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How a Political Journal Changed the Conversation in Washington | Gladden Pappin on 13th and Park
Description
Gladden Pappin, co-founder of American Affairs and newly joined Ballard Partners, sits down with Adam Goodman on 13th and Park to trace the intellectual and personal journey that brought him from Little Rock, Arkansas, to the center of Washington's policy debates. A sixth-generation descendant of the Osage Nation and Harvard graduate, Pappin draws a straight line from his grandfather Bob Gladden's restless work ethic and globe-trotting ambition, to early exposure to high-level politics through the Clinton White House, to the conviction that American political thought needed a serious reset.
Pappin and his co-founder Julius Krein launched American Affairs in 2017 at the Harvard Club of New York, deliberately placing it beside Foreign Affairs on the shelf and inviting contributors who actually understood industrial policy, supply chains, energy dominance, and the competitive threat from China. Long before those topics reached the mainstream, the journal was making the case that deindustrialization had hollowed out American towns and that the political consensus of the 1990s had cost the country real power. Pappin describes how Senator Marco Rubio's office became an early home for those ideas, and how proposals that once filled the journal's pages now sit in the offices of the current administration.
The conversation turns to J.D. Vance, whom Pappin first engaged in a critical review of Hillbilly Elegy in 2016, and who reached back out in January 2019 to begin a serious policy dialogue. Pappin offers a rare inside look at how Vance approaches ideas, describing a leader who actively seeks out dissenting voices, drills down on each subject area, and refuses to surround himself only with people who already agree with him. That portrait of intellectual curiosity, Pappin argues, is what distinguishes Vance as a strategic thinker.
Pappin closes with a sweeping assessment of Europe, NATO, and the Trump doctrine's emphasis on economics as a parallel pillar to security and sovereignty. Having led a research center in Hungary and now heading Ballard Partners' Central and Western European practice, he argues that the foundation of European security rests on individual nations and the willingness of their people to invest in their own countries, and that the new American approach of anchoring alliances in clear economic value propositions is both a correction to overreach and a more honest path to lasting partnership.
Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:12 Welcome to Ballard Partners
1:34 Arkansas Roots and Grandfather Bob Gladden
2:41 The Clinton White House and Early Politics
3:30 Launching American Affairs at the Harvard Club
5:14 The Ideas Behind the Trump Doctrine
7:59 Marco Rubio and the China Competition
9:39 Reviewing J.D. Vance's Book in 2016
11:28 Vance Reaches Out in 2019
12:31 How Vance Approaches Ideas and Leadership
14:33 Europe, NATO, and the New Transatlantic Relationship
16:09 Individual Nations as Europe's Foundation
17:51 Economics as the Core of the Trump Foreign Policy Doctrine
20:18 What Living Abroad Taught Him About America
21:05 Notre Dame, South Bend, and American Life
21:48 Closing Thoughts on American Affairs and Big Ideas
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