“The Highest Calling:” David Rubenstein Reflects on the American Presidency

WALTER ISAACSON: Thank you, Christiane. And David Rubenstein, welcome back to the show.

 

DAVID RUBENSTEIN: My pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.

 

ISAACSON: On this book about all the interesting presidents, you interview a lot of historians, and sometimes you start by asking the question about why did you write about this president? So let me throw that back at you. Why did you write a book about the presidency?

 

RUBENSTEIN: Well, what I did say at the beginning is that why did we need another book on the presidency really because there have been an infinite number of them, and I can’t say that my book is gonna change the world. But what I was hoping to do was to show how presidents’ reputations change a bit, how it’s important to know something about a president. And most importantly, I wanted people to get excited about presidents and then vote. We have 160 million people that voted in the last presidential election, but 80 million people who are eligible to vote chose not to vote. And I’m hoping maybe more people will vote this time. I think our democracy would be stronger if more people voted.

 

ISAACSON: You call the presidency the greatest calling. It wasn’t really that in our early history. Even George Washington, it was not considered to be more than one of three branches of government. Tell me, why do you call it the greatest calling and how did it become that?

 

RUBENSTEIN: Of course, when George Washington became president, we had 3 million people in the country, and we were not exactly a global power. And being president of the United States was not thought to be the greatest thing in the world. In fact, George Washington really didn’t want to be president of the United States. He turned it down for quite some time. But what I try to say in the book is that when Woodrow Wilson went to Paris to help negotiate the Treaty of Versailles that was gonna end the first World War, he was treated like a God. He had hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people in Paris cheering him. And that’s when the, you know, the first time the president of the United States had left the country as a president. But also the first time that I think the world saw the most important man in the world or person, more, most important person in the world was the president of the United States.

And while Wilson was succeeded by people who weren’t quite as prominent, like let’s say Harding or Coolidge, ultimately when FDR became president, it’s clear from that point on, the most important person in the United States and in the world is the President of the United States. And that’s why I’d say it’s the highest calling. And that’s why presumably so many people have spent so much time trying to become president. I try to point out in the book, people spend couple years of their life trying to become president. In fact, our current president spent 47 years of his life thinking about becoming president of the United States. And ultimately he did become president. And you say to yourself, why do they wanna do this? John Kennedy was assassinated. Lyndon Johnson was driven out of office. Richard Nixon had to resign. Gerald Ford couldn’t get reelected. Jimmy Carter couldn’t get reelected. George Herbert Walker Bush couldn’t get reelected. Ronald Reagan was assassinated, almost assassinated. So why do people want this job? Because it is the highest calling. You are probably the most important payer person on the face of the earth when you’re president of the United States. And people can’t resist that, that power.

 

ISAACSON: One of the reputational changes that really struck me in the book is you have Amity Shlaes, a great writer, and she writes about Calvin Coolidge, whose reputation seems to be coming back up. Explain that to me.

 

RUBENSTEIN: Well, when Ronald Reagan became president of the United States, he took Coolidge’s picture portrait and put it in the cabinet room. Why? Because he admired what Coolidge stood for. Coolidge believed that the federal government couldn’t solve all our problems. He actually believed there should be a balanced budget, which is very rare. He also believed that there should be, I would say reduced federal expenditures in certain types of areas. And he also didn’t believe in talking too much. So he was very laconic. Famously in the book and in the interview, there was a person who said to him, I bet somebody else that I can get you to say more than two words. And he said, you lose. And he just was a very different person. He could have been elected almost certainly to another term, but he chose to go back to his native New Hampshire and stay there – native Vermont, I should say, and stay there. So he was a person who’s, I think, admired by many people, including the person I interviewed, because he didn’t try to brag about himself. He didn’t try to get the federal government to do more than maybe it should do. And he also was trying to balance the budget, a very unique thing these days.

 

ISAACSON: You also interviewed Jonathan Darmon, who happens to be the son of a former presidential advisor in the old days. And Jonathan Darman talks about Franklin Roosevelt, and just as Doris Kearns Goodwin and others have done, talks about how polio was so important, otherwise he may have just become a playboy. Explain why overcoming adversity is part of becoming a president.

 

RUBENSTEIN: Jonathan Darmon’s theory is that FDR was a nice man, but really not considered an intellectual giant by his peers. Not much of a leader. Considered a bit a feat, kind of person who was never gonna amount to that much, all of his peers often thought. But then when he contracted polio, all of a sudden he got more grit and determination to fight that polio. And it points out, and it’s pointed out in the interview, that maybe he had better doctors, maybe, and it was recognized that polio at the very outset, maybe he could have walked again, but he had bad treatment for about 30 days before they really recognized what it was, and as a result, he never could walk again. But he used such grit and determination to pull himself back into the limelight of political life that it probably made him a stronger person. And Jonathan Darman’s theory, which I think I agree with, is that had he not had polio, FDR probably would not have been president. He wouldn’t have had the personality, the character, the grit to actually do the kind of things you have to do to become president or be a good president.

 

ISAACSON: Let me ask a question about you personally, because you began your feel for, an association with the US presidency as a mid-level domestic policy advisor for Jimmy Carter. And you tell a great story too, of Inauguration Day where you get to go to the White House first because nobody else is running the shop. Tell me what it was like to work with Carter and what did you feel when you go into the White House really for the first time?

 

RUBENSTEIN: Well, I came from a blue collar background. My parents were not college or high school educated. And the idea that three years outta law school, I’m working in the White House advising the President of the United States was a bit surprising to my parents and all my friends that I’d grown up with. And it was surprising to me, so I had to pinch myself every day when I’m working in the White House. There’s nothing like the thrill of working in the White House as an advisor, because you’re at the center of power, you’re making recommendations to the president, and those recommendations, if they’re followed, are likely gonna affect a lot of people’s lives. So I enjoyed it. I didn’t take a day off for four years. I got inflation to a very high level, so nobody’s actually invited me back, but I enjoyed it. It was one of the highlights of my life. And you know what the story you’re referring to is, I was one of the first people in the White House, but I didn’t know how to get into the White House on January the 20th. I forgot how to get cleared in. So had there been an emergency that first hour or two we wouldn’t have had anybody to cover it. But anyway, the administration didn’t, overcame that problem.

 

ISAACSON: President Carter is now reach his hundredth birthday. He’s in hospice care. Tell me personally what you think of him, and do you think his reputation is due to be increased?

 

RUBENSTEIN: His reputation will increase and get much better for two reasons. One his post-presidency’s been a spectacular. He was president for 40 – 4 years, but post president 44 years. So he is got 11 times as much time to do things, and he is done his spectacular things as former president. Helped eliminate river blindness, Guinea worm, election monitoring and things like that. But – and he is won the Nobel Peace Prize for things he did after he left the presidency. As the, as the president, he got more done than people recognized at the time. Today, if a president gets appropriations bills through and the debt limit bill through, people think, wow, they’re great. And they get one more bill through, people think they’re heroic. Carter got enormous numbers of things through the Congress, but because he proposed so many more, he didn’t get credit for it as much as being successful. So Carter was trying to get too many things done. He got many of them done, but people thought he was a bit of a failure because he didn’t get many of his things done. And also he didn’t get the hostages out. Had he gotten the hostages out during his term as president, I think he would’ve been reelected.

 

ISAACSON: George HW Bush actually had a very successful one term as a president. In other words, he compromised on taxes, which probably didn’t help his reelection bid, but it did help the economy. He had brought us to a safe landing in the Cold War after the Berlin Wall fell without, you know, causing a spiking the ball in the end zone. And he even pursued the first Gulf War in a way that got his hand and got us out rather than a long-term war. Why didn’t he get reelected and will history treat him better?

 

RUBENSTEIN: Well, I think he didn’t get reelected for a couple reasons. One he went back on his word that he wouldn’t increase taxes to make sure we had a closer to a balanced budget or, or smaller deficit. He did agree to increase taxes and therefore went back on a commitment he had made. Secondly, it was perceived at the time that we were in a recession while he was president toward the end. While we were not, it turns out, in a recession, there was a perception of that, and that was a problem. I also think he was dealt a difficult blow by having somebody essentially run against him for a year or so, Ross Perot. Ross Perot was a businessman who ran as an independent. While he didn’t get any electoral votes, he got 19% of the popular vote, but he spent most of his time railing against George Herbert Walker Bush. And that was a problem. Bush though, as you point out, did help settle the, and end the Cold War peacefully. He helped unite Germany without a lot of problems with Russia at that time. And it went, had been controversial to reunite Germany. And most importantly he did the Kuwait War in a way that, it shows people how to wage a war. Massive force. We won decisively. We got out, we accomplished our mission. We didn’t have mission creep.

 

ISAACSON: George W. Bush made a lot of decisions during his presidency that were hotly disputed in his time. Did he indicate to you in his discussions anything he had second thoughts about?

 

RUBENSTEIN: Well, he did have some second thoughts about the invasion of Iraq. I think he felt that had he known that there were no weapons of mass destruction for certain he probably would not have invaded. But he’s not a man that gives a lot of second thoughts to things. He’s very secure in his life in a position. So there aren’t many things that he would second guess. Many people would say maybe he should have second guessed tarp. And at the time that tarp was done to bail out the US economy, he was critical of the idea of bailing out the banks. And he really felt this was antithetical to everything he had stood for. But he then, again, he went along with Hank Paulson, his Secretary of Treasury, and Ben Bernanke, the head of the Fed. And ultimately I think it worked out and the economy recovered.

But I think he had some second thoughts about whether that was a good idea at the time. Now I think he thinks it probably did work. As to the war in Iraq you know, that, you can talk about that forever. He’s not gonna say that he made a terrible mistake. He’s just gonna say that had he known things that he didn’t know, had the war, had the circumstances been different, he might have done a different thing, but he doesn’t you know, I’d say he spends a lot of time second guessing himself. That’s not the kind of person he is.

 

ISAACSON: You interviewed Donald Trump down in Mar-a-Lago, and I think it was a day of one of his trials. Explain what that interview was like.

 

RUBENSTEIN: I’ve interviewed him before, and I’ve known him for a while. I knew him when he was a businessman, and I, he first told me in an interview at the Economic Club of Washington, he was gonna run for president. I said, president, what? I couldn’t believe it was gonna run for president of the United States, but I was surprised and I was wrong as many people were about his ability to connect. And you know, while many people are critical of him, he has been the nominee of the Republican party three times in a row. No other person in history has ever done that, and he had no government background. So he obviously has some flare for connecting with people that is hard to define and hard to put your finger on, but he obviously has ability to, you know, possibly be elected president again. And I wouldn’t rule out his being elected again, we just don’t know. But Donald Trump, you know, when you’re interviewing him, he is obviously different than other people, and he might say things that other people may disagree with, but he is never in doubt, never in doubt about his views.

 

ISAACSON: You interviewed President Biden not too long ago, and it was a full hour, just the two of you in the Oval Office. Tell me what he was like and what type of feelings he was having about what was happening politically.

 

RUBENSTEIN: At the time I interviewed him, he expected to be the nominee of the party. This was in, this interview occurred before he decided not to pursue the nomination again. I’ve known him for a long time. He was the first United States Senator to endorse Jimmy Carter, my former boss. And I’ve known him in many different contexts in Washington, DC. I’ve been the chairman of the Kennedy Center, the chairman of Smithsonian. In those contexts, I’ve had an opportunity to interact with him. Think about it, he was elected to the United States Senate when he was 29 and a half, and couldn’t even be sworn in until he was actually 30 years old. His wife dies and a daughter dies in a tragic accident, and he almost doesn’t become Senator. He wants to stay at home with his two sons, but he does become Senator.

And then the pressure to, on him to run for president over the next 45 years plus is an enormous ’cause people always say, you should be president, you’d be perfect to be president. He finally makes it at a relatively older age, 78, and has now had four years as president. I think he will leave the presidency content with what he achieved. I think he’ll feel he got many significant things through like the Chips Act and the infrastructure bill through and actually dealt with the debt limit issues and other kinds of things. But I think he probably would prefer to have another term, but in the end, that’s not gonna happen. He gave me an hour alone, no staff people, and it was a pleasant time. And obviously at the time he talks when you interview him, what he is most excited about when you talk to him is about his family and also his parents. And when you talk to him about his mother and father, he really lights up and is an incredible individual. And I can see why so many people over so many years have thought he should be president of the United States. He’s really, a really interest, interesting person and very nice to interview and a person that I’ve enjoyed getting to know.

 

ISAACSON: One of the big political questions, of course, though, was his age, and whether his age was catching up with him. You got to spend an hour alone with him. To what extent did you feel that he was getting older from the person you’d known for decades?

 

RUBENSTEIN: I didn’t see the kind of problems that appeared in the debate. You know, the debate may have been due to a number of other things. Clearly people are, age a bit and I’m now 75 and I, if I was doing this interview at 65, I’m sure I could do a better job than I’m doing today. So people do age, I don’t see that he is aged any more than a normal aging would process, would have it occur. But again, I’m not a doctor and so forth, and I spent an hour alone with him, and he answered every question, and I, we put the entire interview in the, in the book. We didn’t edit it out or anything like that. And so I think he did a pretty good job. Now, doing a debate in front of 75 billion people is a little more complicated than doing an interview in front of me.

 

ISAACSON: You talk about perhaps there should be some reforms in how we choose the president, and I just saw that vice presidential nominee Tim Walz was saying maybe we should get rid of the electoral college. Tell me what reforms you think there should and should not be.

 

RUBENSTEIN: Well, the electoral college would be a good thing to get rid of – it was created because it was thought that the American voter wasn’t smart enough to really make a decision on president, so we created these electors. But the system really enables us in five cases to have people elected president who won a minority of the popular vote, a minority of the popular vote, in five cases. And I think that’s not really as democratic as we’d like. But to be realistic about it, that’s not gonna change. It takes two thirds of each house and three quarters of each estate to get a constitutional amendment. So I think I prefer to focus on things that are more realistic. I think it’d be better if we had some limits on what a president can do financially as president. There are no limits on that now.

There’s no limits on what he can, he or she can do with their own personal financial assets. President Kennedy put his assets in a trust. President Carter did as well. If you’re a cabinet officer, you have to put your assets in a trust or sell your assets. No such requirement for president. I think it would be good if we did have more disclosure on health. We don’t really require presidents, our presidential candidates to disclose very much about their health. They give a proforma description, but not very, very much. I think that would be a good idea. I also think it’d be a good idea if the former president would find some way to get together and maybe combine their collective experience, in some ways, I’m gonna help the country. Right now, we don’t have any mechanism for doing that, but I think that would be not a bad idea as well.

I also think that we should probably get rid of as much money in politics as we can. In other words, it’s too much money right now in politics. It’s gonna take about 7 or $8 billion this year to finish this presidential campaign when you add up everything that’s been expended. And it’s unfortunate you have to spend that much money to become president of the United States. And I think because it’s so much money is involved, you do run into questions about whether presidents are forced to make decisions because donors ask him to do something. And maybe that’s not in the best interest of the American people all the time.

 

ISAACSON: David Rubenstein, as always, thank you so much for joining us.

 

RUBENSTEIN: My pleasure. Thank you, Walter.