The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Dillon Era: Douglas Dillon in the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson Administrations by Richard Aldous

Episode Date: October 5, 2023

The Dillon Era: Douglas Dillon in the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson Administrations by Richard Aldous https://amzn.to/46fXMmc C. Douglas Dillon – heir to a vast investment banking fortune, and one of the richest men in America during his political career – was a Republican who served in a Democratic administration and became one of the greatest modern treasury secretaries. He believed in bipartisanship and public duty, a sensibility that has all but faded from the current political climate. With exclusive access to the family’s archive, in The Dillon Era Richard Aldous sets fresh eyes on a well-documented period in recent American history, unfolding a deeply influential but somewhat overlooked political career. In 1953 President Eisenhower appointed Dillon as ambassador to Paris, and he promoted him to second in command in the State Department in 1958. Tapped by Presidents Kennedy and Johnson for treasury secretary to reassure Wall Street that the nation’s finances were in safe hands, Dillon would become one of President Kennedy’s closest advisors, and perhaps the only cabinet member who was a personal friend. His impact on the Kennedy and Johnson administrations was immense, not least in delivering the most comprehensive income tax cuts the nation had ever seen. Overseas he worked to sustain political cooperation as the Bretton Woods system threatened to unravel. By the time he left office in 1965, the Washington Post recognized Dillon as “by far the best Secretary of the Treasury of the postwar period,” and European Economic Community president Walter Hallstein hailed a new “Dillon era.” Dillon advocated for evolution and reform over radicalism, and he placed the national interest above party interest. The Dillon Era throws new light on the postwar period, identifying Dillon as a pivotal figure in American policymaking during these crucial years of the Cold War.

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Welcome to the show, my family and friends. For 15 years, three-4 shows a week, 15-20 shows a week. What is it? 2-3 shows a weekday and we're doing about 4 now in 10-15 a week. We're bringing you the Chris Voss Show. The billionaires, the CEOs, the Pulitzer Prize winners, the people who advise presidents, the astronauts, the brilliant authors that just come with their newest, hottest books right off the shelf.

They're so hot, you can still get hot off the ink. Do people still do that now? You can't do that with the Kindles, people, but you can try, and we bring the brain bleed. And of course, little old moi, me. I'm just the dumbass that shows up on the show with a mic and tells the story. And we have all the great people that come on and share the intelligence. And we have another on today. And as always, we're going to be talking a little bit about history. You're going to learn some stuff today, people.

Because as we always say on the show, this is a direct Chris Voss quote. The one thing man can learn from his history is that man never learns from his history. Thereby, we go around and around my friends uh so it's important to learn history and know history and of course some of the most interesting people are in history because i don't know the politicians and people nowadays are kind of boring they notice all seem to be little robber barons or whatever but maybe maybe they weren't that different in the old days so we're going to get into it but in the meantime we would appreciate and love you forever the family the christris fos shows a family that loves

you but doesn't judge you but if you want to get even more love if you want to enter the realm of loviness of the chris fos show uh please refer the show to your family friends relatives go to goodreads.com for it says chris fos youtube.com for it says chris fos linkedin.com for it says chris fos and uh chris fos one on the tickety talky where all those kids are doing the dancing and stuff and somewhere we're on there trying to be relevant but uh it's of course not working uh okay boomer i'm gen x anyway we have an amazing gentleman on the show he's written a host of uh just a plethora not just a host of just a plethora, not just a host, but a plethora of an amazing books of history and figures in history and everything else.

I'm just going to be delving into his history books after the show, because there's a bunch that we talked about in the pre-show I want to read. Richard Aldis joins us on the show with us today, and his latest book just came out October 2nd, yesterday, 2023. Congratulations, Richard. His newest book is called out October 2nd, yesterday, 2023. Congratulations, Richard. His newest book is called The Dillon Era, Douglas Dillon in the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations. We'll be talking to him about this amazing history, this interesting man, and what we can learn from him, and what we can probably learn not from him because man never learns from his

history see what i did there i went fell back to that thing richard aldous is a historian of british and american politics and culture his 10 books include and along with three co-edited uh schlesinger the imperial historian reagan and thatcher the The Difficult Relationship, Macmillan, Eisenhower and the Cold War, and a dual biography of Gladstone and Disraeli, Lives of Malcolm Sargent and Tony Ryan, and most recently, the new book, The Dillon Era. He teaches at Bard University, where he's the Eugene Meyer Professor of British History and Culture.

He is a founding member of the editorial team at the American Purpose magazine and presents its weekly book stack podcast. I'm going to check into that. He writes regularly for publications, including the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times, has made numerous appearances on CNN,

Spectrum News, Fox News, the BBC, RT, and other broadcasts. And he's a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. I feel like I need to say that in a British accent. And now he reaches the pinnacle of his appearances on media on the Chris Voss Show podcast.

Welcome to the show, Richard. How are you? I'm good. Thanks so much for having me, Chris. I'm strapped in and I'm ready to go. There you go. All right. Well, sounds good then.

It's not an only fan show. Keep that in mind. I don't know what that means. But thank you, Richard, for coming to us at.com. And so people can look you up on the interwebs. So the best place to find me is at BARD, which is bard.edu. As you mentioned, I also host the Bookstack podcast for AmericanPurpose.com. So either of those places, that's where I am. You're strapped into the roller coaster of the Chris Voss show, ready for the brain bleed

to come out of you. See, I can't even pronounce stuff. I've brain bled so much for all the amazing knowledge that folks like yourself put these books together. So give us a 30,000 overview of this new book, The Dillon Era. So this is the story of Douglas Dillon, who's the Treasury Secretary in the Kennedy administration. So, so far, you might think, okay, you're a pretty ordinary politician. What makes him interesting is that he was a Republican in a Democratic administration.

He'd also been in the Eisenhower administration, where he'd been at the State Department. In 1960,edy goes up against nixon uh no one's quite sure who's going to win but everyone thinks that that if nixon wins they're going to give dylan the secretary of state job loses kennedy comes in and kennedy offers him the treasury secretary so he's a he's an interesting character because we we don't live in a particularly bipartisan age. Douglas Dillon is the quintessential bipartisan politician. There you go.

Works for Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson. So three different administrations. And he's a Republican. I can't remember, was Eisenhower a Republican? I think he was, right? Yeah, so Eisenhower's a Republican, and then Kennedy's a Democrat, and Johnson's a Democrat too. So he works for one Republican administration and two Democratic ones.

There you go. And we need people like this that work in our governments that aren't so much bipartisan, but people that just kind of keep the wheels chugging along. So who was this guy? Give us a background on who was he and and how did he how did he get uh positioned to be in these administrations yeah so he is the the son of a man called clarence dylan who um runs dylan reed uh kind of on wall street and clarence dylan is one of the 50 richest americans so a billionaire by by today's in today's money. And, you know, when young Douglas is growing up, it's pretty much that Clarence sees him as his banking heir, that he's going to run the firm, he's going to be on Wall Street. And that's what he does throughout the 30s and the 40s. Obviously, like so many of the greatest generation, he goes away and fights

during the war. But then it is not enough for him being on Wall Street that he doesn't just want to be living in this very constrained environment. He wants to do something else with his life, and that's politics. And he's very lucky because most people, if they want to go into politics, they have to work their way up the system, climb up the ladder. But his father was a major donor to Eisenhower in 1952. He was a close friend of John Foster Dulles, who was Eisenhower's closest advisor. And as so often happens in the American political tradition,

ambassadorships are one of the ways in which you reward your biggest donors. So Eisenhower offers the ambassadorship to Paris, to France, to Douglas Dillon, and that is his first political job. So he goes off to Paris where he's ambassador, and with John Foster Dulles installed as Secretary of State. So he always has his protector there at the highest level. There you go. Did he come up through Wall Street in the same era that Joe Kennedy did? So he's younger than Joe Kennedy, but that is when kind of Kennedy is around,

and Clarence Dillon would be roughly a contemporary of J. Kennedy. The relationship that Dillon later has with John F. Kennedy, I think partly comes out of this kind of shared background that both of their fathers were millionaires, both of their fathers were quite, let's say, had quite sharp elbows. You know, they weren't afraid to be rough when they needed to be. They were both kind of players in the financial world. But then the sons had both been to Harvard around the same time. They'd both gone into politics.

So there's a lot of similarities. And it's one of the things that Jackieie kennedy uh said was that dylan was the only friend that kennedy had in his cabinet he was the only person that uh that kennedy that the kennedy saw socially wow that's amazing so he was a man of all sort of things was now i know that in the kennedy administration they were lambasted for being this new sort of generation of college educated men in, in, in kind of more brainiacs, if you will. You know, that was one of the challenges I think they were having with the Vietnam war is they were trying to run it from a, from a college logic, brain aspect sort of thing uh i don't know if that's true or not but tell me if that's true or or you know if this is you know he was one of that generation this is the new sort of college people showing up in administrations so i think that the dylan is slightly different to that

group but i think that it is uh it's it's broadly is true that david halberstrom idea of the uh the the brightest and the best and that these these as you say kind of um to use the phrase of the time the eggheads academics like me um people like george bundy who came into the administration he'd been dean of arts i think it was at uh at harvard so you know these kind of characters come in and they see how things work theoretically, but maybe they lack that kind of more human level. They tend to be technocrats, people like Robert McNamara. Dylan, I think, is different, though, because he comes from that banking tradition. And of course, the thing about Wall Street is that it doesn't really matter whether things work in theory for them it has to

work in practice and they are empiricists because it's all about making money you know you can't you can't say well you know i i think it should be this i think it should be that it's because if you do something for the wrong reasons then you end up losing uh in the money of the time you know hundreds of thousands millions of millions of dollars and then you're out on your ear. So, you know, I think Dylan brings that kind of very professional, very pragmatic view to politics. Above all, he is a pragmatist. There you go. So you've written a lot of great books. You've written about Schlesinger. We talked in the pre-show. One of my favorite first big books i read was 1000 days and and made me interesting in jfk uh and uh you've written about eisenhower the cold war reagan and thatcher uh difficult relationship didn't they have a

side thing going on no i'm just kidding well that's that's that's one of the that's one of the arguments of the book that the traditional ways that those two are always in. It's like it's a political marriage. They loved each other. They never argued, this kind of thing. And so that other book is arguing, well, yes, they had a very close political alliance, but they disagree on almost every single issue. And so the book kind of goes through each one of them showing where they, where they disagree. Which is interesting because they're both so destructive, I think, to,

I mean, a summation would be they're both so destructive to the middle class, or was that, is that maybe true or not? I think that, so, I mean, the, their relationship is really more about their foreign policy relationship. So, it's about the, it's about the end of the Cold War. So, you know, the way in which, for example, Margaret Thatcher is the person who introduces Reagan to Gorbachev. She, in effect, vouches for Gorbachev. But then when he goes off to Reykjavik and offers the Soviets that, hey, why don't we just give up all of our nuclear weapons?

She kind of describes that as like an earthquake under her feet and just goes completely ballistic with him. So, you know, I think that, yeah, it's a really, really interesting relationship between the two. The Iron Lady. Coming to an OnlyFans near you. I don't know what that means. So what attracted you to the Dylan gentleman, Douglas Dylan?

What was it that made you go, hey, this is something I want to write about? Yeah, so in some ways that comes back to what you were just saying, that like you, I read A Thousand Days when I was a child. It was one of the first books, really, that grabbed my attention. It was up on my dad's bookcase. And at one point I kind of took it down and started reading and I just almost couldn't stop reading. It's just such a fabulous story.

And, you know, Schlesinger is one of the people in that book and in his diaries and in his letters and when I was working on his biography that he keeps talking about Dylan as this really brilliant character. and when I was working on his biography, that he keeps talking about Dylan as this really brilliant character. And, you know, honestly, he didn't want Dylan in the first place. He tried to persuade Kennedy not to give Dylan the job as Treasury Secretary. He thought it was going to be a disaster. And yet after a year, he describes himself as dylan's greatest fan so that kind of really intrigued me because you know most people i guess unless they remember him from the you know signing the money um won't really know very much about douglas dylan he's kind of receded uh into the

you know just into the wallpaper of that administration so i kind of felt you know why is it that at the time everyone thinks this guy is so important a really central character nixon wants him as at the state department kennedy wants him at the treasury schlesinger turns on a dime about him once he sees him in action why is it that this guy who was so important now just kind of seems not to be written up as part of the history did he did he turn away from the nixon administration for being appointed well all i mean is all all i mean is that he was if nixon had won in 1960 then nixon would have pointed him but because nixon loses then kennedy then kennedy comes to it I mean actually I mean we've got to be careful not to romanticize bipartisanship Nixon and Eisenhower were both furious when uh when Dylan took the

treasury job from Kennedy in the end they agreed that he had to do it because of it because of the American interest but they were actually furious at him for doing it so you know sometimes especially today on days like today where you know we've been watching what's going on in the house of representatives with kevin mccarthy and so on that you know we sometimes we look back and we romanticize the past um there were there were political rivalries in those days too there you go. And for context, people who watch our videos 10 to 15 years from now, Kevin McCarthy was just removed from the Speaker of the House.

In fact, he's the first. He just made history as the first House Speaker who's been removed. Yes, and it's an unprecedented act. You know, an interesting spectacle interesting uh uh spectacle on uh leadership and uh politics when you want something so bad just to be speaker uh so you can put your name in the history books that you're willing to sell your soul for anything and anything just to get the position here's what you get you made made history, buddy. Good job. And it is, interestingly, it is one of the things, actually, about Douglas Dillon that kind of, in some ways, gives him a kind of a power because, you know, as the son of one of the richest men in the United States, and with this kind of Wall Street to fall back on, it meant

that he could always speak truth to power then you know there are occasions when when he's in paris he writes a memo that says you know eisenhower needs to step up um he sometimes he speaks quite you know quite um harshly to kennedy and to johnson because he always knows if you don't like it that's absolutely fine i can go back to wall street so he's not one of those. He's not a professional politician in that way. He's not someone who's always worrying about the next job. You know, you can say what you like about the fact that the money doesn't matter to him.

But in that instance, it's something that means that he's always able to maintain his integrity. I think this is interesting. In 1965, when he left office, the Washington Post, the WAPO, recognized Dillon as by far the best secretary of the treasury of the post-war period. You don't see a lot of endorsements like that from the WAPO these days. I think they try and stay more down the middle.

No, I mean, it's an incredible record that he had. I mean, it was the longest uh longest peacetime boom in america in american history uh at that phase um you know you've got industrial production uh personal income uh all of these kind of markers of the economy are at all-time highs unemployment is an all-time low employment is an all-time uh high so you know all in all of these regards and he brings um the uh tax the marginal rate of tax down from uh now just wait for it chris i'm just gonna just need to prepare you for this so he brings it down from from 91 percent 91 percent down to 70 so you know that's the that's the the kind of impact that he's having and that's part of his legacy as uh as treasury secretary i mean it's high it's hard

to believe now that the marginal rate of tax could be 91 there you go now is that for the highest earning people so well the the marginal is um is what you, obviously, is what you pay on every dollar beyond the kind of the highest rate. But below that, he's also bringing down rates. All of the bands are brought down. So, there's an equity inequality about it in the way that he does it. Maybe that's one of the reasons we felt that was such a good economic era. You know, I think there's a lot of different reasons that mix into that. There was the saved up money from people, from boys that came home from World War II

and the college program, the housing program, and Levittown, and how we mapped out America after that. There was a lot of money that got poured into the people saved up during the war that kind of caused that whole white picket fence, dual car garage sort of era that everyone thinks was so wonderful, but it was such a blip on the screen. It probably wasn't. The other thing that is is worth saying though, is that they, when he came into office, they were predicting quite a deep recession. So, you know, this kind of economic performance,

I think is, you know, is generally regarded, you know, even people like Paul Samuelson, economist, I think he wins the Nobel prize. the Nobel Prize, kind of says that history will, his phrase is something like history will bow down to the memory of Douglas Dillon. Money is there for the Great Society and also for the Vietnam War. And it's those things that then begin this kind of period of economic difficulty and particularly high inflation that runs through the through from the late 60s through into the 70s. There you go. A very interesting thing on on on politics. I suppose. I don't know, do we need more money men in politics or do we need more career politicians? Do you think there's a better of people involved when politics represents society. I mean, one of the problems with professional politicians

is that they tend to all be very similar. I mean, I think we've moved away from kind of an earlier period, and this is not just the United States, but it's across the Western democracies too, that that kind of tradition of working class politicians coming from the shop floor to Congress and kind of representing the interests of the working class, that has gradually diminished over time.

And I think that on the other side, you have this sense sense of um kind of politicians constantly having to think about raising money that money has that politics has become so expensive that it kind of it it makes it more and more difficult for uh individuals to kind of stand on their principles because they're always having to look over their shoulder and think about donors think about challenges raising money for campaigns and and so on so i think that what you might describe as the kind of the ordinariness of politics has really declined over the last 50 60 years and and rulings from scotus like citizens united and a few others that made it so you can buy your politicians um you know you can you can buy from scotus like citizens united and a few others that made it so you can

buy your politicians um you know you can you can buy your scotus thing evidently now if you're a billionaire you can own your own uh scotus uh uh member um yeah just buy your own judge really when it comes down but you know i think that i personally i think we always have to be careful uh with kind of one of the one of the other problems around the difficulties with politics is that you know we're always we're always saying that Washington is broken that politics is corrupt that the supreme court is is is corrupt and can be bought and I think that you know that that kind of degrades the political process as well that you know there there have been um whatever

about the kind of the individual cases and individual decisions of the the supreme court it's still consistently over the course of american history has been one of the essential bulwarks to uh defending uh democracy and the and the vision of the the founders in this kind of uh division of power so you know it's it's a it's a really really tricky balance i think and i i agree with you it's it's it's uh well we throw a lot of jokes around the show and a lot of segues uh into different things uh and you know we you know sometimes it's easier to do the cheap joke uh there are a lot of people as you mentioned that pick up on that, and they just throw up their hands and become agnostic.

They just don't care, and they don't vote. And they're like, I don't know, why should I vote? Because, you know, like you mentioned, well, you know, there's so much that's bad. But actually, you know, and we talk about this on the show from time to time, the problem is the people who don't vote in this country, um, and they don't give a damn. Uh, and that is the problem because the people who end up giving a damn voting and running this country are the people that, um, you know, sometimes aren't the best people and we need everybody in this democracy to take care of it because, um, it's, it's fragile

and, uh, everybody needs to vote and everyone needs to care and everyone needs to be involved. You, I, I'm a big believer that you get the government that you vote or don't vote for. If you, even if you don't vote, you have made a choice. Um, and you made a choice for some of the worst people to get out of power because then you, it's now just up to the parties instead of the average middle America sort of person. Those are my thoughts on it. You get the government you vote for. So if you don't like the people, maybe you should go look in the fucking mirror.

I don't know, what do you think? On that question of people not voting, sometimes, sure, people maybe don't vote because they can't be bothered, but a lot of people don't vote because they can't be bothered, but a lot of people don't vote because they don't feel any connection with politics, that they feel disenfranchised by the political process.

That, you know, there is, as I say this as an outsider, as a newcomer to the country since 2010, that there is no country like the united states which discusses its politics more that takes a pride in its politics you know kind of endlessly discusses the political process um and i and i yeah absolutely that i mean you know that i mean we're already talking about the 2024 presidential election um it's more than a year away in the UK, which is a very mature and successful democracy. You know, we usually complain about an election campaign that takes six or seven weeks. That's right. You guys are shorter in your time. Yeah. So, you know, there's a sense in which, you know kind of americans are really invested in their in their democracy so

it's about trying to find a way to take that fascination with politics that real commitment but but reconnecting with people so that they feel that they have that connection with the political process with what's going on in uh in uh was, you know, that's one of the reasons why, you know, I wrote the book about Dylan was because partly I'm fascinated by this earlier era where, you know, there is just more general appreciation and understanding of the political system where people are able to work across the aisle, where they are a bit more pragmatic about things,

where it's quite possible for a politician from one party to work in the government of another party. There are currently no Republicans in Joe Biden's administration. When Donald Trump was president, there were no Democrats in his cabinet. Mike Flynn, the short-lived national security advisor, was the only high-prof uh in that administration so we've moved away from a time where people can work together can draw ideas from the other side where they might think that the people on the other side of the aisle are not necessarily their enemy they're just their opponent there you go

yeah i always thought that, you know, maybe I watched the House of Lords too much with you guys arguing over there. It's fun to watch the debates in there and some of the slings that you guys throw at each other in the House of Lords. And so it's kind of fun to watch that politics over there. And I always assume you guys from,

you know, watching the house that I'm like, well, this, uh, their parliament, they must throw around a lot of politics, but I forgot you guys do have a shorter run as do a lot of other countries,

um, for, uh, running for office. Um, I wonder why is this so long? Is it because we're such a huge country and it takes so long to tour around and kiss the babies and babies and shake hands?

Or are we just, I don't know, just obsessed with ourselves because we're Americans? I don't think it's that you're obsessed with yourself. But as I say, you Americans, it seems to me, are obsessed with politics, that you love politics, you love the game. And let's face it, it's not just Americans, is it? The whole world is fascinated by the presidential election, partly because it's to elect the most powerful person, office holder in the entire world, but also because presidential election is a blood sport.

At the end of the day you go through this process you see people that you think are absolutely brilliant just wilt before your eyes um and at the end at the end of the day it comes down to this kind of gladiatorial combat uh where it's just the you know the the representative of one major political party versus the representative the nominee of the other major political party versus the representative, the nominee of the other major political party. And they just go hell for leather at each other. And it just makes for a fantastic vision. But as I say, you know, the United States for all the faults of its politics is one of the most stable political and successful political systems in the world.

So, you know, something is working, even when things are not working, something is working. There you go. And people don't realize that. I mean, we, yeah, we have a democracy that's fraught with all sorts of stuff. Yeah. It's fragile. Yeah. It's still, you know, I, a lot of people on, uh, assume that when it says the democracy

that we're, or the constitution that we're a perfect union. No, it's, it's, it's that we're moving towards a perfect union, which will probably always be moving, uh, towards a perfect union. You know, uh, president Obama said it best. We zig and we zag and we go back and forth. And sometimes we go really back this way and over this way hard and and uh but uh you know it's still one of the best uh things for democracy in the world and i think the best experiment for the the spirit the idealism of the human spirit i think what's really

when i used to look at the ussr when i growing up, I'm kind of dating myself, Gen Xers, Gen Zers are going, what's the USSR? We used to hide our best friends. Us Gen X people have to stick together. Yeah, we do. The greatest generation ever. But when I used to look at the two of them as an entrepreneur, I realized that capitalism was really about the spirit of the human spirit, the potential that you could do anything and be anything. And the communism was really about just pushing down, controlling and containing human spirit and the ideal. And I think that's why we technically won, or at least I think we won. I guess we have to wait a few hundred more

years to see if we won, get as far as british uh you know a few thousand years down the road so give us your final thoughts in your book what you want people to remember and pitch to pick up the book as we go so so i think there are really there are two things that the the first thing is just to kind of be interested in this guy that, you know, this is somebody who made mistakes, yes, but was a really serious figure from the time. And partly because of what happens at the end of the Kennedy administration with the tragedy of the assassination and then the myth of Camelot. And then we're straight into Vietnam that he tends to he's just been forgotten. So he's a he's an underappreciated figure but one who I think is worthy of investigation and then the second thing to take away from it is that this

this book is an illustration it's an example of when politics was done differently and it's not saying that politics was done perfectly during that time. I mean, you only have to look at segregation in the South to realize that this was not a perfect society or a perfect political society. Far from it. But there was a way in which politics was done, a kind of pragmatism, a kind of evolving towards social progress that I think is worthy of revisiting just because it gives such a stark contrast to the way in which our own politics are conducted today. There you go. We need more sanity and more people that are working down the middle. I think this, like you say, this is great that the gentleman's working with both sides of the aisle. We need more of that. And as you said, today when we see the extremists in the House of Representatives

literally overthrowing a Speaker of the House because they can't get their way and being able to do that, I mean, just with four votes that they had at their disposal, I think he lost by six in the House. I noticed Pelosi abstained or she wasn't in that house chamber at the time uh which i thought was kind of interesting uh i was waiting to hear her vote um but but the fact that you know the extremists of a party can overthrow their speaker

is kind of you know it's kind of scary because you're like, geez, we've seen populism rise around the world. I believe, who is it just elected a populist leader in Slovakia? Slovakia, that's right. And Italy has a populist far-right leader as well, and Hungary too. Victor Orban, Hungary. To be noted, it's the original party in Italy of Mussolini.

So there you go. And evidently, a lot of Europe is leaning that way. So there you go. But yeah, it's a scary time in history and interesting. So the more we can, as I said before the show, the one thing man can learn from his history is that man never learns from his history. So please, for the love of God, people, buy history books and learn from them.

Thank you very much, Richard, for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. Give us any dot coms you want people to look you up on the internet, please, sir. Yeah, so it's bard.edu, which is Bard College, and americanpurpose.com, where I host the Bookstack podcast. There you go. Thank you very much, Richard, for coming on the show. This has been really fun, and I'm going to look forward to your book. And I'm going to go grab that schlesinger book too i'm

really into that yeah thanks so much for having me chris it's really been a blast thank you and thanks to our audience for tuning in it's always a blast to have you guys as well go to goodreads.com fortune's christmas linkedin.com fortune's christmas youtube.com fortune's christmas and christmas one be good to each other stay safe and we'll see you guys next time and that should have us out lots of