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[upbeat music] - Hello everyone and welcome to Amanpour & Company.
It's been an extraordinary year that's changed the world as we know it from a global pandemic that shifted the way we live, work and interact with each other, to the most consequential US election in modern history, to a moral reckoning with racism around the world.
So this holiday season, we're bringing you some of our favorite interviews from this year on all of this and more.
here's what's coming up.
Looking ahead to life after lockdown, when can we attend large public events again?
My exclusive joint interview with two of the greatest sporting champions, spanning generations and genders, Billie Jean King and Andy Murray.
Then.
- You live and die by metrics, just as we did in the combat zone.
- David Petraeus on how a clear strategy and clear communication can lead us through this crisis.
And later.
- History doesn't repeat itself.
But as Mark Twain is supposed to have said, it rhymes.
- America's history teacher, filmmaker, Ken Burns, aiming to unite the nation through shared stories.
[upbeat music] - [Announcer] Amanpour and Company is made possible by Rosalind P. Walter, Bernard and Irene Schwartz, Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III, Candace King Weir, the Anderson Family Fund, the Cheryl and Philip Milstein family.
Charles Rosenblum, the Straus Family Foundation, Jeffrey Katz and Beth Rogers.
Additional support has been provided by, and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.
Thank you.
- Welcome to the program everyone.
I'm Christiane Amanpour for working from home in London.
As local and national governments around the world wrestle with reopening their economies, some of the most popular businesses like music and sports, face particular risk.
Here in Britain for instance, a new survey shows that two thirds of those polled feel uncomfortable returning to large public gatherings.
And in the United States, less than one in four would head out to a major sporting event if restrictions were lifted tomorrow.
Tennis great, Roger Federer, sees opportunity in this crisis that goes to the very heart of gender equality on court.
Particularly right now, given how this pandemic exacerbates the gender issue of court.
More women are on the front lines of this coronavirus response as essential workers.
Meanwhile, women also apparently are losing more jobs than men overall, and they are suffering more abuse at home under lockdown.
Now, our first guest tonight in an exclusive joint interview, a perfectly place to discuss equality in their sport, and of course, a lot more.
Tennis legend, Billie Jean King, is a giant in the fight for gender equality in every arena.
And three time Grand Slam champion and Olympic champion, Andy Murray, is an unabashed champion for women's rights as well on and off the court.
And they both join me now.
Welcome to this program.
We're delighted to have you to talk about this crisis that we're living through, but particularly as I described, how it affects the world's most loved events, sporting events.
So first can I ask you, Billie Jean, I asked you not not too long ago how you were doing on the lockdown?
I think you said it gives you a chance to reflect, gives you a chance to rest up from a punishing and ruling worldwide travel schedule.
So I wanna ask Andy as a finely tuned champion machine right now, what is it like to be off work and off the court?
- Yeah, I don't know about finely tuned.
I've had my fair few breakdowns over the last few years.
But yeah, look, it's been tough obviously, tough for everybody just know, but it has also given us the opportunity to spend time, and a lot of time at home with my family of which, with my job and the traveling that we usually do, I don't always get that opportunity.
So that's been really nice and challenging at times trying to teach and educate my children, which our teachers usually do that for us.
It's been hard as well, but I've enjoyed large parts of it, it's been quite special to have this time with my family as well.
But obviously, yeah, tough not to just be able to go out and socialize and do things.
Aside from the tennis and sport, which obviously is an important part of our life is just living really and going out to restaurants, and having your usual freedoms and not having them has been tough.
- Let me ask you, Billie Jean, because not only have you been a champion for so many years, but you understand very, very, well, the psychology of what it takes to keep up your game face, so to speak.
How do you think the younger generation of players are coping, and how it might affect them post lockdown when you can get back to tournaments and the kind of rigorous training that goes into that?
- Well, I think when they do get back to play, we're gonna find out, but right now, it's a great time to meditate, to actually do have some niggles or injuries to let them heal.
A lot of times players are under the gun to keep playing for the rankings and whatever.
So this is a chance to heal.
And also, I think to think about what it means to be the best you can be.
And that is I'm real big on mental, emotional, and physical.
And I think the greatest players in the world have always been, doesn't matter what generation, they've been the strongest emotionally.
And I don't think a lot of times the players split those, like the mental emotional enough, because metal is what you think, emotional is what you feel.
So I take some time to maybe talk to a psychologist about that.
But I think it's really, really important to have reflection time.
And also, what are your new goals?
You've gotta come out of this, it's gonna be different and you've got to adapt.
- Okay, so you've led me into the sort of headline of what I sort of introduced before I welcomed you on.
So reflect and adapt.
So I wanna ask you, we mentioned that Roger Federer has put out a feeler, maybe it's a trial balloon, I don't know.
But it's about the idea of combining the women's and the men's tour.
So let me just read the tweet and get you both to talk about it.
So a few days ago, he said, 'Just wondering, 'am I the only one thinking that now is the time 'for men's and women's tennis to be united 'and come together as one?'
Andy Murray, you're a male player, what did you make of Roger Federer saying that now?
What do you think he means?
And what might be the result of that tweet?
- Well, I'm assuming it's something, I'm not on the ATP Player Council just know.
But I'm assuming it's something they may have been discussing over these last few weeks and months, about the possibility of the ATP and WTA merging.
This is something obviously Billie Jean has been.
Well, one thing to happen for 40, 50 years, she's the one that really had the vision for all of this.
And we need certainly to remember that, but I think it's great if more of the male players are seeing it as a positive step for the sport.
I think we have a very unique sport and that we have, the men and the women competing at the biggest competitions together.
That doesn't really happen in any of the other global sports.
And I see that as a big positive.
We have equal prize money at those events, which I think is fantastic.
And I think that's very attractive to sponsors, to the audience.
We have pretty much a 50, 50 kind of audience split between men and women, which again, is rare across sports.
And I think all of these things are things that we should be celebrating in the sport, and sometimes they aren't.
And there's a lot of infighting that goes on with these things.
And I don't think that should be the case.
There's obviously going to be some issues potentially with a merger as well.
But, it's definitely, I think, a step in the right direction to start these conversations.
- So you obviously agree with it.
Some of the other top tennis players on the male side do too rough on the doll, but Nick Kyrgios opposes it.
I want to ask you, Billie Jean, because obviously, I wanted to get you on this, you have spent your whole career blazing that trail for equality.
And you did start out wanting both tours to somehow get together.
Are you pleased that this is happening now?
Do you see just opportunity or any pitfalls?
- Well, I'm thrilled that Roger brought it up because when the top male players bring something out, people listen.
And I did have a chance to talk with Roger.
And we talked about it, he said the reason he even thought about this is is because he finally had some space and time to reflect and think about the sport.
But what tennis people have to understand, we need to get along, we're much stronger, much stronger, as Andy said, if we're together, from sponsorship to opportunities and we can grow.
But what we have to understand is we have to stay together as a sport, because we're not competing within our sport, like a lot of tennis people think, our job is to be together, so we can compete against the other entertainment and other sports.
I don't think people realize, we're in this business.
And so I think it's very important we're together, that we're not an acquisition, the WTA would not be an acquisition, we'd be a full partner in this drive to make our sport better and more valuable.
- Okay, so that's really interesting the way you put that, because obviously, there's also amongst some of the pioneering women in the sport, some concern that this might be really great.
But it also might yet again, if it's an acquisition, and not a business merger on equal terms, it might frame the women's game within again, a male construct.
Do you see, both of you I wanna ask, but you, Billy, is there a way to do this without getting subsumed by it?
- Well, I think that the ATP and the WTA, and everyone's been talking right now to try to help with COVID-19.
And we've been talking for quite a while on certain issues through the years.
But I must say the leadership of both are much more interested in combining a partnership.
So I think anything's possible, if we stay positive and work through each point by point by point like you always do in negotiations.
But can you imagine how strong we would be if we can negotiate as one voice, cha-ching.
- On that cha-ching note, Andy Murray, certainly some in the male world in men's tennis are concerned that they wouldn't get as maybe as much cha-ching, so to speak.
Do you see any struggle from other men in your sport to try to get this done?
And except 'cause you want to see it done.
- Yeah, I mean, yeah, definitely.
There's some some potential for that.
I mean, I've had some times conversations in the past, when there's been prize money increases within the sport where let's say the fresh round losers check has gone from the man that went from like 8,000 to $10,000.
And the women's went from $6,000 to $10,000.
And I spoke to some of the male players about that who were unhappy because the prize money was equal.
And I said, 'Well, would you rather, 'there was no increase at all?'
And, they said to me, 'Yeah, actually.'
And I was like, 'Well, that's some of the sort 'of the mentalities that you're working with 'in these discussions 'where someone would actually rather make less money 'just so they're not an on an equal footing 'with some of the female players.'
So there will be some challenges.
But look, I think, when you have, obviously a lot of the top male players now starting to discuss it and talk about it, that's definitely very promising.
But I think it's really important, I think, in these negotiations that when it comes to the sort of key decision makers right now in tennis, pretty much all of them are men.
And I think that when these discussions happen, it's quite important not just to see this merger through like a man's eyes and to bring more women into the decision making positions, so that everybody's voice gets heard and everybody gets protected in these discussions.
And I think if that happens, we have a huge potential as a sport to me.
I already think it's a very special sport because of what we already have.
But I think it could even better.
- Billie Jean, just quickly, that's really an important point to make sure that women are at the table obviously.
But just quickly, if you can in the potted version of the original nine, when you basically forced an issue, and you made women's professional tennis a reality.
- We have fought so hard, people have no idea to get to where we are right now.
And as Andy said, if we don't have more women who are in decision making positions, it won't be probably as even.
But there's a lot of men just like Andy, who believe in us.
I find that men who have daughters, like Andy has two daughters and a son, Roger and I talked about it, he has two daughters and two boys.
So it's all possible, but we have to keep the vision.
You always have to keep the vision like we have the nine of us and we signed a $1 contract with Gladys Heldman.
We had no idea what was gonna happen.
The lattice went and got a sponsor, we had no infrastructure.
Three months later, we had to start our tournaments.
We all went out and we made it happen.
But we can all do this if we just work together for our sport, and realize we have to stay together so we can compete in this world of entertainment.
I think tennis people always going inside so much and worried about the factions, winning over this one within tennis.
And we're not the biggest sport in the world.
But we are unique, like Andy said, that we can have men and women.
And from a PR point of view, I think that is a huge plus, because the world is going towards equality slowly, slowly, every generation.
But every generation has to continue to fight for this.
And I think the time is just right, because we have space, we're not playing tournaments.
And with Roger bringing it up in the [indistinct], that hasn't always been the case.
But Andy's always been in there for us and championed the game in so many ways and he understand so much about everything really I can tell listening to him.
That we just have to find a way to make this merger happen.
And people won't realize how much good it will do.
- So let me just follow up with you Andy on that because without wanting to burnish you with a halo, many women in the sport do look up to you with thanks, I guess, for being a big, big champion.
And I wonder, is it because your mother was such an influence on you as your coach growing up?
And obviously, it's your mother that you were the first male professional player to have a female coach, Amelie Mauresmo.
Obviously as Billie says, you have two girls.
What is it that kind of made you see the need for fairness and the level playing field?
- Yeah, I mean that really started when I got a female coach actually.
Because when I came up onto the tour, I never saw any female coaches around.
It was not, to be honest, something I've thought about doing.
I'd just seen male coaches on the [indistinct] and just assumed that I should also have a male coach.
And then there's actually Darren Cahill, who's an Australian coach, he's working with Simona Halep, one of the best female players in the world just now.
He suggested, 'Why not look at a female coach?'
And when he said that, I thought, yeah, I was like, of course, why not?
I was coached by my mum when I was young, and I had a very good relationship with Olga Morozova, who Billie Jean might know.
She she me on a few trips when I was very young, and I'd always got on very well with her too.
And when I did then employ a female coach, I realized, this isn't how it normally is.
Every time I lost the match, my coach was getting blamed for it.
And I never had that with any of my previous coaches.
And Amelie Mauresmo was a former world number one, a Grand Slam champion.
Fantastic player, extremely qualified to coach.
And that was when I realized there was, this was a problem and you start to see it more and more.
And that was when I started to talk to my mom a little bit more about it.
She's someone who's inspired I think, by Billie Jean's work.
And yeah, I started to take more of an interest in it and see that it was an issue that needed to be resolved within the sport.
And that was really where it kind of started for me.
- So let me just get back to the COVID issue because you're also, I think both of you are interested and working on trying to support some of the lower ranked players who are not as well off and not as okay during this complete shut off of their sport.
I mean, many people don't know that it's not just the famous names, it's so many 100s of other players who live, I guess from hand to mouth, tournament to tournament, and they don't have the wherewithal.
So what are you doing to try to help that kitty?
Andy, let me ask you first.
- Well, I mean, the ATP have set up a tennis player relief fund to help the players rank between 207, 100 in the world to obviously or not making any money just now, like all of the players, but are not able to support themselves.
So I think that was a positive initiative.
But there's also been some resistance to that from some players as well.
But I have given some money to that fund to try and help some of the tennis players.
And, hopefully, they might in a few months time, there might be some events that we can put on as well to help raise some more money for those players.
Because, they'll be the ones feeling the most just now and the players ranked in that ranking bracket will also be the future of our sport as well.
There'll be some young players coming through just know that will go on to be Grand Slam champions, and the number one top 10 players in the world.
So yeah, it's important that we try to support those players now and in any way we can.
- And Billie Jean, on the issue of, for instance, Serena Williams, who's trying to beat the record of Margaret Court in Grand Slam.
You just tweeted this week, a really sweet picture of when you first met the Williams sisters 32 years ago.
Just quickly, what does this timeout mean for that kind of dream?
Could that put pay to it yet another year?
- Well, you can look at it two ways.
I think you have to look at it as a positive, and that you have to figure out what you need to do.
If I were Serena, the one thing when you're an older player, is you have to be more fit than you ever thought possible.
I played until I was 40.
And I remember sometimes playing against the player that was half my age or two times their age is still less than I was.
So you have to be extremely, extremely fit.
And if I were Serena, with this time off, I would enjoy my baby daughter and my husband, but I also would be absolutely just from a physical point of view, just driving myself and being absolutely discipline to be self fit.
So when tournament startup again, you definitely can be ready.
But I think that's the most important thing for Serena, 'cause once she start playing matches, she's amazing.
Of course, Andy played mix with her so he knows well how wonderful she is.
- And I wanna ask Andy as well, how did these cancellations affect your career and your level?
- Well, so the last match I played was in the middle of November.
So I haven't played a match for six months and I haven't actually hit a tennis ball for the last six weeks, I've been at home.
But I have no idea really and I don't think many of the players do know how it will affect them.
I've tried to use this time to get myself in the best shape possible to try and get my hips stronger.
I've had multiple operations on that hip so I'm trying to give that more of a chance to heal but also to get stronger as well.
And I'm physically in really good shape.
I've been able to use the bike and I have some weights at home which has helped.
And yeah, I'm just trying to get myself in really good shape so that when we do get the opportunity to play again, my body is ready.
- And in the meantime, as you say, you're staying with your family, this particular Instagram contribution has gone quite viral showing you in your Instagram posts, 'When your daughter's want you to play dress up 'and put on a skirt.
'I tried to explain it was a kilt not a skirt, 'but they showed me it was definitely a skirt.'
And there's the picture of you in your skirt - Yeah, they won that argument.
They win most arguments with me.
My daughters, they're foreign too, but yeah, they've already got me wrapped around their fingers.
So yeah, it's fine.
They're the sort of things you get up as a dad when you're at home but they actually said to me [indistinct] on all morning.
And then when I did put it on, they just said, 'Oh daddy, you look silly, take it off.'
- [indistinct] Or whatever.
- I wrap my finger around my dad too.
So I get it.
I know where they're coming from.
- That's really good.
- It's important when the fathers believe in their daughters as much as their son.
- Well, this is brilliant.
Billie Jean King, Andy Murray, thank you so much for being with us today.
Really great.
- Thanks, Christiane.
- And now, our next guest is General David Petraeus, who led troops in Iraq during the 2003 war, and later also coalition forces in Afghanistan.
He then went on to lead the CIA and is now Global Chair of the New York investment firm, KKR.
So, he is well placed to know what makes a good strategic leader and whether wartime lessons can be applied to fighting a pandemic.
He talks to Walter Isaacson about it.
- General David Petraeus, thank you so much for joining us.
- Great to be with you.
Thanks, Walter, - You've talked often about the principles of strategic leadership.
What are those principles?
And how do they apply to this case?
- Well, I think there are four tasks of a strategic leader.
And in this setting certainly, the strategic leaders would include the President, those in Congress, the fed, and the governors as well, given a federal system that we have.
And the four tasks are to get the big ideas right.
And by and large, I think that there has been convergence around these big ideas about what to do, even as we are racing to develop a vaccine and a therapeutic treatment.
Second, to communicate the big ideas and the progress in implementing them to the population, so that they know the status, they know what we still need them to do.
And they know how to go about activities as safely as is absolutely possible to oversee the implementation of the big ideas is the third task.
And this involves everything from the metrics which have to be absolutely forthright and grounded in data.
The example that's provided, the energy, the inspiration, the driving of the campaign plan, which would include first and foremost, I think, the dramatic increase in testing and the dramatic increase required in contact tracing.
And then the final task that is sometimes overlooked, which is and generally formally has to be done, which is to sit down and determine how the big ideas need to be refined, augmented, whatever, so that you can do it again and again and again, because we're going to learn from the early experiences of states that are beginning to take small steps back to economic recovery.
And we're going to learn whether or not they should do that, even if they haven't had the 14 days of the downtrend, that is a feature of the White House proposal or in the one of the governors in Harbor.
So that's the process I think of strategic leadership.
And I think that, again, having arrived at these big ideas, the challenge now is to make sure that everyone understands them, that you have sort of a relentless communication of what these big ideas are, and then an even more relentless oversight of the execution of that.
- You talk about relentlessly communicating with clarity.
Do you think we've been effective at communicating clearly about things like should you wear a mask?
How do you get testing?
What type of testing we need to do?
Or do you think there are ways to improve the single messages we should be trying to get out?
- Well, I think there's always room for improvement in whatever endeavor you're engaged in.
I'm sure that we will look back and see that there have been cases where there have been deviations from this single minded emphasis on the steps that need to be taken while also acknowledging, Walter, that in a federal system that has 50 states with big differences between them in a number of situations.
I mean, the dispersion of the population in a western state compared with the density of that population, say in southern New York and New Jersey, is very, very striking.
And therefore there will be some differences in how the reduction of the restrictions plays out.
- So what message should the American people take from the fact that the President has said he won't wear a mask, the vice president didn't wear it in the hospital.
- Well, I hope the message is not that they shouldn't wear a mask in a public place.
That, for example, if you're riding the subway in New York or on crowded streets, should they become crowded again, or in other situations, where you can't maintain the physical distancing that we have all now memorized at six feet or further, that you shouldn't actually do what it is that they are doing.
Perhaps, ideally, I'd hope founded on some data that they're being tested frequently.
And there's enormous safeguards and all the rest of this.
But at the end of the day, again, strategic leaders get paid to provide example as well as all of these other actions, when it comes to overseeing the execution of the big ideas that we have discussed, in which they are the ones, of course, who put those out to the US public.
- Do you see an overarching strategy at work?
- Well, I do.
Again, as I described, the White House framework, I think, is very solid.
In fact, if you look at the National Governors Association approach, they actually compare and contrast every single one of the different significant proposals that is out there.
And they are all roughly again, the same.
They all involve initially braking community transmission by essentially the lockdown that we've all been experiencing.
And then when the data shows you certain indicators, and these are the metrics.
And again, you live and die by metrics, just as we did in the combat zone.
We've got to follow the data.
And we have to adhere to again, the guidelines, certainly modified for the states and municipalities and their conditions.
But take the actions, if and only if you have seen 14 down days, and then you go to the next step, and then 14 more the next, and so forth, until you are largely back at what used to be normal.
Noting that there is going to be a new normal.
And that I do think that business and consumer and citizen behavior will change some of it in certain respects forever, as a result of this terrible pandemic experience we're going through.
- But on most of the governors totally frustrated that they don't have the testing facilities that they need.
- It certainly seems to be that in a bipartisan basis, I think it's accurate to say that, again, Democratic and Republican governors have stated that they would like to have more assistance with testing now.
Again, to be fair, this is very, very hard government work as we say, to dramatically increase this and noting that a lot of the materials for these testings and the various equipment involved is not produced in the United States.
There's a huge reliance, of course, on Chinese manufacturing in a lot of these different ways.
And there was also a huge reliance on what was called just in time logistics.
Where you don't wanna have huge warehouses, because that'll cost money.
And as just as businesses have, in some other cases, will slim down the warehouse contents because there's a confidence that in a crisis, you can just have them deliver more and more rapidly than what is normally the case.
And of course, if it's a global crisis, everybody is shut down.
And that particular approach demonstrates certain vulnerabilities and challenges.
- Is the administration using the Defense Production Act effectively, in your opinion?
Should we be taking an approach more like we did in World War II?
- That's a tough question.
Obviously, it has been used, I think it's just twice formally, but the threat of it has also been used.
And I think that's been used to reasonably good effect.
But again, at the end of the day, Walter, it's not a subjective judgment that should guide us here.
It's actually as my father used to say whenever I bring home a report card, 'Results, boy.'
And it was the same in Iraq.
I remember my great mentor, General Tin, coming out to Iraq, we were about month five.
And actually, we're starting to see a positive trend, but it's still too early.
And he tells me, he said, 'You have a public relations challenge here.'
And I said, 'We don't have a public relations challenge, 'we have a results challenge.'
And again, what should tell us how we were doing is whether or not we ultimately get to whatever is determined should be the goal for a national testing.
And again, if it's 5 million tests per day, which again, would be something like 15 to 20 times a good day right now, that should be the metric against which we are competing.
- You say that one of the most important things to do now is a massive surge in testing.
And that we should have a coordinated effort to throw everything at that.
Do you think that's happened?
- I think there is that recognition.
I think, look, I mean, it was a press conference yesterday or the day before that had all of the individuals that produced these kinds of tests.
Not all but a subset of them once back on stage in the Rose Garden.
So again, there's clearly that recognition.
Then the question is, are those who are in charge of driving this campaign because make no mistake about it, a commander may try to make it look as if he has a light hand on the reins.
And all he's doing is just sort of patting people on the back and they're doing great work.
You drive a campaign, the surge in Iraq, we drove, General Odierno and I drove that surge with McChrystal, and others.
Again, and you absolutely throw everything at that.
And you don't let obstacles stand in your way if you can prevent it.
- But do you feel that that's what's happening now?
That that's what's our leaders-- - Is a tough one for me to judge, Walter.
Again, I'm not in the councils of these, again, of the task force and the others.
I'm not aware of all the instructions that have gone out.
I don't have the projections, and again, the heart data right now.
But again, certainly right now, I mean, what is I think undeniable, is that we do not have the level of testing that every single one of the programs either specifies or suggest is required, ultimately, to, with confidence, allow people to reduce some of the restrictions under which we're currently operating.
- President Trump calls himself a wartime President.
Tell me what you think the attributes of a wartime president should be.
- I think that wartime or peacetime, but of course, there's a certain urgency to leadership in wartime.
But you come back again to the four tasks of a strategic leader, getting the big ideas right, it's usually an inclusive, transparent, open, iterative process.
No one of us is smarter than all of us together.
Developing the big ideas then communicating them and doing that relentlessly.
And again, the measure is how well does someone perform each of those different tasks?
And that's the question that I think, again, it's fair for a country to ask about its leader, about its Congress, about its Federal Reserve Chief, Treasury Secretary and the other prominent players, CDC and DHHS.
And it's fair for citizens of states and cities to ask the same about their leaders.
- President Trump has said that he bears no responsibility for this.
As a commander, how do you balance the notion of saying the buck stops with me taking responsibility for things, with the need to keep people still having faith in what you're doing?
- Well, look, I grew up in a profession, and served in that profession for over 37 years and over 38 and a half in government overall.
And the description of your responsibilities as a commander was that you are responsible for all that your unit does or fails to do.
Now, obviously, you look at when you're evaluating the commander, for example, and you see that there has been some problem or challenge or they came up short on something or did fantastically on something, it's not always because of the commander, it's obviously always a team effort.
So in that sense, you have to factor in what else is going on.
But at the end of the day, that particular thinking seemed inescapable for me.
And I think probably is a reasonable example of the kind of accountability that should go with the awesome responsibility that comes from command, from executive positions.
- Have you spoken to President Trump about this?
- No.
I should note that I have spoken to members of the White House, some that are of fairly significant rank, several of them, and they have welcomed input.
They haven't necessarily applauded every single bit of advice or recommendations that I have made.
But by and large, they have been appreciative of me making that, providing that input.
- Do you think it would be useful to have a full time commander like a general in charge of this on a day by day, hour by hour basis?
- Look, I think you have a task force, it's led by the Vice President.
The President clearly is heavily involved in this.
There are subordinate task forces of various types.
The challenge, of course, is how do you drive this to the next level?
And that is, I think, the major question right now, when it comes to significantly and dramatically increasing testing and contact tracing capabilities.
- And finally, what have you learned as a wartime commander and a joint commander of many forces under your control that would apply to this fight against coronavirus?
- I think what you learn as a combat commander, if it's in Iraq or Afghanistan or the greater Middle East, or what have you, is the imperative again, of getting the strategy right.
Please recall that the surge in Iraq that mattered most wasn't the surge of forces, it was a surge of ideas, it was a change in strategy.
And then that you have to work very hard to communicate those big ideas through the breadth and depth of the organization.
And then relentlessly oversee the implementation of those big ideas, working very hard to set up your subordinate commanders for success and to get everything you possibly can for them, so that they have the best possibility of achieving success, without ever forgetting to sit down formally.
We used to do it in Baghdad, and determining how you need to change, to refine to augment the big ideas, so that you do it again and again and again.
- General David Petraeus, thank you so much for joining us.
- My pleasure, thanks, Walter.
- A really important perspective.
And American history is filled with great leaders who united the country at times of peril.
But in this current crisis, the nation seems as divided as ever.
Like, for instance, Michigan, where a Democratic governor is in a standoff with Republican legislators over lockdown rules.
Angry protesters, some opened the arm, jammed into the statehouse there, demanding an end to the state of emergency.
Historian and documentary filmmaker, Ken Burns, says that in divided times, it is more important than ever, for America to live by its motto, E Pluribus Unum, out of many one.
In fact, UNUM is the name of his online resource for history buffs.
It's an incredibly themed compendium of his work across four decades.
And Ken Burns is joining me now from Walpole, New Hampshire.
So about UNUM, you've relaunched it now under COVID.
And we'd heard that little clip where you saying, Mark Twain says history doesn't repeat itself, it kind of rhymes.
What do you see rhyming today from history and what are you putting out via UNUM?
- Well, I think that what we see rhyming is pretty obvious.
We've got depression like economic circumstances, we have this thirst, this cry for leadership that have appeared at the critical junctures in our past.
We're on a warlike footing.
So one harkens back to the revolutionary times in George Washington's leadership and the early days of our republic.
Abraham Lincoln in the Civil War, of course, I think, probably what comes to mind for most people is the person who oversaw not only our federal, our central art UNUM approach to the depression, but also to the Second World War, the greatest Cataclysm in human history.
And that is Franklin Roosevelt.
UNUM is an attempt to realize that a, history does not repeat itself.
But there are many evergreen themes that constantly occur and reoccur.
Motifs, echoes, ghosts, rhymes, if you will, that permit us to have a greater perspective on what's going on now.
So with the support of the patriotic philanthropist, David Rubenstein and my longtime colleague, Don McKinnon, we've been working for many years on essentially assembling mixtapes, if you will, of these various themes.
It might be leadership, it might be women, it might be race, it might be the nature of freedom, it might be hard times, innovation, war, politics, a whole variety of things.
And look at the way the various times in our films, we've accidentally bumped into these things, and how they together suggest connections to the present.
There's never a moment in my filmmaking over the last four and a half decades, where I haven't finished a film, looked up and realized that it was rhyming in the present.
- And look, talking about FDR, which you just mentioned, of course, you did a big series on the Roosevelt.
And you've noted, of course, FDR straddled the great eruptions of the time of that, of the depression, Second World War.
You just heard General Petraeus also talking about how communication is a vital part of strategy.
So I wanna ask you in a moment about fireside chats, about how FDR got the nation through this terrible, terrible time.
So let's play a little clip.
And then we'll talk about it.
- [Announcer] By March 1933, when Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated as President, the banking system itself seemed about to go on.
As frightened depositors threatened to withdraw their savings.
Roosevelt closed the bank, then asked for radio time on Sunday evening, March 12th, to tell the American people how he and they together would meet the crisis.
- So, Ken, remind us what that was like, those fireside chats.
And when he demanded that time to be able to communicate via radio then.
And of course, in many, many decades, since it's been via television.
Just compare or rhyme how FDR communicated, and the result of that, the effect of that, compared to today and then presidents since him.
- Well, I think Roosevelt understood that the power of this was in less being more.
We sort of hear about the fireside chats and assume they might be similar to the daily COVID briefings.
They were not.
They were few and far between.
So when they happened, everybody paid attention.
And he was using a relatively new medium of radio in a very intimate and a completely thoughtful way.
Instead of having to, with a stentorian voice, project to the farthest, he could actually in a soft voice draw you in and you lean closer to your radio, and the genius of the communication.
And people actually went and put their money back in the bank when he said hoarding has become an unfashionable pastime.
People went and put their money back into the bank and saved.
Capitalism, some people thought in just a few days.
Today, I think we think that we can control the media.
But it's really getting a tiger by the tail.
And so I think what we find is that the American people are drowning, they're saturated, they don't know where to get the information from.
And it makes us susceptible to those alternative facts and the possibility of those with more nefarious purposes to manipulate those facts or to try anything.
I think what was important about the great leaders, whether it was Washington or Lincoln or FDR, who arrived in very different technological times, in terms of the transfer of information, nonetheless, understood that they were responsible.
That being experimental was important, to admit your failures was essential, and to essentially give voice to Unum.
That is to say, we do celebrate the Pluribus.
That's hugely important that everyone feels like they're a member.
But at the same time, we understand and this was the depression, the economic circumstances were forced on us.
But in the Second World War, we took that shared sacrifice another step, and we said, 'We've only made 5,000 planes a year 'and you want 50,000, that's impossible, Mr. President.'
He goes, 'No, it's possible.'
And we made 50,000, airplanes.
50,000 airplanes.
Women did a lot of the work.
Americans just decided they would put their oars in the water at the same time, and pull in the same direction.
And much as we're being asked to sublimate the individual freedom, what I want for a collective freedom, what we need right now with the COVID response to flatten the curve, is hugely reminiscent, echoing of these previous eras.
- So what you've said also is that you really want to, you need, the way to unite Americans in this incredibly and increasingly fractured state of the world and state of your nation is to talk about shared story, shared history.
Do you see anybody out there who is bringing that Pluribus even now?
Certainly, people have pointed to another Governor of New York, the current Governor of New York, obviously, FDR echoes.
Do you see what Andrew Cuomo is doing as trying to put the Pluribus back into the United States?
- Absolutely, I think him and the Governor of Michigan and the Governor of Rhode Island, each in their own way, are really trying to say, an important part of all of this is empathy.
That is to say, I understand what you're going through.
I remember the poles of the time of the depression, people would place FDR above God.
One man said he's the only person who knows that my boss is an SOB.
Here is this to the manor born patrician leader, FDR, who is himself enslaved by infantile paralysis, he cannot walk without assistance.
And yet people around the country feel that he knows them, feels that he senses what they're about.
And so I think that you see in the daily briefings of Andrew Cuomo, and other governors, red state and blue state around this country, it is devolved in a vacuum of leadership to them to say, this is where we are, these are just the facts.
This is what we need.
This is what we're doing.
This is what I need of you.
This is what you need of me.
And this is what I will try to do.
These are all important things.
And I have a sense that if we were to take time away from their busy schedules, and I wouldn't wanna do it now, we'd find that each one of them, Andrew or Gretchen or whomever are students of history.
That they've read about what it takes to make the engine of this democracy operate.
And it isn't just a set of aphorisms on the wall.
It's putting on the gas and then putting on the brakes.
It's admitting your failures.
It's taking responsibility.
It's experimenting.
It's being honest.
And it's saying essentially, as you mentioned before, the buck stops here.
- You mentioned a couple of female governors, including the governor of Rhode Island, Governor Raimondo, I consider Rhode Island my home away from home state.
But you also in your history lessons in your films, point to women's rights and how women, well, talk about the war production.
Women came hurtling to the core.
And did so much in the manufacturing and the supporting of the war effort from home.
Just tell us because right now, women are the majority on the frontline as essential workers, certainly in the healthcare and that kind of, yeah, industry right now.
History tells us what?
That it'll get better for women afterwards.
I mean could this be a turning point in terms of rights and et cetera?
- This cannot help but be a turning point.
All great crises, and this is clearly one of the greatest crises in the history of the United States, offers, obviously, all of the horrible things that we're going through, all of the disproportionate effects on African Americans and people of color, are all the economic dislocations, all of the loss, the death, the sadness.
But it also offers opportunity, and every great crisis has done that, including World War II, including the Civil War, and I think, right here, Christiane, what could be a more ennobled position in the world than a nurse right now?
I mean, somebody, all of us are sheltering in place, and trying to surround us with the kind of various moats that protect us and our family, and understandably so.
And we've been asked to do that.
But we have people, mostly women who are moving towards this danger.
And that to me is so ennobling.
And so I think what happens is a crisis also offers us, particularly, in this case, a chance to transcend the dialectic that has beset us for the last 50 years since Vietnam.
This sense of red state, blue state, of young and old, of gay and straight, of rich and poor.
And that maybe, these old forums, these old tropes that have made somebody money, don't actually have to work anymore.
That we can actually see what the mechanics that our founders thought had to come into play, particularly at crises.
And if they're called into question at these moments.
And we can understand, for example, why when we're prosperous, and things are going well, we can question the role of a government.
But a strong federal government at this moment is an undeniable fact of the survival of the United States of America.
And at that point, we can look to our past and look to a Homestead Act, and the Land Grant College Act and a Transcontinental Railroad, and the Emancipation Proclamation, and the 13th and 14th Amendment and Child Labor Laws, and labor's right to organize, and the social security, and the GI Bill and the Interstate Highway System, and a man on the moon, and the affordable care and go whoa, our record as a federal government, isn't this big force of evil, have we screwed up?
Yes, please see my film on Vietnam.
But we are at heart about a strong federal government that responds to the needs of its people, it hasn't done it very well most of the time, but when it does do it well, we are all the better.
I think this time calls for great, strong leadership, as we're seeing in many of the governor's houses.
- And I can tell you overseas people are very well aware of American federal leadership at its best, and they're missing that absence right now.
But I wanna end on a more hopeful note that, with UNUM, you're also putting out one of the things that you did first was about the Brooklyn Bridge.
It's something that's really inspired you.
And it's a really, it's a hopeful way to end.
So I wanna put a little clip from that movie, and then we'll just quickly talk about it.
- I mean, they could have built another Manhattan Bridge, couldn't they?
And he didn't, he really aspired to do something gorgeous.
So, it makes you feel that maybe you too could add something that would last and be beautiful.
- So the great Arthur Miller talking about the decision to do that bit of infrastructure.
Just quickly, we've got about 30 seconds.
Why is it so important?
- This is history, it makes you an optimist, despite all of the horrible stuff that history reveals about us, human nature never changes.
The levels of greed and generosity are the same.
Sometimes within the same person at war with one another.
But what Arthur Miller is acknowledging is the human impulse.
None of us are getting out of this alive.
A coronavirus is going to remind us that in ways that are uncomfortable.
But if we do something that would last and be beautiful, there is a kind of immortality, and there is a sense of joining with other people in common purpose and a kind of common anthem, if you will, that gives us the confidence, gives us the courage, gives us the ability to move forward.
And the best teacher I know to arm you for these challenging moments, is the history you don't know.
- And it's so great that so much of the history you have created on film is now up there, it's on PBS, it's on UNUM, and people can go and access it now.
It's a really great service for our time.
Ken Burns, thank you so much indeed.
And finally, on Monday, the President of the European Commission is hosting a virtual international pledging conference to raise money needed to accelerate COVID-19 vaccine development efforts.
Leaders and health organizations from all over the world are joining the event except for one major player and that is the United States.
I asked Ursula von der Leyen about it.
- We want to have this online pledging conference on Monday, the 4th of May.
And indeed, we wanna raise $8 billion.
And we all know this is just the beginning, we will need more.
- It looks like what people have been asking since the beginning, some kind of global task force to really coordinate many things, but in this case, vaccines.
I know that the US government has not been particularly reliable as a leader in this moment, but it's just not willing to participate.
Have you ever come across that kind of reaction from the United States in a global crisis like this?
- Well, the united states are doing a lot domestically, what research for vaccine is concerned.
And indeed, they are informed about our global initiative.
And I hope that in the one or the other way, they decide to join.
But for sure the American footprint is there because we have outstanding American scientists and philanthropists that are joining our call for action.
And I'm very glad about that.
So we invited the whole world, and I think the whole world is joining, - And my full interview with the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, about that and a lot more will air on our show on Monday.
That's it for our program tonight.
Remember, you can follow me and the show on Twitter.
Thanks for watching Amanpour & Company on PBS and do join us again next time.