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Speaker 1: On this episode of News World, the United States faces

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Speaker 1: dangerous threats from Russia, China, North Korea, Haran, terrorist climate change,

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Speaker 1: and future pandemics. The greatest peril to the country, however,

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Speaker 1: comes not from abroad, but from within, from none other

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Speaker 1: than ourselves. The question facing us is whether we are

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Speaker 1: prepared to do what is necessary to save our democracy.

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Speaker 1: In his new book The Bill of Obligations The Ten

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Speaker 1: Habits of Good Citizens, New York Times bestselling author Richard

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Speaker 1: Hass calls for bold change. He argues that the very

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Speaker 1: idea of citizenship must be revised and expanded, and makes

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Speaker 1: his case for what he considers obligations for American citizens.

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Speaker 1: Here to talk about his book, I'm really pleased to

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Speaker 1: welcome my guest and old friend, doctor Richard Hass. He

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Speaker 1: is the president of the Nonpartisan Council and Foreign Relations

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Speaker 1: and experienced diplomat and policymakers. Served in the Pentagon State

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Speaker 1: Department of White House under four presidents Democrat and Republican alike.

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Speaker 1: A recipient of the Presidential Citizens Medal, the State Department's

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Speaker 1: Distinguished Honor Award, and the Temporary International Peace Award, is

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Speaker 1: the author or editor of fifteen other books. Including the

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Speaker 1: best selling The World, A brief introduction, a World in Disarray,

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Speaker 1: and Foreign Policy Begins at Home. Richard, Welcome and thank

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Speaker 1: you for joining me on News World. Thank you, mister speaker.

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Speaker 1: It's always good to be with you. Well, first, I

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Speaker 1: just want to congratulate you as a fellow author. The

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Speaker 1: Bill of Obligations is number ten in the New York

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Speaker 1: Times Nonfiction bestseller list this week, and that is a

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Speaker 1: remarkable achievement for a book that's that serious. Well, thank you.

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure how much critic goes to me and

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Speaker 1: how much it actually says about what's out there in

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Speaker 1: the sense, I think the book is gaining some traction

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Speaker 1: or resonating. And I don't know what your experience has been,

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Speaker 1: axpect we'll talk about it. But my senses, a lot

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Speaker 1: of Americans buy into the premise that they loved this country,

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Speaker 1: but they're worried about some of the things that are

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Speaker 1: going on. They're not as confident about our future as

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Speaker 1: they'd like to be. So I think the book is

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Speaker 1: tapping into something. Yeah, I think you're right. I think

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Speaker 1: there are a lot of people now searching for answers

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Speaker 1: because they feel troubled about where we are. Before we

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Speaker 1: get to the book, let me go back to your

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Speaker 1: own career. You've really had a pretty remarkable background. How

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Speaker 1: did you get into this, this being the book or

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Speaker 1: this being my career your career. I don't know about you,

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Speaker 1: but I haven't planned or designed a lot in my life.

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Speaker 1: I've sort of what happens while you're thinking about what

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Speaker 1: you're going to do next. I came of age in

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Speaker 1: the sixties. The big public debate was Vietnam. I went

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Speaker 1: off to college and when I got to college, which

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Speaker 1: was a liberal arts college in Ohio or Berlin, I

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Speaker 1: went around campus and I said, who's the most interesting

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Speaker 1: And people said that's this professor, Professor Frank And I

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Speaker 1: said that's great. What does he teach? And they said

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Speaker 1: New Testament? And I laughed that. I said, we never

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Speaker 1: got around to that one in our house. But I'm

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Speaker 1: game for anything. So I took the course, and I

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Speaker 1: expect you've seen great professors can make a subject come alive.

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Speaker 1: He was fantastic, and at the end of the semester,

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Speaker 1: he said, why didn't you come to the Middle East

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Speaker 1: this summer do some archaeology? So I did did a

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Speaker 1: dig I spent my junior year abroad in the Middle East.

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Speaker 1: Then essentially I was launched on this trajectory. I got

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Speaker 1: a degree in Middle Eastern studies, then in international relations.

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Speaker 1: After I did a post doc at a think tank

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Speaker 1: in London, and literally while there, some people were from

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Speaker 1: the Carter Pentagon, So this is nineteen seventy seven or eight,

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Speaker 1: and they said, you seem like a pretty bright guy.

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Speaker 1: Why didn't you come get some government experience, come work

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Speaker 1: at the Pentagon? And I got there, and in the

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Speaker 1: timing is a lot in life newde So I got

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Speaker 1: there in the summer of seventy nine. Six months later,

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Speaker 1: you had two big events. You had the revolution in

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Speaker 1: Iran and you had the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. I

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Speaker 1: was probably one of the very few, if not the only,

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Speaker 1: person there who had recently been to both Afghanistan and Iran.

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Speaker 1: I'd been there within the last six months, and I

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Speaker 1: wrote my doctorate on that part of the world. So,

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Speaker 1: you know, one thing happened after another after another. I've

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Speaker 1: been incredibly blessed doing interesting things my whole career. You

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Speaker 1: served in the State Department at a pretty senior level,

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Speaker 1: You've served in the Defense Department. Those are two culturally

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Speaker 1: very different places. As you look back on it, what's

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Speaker 1: your sense of those two bureaucracies. It's an interesting question.

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Speaker 1: The Pentagon, which I served first, a more orderly place

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Speaker 1: in some ways. This one experience, we were trying to

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Speaker 1: get civilian oversight of the operational war plans and Bob Comer,

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Speaker 1: so called Blowtorch Bob, who was the number three guys,

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Speaker 1: the first Undersecretary of Defense. I worked directly for him,

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Speaker 1: and he was basically saying, you go get involved in

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Speaker 1: these And finally some colonel sat me down and he said,

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Speaker 1: doctor Haas, you may be a decent guy, you may

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Speaker 1: be a pretty smart guy, but you're what we call

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Speaker 1: Christmas help. I said, what do you mean? And he said,

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Speaker 1: you're here what for a couple of years. Civilians come

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Speaker 1: and go, this is our career. No way you're going

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Speaker 1: to get involved in our war platting. But look, people

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Speaker 1: were incredibly serious, incredibly respectful. I found the military really

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Speaker 1: intellectually open in many ways. I enjoyed my work with him.

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Speaker 1: I actually found that one of the more satisfying experiences

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Speaker 1: I've ever had. I've had the State Department more frustrating.

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Speaker 1: For the most part, Foreign Service officers with very few exceptions,

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Speaker 1: I didn't find as creative as I would have hoped.

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Speaker 1: A lot of them were more comfortable with reporting than,

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Speaker 1: if you will, innovating their own thinking. A lot more

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Speaker 1: time in the State Department went into the bureaucratics, because

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Speaker 1: the State Department, as you know, is constructed with so

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Speaker 1: many overlapping juristics it's almost designed to frustrate. So I

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Speaker 1: found the Pentagon more satisfying. Though I've got to say,

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Speaker 1: out of everything I've ever done, with the four years

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Speaker 1: I spent at the White House on the National Security Council,

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure if it was because of the venue,

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Speaker 1: of the people I worked with or the administration I

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Speaker 1: was in, which was Father Bush. But that was by

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Speaker 1: far the best professional experience I had, and that gave

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Speaker 1: you a chance Storical Skolcroft didn't it. Absolutely. I worked

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Speaker 1: with Skolcroft, I worked with Gates, I worked with forty

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Speaker 1: one a lot. I was the chief Middle East, South Asia,

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Speaker 1: Persian Gulf person on the staff, so obviously, among other things,

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Speaker 1: when Saddam Hussein decided to invade Kuwait in the summer

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Speaker 1: of ninety that fell in my inbox. So it gave

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Speaker 1: me a chance to work very closely with what I

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Speaker 1: thought was an extraordinary bunch of people. And you also

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Speaker 1: had Jim Baker at State, Dick Cheney at Defense, Colin

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Speaker 1: Powell was chairman, Larry Eagelberger was the Deputy Secretary. I mean,

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Speaker 1: not too shabby talk about a talented administration. You were,

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Speaker 1: in a sense, right in the cockpit of the administration's

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Speaker 1: greatest concerns. I was again fortunate, And I remember early

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Speaker 1: on in the administration, although focus was on Europe the

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Speaker 1: end of the Cold War, I was bored. I was restless,

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Speaker 1: and I kept coming in and complaining to Scocroft that

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Speaker 1: I didn't have enough to do. The Middle East peace process,

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Speaker 1: as we used to call it, was as always going

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Speaker 1: nowhere slowly, and I was frustrated. And then suddenly things

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Speaker 1: got extraordinarily interesting, just became the first real test of

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Speaker 1: what we now called the post Cold War world. It

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Speaker 1: was about as interesting and I think, as important as

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Speaker 1: things get in Governor. I actually think also the president

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Speaker 1: forty one, he and his team handled it. I thought

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Speaker 1: remarkably well. Was it a big surprise when Saddam took

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Speaker 1: over Kuwait? Yes, I mean we all thought when he

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Speaker 1: was posturing with his forces, building them up on the

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Speaker 1: border in the summer of ninety late July. We thought

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Speaker 1: it was just that I was almost to use an

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Speaker 1: academic it was almost an example of gunboat diplomacy. He's

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Speaker 1: building up. We've all thought it was trying to pressure

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Speaker 1: Kuwait to get them to stop pumping so much oil,

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Speaker 1: to agree to the price increases that Saddam wanted. He

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Speaker 1: was hurting economically after the decade long war with Iran,

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Speaker 1: and so we thought he was just simply there muscling Kuwait.

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Speaker 1: And it only became about the last twenty four or

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Speaker 1: thirty six hours that he was doing way, way, way

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Speaker 1: more than he would have needed to simply coerce, and

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Speaker 1: that's when it became clear that he was going in.

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Speaker 1: So you also had a remarkable opportunity when you chaired

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Speaker 1: the multi party negotiations in Northern Ireland which created the

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Speaker 1: foundation for the twenty fourteen storm on House Agreement. I

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Speaker 1: have some interest in this because as speaker, as you know,

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Speaker 1: every year you celebrate St Patrick's Day and the tea

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Speaker 1: shock comes from Ireland and all that, and I actually

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Speaker 1: hosted the first meeting in which both the Protestants and

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Speaker 1: chin Fain were in the same room. But another that

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Speaker 1: used to be the hottest ticket of Washington, the Speaker's lunch.

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Speaker 1: That's Saint Patrick's day. I always had guinness from the Dubliner.

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Speaker 1: It was always a wonderful moment. But literally they sat

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Speaker 1: at separate tables, but they were in the room and

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Speaker 1: was considered at the time sort of a minor breakthrough

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Speaker 1: and ultimately became normal and Northern Ireland. You know, I

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Speaker 1: did it twice. I was three years the us ON.

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Speaker 1: I was George Mitchell's successor, so did that from two

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Speaker 1: thousand and one to three. And the big emphasis there

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Speaker 1: that was right after the Good Friday Agreement or the

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Speaker 1: Belfast Agreement, which by the way, we're going to note

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Speaker 1: the twenty fifth anniversary of this march. And then the

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Speaker 1: goal was to try to get them to disarm and

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Speaker 1: so forth. But a moment I went back when you

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Speaker 1: mentioned the Answer Party talks about a decade ago. The

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Speaker 1: big issues were, more than anything else, was trying to

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Speaker 1: get the various parties to deal with the legacy of

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Speaker 1: the past. You had had the three decades of the troubles,

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Speaker 1: and there were thousands of crimes that had never been resolved.

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Speaker 1: You had over what thirty five hundred or so deaths

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Speaker 1: as a result of the political violence, and the whole

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Speaker 1: question was could you get a society to deal with

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Speaker 1: a lot of the unre resolve questions and issues. Turned

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Speaker 1: out no, we couldn't. Finally they agreed a year later,

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Speaker 1: but then they've never implemented it. It was a learning

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Speaker 1: experience how difficult it is for societies to often deal

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Speaker 1: with difficult issues in the past, and we try to

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Speaker 1: get some other things done, and again it was easier

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Speaker 1: to do in principle rather than in practice. I guess

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Speaker 1: the good news is that violence has become relatively rare

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Speaker 1: in Northern Ireland. The bad news is local political institutions

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Speaker 1: aren't working and it's one of the most segregated societies

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Speaker 1: in the world. It's interesting to the phrase integrated education.

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Speaker 1: There has nothing to do with race. It's religion and

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Speaker 1: maybe ten percent of those school kids go to joint

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Speaker 1: traditions schools where Protestants and Catholics get educated, but the

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Speaker 1: neighborhoods are still very separate. The experiences are still very

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Speaker 1: separate in Northern Ireland. When I want to speaker, it

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Speaker 1: was very stark to have neighborhoods that were literally cut

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Speaker 1: in half by walls, and we're necessary because the level

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Speaker 1: of hostility was so staggery. Now you're right. Then that

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Speaker 1: had the Orwellian term of peace walls, the massive granite walls,

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Speaker 1: cement block walls with concertina wire. Somehow calling them peace

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Speaker 1: walls always struck me as one of the oddities. You've

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Speaker 1: commented that there was a period in the late seventies

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Speaker 1: starting with your graduate work at Oxford where you studied

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Speaker 1: more history. You read Souls and Eats, and you had

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Speaker 1: a sense of the British labor parties not being functionally

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Speaker 1: very effective, and then the rise of Thatcher, Who's I

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Speaker 1: think with Reagan and Pope John Paulo second, among the

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Speaker 1: remarkable figures of that era. How did all that affect you?

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Speaker 1: It really shook me up. It threw me. I grew

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Speaker 1: up in New York, went to school at Orble, and

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Speaker 1: so not surprisingly I came out of a very liberal background.

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Speaker 1: Vietnam was the defining issue of my generation. I was

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Speaker 1: too young for civil rights to have been a defining issue,

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Speaker 1: but Vietnam was. And then when I went to Oxford,

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Speaker 1: one as I studied an enormous amount of history. I

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Speaker 1: had an unbelievably rich, fortunate experience. The people I worked with.

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Speaker 1: I don't know if these names will meet think Alister

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Speaker 1: Bach and Michael Howard, Albert Harani, I mean talk about

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Speaker 1: being fortunate. And I realized there was a lot more

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Speaker 1: to history than what I had seen firsthand in my

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Speaker 1: own life. The Soldier Niets and Critique was very powerful

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Speaker 1: for me to read about what authoritarianism was really like

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Speaker 1: and what it meant in terms of the destruction of

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Speaker 1: lives and the removal of freedoms and choices. I mean,

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Speaker 1: how could you not read that? For me, it was

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Speaker 1: an eye opener about the realities of communism and the

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Speaker 1: Soviet system. I was still very young, and I was

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Speaker 1: in my early twenties. And then you had in Britain

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Speaker 1: the Labor Party, the labor unions took over the Labor

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Speaker 1: Party and went far, far, far left, and you had

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Speaker 1: people like Michael Foote, Arthur Scargo. These were essentially fellow

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Speaker 1: travelers or worse, and really were I mean here we

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Speaker 1: used the word socialism here in a rather loose way.

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Speaker 1: There was nothing loose about it. It was literal. And

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Speaker 1: Thatcher came along and unlike some of the other Tories

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Speaker 1: who she ultimately I think decided were fairly wet. For

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Speaker 1: some she was dogmatic, whatever, But I just thought she

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Speaker 1: was principled, and I thought she wasn't so much speaking

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Speaker 1: truth to power, but she spoke truth to public. And

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Speaker 1: she basically was incredibly intellectually honest. She didn't worry if

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Speaker 1: she was unfashionable in certain ways. And it just basically

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Speaker 1: shook my intellectual world and shook my political world, and

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Speaker 1: it made me realize the background they came out of

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Speaker 1: was wildly incomplete in what I knew and in its assumption.

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Speaker 1: So that's where I took a major turn, and I,

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Speaker 1: by the way, became a Republican for the next what

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Speaker 1: you know, thirty five forty years. You are quintessentially a centrist.

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Speaker 1: As I think of your whole career and I think

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Speaker 1: of your role in public life, you've tried to be

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Speaker 1: a very balanced person who fostered dialogue rather than in fighting. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think it's true. I'm not particularly ideological, for bitter

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Speaker 1: or worse, I tend to be really analytical and I

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Speaker 1: tend not to be at home. And I tell the

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Speaker 1: fellows who worked for me here at the Council and

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Speaker 1: fire relations. Don't spend your time ascribing motives, don't spend

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Speaker 1: your time attacking people. Just dig into ideas to get

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Speaker 1: into prescriptions. And I try to live by that, and

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Speaker 1: I voted for people in the course of my life

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Speaker 1: in both parties. If anything, I'm probably a classic liberal.

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Speaker 1: If I had a sort of or possibly a Burkean conservative,

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Speaker 1: you know, we can play with the labels. But either way,

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Speaker 1: I guess I'm a little bit old fashioned. Schlessinger wrote

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Speaker 1: a small book sort of defending classical liberalism in a sense,

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Speaker 1: which at one time was the dominant political philosophy in the

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Speaker 1: the United States. It was. Indeed, I think it comes

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Speaker 1: very close. You know, this is a country, as actually

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Speaker 1: President Biden mentioned in These the Union, that this is

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Speaker 1: a country founded on an idea, and I actually think

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Speaker 1: the ideas are very much classically liberal. We didn't always

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Speaker 1: necessarily live up to them. About the worth of individuals, freedom, opportunity,

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Speaker 1: those kinds of words I actually think are very close

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Speaker 1: to our DNA here. This has been in some ways

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Speaker 1: the most remarkable country and history in terms of attracting

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Speaker 1: people from everywhere, creating enormous levels of wealth, and yet

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Speaker 1: in my lifetime I watched us sort of reached a

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Speaker 1: peak of belief in ourselves and then just begin to

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Speaker 1: internally devour ourselves and begin to question almost everything. And

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Speaker 1: some recent polls, it's pretty sobering, particularly for younger people,

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Speaker 1: how much the depth of commitment to America and the

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Speaker 1: depth of commitment to what we would have thought of

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Speaker 1: as patriotism has grown more shallow. Why do you think

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Speaker 1: that's happened? Well, when I think you're objectively correct, and

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Speaker 1: you see it in the polls, and I hear it

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Speaker 1: in conversations, and I think, like you, I'm distressed by it.

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Speaker 1: It wasn't something I saw as coming. I think there's

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Speaker 1: a number of reasons. One is our educational systems really

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Speaker 1: poor in many ways. If we don't teach people about

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Speaker 1: our history and whatever, all of our flaws to many wonderful,

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Speaker 1: extraordinary things we've accomplished, If we don't point out some

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Speaker 1: of the flaws of other ways of organizing societies and governments,

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Speaker 1: why do we think people are going to necessarily know

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Speaker 1: those things that One of the analogies I use in

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Speaker 1: the book I'm Jewish is the experience of passover Jews

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Speaker 1: gather every spring to celebrate Passover, the story of the

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Speaker 1: exodus from Egypt. But there's a commandment in the prayer

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Speaker 1: book for Passover literally called the telling, that's the English

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Speaker 1: translation of it, where we have the obligation to tell

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Speaker 1: the story, so generations understand what's the core, what's the

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Speaker 1: dna of being Jewish? And this was essential for Jews

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Speaker 1: in particular, because so often in their history they or

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Speaker 1: we in my case, have been deprived of access to

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Speaker 1: holy places because of persecution or whatever. And what I

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Speaker 1: like about the ideas it says, don't take for granted

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Speaker 1: that your narrative is somehow known or passed on. You've

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Speaker 1: got to make it a conscious act, and I think

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Speaker 1: we in America have failed to do it. The demise

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Speaker 1: of civics in a lot of our public schools is

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Speaker 1: part of the problem. The fact that you can graduate

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Speaker 1: from almost any college in the country, and even though

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Speaker 1: these courses may be offered, they're not required, and most

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Speaker 1: students don't take them. I think that's part of it.

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Speaker 1: I think the end of the draft had something to

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Speaker 1: do with it. Newton, and more broadly, the lack of

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Speaker 1: common experiences in this country. I mean, you and I

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Speaker 1: again are roughly the same generation. I remember the debates

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Speaker 1: about melting versus mixing pots. I actually think we have

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Speaker 1: something different now, which is separate pots. And people live

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Speaker 1: in this geography, go to this church, go to this school,

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Speaker 1: watch this cable station, listen to this radio, and may

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Speaker 1: have very little interaction with someone from a different class,

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Speaker 1: or a different educational background, or a different part of

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Speaker 1: the country, or a different religion or a different color.

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Speaker 1: I just think we're much more separate. So for lots

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Speaker 1: of reasons, I feel that we don't understand our own inheritance,

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Speaker 1: we don't value it, and we no longer have nearly

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Speaker 1: as much common experience. And I probably started to go

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Speaker 1: on solong. I probably see one other thing. I think

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Speaker 1: in recent decades, for a lot of Americans, the American

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Speaker 1: dream has not proven real. A lot of people have

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Speaker 1: seen their standards of living stagnate. They're resentful about what

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Speaker 1: they don't have. It's all the makings of populism. The

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Speaker 1: Iran and Iraq Wars where elites were seen to have

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Speaker 1: let a lot of quote unquote average Americans down. So

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Speaker 1: I think for all these reasons, the populism is stronger

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Speaker 1: in support for democracy is weaker. You're concerned about this

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Speaker 1: led you to write the Bill of Obligations, which I

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Speaker 1: think is a fabulous concept. How did that conceptualize for you?

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Speaker 1: How to come together as a way of communicating. I

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Speaker 1: don't know how you write your books. I walk a lot. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I once read Isaac Bishevik Singer once said a writer's

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Speaker 1: best friend is his waste paper basket. You gotta get

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Speaker 1: rid of stuff. You're right for me, it was also walking.

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Speaker 1: That's probably my sneakers, just thinking about where we'd going wrong.

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Speaker 1: It's in some ways a longer answer to the question.

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Speaker 1: Just gave me where things went wrong. And I just

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Speaker 1: started thinking about a lot of what was going on

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Speaker 1: in our society and the focus on rights, and I

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Speaker 1: get it, and I understand why rights are so fundamental

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Speaker 1: to democracy. Indeed, it's almost a word association. You mentioned

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Speaker 1: the word democracy, I'd probably say rights or freedoms. But

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Speaker 1: then I started looking at our political debates and increasingly

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Speaker 1: it was right versus right. I read a quote from

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Speaker 1: Steve Bryer then on the Court and Justice. Bryer said

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Speaker 1: that most of the tough cases they have to handle

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Speaker 1: are basically just that it's rights versus rights, and they

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Speaker 1: gave me a really interesting the more I started looking

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Speaker 1: at it and started reading some philosophy about it, that

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Speaker 1: societies that just thought about rights ultimately would not succeed.

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Speaker 1: We needed some ways of navigating or bridging when rights

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Speaker 1: came into conflict with one another. January six obviously shook

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Speaker 1: me up. It told me that something was seriously, seriously wrong,

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Speaker 1: and that's what got me launched on this you know,

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Speaker 1: with real intensity, got me launched on this book. I'll

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Speaker 1: be honest with you. I never thought I was going

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Speaker 1: to write this book. I'm a foreign policy guy. That's

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Speaker 1: kind of who I am, and here I am, I'm

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Speaker 1: writing this book. It was really again goes back to

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Speaker 1: what I think I mentioned before. You know, life's what

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Speaker 1: happens while you're planning it. Well, this is what happened

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Speaker 1: while I was planning it. How did you come to ten?

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Speaker 1: It was about like that. I'd love to give you

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Speaker 1: a really learned, philosophical substitutive answer, but it was some

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Speaker 1: about eight or nine same, really really bad. Eleven seemed ridiculous,

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Speaker 1: So I started playing with it, and ten seemed about right.

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Speaker 1: Did you think through all ten before you began writing. No,

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Speaker 1: I thought through some of them. It was more of

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Speaker 1: a progression, and I just kept thinking about it. Again.

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Speaker 1: I don't know how you write, but for me, the

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Speaker 1: process of writing is it's aided by modern technology. You know,

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Speaker 1: when I wrote my first stuff forty fifty years ago,

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Speaker 1: doing a draft was an enormous undertaking. Yeah, I did

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Speaker 1: it on manual typewriters, and if you wanted to make changes,

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Speaker 1: it was a massive show. We say loss of time.

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Speaker 1: With modern software, it's very easy, it's very iterative. And

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Speaker 1: just kept working in and a lot of it was

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Speaker 1: just thinking what we as citizens had to think about,

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Speaker 1: and some of it was obvious. I started combining some

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Speaker 1: and separating it became pretty clear. What's interesting. The book's

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Speaker 1: been out now for a couple of weeks. No one

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Speaker 1: has yet come to me and said, you really miss something.

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Speaker 1: Maybe I have. I'm not ruling that out, but no

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Speaker 1: one said, how could you write this book about obligations

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Speaker 1: and less ten and not having mentioned this? And that's

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Speaker 1: yet to happen to me. But just maybe I stumbled

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Speaker 1: on what seemed to be ten pretty basic building blocks,

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Speaker 1: if you will, of democracy. To what extent was your

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Speaker 1: sense of obligations reference in your mind back to John F.

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Speaker 1: Kennedy's inaugural address. That was one of the early thing

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Speaker 1: I reread Profiles and Courage, which was quite interesting, and

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Speaker 1: Kennedy both lauds people who compromise when compromise was controversial

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Speaker 1: and people who refused to compromise when that was the

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Speaker 1: principal thing to do, which I found untreating. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: I was surprised by how far are we come in?

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Speaker 1: And again I don't want to make the book. How

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Speaker 1: would I put political in certain ways? But I thought

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Speaker 1: during the Trump years and the rest, there wasn't enough

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Speaker 1: thinking about what I would call putting country first. I

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Speaker 1: thought that something had gone wrong with our collective character,

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Speaker 1: and I thought, by the way, Donald Trump was as

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Speaker 1: much a reflection of that as he was a driver

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Speaker 1: of it. And again, this is someone who was a

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Speaker 1: Republican for over four decades. So the Kennedy thing, it's interesting.

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Speaker 1: The other day I was on TV talking about the

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Speaker 1: book and they showed some tapes of Kennedy speaking as

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Speaker 1: an ordgirl address at all that it was fantastic, the

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Speaker 1: quality of the oratory thanks to the soar and sinsence,

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Speaker 1: lessingers and they're asked, I understand, but still it was

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Speaker 1: quite remarkable. Well, I think it was also Kennedy. I

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Speaker 1: think Kennedy had a stylistic intuition that almost doesn't matter

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Speaker 1: which of his speeches you listen to. He's really parallel

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Speaker 1: to Reagan in that sense that he understood how to

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Speaker 1: draw an audience in I think I probably quoted Reagan

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Speaker 1: more than any other former president in this book. Some

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Speaker 1: of his things. One of the great things I did

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Speaker 1: in this book, I've never done it before. I read

429
00:23:39,080 --> 00:23:41,399
Speaker 1: all the inaugural speeches of the presidents. I read the

430
00:23:41,440 --> 00:23:44,040
Speaker 1: farewell addresses of the presidents. For me, what was so

431
00:23:44,119 --> 00:23:46,080
Speaker 1: much fun about this book is when I write foreign

432
00:23:46,080 --> 00:23:50,480
Speaker 1: policy books, I'm basically involved in real estate that I'm

433
00:23:50,480 --> 00:23:52,879
Speaker 1: pretty familiar with, and I have to just get a

434
00:23:52,920 --> 00:23:56,240
Speaker 1: little bit more refined or dig deeper. So much of

435
00:23:56,280 --> 00:23:58,000
Speaker 1: this was new to me in the sense either I'd

436
00:23:58,040 --> 00:23:59,480
Speaker 1: never done it, or I hadn't done it in forty

437
00:23:59,520 --> 00:24:04,080
Speaker 1: or fifty years. Rereading the Federalist reading the Articles of Confederation,

438
00:24:04,160 --> 00:24:06,040
Speaker 1: I don't know the last time you have read the

439
00:24:06,160 --> 00:24:10,119
Speaker 1: Articles of Confederation, my Lord, Why anyone on the planet

440
00:24:10,160 --> 00:24:12,800
Speaker 1: would have thought that was a viable design for a

441
00:24:12,840 --> 00:24:18,640
Speaker 1: government totally escapes me. And this reading all these speeches,

442
00:24:18,680 --> 00:24:22,600
Speaker 1: reading a lot of Supreme Court decisions, the richness of

443
00:24:22,640 --> 00:24:25,639
Speaker 1: some of the rhetorics, some of our intellectual history, I

444
00:24:25,720 --> 00:24:29,320
Speaker 1: found this, in some ways the most exciting research I've

445
00:24:29,359 --> 00:24:31,879
Speaker 1: done in years. It's actually you mentioned in the Articles

446
00:24:31,880 --> 00:24:36,800
Speaker 1: of Confederation. It's easy to forget that the founders, many

447
00:24:36,840 --> 00:24:41,000
Speaker 1: of them, were as fearful of too strong a government

448
00:24:41,320 --> 00:24:44,600
Speaker 1: as they were of Great Britain, and that there's actually

449
00:24:44,600 --> 00:24:46,760
Speaker 1: a faction, maybe as much as forty percent of the

450
00:24:46,800 --> 00:24:50,280
Speaker 1: Continental Congress that wants to get rid of Washington halfway

451
00:24:50,320 --> 00:24:52,359
Speaker 1: through the war because they're afraid he is going to

452
00:24:52,400 --> 00:24:56,360
Speaker 1: become Cromwell and establish a dictatorship. Here's this poor guy

453
00:24:56,680 --> 00:24:59,119
Speaker 1: desperately trying to take on the greatest empire in the world,

454
00:24:59,320 --> 00:25:02,439
Speaker 1: and behind almost half of his team is going, we

455
00:25:02,440 --> 00:25:05,240
Speaker 1: don't want him to be too strong one hundred percent.

456
00:25:05,280 --> 00:25:08,560
Speaker 1: And you look at the anti federalist literature and the heroes,

457
00:25:08,600 --> 00:25:11,159
Speaker 1: the people we grew up with reading his kids, so

458
00:25:11,280 --> 00:25:14,320
Speaker 1: like the Patrick Henrys and all that, who were vehemently

459
00:25:14,400 --> 00:25:17,360
Speaker 1: against what they thought was this new tyranny we were

460
00:25:17,359 --> 00:25:20,680
Speaker 1: creating under the Constitution, which by the way, is obviously

461
00:25:20,720 --> 00:25:23,320
Speaker 1: what led to the Bill of Rights. That was one

462
00:25:23,359 --> 00:25:27,520
Speaker 1: of the first deals that okay, for certain states to

463
00:25:27,640 --> 00:25:31,440
Speaker 1: sign on to ratify the proposed constitution. They basically said,

464
00:25:31,480 --> 00:25:35,520
Speaker 1: we'll do it conditionally, and we've got to put certain limits,

465
00:25:35,520 --> 00:25:38,119
Speaker 1: and we've got to preserve certain prerogatives for states in

466
00:25:38,119 --> 00:25:41,120
Speaker 1: particular also for individuals. But what you say is exactly right.

467
00:25:41,440 --> 00:25:43,760
Speaker 1: The articles may have been too weak, but there was

468
00:25:43,800 --> 00:25:46,320
Speaker 1: an enormous faction that was worried that the new government

469
00:25:46,359 --> 00:25:48,359
Speaker 1: was going to be too strong. Well, and of course

470
00:25:48,480 --> 00:25:51,800
Speaker 1: you have with Jefferson, who is sitting in France and

471
00:25:51,840 --> 00:25:57,120
Speaker 1: I think beginning to sense the dangers of tutolitarianism, who

472
00:25:57,160 --> 00:25:59,520
Speaker 1: basically comes back and says, look, I will oppose the

473
00:25:59,600 --> 00:26:04,000
Speaker 1: Constitution unless you adopt a Bill of rights. I suspect,

474
00:26:04,160 --> 00:26:08,440
Speaker 1: given his prestige, had Jefferson joined Patrick Henry, the Constitution

475
00:26:08,480 --> 00:26:12,240
Speaker 1: could not have been adopted. Quite possibly, And Madison turns

476
00:26:12,240 --> 00:26:14,600
Speaker 1: out to have been critical in this. It's interesting Madison

477
00:26:14,680 --> 00:26:16,760
Speaker 1: the others were against the Bill of Rights early on

478
00:26:16,800 --> 00:26:19,280
Speaker 1: for lots of reasons. One of them, it's almost the

479
00:26:19,320 --> 00:26:21,440
Speaker 1: old red line thing. If you remember, whenever you say

480
00:26:21,480 --> 00:26:24,359
Speaker 1: here's a red line, don't cross it. People say, well,

481
00:26:24,400 --> 00:26:26,360
Speaker 1: we have to be careful. Does that mean if they

482
00:26:26,400 --> 00:26:28,800
Speaker 1: do everything and anything up to that red line, we're

483
00:26:28,800 --> 00:26:30,840
Speaker 1: going to live with it? And that's almost how people

484
00:26:30,840 --> 00:26:33,120
Speaker 1: felt about a bill of rights. Well, if we enumerate

485
00:26:33,200 --> 00:26:35,880
Speaker 1: these rights, what about other things? And if we don't

486
00:26:36,000 --> 00:26:38,560
Speaker 1: enumerate them, does that mean they don't exist? It was

487
00:26:38,560 --> 00:26:39,960
Speaker 1: a close call, by the way. That was the other

488
00:26:39,960 --> 00:26:41,679
Speaker 1: thing that comes through when I reread a lot of

489
00:26:41,680 --> 00:26:45,440
Speaker 1: the history. History always looks so inevitable when you look

490
00:26:45,520 --> 00:26:48,160
Speaker 1: back on it, and you generalized there was nothing inevitable

491
00:26:48,280 --> 00:26:50,800
Speaker 1: about this whatsoever, which in a way it should give

492
00:26:50,840 --> 00:26:54,560
Speaker 1: us optimism about the future. I agree. I'm an anti inevitableist,

493
00:26:54,640 --> 00:26:56,760
Speaker 1: if such a word exists. I don't know what your

494
00:26:56,800 --> 00:26:59,479
Speaker 1: experience has been, and we talked about some of mine before,

495
00:27:00,240 --> 00:27:03,520
Speaker 1: but I've been in situations you mentioned what Saddam Hussein

496
00:27:03,600 --> 00:27:05,919
Speaker 1: did with Kuwait, or certain things with the end of

497
00:27:05,920 --> 00:27:08,680
Speaker 1: the cold, where any other crises I've been involved within government,

498
00:27:08,920 --> 00:27:11,760
Speaker 1: it wasn't inevitable. We either did or didn't do certain things.

499
00:27:12,040 --> 00:27:14,600
Speaker 1: It actually turns out that a relatively small number of

500
00:27:14,680 --> 00:27:18,040
Speaker 1: individuals can have an outsize impact on history. You mentioned Reagan,

501
00:27:18,080 --> 00:27:21,240
Speaker 1: remember the air traffic controller strike? How many other presidents

502
00:27:21,240 --> 00:27:24,680
Speaker 1: would have done that? You mentioned Thatcher with the miners

503
00:27:24,720 --> 00:27:26,800
Speaker 1: or what have you. I'm so old fashed. I actually

504
00:27:26,880 --> 00:27:29,119
Speaker 1: believe in the great man or woman theory of history

505
00:27:29,160 --> 00:27:31,840
Speaker 1: a little bit. It's very little that's baked into the cake.

506
00:27:31,920 --> 00:27:34,840
Speaker 1: Maybe the cake limits the ranger choices to some extent,

507
00:27:35,359 --> 00:27:38,600
Speaker 1: but individuals matter to an extraordinary dure. And that does

508
00:27:38,680 --> 00:27:42,360
Speaker 1: give me optimism. Whenever I hear people getting too pessimists

509
00:27:42,400 --> 00:27:45,040
Speaker 1: and say, oh, you know, we're cooked, I say, no,

510
00:27:45,240 --> 00:27:47,959
Speaker 1: not at all. Things can and probably will change, hopefully

511
00:27:48,000 --> 00:27:51,280
Speaker 1: for the better. It's sort of like certain people are

512
00:27:51,520 --> 00:27:56,360
Speaker 1: eruptions from the norm. The gerald Ford Republicanism could never

513
00:27:56,400 --> 00:27:59,760
Speaker 1: have pulled off the eighties, the traditional debt tories could

514
00:28:00,000 --> 00:28:03,200
Speaker 1: ever have pulled off the Thatcher Revolution. Frankly, we're living

515
00:28:03,200 --> 00:28:06,439
Speaker 1: through one of the more fascinating eruptions with Elon Musk.

516
00:28:06,880 --> 00:28:10,480
Speaker 1: Here's a guy who, by share weight of intelligence and personality,

517
00:28:10,920 --> 00:28:16,040
Speaker 1: keeps inventing things that would not have existed in his absence.

518
00:28:16,760 --> 00:28:19,640
Speaker 1: It's certain people who come along in history and they

519
00:28:19,680 --> 00:28:22,480
Speaker 1: don't swim with the tide or the current, and they

520
00:28:22,520 --> 00:28:26,080
Speaker 1: actually do make a fundamental difference. But I think you're

521
00:28:26,240 --> 00:28:30,719
Speaker 1: I think these people they really do rise above in

522
00:28:30,760 --> 00:28:32,840
Speaker 1: some ways as a result chape history, and I agree.

523
00:28:32,880 --> 00:28:36,000
Speaker 1: I think Reagan most definitely was one of those people,

524
00:28:36,040 --> 00:28:38,080
Speaker 1: as was not. Just Yeah, I feel pretty lucky that

525
00:28:38,080 --> 00:28:40,960
Speaker 1: I had a chance to work with both. I've always

526
00:28:41,000 --> 00:28:45,360
Speaker 1: thought part of what made America astonishingly different is that

527
00:28:45,440 --> 00:28:48,800
Speaker 1: our capacity to block the future is much weaker than

528
00:28:48,840 --> 00:28:53,040
Speaker 1: most cultures, and so people can show up and whether

529
00:28:53,080 --> 00:28:56,440
Speaker 1: it's in politics with Reagan, or it's in film with

530
00:28:56,520 --> 00:29:00,640
Speaker 1: Walt Disney, or it's inventing SpaceX with Musk, we just

531
00:29:00,680 --> 00:29:04,120
Speaker 1: have this capacity to reinvent that breaks out of the

532
00:29:04,160 --> 00:29:06,680
Speaker 1: norm over and over and over again. And this is

533
00:29:06,680 --> 00:29:10,320
Speaker 1: a society that is founded on ideas, on concepts, So

534
00:29:11,280 --> 00:29:13,920
Speaker 1: you weren't precluded from doing that because you weren't born

535
00:29:13,960 --> 00:29:15,880
Speaker 1: into the right class, or you didn't have the right

536
00:29:15,960 --> 00:29:18,080
Speaker 1: last name or whatever. I think in that sense we've

537
00:29:18,120 --> 00:29:21,920
Speaker 1: been more open. I think immigration has played a role

538
00:29:21,960 --> 00:29:25,640
Speaker 1: in that. Historically significant percentage of the kinds of people

539
00:29:25,680 --> 00:29:30,080
Speaker 1: you're describing often chose to come here, or the children

540
00:29:30,120 --> 00:29:33,640
Speaker 1: of people who chose to come here. I think we've

541
00:29:33,720 --> 00:29:38,000
Speaker 1: you know, through our educational system we've provided opportunity. So

542
00:29:38,200 --> 00:29:39,680
Speaker 1: I agree with you. I think this has been a

543
00:29:39,680 --> 00:29:44,080
Speaker 1: country of enormous flexibility in that sense or openness. But

544
00:29:44,120 --> 00:29:46,120
Speaker 1: the only thing that worries me is there is a

545
00:29:46,400 --> 00:29:49,719
Speaker 1: part of the literature which talks about democracies as they

546
00:29:49,760 --> 00:29:52,320
Speaker 1: get older, they get sclerotic, the way people of our

547
00:29:52,440 --> 00:29:55,920
Speaker 1: generation do. The reason you and I are busy taking statins.

548
00:29:55,920 --> 00:29:58,200
Speaker 1: So the question is what provides a statin to a

549
00:29:58,320 --> 00:30:01,440
Speaker 1: mature democracy, and how do we make sure that special

550
00:30:01,440 --> 00:30:04,080
Speaker 1: interests don't get too powerful and that it just gets

551
00:30:04,080 --> 00:30:07,320
Speaker 1: harder to get stuff done. And we see some of

552
00:30:07,360 --> 00:30:09,440
Speaker 1: the debates now which I think have added a degree

553
00:30:09,440 --> 00:30:12,880
Speaker 1: of rigidity, the lack of say, really talented immigration, those

554
00:30:12,960 --> 00:30:15,280
Speaker 1: numbers are down and so forth. So I think we

555
00:30:15,320 --> 00:30:17,880
Speaker 1: have to make sure we don't take away the sauce

556
00:30:17,960 --> 00:30:19,720
Speaker 1: that has made us as special as we are. I

557
00:30:19,720 --> 00:30:22,160
Speaker 1: think we have to recognize it and protect it. Would

558
00:30:22,200 --> 00:30:28,120
Speaker 1: you recreate a civics curriculum for every school in the country, Yes, sir,

559
00:30:28,240 --> 00:30:30,240
Speaker 1: I would love there to be one for middle school

560
00:30:30,280 --> 00:30:33,960
Speaker 1: and high school colleges. Yes, I think we need to

561
00:30:34,240 --> 00:30:37,120
Speaker 1: make civics required. I think there has to be a

562
00:30:37,160 --> 00:30:40,440
Speaker 1: degree of consistency. It defeats the purpose if kids in

563
00:30:40,480 --> 00:30:43,560
Speaker 1: New Jersey get a totally different understanding of the United

564
00:30:43,600 --> 00:30:46,440
Speaker 1: States than kids in Florida or California or what have you.

565
00:30:46,920 --> 00:30:49,280
Speaker 1: So I do think we need to have some common

566
00:30:49,280 --> 00:30:53,240
Speaker 1: exposure to what makes us who we are. I want

567
00:30:53,240 --> 00:30:55,160
Speaker 1: to thank you. I think your book, The Bill of

568
00:30:55,200 --> 00:30:58,920
Speaker 1: Obligations the Ten Habits of Good Citizens is exactly the

569
00:30:58,960 --> 00:31:01,440
Speaker 1: beginning of a dialogue we desperately need as a country.

570
00:31:01,800 --> 00:31:05,080
Speaker 1: I'm delighted that your own career is taking this direction.

571
00:31:05,120 --> 00:31:08,200
Speaker 1: This may be a period where fixing us domestically may

572
00:31:08,200 --> 00:31:11,800
Speaker 1: matter more than fixing us internationally. I want to encourage

573
00:31:11,800 --> 00:31:14,200
Speaker 1: our listeners to get a copy today. And again, I

574
00:31:14,240 --> 00:31:16,160
Speaker 1: want to congratulate you for being the New York Times

575
00:31:16,200 --> 00:31:19,320
Speaker 1: bestseller list. I really appreciate you're spending this kind of

576
00:31:19,400 --> 00:31:22,240
Speaker 1: quality time with us now. Thank you so much. I've

577
00:31:22,320 --> 00:31:24,560
Speaker 1: enjoyed this as much or more than any conversation I've

578
00:31:24,560 --> 00:31:26,240
Speaker 1: had since this has come out, and it's always a

579
00:31:26,240 --> 00:31:30,320
Speaker 1: treat to spend time with you, my friend. Thank you

580
00:31:30,360 --> 00:31:32,920
Speaker 1: to my guests. Doctor Richard Hass you can get a

581
00:31:32,960 --> 00:31:35,480
Speaker 1: link to buy his new book, The Bill of obligations

582
00:31:35,840 --> 00:31:38,800
Speaker 1: the Ten Habits of Good Citizens on our show page

583
00:31:39,040 --> 00:31:42,120
Speaker 1: at newtsworld dot com. News World is produced by Gingwish

584
00:31:42,120 --> 00:31:46,600
Speaker 1: three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guarnsey Sloan,

585
00:31:46,960 --> 00:31:51,120
Speaker 1: our producer is Rebecca Howe, and our researcher is Rachel Peterson.

586
00:31:51,600 --> 00:31:54,560
Speaker 1: The art work for the show was created by Steve Penley.

587
00:31:55,160 --> 00:31:58,160
Speaker 1: Special thanks to the team at Gingwish three sixty. If

588
00:31:58,200 --> 00:32:00,880
Speaker 1: you've been enjoying newts World, hope you'll go to Apple

589
00:32:00,960 --> 00:32:04,080
Speaker 1: Podcast and both rate us with five stars and give

590
00:32:04,160 --> 00:32:07,040
Speaker 1: us a review so others can learn what it's all about.

591
00:32:07,600 --> 00:32:10,160
Speaker 1: Right now, listeners of news World can sign up for

592
00:32:10,280 --> 00:32:15,800
Speaker 1: my three free weekly columns at gingwire dot com slash newsletter.

593
00:32:16,360 --> 00:32:18,840
Speaker 1: I'm new Gingwich. This is news World