A Bit of Optimism - A Lifetime of Leadership with President Joe Biden

Episode Date: October 15, 2024

Leadership is deeply personal. As people change, the way they lead has to change, too.Few leaders have navigated as much change as Joe Biden. He was elected to the Senate at 29 and will end his time as President at 82. The number of things he has witnessed and been a part of over the course of  his career is remarkable. His journey has been shaped by unlikely friendships and profound personal loss.I had the honor to sit down with President Biden at the White House to reflect on how his experiences have influenced his approach to both life and leadership.I chose to stay clear of politics and instead focused on the lessons that are applicable to all Americans…and indeed all people.  I hope you find it insightful and inspiring.This...is A Bit of Optimism.

I really appreciate you taking the time. My staff is crazy about you, man. There's no such thing as an expert leader. The best leaders I have ever met are students of leadership. And though I've written books on the subject, I'm constantly learning from those who know more than me, which is why I'm so excited to sit down with somebody with over 50 years of leadership experience.

I'm proud to sit down with President Joe Biden to hear his thoughts on leadership, inspiration, and what helps us get out of bed in the morning. This is a bit of optimism. Mr. President, thank you so much. This is such a treat for me as a student of leadership to sit down with somebody who, I mean, whether you know it or not, you've studied leadership for most of your life. And so I want to start with a question that's rather timely, if I may. My 13-year-old nephew, Jacob, is running for class president today, actually. And so I was wondering if you have any words of advice for young leaders on what he should expect should he win the election that he's running for. He should expect to have to do what he said he's going to do.

Look, I remember the, I used to stutter when I was a kid, but I was always sort of the leader of the pack, my my gang, and I was elected class president in grade school and high school. And the biggest thing is, I think, for him to let people know that he cared about what he said. And it sounds silly to say that, but I really mean it. It doesn't matter how old you are. People know whether or not you meant what you said. When did you learn that lesson? Well, look, I kind of won the gene pool lottery. My dad used to say, for real, you're a man of your word. Without your word, you're not a man.

From the time we were kids, from little, my mother would look at you and say, Joey, she was 5'1", had a backbone like a ramrod, but she was everybody's mother confessor. She said, Joey, remember, courage lives in every heart, and someday you'll be summoned. You've got to do what you say you're going to do. I think of all the expressions that I grew up believing. My mother would say that, you know, if you have to ask, it's too late. My dad would say, families begin in the middle and end. I mean, for real.

If you ask any of my friends I grew up with, they can quote my mom and my dad and my grandfather and others. So it was all about just, I know it sounds silly, but my dad and my grandfather and others. So it was all about this, and I'll sound silly, but my dad's favorite word was dignity. He'd say, you've got to treat everyone with dignity. Everyone's entitled to be treated with dignity no matter who they are. And people can know it. They sense it.

They feel it. They can taste it. You say you won the genetic lottery, but it sounds like you won the lottery for parents. That's what I meant. The genes of your parents, not yours. Oh, no, no, not me. Not me.

But, you know, I was fortunate that I had the benefit of a family that was, we were middle class. We didn't have any money. But it was all about how you treat everybody. all about how you treat everybody. And, you know, I remember when I was a young senator, I met my dad at the Hotel DuPont, which is a four-star restaurant at the time. He was in town for business. He ran an automobile agency. And I remember coming down the elevator, and the chairman of the board of the DuPont company came down. And my father said, hello. He said, hi. that was all just nice. Then he walked over to the shoeshine guy, and he talked to him.

I said, Dad, why is that? He said, everybody's doing it. Everybody's doing it. That was my father. I mean, for real. Not a joke. These are the stories that I've heard about you that I think most people don't realize because they generally happen off camera, which is you come in and say hi to the guy

setting up the teleprompter. And I mean, it's nice to know that if your parents could see you now, that you're still doing the things that your dad taught you when he went over to the shoe shine. Well, look, I mean, my mother say, remember, Joey, no one's better than you. You're no better than anybody else. You're the same as everybody. You got to treat people with respect And look, I mean maybe if I come from a different circumstance We were the guys that would be figuratively speaking holding the teleprompter

But I think a lot of people forget where they come from, you know as people gain power or rank or money You and I have both met people who they think they deserve the rank they've been offered. And I'm so curious because we both know that humility and remembering where you come from is essential. How do you stay so grounded? Like, I mean, you're the president of the United States. They can, you know, they call you the leader of the free world. And yet you, how do you maintain the humility that you remember where you come from? Oh, it's easy.

Look, my staff jokes with me. The first two years I was president, they play Hail to the Chief, and I literally wonder, where the hell is he? The people I grew up with that I knew and liked the most were people who were just looking for a shot, just looking for an even shot. There weren't a whole lot of folks that I hung out with that were very entitled. You stayed friends with a lot of your childhood friends, and I understand that I think it was last week you went to a funeral for a childhood friend.

Again, I can only imagine your schedule, that you took the time to go to the funeral of a childhood friend. He's one of my oldest friends. We go back to being in St. Paul's Grade School in Scranton, Pennsylvania, when I was in kindergarten. And we stayed friends throughout our entire lives, over 70 years. And how could you not go? And it was important to go for another reason.

Because I'm president, it's important for his family to know that it didn't matter. Tommy was still one of my best friends. He was smarter than I was. He was faster than I was. I mean, he was just a friend. A lucky man and a woman that has a really, truly good friend. And it's been my whole life. You talk about friendship.

And one of the things that I've sort of come to see is that there's an entire industry that's trying to help us be better leaders, an entire industry that tries to help us be better parents, an entire industry that teaches us how to eat better or exercise better. But there's precious little that teaches us actually how to be friends. And I think most people think they're good friends, but if you peel the onion just a little bit, I think most people actually could be better. For example, do we cancel on work for a friend

or do we cancel a friend for work? And we usually cancel on our friends because our friends will understand. And yet here you are. I think you set a remarkable example that you clear schedule and travel to go to the funeral of a childhood friend. I know that for you it seems normal and natural, but it's actually becoming, I think it's becoming something that people are struggling with. It's a dying art how to be a friend. Look, I have an advantage.

I'm president of the United States. No, I'm not being facetious. For example, I have a rule. be facetious. For example, I have a rule. I realized when we were doing the Bork hearing, which was a very controversial hearing, the fellow who had done the most research, the most informed, this was a five-month process. This particular guy was having trouble at home with his family. And the hearing started, and I realized how trouble, how much, I said, no, you can't show up. I said, but I'm the only one, go home.

Take care of first things first. And I didn't realize my whole staff didn't know that. So I write a letter to every new staff member. If you have a personal problem and it's real, you don't have to tell me what it is. Just tell me you can't be in and go take care of it. Because I know you're not gonna lie to me. And if you do, you're fired. But just, if you need't be in and go take care of it because I know you're not going to lie to me. And if you do, you're fired.

But just if you need it, just take it. And don't tell me it's because your son is dying or your wife and you are having a problem or your mother's ill. Don't give me any explanation because that's what I did. After I got elected, you know, my wife and daughter were killed and my two boys were badly injured. And life was kind of upside down. To make a long story not quite so long, it was one of the things that I didn't want to stay in the Senate.

And a number of senators, five of them, got together from Teddy Kennedy to Tom Eagleton to Fritz Hollings to convince me to stay for 10 months. to Fritz Hollings to convince me to stay for 10 months. And what I realized when I had, I have a rule. If there's something important to my children and there wasn't a critical vote, I'd go to the parent-teacher meeting. Not a joke. Like my wife tells a story about how when our daughter, it was her birthday and it was a big deal,

but I used to commute every day on the train. So what I did was I found out there were going to be four hours between the vote. So I got on the train, on the 4 o'clock train, got off at 5.30. She was standing on the platform with a cake to blow out the candle, and I got in the southbound going south. Because that's what a family does. And I was able to do it. I had 500,000, million bosses, but it's much harder if you have one boss who can fire you. So everybody in my staff knows for real, if you've got a personal problem, just say, I can't be in, and go.

And so it's not that I'm not being so noble. I just want them to be able to do the same thing I can do. You talk about when you lost your daughter and your wife, that the relationship with your sister got a lot closer. That was already so close. She was on my handlebars since she'd been three years old. I really mean it. She's my closest friend in life. And she has more courage and brains than anyway. So when I lost my wife

and daughter, she had just been married. And she and her husband, she gave up her, they were hospitalized for a long while, my surviving sons. And I stayed in the hospital. When I came home, they had given up their home. They had moved into my house, helped me raise my kids. That's amazing. And two days after I got married, the second time, no man deserves one great love, let alone two. Years later, I got married again.

I came home and they were gone. They were just there to support. Yeah. And they're always there for me. She managed every one of my campaigns. She called me this morning. Anyway, long story. To change, change tack slightly, you know, trust in government has declined precipitously over the years. I think in the 1960s, it was something like 70% of people trusted government. and now the numbers are hovering around 20%. You were inside, in government, this entire time, watching what was going on behind the scenes while that trust eroded in the public. Looking from the inside out, could you start to see what was happening, the way that business was

being done, that you could predict that this is not going to see what was happening, the way that business was being done, that you could predict that this is not going to be good for government and the relationship with the general public? I was a senator for 36 years. And so I had a lot of friends on both sides of the aisle. We'd argue like hell, but we're friends. And so when I was vice president and things really began to go south, I realized we didn't, they didn't, weren't talking to each other very much. So what I did was, as president of the Senate, I showed up to go to lunch in the senator's dining room. There's two dining rooms down that hall by the elevator, first floor. On one, there's a waiting room and then there's a big restaurant where I

could take you as a senator, I could take you as my guest. There's another one to the left is a room that is, you walk in, there's a big archway at the other end, two large tables that can seat, I guess, 15, 20 people each table with a buffet. Only senators allowed in there. And so what happened was I learned from Teddy Kennedy, he used to come, he was a great friend and really helped me out, the whole family did, emotionally helped me out. And Teddy used to come by and say, come on, in the beginning, go to lunch with me, Joe. I said, I don't want to go to lunch. So finally one day he came to the office about six, eight months in and said, you're going to lunch with me, damn it. So I got up and went over and he said, just sit and listen. You'll learn more sitting and listening to these guys. And he was right because when you learn that a man has a son that has a drug problem

or his wife has breast cancer or he just lost his mother, it's hard to really dislike him. You get to know him a little bit. We used to travel together on foreign trips with our family, our wives with us. And you get to know one another. You can disagree like hell, but you don't hate them. You don't cast aspersions on them. And so I got on pretty well with most senators on both sides of the aisle.

And so when I was vice president, I could feel things were going bad. A lot of just things that never were said before to people, one another. So I went over to have lunch in the Senate because I knew a lot of these guys. There's no place you can have lunch anymore. Oh, really? I walk in, there's just armchairs and couches. If you're a Republican, I'm a Democrat, no place we can go to eat unless it's one of our offices. If you're a Republican, I'm a Democrat, no place we can go to eat unless it's one of our offices.

There used to be 20, 25 senators, both parties, in one large room. And we got to know each other. And so it just, people don't talk. It's easier to really dislike someone and ascribe the worst characteristic to them when you don't know anything about them. And that's what's happened. Did it really start when congressmen and senators used to move to D.C. if they got elected, move their families to D.C.? They all went to PTA meetings together and baseball games together. And then that stopped. People live on their couches now or they get a temporary apartment. Was it because they weren't hanging out after work?

It's really important, I think, in public life to understand where the other guy's coming from. So, for example, it's one thing to have a policy position on manufacturing when you're from a manufacturing state. Another thing if you come from a farming state, well, you've got to understand where the guy's from, why he has limitations, why he ran on things that are different than what you think, because we're 50 different states. And we don't seem to do that anymore. We don't seem to understand the other guy. For example, John McCain. John McCain, after he came back as a prisoner of war. Came to work for the Senate as a military attache, helping senators when they traveled abroad, there were five of them.

We became really good friends. We traveled a couple hundred thousand miles together. He'd come to my home, his second wife, I introduced him to. We were going to, stopped in Hawaii on the way to Japan. And he really, I could tell, he really liked this woman who was the Admiral's daughter. And I said, yeah. And so I went up and I introduced myself to her.

You were John McCain's wingman? I sure was. But John and I, we argued like hell. But we were friends. We never attacked one another's character. And it really matters. As you're talking about it, the thought that's going through my mind that actually kind of makes me a little bit sad is that, you know, we follow our leaders. Kids, you know, model themselves after their parents and we model

ourselves after our leaders, you know, and all the way up to President of the United States, you can actually dictate some of the behaviors of the nation. And you know, if I look at sort of the state of America right now, we don't like to listen to people who don't look like us, sound like us, who have different political views than us. And I thought that politicians were a reflection of us. But now I'm starting to hear from you that we're a reflection of our politicians, that they were the ones who stopped reaching across the aisle.

I wasn't going to run again after my son died. Yeah. And he died in 2015, Memorial Day. And I was going to write another book on the inflection points in world history. I think the things that happened in a relatively short period of time since the 1500s determine what it looks like for the next six, seven generations. For example, the idea that Europe would ever be united without Gutenberg's printing press wouldn't have happened.

And look what's happening now. Where do you go for the truth? And look what's going to happen with artificial intelligence. Someone sent me on my iPhone. I'm making a speech making me sound like a fascist. I couldn't tell it wasn't me. I'm looking at it, I could not tell. So we have to figure out how we're going to deal with the significant, let me put it this way, the number of people that get their news from mainstream media is de minimis.

And in mainstream media, there are no editors anymore. Nobody's saying you can't print that. That's not true. Everybody's looking for a click. And I'm not being critical because that's how they get paid. It's a misaligned incentive structure, isn't it? Yeah, sure. It's personal gain from what I can say.

And when that gets screwed up, integrity is sacrificed pretty quickly. Yeah. And so, for example, the stuff that people are saying now about Kamala, they're just making it up. I think it's getting harder because I really am worried. I've made three major speeches on my concern about the future of democracy in America. I mean, it's really very, very difficult. If you say it enough, say it enough, say it enough, say it enough,

people believe it. So if you have one source of news that already has a determination of outcome, you're going to hear the same thing a thousand times. You hear it enough, you begin to believe it. You as a leader, I mean, I can imagine when you were elected 29 years old, you show up in the Senate, I mean, starry-eyed and, you know, sort of there's some sort of disbelief. And you weren't the leader then that you are now. I'm sure you've grown.

How did the Senate help you grow? Well, look, when I showed up in the Senate right after the accident, there was nothing story-eyed about any of it. I mean, I didn't have, I didn't enter the Senate happy and excited. And I only agreed to stay for a while. Senator Mansfield, who had a great deal of integrity, he used to tell me that it's always appropriate to question another man's judgment, but never his motive. You don't know what their motive is. And one of the rules I've kept, and that's why I think I've been relatively successful. But the point is- Relatively. That, well, only relatively.

I'm being facetious. You're president of the United States. I think it's worked out okay. I kept thinking about what would my family want of me. I was lucky I had some real mentors looked out for me. And so it wasn't always a story. I didn't want to stay. So it wasn't always a story. I didn't want to stay. I would always walk into the Senate, and after 5 o'clock, go up to the Secretary of the Senate and say, how many more votes?

So I knew when to catch a train to go home to be with my kids. There's a line in the musical Hamilton, in the room where it happens. Are you there in the room where it happens? You have met a lot of world leaders over the course of your political career, and you've had a lot of private conversations with leaders who are friends of our nation, and sometimes with leaders who there's tension between our nations. Is there a common thread that you have found when you go into these meetings? What actually happens in those meetings? Well, I was the second youngest

senator in history, and I'm the oldest president in history. I've probably known personally and spent time with more world leaders than any president has in American history. Not to make good or bad, just longevity. And you know an awful lot about the positions of these folks before you go in. And one of the things I find, no matter what it is, is being straightforward is always the best bet, especially to get, and when I want to really get down with another world leader, I disagree with Putin or whoever, I do it alone, just he and I in a room. Because you take a measure of a man, whether you know he knows he's lying to you or you know he thinks he's telling you the truth. You get a sense of whether or not they care about what they're, they mean what they say or they're just trying to mislead you.

And that also requires an awful lot of intelligence background and work and knowing these people. requires an awful lot of intelligence background and work and knowing these people. For example, he wouldn't mind my saying it, when I got all those prisoners freed from Russia, one of the things I had to do was get the Chancellor of Germany to release a really bad guy in return for getting those. And I trust him, I know him, and I knew it was a hard call. and I trust him, I know him, and I knew it was a hard call. He saw my wife at the Olympics and he said, the only reason I did it is I trust Joe, I did it for Joe. I used to drive Barack crazy because we'd start every day together at 9 o'clock in the Olo office.

One of the things I always say to him, all politics is personal. It's personal. It's a personal relationship. It matters to them, all politics is personal. It's personal. It's a personal relationship. It matters to know who the other person is. And I think most of these guys, good, bad, or indifferent, are pretty good reads of personalities. They can tell whether or not you mean what you say, and you say what you mean, and you have any empathy. So I think it really matters, building personal relationships. So one of my favorite things about America

is our optimism and our idealism. And I love to joke with my friends that we celebrate our independence on July 4, 1776, but that's not when we had independence. That's when we signed the Declaration of Independence We didn't win our independence until September 3rd 1783 with the Treaty of Paris full seven years After the signing of the Declaration of Independence, but in true American fashion, you know We celebrate our independence from the day

We thought about it not the day we actually had it and I think George Washington wasn't elected until you know many years later, six years later. And this is my favorite thing about America. We just believe we can. But it seems to feel these days that our idealism and our over sense of a grand sense of optimism seems to be diminished. And it seems that our leaders in politics,

they don't talk about world peace anymore. They don't talk about big ideas. A lot of it is small. A lot of it's wins and losses and taking the win and making sure the other guy had lost. A, is that true? Do you think that we've lost our idealism maybe since the fall of the Berlin Wall? And if so, what do we do to get it back? I haven't lost my idealism. I end all my speeches by pointing out there's not a damn thing America can't do if we do it together. Nothing. And I believe that. Not a damn thing. Not a single solitary thing. And if you notice, I get criticized. For example, I put together a peace plan for Israel in the Gaza. I got it adopted by the entire UN Security Council, all of our NATO allies.

People said, and I get asked by the press, understandably or cynical, saying, what makes you think you can make it work? I mean, you got that done, but what's going to happen? But we continue to work on it. We continue every day to plow away at deciding to try to change the dynamic and change the leadership in other places as well. I think we're the only country in the history of the world that has come out of every crisis stronger than we went into the crisis.

I mean that sincerely. Like, for example, I spent more time with Xi Jinping than any world leader has. And I was in China with him. He turned to me and he said, can you define America for me? I said, yes, in one word, and I meant it. He said, what's that? I said, possibilities. We think anything's possible.

You said we can achieve anything if we work together. The problem is, this goes back to the beginning of our conversation, is we're not very good at together anymore. Well, guess what? Remember they told me I could never get the plan done for infrastructure. I got $1,300,000, $300 million. They told me I couldn't get the veterans benefits done. I got it done. They told me I couldn't get every single thing we passed.

Five major piece of legislation. And we're now in a situation where the most our economy is the strongest economy in the world. So what I have been surprised about and I will not tell you the names because I promised I wouldn't in my first two years, there were seven senators on another team that I used to work with who individually called me to tell me, Joe, I agree with you, but I just can't do it. I just can't do it. What surprises me is what is it that's changed in terms of the kind of,

I know they don't agree with this mega malarkey, but why? What kind of threat does Trump have holding over these people? For example, the border. We worked for four damn weeks a month to work out a deal on the border with one of the most conservative senators in the United States Senate.

We got a deal. We're about to have it pass. As it was voted on, Trump picked up the phone. This is public knowledge. Called the Republican senators and said, you're in trouble with me if you support it. All you're going to do is help Biden and hurt me. Even though he acknowledges

the single most significant thing we could have done. That is a big change. I think it goes back to where we started this conversation, which is when we can no longer see each other as human, we become caricatures, and we no longer are willing to invest in building relationships and trying to understand. And you said in the Senate when you could just sit down and eat with people because the literal environment encourages people to eat together,

and now you cannot. Well, but these guys knew this was the right thing to do. That's unusual for someone to know, and they're good people. They're decent women and men. You've had a remarkable career. You've achieved some amazing things over the course of your career.

I'm curious, was there one thing, one project, one piece of legislation, it doesn't even matter if it was successful, but something that you've worked on, something specific that you've worked on over the course of the entire career that you loved, loved being a part of that process? And if everything you worked on your entire career was like this one thing, you'd be the happiest person alive. The Violence Against Women Act. Say more. Well, you know, at the time I started to talk about it as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, I had done a lot of research on it. And people said, you can't, you can't do this. And even people who thought it was unfair, thought it was interfering. I was going to break up families.

And I just kept at it for two years, for two years. And I wrote it with, as my daughter would say, my own paw. And it's the most significant thing that I've ever done because I'm in the view that there's not a damn thing in the world that a man can do that a woman can't do. I mean, it's necessarily nothing, number one. Number two, that the victimization and the abuse of women, my father used to say, the greatest sin of all, and this is really what he said, is the abuse of power. And the greatest abuse of power is a man who lifts his hand to a woman or a child. And that's what, I mean, it was rampant. But we've made so much progress, changed so many lives, given people hope, and saved the children of those circumstances.

So let me push you a little bit, which is you've done amazing things. What is it about this specific act, this violence against women, that stands out amongst all the other remarkable things that you could have talked about? Because there were so many people, millions of women, who were in a situation where they couldn't get out. They didn't have any options. And we changed the law. We changed the rules. We changed everything from providing housing to providing opportunities. And what it's done, it's also created a generation of women who don't put up with it anymore, who are able to step back from it. But the biggest thing it's done, in my view, is see the incredible change and opportunity it presents

for the children of these marriages. And what is it that you loved about it? Again. Because I was a runt. I was a skinny guy who stuttered. But the abuse of power was the worst thing anyone could exercise. And, for example, I remember that I was, we lived in Scranton, Pennsylvania. We had lived in Scranton. We would go home for the summers and live in my grandpa's house, all holidays and everything. And one day we were up there and there was an area in Scranton, I lived in a place called Greenridge, it was a middle class neighborhood. And there was a place called The Plot down by the Lackawanna

River. And the guys in The Plot had some tough gangs and they'd come up our way. I was 13 years old or 14 years old, and one of the guys, a group of guys came up from the plot on Dimmick Avenue, which is behind my house. And my mother's looking out the window in the pantry, and looked out through the small backyard, and sees this one guy, he's a little old, and he smacked me and really hit me in the face, knocked me down. And I got up and I came walking in, and my grandfather's at the kitchen table, retired. What's the matter, Joe?

I told him, he said, that's a shame, honey. Walked in, my mother said, come here, Joe. I just watched what happened. You go back out there and smack him. I said, Mom, he'll kill me. She said, I'll give you a quarter if you do. She said, because if you don't, you'll never be able to walk out there again. But one thing, Joe, when you do, when you walk out,

you've got to make sure, wait until he comes up to you, and you've got to hit him right in the nose, as hard as you can. I said, he'll kill me. I said, Joey, I'm telling you. So I went back out. I was more afraid of my mother than I was. Hit him in the nose, started bleeding, went, ah, and ran. The point was, my mother would say, you just can't yield to a bully. You can't do it. I was scared to death. Once I was so brave,

that's what Tommy Bell and I were talking about before he died. The thing that I've loved talking to you about and the pattern that I see over this entire conversation from the legislation that you're proud of and the pattern that I see over this entire conversation from the legislation that you're proud of and the conversation about friends and the losses you've had in your personal life and this story as well, is you always provide protection for people so that they can do the thing that they need to do to protect others. But just like your mom gave you top cover, you know, for you to go fight the bully, and you passed legislation

so people could go protect other people. And even what you do with your staff, you give them safe space to go look after their families. And it seems like through your whole career, you've offered people the safety and protection and backup so that they can do that thing for others,

the people that they love? Everyone, everyone deserves a fair shot. And there's so many ways we can do it. It's beautiful. Mr. President, thank you so much for taking the time. I'm not sure this is worth your time, but thank you for this. It's so inspiring. Thank you so much, sir. Well, thank you.

Appreciate it. If you enjoyed this podcast and would like to hear more, please subscribe wherever you like to listen to podcasts. And if you'd like even more optimism, check out my website, simonsenic.com. Until then, take care of yourself, take care of each other. A Bit of Optimism is a production of The Optimism Company. It's produced and edited by Lindsay Garbinius, David Jha, and Devin Johnson. Our executive producers are Henrietta Conrad and Greg Rudershan.