The Man Who Ran Washington – A Conversation with James A Baker III, Peter Baker and Susan Glasser

secretary baker distinguished speakers and guests i'm john martin managing partner of bakerbots and we are proud to sponsor the baker institute and to be a part of today's event as most of you know members of secretary baker's family were among the founders of our law firm many years ago and in fact this year bakerbot celebrating our 180th anniversary as a law firm and it's my pleasure to present to you today's discussion in connection with the man who ran washington the life and times of james a baker iii a book about our very own secretary baker it was co-written by peter baker chief white house correspondent new york times susan glaster of the new yorker and mark updegrove president and ceo of the lbj foundation lead a discussion of the book with secretary baker miss glasser and mr baker while you don't need me to remind you that secretary baker has enjoyed a long and distinguished career in public service here are just a few of the many highlights secretary baker is the man who led presidential campaign presidents ford reagan and bush over the course of five consecutive presidential elections secretary baker is the man who served as under secretary of commerce for president ford chief of staff presidents reagan and bush and president reagan's treasury secretary where he spearheaded the historic and bipartisan 1986 tax reform act from 1989 through 1992 secretary baker served as the 61st secretary of state under president george h.w bush and during his tenure he traveled to over 90 countries and confronted the unprecedented challenges and opportunities of the post-cold war cold war period and secretary baker is the man who laid the foundation for reunification of germany and forged and assembled an unprecedented coalition that forced iraq out of kuwait he organized the madrid peace conference which for the first time brought israel and all neighboring arab countries together secretary baker is also the great grandson of one of the founders of our fur bakerbots and i'm always proud to call him my partner we're delighted to have him and all of you with us here today and i'd like to turn this over to mark up the grove but before that i've been asked to ask everyone in the audience to refresh your screens as we go through this thank you john thank you thank you john thanks very much what an honor to be conducting this conversation with secretary baker and peter and susan and mr secretary we'll start with you uh you had a a battle with covet 19 earlier this year and we were all worried about you how are you doing how you feeling i'm doing great mark thank you very much i just got back from my ranch in wyoming where i was elk hunting with uh my son and grandson and uh so i'm able to do that so i feel really pretty good and fortunately i had what i what turned out to be a pretty mild case of the virus but i want to tell everybody who's tuned in you don't want to get it it is no fun it really hammers you but i'm doing great thank you well as susan glasser said before the call we all want your genes mr secretary uh peter congratulations on the man who ran washington uh my first question is more a lifestyle question uh if you have out a blockbuster book uh we have a president with a penchant for making news uh and we're in the midst of the most consequential election of our lifetimes how are you doing it how are you balancing all these things what what does your life look like right now we may be the only people who are grateful for having to stay home we're sitting in our living room talking to you uh now doing all of our book appearances by zoom uh and then you know picking up the laptop and you know peter's writing stories from the new york times and i'm writing my column but you know we're super grateful uh to you really as the godfather in some ways of this book and of course to secretary baker uh for uh enabling us over years and it took us a long time to write this book well i i peter what did you want to achieve with the man who ran washington well i think first of all we were surprised to learn when you would i talked about this way back in 2013 when we sat and talked about who had not had a worthy biography written of the major figure in american life it was really stunning to think that nobody had written something on secretary baker not only was he secretary of state during this incredibly consequential time but as you pointed out he had his hand in so many other events over the course of really a quarter century in america and we thought his story tells us a lot about washington in that moment as well how things work how they didn't work and how things have changed since then so we thought that it was a great story about him but also a larger story about uh about washington about america in general susan i i i knew about obviously i've read a lot about secretary baker's career but in reading your book i was reminded of so much more that he accomplished john martin enumerated some of the highlights of secretary baker's career but i wonder if you could give us a cursory look at secretary baker's very consequential career as a government public servant well that's right i mean you know i think uh first of all uh we've been calling it secretary baker the world's most uh successful mid-career switch uh you know not even coming to washington uh until your early 40s and yet you know assembling this remarkable portfolio that began with rising in barely one year's time from a relatively obscure position at the commerce department to running the campaign of the incumbent president of the united states jerry ford uh you know in and of itself uh a remarkable thing but mark to your question you know from that period when he comes to washington as ronald reagan's chief of staff in the white house uh you know when you look at the record of the number of deals that were made at a time when now we can't even manage to come together as a country to pass a relief package for coronavirus victims in this economic tsunami you know secretary baker was able to work with democrats on social security reform on tax reform in 1986 he was uh you know the first thing after the very divisive 1988 campaign was to sit down with jim wright and to put an end to uh the political fighting over u.s support for the contra wars uh and of course he negotiated with soviets uh numerous uh uh arms control packs as well as the framework for the german reunification talks we're celebrating the 30th anniversary of uh today so i you know i could go on but it's it's a pretty remarkable record at a time when any deal seems elusive in washington today i want to quote you uh peter susan uh about secretary baker's time as what you call the the gold standard for white house chiefs of staff and you write in the book he had seen how washington chewed up and had chewed up and spit out would-be power brokers it was a tough city hubris was an occupational hazard one day you were the man next to the president the next day you were counted aside no longer relevant even humiliated so mr secretary not only survived you thrived what was the key to your success well i think uh mark one thing i was always imbued with uh with a work ethic my father and mother uh always taught me never to start anything that i wasn't prepared to finish and to finish what i started but three one the reason i think that i was successful in those jobs is because i was working for some extraordinarily fine wonderful capable presidents of the united states and they were presidents who thought that they that the reason they were in washington leading the country was to do the people's business and to get things done and that's what drove me the idea that we ought to we ought to get things done for the american people but i think primarily my success is attributable to the wonderful presidents i work for but also the extraordinarily well qualified assistants who worked with me and who came to washington with me mr how did you clearly you don't have a good relationship with the president unless you engender their trust how did you establish the trust of the president you worked for well i think the way you do that is to perform for them and to do what within legal constraints and reason they want you to do and to do it as expeditiously as possible but to let them know through your contact with them that they can they can trust your word they can rely on you that if they assign tasks to you you're going to do everything in the world to try and complete that task i didn't have any trouble frankly i worked for for three full-time for three wonderful presidents jerry ford ronald reagan and george h.w bush and of course part-time for a fourth george w bush and i never had any doubt whatsoever in four years as ronald reagan's chief of staff there was only one time that i felt a little bit like i wasn't appreciated that they didn't maybe uh trust me and you know i was the interloper i came into the reagan administration having run two campaigns against ronald reagan and yet he asked me to be his white house chief of staff i don't think that's ever going to happen again in american in american politics but it says something about the broad gauge nature of ronald reagan with george bush of course i had i didn't have to establish approve my trustworthiness he he and i had been friends for 40 years he was my god my daughter's godfather and uh and i had run all of his campaigns so there was no no problem establishing trust there clearly susan you write in the book that secretary baker was the most consequential secretary of state since henry kinder how so well you know i look you could write a whole book and many people have written books uh just about this remarkable period of 1989 to 1991 when the hinges of of world history were clearly shifting and unlike this present moment they were largely shifting in the us's favor but you know when peter and i did this book we had spent four years in the former soviet union just a decade after these events i think we came to a renewed appreciation for the fact that you know in hindsight it may look inevitable but it wasn't really inevitable uh and in particular uh when you look at uh the actions that secretary baker took often you know he himself would probably tell us today he's a you know cautious man but he took some very bold steps to make sure that uh the german unification which nobody expected uh inside his state department before november 1989 uh they then acted very swiftly and by uh the winter the early winter of 1990 uh he helped to not only come up with but to get agreement from feuding allies over a framework for german unification which was signed just uh you know barely six months after that uh by the next fall imagine that saddam hussein had invaded uh kuwait sooner imagine that gorbachev had had a coup by hardliner sooner all of these events occurred and so i think this is a classic example of a secretary of state who mattered uh you know at a moment that mattered as well right uh it's it's the marriage of the two mr secretary there was no certainty that the cold war would end peacefully and lead to a new era in the world what do you think made the difference uh during that during that time in in in u.s leadership well i think i think that we were consistent uh you know uh the french and the british and the and the soviet union didn't want to see germany unified but it was a feeling strong feeling of george h w bush president bush and helmuth cole the chancellor of west germany that you know uh the west writ large had talked for many years about freeing the peoples of the captive nations of eastern europe well some of those people were in the german democratic republic east germany and we talked about it for 40 years well when the time came where we had an opportunity to try and do something about it it would have been a crime not to try so we tried and we were fortunately successful over the objections of the british the french and and the soviet union and as susan just pointed out there was a narrow window of opportunity to get this done we were quite fortunate that we got it done uh and there were a lot of there were a lot of people who didn't think it was going to make it at the time peter you write of secretary baker he was not defined by his era he helped to define it where did james baker make his most significant mark well i think continuing what we've just been saying i think you're right to say it's not inevitable like it could have been so different this was a very volatile moment we remember it in in hadiographic terms almost because it did work out so well but it could have so easily gone the wrong way gorbachev could have been overthrown earlier the hardliners could have uh you know come in and and and sent tanks into the east they could have stopped uh they had 300 000 troops in east germany at the time of the negotiation that secretary baker is talking about here they could have said no and it was very uh easily it's very easy to imagine a scenario that would have been uh catastrophic in a lot of ways and i think therefore you have to say that while the forces of history were moving and they were not you know precipitated by secretary baker or president bush necessarily it was the fact that they figured out how to harness them and steer them in a direction that led to a positive outcome that was probably the most significant uh you know achievement of this period mr secretary as peter's alluded to you presided as secretary of state when america had triumphed in the cold war and stood a stride in the world as the uncontested superpower um how do you think america is perceived abroad today well you know the the goal as as i understood it and do understand it having spent four years at secretary of state is that you really want to be respected by your allies and feared by your adversaries i don't think that's any longer the case today i'm sad to say i particularly don't think that we are respected by our allies and there are a lot of differences now between america and her allies and i think there are some who do not appreciate how very very important our alliances are to our international uh well-being and to the well-being therefore of our of our domestic policy i just think that uh that it's too bad that we have not nurtured these alliances which have been so important to america over the course of the past 40 or 50 years i do think we're still perhaps feared by our adversaries as well we should be uh and and that part is probably all right but we're but we're not respected by our allies and the reason is i think sadly mark we're not leading i've always said that it's really important for america to lead internationally i firmly believe that when america is engaged internationally and is leading that we are a force for good that we are that we are forced for peace and stability we never all of our intervention none of our interventions or for a gain for america in terms of territory or or treasure or anything like that uh but there used to be a greater appreciation of america's leadership role in the world than there is today because we were doing a better job leading than we are today mr secretary if you were at the helm uh today what would you do to ensure that we regain our position as a leader in the world well i think we have to for the first thing i'd do is see if we can repair our alliances re-strengthen them get them put them in the kind of good shape they were in during the cold war and during our period in office we relied uh heavily on those uh i don't germany would never have been unified without our relationship with the federal republic of germany uh we wouldn't have won the cold war by ourselves it was our it was our strong alliances the transatlantic alliance with europe and our security alliances with japan and korea and the pacific and those things all uh need they need care and feeding and tending and that's something we ought to really uh pay attention to and start doing again as we move into a new administration what do you think the greatest trouble spot in the world is i think that one thing well let me say one thing that i think has happened that is that is good is that finally uh we are we are confronting china with respect to its broken promises to the international community i'm one who worked really hard to get try and get china into the world trading organization and we got them in and we thought and perhaps erroneously that this would cause them to change their behavior but he didn't and they have not they have not kept their promises to the rest of the world so i think that that's really do we're doing well uh in that regard you ask about what what the biggest threats are facing america uh that's not exactly what you asked but that's part of you that's that includes your question our political dysfunction is the worst challenge biggest challenge that we face we've got to find a way to get back to doing business the way we used to where the the two major political parties would cooperate and compromise to do the people's business we've got that problem we've got the problem of of the fiscal ticking fiscal debt bomb nobody talks about it anymore but it is huge and when when interest rates go up again and they're going to go up again you're going to see terrible terrible burgeoning of that already too large fiscal debt bond says the the former secretary of the treasury peter uh i want to go back to to secretary baker's point about the dysfunction in washington you've covered washington for a couple decades now and and you've seen a whole lot in your experience what is the the the biggest change in washington since uh james baker was in government yeah i think look we shouldn't over romanticize the past it was partisan in his era just as his partisan today and there are certainly moments of dysfunction then as there are now but what's different is that there wasn't the that wasn't the only thing right that wasn't the consuming nature of washington at that time secretary baker will tell you he could be fiercely competitive in an election and then sit down after the election and work things out with democrats and the purpose of the election was to get to the point where you could govern and i think today what you see is in some ways the opposite the purpose of governing is to set up the next election and that there doesn't seem to be the incentive structure that there was back then much less the people to take advantage of it to compromise compromise today is a dirty word if you compromise it means you have given up something you've sold out you've you're comp you've uh abandoned your party or your principles whereas in that era in baker's era there was a value of political virtue and a political reward for showing bipartisanship for managing this across the aisle and say let's solve big problems and i think that's what we see as the most significant difference between that his washington and today is washington susan uh as you write in the book one of the lessons of of secretary baker's career is as you write when the tectonic plates of history move move with them would somebody as as competent and as adaptable as james baker succeed in today's washington you know mark we've been getting that question a lot understandably i do think that uh you know at the moment we're living in uh secretary baker's uh reputation for sheer competence uh you know that's a word that we don't hear a lot right now and that would uh go far in this or any uh moment in history and so you know in part you could you could read his story as uh some eternal lessons uh for how to get ahead and succeed uh in politics uh you know don't lie to the press uh is is one particular lesson that peter and i are appreciative of uh you know but look competence uh you know always succeeds but the broader question of to what end uh i do think the structural impediments to working together is is a fundamental shift in our politics right now nobody is seeking the 51 strategy uh you know people are no longer seeking to persuade others they're seeking to mobilize those who already agree with them and i think that you know look secretary baker uh you know made a difference in many different ways not just by uh you know showing up in hard work he's very modest to say that was the secret of his success because this town is filled with hard-working you know workaholic lawyers who call everybody back uh and they don't all get to do those remarkable array of things i think we'd like to think uh that a secretary baker could come in but in in all honesty looking at this administration uh you know there's no level uh there's no one who could manage and constrain the situation that we're in right now that has to be the inevitable conclusion from already having i think more chiefs of staff in the role than anyone else already having more national security advisers in this white house than since the position was created in the aftermath of world war ii uh mr secretary peter and susan wright of donald trump in the book's introduction he disparaged long-standing alliances as you alluded to earlier um vowed to rip up free trade pacts decried american leadership outside its borders casually embraced a new nuclear arms race and sought to reverse the globalization that had defined international politics and economics since the end of world war ii he opposed just about everything that baker and the modern republican party supported and yet they write that while you momentarily considered writing for joe biden you said to them please don't say that i will vote for biden i will vote for the republican i really will i won't leave my party so mr secretary why are you not willing to leave a party that has so manifestly left you well because uh the main reason of mark is that i am a conservative now when i became ronald reagan's chief of staff and the hardline ideologues in the reagan administration wouldn't give me credit for being a conservative they beat up on me pretty good but look i'm a texan i'm a conservative and and i really believe in conservative principles and values i believe in limited government i believe in pro-growth economic policies i believe in a strong defense i believe in conservative judges all of these things make a big difference in my in my calculus uh i don't try to defend our current chief executive uh i i think they write they quote me and they're saying he's his own worst enemy and and maybe quote me as saying something uh more negative than that uh but but at the end of the day and let me say one thing before i at the end of the day i'm a conservative and i am concerned about the direction of our country i have 19 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren and i want to see the kind of america that i was privileged to enjoy see that enjoyed by my grandchildren and great-grandchildren and i look at that democratic platform which joe biden is going to have to support and it scares the hell out of me and i want to say though having said that i like joe biden i've worked with him he's been down here to the baker institute i think at least twice i respect him as a man who likes as i did to reach across the aisle and probably try to get some things done but i worry when i look at that platform about how uh really radical and liberal it is so that's why i am going to stay where i am it's not a party thing it's really not an individual thing it's it has to do with the future direction of our country mr secretary you mentioned you worked with joe biden while you were in government uh joe biden was the senator from delaware uh right you mentioned he was vice president too and i went up there and and worked with him with him and with president obama and others on the new start treaty uh and helped help with that a little bit that's what i meant by that no i understand and i uh you know joe biden again you've worked with him in in his capacity as senator and vice president uh you mentioned the dysfunction in washington we've alluded to the divisions in our country would joe biden be good in uniting the country and bringing washington together as a consensus builder it would depend entirely upon the extent and degree to which he is bound to that platform and the deal that he had to cut with the more progressive elements in his party i think i mean uh joe would is essentially one who would like to sit down and reach across the aisle and find a an agreement find a deal just like i mean i just like i used to do all the time that's the way you govern that's the way you ought to govern politics is the art of compromise as peter said compromise today is a dirty word my worry about uh joe frankly is that he has to pay a lot of attention now to those elements that control the democratic party which has moved very very far left and that scares me one of the differences in ensuring that there was a uh a peaceful resolution to the cold war mr secretary you talked about it is the humility and restraint by the 41st president george bush and and frankly it mirrored your own humility and restraint uh i wonder did the president's performance in the debate last week give you pause about about donald trump and his ability to be the commander-in-chief of our nation well i've already told you i had i had reservations about our current chief executive that doesn't mean that i'm i'm not going to vote for him because of the larger issue that we just went through but i thought that debate was a disaster but i didn't think that it i didn't think either candidate was particularly effective but what i really regretted was the nature of the food fight that's not the way presidential debates ought to ought to go and i and i've frankly felt really sorry for chris wallace whom i've known forever and he's a wonderful journalist but it was terrifically difficult to control to control the dialogue in that debate and i i thought the debate when effect was a food fight having had covert 19 uh mr spectary and experiencing the the virus firsthand it how would you would you have managed the covet 19 crisis differently than the trump administration has well i don't know um perhaps so one thing that i think is is important to remember is how how vital message discipline is when you're running the white house or when you're running a campaign you ought to make sure that everybody has the has the story and that everybody sticks to it and that it's uniform and you don't change your your story every every so often and i'm afraid that's what was going on in the briefings on the on the virus in the in the press room at the white house right susan what is the what is the legacy of james a baker iii how do you think he will go down in history well uh you know secretary baker is is good at speaking for himself as we've heard uh you know what peter and i were struck by in our conversations with him uh was always a you know a real palpable desire uh to escape the label of you know really having been a political uh handler a political strategist and to be remembered as a statesman and a diplomat in addition to being a texan i'm quite sure that that would be a a big part of his legacy and his family's legacy but you know what i would say is that i might disagree a tiny bit and say that he was a master political strategist but in a big definition of politics whether that was politics in the american sense running five national presidential campaigns or politics in the international sense and that he really brought in fact a canny politician's uh sense to the necessities of creating a post-cold war order that would endure and that it was uh politics in the biggest possible sense defining the age from the end of watergate to the end of the cold war peter what are your thoughts on president uh or whether on secretary baker's uh legacy that was that might have been a fraud [Laughter] well look you know he would have been an interesting president i think that would have been uh different counter factual in history right um yeah i agree that i think susan said i think he wants obviously and he can speak for himself but i think that uh he would point to his time as secretary of state as a statesman the first of the two memoirs he wrote of course was about his four years as secretary of state he didn't want at first anyway to focus on the rest of his story later i think and i'm glad he did uh wrote a political memoir about his time uh you know in other jobs but you know i think that it's it's uh you know you you quote the book saying he was the most consequential secretary jason's kissinger i could even make the argument more so honestly i with all respect to secretary kissinger i know secretary kissinger has a certain celebrity that's uh that precedes everybody but i think that that four year period in our lifetime uh you know in the in the post in the post-world war ii era you know stands out as as as susan said the hinge of history changing so i think that's that's it's hard to beat that legacy mr secretary uh uh clearly you will be remembered as a as a great statesman but as peter and susan point out you ran five presidential campaigns which is uh absolutely stunning uh as we approach uh the presidential election of 2020 and election day do you worry about the soundness of our system you know i really don't mark i i think our institutions are strong i know there's a there are people out there who are really worried about whether we're going to eliminate some of our important institutions or diminish them or but but i have perhaps having spent so much time uh with presents close up i i have a i have a sense of the restraints that they are subject to and i i just do not i really don't worry about american democracy i worry about um some discreet things from time to time i i you know i i'll have to tell you probably think this i'm saying this just because i'm a republican it's not true i worry about court packing i'm packing the supreme court i worry about uh attacks on our constitution that are done in a legal way but i do not worry about the system surviving we you read a lot some nowadays about our democracy is under attack or under assault there are so many restraints upon the president's ability uh to to get off the rails if you will that i really don't worry about that our our system of checks and balances is quite effective and quite strong in my view i i won't ask you who you will vote for mr secretary because you've made that pretty clear but i will ask you how will you cast your vote where well how will you do it by mail will you go to the polls how are you physical i'll go i'll go to the polls and vote absentee during how do you want to be remembered uh when when the history is written about your uh your service in government how do you wish to be remembered you know i went to a an event after i left uh as uh after i left government after jerry ford lost to jimmy carter in a campaign that i ran for jimmy for jerry ford or lead for jerry ford i went to an event in lake cuomo and there were a number of people there there were political people and substantive people and one of the guys that was there was a guy named bob schrum i you all may remember about he was a kennedy political operative and he was he was quite accomplished politically and and uh i remember the moderator asked or asked a question of of from that that had to do with with substance some substantive issue and trump said look you want to ask baker that question he said he does politics and policy i just do politics well i'm really proud frankly of the fact that i was able to achieve something in politics and in policy and that's why i entitled my uh first memoir about my time as secretary of state the politics of diplomacy because i think my political experience really helped me uh in in in those jobs in both white house chief of staff which is a big political job yes but then as treasury secretary and his secretary of state but you ask me how i want to be remembered is that what you asked me i guarantee i'll tell you how i want to be remembered i want to be remembered as a guy who ran five presidential campaigns for three different republican presidents and then served as chief of staff for two different republican presidents and then served for almost four years as secretary of treasury and four years as secretary of state and and spent 12 years in washington and left unindicted i think that's my biggest accomplishment well i have no doubt that you will be remembered for all that and more and mr secretary i can't let you go without asking you uh what advice would you give young aspiring jim bakers who wish to make uh a career in government service i i know you've talked about the the five ps and the importance of hard work uh your 5p rule which is prior preparation prevents poor performance uh but but alluded to a humility you're you're not telling us something some key ingredient to your great success what would you tell young folks today well i i think that uh if you want if you want to have a role in policy you need to understand that politics is the way you get to practice policy i've always seen the two and peter and susan make this quite clear in a at two discrete uh pursuits politics is one thing politics is is getting uh elected so that you can do policy and uh and therefore i would tell young people that you ought to figure out some way at some point in your career to do some politics you don't have to get out and run for the legislature every time the bell rings like the dalmatian jumping on the fire truck and so forth you can you can wait you can do something else significant uh with your life before this is the theory that george h.w bush had and pretty much said i share do something consequential with your life and then if you want to go into politics go into politics but remember that it takes a lot of grunge work politics is crossing the t's and dotting the eyes and a lot of it is just grunge work but that's what gives you the opportunity to practice policy and uh and i think it also rewards gives you gives you a sense of uh of reward or accomplishment that you've been able to put something back into the system you put something back into the system not just by practicing policy or extra you know uh exercising poverty but by participating in politics we are the best country in the world notwithstanding what you read a lot about how terrible america is and so forth i tell people i flew all all over the world for four years and i and i had the opportunity to see uh how other countries and other people hold us in such high regard people no everybody wants to come to america nobody wants to leave america so i i don't like to hear all of the negativism that we hear and uh and the condemning of america that goes on we've got the finest country in the world and it's a country that every citizen ought to find a way to somehow give something back to it's a wonderful note on which to end uh peter baker susan glasser congratulations on the man who ran washington a a remarkable account of uh of secretary baker's consequential life and secretary baker thank you for your remarkable service to our nation thank you mark very much thanks mark we appreciate it thank you very much you

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Length: 43min 41sec (2621 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 07 2020