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Happy Mother's Day. I'm Jane Pauley, and this is Sunday Morning. Even in a city infamous for leaks, last Monday night's release of a draft Supreme Court opinion reversing Roe v. Wade was a bombshell. The breach at the nation's highest court was all but unprecedented, its motivation still unknown. While a final decision on the landmark abortion ruling isn't expected for several weeks, the battle lines have been drawn. This morning we have two reports beginning with Martha Teichner. The likely end of Roe v. Wade. In Illinois and Missouri, it's not battle over, it's battle on. I'll take you there this Sunday morning.

And then Jim Axelrod will look at what overturning Roe means for the Supreme Court and all of us coming up. Rita Braver is on Broadway this morning sharing some laughs with the all-star cast of its newest comedy, POTUS. God, if you're not going anywhere, who's gonna stop me Marge? You?

Yes. When you see Vanessa Williams headlining a gleeful cast of women directed by five-time Tony award winner Susan Stroman, you might be surprised to learn who the writer is. This is your very first Broadway show. And how old are you?

I'm 28. Pretty amazing, right? It's amazing. Later on Sunday morning, the women of POTUS. Robert Costa talks politics and more with the ultimate Washington insider, David Gergen. Dr. John LaPook speaks with actor Ray Romano and his former boss, Phil Rosenthal, about food and friendship. On the subject of food, Elaine Quijano tells us about an inspiring story about food and friendship. On the subject of food, Elaine Quijano tells us about an inspiring link between donuts and the American dream. Gwyneth Paltrow with thoughts on Mother's Day, a horse tale from Steve Hartman, and more on this Sunday morning for the 8th of May, 2022.

We'll be right back. The leaked draft of a Supreme Court decision overturning the landmark Roe versus Wade is sending shockwaves through our cultural, political, and religious landscape. We have two reports. Jim Axelrod will be along shortly, but to begin, Martha Teichner on the front lines of the abortion debate. Nevermind that Justice Samuel Alito's leaked majority opinion was a draft, not a final decision. Its impact was like a hurled grenade. Once detonated, it ignited all the pent-up passions surrounding the expected overturn of Roe v. Wade after nearly 50 years.

The news was a shock, but not surprise. In 2019, we got a preview of, you know, and a dry run of what living in a post-Roe reality was going to look like. Yamelci Rodriguez is president and CEO of Planned Parenthood for the St. Louis region and Southwest Missouri. In 2019, only last-minute court intervention kept the Planned Parenthood facility in St. Louis open, the last abortion clinic in the state. And it was at that moment that we started to be really strategic for planning for a future without abortion in the state of Missouri.

We built this 18,000 square foot facility in secret. In Fairview Heights, just across the Mississippi River from St. Louis. In Illinois, abortion laws are as liberal here as they are restrictive in Missouri. Last year, it performed approximately 6,000 abortions.

It is prepared to perform 14,000 a year going forward. So we are doing this not just for Missouri patients, but for patients from across the Midwest and the South. If you want to see what a post-Roe world will look like, this is it. Just look at a map of the states where abortion will be legal, like Illinois, and all those others where it likely will not.

A new kind of continental divide. In January, the Fairview Heights Clinic opened this First in the Nation Regional Logistics Center. I heard the panic in your voice.

It's okay. It provides patients money, transportation, lodging, whatever they say they need, wherever they are. If you need any type of travel or ride. Kowana Shannon runs the center. I'm sure there are anti-abortion supporters who will say you're facilitating people killing their babies. I will tell you that I am sitting here every day facilitating a person's right to choose what they want to do with their body. I dreamed of being a mom and when I learned that some children don't even have the right to live it just shocked my conscience.

It still does. Equally passionate but on the opposite side is Missouri State Representative Mary Elizabeth Coleman, elated that the Supreme Court could actually overturn Roe soon. It seems like an incredible victory for the American experiment in my mind. We have a decision that 50 years ago was wrongly held and the conservative pro-life movement has been working within the system to change that bad law since it was passed. Mother of six, a lawyer, Coleman is the face of her state's waiting in the wings law banning abortion. Roe gets overturned.

What happens? Abortion will be illegal in the state of Missouri except for the life of the mother. Coleman has proposed legislation that goes further targeting not the woman herself but any professional service provider anywhere who knowingly aids or abets someone from Missouri getting an abortion.

Exactly the sort of services the Fairview Heights facility provides. I don't think if you live in Missouri or if you live in New York your value as a person is any less. So I'd like to see us continue to try to fight this at a national level as well. According to a CBS News poll out today, more than six out of ten Americans want Roe left in place. But if it does fall as expected, the battle over abortion shifts from the courts to the legislative arena at all levels of government. And both sides agree on this one thing. Right now, vote because your life and your future actually depends on it.

This is Jim Axelrod. The security fence surrounding the Supreme Court is all you need to see to understand the gravity of what unfolded in Washington this past week. While the court may have decided a presidential election in the last quarter century and ruled on how to make an election, the court ruled on who could legally marry whom. The draft leaked Monday night, suggesting Roe versus Wade could soon be overturned.

The Republicans have been working toward this day for decades. Elicited an emotional intensity reaching even deeper and more broadly abortion is violent. If you ask most Americans to name the Supreme Court decision, the vast majority will name Roe v. Wade. It's the only Supreme Court decision that's dominated Supreme Court confirmation hearings and presidential elections for decades.

University of California Davis law professor Mary Ziegler. What is the legal reasoning underpinning the overturning of Roe v. Wade? The legal reasoning comes down to the idea that the court says that there are only a limited subset of rights that are recognized in our constitution and those are ones that have been deeply rooted in our nation's tradition and history. Our rights are not up for debate.

Which explains that intensity for so many. Wondering if one long-established protection is overturned, what's next? We don't know if this court is going to stop with reversing Roe. We know that there are at least some justices on the court who would like to reverse a whole variety of other decisions on issues from criminalizing same-sex sex to banning same-sex marriage. Somebody who says to you, relax, this isn't a slippery slope.

What do you say to them? Well I say it's unpredictable and I say that if you had spoken to many Americans five years ago and said Roe v. Wade would be overturned in Amy Coney Barrett's first abortion decision on the Supreme Court, they would have said well that's ridiculous, right? That's politically unnecessary and risky for a court that's reputation has already been damaged and yet here we are.

Did you see this coming? Everyone saw coming the possibility that the court might overturn Roe by a five to four vote. I certainly didn't see coming that the decision was going to leak. As president of the nonpartisan National Constitution Center, Jeffrey Rosen won't take a side on what the draft says, but he's withering in his criticism of how we found out. Court's internal deliberations are its most sacrosanct product and it's impossible for a court to function if early drafts leak.

For Rosen, the leak and who did it is no sideshow distraction from the main issues. It's a grave threat to how the court works in private so justices have room to recast, rework and revise their opinions. There have been many motives that have been bandied around, but one is that after five justices voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, Chief Justice Roberts is now trying to convince some of them to change their mind and to join him in a more moderate opinion. The leaker is trying to make it harder for any swing justices to peel off and change their minds. In an appointment which could turn the Supreme Court to the right for years to come, wanting to end the court's highly partisan era often traced back to hearings for conservative judge Robert Bork. Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back alley abortions. Rosen says Robert's mission has been to broker opinions that reflect consensus favoring eight to one decisions so much more than five to four. Chief Justice Roberts said we've got to be narrow, we have to be modest, we have to be incremental or we're going to run the risk of a tremendous threat to our legitimacy.

But that's the opposite of where we find ourselves this Sunday morning. With the court quite possibly close to an expansive, sweeping decision that will overturn a protection that's been in place for half a century, one Americans feel strongly about. Law professor Mary Ziegler. The court has historically not been that untethered from what people tend to think, especially when the court is inserting itself into virtually every major issue of the day, from guns to affirmative action, to abortion, to the rights of LGBT people, to voting rights, to the regulation of climate change. I mean, the court is literally in every conversation we're having and it's operating in ways we haven't seen in the recent past. But as Americans have repeatedly learned the last few years, the recent past is no longer the best guide to how we'll function in the future. This will be something that professors of constitutional law and indeed professors of any kind of law will be talking about probably for more than 100 years from this conversation.

This is The Takeout with Major Garrett. This week, Steven Law, ally of Mitch McConnell and one of Washington's biggest midterm money men. List for me the two Senate races where you think Republicans have the best chance of taking a Democratic seat away. Nevada, New Hampshire. Not Georgia.

Well, Georgia's right up there, but New Hampshire is a surprise in New Hampshire. People really just kind of don't like Maggie has for more from this week's conversation. Follow The Takeout with Major Garrett on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Now streaming, I used to believe in progress. No matter what we do, we just end up back at the start.

We're in crazy time. The Paramount plus original series, The Good Fight returns for its final season. The point isn't the end. The point is winning.

Yes! There are bad people in the world. The best way to protect the good people is to convict the bad. So here's to us.

The Good Fight, the final season, now streaming exclusively on Paramount Plus. From correspondent Elaine Quijano now, a treat in every sense of the word. Hi, how are you? What can I get for you? Okay. Pour the sprinkles? Yes, ma'am. Okay. Awesome.

The mom and pop donut stores that dot California strip malls carry mostly the same mouth-watering doughy delights. Thank you, my friend. Thank you. Have a nice day. But beyond the rows of glazed chocolate and sprinkles lies a different kind of richness in the stories of the Americans behind the counter.

Hi, come on in. Roughly 80% of donut shops in California, that's well over 1,000, are owned by Cambodian refugee families. Soon the streets were choked with refugees. They arrived in America in the late 1970s and early 80s, seeking safety as the communist Khmer Rouge committed genocide in Cambodia's killing fields.

Millions were executed or disappeared. Many who escaped settled in California and found work in donut shops. We immigrated right after the genocide. Teresa Engo owns Blinky's Donuts.

Her family has owned donut stores since the 1980s. I mean, at the beginning, once you get here, you don't speak the language and you have family that offers you a job and next thing you know, they've been doing it for their whole life. So, and sometimes it's a few generations at a time.

There weren't a lot of resources that were really offered to refugees and so they had to figure out how they could support each other. Erin Curtis is an LA historian with the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. California has had a long history of donut culture and it's become even more famous, I would argue, in the last 40 years or so and that's really due to Cambodian refugees who kind of came in and expanded the donut culture here in Southern California very greatly. Fair to say it's part of American culture then.

Yeah, absolutely. A culture which now includes the pink donut box. Decades ago, Cambodian store owners bypassed expensive white boxes for cheaper pink boxes which fit a dozen donuts perfectly.

The move not only saved thousands of dollars, it also created an icon of sweetness. I probably learned how to fold a donut box, a pink donut box a pink donut box before I learned my ABCs. Dorothy Chow manages a donut supply company. The daughter of Cambodian refugees, she grew up working in several of her parents stores and considers herself a donut kid.

I mean there were some days that I worked maybe 12, 13, 14 hour days but then now as I'm older I can look back at it with pride. Like I am a part of something bigger. I am part of this whole journey that our parents have been on. They came here with nothing. They needed all the help that they could with the donut shop and we were there to help them and support them whenever we can.

A story which is now being unboxed. That common shared experience of the donut is very American. Fung Wen is a Cambodian American artist who came to America as a refugee. A lot of the work are portraits. In her exhibit Donut Hole at Self-Help Graphics and Art in Los Angeles, she uses a pink donut box instead of a white canvas to capture a taste of the Cambodian American refugee experience. It's not canvas, it's a throwaway cardboard box. Underneath the suite of the donut is actually intergenerational trauma and pain.

Fung's art focuses in large part on the second generation. She juxtaposes childhood images of donut kids with the portraits of the adults they've become. And it's only this generation born in the United States to tell their parents, look we want to honor you. You've never had the time to even think about what you've been through and we want to take this time to honor your story because you didn't have the time to write about it. One of her portraits, Dorothy Chow. When you saw your portrait, what did you think? I had a sense of pride.

I think maybe for the first time I felt like growing up in America and maybe making sacrifices that did as a child was finally being seen. Now as an adult, Dorothy herself sees things differently, like the pink boxes she once folded as a little girl. What do these donut boxes represent to you? These donut boxes are an example of resilience and a representation of the refugee experience here in America.

Oh great, would you look at this? Oh my god, tuna juice! Oh my god! Actor Ray Romano rose to fame thanks to the hit sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond. And among those who love him, his former boss, producer Phil Rosenthal. They talk with our Dr. John Lapook about food, television, and friendship.

The bees seem to be trying to get at us, but they really seem to be going for my face. Hello. Phil Rosenthal has one of the best jobs in the world. Well, Phil, I'm so glad to meet you. Oh, we're hugging folks. Oh, I love it! As the creator and star of the hit Netflix series Somebody Feed Phil... We're just dancing.

Rosenthal travels almost everywhere and eats just about everything. Oh my god, look at it. It's already dead. Of course it's dead. Don't think it's alive. But it is very moving.

Yeah, but it's the muscles. We go to a fabulous place on the earth and I try to get you to come there by showing you the best places there to eat. Hello, sir. I take it you've done this before. No? Sit down, please.

Sit down, please. There's no more mind expanding thing we can do than travel. It literally changes your way of thinking.

It changes your perspective. Wherever I am in the world, if it's time to go out to eat with my wife and we don't know where to go, I text Phil. Hi, I'm Ray and I live here in Long Island. Rosenthal and his buddy, actor Ray Romano, met in 1996 when Rosenthal created, wrote and was executive producer of Everybody Loves Raymond.

They took me from New York and they had set up 10 meetings with potential show runners. And let's tell the true story. You were the second one. But the first guy turned it down. Yes.

So I went with Phil. Isn't that nice? You really know why? Sure.

Sure. I know. I totally know.

The show ran for nine seasons on CBS. I'm going to give you the whole half a sandwich. How's that? Which is how the idea for Phil Rosenthal's current travel show began 25 years ago while they were making the sitcom.

I can honestly say it's his fault. I asked him, what are you going to do on your hiatus? That break between season one and season two. And you remember you were going to New Jersey Shore, where we always go. Right. And I said, oh, that's nice.

Have you ever been to Europe? And he said, no. And I said, why not? And you know what you said?

I said, I'm not interested in other places. Art imitated life. A light bulb went off. We got to do that episode.

We got to do that episode where we send him with that attitude. Free trip to Italy. Well, I don't know. I'm not really interested in other cultures.

Rosenthal wrote two episodes that explored Romano's stated lack of desire to travel beyond his beloved Jersey Shore. Can you believe this? It's nice. The water.

Yeah. And his eventual transformation. Raymond first notices a beautiful flower stand. And then you're walking alone. You're by yourself. And you run into two kids who are kicking a soccer ball. Comes my way. And I kind of give it back to them.

And then they actually engage me to play with them, kicking around with them. It's one of my favorite things we've ever done on the show. And finally, Raymond buys a slice of real Italian pizza. This is like the best pizza I ever had, man. You like more?

Well, yes, I want more. I love it so much. It's everything I love about travel. How your mind literally gets changed. It's like they know how to live here.

Don't you think? Don't you think it's kind of beautiful here? We know what happened in the episode, but what happened to you in real life? We stayed in Italy and we flew to Sicily to visit my wife's hometown. So we spent a week in this little village in the mountainside. The stuff we did in that episode, I was living in real life.

We were in a car this big. They were feeding us from the food they grew. You know, it's just seeing goodness from people who don't look like you, sound like you. You know, there's like this common denominator that you realize people are good all over.

So I see this happen to him and I think, what if I could do this for other people? Rosenthal held on to the idea and started his travel and food show in 2018. How hungry are you? I'll taste everything.

Okay. I got some goat noodles. I love goat.

I think goat is the most underrated meat. Do you ever ask a producer to taste something first? Nope.

Nope. I just jump in like an idiot. Okay. And when something's amazing? Yeah. I share it with everyone. Great.

That's what I was going to ask. It's also the secret to why I'm not 400 pounds is because I taste everything, I finish nothing, share everything. He is especially fond of a chef he met in Thailand.

She's like a pilot. It's a Michelin starred shack. Unbelievable. A crab omelet.

There's like a pound, a pound and a half of freshly shucked crab. It's probably the most expensive street food in the world. I think it's $50 for this omelet and it's so friggin delicious. You'd never see it in America because it would be prohibited.

It would be $200 to $300 here. Rosenthal has just finished a book published by Simon & Schuster, a division of Paramount Global, to document his travels and the best recipes he's discovered. It's these artisans, these craftsmen who take such care and pride.

It's their national heritage, their personal family history that's in every bite of the food you're getting. And I swear to you, you can taste it. As for Romano, in the decade since everybody loves Raymond. What do you say we just head south together? Great. Yeah. Hey, jump up on my back and relax the whole way.

He has continued to act in comedies and dramas. You know, I don't, I don't care whether you did it or not. That makes no difference to me. Yeah, I know. I'm here to defend you. And he just finished directing and starring in a dramedy called Somewhere in Queens, which he also co-wrote, once again drawing on memories of his family.

Do they yell and do they scream and are they loud? Yeah, there's that love underneath it. You can't deny it. There's a bond that can't be broken. Which also perfectly describes Ray Romano's bond with Phil Rosenthal. It's pretty humbling now for me to go to dinner with him. And when people come up to talk or an autograph, it's for this guy now.

It's crazy. Steve Hartman has a story which proves winning isn't everything. Not long ago, friends and fans gathered to pay their final respects to one of the most unlikely celebrities in sport, Zippy Chippy. Zippy loved being a racehorse.

He just wasn't very good at it. And farcical as it may look. He's going to live forever in my heart. Unofficial Zippy fan club president, Roseanne Friere says this memorial is hardly horseplay. It could be a joke to some people, but the people that know the real story about Zippy, they're heartbroken. Zippy Chippy was born into a racing royal family.

He's the grandson of Kentucky Derby winner, Northern Dancer. And Zippy too could have been one of the all-time greats. If only at the start of every race, he just would have started.

They're off and dwelling in the gate is Zippy Chippy. Zippy never quite understood why everybody was in such a rush. He lost every race he was in.

0 for 100. Zippy Chippy finishes last. 101 if you count the time he lost to a minor league baseball player. That cemented his reputation as the losingest racehorse in history. This is Zippy back in 2000 with his owner and faithful companion, Felix Montserrati. Felix died a few years ago, but he never gave up on this horse. Zippy is like my son.

I like him a lot. And every time he rung, he made me feel good. Zippy lived out the last leg of his life here at the Old Friends at Cabin Creek Retirement Farm in upstate New York. He died last month at the age of 31 and is now being celebrated finally as the winner that he was. To his love.

We'll miss him. Not a single person even mentioned his racing record. Quite to the contrary. In a sport that winning is everything, Zippy taught us that losing is a normal thing. Do you think people see themselves in Zippy a little bit?

Oh yeah. I think we all see ourselves in Zippy because it was always on Zippy's terms. Whatever Zippy wanted, Zippy did. At the Kentucky Derby, all that matters is speed. But Zippy reminds us there's more to life than running for the roses.

That sometimes it's better to just stop and smell them. POTUS, Washington's shorthand for President of the United States, is now on Broadway. Not the POTUS, of course, but a funny new show about the women behind a fictional commander in chief. Rita Braver has our front row seat. You!

You are not nice to me! Meet the wild women of POTUS. All seven scrambling to serve one incompetent, lecherous chief of state.

I have bullied 500 feminists into attending tonight's dinner. I have written 37 drafts of POTUS's speech to try to keep our female base from shrinking literally smaller than a nut sack in the snow. Tony Award winner Julie White plays the White House chief of staff. Headliner Vanessa Williams is the president's wife. Your loyalty to my husband is admirable and I hope you continue to feel fulfilled by your choice of trading youth and beauty for a life of service to him.

Thank you. In fact, the president, who we never actually meet, takes advantage of everyone. But Williams says her character has made a calculated decision to stay as first lady. Because she knows what her husband is. Absolutely. It can be reflective of what a lot of women who have been in that space have had to deal with.

You know, a choice of staying in the marriage when you know that everybody knows the reality of what's happening to the marriage. Oh, and that includes his dalliance with Dusty, played by Emmy Award winner Julianne Hough. I'm here about the position. What position? The position. Why are you winking?

They told me to be discreet. But she soon realizes she got hoodwinked along with everyone else. It was like there was some some belief in him. There was like this charm.

It's like when you first date somebody and they're on their best behavior and then they just boom, boom, boom, boom. Yeah, monster. Your bathroom is disgusting.

They may take off their shoes and the toenails are just horrible. Oh, OK! Comedian Susie Nakamura is the White House press secretary. God, that thing is loud. You can't pump in my office. Where else am I going to do it in this hellish place? Not my problem. Put them away.

Chris, a White House reporter, is played by Broadway veteran Lily Cooper, who also happens to be a nursing mom, both on stage and in real life. I mean, you're strapping it on. Quite literally.

Quite literally strapping it on. And I think it adds to the chaos of being a working mom is finding time to pump while you're at work. It's crazy.

What is this show saying? That being a working mom is hard. It's really hard.

And I think it's kind of taken for granted that we just do it. Lea DeLaria of Orange is the New Black fame plays a different type of working woman. She's the president's jailbird drug dealing sister. Girl, you've got to get some hotter interns.

Your whole staff looks like sweaty beanie babies. You and the press secretary are old flames, correct? Yeah, yeah. Susie Nakamura play and I play girlfriends in this. So, yeah, that's that's a lot of fun. I get to kiss both these girls.

I could kiss 16 times a week right here. And Saturday Night Live alum Rachel Dratch is the president's mousy secretary who's trying to change her image. Are you having a stroke? I am power stancing.

I am decreasing my cortisol and increasing my testosterone, thus increasing my confidence. She's kind of the wise fool in all of this, right? Oh, I like that. That makes me feel like I'm doing something really lofty.

Why do you want to play this role? Well, just I don't know, just like seem super fun. I mean, it's first of all, it's Broadway, my Broadway debut.

And I've always had the two. Yeah. All of these colorful characters come directly from the imagination of playwright Selena Fillinger, making her Broadway debut, too. So here you are, 28 years old on Broadway.

Isn't it beautiful? She grew up in Oregon and studied playwriting at Northwestern. How'd you get the idea for this show? You know, we were having this series of headlines basically about powerful characters. About powerful men abusing their power. It was fascinating because they always had this circle of women around them, you know, that were always defending them or enabling them. And I was like, what's going on? So I became really fascinated with what those women's daily lives looked like.

I'm sure a lot of people are going to see this play and wonder, is there any particular president that you are trying to skewer? I mean, it's an amalgamation of so many of them. But I do think it's a story that you could put in so many institutions, so many companies, so many schools, so many homes.

And then you wake up and you do it all over again. And bringing Fillinger's play to life is a director who broke through Broadway's glass ceiling. Five-time Tony Award winner Susan Stroman. You read this script before you knew how old she is.

Yes, yes. And when you found out? I couldn't believe this. I couldn't believe it. The show says a lot about women, not only can they be funny without a man around, but also the idea of the show about women in charge. To do something this fantastic and have that room just filled with estrogen, just women, just women, being creative, being funny, in the lead, in the power, you know, working together.

It was a completely different process than I've ever been involved with before in terms of creating something new. And boy, do they use their power. If you're not going anywhere. Oh, who's going to stop me Marge, you? Yes.

So everyone loves Vanessa Williams and yet here you are playing Lady Macbeth with a sense of humor. Right? Yes, yes, yes. Yeah.

Who's wildly accomplished and deeply effective. She's a tough cookie, but we're all tough cookies. But we're all tough cookies.

Some people do call them cookies. And as for that other thing they say about women, if you Google women aren't funny, it's kind of a thing, right? You would hear like, women aren't funny. I don't even know where you'd hear it. And I was just like, screw that.

You know, I grew up on, you know, like Lily Tomlin and Gilda Ratner and Kilburn, so it never crossed my mind. We're not going to give away the plot, but as the play ends, the women triumphantly take the stage. And the cast members say their main goal is to bring some fun into these troubled times. You're probably kind of sweaty because you've laughed so hard. And I had a woman come up to me and say, I started laughing and I laughed so hard I wet my pants. That's hype me.

And Q depends commercial. On this Mother's Day, thoughts from actor, businesswoman, and mom, Gwyneth Paltrow. I remember the morning my daughter Apple came into the world. I felt this incredible rush of love. It was so shocking that I asked my mother, do you love me this much? It reframed completely how I saw motherhood. When my son Moses was born two years later, I expected to follow the same emotional template. But for the first several months, I experienced postpartum depression. I was overwhelmed by all of the feelings. Most acutely shame, even though I knew then as I know now that Moses would light up my life. My experience of motherhood in those early days was different, but in hindsight, I can see how many things were exactly the same.

I love them both so, so much. I wondered who they would become. I sang to them. And of course, I wiped their butts a lot, which brings me to my next point. I never had to think about the cost of diapers, never once. Until recently, when my team at Goop brought it up, we were talking about the diaper tax. Despite the absolute necessity of diapers, in 33 states, they're taxed like a luxury good. Depending on the state, the sales tax can add between 1.5% and 7% to their cost. This makes diapers the fourth highest household expense for many low-income families.

If you can, I hope you'll head to Goop to learn more. And that's what's on my mind today, and something else. Apple is now a week shy of turning 18. She's going off to college in the fall. Yes, it's been that long since she was in diapers. When they say it goes by fast, I'm here to tell you it's true. If you have kids in your life, I hope you can spend some time with them today.

I'll be here enjoying my family's tradition of making the kids prepare Mother's Day brunch. There are few Washington insiders as inside as David Gergen. He's served four presidents, Republicans and Democrats alike.

He shares reflections on lessons learned with Robert Costa. Is it possible to be a David Gergen today to serve presidents of different parties? Listen, I can assure you that there are lots and lots of people out there who are better equipped to do it than I was. But there aren't a lot of people going between R and D. There are not a lot of people.

If you want to see the results, I can show you the scars on my back. David Gergen may be a battle-tested veteran of decades spent advising presidents, Republicans and a Democrat. But Gergen, who turns 80 tomorrow, doesn't hold back when asked to describe the state of democracy in 2022. We can't continue on the path we're on. It's unsustainable. He has a sense that we're like in a car at midnight on the edge of a cliff with rain falling and no headlights. Sound alarmist? Well, consider the source.

David Gergen remains a Washington legend for his clear and steady appraisal of the times, having guided Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton through critical moments in U.S. history. When you step back and look at all this, is America in a political crisis or a moral crisis? That's a great question. That's a great question. I think it's a moral crisis.

I really honestly believe these are moral questions, ultimately. Gergen is reaching out to those who share his concerns with a new book, Hearts Touch with Fire, published by CBS parent company Paramount Global's Simon & Schuster. It's a call for a new younger generation of leaders to seize the reins and to learn from someone who was so often in the room where it happened. Take me in the room with Richard Nixon. What's a lesson from your time with Nixon that applies today? Nixon was a man who was, in my judgment, the best strategist we've had in the last half century or so. But he also had demons inside him that he had not learned to control, and they eventually took him down.

Always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself. Well, know what one of the most wonderful images is? Nixon getting on the helicopter. Yeah. And that night in Washington, life went on. Well, it did.

Exactly right. I was there. I was on the lawn. I saw the helicopter take off. The transition of power worked in August 1974. It did.

It did. Not on January 6, 2021. Absolutely. And I think that is just a measure of how much we've changed. You've worked for Republican presidents. Do you have faith in Leader McCarthy and Leader McConnell?

I wish I did. I am looking forward to the day, which I think will come, when the Republican Party will regain its balance. But the Republicans are not just dealing with an ideological battle. They have a former president still on the march politically in this country, pushing a lie.

Yeah. But there are various signs now that the power, the structure, the Trump in charge, that armor is beginning to fall off a little bit. He looks a little more ragged now than he did before. Gergen's call for new leadership includes our current president. Your book says it's time for the current generation of leaders, frankly, to get out. It's time for the exit. It's time for the torch to pass. There are some wonderful people who are in power, mostly, you know, baby boomers.

But the truth is, as a generation, the baby boomers, I think even too many of the baby boomers, has been a disappointment. President Biden, should he run again in 2024? In my judgment, sadly, I think that President Biden's time as an active leader will end with this term and should end with this term. Would the same message apply in the House and in the Senate?

Leader McConnell, Speaker Pelosi? Absolutely. They might say to you, David, we might be near 80, but we can still do the job.

We don't need to go away. I think the proof is in the pudding on that question. If this is the job they say they're doing so well, I think most people in the country would disagree with that. Our problem is we've had too many leadership failures, not too many successes. For more than 20 years, Gergen has taught leadership at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Like the school's namesake, Gergen is a Navy veteran and sees military service as a character forming crucible, something missing from the lives of so many today. Do you believe young people are craving some kind of tough forging experience on leadership? Absolutely.

Yes, I do. And I think you see it in some of the Parkland kids, you know, who've been coming back. I think we see it certainly in the climate movement with Greta Thunberg. We see Malala overseas in Pakistan.

And the other stream I would call your attention to are young black women who are occupying the high ground, you know, on things like Black Lives Matter and the Me Too movement. But just down the street here in Cambridge at Harvard, you have so many ambitious students who are saying, I have to go into the private sector. A lot of young people feel like they don't have the time or ability to do national service. I agree. There are people who would do that. But we haven't offered it in a very big way.

We haven't encouraged people to do it. Let's go back to and remember a predecessor organization. It was called the Civilian Conservation Corps.

Planting is another important conservation measure. We had 250,000 young men in the woods. It was the most popular program of the New Deal. When people serve when they're young, they tend to come back to it. After years of serving presidents, David Gergen now hopes to shape future ones. And while his eyes are fixed on tomorrow's leaders, the lessons of the past are always close at hand. You're right about that picture of JFK leaning over the desk.

Yes, yes. Our leadership models are evolving. That Kennedy really was the great man theory at, you know, in a picture.

It's sort of at dusk, lonely figure, the burden of the world on his shoulders. Look at Obama. From my point of view, the iconic picture of the Obama presidency is when he's down in the Situation Room, we're closing in on Osama, and there are all these people surrounding him, all of his advisors. We've moved from a singular person theory of leadership to a more collective action. Constructive collaboration becomes essential in a really complicated world that's moving so quickly. Leadership can be tough. It can be very tough, but you can't forget the essentials that go back to the Greeks and Romans, you know, of character and of capability and of courage. You know, those are things that are still necessary today, hundreds of years later. Thank you for listening.

Please join us when our trumpet sounds again next Sunday morning. This is Intelligence Matters with former acting director of the CIA, Michael Morell. Bridge Colby is co-founder and principal of the Marathon Initiative, a project focused on developing strategies to prepare the United States for an era of sustained great power competition. The United States put our mind to something we can usually figure it out. What people are saying and what we kind of know analytically and empirically is our strategic situation, our military situation, is not being matched up with what we're doing. Follow Intelligence Matters wherever you get your podcasts.