1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,040 ROBERT COSTA: Welcome to the Extra. I'm Robert Costa. 2 00:00:03,040 --> 00:00:08,980 Tonight we return to that Washington Week bookshelf, where we bring the nation's best 3 00:00:08,980 --> 00:00:13,240 authors to our table to discuss their latest work. 4 00:00:13,240 --> 00:00:18,600 Our guest is John Dickerson, 60 Minutes correspondent, political analyst for CBS News, 5 00:00:18,600 --> 00:00:25,820 and author of the fascinating new book The Hardest Job in the World: The American Presidency. 6 00:00:25,820 --> 00:00:30,810 But before we bring in John, let's recall some of the biggest moments of those who have 7 00:00:30,810 --> 00:00:34,850 held the hardest job in the world in modern times. 8 00:00:34,850 --> 00:00:38,910 FORMER PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY: (From video.) Ask not what your country can do 9 00:00:38,910 --> 00:00:42,610 for you, ask what you can do for your country. 10 00:00:42,610 --> 00:00:45,020 FORMER PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: (From video.) People have got to know whether or not 11 00:00:45,020 --> 00:00:47,920 their president is a crook. Well, I am not a crook. 12 00:00:47,920 --> 00:00:51,180 FORMER PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: (From video.) Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. 13 00:00:51,180 --> 00:00:54,090 FORMER PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: (From video.) I can hear you. The rest of the 14 00:00:54,090 --> 00:01:00,950 world hears you. And the people - (cheers, applause) - and the people who knocked 15 00:01:00,950 --> 00:01:06,150 these buildings down will hear all of us soon. 16 00:01:06,150 --> 00:01:10,950 FORMER PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: (From video.) Out of this terrible tragedy God has 17 00:01:10,950 --> 00:01:20,890 visited grace upon us, for he has allowed us to see where we've been blind. 18 00:01:20,890 --> 00:01:35,040 (Singing.) Amazing grace, how sweet the sound. 19 00:01:35,040 --> 00:01:41,400 PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: (From video.) This American carnage stops right here and stops 20 00:01:41,400 --> 00:01:50,950 right now. From this day forward, it's going to be only America first. 21 00:01:50,950 --> 00:01:56,420 JOHN DICKERSON: Thank you, Bob. What a - what a panoply of sound that was. 22 00:01:56,420 --> 00:02:01,450 COSTA: And John, we did not play sound from the Founding Fathers because it does not 23 00:02:01,450 --> 00:02:07,600 exist, but if we had sound from the Founding Fathers talking about the American presidency 24 00:02:07,600 --> 00:02:13,260 and the amount of power that should be contained in that office, what would they say? 25 00:02:13,260 --> 00:02:17,510 DICKERSON: What the founders would say about the presidency is when you need it, you 26 00:02:17,510 --> 00:02:22,860 really need it. Gautam Mukunda, who's a professor at Harvard, says the presidency's 27 00:02:22,860 --> 00:02:26,980 like an airbag; you may not think about it, but in an emergency you need it. 28 00:02:26,980 --> 00:02:30,630 And that's the way the founders thought about it, and that's what we see in the multiple 29 00:02:30,630 --> 00:02:33,650 emergencies the president faces today. 30 00:02:33,650 --> 00:02:38,430 That's what the presidency is required to do, is answer those moments of crisis. 31 00:02:38,430 --> 00:02:42,060 But they would have quickly hastened, the founders would, to say we may give the 32 00:02:42,060 --> 00:02:46,560 president emergency powers and give the president powers to do things alone as a single 33 00:02:46,560 --> 00:02:51,250 human that are very tempting - because they worried so much about ambition and the abuse 34 00:02:51,250 --> 00:02:55,780 of it - we may give a president these powers, but we are going to shackle the president 35 00:02:55,780 --> 00:03:00,930 and weigh Congress against him and give the courts power so that a president doesn't get 36 00:03:00,930 --> 00:03:04,620 out of control. Which means if they looked at the presidency today, with its 37 00:03:04,620 --> 00:03:08,730 multiplying duties and the power that's been given to the president sometimes by 38 00:03:08,730 --> 00:03:14,060 Congress itself, they would be quite in a state of fretting and worry. 39 00:03:14,060 --> 00:03:21,120 COSTA: John, we just saw a photo of Lyndon Baines Johnson go across our screen here, and he is a 40 00:03:21,120 --> 00:03:29,580 prominent character in your book. Why did LBJ matter when it comes to understanding the presidency? 41 00:03:29,580 --> 00:03:34,580 DICKERSON: Lyndon Johnson mattered in looking at the presidency because, one, he loved 42 00:03:34,580 --> 00:03:40,180 political power. He loved husbanding it. He loved finding it. He loved using it. 43 00:03:40,180 --> 00:03:44,610 And so he was a - he was a political animal who believed that if you gained power in all 44 00:03:44,610 --> 00:03:49,810 of its different ways, including flattering your opponent or flattering somebody you 45 00:03:49,810 --> 00:03:54,920 needed something from - he wasn't just a bully; he was also a great flatterer as a way to 46 00:03:54,920 --> 00:03:59,880 gain power through that - that you could use power and do good with it. And he was presented 47 00:03:59,880 --> 00:04:04,530 with a moment in the assassination of John F. Kennedy to move and do something with it. 48 00:04:04,530 --> 00:04:08,690 He was presented with a moment after the beatings on the Edmund Pettus Bridge to use that 49 00:04:08,690 --> 00:04:12,190 moment to try to get civil rights legislation passed. 50 00:04:12,190 --> 00:04:17,880 And he was also a complicated, failed, gnarled person with lots of carbuncles on his 51 00:04:17,880 --> 00:04:22,060 character, which represent the full complexity of the presidency. 52 00:04:22,060 --> 00:04:26,730 We do not elect angels in part because the job of getting the presidency - and this was 53 00:04:26,730 --> 00:04:30,980 something the founders worried about - the job of getting the presidency requires some 54 00:04:30,980 --> 00:04:36,720 low acts now and again, and nevertheless you are elevated to a job where you can harness 55 00:04:36,720 --> 00:04:42,200 your ambition and your skill to do great things for millions of people and generations. 56 00:04:42,200 --> 00:04:46,600 COSTA: And one of LBJ's tactics was - they called it the treatment, right, where he 57 00:04:46,600 --> 00:04:52,250 would lean up against people and physically loom over them to try to get a deal done. 58 00:04:52,250 --> 00:04:57,940 But John, we don't see those kind of LBJ-style deals as much anymore; we see a lot more 59 00:04:57,940 --> 00:05:03,560 executive orders, presidents having their own orders from the Oval Office, rather than 60 00:05:03,560 --> 00:05:07,550 working with Congress. Is that a product of the lack of bipartisanship in 61 00:05:07,550 --> 00:05:10,450 Congress, or is something else happening? 62 00:05:10,450 --> 00:05:13,510 DICKERSON: It's a product of two things. 63 00:05:13,510 --> 00:05:17,090 You and I have been in a lot of those gymnasiums and VFW halls and listened to candidates 64 00:05:17,090 --> 00:05:21,430 make promises that just balloon outside the room they are so grand and they are on every 65 00:05:21,430 --> 00:05:27,220 scale. And we have come as a country to expect presidents alone to do the job, and what that 66 00:05:27,220 --> 00:05:31,480 does is it creates an expectation from the campaigns that when they get into office they 67 00:05:31,480 --> 00:05:34,620 will move quickly and with great results. 68 00:05:34,620 --> 00:05:38,020 And under that kind of pressure once you get into office, you have to do something. 69 00:05:38,020 --> 00:05:41,930 The work with Congress is slow, dull, patient, full of compromises. 70 00:05:41,930 --> 00:05:46,060 That's not the pace that you set when you're out there campaigning, so you use a lot of 71 00:05:46,060 --> 00:05:50,570 executive orders to make it look like you're making more progress than you actually are. 72 00:05:50,570 --> 00:05:53,930 But the other thing that has changed is something you and I have covered a long time 73 00:05:53,930 --> 00:05:58,220 too, which is the structure in politics has changed so much since the days of Lyndon 74 00:05:58,220 --> 00:06:02,440 Johnson or even the days when Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill could make a deal together. 75 00:06:02,440 --> 00:06:06,320 And in writing the book I went back to sort of try and trace the roots of what happened, 76 00:06:06,320 --> 00:06:09,950 and basically what happened is we lost split-ticket voting. 77 00:06:09,950 --> 00:06:13,580 Voters who used to vote for a Republican president but a Democratic senator, or a 78 00:06:13,580 --> 00:06:17,150 Republican president and a Democratic House member, they don't exist so much anymore for 79 00:06:17,150 --> 00:06:20,550 a variety of reasons which I detail. 80 00:06:20,550 --> 00:06:24,220 And so the structural thing that made people get into a room and reason with each other, 81 00:06:24,220 --> 00:06:28,850 because the voters were going to hold them to account, a lot of those structures have disappeared. 82 00:06:28,850 --> 00:06:33,650 Now the structure of politics encourages a lot of behavior that's basically acting out, a 83 00:06:33,650 --> 00:06:39,820 lot of frantic declarations on cable TV, a lot of behavior on Twitter that doesn't 84 00:06:39,820 --> 00:06:45,130 produce anything other than rage in your political base, which keeps getting you elected 85 00:06:45,130 --> 00:06:49,580 but doesn't actually get anything done once you are elected. 86 00:06:49,580 --> 00:06:53,890 COSTA: John, one thing this pandemic has brought to the fore of our national debate is 87 00:06:53,890 --> 00:07:00,440 the question of who is in charge - is it a governor in a state that's dealing with an 88 00:07:00,440 --> 00:07:04,920 outbreak, is it President Trump, is it Vice President Pence and his taskforce? 89 00:07:04,920 --> 00:07:09,690 And you interviewed Vice President Pence last month and got this issue that's mentioned 90 00:07:09,690 --> 00:07:15,080 in your book, the tension between presidents and state officials about who's in charge, 91 00:07:15,080 --> 00:07:18,490 especially during crisis moments. Let's take a listen. 92 00:07:18,490 --> 00:07:21,970 VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE: (From video.) One of the elements of the genius of America is 93 00:07:21,970 --> 00:07:26,350 the principle of federalism, of state and local control. We've made it clear that we want to 94 00:07:26,350 --> 00:07:31,050 defer to governors, we want to defer to local officials, and that people should listen to them. 95 00:07:31,050 --> 00:07:34,090 DICKERSON: (From video.) But Mr. Vice President, the virus doesn't know federalism. 96 00:07:34,090 --> 00:07:36,910 A virus that hits in Texas is in New York tomorrow. 97 00:07:36,910 --> 00:07:41,820 This is a problem that requires a coordinated national result. 98 00:07:41,820 --> 00:07:47,060 COSTA: John, what did the vice president's answer reveal to you? 99 00:07:47,060 --> 00:07:52,530 DICKERSON: Well, it revealed a couple of things. It revealed, basically, an attempt to 100 00:07:52,530 --> 00:07:57,250 find a rationale for criticisms of the administration's tardy response to this pandemic. 101 00:07:57,250 --> 00:08:01,550 We know there is a federal expectation of a response to the pandemic because they've been 102 00:08:01,550 --> 00:08:07,230 practicing it for the last three presidencies. The Trump administration coming into 103 00:08:07,230 --> 00:08:12,410 office practiced with the outgoing Obama administration what they would do if a pandemic 104 00:08:12,410 --> 00:08:16,240 hit, what the federal government would do if a pandemic hit. There are all kinds of 105 00:08:16,240 --> 00:08:20,440 reports within various different agencies about the federal response. 106 00:08:20,440 --> 00:08:25,240 The Obama team had a response, a 90-some-odd-page booklet they wrote about how to respond 107 00:08:25,240 --> 00:08:29,790 at the federal level to a pandemic. George W. Bush went on vacation and read the book 108 00:08:29,790 --> 00:08:34,920 about the 1918 swine - Spanish flu, came back and told Fran Townsend, who was his top 109 00:08:34,920 --> 00:08:40,640 domestic terrorism advisor, we need a plan for a pandemic; she came up with one. 110 00:08:40,640 --> 00:08:44,350 So we know there's a federal response. That doesn't mean governors don't have a lot to 111 00:08:44,350 --> 00:08:49,850 do too, but there is a federal response, and the president has been tardy in embracing that. 112 00:08:49,850 --> 00:08:53,080 The reason there's a federal response is, as I discussed with the vice president, the 113 00:08:53,080 --> 00:08:55,690 virus travels across state lines. 114 00:08:55,690 --> 00:08:59,390 The principles of federalism, which are important in the response - for example, if 115 00:08:59,390 --> 00:09:03,710 you're trying to get somebody to wear a mask, it's more powerful if your local official 116 00:09:03,710 --> 00:09:11,120 encourages you to do it than if a distant bureaucrat in Washington, or even a politician 117 00:09:11,120 --> 00:09:14,700 in Washington, does it. There are elements of federalism. But the coordination, the 118 00:09:14,700 --> 00:09:19,610 fast movement, the emergency action is really - you can - the federal government has a 119 00:09:19,610 --> 00:09:24,010 very significant role to play. And there is a national rallying job for the president. 120 00:09:24,010 --> 00:09:29,310 You played that clip from FDR at his first inaugural, nothing to fear but fear itself. 121 00:09:29,310 --> 00:09:33,250 He talked in that speech, mentioned the word "action" eight times. 122 00:09:33,250 --> 00:09:37,980 Presidents rush to the challenge usually in the American system. 123 00:09:37,980 --> 00:09:42,750 And in this case, there was an opportunity for the president to rush into the challenge, 124 00:09:42,750 --> 00:09:48,330 to speak to the country as its most powerful spokesperson, to deliver clear information 125 00:09:48,330 --> 00:09:50,960 about what was going on. 126 00:09:50,960 --> 00:09:54,630 That's, when you talk to disaster experts, the most important thing is clear information. 127 00:09:54,630 --> 00:09:59,190 Even if the information is to say we don't know much what's going on, is to have one 128 00:09:59,190 --> 00:10:02,880 single, clean piece of information coming from a high level. The president could have 129 00:10:02,880 --> 00:10:07,610 done that. Instead, he gave very conflicting - and continues to this day to give 130 00:10:07,610 --> 00:10:12,980 conflicting advice about everything from masks, to tests, to a host of other things. 131 00:10:12,980 --> 00:10:18,950 COSTA: John, you book ends with a chapter about this upcoming election 2020, and it 132 00:10:18,950 --> 00:10:23,110 anticipates President Trump's appeals to suburban voters. 133 00:10:23,110 --> 00:10:26,520 You write, quote, "Suburban Republicans, particularly women, who took a chance on Trump 134 00:10:26,520 --> 00:10:30,440 in 2016 moved away from him over time. 135 00:10:30,440 --> 00:10:34,530 So to win reelection, Trump must go for the throat, pushing his strategy against 136 00:10:34,530 --> 00:10:42,350 Democrats even further." What did you take away from your own reporting and research 137 00:10:42,350 --> 00:10:49,190 about President Trump's suburban strategy in 2020, and how history informs it? 138 00:10:49,190 --> 00:10:53,680 DICKERSON: One of the downsides of writing a book is that at some point you have to put 139 00:10:53,680 --> 00:10:57,950 the pen down. And the book was finished before George Floyd's death, before COVID, 140 00:10:57,950 --> 00:11:03,550 before the economic collapse. And so that picture of the suburbs, which is still true, 141 00:11:03,550 --> 00:11:06,810 has been changed a little bit in the wake of those things. 142 00:11:06,810 --> 00:11:11,480 We've seen extraordinary movement even further away from the president in the suburbs 143 00:11:11,480 --> 00:11:15,790 because of his failed response, as those voters see it, 144 00:11:15,790 --> 00:11:20,170 to the racial questions in America, and the notion of implicit racial bias that a lot of 145 00:11:20,170 --> 00:11:24,960 people in the suburbs believe exist and have seen the president not only have no real 146 00:11:24,960 --> 00:11:29,620 answer to those issues, but not even seem to be able to hear the complaints that are 147 00:11:29,620 --> 00:11:33,660 being voiced in the streets of America about the racial inequities. 148 00:11:33,660 --> 00:11:36,810 And so that has hurt his position in the suburbs. 149 00:11:36,810 --> 00:11:40,400 What I was writing about is what we see the president trying still to do, and which he 150 00:11:40,400 --> 00:11:45,590 is having some difficulty doing, which is essentially criticizing the other, which is 151 00:11:45,590 --> 00:11:50,340 talking about those radical liberal Democrats, talk about the Chinese, basically follow 152 00:11:50,340 --> 00:11:55,150 the playbook that we've seen before, going all the way back to Governor Wallace, to 153 00:11:55,150 --> 00:12:01,880 Richard Nixon, where they raise boogeymen in order to basically say to their base: You 154 00:12:01,880 --> 00:12:07,200 may or may not like me, but the enemy on the other side is at the door, and they are 155 00:12:07,200 --> 00:12:11,290 dangerous. And so we must all gather together against them. 156 00:12:11,290 --> 00:12:14,850 The problem for the president is that as he tries to do that, following his traditional 157 00:12:14,850 --> 00:12:19,910 playbook, reality has inserted something else, which is the consistent question of 158 00:12:19,910 --> 00:12:25,040 whether he has been up to the task of handling these three big problems he faces. 159 00:12:25,040 --> 00:12:31,760 COSTA: You almost said Mike Wallace there, 60 Minutes on your mind on a Friday night, John, clearly. 160 00:12:31,760 --> 00:12:36,630 DICKERSON: (Laughs.) You have a good ear, Bob. 161 00:12:36,630 --> 00:12:41,980 COSTA: Hey, John, just to wrap up here, I was really intrigued by your book because it 162 00:12:41,980 --> 00:12:47,240 comes three and a half years into the Trump presidency, the ultimate outsider to this 163 00:12:47,240 --> 00:12:53,050 institution. And you're grappling with this institution, its history, its power in the Trump era. 164 00:12:53,050 --> 00:12:57,880 But we're also in the middle of an election where Vice President Biden could in less than 165 00:12:57,880 --> 00:13:02,630 100 days become president of the United States, president-elect. You've covered Biden 166 00:13:02,630 --> 00:13:08,070 for a long time. He's about to make his vice presidential selection. Based on your 167 00:13:08,070 --> 00:13:14,380 experience with him over the years, how does he see the presidency, and why does that matter? 168 00:13:14,380 --> 00:13:20,310 DICKERSON: It's a great question. He sees the presidency, of course, from two special 169 00:13:20,310 --> 00:13:23,820 vantage points in Washington. A long-time member of the Senate who has worked with 170 00:13:23,820 --> 00:13:27,600 presidents of both parties, but then working inside the administration. 171 00:13:27,600 --> 00:13:31,530 And one of the things I did in the book is go back and look at a lot of what Mitch 172 00:13:31,530 --> 00:13:35,850 McConnell had said and then what he wrote in The Long Game, his book about Washington. 173 00:13:35,850 --> 00:13:40,010 And in that book he gives Joe Biden all kinds of credit for being able to work with him. 174 00:13:40,010 --> 00:13:44,590 Mitch McConnell was no pal of Barack Obama's, and the feeling was mutual. 175 00:13:44,590 --> 00:13:48,600 And yet, Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell could get business done, in part because they 176 00:13:48,600 --> 00:13:53,330 recognized something we don't talk much about in campaigns, but which is a truth of 177 00:13:53,330 --> 00:13:56,820 Washington, which is deal making is a little ugly. 178 00:13:56,820 --> 00:14:00,290 And deal making requires you to kind of put aside the fact that you may violently 179 00:14:00,290 --> 00:14:04,880 disagree with the person you're negotiating with on 90 percent of what they believe. 180 00:14:04,880 --> 00:14:10,200 But you focus on the 10, and you make the deal, and you make the progress you can on the 181 00:14:10,200 --> 00:14:15,880 10 percent. And Joe Biden believes that. Ronald Reagan believed that. FDR believed that. 182 00:14:15,880 --> 00:14:20,420 And so Joe Biden believes in working within the system. And so his vice presidential 183 00:14:20,420 --> 00:14:24,780 pick, I think, while it will spend - first of all, it's the best window into his 184 00:14:24,780 --> 00:14:29,180 current state of decision making. And the presidency is a job of making decisions. 185 00:14:29,180 --> 00:14:32,660 So we are going to get to see in real time how the vice president makes decisions. 186 00:14:32,660 --> 00:14:36,790 And one thing he wants to do, of course, is keep his party unified at a moment where 187 00:14:36,790 --> 00:14:41,160 America is having a complete rethinking of its racial landscape. 188 00:14:41,160 --> 00:14:44,820 And he wants to take advantage of that as the person who can reshape that landscape in 189 00:14:44,820 --> 00:14:48,650 the best and most equitable way that's consistent with our founding principles. 190 00:14:48,650 --> 00:14:51,930 But he also wants to show that he can do the job. 191 00:14:51,930 --> 00:14:57,420 And so he wants somebody who can be - who can step into that job and can work with him to 192 00:14:57,420 --> 00:15:01,980 explain what the job is to the American people, because his ultimate case is that Donald 193 00:15:01,980 --> 00:15:06,500 Trump has not done the job; he will be able to do the job, not only in terms of handling 194 00:15:06,500 --> 00:15:11,360 things in the day-to-day excitement of the presidency, but also tend to those values 195 00:15:11,360 --> 00:15:16,220 and play that role as a steward of the American presidency. And I think that will be 196 00:15:16,220 --> 00:15:22,080 somebody who will try to bring his vice president into that same lane for the American people. 197 00:15:22,080 --> 00:15:28,070 COSTA: That's so well-said, John. The presidency is a job about making decisions. 198 00:15:28,070 --> 00:15:33,320 It has an onslaught of other issues and challenges, but at the end of the day about making 199 00:15:33,320 --> 00:15:37,520 decisions, and leadership. That's it for this edition of our Extra. 200 00:15:37,520 --> 00:15:41,710 Thank you very much to John Dickerson for joining us, and to our viewers. 201 00:15:41,710 --> 00:15:44,950 And you can listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on our website. 202 00:15:44,950 --> 00:15:48,330 While you're there, sign up for our Washington Week newsletter. 203 00:15:48,330 --> 00:15:52,790 It has a lot of information in there, great stuff to keep you updated on the show. 204 00:15:52,790 --> 00:16:00,050 It's for our most fervent viewers, our long-time Washington Week regulars, like yourself. 205 00:16:00,050 --> 00:16:12,800 But for now, I'm Robert Costa, and we'll see you next time.