“The resentment towards Washington that fuels President Trump's rise is a resentment toward the establishment that Jim Baker was so much a part of.”
Peter Baker is the Chief White House Correspondent for the New York Times, political analyst for MSNBC, and author of Days of Fire and The Breach. Susan Glasser is a staff writer for the New Yorker and author of its weekly Letters from Trump's Washington, as well as a CNN global affairs analyst. Susan and Peter are married, and their first assignment as a married couple was as Moscow Bureau Chiefs for the Washington Post, after which they wrote Kremlin Rising.
Jim Baker sits relatively under-discussed considering the enormous influence he wielded from the end of Watergate to the end of the Cold War. Baker ran five different national presidential campaigns, served as Chief of Staff in both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush’s White House, Treasury Secretary and ultimately Secretary of State from 1989 to 1992 during which time the Soviet Union collapsed. “Jim Baker as a subject turned out to be, I think, sort of oddly relevant to the moment… Donald Trump had yet to appear on the scene in terms of Washington politics at least… our interest was in a big subject about Washington and understanding ‘how had Washington become such a dysfunctional gridlocked place?’”
H.W. Bush urged Baker to get into politics and started Baker’s multi-decade political career that shaped Washington and how it’s operated in the decades that followed. One can trace the kind of deal-making politics, in which Baker played a major role creating, all the way to today’s climate that has seen a rejection of the status quo, exemplified by President Donald Trump’s ascendency.
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SPEAKER
Peter Baker
Chief White House Correspondent
The New York Times
MODERATOR
Anthony Scaramucci
Founder & Managing Partner
SkyBridge
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
John Darsie: (00:08)
Hello everyone, and welcome back to SALT Talks. My name is John Darsie. I'm the Managing Director of SALT, which is a global thought leadership forum and networking platform at the intersection of finance, technology and public policy. SALT Talks are a digital interview series that we launched during the work from home period with leading investors, creators and thinkers. What we're trying to do during these talks is replicate the experience that we provide at our global conferences, the SALT Conference, which we host twice a year, once in the United States and once internationally, most recently in the UAE in 2019. What we're trying to do during these talks and at our conferences is provide a platform for subject matter experts, as well as to provide a platform for big ideas that we think are shaping the future.
John Darsie: (00:56)
We're very excited today to welcome Peter Baker and Susan Glasser to SALT Talks. Peter is the Chief White House Correspondent for the New York Times. He's a political analyst for MSNBC, and is the author of Days of Fire and The Breach. Susan Glasser is a staff writer for the New Yorker, and author of its weekly Letters from Trump's Washington, as well as a CNN global affairs analyst. Susan and Peter are married, and their first assignment as a married couple was as Moscow Bureau Chiefs for the Washington Post, after which they wrote Kremlin Rising. Peter and Susan today live in Washington, DC with their son. Just a reminder if you have any questions for Peter or Susan during today's SALT talk, you can enter them in the Q and A box at the bottom of your video screen on Zoom. Hosting today's talk is Anthony Scaramucci, the founder and Managing Partner of SkyBridge Capital, a global alternative investment firm. Anthony's also the chairman of SALT, and with that, I'll turn it over to Anthony for the interview.
Anthony Scaramucci: (01:53)
John, thank you. As I'm wont to do, holding up the book here. Congratulations, guys. It's a brilliant tour de force. A lot of post World War II history in this book, lots of discussion about how we got to where we are today, related to the Republican Party, so very highly recommended. I'd like to start with you, Susan. For those of us that are less familiar, I'm not, but a lot of people may be, with James Baker, who is he, what is his more signature accomplishments, and why did you guys choose to write a book about him right now?
Susan Glasser: (02:30)
Well, first of all thank you for having us in this nice, quiet period in our nation's politics. We can just sit back and talk history. You're right, that Jim Baker as a subject turned out to be, I think, sort of oddly relevant to the moment. That was not necessarily our intention when we began this seven years ago. Donald Trump had yet to appear on the scene in terms of Washington politics at least, but Jim Baker, I think already even then, our interest was in a big subject about Washington and understanding how had Washington become such a dysfunctional gridlocked place?
Susan Glasser: (03:08)
The period that Jim Baker helps us tell the story of our politics, really he was at the height of power from the end of Watergate to the end of the cold war. He has this incredible, unique portfolio where he is both a national political figure of extraordinary accomplishment. He actually ran five different national presidential campaigns, and he also rose to become a principal in his own right. That's Washington speak for big mocker who gets a seat at the table. He was not only Chief of Staff in Ronald Reagan's White House, and later in George H.W. Bush's, he's the only person ever to be Chief of Staff twice, but he also was Secretary of the Treasury when they negotiated and successfully made the 1986 Tax Reform Bill, and then he of course became Secretary of State at the end of the cold war, in this momentous period from 1989 to 1992.
Anthony Scaramucci: (04:08)
If he had a world view, Peter, what was his world view and what were his ideological goals, if there were any?
Peter Baker: (04:17)
It's a great question because we think of Baker, of course, as a pragmatist. Look, he was a Texas conservative, small C, but he didn't let ideology stand in the way of getting things done. I think that he had an ideology. His ideology was make things happen, get things done, move the ball down the field. If he had to compromise to do it, that was okay. That's why his story is so interesting today, because we don't see a lot of that in Washington today. Politics is so zero sum that if you're having a negotiation and you give anything away to the other side, somehow it means you sold out. Compromise is a dirty word. But for Baker, compromise was how you got things done. You could be a ruthless knife biter in election season, but when it was over, you sat down with the other side and you worked out deals on taxes, as Susan said, on social security, on the Contra war of the 1980s. He sat down with the Soviets, obviously, and the Germans and the Arabs and the Israelis. For Baker, while he was a conservative, I think the biggest ideology for him was what do you need to do to get things accomplished?
Anthony Scaramucci: (05:18)
You know, for me, when I was reading this book, it was reminiscent of Robert Moses' book, The Power Broker, which I think is ... Sorry, Robert Caro's book about Robert Moses, known as The Power Broker, because it was a tour de force on somebody that didn't have elected office but was really at the center of monumental decisions and policy. One of the things that struck me about James Baker is that he would recoil from speaking out against policy initiatives or decisions that didn't necessarily go the way he thought they should be, or they were more controversial. I'll give the biggest example. He called President Trump crazy in 2016, yet he went and voted for him. He also refused to break away from him in the 2020 election. What does this say to both of you about the allure of power of James Baker himself, but just what Washington's all about?
Susan Glasser: (06:13)
Well, you're right to point that out. That was an interesting counterpoint to our historical research for this book was also the rise of Trump is happening in real time and definitely Jim Baker saw this as a hostile takeover of the Republican party that he felt that he had given his life to building. In so many ways, he's the un-Trump, in terms of both a sense of personal integrity but also just in terms of ideologically. He's still a very committed internationalist who believed in alliances, a free trader, an enemy of deficits, and in favor of telling it like it is. That's the thing about a pragmatist. You have to have a reality-based view of the world if you're going to be a practitioner of realpolitik as opposed to a non reality-based view of the world.
Susan Glasser: (07:08)
Yet he wasn't able, as you said, to fully renounce Donald Trump. For us, I think that's why the book is a study of power and it's not a celebration of it. It's a way of understanding that for someone like Jim Baker, maintaining your access, that really there's no point in pissing on the outside that you really don't get anything done by simply being a critic. It wasn't just Donald Trump. That was his view of the Iraq war when his best friend's son, George W. Bush, was president. Jim Baker was absolutely against that war. He thought it was a terrible idea, but somehow managed to make his concerns and opposition known but without blowing up his bridges to George W. Bush. I think that's another example of how he thought Washington operated.
Anthony Scaramucci: (08:01)
Well, I guess the thing that struck me about the book, you started writing it during the Obama administration. Then the Trump administration starts to unfold on us. I'm wondering, maybe this is for you, Peter, how do you think Baker's style in politics, did it lead us to Trumpism?
Peter Baker: (08:21)
Yeah, that's a really interesting question because there are ... we talked a little about this before going on air. The resentment toward Washington that fuels President Trump's rise is a resentment toward the establishment that Jim Baker was so much a part of. Now, did he do something specifically to lead to Trumpism? No, he's anti Trump in so many different ways, but I think that there is this backlash toward the elites, a backlash toward a Washington that seemed very comfortable and entitled and part of a ruling class that didn't really understand what it was like to live in so much of the country. In that sense, Trump represented a rejection of not just the Democrats, but ultimately the Republicans of the previous era in that sense. I think that people might not have bought what they thought they were buying in voting for President Trump, but there's no question, I think, that a lot of people were motivated by a sense that Washington had gotten away from them.
Peter Baker: (09:19)
What they lost, though, what they didn't see, I think, is that Washington did actually work in a way that it hasn't in the last four years, and the paralysis of the last four years hasn't made anything better for a lot of people out there who resented what had come before. I think Baker is a fascinating figure in that sense of representing what you say, part of the rejection of Washington.
Anthony Scaramucci: (09:43)
I want to take you back to one of the more fascinating stories in the book. James Baker is the campaign manager, effectively, for George Herbert Walker Bush in 1980. Then win the Iowa caucus, but they go on to lose the nomination. Ronald Reagan ascends in New Hampshire and they get to the convention. Tell us about the selection of George Herbert Walker Bush as Vice President, and then the eventual selection by Ronald Reagan of James Baker to be his Chief of Staff. They were adversaries six, eight months prior to that.
Susan Glasser: (10:20)
Well, that's right. It is one of the most amazing chapters really, because of course, without that-
Anthony Scaramucci: (10:25)
Love that chapter, by the way. Just editorializing right here. Just a fascinating human story. Please, I'm sorry I didn't mean to interrupt.
Susan Glasser: (10:31)
Yeah, no, you're right. Absolutely, because Baker actually wouldn't have become Baker without that incredible period of time. He and George Herbert Walker Bush were best friends from the country club of tennis courts in Houston. Baker had gone into politics really at Bush's urging. He turned out to be great at it. He runs this 1980 campaign and he takes Bush from an asterisk in the polls, literally an asterisk, to be Reagan's main rival for the Republican nomination. But they're not going to beat Reagan, ultimately. Baker, here, I think shows this canniness that he later became known for. He understands that the goal at that point is not winning the nomination that they're not going to win, but in a way his campaign is on now to get Bush that vice presidential nomination.
Susan Glasser: (11:24)
There's a real dance they have to do later in the primaries where Bush is out there, he wants to win. Very competitive guy, just like Baker. He's running against Reagan. He uses the phrase voodoo economics, which was one of the most memorable attack lines on Ronald Reagan that there was. Baker's actually mad at him. He's worried that he's going too far in attacking Reagan, and that ultimately that might doom his chances. In the end actually it was Baker and not Bush, who really forced Bush to pull the plug on his primary campaign. Bush and his family weren't ready to do so. They were resentful of Baker for saying now's the time to get out if you still want to keep your hopes alive. They did it. Bruised feelings, and yet Baker ultimately was correct in many ways, you could say, because they had just left it open.
Susan Glasser: (12:14)
Amazingly, at the 1980 convention, the big talk was that somehow Reagan might actually pick Gerry Ford, the former president. That had the entire convention in an uproar, and it actually faltered at the very last minute on these negotiations. What would it be like to have a former president as the vice president? Who would really be in charge? Ford over-reached, essentially, by asking for too much stature, too much authority, and Reagan just couldn't go there. There was nobody left to call but George Bush, who didn't think he would get it, by the way, interestingly, when the call finally came.
Anthony Scaramucci: (12:52)
Yeah. It's an amazing story. I don't want to give up the intrigue in this story, but it's a human story. It's power politics. It's the practicality of the campaign, what they need to do to beat a sitting president, and as we all know, there's only been three sitting presidents that have lost re-election since World War II, Jimmy Carter being among them. Baker was best friends with George Herbert Walker Bush, but they had a very complicated relationship. What was that relationship? How would you define that connectivity between the two of them?
Peter Baker: (13:25)
Yeah. We interviewed President Bush before he passed away. Obviously we interviewed Jim Baker an awful lot for this book, and both of them used the phrase siblings to describe it, that they were like brothers. If you think about it, brothers of course sometimes fight. Sometimes they have a rivalry, sibling rivalry. They're competitive. They want to prove something to each other at times.
Anthony Scaramucci: (13:43)
I'm so mad at my brother for incidents that took place in 1971. I just want to make sure everybody knows that.
Peter Baker: (13:50)
Exactly, but you love him to death, right? He is your brother. He will always be your brother, and I think that was the case of Baker and Bush. They had moments of friction, like what Susan described when they were upset at Baker for pushing them in 1980 to drop out. In 1992, when Baker was reluctant to come back to the White House to help Bush's flagging campaign for re-election, there was some sourness there. When Bush picks Quayle to be his running mate, arguably without telling Baker, that's kind of an act of rebellion against Baker. Why do I always have to listen to him? I know what I'm doing. I'm the President. In fact, when Baker would get on Bush's nerves, what Bush would say to him is if you're so smart, how come you're not President? There was this kind of sibling push and pull.
Peter Baker: (14:32)
The thing that really tells you why this is such a profound friendship that supersedes all that is the last day of George Bush's life, and that was just two years ago. The person who comes to his house three times that day in Houston is Jim Baker, checking in on his friend. The last few moments of Bush's life, he's by his bedside, literally rubbing Bush's feet in the final moments of his life. That's a friendship that goes beyond politics. As Susan said, it preceded politics. Because they were tennis partners and friends, family pals, their families got together in Houston, they had a relationship unlike any President and a Secretary of State, I think, in American history. I think that gave Baker power, by the way, as Secretary of State, but it's also a very human story, as you say.
Anthony Scaramucci: (15:17)
Look, it's an amazing story. It makes you feel proud to be American when you think about the character of both of those men. Baker recognized something about Washington, that there was a perception to power as much as there was real power. You guys addressed it in the book. He also had a knack for playing the media a certain way. I was wondering if you guys could explain that as well.
Susan Glasser: (15:40)
Yeah, no. Image management was definitely one of his super powers. I'm sure as a fellow practitioner, I'm sure you can appreciate some of these skills which really transfer, even though the media world has fragmented into-
Anthony Scaramucci: (15:53)
I'm not that great at image management, Sue. What you see is what you get, okay? I don't have three sticks next to my last name. Go ahead. Keep going.
Susan Glasser: (16:03)
He was a natural at it, from a purely absolutely selfish journalist point of view. You've got to appreciate a man whose motto was never lie to the press. Now, he might spin them aggressively, and he certainly did so, but Baker's skill was actually in managing the press rather than being at war with them. He took that away from his very first assignment on the national stage in 1976 when he became literally in one year, amazing rise, he went from an obscure position at the Commerce Department to running Gerry Ford's campaign. At the convention in 1976, the last disputed convention, here he is, this novice in politics. He's up against Ronald Reagan. John Sears, the campaign manager for Reagan, basically was a BSer, and he was telling the reporters all sorts of inflated vote counts that turned out to not hold up, whereas Baker was much more cautious and earned this enormous credibility with the national press corps. He carried that lesson with him.
Susan Glasser: (17:05)
In the Reagan White House, famously back-biting, one of Baker's great skills that I think enabled him to consolidate power was not only his mastery of the bureaucratic politics of a White House controlling the paper flow to Ronald Reagan, but it also was ... he would have these Friday briefings with the reporters for Time Magazine and Newsweek, and that mattered still back then. They would do these reconstructions of the big dramatic events of the week, and somehow, of course, Baker, as their background source, would always be in the middle of the event as they were portrayed in this first draft of history.
Anthony Scaramucci: (17:43)
It's an interesting segue to this question, because I was thinking about this this morning. He was a ruthless fighter. He gave it his all during the campaigns, but then he reeled it back and became this pragmatic deal maker. I guess what I'm wondering, as we look at President-Elect Biden today, how do you think he's going to handle the progressive wing of his party? Is he going to be this pragmatist like a James Baker? Will he manage things similarly with his team? Where do you think things are going, and what would Vice-President-Elect Biden, excuse me, President-Elect Biden take from a book like this about James Baker to help him manage the government in its current state?
Peter Baker: (18:26)
We should send him a copy. I do think that Biden is instinctively like Baker in the sense that he wants to cut deals. He wants to work across the aisle. That is his natural instinct, and he's from that era, to some extent. He obviously is an institutionalist, I think, like Baker is. He believes in Washington, he believes in Congress, he believes in working together. Whether this environment allows or not, is a different question. This environment is obviously different than it was when Baker was at the height of his power. You're right, I think that Biden will come under enormous pressure from the left within his own party to be much more sweeping or ambitious than maybe his natural inclination would be, and certainly than the Republican-led Senate, if it stays in Republican hands, as it looks like it probably will, would allow him to be.
Peter Baker: (19:10)
I think Biden would like to be a Baker, I just don't know whether he either has the capacity at this particular moment, given the environment, to be, but I think he'll try. I think he'll try. He and Mitch McConnell do have a relationship together. I do think they may not believe on big, sweeping plans on climate change or health care, but I do think that they will avoid the kind of train wrecks we've seen in the last number of years on government shutdowns and debt ceiling crises. That kind of thing, I imagine that McConnell and Biden could probably work their way through.
Anthony Scaramucci: (19:40)
When you think about 2000 and the stress on the country as we were waiting for the results in Florida, and it has been reported, and you guys can tell me if it's true or not, that the White House reached out to James Baker related to the current electoral outcome. How is it different from today, and if that is true, why do you think somebody like James Baker did not accept the appointment that he accepted from the Bush's in 2000?
Susan Glasser: (20:09)
Well, it's interesting. We did speak with Secretary Baker the other day, and we asked him about this because it was reported that Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, he was in search of not Baker himself, I should say, but a James Baker like figure. Actually Baker told us they did not reach out to him directly, but clearly he's much invoked, and the reason is pretty simple. Because he's perceived as somebody who would both have the enormous stature and credibility that was needed to reassure the country at a time like that disputed 2000 election, but also the knife fighter chops to figure out one way or another a legal strategy that would put them in the right. That was what was interesting about Baker the pragmatist back in 2000 in Florida.
Susan Glasser: (20:56)
Many Republican lawyers felt that, as a matter of principle, that they were believers in states' rights, that matters like state recounts belonged in state courts. Baker, essentially from day one, looked at the situation in Florida and he said we're going to federal court. He had a very my job here is to win perspective on that, and he thought that the Florida Supreme Court was all Democratic appointees and it didn't look good for them. He wasn't sure of the outcome in the Supreme Court, but he felt that that was a better course, and he essentially won the argument over those Republican lawyers, even on his own team who were not so sure about it.
Susan Glasser: (21:38)
Look, the bottom line is that was a really different situation than today. Number one, most important thing, as Baker said to us when we talked to him, we never said don't count the votes. What an absurd thing to say. You can't really make that argument in the United States. The votes had already been counted, and in fact there had already been the automatic recount in Florida. The question was what additional recounting should go on, what to do with questionable ballots with the hanging chads and everything. That was very different. Then the other thing, of course, is that you had two candidates in George W. Bush and Al Gore who both believed in the American system, and in fact their main concern for both of them was how do we get to an outcome that everyone can accept, and how do we make sure that we haven't undermined American democracy in this? Of course, we now have the exact opposite situation, where the President himself is the underminer.
Anthony Scaramucci: (22:33)
What do you think happens?
Peter Baker: (22:41)
Now?
Anthony Scaramucci: (22:41)
Yeah.
Peter Baker: (22:42)
Well, look, I think we're going to see still a potentially volatile 70 day period. The President is still president until January 20th. We've just seen today he's fired the Defense Secretary. There's very likely to be more firings, we think, in the days to come. That could lead to a period of uncertainty and instability. I don't think there's any chance, it doesn't seem like, of overturning the election, just to make everybody understand that. The challenges he's put in court, first of all, haven't gone anywhere. Judges haven't been all that open to him. Second of all, even if he won, there's no actual allegation of any specific fraud that would create so many votes that it would overturn his election. They're literally just flailing at this point by arguing about whether the observers should have been six feet away or 20 feet away, things that don't really change the outcome. I think that he just wants to create enough noise out there so that he can explain that he didn't actually lose. It was stolen from him, and on and on. Will he concede? I don't know. You obviously know him better than I do. I'd love your opinion. Will he actually leave gracefully on January 20th? It's a good question, but he will be, I think, not President at noon on January 20th, whatever he decides to do.
Anthony Scaramucci: (23:53)
Well, let me put it to you this way. Since Scaramucci's now an 11 day time period, he will have been President for 132.78 Scaramuccis, and unfortunately right now for the country, we have six and a half more Scaramuccis to go. I think the last six are going to be really tough on the country because the guy's basically a sore loser and a big time baby, so we'll have to see. Some people have told me, that are very close to him, he's going to take a powder in Mar-a-Lago in December not to be seen again in Washington. That is a real crybaby pants. That is just like in elementary school when some kid had the football and was taking the football and taking it home with him. I hope he doesn't do that, but everything he's going right now is providing more evidence to the American people about why people like myself who worked for him said, okay, you can't have this guy be President. He's just not fit to be in that job. I was a little surprised by James Baker, and I want to ask this one last question because when I've met Secretary Baker in the past, he always struck me as a guy that had this centered, principled nature to himself. Yes, pragmatist, but sensible, principled nature. Were you guys surprised at his support for the President here prior to the election?
Susan Glasser: (25:18)
You know, look, we struggled with this really for four years. In a way, eventually it was less surprising to us in the sense that we asked him the same question over and over again and he never gave a different answer. At a certain point, if somebody tells you who they are, you have to listen. For whatever reason, Jim Baker chose, at the age of 90, the identity of a partisan, choosing his party. When we asked him this multiple times this year, that's what he fell back on, is this idea that, well, there are some terrible possible consequences. The left is going to pull the country too far away. It didn't seem very convincing to us, but again, it was a conscious choice on his part, so that told me both about what his views of his power, and that right now we live in such a partisan moment that you basically have to pick an identity and stick with it.
Susan Glasser: (26:16)
The other thing is, look, we talk a lot about his accomplishments in the book as a statesman, as a negotiator, as Secretary of State dealing with the Soviets, but he was a very hard-edged political player and partisan. You look at the 1988 presidential campaign, and you can see a through line from that campaign to the scorched earth politics of today. Baker and Bush, they didn't govern like that kind of partisan because Washington was different then, but they ran a politics where they took Michael Dukakis, essentially a mild-mannered technocratic governor of Massachusetts, and they turned him into a flag-burning, pledge of allegiance hating, criminal coddling enemy of the state. They understood, in very crass terms, that that was actually the only way for George Bush to win when he was 17 points down coming out of the conventions. You can look at that aspect of Jim Baker's record too, the Willie Horton ads.
Anthony Scaramucci: (27:21)
Lee Atwater, James Baker.
Susan Glasser: (27:22)
That's right. He always had this duality to him, and I think that's what we explored in the book.
Anthony Scaramucci: (27:28)
Okay. Well, it's a fabulous tour de force. There's some great history in this book as well. I love the book. My last question before I turn it over to audience participation, is what did James Baker think of the book?
Susan Glasser: (27:44)
Well, he's still talking to us. That's good.
Peter Baker: (27:45)
He is talking to us. Look, he wrote two memoirs of his own, so he had a chance to say what he wanted to say about his own life. I think he cooperated with us the way he did because he realized if you're going to be a figure in history, somebody else has to write a biography about you. He had already written two of his own books. He gave us all the time in the world, he gave us complete access to his archives at Princeton and Rice University, we interviewed all eight of his children, his wife, his cousin, his nanny, who's 107 years old and still around, as well as all the poobahs, the presidents and vice-presidents and so forth. I think it was because he wanted somebody to tell his story who was independent and had credibility beyond his own circle. There are things in the book he doesn't like. His joke is I told them it could be warts and all and I wouldn't object to that. I didn't mean all the warts. That's the joke. But I think overall he thinks it's a fair and accurate presentation. He's told people that we've talked to that he learned things from the book that he didn't know because we interviewed so many other people, I think. If it's a revelation to him, maybe it could be a revelation to other readers too.
Anthony Scaramucci: (28:49)
Well, it's a great book. Thank you guys for writing it. I learned a tremendous amount from it, and I appreciate you joining us. We have our audience. We have pretty vigorous audience participation, so I'm going to turn it over to John Darsie.
Peter Baker: (29:02)
That's great.
Susan Glasser: (29:03)
Thank you so much.
Peter Baker: (29:04)
Thank you, Anthony, appreciate it.
Anthony Scaramucci: (29:05)
My pleasure.
John Darsie: (29:06)
Thank you guys again for your time. It's great to have you on, especially in this moment when everything you're writing about and talking about is so relevant. One thing that struck me in reading the book and in thinking about the Trump era is Trump is a wannabe dictator in a lot of ways, and he has some dictatorial instincts, but he's not particularly competent about Washington. He doesn't understand how things work. He wasn't able to navigate the political establishment, despite some world views that were potentially dangerous for the country. What do you think the example that Trump set within the Republican party about how to be successful, if we got a combination of James Baker and Donald Trump in the White House. Is that something that scares you, and how do you think that would play out if we get somebody who's more astute in terms of understanding how Washington works, that has these instincts that are more illiberal than any leader that we've had as a country?
Susan Glasser: (30:02)
Yeah. I think you're right, that that is one of the very scary scenarios that we just avoided here. Now, other people have asked us a version of this question, like could Jim Baker have made Donald Trump's White House work if he was White House Chief of Staff? My answer to that actually is a pretty unequivocal no, in the sense that someone like Jim Baker wouldn't have taken the job because you couldn't succeed at it, and that really nobody could have been an effective chief of staff, in my view, for Trump because you look at the history of him, both in office and also just him before that, as a businessman, it's clear that his personality, it's just impossible for somebody to have the independence and stature and authority to really do things in a professional way around Trump. That's just anathema to who he is in any job description.
Susan Glasser: (30:58)
That being said, look at history. A lot of the descriptions of ... not all, but many authoritarians or wannabe dictators, they have some similarities in terms of personality type to Trump. Many of them were described as buffoonish or not very successful in terms of organizing things. What's remarkable is that over time, people can learn to adapt. I do think that in a second term, had Trump managed to pull it out, he would have accomplished more and more of what his agenda was and the agenda of people around him. So I do think that was a very, very, very close call and that someone else could be successful with that kind of politics.
John Darsie: (31:49)
Our next question is about foreign policy. James Baker is known as a diplomat, both at home and abroad. He believed very firmly in the power of diplomacy. The Obama administration, in a lot of ways, developed a similar tack. They tried to engage in diplomacy even with some of the countries, like North Korea, like Iran, that others believed we should institute maximum pressure campaigns, which the Trump campaign then did in Iran. If James Baker was Secretary of State today, do you think he would follow the more Republican doctrine today of maximum pressure, more stand offish foreign policy, or do you think that it would look more like an Obama emphasize diplomacy type of presidency, Peter?
Peter Baker: (32:28)
That's a great question. I think it would be a mix in some ways. He would be strategic about the way he thought about it. It wouldn't be a one size fits all solution. There are instances in the world where he would have been in favor of maximum pressure. I suspect he thinks that negotiating with North Korea wouldn't be a fruitful prospect because they weren't going to come up with a deal that would be acceptable, and therefore maybe maximum pressure might make sense, economic sense. But he would be pushing to talk with Iran, for instance.
Peter Baker: (32:56)
In the late George W. Bush presidency, one of the things he did with the Iraq study group was really push both push and Condi Rice to re-open diplomatic avenues with Iran, with Syria, and to try working on the Israeli-Palestinian issue in a way that they were not, because he does believe in diplomacy. Now, I don't think the Iran deal that Obama came up with was actually good enough. He's criticized that, but he does like the idea of a deal, and he thinks had it been done better, that that would have been a better situation for the country than the confrontation that we're in right now.
John Darsie: (33:31)
We have a question that pertains to Russia, and I'm going to turn it into a two part question. The question specifically is that Putin claimed that during the break up of the Soviet Union, assurances were given to Putin and leadership there that NATO would not expand into the former Soviet Union, and he cites assurances that were given by diplomats that included James Baker. Is this true, and do you think the Bush team was the best to handle that era of foreign policy? What now do you think happens between the relationship with the United States and Russia, given that Russia, it's a bipartisan consensus at this point, that they helped Donald Trump get elected. How do you think they pivot their relations and their approach to dealing with the United States, Susan?
Susan Glasser: (34:15)
Yeah. Those are both really great questions. Just quickly on that Baker and his negotiations with Gorbachev. He did use, at one point, this phrase not one inch to the east language. I think the context has often been misrepresented. It's become one of Vladimir Putin's talking points. That's why you hear it a lot now. The context at the time was a question of what was going to happen to East Germany. They were talking about unification of Germany, and there were several hundred thousands Soviet troops in East Germany. They were going to be withdrawn, and the question was if the reunified Germany was going to join NATO, what would that mean in terms of this? Remember, at the time both the Soviet Union still existed, and the Warsaw pact still existed, so it was a very, very different conversation than the modern context in which its often sort of misquoted. Even then, Baker was straying from his official talking points, and it was seen as a mistake. He quickly backed away from that. He never repeated that again.
Susan Glasser: (35:22)
When they actually did sign the deal for German reunification, there was no such language evolved. This has been a little bit of a canard, right? Nobody was talking about NATO expansion beyond Germany at that point in time because, again, the Warsaw Pact still existed. What it tells you is the question of what kind of a victory did the U.S. win in the cold war? That's essentially what it's about, and Vladimir Putin has always held the idea that we imposed some kind of a harsh victor's peace on the Russians, and that he's trying to revise that. The truth is that NATO expansion came much later, in two rounds that began with Bush's successor, Bill Clinton. Interestingly, when we had a conversation recently with Secretary Baker about this, he said that he thought you could make the argument that maybe we had expanded NATO too much or had not really thought through what the implications of that were. That was actually a subsequent era's political fight that he and Bush did not shape the outcome of. That's number one.
Susan Glasser: (36:33)
Just quickly on Russia going forward, I would say this. You haven't heard Vladimir Putin congratulating President-Elect Joe Biden yet, even though most other world leaders, even those close to Trump, like Benjamin Netanyahu, have done so. There's a reason for that. Biden, when he was Vice-President and Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was always very skeptical of Putin and Russian power. In fact, he was kind of the designated envoy during the Obama years to people like Ukraine and Georgia, who were pushing back against revisionist Russian power in the region. I do think you're going to see a kind of renewed partnership with our European allies on the question of how to hold the line against the Russians, what can happen to challenge Putin's view. Putin, with Trump, has taken this triumphalist view that somehow the decadent West has actually been defeated and that his form of illiberalism has won.
John Darsie: (37:44)
Peter, I'll turn to you on this one. You wrote an article in the New York Times recently about the split within the Republican party about what do we do right now? How can we convince President Trump to concede, or do we throw our weight behind him with these frivolous lawsuits attempting to ... they don't even really seem like wholehearted attempts to overturn the results, but just to undermine the results and try to maintain some grip on power. Do you think there's any leadership in the Republican party or anyone close to Trump that is going to be able to intervene and cause him to concede the election, or do you think we're going to continue all the way through until January with Trump claiming that he's the rightful victor and we're going to have a sort of muddled transition of power in a way that we've never seen?
Peter Baker: (38:27)
Yeah. I'd go for muddled. Look, you've seen some leading Republican figures come out and congratulate President-Elect Biden, including former President George W. Bush, including Senator Mitt Romney and so forth, and you've seen some Republicans say to the President in effect, look, you don't seem to have anything there. Stop saying stuff like this, including Governor Christie, who has been an advisor of his over the years. Most of the Republican office holders these days are trying to straddle this uncomfortable line between saying more or less, well, if he has anything, he has every right to challenge anything he wants to challenge, take it to court, but they're not embracing the conspiracy theory. They're trying somewhere between acknowledging the result and crossing the President.
Peter Baker: (39:14)
I think that the President is just ... he has said over and over again, he does not like losing. For him, the idea of being tagged as a loser is unacceptable, and if there's anything he can do, even if he leaves office peacefully and on time, to avoid that tag by saying this is a stolen election, it's not a legitimate election, I think he's going to continue to do that. He said the 2016 election that elected him was crooked, and that he actually won the popular vote somehow.
John Darsie: (39:42)
He's had to recycle. He's recycling the narrative that he had ready to go when Hillary potentially was going to be the winner, and he's recycling it now in 2020.
Peter Baker: (39:50)
Exactly, and I think for him the danger, though, is looking more and more feckless as people just begin to tune him out and ignore him, which is maybe why he fires the Defense Secretary or does things like that to refocus attention on himself as everybody else is trying to turn back to Biden at this point.
John Darsie: (40:07)
Yeah. He's trying to look presidential, and the best way to do that is to show that you still have the power to fire people.
Peter Baker: (40:12)
Yeah.
John Darsie: (40:13)
I'm sure he's tossing and turning today as the news of the vaccine, positive early results of the vaccine get released a few days after the election, I'm sure that will be another point of conspiracy for him. We'll leave it right there. Peter and Susan, thank you so much for joining us. Anthony, do you have a final word for Peter and Susan before we let them go?
Anthony Scaramucci: (40:33)
No, listen, I thought it was a terrific book. I'm going to hold it up again. You guys know that I'm not that promotional, as you guys know about me. I'm going to hold it up again and say thank you very, very much. It's a phenomenal tour de force in literally the last 40 years in American politics, and I greatly enjoyed it. I think this is going to be something that people are going to be reading 10 or 15 years from now. This book has legacy the same way the Caro book, in my opinion, did about Robert Moses. God bless you guys. Best of luck with the book, and thank you for joining SALT Talks.
Susan Glasser: (41:07)
Thank you so much.
Peter Baker: (41:07)
Thank you, John. Thank you guys so much. It's a lot of fun. This is great.
Anthony Scaramucci: (41:11)
Okay. Wish you the best.
Susan Glasser: (41:13)
Thank you.
Peter Baker: (41:13)
Have a great day.
