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
Than 2016 correct . Visualize thenot rise of donald trump in the transformation of the Republican Party we started this book back in the obama era. We had a sense that baker was a character who would help us to write a big story about washington as well has as well as his own personal story. From watergaten to the end of the cold war and james baker is in the middle of that. Host was an easy prey . Did he easily agreed to be interviewed for the book project . Wast at this point, he willing and ready for some of the l2 write a biography about him. Some ready for amebody else to write biography about him. He was open and cooperative. He didnt put anything off balance. He was very generous with us. Host what was it about him personally and about his stellar career in washington and before that that initially you to talk to him . Guest i think we realized we were delighted to realize that no one had done an independent book of history about him. When you think about it, baker has a unique
Life and times of james baker. In Susan Glasser, welcome to washington journal. Let me start with a question about the idea of doing this book on james baker. This obviously predates the 2020 election, but this is earlier than 2016 correct . Visualize thenot rise of donald trump in the transformation of the Republican Party we started this book back in the obama era. We had a sense that baker was a character who would help us to write a big story about washington as well has as well as his own personal story. From watergaten to the end of the cold war and james baker is in the middle of that. Host was an easy prey . Did he easily agreed to be interviewed for the book project . Wast at this point, he willing and ready for some of the l2 write a biography about him. Some ready for amebody else to write biography about him. He was open and cooperative. He didnt put anything off balance. He was very generous with us. Host what was it about him personally and about his stellar career in was
We have all long operated we covered the white house together, weve done that. We know how all president s and their Communications Team try to throw information out there because they want us, they want us to echo that. They want to put that out there. In an amendment such as this that so challenge with the subject of the continued influence the fact, do you change the way you put that information out there . How do you address that reality . You are muted, mara, sorry. This is a really, really, really tough problem. Because were so tribal, because of the tribalizing effects of social media, you know, whatever we do to discuss a piece of misinformation or disinformation, we putting that piece of this information out there and by definition i guess were giving it more life for airtime. Npr is a mainstream News Organization. We try to surround this piece of misinformation or disinformation with as much context and Fact Checking as we can, but what we found, maybe we can talk about this,
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