Jean Luo

How would you lead a divided United States?

Well, so as you're talking about bipartisanship in Washington and also the White House, we want to go back to negotiation and the topic of negotiation.

So when you're a chief of staff in the Obama White House, your job involved negotiating between Congress, the president, and a bunch of competing interests.

What is the most important thing people misunderstand about how major deals actually get done in Washington?

And what is the biggest mistake people make when it comes to deal making?

Okay, so if I can summarize.

No, that's like negotiation 101.

Well, I would think so.

At Stanford.

But the second story about negotiating with the unions is basically what we learned in negotiations class in business school is that you're supposed to have all of the topics laid out there.

You should have as much information as possible about what the other side wants because then you can –

as you said, negotiate across all four issues and give and take.

Now, that's going to take you a generation to fix that.

It literally takes three seconds to do and we're available on Spotify, YouTube and Apple podcasts.

Now back to the show.

So Ram, on the topic of soft power, I want to talk about American hegemony.

So American hegemony refers to the United States' dominant position in the global political, economic, military and cultural order.

Do you think we still hold this position in the world, especially in the light of nuclear proliferation and the rise of major global powers?

And is it important to maintain?

Well, it's interesting, I think, on the soft power and also like cultural influence.