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The Emptiness of Bob Woodward w/ Matt Duss | The Nation Podcast · The Nation Podcasts

• 0:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to the nation podcast where we take you behind the scenes of our biggest stories with the journalists who wrote them.
• 0:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm Dee Dee Gotten-Clan, Special Correspondent for the Nation.
• 0:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: For over 50 years, Bob Woodward has had an uncanny ability to get sources talking, and to sell books.
• 0:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: From Watergate to Donald Trump, no political era has gone by without at least one Woodward Tom promising to peel back the curtain on how Washington really works.
• 0:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now Woodward is out with his latest, the bluntly titled, War.
• 0:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: and the beginning of the second Trump era.
• 0:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: But what it really shows is what happens when a reporter evolves from a mock raker into a reputation laundering for the establishment.
• 0:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Joining us on the podcast today is Matt Duss, the executive vice president of the Center for International Policy and Former Foreign Policy Advisor to Bernie Sanders.
• 1:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Duss's review of war is in the October fall books issue of the nation.
• 1:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Matt is someone who's been reading you for a long time and cheering for your policy prescriptions.
• 1:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a real delight to have you.
• 1:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for joining us.
• 1:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks so much.
• 1:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's great to be here and of course always great to write for the nation.
• 1:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Terrific.
• 1:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I want to start where you do, which is with Joan Didian, her essay on political pornography, which was probably the first widely read piece critical of Bob Woodward's method that anyone read.
• 1:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that was 1996.
• 1:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: So remind our listeners what Didian had to say about Woodward.
• 1:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right.
• 1:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, she in her 1996 piece, I mean, she just looked at, you know, she just kind of took apart his method and the basic point she made was, you know, yes, journalists have to use sources but what woodward does is he just kind of allows sources to tell the story to kind of share their perspective and to frame the coverage as they will.
• 2:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: He makes little if any attempt to really interrogate what they are telling them to interpret it in any way other than just hears what
• 2:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And she makes, I think, a very valid point that, you know, when we have people who, when we have, you know, informers, informants, whistleblowers, or, you know, criminal informants, let's say.
• 2:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: We understand that they are telling things in their own interest, and we kind of take their testimony with, with that in mind.
• 2:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's not to say we dismiss it, but we understand that people have an agenda.
• 2:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, but Woodward's method is to, like, be, pretend to be completely innocent of any of this.
• 2:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, as if everyone who he, who is talking to him is just trying to get the truth out.
• 2:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: And thus his role, his task, his achievement.
• 3:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: is simply to get people, to talk to him, you know, and she uses this example.
• 3:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: She was watching this.
• 3:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: I believe he was on Larry King and Larry King brought up white water, which was then just only starting to pick up steam as, you know, what became the scandal that would engulf the Clinton White House.
• 3:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: And Woodward said, I don't really know that much about white water.
• 3:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm just waiting for someone to call me up and say, I want to talk.
• 3:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: which is a really remarkable statement.
• 3:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: It seems that if a real kind of political journalist would be very interested in finding something at like that on their own, instead of just waiting for the phone to ring and for an informant or a source, just to say, here I have the goods.
• 3:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let me tell you the story.
• 3:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: But again, I just, I thought that was really interesting.
• 3:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: I had, it's in a collection called Political Fictions that was published in the early 2000s,
• 3:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: brilliant, but it was so relevant especially to this piece, to this book, because Woodward has written about multiple administrations, often writes multiple books about the same administration, but this book about Joe Biden's conduct of the two wars in Ukraine and Gaza, he's so clearly admiring.
• 4:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: of Joe Biden and the team that Joe Biden had built such that he felt the need to editorialize in a way that I think is actually uncharacteristic of his usual method to say at the end, I believe that Joe Biden and his team will be seen as an example of steady, competent leadership, which I noticed really kind of in contrast to what he has just told us or shown us if we really, really choose to see it.
• 4:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you use the, you quote the great, the great political philosopher Chico Marx.
• 4:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's right.
• 4:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Who are you going to leave your, me or your own eyes?
• 5:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly.
• 5:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I did, I felt the need I didn't need to cite Marx, just not yet.
• 5:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that the usual one.
• 5:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: But no, the explanation has a close.
• 5:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, and I took the chance of citing a marks that some younger readers might not be aware of, but I'm doing my part for cultural education here.
• 5:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Everyone should watch Duck Soup.
• 5:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's an enduring classic.
• 5:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I mean, I felt that was relevant because he tells us this in this kind of weird benediction at the end of the book.
• 5:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: This kind of post script.
• 5:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I said, you've just spent the previous 300 some pages.
• 5:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, showing us how this team has helped perpetrate an era defining catastrophe in Gaza.
• 5:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: And yet, you want us to know that you think they did a really good job, and I can't accept it.
• 5:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, you know, this phrase is so many interesting directions.
• 5:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: I want to stay where we are for just another minute or two, which is
• 5:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Just to talk about and maybe get your views about the difference between source polishing, which is something that any journalist on a beat is sometimes tempted to do, often feels driven to do.
• 6:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have stone famously said you should never have lunch with the Secretary of State because if you do, he'll ask you what you think about something and then he'll listen and that will show that he's a wise man because he's because he's sort of your counsel and therefore you'll find it harder to go after him when he does something catastrophically stupid.
• 6:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: But you know, if you're covering the state department or city hall or the White House or the panic on day after day and you want to get stuff that your competitors don't have it's almost a requirement that you
• 6:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: give the people you talk to a chance to serve their own agendas as a reason to coming back to talk to you.
• 7:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I suppose for somebody like me who's a suspicious reader of journalism and has been a suspicious reader of journalism for a long time.
• 7:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's one of the things you look for, you know, who are they quoting?
• 7:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: How often have they quoted this person?
• 7:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: What is this person, you know, sound like?
• 7:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, if we were living now in the blessed second term of the blessed Bernie Sanders, you know, I would be reading what you'd said to, you know, David Clayarner or John Nichols in the past, and I'd be thinking, oh yeah, Matt Doswood, he'll still talk to us because, you know, we give him a chance to say nice things.
• 7:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I think there's a difference, or at least it seemed to me you were implying there's a difference between ordinary source polishing and kind of
• 7:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: do, which is to say letting people put themselves in the best possible light, and going above and beyond that by saying maybe we want to put a little makeup under your eyes here Mr. President and maybe you want to put a little Vaseline on the lens while you talk about Gaza.
• 8:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't know, I think that's all right, and it's interesting, I mean, yeah, just as far as my own role, I mean, I mean, I'm someone who has been on kind of both sides of this equation
• 8:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then moved into government where I was a source, both on and off the record, though I tried to be on the record as much as possible.
• 8:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I understand that this is a negotiation, but my own view as someone who practice journalism and respects the craft a lot is what you want to do as a journalist, just say, listen, I'm going to tell the truth.
• 8:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to do my very best to represent what I understand to be what actually happened.
• 8:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: I will listen to you, I will share as if you're my source, I will take your view into account.
• 8:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: I will compare it to other accounts of the same situation.
• 9:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's the best you can do, and you're right, it is often tempting for journalists when they have established a source of relationship with a very high-level source who can give
• 9:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Which they can in turn turn into scoops which can then kind of advance their own career That's that's very attractive currency so again every every journal is really has to kind of manages on on their own some do pretty well some do less well
• 9:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I think what's really, you know, woodward as kind of one of the most prominent journalists in Washington, you know, Washington legend going back to Watergate, he is just understood as, I'm the guy who you come to to help burnish your version of events into history.
• 9:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, he really, you know, he's one of the very few of only who, who, who kind of occupies this very special space as someone who's understood he's always going to be working on his next book about this current administration.
• 9:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, if you want to get your version of events and put the best possible spin,
• 10:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: You better go and eat soup at Bog Woodward's house and give him your version of events before the people that you've been fighting with inside the administration go and eat soup and give their version.
• 10:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right, and it's interesting because in some of his books and this sounds like it was not one of them.
• 10:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: that understanding on the part of sources which is that if you want your version out you have to talk to woodward has sometimes led him to find things out that you know we didn't know already.
• 10:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: But that seems to be mostly not the case here, although there's one exception I want to get to in a few minutes.
• 10:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: But before that I want to ask you to explain a phrase which I thought was really interesting and which could really do with a little unpacking.
• 10:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's where you talk about his depiction of the Biden administration's handling of the conflict in Ukraine.
• 11:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: you say we should also note that Washington was quite literally built brick by brick to handle confrontation with Russia.
• 11:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: So can you elaborate on that a little bit?
• 11:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah well I mean Biden again as a creature you know he's as I write elsewhere I mean Biden is in many ways a just the embodiment of the foreign policy establishment not even of the post Cold War but of the Cold War I mean Biden was elected
• 11:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: to Congress, I believe it was 1972, taking office as the youngest ever senator in 1973, when the Cold War was still very much happening.
• 11:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: And there are people around Biden as part of kind of broader Biden world, and let's understand, Biden had been in Congress and in Washington for so long, obviously serving two terms as Vice President.
• 11:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: for Barack Obama that he'd built a pretty formidable and expansive foreign policy machine around him and these are people who really came up and were cultivated and kind of developed their worldview in the Cold War.
• 12:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: But beyond that, again, as I wrote, Washington, you know, the kind of national security state, the foreign policy establishment as we understand
• 12:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: grew up in the Cold War where it was all arrayed around competition with the Soviet Union, NATO, obviously being an example of that, but you know, kind of smaller conflicts, you know, the kind of twilight competition between the U.S.
• 12:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: and the U.S.S.R.
• 12:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: in various places in the global south, the developing world, Latin America,
• 12:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: often, often very negative, very violent, undemocratic action by the United States to kind of head off what it saw as kind of communist inroads.
• 12:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that is a way of thinking about foreign policy that has been passed down to generations.
• 12:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the people who first occupied those positions of power and influence mentored people who then mentored people.
• 12:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I don't want to overstate this, but having been in Washington now for almost 20 years got helped me.
• 13:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: It really, I mean, this stuff really, you know, it has become deeply ingrained and institutionalized in a way of thinking of how American powers should be used, what American power is for.
• 13:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so while I do give them credit for how they handled the Ukraine war, I mean, I have some criticisms, but in general, given that what is tough situation, it wasn't how it very easily could have escalated.
• 13:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: I do give them some good marks, but again, as I note, this is a scenario for which multiple generations of foreign policy professionals have thought constantly.
• 13:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we've had 60, 80 years of training for Russia to invade one of its neighbors, and so we should be less surprised that when they finally do it, the U.S.
• 13:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: has some off the shelf moves that they can put into practice.
• 13:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right, exactly.
• 13:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the US-Europe relationship is probably the most foundational kind of alliance system that the United States has, and that was activated.
• 14:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Again, quite adeptly, I think it's worth noting that, but these are kind of natural moves.
• 14:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's a sort of muscle memory to this kind of situation that we saw kind of obtain at real time.
• 14:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think the phrase muscle memory is really interesting because I wonder if some of the horror that the foreign policy establishment feels and manifests, you know, people like Adam Schiff, but also people like the Lincoln Project Republicans, is because Donald Trump
• 14:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, yeah, that's interesting, and I think it's true, I mean, he Donald Trump
• 14:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: has the muscle memory of a version of American power that he perceived it and frankly a lot of Americans perceived it right this kind of I don't know I don't want to insult comic books but like this kind of comic book version this cartoonish version of American power and that you know this kind of version of the end of Cold War was like America showed strength and then we outspent the Soviets and that's how the Cold War ended which is of course
• 15:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: not an accurate depiction of what actually happened, but it is a story that many Americans have been told and have told themselves.
• 15:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that allows everyone involved on the American side to take comfort.
• 15:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right, exactly.
• 15:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's really, it's...
• 15:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, and but you have, you know, there are people for whom the story is that simple.
• 15:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's interesting, there's actually a piece I wrote for the nation back in 2015.
• 15:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Or maybe it was 2016 when Donald Trump was really starting to kind of lead the field in the primary, where, you know, he, it was, you know, the Neocons, you know, who many of whom became never trumpers were a gas, as you said.
• 16:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because they were people who believe, yes, American must be powerful, we must take all competitors, we need to be out there showing our power and everything that happens everywhere in the world is America's business.
• 16:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: But there was at least a rhetorical commitment.
• 16:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: to a set of international rules and multilateral organizations and norms even if they were quite hypocritical about it and they broke those rules and norms whenever they wanted as administration after administration of both parties has done throughout the 20th and 21st century.
• 16:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: But Donald Trump took the belligerence part of that and just did away with all the values and everything else.
• 16:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that is what they still, many of them still haven't come to grips with.
• 16:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: So basically, as I wrote in that earlier piece, a few years ago, I think the title was Donald Trump is beating the Neal Council at their own game, because he has just taken up the belligerent America who, you know, by, who bite into it's enormous military power gets to do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, wherever it wants, and we don't even have
• 17:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: like calling the Department of Defense the Department of Defense instead of the Department of War.
• 17:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right.
• 17:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and it's performative, but that's part of what Donald Trump brings is performance.
• 17:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right, but also lack of lip service to liberal values.
• 17:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, that's right.
• 17:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: He has lip service to populism, he has lip service to a certain kind of concern for the working man, but for the kind of rules-based international order as that tripping happy phrase that Williams had to use so much in the early 2000s, not so much.
• 17:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right.
• 17:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: I want to ask you about this one and I apologize for getting into the weeds, but you know, this is this is our chance to get into the weeds.
• 18:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's what I'm here for.
• 18:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you talk about the one of the rare instances in the war, which we learned something new.
• 18:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's what words revelation of a phone conversation between Vladimir Putin and Boris Johnson when Boris Johnson was Prime Minister in which Johnson, with perfectly transparent British understatement, tells Putin that Ukraine won't be joining NATO any time soon, which is, as you translate for the slow-witted, is diplospeak forever.
• 18:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: that after that call Johnson grew concerned that Putin had put him in NATO into a trap because they knew that Putin knows that Ukraine would not join NATO.
• 18:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: He wanted them to say this publicly which would contradict NATO's open door policy and make it seem like the Russians had a veto over NATO decisions.
• 19:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then you say, but sadly, it isn't all that consequential.
• 19:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Since any close observer of the war already knew that the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO was only one among a broad set of grievances for Putin.
• 19:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I want to push back against that a little bit because remember that it was Johnson transposing from one crisis to an act.
• 19:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it was an Istanbul, negotiations were proceeding and would have led to, you know, might have led to a ceasefire.
• 19:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: It looked like they were going to lead for a ceasefire pretty early in the war.
• 19:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it was Johnson, who said to Zelensky, don't make that deal.
• 19:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I wondered reading this, whether
• 19:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: you, you, or would, or would might not have drawn a line between Johnson being the one to transmit that message and Johnson being the one that he, that felt maybe he'd let the cat out of the bag and talking to Putin himself.
• 20:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Huh, I mean, uh...
• 20:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's an interesting question, I mean a couple of things, one is, as I know, it's pretty clear that already without even beyond what Johnson said.
• 20:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, Sholts, Macron both made their efforts, they've, you know, personally went to Moscow, they sat around that big long table with Putin, if you remember those pictures.
• 20:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then came out to do press conferences after the meeting and both in their very interesting diplomatic but I think very clear way talking about we are ready to deal very seriously with Russia's legitimate security concerns about it's you know it's borders and it's near abroad etc.
• 20:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: whatever language they actually used.
• 20:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: That I heard and I do think people who are kind of know how diplomatic speak works Was a clear sign that yeah, like we understand you have a problem with Ukraine joining NATO That's not going to happen Now should the United States should NATO have just said that outright?
• 21:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think they should of I think there is this idea that oh, we can't You know, we can't give Putin a veto like treating this norm
• 21:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: as so holy and sacrosanct, I mean just this idea that well anyone gets to apply to NATO membership sure but the members of NATO get to make a decision.
• 21:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: about who joins the United States gets to make a decision about which countries it enters into binding alliances with.
• 21:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is our decision.
• 21:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it is entirely fair to say that listen, we understand that Ukraine joining NATO would probably create more problems that it would solve for us.
• 21:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: So again, it's fine to say there should be an open policy anyone can apply for NATO membership that does not then obligate NATO's members to approve that So that you know and again in my own conversation with Biden administration at the time this came up as well They understood that okay, we're kind of hamstrung by this public commitment to the open door policy
• 22:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, my response was like, well, why are you hamstrung?
• 22:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can just say it, but they chose to honor that and again, that is, it's kind of bizarre.
• 22:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Having said that,
• 22:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think that would have solved the problem because, again, my own views that Putin is smart enough to know that this was not going to happen.
• 22:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Would it have helped the situation?
• 22:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe I don't think so.
• 22:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: We probably should have tried it.
• 22:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: If only to call Putin's bluff, to say, listen, okay, Ukraine's not getting it to NATO, let's deal because I think he's made clear repeatedly.
• 22:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: that his grievances and his goals are much more expansive than just Ukraine's membership in NATO.
• 22:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now what you said about Istanbul is also interesting and I do think there's a narrative out there that I don't really agree with.
• 22:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think there are some who kind of believe that oh we were on the press, we were on the cusp of ending this war and then Boris Johnson flew to Kiev and told Zelensky don't take the deal.
• 23:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've just never have really been convinced about that.
• 23:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: I do think that there was the possibility of an agreement in Istanbul.
• 23:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is unclear that Putin himself was bought into some of what was discussed in Istanbul.
• 23:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think there are elements of that agreement even if he was bought in that were very problematic for Ukraine, such as Ukraine, Russia having to agree that it had violated the ceasefire in order for Ukraine's potential allies to then take action.
• 23:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: to impose consequences for the violation of the ceasefire, but that aside, you know, I'm willing to say that, yes, there were possibilities, but there were still a lot of big question marks on the road toward real peace, so I don't want it.
• 23:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: We should not pretend that this was a peace agreement that was just scuttled by Boris Johnson.
• 23:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, I agree with that.
• 23:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: I suppose I was looking at it slightly differently as a historian and thinking,
• 24:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: uh... thinking that this may tell us something we didn't know about johnson's motivation hmm you know that it johnson was the most vehement or at least he's been depicted as the most vehement in
• 24:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: in opposing whether it would have been successful or not, further moved in the direction of what they were talking about in Istanbul and the data point that he had said something to Putin that he later found, he shouldn't have had given him more leverage than maybe he would have liked
• 24:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: might supply a motivation for, you know, in other words, part of me is who he's wanted, why was it Johnson who, you know, if you accept that he delivered this message and I understand that there's still some dispute about whether, not just about whether it was efficacious, but whether he ever delivered it.
• 24:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: But if you think that he delivered it, I've always wanted to be a white Johnson, you know, for me that was an interest.
• 25:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, I agree.
• 25:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's that's interesting.
• 25:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I also say Johnson, there's a whole lot of things that Johnson like exploited the Ukraine war for.
• 25:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, he was under massive pressure.
• 25:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: His administration was scandal-ridden.
• 25:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: He was almost certainly already on his way out.
• 25:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: and he really leapt in the most grotesque at the opportunity to pose and posture as you know this wartime leader and he's continued to try to exploit that after he left office and disgrace to try and kind of cement his legacy okay all that other horrible stuff happened and I was pretty much this horrible joke as a prime minister but at least I was kind of this little mini
• 25:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: sad and ridiculous but that is that is his claim yeah um okay well i think you know there's there's always more to say about Ukraine and U.S.
• 25:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: policy uh it's certainly not clear the Trump has done any better on the other hand
• 26:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not yet clear that he's done much worse.
• 26:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: I did think at the time I was editing the nation that maybe the left could have been more generous about the Biden administration's restraint on Ukraine.
• 26:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And they're, you know, the clarity of their hard lines to the Ukrainians about where they weren't going to go, even if, you know,
• 26:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: whether you agree that those were the right hard lines, they seem pretty clear about it, and that probably kept things from getting worse in terms of international conflict.
• 26:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: But if the U.S.
• 26:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: foreign policy establishment and its avatar made flesh Joe Biden were built to manage a conflict with Russia, one could also argue that
• 26:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: underneath the bricks there was an architecture that was also built to sustain and support the state of Israel.
• 27:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you know that's that architecture tends to be in pre-modern style under the skin of the building but it's interesting to think about the ways in which the Gaza war has exposed it and
• 27:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there, you're, well, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but certainly the administration function far less well.
• 27:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think unfortunately they functioned well, but they functioned well toward a horrible purpose.
• 27:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I'll put it, well, yeah.
• 27:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, but we'll also say like,
• 27:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Underneath the skin, I like the way you put that, but also the U.S.
• 27:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Israel relationship as it exists today is in many ways itself a function of the Cold War.
• 27:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, let's remember there was obviously a U.S.
• 27:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Israel relation going back to 1948, the United States was one of the first to recognize the new state of Israel, but the relationship really hit a new level after, you know, in the 1970s with the Yom Kippur War,
• 28:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: which brought the US Egypt and Israel together obviously flipped Egypt from Soviet ally to US ally but also bound the United States as a major security partner to both Israel and Egypt in a way that has kind of characterized the US role in the region.
• 28:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: pretty much till today.
• 28:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I think that is worth noting.
• 28:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: But as part of that over the past decades, the relationship with Israel has become so deep, multifaceted, the relationship between Israeli and US.
• 28:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Orange manufacturers is extremely tight.
• 28:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: They often co-develop weapon systems.
• 28:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Iron Dome is a great example.
• 28:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Iron Dome missile defense system, which is co-developed by
• 28:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Israel with U.S.
• 28:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: support has become itself a major global arms supplier.
• 28:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's obviously close political relationship intelligence, military, and at the civil society level.
• 29:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And again, I think this is important to note too.
• 29:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not just all about arms trade.
• 29:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: and power.
• 29:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean there is a genuine political relationship between the two countries in terms of culture in terms of religion that I think helps bind the two countries together and that's also part of why
• 29:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Joe Biden as someone who again as a as an older leader who kind of came of age and his understanding of the state of Israel was formed in kind of this 1967 period a very very exodus the Leon Euras novel, but also probably the movie with with Paul Newman and Eva Murray say probably even more so yeah even recent is a very powerful influence.
• 29:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure You know, but I mentioned in in in
• 29:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: in the in the piece and that's what what it draws its title from in case in amber is this meeting that Joe Biden had with with his early prime minister gold in my year in 1973 which he constantly talks about like if you've ever seen him give a speech about Israel you have almost certainly heard him recount that that meeting his own staffers joke about it he just brings it up so much and it has taken on this kind of
• 30:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: just kind of legendary status in his own mind so much so that privately some of his age or like did some of this stuff really happen because this story has gotten bigger and longer over the years that we've known him.
• 30:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it's still kind of stands in for his understanding of Israel.
• 30:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's just encased in Amber just in that moment and it's not the Israel that exists today.
• 30:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's fair to ask whether the Israel in his imagination ever ever really existed.
• 30:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it certainly does not exist today.
• 30:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: But even though he's a kind of extreme exponent of this, unfortunately, he does, you know, this is a shared tendency among a lot of people in Washington, the political class and also the foreign policy established, which is to say, you know, Israel is just our plucky little ally and they're facing threats from the region.
• 31:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And sure, Israel does face some threats, obviously, the October 7 attacks were horrific, everyone understands that
• 31:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the reality is, even before October 7 and going back many years, Israel is a regional, regional military superpower.
• 31:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is not this country on the cusp of being destroyed by its regional enemies.
• 31:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: The threats it faces are very different.
• 31:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: And yet, Joe Biden decided to respond to October 7 as if anything but standing shoulder to shoulder with Israel would result in Israel disappearing from the face of the earth.
• 31:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think what we all we've seen for now almost two years is this has just enabled a genocide, which I growing under of scholars and experts now term now say qualifies as a genocide.
• 31:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: So there are so many, again, there's so much to talk about on that.
• 32:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: I want to pick a couple of threads.
• 32:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: One is the hugging BB strategy.
• 32:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, the Biden flu to Israel right after October 7th, he literally hugged Netanyahu, said we're with you.
• 32:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: They loved him.
• 32:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I found myself wondering in the months after that, you know, at the time, that did not seem a crazy idea.
• 32:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
• 32:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: First of all, because in certain corners of the rest of the world, including the left, hugging in Israeli was not the mode of response to October 7th, and secondly, because, you know, if you want influence, it's probably better to support somebody when they've been kicked.
• 32:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: On the other hand, the fact that Biden was never able to pivot from that.
• 32:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Never able to step back and say, look, baby, we were with you when you needed us, but that was 40,000 dead Palestinians civilians ago, and now it's time to stop.
• 33:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: I assume Woodward has very little to say on this, and we can bring in Woodward's account.
• 33:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I guess I'm actually more interested in your view as a foreign policy observer.
• 33:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you think that was because Biden was just locked into this, you know, plucky little steak, gold in my ear, only democracy in the Middle East?
• 33:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Or do you think it was because his mental decline had reached the point where he was incapable of really processing new evidence?
• 33:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's very much the first, I mean, I don't, I think clearly we all saw his performance in that legendary or notorious debate, I'll say, I think my understanding and there were other moments when he was much better rested, which he clearly was not.
• 33:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: where he was much more with it, and again, my understanding from people inside the administration who I do trust and it's private.
• 33:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think the trend has been.
• 33:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was like most of the time when he was rested, he was very with it.
• 33:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this is one issue on which he was more deeply engaged than really any other one.
• 34:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Precisely caused the U.S.
• 34:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: as a relationship with such a deeply important and ideological one for him.
• 34:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I really do not kind of ascribe the policy to his kind of mental
• 34:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think in some ways, that's almost more of an indictment.
• 34:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: But that then leads to what I think of as the Chomsky question.
• 34:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: In the 80s and 90s, when people on the left were just beginning in the early 2000s, when more people on the left were beginning to question the U.S.
• 34:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: reflexive support of Israel, and there was a kind of, you know, awareness of apac and its role in our politics and all that, you know, Chomsky pointed out repeatedly that this is not a case of the Israeli tailwagging the American dog, this is the case of the Cold War American foreign policy establishment, would have needed to invent an
• 35:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: how much of that, you know, connecting as it were the first half of your piece to the second, how much of that Cold War origin of this relationship is also as it were at fault for locking the U.S.
• 35:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: into underwriting a genocide.
• 35:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, I actually think that's what, you know, Chomsky's view is close to my own.
• 35:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've always thought that this idea, that, you know, that the Israeli tail is wagging the US dog, lets US policy makers off the hook.
• 35:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Israel is seen, there is, let's put it this way.
• 35:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is a shared view among,
• 35:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: policy makers, among hawkish policymakers in Israel and in Washington, that Israel will serve essentially the U.S.
• 35:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: as a sheriff as its enforcer in the region, with the share goal of sustaining U.S.
• 35:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: regional military hegemony, regional U.S.
• 36:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: influence, first to box out the Soviet Union and now today to box out China.
• 36:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, they just kind of slotted out, uh, you know, Russian and also this is the uh, this is the weird part of it to box out Iran by which account Netanyahu's policies and US support for them has not been entirely irrational.
• 36:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, I think that's right.
• 36:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, one tactically, one has to be impressed by what Israel with U.S.
• 36:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: support has achieved.
• 36:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: But as I've written elsewhere, Israel has a very, very bad record of translating brilliant tactical moves into long-term strategic gains and wins for its own security.
• 36:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this is what we see right now with this strike we're speaking now.
• 36:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: just a day after an Israeli strike on Doha Kotter, which was criticized by Donald Trump, and really just an insane kind of escalation.
• 36:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: But there is a logic to Netanyahu who constantly pushing the boundaries of what's acceptable for his own political survival.
• 37:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: We don't have time to really get into that.
• 37:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: But just going back to the analysis that I do share about what
• 37:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, first a commitment to American primacy, not just in the Middle East, but globally.
• 37:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: But for, you know, in terms of the Middle East region, the U.S.
• 37:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Israel where partnership is a real-inch pin of that, and Israel has a role to play as the U.S.
• 37:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: is regional a force.
• 37:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, Joe Biden would not put it in those terms.
• 37:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I think that is essentially the views that he shared.
• 37:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: I know that that his top Middle East hand in the White House, Brett McGurk,
• 37:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: sees things that way, unfortunately, his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, essentially went along with this and supported it, perhaps not as aggressively as McGurk did, but at the end of the day, Jake Sullivan was the one whose job it was to manage these policy debates, and he often landed in the same place that McGurk did.
• 38:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: I want to ask one last question.
• 38:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Give him what we know of Woodward's record in his method.
• 38:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is he even now cultivating his relationship with Donald Trump, JD Vance, Donald Trump Jr., who is the insider who's view we're going to get in the next Woodward.
• 38:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's a great question.
• 38:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I would say obviously he's already cultivating.
• 38:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: He has relationship with Trump world going back from the first administration.
• 38:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think there are people around Trump who are smart enough to understand that if we want to, you know, again, burnish our view.
• 38:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: into the historical record, Bob Woodward is the one to do it.
• 38:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: I would say someone like JD Vance or Mark Rubio, both of whom, whatever you think of them, clearly are intelligent.
• 38:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: They understand that listen, we need to be talking to Bob Woodward and we need our people to be talking to Bob Woodward, given they both very clearly want to be, you know, the inheritors of the Donald Trump legacy.
• 38:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that's gonna be an arena of competition for the two of them.
• 39:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the last point I would make about the question about my piece, you know, where I end,
• 39:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I kind of used the essay or try to use it as a way of looking at the failure of the larger Democratic foreign policy establishment.
• 39:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I guess, you know, as I note, the pieces kind of the first volley in this kind of battle to define the Biden administration's legacy, but I think we're going to be continuing to do that.
• 39:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: There are a number of pieces coming out.
• 39:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now you've got a few members of the Biden administration who are finally coming around and admitting
• 39:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: what everyone else could see with their own eyes, which is that the Gaza policy was a catastrophe, it did not work.
• 39:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Whatever they claimed they were doing, we could all clearly see they were doing something else.
• 39:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the question we have to deal with is like, do these people get to try this again?
• 39:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, do these, should these people ever get a shot to serve in government again?
• 39:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, and unfortunately, accountability is not something that really exists.
• 40:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: in Washington elite impunity is you know one of the soul remaining areas of actual bipartisan consensus the idea that whatever crimes or atrocities you help perpetrate while in office as long as you try your best you'll still get invited to you know to speak at the dinners and you'll get a spotted Harvard you're probably hook up with a consulting firm and then you'll get to wait around a book deal of course to tell your side of the story if if if
• 40:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: and then you know you'll wait around and maybe you'll slide back into the next democratic administration.
• 40:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah well I mean it's an interesting thought which I'm gonna leave our listeners with as to whether Donald Trump's going after all of his enemies with such force and vigor might actually also end up posing a threat to the bipartisan comedy of you know the establishment
• 40:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: If that happens, maybe the last, maybe this administration won't be a total loss, but that's right, I could see some benefit to that.
• 41:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: All right, well, Matt does it's been a real pleasure.
• 41:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for joining us on the nation podcast.
• 41:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much, glad to be here.