Host what is the thread that connects all these topics. Guest one of the great things as journalist you can do anything you want. Im not a scholar. I dont have a specialty. Having said that there is a connection. I fells i would say its america after world war ii. This country really coming into its own as this global power, this supreme power, really. That fascinated me, and what is it like to be a leader in this world thats your world, your time, your world. So that drew me initially to the wisemen which i did with Walter Isaacson, and then john paul jones, couple centuries before, but even he is a study in leadership, and i just im fascinated by the burdens of leadership, because its hard. Its harder than we think. And im fascinated by what its like to be a man usually men obvious live we Sandra Day Oconnor, but up to her, men. And human fallibility and weak in enormous pressures. How do they handle it . Well, some really well and some bravely and some not so well but its the pressure that interests me and how human beings respond to the pressure of the grandiose about this global leadership. Host lets good back to first book with Walter Isaacson in 1986, the iowaman. Harien marks ache sewn, bowlan, its. Seems there was a coordination to their process and a coordination to their goal and that it was a shared goal. Is just looking back a history . Guest no. No. I take your point. Were always looking back. Imposing order on chaos, its just years passing. I take your point. In this case, yes, actually, there was a shared world view. And the world view was it is americas time. 19th century was rule brit tabban, chaos in the early 20th century but out of world war ii its our time, and its our time to do some good some honorable, decent, idealistic things to bring democracy to at the world. Theres seriously idealistic but this. Now its also true they were going to make money doing it. So you cant divorce these things. These are people from wall street, and they had made money by dealing with the world. So part of the Global Vision is free trade, a Global Community in which countries trade with each other and america will do pretty well in that and these people individually america is going to do well so you cant divorce the money piece but theres a lot of idealism. But the third piece is power. In order to do this you have to if have power and use power. When do you power, when it is military power, war, diplomacy . Being smart enough to not do not good to war. Thoser huge challenges which these men met pretty well initially. Obviously the wise men is a val dickory book segue brateing the world they made because it by and large wag some important exceptions, created decades of global peace, no world wars. Global peace, and a system, a trading system that really benefited the United States, but also benefited europe, which was rebuilt; asian, africa, other the whole world always new books but how things are not as bad as you think. And because Global Standards of living have gone up. Democracy has spread its receding but it spread after world war ii. So good things happened not just to the out but to the whole world because of this system. Important exceptions, vietnam was a disaster. Americans can be we make mistakes and exploit people and do bad things. All true. But if you take the totality, the world got better. Host well, from that book, the wise men you write that even the most careful scholars in fact darkly the most careful ones, seems to forget that at the midst of the momentous forces that shaped the modern world were flesh and blood individuals acting on imperfect information and half formed beliefs. Guest isnt that life . Certainly my life. And its also the lives of the moan who make the great decisions. For instance, what is russia really up to . Rush russia was a closed society, the soviet union was a closed society. We like to think of james bond. We didnt have any spies in moscow. The First American station chief who was station thread was thrown out on caught on a sex trap, what they call holiday holiday honey trap. Were guessing. Until we had spy satellites in the late 1950s, tell the late 1950s we had spy satellites and looked down and see if that are were building missiles with didnt know what was going on. So did we have information . We had no information on our chief adversary, and of course you add to that human feet, human blunder. We made mistakes but here we are. He we didnt all get killed but might have had not been for the good jam of Dwight Eisenhower our first truly nuclear president and was because he had been a smart soldier, injured war, was determined to keep us out of war. Were not now radioactive dust which we could have been had he made the wrong move. Me survived this dangerous period but we were in ignorance through much of us. Host before we get too far from an aside that you made, i want to ask you about it. You mentioned that democracy is receding today. Guest im thinking about is i was out at stanford a year or two ago and they have a professor named mcfall. Host michael mcfall, the form ambassador in russia. Guest i was at my wifes reunion and they tracked democracy, and it was disturbing. The rice of the strong men and poland and hungary have seen their democratic norms erode. Its the end of law. Whether the judiciary is truly independent or taking phone call taking orders, what my hero, Justice Oconnor, called telephone justice. Taking orders from the party or are they trying to do the rule of law. And measure that way, im very, very, very sorry to say i think democracy is eroding somewhat. I dont think its necessarily cat cataclysmic or cant be reversed. Im not an expert. But signs after the great spread of democracy, its sliding back. Host well, before we get into ikes bluff, another one of your books, how would you describe the 50s . Guest well, confusing because we my generation, i grew up in the 1950s. He early 50s was boring. Nice time, american prosperity. I think american incomes roughly doubled in the 1950s. The growth of the middle class. America did a spectacular job in the 1950s or creating and growing a middle class, washing machines and cars and houses and people just did great. So thats the sort of positive view of it. But of course it was also a scary time because the soviet union was Building Nuclear weapons to kill us maybe, and we didnt really know how many or what their strength was and we were building our own weapons, and that was scary stuff, and anytime and at the same time, in much of the world, colonialism is collapsing the aftermath of colonialism in africa and asia. What had been british mostly or german or french or even american, i is now Something Else. Are greg pains . Of course, how can you shift from a system of colonial rule to a simple of selfrule without agonizing growing pains and being exploited and manipulate emt by the communists and moscow and beijing and theits messy. Host does that world still exist today . Are we still feeling the effects of that generation . Guest yes. I mean, the world is still essentially a Peaceful Place with an open trade order i in the out tariffses and trumps and all kind of to an older person like me, alarming. Having green up under an earlier order but you can get overwrought about this things. We still have an International Trade order. We still have convention that bind us. These things may be dated and may be under threat but they still exist. And before we get too upset about this, we need to try to step back and see the broader picture, i which is that world order created after 1945 still exists. It in a perilous process of evolution, bad things may happen. My crystal ball is terrible but the basic sin yous of it exist. Host evan thomas, november 1989, the berlin wall falls. Did we enter a new chapter in world history. Guest we thought the were at the end of historiful i bought into that. Wow, we won. Democracy won, freedom won, the rule of law won. This is great. But some people warned, other forces were afoot, nativism, the darker side of the human nature. Tribalism. Fearfulness but the other. These things never go away because theyre in our nature. Whatever political systems we try to many try to help us through the terrible human urges but the human urges are there people are tribal, suspicious, dont like the other. They want to stick to their own kind. Easily fearful and threatened. Im describing myself, every human being. Thats just the way we and are so were hoping that we are past all that with the end of the cold war. Of course we warn. Some smart scholars saw this, huntington wrote about the clash of civilizations and he foresaw it and im sure he will be attacked because he didnt see exactly right. My point is there were some smart miami who said, hey, dont declare victory too soon. We have some rough stuff. And rough stuff i mean human stuff ahead. I just think its always with us. Its a twilight struggle. Always going to be struggling with ourselves to be better. Host what was ikes bluff . Guest only i only inning could have pulled off was to then the soviet union with Nuclear Annihilation to keep them from either attacking us or being too aggressive in their own expansion. Host how did he pull it off . Guest well, pretty cagily. He he let it be nope that we had lot of Nuclear Weapons and were willing to use them. Now, this is not a bluff that anybody can make. It happened in our case made by the supreme allied commander in world war ii, the five star general who had conquered europe. If youre that man, your bluffs have credibility. Not every leader not even the guy who followed him, jack kennedy, had that kind of credibility. This is very eisenhower thing to do. I say all this because his Foreign Policy is a not really applicable to others. It worked for him. Not shoot sure how well it would work for others. He had a particular credibility and coolness. Didnt allow himself to get flapped up because, i think, we hit some great kansas virtues going up. Wonderful value. But a soldier. And he was soldier who had seen a lot of war. Not ever in combat himself but he had sent thousands of young men off to die. So he had to live with this. Hes lying in his bunk on the eve of dday, one man, decided. I think his order was Something Like, okay. It wasnt that grand, but he had to live with sending not just a few fellas but whole armies off to die and hopefully to win, but that burden, that burden had strength in him. If it done doings dont break you will things that dont break you, will make you. He had a weak smart his stomach was shot and was taking sleeping pills when he was president so he paid a high, physical cost for the tremendous pressure he was under, but he handled that pressure, i think, brilliant you. Host you write in ikes bluff bluff that, like you said, kennedy or johnson could not have done what he did. Guest i dont think so. This is now in the realm of speculation and counterfactuals. Historyons love it. What would johnson or kennedy have been like in these issues . I dont know. But they had they certainly hadnt conquered europe. Had not ikes experience. Dont seem to me to have the same did London Johnson in vietnam have his coolness . I dont think so. Host you spent 45 years as a contemporaneous journalist. How do you make the segway into being an historian as well . At one time was that a side line . Guest theyre not so easily divided. I work for the Washington Post company and the opener was catherine graham. Her husband, phil graham, said the journalism is the rough first draft of history. I was already in the history business somewhat in journalism, and in history, im in the journalism business. Im a journalistic historian. Im not a great archivist. I use archives but i depend on scholars. When i get into a subject issue good try to find out who the great scholars here who have devoted their lives to this, know a lot more about this than i do. So im on a an historian who goes and finds the deep dive scholars, and i use their work and i find them. Talk to them. Help me. Im doing it right now, actually. And so im a journalistic historian, as a journalist i was a journalist who tried in the painings of time and newsweek to bring some sense of detachment. News magazines which barely exist today, we come in after the weeks. Were not we made news occasion lit but more familiar position was to come in right after and try to get perspective and say what do we think is going on here . And sometimes we were right and sometimes we were wrong or half wrong but pretty close. Was already doing you could call it an historians work as a journalist. Im oversimplifying this, but there is a linkage. Host one thing i hearn about icen eisenhower he was opposed d to nagasaki and hiroshima. Guest he said something. There is scholarly debate about his. I his son, john, remembers a conversation where ike in potsdam where he said we have this bomb and shouldnt use it. But i think the scholars are skeptical because ike didnt record it elsewhere and it seemed to me he had trying tomorrow what the scholarly debate is but i remember reading a journal article that cast doubt on this and made me go, huh. Did he really . I actually dont know. Host heels not the only president you have written but, mr. Thomas and i dont know but in cspans newest book pile the president s your chapter on Richard Nixon is our featured chapter. And he is ranked in this surveys of historians that we do every couple of years as number 28, i believe it is. And would you put him at 28 . Guest i guess. So its a hard one because president nixon did some amazingly big stuff, and good stuff, in the foreign realm. I think opening up china was an amazing act of statesmanship, and also he president of the United States goes to moscow and negotiates the first ever nuclear arms treaty. How many president s have done that . And he nixon has a world view that was you can pick at it but it was amazingly robust and working with henry kissinger, his National Security adviser, very ambitious and also a very successful domestic politician. He got elected to ran five national tickets, elect four times, only Franklin Roosevelt has done that. Won by i think the second largest landslide in history, 1972. They pass a lot of Domestic Legislation especially environment. He created the epa. Much more effective on civil rights than people realize. I say that because he also doomed his own presidency by his unruly emotions. Just he made foolish decision because he let his emotions carry away with him, and he wrecked his legacy. Number 28 from a really a selfinflicted wound there of not dealing with watergate when he could have. Host you also have a personal connection to people would run for president. Guest i do. Host what is that. Guest pretty tenuous. My grandfather is normal thomas, a socialist candidate for president six times, 1928 to 1948. And that all sounds impressive. Never got american million votes. Im not even sure it was a million roosevelt beat him Something Like 22 million to 800,000. So he was not a very successful candidate. Unsuccessful politician but did stand for something, its not something i have personally agreed with. Im not a socialist. But i loved him, and i admired him. Host you remember your fathers reaction to his running for your father was a book editor no my dad loved my reaction. Got my reaction from my father. He loved his father. He didnt agree with him but he admired him. Host was your grandfather socialism similar to todays socialistic movements . Guest oh, how do i gave good answer to that. Its certainly involved more government in your social welfare for sure. More medical care. My grandfathers platform in 1932 looks like a standard democratic platform now. Any social well anywhere 1932 was new. So, if you just actually looked at the socialist platform of 1932 it would look like not just the far left of the party but the middle left of the party. The general notion of get the government involved in helping people, yes. But this is a different age, different political situation, different. Host evan thomas, your book, being nixon, came out in 2015. I think its fair to say its not its sympathetic. Guest yeah. Host not in a guest wishes to be. My aim was to be. Why did i write it . I think its the 13th nixon by agoography. What was i going to say that was new . I was this is going to sound kind of conceited but i represent the east coast establishment press. Im not my politics are actually moderate or nothing. Im not sure i have any politics. Im a type. I went to harvard. Im a type. And the type that nixon hated. He hated people like me. Not me permanently but people like me. Not me personally but people like me. Interesting to try to reverse engineer this. To and its sympathetic how did he see the establishment . The Washington Post company for which i worked . How did that world look to him and how what was it like being system thats why the become is called being nixon. I made the best effort i could to switch the lens, so instead of me looking at him, in a way its him looking at me. Its much more than that but that was the impetus of the book and the best parts of the booking sympathetic but moments with the east coast establishment and they treated him terribly. He let the stuff get out of control. He did and got brought down by the Washington Post. Ironically or maybe suitably. 0 not sure. But i am cinco de |mayo i am sim the tick he was created badly . Why . Stupidity, tribalism. Theres a scene in the 60 election and theyre all in some garden party in georgetown and arthur all sucking up to jack kennedy, and theres something vaguely offensive about it. The smugness and a primness and arent we better looking, better dressed . Arent we just better than nixon, and nixon would know and feel put down and it was theres an arrogance to it that nixon was right to be aggrieved but also cleverly played off of some of our Politics Today is the descend sent of Richard Nixon figuring out you can get votes by running against these people, this establishment, the mainstream didnt have that word then but this can work for you. Populism, not al