The Radical Centrist: Ira Shapiro: "We're in a Dark place"

Thursday, August 28, 2025

Ira Shapiro: "We're in a Dark place" - The Damage Runs Deep

Episode 73

The Radical Centrist

Ira Shapiro: "We're in a Dark Place" The Damage Runs Deep

In this podcast we catch up with Ira Shapiro after just 150 days of the Donald Trump administration including the challenges ahead for democracy.

As is always the case, for those who listen through the full podcast there are always gems to take away from the experience and this podcast is no exception.

Listen here:

https://feeds.podetize.com/5UMllOtsR.mp3

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YouTube

https://youtu.be/3SG9BxPx0oQ

Ira Shapiro, Brandeis University 1969, first cut his political teeth when he landed an internship in Washington with Senator Jacob Javits of New York. Supported by a $600 stipend from Brandeis, it was a good way to spend the summer between Brandeis and Berkeley, where he's been accepted to study politics on a National Science Foundation fellowship.

But Washington — and the Senate, in particular — had captured Ira’s imagination. So, he did one year at Berkeley and then switched to the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

After practicing law for a short time in Chicago, he returned to Washington in 1975 as the legislative legal counsel to Wisconsin’s Democratic powerhouse Senator, Gaylord Nelson.

Over the next 12 years, Ira worked for several Senate committees and other individual members in what he wouls come to call "The Last Great Senate" not coincidentally the name of his first book. He had a front-row participant-observer seat to see the men and the few women of the Senate listen to their colleagues with respect, learn from one another, change their minds, compromise and find solutions to national problems.

Then, from the same place, he watched it all start to erode.

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Today, Ira is the President of Ira Shapiro Global Strategies, LLC, a consulting firm specializing in international trade, U.S.-Japan relations, and American politics, which he founded in 2014.  He brings to the firm 40 years of experience in senior staff positions in the U.S. Senate, the Clinton administration, and private law practice.  He is also the author of the critically acclaimed book,  The Last Great Senate: Courage and Statesmanship in Times of Crisis, published in 2012. He has also written "Broken - Can the Senate Save Itself and the Country?" and most recently, his newest book: "The Betrayal: How Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans Abandoned America"

He also publishes regularly from his new Substack: Truth be Told.

Shapiro is not only among the foremost experts on the United States Senate in the country, he was also the lead negotiator for the US/Canadian talks during the NAFTA process and he has continued to provide commentary and consulting on International trade. A regular friend of the podcast, we check in with Ira from time to time for his brilliant analysis and highly quotable observations.

In this podcast Ira shares not only his observations on the current state of the Senate but also some ideas for fixing these problems. Green shoots we call them.

Subscribe to Ira's Substack here.

His latest book The Betrayal: How Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans Abandoned America details the ways in which the Senate has gone astray in recent years.

Order The Betrayal

The Last Great Senate

Order The Last Great Senate

Order Broken

Mr. Shapiro Goes to Washington

https://www.brandeis.edu/magazine/2012/summer/the-brief/shapiro.html

Courtesy U.S. Senate Historical Office

Democrat Edmund Muskie, Republican Jacob Javits and Democrat Hubert Humphrey were among the most significant policymakers in the U.S. Senate during the 1970s.

by John Weingart ’70

I first met Ira Shapiro ’69 on the campaign trail. We were both on the ballot that year, though for different offices, when we bumped into each other canvassing for votes in a dorm in North Quad. He was hoping to represent the junior class on the Student Council while I was seeking one of the sophomore seats. For the record, we both won.

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