The presidential election of 2020, it's been called the Battle for the Soul of America,

and there's no doubt that politics will be very different depending on who wins and who loses.

But whatever the outcome, the future depends on the past.

So in this podcast, recorded before the votes have been counted, we're looking for continuity

and insights that will still be valuable come what may.

We'll talk with John Dean, Richard Nixon's White House attorney.

He says it was not Donald Trump who created an authoritarian nightmare that goes back decades.

But first, it's Evan Osnows with a new book on Joe Biden that'll still be worth reading

even if the former vice president fails to win a promotion.

Osnows covered Iran and China, and he won a Pulitzer Prize.

Now, with the New Yorker, he's writing on how the Republican Party's so-called

liberal eastern establishment came to support Donald Trump. But the new book is called Joe Biden,

The Life, The Run, and What Matters Now? Evan Osnos, welcome.

Thanks, Warren. It's great to be with you. You talked to more than 100 people, in addition to Biden

himself,

President Obama, other Democrats, and also opponents. Why did you do this, particularly as close

as you have to the election? Well, it's interesting. I have had a kind of what I would describe

as a recurring fascination with Joe Biden that goes back to a long way,

actually.

I started interviewing him back in 2014 when he was in the vice presidency.

And I wrote a profile of him in The New Yorker.

And to be frank about it, where part of the reason was he was doing a lot of foreign affairs.

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