Speaker 1: Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is a Deep Background, the
Speaker 1: show where we explore the stories behind the stories in
Speaker 1: the news. I'm Noah Feldman. As regular listeners know, this
Speaker 1: year's central theme on Deep Background is power, and we've
Speaker 1: been approaching the question of power from numerous different angles.
Speaker 1: This week, I want to feature a conversation with one
Speaker 1: of my contemporaries, a college classmate actually, who has had
Speaker 1: an intimate understanding of the structure of power long before
Speaker 1: chronologically most of us even had a whiff of getting
Speaker 1: anywhere near any of it in the real world. That
Speaker 1: person is Matthew Barzen, who served as US Ambassador to
Speaker 1: Sweden from two thousand and nine to two and eleven,
Speaker 1: and was then the US Ambassador to the United Kingdom,
Speaker 1: traditionally considered the jewel in the crown of US ambassadorships,
Speaker 1: for another five years thereafter. What's remarkable about his career
Speaker 1: is that he had the opportunity to do these jobs
Speaker 1: starting off when he was still in his thirties, rather
Speaker 1: than as the capstone to a long and distinguished diplomatic
Speaker 1: career the way many many ambassador positions operate. Since doing that,
Speaker 1: Matthew has decided to share some of his ideas around power,
Speaker 1: and he did so in a new book called The
Speaker 1: Power of Giving Away Power, a book that offers a
Speaker 1: different philosophical account of power, viewing the question very much
Speaker 1: more from how elites can broaden the base of power
Speaker 1: than from the countervailing perspective of how elites can constrain
Speaker 1: and control power. And in an era where populism is
Speaker 1: seen by many powerful people as a fundamental threat, Matthew
Speaker 1: instead sees the engagement of broad publics into the possibilities
Speaker 1: of deploying power as a necessary and positive development, even
Speaker 1: as he too worries about the kind of populism that
Speaker 1: comes with bad values or bad beliefs. Having read his book,
Speaker 1: I thought it would provide a wonderful springboard for a
Speaker 1: different kind of conversation about power from somebody who knows
Speaker 1: how to deploy it, but who fundamentally believes that it
Speaker 1: needs to be reshaped. Matthew, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: joining me to talk about many things, among which is
Speaker 1: your terrific new book, The Power of Giving Away Power,
Speaker 1: with the subtitle how the Best Leaders Learn to Let Go,
Speaker 1: And as a lead in I want to ask you
Speaker 1: about your very unusual path to leadership experience at an
Speaker 1: extremely young age. You came out of the business world,
Speaker 1: and then when you were still in your thirties, you
Speaker 1: became an ambassador, first to Sweden and then to the UK.
Speaker 1: So big ambassadorships. How did all that happen? Well, first
Speaker 1: of all, thanks for having me, Noah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: didn't plan it. I was, as you mentioned, right out
Speaker 1: of college. I got involved in what was then the
Speaker 1: very unglamorous world of internet companies. We didn't call them
Speaker 1: dot com companies, it was just the Internet. I did
Speaker 1: that for a while and then a distant cousin of
Speaker 1: mine announced that he was running for president, John Kerry.
Speaker 1: This is two thousand and three, and so I had
Speaker 1: interned for him when I was in college when he
Speaker 1: was a senator, and I said, how can I help?
Speaker 1: And what you and the listeners know is in our system.
Speaker 1: If you ask how you can help, ninety nine times
Speaker 1: out of one hundred, the answers help us raise money.
Speaker 1: And my heart sank. Because I was raised in New England.
Speaker 1: We have that in common, and I was raised to
Speaker 1: never talk about money, politics or religion, and I knew
Speaker 1: that fundraising would require at least two of those and
Speaker 1: probably three and I sucked at it, which is a
Speaker 1: longer story. Then I got better at it, and then
Speaker 1: Senator Obama asked me if I would help out on
Speaker 1: his campaign, and so that's how I got into his world.
Speaker 1: And then when he won, he asked me if I
Speaker 1: would serve as ambassador, and candidly I thought, oh, that's
Speaker 1: what like old people do. It's just like a giant
Speaker 1: cocktail party, like, no thanks. But then I learned more
Speaker 1: about it. There's a great Republican friend of mine who
Speaker 1: knew a lot about it, and I talked to him
Speaker 1: and he described what the role of diplomacy was all about,
Speaker 1: and then I got intrigued and said an enthusiastic yes.
Speaker 1: So power is one of our central themes on Deep Background,
Speaker 1: especially this year, and your book is about power. But
Speaker 1: as you tell that story, it strikes me that you
Speaker 1: got into a position of genuine power to the extent
Speaker 1: ambassadorships are that. And we can talk a little more
Speaker 1: at some point about what kinds of power it's possible
Speaker 1: to wield in those jobs, because I think you did
Speaker 1: that quite interestingly and innovatively. But the way you got
Speaker 1: there was through a different form of power. Which, as
Speaker 1: you said, is the power of fundraising in our system. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So if you started off, as you said, not so
Speaker 1: good at it, not a naturally talented fundraiser, what was
Speaker 1: the trick that is one way of deploying a certain
Speaker 1: kind of power in our system. Yeah. The reason I
Speaker 1: was so bad at it for quite a long time
Speaker 1: was I sort of thought it was about me. So
Speaker 1: I would have these awkward usually emails in my case,
Speaker 1: of like, hey, sorry to bother you, I've set a
Speaker 1: goal of trying to raise X amount of money and
Speaker 1: would you help me? And anyway, that is not a
Speaker 1: very effective way of doing it because it puts yourself
Speaker 1: at the center of the discussion. And I was fortunate
Speaker 1: enough to be seated next to this amazing woman named
Speaker 1: Lynn Twist, and she had just written a book back
Speaker 1: in two thousand and three called The Soul of Money,
Speaker 1: and she's a professional fundraiser. And I had raised hundreds
Speaker 1: of millions of dollars. So in desperation, I said, can
Speaker 1: you please, I mean, I will buy your book, I
Speaker 1: will read it, but I need help right now. And
Speaker 1: she said, sure, do you have a pen? And I did,
Speaker 1: so I picked up a pen and I wrote it
Speaker 1: down on a napkin, and it was just three things.
Speaker 1: Number One, money is like water. When it flows, it heals,
Speaker 1: and when it's stagnant, it kills. Number two, Only ask
Speaker 1: people for money who want to use their money for
Speaker 1: something greater than themselves. Number three ask everyone. And of
Speaker 1: course the trick there which I fell for, was, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, how can I ask everyone and only ask
Speaker 1: people who want to use money? And she basically said, look,
Speaker 1: everybody wants to use money for something greater than themselves.
Speaker 1: It may not be politics, or it may not be
Speaker 1: your political party or your candidate, but it's something. And
Speaker 1: so if you ask them to do that, you are
Speaker 1: helping them help their money flow. And so when they
Speaker 1: say no to you, they might say yes to something else,
Speaker 1: and so you're doing them a service. And that, for me,
Speaker 1: really clicked, and I thought, okay, because I got plenty
Speaker 1: of notes, but they didn't hurt, they weren't personally wounding.
Speaker 1: They were just I felt like I was helping the
Speaker 1: money and the energy flow, and that for me, did
Speaker 1: it Does that make any sense? Yeah? It makes a
Speaker 1: lot of sense. It leaves out the sales pitch part,
Speaker 1: and it makes me interested to hear whether in her
Speaker 1: viewer in your own experience, it doesn't matter so much
Speaker 1: whether you're selling John Kerry or selling in Barack Obama.
Speaker 1: As an outsider to fundraising, I would think it would
Speaker 1: make a big difference that one was more effective and
Speaker 1: inspiring than the other, but maybe that's just naive totally.
Speaker 1: And fast forwarding when I started to work on the
Speaker 1: Obama's first campaign, and I was doing well, and we
Speaker 1: sort of pioneered the first low dollar fundraiser, and then
Speaker 1: that caught on and we took that out across the
Speaker 1: country as a model. I was asked with a bunch
Speaker 1: of other volunteers like me to teach fundraising training, which
Speaker 1: we pretentiously called Obama University. Subsequent presidents have given presidential
Speaker 1: name and university a strange name, so this had none
Speaker 1: of that go on. But anyway, so we'd gather I
Speaker 1: think one hundred at a time volunteers from all around
Speaker 1: the country and if you ask them, which we did,
Speaker 1: what do you want to get out of today? Is
Speaker 1: it was an all day session what do you want
Speaker 1: to get out of today? And everyone wanted the exact
Speaker 1: same thing, which is, please arm me with talking points
Speaker 1: to go back to Austin or Boston or wherever and
Speaker 1: win the argument. And the realization that I'd come to
Speaker 1: learn from Lynd Twist and from Obama himself is And
Speaker 1: we did it as a gimmick. We'd say, okay, a
Speaker 1: quick show of hands, how many people here like to
Speaker 1: lose an argument? And nobody ever raises their hand. So
Speaker 1: I don't think we're in the argument winning business. It's
Speaker 1: just sort of bad math. So you don't need to
Speaker 1: win an argument. You don't even have to really make
Speaker 1: a pitch if you just ask people what their hopes
Speaker 1: and fears are, really listen and connect it back to,
Speaker 1: in this case, what Obama also is fearful of and
Speaker 1: hopeful for. That's pretty much just the job that's already
Speaker 1: I think a powerful takeaway to something that is not
Speaker 1: immediately available to the ordinary person who reads the news
Speaker 1: and reads about fundraising. I don't think we think about
Speaker 1: what the back room looks like where people are trying
Speaker 1: to figure out the right way to do it. That's fascinating.
Speaker 1: So Lynch Twist gave you her book in three bullet
Speaker 1: points to put on a napkin. I'm curious to see
Speaker 1: what your napkin worthy. Three bullet points are for your
Speaker 1: own book, the power of giving away power, because it's
Speaker 1: a quirky and fascinating book, and I use quirky in
Speaker 1: the most positive sense at the time. Thank you. What
Speaker 1: would you say if someone said what you know, I'm
Speaker 1: saying next you at a dinner party and I promise
Speaker 1: to buy your book? But what are the bullet points
Speaker 1: that I can write down right here? All right? This
Speaker 1: is fun putting me on the spot. Noah, okay, I
Speaker 1: would This is inspired by another amazing woman who I
Speaker 1: didn't get to meet because she died in nineteen thirty three,
Speaker 1: and she is the matron saint of my book. And
Speaker 1: her name is Mary Parker Follet eighteen sixty eight to
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty three. I encourage listeners to look her up
Speaker 1: on Wikipedia, which is how I found her. I had
Speaker 1: a rule about I'm going to answer your question. I'm
Speaker 1: stalling for time now. You also have a terrific account
Speaker 1: about Wikipedia in the book, so you're read it's all
Speaker 1: the amanicy consistent. Well, but I had a rule in
Speaker 1: the book as I was writing it and rewriting it
Speaker 1: and rewriting it, and I had this little informal rule
Speaker 1: up on my white board of only that could only
Speaker 1: quote three dead white guys per chapter. I loved them.
Speaker 1: I mean, one day I'll be one. But I just
Speaker 1: figured there ought to be a limit. So I had
Speaker 1: hit the limit in this particular chapter, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to quote Peter Drucker, who is I don't know the
Speaker 1: twentieth centuries probably pre eminent sort of the guru's guru
Speaker 1: as it relates to for profit, nonprofit government leadership and management.
Speaker 1: So he had the perfect thing and I wanted to quote,
Speaker 1: but I couldn't. So I start digging around in Wikipedia
Speaker 1: about Peter Drucker, and I learned that lo and behold,
Speaker 1: he had a guru, the guru's guru's guru, if you will,
Speaker 1: And her name was Mary Parker fall It, and she's
Speaker 1: this amazing story and she studied power and she studied leadership,
Speaker 1: and I read everything she wrote and she rocked my world,
Speaker 1: and so inspired by her, I will try to sum
Speaker 1: it up. And she basically said, all of our democracy
Speaker 1: and all of our business, some of our most intractable
Speaker 1: problems can actually are going to be dealt with one
Speaker 1: way or another. With a bunch of people sitting around
Speaker 1: a table with each other, and she said, there are
Speaker 1: four possible outcomes of a meeting, but only one of
Speaker 1: them is worthwhile. Now, Outcome number one is you go
Speaker 1: in the meeting and you try to win. She's like, well,
Speaker 1: that's no good because someone else is going to lose.
Speaker 1: Option number two is you go in and you just acquiesce,
Speaker 1: like Joe is sort of a blowhard, just let him
Speaker 1: have his way. It's easier that way. That's no good
Speaker 1: because you haven't brought your contribution to the meeting. Outcome
Speaker 1: number three also bad, but very tempting, and we're usually
Speaker 1: told it's good is compromise, but her point was, no, look,
Speaker 1: if you compromise, that's just little mini victories and mini defeats.
Speaker 1: It's not something to be sought out. The only reason
Speaker 1: she thought you should get together for a meeting at
Speaker 1: all is if you could do the fourth thing, which
Speaker 1: was the only good outcome, which was creating something with
Speaker 1: your fellow meeting members. And it's a pretty high standard,
Speaker 1: but we all been in those meetings where it really works.
Speaker 1: And she said, the magic that happens if you make
Speaker 1: something together in a meeting, you are fully all of
Speaker 1: you is in that thing. You've made it's in you.
Speaker 1: You're not diminished for it, you're enriched by it, and
Speaker 1: you haven't lost yourself in it. And so if we
Speaker 1: take Mary follows I think very wise points. I would
Speaker 1: if I had to sum up the whole book in
Speaker 1: a napkin worthy three bullet points, it would be expect
Speaker 1: to be needed, expect to need others, and expect to
Speaker 1: be changed. And that final one's important because in today's
Speaker 1: lingo we say, and I think appropriately and I think
Speaker 1: Mary Follot would love that we say it, bring your
Speaker 1: truth to the meeting, absolutely, because no one else can
Speaker 1: bring your truth. So you have a deep obligation to
Speaker 1: bring your truth. But if that's all you do, that's
Speaker 1: not enough. You need to through this process of co creation.
Speaker 1: You ought to leave that meeting a different person than
Speaker 1: you came in. That's the reciprocal obligation. If we take
Speaker 1: Mary follow at her word, that's the expect to be changed. Part.
Speaker 1: That leads me to a question that I myself have
Speaker 1: been struggling with, and I think is in the backdrop
Speaker 1: to a lot of the debates about power that we've
Speaker 1: been having on deep background and also in our society
Speaker 1: and more broadly, it's very appealing to say with Mary
Speaker 1: Parker followed and with you, we should exercise what you
Speaker 1: quote her is calling power with, not power over. And
Speaker 1: we shouldn't go into the meeting, whether it's a fundraising
Speaker 1: meeting or a business meeting or any kind of meeting,
Speaker 1: trying to win, because, as you said, if you win,
Speaker 1: then somebody else loses. Those are very powerful insights. They
Speaker 1: seem right. Then you look at a country like the
Speaker 1: United States today, which is so found lyad divided and polarized,
Speaker 1: and you don't have to claim that it's unpresent. I
Speaker 1: actually don't think it is unprecedented, but it's bad in
Speaker 1: relative terms to the research past. And you say, well,
Speaker 1: you know, leaders of the United States Democratic Party don't
Speaker 1: just try to win by having fifty votes in the
Speaker 1: Senate plus the vice president to break the tie. Work
Speaker 1: with right, let's exercise power with to which miss McConnell says, yeah, no, no,
Speaker 1: thank you. I don't want to exercise power with you.
Speaker 1: I mean Barack Obama tried to do this on occasion.
Speaker 1: Sometimes he got away with it, more often he didn't.
Speaker 1: I mean, I love the idea, and I do think
Speaker 1: that under other circumstances. You know, Joe Biden would have
Speaker 1: been a politician who loved that idea and would have
Speaker 1: said yeah. You know, when he was in the Senate,
Speaker 1: he had a reputation for trying to be a centrist,
Speaker 1: for be friends with people on both sides of the aisle.
Speaker 1: It all sounds almost hopelessly romantic and naive seen from
Speaker 1: a distance of twenty or twenty five years, but that
Speaker 1: is how he operated through much of career. But it's
Speaker 1: just not doesn't seem to be doable now. So I
Speaker 1: guess I'm well in a place of saying philosophically, I
Speaker 1: totally agree with you. I mean, I love this idea.
Speaker 1: I love the idea that you know the key to
Speaker 1: power is to not think that you have all the power.
Speaker 1: I just don't know in practical terms how one can
Speaker 1: I suderstand that. Look, I do think you've picked. I mean,
Speaker 1: our two party system in Washington right now looks pretty
Speaker 1: tough if you come at it through some of the
Speaker 1: other wonderful topics you've covered on this podcast. Take NC
Speaker 1: DOUBLEA athletics. Right We're almost no one involved thinks the
Speaker 1: current system is all that great. Right in Louisville, where
Speaker 1: we live. We don't have a pro team, so we're
Speaker 1: obsessed with University of Kentucky, University of Louisville. We take
Speaker 1: it really seriously. If you've got all the fans in
Speaker 1: a room, they may split red blue cards, cats, but
Speaker 1: not on political terms. They love the games that are
Speaker 1: played and they don't think the current thing is working
Speaker 1: all that well. So you can imagine that group systematically
Speaker 1: trying to work through together finding a better way to
Speaker 1: do that. I mean, would you agree that seems we
Speaker 1: aren't hopelessly in partisan trench warfare as it relates to
Speaker 1: college athletics. Yeah, I think that it's it's definitely plausible
Speaker 1: that reasonable people, without getting super angry at each other,
Speaker 1: could try to work out a better way to do
Speaker 1: NCAA sports. Yeah, I'm willing to accept that. I'll accept
Speaker 1: the preface, thank you well, so then and so the
Speaker 1: act of working through it, I don't think anyone. Very
Speaker 1: many people don't think they have the right answer coming
Speaker 1: into that meeting or series of meetings. They are open
Speaker 1: to and they'll learn about the trade offs and like, oh,
Speaker 1: I didn't realize if you just paid everyone, maybe women's
Speaker 1: athletics would lose all their money in three weeks, and
Speaker 1: oh gosh, no, I didn't. That undetended consequence isn't one
Speaker 1: I'm willing to live with. Right, and you start doing
Speaker 1: that kind of work, I think we're get tricky. And
Speaker 1: where I think the point of this book could be
Speaker 1: misunderstood is and I'll stay with sports for a second.
Speaker 1: There's a bathroom somewhere on ninety five between New York
Speaker 1: and Boston where in the bathroom someone had scribbled Yankees suck,
Speaker 1: and then someone scribbled it out and wrote Red Sox suck,
Speaker 1: and then someone wrote Yankee suck. Right, So there's like
Speaker 1: almost like eighteen inches worth of this scribbling back and forth.
Speaker 1: And then sust have been new Avan, Connecticut based on
Speaker 1: many factors, don't you think exactly. So then someone comes
Speaker 1: into the bathroom and circles the whole back and forth,
Speaker 1: and then a big green sharpie writes and we all
Speaker 1: love baseball. Now you're kind of like, oh, like that
Speaker 1: feels good for like a second. But if if the
Speaker 1: people trying to find a way through these intractable problems
Speaker 1: sound like mister green sharpie, and I didn't go back
Speaker 1: by the way but you know there's continued commentary on
Speaker 1: where mister Greensharpie could put his pen. Oh yes, it's
Speaker 1: just annoying. It's this sort of group hug, feel good
Speaker 1: crap that people will just be like, well, that's not
Speaker 1: a real life thing. So what I would say is
Speaker 1: somewhere between Red Sox sock Yankee sock sort of trench
Speaker 1: warfare going nowhere and hey, big group hug, we all
Speaker 1: love baseball, there exists and in between space where I
Speaker 1: think we should put a lot of time and effort,
Speaker 1: and you are on this podcast, which is to stick
Speaker 1: with baseball. Hey, should we eliminate the designated hitter in
Speaker 1: the American League? Now you can imagine Red Sox and
Speaker 1: Yankees fans being super shortsighted and being like, well, we
Speaker 1: have a really good DH now, so that sucks. But
Speaker 1: you could also imagine them being like, I am willing
Speaker 1: to have this discussion about a game we love, but
Speaker 1: bring all your differences in disagreements and argue and haggle
Speaker 1: about a game you love and the habits of doing that.
Speaker 1: I think we've lost and we need to get better
Speaker 1: at and we could get better at them outside of
Speaker 1: high stakes Washington politics, because there's so many other things
Speaker 1: we could get to work at, and if we got
Speaker 1: good at doing those, maybe we could or our children
Speaker 1: maybe could get better at solving some of these other ones.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you partly about how we lost
Speaker 1: that capacity, and I want to use as a concrete
Speaker 1: example something you're in a position to know a huge
Speaker 1: amount about, which is the years where you were US
Speaker 1: Ambassador to the United Kingdom were years that the Brexit
Speaker 1: specter gradually went from being a pie in the sky
Speaker 1: idea to something actually plausible, and then, ultimately, to a
Speaker 1: lot of people's shock, it actually happened. And you had
Speaker 1: the front row seat to all of that. So I
Speaker 1: wonder what you would reflect on in observing that whole
Speaker 1: process and in the course of your pretty significant amount
Speaker 1: of time there. I would argue that they that's what
Speaker 1: happened to them. They lost the ability to have the
Speaker 1: green sharpie, and they collapsed into our red Sox versus
Speaker 1: Yankees or remain versus Leave. What do you think happened
Speaker 1: there at a deep cultural level. I think the honest
Speaker 1: and short answer is I don't know what I did learn,
Speaker 1: As you said, being right there in the middle of
Speaker 1: all that, I remember why. I was at some fancy
Speaker 1: black tie dinner in the city of London. I was
Speaker 1: seated next to a gentleman. He was quick to tell
Speaker 1: me early that he had written something like a five
Speaker 1: hundred thousand pound check to the Remain campaign, right, so
Speaker 1: this is the group against Brexit, and I thought, okay,
Speaker 1: you know, good to know. And then we chatted about
Speaker 1: other things, and then I'm looking up at the in
Speaker 1: this big vaulted ceiling room. There was some flag I
Speaker 1: didn't really recognize. It may have been like the City
Speaker 1: of London flag or something. Then there was the English cross,
Speaker 1: the English flag, and then there was the Union jack
Speaker 1: and I just said to him offhandedly, I was like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, twenty years from now, could you picture the
Speaker 1: European flag as a fourth flag up there? And you
Speaker 1: would think I said something incredibly insulting to him. And
Speaker 1: he turned to me and he's like, over my dead body,
Speaker 1: you know, gripping his butter knife. And so here's a
Speaker 1: guy funding Remain and he hates the idea of the
Speaker 1: European Union flag ever showing up in this place that
Speaker 1: he loves. And I thought, oh, okay, that's weird. So
Speaker 1: there wasn't a whole lot of love for the European
Speaker 1: Union by the people who were That's not true of everybody.
Speaker 1: Some people really got into it, but I thought that
Speaker 1: was a window into Hey, that's a tough thing to prevail.
Speaker 1: So in that interpretation, which is a fascinating one, and
Speaker 1: I like stories about how you say something in England
Speaker 1: and then people look at you like you've insulted him,
Speaker 1: because that seemed to be every conversation I had an
Speaker 1: entire time that I lived in English, although to be fair,
Speaker 1: half the time they were also insulting me and they
Speaker 1: didn't know they were doing it. But so I love
Speaker 1: the story. It sounds like in your interpretation, you're suggesting
Speaker 1: that the deep national sentiment that people feel in England
Speaker 1: and maybe in Britain as well more broadly, is just
Speaker 1: so powerful that even people who rationally had an argument
Speaker 1: for remaining in the European Union at some deep level
Speaker 1: didn't care about it as much as the people who
Speaker 1: really wanted out. Well that that still begs the question, yeah,
Speaker 1: could go ahead. So the rough runt of the way
Speaker 1: it was worded was just sort of thumbs up, thumbs
Speaker 1: down in out it was a binary choice. If you
Speaker 1: gave people, you know, when you do HR surveys, it's
Speaker 1: like strongly agree, somewhat agree, neutral, There's a five check
Speaker 1: marks you could do across the spectrum. My sense is
Speaker 1: if you had asked, I have nothing to back this up.
Speaker 1: This is a hunch. Hey, do you want to be
Speaker 1: totally fully in the EU like France and Germany are?
Speaker 1: That's one out of five? Do you want totally out?
Speaker 1: I'd never want anything to do with this thing is
Speaker 1: a five. I think you would have ended up with
Speaker 1: people sort of I don't know in the two and
Speaker 1: a half to three kind of like I want to
Speaker 1: be in, but I don't want to be in their currency,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to have the same customs union. Oh,
Speaker 1: which by the way, is where the UK was as
Speaker 1: it relates to the European Union beforehand. But a lot
Speaker 1: of that subtlety gets lost in out. Yes, no kind
Speaker 1: of world, which this mindset, which I call the pyramid mindset,
Speaker 1: which I think is really I mean, the obvious way
Speaker 1: is sort of a top down view of the world,
Speaker 1: but by the way, a bottom up view of the
Speaker 1: world is the exact same shape, and I would argue no, better.
Speaker 1: It's the same pyramid shape where we get trapped into
Speaker 1: thinking it's wind lose up, down in out, which is
Speaker 1: how that referend of battle played out. And there's an
Speaker 1: alternative way of looking at ourselves in the world around
Speaker 1: us that isn't a pyramid. And these amazing leaders we
Speaker 1: talked about some of them, there are lots of others,
Speaker 1: many of whom we've never heard of, who've built these
Speaker 1: unbelievably consequential organizations and innovations that we benefit from every day.
Speaker 1: They chose to not look at the world like a pyramid,
Speaker 1: and they didn't think, oh, everyone on their own. They
Speaker 1: chose to look at the world in what I call
Speaker 1: a constellation, which is, yes, be yourself. You're a star,
Speaker 1: and you see other people as stars, and you try
Speaker 1: to form new and interesting connections between them to make
Speaker 1: something useful and something you could never do on your own.
Speaker 1: Too often are default setting is looking at the world
Speaker 1: like a pyramid, and we keep getting into those binary traps.
Speaker 1: One of the things I really liked about the book
Speaker 1: is that you didn't fall into the trap that sometimes
Speaker 1: people do in leadership books, where they just give you
Speaker 1: a series of case studies of quote unquote great leaders
Speaker 1: and say do it like this person, And so it
Speaker 1: was a relief that you didn't write it that way.
Speaker 1: That said, I did finish the book wondering who are
Speaker 1: your models of people who you think of as having
Speaker 1: governed either businesses or countries or other kinds of nonprofit
Speaker 1: entities through this model of giving away power or doing
Speaker 1: the power with thing. I mean, it would be great
Speaker 1: to say Barack Obama, whom we both admire tremendously, but
Speaker 1: I sort of think his biggest wins came when he
Speaker 1: didn't do that. You know, Obamacare being a great example
Speaker 1: of not open without complexity. But you know, the real
Speaker 1: transformative piece of legislation, to my mind of his presidency
Speaker 1: not was saying what this or being word did to
Speaker 1: it subsequently and it really was not ultimately a compromise.
Speaker 1: It's a great point. I mean, Anne Marie Slaughter wrote
Speaker 1: this great essay I think in Foreign Policy or Foreign Affairs,
Speaker 1: and I'm paraphrasing here, but she basically starts off because
Speaker 1: I would add the Paris Climate Accord, despite what happened
Speaker 1: to it afterwards, I think it's wonderful she said. As
Speaker 1: an internationally trained lawyer, and this and this. I ought
Speaker 1: to hate the deal, and I ought to hate it
Speaker 1: because it isn't binding. It isn't And she does the
Speaker 1: whole litany of what were the criticisms of it leading
Speaker 1: up to it and after it, and she said, but
Speaker 1: for all those reasons, of all those things, it isn't.
Speaker 1: I think it is wonderful and really helpful because it
Speaker 1: is not binding, it is open ended. It allows people
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. And I think that is an interesting
Speaker 1: test case. And I am no expert on climate or
Speaker 1: the Climate Deal, but that we could get out then
Speaker 1: get back in. Other people could step up for us
Speaker 1: when the previous administration didn't want to. All of that
Speaker 1: is a kind of weird in a good sense and
Speaker 1: flexible way of dealing with something that is voluntary. People
Speaker 1: set their own targets and it may go off the rails,
Speaker 1: but it could lead to something really beautiful. I like that.
Speaker 1: So Anne Marie Slaughter, she's someone I admired tremendously. You know,
Speaker 1: she's done things in academia where she was a professor
Speaker 1: in a dean. She's been in government as director of
Speaker 1: Policy Penny in the State Department. Now she runs a
Speaker 1: think tank. I mean, there's sort of no cool thing
Speaker 1: in the world of public life that she hasn't done.
Speaker 1: And she's argued, really in a series of books over
Speaker 1: the course of almost twenty years about the value in
Speaker 1: the international community of networks of people who are often
Speaker 1: like minded, who come from different countries, and cooperation among
Speaker 1: those people. Now, one of the criticisms of her work
Speaker 1: that's come both from the left and from the right,
Speaker 1: and she is nothing if not the mainstream of American
Speaker 1: foreign policy thinking. I think I always think it's good
Speaker 1: if people are criticizing you on both sides. But one
Speaker 1: of the criticisms that her work has encountered is that
Speaker 1: the people who are doing the dance are actually an elite,
Speaker 1: and that they're an elite, they exercises a lot of
Speaker 1: power that because it's not centered in one person, most
Speaker 1: people don't really notice, and which is therefore in some
Speaker 1: sense less responsive to big majorities of people. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: made me want to ask you about the sort of
Speaker 1: overall picture you have of the power of giving away power.
Speaker 1: It's very consistent with Anrie's idea of shared power. As
Speaker 1: you said, a lot of decisions are made by the
Speaker 1: people in the room, and I wonder, how do you
Speaker 1: think about that? I mean, it could be very down
Speaker 1: to the grassroots. But you know, fifty million or three
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty million people will have trouble all sitting
Speaker 1: in a room together. They're always representatives of that group.
Speaker 1: We're sitting in a room. Yeah. You said two phrases
Speaker 1: that I think often come up in this context that
Speaker 1: are important to clarify and redefine maybe. And one is
Speaker 1: I had this discussion with Anne Marie. She came to
Speaker 1: London and she said, oh, we need more bottoms up.
Speaker 1: And I made the point to her I made earlier,
Speaker 1: like bottoms up is no better. If you think of
Speaker 1: yourself or you think of other people, is at the bottom,
Speaker 1: you are doomed. Nothing good is going to come from
Speaker 1: thinking of people at the bottom. You'll be condescending or
Speaker 1: you'll feel condescended too, depending on where you've put yourself
Speaker 1: in that equation. It's an awful equation, and you do
Speaker 1: not have to look at yourself or others. Is at
Speaker 1: the bottom of a pyramid. You could think of yourself
Speaker 1: as stars in a constellation, for example. The other is
Speaker 1: the word sharing power, which is what you said sounds right.
Speaker 1: It is an exercise in dividing, implicit and sharing powers.
Speaker 1: There's only so much and so we'll divvy it up.
Speaker 1: And it's like no, no, no, you're done once you're
Speaker 1: in that limited mindset. The great leaders, these constellation leaders.
Speaker 1: Power is not something to be obviously lorded over others. Okay,
Speaker 1: we all got that mumbo. It's not something to be
Speaker 1: hoarded to yourself as an isolated individual. It is not
Speaker 1: something to be divvied up and shared. It is something
Speaker 1: to be made with and through other people, made and
Speaker 1: multiplied over and over again. And that's where the magic lives.
Speaker 1: And it's where the phrase grassroots is a real problem
Speaker 1: because it's just kind of code for bottom up. Two.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. So I like that, and I
Speaker 1: buy it, and I also take it that what you're
Speaker 1: saying is that power needs to be conceptualized as not
Speaker 1: zero sum. It has to be positive sum. You can
Speaker 1: construct power in ways that are inclusive because you're not
Speaker 1: starting with a pie and then dividing up the pie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think that's very very powerful. Do you think
Speaker 1: there are no zones of power though that would genuinely
Speaker 1: truly qualify as zero sum aren't there some situations, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean if you think about the amassing
Speaker 1: of troops and resources and the logistics of D Day,
Speaker 1: I bet that was very pyramid like and top down
Speaker 1: and work backwards from a set date, all these sorts
Speaker 1: of things I warn against in the book, like it
Speaker 1: was helpful for that. But what I love is Churchill
Speaker 1: made the point at the time like that is to
Speaker 1: win this victory and then a different kind of hard
Speaker 1: work begins where that mindset isn't at all helpful. And
Speaker 1: that's what he called for the forming of special relationships,
Speaker 1: which sounds really touchy feely except at Winston Churchill saying it,
Speaker 1: and he's like, no, no, millions of them right between
Speaker 1: farmers and farmers, and like that's where the energy and
Speaker 1: this new kind of power can be created and multiplied.
Speaker 1: I don't know if we're allowed to if can I
Speaker 1: ask you a question because this is I didn't write
Speaker 1: this in the book, but I want to. It's what
Speaker 1: I've been struggling with. In the book, I talk about
Speaker 1: the fact that win win is a losing formula because
Speaker 1: it sounds good at first. It's like win win, but
Speaker 1: you can't sort of talk about winning without implying losing.
Speaker 1: And it comes with all these it comes with that
Speaker 1: pyramid mindset that isn't helpful, I think, to a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of intractable problems we're trying to work through together.
Speaker 1: So I went back to that famous Adam Smith quote,
Speaker 1: we do not rely on the benevolence of the butcher,
Speaker 1: the baker, the brewer for our dinner, right, And I think,
Speaker 1: and then you read on a little bit, and he
Speaker 1: is understandably, I think, skeptical of sort of the do
Speaker 1: good or instinct that it is particularly important for progressives
Speaker 1: to listen to that critique of he had seen so
Speaker 1: many things not happen or happen badly relying on benevolence alone.
Speaker 1: My question you, it's like, okay, so it seems like
Speaker 1: we've run with it over since seventeen seventy six till
Speaker 1: now we've sort of run with that. Okay, you don't
Speaker 1: rely on the benevolence, So then you do sort of
Speaker 1: some version of enlightened self interest or whatever. That's what
Speaker 1: is going on between the butcher, the baker, the brewer
Speaker 1: and you, who's an implied other stick figure in Adam
Speaker 1: Smith's rendition, which doesn't seem right either. And I guess
Speaker 1: my questions like, what would you describe as the relationship?
Speaker 1: What does the butcher think of the baker? What does
Speaker 1: the baker think of the brewer? How does the brewer
Speaker 1: think of you? What is going on between all those
Speaker 1: people that begin with B. One of the answers that
Speaker 1: emilily comes into my mind is inspired by the historian M. A.
Speaker 1: Rothschild's writing about Adam Smith and what she I'm going
Speaker 1: to grossly oversimplify this, but one thing that she shows
Speaker 1: is that you know some of this famous for Wealth
Speaker 1: of Nations, which is where the quote you're introducing comes from.
Speaker 1: But he also wrote this incredibly influential at the time
Speaker 1: book called a Theory of Moral Sentiments, and he was
Speaker 1: actually really deeply interested in exactly the question that you're asking.
Speaker 1: What are the we call them affects or sentiments that
Speaker 1: shape the moral life. And now this is me riffing
Speaker 1: on Emma, but I think it's sort of interesting that
Speaker 1: in Smith's world people still believed that being in commerce
Speaker 1: with other people made you like them more, made you
Speaker 1: feel more connected to them, because relative too, I live
Speaker 1: in my little hamlet, I never leave I grow all
Speaker 1: my own food, I make everything that I make for myself,
Speaker 1: and I therefore never meet the people on the other
Speaker 1: side of the hill. And when I meet them, I
Speaker 1: don't like them, because if I meet them, it's probably
Speaker 1: because they're trying to steal something from me. Relative to
Speaker 1: that world, a world where I go over the hill
Speaker 1: with my goods and the people on the other side
Speaker 1: of the hill come up to the top of the
Speaker 1: hill with their goods and we trade, is a world
Speaker 1: where we have more human contact, more engagement. And I
Speaker 1: think in the seventeen hundreds of people believed with Smith
Speaker 1: that the way I would think about those other people
Speaker 1: with whom I was trading on a daily basis is
Speaker 1: that I liked them because I got to know them
Speaker 1: a little. Yeah, there we go. Then we got, you know,
Speaker 1: fifty years later by the time Marx is looking at
Speaker 1: the same economic situation. By then, big time capitalism has
Speaker 1: come into existence, and we've had the Industrial Revolution much
Speaker 1: beyond what Smith could just glimpse the beginnings of. And
Speaker 1: then at that point Marx is starting to say, look,
Speaker 1: economic relationships are alienated. It's no longer the case that
Speaker 1: I like you, and so now we sort of imagine
Speaker 1: that in the small town everyone knew each other and
Speaker 1: liked each other. But once you go to the big
Speaker 1: city and you have to buy and sell in a
Speaker 1: big store, or you work in a factory, you become
Speaker 1: alienated from the other people, alienated from your labor. And
Speaker 1: I guess my own view is that in the perfect world,
Speaker 1: all of our interactions would enable us to feel a
Speaker 1: little more human connection, a little more human contact. And
Speaker 1: you know, the Internet shows you how complicated this is. Right,
Speaker 1: The Internet both had a promise of nanimity and a
Speaker 1: danger of alienation, and especially with the rise of social media,
Speaker 1: it produces at least the perception of intimacy, and you
Speaker 1: can actually get to know people on the Internet whom
Speaker 1: you wouldn't know otherwise. I look at my kids world.
Speaker 1: They have a much broader acquaintanceship than I did at
Speaker 1: their age, because I basically knew people whom I had met. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they know a lot of people well whom they've
Speaker 1: never they've met them, but they haven't met them in person.
Speaker 1: So I guess, to me, this is the sort of
Speaker 1: thing that's it's always both elements are going to be there.
Speaker 1: We're going to have to interact with you with one another,
Speaker 1: knowing that we have something to gain, that there's something
Speaker 1: kind of quote unquote purely economic about it. But we
Speaker 1: also need to have some sense of human connection and
Speaker 1: if we don't, we are screwed. Well, thank you, and
Speaker 1: that is very helpful. As you were saying that, I
Speaker 1: was thinking often I think our debate is the individual
Speaker 1: or like big groups of people, and what I think
Speaker 1: Mary fall it and what we're talking about is small
Speaker 1: groups of people sitting around a table together, something as
Speaker 1: mundane as your staff meeting on Monday. That is certainly
Speaker 1: where Mary Follett said, that's where a lot of this
Speaker 1: work can happen, because in a crowd you can be lost.
Speaker 1: You're not lost in a group. You are more you
Speaker 1: in a group. You can only really know yourself by
Speaker 1: bumping into working through with other people around you and
Speaker 1: figuring out ways to get people around a table, and
Speaker 1: not to say things that like what unites us is
Speaker 1: greater than what divides us, which is another one of
Speaker 1: these things that everyone nodds their head. I certainly do
Speaker 1: when people say it, because you're supposed to nod your
Speaker 1: head to it. But I don't think it's true. And
Speaker 1: I think all the energy lies indifference. That's where the magic,
Speaker 1: That's where all the energy lives. So let's not be
Speaker 1: afraid of it or sweep it under the carpet. Let's
Speaker 1: deal with it. We'll be right back, Matthew. I want
Speaker 1: to thank you for your service to the country, for
Speaker 1: a fascinating and challenging book, and for a really great
Speaker 1: conversation about power and how we can rethink it in
Speaker 1: more productive ways going forward. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: having me, and thank you for this podcast. And you're
Speaker 1: hitting on crypto we didn't talk about, but all the
Speaker 1: topics you're going through on this podcast are the things
Speaker 1: I'm eager to learn much more about. So I'm a
Speaker 1: big listener and fan too. Thank you. Thanks him. Speaking
Speaker 1: to Matthew about the power of giving away power, I
Speaker 1: was really struck by the paradox that lies at the
Speaker 1: heart of it. On one hand, Matthew is a strong
Speaker 1: advocate of the idea that we need to recognize our
Speaker 1: diversity and our difference in order for power to mean anything,
Speaker 1: and that instinct lies at the heart of his idea
Speaker 1: that we need to diffuse power and spread it out
Speaker 1: to many different people in order for it to function,
Speaker 1: and indeed that doing so will enhance the power and
Speaker 1: authority of the legitimate democratic institutions that do so. That
Speaker 1: insight seems to be correct, and it is, after all,
Speaker 1: the basic insight on which all democracy is built. Democracy is,
Speaker 1: after all, the very idea that collective rules should take
Speaker 1: place collectively rather than from the dominant center. Yet, at
Speaker 1: the same time, as Matthew acknowledges and indeed points out,
Speaker 1: in a world where we are tremendously diverse, and where
Speaker 1: power is sent out to many, many different people, there
Speaker 1: is a real risk that our divisions will become so
Speaker 1: significant that we will no longer be able to make
Speaker 1: collective decisions, and a glance at the US political system
Speaker 1: over the last five or six years suggests that we
Speaker 1: may actually be in such a period. Indeed, in other
Speaker 1: historical moments, political division might have given way to common
Speaker 1: feeling when we face something like the COVID pandemic, But
Speaker 1: in our profoundly politicized era, it seems as though even
Speaker 1: existential threat to our lives is not enough to pull
Speaker 1: us together. As we've come to understand and construe the
Speaker 1: pandemic in politicized terms and in polarized terms, making it
Speaker 1: harder and harder for polarization to go away. In this conversation,
Speaker 1: I don't think that either Matthew or I solved this paradox,
Speaker 1: and perhaps it's a paradox that can't be perfectly solved.
Speaker 1: Like Matthew, I have a lot of faith in our
Speaker 1: capacities to pull together as a country eventually. Yet that said,
Speaker 1: I don't have a simple solution to how we get there,
Speaker 1: other than living through the realities of our divisions and
Speaker 1: trying to slowly and gently make our way back towards
Speaker 1: the middle. I think that's the kind of aspiration that
Speaker 1: Matthew has, and to me, it makes his political vision
Speaker 1: immensely attractive and interesting, and it makes him a person
Speaker 1: who's worth watching going forward, not just for the ways
Speaker 1: he's deployed power in the PAS, but for the takeaways
Speaker 1: and lessons that it's led him to reach. Until the
Speaker 1: next time I speak to you here on Deep Background,
Speaker 1: breathe deep, think deep thoughts, and have some fun. Deep
Speaker 1: Background is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. Our producer
Speaker 1: is Mola Board, our engineer is ben Toalliday, and our
Speaker 1: showrunner is Sophie Crane. Mckibbon. Editorial support from noahm Osband.
Speaker 1: Theme music by Luis Gara at Pushkin, thanks to Mia Lobell,
Speaker 1: Julia Barton, Lydia Jeancott, Heather Faine, Carlie Migliori, Maggie Taylor,
Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, and Jacob Weisberg. You can find me on
Speaker 1: Twitter at Noah R. Feldman. I also write a column
Speaker 1: from Bloomberg Opinion, which you can find at Bloomberg dot
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