(theme music playing) GRAHAM: Good evening, and welcome to "P&P Live".

I'm Brad Graham, the co-owner of Politics and Prose along with my wife, Lissa Muscatine.

And we have a very interesting program for you this evening, "The Man Who Ran Washington" by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser.

On behalf of Politics and Prose bookstore, please welcome Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, as well as John Dickerson to "Politics and Prose Live".

And we're delighted to have the three of you with us this evening.

Peter and Susan of course are one of the great journalistic power couples of the day.

Peter is Chief White House correspondent for the "New York Times" and political analyst for MSNBC.

Susan's a staff writer at "The New Yorker" composing a weekly column on life in Washington.

And she's Global Affairs analyst at CNN.

They tell the story of James Baker, the once obscure corporate lawyer who became as Peter and Susan called him, "The indispensable man to four American presidents."

The masterful power broker, who ended up influencing the course of the United States for years.

At a time, now, when politics in Washington is widely viewed as hopelessly broken, and the art of deal making is shunned, if not forgotten, it's nonetheless instructive, and certainly fascinating to look back at how Baker operated and draw lessons as Peter and Susan do about the practice of compromise over confrontation and pragmatism over purity.

Moderating this evening's discussion is another accomplished journalist, John Dickerson, correspondent for CBS's "60 Minutes" and previously cohost of "CBS This Morning", and anchor of "Face the Nation".

His recently published third book is "The Hardest Job in the World" about the American presidency.

So Peter, Susan, and John, the screen is yours.

DICKERSON: Wonderful, thank you so much, Brad.

Great biographies are interesting in their own right because in true powerful textured humans are just interesting stories to know about, but when they are the story that you can, when you can tell the story of a time and an age and a city and a fascinating period of American history through the biography, you've got a special joy on your hands and that's what you have with this book.

Susan, um, let's just start at the beginning.

Give us a sense of where, where did Jim Baker come from?

GLASSER: You know, I, I don't know about you, but I am one of those people who always loves the first part of biographies.

Uh, you know, I, I love biographies.

I love big political biographies.

Uh, and I have to say, I didn't know anything about Jim Baker's background beyond a vague sense of his Texas-ness, uh, and his friendship with George Bush and Peter and I really embarked on this project seven long years ago with the idea that, you know, it was a way to tell a big story about Washington and how much Washington has changed.

And you know, that this was also, Jim Baker's heyday was, you know, sort of generationally you and I, and Peter, this was, you know, when we were just sort of emerging into the world and, and going to college and, you know, what did it tell us about this moment of time from the end of Watergate to the end of the cold war.

But I have to say that, uh, you know, my experience as a reader of biographies has also been my experience as a writer of a biography.

And that is to say, Baker's family story is fascinating.

And I think it really does help to explain, uh, the man in many ways.

And he really, uh, was, uh, he's actually the fourth James Addison Baker, although he's known as the third, uh, which has frankly... BAKER: Don't ask why.

DICKERSON: The family was terrible with math.

GLASSER: That's their, their excuse is that I'm not sure that's the full story, but, um, you know, in fact his family didn't want him to come to Washington.

It's not a story of a wealthy Houston aristocracy that bred him, uh, to become, you know, a Senator or a, you know, power broker quite the opposite.

Uh, in fact, he lived this life of discipline.

Uh, also not, they were not a wealthy, uh, oil and gas family or something like that.

They were, uh, the emergent professional class of Houston.

This was a family that built at what was at one time, the biggest law firm, uh, west of the Mississippi Baker and Boss still around today.

And, you know, so his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were these very distinguished lawyers in Houston and out of this sprung Jim Baker, a very unlikely candidate as it turned out to become a future Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury, uh, or anything at all, uh, involving politics.

DICKERSON: And Peter, I guess, was it his grandfather who said, stay out of politics.

So did he?

We're going to talk a lot about winning and the drive to win and that central part of his character.

Did it come from those early days?

BAKER: Yeah, I think there's a huge burden on anybody named James A. Baker the third, right?

Even if he was the fourth.

I think the legacy of a family that had been such an important part of Houston, uh, you know, lay on his shoulders, his great grandfather, grandfather, father, they helped build modern Houston.

A lot of the institutions in today's Houston, all the way up to, and including Rice University that renown a school, there, are all part and parcel of his family's legacy.

So when you're a James A. Baker III there's a lot riding on it.

And, you know, he did what his father told him.

He had a very controlling father.

They nicknamed him The Warden, his dad would throw cold water on him on Saturday mornings, if they slept too late.

One time when Jim Baker, young Jimmy Baker got in trouble with some friends and got arrested for some hooliganism, his friends' parents all came and bailed him out.

His dad let him stay the night in jail.

You're not going to get out that easily.

So he had a burden, I think, of proving himself from the very start.

And that I think drove that competitive drive you're just talking about the drive to win, whether it be on the tennis courts or ultimately in politics.

DICKERSON: And then Susan, 'cause we got so much of his career.

I could spend the whole time back in Houston... GLASSER: Yeah.

DICKERSON: But um, Susan, tell me about, um, so he's a successful lawyer and he has, he has a tragedy, um, you know, early in life before the Jim Baker who comes to Washington.

Um, talk a little bit about that.

GLASSER: Yeah, I do.

I think that again, his accidental career was both because his father absolutely wouldn't think of him entering into politics, but also, uh, you know, he had grown restless with this life in the 60s.

Uh, he had sort of a, a lovely, uh, college sweetheart who he married and she falls ill tragically with, uh, cancer, and they have four young sons.

And, uh, there's this incredible letter, uh, that's never, you know, it was never published before.

And he writes a letter to his best friend, George H. W. Bush and he says, "George, I haven't told anyone this.

Not my mother, not my children, not even my wife, uh, but she has been given a fatal diagnosis of cancer."

And interestingly, he was writing this to George because, uh, actually Baker was already restless in his life and Bush was trying to persuade him to get into politics.

Bush at this time was running for Texas, uh, for the Senate seat, which he actually did not win, uh, giving up his U.S. House seat.

And he wanted Baker to run for his House seat.

And Baker said, you know, "I was interested in this, but I can't do it."

And of course that's a bond like no other.

And then tragically, his wife did die, leaving him alone with these four boys.

And you know that the tragic coda, by the way, to this letter, which in and of itself, I mean, Baker basically, weeps still at the thought of it.

So he ultimately ends up marrying one of her best friends, uh, Susan, uh, and she comes over to the house after the wife's death.

And she says, "There's a letter here for you that your wife left for you."

I mean, this is really it's really incredible stuff.

And of course the wife knew Mary Stewart did actually know about her fatal diagnosis and she left him this beautiful goodbye note.

And then they ended up getting married and it's like "Brady Bunch", literally.

There's three kids that she has.

There's four kids that he has.

And it's like the Brady Bunch though from hell, you know, it's not the family sitcom version.

It's a very difficult and challenging thing.

DICKERSON: And which includes Peter, him sampling some of his son's pot, which I, when I read that, I thought this is, this is just completely inconsistent with my, um, so... BAKER: He didn't get anything out of it.

He complained that he didn't really... DICKERSON: I know, I know.

BAKER: He didn't get what the whole big deal was about.

DICKERSON: Yes, drilled a dry, well, it was doing nothing.

Um, and then the letter that he writes his in-laws about hiding the cancer, isn't it, it's amazing, amazing stuff.

But let me, um, Peter, let's talk quickly about George Herbert Walker Bush, and the beginnings of that friendship, where the basis of it is because that would be a defining part of his life.

And he obviously spoke so eloquently at the former president's funeral.

Um, where did that friendship begin and it's, uh, and, and, and how did it grow, um, before he comes to Washington?

BAKER: There's actually a cousin between them that he meets that said when Bush moves to Houston, you need to meet, uh, the, uh, these Bakers, but really, it's formed on the tennis courts, where in the Houston country club, Bush is a competitive guy, he wants to be a, you know, a winner there.

And who's the guy whose name is on the wooden plaques on the company clubs as the singles champion, Jim Baker.

So the two of them team up as doubles partners, and they win actually a couple, a couple of years in a row.

They'll still tell you about that way, Jim Baker will, anyway, and we interviewed George H. W. Bush before he passed away and he still remembered very fondly their, their championships.

It was something important to them.

And really this friendship grew and blossomed to the point where, as Susan said, Bush is the one person Baker confides in.

And in fact, when Mary Stewart dies, the only people outside the family, the last people outside of the family to see her are the Bush's.

And it's Bush who says to him afterwards, look, you gotta pull out of this.

Baker's, Baker told us, he said, if there was ever a point in my life, I would be an alcoholic, it was at this moment.

And Bush said you got to come work on my campaign.

And that really pulls it in a new direction.

And Susan said, he was already restless, but it really is the beginning of a whole new chapter in his life.

And really how interesting, how history changes, hinges history on completely random events, like we need somebody, a country club having a family tragedy needing to expunge the guilt, the, the grief, uh, and suddenly life is different and history is different.

DICKERSON: That's right.

And this book constantly throughout it, it's the sort of the, the man and his time.

GLASSER: That's right.

DICKERSON: Kind of syncing, syncing up at the right moments.

And then some of it is the man, but some of it is also, it's also the time.

Um, so Susan, one of the things that strikes me about Jim Baker and I can't think of, and you can tell me who the person would have been, I guess Clark Clifford would have been like, well, I don't know.

Yeah, he was involved in Truman's campaign.

Okay.

Anyway, he plays both, he has excellence in campaigns and excellence in governing.

Now we are at a time now where there is, there is no distinction between the two or if there is, it's prosciutto thin, but, um, what brought him to Washington?

Um, was it the campaigns or was it the governing or let's just start there with the beginnings of his career under Ford?

GLASSER: Well, it's a great question because in the end, uh, you know, Baker wanted to be remembered and is remembered for his accomplishments as a statesman, but in many ways it was at politics that he excelled in that gave him the opportunities to be a statesman.

So he comes, uh, to Washington for a very obscure job in the commerce department.

Uh, you know, this is not exactly the center of the action, uh, in any administration, but Watergate has wiped out the Republican leadership, like a, you know, neutron bomb.

And so there are opportunities available for ambitious young men.

Uh, but you know, Baker is midlife already.

He's 40 years old.

It's like the world's most successful mid-career change, right?

So he becomes, he's early forties.

Within one year of going into this obscure job, uh, which is not the center of the action.

He is running Jerry Ford, the President of the United States' campaign, and what turns out to be the very last ever contested floor fight and in a convention, uh, Baker ends up, uh, through again, luck and coincidence, as well as impressing people with every assignment he's given.

I mean, that's the thing that I think for Peter and I really impressed us, right.

Was like Baker, he lived his previous several decades, you know, very successful, but in a very narrow playing field.

And he was good at it.

And it was hard work, uh, certainly demanding, but every time he went on a bigger playing field, he thrived and eventually ended up, you know, in the room, ended up bonding with the Soviet Union as it's collapsing, but he thrived the bigger and the bigger challenge that there was.

DICKERSON: Yeah.

And I'm going to get to that because you've mentioned that, you know, he was, he only had one undergraduate course, I think, in economics, but he goes on to be Treasury Secretary and he's over here being Secretary of State.

GLASSER: He was not a good student by the way.

That's, he definitely was not.

BAKER: Not a great student.

DICKERSON: Which is interesting.

Cause you make such a case that he's, he prepares so much and is such a workaholic in that sense.

So that's, uh, that's really, um, interesting.

Peter, one of the first things he does when he's working for Ford is he beats Reagan it's 1976.

He beats Reagan.

And the reason this is interesting to me is, um, throughout his tenure, particularly when he's Reagan, then Reagan's chief of staff, which we'll get to quickly, there's suspicion about Baker and whether he, what kind of, just kind of what kind of Republican he is and whether he's, so he beats Reagan.

Um, tell us a little bit about that chapter, but, but, but what kind is he a Ford, you know, is he a Ford Republican or is he a rock ribbed Reagan Republican that we're going to.

Because he's his chief of staff later.

So what kind of Republican was he?

BAKER: Yeah, that's a great question.

He's a Republican who wanted to win, right?

In fact, to your point and he wanted to win.

He wanted to be Reagan.

Ford was being challenged from the right.

Ford never won national office, of course.

And so Baker is put in charge really very late in the, in the game because of the tragic death of the first person that Ford wanted to be his delegate hunter.

And then, uh, you know, suddenly he's in charge of rassling delegates and he does it in a couple of ways.

One he's very intuitive about what other people need.

"Hey, you want to go to the State dinner with the Queen?

I got you seat.

No problem there."

Uh, they were literally asking for things like fix my local sewer system.

I mean, Baker would do anything he needed to do.

As long as didn't cross a certain ethical line in his view to get delegates in Ford's pocket.

The other thing that made him successful there was he didn't lie to the press.

That sounds like a smart thing or a basic thing, but it's actually not always the case.

Right.

John Sears, who was the John Sears, who was the Reagan chief kept giving inflated delegate counts that didn't match what the reporters found out to be true and they began to stop trusting him.

Whereas Baker was always very straight with them.

"This is how many delegates we think we have and how many delegates we think Reagan has."

Built him trust and credibility.

And it really was the basis for a career of really masterful working in the press, obviously to his own benefit at times.

DICKERSON: Right.

BAKER: I think to your point though, is he a Ford Bush Reagan conservative?

I mean, he's a conservative, don't get him wrong, but he was a conservative who wanted to get stuff done.

And I actually think that's why Reagan picks him ultimately as Chief of Staff, because in fact, Reagan, while he'd been obviously very conservative philosophically, didn't like the idea just as he said, running off the cliff with his flag, he wanted to get stuff done himself.

Baker was a tool he saw to make that happen.

DICKERSON: Well, thank you for that segue because, um, it is an extraordinary thing for Reagan to pick the guy who ran against him with Ford in '76 and then Bush in '80, and then suddenly calls him up on election night or the next night and says, I need, you know, essentially I need you to make, to be successful in Washington, which seems like a very, you know, it's one of the reasons, uh, Reagan had, was great.

He knew to pick the right person.

So Susan you guys write that he is the gold standard, that Baker was the gold standard as Chief of Staff for Reagan.

Why was that the case?

GLASSER: Well, you know, somebody said every single day that Baker was in that White House, he was accumulating power, uh, and others were losing it.

And in the first year, it wasn't entirely clear to people.

If you look at back at some of the accounts that were written of it, uh, you know, there was a sense, in fact, that Baker was not really that he would sort of the administrator and Ed Meese was seen as that the keeper of the ideological flame.

And then there was Mike Deaver, the image man, uh, and it was called the Troika.

And that somehow it was this unwieldy three-headed power structure of the Reagan revolution.

But in reality, what Baker had done, this is where his careful lawyering combined with enough knowledge of Washington, uh, to know what, what counts as real power, were indispensable.

And Ed Meese had been with Reagan for a long time, but he really didn't, he got masterfully outplayed literally on day one in November of 1980, when Reagan has announced that, uh, Baker will be the chief of staff, Meese had expected that he was very upset.

Reagan essentially told Baker "You deal with it."

BAKER: Your first job.

GLASSER: I know, right?

Like it's to placate your, your ousted rival.

But they write down the roles and responsibilities on paper.

And this is probably his most famous kind of power move in Washington.

And Ed Meese says, "Well, I would like Cabinet rank."

And he's caring about things like fancy offices.

He's going to get Kissinger's old office and he's going to get Cabinet rank and a big title.

And Baker's like, "Well, that's, you know, I'll just take care of, you know, some of the less glamorous duties, like the legislative liaison, like the, you know, policy coordination council.

Oh.

And you can be a full member of the National Security Council.

I won't do that.

And just sign right here."

And you know, and he gets to be in charge of all paper flow to, and from the White House, to the President, which is widely seen as one of the most crucial, uh, is the way to have real power in the White House.

He gets, in terms of real estate, he gets the crucial office that has historically been occupied by the Chief of Staff.

So he has the convening power.

Everyone sees him as the boss.

He gets personnel, which means he's putting all his own people in every job.

And then at the end, Meese did one more thing that hurt himself even more, just as they've already made an agreement Meese says, "Well, also I would like the right to go into any meeting with president Reagan."

And Baker says, "Well, that's just fine.

Absolutely.

But just for symmetry, I'll put that one down in my column too."

So now Meese has just signed away his right to have a private meeting with President Reagan and Jim Baker can sit in on any meeting that Ed Meese has with Ronald Reagan.

DICKERSON: Um, so, so we've talked about this a lot and Susan, what you just so beautifully described is understanding how power works in Washington.

And, you know, as we think about and people fashion themselves as, um, particularly the, the sitting President, they're going to come into Washington, make it go and make it work.

Power works differently, Peter, in Washington than it does in other places.

And, and so give us a sense of what Jim Baker thought about power.

Cause there's, you can, you run elections to get power to then govern, but then you need to have a certain sense that that Susan so beautifully just described of how you wield it inside the building.

So how did, how did Baker think about power?

BAKER: One thing you thought about was how do you, you don't have any power, if you don't cut deals, right?

You don't get power if you don't get to the finish line and you can have a fight over taxes or over spending or over healthcare or all the different issues, you can have fights over.

But if you don't actually get to the point where the president of the United States is signing something that goes into law, you haven't achieved anything, which is so different than today, right?

So in 1983, he's White House Chief of Staff and the Social Security system is in trouble financially.

So he sits down with Tip O'Neill and Tip O'Neill's people, the Democrats, and they work out a deal.

It's the last time we've had a bipartisan big time deal on Social Security.

Same thing in 1986 on the tax code, he and Dan Rostenkowski the democratic congressman from Chicago, two of them sit down, they cut a deal basically to rewrite the entire, the entire tax code top to bottom.

Hasn't happened again since.

In 1989, he's Secretary of State.

He wants to get the Contras War off of George Bush's plate.

That's been debilitating for the Reagan administration.

It was the major issue of the 1980s.

He sits down with Jim Wright, the Democratic speaker.

He sits down with Jimmy Carter.

He sits there and says, let's get rid of that on some of the deal.

So to Baker powers about getting to the finish line and getting something done.

And that may mean you give something away.

It may mean you give something to the other side, but broadly speaking, you know, if you're, if you're not doing that, you're wasting your time and elections are only meant to get you to the place that you've governed, not the other way around.

DICKERSON: So let's move over to the Treasury Department.

Um, Susan.

So again, not a good student, didn't know anything particular about economics.

Um, and we'll talk about this also when he moves into the State Department.

But so he's been at Commerce, he's run a Presidential campaign.

He's been a lawyer, he's been Chief of Staff.

Now there's the swap, uh, with Reagan and he's over at Treasury.

What strikes me is how, how does one person know how to do all those different things?

Is there a, can we start to build a kind of Jim Baker way of operating that allows him to be able to do all those different kinds of jobs?

GLASSER: Well, I think he took the lessons actually that he had learned in the White House, uh, as Chief of Staff and he, he actually brought them over there.

And it's interesting because, uh, as you said, he didn't really have any background.

Jim Baker was one of those, "A" players who is not too insecure to hire other "A" players.

And, you know, that, I think is a secret, not just in Washington, but probably in a lot of areas of business.

Uh you know, and he wanted to be surrounded by top flight people.

He built, you know, they later came to be called his "plug-in unit".

Uh, and he had a wonderful team of advisors who actually were with him from the White House to the Treasury, to the State Department and at the campaigns in between.

And that served him very well.

Now, of course, that caused certain friction in the big bureaucracies, both at Treasury and at State, that are, you know, prickly about their expertise and the like, and, uh, didn't want, you know, sort of outsiders, the political types coming in and telling them what to do.

But, you know, unlike say our current situation, uh, Baker, I think was a believer not only in expertise, but in using it to his advantage, rather making war on it per se.

Uh, and certainly the tax code is, is probably the most complicated thing you can do to the international economy again.

Uh, you know, these were very complicated things, so it, you know, he was reaching into the bureaucracy, but I think that coming with key advisors was important.

Also because he had the relationships with Reagan, right.

You know, he understood what was the priority of the administration and actually tax reform had been outlined as the number one domestic priority.

So, you know, he's still in the center of the action.

And then the third thing I would just spotlight is he learned about the importance of having and using relationships on Capitol Hill.

And of course now when, we don't, we have a speaker who doesn't talk to the president, and we don't do any deals, maybe it doesn't matter so much.

But if the goal was doing deals, it mattered a lot at that time.

And he was really, really good at working Congress.

DICKERSON: When Baker becomes Secretary of State, that's another instance in which he's gotta, he's got to go learn the world.

What was he, did he have any previous, you know, skill or interest in foreign policy before then?

BAKER: Well, he'd written a paper in college about the Russians.

That's about it.

You know, he, you know, he would tell you is "Look when your Treasury Secretary in effect, you do a lot of foreign negotiation," which is true.

You work with finance ministers on currency rates and things like that.

But no, basically he did not exactly come to the Foggy Bottom with a history of grand geopolitical thinking, this is not Kissinger.

He didn't, he wouldn't sit there as Susan likes to say, he wouldn't sit there and talk with you about the treaty of Westphalia.

This is not his bailiwick.

But basically the State Department was just like another venue, whether it be campaigns, the White House or Treasury, where a certain skill set applies, even if the knowledge base isn't there.

And to that extent, he basically had George H. W. Bush as his partner, a partnership, as we just said, unlike any in American history, think about that, really.

We can't think of another American President and Secretary of State who was personally close as these two men were maybe Jefferson and Madison, but really you can't think of any.

That was his power base.

And so, yeah, he didn't know much about the history of Nagorno-Karabakh or, you know, maybe the Kashmir dispute kind of alluded a little bit, but he had, what really mattered was a president, uh, behind him whose faith was in him was, was absolute.

And whose credibility he got to carry into the outside world.

GLASSER: Interestingly, we just heard, it's not in the book because we just heard it this week, but with the war starting back up in Nagorno-Karabakh, I'll tell you one sad thing.

We, we heard that he was offered to be the negotiator of when the first war there broke out, in the early 90s.

And he said, no way, I'm not touching that.

Uh, so sadly.

BAKER: He had a fine sense of what was accomplishable and what was actually important enough for him to use his time.

He, he didn't, he didn't waste his time on that I thought were A: impossible or B: too easy or C: obscure and not central enough.

DICKERSON: Remind us of where the world is um, when Baker comes, this is really a question about Baker and Bush.

Um, because part of it seems to me, part of his ability to step into the State Department is everybody...

I mean, there are some obvious foreign policy disagreements in the world, but where is foreign policy and America's role in the world and how did James Baker engage with that?

You know, it seems like there were a certain set of rules about what American foreign policy was, um, that were a little bit simpler then.

GLASSER: Well, that's right.

This was the late Cold War, but no one knew how late it was in the game.

And I think that's part of the problem.

So, you know, Mikhail Gorbachev had come to power after a series of progressively more infirm leaders with Brezhnev and then Chernenko and Andropov, and then you get Gorbachev.

And so in the later Reagan years, obviously Reagan formed a bond with Gorbachev, but there's still uncertainty.

How much is he for real, there's ingrained hostility here in the United States with conservatives inside the Pentagon, uh, even inside the White House and same thing, of course, uh, in the Soviet Union where Gorbachev is largely, uh, has a very hostile, uh, public bureau.

And certainly the military, uh, is very suspicious of this new opening.

And so the context is actually, uh, unraveling of the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe already you're feeling that as, as Bush is sworn in and Baker sworn in the Secretary of State.

But an uncertainty, for example, in, uh, the beginning of Bush's tenure, there are all sorts of papers going back and forth.

And there's a famous memo, you know, from, uh, some of the experts inside the State Department, talking about the prospect of German unification and saying basically, no matter how much we might wish it, uh, it's not going to happen, you know, any time in the near future.

And that it's a dream for us.

And of course only, uh, not even nine months in to their tenure, November, 1989, the world changes.

And, uh, Baker's a brand new Secretary of State.

DICKERSON: And Peter, they must manage the end of the Cold War, essentially with all the complexity.

Um, let's break down the complexities a little bit because it's it, I mean, you know, I started that question thinking about, well, America, the idea of American power and American leadership were kind of taken for granted by these by Baker and Bush, which now, you know, there's a debate about that.

Um, so that seems like they were in, they were in agreement on, but, but everything else was up for grabs.

So, so let's walk through a little bit of that.

Um, Peter, so, uh, first off let's, 'cause it seems in hindsight as you guys write that, oh, it all got tidied up and it was, it was neat before we let's take it from the allies' side.

What were some of the challenges for Baker working with Thatcher, the French?

BAKER: Right, no, exactly.

Right.

I mean, just on German unification, just to use that example, Margaret Thatcher, Francois Mitterrand and France, they were not enthusiastic about the idea of a unified Germany in the heart of Europe again, I'd only been, you know, 40 years from their perspective when the last of the two 20th century World Wars have been fought thanks to Germany and their view, of course they don't want that to happen again.

And I think that, um, they're skeptical.

So even while he's, Baker's trying to negotiate with the Soviets, who of course are the central, you know, players in this, he's trying to keep his own people in line.

And then there's the West Germans forget the East Germans, the West Germans themselves were divided in two, you know, the Foreign Minister was not from the same party as the Chancellor.

So every time he made a deal with a Foreign Minister, he had to make sure that the Chancellor was actually on board.

GLASSER: And they didn't even talk to each other.

BAKER: And they didn't talk to one another.

GLASSER: They talked through him.

DICKERSON: Well, that's yeah.

Susan pick up on that.

They hated each other, right.

Kohl and his foreign minister and each other.

So how, how is Baker managing this in foreign capitals with people who don't know from Houston?

Right.

I mean, you know, when you're a lawyer and it's all, and even in Tip O'Neill, you can relationships, but how does he, has he worked these complicated relationships between the Chancellor and his Foreign Minister?

GLASSER: Well, that's right.

First of all, Hans-Dietrich Genscher was a real character who'd already been Foreign Minister for a very long time.

So he was actually much more experienced on the world stage than Jim Baker.

But yeah, there was real hatred between Kohl, and his Foreign Minister.

And so Baker in many ways was the key intermediary.

There was also suspicion back in Washington, actually he and Brent Scowcroft, who was the National Security Advisor and Bush, they got along very well.

And, and they're also held out to be by the way, kind of the gold standard for a national security team.

They got along, they had Dick Cheney at the Pentagon, but the truth is they did have some different views.

And, I think Scowcroft was not only cautious as Bush and Baker were, but he was, you know, probably more hawkish and more skeptical of the Soviets and then there was the built-in, hawks in the Pentagon.

They were always suspicious of Baker.

And what is he going to give away to the Soviets?

And, uh, you know, there's this one key moment really where Baker hijacks an international conference over the Open Skies Treaty, which by the way, has now just been withdrawn from, uh, by the Trump administration.

It's, it's one of those like little footnotes to this whole episode in American history that we'll come back to, but, um, Baker hijacks this, and he comes up with the framework for how they're going to negotiate German unification.

Why?

Number one, he has an unquestioned assumption of American leadership.

He views himself naturally at the head of the table.

And then he, but he knows that the Germans also need to have their fate in their hands.

So the state department actually a brilliant young guy, Frank Fukuyama of "The End of History" just started working at the policy planning department.

He comes up with and they work on it and they refine this idea of a what comes to be known as the two plus four, or the four plus two or the three plus three.

But basically it's the two Germans East and West that they'll be negotiating.

And then the four World War II victorious powers.

And Baker in a whirlwind few days sells this, to everyone.

But actually his hardest sale was back at the White House where both Bush and Scowcroft in particular were not really convinced this was the right way to go.

DICKERSON: And not convinced why, Peter?.

BAKER: Well, I mean, the, you know, they kinda got ahead of the train, right.

You know, he has sort of said, let's think about it.

They're like, okay, let's think about it.

And suddenly he's calling from Ottawa saying, hey, it's a done deal.

I'm like, "Whoa, wait a second."

And that, and you know, Kohl was sort of, there was some miscommunication between Kohl and Bush about whether or not each of the other was really on board and, and Baker had to basically manage that as well and get people to call back and forth.

No, no, really the Germans really are on board.

It's okay.

And then tell the Germans, no, really Bush is really on board.

I think this is, you know, it's part of his skill at, you know, relentlessness, right.

DICKERSON: Yeah.

BAKER: Nothing is ever done until it's done.

He understands that.

German unification is a great story.

The night before the treaty is actually going to be signed the whole thing falls apart while Baker has taken a sleeping pill in his bed and suddenly bang, bang, bang on his door.

It's the West German Foreign Minister.

And Baker's answered the door and his hotel bathrobe and slippers.

And they're suddenly having to put together the deal again that had just fallen apart hours before it was going to be signed.

And so, you know, no deal is done until it's done.

He never lets up the gas.

I think he applied that to the Middle East, to Germany, to the Soviets and every other venue.

DICKERSON: So, um, Susan, I'm gonna combine this question about, um, about Iraq in two ways, cause we're gonna hit the speed bar on the time here.

So Baker is involved in building the coalition for the first Gulf War, or the first war in Iraq, but is highly skeptical and, and then plays a kind of late stage role in, in being the gang of you know of wise men coming to rescue Bush's war, which we can talk about a little bit if we want, but.

There's so much to talk about that he did in the Middle East, but let's just on Iraq, what was the difference between the coalition he built for the first one and his fear and skepticism about the second one?

GLASSER: Yeah, that's a great question.

I should say overall Baker really is a believer in American power and American leadership, but really not a militarized vision of American power, such that, you know, really applied in the post 9/11 era.

You know, he was much more of a natural diplomat by instincts.

When he thought about leadership, he meant putting together coalitions.

He was a big believer in alliances and coalitions.

He was, and so, you know, remember he, he had been completely immersed in the central problem, which he saw, which was the unraveling of the Soviet Union.

And in that context, Saddam invading Kuwait is not exactly on the agenda, let's say.

Right.

And in fact, he, you know, got some guff for not having paid enough attention perhaps to the, the lead up signs of that invasion.

You know, he's in the main, arena, you know, uh, with the Soviet and in fact with the Soviet Foreign Minister as this plays out.

And so that's how he looked at this as the building and the first big test of what the post-Cold War world order really was going to be.

And that is how his people inside the State Department viewed it.

And I think that's how he viewed it, that, that he and Bush were making a new world.

They understood that the old world that had applied since World War II was gone.

And so it was monumental.

They thought, can we bring in the Soviets and show that it's no longer a bipolar world of competition, right?

You're either with us or against us and the people who are with the Soviets to get the aid and the money.

And they thought, no, we're going to create this, this new way of saying that the world has a vast coalition.

And by the way, he was just such a good salesman.

He flew around the Middle East.

He almost actually made that an income generating war for the United States, the first person, Gulf War, but flash forward, he saw, and was very skeptical of that second war.

George W. Bush's war in Iraq, not only because he's not a believer in any kind of wars of choice, you know, or preemptive wars, but also I think, because he thought that Bush did not have, uh, people on his side, he didn't have the kind of alliances, around it.

And he was worried about exactly what ended up happening, frankly, which is that, uh, it's very easy to roll through Iraq, with your, tanks and your air force and not to, what are you going to do with it when you have it?

He and Colin Powell were kind of soulmates in that sense.

DICKERSON: Yeah.

Um, so right, and so, and then, so the Baker-Cheney, worldview clashing is also very, interesting.

So Peter, um, but I, but I don't want to so many options here and so little time, so, but I don't want to, we're in the middle, I'm going to jump from Iraq back to 2000, 'cause I skipped over the 2000 recount and, and so tell that story, Peter, and also my rec.

So because of the suspicion of the son of Baker and then Baker comes in and is highly effective in that recount?

So tell me why he was so effective and also, the relationship with W., which had its complexities?

BAKER: Right, no, exactly right.

Let's just George W. Bush doesn't want to be running his father's campaign, or at least want to be seen as running his father's campaign.

So Baker's kind of stiff armed throughout the 2000, the contests.

He doesn't want to, he's not offered a part.

He's not welcomed to have a part.

And in fact, there was still some sourness there leftover from 1992, when W. and Barbara Bush in particular felt that Baker hadn't really, you know, done enough to come to the father's rescue in that campaign against Bill Clinton.

So, but election day arrived in 2000 and suddenly it all comes down to a handful of votes really in Florida.

And so who's the one person then George W. Bush does pick up the phone to call is Jim Baker.

He's the one guy he knows can handle this, not just because he's a lawyer.

He obviously is a lawyer, but he really understand the politics of it.

So Baker flies to Florida, where he meets with Warren Christopher.

Warren Christopher's another former Secretary of State picked by Al Gore to represent him.

And the Democrats told us, we're doing, doing interviews for the book.

They say, you know, as soon as we knew Baker was picked, we knew we were toast.

And you could see it in the first meeting that Baker has with Warren Christopher, because Warren Christopher's come in very dutifully and so really with this plan where we can sit down and we can work this out together, like, you know, fellow Secretaries of State and Baker's like, "Yeah, you know what?

My candidate won, I'm here to make sure that victory sticks."

And so Christopher goes to plan B, he's got an alternative version of this plan, a Baker's like still here to make sure W. wins.

And so a two hour meeting suddenly has ended in 20 minutes because that wasn't what Baker was going to do.

Now, what's interesting about that today, right?

Is we're talking about the possibility of another Florida at the end of this race, or maybe another three Floridas, or four Floridas or five Floridas, as messy as that was as ugly as that was as acrimonious and, and, and, and, and, uh, divisive is that was, you know, you still had in Baker and in Bush and in Gore and the others who were participating a fundamental respect for the system when it was over, everybody said it was over and it was time to move on as a nation.

And I think that's the worry is we don't have that today.

DICKERSON: Does the Jim Baker success and Jim Baker world rely on a certain set of, oh my gosh, here's that word again, norms, um, and guardrails that everybody agreed were there.

And, and because he, because strikes me is you write so much about power and winning.

Well, Donald Trump is very engaged in winning and power.

So, either one of you, you both can answer on this question of how much was he successful because he understood because it was a world in which at least at some level, everybody agreed on a certain set of things.

And then whichever one, doesn't answer that question can answer the Donald Trump and winning, question.

GLASSER: You know, I mean, we've actually wrestled a lot with this, 'cause I think that is sort of the essence of the thing, how much, what you're basically asking is how much was he a man of the moment?

And, you know, would he be a very different figure in this moment than he was then?

So, one thing I've been thinking about this week a lot, uh, was how, while he's not a very ideological person, right, pragmatism, you know, was his rap and you either like that, or you didn't.

But the truth is though that he has certain fundamental instincts, certainly when it comes to America and the world, but also a sense of, you know, personal integrity and decency that translated into his vision for what public service was.

And, you know, remember he, and, George H. W. Bush were not just personally antithetical to Donald Trump, but also, you know, professionally and politically.

So George H. W. Bush could hardly say the word "I" in public.

And he said, that was always because his mother, you know, would punish him for doing so in a way, and, and Baker comes from that world as well.

But I've been thinking a lot about when Ronald Reagan named Sandra Day O'Connor to be the first woman justice of the Supreme Court.

And it was Jim Baker who really pushed him to do that.

Why?

Because the incentives lined up with his instinct, you know, the incentives back then were certainly to do things that were popular with a broad spectrum of the American people, especially because Reagan early in his tenure is still seen as polarizing or divisive, you know, a kind of right wing extremist.

And, you know, Baker got a lot of pushback from that, from the conservatives who were already very suspicious of him.

And, you know, he was not a Reagan true believer.

They knew that, and he, he fought hard to get her.

He actually physically blocked, some of the judicial activists who wanted to push a more conservative candidate on Reagan from having a meeting with the President.

And of course, Reagan appointed O'Connor and it was a big part of his legacy, a positive part of his legacy as well as being good for him politically.

So, you know, that that's a difference.

BAKER: I would say, and to add to that, Baker was competitive and he was a hard-hitting player.

He was at times ruthless.

We can certainly say that the Willie Horton, and flag and Pledge of Allegiance stuff with the 1988 campaign, struck a lot of people as, as too far pushing the envelope, but even, so there were lines, there were lines.

And I I'm, this was brought home to me last winter, John, when we were all covering the impeachment trial that we just had.

It was hard to remember it was just this year.

And after filing off deadline that night, I was going through some files on the Baker book, trying to make sure we had used everything we wanted.

And I found a memo that we hadn't used in the book because it didn't really strike me at the time I first saw it.

And the memo was a memo that Baker had written to the file in 1992, George Bush was losing to Bill Clinton and four Republican Congressman had come to the Oval Office saying, "Hey, you got to call the Russians for some help and get some dirt on Bill Clinton."

And Baker writes his memo basically saying, "We said, no, we kicked him out of the office.

No way we just don't do that."

And boy did that, just strike me at the time.

And I, as a, as a sign of how much things had changed, right?

There were still lines.

So you push them and you can argue about being ruthless and too, uh, over the top at times that there were lines that we don't see in today's world.

DICKERSON: And thank goodness you wrote that piece because I was in the middle of writing my book and found a nice tidy place exactly in a place where I needed it.

So I really appreciate you writing your book and helping me with mine.

GLASSER: A great book by the way, everyone should buy that.

BAKER: After you buy our book and you have a few dollars left over, buy his.

It's a real master study.

Seriously, it's a master study of how Washington works.

I love the book.

GLASSER: It is.

DICKERSON: That was not my, that was not what I was expecting.

GLASSER: It was warranted.

BAKER: I know, we love it.

DICKERSON: That's very sweet.

Okay.

Back to the important task at hand.

John Swansburg, who's my editor at "The Atlantic", says his son asked him what he did.

And he said, well, basically I solve puzzles with friends, which is what he, how he described being an editor.

So you guys are married.

So that seems like a pretty good way of solving puzzles with friends.

How did you, tell us a little bit about the writing process.

How did you distribute the work?

Did you do it together?

Did you say, you know, "You take Houston, I'll take the, you know, uh, Deputy Secretary of Commerce" or whatever, how'd you split up the work.

BAKER: Susan is going to answer it.

But first I want to say John, as you know, if you find a really good editor, you gotta marry him because there aren't that many really good ones out there.

Susan was my editor when we met.

Awesome.

Believe me.

GLASSER: I thought you were going to say, by the way that the job description of an editor was like, you look at Twitter all day and zoom calls.

But look, we're very lucky because we already did a book before and we were still on speaking terms after that.

And in fact, actually that was, we finished "Kremlin Rising" the very same day that, uh, we had our son, that was not on purpose necessarily, but writers are deadline people, so.

DICKERSON: I'm sure.

BAKER: I came upstairs, said "I've just sent the last two chapters to the publisher."

She says, "Good, I'm having contractions."

So this is a lot easier.

We didn't.

GLASSER: Yeah, this one was easier.

DICKERSON: Yeah, nothing concentrates the mind, like a birth, I guess.

Um, but so Peter, did you, I mean, so, I can only refer to my own experience and I wander around talking to myself.

It must be nice to have somebody else to talk to.

BAKER: It is actually.

DICKERSON: I mean, we're there, here's what I imagined.

You're making eggs on a Saturday morning.

You're, and then suddenly you lapse into a conversation about, you know, I don't know, the 1988 race, and then you suddenly have a revelation, somebody's scribbling down your, was that the way it happened?

I mean, did it happen in the nooks and crannies of your life, as opposed to just in the big chunks when you're sitting at the desk?

BAKER: Yeah, I think so.

GLASSER: That's a great way of describing it.

The nooks and crannies, remember that we lived with this project for seven years, which is insane.

So obviously a lot happened.

And, uh, the biggest thing that happened is we thought we would finish it, after the 2016 election, when we already had that much of the, research and interviews.

And, we were going to move to Jerusalem.

And be foreign correspondents again, for a few years before our son was too old to still do it with us and actually Peter and our son went there and Peter started working as a bureau chief, uh, for the "Times" in Jerusalem.

And I was going to come there, after finishing up as "Politico's" editor and then Trump got elected.

So, we moved back here and instead we've been foreign correspondents in our own land, but that delayed this by really, you know, several years.

DICKERSON: Yeah.

BAKER: Probably because the story actually changes or is enhanced by understanding Baker's time and connection to today's time, right?

Because Baker is the un-Trump, he's so different.

And the, and the era and his incentive structure was so different, Washington was different.

So it only enhanced the story in our view.

DICKERSON: And now, so I'm going to turn to a couple, a few audience questions.

So Susan, what was the most surprising thing you found out about Baker?

GLASSER: Well, I imagine there are some people who have already seen, you know, the excerpts that we ran in the "New Yorker", and they already know what I'm going to say.

It is actually surprising that Jim Baker voted for Donald Trump in 2016.

And, you know, in the end, as Peter said, I think that that helped us to understand our subject clearly in a way that we didn't fully, but we've spent now essentially five years going back and forth with him on this subject.

And, uh, you know, it was really interesting.

I met with him at the Willard Hotel where he likes to stay when he comes to town a week before the 2016 election.

And he told me at the beginning of that interview, which was on other things that he was probably going to vote for Trump.

And I, I couldn't believe it.

And, he explained actually that everyone in his life was mad at him about this, you know, the Bush's, obviously, were not going to be voting for Trump.

And they'd already said that publicly because of Bush's, uh, because of Trump's attacks on Jeb Bush, and his, his family, many of the members of his family were strongly against it.

His wife.

BAKER: Daughters.

GLASSER: Yes.

And, uh, I just, I kept coming back to it and, and, you know, came back to it again at the end.

I said, sir, you know, forgive me, but I've got to ask you like, Jim Baker's really gonna do this?

And he had this sort of agonized look and he said, well, I haven't done it yet.

Uh, and in the end he actually did do it.

But this is also someone he called crazy, he called nuts.

He's a very clear-eyed realist, not just about deals, but about humans and human nature.

He is well aware of, um, the current President's flaws.

Uh, and I think it's just been something that has told me about the current state of the Republican party and why it is that so many people who don't like Donald Trump have nonetheless found it difficult to renounce him fully.

DICKERSON: I wonder Peter, if, if that decision that Susan just described from, from Baker is a ratification on basically Donald Trump's worldview.

Which is, you know, Senator Bob Corker and Senator Mitt Romney and Senator Jeff Flake, they can talk about things all day long, but in the end, they pretty much voted for me.

I mean, sorry.

They pretty much voted with me and for the same stuff.

And at the end of the day, there's belly aching and there's norms and there's suits with monograms on them.

But essentially power is what matters and power is what people will ultimately align themselves towards, even if they have all these other things in their lives.

BAKER: Right.

DICKERSON: And that kind of feels like the decision that, that Jim Baker made.

BAKER: This book is a study in power.

It's a study.

And in fact, if that Robert Carroll guy hadn't used the title first, we might've called it "Power Broker" because I think it is about the acquisition exercise preservation of power.

Not that Baker is a power monger kind of person.

He's just that he wants to get stuff done.

And I do think that in his world being on the outside throwing stones means you have no power.

There's just no point to it.

You're just, you're, you're, you're, you're irrelevant.

And it's better from his point of view to be on the inside of that house, trying to manage things as best you can.

Try to steer things in the best direction you can.

He tried this with Trump, he gave him a two page memo saying, "Here's how you be more presidential."

Trump, of course lost it or you think he tossed it.

He helped get Rex Tillerson named Secretary of State said, "Well, maybe he'll listen to Rex because Rex is a reasonable guy."

Trump didn't listen to Rex.

So I think that, you know, Baker has, has had an education just like everybody has about the limits of anybody's ability to manage this particular President.

And we'll see where he ends up.

He hasn't voted yet, as Susan said this time, and we'll see where he, he falls on the, in the end of the day.

DICKERSON: Susan did.

Um, does Baker have any second thoughts, doubts, regrets about working so hard to get George W. Bush elected given how he felt the Iraq war was prosecuted and, um, and basically the vote, the George W. Bush term?

GLASSER: You know, Jim Baker, we spent a lot of time with him.

He was incredibly generous.

And I have to say with his time and, you know, opening up his life, his family, his archives to us.

He is not an introspective sort of a guy.

He's not the kind of guy like Richard Holbrooke.

He's not, you're handing over like, you know, years' worth of his personal diaries and you know, observations about great works of you know, political history that he read when he was 25.

And he's not given to doubts of any kind or, or regrets.

And, you know, for him that, that the central principle of his public life was this incredible bond with the Bush family.

And, you know, you can fight with your family and you can disagree with your family.

But I think that's the lens through which he viewed, his dealings with them.

BAKER: There's this wall, you'll love this, John at the Baker Institute in Houston.

Baker loves political cartoons.

And he would basically get, he would get political cartoonists to send him the originals and they would sign them and he would frame them all over the institute.

There's a whole wall of them, of him from the Iraq study group, the essence of which he is here's, here's daddy's brand schooling, the young immature baby, the president on how to do foreign policy.

Well, one time George W. Bush came to visit the Institute.

Baker's all panicked that he would see this wall.

So he lines up a whole bunch of people on the other side of the room, so when Bush comes in, he has to do kind of a receiving line and not look at the wall of cartoons.

But the thing that's telling is Baker loved the cartoons.

He loved to have them there, even though of course, they were somewhat diminishing of W. because he A: has a good sense of humor, and B: I think he had a healthy regard for his own, you know, status as a wise man.

DICKERSON: Susan, is this a book that, um, that you would give or could give, uh, somebody in the Trump, well, next Trump term?

Let's imagine that Trump pulls the two page memo out of the circular file.

Decides I'm going to run this like a traditional White House, or let's say it's a Chief of Staff under the Biden administration.

Is this a book that you can give to somebody and say, you know, learn, learn from this book or has politics just changed so much?

GLASSER: Well, it's a great question, but I think there's absolutely, I mean, you know, there are kind of Baker's Washington rules to live by embedded throughout the book, which was actually a premise of a piece that we ran in "Politico" magazine earlier this week.

But I do think that there are essential principles that apply in almost any you know capitol and in a power broking situation.

My personal favorite, you know, from that list was he thinks like if somebody gets in your lane, don't just you know, shove them back out of your lane, but, you know, run them over so they don't ever do it again.

And there was one time when Dick Cheney went on TV and started questioning Mikhail Gorbachev and saying like, "Oh, I don't know if he can really go the distance there."

Well, this was needless to say, not at all what, uh, the Secretary of State wanted the message to be.

And he calls up Cheney, yells at him.

Cheney says, "I'm sorry, it won't ever happen again," but that wasn't enough.

He then calls up Scowcroft in the White House.

He calls up the President and he says, "Dump on Dick with all possible alacrity."

And to me, I just love that one.

Cause they were good friends by the way.

You know, and for two decades, in fact, Cheney helped to get him where he was because Cheney was in the Ford White House and saw in paper reel.

But it didn't matter, you know, it's your best friend, your worst enemy if they get in your lane and you're the Secretary of State, run them over with all possible alacrity.

DICKERSON: Let me just thank you both very much for the book, um, for your time.

Um, thanks everybody for watching.

It's a fantastic book and, uh, I'm just so impressed by you guys.

BAKER: Thank you for agreeing to do this.

It's a great honor for us and thank you, Brad and Lissa for hosting, one of our favorite store Politics and Prose out there.

GRAHAM: John, great, great moderating and Peter, Susan, a fascinating discussion about the remarkable power broker who did operate under circumstances, very different from today's, but whose story still offers a lots of relevant lessons for us all as your book makes, makes clear so well, but to everyone, one watching, um, thanks again for tuning in from all of us here at Politics and Prose, stay well and well-read.

NARRATOR: Books by tonight's authors are available at Politics and Prose bookstore locations or online at politics-prose.com (music plays through credits)