Harry Truman had that advantage people thought this guy can never do it and he ended up being by by many of our better modern presidents, people certainly underestimated Joe Biden but so far, he's had it just right I'll mention one final thing and Amy when male so I want to speak to this, I think one of the smartest things that Biden has done is just to not give Trump any oxygen. He doesn't comment about the impeachment trial, he's been studiously neutral it's kind of like it's not my business that's for the Senate to decide. He just won't get drawn into this partisan craziness that we've been living down Trump's off Twitter now so we don't have wild spikes every every day coming out of Twitter to set the nation on fire and so, you know, as, as, as Trump called him sleepy Joe, just because genius old guy he's got this super sort of like, you know, grandpa in the fastest roadster in town. And it's an interesting combination. Yeah, I'm an image of grandpa in the aviated glasses in the trans am is definitely appearing on my cortex. Amy, let me let me on that on that topic. Biden, Biden is as we say Biden is sort of going high he's ignoring President Trump, he's trying to unify the country, and obviously the urge the instinct the reflex to reach for bipartisan agreement has been at the center of Biden stick since he entered national politics in the 1970s. But you, you earlier in this discussion you pointed to how divided America is after the November election so how what are Biden's chances do you think of unifying America. Excellent question it's something that we're talking about a lot here to David's point on on how well Biden's been doing and you know I think his mantra basically is whatever Trump did we're doing the opposite, which was also his campaign message and who am I, I'm not Trump, how am I going to operate, not like Trump, who are the people going to be around me, they're not going to be anything like the people Trump brought around him. So it really is like literally every day as a reminder of that. Yes, the policy is going to be different but just literally that the ability for people in and around Washington but quite frankly around the world. I know that there's some predictability back. I think it has has like given a big sigh of relief right just that's just one, one thing that feels so different from where we were just a month or little over a month ago. So as for the unity question, you know, this is the, the fight that Democrats and Republicans are having right now Biden campaign. No, now Biden White House will tell you that look when we talked about unity on the campaign. We were going to do everything in a bipartisan manner didn't mean that we were only going to pass legislation that Republicans like it didn't mean that everything was going to be bipartisan it meant that we were going to be open to conversations that meant that we were going to be simple and that they were going to look for openings meant that we weren't going to attack people on Twitter, Dan and Dan, including people in our own party, Republican site well, you're not really trying for unity if you're just going to and your first moments in go about signing multiple executive orders that are basically a wish list of Democratic progressive policies on climate on immigration on things like transgender military soldiers and and so I said that's not unifying. Here's the biggest challenge and you're right there is this sort of reflexive Biden is to look for the middle to look to for the the Republican he can bring in. And if you've been around Joe Biden and all you will hear the story about Jesse Helms you'll hear the story about all the other people that he's worked with over the years on the other side who he had in policy wise, politically ideologically nothing in common with but found a way to sort of connect with them. Here's the challenge. And when you look at, for example, how many members of the house sit in a district that is that was one by the opposite candidate so a Biden Republican district, or a Trump Democratic district, only 17 of those total 17. There were 63 of those back in 2008. The last time the Senate was 5050 as it is today. There were 30 senators who who were from a state that the presidential nominee of their party did not carry. Today there are six. So it comes down to what life usually comes down to which is incentives. There is very little political incentive to do a bipartisan bill, because ultimately, if you sit in a district that is red, or sit in a district that is blue, what's the benefit you're going to get from working with the other side, nothing, you're likely going to get a challenge, a primary challenge, or in the case as we saw we were talking about the impeachment debate, you're going to get potentially kicked out of your own caucus by your own members, people that you work with day in and day out so the incentive structure is so very different today than it was 20 years ago. And so it means that when we talk about, you know, finding unity or finding ways for the two sides to work together, we have to think beyond just how many Republicans, how many Democrats voted for it. Finally, the thing that I will add and I think needs to really be understood is, you know, this divide in America, we talk about blue and the red state, but it's more than just that they're voting for Democrats or Republicans and it's more than just ideology. This is happening all over the world, it's happening I'm sure in Australia to this divide between sort of more urban areas, and those that are more small town and rural, but it's not just a, it's not just who they're voting for divide it's that the priorities of the two parties are completely different. Again, back in 2000, the Pew Research Center has been asking this question since 2000 about, you know, what are your top priorities to Republican voters what are your top priorities to Democratic voters. And in 2000 of the top five priorities on the Democratic list, all but one were similar on the, on the Democratic list or vice versa right so maybe educations number one on the Democratic side and it's number three on the Republican side but still about the same issues in the top five priorities. Today there are, or the last time they did this poll is in 2019, there are zero, zero. So the top five issues for Democrats are not the top five issues of Republican so it's hard to come to an agreement, right, if we don't agree on the problem. That's very sobering. David, let me ask let me move on to the America in the world and you mentioned President Biden's first foreign policy speeches president that he gave overnight. He gave that speech at foggy bottom at the State Department. He announced that diplomacy is back. Now mutual friend Jake Sullivan also said overnight that Biden's national security strategy will lead with diplomacy. So what were the, what were the cues that you picked up from that speech what did you notice what was of interest most interested to you from that foggy bottom speech. The foreign policy speech, as Amy said about the Biden generally was, and I'm not Donald Trump speech. He went down the list. I'm going to rebuild the shattered alliances. He was very specific about Russia the days of rolling over to Russia are finished. He said interestingly about China that, although we're going to compete with China he's prepared to work with with China I thought that was significant. He broke from Trump's total support for Saudi Arabia and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman by saying the US will no longer supply weapons for the war in Yemen I think there's going to be a significant initiative to try to do some diplomacy in the Yemen war there's a prisoner exchange that's about to happen, which has been organized in Jordan. We have a new special envoy who for many years has been the State Department's lead person for Saudi Arabia Tim Lender King, whose job is going to be to see is there's some way we can broker regional support for a resolution in Yemen I think that's actually somewhat closer than than people may imagine. The final thing that was very untrumpian, but is going to is going to be part of Biden's style is to embrace the State Department itself. Trump almost fell over himself saying how much he loved diplomats and you're great and you know it was it was wonderful. Trump talked about their personal courage and going to difficult places and a real expression of support and Trump view the State Department view the CIA view much of the government as what he and his supporters would call the deep state. The first is State Department Foreign Service Officer, you felt pretty good after after that that speech. I think, in terms of significant outlines of the foreign policy that's ahead on on the hard issues we haven't seen much yet. There's a suggestion of seeking some sort of opening with with China will see how that develops. There are other issues we can talk about that are of interest to your viewers in Asia. But in general I thought it was a good comforting speech diplomacy is back America's back parentheses Donald Trump is gone. So let me change from the deep State Department if you like to the State Department. Let me let me draw you out on the comment David, you made or the illusion you made there to China and this balance between a competition and cooperation that the Biden administration seeks to strike. And there's been some speculation as you know that as with the Obama administration a desire to do deals with China to do global deals whether it's on climate or other issues might mean at some point that the competition element is shelved and allies a I noticed an article in the Wall Street Journal the other day on the team of rivals that was that was betraying John Kerry and Kurt Campbell for example on opposite sides of the China argument and and saying this may be a big sort of division in the administration is that the way you see it and you know if you were to squint your eyes do you think Biden the Biden administration will emphasize more on the competition side or more on the cooperation side. Well, first, John Kerry has has made a point of trying to refute this idea that he would urge concessions to China so as to get Chinese support on climate change. The talk of some sort of rivalry between Kerry and notably Kurt Campbell, but also Jake Sullivan. One hears a lot of that. My own sense is that they're going to try very hard to compartmentalize their China policy so there will be a climate file and they're going to make a powerful pitch to the Chinese that it's in your interest to economically in terms of your global leadership position to work with us will see how much success they have but it'd be surprising to me if China resisted an American supported effort to move forward on climate change. I think in terms of protecting very sensitive US technology, especially the technologies involved in chip making, I think we're going to see more continuity from Trump policies than than change, I think there's general recognition among US specialists on China that we need to be very careful about protecting our lead in in the most important technologies, the research that I've done to look at the extent to which China is really leaping ahead of us in artificial quantum computing and the various strands that would be part of future dominance that's overstated. The United States lead remains pretty substantial and I think there's a consensus from Sullivan Campbell, blink and throughout the government that it's important to protect that I would I would think there will be strands of cooperation, but the sort of fundamental idea that we're going to have and technology and our, our, our leading edge, even at the cost of, I want to call it partial decoupling in in the US Chinese technology and perhaps, you know, part of the economic relationship but I think I think that's that people should expect there would be some decoupling. All right, Amy, let me bring you in on this climate change question, if I can we've seen a lot of action in the early couple of weeks from the Biden administration on energy policy and climate policy. And of course the appointment of a former presidential candidate and Secretary of State is the climate change envoy but also rejoining Paris designating climate change as a top national security priority, saying that the government fleet of I think it's 650,000 cars and trucks will be replaced with how big a shift in the domestic energy and climate change debate, are we going to see under the Biden administration and to the extent that you can comment what kind of change to the global atmospherics. Do you think that will have on the climate change, the global climate change debate going from the Trump period to the Biden period. Well it gets at Michael this divide that we were talking about in this country, you know the sort of red and blue and when you look just physically geographically about you know the big differences between red American blue America. Red America is predominantly, and again this is true in in some other countries, driven by the following industries, you know energy extraction, ranching and farming, and, and manufacturing, and it is in the blue areas where it's, you know, it's trade and it's finance and it is the sort of thing that we're doing right now right and all of those sorts of things that you can do in an internet age it's a knowledge based industries and so Donald Trump ran again on a, on a message that there is a real American there's a not real America and in real America, we, you know, love coal and love drilling and any, any attempt to regulate or over regulate or to impinge on that is basically saying, you know, you're anti American. But we've been having these fights for some time this isn't new. And, and again so we've in some ways had it litigated in this last election. We had it litigated in the 2016 election about, you know, who's, who is the most normal American the one who's supporting climate change, you know, real mitigation on climate change or one who is saying, you know, this isn't such a big deal. And in this case, if you know you're Biden you say well we we have already sort of won that fight. And if you look at the polling on a lot of these issues. You know, even on the issue of the quote unquote green new deal most Americans have no idea what that means. It sounds kind of nice right everybody likes green everybody likes a deal, put them together. There we go. Perfect. So most people have no concept of what, of what that is the areas that are skeptical about the doing more on climate change are areas in which, again just from a pure political standpoint if you're just looking at that way. Have already been lost to Democrats and aren't likely to come back. Democrats aren't going to win West Virginia ever again, or at least in the near future. And so that, as I said I think that that piece really has been litigated. The question is how much you can really do legislatively so much of what the Biden administration has done and what the Trump administration did was through these executive we're finding this week and last week that problem with them is that they are ephemeral right they're not written law they're they're not there they can be overturned with the stroke of a pen from a new president. So, I think the challenge especially if you're in the energy space or if you're thinking, again globally about what this, what this is saying to the rest of the world about you know their ability to do the hard stuff on climate is. We're doing the US is doing a not great job, either right. We're doing stuff but it is very much a, you know, one step forward one step back and again not in a full some sort of, you know, again green new deal way where we're tackling this comprehensively, but it's taking bits and pieces here and there. I think the thought going forward is generationally. This is one of those issues that you know once the those those folks who are in the 40 and under become the leader of our world in our country that these issues are also going to be debated in a in a very different way. Amy, let me ask you another question that probably the toughest and most important issue for President Biden this year is COVID. It's great to have an administration that takes a sign seriously that encourages the use of masks that's focused on on rolling out vaccines. But on the other hand, President Biden is still faced with many of the structural issues that hampered the US response to COVID. He can do a great job himself but there are a lot of other factors I think that went into America's unimpressive COVID response including the size of the country, the highly individualistic culture the hyper partisanship, perhaps the lack of universal control over the way your federal system works which is quite different from the way that Australia's federal system works so how do you think, how is the administration approaching the problem of COVID, and how likely is it, do you think that the Biden administration will get the pandemic under control in America by the end of the year. Yeah, that really is everything. I mean, in some ways there is, there is nothing more stressful than to come in as a new administration with a crisis that is already underway. And, you know, obviously, the folks that Biden has brought around him and Biden himself have already experienced that when they came in in 2009 in the middle of a financial crisis. So, this in some ways isn't that new to them, but they also know that, as you pointed out that the, the challenge is more than just getting the, the COVID under control, it's also getting Americans sort of on the same page. And so we're all agreeing that wearing a mask is the right thing to do that, getting the vaccine is the right thing to do to trust the vaccine to trust the medicine. So I do think that that's still some of the structural problems, but fundamentally, you know, the fact is that while he was, while he's walking into huge problems. He was also given, as he walked into the White House, the keys to solve them. Well, at least one key, which is the vaccines. And so, those are there. And a big piece of this now is, is really about production and distribution and getting as many of those vaccines to as many people as possible. And I think for folks here all just speak for myself to me, the end of the summer is going to be really that that make or break moment, I think, because it will be at that time where I say right there's been six months. Right. You know, the next couple of weeks we're going to have a COVID package where more money is going to get pumped into the economy, more money that's going to go out to testing and distribution and, you know, get making more masks and making more vaccine. You do all that. You get refocused on distribution. The economy will, will bounce back to a certain extent. So you're going to get a nice little bump again if you are thinking about this politically from the Biden perspective. So things go better with the vaccine things go better with the economy. And by, by summer, what I think we will have seen that is okay. Our people, going back to their quote unquote normal lives, our kids going back to school did we get a summer vacation. My number one concern literally at this time is, can I please get my kid out of the house for the summer, just a couple of summer camps, I'm desperate. Those sorts of things, you know, getting getting Americans feeling comfortable again is really where he will be judged. All right, now I said I'd put some questions from our audience to Amy and David we have a lot of questions so I'm going to try to get through a bunch of them I want to start with you David. I'm actually going to give the prerogative to the chairman of the Lowey Institute Sir Frank Lowey. Frank asks this, will the world, it's again on the covert theme, will the world return to normalcy. And if so when will that happen and what will that normalcy be like. Well, first to salute to your chairman, Sir Frank, and best wishes to him. I think the thing that we say about about business. So many aspects of social life is that there's going to be a new normal. The world is going to come back but it's not going to look the same as it did before companies individuals countries have adapted. The pandemic has tested systems, but there's surprising adaptability in my judgment. My worry is that one of the really dangerous trends in America and the world which is the separation, the elites and the people connected with them and their industries prospering getting increasing returns to their success. Nimbleness produces greater success and greater nimbleness and other people who just get left behind who were unlucky who were in parts of the country or the world that aren't connected to these very adaptive technologies that that that gap will get greater. And the thing that's the poison in our system that's led to such terrible division and I do want to speak a little bit. Some point about about the divisions in America but but they're they're all over the world. We will come back to a kind of normal but it'll be different. And we need to be, I think quite concerned that the differences will exacerbate some of the underlying political and social tensions that existed before and that got us into the mess that we've been we've been living through. Amy, the next question is from you for you and it's from Irene Geblonka, and she asks a question about Dr Biden Jill Biden the first lady of course who's, who's very doctorate actually became the weirdly the subject of political argument, a media argument a few weeks ago. And Irene asks, how do you see her role developing in the administration is she likely to be an advisor to the President Allah Rosalind Carter. I think we're going to see Jill Biden fulfill the role in much the way that Michelle Obama did I mean both of them are incredibly effusive. They are extroverts. Now she can't do that right now. You know if we were in a non coven time. I'm sure she would have already been at you know 16 different events with kids with school school events with all sorts of, you know with military officers. I think, in that sense, she, she will be very much like Michelle Obama and also kind of going back to her you know she loves to talk about her Philly roots and, and you know her very middle class upbringing. And her, she does really have an appeal that that that crosses into so many different kinds of parts of America, you know she's, she does not come across as this sort of elite. I'm sort of better than you all right she's the debate was, can you call her a doctor because she has a doctorate. And, and no she didn't go to an Ivy League school and no she doesn't teach at my league school she teaches at a community college. And I just want to just to echo David's point about you know returning to normal. I agree with him completely that my fear is that similar that the have and have nots gap which has only grown grown in the last 20 years gets even more significant. They're entire industries that have been completely decimated, and a lot of those industries the service industries are dominated by women. And even women who can do what we're doing right now which is work from home have a computer if you have computer you can work have had to drop out of the workforce because they cannot do childcare and work and not have school. And so what this means to an entire generation of women who you know have broken through so many barriers is going to be another thing that I fear that we're going to go backwards. David, you alluded before that you wanted to say something about American unity so let me invite you if you want to make some comments on that please do but while while you're thinking about that let me put one other question to you from Hunter mastern at the Australian National University and Hunter asks, how do you think the Biden team will balance human rights and great power competition in the Asia Pacific. We got a sense today in Biden's speech at the State Department of what will be an increased emphasis on human rights. He's going to change the refugee resettlement policies from what Trump had done and I think he and Secretary of State Tony Blinken are serious about trying to recover some of America's moral leadership. And that means being more outspoken about human human rights issues. I think China and human rights issues in China were a big concern for the Trump administration so that won't be a major difference but but I think the idea that Biden so often repeats which is that at the center of American power is that human rights and moral authority will will lead them to be very active. I'll just briefly say say a couple words about this question of unity and division in America. What happened on January 6, the storming of the US Capitol, but was an extraordinary and and truly dangerous event. And it was dangerous because, although that mob was not made up of average Trump supporters, there are some tens of Americans who share Trump's view that the election was fraudulent. In other words who don't believe that our democratic democratic system is working were that alienated from it. Biden understands that somehow he's got to find a way to speak to those people and begin to bring them back into a broad America where they may not agree with his policies they won't stop being conservative Republicans, but they're not going to be seditious. And I think that's in some ways is most important challenges it's so amorphous hard to get your arms around it. But I think your viewers should pay attention next week as the impeachment trial in the Senate starts to the question of whether that's going to ignite these very dangerous passions. Biden's doing everything he can not to be drawn into it. And I think he's going to make that a priority I mean that could just blow out everything else he wants to do. I don't know if he's not careful but I'm paying real attention to this question I final thought is an Australian counter insurgency strategist named David Co colon, who wrote a book called the accidental gorilla about about. We've had a couple of problems there as you will have heard with David Ignatius is feed which is why you've had a lot of vision of me while David speaking. I'll get David back but in the in the interim. I'm going to put one question to Amy it may well be the last question and it but it goes to the same issue that David was speaking about their Amy. This is another audience question from Terrence Hull Terrence asks, is it possible to prosecute citizen Trump in federal courts for crimes he committed while president and I guess the reason that's so relevant is that, even though President Biden wants to drag the country forward to the to the future President Trump keeps pulling us back and even if he doesn't want to engage with President Trump. There are a lot of lawyers out there who do want to engage with President Trump so how do you think that criminal legal element might play out and play into this question of President Biden achieving unity. Great. And of course, you know, the question to and I and I think that Biden, as I recall, is not has had publicly he's not interested and the Department of Justice, necessarily going out and finding ways to prosecute citizen Trump. And at the same time, there are legal issues that are already out there remember that are much more about his civil issues about his business that are still sitting in front of the New York Attorney General and and the Manhattan District Attorney so those cases are still also sitting out there. I think what was really interesting and this is this has been happening actually as we've been on this call and right before it. House representatives decided today for the first time ever that to expel a member from the opposite party from a committee from the committees that she sits on. Because of things that she said and tweeted and promoted that encouraged things like shooting members of Congress. There's a photo of her standing in front of three members of the Democratic Party holding a machine gun. She has pushed conspiracy theories about everything from 911 being a hoax to some of the school shootings, being false flag operations, and Democrats stood up today and said, she should be off of the committees and Republicans you should join us and if not, we're going to go ahead and do it. And do it. And so what is happening, both with the impeachment vote now with this vote on this woman, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor green, where Democrats seem to be planting their flag, and much more so you're right as Senator Joe Biden is doing it but Democratic folks on in Congress is to say the Democratic Party is going to stand up against this attack against any white supremacy terrorism call it out, not ignore it. It's up to Republicans to do the same. And if they don't voters are going to have a very clear contrast between the two parties, who stands for what who believes in what who's going to defend what. And I think if you are it is true, as, as David pointed out that you know Joe Biden is ready to move on to his agenda to get beyond Donald Trump but this isn't just about Donald Trump I think the worry. The other word is what has been stirred by Donald Trump it's always been there he didn't invent it, but what has been stirred up and emboldened is still out there, and that the conspiracy theories are still going strong and that these terrorist groups are still out there. And so it is up to Biden to do two things one yes to move on to say we need. I don't want to spend my entire presidency, focused on Donald Trump personally but what I do need to be focusing on is reading the country of domestic terrorists and saying there is no quarter for them there will be no way in which this administration is going to let that go. And so I think that you'll see much more on that piece of it than on the. Let's go after Donald Trump himself piece. All right I'm delighted to see David Ignatius is face back on the screen we had a little internet problem earlier that's how life in the zoom era goes we roll with it. David I want to give you the opportunity the last word if you like, as you're interrupted earlier. We're just taught Amy was just closing about this question of unifying America but at the same time, calling out criminal behavior so final word to you David. As I say, I don't mean to sound overly optimistic, we remain a frighteningly divided country, but Biden's off to a good start. I think there are parts of the Republican establishment that really want to be free of the Trump era, Mitch McConnell's finally found a voice to be a leader for Republicans. And so, you know my my theme this week is is American resilience we may be back in the swamp before you know it but but this week I'd be a little bit more optimistic. Well thank you both. I think of you both as our code breakers today because on the on the politics and the policy you've you've helped break the codes for Australian viewers. Thank you very much. I think the image that I'm taking away is the speedy grandpa. As David put it of Joe Biden on the highway in the roadster and I guess we all wish him Godspeed so thank you very much, Amy and David for joining us, despite Internet snafers thank you. Thank you everybody else in the audience for joining us for this first low Institute live event for 2021. The Institute works continues this year. Let me give a little plug to my own podcast the directors chair, where the 2021 season begins next week. And the first guest for 2021 will be an old friend of David's in mind David portrays so please join in for that so again, thank you ladies and gentlemen for joining us. Thank you Amy Walter and David Ignatius. Stay safe and stay well.