Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Life After Power with Jared Cohen

Episode Date: January 29, 2024

What is it like to transition from one of the most powerful positions in the world, to that of an ordinary citizen? Sharon is joined by presidential historian and New York Times bestselling author, Jared Cohen, to share about what happens when presidents – at the pinnacle of their prestige and influence – leave office. What can we learn about human nature and building a legacy from these past political figures? Join us as we explore Jared’s new book, Life After Power, that confronts the ambiguous question of “what’s next” through the lenses of seven presidents, and how they found meaning in life beyond the White House. Special thanks to our guest, Jared Cohen, for joining us today.  Host/ Executive Producer: Sharon McMahon Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder  Production Coordinator: Andrea Champoux   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, friends. Welcome. Delighted to have you with me today. My guest is presidential historian Jared Cohen, and he has written a really, really interesting book about what happens when presidents leave office. It's called Life After Power. And we have so much to learn about what presidents do with their time after they make the ultimate career transition. So let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting. I am really excited to be chatting today with Jared Cohen because it is always fun to chat with another presidential historian nerd and you could just spend, we've already spent a considerable amount of time before we started recording being like, well, what do you think of Pierce? What is up with the Grover Cleveland's mustache? You know,

like you could just do this all afternoon. So fun to have you here, Jared. Thank you. Thank you, Sharon. I'm glad we didn't start with Chester Arthur, Martin Van Buren's mutton chops, which would have been a classic opener. I mean, it is absolutely true. I've said this for literally a decade that Martin Van Buren looks like a koala bear. If you Google a picture of a koala bear, Google it, put it next to Martin Van Buren. And it's like, that is what a human koala bear looks like. Look, I'm not going to quarrel with you on that. Also, what's interesting about Van Buren, he was the only US president who English was not his first language. His first language was Dutch. So interesting.

Yeah, I think that there's so many little nuggets like this that people who are into this topic could be like, yeah, that's right. They went to the Dutch Reformed Church. That's so true. And you could just like trade fun facts back and forth for 18 hours. 18 hours. But I'm glad to have you here because you have a new book that I found very, very interesting, Life After Power, which is about this sort of ultimate career transition, which is what happens when a president at the pinnacle of their prestige and influence has to leave the White House. And there's a lot of different answers to that question. And you explore a number of them in Life After Power. But what about this topic is so interesting to you?

Why not just write about mutton chops and, you know, speaking Dutch and all of the fun facts? So Sharon, I've been obsessed with the presidency since I was eight years old. And there's two topics that I've always kind of pondered. My last book was called Accidental Presidents. And I looked at what happens when the president dies in office. And when I was done with that, I started pondering the question, well, what happens when the president survives the office? And I noticed that I'd buy these thick Ron Chernow biographies or these thick David McCullough biographies, and you'd kind of close them when the presidency ended. And I was really curious, did any of them amount to anything? Because look,

all of us, whether we're a hyper ambitious person or not, we're going to have to contemplate many times in our lives, this question of what do we do next? So as I grappled with this question of, are there any former presidents who found a greater sense of purpose and meaning after they left the White House than when they were in it, I really could only find seven that I thought were worth talking about. I mean, Thomas Jefferson went on to found the University of Virginia. He had three things etched in his epitaph, none of which were being president, secretary of state, or vice president. So the founding of the University of Virginia was one of the three most important accomplishments, and he succeeded in doing it at 82 years old. John Quincy Adams is the sort of quintessential

second act. His presidency was an intermission between the two greatest acts, in my opinion, in American history, a life that was architected for him by his famous parents that gave him the presidency, and a second act where in a much lower station, he found a much higher cause as an ex-president serving in the House of Representatives, where he became the leader of the abolitionist movement. Grover Cleveland is the sort of quintessential comeback. It's hard to argue with the success of being the only former president to become president again. We'll see what happens in 2024. William Howard Taft, I was interested in him because he spent his last 10 years of life being most professionally fulfilled because he finally got his dream job as Chief Justice of the

US Supreme Court. And I think his story is informative because it represents the narrative of somebody, they got offered their dream job many times, but the timing wasn't right, the circumstances weren't right, and they had to kind of defer that dream. I think Herbert Hoover is one of the great stories and one of the most misunderstood stories of how do you recover reputation and platform if you're somebody who desires service. Jimmy Carter invented the idea of building a whole identity and almost administration around being a former and he found himself with a 42 plus year active post presidency where unshackled from the burdens of being a politician, he was actually able to use the presidential platform to do all

the things that he wanted. And then George W. Bush seems to be the only former president who has made a clean break has fully moved on. And yet he's managed to, I think, achieve a level of happiness in the post-presidency than any of his predecessors. And he's found a post-presidential voice that allows him to pursue the things that he cares about without undermining his successors. And he does that through painting. And as a result, by investing less in his legacy than any of his living predecessors, he's the only one whose popularity has doubled since leaving office. Totally. I know so many people now who felt like his presidency, they were like, yeah, okay. I don't love, I don't love this stuff. And they were not by the end of his presidency,

not gung ho about the war in Iraq. And, you know, like they just felt like, okay. And now when I say, how would you feel about having W back as president? They're like, that sounds great. I would, let's do that because his reputation has now softened to the point where he seems like a charming, affable guy with a smirk who's got a little joke, but relatively harmless in comparison. I know so many people, even pretty left-wing people who were like, I would love to have George Chevy back at this juncture. So I spent two days interviewing him in Kennebunkport during COVID for the book. And the first thing he said to me when he sat down, I didn't even have to ask the question. He said, when it's over, it's over. I don't miss it. And you hear him say this. And after spending

a couple of days with him, you realize I actually believe him. I think he literally doesn't think about being president. I mean, it's like a psychological journey into a brain dynamic that most of us can't possibly fathom. And I think he's kind of amusingly chugging his way to the legacy finish line because he's watching all these other former presidents invest so much in their legacy. And he says to me, legacy is, he feels it's a dirty word. He feels like it's a self-centered world.

It's not that he doesn't care about his legacy, but he's very quarrelsome with the idea of trying to influence his legacy while he's alive. And he jokes with me that, look, they're still debating the legacy of the other George, meaning George Washington. He said, by the time they get around to me, I'm going to be long dead, right? And so he's a man who very much lives in the present and his family genuinely loves him. His faith is a central part of his life. And I think he's found a lot of peace in the post presidency. And I mean, the painting is so much more than a hobby. I think anyone who

thinks that George Bush is a painter as a hobby doesn't understand what it's all about. And his view is, look, at some point, my knees are going to give out and I can't mountain bike and I can't run. At some point, I'm going to end up in a wheelchair. He's the only former president who, when leaving office, still had his mother and father alive. So he watched them age in the post presidency, and it had a really profound impact on him. And he looks at painting and he's like, look, you know, up until my dying day, painting gives me an opportunity to have an endless learning experience and keep my mind at work. And this is a very powerful lesson that I think we can learn from some of these former presidents is all of us are going to age

and face mortality on the horizon. And this important lesson of having something that gives you an opportunity to learn every single day that's not tied to your physical vitality is absolutely an essential ingredient for longevity.

I think Jimmy Carter, of course, has one of the most famous post-presidencies in American history. And there's so much to admire with what he did with Habitat for Humanity and the Carter Center, of course. But I think one of the post-presidencies that nobody's ever heard of, unless you are very into presidential history, is Herbert Hoover. First of all, people don't know that Herbert Hoover potentially saved more lives than any U.S. president by a magnitude of many times. And they have no idea that he was anything other than a failed, essentially a failed president during the depression. That's what they associate him with because we hear of like the Hoovervilles and, you know, like just this rich man and like let everybody lose all their fortunes. And he actually did so much before he became president, and he did so much after. And I would love to hear more of the story of Herbert Hoover.

Absolutely, Sharon. And I would say my tagline, I mean, in the book, the chapter on Herbert Hoover is called Recovery. The lesson we get from Herbert Hoover is anybody whose reputation has been, you know, they believe unfairly tarnished or fairly tarnished. Herbert Hoover offers an amazing story of a path to recovery and how you balance the vanity of restoring your good name versus the reality of what you actually want in terms of influence. But my unofficial tagline for Herbert Hoover is make Herbert Hoover great again. And the reason I say that is for a man who lived to be 90 years old, all we remember is the three and a half years

of his presidency post Great Depression. And what people don't understand about Herbert Hoover is he had perhaps one of the greatest pre presidential stories in history. And frankly, one of the greatest post presidential stories in history. Herbert Hoover, in 1928, virtually waltzes into the White House. Far from being a man born into privilege, he was orphaned as a young boy, grew up completely impecunious without a dollar to his name. He becomes a self-made millionaire. Herbert Hoover becomes known as the great humanitarian for two reasons. One, in 1927, he becomes the hero following the Mississippi floods as Commerce Secretary and goes way outside of his mandate to save so many lives, many of who were African American. And he's the man who, after World War I, ended up feeding all of Europe.

He becomes the hero of Europe. He saved the world from starvation. And so it was a no-brainer to have him as president. In fact, he was courted by both parties. And obviously, the Depression hits, and his whole reputation gets turned upside down. And when he's defeated for re-election in 1932 and FDR becomes president, Herbert Hoover goes into kind of a self-imposed exile. But the FDR people, they really do a number

on him. I mean, whether he's running for president or not, in 1936, in 1940, in 1944, even after FDR is dead, the Democrats are still running against the legacy of Herbert Hoover. And those 12 years of FDR's presidency were a really challenging emotional time for Herbert Hoover. Anybody who leaves office in such disgrace would have to grapple with this. His name is destroyed. To use Arthur Brooks's line, he had this need to be needed and yet wasn't being called on. He's the only president or American to meet Adolf Hitler before America enters the war. And upon his return to the United States, FDR, nor anyone in his administration bothers to ask him for a briefing. So he was really, really excluded. But when FDR

dies on April 12, 1945, Harry Truman, who shared a similar disdain for being an FDR shadow, he resurrects Herbert Hoover. And so why does he resurrect Herbert Hoover? Because he's on the precipice of World War Two coming to an end. And there's only one man who's been both president of the United States and understands what it takes to feed the world. And the world is once again facing a starvation crisis. So the two of them form this very unlikely partnership, they called it an exclusive trade union. And so Herbert Hoover, once again, becomes the man who feeds Europe and feeds the rest of the world. And he does it at a much more advanced age. He was more prolific as a book writer than just about any other president in history, except for Jimmy Carter and perhaps Theodore Roosevelt. And both Harry Truman and

Dwight Eisenhower go on to ask him to organize and reorganize the executive branch of government. And so Herbert Hoover actually restores his name in his lifetime. In his final act in 1960, Joe Kennedy, John F. Kennedy's father, asked Herbert Hoover to basically nurture a repression between Richard Nixon and JFK saying it'll be a good image for the country. So he dies sort of revered bipartisan elder statesman, he dies, having been needed by both parties, he dies, once again, as the great humanitarian. But it's also a cautionary tale, because his good name did not survive his death. But I think by the time Herbert Hoover dies at 90 years old, what matters more to him than his name is having once again found himself of service again. And I think, again, it's another story of how a man lived to be 90 years old. I think so much of

it is about a productive life. I think there's these people who need to be needed. There's these people who, you know, they need to serve. And if you don't allow them to do that, it's like giving an old person, you know, a car and then saying you're no longer fit to drive. We're taking away your keys. Yeah. I think so many people have never heard of what Herbert Hoover did in Europe during World War I, how he, as you were saying, he became known as the great humanitarian, how because he is this sort of wealthy businessman, he's able to grease all of these wheels in Europe and also grease the wheels in the United States to create programs that ship at great peril, ship tons of, you know, literally

tons and tons and tons of food across the pond to save the Belgians and other countries from literal starvation. And then he uses that expertise. And I also think it's a testament to Truman that Truman, who is of the opposite party, looks around and says, who is the person who is best equipped to help me save Europe and other parts of the world from starvation as a result of war. And he doesn't think to himself, I'm going to get my buddy who's also a Democrat. Like he might be able to do it. Like, no, he realizes that the right man for the job perhaps needed his image propped up a little bit, but was from a different party that his predecessor had spent, as you

mentioned, 12 years disparaging. So I think it's a testament also to Harry Truman to recognize Hoover's contributions and to call on him again. Sharon, I think that's absolutely right. And one of the things that I write about in the book is that Harry Truman and Herbert Hoover, in my opinion, is that Harry Truman and Herbert Hoover, in my opinion, invented the modern post-presidency in terms of this idea of former presidents as statesmen. Jimmy Carter is the one who put structure around it. And Jimmy Carter is the one who built an actual almost post-presidential administration. But the idea of a former president being called on by a sitting president, regardless of party, and deployed around the world is a Harry Truman and Herbert Hoover invention. And by the way, had it not happened, the world that we live in today would look very different. That very act

prevented the world from starving after World War Two. And, you know, Herbert Hoover, it's not that we should let him off the hook for the Great Depression. But, you know, as these presidents who live these long lives should be evaluated in their entirety. So you can criticize the Hoover presidency and admire the Hoover pre presidency and the post presidency. But one of the reasons that I wrote this book is, it's so important to tell the complete story, because it's part of the American story, right? Former presidents are a unique feature of a democratic system, right? They don't exist in authoritarian systems or if they do in sort of a, they do under house arrest or in weird ways. And so if we're going to tell the story of America, it can't start and end with the oath of office and the departure from office. It has to continue and tell the story of these former presidents. I totally agree with that, that people should be evaluated for their contribution in their entirety. And it is fair to criticize historic figures

for things that they got wrong. Just like it's very fair to criticize Thomas Jefferson for enslaving people and for impregnating Sally Hemings and for all of these acts. And it's very fair to criticize Thomas Jefferson for enslaving people and for impregnating Sally Hemings and, you know, for all of these acts. And it's also fair to acknowledge his incredible contributions when it comes to our founding documents to the University of Virginia. It's not one or the other. You can abhor the fact that he was an enslaver and also understand that the University of Virginia is a great institution that has clearly outlived him and has played an incredible role in U.S. history. So I totally agree with you. You have to take their contribution in totality.

And people don't do that with Hoover. They absolutely don't. I think you're totally right on the nail that they just are like, that little three years wrecked it. He's a nobody. He's a terrible guy. that's how they view him i want to go back in time a little bit to talk about a man who looks like griphook the goblin in harry potter uh i as you can tell i often equate presidents with other characters that i know of but i, if you look up a picture

of Griphook and you compare it to John Quincy Adams as an old man, it is uncanny. Have you noticed this before? I will tell you, Sharon. So my favorite, perhaps my favorite paragraph in the entire book, just from a descriptive perspective, is my description of John Quincy Adams, where I talk about how his head sat on his torso, as if the neck was an afterthought. I talked about his facial features as a botched plastic surgery of plastic surgery had existed back then. So you and I, well, I don't draw the sort of the fantasy character analogy, I absolutely see it. And I share your fascination with John Quincy Adams, absolutely bizarre physical

appearance, which by the way, we have a more accurate picture of than any of the early president. He was the first president of the United States to actually be photographed, albeit as a former president. Yes. I think it's funny too, that he has a habit of skinny dipping. That's also very funny to me. He almost died skinny dipping. I mean, this is, this is an amazing, I start off the chapter with this story. Bathing suits weren't really a thing, I guess, back then. So imagine this, the president of the United States, skinny dipping in a tributary of the Potomac, by the way, in the pretty cold weather.

He actually on that day wasn't skinny dipping, his aid was. And so he was wearing these heavy clothes. Their boat capsizes and he ends up so weighted down by his clothes while his skinny dipping aid is fine, he nearly drowns. And so when he finally hours later gets to shore, then he strips naked. So imagine this, the President of the United States and his little aid in a horse and buggy completely naked, making their way back to the White House. And had it not been a metaphor for how disastrous his presidency was in the first year, perhaps he would have been amused by it. But instead, he describes it as one of the most humiliating moments of his life that was all too familiar, given his political fate. Yeah. I mean, imagine any modern president. Imagine Donald Trump riding in his car like, hey, I went for a swim. I mean, sometimes it happens. I had to take my clothes off because I almost drowned. Or imagine Ronald Reagan. Any modern president, it's an absolutely

absurd notion that the president is just like, oh, he's naked on his way back to the White House. That's absurd. History would have been very different had any of us in modern times been able to actually visualize John Quincy Adams naked, which is an image that I never want to have in my head. You say in the book, personality matters in politics. So does appearance. And we know what Adams looks like as he was the first president ever to be photographed, though his photo was taken years after the White House. At 5'7", he was overweight and round. He had glaring eyes, bushy eyebrows, and mutton chops around his face like a lion's mane.

Adams' hair was thin, and his neck disappeared into his torso as if it were a genetic afterthought to the rest of his body. His facial features were pointed, even unnaturally so, and might today be mistaken for failed plastic surgery. But the photograph doesn't capture it all. Adams' body, like many in this less hygienic age, was often covered with pimples, boils, and scars. Yeah, I mean, if that isn't appetizing, here we have a man covered in boils with no neck and a very, very uncannily pointed nose who today looks like a character out of J.K. Rowling's imagination. I think that's right. And by the way, for your listeners, I try to have some fun with how I tell the history. I think history doesn't need to be dry and boring. I try to

bring some of my own amusement into these descriptions. And I think the Adams description is an example of that. Okay. One of the reasons I find the Quincy, as I like to affectionately refer to him, I find him interesting for a few reasons. One is his hatred of Andrew Jackson, a hatred that I also share. Andrew Jackson doesn't know this, but we are each other's nemesis. And he's not aware, but I am. And so his opposition to Andrew Jackson is very interesting to me. That's interesting. But also one of the most interesting things about John Quincy Adams is what he does after he leaves the White House. He loses his reelection bid and grumpily doesn't like the fact that he's gotten beaten. doesn't like the fact that he's gotten beaten. Isn't somebody who is like, you know, you win some, you lose some. No, he had to lose to Andrew Jackson, which I can understand being salty about. But instead of just going on home and being like, well, guess I'm just going to plant some wheat,

watch the sun come up. He decided to do something different with his life. And I would love to hear you tell people more about it. Absolutely. And I think the punchline on John Quincy Adams, that's so extraordinary. Here's a man who began his career appointed by George Washington in his administration. And he dies in 1848, serving in the House of Representatives alongside a freshman congressman from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln. I mean, what a living link between two great generations. And it's one of the most extraordinary political stories of longevity. After John Quincy Adams loses his bid for reelection in 1828, he goes back home to Quincy, Massachusetts, and he's bored. He's defeated. His diary is just littered with self-loathing, violin playing,

feeling sorry for himself. He tries his hand at tree farming. He has literally dozens of pages about how the dead trees are a metaphor for his life. He's annoying his wife and his family. And the problem that John Quincy Adams has, and it's a curse of being the son of a founding father, he just didn't know how to do anything else other than serve in the public sector. And so he's already been president. He's already been Secretary of State. He's already been a senator. He's already been an ambassador to multiple countries. And they convince him in his hometown to try his hand at running for the House of Representatives. And he agrees to do it.

And he gets elected as an ex-president to the House of Representatives, but to this day, the only former president in history to be elected to the House. And when he enters the House, he's sort of a novelty, right? This sort of weird ex-president, nobody knows what to do with him. And he doesn't really know what to do. And he's shunned by people he believes are of mediocre minds. He had never been a zealot for slavery. Slavery, while he was president, it was actually kind of put on hold. He abhorred the institution, but it wasn't a cause that he took up. So he didn't know what to do in Congress.

And at the time, nobody talked about slavery in Congress. And so he does what you do as a member of Congress, which is petitions come your way, and he starts reading them. And so he starts getting these petitions, and most of the petitions are from church groups and religious communities who are petitioning for the abolition of the slave trade in the Capitol. They're petitioning for the emancipation of slaves. And he starts reading these petitions in Congress. And the slavocracy in Congress, they're just apoplectic. This is not something that's supposed to happen. And John Quincy Adams begins to develop a reaction to this, because how dare you

violate the right to petition, right? He thought he was just reading these petitions. And so the angrier they get, the more petitions he wants to read. The more he reads petitions, the more petitions get sent his way. And at the time, in the 1830s, the abolitionist movement, it's very much a radical fringe movement. It's not at all mainstream. It's not something that John Quincy Adams had contemplated taking on. But he finds himself becoming the champion of the abolitionist cause by virtue of reading these petitions. And finally, they try to silence him by basically by passing a rule in the house that says you cannot talk about slavery. And he chants, you know, am I gagged? And then it becomes known as the gag rule. And the more obstacles they put in front of him, the more clever ways that he finds to outfox them. And he just does a political jujitsu against these sort of mediocre peers in the House of Representatives. And ultimately, he finds lots of creative ways to get them to repeal the gag rule eventually. He finds creative ways to continue talking about slavery. And it's only when he finally stands before the Supreme Court defending the Amistad slaves in the famous

Amistad case, and achieves an extraordinary victory before a Supreme Court that has justices on it that are mostly slave owners, that he basically wakes up to the fact, you know what, I guess I'm an abolitionist. And his story is so fascinating to me. And such an interesting lesson, because we, you know, so many people assume as you're contemplating what's next, you have to know exactly what that is, and then go chase it. John Quincy Adams never knew what was next. He went to the House of Representatives knowing, you know, having no clue what he was going to do. And in that much lower station, he found this much higher cause and that cause found him. And I think, you know, that's not for everybody, but that is a powerful way to think

about what comes next. Position yourself to be the recipient of a worthy cause that you want to spend the rest of your life championing. And had John Quincy Adams not served nine terms as an ex-president in the House of Representatives, the abolitionist cause would have taken much longer to mainstream. And who knows, maybe Abraham Lincoln wouldn't have taken the torch when he did in 1848 and take up that cause as fast as he did. So Adams ended up doing something that I believe his famous parents would have greatly admired, and he achieved something that his father never achieved. He was a very grumpy, curmudgeon-y man, but in his final years of life, what he enjoyed was for the first time in his life being seen as a charming, handsome, popular figure. And in his last swing through the United States, as he's sort of granted by kind of pro-abolition fanfare, women start giving him a kiss.

And so every new city that he goes to, it's who's going to be the first woman of Kentucky to give him a kiss? Who's going to be the first woman of Cincinnati to give him the kiss. And so every new city that he goes to, it's who's going to be the first woman of Kentucky to give him a kiss? Who's going to be the first woman of Cincinnati to give him the kiss? And he admits to his diary that he's kind of a glutton for it. Uh-huh. He likes the attention. He spent his whole life looking less than dapper, much smaller than the imposing Jackson figure. And now as he's traveling around, the women are finding him very, very like silver fox. Yeah. I find that so interesting. And I love what you just said that he had to accept a lower station to find a higher calling. And boy, is that something many powerful people are unwilling to even entertain. Yeah. And by the way, he had so much more success and impact and fame and platform and notoriety

in that lower station. I think what we learned from John Quincy Adams is the power of the office is an ingredient, but there's other cocktails for success that can lead somebody to achieve something far greater. I love that. And I love how he leaves his mark on America in many ways. He's a huge advocate of the Smithsonian institutions, and they probably wouldn't exist without his advocacy. He's super, super into observatories and astronomy and advocates for building all these observatories all over the United States. So that this scientific inquiry, even though he wasn't really a scientist, he is fascinated by it. And America is better for his advocacy of abolition. It's better for his advocacy of scientific inquiry, the public scientific inquiry, not

just like, let's give some grants to these professors, but science that the public could access and appreciate and become better by. And I love that about him. And I wonder if you can tell everybody very quickly the story of how the Quincy passed away. So John Quincy Adams, he enters the House of Representatives in 1848. It's his ninth term. He's old. He's frail.

He's kind of hobbling in. Many thought that he wouldn't make it. And he's not as vocal as he was in his early terms. But in one last kind of act of defiance against the slavocracy, he sort of stands up to oppose a bill. And it's kind of his last gasp as he collapses on the House floor

and someone shouts, John Quincy Adams is dying and he's brought to a couch where he dies right there in the House of Representatives. right there in the House of Representatives. He dies in the House of Representatives and then he stays in the Capitol building for like a few days and there's paintings of it. And nobody's like, quick, get him to the hospital. They're all like, well, he's dead.

Guess we should leave him here. I mean, it's it's so strange. Well, this is a long story of dead presidents lying in rest in the rotunda. And by the way, back then, people used to snip a lock of their hair because hair was seen as quite valuable. But what's interesting also is there's not a lot of information we have about the relationship between John Quincy Adams and Abraham Lincoln, other than the fact that we know Abraham Lincoln greatly admired him. And we know that John Quincy Adams probably barely knew who Abraham Lincoln was. It's hard to imagine Abraham Lincoln and John Quincy Adams having not had at least some conversations. It's also hard

to imagine John Quincy Adams at that advanced age really caring or taking much notice. But Lincoln, again, as a freshman member of the House of Representatives, is one of the representatives in charge of organizing his funeral, and he becomes a pallbearer for John Quincy Adams. So again, it has that sort of symbolism of this sort of transition of the torch from a son of a founding father to a leader who would go to define the next generation. to define the next generation. What do you hope that the reader who closes the last page of Life After Power, what do you hope the reader takes away?

What I hope the reader takes away from Life After Power is a relatability between some of the questions they're asking and the models pursued by each of these former presidents. So everybody who reads this book, everybody who's listening to your podcast at multiple times in their life, they're going to ask the question, what's next? And there's lots of places people go for answers to that question. They go to their mentors, they go to Harvard Business Review for case studies, they look at entrepreneurs. Nobody looks at former presidents.

Why does nobody look at former presidents? They're these seemingly unrelatable figures. We can't possibly have anything in common with them. But you know what? What the book shows is we actually have a heck of a lot in common from them and we can learn a lot from them, right? And there's something in this book for everybody. If you view yourself as kind of a serial founder, you're going to learn a lot from Thomas Jefferson's experience. If you're somebody as kind of a serial founder, you're going to learn a lot from Thomas Jefferson's experience. If you're somebody that wants to have a great second act and you don't quite know what it is, John Quincy Adams is your man. If you're somebody who wants to have a comeback, Grover Cleveland's your guy. If you're somebody that passed over opportunities that you

wanted and you're worried it's too late, but you want to make one last dash at it, William Howard Taft is your guy. If you're somebody that feels like you need a recovery, whether in reputation or platform or service, Herbert Hoover is your man. If you're somebody that literally just wants to rest on your laurels and be a great former version of yourself, Jimmy Carter gives you the playbook for how to build that infrastructure to make it happen. And if you're somebody that wants to close a particular chapter of your life and completely move on and just enjoy being present, George W. Bush offers you the perfect psychological textbook for that. And so I hope that what this book does is it makes the story of our former presidents a story that we all are not just

curious about because it's part of the American experience. My hope is that we're going to look at the stories of former presidents and find them highly prescriptive for our lives. And that's why I wrote the book. Well, I really enjoyed reading Life After Power. People can buy it wherever they like to get their books. And especially I always like to plug bookshop.org. You can support independent bookstores via bookshop.org. But what a unique collection of stories. And I really enjoyed all of the fun tidbits, including that description of John Quincy Adams.

It really, really amused me. And I enjoyed seeing how much the Quincy hated Andrew Jackson. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. I'm just teasing, but you know what I'm saying? It's such a unique perspective on the presidency. We tend to learn about like, oh, the pits they had in the White House and the name of their daughter

and these kinds of fun facts, but we learn so little about their post-presidential years. And I just really enjoyed getting to chat with you and I really enjoyed Life After Power. So thanks for being here, Jared. Thank you, Sharon. I really enjoyed getting to chat with you. And I really enjoyed Life After Power. So thanks for being here, Jared. Thank you, Sharon. I really enjoyed it. You can find Jared Cohen's book, Life After Power, wherever you like to buy your books.

So many good takeaways from this one. You'll learn a lot of interesting facts about their presidencies, but also life lessons that we can apply for ourselves. Thanks for being here today. The show is hosted and executive produced by me, Sharon McMahon. Our audio producer is Jenny Snyder. And if you enjoyed today's episode, please be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. And if you could leave us a review or share this episode on social media, those things help podcasters out so much.

Thanks for being here today.