Peter Baker & Susan Glasser: “The Man Who Ran Washington” | SALT Talks #106

Peter Baker and Susan Glasser. Peter is the Chief White House Correspondent for the New York Times, political analyst for MSNBC, and author of Days of Fire and The Breach. Susan is a staff writer for the New Yorker and author of its weekly Letters from Trump's Washington, as well as a CNN global affairs analyst. Susan and Peter are married, and their first assignment as a married couple was as Moscow Bureau Chiefs for the Washington Post, after which they wrote Kremlin Rising. Jim Baker sits relatively under-discussed considering the enormous influence he wielded from the end of Watergate to the end of the Cold War. Baker ran five different national presidential campaigns, served as Chief of Staff in both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush’s White House, Treasury Secretary and ultimately Secretary of State from 1989 to 1992 during which time the Soviet Union collapsed. “Jim Baker as a subject turned out to be, I think, sort of oddly relevant to the moment… Donald Trump had yet to appear on the scene in terms of Washington politics at least… our interest was in a big subject about Washington and understanding ‘how had Washington become such a dysfunctional gridlocked place?’” H.W. Bush urged Baker to get into politics and started Baker’s multi-decade political career that shaped Washington and how it’s operated in the decades that followed. One can trace the kind of deal-making politics, in which Baker played a major role creating, all the way to today’s climate that has seen a rejection of the status quo, exemplified by President Donald Trump’s ascendency. ————————————————————————— To learn more about this episode, including podcast transcripts and show notes, visit salt.org/talks Moderated by Anthony Scaramucci.