Thai im Judy Woodruff im thrilled to be joining these three amazing others today. You see them on the screen. They are George Packer whose latest book our man Richard Holbrooke and the end of the American Century and Susan Glasser and peter baker his book is out this fall the man who ran washington the life and times of james a. Baker to third. Two brilliant books about too complicated and fascinating men. They were born a decade apart baker in houston in 1930 and holbrooke in manhattan in 1941. Baker a republican trained as a lawyer holbrooke a democrat a Foreign Service officer a student of foreign policy. Their lives took very different trajectories but they both ended up in washington where they became major power players. Picking up on that this is a man with great vision and it was there before he came to washington. It was. He was a family feud aristocracy. He was expected to great things. He had a very dominating father who imparted on him the legacy of his family or the bakers, one thing they were not meant to do with politics. He was told we dont do politics and thats when he finally breaks away from his fathers domination over his life and his world basically changes at age 41 he suffers this great family tragedy. His first wife dies of cancer and ran the Houston Country ClubTennis Courts and george h. W. Bush took him off on a different odyssey that puts them at the center of world events. George im going back and forth because again the stories in the books are so rich that we could go in so many directions but im going to try to weave these stories together. George packer, Richard Holbrooke i use the word complicated but it doesnt begin to do justice to him. Why did you want to write about him and talk about his ambition, what drove him and frankly the fact the first order of the book is about vietnam. He died in december of 2010. He was actually stricken in Hillary Clintons office of the secretary of States Office which was a fitting finale and the high drama characteristic of him. A few weeks later his widow offered me his personal papers and id thought i have a chance to explore a flamboyant mesmerizing maddening character whose career covered vast centuries from kennedy to obama from vietnam and afghanistan through an intimate look at his diaries and letters and other papers. I said yes without quite knowing why i said yes. Holbrooke began to read those letters and he began his career in south vietnam. In 1960. As soon as i began reading his letters from the mekong delta to his first wife i knew he was so intelligent so observant and funny and arrogant and a guy who could fill a book and maybe more. So his ambition was a demonic engine that was there from the very start and that got him into very high places and led to some try and send also in the end i think cost them a great deal. Friendships, relationships and maybe his own Hearts Desire which was to rise to the top of his field. He never got there because people found them to be too difficult and abrasive person and his ambition he could never keep in check. Demonic engine what a term. Susan and peter talk about jim baker. He came to washington. He ran the campaign against Ronald Reagan for george h. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan shows him to be a white house chief of staff and he was seen as probably the most successful person at that job, this modern time. How did he do it . Thats a great question because he didnt really have a background that was necessarily project that he would be successful. He was a lawyer and he ended up running gerald fords campaign in 1976 coming in from nowhere in the wreckage after watergate. There were no republicans left in this generation and thats why the Previous Group had been convicted and sent off to jail and he opened up a world of people like jim baker, dick cheney Brent Scowcroft and a whole generation of people who came before. I think its an example of a president that was an outsider coming in to washington but he wanted to get things done. He doesnt have the Organizational Skills to run the white house they didnt understand washington. This is a guy who ran not just one but two campaigns as his chief of staff but ended up being a smart choice on his part. And susan what was that quality in jim baker that got him chosen for that job made him a success and went on to be the treasury secretary pulled off a big bipartisan tax plan which as we know we havent seen anything of the likes of his sense that airing the reagan years but what was it about him that pulled it all together . Well peter baker this is a question that everybody asked him. He would give this folksy twang and hed say well you know my family has managed prior preparations with poor performance that we all know pretty well that washington is a city full of ambitious lawyers who do their homework and stay up late and certainly its true that baker was assiduous to the point of effective when it came to getting the job done and he he would stay in the Reagan White House until he returned every phonecall out of every member of Congress Office after he knew they had gone home. This is a. Internet era but thats not obviously there are plenty of people who are extremely well prepared. Certainly thats one aspect but i think peter and i founded working on the book that in the end for jim baker success was the only option. I think the hypercompetitiveness is part of what he had in common with george h. W. Bush and i think thats how they bonded. And by the way there are various stories about how theyd teamed up but a picture is looking at the other day of jim baker pointing to the wall before george h. W. Bush showed up and the single champion at the country club for the past few years. It was james a. Baker to third and george h. W. Bush wanted to be teamed up with a winner. Theres a question about that. Jim bakers father and his family and generally deserted this over leaning power over his early years. It changed him as a person. His dad literally beat this kind of competitiveness into him. They joke and call them the warden but jim baker would go and play a tennis match and when he was done playing his match his father would make him stay on the court and keep practicing. I think that tells you an awful lot. Baker both managed over leaning ambition both have a certain insecurity and an obsession with how they were perceived by others but the difference was jim baker i think has this amr moussa selfdiscipline where holbrooke was this character who emerges in georges wonderful and powerful book. Baker took that discipline that was eaten into him and goes into politics with this rebellion. He could have done it when his dad was alive. It was only when his dad was that he went to washington. George pick up on that. Theres so much to say about Richard Holbrooke. His area was foreignpolicy and understanding the world. People talk about what a brilliant, another version of Henry Kissinger. How did you see him in his take on the world as a diplomat and how did he combine that with getting things done in washington . So a few things. First of all there are some overlapping themes here between peters book in mind. One is ambition that one is tennis. Holbrooke played a ton of tennis and ive a feeling that he rose up through the hierarchy in saigon and then in washington by whipping people on the tennis court or by being so competitive they have to respect him. First it was anthony lake who was his close friend and his peer in the Foreign Service in saigon and it remained that way for 10 years and their friendship mysteriously disintegrated with great consequences for them and for u. S. Foreign policy later when they were working together on bosnia under bill clinton. Then he started playing tennis against westmoreland and Maxwell Taylor in saigon and eventually got to Bobby Kennedy in washington. This is how holbrooke maneuvered in order to be invited to the best dinner tables in georgetown he revered this postwar generation of american statesman from averell harriman to george kennan, george marshall. He thought of them as the model for him. He wanted to be just like them. The problem was he was a very different man. He was not born to an aristocracy. He was although he never talked about it and have an outsiders and uncouth and as that kept getting in his way as well as being away for him him to push other people aside and get ahead. And then the times change. The establishment was falling apart during holbrookes career in the wake of vietnam. It was no longer that group of wise men who simply could be called upon by the president so holbrooke was forever trying to get to the top of the mountain. He loved mountain climbing stories and always just falling short. I had this line that he got to the highest base camp imaginable but he met every assault on the summit and it failed. Its partly because of history chain. He didnt have a geostrategic mine. He was more of an operative. He was the guy who went in and got things done especially in Foreign Countries and bosnia for example. And times change and holbrooke is not cut out to smoothly ride his way to the top wasnt selfdiscipline like baker as susan said. He was undisciplined. He was transparent. His appetite for insecurity were all on the surface. He thought he was playing people when in fact they saw right through him and in the end the relationship that failed him was the one of barack obama who he desperately wanted to work closely with and to be trusted by him and obama never trusted her liked him and to some degree died of a broken heart with a sense of failure at the end of his life. Let me have quickly the parallel between the two men who are vastly different in a lot of ways and yet what made it they both were a lot less and than they both were distinctive. Ive been looking for places where their lives intersected and if they knew each other better and you can comment on that but i was looking at the period of the balkans. Baker was obviously they are in the administration at the end of the cold war. The balkans to remember he said we have a dog in that fight and later that became the place that Richard Holbrooke later triumphed. Its a place but it may be a way to look at what was it about the balkans and richards holbrookes strengths and weaknesses . I think that fight was crucial because it said something about james bakers worldview and its view of american foreignpolicy and where we have interest in where we didnt. He listed the balkans is hopeless ancient slavic struggle and we could never understand and had no this is getting involved in. He made a very cursory effort to try to negotiate with milosevic and other balkan leaders at the beginning of the war. He botched it in the war happened anyway. Bill clinton inherited it to the terrible stage and bosnia. Its not acres finest hour and it shows something about the limits of realism. The difference is holbrooke had at passionate sons that america had to be involved in the bosnias of the world and yet he let that country bleed. It would eventually become our problem and would possibly rupture the transatlantic alliance. It was not of no consequence. We actually did have a dog in that fight at once holbrooke admitted himself to that antidid it in a way that he really did care about other countries and people and places whose names we cant pronounce who are suffering in civil war and as refugees and floods and famines. This was something he characterized him throughout his life. Yet passionate humanitarian streak and i was activated by the suffering in the balkans as was his very postwar Acheson Kennan sense that america had the lead. He was not going to stop until he had a deal and what peter mentioned is exactly what bosnia brought out in him. The same qualities did not work in other places but in oz nia all of holbrookes strengths came together and he achieved his claim to history which is what he supports. Susan listening to you im thinking about how baker went back to the balkans at the end of your book and another period iraq the first iraq war in 1990 the first gulf war where in writing the book he wanted to take out references to, there was a line in there about maybe we should have stayed longer and we could have could have done something about saddam hussein. He didnt want that in their clearly suggesting may be mistakes were made. Will look jim baker was a pragmatist and he came by that to his own experience. He was not all about the freedom agenda or democracy agenda on the world. Baker was essentially very calculating about where he thought the deal was possible and he was going to jump on and where he didnt see one hed be pretty disciplined. At the beginning of the bush presidency he became secretary of state he wasnt acheson at all in the middle east. There was no deal there and he understood he had to focus on those priorities in this part applies some of the career diplomats were suspicious of him. He was going to have his own very political list of what he thought he could accomplish and he wasnt going to focus on so he went looking for the deal. Thats the key to understanding the foreignpolicy worldview. Its more than a centrism or an idea that he was a rigid isolationist. He was very much willing to assert American Power in the world but nobody was quite sure what that new power would be. The world was falling apart in 1989 to 1991. And george talk a little bit about holbrookes view of all that and how he maneuvered talked about the balkans but how did he maneuver in the postcold war era . I think holbrooke would not have been as masterful as baker was at the moment of the fall of the berlin wall and his solution to the soviet union. Holbrooke in a way never showed much interest in the greatest foreignpolicy issue of his life which was the cold war. I think he found the soviet union may be just too abstract, too static, not enough happening in nuclear arms talks with some thing holbrooke would never have gotten adjusted in. His intensity and attention were always directed toward particular countries where there was conflict and where there was suffering, vietnam, bosnia, afghanistan. Once the cold war ended to think holbrooke saw the opportunity for democrats to reenter the foreignpolicy arena. He had been scarred by vietnam as was every democrat of his generation both by having been involved in the war and being in thinking we need to get out which was the position he had. He was always worried about an attack from a hawks. Once the war ended that pressure was off and i think he had an outside idea of what america could do as the soul superpower. He wanted to be involved not just in Bosnia Kosovo cypress east timor and the congo not with military but an allpurpose negotiators, the horn of africa. They were all the small wars going on in the 90s as countries were disintegrating and he found them all sort of irresistible. In a way baker is more think of a figure who had sort of a large view of what was possible and what was not and the foreignpolicy and geopolitics where is holbrooke was more of an operative who would go and try to solve peoples problems. In the postcold war era he was at his best and may be his most successful and got himself into some trouble that he had a hard time getting out of. Peter would like you to pick up on that. There was one line i wrote down about acre in the end when you are writing about how much you wanted to be seen as a diplomat again working on the book and im quoting he was after all a fixer. No matter how much he tried to break out of that straitjacket a fixer to shape world events. I mean george is saying james baker was in some respects more like Henry Kissinger but there was a difference. There was a difference. Taker focused on the big things. Baker was quite sentimental. He was not moved by pictures of suffering and never thought his work in east timor was kind. He was very calculating that sounds but he didnt have a great world geopolitical view of things. He would not have gotten into a discussion about it or he was in the end of fixer a political operative who knew how to get legislation through a Campaign Leader who could negotiate the base but the other team and the great downfall of his life the thing that question the most was when he had negotiated the madrid peace talks and brought the coalition together for the gulf war and manage the unification of germany and then he threatened his friend george bush calls them back to the white house parties about to lose reelection in these baker to come back and once again resume out roll of fixer. Its a crushing blow for baker. He couldnt stand the idea that suddenly he was worried about funding instead of issues of the day. In fact through the fall as he was once again in a losing campaign is on staff felt like he wasnt in it they said why are you doing anything . They called his wife and said yet to get on his case and even barbara bush said he baker wasnt all in for her husband. It caused a rift between baker and the bush family that took years to resolve. The picture was the thing he wanted to transcend and it was something he couldnt escape. I was covering washington then and i remember it felt like we waited for months for baker to get into the campaign. The problems they were having. George we talked about the ambition and holbrookes case largerthanlife pluses, largerthanlife flaws. What was it about him that in the end kept him from realizing . He really wanted to be secretary of state and you mention what happened between him and president obama. What was it about him . In 1996 it just achieved his greatest which was the peace talks and bill clinton was reelected and had Warren Christopher is a secretary of state it came down to Richard Holbrooke and madeleine albright. Clinton was leaning toward holbrooke because he said he is brilliant and he has a great mind he knows more hes relentless. Hillary clinton wanted to be the first female secretary of state but in the end clinton said to al gore dont think holbrooke has the selfawareness to keep it relation shows from becoming toxic. That was assured analysis of his character. Holbrooke understood the person across the table whether it was slow but on mullahs of its slow but on mullahs a bit. He couldnt see himself or laugh at himself that he couldnt see himself as others saw him. There was a kind of lifelong blindness to his own flaws in his own character that i think was a fatal flaw that meant he could negotiate but when there was an obstacle that lay in himself he didnt go know how to get around it and that was what ended his relationship with barack obama. Holbrooke was trying to lecture him and flatter him and talking about yet nonand this ancient guarantor coming to grab the young present by the lapels and say i know and obama couldnt stand it to holbrooke did not know why none of his charms were working with this sterling young president who he wanted to impress. That was the reason why he never got that job with his Hearts Desire is secretary of state. The reason was himself. I want to ask peter one question if i can. Holbrookes boss warned christopher became the counterpart to james baker and wish the cogore and was beaten and ive always felt james baker was a blueeyed killer. No one could beat him when it came to that kind of conduct. Had he think Richard Holbrooke would have done going up against james baker on the florida recount . Is not a political operative and not a Campaign Manager and he is not a lawyer but hes a brilliant negotiator. How do you think holbrooke would have done against baker . George thats an awesome question. To say one of the interesting things going back there were Many Democrats who said we knew that al gore as soon as we learned jim baker had been involved. People were well aware of the differences between those two men. One of christophers great mistakes was sitting down and we tell the story in the book of the two of them sitting down for the first meeting when the election is undecided and whats going to happen in florida. Christopher locke doff and amount of time in tanks they are going to roll up their Shirt Sleeves and get down to business with negotiating. Jim baker wasnt there to negotiate he was there to win and i dont think that fundamentally i think is where his experience as a corporate lawyer for decades came into a pretty think there would have been an asymmetry there between holbrooke and baker that did come from misunderstanding of what a highstakes legal venture this was pretty understood he wanted to get out of the foreign courts and he had a very calculated and disciplined sense of what it took any wasnt going to jaw bone. He had no interest in facts and sitting there figuring out what was in the minds of al gore or Warren Christopher. That might have been hard for holbrooke to negotiate in this particular situation and you also have to come back to comment do you have the respect to command your own team . I think that was one of bakers Hidden Assets always dealing with risk. Certainly we had a debate about this word to the closest secretary of state and present orc the closest is secretary of state and president since madison and jefferson . Im not so sure because im not an expert on madison or jefferson. I know that jim baker would have appreciated Richard Holbrooke as a worthy adversary and a debate partner. Thats for sure. He recognizes excellence and by the way women and men he liked to play tennis against the good players and he would have known holbrooke has a good player. Its a great thought experiment to think about what it would have been acre versus holbrooke. Pickup let me ask you he talked about in the end Richard Holbrooke didnt really know himself. Does jim baker know himself . Thats a great question. Hes not a reflective person and hes not an introspective guy. I love doing this book because we have a live subject and george didnt. We got the chance to ask him all these questions and the truth is he is not someone whos going to open up his psychological profile and really expose himself in that way. He is super disciplined even to this day but he did give us favors and by holbrookes letters from vietnam they werent express it in that way. They were clues here and there and one of them that i thought was very human was where his first wife died of cancer and he gave us a letter. I saw that and its stunning. He writes to his friend george bush. George bush is going to run for senate and is trying to get baker to run for his house seat and baker writes a letter explaining why hes not going to campaign. He said to his friend george the reason why is because his wife is dying and even she doesnt know it. The doctors havent told her and in this era may be this was considered to be okay. But he says to his friend i cant because my wife is dying. He hadnt told her, then told my kids i havent told my mother. The one person he tells his george bush. Thats a friendship that is a powerful and transformative and thats human. I think it showed us in a way we hadnt known in another letter his dying wife mary stuart writes him a letter because she does know shes dying and she hides it in the house. He hands her this letter 50 years later and shes crying to the state bird the human story and a powerful story not psychologically open the white holbrooke was and georges study of holbrooke is so rich and so threedimensional. He is a human person i thought that was one of the things that made this book so great. My book to be able to do my book depended on holbrooke not being you can talk to james baker and not having Richard Holbrooke looking over my shoulder and in fact he wouldnt have given me his papers at all and all the people who talk to me didnt have to worry about what he would say once he found out. For me this had to be the story of a man who had come and gone and that was how i was able to write it honestly. Thats an important distinction. Both holbrooke and baker getting back to this question were extremely astute in different ways at managing their images. Both other critics would say that was one of the great skills talking to reporters and people like us. They had an extreme sensitivity toward their own image. Judy you pointed out one of the great sources for us in writing this book actually was looking at what baker deleted from his memoirs of the state Department Years and his public life because its the stagemanaging of your image and the part they dont want to tell you are as revealing as anything else. I would say jim baker is knotted direst not a direst. Hes not keeping his personal story round two diary things is written to memoirs of his own and he was candid with us especially that his family. You get a certain level of selfawareness by the time youre 90 and if you can talk about how you called your doubt the wharton and how you father micromanage you so much that even after you are a marine veteran and graduated from college he would bring not only the law school that he insisted you go to put the sign up for the fraternity as an undergraduate because that was the fraternity is father thought a member of their family should be in. He was willing to get surprisingly personal in a way that i think helped us understand that its not just a resume that you are talking to. You have to look at those personal qualities to understand what made him able to tackle a series of washingtons hardest jobs in a way that nobody else is done in this compressed period of time in the modern era. I want to ask you about todays washington and how and im interested george to know how you think holbrooke would be able to function in the washington of today. What would it be like and peter jim baker what has he think of whats going on and we know that this interview will be released in september so time will pass for another month or so but george what about that . I think he would have been at sea. He was shaped as i said by the postwar. His dna were the architects of the postworld war. They were the implements is that he never stopped comparing himself to end today first of all trumps washington would be just a mindboggling alien and a polling place for Richard Holbrooke and everything that trump does in the foreignpolicy is the opposite of what Richard Holbrooke would do. Everything, cant think of a think of a single thing that he would have agreed with and vice versa. He would have been writing columns for the Washington Post and he would have been announcing the isolationism of America First and he would have talked about the importance of the transatlantic Island Alliance nato and our allies in asia. During the pandemic of think he would have been really and organizer of other countries to find a cooperative response. That was something he excelled at and he put hiv aids is an issue before the Security Council so we understood that it could be a threat to our national security. He would not have known how to function. Social media would have brought out all of his worst qualities i think and is best. The schmoozing and seducing of reporters mental seducing of reporters that he would sell that is something that is so easily done and mattered so much anymore. I think it would have been an alien world for him and he would have felt as if the golden age was gone. Peter, james baker is a republican and hes watching closely whats going on. I think he finds its the antithesis of everything that he believed about governance and politics. The paring down basically of the architecture of World Affairs and a Republican Party that baker spent a lifetime with. I founded research one night covering the impeachment trial of President Trump and i was going through some baker files one night and after the deadline they found a memo memo to baker. His ethical behavior meant so much to him but he kept the file of all the things that he thought were costing lives. One of the memos he had of the congressmen coming to george bush saying hey you were losing. You need to ask britain and ask russia for help understanding bill clintons overseas activities when he was young and baker bush said no. We will not ask foreign powers for help in our elections. I was so struck by it echoes of such a contrast to what we were covering during the day. Look at think peters point is really well taken. Jim baker was the nontrump in many ways and yet he could not think about them. I sat down with him before the 2016th election he was a man stricken. He was absolutely in pain and tortured over what to do about the holtrop eddie told me donald trump doesnt believe Everything Everything anything that i believe when it comes to foreign policy. He says crazy things and the fact he told me that donald trump was not entity couldnt bring himself to reject the nominee. Jim baker came out of his time in washington convinced that the only way to wield power is from the inside. And is not a man who thinks theres efficacy about being outside howling and complaining. This is a struggle of the Republican Party under trump. And its a window into the party watching Jim Baker Russell was donald trump who wanted personal level is the exact office of him and hes never run himself to publicly denounced trump and to disavow the turn in the Republican Party thats working in a different direction. Its a all endlessly fascinating these two men who clearly helped shape washington with such enduring legacies. The books could not be more important right now and i want to thank these amazing authors George Packer author of our man Richard Holbrooke and the end of the and Susan Glasser and peter baker of the man who ran washington. Thank you all three for such an extraordinary conversation. Thank you so much judy