Susan GlasserCritiques

Excellent read of geopolitical life during 90's and international diplomacy.

The authors are married. The 32-chapter audiobook with epilogue takes twenty-nine hours to complete. It is a very good account of the events of the Donald Trump presidency.

This massive (over 700 pages) accounting of the four years this country survived the presidency of Donald J. Trump does a public service to the U.S. I firmly believe if it were somehow possible to get every voting citizen to read “The Divider,” Trump would fade into oblivion. Unfortunately, not only is that not possible, but as of this writing Trump is the leading candidate of both political parties to be re-elected president in 2024. In fact, he is so far ahead of any of his Republican primary opponents, it would be possible for him to forego all campaigning and he would still be nominated. That may very well be what he is doing right now since his early campaign events are very controlled and not the kinds of events designed to win over voters not in his base. What is most disturbing about Baker and Glasser’s book is that their book is evidence that one of our two political parties is arguably rotten to the core. The fact that a solid majority of Republicans fervently stand behind Trump now that he has been impeached twice and is facing more than 35 (and counting) criminal indictments is more depressing than the possibility of Trump winning a third term because it is proof that our democracy is broken. Time will tell our future, but it is not bright

I made it through 250 pages and the writing is excellent but I realized that I was just plain SICK of reading about Trump. Yes, Baker and Glasser provide more detail about what was going on in those years but for those of us who were watching and reading about it daily as it happened, this is more than enough. Living through it was hard enough.

I spent a fair amount of the time I was reading this book wondering why I putting myself through Trump's presidential term again. It was awful enough living through it the first time!

Which should tell you something about the urgency of the prose, the immediacy of the writing, which is excellent. I find this to be a very readable, yet very detailed and documented, history of Trump's time in the White House. I recommend it.

The authors set out to document, as they put it, “the inexorable culmination of a sustained four-year war on the institutions and traditions of American democracy.”

Of Donald Trump, they write:

"He did not know that Puerto Rico was part of the United States, did not know whether Colombia was in North America or South America, thought Finland was part of Russia, and mixed up the Baltics with the Balkans. He got confused about how World War I started, did not understand the basics of America’s vast nuclear arsenal, did not grasp the concept of constitutional separation of powers, did not understand how courts worked. ‘How do I declare war?’ He asked at one point, to the alarm of his staff, who realized he was unaware that the Constitution prescribes that role for Congress. He seemed genuinely surprised to learn that Abraham Lincoln had been a member of the Republican Party. ‘He knew nothing about most things,’ observed one top aid. Advisers soon realized they had to tutor him on the basics of how government worked.”

…and yet, he became the 45th President of the United States!

As President, he was always concerned more about appearance than substance. He loved the trappings of office, and never passed up a good photo-op. He made many appointments to key positions based on how well the candidate would look on television rather than on their qualifications. He even spent “exhaustive amounts of time each morning combing and twisting the long strands of his awkwardly colored hair.”

Watching television took up an inordinate amount of Trump’s time. He passed many hours watching his favorite network, Fox, and often made decisions based on how they would play with his ratings. Although his family and friends had relatively easy access to him, key members of his administration frequently had trouble gaining his attention. Newt Gingrich even said “The two most effective ways of communicating with Trump are ‘Fox and Friends’ and ‘Hannity.’”

But television wasn’t the only media outlet he wanted to dominate. He used Twitter as an outlet for outrage and a means for self-praise, and “fact-checking was never part of the process.”

His foreign policy, if he can be said to have had one, revolved around his “conviction that the country had been taken for a ride by foreign allies and adversaries alike.” Everything was about transactions with Trump, and all transactions were about “winning,” which to Trump generally meant getting money or favors. He alienated traditional allies and courted enemies and adversaries.

He sought constant adulation and was much more interested in appearing in rallies than in governing. He surrounded himself with sycophants and yes-men, and fired aides who dared to challenge his whims. He turned most conversations into some way of bragging and exaggerating about his supposed “accomplishments.” He lied constantly: the Washington Post fact checker counted 30,573 false or misleading public statements he made while president!

Baker and Glasser follow Trump’s chaotic presidency in carefully researched detail from his false claims of the biggest inauguration crowd in history to his aborted effort to overturn his loss in the 2020 presidential election. It was, in their words:

". . . an unimaginable period in our history when the United States had a leader for the first time who neither knew nor subscribed to many of the fundamental tenets of the Constitution and even actively worked to undermine them."

Evaluation: This book is an excellent, almost day by day, summary of the Trump presidency. Every chapter outlines reasons for enlightened citizens who love the United States to be angry.

(JAB)

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The Divider: Trump in the White 2017 – 2021 by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser is a comprehensive overview of President Donald J. Trump’s administration. Mr. Baker and Mrs. Glasser are journalists, and a happily married to each other.

The book is a compelling narrative of an administration steeped in non-stop scandal, much of it its own doing. Touching almost every headline generated from the oval office, and many generated about it. From the Muslim ban to the border wall, to the election and the attempt to overturn the results.

The book paints Trump as a President who thinks he knows everything. This is not unique to American Presidents. Teddy Roosevelt was known to preach to experts, Nixon of course thought he knew more than anyone, among others. The difference, as many knew at the time, is that President Trump was so convinced he knew everything better than everyone and simply refused to listen to other opinions. I’ve read several articles about why that is, but that is not relevant to this book.

We’ve heard this before: Donald Trump is a unique threat to American democracy. There’s nothing earth-shattering about the book, and I don’t know why some of the stories were included instead of policy discussion. And yet, this is a comprehensive, extremely well-researched, readable, and fascinating book.

The Divider Peter Baker and Susan Glasser does a good job, however, detailing how the GOP became the Party of Trump. Much like in Thank You for Your Servitude, it chronicles how party leaders just sat back and let Trump take it over, ideology be damned as long as there’s a win at the end of the election. The main beneficiary of this was Mitch McConnel’s agenda, but the price was high. A political party with no platform, agenda, or position other than “we stand with Trump”, as the 2020 RNC’s platform blatantly stated.

I do disagree with some of the assessments, for example:

“Trump seemed to believe that he could win again by replicating the polarizing strategy that worked in 2016, however much of a fluke its success has been.”

Was it really a fluke?
Divide and conquer has been a winning strategy for a long time, and has been honed to a fine science by Karl Rove. If anything, winning by inclusivity is a fluke.

The authors point out, over and over again, that Trump’s biggest foe was himself. His need for enemies, real or imagined, as well as pitting advisors and staff against one another, were the biggest obstacles. Jared Kushner, however, comes across as a competent administrator, who learned quickly how to manage his father-in-law (I am looking forward to reading his book at some point).

The most sobering aspect of this book was how many highly educated people in high office were willing to overturn an election, lie, and cheat because their side lost. As the authors point out, the threat to the United States is not only Trump but those willing to pick up his anti-Democratic mantle.

As the authors point out, a comprehensive, detailed account of the Trump administration has not been published. If history is any indicator, we have about two decades to wait.

If you’re leaning to the left, center, or right you’ll probably like this book. If you’re a MAGA Republican, probably not so much. However, it is packed with first-hand quotes, as well as great information, so I do feel that it has a lot of value.

"For the last two decades, the rules of political reporting have been blown up. And I've cheered at every step along the way".

Covering Politics in a "Post-Truth" America by Susan B. Glasser

I was very impressed with this Political work and will be recommending it to "Political Junkie" friends.

Susan B. Glasser is a journalist herself and was an editor at Politico during the 2016 Election.
She writes both eloquently yet in a deeply personal way of the changing faces of Journalism and Reporting.

She speaks of how Today's news is fast and sophisticated with so many digital news outlets, outstanding reporters, Policy Wonks and a Tech Savvy audience of readers.

But she also exposes the downside of all this News. She speaks of "Revolutionary Chaos". She asks important questions like just what have we, the people, given up for all this modern cutting edge news? Is there any accountability left?

And she goes into great detail about the 2016 election, the polling models and how wrong they were, the viral moment of the Trump Access Hollywood video and the realization of just how deeply our whole way of digesting news has changed.

I'd say this is a must read for any Political Junkie. It was written back in 2016 when Trump first won but is no less relevant now and I really enjoyed this essay including the look back at a more simple time and the reign of Print Journalism. I look forward to reading more of her work as this was excellent.

"He was no visionary, no innovator. He articulated no grand plan for the country or the world. He did not start Reagan's revolution, not the one that later swept Eastern Europe. Yet he figured out how to channel those forces, to harness them and focus them on constructive outcomes while avoiding potential disasters. He could bring together people who were more comfortable apart and find pragmatic ways to paper over any rifts. There was a little idealism involved and a fair degree of opportunism. He was not above political hardball to advance his team’s chances at the ballot box. He never lost sight of what was good for Jim Baker and he survived the ruthless arena of Washington. Asked in later years his biggest accomplishment, he regularly joked, “leaving Washington unindicted," a line he lifted from a Doonesbury cartoon. But somehow in the main, it worked. Things got done.”

Jim Baker may have been one of the most powerful men in the United States. He worked in high level positions both within the Reagan and George H Bush administrations. He simply got things done! Both respected and reviled, Baker was able to manage the corridors of power not only in Washington but throughout the world.

If one wants to understand our current history and politics, one has to understand Baker’s role in both. This is a very long book (600 pages) but the authors do an excellent job of moving along the narrative with various anecedotes and insights. It appears to be a very fair book regarding Baker the power broker and Baker, the man.

Excellent book...

This book gives a nice history of White House & DC during the 1980s and 1990s. Interesting character !

If you love Russia, or know someone who does, or have concern for someone who lives there then this book is for you. A great record of what's happened in the last 6 years under Putin. Things are getting worse and less free in Russia, not better. People who say "the verdict is still out on Putin," should probably read this book. In the past few years most "free" speech has been virtually outlawed, all TV media is now state-owned, oil and gas have been renationalized, the quagmire in Chechnya has continued, and all political parties and elections are now controlled by Putin and his party. My personal belief is that in 5-10 years you will no longer see Western missionaries allowed to live in Russia.

I found a good example of the censorship that the book talks about just yesterday. One of the websites that I used to frequent for information on Chechnya and to chat with Caucasus peoples was shut down. Kafkazcenter.com was housed in Sweden, where the Russian embassy allegedly convinced Swedish authorities to raid their offices and confiscate their servers for inciting terrorism. The site is very pro-Islam, and anti-Russian authority. You can find info on rebel attacks there that you won't see on any other news source. It's back up and running, for now, on Lithuanian servers.

This takes you through 2005. The early years of the Putin dictatorship when he took control of the media, kept stoking the fires in the former republics and established his government of cronyism featuring many of his ex-KGB pals. Also covers the Chechnyan terrorist attacks in Russia and how he completely befuddled and manipulated Bush. Very interesting commentary on how he revived many of the symbols of the Soviet era and now runs a semi-Soviet state while calling it a democracy. Anyone wanting a glimpse into the current Putin maneuvers will be served by reading this for background.