This generation the first part of his career overseas courtesy first of the Chicago Tribune shortly after graduating from harvard in the middle east from iraq and other countries. In 2008 shared a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting and then covering politics and Foreign Affairs with the 2014 National Book award and as a finalist for the 2015 put surprise. The new book is adapted from an occasional series of new yorker articles over the past decade including most recently, the profile of biden last august for him it has become an area of accidental expertise planting the former Vice President in the book to highlight the extensive experience, fundamental decency and language of dealing. Speaking of articulate and incite the conversation with Pete Buttigieg the 2020 democratic president ial candidate he also has a new book out he did an event for that three weeks ago so recognizing evans work and also putting in the political his former primary opponent who is now the enthusiastic picked to be the next president of the United States, joe biden. Thank you so much its an honor and a tree to be participating under the auspices of politics and prose. And especially for a journalist and a writer and observer that is so wellsuited to properly open a window into someone on the one hand that was well known and recognized figure in before and during the Vice President see and it is crucially important to spend time as i hope and pretend to be neutral. We are talking about one week from tonight will very soon after we know is the next president of the United States. Thank you for the chance to have this conversation the first time i worked up the nerve to ask my predecessor as a mayor that it would be a good idea for me to run. Instead of directly answering my question and had a career in indian after serving as mayor he stared at his basket of french fries and said in politics so much is out of your control. The first thing you need to think about is that. And when somebody like joe biden would be leading us forward if is in many ways a lifelong destiny and on the other hand never knowing he would reach this point with the group being opening anecdote and more broadly what you think of the relationship beyond controllable has played in his formation and political life and likely to play in his presence . Thank you. Have to say mayor pete, it is a ludicrous honor to be appear talking about the subject of a very busy schedule right now and thank you for making space to talk about this when people are thinking about politics it was like an important piece of work and one of the most interesting elements of the story of joe biden beginning with a piece of his biography and has a political battery that made it all the more reason that he woke up one morning on the hotel room in 1987 and unable to move his legs. He cannot figure out how he got there. He had a brain aneurysm. To in fact. And the description was agony they got into a hospital and the surgeons told him that that he was at risk of such grave injury he couldve died so quickly they had to summon a place to deliver last rites even before his wife to get there. Joe biden had been on the campaign trail for months and had a nagging headache and was putting it aside and it was a strong better fate that he had bombed out of the waste as he tells the story and the fact he is out to have a moment and that is when he was attacked with the aneurysm so the doctor said frankly you are a lucky man if you are on the campaign trail and continue to ignore your symptoms you might be dead right now. And said you know go under the knife will save your life and you may lose your ability to speak. Somehow that moment and he said i wish that wouldve happened to me last summer so as a political person and was out of congress for seven months and comes back and what i think is fascinating we see this record recurring pattern and to pursue that very conversation and to have control over one certain cambodia from his dad. And that cosmic ledger and said the highs would be the great lowes. Metal he made sense of it in his own life all the way until today. There was a great sense of control that was the mantra of the apple store. There is a feeling today that american said that fate is something that is less able to define something that happens to them. And then to be shaped in that moment of the generation to come of age starting off with a big argument that if things had just settled down and all the test of was over with the prosperity and consensus and especially a Digital Media now is tragic to think back now the way we thought about in the nineties. Only to have the story coming back at us like 9 11 starting thousands of miles away. And with the undergraduates of notre dame almost 20 years apart for me. And then to say the entire experience and to have the crushing blows of the Great Recession and then becoming aware of the world in any of the most convenient stereotypes the baby boomer generation that is called the silent generation and to be directly involved in world war ii but with that counterculture sixties movement and then to get in trouble to be perceived as nostalgic and then a humble conception about how transformation might be the hallmark of his administration and then how he meets this unique moment of 2020 and i see it in joe bidens life. There is a point at which to assign characteristics and with the postwar generation with the movers and tours in the pompous lot so a community that felt as if one has the tools to create their own reality and one of the smallest generations and then they had the g. I. Bill just as a practical matter that sociologists call them the loki mom the lucky few. That meant its easier to become class president and the start of the show and to be promoted along the way. And to shape and dont need to trust institution that millennials are the largest generation American History and introductory sessions in 20 years and the 9 11 and one of the challenges speaking to a political scientist said there has never been a moment in which that that was as pronounced as they were and how you build for people and those and encompassing identity coming of age in a very different moment that you and i can find something together and have that touchstone of shared reality that this experience of my generation is radically different from the baby boomer from the walk into the American Legion and have a veteran of the vietnam era we have the experience of service. Perhaps it was the same plant show just to give us a touchstone of all the things that were different. So to create the circles i belonging that overlap i belong to your generation be prone to my church i belong to your church but i want to your soccer team. You dont care for soccer but in the same neighborhood than there some chance of trust. And to show the potential to cut across belonging so to be in conversation with pakistan my next her neighbor and the algorithms serve up to reinforce and those circles that ought to be overlapping and concentric. So we are running out of things. That we all have in common. One of the things is the presidency. It is symbolic. Not to be discounted as a walking symbol of the minimal amount of things. We may not support the same person president we have the same president and to know that they were walking symbol of unity of the existence and that was my focus and began to lean into how important it was into the symbolic functions of the office in the power. It was the message in this idea of unity political boundaries and what anecdotes did you encounter to shed light he would be able to deliver on this appeal and promise . Is one of the reasons i support him and what he has to offer the country. You get on something is it possible to talk about unity and thats all it has to mean but his life you see the small the democratic habits of unity to establish a connection with people in which you try to transcend those boundaries of belonging. I seen them and went to ukraine at one point and this is a classic political line and politicians and say if i had hair like yours are the president. He has use that in baghdad, beijing beijing or wilmington i know how many times maybe south bend. It is disarming true no matter who he says it to so he and obama have a shared idea unity is possible what brought them together and obama has his ability to use this language and then to feel elevated by it in the famous moment where he emerged from americans not a bad america or blue america a lot of diplomats dont like me because because when i started on the process of negotiation my first idea is i cant Say Something that is bullshit you just have to acknowledge that they have a point and that is worth listening to accept it is a radical notion and to think that unity is possible and how we just 45 the own tribe through the lens of our experience it comes by way of local and in terms of fired up we get. And not protected by where party or in. And the own zoning dispute could be the swing vote that delivers my budget and with the issue of housing policy that is a stick with some local issue and because of the shifting nature and as a mayor you eat what you cook. That is a bad walkway the possibility and then not completely blow each other up and even with the strange bedfellows moment and that moment has open the possibilities and done so many things that is contrary to conservative values as liberal values maybe once in a generation moment if it goes as i hope it will and to decide what it would be next to pick up the pieces. There could be an interesting moment for that. And about the cold hard power politics of washington in a set of qualities that comes together in joe biden and when he says i really do mean that he really does about the need to bring us together. And he can feel that. I see questions coming in on zoom and a little later we turned to those so keep them coming. You have been mayor pete and now moderator pay. [laughter] i will take it. So far will he contend with the left side of a party that doesnt agree . That is suspicious of the fundamental to the degree by which joe biden has been genuinely open. So nobody says this is a trojan horse fantasy but there is an openness to a. And aoc clearly she had her differences with joe biden in the primary. May not be in the same party is that person a minute then to the end of the primary and joe biden could have been within his right to say i dont want anything to do with you but instead he said come up my climate policy. Thats how you end up with aoc and john kerry in a room with a range of different places and interest with that conceptual politics and all of them were given a chance to speak to said i was pleased by how much they were surprised as the Vice President of the United States as a mayor shows up in who do you think you are . Or worse . Some in the beginning with the middle of the campaign during the arche was equally interested there was no break or to change town and also by the way before and during after my decision to support him which speaks a lot to the instinct not only a political strategy but then into the core of he is. I believe today he is in warm springs which is a place that is associated with fdr. Looking for anything at all nothing quite thats it but a moment when democracy seems to be in question around the world and in many different ways and the moment when future the american project and then perhaps the immediate decisions managing a crisis will also turn out to be decisions a local for a generation and with those that greeted fdr reaching the presidency and waiting for president elect biden. I wonder how much you think that analogy with the instructive ways and what made of the presidency in that moment. And there are a lot of americans that were skeptical of the idea someone who spent his career as the indefatigable centrist that i have a transformative change in politics. Is that inauthenticity . But barack obama said its not that joe has fundamentally changed his stripes but the circumstances changed. Its a different country than when he entered the race he understand structural issues that we are facing a function and that is part of the reason to taking on the aroma of this more ambitious presidency and one that would not be his identity before. And talk about explicitly a left and then to admit mistakes. Partly because the book is full of examples and making mistakes and nobody has had a career as long as his has been will have a life of unblemished choices and decisions. There are things he deeply regrets and he realizes he did not fully understand. So after the killing of george floyd i said to biden how did this change your . Killing george floyd what did you learn from that . He said one thing is that i was wrong. And i was telling this parable of race in america of me growing up in the jim crow delaware where african diplomats going between washington and new york stopping a segregated rest areas. And then the first black president and there was that arc of progress what so many of us saw is that we were wrong in history was not finished it was ragged and alive and that you cant extinguish hate. Hate hides and it waits for a leader to give it oxygen and then comes roaring back. To and through the trump experience in the higher belief of the power of the office and he did before hand. It is a moment that will drive people into their habits over that perfection in the remarkable things about them that continues to respond to what is happening and learn from in so many ways. But with the account of how the world works even after so much work done within it. And the primary victory is an extraordinary thing if you consider how much he was written off of various moments. And attempted to run for president before. More than once. People didnt see him getting to iowa let alone past that are having such a commanding lead out of South Carolina and then to bring the Party Together quickly after that. And thats where very few political commentators would have described him. Now we will swap thats because i will ask you the same question. Where measure of ways that mine gets things wrong getting into patterns of understanding that this is what the Democratic Party is today and this is what the electorate is. And then all of a sudden something that the campaign had to lead from the beginning that most people would describe themselves as moderate or conservative democrats. And with the most public members of the party. And looking at jim clyburn to deliver this crucial endorsement in South Carolina and then to break free and to secure the nomination. And clyburn reminded me that he may not look to you in washington or new york like the coolest guy around but in South Carolina that was contending with the massacre in a black church is not the same time trump was announcing his presidency, for us, this is a matter of existential significance. And for this reason we know joe and he knows us and that there is a certain unapologetic pragmatism and that drives them to make the choices they made. But i would ask the same question of you but one we surprised by the results . Did you see it coming . So how do you interpret and what happened in that race quick. It has to do with trust especially South Carolina. For him those expectations were already higher and he beat them. And with that but even candidates of color. Even if there was a sense you do not agree with him so to cut across all of that and the persistence that he didnt get discouraged by the results and to stay in the race and then that gets back to talk about in a sense of awareness of the ups and downs and then those to be with they could be. And that suit him well and those qualities we are talking about with those different ideological of the party and that will be important for governing. Now lets turn to audience questions. From sweden, how do you think mr. Biden word make decisions as president . By the way have no illusion the swedish members are here to see me. They are here to see but im grateful. So how does the mind work those that worked with one encounter to interview somebody in the Obama Administration the cliche of joe biden is he talks too much. We know that poor people dont seem to get is he is listening so in this particular case he would call me up and sometimes talk for 90 percent of the occasion but then slap me on the back and say great talk always pick something up and then use that factor point of analysis to make the obvious contrast with that security has had in his life the first nominee without the Ivy League Degree since mondale. And to grasp that new information that what he knows that he doesnt know and constantly seeking that and then to talk to about that. He asked me questions but i knew about and things i didnt know much about them that humility to pop for information. We all know that. And always filled with those questions and then to inform his decisionmaking. But the senate is a unique body. Have spent more time in it than joe biden. How do you think his background as a senator drives his understanding of the presidency and the role of government in general . It is interesting to the molecular level he is a senator. It is core to his conception you mentioned before we can disagree on the first day and then make a deal on tuesday that is a senatorial way so when joe biden joined the vice presidency he kept his locker in the senate jim because he enjoyed going over there and is like the intelligence gather to come back to the white house with little tidbits of the color of the negotiations there is a disadvantage to a barack obama said the problem is joe biden came of age in the senate that functioned that you to get things done it has been painful for joe biden and obamas words to come to terms with what might need to be done to make the senate function again. And so getting rid of the filibuster and then you mention that in the book we actually used to refresh the democratic functioning more often than we do. And every ten years we used to do these reforms and we dont have them now. It is we are out of practice as a country to revise these things and then to change the number of justices on the supreme court. The only modern to do it was Mitch Mcconnell to change it to a until he took power again but then to go through the motions of updating the democracy equipment the last building amendments and then lowering the voting age to 18 at a time you can be old enough to be drafted into the military but yet not be able to vote on the leaders who were drafting you. And those who are creatures of the senate. And mike with the filibuster that tells you there is no danger of dramatic reform destroying the senate thats how we put it back together and it will be interesting to see how President Biden will guide that. So offtopic where we see betty and truman . Unfortunately know they are out of the house for the moment. They will not be making an appearance but that also means we will not be interrupted as we sometimes are. We find a way in. [laughter] and then to draw attention to the transition and this is a. I cannot think of another time in modern history where the window transition has mattered more theres more pressure and its worth mentioning for all the dramatic differences there is a remarkable degree of collaboration between the Outgoing Administration brock Obama Administration to align legislation for the Great Recession because those happening in september and october will be a game plan maybe that gives us an inkling of a good standard would look like for nothing like this. And during this transition perhaps. When it was ambiguous and then after that between the election and the inauguration. Im so glad you mention the fact that we forget this contested transition between the bush presidency and Obama Presidency was a high level of collaboration even down to the functional handshake of the Incoming Department head which makes a huge difference we never used to think we were talking about a president who wouldnt acknowledge the legitimate election but with the extraordinary ability to handoff what is the enormous complicated set of 250 Companies Working together every four years or every eight years and we do it parties. Biden has the advantage in one of his very first assignments and to take on the implementation of the stimulus bill. And then how you began to retrofit and to fix the airplane while you still fly at 30000 feet and thats what will be required. Right now there is a process a very intensive process going on that you dont hear as much but it is a serious plan for what we can do on day one like returning to paris or the who and the legislative plan it might be different than the past. What you hear from joe biden is we dont need to use the old playbook of a high the secrest and thats what they have experience. And had this extraordinary partnership. One questioner said how does of that era veterans with the domestic and Foreign Policy challenges sliding into a familiar playbook that is called the obama three administration so what is distinct about the president ial leadership . I think there is a significant detail we havent talked about that the world is fundamentally changed even while we have been drawn into our own domestic drama. China plays a different role than four years ago. And with the crisis for the administration. And the project going out into the world to affect with that credibility and to use your words and reestablish trust and coming to the iraq war experience looking at the United States and its intentions and the difference is biden comes with some existing relationships. They said you to drop joe biden foreignpolicy and to any capital in the world at any joe blow could be a socialist and would have met that along the way and there is something valuable there to call it what it is which is reconstruction. So to be surefooted on form policy and his tenure in the senate where he insisted on being a central player of the obama biden administration. I dont want to miss a chance for your insights. You in the middle east and you know china. You know joe biden and you know china and all of that entails where does i go . So when they came over and did it for the unusual thing. He and his staff that were working on the China Project and working around the corner from where i lived. But then also i can i will find a diner and go there both the Diplomatic Mission on china i dont have the Security Team lets you do that. [laughter] sorry to interrupt. Secret service said were going where and doing what . They go to this restaurant off he goes into this place and says i know you came here and here i am screwing it up. For years afterwards they would carry the biden special on the menu. I mentioned it it was a nice stunt but had a deep meaning of the nature of the american and chinese politics they had a series of scandals around official corruption and suggest making the subtle gesture as a real visiting party and meet with people he put the chinese Political Class on notice and afterwords president xi went out to have lunch at a little dumpling restaurant in town and call that the biden effect and there is a direct relevance to that now. And those kinds of messages you have to do and then to remind people around the world what does it mean to be a free country . Practicing democracy as we move into this phase to have two governing system and for claims and that is an incumbent and has been doing it for a while. Coming back closer to home, home, the question of unity within the coalition what i took as very encouraging is they didnt have a lot of prominent republicans the bushes wanted nothing to do with it and no sign of the mccain at the Democratic Convention by contrast folks like aoc and Bernie Sanders and those with a moderate ring one wing and republicans all say we dont agree on everything we agree on joe biden one of the most frequent questions if i was doing a panel is how can the Democratic Coalition stayed together through election day . Just remembering how that exceeded expectation and to have the fears which is a credit to the Figures Network of the invitation to be part of the conversation and its one thing to do that and the campaign so he takes office in january with those competing lectures the democrats would have the imperative with the midterm life they experienced in 2020 spoke to see the clock you want to reserve a couple of minutes for one more question for you. It means a lot to me. Spoke to see the clock you want to reserve a couple of minutes for one more question for you. It means a lot to me. Approximate 30 seconds after he wins and frankly it should. And continue to push the party because that is how you fall out of touch with the demands people have is a difference between pushing and seeking to look at progress and ultimately somebody says a progressive activist to have a joe biden presidency to go from protest to persuasion that is incumbent on all of us as citizens how we face forward without tearing somebody down. This is a hugely important piece of your book coming mention this earlier after being overseas a number of years we talk about unity over and over is the experience of doing something together for a purpose larger than yourself there is a miraculous effect and we have some that can do it and then there was a moment with the peace corps had you think of National Service and what it might take . America always does better when we have a National Project and the moon landing have that spirit not even a war even though they were not participating directly. Even with those extended existential ways in which, trying this pandemic and its no less urgent but those that benefit from engaging in more ways thats part of the promise and it is the experience itself and leaving that aside those that would have some occasion to do with other americans in a collaborative way different background will show very different politics people i trust my life to in a heartbeat because of the pressures we were under and in front of us. Thank you have to go to war to get that. And the funding for more voluntary service opportunities. But to make that such a norm and properly pay for it, then it gets to where its not too close to universal and the idea im excited about because i think it would help us deal with the political estrangements so like bidens gray out in the senate laying out front of the instruments he every guy. Meant to give them our resources they can bring in more people gets more attention. One out of five those that want to get in there isnt enough space so this is a practical answer to the big question how do you unify a country . And to take practical steps. Your time is trying to a close but i am so thankful to visit with you and encourage everyone that amounts to a handbook and if most americans do agree on this ought to be the next president of the United States. And then i will turn it back over to bradley thank you for joining us to politics and pros prose. We are grateful for being here this afternoon and a terrific book with this discussion made clear with a much better understanding a public figure who we think we know that has even more to him. Of the university w york and founded by shelby white and the Leon Levy Foundation i