The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Picking Presidents: How to Make the Most Consequential Decision in the World by Gautam Mukunda

Episode Date: October 15, 2022

Picking Presidents: How to Make the Most Consequential Decision in the World by Gautam Mukunda Celebrated leadership expert and political scientist Gautam Mukunda provides a comprehensive, objective, and non-partisan method for answering the most important question in the world: is someone up to the job of president of the United States? In Picking Presidents, Gautam Mukunda sets his sights on presidential candidates, proposing an objective and tested method to assess whether they will succeed or fail if they win the White House. Combining political science, psychology, organizational behavior, and economics, Picking Presidents will enable every American to cast an informed vote. In his 2012 book Indispensable, which all but predicted the Trump presidency, Mukunda explained how both the very best and very worst leaders are "unfiltered"—outsiders who take power without the understanding or support of traditional elites. Picking Presidents provides deep analysis of filtered and unfiltered presidents alike, from failed haberdasher and skillful president Harry Truman, to the exceptionally well-qualified—and ultimately reviled—James Buchanan; from Andrew Johnson, who set civil rights back by a century, to Theodore Roosevelt, who evaded party opposition to transform American society. Picking Presidents lays out a clear framework that anyone can use to judge a candidate and answer the all-important question: are they up to the job?

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from the chrisvossshow.com, the Chris Voss Show. Welcome to the show, my friends. It's certainly wonderful to have you. Chris Voss Show.

The family loves you, but doesn't judge you. Well, not harshly, but like your mom does. So clean your room. Anyway, guys, we have an amazing author on the show. He's the author of multiple books. Gautam Kundalini is going to be on the show with us today, talking about his book, Picking Presidents. But in the meantime, before we get to him, make sure you go do all the things. You must always do all the things.

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and we're doing LinkedIn audio chats over there. We've got access to that. So we're kind of over there promoting stuff, talking about the Facebook or talking about the podcast and the Facebook and talking about some of our guests we have on kind of, you have back dropped some of the stories and things that we had and fun parts of the show. Anyway,

guys, be sure to check all that out. We certainly appreciate it. And for the show, your family, friends, relatives today, we have an amazing author on the show he's written a prolific book it's the hardcover is

coming out october 18th 2022 the kindle is out now which is pretty cool you can get access to the kindle if you want to take and get it the name of the book is picking presidents how to make Presidents, How to Make the Most Consequential Decision in the World. We have today Gautam Mukunda on the show. He's going to be talking to us about his amazing book. But first, let me tell you who he is and how he got here. He started his life, it sounds like, on those, what's that one show? I don't know. The show of This is Your Life.

He is an internationally recognized expert in leadership and innovation. He often jokes that his life ambition is to have the world's most confusing resume. We'll ask him about that when he's on the show and that he's most of the way there. He is a research fellow at Harvard Kennedy School's Center for Public Leadership. He is also the host of NASDAQ podcast, World Reimagined, and a columnist at NASDAQ's World Reimagined. Previously, he was a professor at Harvard Business School and a distinguished visiting professor for the Schwarzman Scholarship. He is the author of two books, Indispensable, When Leaders Really Matter, and this new one picking presidents he's published articles in harvard business review we love those and have their authors on foreign policy security studies

slate fast company parameters politics and life sciences and systems and synthetic biology on leadership reforming the financial sector military innovation network centric warfare and security and economic implications of synthetic bio welcome the show we are glad to have you oh it's great to be here with you chris i think i ran out of commas on that last one i was just going going you have a lot of stuff on your resume congratulations my friend welcome the show oh it's great to be here this is gonna be a blast there you go and as your dot coms where can people find you on the interwebs it's great to be here. This is going to be a blast. There you go. And what is your dot coms? Where can people find you on the interwebs? It's gothammukunda.com. I won't say it spelled the way it sounds because it isn't.

But if you're watching this or listening, g-a-u-t-a-m-m-u-k-u-n-d-a dot com. And on Twitter, I'm at gmukunda, at g-m-u-k-u-n-d-a. There you go. So your previous book was on leadership. What made you want to write this book? Well, funny story. I was actually getting started on a book on leadership in a crisis when, you know, candidate then candidate Donald Trump started running for running for the way for the nomination for the Republican nomination. And so way back in my first book, I had I had said

that, look, when we study leaders, one of the most surprising things that the academic literature on leadership, right, like, you know, all the professors who study leadership, is they say most leaders actually don't matter that much. And you're like, what? I mean, I come from the business world before I did my PhD, and, you know, I worked with the military. It's like, wait, leaders don't really care who's in charge. And if you ask anyone who's not an academic, they would say leaders are really, really important. But the people who say leaders don't matter, they're not dumb, right? Like they actually have three really good reasons for saying that. And they all make sense.

And so the first one is the idea that leaders are externally constrained, right? You run a company. You can't set your prices or whatever you want because if you set them too high, you get undercut. So it's a limit on what you can do. And then leaders are internally constrained, right? They have like culture and processes and budgets. And so that sets limits on what they can do. But the most important thing that stops leaders from having impact is that for big organizations, right? So the, you know, the powerful ones, the ones that have a big impact on the world, the leaders aren't chosen randomly. There's a process that they

have to go through to get the top job. And that process evaluates the candidates for leadership. And it says, well, is this person what we're looking for? Is this person actually going to do what we want for the next few years? And if the answer is no, then they don't give them the job. They give it to someone else who will. And so the idea in all this research was that it's not the person who matters, it's the process. Who wrote that? Let's go find them. There's no one person, right?

And the funny thing is, that was a pretty common view, is if you're talking about like GE or McKinsey or Goldman Sachs or something like that, that's probably true, right? I mean, I've talked to plenty of CEOs who've said to me, well, you know, like I think I'd do a great job, but I think there were plenty of other people at my company who if they'd hired them, I'm not sure how different the outcome would have been. And so what I said was the interesting thing about that is it's true except when it isn't. And it's the when it isn't that's really interesting. Because if your process for selecting a leader, for whatever reason, doesn't have the chance to evaluate a candidate properly, right? Maybe that person inherits the job. Or maybe they're an outsider, and you don't really know that much about them. Or, you know, maybe the corporate jet crashes with all the other candidates.

Like, you can imagine all sorts of stuff, right? In that situation, that person you pick to be the leader could be very, very different from all the other people. Like you can imagine all sorts of stuff, right? In that situation, that person you pick to be the leader could be very, very different from all the other people who could have the job, right? And because they're very, very different, they could do things that were really, really different. They could make choices that were really, really different. And what do we know?

You know, as I said, I came from the business world. What do we know about choices, you know, especially from finance, choices that you'd say one thing and everyone else in the world would do the other? What we know is the outcomes of those choices are really high variance. You're either really, really, you look like a genius or you look like an idiot, but they're usually not boring. They're not in the middle. So what I said is these kinds of leaders who I call unfiltered leaders, the leaders who haven't been fully evaluated, they tend to be really high variance.

They're either great or they're awful, but they're not boring. So my first book was about, you know, laying out that set of ideas and creating a theory and, you know, sort of testing them in a bunch of different areas in politics and in business and in sciences and in the military and things like that. And so, you know, so like in and of itself, this candidates who are sort of come in from the outside who you don't know a lot about them, who maybe the organization's elites don't even like them and don't want them to get the top job, but they can't stop them for whatever reason. Well, that sounds a lot like Donald Trump, right? In 2016, you know, yeah, that sounds pretty familiar. But where it got really a little weird, a little uncomfortable sometimes was, you know, at the end of the first book, I said, well, look, if my prediction for these unfiltered leaders is they're going to be really great or really awful, but I don't know which one is kind of hard to tell. What would help me predict which one it's going to be, if it's going to be great or awful? And so the most important answer, and this is,

you know, this is kind of my secret that I tell people, you know, the most important thing you can do when you're picking people, you need to lucky right like luck luck really matters luck's incredibly important you know hyman rickover the american admiral who sort of invented the nuclear navy he used to say that luck is better than skill or it's like i can't use you if you're not lucky but okay you know like luck is important but if but if setting that aside if you can't you know i can't guarantee you luck i wish i could um what else and i said is so i can't, you know, I can't guarantee you luck. I wish I could. What else? And I said, so I can't tell you what's certain to make someone succeed.

But I can identify characteristics that make someone look really likely to fail. Right? Because what those characteristics, what they all have in common is they are a set of things, characteristics, traits, right, that make you look more impressive on first encounter than they are when you really get to know someone. So they create like a really positive first impression. But in the long run, you realize this person's disaster. Yeah. And we can all think of people like that, right? We've all met people like that in our lives, and we usually wish we hadn't. And so I came up with four characteristics in that first book that i

thought these are like big you know what i said they're warning signs right if someone has any one of these four you should say it's just not worth the risk oh it's not worth the risk of giving because you don't know what they're going to do yeah and if you make some of the leader you give them power and giving someone power is risky right because then they got power they can use it in ways you might not want they can even use it against you sometimes. So you don't want to take the risk if you have any of these four traits. The four things that I came up with in the first book, which, again, was published in 2012, 10 years ago, not thinking anything about modern politics. And the four were personality and psychological disorders, where the examples I use are narcissism and psychopathy. Highly simplistic or out of the

mainstream ideologies and an extremely risk-prone or incompetent managerial approach and unearned advantages like inherited wealth yeah i came up with this in 2012 2012 yeah so that happened what was the third one again i'm typing these out for my so so psychological personality disorders oh yeah system psychopathic yeah yeah like out of the mainstream or highly simplistic ideologies a incompetent or extremely risk-prone managerial approach yeah and unearned advantages like inherited wealth right and all of those have in common is they make you look great on a sort of first encounter but there's nothing there underneath the surface right or if there is something there is bad yeah so i was so you know so that happened and you predicted all four of these things that people had them they probably

wouldn't they probably won't go well for you yeah if you make them in charge so if you make them in charge yeah if you put them in charge yeah so you know so the election happens and one of my friends posted on my Facebook page. He says, so did you have a time machine? I'm like, no, I did not. But I'd probably take a look. Let's take another cut at these ideas and see what we can get. So what the second book knew about leadership and say, is there a way to create an objective framework that anybody can use to evaluate presidential candidates to tell us, well, okay, even if this person's not my party, even if I wouldn't vote

for them, I kind of feel confident that they could do the job. Right. Because like, even if I wouldn't vote for them, I kind of feel confident that they could do the job. Right? Because like, even if the president isn't someone I personally want, the presidency is so powerful and so important, not just to us as Americans, but to the entire world that you really want to make sure

they can at least get the basics right. Right? You just don't want to risk someone who doesn't know what they're doing. So that's the first question. And that was the first objective of the book is you should be able to take information that you can find in the New York Times or in Wikipedia. Right. No deeper, no like deep biographical stuff.

No need to look at their tax returns. Just just, you know, what what anybody, any informed citizen could know and apply this model and see what you get. Hi, folks. Here's Voss here with a little station break. Hope you're enjoying the show so far. We'll resume here in a second. I'd like to invite you to come to my coaching, speaking, and training courses website. You can also see our new podcast over there at chrisvossleadershipinstitute.com.

Over there, you can find all the different stuff that we do for speaking engagements, if you'd like to hire me, training, training courses that we offer and coaching for leadership, management, entrepreneur ism, uh, podcasting, corporate stuff, uh,

with over 35 years of experience in business and running companies as CEO. Uh, I think I can offer a wonderful breadth of information and knowledge to you or anyone that you want to invite me to for your company. Thanks for tuning in. We certainly appreciate you listening to the show and be sure to check out Chris Voss leadership institute.com. Now back to the show. There you go.

There you go. You know, did you take into account that sometimes the, it's not just, it's not the leaders that are the problem when they're evaluating or picking them. It's that the people that are picking them are idiots. Yeah. So absolutely. And I mean, my whole thing, right, is about the process for picking people. That's how I got out of this thing. Because there's a lot of great leaders, like when GE is evaluating people or a company's evaluating leaders, there are different great leaders

they can pick, but there are different styles of leadership. Maybe there's different segments or experience levels. Like maybe someone who's a technology, you know, AT&T person, maybe they won't be good for GE's washing machine division. I'm just, you know, just picking up spitball stuff. No, in fact, you're exactly right about that. But they're still great leaders. Yeah.

So what I would say is there are two things about that. One is that picking leaders is not a ranking problem. It's a matching problem. Ah, matching. Right? So you're not trying to rank people from one to a thousand and say, this is the best leader and this is the worst leader. That doesn't make any sense. It's exactly what you just said.

You want to figure out, okay, how do I fit? Is this person a right fit for my situation that's the only way you're ever going to get it right i was i would say it's like dating right like like like teenagers want to date a supermodel what you if you want a happy marriage you may date the person who's right for you who's the right fit for you right well one of my friends says that everybody has baggage you just want to get someone with a matching set i'm like okay that's a great i. I like that analogy. Note to self, find someone who's got as much baggage as I do.

Wait, is that possible? So absolutely. And in fact, by the way, your specific case is exactly right. You know, GE used to be like the home ground of CEOs, right? Where every company in America that they would hire. So in fact, very specifically, two of my colleagues, Nathan Noria, who used to be the dean of Harvard Business School, and Boris Groysberg, wrote a paper where they showed that ex-GE CEOs, if they went to companies that were similar to the division of GE they used to run, did well. And if they went to companies that were different from the division of the GE that they used to run, did poorly. Really?

Yeah. That's really interesting. I'd love to see, dig into some of that data. I love the aspect of leadership. You know, a good example was when I was young, I worked at a company that was eventually owned by Southern Bell. It was a big telemarketing firm. And there was one of the managers there who was the rotating head of the facility because they had shifts. She was really awful. She ran like kind of like a high school division sort of management style where everything, everyone just begged up to her. It was almost like a mini Trump and sycophants and no one got any work done because there was no reward for,

you know, working hard. It was working for kissing her butt. Well, one day she was so toxic that she called in a bomb threat to the front desk as a joke to impress her little sycophants at the thing one day. And I was sitting there while she did it. She came up with the idea and decided to call the front desk security. And, you know, this is a facility of a thousand people and they're calling a bomb threat as a joke. She thought it was funny and she was narcissistically, you know, thought this would be humor. humor of course the front desk security knew the sound of her voice and where the call was coming from and she was traipsed off by the police three to four months later they couldn't find good management they had good management and

they have rehired her back oh good lord yes yeah so there's an extreme example for you of how idiots can be the ones the decision and it has nothing to do with the leader. My goodness. So this reminds me of Al Dunlap, the infamous former CEO of Sunbeam, right? Who took them from a multi-billion dollar company to zero in about 18 months. And so his preferred managerial style, and this was not exceptional. This is just how Al Dunlap operated, was when he took over at Sunbeam, he called in one of his division heads. And as soon as the guy walks into his office, he set up the substance in front of his subordinates, right?

In front of the guy who walks into his office, he starts screaming at him and swearing at him, doesn't let him get a word in edgewise, actually picks up a chair and throws it at him. Wow. And then ejects him from his office. And I always tell you, tell my students, if you see something like this happen at your company, find a new job. Trying to think if I've done that before. When you talk to the people at the top, right, they might be wrong. They often have like incentives that are screwed up. And so they make bad decisions because they're fulfilling those incentives instead of doing things that were actually for the good of the organization. And wow, we could talk about that for hours and hours and hours. But they're rarely dumb, right?

Because there was some process to get, again, to get to the top of that hill. And it usually doesn't select for stupid. It usually doesn of that hill. And it usually doesn't select for stupid. It usually doesn't select for genius, but it doesn't select for stupid, right? And so quite often things that look stupid to us are when you actually look, when you understand the incentives, what's really going on is they are incentivized to make bad decisions. Yeah. And if we fix that, we would get better decisions. And you write about this in the book with the new book.

I do. And so it's so what I say is right there. When you think about it from my model, there are basically four outcomes for a presidency president. Right. You can get someone who is filtered and successful. So like, you know, an organization product, think George H.W. Bush. Right. That guy had been around the upper reaches of the american government for forever before he became president everyone knew exactly what they were getting and he becomes president and he was exactly what people predicted right he didn't he doesn't have the vision thing as he himself said he doesn't have some great economic reform but if you want someone to like figure out how to make sure that things go well in the middle you know you know we're going to win a war in the middle east and think nothing does that this is the guy like no one has, when you read his books about foreign, his book called A World Transformed about, you know, his foreign policy, essentially, it's a master class.

You know, everyone should read it. Like, this is how it's done, right? Because no one's ever been better trained to do it and no one's ever been better. So filtered success, right? And then what about the second category would be filtered failure, right? So you get somebody who's just as experienced as Georgeorge hw bush but everything goes wrong that's exactly the category we're talking about where something else and so we can talk about what would do that the other are you talking about the dick cheney presidency who's this w bush guy yeah so so george

so george hw bush right the father not the son yeah so yeah so a filtered success is exactly what we were just talking about, where the system is broken. Oh. Right. So my example of that is, my best example of that is James Buchanan. So Buchanan is the president from before the Civil War, from 1857 to 1861. He's basically the president who takes us into the Civil War. Right.

And so what happens there is Buchanan is from Pennsylvania, but his entire political persona was about giving the South, particularly the slave-holding interest in the South, everything they wanted. Whatever they wanted, he would give it to them. The phrase for people like him was they were called doe faces. They were northern men with southern principles. So that was Buchanan, and he was the perfect doe faces. They were northern men with southern principles. So that was Buchanan. And he was the perfect doe face. And he was – he is one of the three – up until Joe Biden was elected, he is tied for the most experienced person ever to become president. And he's a total disaster.

It's hard to do worse than the Civil War as your outcome right but what happened was the system has broken into this in such a way that the southern slave holding interests had captured the nominating process for the democratic party wow so you could not be nominated by the party without the southern interests signing off on your nomination and they would not sign off on anyone who would did not give them every single thing that they wanted did did nixon copy this blueprint for this great southern strategy well yeah not nearly as bad but but yeah i mean there there are some pretty obvious parallels when you can think as we go later with the southern strategy and so it's the assassination of both presidents that

that canceled that yeah wait. Wait, not really. But kind of. I mean, when you think about... Anyway, sorry, I'm segueing, sidelining. So this is like a... This is a system... So what I say is the hardest call for me is when you look at it, you have to diagnose that a system...

There's a system that's not giving you exactly what you want and the system that has completely failed. Those are very different things. So the United States in 1857 completely failed, right? Like the system is a disaster and it's going to fracture and that's what happened with Buchanan. A system that just doesn't give you exactly what you want, that you want to work with because when you discard the system, it's a disaster, right? Was that – sorry to interrupt you. Was that why the – was the South so spoiled from James Buchanan?

That's why they rebelled against the election of Abraham Lincoln? Not just James Buchanan, but so before him was Franklin Pierce, who was no better. And so what happened was you had – we sort of forget this, right? It's this weird American historical blank in our memory that we remember the the founding generation with the constitution who sort of thought of slavery as this awful thing they were stuck with and you can say you know i don't have a lot of sympathy for you are rich and you are rich and powerful off the back of the you know the labor of people you're enslaving but at least you know at least you acknowledge that it's a bad thing, right? Like that's not a lie, but that's something, right?

By the 1850s, the position in the South was the dominant, overwhelmingly dominant position. What was called the pro-slavery movement where they said slavery was a good thing, right? That slavery – that's not just that we have nothing to be ashamed of. They would tell northerners, you should be ashamed that you don't hope that that you're not that you don't have slaves you would even see southern writers writing that actually northern poor whites should be enslaved they would be better off that way wow right yeah and so the so what we forget by the 1850s is this was not a war between people who were like hated slavery and wanted to abolish it and people who hated slavery were stuck with it it's between people who didn't let you know like the abolitionists hated slavery

and the southern radicals who caught started the civil war loved slavery obviously only for other people right that's a very key component is they only for other people and so that the because the that happened was essentially what happened was you had the South in this spiral of constantly more radical demands until it finally escalated to the point where when they left – when the states tried to – when the states seceded in 1860, they didn't secede because the North was abolishing slavery. They seceded because they because a candidate got elected who they did not support wow right that's it right like lincoln didn't come out and say i'm gonna abolish it just said that most his policy position was we're not going to let you expand slavery right and even that it's not clear because we saw with dred scott that the supreme court again answering the southern interests gave them exactly what they

wanted which was the limitations on the power of the federal government to do that. Wow. Wow. And so you write in the book that he was a bad choice and ends up leading us down the pathway that sets up the Civil War. Do you see any similarities in today's world and what we're dealing with? Because a lot of people are talking about, you know, the Civil War, you have politicians inducing violence. If you study the history of the rise of fascism, authoritarianism, and any democracy, you see that we're on a train rolling down the tracks to a possible bad ending.

Do you see any similarities between that and what's going on today? So I am a political scientist by training. My PhD was in political science. And I don't think you can find a political scientist who isn't incredibly worried about what's happening right now, where essentially, you know, I would say this is not a partisan statement. I just think it's true. Essentially, the large fractions of the leadership of one party essentially seem to believe that there is no such thing as a legitimate election that they lose right and you even see the leading candidates for secretary of state in arizona right now saying right essentially there is no scenario where i

will certify an election where the debt where where democrats went right and like you cannot have a stable democracy that depends on one of the parties winning every election because eventually they will not. Yeah. And so this is really I mean, this is something that when I talk to people, you know, in the financial world, my friends and things like that, people who don't have this background in political science, they're like, well, you know, the American public's pretty, you know, like they'll figure this out. And I'm sort of the American public is very smart. This is not a question about how smart the public is. It's a question of whether the system can survive when there are very powerful actors who are trying to break it.

And that, yeah, this is very, it's very worrying and it's very scary. And the parallel to James Buchanan, as I say in the book, is you got to think about what is the interest group in the United States today that is so powerful it essentially can capture big chunks of the political process and say, if you do not go along with us, you know, you cannot get elected. So since politicians are, by definition, ambitious people who want to get elected. They tend to go along. So in the Republican Party today, it's almost impossible to get elected unless you're part of Donald Trump's movement, right? Like there are examples of people who have been able to break, but there are not many, right? The governor of Georgia has done it. Brian Kemp has done it. There are a few others. And not that much, right?

Like he broke a little bit, but it's not like he's gone all the other direction. But that's a political movement that, you know, is tied to an individual person who is, you know, not young. So if you sort of play out the clock long enough, things will change in that department. Maybe they won't get worse. Maybe he'll be replaced by someone who has worked. Like you can imagine that scenario. But I can't forecast that. If you were to look at the interest group, what I would say is really, and I say this in the book, is what you might call big finance, right? So the huge financial institutions that essentially blew up the world economy in 2007, they are simply, to an extent that it is essentially impossible to exaggerate, the most powerful single interest group in the united states right and it's

you know they're actually referred to as the blob in dc right because they're there and they they you know so just to give you an example and you know i mean look like i you know i work at a venture capital fund right like like they're big chunks of the financial sector that are very useful and very valuable and you know you would not want an American economy without venture capital. You just wouldn't, right? Like, like that would be a design. I'm not saying everything VC does is great, but you want that, right? You want an American economy with commercial lending. Like, that's really important. You want, you want that. But if you work in finance and have the same level of education, right? That someone who doesn't work in finance does,

you're going to get paid about 50% more. Right? There's no reason for that. It is simply a product of the political power of the industry. If you are a senior executive in finance, you're going to get paid about 150% more. And if you are a senior executive in finance who works in New York or Connecticut or New Jersey, which basically means like the big hedge funds, the big banks, things like that, right?

You're going to get paid 250% more. And that premium, by the way, is responsible for a big chunk of the increase in American inequality since 1980. Yeah. But in 1980, before we deregulated the financial sector, do you know what the premium was to work in finance? What? Zero. Really? You didn't make anything more. Yeah. So what happened is the United States economy has the financial sector has grown more and more and more. It's a process called financialization. It happens to economies. We can see an example of financialization in 12th century Venice. Right. So this is a process called financialization. It happens to economies. We can see an example of financialization in 12th century Venice, right?

So this is a process that happens over and over again where the financial sector gets bigger and bigger and more powerful and more powerful and essentially strangles the rest of the economy. And that happens over all its people. There's just one example, right? And by the way, the bigger the financial sector is, the more it's associated with inequality, with crashes and with panics, like lots of bad things, right? With slower economic growth. All of those things all come from this very big. But so only one example seems like a really bad data. So here's the good side.

The one example is us. The United States. Not now, sadly. The United States. For now. Yeah, in the 1930s. Okay. With the post-Great Depression reforms, Franklin Roosevelt did that.

And so when the Great Depression happened, the income premium for being in finance was exactly what it was in 2007. And then we did all these reforms and it went to zero. And so we're and so in fact, so Peter Drucker, probably the greatest management thinker who's ever lived. Right. He wrote an article once. He said that, you know, that the great the the best students at Harvard Business School, he says, would feel ashamed to go to work at a bank. He says they want to go work for General Electric or for Boeing or for companies that build things that matter and that create value. And so he said that, and he was like, that's the way the economy works. That was the 1950 works. That was 1950s. We don't have that anymore because this one sector has become so powerful and so dominant

in the economy that now if you're a top graduate at Harvard Business School, where I taught for seven years, you don't want to, you know, like in general, you might go to a tech company that's becoming more and more prominent, but you're still a lot of them are going to go to a big bank and they're going to get paid a lot and they're going to be very, you know, but that has consequences that are really negative. And when you have that kind of money, you also have a lot of power. And we see that in the way we nominate candidates today. Wow.

You know, I've been I Googled this, as you mentioned it, the financialization and Venice. I'm going to I want to read up some more on this. And it's pretty interesting. Did did what happened? You know, you talk about what happened in Venice. Is that what's leading them into the rebirth of Mussoliniism? I mean, we're talking about hundreds of years earlier, right? Yeah.

So, I mean, we're talking about Venice before Christopher Columbus even found America. Okay. So I have an article I wrote, it was in Harvard Business Review, called called The Price of Wall Street's Power that talks about this in the United States and what we can do about it. And in fact, that was what kind of led me, that was one of the things that led me to understand how it is you can get a, like the biggest puzzle for me when I wrote this book is how can a filtered president fail? Because they're so carefully chosen, right?

Like they should be able to do the job. And the answer is they are chosen to fail because they are chosen to reflect the interests of that one powerful group. Slavery in the 1850s is the example instead of the interests of the country as a whole. Wow. So because they're picked to do that vision, they will fail because it's not they don't represent the whole country in the interest of the whole country and they don't execute in the interest of that country. Is that correct then? I mean what they'll say is – I mean at the time, they may think they're succeeding, but we will look back and say this was a disaster, right? Like political debates of the era kind of get – I would say it's over time they come out in the wash.

In 1863, was Abraham Lincoln recognized as the greatest of all American presidents? Probably not. But in 1963, nobody had any doubts. Yeah. Yeah. Do you think the same thing will be said of Biden? I mean, he came in and kind of restored democracy and rule on. And, you know, we're still we're still, you know, seeing how the second act goes. We don't know if we're going to end up like, who's the head of Italy that had two horrible terms and almost drove them into the ground?

Berlusconi. Berlusconi. I remember seeing the night Trump had won two Italian reporters, journalists, who'd outed Berlusconi and written about you know a lot of his his his problems and corruption they're like you just you just elected briscoe you know him and you may have second term to set two terms where you know he did the same thing he was run out of office and then no one set rules or laws or anything and he came back in was worse so we may be setting ourselves up for that but i don't know maybe maybe people look back on biden be and on Biden and say he was a great leveler. You know, the thing that got me through the Trump years was one of the logs, I call it,

that got me through the white water there was President Obama saying, you know, this country is constantly in search of a perfect union, and we zig and we zag back and forth, I think was his quote. Yeah, we zig and zag back and forth, and sometimes we zig one way and we zag back and forth, I think was his quote. Yeah, we zig and zag back and forth. And sometimes we zig one way and we zag back the other way. I don't know. What do you think about that? Is that zig and zagging?

Is that a referral to what you mentioned before where sometimes one interest group takes over and takes us one way and the rest of us go, no, this isn't America? I don't know so let me sort of ground it first is that you know like like my parents are immigrants like a lot of people who are the children of immigrants i am sort of fiercely patriotic about the united states right like this is the greatest country in the world and i am not open to argument on that subject right like and i'm you know i'm one of the lucky ones like that it's treated me very well and but i've never had a doubt about that for a moment and i and i never will right i will i will die believing i don't have any doubts about that but it isn't that but the what i would say is the mistake we make is believing that that is

granted to us by divine right not earned right you the united states is constantly the united states is lucky and that unlike almost any other country in the world its destiny is in its own hands right ukraine was invaded by russia and the only way you and this is not in any way a criticism of the unbelievable heroism and skill with which the ukrainians defended their country right like like there isn't i think we are all in awe of what the Ukrainians defended their country. Right. Like, like there isn't, I think we are all in awe of what they've done, but their destiny was not in their own hands.

If the United States had not rallied to their side, if Western Europe had not rallied to their side, they would not have been able, there is no amount of skill that would have been able to save them. Right. But we are not faced with that. Our destiny is in our own hands, which means that we get to choose whether we go when you know

whenever we zig in the wrong direction there's not there's you know there's nothing ordaining that we go back in the right one we have to do it and no one health no one can help us and so that when i look at that you know when i look at at us where we are today. So, as I said, you can't be knowledgeable about the subject and not terrify. I'm really worried. You know, like very, very worried about what the next few years will look like. But if you also think about the great like so President Biden was elected on not that close an election in 2020. But he took, you know, with a slim margin in the House and a zero vote margin in the Senate. And it is easy for to criticize, you know, what hasn't been done.

You know, the United States and there are a lot of things we could say. The United States is about to drop out of the top 50 in life expectancy. Wow. In 1980, when Ronald Reagan was elected, we were first. We're about to drop out of the top 50. Right. Like what an unimaginable catastrophe inequality is but you know like like there are a lot of different ways which we could talk about

and you know and you know obviously it's much worse in the united states for minorities and for you know like like there there are many ways in which even you know even as the united states delivers for some segments of its population it's it's even failing even more badly with others but for all of that my my wife is from Sweden. And so we went to Sweden and visited for my first time this summer. And it's an amazing country. It's people, they live a long time,

everybody's tall, I felt like a hobbit. Great. And I'm not sure. But if Sweden were an American state and we put it in per capita, do you know what state it would be closest to? What? Do you want to guess?

Now, are we talking about a country state or are we talking about a state in this? Like if it was California or Texas or whatever, like per capita income, right, which is a pretty good measure of wealth. What state would Sweden be most comparable to? Probably New York. Yeah, you would think that. It missouri what the fuck yeah so sweden is a wealthy country i was gonna see our i was gonna say i was gonna say alabama just as a joke but so sweden is a wealthy country and missouri you know is a wonderful state like you know i've been there many times my college my college roommate was from missouri i love it dearly but sweden missouri is not one of the wealthiest states in the country

it's not close to being one of the wellness days so basically sweden's like deliverance or something what's going on no well sweden is much more equal than any right so the wealth that they have is distributed amongst the population much more you know much more evenly than design america state but we forget the united states is unimaginably wealthy, right? It is spectacularly rich. Well, I think in Missouri it's mostly – wait, hold on. That's a Mississippi joke. I was going to say it's Brett Favre, but never mind. That's another joke.

Yeah, right. I mean, so when we think about, like, you know, how is it done? Well, you know, 220-some years ago, the United States was 13 colonies hanging on the edge of the Atlantic, you know, and now it is the wealthiest, most powerful country in human history. Right. It is so much wealthier than wealthy countries that wealthy countries like Sweden are basic would be poor states in the United States. Right. That's what the only countries that are richer than the United States are oil states. Right. Like they're various countries that are floating on lakes of oil. That's kind of the only way you get to be in our league. Yeah, Russia is the gas station.

Yeah, Russia is not even close to our league, but like Norway, right? So Norway has a higher per capita income than we do. They have a lot of oil. So when I say – so it's like what's going on with the system, right? It's like with Biden, it's worth saying, okay, but the system has worked a lot better maybe than we give it credit for and even when it hasn't worked for most america for many americans right certainly it didn't work at all for african americans for a very long stretch of time even there it started to improve you know much too long and took much too long it's been much too slow but it is it is

it has at least started to improve and there's at least recognition by many americans that this was a huge failure for which we need to which we need to correct we weren't really a democracy until the 60s yeah that's right the united states was not in any meaningful sense of democracy of the 1960s we forget that but so look at joe biden right he's elected with like if i think a four seat margin of the house and a zero seat margin of the senate right this isn't narrow this is non-existent this is the thinnest thing in his. This is just insanely thin, right? And with an opposition that is just pretty draconian on not really willing to compromise. With that thin a margin, this administration has passed the first gun control in 30 20 some years the most the largest piece of industrial policy in the

chips act in american history right to bring production of a sort of critical and just critical technologies back on shore in the united states and in the climate change bill that we just passed just to put in perspective this is a larger bill passed in a single session of congress right a larger commitment to dealing with climate change than every country in the european union has done combined in their entire history wow holy crap that's right let's just get to this gargantuan right i mean so none of this is meant to say that the United States shouldn't do better. Of course, it should do better. We should do better. We should do better. Right. And we have the resources to do better. We just said, right, like we're incredibly rich.

But we should also acknowledge that, hey, maybe the system is not working as badly as we thought. Right. The 2008 financial, the financial crisis, global financial crisis, you know, it happened here. But we of all of the major industrial countries we recovered fastest yeah that's true right that's true so the system here it might a little bit more resilient than we give it credit for being and i just look at biden i say well again is he going to be remembered up there with you know on mount rushmore i don't know it's too soon to tell it's one and a half years and a lot of it's going to depend on what happens next right if he wins in 2024 and then in 2028 right you get to the point where we're not worried about the stability of democracy

because we passed the right now being the electoral count act that's being considered in the house and senate but if that's passed it's going to do a lot to stabilize the system right if we look at that and we're saying you know maybe he didn't get us all the policies, victories we would have liked. You know, maybe there's some change or whatever. I don't know. In some level, I don't care. If eight years, you know, five, six years from now, we look back and we say, if the Republicans win, the system will not fall apart. And if the Democrats win, the system will not fall apart.

That will be a pretty heroic achievement. I think historians will look back and give him a lot of credit for that it's kind of it is kind of interesting how i've noticed that some of the trump pick candidates after they won their primaries have fallen back to becoming not election deniers there's still some that are doing it but but it's kind of interesting how they flip-flop back to the thing, and hopefully people recognize the importance of our democracy and get a vote. This referendum that we'll have on 2022 will be pretty interesting. From what you've outlined in your book and talked about, do you see any of that coming into play in 2022 with the elections that are going on? I mean, it's kind of

weird where we're at. I had said to my friends when the SCOTUS thing had leaked that they possibly might be overturning Roe versus Wade. At that point, we had incredible apathy with Democrats. I'm a moderate Democrat, full disclosure. We had incredible apathy that these guys were going to show up. And I just really do not want to hear in the next two years 50,000 committees on Hunter Biden's laptop. I just really don't care.

And I don't know what that has to do with my democracy. But in the romper room that we had before, the house is always a romper room, really, when you study history, I guess. But the Senate's like the grownups, I guess. But Nancy Pelosi's done a great job, I have to say. I think so. But there's a certain area of the House that seems to be her opera room, if you watch the news on any given day. But segues aside, you know, we have the—and I said, you know, if SCOTUS overturns Roe v. Wade, this nation may actually need that to save it because it will get out the vote. I mean, it's not cool what's happening on the side of that, but we may need that to save it because it will get out the vote i mean it's it's not cool what's happening

on the side of that but we may need that to save this nation and i think i might be right from what we're seeing and now everyone gives a shit about turning out in 2022 and so i mean it's really clear that dobbs transformed the 2022 election right there's just no doubt about it and we don't know what it's going to do in 2024 but my guess is the implications of it will not have faded i will you know not fully have faded by that they might have faded so i think you'll be right because scotus i mean even if we take the senate the democrats take the senate there's there's it's going to take years to to restack the the scotus yeah i mean unless they decide to expand the the set the the supreme court it will take generations and there's no question that the that you know on just on areas like environmental regulation it's going to be it's

going to be much much harder than it was with this court things like you know a variety of issues you know on on in terms of abortion rights if democrats have control of the house and senate they can pass federal laws to protect and then we'll see if the court is willing to overturn those laws that would be pushing to a new a whole new level that they maybe wouldn't might be a little worried to do especially if they see a massive backlash against them in the public right there's they kind of saw that with kansas where that's that's right yeah they all went holy shit women are really pissed off at us i mean i was relatively optimistic about the outcome in kansas and way underestimated what we had, what actually came out.

Right. So like so it was suddenly. And but this is this is my sort of going back. Maybe it's that patriotism thing. And I have faith in the average American. Right. Like I actually don't have much like I do not doubt that most Americans want to do the right thing and like care about their country and want – the question is not does the – do Americans – are they going to do the right thing here? The question is, is the system going to allow them to?

Right? And the system is old, right? The U.S. government is not older than the french and the italian and the german governments right it's older than all of them combined like the system as it is exists now is very very different from what it was imagined to being in the in the you know when the when the constitution was written and so what we are for 200 years we have survived more than that now 220 years we have survived well because everybody kind of agreed that the survival of the system was more important than winning an election right like like there was a basic agreement that we were not going to

go to the wall yeah though the one fundamental core of us was that we were not going to go to the wall. Yeah. The one fundamental core of us was that we handed power from one person to another, even if we thought that maybe things weren't right with Nixon. There was questions about John F. Kennedy and, you know, stuff they'd done pulling things. I think there's been a lot of history written on that. Nixon could have been a dick. And, you know, he later was. Nixon could have been a dick. Richard could have been a dick. There's a joke there. But he didn't because he cared about the Constitution and that transfer of power. That's the one thing that's always separate. That one single thing seems to make all the difference. Gore versus Bush. You know, the question of what happened

there. You know, the same thing with, you know, Trump where, you know, there's the, you have the college, the electoral college versus the popular vote. Both Gore and Trump are two people that were elected against the popular vote. Bush and Trump. Bush and Trump. Did I say Gore and Trump? Yes. Yeah.

Well, yes. Yeah, sure. So, yeah, I stand corrected. So, you know, the handover, like you're talking about, is really important. And, of course, now we see that they've attacked the great Bannon, Steve Bannon strategy, attacked the electoral process in and of itself. And we see that when that happens, you're seeing the attack go on, I think, in Brazil now, where the question of the vote and study of history and fascism. So it'll be really interesting to see.

As we go out, we've got to touch on some other things in the book. Should we get some plugs in? Anything more we need to talk about in the book or tease out or you want to add on to what I just said? So two things. One is it's easy for us to forget how important the presidency is, right? Because, again, we're the beneficiaries of a government that works. And if you want to see what a government that doesn't work looks like,

take a look at Afghanistan or, you know know like there are plenty of places where the government just doesn't work ours doesn't work as well as we would like it to but that's a whole different world from it doesn't work at all and the presidency plays a key role in that layered on top of that of course is the presidency has powers that no other human being the president has powers that no other human being can approach right the president is one of two people on earth who can end human civilization if they choose to do so. That's scary. That's scary stuff.

The president of the United States has power that 200 years ago we would have attributed only to God. It can control whether the crops grow, not control, but at least influence, and also kill people from a distance. So the first is we need to take it seriously. You can't vote for somebody, we need to take it seriously, right? You can't vote for somebody.

You need to really think about, do you trust this person with power? The second is, I think what the book really brings out is how often everything that, many of the things that we love about the United States have survived or advanced because of luck, right?

We just got lucky. We got lucky over and over again, right? You have to get lucky a little bit. You have to get lucky, right? I just got lucky. We got lucky over and over again, right? You have to get lucky a little bit. You have to get lucky, right? I mean, but Theodore Roosevelt, the first great reformist president, right? The person who just in many ways created the modern presidency and much of modern life. And, you know, is one of the most charismatic and sort of interesting people who's ever lived, right? Like Theodore Roosevelt became president because the powers that be in the Republican Party made him vice president in order to get rid of him.

They were like, this guy's a reformer. He's actually serious. We you know, he actually wants to he actually wants to regulate business and make the average person better off. We can't have that. Let's put him in a place where he cannot possibly do any harm. I know the vice presidency. Right. Didn't they do that with Johnson, too? And so so they made him vice. You know, they made a vice president to get rid of him.

And then McKinley is assassinated. And all of a sudden. He's president United States and he uses it right. Like he does not slow down, even for this. I don't think he was capable of slowing down. So what we see over and over again is the fact that the system worked in that sense. Right. Doesn't mean you should rely on it. That's true. Right. Luck is not a method. And so what we also didn't need should do is think, you know, is is both. I think it's interesting. Right. I love American history.

It's kind of cool knowing all the different accidents that happened. The fact that Harry Truman, who was also an extraordinarily good president, right, only became president by the skin of his teeth. But it came very, very close to going a very different way. Right? So American history, I find American history fascinating. But if you don't, I think you might find out it's even more interesting than you think, because there's a lot there going on. When you tell the story this way, it comes out. It's a it's a much more of a high wire act than I think most of us realized we were when we were studying in high school. And the last thing I say is it is possible to do a better job.

I do suggest some reforms in the book that like you don't have to amend the Constitution. Right. We don't have to, like constitution right we don't have to like rebuild the system from scratch relatively small things we could do that really would hugely improve our odds of getting not just good but great presidents what do you what do you think about the new electoral act thing i'm not sure if it's been signed off on yet i think it's still kind of the electoral count act electoral can act yeah there's supposed to be some of the stuff that's been reformed from 1800s in there yeah it is an absolute necessity passing it is literally the most important thing in the United States right now. Wow. It will close many of the vulnerabilities that the Trump administration tried to exploit in 2020 to overturn the election.

And if it does that, then I won't have zero worry, but I will be way less worried than I would be without its passage. Yeah, I think the Senate's passing it. I know McConnell signed off on it. I think it will pass. That's usually a sign. We still have the House. So, yeah, that would be good. You know, I mean, I guess a lot of this, the original law was written in the 1800s, and some of it was pretty ambiguous.

It's, in fact, uninterpretable. Like, it was very badly drafted, and there are big chunks of it that is impossible to make to make even to figure out what they were trying to say yeah you know you i'm glad you have a lot of faith in in us americans as an american who lived here and spent his first half of his life in complete apathy and and thinking that he was entitled you know the classic asshole American who thinks that, no, in democracies, just like my milk, it's always been on the shelf, so it'll always be there tomorrow whether I vote or not. We have a lot of that going on in the country. We had a severe attack over the last, I don't know, 20, 30, 40 years of making us stupiders of people because we don't care

and also, you know, spending $8 trillion in wars as opposed to building better schools and paying teachers. And I don't think it's getting better. You know, George Carlin has a famous quote that I'm always reminded of almost on a daily basis, whether it's on social media or talking to me about politics. And the quote is, think how stupid the average person is and realize half of them are stupider than that. And I don't know what circles you run in, but you've probably been on Twitter and social media, I'm sure.

You have more faith in American people than I do. That's what I'm leaning to. YouTube comment sections are where human thought goes to die. Oh, I know. We have a big channel. But let me flip that around. I don't think you have to be... Give me some hope, baby. You quoted George Carlin. Let me quote... Now I'm blanking on the philosopher. flip that around i don't think you have to be so give me some hope baby you quoted george carlin

you know let me let me quote let me flip the quote now i'm now i'm blanking on the on the philosopher i was trying to look at hobbs it's thomas hobbs right where he said right that the people are much more are you know the wisest councilman that's his phrasing right so the wisest public official is less acute at understanding someone else's interests than that person is at understanding their own and so what it says democracy doesn't require us all to be geniuses right what it like that's not you know that that would not be a system that could ever work it requires us to think about you know in its real sense to one is to vote retrospectively to say well the last four years am i happy or not And if both parties are functioning,

that works really well. Right. So both parties are functioning. You say, well, I'm not happy with the last four years. Let's do a change. Or I am happy with the last four years.

Let's stay the same. In fact, both parties are working. That's great. That'll, that'll, that'll, that'll,

that was a big chunks of American history. Well, I think what it requires us to do is not, you know, we don't, you don't, we don't all need to be deep scholars of international relations or the federal budget. But what we do need to do is to take our job as American citizens seriously.

And show up to vote. Show up to vote. But also, you know, like say that, OK, I may not understand, you know, climate change, but there are people who do. And I should accept it. I don't, and I should listen to them, and I should take that into account. Experts get things wrong all the time. There's no doubt about that. But she pulls it.

Yeah, but everybody gets things wrong all the time. Ask any husband. time, right? Like any husband. Yeah, right. I mean, yeah, absolutely. Everybody gets things wrong all the time. So, you know, if you say, well, the experts are wrong, have been wrong before. I'm true.

What's your alternative? Right. So, like, I do think there's a take your responsibilities and American citizens seriously vote and vote in a way that is, you know, that is, this is a thing you do that helps to determine the fate of the world. And of course, like it does. Yeah. And of course, read your book as well. So you don't have to vote correctly

by picking leaders that aren't going to fail. So there you go. Can I offer you just a comedic debate? Thomas Hobbes was born in, was in the 16s, 1700s. George Carlin died in 2007. So I'm thinking, you know, maybe Thomas Hobbes didn't have Instagram. I don't know.

Well, Instagram wasn't around in 2007. One can only imagine what he would have done with it. Yeah. You know what? He hasn't seen us lately is my point. I bet you Alexander Henry Hamilton would have been the greatest tweeter of all time. Do you think

he would have been an angry, toxic tweeter? He would have been everything. It depends on his mood at any given day. Was that his crystal flute? That was James Madison's. James Madison's. I would have liked to have seen his tweets too.

This has been very interesting and very insightful. People should pick up your book so they understand the importance of their vote. And I'm glad you have faith. You know, I love people who come here as immigrants. My great-grandfather was an immigrant for Germany, so definitely I'm, what, a two-generational immigrant. Everybody's an immigrant in this country, and it really comes down to it at the core. But, yeah, there's a real apathy towards people that grew up here that, you know, democracy's always been there. And so they always think it'll be there. And hopefully we learn from January 6th. You know, I think right now we're

talking with the authors of one of the officers of January 6th, who was almost killed and dragged into the group, Fanon. Oh, Mike Fanon. Oh, I read a profile of him. That's going to be fun. Yeah. Yeah. We're talking, I've talked with with his coauthor and we're talking about having them on. And so hopefully we'll have them scheduled soon. But you know, January 6th is, you know, kind of, we almost kind of needed January 6th. So that low point, that dark point to go, you know, what the hell, but then also it's reminiscent, you know, I had Tom Hartman, the radio host on a week later after January 6th, just for a book that was scheduled.

And I remember at the end of the show, he threw me off my chair. And when he said, you know, January 6th, they call January 6th, right? And I go,

what? It goes to rehearsal. Yeah. You know, any reference Hitler's beer hall. And I think there's some other, I can't remember if it was a Pinochet or it was some sort of other fascist uprising, Mussolini warmup.

So, you know, I don't know. It's going to be a really interesting ride the next two to four years. It will be, but, I mean, if there's one note I would say about contemporary politics, it's we get to decide where the ride ends. For now. And nobody else does, right? It is up to us.

We get to make that choice. Yeah. We get an election or two more. And after that, it's anybody's bet. But the people should read your books. They understand this more. People should see insight of why it's important to pick a president that's good for America. You know, I tell people now, you know, I have one of the arguments I used to have with people when I still had Republican friends was, oh, if Donald Trump

had been a Democrat, you would have voted for him because you vote straight ticket Democrat. No, I don't. And I think more and more people need to realize this. And I think I kind of saw that with the Biden election, because there were a lot of people, because Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died, that were worried about the abortion and the Senate and the SCOTUS. And I saw a lot of Republicans that voted for Biden. And so I'm hoping that, you know, I tell people nowadays, you need to vote for the Constitution. I call myself a constitutionalist. I don't know if anyone's using that term.

But to me, I talk a lot about nowadays that this is a system where it's a relay race, where we're handing a baton from one president to another, and we're saying, take this little young American democracy, this republic, on for another four years. Carry the mantle, do the things that you talk about in your book, and we've talked about on the show today, to make sure that we ensure that democracy works, and that hopefully they do the best that they can possibly do may not be the best if if we're armchairing it from quarterbacks you know you know popcorn we're watching the bachelor shows that you know whatever i'm gonna get sued by the bachelor i guess now but you know

we're we're hopefully will take us to a better point that we were from the prior four years but then we zig or zag or at least hopefully we'll recognize that, hey, maybe those last four years could have been better and we'll do better. But to me, I'm a constitutionalist. If Donald Trump had been a Democrat president, I would vote Republican. And I left the Republican Party in 2012. I've moved around because I really have learned I care more about the Constitution. So I hope that whatever I'm rambling about will make sense to anyone listening. And then also trying to find the exit ramp here in the segue. But I hope that we'll get there.

What do you think? I hope that we'll get there, too. Like I said, I have faith, but I am very, very worried. The next few years are are things could go really bad really fast in this country in ways that very few of us appreciate but i have a lot of republican friends right because i i spent a lot of time working with the military capital well oh yes that's true yeah also true but also but i spent a lot of time working with the military and so you know i mean like the i would in fact i just got off the phone with the general of the air force

literally i had to hang up to take this call. I didn't do this podcast with you, right? And he's a Republican. And like, so they take an oath, right, to the Constitution. So I worked for the federal government as a summer intern, of all things, in high school and in college. And the funny thing is, when you do that, you take an oath. You take the same oath. You take a loyalty oath to the Constitution.

Yeah. It's not that different. Preserve, protect, and defend the constitution of the united states against all enemies foreign and domestic and the thing about the oath when you take it is there's no time limit it doesn't say the oath doesn't go as long as i'm an employee of the federal government now when you take that thing it's for life right you take it yeah you take it and it's that it is until you i mean if you listen if you listen to the words and take it seriously and i did it's for life you take it to the day you die

well and so yeah my you know look my friends are i said i have lots of friends are republicans and we can have different issues differences on tax rates and you know war on foreign policy and you name it any issue you want but the area where we have to be in agreement is to support protect you know and offend the constitution of the united states against all enemies foreign and domestic and that really is the line that every american has to draw right we all we all got to remember that yeah and the right to vote the freedom to vote which is the foundation of every other freedom and every other i mean we we have to recognize that the freedom to vote. It's the foundation of every other freedom and every other.

I mean, we have to recognize that we have to recognize in my in my opinion, we have to recognize that that transfer of power is the one thing that makes it different because a lot of countries vote. You know, Russia votes. We just saw, you know, the voting they did in Ukraine at a gunpoint. They went door to door with guns and went you're voting today maybe we should do that in this country but not with guns the because that would bend badly if they did that in texas i think that's a joke but you know it's it's it's that whole transfer of power that going okay i won or i lost okay let let's pass that to next thing. And we're going to resolve that next time like Nixon did with John F. Kennedy. It was a bitter pill to swallow.

I'm sure Al Gore probably, I don't know, has nightmares every day about it or every night about it. Maybe he sleeps during the day. I do at my age, so he probably does too. So maybe he does have those nightmares in the day. Anyway, jokes aside, people should read your book is what I'm trying to round about

to figure out the best way to pick their presidents and the best way to do it. And for my money, you know, I love the Constitution. I love democracy. I want everyone to have the right to vote. I think that's important to protect. We shouldn't allow. We should look at what SCOTUS is doing, you know, with, you know, everything from Citizens United to all the other things they've done. I think there's some voting things they have coming up on their agenda, if I recall rightly.

But everyone should have the right to vote in this country. There should be polling places everywhere. There should be encouragement to get a vote. So it represents what this whole country wants. And I'm going to hold on to your faith and your belief in this country that we're good people. We're going to do the right thing. I'm going to hold on to that as long as i can and if not i may end up crying about it at night four years later i'll put her i'll put on a pillow and stuff but you believe in these

this people in this country more than i do so i'm going to hold on to your faith as opposed to my own oh thank you chris there you go give me your.com so people can order up the book and find out how to make a better country. Gotham, Mukunda, G-A-U-T-A-M-M-U-K-U-N-D-A.com. On Twitter at at G. Mukunda, at G-M-U-K-U-N-D-A. Picking precedences on Amazon, your local bookstore, you name it, you'll find it. Yeah. And all my jokes aside, there's a lot of jokes I put in the show. You give me a little bit more faith in this country

and hopefully what I'll do. And I needed that shot in the arm. I talked to some idiots the other day that they had the most extraordinary conversation. We actually argued what you and I talked about earlier, whether or not the president is the most powerful people in the world. And I'm like, you know, he has the nuclear football.

And they're like, yeah, but it has to take 20. They literally told me that it had to take 24 hours for the president when he activates the nuclear football to for the joint staff or something to approve it. And I was like, you know, this is the people who are voting. You people are voting, you know. And George Carlin, of course, came to mind at that time. And I explained to them, I says, no, it's an immediate. It's like I think it takes 20 minutes for those nuclear bombs to land once they're in the air. And that button is pressed.

I mean, it just goes to the guy. I watched the sequence on TV. At least, you know, I don't know. I trust everything that's on TV except for The Bachelor and Survivor. Anyway, pick up the book, folks, wherever fine books are sold. Picking Presidents, How to Make the Most Consequential Decision in the World. I highly recommend it because you definitely want to understand, what's the

old line I always say on the show? It's my quote, the one thing man can learn from his history is that man never learns from his history, and thereby is this folly. So, it's been wonderful to have you on the show. Thank you for coming on, and brilliant discussion. It's been very insightful in spite of all the, all the comedy I've kind of thrown in there to make it fun.

Thank you, Chris. It was a pleasure. There you go. And hopefully we'll be talking about your future books in a democracy to come. Thanks so much for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com for Chris Foss.

I'm sure his book will be up there. Go to all of our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Tik TOK, all those crazy places that kids are playing nowadays. Stay safe, his book will be up there. Go to all of our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, all those crazy places the kids are playing nowadays. Stay safe. Register to vote, damn it.

I think I'm going to start ending the show with reminding people to register to vote. Register to vote. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. Take care.