57. Tucker Eskew, spin doctor to George W. Bush and Sarah Palin: Why I'm voting Democrat

27:24I was delighted to get to know the city and it brought me back as recently as just before Christmas this year and I still love it. Tell us what differences you found between the US and UK systems. I mean, I spent quite a lot of time in Afghanistan and Iraq, and I was always astonished by the difference when I went to a presentation from a US general compared to a UK general. The scale, the professionalism, the depth of stuff going on in the US compared to what things felt like in Britain. Give me a sense of how it felt in terms of scale, expectations. What surprised you in the first few days when you turned up in Downing Street?

27:57Well, aside from being in a place where there was a great deal of sympathy for the United States, and yet there was already the sort of counter effect. We hadn't at all gotten to that place in the United States. So you knew you'd, to borrow a term from American entertainment, that Dorothy was not in Kansas anymore. We were in a new place, a different place, and yet one that had deep roots and deep affection and alliances. So I felt at home, but a new home and thoroughly broadened by living in an environment that included many people of Arab descent, including Muslims, a place that was remarkably international.

28:39On Downing Street itself, in terms of the resources, the way that it was run, the building itself, how did all of that compare to the White House? And try to be frank, I know you want to be polite, but your honest reaction when you first turned up, did you think, whoa? You thought this is a nice little three-star boarding house. Its scale is quite different. You know, we call the land and the compound the White House is on the 18 acres. That's its nickname. There are no 18 acres. So, you know the scale is different. But you sit in the lobby in a smaller welcome spot and there are seven newspapers laid out in front of you.

29:18I'm the son of a newspaper man. And I was so excited to be in a newspaper-centric culture. So I love that. I was amazed to get secret information in a brown paper bag that was handed around in the foreign office. That was very striking to me. Notwithstanding Donald Trump's transgressions with secret documents, I can assure you prior to the Trump era, documents were distributed, maintained, burned, and shredded with a care that is extraordinary in the pre-Trump era and will be again someday if it isn't already under Biden. So there were differences. It's this hutch, it's this warren of offices without quite the same sort of reason.

30:05The White House has been added to with the West Wing, which is what most of us really think of when we think about White House, but the residence, as we call the building that you see visually in your mind, is grand. It's massive. Everything's painted in white. There's a brilliance to it that is quite striking. And then next to it is the Eisenhower office building, this almost baroque old structure with huge columns and it's got weight to it. It is substantial. So, I didn't quite feel that. Tucker, I think it's very revealing that Rory asks you to describe what Downey Street's like, and you ended up describing the White House.

30:45We get the message. It's not the same. It's not the same. I mean, what else would I say about that? You had the time of your life. Every day started with Alistair ripping into either a spokesman or a newspaperman or a woman in a room with 15 other people, all either because they have that sense of humor or because they were dutiful minions laughing uproariously. Well, it was very, very good to have you. Let me just ask you something else about, I mentioned this in the introduction, this whole thing about religion. So I can remember George W. Bush once asking me, you know, why I didn't believe it.

31:27He sort of obviously saw it was kind of quite a defect. You're a committed Christian. And I was, during the Iowa primary, I saw this extraordinary television report inside a church in Iowa where the guy in the pulpit was explaining why people of God have to vote for Donald Trump. Now, again, I don't understand what's happened to the American psyche. So give me your analysis from the Christian perspective of what's happening in your politics. The evangelicals all seem to be so much behind Trump. I don't get it. There is a cottage industry in trying to determine what is really going on in the evangelical movement.

32:06I belong to a mainline Protestant church, Episcopalian. So we nod to the Archbishop of Canterbury while having very local control of churches. And I belong to a church where two weeks ago, we actually talked about politics in what we call an adult forum, not the pulpit, not the church itself, but in a separate room where I was allowed to speak to the idea of depolarization and an organization called Braver Angels and some of the civic reform movements going on in this country. Not every church is like that. It would be impossible to overgeneralize about the Christian church in America. There are many strains of the faith, but any strain of the faith which puts politics above faith and the tenets of the religion.

32:54I have a partner, Mike Shannon who says very wisely that if you're orthodox in your Christianity, you should be unorthodox in your politics. And sadly, that has not happened in too many of the evangelical churches in this country. Not all. I think this is something I'd love to develop more. What is it that those churches say to justify their support for Donald Trump? I mean, obviously, we look at him, we see him as this kind of philandering, lying, kind of moral abomination. and you've got preachers saying this person is some sort of, I don't know, messianic figure. How do they pitch it? What's the spin?

33:31How do they convince their readers that such an improbable person could be a Christian candidate? I think the sense of grievance and being under assault and looked down upon by your betters, so to speak, drives a great deal of this. and a sense that the way it was, which includes tenets of faith, but much more than that in terms of patriotism, society, I don't believe that it is demonstrably or overwhelmingly racist. I don't believe it is demonstrably or overwhelmingly fueled by hatred, but I do think there is grievance and there is a sense that our betters look down upon us. And the changes that have occurred in our society are too rapid, too destabilizing, and run counter to what we in our group, our in-group, considers the norm, and Donald Trump's a fighter.

34:27American politics is very, very dominated by particularly Christian religious rhetoric. I guess every president talks about their faith. Joe Biden talks a lot about his faith. It's not true in Britain. But America is changing. I mean, when you were born, I guess 91 % of people acknowledged themselves as being Christian. When you and Alistair were working together, it was 75%. It's now down to 61 % pretty quickly. The number of people identifying as agnostics or atheists is growing all the time. Do you think that this is going to change, that there's going to come a time when actually religion won't feel as central, when every politician won't have to wear their faith on their sleeve?

35:03I could foresee that. I could also foresee a reawakening. It's happened in the church before. I also think that other, particularly the Abrahamic religions, offer something to a diverse and changing America that could show patterns of growth. I'm not saying we've hit we, meaning the church, broadly defined, has hit bottom. It could go lower in their fears that it will. But whether through faith or DNA, I have some hope and optimism, and I do believe it's a country founded on some principles that are quite consistent with the church but live well beyond the walls of the church grounds and have been deeply influential in an enlightened world, which may be going through some very dark times and could get darker.

35:53But I try to keep my eye on the long game and believe that this country is a beacon of hope and that we can restore some of the luster to our Western ideals and work together with our allies to advance freedom and flourishing, even in very troubled times. I'm a strong internationalist who's fearful of a crumbling alliance around Ukraine. I am a pro-Israeli, small-D Democrat who believes the people of Gaza need an awful lot. And that's not that far out of the American mainstream. I want to remind you all that there is in this country and I think in much of the Western world, a perception gap where the people on the polls for the various ideologies believe that the other is just far worse than they actually are.

36:41And there's numbers that back this up in this country. So what I'm trying to be part of is better conversations that lead to open discussions that don't all end in the mushy middle. we're still going to disagree, but to disagree better, more smartly, and within the framework of a wide ideological spectrum that nonetheless rules out the rise of authoritarianism and socialism run amok. Tucker, one thing that we used to agree about, and I discovered when we met in London a few weeks ago, we maybe aren't necessarily on the same page. Going back to when you worked in London, you were pretty much, just as I was kind of 100 % supportive of Tony Blair, you were 100 % supportive of George Bush.

37:27But I get the feeling from talking to you that you maybe have a lot of worries now about the strategies that we pursued at that time, and in particular, maybe the Iraq war that followed on from the Afghanistan war. Now, Rory and I had a very long podcast discussion last year on the anniversary of the war, So we don't need to rehearse all of the arguments, but I'd just like to get your sense of how your kind of mindset on this may have changed in recent years. Well, I'll start by saying that I am on the record over and over again defending President Bush, Prime Minister Blair, particularly while I was still in the government left in early 04.

38:04And I think with the passage of time, I recognize that toward the end of his administration, George W. Bush made some long overdue, very helpful changes, which were later undermined as our government swung in a different direction. I think there were nothing but the best of intentions for our country and our alliance and the West and peace. I think there was, as I've said, no playbook for contending with our enemies in a post 9-11 world. And I believe that those who've accused Blair and Bush and others of lying are doing so willfully, knowing that they are wrong, knowing that a lie is about intention.

38:49and not effect. I think there were very damaging effects from mistakes, but a mistake is far different from a lie. And in the way that George W. Bush held true to supporting our troops, trying to defend our country, I believe he did the best he could and he will let history judge him, But he didn't lie. And yes, he's human. And there were mistakes. He made mistakes. I made mistakes. And we're all living in a post 9-11, post Iraq, post Syria, post, yeah, we're in tumultuous times. I was waiting for the but, which didn't quite come. So I'm going to give you a bit of an opportunity for the but, because the truth is, you know, I was in Iraq and Afghanistan.

39:37And Iraq, you know, when I was there last year, it is absolutely astonishing. You spent with your allies three and a half trillion dollars on those wars. You now drive from Baghdad airport into the capital city and you see signs praising Sadr Ghassim Soleimani, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander, attacking American terrorism. You have Iranian militia groups celebrated on every mile on the road to Mosul. Afghanistan, we invaded to topple the Taliban government. We spent a trillion dollars and we quite literally handed the country back to the Taliban again. So talk me through this. I'll talk you through this.

40:10Joe Biden led that debacle of a withdrawal from Afghanistan. I and countless other Americans began to go very negative on Joe Biden as soon as that happened and have held to that ever since. Rory, we live in an era of changed expectations and dramatically greater problems. And I think we've got to all have the will to do the very best we can. I think there are enormous problems in this difficult, at times decaying world. And yet, all we can do is what we can do. And I'm committed in my own way, outside of elective politics, of doing what one newsman said to another problem solver in this country.

40:57My friend Alan Miller was trying to engage a journalist, Ted Koppel, some of you would know, in the cause of fighting disinformation. And finally, Koppel said, but Alan, it looks like you're trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon. And Alan took a deep breath and said, yeah, but what else are you going to do? And I think we've all got teaspoons. And yes, the ocean is boiling in spots, Rory. What are you going to do? Would you say - But what can I do? But what can I do? What a book. What a book, Tucker. Thank you. And I saw that you mentioned that in your church. I saw the video when I was looking into your recent pronouncements.

41:34Is there a part of you that thinks that some of this decaying and disorder that you talk about was, in a sense, directly flowing from some of the decisions that we made we were part of back then? It reminds me of Rory's question about, you know, did Newt Gingrich, did Sarah Palin, you know, I think history's a big ocean and there are a lot of rivers that have fed into it. So I couldn't single out any one thing except to say that when you are fighting on really high stakes ground with the eyes of the world upon you and mistakes lead to enormous expenditure and treasure and lost lives, that's bound to have unstabilizing, destabilizing rather effects.

42:19And it has been the case that too many destabilization events have occurred in the last 25 years in America. And we need to get back on more solid ground. So the time when you were in politics, the time when you were working with Alistair was the end of a period of enormous optimism and American dominance, more and more democracies, more and more prosperity around the world, more and more free trade, in fact. We've now entered an era where since 2014, every year, it's been getting more dangerous. Extreme poverty has been going up in Africa. There's a lot of violence and trade is diminishing. And one of the questions, I guess, is does the US have the appetite anymore?

42:59You talked about being leader of the free world. This is a system since the Second World War, which was predicated on, I guess, open borders, free trade, America as a global policeman. All of that seems to be collapsing. And I don't get the sense that either Biden or Donald Trump are really very interested in encouraging Americans to lean into those things again. I think that's a fair assessment. I don't doubt that we're in a period of enormous transition. I still see the United States coming around to its place. That place will be different from what it was as it changed really throughout the last century.

43:36But it is a place that is fueled by innovation, fed by our diversity and strength. We're not bowed to almost in a temple-like fashion by some of the far left. So diversity, innovation, enormous economic strength, and the ability to reinvent itself, those things still exist in the America I live in. I'm trying in my very small way with my very small teaspoon to be part of efforts at the kind of grassroots level, truly grassroots. We need better leaders as well. And if I have to vote for Joe Biden over Donald Trump, so be it, but I still be looking for stronger leaders than that. And I think our history proves that sometimes when you most need them, they do come forward.

44:21And I hope to be part of making a grassroots movement that demands that that happen come into being. Tucker, my last question, and thanks for all the time that you've given us, I want to ask you about your sense of Britain. As you say, I've lived here for a time, you lived here for a time, and we've just been involved in these strikes in the Red Sea against the Houthis. there is a sense of still, I think, of a kind of special relationship so-called. But I just want you a sense of how you think Britain is seen in the world and how you think Britain is seen by Americans. Roy and I met some congressmen and women recently, and they, you know, they'd come over for a trip to Britain, but some of them I sense didn't maybe take Britain quite as seriously as we were taken in the past.

45:08And I just wonder whether you think we are the same country that you kind of grew up with and whether there's still that same affection for Britain? I think it is more muted than it used to be. I think it has changed. I think it's deeply unfortunate, but the same forces that brought Trump that were reflected in Brexit have served to, in both cases, in my view, undermine the standing of our two nations in the eyes of the world and really your economic strength, ours. I think you add up COVID, media fragmentation, destabilized world, terrorism, and the rise of authoritarians. I think there's a great need for nations like ours.

45:49I'm pulling for Great Britain and the United Kingdom, and I'm pulling for the United States. Tucker, my last question is trying to understand the motivations of senior Republican politicians and the way they get in behind Trump. You were talking about your friend, Senator Tim Scott, who seems to be, you know, on the surface, a very charming, polite, attractive figure. And he got up on that stage with Donald Trump at the end of that vote in New Hampshire. And he said, I guess you must really hate Nikki Haley because you endorsed me. And Tim Scott put a big grin on his face and he said, I love you, Donald Trump, right?

46:25And then I'm left there thinking, what is happening? These senior, serious, impressive people, Congress people, senators, all of them bending the knee to him. What's going on? I have long felt, Rory, that if those politicians in the Republican Party had seen themselves as being on a plane with engine trouble, they could have wrapped arms around each other and 10 of them, 15 of them even, taken the three or four parachutes left on that potentially crashing airplane and jumped out altogether. They might have lost six or eight of them as a percentage, 60 or 80 % of them. And yet many would live and the party would have survived.

47:10And we could have put Donald Trump's political career and his marring of the American landscape to an end by convicting him during impeachment, either of those two times, but especially the second time. And they failed to do that. Whether that was lack of foresight, wishful thinking, or fear of the voters and the electorate that keeps them in office, there's way too much of the latter. It doesn't speak well of the character and ability of the people entrusted by Republicans, at least, to hold office in this country. I think Democrats have many weak spots in their elected ranks, but I couldn't compare the problems on the left to those that the Republican Party has made, created, sustained, and doubled down on.

47:58Tucker, I'm going to cheat and have a final, final question, but it has the advantage that you've got a one-word answer. Who's the president going to be in two years' time? Wishful answer or a real answer. No? What do you think? What do you think? Yeah, I think Joe Biden. Do you? You don't look or sound convinced. I think we all have a year of tremendous uncertainty in front of us. Yeah. But I do think there's power in hope. I know I'm coming across as sort of a, I've been called by my friend Stuart Stevens as one of those sucker optimists in the Bush world. I think optimism takes action to make it hope.

48:34I do have some hope. I will do what I can to try to produce outcomes that improve the country, but there's not much I can do. I hope many others, and I know many others will join me in that. The South Carolina motto in Latin is, while I breathe, I hope, don't spero spero. I do breathe, I do hope, and I do believe that we'll ultimately make the right decision. Well, listen, thanks for giving us so much of your time. It's lovely to see you again. Great to see you, Alistair. Rory, nice to meet you. Thank you, Tucker. Thank you very much.

49:08So, Rory, what did you learn from that? Well, I learned a lot. I mean, And look, I've got American relatives who are going to be as enraged by that as some of your teacher friends were by the Gillian Keegan interview. I can assure you that my in-laws do not want to hear that Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush were fine, upstanding Americans. So, I mean, I think he's a very sympathetic man. And of course, you know, I'm a left-leaning conservative who broke against Boris Johnson. And so I feel a lot of empathy for him. But there will be a lot of my American friends listening saying this guy was allied with people that they would have seen as pretty unpleasant right-wing Republicans who created a lot of the problems that led up to Trump.

49:49You know, I thought was really interesting was when you were pressing him about, I guess about ambition, really. I mean, I hadn't really thought of his answer about why Biden was standing and why some of these Republicans weigh in behind Trump was really about just this sort of ambition, in a sense. And I think at the Trump-Biden level, this unbelievable confidence that they have that they are the right people. It's kind of obvious when you think about it. It's such a profound observation, isn't it? Because it's the same when you ask, why did Robert Buckland, who was on the left of the Conservative Party, endorse Boris Johnson?

50:24Why did Rishi Sunak or Oliver Dowden endorse Boris Johnson? Presumably, it's because politics has become basically a game about making it to the top. It's like Machiavelli on steroids. And all that really matters to the key Republicans is that they keep their seats and they have a chance of getting into Trump's cabinet. Well, I think we should, you know, I think it was good to get somebody on who's obviously not a leader like Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Arnold Schwarzenegger, some of the other Americans we've had on. But I think through this year, we should look to get a few different voices, even at the risk of annoying your in-laws.

51:01I mean, I thought he was lovely. The other thing that was interesting, which is very, very American, I think, is obviously his openness about faith, his belief that Christianity is going to revive, his extraordinary sort of almost sermons on hope that kept coming back again and again. Actually, I should have dug more into South Carolina. I thought he was very good on the motivations of Trump voters, very good on saying that he doesn't want them to be demonized as racist. but his attempts to try to understand why voters feel so angry, so betrayed, so lost that they would get behind this guy. We didn't really get time to talk about this organisation you mentioned, Braver Angels, which is really this kind of disagreeing, agreeably thing, depolarising.

51:44And the book I mentioned on the podcast recently was actually a book that Tucker sent to me, this Monica Guzman, who wrote this book. I hadn't thought of it that way before. because he's definitely changed from the person, in terms of the way that he talks about politics, he's definitely changed. Well, tell us a bit about this. Tell us what he was like when you first met him. He was very like he is, very warm, very charming, very open. But, you know, he would be like me in terms of, look, this is what we're going to do. He had, you know, I had a touch of the Lee Outwaters about me. He had a touch of the Lee Outwaters about him.

52:16You do what you have to do to win the argument that you're engaged in at the time. And I think he was always very reflective. But I think what happens because of the polarization that's gone on now, I think he feels we have to come at politics and political argument from a different way. So he's somebody that would have almost come across 20 years ago as a kind of ruthless realist. Yeah. But now when he sees people like his friend, the senator from South Carolina getting in behind Trump, he's like, there's a limit to the ruthless realism. Yeah, he's thinking around it, as opposed to just thinking, well, that's the obvious right thing to do, because that's your team and you're trying to win.

52:54He held back, you were right to say, when you said you were waiting for the but. When I've spoken to him before, he kind of has been a bit tougher on the policies that we pursued in the aftermath, particularly in relation, I think, to Iraq. But I guess he's also one of those guys, he's pretty loyal. You would never get him to say a word against George W. Bush's integrity. He's still a bit like me with Tony. He'll speak up for him because he gets plenty of people who don't. And so when you were working with him in 2001, began working with him in 2001, did you think there was a very distinctive American approach to communication which was a bit different to the British approach in those first few days and weeks working together?

53:36Did you notice that he came from a different context and culture? I think he fitted in very, very well with what we were trying to do. And we were trying to build these international coalition information centers, they were called, in Washington, Europe, and Islamabad. In fact, the guy that we talked about is Fred Greg Jenkins. The other person who drew the short straw may shortly be a cabinet minister because Pat McFadden was – I can remember Pat's – Pat has quite a lugubrious face anyway. When I said to him, Pat, I really think you need to go to his lab about it. His face did fall somewhat. But anyway, off he went and has ever did a brilliant job.

54:13But no, this all started in the context of what we'd tried to do during the Kosovo War, when we did build in these internationalized communications infrastructure. So, after 9-11, I sent a copy of all the papers that I'd done on the Kosovo situation to Karen Hughes, who was Bush's communications director. As a result of which, we then sort of got these new structures. Tucker was the guy that Bush sent to come and be his man inside the London hub, as it were. So, I think our communication systems were pretty similar. Well, Alistair, thank you very much for getting on. I mean, I thought it was really interesting and I, you know, strength to his arm.

54:57It's really good to see somebody of that seniority taking the fight to Trump. See you soon. See you soon. Bye bye.