Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: We spend so much time talking about the horse race,
Speaker 2: the policy proposals, of course, the debate this week, some
Speaker 2: of the wild rhetoric that we heard on the stump
Speaker 2: in the last forty eight hours. We don't always think
Speaker 2: about the job that they're working for. And the latest
Speaker 2: from David Rubinstein, the highest Calling. We've both been curled
Speaker 2: up with this book for a minute conversations on the
Speaker 2: American presidency. You start reading about all of the presidents,
Speaker 2: including by the way, Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and
Speaker 2: I'm left with the same question, why would anyone ever
Speaker 2: want this job?
Speaker 3: Yeah, very difficult one, of course, perhaps the most difficult
Speaker 3: to attain, at least in American politics, in the way
Speaker 3: in which this republic operates, and of course one that
Speaker 3: may be held differently, viewed differently by the people who
Speaker 3: have inhabited the office as you look over the history
Speaker 3: of the now forty six presidents, and twenty of them
Speaker 3: featured in this new book. And we're very lucky to
Speaker 3: have David Rubinstein, the author here with us. He of course,
Speaker 3: is co founder and co chair of the Carlisle Grouve,
Speaker 3: also a host on Bloomberg Television in addition to being
Speaker 3: an author of this book. Always a busy man. Thank
Speaker 3: you for making some time for us here in studio
Speaker 3: in Washington. It's worth pointing out while this is in
Speaker 3: part titled Conversations on the American Presidency, it's also conversations
Speaker 3: with a number of former and even the current president.
Speaker 3: You spoke with both Donald Trump and Joe Biden when
Speaker 3: writing this book. We talk a lot about the contrast
Speaker 3: between these two men. Did you pick up on how
Speaker 3: they made differently view the office of the Presiden's here
Speaker 3: with there more overlap than you expected.
Speaker 4: They do have different views on it and how to
Speaker 4: do it. I interviewed both of them on separate interviews,
Speaker 4: with Joe Biden in the Oval Office for an hour alone,
Speaker 4: and I've known him for a long time, and I
Speaker 4: think he felt comfortable with me, and I've had a
Speaker 4: lot of interactions with him over the years. I've interviewed
Speaker 4: Donald Trump before. In this particular case, he was getting
Speaker 4: ready for a trial, and so it wasn't exactly in
Speaker 4: the Oval Office that I was doing it, but I
Speaker 4: had had dinner with him not too long earlier and
Speaker 4: had gotten ready for the interview, and they both have
Speaker 4: different perspectives on the job. And I might call it
Speaker 4: the highest calling because this is clearly the most important
Speaker 4: job in the world. Since Woodrow Wilson went to Paris
Speaker 4: to negotiate the Treaty of Versilles, it's been clear that
Speaker 4: the President United States is the most important person in
Speaker 4: the world, with very rare exceptions. And so you have
Speaker 4: to say to yourself, why do people want that much responsibility?
Speaker 4: You asked in the beginning, and think about it. John
Speaker 4: Kennedy was assassinated, Lynda Johnson driven out of office.
Speaker 5: Richard Nixon in fact had to force to resign.
Speaker 4: Gerald Ford lost reelection, Jimmy Carter lost reelection, Ronald Reagan
Speaker 4: was almost assassinated. George Herbert Walker Bush not reelected. So
Speaker 4: you have to say, why do people want to put
Speaker 4: themselves through this and to be president? You have now
Speaker 4: spent two years campaigning bad food, no exercise, no family contact,
Speaker 4: and it's not a.
Speaker 5: Wonderful thing to do.
Speaker 4: But the reason is that people who are ambitious say,
Speaker 4: I want to do something to help my country. I
Speaker 4: want to show that I've done something useful for society.
Speaker 4: And it's the ultimate job in the world.
Speaker 5: For sure.
Speaker 2: Then after that big fight, you get there and you
Speaker 2: realize the golden bars surround you. You talk to both
Speaker 2: Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and I'm compelled, I believe.
Speaker 2: On two pages facing each other, Donald Trump talked about
Speaker 2: the loneliness. You askedten, what does it like to be
Speaker 2: in the White House? The loneliness? You asked Joe Biden,
Speaker 2: is this as fun a job as you thought it
Speaker 2: was going to be? He said, fun is not the
Speaker 2: word that I would use. Maybe they have something in
Speaker 2: common there.
Speaker 4: Well, every president thinks it's lonely because in the end,
Speaker 4: every major decision that the federal government has to make
Speaker 4: and it's difficult, it gets the president because it was
Speaker 4: easy to make a decision about something they would have
Speaker 4: gotten incided by somebody else. Yeah, so they get it's lonely,
Speaker 4: and it's said to be a very lonely job. And
Speaker 4: what Donald Trump was referring to is that in several
Speaker 4: holidays the government was more or less shut down. He
Speaker 4: had to stay there to wait for the government to
Speaker 4: open up and maybe sign a bill.
Speaker 5: So he didn't go down.
Speaker 4: To mar A Lago for I think it was three
Speaker 4: of the four years he was in the White House
Speaker 4: alone during the holidays, and you know, Joe Biden has
Speaker 4: spent a fair amount of time there in long hours
Speaker 4: as well. One of the reasons presidents like Camp David
Speaker 4: is you can go there, you are with your family typically,
Speaker 4: but you don't have all the Secret Service watching you
Speaker 4: every second, you know, And it's not quite the federal
Speaker 4: prison that the White House is often called by people.
Speaker 4: Ronald Reagan said it was the, I guess, the high
Speaker 4: water mark of the federal penitentiary system, because when you're
Speaker 4: in the White House, everybody watches everything you do. You
Speaker 4: can't walk around outside. It's a very complicated and lonely job.
Speaker 4: But again, many people spend time trying to get there,
Speaker 4: and a lot of people want that job.
Speaker 3: Well, and Joe Biden wanted to keep the job up
Speaker 3: until just recently. You spoke with him in April of
Speaker 3: this year, so he still was attempting to seek a
Speaker 3: second term at that time. Do you think the tenor
Speaker 3: of your conversation would have been different had he already
Speaker 3: made the decision to not seek reelection and endorse Kamala Harrison.
Speaker 4: Probably sure he thought he was going to be the
Speaker 4: nominee of the party, and he wanted to be the
Speaker 4: nominee the party, and obviously events unfolded. When history of
Speaker 4: this election is written, the two most consequential decisions I
Speaker 4: think will be Donald Trump's decision to do an early debate,
Speaker 4: because by doing an early debate, he in effect knocked
Speaker 4: Biden out and therefore he now has an opponent that.
Speaker 5: Might be tougher.
Speaker 4: And Joe Biden's decision to ask for an early debate,
Speaker 4: because had he not had an early debate and the
Speaker 4: debate was in September October would have been too late
Speaker 4: to have him replaced. Probably, so both of them will
Speaker 4: probably look back, depending who wins, and say, maybe I
Speaker 4: shouldn't have had an early debate.
Speaker 2: You dedicated this book in part to Ted Sorenson, which
Speaker 2: is fascinating to me. Of course the force behind, as
Speaker 2: we've learned, profiles and courage, but also JFK's inaugural address
Speaker 2: that we choose to go to the moon speech. Before
Speaker 2: you joined us, Kayley and I were talking about migrants
Speaker 2: eating animals in Springfield, Ohio? What would Ted Sorenson make
Speaker 2: of the rhetoric on this campaign?
Speaker 4: Ted Sorenson, for those who don't know, was a very
Speaker 4: young aide who worked for President Kennedy before that for
Speaker 4: sen Kennedy, and he was the person who was probably
Speaker 4: very involved in writing let's say, Profiles and courage President
Speaker 4: Kennedy or then Senric Kenny was ill, probably difficult to
Speaker 4: write too much of it himself. And then the inaugural
Speaker 4: a dress, which I think was the greatest inaugural dress
Speaker 4: of my lifetime, was written in large part by Ted Sorenson,
Speaker 4: and I admired him. I didn't think I could be
Speaker 4: a candidate. I wasn't rich enough, smart enough, handsome enough,
Speaker 4: charming enough.
Speaker 5: To be a candidate. But I thought I could be
Speaker 5: an advisor.
Speaker 4: And so he was the person I went to work
Speaker 4: for when I practiced when I began practicing law in
Speaker 4: New York. And you know, I greatly admire him. I
Speaker 4: was just with his widow the other night when I
Speaker 4: was doing a talk about this book in New York.
Speaker 4: And you know, Ted was an inspiration to me because
Speaker 4: he knew how to write in a way that very
Speaker 4: few people have been able to do since then. He
Speaker 4: just had a way with words. And if you think
Speaker 4: of the inaugural address that Kennedy gave, ask not what
Speaker 4: your country could do for you, but what you can
Speaker 4: do for your country. Those are words that you know
Speaker 4: are going to ring with us for the rest of
Speaker 4: our lives.
Speaker 2: Would he see this as a world in which political
Speaker 2: rhetoric has regressed though these are poetic speeches you're talking about.
Speaker 1: Turned to twenty twenty four.
Speaker 4: We don't value presidential rhetoric in quite the way that
Speaker 4: we probably used to. You know, we used to talk
Speaker 4: about great presidential speeches Lincoln's second inaugural dress, FDR's inaugural dress,
Speaker 4: the first one, or Kenny's in augur dress. Today we
Speaker 4: often don't focus on the rhetoric as much or the
Speaker 4: speeches because the craftsmanship is not quite as fine tuned.
Speaker 4: But there's not as much emphasis on it being fine tuned.
Speaker 4: People just wanted to know what is the president going
Speaker 4: to do, what's it going to do for me? And
Speaker 4: that kind of thing. And it's a different world. Remember
Speaker 4: when John Kenny gave his speech inaugural address. In those days,
Speaker 4: there was no internet, there was no social media. The
Speaker 4: evening news shows for fifteen minutes. There were three networks,
Speaker 4: each one did fifteen minutes a night, and then the
Speaker 4: only papers that people cared about were the Washington Posts
Speaker 4: in New York Times. There was no other way to
Speaker 4: worry about conveying ideas, and so it was a different
Speaker 4: world today. If you're President of United States, you're working
Speaker 4: in the White House. Every minute, you have to focus
Speaker 4: on social media who's saying what, and you have to
Speaker 4: be attuned to what's going on all around the world,
Speaker 4: and you never really are are free from social media
Speaker 4: or TV networks.
Speaker 1: Never well.
Speaker 3: And that's one of the ways in which the office
Speaker 3: perhaps has changed, is you look from George Washington to
Speaker 3: present day. One thing, though, has remained the same. Every
Speaker 3: single person you talk about in this book is a
Speaker 3: man that potentially could change. If Kamala Harris wins in November,
Speaker 3: does that change the nature of the office once what
Speaker 3: Hillary Clinton called that highest glass ceiling has actually been shattered.
Speaker 4: Of course, you think about it. We've had forty six
Speaker 4: men serve in this position, no women. Interestingly, when the
Speaker 4: country was set up, women weren't even allowed to vote
Speaker 4: or in any way participate in government. We obviously changed
Speaker 4: that with the Night of the Amendment. It is amazing that
Speaker 4: you have more than half the population's female, but we
Speaker 4: still haven't and had a female president, we may well
Speaker 4: this time, who knows. I think Hillary Clinton came as
Speaker 4: close as any woman has ever come, because had she
Speaker 4: won one or two more states, she would have been
Speaker 4: president United States and we would have broken that glass
Speaker 4: ceiling to.
Speaker 2: Hear your view on this race. Now, everybody wants to
Speaker 2: know what's on your mind. And I'm sure there are
Speaker 2: some things you can tell us, and maybe you don't
Speaker 2: want to share, but you understand the conversation on Wall Street.
Speaker 2: What is the great fear right now when it comes
Speaker 2: to Kamala Harris, is that the idea of taxing capital
Speaker 2: gains on unrealized gains. Wall Street seems to be more
Speaker 2: comfortable with the idea of Trump, despite a pretty well
Speaker 2: performing stock market under the Biden administration.
Speaker 4: Well, I'll tell you what I think people think, but
Speaker 4: I don't want to say these are my views necessarily,
Speaker 4: but people on Wall Street, and remember Wall Street generally
Speaker 4: is focused on stock market and making money and other things,
Speaker 4: not kind of values that a president might have. But
Speaker 4: they're worried that taxes will go up on businesses, and
Speaker 4: wealthy businesses they're worried that and wealthy individuals. They're worried
Speaker 4: that the regulatory environment will be very harsh. The anti
Speaker 4: trust environment has not been favorable for a lot of
Speaker 4: M and A transactions, and they're worried that it might
Speaker 4: continue that way. They're worried that the people that she
Speaker 4: might put into regulatory positions might be tougher on business
Speaker 4: than even the ones that Joe Biden put in.
Speaker 5: So that's what they're worried about.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure I share all those worries, but I
Speaker 4: think many people on Wall Street saying, look, we have
Speaker 4: to hedge our bats, and Wall Street is all about hedging, right,
Speaker 4: So they are focused very much on the Senate because
Speaker 4: the Senate can very well go Republican. You only need
Speaker 4: to switch one or two seats if we go Republican.
Speaker 4: And so if the Senate were to go Republican and
Speaker 4: with the filler buster rules, I think many people in
Speaker 4: Wall Street who don't like Kamala Harris would say, well,
Speaker 4: we can block almost anything through the Senate.
Speaker 3: Well, and that's what we'd have to keep reminding ourselves
Speaker 3: is we get these various policy proposals from these candidates,
Speaker 3: there is only so much they can do on their
Speaker 3: own without Congress backing them. So it's important to remind
Speaker 3: ourselves of rules that have to be followed as far
Speaker 3: as how legislating goes. I want to ask you about
Speaker 3: a rule completely unrelated to politics, though, but related to
Speaker 3: of course your interest in sports as an owner of
Speaker 3: teams like the Orioles. There's a new rule in the
Speaker 3: NFL that allows private equity. In Bloomberg's reporting today, the
Speaker 3: Chargers the Dolphins are now getting interest. Is this something
Speaker 3: you're looking at, David Well.
Speaker 4: I would say that it was public public disclosed that
Speaker 4: the firm that I'm the co chairman of, Carlisle, is
Speaker 4: part of a CONSORTI that has been authorized by the
Speaker 4: NFL to buy stakes that go up to ten percent,
Speaker 4: And so all I can say is what's been said
Speaker 4: already in the press. But I do think that sports
Speaker 4: have been a very attractive investment for the last couple
Speaker 4: of years. Very few people have made major sports investments
Speaker 4: that have lost money. Now, some people say it's a bubble,
Speaker 4: it can't keep going on this way. The other hand,
Speaker 4: nobody seems to be running away from the bubble. And
Speaker 4: one of the reasons is that sports is now global
Speaker 4: and because betting has occurred, and betting is now very
Speaker 4: popular betting has fueled I think interest in sports, and
Speaker 4: so people are much more interested in sports than when
Speaker 4: I was a child because there's betting involved, is in
Speaker 4: addition to rooting for your home team.
Speaker 5: So I as you know, I bought the Bottom.
Speaker 4: Oriils or control of the Bottom Oriols with partners recently,
Speaker 4: and I'm now learning the ins and outs of what
Speaker 4: it means to be a sports owner. And you know,
Speaker 4: every time we win, I'm feeling deliriously happy, that you know,
Speaker 4: and when we lose, I feel like the dagger in
Speaker 4: my heart. And so you know, I wish I know
Speaker 4: I was a junior. I was a Little League All
Speaker 4: Star when I was eight years old, and I feel
Speaker 4: like going into the players and say, look, let me
Speaker 4: tell you what I learned when I was eight years
Speaker 4: old about how to hit or how to pitch. But
Speaker 4: they don't seem that interested.
Speaker 1: We only have a minute left. I'm a huge fan.
Speaker 2: I know you are too, Kailee of peer to peer,
Speaker 2: I know what my favorite episodes are.
Speaker 1: What's been your favorite interview in this experiment?
Speaker 4: When I did Oprah, it was pretty interesting because she
Speaker 4: said to be a great interviewer. She says, I'm not
Speaker 4: a great interviewer. I'm a great listener. And she's right
Speaker 4: because you have to learn what person is saying and
Speaker 4: then pivot. And that was really interesting. I did George
Speaker 4: Bush and Bill Clinton together one time and that was,
Speaker 4: I think, really good. And Warren Buffett was great when
Speaker 4: I did him. So I like all my interviews. So
Speaker 4: it's like I luck all my children, right, So I
Speaker 4: don't think anyone is more of a favorite. But what
Speaker 4: I like the best is when I know the person
Speaker 4: reasonably well. Yeah, and when you try to use my
Speaker 4: sense of humor, they play along with it. You know,
Speaker 4: when somebody it doesn't pick up that I'm asking a joke,
Speaker 4: it's not as much fun. So like when I asked
Speaker 4: one time Bill Gates, do you think of he had
Speaker 4: a college degree, you might be more successful in life.
Speaker 5: He didn't get that it was a joke and he
Speaker 5: gave a serious answer. So you know, I like people
Speaker 5: that can pick up on the joke. Sometimes that's great.
Speaker 1: The humor goes a long way around here.
Speaker 2: I have to say, by the way, the McDonald's CEO,
Speaker 2: why does the coke taste better?
Speaker 1: At that?
Speaker 2: I learned something whenever I watch peer to peer David Rubinstein,
Speaker 2: a great treat to have you at the table.
Speaker 1: Congrats on the book.
Speaker 2: It's called The Highest Calling, Conversations on the American Presidency