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 wante