♪ >> brennan: today we wanted to bring together two governors from particularly hard-hit states this year, ohio republican mike dewine and michigan democrat gretchen whitmer. good morning to both of you governors. >> good morning. >> thank you very much, margaret. >> brennan: the responsibility of dealing with this pandemic, including the decisions on health restrictions, on testing, how you're going to get this vaccine to your constituents, has really been placed on you as the executives in your state. do you feel like the country learned this year the value of their local government? governor whitmer? >> governor: well, i hope so. i know that this is not a

moment that any one of us governors would have chosen to be in, and yet it was incumbent upon us to rise to this challenge and to do what we needed to do to protect the people that we serve. in lieu of a broader national strategy, it was really was on us to navigate. and i think we've done a lot of it together. >> brennan: and governor dewine, do you think there is a new appreciation for the local officials versus a focus on the national? >> governor: i think people normally look to their governors in a crisis, a local crisis. flooding along the ohio river or tornadoes in western ohio, that's normally what you think a governor will respond to. i think in a sense they're used to a crisis. this is once in 100 years. we haven't seen anything like this as all. i think one of the things that i have found good about it, frankly, is that i've gotten to know gretchen, governor whitmer, and i've gotten to know all of our

neighboring governors. we talk quite a bit. frankly, we have a common enemy. and the common enemy is this virus. and we're battling back against it. there are certainly some people in my state who disagree with some of the things that we have done. >> brennan: governor whitmer, viruses don't know borders. do you feel like as two mid-westerners here, there is more of a cule now to call no work together reach until, tregionly towork together, whent comes to, for instance, on how to vaccinate your population? >> governor: this virus doesn't stop at state lines or party lines. this is a common enemy. that is always how we have looked at it. trying to learn from the best science. this being a novel virus, we've learned an incredible amount. when i share information, i get the benefit of all

of the cleveland clinic and all of the experts wer we're talking to. >> brennan: will you coordinate those strategies on who goes first and who goes last? >> >> governor: we share a lot of information. we were on the phone with a lot of the governors just a few days ago, and one of the issues was what is the priority. there is a censu consensus of what we call the a1 group, people who are risking their lives every single day, as well as where we have taken the most losses, and that is in our nursing homes. i think there will be more a lack of consensus among people in general when you get beyond that first group. >> brennan: governor whitmer, we're talking about an essential worker, which is kind of subjective here. in the state of colorado, i read they're going to begin prioritizing people at ski resorts because it

is so key to their economy. how much is this going to vary state by state? who is essential in michigan? >> governor: i think it could vary a great deal. vaccines are coming online and they're going to come at a faster pace. doing the hard work of acknowledging who has the most exposure, who is out there in jobs that are, you know, coming into contact with the public at greater numbers. these vaccines -- what we have to do right now is to really ensure that the public understands these are safe, these are affective. as they become more available, we want people to make their plans to get vaccinated. >> brennan: governor whitmer and governor divine, both of you have been criticized for taking extraordinary measures to protect your constituents, being accused of overstepping authority. governor whitmer, i know you had that extraordinary kidnapping threat, and there were threats against

and governor dewine as well. i wonder how both of you make sense of that experience. gorn whitmer? >> governor: i would say this: every governor in the country is getting some sort of backlash. the backlash we're getting is because we've gone to make sure that every measure is about saving people's lives. we have largely had a lot of success. studies have shown we have saved thousands of lives, and yet we know covid-19 is still a very real threat. we're posting the highest numbers than we have in 10 months. other governors are getting the backlash because they haven't done enough and people have been dying on their watch. there are no easy solutions here. yet i believe that the right thing to do is to follow the science and to put people's lives first because we can, and we will, recover from the economic blowback from covid-19 that has run amuck in our country. what we can't do is bring

someone back to life. >> brennan: governor dewine? >> governor: i think it is understandable that people are upset. it is nine months into this. people are tired of it. so i get it. and, you know, we've asked people to make sacrifices. but my message to the people of ohio continues to be we should do everything we can to save lives. and hope is there. the vaccine is here. it is going to take a few months for everybody to get it, but this is not the time to pull back. this is not the time to give up. small businesses have been hit very, very hard, but you have to balance that with saving lives. >> brennan: here is to a healthier and happier 2021. thank you to both governors. we'll be right back.

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the nation," and each year we talk to authors who new books have all been named some of the year's best. four of them join us now. jon meacham's book is "his truth is marching on." pter baker and susan glase are the co-authors of "the man who ran washington." and isabel wilkerson is with us to discuss her latest, "the origins of our discontent." good to see all of you. isabel, i want to start with you. you tackle the very difficult subject of race in your book, in which you describe a task system in our country, and skin color is the metric to where you fall in the hierarchy. is the awakening in our country this year for the issue of systemic racism

begin to tear that apart. >> we still face disturbing levels of division in our country. this idea of racialized polarization still continues. but i do hope that some of the things that have happened over the last year, this past summer particularly, involving the sense of awakening and outrage over what happened to george floyd and breonna taylor, and so many people who have become part of our conversation -- i hope this has been leading us to some type of awakening to get past these divisions. >> brennan: jon, you profiled one of the giants of our civil rights struggle, john lewis, who we lost, and you wrote about his famous march in selma, where he was severely beaten. you said when that footage was shown to the country, there was revulsion all

over america. revulsion and then redemption, is there anything more american? right now in america we have revulsion about what happened. are we at the point of redemption yet? >> redemption is a complicated thing. and that's something that we have to work on every day. john lewis represents, i think, faith in two fundamental forces in life. he was on that bridge because of a faith in god. and he was on that bridge because ultimately of a faith in america. frederick douglas once said there is no soil so conducive to the growth of reform as american soil. so progress is possible. and john used to say, when people would say, well, nothing has ever changed, he would say come walk in my shoes. now, that is easy for me to say, i'm a white,

southern male, episcopalian. things tend to work out for me in this country. i wrote this book and i wanted to profile john lewis because he represents the embodiment of the best that the religious impulse can play in our public life. and mor more more than any other person i've ever known, he closed the gap between the left and the sermon on the mount with the practice of those virtues. if we look at people who walked among us, and we see what they did, and they did something so remarkable, that should give us some faith and inspiration that we can do the same. >> brennan: as part of that process, peter and susan, it is figuring out how to turn what the country is experiencing into action, that falls upon our political leaders. you cover washington, the

both of you. we're seeing a lot of pressure on the president-elect to do something about race and division in this country. a lot of that early on is focused on representation. does it end there? how does the president-elect begin dealing with this problem. peter? >> well, look, you know, it is not just a question of who you put in your cabinet. that is only a start. there is obviously great wounds out there in this country to heal. this is a president who has talked about doing that. he has talked about being a bridge-builder and a healer and a honor who person wo wants to bring people together. in our book, we talk about james baker as a bridge-builder. we talked about how he tried to work with other parties to make things happen, and across the cold-war divide with the soviets to bring the world together. i think what joe biden is talking about doing is the same kind of thing, where we can cross these lines

and cross these divides and begin to reimagine america in a better way. >> brennan: susan, it just feels so different. the divides feel more bitter and deep. how do you do that? and is there something unique to the challenge ahead? >> you know, margaret, i think the thing that was so striking is how profoundly the political incentives in the country have changed. it is not that we've had a uniquely dederive divisive presidents -- we certainly have had a divisive president. but it is also that we've had a country and a political system that has just lost the ability, it seems, for politicians to work together across the aisle. the question is: has that incentive structure actually going to be impossible for even a joe biden to come in and sit

down and work with it, when the reward system has gone in the other direction, to be ever more extreme. >> brennan: isabel, you, in your book, start off with a pretty stark image of choice and moment in time. you describe a photo from 1936 in germany, in which a lone man stands in a crowd full of other men. they're all giving nazi salutes, and his hands are folded. it appears defiant, almost. why did you start on this? what does that signify to you? >> i started with that as the photo of. [indiscernable] he was surrounded by people. and he alone was on the right side of history. we all would like to believe we would be on the right side of history in a situation such as that, that we would somehow find a way to stand up in favor of justice, when we're

surrounded by injustice and people falling under the spell of that. >>.it comes upon all of us what each of us can do,and the responsibilities that each of us has. the reason why i speak about hierarchy is because this is part of our inheritance, the inheritance of this hierarchy that dates back to the time of enslavement, that essentially was in place for far longer than it was not in place in our country. and how we live with the after-effects of that. it falls upon each of us to learn the history and to be able to reckon with it. >> brennan: i'm interested in this idea, though, of what you're describing as a task system. because in at least political narrative, the past four years has been about disruption. they've been about breaking apart systems.

they've been about trying to break apart the establishment, in particular. you have a very different view, right? you think, and have pointed to the 2016 election in particular, as about reinforcing those task systems? >> well, you know, it is essential a art official ranking of human value. so we've inherited the rankings that have essentially been assigned to people based on pon upon what they look like. i want to remind how long this has been a part of our country, that it is a foundation of the power structure we have inherited. >> brennan: jon, you have used the phrase "the soul of america," and we hear that phrase from the president-elect quite often. we've had the election

tha.where are we now? where does that fight go? are we at absolution? >> no. we're a long way from absolution. my sense of the soul of the country is that soul in hebrew and in greek means breath, in which our better angel sees-lon sees lincoln's phrase, do battle. and every day is part of that struggle. to go to what peter and susan were saying, division in american life is not the exception; it is the rule. and disagreement and the impulses of appetite and ambition and the clash of interests, all of these things are perennial universal human forces. what we have to do, what were called to do by history and by reason, and

to some extent by faith, is to devote ourselves to the idea and the reality of making real for everybody the promise of the country. which is that we were all created equal, and we have certain inai in ailiable rights. and the right side of history been those who stand on the side of individual rights, of the sanctity of the individual, of liberty under law, and of openness. we build bridges in this country when we're at our best, not walls. and that may sound like a homily, but it has the virtual of being rooted in history. go around washington. what are the monuments to? the monuments are to imperfect people and imperfect events, but they

are ultimately about liberation and not captivity. and that's where the work of politics should be. >> brennan: president trump, as i referenced, was elected on this agenda of disrupting the status quo. kamala harris is a symbol of change. and joe biden is seen, though, as a return of the establishment. what is the choice we're making here as a country? in some ways, the biden patform was about restoring where we were. >> well, look, margaret, it is very hard to imagine a world where we're going to pretend that the last four years didn't happen, right? i think there was a palpable sense of returning to normalcy that animated joe biden's campaign. i think the question is really whether identity politics is the choice that people on both sides of the aisle are making right now. was it really about a policy platform for biden

or even for donald trump? to me the lesson in the last few years is that people are much more likely to embrace identities and tribalism that they find to be comfortable in our politics, at the expense even of a program. >> brennan: does disruption become the new platform or is it about restoration? >> margaret, you might want a more normal world, but the truth is that, you know, the world has moved on. and there are a number of areas, the middle east, and the recognition of israel by the trump administration, by several arab countries, obviously is a different fa fact set than the one that was there four years ago. biden has assembled a government that suggests that, a return to

competency and expertise and people who have served in the obama administration. i think the message to people is that trump represents a dicontinuity in american politics, but it is unclear that that is really the case. to jon's point, we're not going to just wash away the last four years. it is not even the beginning of over. we're not going to wake up some day and it is all going to be some crazy dream. >> brennan: peter, as americans, we always think it is about us. we're talking here about us as a country. but for the rest of the world, when they hear the president-elect say america is back and we're ready to lead. hasn't the world moved on? hasn't the world changed? does the world really want america to organize ill? >it?>> and president-elect

biden probably realizes the world has moved on. they've seen what it is like when america goes in a different direction. i think there is a lot of burned feelings out there about international agreements. who is going to want to enter into another agreement with the united states if they feel like in the next four years it will change. partly because of this idea that we swing back and forth radically every term. he will adopt more of trump's positions on china -- mt specific tactics on tariffs, but a stronger position again china than the obama administration has. you can't simply rerun the past. you'll have to adapt to the future, and that will include some of what the last four years has brought to us. >> brennan: thank you all for joining us today. and happy new year.

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♪ tonight breaking news in nashville, authorities name the christmas day bomber. >> anthony warner is the bomber. >> new details about the attack and the motives behind it. the deadliest month, a covid-19 surge across america. the situation in california is critical and the heartland is hurting. holiday travel could spark a violent wildfire. police across the country are struggling to deal with