Chris Riback's Conversations

Ronan Farrow: Inside the War on Peace

Iran, North Korea, Syria, Brexit, Paris Agreement, China. Prime Minister Abe, Macron, Merkel, Xi, a fellow named Putin. At a time when U.S. foreign policy – when diplomacy itself – requires as much clarity and coordination and skill as it has in decades, ours has been going through – to put it diplomatically – a major transition.

You know the headlines: Thousands of State Department positions unfilled. Budgets slashed. Tillerson fired. One day we have the world’s biggest button; the next, we’re ready to travel across the world for a summit with a leader who just months ago was a madman.

How’d we get here?

That’s what Ronan Farrow has pieced together – through exceptional storytelling and just plain reporting – in his new book “War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence.” Farrow did the work, talking with every living Secretary of State. And what he’s pulled together is the story of not only the shrinking, but also the militarization, of U.S. foreign policy. And to be clear: It didn’t start with Trump.

You might have heard of Farrow. He’s a bit ubiquitous and, if you ask me, extraordinary. He just won a share of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for public service: his The New Yorker articles helped to uncover the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse allegations and played an important part in fueling the #MeToo movement. He has been a lawyer, diplomat, journalist, and a Rhodes Scholar. He worked in the Obama State Department as Special Adviser for Humanitarian and NGO Affairs in the Office of the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, among other roles.

And as you’ll hear, he’s also extremely gracious, which is not a bad quality, even if you’re no longer a diplomat.

Stuart Eizenstat: Taking Another Look at the Carter Years

Forget everything you think you know about President Jimmy Carter and get ready to ask yourself: Was he an ineffective, overwhelmed outsider who oversaw four of the worst years in our history… or, as my guest today argues, was Carter’s presidency one of the most consequential in modern history.

I confess – I forgot just how much occurred during Carter’s four years – and how much of what he did set the stage for politics and policies today: Ideas like protecting the environment, putting human rights at the center of our foreign policy, energy conservation, the Middle East peace process, and perhaps most painful in today’s political ridiculousness: A post-Watergate President who ran for office on the promise that “I’ll never lie to the American people.”

Say what you want about Carter; he kept that promise.

But for all the success, Carter’s presidency is rarely hailed. He micromanaged. He tried to do too much. He ruined the economy. He oversaw gas lines in America – literally, lines of people in cars waiting to fill their gas tanks. Google it. And most terribly, he couldn’t free the American hostages from 444 days of captivity in Iran.

So how should we consider Jimmy Carter’s presidency?

Stu Eizenstat had a front row seat to it all. From 1969 to 1981, Eizenstat worked for peanut farmer, governor, candidate, and President Carter, ultimately as his chief White House domestic policy adviser. Eizenstat has written an historical take on Carter’s four years as President – one that Stu himself says is largely positive, yes, but doesn’t shy away from harsh criticism, too. As Stu writes: “I am not nominating Jimmy Carter for a place on Mount Rushmore. He was not a great president, but he was a good and productive one.”

More on Stu: Before the Carter years, he had worked as a very young man in the LBJ administration. After Carter, he served as US Ambassador to the European Union and then Deputy Secretary of the Treasury under Bill Clinton. He has been a powerful presence internationally, and was awarded high civilian awards from the governments of France (Legion of Honor), Germany, Austria, and Belgium, as well as from Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence Summers. He now heads the international practice at Covington & Burling.

His exceptional book gives insight and context to every crisis and challenge of the 1970s… We talked about many of them – most relevant for today, I asked him about how much of what Carter did is being attacked by Trump and Trump’s own approach to the Presidency.

Asha Rangappa: How Will the Mueller Investigation End?

How will it end?

For any of us following the Mueller investigation -- hanging on the latest leaks around the mood inside the White House and who might get fired or not fired – the wonder of what’s next is relentless. The possibilities seem endless.

That’s why for many of us, we’re getting a crash course in Constitutional Law – indeed in our Constitution itself – seeing in real time how and whether our government works.

What happens if Robert Mueller gets fired? Can he be? What about Rod Rosenstein? What does a Constitutional crisis look like – what does it mean?

No need to worry – Asha Rangappa can explain. You likely know, Asha is a frequent CNN contributor and senior lecturer at Yale’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, where she teaches National Security Law and related courses. 

But as you’ll hear, Asha’s personal story is extraordinary and would make for a fascinating conversation on just its own: Asha is the Indian-American daughter of immigrants and speaks fluent Spanish. She was a Fulbright scholar and took that opportunity to Bogota, Colombia – where else, right? There Asha studied Colombian constitutional reform and its impact on U.S. drug policy. After Yale law school, she clerked in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Following that stint, Asha went on to do what any Princeton & Yale graduating, Fulbright-winning, Federal Court clerking person would: She joined the FBI as a Special Agent and later served as Associate Dean at Yale Law School.

Sorry, I realize you likely now feel lousy about yourself. So do I. To make it worse, as you’ll hear in our conversation, Asha’s also really funny and smart and totally personable. I hate her. But I do think you’ll love the podcast.

Jennifer Palmieri: Who Will Be the First Woman President?

Why is Hillary Clinton not the first woman President?

Many people, political types, historians and sociologists will consider that question for many years to come. But besides Hillary Clinton herself, the people who surely must think about it most are the ones who worked with her for years and during the campaign.

Jennifer Palmieri is one of them.

You may know: Palmieri was Director of Communications for Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. Previously she served as President Obama’s White House Director of Communications, National Press Secretary for the 2004 John Edwards presidential campaign and for the Democratic National Committee in 2002. She also was Deputy White House Press Secretary under Bill Clinton.

That’s quite a history in politics, but Jennifer hasn’t written a strictly political book. Instead she’s written – based on the campaign, certainly – a compelling and important reflection on the future. And it’s excellent.

The book is “Dear Madam President: An Open Letter to the Women Who Will Run the World,” and it’s already a New York Times best-seller. Palmieri wrote it in the form of a letter – addressed to the future first woman President, whoever she may be.

Palmieri considers it all – history, gender bias, campaign mistakes, Donald Trump – and offers advice to the girls and women who, as she puts it, will run the world.

Why is this book breaking through? There’s no bitterness. More importantly, it’s incredibly reflective. Palmieri writes not only about political life, but also what she’s learned through death – specifically, her sister Dana and her friend and wife of her former boss, Elizabeth Edwards.

In a time of #MeToo and even #EnoughisEnough, the result is a really thoughtful story that captures our times and provides clear insights about the future.

Rick Hasen: How Antonin Scalia was the Donald Trump of the Supreme Court

Perhaps this is how the Framers wanted it, but has there ever been a time where more issues with the potential to more deeply divide us – has there ever been a time where more of them seemed so likely to head to the same place: The U.S. Supreme Court?

I’m talking about the 2nd Amendment, and the inevitable gun rights issues surely to come out of the growing #enoughisenough movement. I’m talking about gerrymandering, the crazy geographical games that determine who sits in our state legislatures and Congress – that’s already in front of the Justices. And, lurking there in the distance, the potential biggest of them all: Can a sitting President be indicted?

And yet, more and more, the U.S. Supreme Court feels less like a beacon of neutrality and more like yet another politicized branch of the U.S. government.

How’d we get here? As you’ll hear in my conversation with Rick Hasen, the person we might want to thank for that isn’t even here anymore: Antonin Scalia.

Rick Hasen is the Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of California, Irvine. He also runs the Election Law Blog. His latest book is: “The Justice of Contradictions: Antonin Scalia and the Politics of Disruption.”

Hasen presents a new view of Scalia – not a political one – but a critical one, looking at how this strict originalist – this justice who argued that the Constitution’s meaning can be found through the original words – may not always have practiced what he preached.

More directly: Hasen also argues, as you’ll hear, that Scalia was the Donald Trump – or the Newt Gingrich – of the Court. He was the ultimate disrupter, and much of the politicization the Court faces today traces directly to Scalia himself.

David Wasserman: The House Outlook for 2018

For the last several weeks, regular listeners will know that I’ve been pretty focused on the state of our democracy. We all need to pay attention. 

At the heart of democracy, of course, is elections… and so today we get to focus on the politics and probabilities and look ahead to the big vote this fall: The midterm elections.

Midterms always have a story to tell, of course, and most frequently though not always, it’s not a good one for the party in power. This year, with the early indicators -- special elections, Presidential approval ratings and generic ballots – pointing to Democrats’ strength, we wanted to find out: How likely is that Blue Wave  to becoming reality.

Specifically, can Democrats really flip the House?

And if you want to talk about district by district voting for the U.S. House of Representatives, it’s hard to find anyone better or more plugged in than David Wasserman, U.S. House editor for Cook Political Report.

Michael Isikoff and David Corn: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America

With the daily headlines on Russia – Nunes memos, Mueller indictments, Trump denials, continual cable TV panels – it’s easy to miss a powerful and – as it turns out, complicated – question: How did Russia happen? How did we get here?

For many of us, the so-called “Russia story” started in 2015 with Donald Trump. It continued with Paul Manafort and Carter Page and WikiLeaks and, of course, picked up steam with Internet Bots and cyber war and what we now know is a continuing massive, coordinated attack on our democracy – on our very way of life.

But as with any major attack, these things don’t just appear out of nowhere. Sometimes, like 9/11, the signs were there and once missed, create the opportunity for something much, much worse.

So how did Russia occur? What happened during Trump’s campaign – and since? And how has all of that come together to put Trump and us in the situation – the divided democracy – we all now face?

That’s the incredible road map and story put together by two of our country’s leading investigative journalists, Michael Isikoff and David Corn in their new book: “RUSSIAN ROULETTE: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump.”

You know them both. Michael and David are longtime award-winning reporters and analysts. Michael is chief investigative correspondent for Yahoo News. Previously, he was an investigative correspondent for NBC as well as a staff writer for Newsweek and the Washington Post. Isikoff has written two best-sellers. David is the Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones magazine, MSNBC analyst, and author of three New York Times bestsellers.

Chris Whipple: How the Trump White House Is the Most Dysfunctional Ever

I’ve just got one thing to say: Thank goodness for John Kelly! I bet that’s not the one thing you expected me to say. But here’s why:

With Kelly so much in the news – for the Rob Porter disaster, inexplicable non-existent security clearances, insulting the congresswoman who supported a gold-star widow from Georgia, his supposed role as a so-called “adult in the room” – for all those reasons and more, people are actually aware of and talking about what is arguably the most important White House job after, of course, the top one: Chief of Staff.

I mean before Kelly, if I wanted you to turn off this podcast right now, I’d tell you that today I talked with the author of a book positioned as the ultimate analysis of the historical role of the Chief of Staff to the President of the United States.

But that characterization vastly shortchanges the appeal and importance of Chris Whipple’s outstanding book “The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency.” After all, do you realize how much of a political junkie you have to be to care about the tactical approach of Hamilton Jordan or Mack McLarty or Ken Duberstein?

This book is so much more than that. This book is less a “how to” than a “how it happened.” It’s story telling theater. Political inside baseball at the high and low points of history. It’s a fun and fascinating read. It’s also a work of history.

You’re there when Ronald Reagan opens the door of his Pacific Palisades home two days after the 1980 election and warmly welcomes his former political enemy James Baker as his new Chief of Staff. You’re there when Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld gets Gerald Ford to let him hire his new deputy, despite the two DWI arrests that young Dick Cheney had.

And most relevant to right now: You’ll hear some thoughtful analysis about why – in Chris Whipple’s opinion having studied four decades of how White Houses both function and fail – why the Trump White House is, in his words, the most dysfunctional in history. As you may know, Whipple is the guy who got the first on the record interview with Reince Priebus after Priebus left the White House.

Whipple brings these incredible historical moments to life, making them feel like little movies. Which makes sense, because making movies is a big part of what Whipple does for a living.

Whipple is a writer, journalist, documentary filmmaker, and speaker. A multiple Peabody and Emmy Award-winning producer at CBS's 60 Minutes and ABC's Primetime, he is the chief executive officer of CCWHIP Productions. Most recently, he was the executive producer and writer of Showtime's The Spymasters: CIA in the Crosshairs.

Steve Coll: Inside America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan

About 13 years ago, I climbed on the bandwagon and, like lots of other folks, read several books to better understand our history in Afghanistan and Iraq and with Al Quaeda — how we got into the mess and, maybe how we’d get out.

You may recall – it was a bit of a golden age of reporting and writing. Among them: “The Looming Tower” by Lawrence Wright;  “Fiasco,” by Thomas Ricks; “Imperial Life In The Emerald City,” by Rajiv Chandrasekaran; “The Places in Between,” Rory Stewart’s crazy story of walking across Afghanistan, as well as his follow-up "The Prince of Marshes." But the first one I read has long stayed with me, and set the context for the all the others to come: That was the Pulitzer prizewinning “Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001” by Steve Coll.

“Ghost Wars” outlined the CIA’s secret history in Afghanistan, the Taliban’s rise, the emergence of Osama bin Laden, and the failed efforts by U.S. forces to find and assassinate him in Afghanistan. It ends the day before 9/11.

Now, finally, Steve Coll is back on the beat. His new book is "Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.” It tells the story of America's intelligence, military, and diplomatic efforts to defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 9/11.

The book is as powerful and relevant and urgent as Ghost Wars was. It mixes details and insights and analysis that, once again makes plain — in painful ways — what happened after those planes hit the World Trade Center.

More about Steve Coll — somehow, writing some of the most important books on our most important foreign policies is not all he does. Coll’s day job is serving as Dean of the Columbia School of Journalism. He is also a staff writer at The New Yorker, author of seven books, and a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. There’s a lot more, but you get the idea. 

That’s also why at the end of our talk, I picked up on my conversation last week with Harvard professors Steve Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt. They wrote the outstanding “How Democracies Die.” My question for journalism Dean Coll, rather than the author: How does democracy work with people who think facts are alternative facts, that real news is fake news? How does it work with people who believe anything – or nothing at all?

How Democracies Die

I might not have a more important political conversation this year than the one I just had with Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt.

You’ll be tempted to look at the title of their book How Democracies Die and – particularly if you sit on the left side of things – think that it’s purely about President Trump. It’s not.

Yes, of course, it covers Trump. Specifically, by looking at authoritarians across continents and throughout history, the authors outline four key indicators of Authoritarian Behavior. And, many of you may not be surprised – they find that candidate and President Trump has infringed on all four. 

But what you’ll also see – more clearly and ominously – is what we might call the Great Softening. What you’ll see is that the weakening of our democracy began long before Donald Trump came down his Trump Tower escalator in 2015 and announced his candidacy.

Quite simply, this book will change the way you look at the last 40 years, daily events, our country, and even democracy itself. If you love democracy, you will love this book.

Some background: Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt are Professors of Government at Harvard. Levitsky’s research interests include political parties, authoritarianism and democratization, and weak and informal institutions, with a focus on Latin America. Ziblatt’s interests include democratization, state-building, comparative politics, and historical political economy. His focus is on European political development. 

Together they’ve spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies around the globe – places like Germany, Italy, Chile, Venezuela, Peru, among others. Now, as you’ll hear, much to their own surprise, our country has become their laboratory.

I should add that if you love democracy, this book also might worry you. While the authors make clear that American institutions are incredibly strong – and, indeed, to date they have held up – you’ll also see how things can change and how they can go south. Our days for taking democracy for granted are gone.