Mark K. Updegrove | Baptism by Fire

September 13, 2009 | Comments Off

Interview with Mark K. Updegrove [15:28m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

From Publisher’s Weekly:

The newest presidential history from former Newsweek editor Updegrove (Second Acts: Presidential Lives and Legacies After the White House) looks at eight presidents who took office at critical moments in U.S. history and shaped American notions of presidential authority and purview: Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, Tyler, Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy and Ford. Updegrove drafts short accounts of each administration, succinctly examining how each helped define and refine the office. By calling upon little known trivia and providing useful context, he weaves an engaging narrative; however, it isn’t without its flaws. Updegrove can’t seem to resist contrasting the decisions of these time-honored presidents with current President George W. Bush, and his liberal eye glosses over some of the uglier aspects of these Commanders-in-Chiefs-ironically deifying men who, by Updegrove’s own account, wanted desperately to be viewed as men, not legends. Ultimately, this is a satisfying read for armchair historians with sympathetic politics, particularly in the attention it calls to aspects of the office (the assumption of power by the vice-president, term limits, etc.) now largely taken for granted.

Posted by admin | Filed Under History, Politics, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, PODCAST

Joseph Flynn | The President’s Henchmen

September 11, 2009 | Comments Off

Interview with Joseph Flynn [14:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

From Joseph Flynn’s website:

I was born, raised, educated, praised, scorned, loved, and shunned in Chicago — and then I took my act on the road. Having endured more frigid winters than I care to think about, I made sure the road led somewhere warm. I’ve lived in Los Angeles, and Honolulu, and Los Angeles again. I loved the warm weather, the blue ocean, and the palm trees. But I didn’t like the isolation of living in the remote reaches of the Hawaiian Pacific. Nor did I like the congestion, smog, and cost of living in L.A. So when my daughter was born, my wife and I thought we could do worse than to raise her in the Midwest, despite the weather. Our decision proved to be correct. Our daughter has grown up to be a happy and brilliant young woman. The Midwest has been a productive place for me to write. And global warming has produced much more moderate winters than the ones I suffered through as a boy.

Posted by admin | Filed Under History, Politics, Fiction, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, PODCAST

Larry Buttram | The Curtain Torn

September 10, 2009 | Comments Off

Dr. Kent: Welcome back to Sound Authors. It’s a beautiful day out here in New York. The sun is poking through the clouds, which is always nice. And I’ve got another author on the show today. His name is Larry Buttram, and he’s the author of three mystery novels and a book of short stories. And he’s the President of the North Virginia Writer’s Club, and this is his first historical fiction novel called The Curtain Torn. And I can’t wait to talk to him about it. Welcome to the show, Larry.

Larry Buttram: Well, thank you, Dr. Kent. I appreciate your letting me be on today.

Dr. Kent: So tell me about this. What a story, you know, just about this fellow, Robert Carter. Tell me about the story.

Larry Buttram: Well, I think it’s the greatest unknown story to American history. He was one of the richest men in America, this was a couple hundred years ago, and he owned 17 plantations, and he said God told him how evil slavery was and he had to do something about it. So he freed all of his slaves. He freed over 500 slaves, and yet he is virtually unknown to history. I don’t think one person in a thousand knows about him. So, have you ever heard of the guy yourself?

Dr. Kent: No, I hadn’t. And you said he freed 500 slaves. Tell us, how do you, first of all, find a character, and then how do you separate fact from fiction? So tell us the fact, and then how you started to create your historical fiction novel.

Larry Buttram: Well, actually there is information about him if you dig deep enough. His grandfather was King Carter, and he was the richest man in America, he was the first millionaire in America. He owned about 50 plantations, about 1200 slaves, and (inaudible) dealerships and brick yards and lumber yards, and when he died he had about half a million dollars in cash on him. So there has been a lot of things written about King Carter. Now, his grandson Robert, that I wrote about, he was not as well known, obviously, he was 4 years old when his grandfather and his father both died at the same time. So the empire, much of it was put in a trust for him. And when he became older, when he became of age, they turned over half of the empire to him, and he was quite different from his grandfather, because he never felt good about owning other human beings and tried to make life easier for them. But he still, it was later in his life that he, here to me’s the most amazing part, I found two references in my research that shows that he said that he thinks he died, he had a fever and he was delirious, and they thought he was near death, and then he came back and he made comments that he had talked to God. And God told him how evil slavery was, he had to do something about it. So he ended up freeing 50 slaves, and actually he was from Virginia, from Fredericksburg, Virginia, but after he freed his slaves he moved to Baltimore and he donated the land where the Baltimore Courthouse stands today.

Dr. Kent: Wow. And you know, what happens when you take a character that you find and say, man, this is a, like you said at the beginning of the show, this is an untold story, people don’t know about this guy. And then what do you do to put flesh on the bones of it and make it into a book?

Larry Buttram: Well, I’ve spent the last year and a half researching the guy, and there are a couple biographies. One was written in 1940 by a guy who’s name was Morton, and it’s Robert Carter of (inaudible) Hall. And to be honest, I mean, it’s a good book, it’s very informative, but it’s very dry reading. I mean, for somebody to read this book I think they would have to want to or be a descendent or something. So there’s not much emotion in it, and there’s another book written by somebody, it was called the First of (inaudible), two years ago, and I can’t remember the author’s name. But I read both of those books, and I actually went down to, his plantation is still there. I’ve actually been to the plantation. It’s in a little town in Virginia called Mantro, so it’s actually outside of town on the Potomac River on an inlet there. The original house burnt down, but the house that was built in 1850 is still standing, and the graveyard is there, and you can see the graves, and you can see the fields and everything. So you know, going there gives you a sense of what it was like then. So I just started creating the, you know, reading everything I could about the guy, and getting to know him in my own mind. I mean, I feel like I know the guy, but I had to make some changes too, I think this was about 70% accurate. But I had to simplify some things and change a few things here or there. You know, as a writer, to try to make the story flow a little better, does that make sense?

Dr. Kent: Absolutely. Well, and you have done, of course, fiction in the past. We talked I guess about a year ago about your book The Third Generation, and you’ve written fiction in the past. What’s the difference between trying to put a real character into a book that’s readable versus creating the whole story yourself?

Larry Buttram: Well, I think the main thing is the research. I’m sure there’s historians out there that I’m sure know a lot more about Robert Carter than I do, but I have spend the last three years, year and a half researching him now, which I had to do some research for fiction to make it believable, but not this amount. And I created outlines and sifted through tons of information. And then the other part was trying to figure out how to fill in the gaps. Because I mean, if I had to write a story about my own life there would be things that were missing. So you could imagine from somebody from 200 years ago there were parts that weren’t clear that I had to fill in, and then other things had to be sort of condensed, because my feeling, no matter how exciting a life somebody leads, 90% of somebody’s life is filled with the day to day tedious thins that we all have to endure. So I had to get rid of that and condense some things. Like for example, one of the things was he didn’t free his slaves until later in his life, and he had 17 children. And I thought wow, I really don’t want to cover all of his 17 children. To do that research and then to write about them, and mention them is going to distract from the story. So I moved the story, I condensed it a little bit and made it after he’d had one child and you know, you see him earlier in his life, and I think that the story, it flows better. But I have had some people tell me they didn’t like that because people that grew up near his plantation say well this is not 100% accurate.

Dr. Kent: So 500 slaves, the story goes that he freed, that’s a lot of people.

Larry Buttram: Yeah, it is.

Dr. Kent: That’s a whole village.

Larry Buttram: Yeah, yeah. I had somebody comment, “Well, Abraham Lincoln freed those slaves.” And actually, Abraham Lincoln technically didn’t free the slaves because in the emancipation proclamation it was directed toward the states that were in rebellion only, where he had no legal authority. So the war freed the slaves, but as far as one individual, you know, Robert Carter freed 500 slaves, and you know, more than anyone in history. And in my opinion, he should be in all the history books. And you’re familiar with Mount Vernon Plantation, right?

Dr. Kent: Yeah.

Larry Buttram: George Washington’s home, yeah. I was down there last month and I took them a copy of the book and the lady called me and she said, “I’m sorry, we can’t cover this because we just don’t have room for any more books.” And it really kind of irritated me, I mean not for me, but George Washington was a great guy, but he owned slaves, and here’s Robert Carter that he built his whole life, he did something for others to kind of make life better, and he gave up his way of life and all his empire to help people. But yet, she can’t find 6 inches of space in their gift shop to put a book about the guy.

Dr. Kent: I’m intrigued by, you know, this character, he sees Jesus. And you know, at that time in history when white folks went to church they didn’t necessarily think that the black folks had the same God or the same Jesus. You know, it wasn’t necessarily, why did this guy happen to see Jesus and then think about slavery? Talk about the difficult political issues tied up in all that. And religion.

Larry Buttram: Well, it’s a complicated issue, and that’s what I think makes him such an unusual guy. And I thought well, to start at the beginning, I found one reference that he was in a town when some slaves were hung, I think for stealing, something. So he saw some slaves being hung when he was young. And I think that had an impact on him. And also the fact that I think he was four years old when his father and grandfather died within 3 months of each other. No matter how rich you are, that made a real impact on him. I mean, this is my opinion, that it made him start thinking about life and what was there at an early age. And part of it I think is just, inheriting his personality to be considerate of others, so when he became older, he became an adult, he became a very religious man and started attending church and helped set up a church with a young minister in the area. And he went to church with a lot of the blacks and slaves, he attended church with them. And he freed, I mean, he sided with many of his servants, in disputes with the overseers and with the neighbors. I think it’s just a natural extension of all that to you want to do more and to question why God let this situation of slavery exist in the world. Does that make sense?

Dr. Kent: Yeah, and it seems like from our former conversation about your other book, race was also an issue there, and as someone who has lived for a time in the South, race is still an issue, of course.

Larry Buttram: Oh yeah.

Dr. Kent: And it seems like in your writing it plays a heavy role. Talk about race in your own life.

Larry Buttram: You know what’s funny, I’ve never experienced, I mean, I’m white, but when I grew up I lived in a community in East Tennessee that there were no blacks, there were no minorities at all. So I guess the way I look at it is I never saw racism in my life. So I was an adult, and I heard people make comments and so on, but I’d never saw a black person until I was an adult. And then I wondered why is this? You know, to get back to your other question, I don’t think, this is probably a strange statement, but I don’t think racism in this country anywhere is a black and white issue. I think it’s an issue of the human heart, and if you look throughout history, any group of people that have been in power have dominated the others, it doesn’t matter if they’re black or white, or if you talk about what the Egyptians did to the Jews, or what the Germans did to the Jews, or what the Japanese did to the Chinese, or in Canada the French and the English don’t get along sometimes, and I can’t even tell them apart. If you (inaudible), it’s like which is which? But I think it’s just a condition of the human heart that we all have to be aware of, that the ones that are in power think that their way is the best, and you know, and I know this is probably a radical statement, but if it’d been the blacks in power in this country and whites had been in Africa, I think the whites would have been enslaved, so obviously that didn’t happen, but again, I think it’s just a condition of the heart.

Dr. Kent: Yeah. Well, it’s such a pleasure to speak with you about this. I know that folks can find your book online. Do a little self-promotion here.

Larry Buttram: Well, they can go to larrybuttram.com and get it there, or the books can be ordered from Amazon or, I think that Borders and Barnes and Noble, all the books just came out, so they probably don’t have them there, it takes a while to get it through the distributor. Until then, the easiest way is to just go to my website and do it.

Dr. Kent: And the book is called The Curtain Torn.

Larry Buttram: The Curtain Torn.

Dr. Kent: A wonderful story, and Larry Buttram has also put out some wonderful other books, go check those out. I talked with him last time about The Third Generation, and check him out on his website, larrybuttram.com. Thank you so much for chatting with me today.

Larry Buttram: I sure appreciate you letting me be on here, Dr. Thanks a lot.

Dr. Kent: Yeah. My next guest on the show is the essay contest winner Dillon Drake, and he has won a contest out there in Iowa, he’s from Iowa. And I’m going to talk to him about his essay and about the whole project and about his life. So come on back for that, I look forward to it.

Posted by admin | Filed Under History, TRANSCRIPTS, Fiction, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, PODCAST

Aaron David Miller | The Much Too Promised Land

September 9, 2009 | Comments Off

Dr. Kent: Welcome to Sound Authors. Today is a great day here in New York. The skies are clearing and the sun is coming out. It’s Friday again, and on Sound Authors I’ve got three guests. Our musical guest at the end of the show couldn’t make it today. We’re going to get Chris Thile again on the show one of these times. But I do have three great authors on show and among them are, at the beginning will be Aaron David Miller. He’s the author of The Much Too Promised Land, America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace. The second guest on the show will be Larry Buttram, the author of The Curtain Torn. That’s based on a fascinating story about a plantation owner. And the third guest on the show will be Dillon Drake. He’s a young man and the winner of an essay contest, and we’re going to talk to him. That’ll be a fun interview as well. But now it’s my great honor to speak with Aaron David Miller. Welcome to the show.

Aaron David Miller: Pleasure to be here.

Dr. Kent: Well, and of course I know your daughter, Jennifer Miller, and she wrote a wonderful book also, Inheriting the Holy Land, and I knew her from Seeds of Peace, which you served as the President of for quite some time.

Aaron David Miller: Yeah, Jenny’s a remarkable author, I’ve learned a lot from her. She’s actually now writing a novel.

Dr. Kent: Oh, wonderful.

Aaron David Miller: She’s in Columbia doing graduate work at an MFA program.

Dr. Kent: Wonderful. Yeah, she’s an amazing lady. Well, let me ask you about this book, your latest. The Much Too Promised Land. What a wonderful title. How did that title come about?

Aaron David Miller: Well, it really is a kind of symbol, or emblematic of the history of this conflict. Palestine in its historical context was really promised multiple times. Of course, there was the divine promise made by God to adherence of three major religions, Slam, Christianity and Judaism. And conflicting promises of course were made for those who believed and those who would follow. The second promise was of course conflicting British promises outlined in the Dalfour Declaration, 1917, that there be a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Those contradicted to some degree the promises that British diplomats had made to various Arab rulers. Finally there was the commitment or promise that the UN General Assembly made in November of 1947 when they promised or outlined their call for a Jewish and an Arab state, the partition of Palestine. My book really deals with the fourth promise. The fourth promise was the American promise, and that promise essentially went like this, that if you Arabs and Israelis are reasonable, you ascribe to a kind of split the difference mentality between what you need and what you can actually have, then the United States will be prepared to assist you. We’ll stand with you in an effort to help you negotiate your differences. And sadly, for many reasons, most of which have to do with the attractability of the conflict and the politics of the locals, who are caught up in the conflict, that American promise has not been comprehensively delivered.

Dr. Kent: Well that’s such a fascinating time right now, even the last couple weeks of, in this country, with this awful shooting that happened in the Holocaust Museum this week, and then in the news, President Obama is again trying to bring the two parties to the table. What, do things ever change in the Middle East?

Aaron David Miller: Well, they do change over time. Amidst all the bad news and there, you know, no one ever wants money betting against Arab-Israeli peace, but there have been hopeful signs in the course of the last 40 or 50 years. We have an Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, which signed in 1979, and it’s not perfect for sure, but it’s extremely important. We have an Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty, signed in October 1994. And again, it’s not perfect, but both parties wanted to continue. So yes, there have been positive developments on the two main fronts right now. That is to say, can Israelis and Palestinians negotiate a conflict detonating agreement, and can the Israelies, Syrians and the Israelis and the Lebanese negotiate treaties of peace. There of course, it’s a much less happy story.

Dr. Kent: Well now, and I remember back in July of 2000 I was actually at the summer camp with Jenny Miller, your daughter, and she told us that, she told me that you were at Camp David with these leaders. And I seem to remember the reason that the peace talks failed was something very small, if I’m not mistaken, it was just the issue of East Jerusalem?

Aaron David Miller: Well, the portrayal of what happened at Camp David is very complicated. In fact, it’s kind of a poster child for post-modernism. There were a dozen Americans at Camp David, members of the delegation, and maybe half a dozen interpretations of what actually transpired there. And I think the, the problem with Camp David is that neither Ahud Barak, the Prime Minister of Israel, nor certainly Yassar Arafat, the leader of the PLO and the president of the Palestinian authority were ready to pay the price for what it would have taken in order to do a conflict ending agreement. And the Americans, however well intentioned under the leadership of former President Clinton really were not, in my judgment, I was one of the 12 smart enough, fair enough, nor tough enough to even get close to reaching an agreement. There is this notion that we were extremely close on all of the issues, including Jerusalem, but in reality there’s much confusion about this. In reality that wasn’t so. And I think that’s part of the problem, is that everybody has a vested interested in choosing their own particular favorite in this confrontation, and they don’t approach the subject with a kind of empathy and objectivity that is required to have any chance of trying to understand it. There’s enough ammunition, figuratively speaking, to keep this conflict going between Israel supporters and the Arab supporters for the next thousand years. But I think the goal should be to try to develop as detached and as objective of an assessment of what each side needs, and then try to figure out how to get there. That’s not so easy because it’s very emotional, but it’s necessary.

Dr. Kent: And now, as someone who’s been in, behind the scenes at a place like that, and you were at the helm of Seeds of Peace, and then for this book, interviewing all of these interesting people for the book, what, you know, how do you make sense of all this information and you know, is there, do you see a pathway towards peace, towards some kind of reconciliation over there? Is it going to take a long time?

Aaron David Miller: Well, on the first question, I’m all for, I’m a great believer of independent, critical thinking. I don’t think, there is no truth with a capital T that is somehow served up on a silver platter, whether it comes from a President’s speech or a minister’s sermon or on a mom’s prayer. Life’s much more complicated than that, and it requires an enormous amount of effort, particularly in a conflict like this, to get at an approximation of what is really the case. That requires hard work on the part of people, not to just take their information from one source, but to get out there and talk to as many people as possible, examine these things in their own right, see if it makes sense to you, and then try to fit all the pieces together. And I think, its not just true on the Arab-Israeli issues, it’s true of life in general. I mean, if you want to really understand something, it requires an enormous amount of diligence and energy in order to do the hard work to get there. In the case of Arab-Israeli peace, I don’t think it’s been absent for some sort of magical, metaphysical reason. I think it’s a question, frankly, of trying to find a balance of interests between parties in conflict. You know, whether it’s true of business relationships, personal friendships, or negotiations between nations. In the end the things that work reflect the reality that people’s needs and requirements are getting met in a way that not just satisfies their interests, but satisfies the others. And that’s really what is required on this one as well. It’s just that when you have a conflict like this where religious belief plays a large role, where people have a historic memory, where people have suffered. In the case of the Israelis, a long history of the Jewish people of persecution and genocide. In the case of the Arabs a long history of colonization, colonialism. And for West Bank and Gazans, particularly for West Bankers in Israeli occupation there are all of these terribly emotional and deep fears and insecurities that get in the way of trying to reach a solution. And that’s why, as with most things politics, leadership is really, really, really important. If I were to point to one concern I have about the prospects of getting Arab-Israeli peace, it’s the absence of leaders who are willing to rise above their own politics and their narrow political constituencies and turn themselves into statesman. That’s what’s missing here. And no matter how badly Barack Obama may want to do this, he can’t do it with one hand clapping. He’s going to need courageous leadership from the Arabs and the Israelis to pull this off

Dr. Kent: And what, you know, I love that one hand clapping image. I mean, it’s a great visual image for me. In these interviews you’ve conducted and these people you’ve talked to for this book, The Much Too Promised Land, was there anything surprising that someone told you that you didn’t expect?

Aaron David Miller: You know, I interviewed three of our last four ex-Presidents. I interviewed all nine secretaries of state. Most of the key Arab and Israeli negotiators, a lot of senators, representatives of the Jewish community, the Arab community. You know, what comes through in these interviews by and large is not emotion or extremism, for sure. It’s balance, it’s sometimes strongly held views, but also the interviews among the power elites that I interviewed seem to have a moderate, almost centrist view on what is required to do this. Everybody it seems, at least those representing the Arab and Palestinian and Israeli points of view, including, I might add, American Jews, Arab Americans that I interviewed, many evangelical Christians. Most of the key evangelical Christians, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Ralph Reed, John Hagy, even there there was a sense of balance. Either everybody wanted to appear reasonable, which I think was partly the case, or in theory this seems to be something that could actually work if you had leaders who would be able to draw some of these communities together. I’m writing a book right now called Can America Have Another Great President? It’s a book on presidential leadership. It’s going to come out the year Barack Oama runs again for election, in 2012. And it takes a look at leadership and the more I think about it, the more I’m absolutely persuaded that what stands between us and the abyss is our people. People at all levels of society who are prepared to act, and act with moral purpose in pursuit of I guess what we could describe as the common good. And I found in many of my interviews a real commitment to the common good. Everybody had a strong point of view but no one seemed to be so dug in that they couldn’t come off of their positions. And what occurred to me is what is required to pull all of this together, Kissinger told me once that you need in the interview that you needed a hand to pull the threads together. And the reality is that’s what you need here. You need three hands, an American hand, an Israeli hand and a Palestinian hand.

Dr. Kent: And you know, for me I guess the new complicating factor in my understanding of Palestine is this real divide between Gaza and the West Bank. Is that a real hindrance to finding peace?

Aaron David Miller: It’s a huge problem. You have, and I don’t want to make light of this, you have what I would describe to you as a Palestinian Humpty Dumpty, which is broken into several parts and which, frankly, is dysfunctional. The real problem for the Palestinians is that yes, it’s the Israeli occupation, and yes it’s settlements. But it’s also the fact that no single Palestinian leader controls all the guns, all the people and all the legitimacy of Palestine. And states can’t operate that way if they expect to be respected by their constituents or by their neighbors. This is a huge problem, fixing the Palestinian Humpty Dumpty. I think it’s beyond the capacity of outsiders to do. Every time we get involved in these politics we ed up doing more harm than good. There are certain things that we can do, but in the end it really will require a decision from the Palestinian national movement. How are they going to unify and can they agree on one strategy for realizing Palestinian national aspirations. So far they’ve proven that they couldn’t.

Dr. Kent: And you know, it’s such a, just as you’re saying all of this, it really does come to mind that people know what it needs to look like, what needs to be done, what they would like to happen over there. But at the same time all of the extremists of the world seem to point to Jerusalem. It’s because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that we’re angry with the west, or is Jerusalem still the center of the world?

Aaron David Miller: You know, I think it, Jerusalem is probably the most sensitive thing and most contentious and will be the most difficult issue to resolve because it’s the issue o which I would argue there is the least margin and room for creative thinking and for compromise. I tell the story in the book that on the eighth day of the Summit when the Palestinians and the Israelis were asserting sovereignty over Jerusalem at Camp David, Americans tried to come in with what were very creative but very rational fixes. None of them worked, and the reason they didn’t work is because history has taught the Israelis and the Palestinians and the Arabs that Jerusalem isn’t to be shared. It’s not to be divided up like some piece of salami. It’s to be possessed in the name of God, in the name of the tribe, in the name of the nation. That’s what history tells us. Now, can those historical memories and can that history be overcome? Yes, but it’s going to require unbelievably heroic and bold decisions. Again, by leaders who have the confidence and trust of their constituents.

Dr. Kent: So then some of your belief in an organization like Seeds of Peace, is probably similar to my hope in it that as young people in an organization like that that will grow up to be leaders.

Aaron David Miller: Yeah, and I ran Seeds of Peace for three years. It’s a wonderful organization, basically trying to save the world one person at a time. There’s certainly a place for that. It’s just very difficult to go down that path when the realities on the ground undercut and undermine every day what it is you’re trying to do. And the occupation and the role that the occupier and the occupied play, this sort of deadly dance, fundamentally makes saving the world one person at a time extremely difficult. So governments in addition to programs like Seeds of Peace are going to have to act to change environments so that not just 200 young people can get to know one another every summer, but thousands ultimately will be able to live normal lives within their societies and then be able to reach out with hope and good intentions toward one another. And in the end that’s what’s missing now. There’s too much despair and cynicism and not nearly enough hope

Dr. Kent: Well, so I have a question for you about both Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. Conservative Christians but Democrats, and both of them put forward a very significant effort in Mid East peace. Is there a difference between them and Barack Obama. Is there improvement in the technique? Is it more of the same?

Aaron David Miller: Well, first of all, of the three there is only one clear success, and that was Jimmy Carter at Camp David. Jimmy Carter with a huge amount of help from (inaudible) succeeded at the first Camp David, September ’78 in hammering out a framework that would ultimately lead to an Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. Bill Clinton, very well intentioned. Extremely skilled, very committed, could not succeed in almost seven years in producing agreements, either between Israelis and Palestinians or Israelis and Syrians. And Barack Obama is still untested. The fact is negotiations succeed or fail when three elements are present. Number one, there again, as I mentioned repeatedly, leaders who are prepared to take risks. Number two, there is urgency. There is real, real, a real need to make decisions, either out of fear of too much pain, or alternatively out of the prospects of real gain .And finally, you need a third party, a mediator. But you need a third party who is, and I use three words here that are very important. Tough, smart, and fair. Tough, smart and fair. Jimmy Carter, even though I would disagree with much of what he proclaims leaving the White House on the Israeli issue, deserves enormous credit between 1977 and 1980. His policies were tough, smart and fair. At least as it pertained to the Egyptian-Israeli process. Bill Clinton was not nearly tough enough. And I would argue not nearly fair enough. Extremely smart. Very smart. Barack Obama is still a work very much in progress, and I have hope that he does have the right skills. But then again, he’s going to need enormous help from an Israeli Prime Minister and a Palestinian President in order to pull this off.

Dr. Kent: And that seems to be a difficult way forward. How does Palestine first of all become somehow sovereign, and how does it find its President?

Aaron David Miller: Well, sovereignty is a function in this case of finding a way to end the Israeli occupation through negotiations and creating a unified leadership, which exercises authority control over the forces of violence within Palestinian society. This is an extremely important point, I don’t care if it’s New York City or Chevy Chase Maryland, or Washington D.C. where I live. Unless you can control all the guns you’re not much of anything, because you’re never going to have the support of your constituents, and you’ll never have the respect of your neighbors. So sovereignty in this sense must come through negotiation. But it also has to be an internally generated process in which Palestinians can find a way to unify. And there’s no magic quick fix here, there’s no cavalry that’s going to ride to the rescue. This is going ot be done through institution-building on one hand, and very tough and excruciatingly painful negotiations on the other hand. And it’s a long movie. Not going to happen quickly, and it’s not going to happen easily. The important thing is that it gets started and headed in the right direction.

Dr. Kent: Well, and let me ask you this. You served also under our most recent President, George W. Bush, and did you find that it was a different kind of administration than Bill Clinton’s administration? Was it a struggle to …

Aaron David Miller: No. George W. Bush had different priorities, and he gave in different value to the Israeli issue. He didn’t really treat it with much of an importance or concern during his first four years. And then under Secretary of State Condoliza Rice the administration tried during the second four years to accord it greater priority, but it had gone untended for too long. And the conflicts within the administration were just, and not only the administration, but conflict, the tensions and the problems within the Arabo-Israeli conflict itself, particularly between Israelis and Palestinians, were just impossible by 2004. By the beginning of 2005 with the second Bush administration, impossible to reconcile. So I’m not sure the Bush administration, having not taken it seriously during the first four years, had much of a chance for doing much about it during the second four years.

Dr. Kent: Well, and something else from the Clinton years, I read that you were appointed by the President to serve on the US, on the Holocaust Memorial Museum governing counsel. What are your, I mean, it was obviously shocking this week to read about the shooting. What’s your take on that?

Aaron David Miller: You know, I think that, I’m a great believer in America. I believe that we have done something here that no other society on earth has done. We’ve created a big tent, and under this big tent, courtesy of the framers and the founders, we have created a society which allows extraordinary interaction between groups and individuals in various religious denominations that often have very fundamentally different views. And they co-exist here sometimes uneasily. But by and large, in a relatively civil matter, we just did something by electing Barack Obama that no other nation on earth would ever do. We elected a member of a formally enslaved minority group. Even though Obama’s not a direct descendent of slaves, and still despised by millions of Americans and made him President of the United States, the most powerful man on earth. No other democracy in the world today would ever, could ever, elevate a minority group to a level of such significance. Only the American system could do this. So I believe in the American system, and yet the system allows and tolerates a degree of freedom and freedom of expression, including the freedom to hate others. And far too often we’ve seen it on the attack at the Lucrene Center, we saw it in the murder of Dr. Tiller, who was performing abortions, we saw it the other day, this poor man, his poor security guard, who gave up his life in the face of extremists from a variety of different points of view who decide to translate their right to hate, however abominable it may be into actions that can kill. And whether or not this is the price we need to pay in a society like ours which gives wide latitude to groups to protest and speak out on their own, for their own causes, even though those causes may be racist, anti-semitic, hostile to this group or that, I don’t know. But it’s a painful reminder that prejudice, tolerance and hatred are still alive and well in America. We’re also reminded that a security guard, a normal working guy, demonstrated real courage just in the act of doing his job. So it’s a terrible tragedy and to have it happen on the mall magnifies its significance.

Dr. Kent: Yep. Well, and you know, kind of in closing here, when you’re speaking about the amazing nature of this country and the sometimes extremism, it really is remarkable that in those interviews, as you said, the responses of all the world leaders and these people was this sort of beautiful, moderate, almost agreement. Did you find agreement between people?

Aaron David Miller: You mean in the sense…

Dr. Kent: In your book?

Aaron David Miller: …Arab-Israeli? I’m sorry, what?

Dr. Kent: In The Much Too Promised Land book, did you sort of find, did you discover that you found agreement between all of these people, despite their backgrounds?

Aaron David Miller: Well, there’s a sort of a sad position that everybody wants to aspire to, and I encouraged a good deal of that centrism. With respect to the Arab-Israeli conflict itself, Arabs, Israelis, these are really by and large good people, caught up, who manage to maintain their dignity, their sense of humor, and their sense of hope, who are caught up in a very nasty, historic, and some people would argue intractible conflict. I don’t think it need be intractable, it’s just, it’s going to take a long time to sort out

Dr. Kent: Well, it’s been such an honor chatting with you, and please do give my greetings to your daughter Jen. And she’s got a wonderful…

Aaron David Miller: I will.

Dr. Kent: …book of the Middle East as well, called Inheriting the Holy Land. And Aaron David Miller’s book is called the Much Too Promised Land, America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace, and I’m definitely going to read it cover to cover.

Aaron David Miller: Terrific.

Dr. Kent: Thank you so much for chatting with me.

Aaron David Miller: Thanks Kent, I really appreciate it.

Dr. Kent: And my next guest on the show is a fellow named Larry Buttram. He’s the author of The Curtain Torn, and it’s based on the life of Robert Carter, who’s a plantation owner that freed over 500 slaves. Come on back for that.

Posted by admin | Filed Under History, Travel, TRANSCRIPTS, Politics, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, PODCAST

John Wareham | The President’s Therapist

September 7, 2009 | Comments Off

Dr. Kent: Welcome back to Sound Authors. My next guest on the show is John Wareham. He’s the author of The President’s Therapist, and he’s a leadership psychologist, lecturer, writer and poet. Welcome to the show, John Wareham.

John Wareham: Great, pleasure to be here. Thank you so much.

Dr. Kent: Well tell me a little about this book. Incredible title, and surely intriguing subject. The President’s Therapist.

John Wareham: The President’s Therapist, and The Secret Intervention to Treat the Alcoholism of George W. Bush is the full title. But yeah, on one level it’s a thriller where insurgents in the White retain a leadership psychologist to help George Bush overcome his addiction to alcohol and reverse the course of the Iraq war. But on a deeper level again, it is not just a thrilled, it is not merely a window into George Bush’s life, but it’s actually a life changer that instills the lifetime of work that I’ve had working with CEOs at one end of the social spectrum, and prison inmates at the other. And so, one review had said that it was a parable for leaders and followers, daughters and sons and wives, addicts and onlookers.

Dr. Kent: Well, and it’s such a hot topic, you know, but until the last hundred days there was no more, I guess controversial figure in the world maybe than George W. Bush, and he’s still on the tip of all of our tongues. Why did you choose such a hot topic?

John Wareham: Well, there were three reasons for that. First as a lifetime leadership coach, I could see that George Bush was the classic salesman over-promoted to CEO, and as such that he was in need of some serious help. But because I also work with a, as a substance abuse counselor, I was very quick to see that he was, when he began to slur his words and become (inaudible) and rigid, which are all signs of an alcoholic. Of course, he showed up to work with a black eye, as you recall, and he claimed that he fell off a couch. It seemed very clear, I thought, that he was desperately in need of help at that point. But then the third reason, which, the thing that actually got to me, I suppose more than anything else, was this whole torture issue. Because I became an American citizen because I believed in their ideals and I believed in their values, and we were the good guy. But suddenly we were not the good guys. Suddenly we were actually practicing torture. And it was hard for me to believe it. Now, I thought I should help, and I believe that if I could sit down with George Bush I would be able to show him what his blind spots were, as I’ve been able to do with other CEOs. But obviously I wasn’t going to be invited to the White House to help, and so I created a leadership psychologist and I sent him in to do this work for me, actually.

Dr. Kent: Hmmm, that’s fascinating. And that’s you, I also come from a family of therapists, and I have to say that they all have their theories about President George Bush as well. And it’s such a fascinating thing because he wasn’t necessarily all that up front about his trials and troubles.

John Wareham: No. The key to understanding him is to appreciate that he was effectively an abused child, actually. That he lived in a horror there as a child, everything seemed to be perfect. But in fact it wasn’t at all. He was emotionally abandoned by the father, he wasn’t ever there anyway. He was off with his mistress and all sorts of other women friends that he had, and he was pursuing his career. And he was left in the care of Barbara Bush, who although, I mean, she seems like a congenial individual, but in fact if you look a little closer, she was a very cold, callous and somewhat cruel individual. And so here’s George Bush as a small child having to deal with this, being accepted on one level, it would seem, and yet being rejected on another. And so he became an incredibly anxious person. And that’s why I would suggest that he had to drink the way that he did, and of course he was in drugs and everything, because it was his underlying anxiety.

Dr. Kent: Well, and it’s also, in watching then President George Bush over 8 years, he did ease up a little bit towards the end. Now, at the beginning he just seemed like he didn’t fit at all. And actually at the very end he seemed very uncomfortable. He wanted to get out. But it’s almost like a heyday for a psychologist to look at this fellow’s career in office.

John Wareham: Yes, well he was engaged, I mean here he is an anxious individual, right, who had been a serious alcoholic. And you give that up for religion, and then he’s engaged from that point on as, I guess he always was, in the classic Oedipal struggle to outperform his father. But that was not going to be a easy thing for him to do at all because the father was an authentic over-achiever. And he was a genuine hero and an athlete and a scholar. Whereas the son was infinitely less gifted, and try as he would, try as he did, he couldn’t ever, he couldn’t ever out-perform the old man. I mean, he came close some people would argue. But at the end of the day, I would say that he really brought the whole family name into disrepute. That’s how ultimately he was able to get even as it were. He was, he’s the classic person who destroys himself because he’s anxious, and he can see that he’s just unable to win at the end.

Dr. Kent: Well and it’s so fascinating how, you know, you are to be applauded just for the concept of the book. What if you were to have the chance to sit down with the President and change his life and as a result of that change the course of world history? How could that therapist in the White House have changed the course of history?

John Wareham: Well, I think he came very close in the book. If you read the book, he sits down with George Bush and is able to lead him to an understanding of the forces that compelled him to make the awful decisions that he did. And in order to bring a person to the light, in order to bring a person to an enlightenment, you can’t sit opposite of them and say, “Listen, the problem with you is that you just don’t think clearly, and you don’t see clearly.” I mean, you can’t do that. You have to lead the person to an understanding of the unconscious forces. And this is what Dr. Alter actually does with him. Now we all, we all have similar problems but, and that’s why the book was interesting. Other people that have actually read the book said that they saw themselves on the pages there because Bush doesn’t really understand why he would condone torture. I mean, he’s got no inkling really of why he went along with all that. But the answer to the question is that he was just treated cruelly when he was growing up. And there are some other forces at play as well, which I actually explain in the book. But bit by bit he gradually comes to see this. And if a person can genuinely see what their problems are, then they want to end them. And so this is where the book actually gets to, where he isn’t that keen to address the harm that he did. And unfortunately there are other forces that then come into play. I’m not sure whether you got to the end of the book, but the end of the book is a very satisfying thing, I think, and it will please everybody, too, whichever side of the aisle that you’re on. I think that if you had the ending, and I should say as well that Dr. Alter is in there to help George Bush, and so he treats him with understanding and care and empathy. And so this isn’t a book that seeks to destroy George Bush or to make fun of him, but actually to help him. I’ve got a feeling that he’s actually read the book. But anyway, that’s a whole other thing, and if he hasn’t, I wish he would.

Dr. Kent: Well, and you know, in, I was so surprised, you know. George Bush was very humble when Barac Obama came into power, and he was very gracious it seemed on the outside, and then I was very surprised that when he got down to Texas he said, “Well, you know, I’m back home now, and I didn’t do anything wrong.” It was sort of this sort of regression almost to sort of a protected place. He’s such a fascinating character in the history of the United States, and I think he always will be. But talk about the actual George Bush, and do you think he did have therapy?

John Wareham: No, I don’t think he did. He would have been much better off if he had. At this point, even though he may have done neither, but I think he feels an unbelievable amount of shame. Because again, he has wound up, as it were, lying in the gutter. I mean, Obama comes in and has clearly completely eclipsed him. He’s gone the other direction (inaudible). But what George Bush, at the end of it, his approval ratings were unbelievably low, and he has gone out in, I would say, disgrace. And I would think he’s got to, he’s got to learn to somehow deal with that and to begin with, he’s explaining it away and saying that history will judge. But I don’t think that that isn’t, I don’t think that that actually will wash with him. Outwardly, his style was that of the folksy cowboy. And people thought was fine. You know, he seemed like a folksy guy, and he seemed like a down home individual. But what you couldn’t quite see under that, there was a tremendous amount of anger and anxiety. And he provoked a war that he didn’t have to have. He could have ended the torture, but he didn’t. So if we go to treaty by the (inaudible) affairs, we can say well, outwardly he seems like a nice congenial individual who has got a (inaudible), especially the people. But that’s not at the end of the day what his actions revealed, right? At the end of the day he began a war we didn’t have to be in, he is responsible for the lives of 4,000 men and women who are dead now. And you can slice it any (inaudible). This is not a sort of legacy that you would wish for yourself at all. And if he hadn’t been there I don’t think these things would have ever have happened. Anyway, that’s what happened on his watch. And so he will…yes?

Dr. Kent: He’s almost, he’s almost too good to be true for a novelist. It’s almost so, he’s already so much of a character that you have something really interesting to work with.

John Wareham: Yes, (inaudible) to work with. Well, actually the psychoanalyst himself has got some issues of his own, which comes through in the book. And he’s dealing with the death of his own son through drugs. So he himself is very much attuned to George Bush’s problems and understanding of them. And that understanding that he brings makes it possible for George Bush to go along with the treatment that is offered. And he leads him to the point of the world is going to alter, and we see what happens then. Anyway, I don’t want to spell out the whole book, but as I say, it’s got a great ending, and I think the story was already one through, 72 hours it happens and it’s happening on a personal level for Bush, it’s also happening on a personal level for Dr. Alter, and it’s happening on a personal level for the reader also, cause I don’t think, people have said that you can’t read this book and not be altered yourself.

Dr. Kent: Well, it’s certainly a, I certainly believe those statements because you’ve had a past of writing many different varieties of books, including the working with prisoners in becoming leaders, Secrets of a Corporate Headhunter.

John Wareham: Right.

Dr. Kent: And then also your other novel, Chancey On Top. How is this novel different for you in that fold?

John Wareham: How is this one different? Well, you get a chance to, I mean, everybody would have liked to have sit opposite George Bush and to confront him, right, on the death of these young men. And so in this book, the reader gets the opportunity to do just that. I mean, he’s there, as it happens. And that was fun for me to do that. And I really, I guess the other thing about the book was I really didn’t know, I didn’t know how it would end. I mean, when you begin on a novel you know approximately what you’re up to. But to see how George Bush would respond to treatment. And again, everyone, if you’ve read the book has said it seems that this is exactly how he would behave. So by that he begins to see the light, he begins to understand his behavior, he begins to feel that, he begins to see the harm that he has done, he begins to wish to alter everything, and then it gets very exciting as well. I was also able to have a talk with Dick Chaney as well, which was sort of funny, and Carl Rove, so they were in the book. And also he has a section with Laura Bush, also. So it’s, you know, some underlying issues around, which nice people don’t really know. I mean, the fact that she, the fact that she killed her former boyfriend, you know, isn’t all that well known. I mean, it isn’t. Well, she did it, she ran the guy over in her car. I mean, she was never prosecuted, they said it was an accident, but again Dr. Alter’s left to, he’s left to speculate about that, and everyone else has been, too. So I think the family, the family history there is laid out. And again, it’s all very clear and then helping her to understand why she was attracted to a man who has got alcohol problems all his own. It makes for pretty interesting reading. But I was especially pleased at the way the endings have finally all come together (inaudible) check out the end. I mean (inaudible) novel, you want everything to come together at the end, you want the excitement to build, and it certainly did for me the whole way through. And it was only after I completed the book the first time that I thought this is excellent. I couldn’t believe that I did it. But then I had this other great idea, so I went back and I fiddled with that, I fiddled with the book, and at the end of the day I thought it was the best that I could do. I thought my books before were different, but of course I had a lot of fun doing this. It’s what every reader, it’s what every person in America would have loved to have done, which is to sit down and help George Bush understand the error of his ways and correct those errors. We would all love to have done that, right?

Dr. Kent: Absolutely.

John Wareham: To have a talk with him and say, “How could you ever condone torture,” and he says, “Well, it wasn’t,” and you say, “Give me a break.” Show it to him, show him clearly. Show that he cannot hide from it, right? And this is what happens in the book, but it’s done in a very pleasant way. So I mean, you’d like to confront him on that, you’d like to ask him about the deaths of the people that he killed, to get the opportunity to see how he responds when he’s out. The press, let’s be honest, the press never asked him a hard question ever, right?

Dr. Kent: Right.

John Wareham: They would ask him a question and then he would just go on at length over and over and over. Nobody ever seriously sat opposite of that man and said, “What the hell are you doing?” Right? Nobody ever did it. Right?

Dr. Kent: Indeed.

John Wareham: Nobody did it. Right. Right. And so he got away with that all that time. People have been much harder on Obama, who hasn’t done anything wrong yet, right?

Dr. Kent: Indeed. Yeah, and I could sit and talk with you for hours about this book, and with Dr. Mark Alter, the man who actually had a chance to confront George Bush. The book is called The President’s Therapist, and The Secret Intervention to Treat the Alcoholism of George W. Bush, and wow, what a topic. And thank you so much for talking with me at length here.

John Wareham: A great pleasure to be on the show, thank you so much for asking me.

Dr. Kent: Yeah, and people can check out more at johnwareham.com, or ThePresident’sTherapist.com, do I have that right?

John Wareham: Yes, right. Yes.

Dr. Kent: And of course the book is available wherever books are sold.

John Wareham: Everywhere but, you can also get it on Amazon as well, but it should be available in all bookstores as well, but if you have a problem, I mean for sure it’s on Amazon, it’s been on the bestseller list there ever since the day of Obama’s inauguration.

Dr. Kent: I can imagine. And what’s your next project?

John Wareham: I’ve got one, well actually I’ve got two, but I’m not going to talk about them because somehow if you do, the air goes out of it, but I’ve got something exciting that (inaudible). Oh, actually I’ve got some serious film interest in my earlier novel as well, called Chancey On Top. And I might also turn this, I might also turn this book into a (inaudible).

Dr. Kent: I’d love to see The President’s Therapist as a film, too, so, but what an honor chatting with you. It’s John Wareham, and The President’s Therapist. You have a wonderful day.

John Wareham: And you too, thank you so much.

Dr. Kent: And my next guest on the show is the author Sarah Allen Benton, and she wrote Understanding the High Functioning Alcoholic: Professional Views and Personal Insights. And we’re going to talk with her in just a minute. She is a college licensed mental health counselor, and she’s got some great insights. And it’s great to talk about that right on the tail end of The President’s Therapist, and The Secret Intervention to Treat the Alcoholism of George W. Bush. What if John Wareham created a situation where a therapist actually went into the White House and had a chance to counsel the former President. So come on back, and we’re going to talk with Sarah Allen Benton, and that will be great.

Posted by admin | Filed Under Medicine, History, Health, TRANSCRIPTS, Spirituality, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, Politics, Religion, PODCAST

« Previous Page — Next Page »