YouSaid · the spoken record

Dan Shapiro

lines on the record: 97
first: 2017-04-24
most recent: 2017-04-24
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Right. Maybe not a full believer on day one. But those first three or four months, being able to spend time with him, being able to work on speeches and other materials for the campaign, that's when I really drank the Kool-Aid, not only about him and what outstanding leader I thought he could be and president across many issues. But on the issues I knew best, somebody who really approached them from a very similar perspective, strong commitment to the traditional alliance between the United States and Israel, strong belief that needs to be one of the core anchors of our Middle East policy, but also a belief that one had to work on negotiating peace between Israelis and Palestinians to make good on that alliance, to help serve our own interests, but also Israel's future as a Jewish democratic state. And of course, in the broader Middle East,”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To the work, I candidly didn't know his chances were so great. I sort of thought this might be a few months little hobby assignment until he lost in the primary unit.”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For Middle East matters as they'd come before the committee. So I helped plan Senator Obama's trip to Israel in 2006. It was the first time he'd ever gone, and he went, I didn't go with him, but I helped put together an itinerary to help make sure he would kind of touch bases with all the different parts of the Israeli political scene and Israeli society. And that went pretty well. And when he was preparing to announce to run for president in the beginning of 2007, I was actually about to leave the Senate and go to do some private sector work. And Mark kind of knocked on my door and he said, you know, we're putting together a team of outside foreign policy advisors for the campaign. I said, yeah, okay. And he said, and you're going to be the Middle East advisor. I said, I am. He said, yeah. And you have a speech you have to write for an APAC forum that the president's going to speak at in February in Chicago. So that pulled me.”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Indeed. And so I just started hanging around the Obama office at Chicago and Illinois connections, had friends in the office, and it turned out that Mark, who's a truly brilliant foreign policy analyst, didn't have a lot of background in the Middle East. He'd done work on many other issues. And he would just sort of turn to me kind of as an informal.”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I know he tells that joke on himself, even from his first conversations with political consultants. Anyway, it shows what Washington experts know. When he was elected to the Senate, I got to know him. He was on the Foreign Relations Committee where I was working with Senator Nelson. And I was also very fortunate, I suppose, that he hired Pete Rouse and Mark Lippert into his Senate office. And these were people, good friends who I'd worked with for many years.”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I guess the first answer is that my sister, who's a law professor here in Chicago, had told me about him when he was running for Senate in two thousand four. I'd actually been asked to help another candidate in that primary whose name I won't mention just because a friend was advising. And she said, me, why are you helping that candidate? You should be helping this guy. He's the real deal. He's really smart. I know him from a law firm in Chicago circles. And I said, what's his name? And she said Barack Obama. And I said, oh, Carolyn, you're so naive. You don't know anything about politics. With a name like that, he's not going to get elected to dog catcher.”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Surprised you. They've surprised me to the good They've surprised me by running a policy so far that is more responsible and more in keeping with traditional norms of U.S. foreign policy, that is strong support for Israel's security, a strong push to try to help Israel negotiate peace with its neighbors, including the Palestinians, but including other Arab states, and a clear view that continued construction of Israeli settlements is one of the factors that makes that harder. And so all of those are consistent with the policy we had in the Obama administration, but the policies of several previous administrations as well.”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Uncertain. So I think it is dangerous, and I think it's very worrying. Look, I don't have much I can say positive about this administration across a range of issues, domestic and foreign. I will say, maybe we'll get to it in more detail.”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so that unpredictability, that inconsistency, that being pulled back and forth between different factions without maybe a real ideological core that you can come back to is extremely confusing and dangerous. I mean, it's confusing to allies who are worried and who are anxious about whether the United States is going to stand by traditional commitments. And by the way, even if it's not directed at them, if I can guess what certain Israeli leaders are feeling, it's not that there's a question about whether the United States will stand up to for its commitments to Israel's security. It's that what kind of ally is the United States if even our NATO partners aren't sure and what's the United States standing globally if adversaries think that traditional adversaries think they suddenly have an in with key White House staff and key allies are”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Calling into question whether we will meet our obligations to our NATO allies. Similarly, at different times to Asian allies, and then it kind of goes back and forth. After calling into question whether we were really going to stand by certain commitments to Asian allies, then he had a very warm visit with the Prime Minister of Japan.”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And a president has to be the, in the end, the referee and to listen to the different views and then make a decision. I think what's alarming in this situation is that we have a president who really has very limited background in most of these issues and has not demonstrated through his life, much less through his short political career, an interest in going very deep into them. And so he's really often, it seems, subject to the last person he talks to. And some of the people he talks to, and I'd certainly put some of the names you mentioned in that category, are, to me, advocating some very extreme and even dangerous positions. And so we hear that come out in this kind of casting aspersions on our alliance with NATO. I mean, NATO has been the absolute rock of transatlantic, I would say even global security for decades. And yet here we are out of the gate.”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's not unprecedented by any means to have rivalries or factions within a White House. I think President Obama's White House was far less riven in that regard than some others, although there are disagreements. That's actually legitimate”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They have to. They have no choice. And I don't begrudge that. Any foreign government has to find out what channel is most effective to advance its interests with the United States. I think it serves us better when we present a unified and cohesive team representing the different institutions in our government, the State Department, the Pentagon, the NSC other agencies as well. And right now, I just don't see any kind of cohesiveness or any kind of ability for those other departments to speak credibly.”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Depend on a phone call to Jared Kushter. There are other people in our government who need to be able to speak credibly and competently on behalf of the government.”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, that's very unusual. He's also just been very, very low, extremely low profile, which one usually expects the Secretary of State to be the main foreign policy spokesperson for the United States. And that's important to educate allies and adversaries and our own public and Congress about priorities. And day to day, he and his team and his embassies need to be the ones to implement policy. And they need to be seen as connected and credible and to be able to speak on behalf of the president. And when they are as distant and low profile and quiet as they've been, it really raises that question. And so I worry about our ambassadors and embassies around the world going into the host governments and the host government's looking at them and saying these are very nice people. But they really don't have any idea what the policy is. And not every relationship can”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's accurate, at least again, by all appearances. Numerous issues have been assigned to Jared Kushner, Middle East peace, and there's a lawyer, Jason Greenblatt, foused in the White House who's actually doing it day to day. U.S. Canada relations, US-China relations. I noticed he was in Iraq over the last couple of days. Whereas Secretary Tillerson has been absent from almost all of the president's meetings with foreign leaders.”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I was the third longest to do that job, but I was the longest serving ambassador in the Obama administration at the end of the term.”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It has its own rhythm figuring out how to get the information you need, figuring out how to work as a team to integrate that information and make policy recommendations. Ultimately, the decisions only made by the decision makers. But that is not something that if you've never done it before, you just kind of walk in and know how that organization works. And so what forces you've got big gaps in staffing between the Secretary of State and the working levels of the State Department, there's about four or five levels undersecretaries, deputies, undersecretaries, assistant secretaries. Almost none of them, and those are really the workhorses of the policymaking process, are in place right now. And there's almost complete cutoff from what one hears between the working levels and the seventh floor where it's Secretary Tillerson sits.”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's a huge problem at the moment as you say there are most of the people in decision making roles are newcomers to government and government's complicated it's its own animal it has”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And if you've worked in one but not the other, you're not nearly as effective until you see how it looks on the other side of the fence.”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. So the Camp David summit failed Camp David Summit of July 2000 took place during that period. So I was involved in trying to help shape the congressional understanding of what was being attempted and then of course what the fallout and the aftermath was. It was also a very important experience just to learn how the executive branch functions. The legislative branch and the executive branch really are almost two different planets and particularly.”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Did I work for Sandy Berger when he was the National Security Advisor as a congressional liaison? And that was actually really important.”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“An incredible boss and even other senior staff on his team to learn from how to do foreign policy the right way in a bipartisan way, how to really put U.S. interests first above domestic politics. Lee Hamilton was an incredible mentor in that regard, not just for me, for hundreds and hundreds of others later for Senator Diane Feinstein of California, later for Senator Bill Nelson of Florida. And I had a range of responsibilities, but I was always keeping foreign policy and usually Middle East policy at the center, and all three of them who also followed that dictum of a bipartisan foreign policy maintained a close focus on the Middle East. So it kept me closely involved.”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Indeed, and was for me. So I came home from that summer, having changed my mind completely about my direction, the no longer seeking the PhD in history. Instead, I finished out a master's degree that was more U.S. foreign policy and Middle East politics and then went to Washington. And I worked for much of the next decade or two on Capitol Hill. I was Lee Hamilton's Middle East advisor on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As a graduate intern, everyone else went on vacation. They said to me, You're the political officer for the summer. So you're going to the foreign ministry and you're doing the diplomacy. And they asked me to write some, I thought, fairly serious cables about the security situation.”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, not fluent, but it was pretty usually pretty strong. It was usable. And I did use it in a small, what was a small embassy then. I'm sure it's much larger today.”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We'll get to that. We'll get to it. I went to the United Arab Emirates, our embassy in Abu Dhabi and our consulate in Dubai. It was a year after the First Gulf War. Bullying the UAE. No, you were an”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. So I thought I was going to get a PhD in history. I finished my degree at Brandeis started a PhD program in the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard. And in the first summer between the two years of the master's portion of that program, I decided to do an internship with the State Department. And it changed my direction completely. I went to the United States.”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. I experienced that in the last few years as ambassador. But that core understanding of there's only one outcome here in which Israelis can live in their Jewish democratic state and peace and security and Palestinians can meet their legitimate aspirations for independence in a two-state solution. That hit me in 1988, and I haven't changed my mind about it since then.”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. Both of those were obviously put under pressure by. And continue to be by the sustained control of a large population that doesn't want to be under Israel's control. Now, as the story develops, and maybe we'll get into it a little bit later, you know, there are many, many reasons for Israelis to be cautious, for Israelis to be risk-averse, to Israelis to feel. With justification that frequently the other side or the other party has not lived up to anything like the values we would expect of them. There's been violence, there's been terror, there's been delegitimization, and that continues also to this day.”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The antifod erupted that a lot of people had to kind of go back and re-look at that situation and say, is this really a sustainable model for the long term?”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Arrangement where both Israelis and Palestinians could live in their own states. So I was a pretty early adopter, if you would, of the two-state solution idea, 1988, let's say. It wasn't that common or that popular an idea, at least among, in the Jewish community, at least among people who considered themselves supporters of Israel. But that really hit me very early on, that there was no other solution to a conflict. It was interesting when I had been in Israel in early 87 on this gap year program, there just hadn't been all that much discussion in the curriculum that we were studying about the Palestinian issue those first 20 years, let's say, of the occupation after 19 after the Six-Day War were relatively quiet years. And it was only when”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“which broke out in December of nineteen eighty seven when I was a freshman in college, I have to say I followed it intensely day to day and it was very painful and traumatic to watch the scenes playing out as Israeli soldiers running after Palestinian, mostly then kids throwing stones. The later Intifadas were much more violent. It was probably the first issue on which I really formed my own opinion, independent of my parents, not that their opinions were all that different, but that I had really done my own homework and really researched and really thought deeply about the issues. It had led me, as somebody who was then and remains today deeply committed to Israel and deeply moved by its story and founding and deeply committed to its security and the need to have in Israel because of everything that's happened to the Jewish people through the years, to also feel that there needed to be an accommodation and some kind of”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. So I quickly, when I started college, it was originally at Washu in St. Louis, although I later transferred to Brandeis. I decided to understand Israel. I really also need to understand not just Hebrew. I also need to learn Arabic. So I started to study Arabic. I started to get deeper into studies of Middle East history, of Jewish and Islamic relations through the centuries. Took many courses in Islam. And it really became more of a focus on Middle East history that was really animating me. Although I followed the politics very closely, and the first Intifada, which erupted.”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was very important I grew up in a reformed Jewish household nowadays I consider myself conservative, but all those years of religious studies, of summer camps, Jewish summer camps definitely imbued in me a feeling that I as a Jew had a special connection with this country far away and where I'd only visited once through all my childhood, but that I felt connected to that history and that story of return, that story of people that had been Exiled from their homeland and through centuries of wandering, much of it tragic, had finally found their way back home and rebuilt that state. That spoke to me very, very personally, absolutely.”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Obvious statement, but we tend to gravitate toward Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and people who have studied in the States. And so there's, I think, a misperception, including on my own part, that most Israelis speak English and you can get by just fine. The truth is a lot don't. And so if you want to, and this is true in any country, connect to people without a filter and help them really understand what you're trying to say. And then, of course, listen to them without the filter as well, doing it in their own language makes an enormous difference.”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I did, and I found it to be more impactful than I expected. You know, I thought when I went, the fact that I spoke Hebrew and I'd worked hard to sort of get it up to a level I could use for public speaking and media that people would appreciate it. Oh, that's nice, Ambassador speak some Hebrew. It was much deeper than that, much more profound for a couple of reasons. Number one, I think it speaks to Israeli's sense of isolation. There's only one place in the world you could have gone and spent the time and invested in the cultural knowledge to master that language. And that's Hebrew. And so it said to people, wow, this is someone who gets us. And therefore they were willing to listen, listen to policy descriptions that they might not agree with, but that they could hear in very concrete terms was coming from someone who sort of spoke their language but also got where they were coming from. And the second reason was impactful is because a lot of his don't speak that good English. It may seem like an”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it definitely drew me to find my own relationship, define my own relationship with Israel. So on that trip, I took after high school between high school and college. I specifically looked for a program where I'd be able to live with an Israeli family and found one that didn't speak any English and really immerse myself to the usual study and travel elements that are on that kind of experience, but most especially to try to really immerse myself in Israeli society, get my Hebrew up to fluency, and really sort of understand what Israelis lived with and how they felt and how they thought every day.”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. Well, it meant that we as a family forged a bond with Israel that really stayed with us throughout my childhood. And so kind of around the dinner table, the conversation would very frequently alight on whatever the events of the Middle East were. We were thrilled and followed intensely the peace negotiations with Egypt, Sadat's visit to Jerusalem, the ultimate Camp David Accords. Then it was the war in Lebanon, which was a very traumatic one. Later it was the first Tintifata. But generally speaking, these were kind of very central parts of family discussion and very prominent my own mind. I determined that I wanted to spend more time in Israel later on as I was nearing the end of high school. So I started to study Hebrew seriously in high school for set a summer camp and then in high school and college class.”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I remember my older sister being very scared. She was about seven, and I remember my parents being worried. I think I was too young. To really understand it well enough to really be afraid. I can remember playing tag in the bomb shelters with the other kids in the apartment building. I just don't quite remember feeling that sense of crippling fear myself, although I'm sure there must have been moments.”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it was a confusing time. Now they, of course, immediately got pressure from their parents, bring the grandchildren home. What are you doing there? Get out of Israel. And they made what it turned out to be a very significant decision for our family. They decided to stay and help volunteer anywhere they could where people had gone to fight. So my father was on a Moshav in a chicken coop. He was in a school teaching. He was in the Angel Bakery down the street. Anywhere men had gone to fight. He volunteered. My mother was mostly, you know, helping take care of the three young children. But they really felt that sense of, that was what began that sense of identification, that this was more than just a semester abroad. This turned into something much more meaningful. Of course, the war ended and we stayed for the rest of the semester.”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I remember it the way one remembers things from four years old with certain images that are very prominent. I don't think I can describe the whole narrative of the three weeks of the war. But I remember going to the bomb shelters. I remember blacking out the apartment. I remember the confusion that my parents were dealing with of just trying to understand what was going on. Their Hebrew was not that good. The news was sporadic. And it was just hard to know. And they tried to assess it from their neighbors. And of course, all of their Israeli neighbors are Israeli neighbors were dealing with problems. Yeah, and dealing with the trauma of having their sons and brothers and fathers going off to the front.”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we spent the first few weeks adjusting to this life in a new country. I was going to with my brother to a local gone or nursery school learning Hebrew, my sister going to elementary school. And it was a great adventure until, of course, Yom Kippur that fall when the siren started to sound and the soldiers started to mobilize through the streets of Jerusalem where we were living. You're six years old.”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, they were the children of the children of immigrants who had really integrated and assimilated significantly, and they were just at the beginning of what became a lifelong or most of their adult lifelong exploration of Jewish life. And so they were really just at the beginning of that process with young children, which was what sparked it They decided they really had to learn more and then give more to their teacher, our family Jewish life became very, very rich. But at that time it was really only at its infancy. So they decided to spend the semester in Israel out of curiosity to learn. Again, they felt some connection, but not something I would describe as deep. So we went there. It was August 1973.”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My mother's a writer and was teaching and writing in the English department as well. So they had a sabbatical and decided to spend a semester in Israel.”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My father is an English professor. Shakespeare is really his area of expertise. Later he started the Jewish Studies program at the University of Illinois, so he broadened out to do American Jewish literature”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, when I was four years old, my parents were academics at the University of Illinois, took a sabbatical. What did they?”
2017-04-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 141 - Dan Shapiro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source