The Dispatch Podcast - The Highest Calling | Interview: David Rubenstein

Episode Date: September 30, 2024

Jamie is joined by David Rubenstein—co-founder of The Carlyle Group and author of The Highest Calling: Conversations on the American Presidency—to discuss the legacies of presidents from Abraham Lincoln to Joe Biden and what we can do about America’s debt. The Agenda: —Original interviews with presidents —Is Lincoln the greatest president? —Unpredictable paths to the presidency —Franklin D. Roosevelt’s transformation —Gerald Ford’s Pardon of Richard Nixon —Donald Trump and Joe Biden —Anti-Israel encampments —Debt and global stability The Dispatch Podcast is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including members-only newsletters, bonus podcast episodes, and weekly livestreams—click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Jamie Weinstein. My guest today is David Rubenstein. He is the co-founder and co-chairman of the Carlisle Group, a host of several interview shows on PBS and Bloomberg TV, owner of the Baltimore Orioles, the author of his newest book, The Highest Calling, Conversations on the American Presidency, which is a collection of interviews that he has done with presidential historians and presidents and former presidents, the presidency. It is a fascinating read and the main subject of our podcast today. But I also talk to David about the economy, something that he is also highly proficient in and understanding. I think you're going to find this a very interesting conversation. So without further ado, I give you Mr. David Rubenstein. David Rupinstar, welcome to the Dispatch podcast. My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

First, thank you for writing this book. I've listened to the whole thing on audio. It was fascinating. I know you've had many careers throughout your life and now writing books. I hope by the end of this, perhaps I can convince you to be a producer of some of the scenes that in this book. Because I think there are some movie qualities here that have not put to the silver screen with I'll point out as we go along. Well, thank you for taking the... the time to listen to the book, and I hope you enjoyed it. I did. I actually was captivated,

especially by a couple of the sections. I want to start with Lincoln. I'm not going to get through all the presidents, but I'm going to try to touch on some of them. In the intro to Lincoln that you write before your interview, something you wrote struck me as an interviewer, myself, like you are, that I had never known, but now seems obvious. And I would like you just to comment on it, you wrote that we don't have any interviews with Lincoln because that was not a thing back then. Now that you think about it, we don't really have any interviews with a lot of the great people of history because it doesn't seem to be a thing. When did it become a thing? And why wasn't it? It seems obvious that you would want to interview and have these interviews with some of these

great historical figures. The format that we now know is fairly common, you know, which is an interview format, really didn't develop into a kind of entertainment form, I would say, probably until the late 1950s when the Tonight Show began with Steve Allen and then Jack Parr, then Johnny Carson, and then people began to do it in the daytime like Bill Donahue and Oprah Winfrey. And then it became a situation where it was recognized that you can actually make it as a really interesting form of entertainment to have interviews going for some extended period of time. But there's no interviews at George Washington, no interviews with Abraham Lincoln. And I've often thought, how can we replicate that? How can we kind of do it? And what I've done over the years is sometimes I've interviewed people that portray Lincoln or portray Washington. They're kind of a fictional portrayal. And these people have the language and the mannerisms of Lincoln or Washington. But I wonder with artificial intelligence, whether it would be possible to go back at some point and have an interview that would be reconstructed about what Lincoln would actually have said, given all the things we know about Lincoln. But we don't actually have any

interviews. Well, if Lincoln was in one of your interview shows that you have, what is what is the burning question that you have for him that you would want to ask? Well, Lincoln, there are many things, but I guess one, a couple questions I would ask him, why did you stay with some bad generals for a long time? Have you ever thought that about just letting the South go? Because many people in the North at the time said, look, the South wants us to succeed, let them go. We'll have our own country in the North. Many people in the North wanted that. Lincoln did not do that. Why was he willing to support slavery for such a long time? He didn't issue the Emancipation Proclamation until January 1 of 1863. Why didn't he issue it earlier, or why didn't

he really oppose slavery in a very visible way earlier, as he had any regrets about going to Ford's Theater that night without any more military protection? As I think pointed out in the book, Mrs. Grant did not like Mrs. Lincoln. And so when Abraham Lincoln invited Ulysses S. Grant to go with him to see our American cousin at Ford's Theater that night. Mrs. Grant didn't want to go because she couldn't stand Mrs. Lincoln, so they made an excuse to get out of town. Had Grant gone there, he would have had a gigantic military operation with him, and it would have prevented that John Wilkes booth from probably getting near the president. So, but you have a lot of those kind of situations in history, you never know what would have happened. I used to ask on my old podcast guests,

you know, with historical leader they most admire. And along with Churchill, Lincoln was the most common answer. You in the book, and I've seen you an interview say that you consider Lincoln the greatest president, I wonder if you can lay out why you think he was, but at the same time taking into one of the themes that comes up into your book, that he was also the president that kind of centralized the executive and that other presidents, you know, fairly or unfairly used as an example to further centralize and get executive power. In my view, Lincoln was the greatest president by far because he held the union together. As I just mentioned, many people in the North said, we don't really care if the South wants us to

see. We don't really like their slavery tactics. Let them go. Lincoln said, no, we want to keep the country together. So he held the country together, number one. Two, he ultimately issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Later than maybe some people wanted, but that began the end of slavery, as we know, and then eventually the 13th Amendment officially ended it. And then next factor is that he did all this with humility. You know, humility is a virtue, I think. And sometimes you don't see that and great leaders. He didn't run around the White House saying, I won the Civil War, aren't I great? Or I just issued the emancipation proclamation. Aren't I great? But he just did it with great humility. And he also had an ability to write and communicate in a way that no other

president has. For example, McGettysburg Address is 272 words. The most eloquent 272 words ever written about what it means to be an American and about what America is all about. And, you know, his second inaugural dress was similarly a brilliant piece of writing craftsmanship. And so his ability to write and articulate, his humility, is winning the war, is freeing the slaves, puts him way above everybody else in my view as a president of the United States. Your section on Grant, I'm just going to, I took notes as I was listening to his life story. And let me just read a little bit of that and to have you comment. You interviewed one of his biographers, Ron Chernow. He was thrown out of the Army for drinking one year before this.

civil war. He was begging his father-in-law for a job. He then volunteers for the civil war, eventually gets into the regular army, ultimately becomes the top general who leads the union to victory because he's a logistics expert, becomes a mediocre president because he's too trusting of all those around whom would turn out to be corrupt, then loses all his money post-presidency, only to write a memoir in a severe pain at the end of his life. So his wife has money before he dies, and the memoir turns out to be one of the best ever written, maybe the best ever written by a U.S. president. Is there a lesson here that sometimes you, you know, you wouldn't have predicted him to be president. He's good at some things, terrible at others, and yet we remember

him greatly for winning the Civil War. Yeah, to put it in context for people who are listening, he listed as a drinking problem. And because of that, he was essentially forced out of the military as a young man. He couldn't get a job, even from his relatives. So he's basically is chopping wood, then making into firewood, and going into the streets of St. Louis. is to sell firewood, you know, as a way to make a living. Eight years later, he's president in the United States. So what did he do with those eight years? Well, after the Civil War started, he became involved in the military, used his military skills, ultimately turned out to be the best general that Lincoln ever had, ultimately won the war, and then was elected president.

Did not turn out to be a great president because he's too trusting of people around him. There was a lot of corruption then, so he was personally honest. And then, as you point out, He lost almost all of his money after he left the presidency because he gave it to his son to invest and it turned out to be a fraudulent investment. So to make money for his family before he died with, he had, I guess, tongue cancer, throat cancer. He basically wrote a memoir, his publisher was Samuel Clemens, known his Mark Twain. It turned out to be the most literate work ever written by a person who was president of United States. It dealt only with his military affairs and the Civil War, but it became an instant bestseller, the bestselling book,

probably in the history of the country at that time. And that really made his family reasonably wealthy by the standards of the day. But Grant died very shortly after he finished the book. But one of the things that drums out to me is that skills don't always transfer. I mean, you know, he seems he was great at being a Civil War General, not great at being a predicate. It doesn't have the ability to see he's work, has bad people working for him, not a great investor. I mean, do you see sometimes you've studied investors and you've studied presidents that these skills are sometimes not transferable? Yes, of course, everybody doesn't have equal skills. But think about this. We've had military leaders become president, and because they're

military leaders, you would think they'd be strong-willed, domineering kind of George Patton-type people, but they weren't. George Washington himself was a great military leader, but as a president, while a great president, he was relatively passive in things. He didn't seem like a very hard-charging person as president. Dwight Eisenhower was the Supreme Allied commander in World War. War II, yet as president, relatively successful, but more passive. He didn't really assert himself in the way that other president did, and the same with Grant. So being a military leader doesn't necessarily mean when you get in the White House, you're going to act like you're ready to invade Normandy or something with that kind of leadership capability. This is one of the

themes I'll ask you throughout the episode. It's kind of sometimes the stars align that these people become president. You mentioned in one of the interviews is that he's a logistic expert. I think during one of his time in the military. I think maybe it was at the Mexican-American War that he did logistics on. If he is not a logistics expert, does he get picked to lead the Union Army? I mean, was this a turn of fate? Well, what happened was he was, when the war broke out, he was invited to join the militia, which is the state army of Illinois, because the governor of Illinois recognized that Grant had military background. He'd gone to West Point, and the fact that he was kicked out of the military wasn't that widely known at the time.

So he got that position. He started doing a good job, starting winning wars for battles, I should say. And eventually he was drafted into the regular Union Army, and he kept winning battles, battle after battle after battle. And Lincoln kept saying, who was this general that's winning battles when my other generals are not even fighting? So eventually he brought him to Washington and made him what was called the lieutenant general, which means the top general in the military then.

So he was criticized because people said, well, yeah, he's winning wars, but he's also throwing so many troops into it. that half his troops are getting killed in the battles. So he was heavily criticized for just basically using his troops as cannon fodder. And maybe there's some truth to the fact that his soldiers died fairly heavily, but no more heavily than Lee's soldiers did. In other words, soldiers died heavily in those combat situations in that war, and Lee lost the same percentage of soldiers as Grant did.

But there's no doubt that Grant lost a lot of soldiers were killed in the way he basically had approached the military, which is push forward, push forward, and don't retreat ever. Just keep pushing forward. When you push forward, sometimes you're going to lose a lot of troops. Final question on Grant, and this is one of the sections where I'll maybe convince you to be a movie producer, he leaves the presidency and goes on this world tour. Can you speak to this world tour?

It sounds just fascinating. Yeah, presidents of the United States didn't really leave the United States very much. I don't think any president ever left the United States as president up until Woodrow Wilson when he went to Paris to negotiate the treaty of Versaida and World War I. The presidents basically were homebodies. Grant had never really been outside the United States, but he thought he would do a world tour after he was president, and he basically went around the world for almost a year

and was received as almost a royal figure, treated very well in every part of the world he was at. And I think he learned a lot about that. In fact, when he got back, he realized how much he liked being president. He ran for president one more time. was he did not seek a third term. There was no law against a third term in those days. But so he did, but he voluntarily did not seek a third term. But when he came back, he wasn't happy with the U.S. and I think he, the U.S. government, the way he was operating, and he decided

he would seek a third term and then following election, but he didn't get the nomination. Garfield, I didn't know very much about Garfield before I read your book, but another fascinating figure. He goes to college, and by his sophomore year, he is a full professor of mathematics, or I don't forget what the subject is, but speak about that. Garfield may have been the highest IQ person ever be President of the United States. He was a math genius. He was also, he's a graduate of Williams College, also a person who became a college president, I think in his 20s.

And he also was a Civil War General and did very well, a member of Congress, Speaker of the House. And his elected President of the United States, even though he didn't want to be President of United States. He was actually nominating somebody else. and then four months into his presidency, he was shot by a defeated, a failed office secret somebody who wanted to be ambassador to Paris or France. And amazing thing in the book is that the bullets, that's two bullets that went into Garfield, one of them was not that significant

and could have gone, not a significant problem. The one that was significant was the one that they couldn't locate. And Alexander Graham Bell comes along with a machine that can detect where the bullet is, and he wasn't allowed to really use it properly. And so ultimately, Garfield dies because of bad medical treatment. Garfield could have survived had he had better medical treatment. Just a question about who the presence you chose to do in the book. Garfield, fascinating story, but is only president four months. Why Garfield did not some other presidents that serve longer? You know, when you publish a book, you can't make it encyclopedics. I couldn't have every president. People, a theory, by publishes, there's books too.

big, people won't buy it. So I had to make it a certain size. I picked presidents who's the authors about these presidents were people who had good stories. So the Garfield story was quite interesting and a good author, Candace Marlard. And some other presidents I've written about before, I didn't want to replicate it here. People say, how come you to have Lyndon Johnson? Well, I previously had another book published an interview by Robert Caro on Linda Johnson that I didn't want to replicate that. FDR, he was a privileged but unimpressive son in his early, years, people wouldn't have predicted him that he'd become president. I guess my question is, how does that change? And do you see any parallels between that assent, that story, and

JFK jumps out to me a little bit? George W. Bush jumps out, people that would not have predicted these sons of privilege becoming president and they become president. Well, of the people who became President United States, certainly in the 20th century, none of them would have been predicted to be president when they were in high school or college, with the exception of Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton was a student leader from the beginning, and he was seen as a real, really dynamic, political kind of figure as a young boy and as a young man. But nobody else who became president in the 20th century had that qualification. FDR, for example, was the son of a wealthy person, Hudson County, New York. He was not seen as a particularly gifted intellect, wasn't seen as a

leader of men, wasn't seen as any person who was going to amount to that much other than be a wealthy landowner. And then the story of the book is how when he got polio, he kind of had to reinvent himself because he knew he couldn't walk again, but he wanted to kind of have a life in public service. So with the grit and determination, he used to kind of deal with his polio, he made himself into a stronger-willed, more dynamic person than he was before. And the story in the book written by Jonathan Dorman, I interviewed him, was how polio actually enabled FDR to have the qualities enabled him. You have to be president and to be a great president. You also mentioned that we have Blair House because of FDR, and it's kind of a funny story why he ended up building it. Would you

mind just tell him that? I just was at the White House last week when they celebrated the 200th anniversary of Blair House. And Blair House was owned by a private citizen, Mr. Blair, and then his children. FDR used to entertain people at the White House, and they would stay over. And on three three or four occasions, Winston Churchill came there before the World War II and as World War II moved forward. And he used to walk around not fully clothed. And Mrs. Roosevelt didn't find that really very comforting to see the prime minister of England walking around half naked. So she basically suggested her husband, maybe we could find a place to put foreign leaders up, not just at the White House. And so in 1943, they bought Blair House as a place where people could actually

stay if they're visiting the White House. I think, I don't know if it's mentioned in the FDR section, but I think it's mentioned in the later sections about just the White House more generally. But up until World War II, you could go up to the White House with your business card and ask to meet with the president. It's a very different world now. Absolutely. Before World War II, you could drive your car up to the driveway in the White House,

parked there. And if you're a young teenager with your girlfriend or your boyfriend, you know, you're sitting there in a car doing whatever young people do in a car and nobody's going to bother you because there's no policeman basically guarding the place. When Lincoln was president in the United States and before that as well, there were people could come into the White House, knock on the door and say, I want to see the president. And then they would feel like an obligation to get you in to see the president that day. Sometimes you might have to come back another day. But it was amazing how job seekers would come in. Like Garfield had a job seeker

come in and asked for a job to be ambassador to France and he got turned down. And later that was the person who assassinated Garfield. But it's amazing how lacking in security. In fact, when I worked in the White House for Jimmy Carter, there were no metal detectors at the White House. Even then, you could walk in with a bazooka, and there was no metal detectors. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is the consequences of not having life.

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And when you're ready to launch, use offer code dispatch to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Truman, one of the facts that jumped out at me was that he had only met FDR twice in his life once before he was vice president once after. How does that happen? Well, FDR had been president elected three times. And the third time, he didn't really like his vice president, Henry Wallace. So he said, I knew he got somebody who's more central. Wallace was seen as very liberal and maybe too liberal for Roosevelt. And so for the fourth, election campaign, he selected Harry Truman. He'd only met him once before, but he was recommended to him by his political advisors. And in those days, the vice president didn't really

have much to do. In fact, they had no office in the, in the White House, no office in the executive office building. And Truman had an office in the Senate. That's all that he had. And he only met Roosevelt once after he was elected President of the United States and Vice President United States. They only met one time. So he didn't know about the atomic bomb. He didn't know about anything Roosevelt was thinking. They just never met. atomic bomb, you know, he learns of it after the president dies and he has no second thoughts about dropping it. I wonder, did he ever think back and question it? And do you think he was right to go full speed ahead and drop the bomb? He dropped the atomic bomb twice, obviously on Hiroshima and

Nagasaki. He never had any second thoughts about it. He never kind of said, geez, did I do the right thing or not? Because at the time, it was certainly thought that to get Japan to surrender, we'd have of a land invasion of Japan, and that might involve 500,000 Americans being killed, as well as several million Japanese being killed. So the cost-benefit analysis at the time, you can question whether it's fair or not, was that by dropping the atomic bomb of once, that would get the Japanese to surrender and no American lives would be expended. It didn't work because after Hiroshima, the Japanese said we're fighting on, and the royal family was willing to keep pushing forward, and so were the generals. Only after the second bomb was dropped did they finally realize that they

had to end the war. But even then, there was almost a coup against the Japanese royal family because the Japanese royal family and Emperor Hirohito was prepared to surrender, and some people in the military were trying to assassinate Hirohito to keep him for agreeing to end the war. I think Truman was correct in making the decision he did, but it's obviously a difficult decision. He wasn't a popular president when he left office, but history is remembering him differently. How does it change over time? What do you think factors that have created his increase among historians as view his popularity? FDR was president for more than 12 years. He was an eloquent person. He was beloved by the American people. He got them out of the

depression in the view of most American people. He did many things that make himself a very likable president, and he spoke with great eloquence. Harry Truman had a Missouri twang. He didn't go to college, was not seen as particularly eloquent. His own mother law thought that he was better as a farmer than as a politician and didn't think much of him. And he basically had a very straightforward approach, no eloquence to it, not a lot of ceremony. And as a result, he was not all that popular. And in fact, when he left the White House, he could have run for re-election again in 1952, but he chose not to do so. But after he won in 48, his popularity went down. He left the White House with one of the lowest popularity ratings ever for a president leaving.

His popularity soared many years later when people realized that he took the tough decision on the atomic bomb. He helped to create the UN. He helped to create the IMF. He helped to create the World Bank. He helped to create NATO. He created the CIA. And he integrated the military in the United States. And he recognized Israel when it was not possible.

to do so. So people in recent years, particularly because of the book that David McCullough wrote about Truman, that won the Pulitzer Prize, people have seen him as a much greater light than they did at the time he was president. Is there any, and this might be a tough one, is there any president that hasn't got the David McCullough treatment? Obviously, David McCullough has passed away. But if they got the David McCullough treatment or will in the future by another historian, you think could rise in the rankings that's not giving his fair due right now in the historical rank? Well, I think my former boss, Jimmy Carter, was not very popular when he left office. Obviously, we had the hostage problems and inflation, and he left with very low approval ratings,

and he lost overwhelmingly to Ronald Reagan. In the 40-plus years since he left the presidency, people have been approving of what he's done as former president, but also they look back at what he did as president. In those days, Carter proposed so much legislation that he couldn't get it all through, but what he got through was significant. But today, we have a lower standard. if you get your appropriation bills through and you don't have a debt limit problem in improving the debt limit, people think you're a pretty good president. You get one or two bills through, people think you're a superstar. Carter got many, many bills through, but because he proposed so many more, he was seen as not all that successful. Carter, I think, will be looking

better in history than he was the time he left the White House. Some presidents come out to be looking worse. Woodrow Wilson was thought to be a great president at the time, helped win World War I and so forth. But now we know that his wife acted as president effectively because he had a stroke for a year and a half at the end of his White House tour and essentially he couldn't really make decisions and his wife was making them for him and she obviously wasn't elected. In addition, he re-segregated the federal workforce. In other words, the federal workforce had been integrated and because Wilson grew up in the deep south, he didn't believe that blacks were equal to whites. he re-segregated the federal workforce, among other things, he actually had the movie that said great

things about the Ku Klux Plan, the birth of a nation, shown at the White House. So now Wilson's name has been taken off the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton. People have had a lower view of him. The same is true of Andrew Jackson. Democrats used to have Jefferson Jackson Day dinners everywhere around the world, when they were having a dinner to raise money. It would be called a Jefferson Jackson dinner. Now, because Jackson is seen as a racist and as a person who did so many damaging things to Native Americans and blacks, he's not, you know, very much in favor by Democrats anymore. So his reputation has gone down.

I want to get a little bit more to Carter in a second, but Ford I want to talk about a little bit. In the book, your interview with the historian you talked to Richard Norton Smith, emphasizes that Ford's decision to pardon Nixon, he believed that a pardon, and I don't know where he, I forget he researched it, came with an omission of guilt, and that kind of prompted him to do the, pardon. Speak to that decision about partying Nixon and that little nugget that Norton Smith

mentioned. Okay. Well, there's this discussion about whether Ford had agreed to pardon Nixon in advance. And when Ford was vice president, Al Haig, the then chief of staff of the White House, went to Ford and implied that Nixon was prepared to resign making Ford president, but there was a kind of implication that a pardon should be forthcoming. And when Ford talked about this with his staff, they said, you know, don't get caught in that trap. So he called Hague back and said, look, there's no deal on a pardon. There's no deal on a resignation. You know, you do what you have to do for the president, and I'll do what I have to do. So he didn't have a deal in advance, though. Hague probably wanted such a deal. Later, Ford realized that

everybody was asking him about Nixon. Is he going to be tried? Is he going to be put in jail? And he just thought it was going to take too much of his time to deal with this issue. So he pardoned him early in his tenure as president, it was heavily criticized. And I suspect that to the fact that Ford lost the election to Jimmy Carter by narrow amount, that had he not pardon Nixon, probably Ford would have won that election in 1976. So it was very costly for him to do so. I mean, it seems like if the vice president wins this election, that issue might come up again, whether to pardon a former president, even if he hasn't gone through trial, some of the federal trials. Do you believe this is something that the vice president

might study in making her decision? I think if the vice president of the United States is elected president, I think there will be some people in the Democratic Party and some people in the Republican party who will say, let's put all of the Trump issues behind us and pardon him. Now recognizing that the pardon of a president of the United States can only deal with federal crimes. So you'd have to deal with the governor of New York and the governor of Georgia to pardon for the indictments there. but I suspect there will be some pressure for it. What you're referring to is in the Nixon pardon is Nixon did never really want to admit he committed a crime. And Ford used to carry around a piece of paper in his wallet that would say a pardon, by accepting a pardon, it's an admission of guilt.

But Nixon never actually technically said he had committed a crime. And I suspect the same thing would be true in the future. If Trump were to be pardoned by some future president, I suspect that president would want Trump to say he made a, he committed a crime, but I doubt that Trump would actually say that. As you mentioned, you worked for Jimmy Carter. When's the last time you talked to him? Did you try to, I mean, he's old, I mean, he's almost 100 now. Did you try to get him to participate in the book?

He'll be 100 in October 1. He hasn't been in a position to really talk to people for a while. So, you know, he does talk to his grandchildren, his children. But I think outsiders, he hasn't really seen them for a while. You know, I saw him a number of times after he left the presidency, but I cannot say that I've seen him recently or talked to him recently. Did you, I mean, you, George H. W. Bush worked for Carlisle. Was there ever a thought of bringing Jimmy Carter into your company while you ran it? No, because George Herbert Walker Bush was a businessman

and he enjoyed business and he enjoyed, you know, meeting foreign leaders. And Jimmy Carter was not a business person. He wasn't interested in doing the kind of things that my kind of firm does. And I think he told me one time he did make a speech at a Carlisle event. And I think we paid him an honorarium, but he said it was the only honorarium he had ever taken. And I think since that time, he never taken one. All the money he ever raised was for his Carter Center. He was not really interested in making money for himself. And no, he was not interested in the kind of things that investment firms do. He had other goals and lives. In the book, in the interview in the book, it mentions that Carter was not an American exceptionalist, like a lot of presidents. Can you speak to

that. The American exceptionalism of the view that America is a special country put on the face of the earth by God, more or less, that to do things that no other country can do. I think Jimmy Carter's view is that, you know, all humans are equal, and he didn't think America was exceptional in the sense that we had a God-given right to be able to do whatever we wanted to do. I think that's fair to say he was a fairly religious person. Most of the presidents that I've examined do give lip service to the religion and their commitment to religion. But Carter was more of the lip service. He spent, you know, his whole life teaching Sunday school. He really observed the principles of his faith. And he was much more religious than virtually any president I've ever read

about. He obviously gets a lot of credit in the many quarters for his post-presidency. And in the book, you interviewed Douglas Brinkley, who I believe himself wrote a book about Carter's post-prevency presidency and traveled with him. In the interview, while he, he said, he said, he he talks about admiring Carter's presence. He does mention that he found Carter's relationship with Yasser Arafat troubling. And obviously, there have been some, I think Alan Dershowitz is the most famous who have accused Carter of an animus towards Jews based on his kind of coziness with Arafat and Hamas at one point. What do you say to those who thought that Carter harbored some animus towards Jews? I don't think that was true. Carter, I don't think was close to Hamas.

He had a relationship with the PLO in the sense that he knew Arafat and he knew Palestinian leaders. I think Carter was more active in that area before Hamas really was active. Anyway, I think he didn't need for the book, Peace, Not Apartheid with Kaleen Michelle, but it could be wrong. Yes. Carter had a book where he, in effect, said that what Israel was doing was apartheid. But I think that was focused more on the West Bank than Gaza. but in any event, I believe that Carter had a view that he had reached an agreement with Began and Sadat at Camp David that basically in return for peace, which was symbolized by the Camp David agreement, that there would be no more settlements in the West Bank. And Began always had the

view that there was no such agreement. So after the agreement and the treaty was signed, the Israelis began to build more settlements in the West Bank, and that was upsetting to Carter because he thought that was going to undo the peace agreement that he ultimately had achieved after 13 days at Camp David. I don't think Carter is anti-Semitic, but I recognize for sure that there are some people in the Jewish community who don't share that view. My former boss, Stuart Eisenstadt, is extremely active in the Jewish community, and he's written many books about what Carter believed in, and he knows do Carter far better than I do. And he does not think that Carter was anti-Semitic.

Carter just had the view that for peace, Israel should not be building the settlements in the West Bank. And that was seen by some people as anti-Semitic, to some extent. In your book, you interview Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton. And there was a moment in that interview that struck me. You asked Bill Clinton whether if he won his failed congressional campaign in 1974, if he would have ever been president. His answer was not a chance. Can you talk to how luck and fate plays a role?

I mean, sometimes you don't get something you want, but had you got that thing, which would be the congressional race, you may have never gotten the bigger thing, the presidency. Well, what Clinton was referring to is he ran against an incumbent, Congressman Hammersmith, who was a Republican incumbent, and he lost. He came closer than anybody thought he would, but he lost. It was very young. Had he won, he had probably become another member of Congress and maybe gone to the Senate, had a long career there. But his view is by becoming governor later, he got more

executive experience and really it made him be more self-confident about the fact that he could be President of the United States. Take George Herbert Walker Bush as another example of the same situation. He ran for the United States Senate twice and got clobbered both times, yet he wound up becoming President in the United States. And when he ran for president, he had never really won statewide anything. And as somebody said at the time, he's running for. for President of the United States in 1980, what is his constituency? It's essentially his Christmas card list.

In other words, the people he sent Christmas cards to, that was his constituency. They were friends of his, but there was no real political constituency. So lots of times people lose. Jimmy Carter lost the first time he ran for governor. So many people, George Herbert Walker, George W. Bush ran for Congress

and lost the first time he ran, the only time he ran for Congress. Many people who run for office to lose and ultimately come back. Ronald Reagan ran for president, twice and he, before he was elected president. He ran in 1968 briefly, and then he ran in 1976. So it's not uncommon to come back from defeat to become president of the United States. But I think what struck me about Bill Clinton's answer, now that I think about it, and

maybe the same would be with Barack Obama and his failed congressional race, his first race, had they got elected to the House, they'd be enmeshed in the kind of House politics, and not very many people come from the House to be the president, that sometimes these defeats ultimately set you up, or if you won what you thought you wanted, you would never have had a chance to be president. Well, look, in the case of Garfield, he was the only person who went from the House to be president of the United States. He only lasted four months of he, because of the assassination. He had been an elected speaker of the House, but before he assumed that position, really, he was in the House for quite a while. Yes, I think when you're a member of the House or the

member of the Senate, you have to cast a lot of votes. And when you cast votes, you make enemies. And so not having a long legislative record is probably a good thing. Aren't that many people go directly from Congress to become president of the United States. Your interview with Maggie Haberman on Trump is probably more negative than I feel like the other interviews. And I guess my question is, does January 6 put an asterisk on Donald Trump's presidency? And will that asterisk always be there? Well, I interviewed Maggie Haberman because she wrote one of the best books written about Trump's presidency and about Trump himself. but it was harder to find an author on Trump's presidency that was extremely favorable.

So, you know, it wasn't like I could find a lot of people at the interview. But to make sure that it was as fair as possible, I interviewed Donald Trump himself. And so I had a time, he gave me an hour of his time to do an interview and, you know, it's in there too. In Maggie Haberman's case, you know, she knew the person pretty well. I had, I would say, a jaundiced view of Trump. But I think, you know, his statements about his presidency kind of counter some of what Maggie Haberman said. On January 6th, it depends to some extent what happens on this election. If Donald Trump is elected again and he pardons the January 6 protesters or people in jail,

as he says he might or would, and he rewrites history for the next four years, January 6 will not be seen as a significant event in the history of the country. If he loses the election, no doubt, people will say, well, because of January 6th and the subsequent indictments relating to it, that made it impossible for him to get to be elected president again. I think January 6th will depend on who becomes president of the United States this time. But I think it's clearly a scar on America to have had that happen, and obviously people blame everybody else but themselves. But sure, if you remember where you were on that day watching it, you probably couldn't believe what you saw. believe what I saw either. Do you foresee any? I mean, we have all these, not all these, there's not many of them, but there are these moments where the presidents come together,

usually over a loss of another president or something historic. And it does seem that Donald Trump is the one who's not ever there or invited. Do you ever see him being part of the president's club or is what he's done just too much that he's ever part of this very exclusive club? I'd be surprised. Former presidents get together typically at president. presidential library dedications and at funerals. But Donald Trump didn't come to some funerals, and he doesn't really have a relationship with George W. Bush. He doesn't have a relationship. At this point, Carter, it's hard to have a relationship with him, but he doesn't have a relationship with Barack Obama. It doesn't really have a relationship with Joe Biden,

though Biden did call him after the assassination attempt recently to talk to him about it. I think Donald Trump's personality is just different than the personalities of other presidents and I don't think he's ever going to be close to other former presidents of the United States. No, I don't think that'll happen. Can you speak a little bit to your, I mean, you, as you can say, mentioned that you met him in the 90s, I think, at Mara Lago. What your relationship has been with him and how you interact with him these days? Well, I, when Mara Lago was not as political as they later became, I used to take my family there, my mother, my father for dinners and so forth. And he came by and had our photograph taken

with us, and he wasn't a political figure then. I didn't think it was that big a deal. Later, when I wanted to interview him for the Economic Club of Washington, well before he was running for president, I did, and I got to know him in that interview process. When he was president, I, as chairman of the Kennedy Center, I had to deal with him from time and time, and as chairman of the Smithsonian, I had to deal with him from time to time. So I developed a, you know, a working relationship with him, and I know him, I'd say, somewhat. And I've, I've, you know, He's hosted me on a couple occasions for dinners at the White House. I've been invited to dinners at the White House when he was president, mostly because

I was chairman of the Kennedy Center or maybe chairman of the Smithsonian or something. You know, he's an unusual person. He never had any experience in government. The only person ever to be elected president of the United States who had no experience in government. And while there are many things you can criticize about Donald Trump and many people do, think about it, he has a political ability that is quite unique. He's been nominated for the Republican Party three times.

in a row. No person in our country's history has been nominated three times a row by the Republican Party. Second, he left office and been indicted. He left office and had the defense of January 6th impeached twice, indicted five times, yet he still has a chance of being President of the United States. He has some political skills that are quite unique, I would say. So it's an interesting individual for sure. And obviously, he has some talents that people acknowledge. nor them at their peril, because if you minimize his political skills, then I think you run the risk that you're going to be very upset when he becomes President of the United States again, if he does.

Joe Biden, you interview Franklin Ford, who wrote a biography of Biden, and you ask him whether he regrets the handling of the Clarence Thomas hearing. And Four says he doesn't have regrets. He has grievances. He goes on to say he thinks that Biden thinks of himself as the world's greatest constitutional scholar. Is there a little bit of Trump and Biden? I mean, that sounds a very like a Trumpian thing to say. He doesn't have regrets. He has grievances. He's the world's greatest constitutional scholar. Well, I did have an interview of Biden himself in the book. I spent an hour alone

with him, no staff at the White House doing an interview with him, assuming that he would be the nominee. Obviously, it turned out not to be the case. I don't know that I've ever heard Joe Biden say he was the world's greatest constitutional scholar. I think Joe Biden is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, obviously spent a lot more time on legal matters than he would have been that he'd not had that position. I have not asked him about the Clarence Thomas hearings, so I don't have any direct knowledge of what his view would be on it. Mr. Forr thinks that Biden probably feels he handled it adequately. The events have overtaken what happened at that time, and I suspect today there are a lot of regrets by people that more witnesses were not called,

but, you know, I haven't heard Biden say that directly. I think Biden is generally happy with the way he handled his Senate career, and he doesn't look back on the Senate with a lot of regrets. That's my observation. In the beginning of the book, you write something that's fairly inspirational. You write that your interest in the presidency is due to my pride in being an American. You go on to say, like many others from modest circumstances who have lived the American dream, I feel achieving what I have been able to do would not have been readily have happened in other

countries because this country encourages upward mobility as part of its ethos, and because my last name would have been a bit of a barrier in other countries, particularly in the countries from which my forebearers came, Ukraine and Russia. The gentleman we just discussed, Franklin Four, recently wrote a piece in the Atlantic titled The Golden Age of Jews is Ending. Anti-Semitism on the right and the left threatens to bring a close to the unprecedented period of safety and prosperity for America. and demolish the liberal order they helped establish. That intro to the book that you write

about, you know, basically having a Jewish last name and be able to succeed in this country, do you fear, particularly after October 7th, that Franklin Foreman may be right in that that period of the golden age of Jews in America, the one that you grew up in, maybe fading? I worry about it because the rise of anti-Semitism is startling. In Europe, particularly, you see anti-Semitism that's very much in the forefront. The number of Jews, who have emigrate left. France is staggering. There are very few Jews left in England.

And you think about it, there were, you know, in World War II, we had, what, seven, eight, nine million Jews living in Europe. Then six million were killed. But you still had a few million left. Today, I doubt if you've got more than two million Jews, if that, in Western Europe, if that. Many have gone to the United States or other countries

and also to Israel. I do worry about it. I do think anti-Semitism is a big, problem and it's not going away anytime soon. I think what's going on in the Middle East now is obviously fueling anti-Semitism. Clearly that's what's caused some of the problems in the college campuses is anti-Semitism. I wish I had a solution for it. If I did, I would have gone to Iowa, New Hampshire, a long time ago, and said, here's why I should be president, but I obviously don't have a solution. Were you surprised about what happened on the college

campuses? I was. I am chairman of the board of the University of Chicago. I previously served as chairman of the board of Duke University, and I served for six years on the Harbor Corporation Board. So I spent a lot of time on university campuses, and I was surprised because after the Vietnam War protests of the 1960s, you didn't see activism on college in quite the way you saw it last year. And many college presidents now are fearful that you'll have a repeat of this kind of protest and these kind of encampments.

So far, we haven't seen it again this year, but that the people are worried about. I was surprised by the level of anti-Semitism and the level of, I won't say violence, but the way some of these students acted. And it was very disappointing to me as somebody who's been involved with universities and who thinks that private universities

and public universities are one of the greatest rassets this country has, and I think they've been diminished a bit by some of the protests. Were you surprised it all by how the college presidents, particularly those that testified, handled it? I was. I mean, I think that presidents who testified were testifying in a very fairly defensive way. And I think they were well prepared for a grand jury type investigation of them, but not for a public theatrical kind of presentation, which is what they became part of. And so unfortunately, really talented people were having their reputations besmirched as a result of what happened. So I was surprised at how the results of those hearings led to several. college presidents having to resign. A couple more questions of the book, and I want to close with some, maybe some economic

questions. Robert Todd Lincoln, this seems like another movie that you might be able to produce. He was at all three presidential assassinations. Well, he actually wasn't technically at the Lincoln one. When Lincoln was assassinated, he was brought across the street, and Robert Todd Lincoln was in town. He went to visit his father before he died. He did see him before he died, though he was not conscious. He was at the Garfield assassination.

he was a cabinet officer then and he was accompanying Garfield to a train station. And he was with McKinley when McKinley was assassinated. So you might say, you know, you don't want to hang out with Robert Todd Lincoln. There's nothing good as going to happen to you. But yes, it is a little bizarre. In the book at the end, you mentioned that one of the things that you would favor legislatively is an amendment that would allow immigrants to become, who become citizens to become president. Is there any immigrant in mind that you wish would have had the potential or who's still now could be president if this law was passed? Well, we have that in the Constitution.

It is said because some people didn't want Alexander Hamilton to become President of the United States, whether that's true or not, I don't know. But I would say Arnold Schwarzenegger, when he was governor of California, before some of the personal controversies arose, was a person that you could say he probably could have run for President of the United States and probably done reasonably well using California governorship as a base. Henry Kissinger wasn't a political person, but clearly had a lot of great talents and skills. And you think about it, today, we have 49 million immigrants in the United States.

The country in United States has about 330 million people. But 49 million, almost 50 million people are immigrants. Those 50 million people are excluded from being president of state. They can do almost anything else in the United States, be secretary of state, do anything else, but they can't be president. And I think it wouldn't be harmful to allow an immigrant to become president of the United States. You also mentioned that you wish there could be a law that would force presidents almost to sit down with journalists more often because of the important. of asking questions. Are you concerned in this age where everybody has an outlet left, right, and center that presidents can just conclude themselves in friendly media and therefore not ever

answer hard questions? I am not happy about it, and I recognize that it's not a Democratic or Republican thing. When people are president of the United States and they have a lot of things going on that they're responsible for, that are unpopular, they don't want to talk to reporters typically, and it's not a healthy sign. So I remember when I was growing up, John Kennedy regularly had a press conference every two weeks. They'd do it at the State Department auditorium. Jimmy Carter, my former boss, would do it pretty regularly every two weeks. And I think it's a good thing.

I wish we would have more presidents that would be more open to answering questions. But we obviously see that the public does not really agree with my view and maybe your view on that because no president seems to be really penalized for not answering questions that much or having regular press conferences. So it seems like it's more of a media obsession than I think it should be. But I think all citizens should be concerned about it. I'd like to close into it. There's a few economic questions since I have you here.

And this might be the transition to it. You are probably the most famous successful businessman billionaire who helps American history, preserve American history. But there was another famous one recently, Ken Griffin, who paid $43 million for a copy of the Constitution. Is there a, do you ever meet with other fellow billionaires who care about American history to kind of map out how you best can preserve some of these monuments and documents? I honestly haven't done that. I think each person who has a fair amount of money likes to make their own decisions. I am a member of the Giving Pledge Group, and I was an original signer of it, there were 40 of us

at the beginning. And from time of time, I have suggested to people at the Giving Pledge that we have a more concerted effort as a group do some things in the patriotic philanthropy area, but I haven't been that successful in doing that so far. So I've concluded that rather than try to persuade other people to do what I'm doing, I'm just going to do what I do, and maybe other people will follow it. And if they do, that'll be good. America's debt problem, obviously, it keeps going up no matter what proposals or it doesn't seem anyone cares very much anymore. Maybe a decade ago, it seemed that there was a lot of talk about it, but now it just seems faded by both political parties. How serious of an issue

do you find that to America's long-term prosperity? I think that two of the most serious problems we have are the dysfunction of the federal government as typified by the fighting in Congress back and forth between Democrats or Republicans on issues that shouldn't be seen as partisan, like passing debt limit bills, and also the problem of the amount of the debt itself. We have $35 trillion of debt. We now are paying more interest on the debt than we were paying, for our defense budget. And historically, when you go back a couple hundred years or so, when you see governments paying more interest on their debt than spending on their own national security, that's generally a sign of weakness. At some point, somebody's going to wake up and say,

we can't afford this anymore, and the dollar is going to go down in value, and we're going to devalue the currency because people will say, I don't want to buy dollars anymore. Remember, we're selling $35 trillion of debt. We're rolling it over every year and adding about $2 trillion every year. At some point, the people that buy this debt are going to say, I'm not sure when I'm going to get back when the debt is paid off is going to be worth what it was when I bought the treasury bills. So I do think it's going to happen, but I've been talking about it as have many others for years and to no effect so far. But the United States doesn't have a sovereign wealth on. We have a printing press. And as long as we can print dollars

and people will buy them, we'll keep doing it. But I think at some point, it's just not going to be sustainable. And so what's really going to happen is we're going to pay off the debt. some point or begin to pay it off in devalue dollars that are worth a lot less than the dollars were when we borrowed the money. It seems like no one can pinpoint when the debt will be too much where it triggers this issue. As an investor, are you able to, how do you hedge that risk of that one day waking up and the world thinks, oh, wait, we have too much debt now and it causes a lot of issues? I don't really think you can hedge it because nobody really knows when it's going to happen And putting a hedge on that kind of thing is too expensive.

The hedges are very expensive to put on that kind of thing. So I don't think anybody really hedges that other than by saying I'm going to invest outside the United States or invest in non-dollar currencies because that's the only way you can really hedge it. So when you have investors who are investing in Europe or Asia or other parts of the world, they're in effect hedging against the United States dollar going down. The other seems great risk to the economy that I can think of is, obviously to human life as well as a war between China and the U.S. over Taiwan as a trigger point.

How serious would that hammer the economy? And is there a way to hedge that as an investor? If you're just thinking in investment terms, if that war broke out. Yes. Well, later today, I am about the interview at a session, the CEO of NVIDIA, which is obviously the chip company that's making the artificial chips and now has a $3 trillion market value. Amazingly, we have found ourselves in the entire world as where all the chips seem to be made in Taiwan. And so as long as the United States economy is dependent on chips as it is, and as long as we're dependent on the chips made in Taiwan, we have to defend Taiwan if China were going

to invade, and China now knows that for sure. You know, in 10 years or now, maybe we won't be so dependent on Taiwan. China seems determined to reunite itself with Taiwan, though it really hasn't been part of China for quite some time. But I don't think Xi Jinping is likely to do anything in the near term because he recognized the United States has no choice but to defend Taiwan, and it would be a fairly bloody battle. And he's obviously seen that Putin has found how difficult it is to take over Ukraine. And I think taking over Taiwan would be even more difficult. Final question, is there any businessman that you interact with that is not in politics, but you think

would make a great president? Well, I think Mike Bloomberg, his campaign didn't go so well, but I think he is a very talented businessman. Obviously, I'm associated with Bloomberg, so you might not be surprised for me to say that. But he's a businessman that built a great business and has a lot of interest in public policy. There are a lot of business people.

Jamie Diamond is another one who's built an incredible operation at JP Morgan. I think he would be effective and very talented person of his president of the United States. generally, though, that's a skill set you have to be a successful business person is not the same skill set that you need to be a president of the United States. David Rubinstein, thank you for writing this book, and thank you for joining the Dispatch podcast. Thanks very much, and I appreciate you reading the whole book. You know what I'm going to do.