Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: This is Master's in Business with Barry rid Hoolts on
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: This week on the podcast My Conversation with David Rubinstein.
Speaker 1: He is co founder and co chair of private equity
Speaker 1: giant The Carlisle Group. They manage nearly half a trillion
Speaker 1: dollars in client assets. He is the host of Peer
Speaker 1: to Peer Conversations on Bloomberg TV, as well as PBS's
Speaker 1: History with David Rubinstein. He hosts the podcast for the Ages.
Speaker 1: He has written numerous best selling books, so many it's
Speaker 1: hard to even keep up with them. The American Story,
Speaker 1: Interviews with Master Historians, How to Lead, the American Experiment,
Speaker 1: How to invest Interviews with masters on the Craft, The
Speaker 1: American Experiment, Dialogues on a Dream, and Now the Highest Calling.
Speaker 1: Conversations on the American Presidency. What can you say? A
Speaker 1: guy who grows up in a lower middle class family,
Speaker 1: gets through college and law school on scholarships and goes
Speaker 1: on to found one of the most successful buy out,
Speaker 1: private equity and venture firms in history. Just an incredible
Speaker 1: success story and someone who is just rich with gratitude
Speaker 1: for where he is. Incredibly generous philanthropist across a variety
Speaker 1: of different areas, including what he calls patriotic philanthropy, which
Speaker 1: is helping to maintain and fix up some of the
Speaker 1: great monuments in American history that no one really has
Speaker 1: specific ownership. Everybody just assumes the federal government has taken
Speaker 1: care of it, and that turns out not to always
Speaker 1: be the case. He is also the owner of the
Speaker 1: Baltimore Orioles. Just to fascin in conversation with someone who
Speaker 1: has just an amazing career, I found this to be
Speaker 1: really really interesting, and I think you will also, with
Speaker 1: no further ado, the Carlisle Groups David Rubinstein. Normally I
Speaker 1: would say welcome to Bloomberg here, David, but you're here
Speaker 1: all the time, so welcome to this little corner of
Speaker 1: the fifth floor of Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much for inviting me, and it's a
Speaker 2: pleasure to talk to somebody who's also a lawyer, who's
Speaker 2: also in the business world and also reads a lot.
Speaker 1: We're going to get to your reading history, which is
Speaker 1: quite fascinating and I've been waiting for this conversation for
Speaker 1: a long time. Your prior book on leadership with CEOs
Speaker 1: was when we were first supposed to meet, but then
Speaker 1: that whole little pandemic thing happened and closed the world down,
Speaker 1: and so we had to postpone until now. But I'm
Speaker 1: thrilled to have you. Since you mentioned lawyers, let's talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about your educational background. Duke Undergraduate, Chicago
Speaker 1: Law School. What was the original plan?
Speaker 2: My career plan was to go into the federal government,
Speaker 2: be trained as a lawyer, so I could go back
Speaker 2: and make money. Eventually, when I wasn't in government, I
Speaker 2: was interested in being an advisor to a president. As
Speaker 2: a young boy, I was impressed with President Kennedy, and
Speaker 2: so I wanted to do what he said, come in
Speaker 2: and serve the government. And so eventually I thought if
Speaker 2: I went to law school, I'd have the skill set
Speaker 2: to maybe be hired in a government and maybe get
Speaker 2: a job in the White House. And my role model
Speaker 2: was a man to whom I've dedicated this book. It
Speaker 2: was named Ted Sorenson.
Speaker 1: Oh Sure.
Speaker 2: Ted Sorenson was the person who helped to write John
Speaker 2: Kennedy's great Inaugural Address, helped to write Profiles and Courage.
Speaker 2: He was an incredibly brilliant young man at thirty thirty
Speaker 2: one when he worked for President Kennedy. He was in
Speaker 2: his forties when I joined the law firm after law
Speaker 2: school that he was at Paul Weiscriftkin, Wharton and Garrison,
Speaker 2: and I hoped that some of his pixie thus would
Speaker 2: kind of fall out my way, and eventually I sort
Speaker 2: of did find that situation where I got a job
Speaker 2: working in the car campaign and worked in the car
Speaker 2: to White House.
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated as a recovering attorney as people who have
Speaker 1: done these successful career transitions. What led you in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty seven to say, Hey, you know there are some
Speaker 1: opportunities in private equity. Let's explore that well.
Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty seven, the phrase private equity had not
Speaker 2: yet even been invented. It was then called buyouts. I
Speaker 2: was thrown out of the White House when we lost
Speaker 2: to Ronald Reagan, so I had to go find another job.
Speaker 2: The only job I knew how to do was practice law.
Speaker 2: I'd practiced a couple of years in New York. I
Speaker 2: wasn't really good at it. I didn't have a lot
Speaker 2: of experience at it, and I didn't enjoy it. And
Speaker 2: if you don't enjoy what you're doing, you're never going
Speaker 2: to be great at it. Nobody's ever won a Nobel
Speaker 2: Prize hating what they do. And so I realized that
Speaker 2: my clients weren't really dying to see me continue practicing law.
Speaker 2: My law partners didn't think I was going to be
Speaker 2: Benjamin Cardoza or Louis Brandei's. So I decided to start
Speaker 2: the first buyout firm in Washington with no experience, no money,
Speaker 2: and no credibility. Ultimately, I got lucky and it turned
Speaker 2: out to be a very large firm.
Speaker 1: So there's this little bit of an urban myth that
Speaker 1: at age thirty seven you read a book on entrepreneurship
Speaker 1: that states, hey, once you're older than thirty seven, the
Speaker 1: odds is starting a new firm drop precipitously. Is there
Speaker 1: truth to that?
Speaker 2: Sometimes urban myths are accurate. In that case, I read
Speaker 2: a book that said that if you are going to
Speaker 2: be an entrepreneur, you typically start your entrepreneurial venture between
Speaker 2: the ages of twenty eight and thirty seven, and if
Speaker 2: you're thirty seven you haven't done it. The chance of
Speaker 2: doing so is very, very small. And I read that
Speaker 2: when I was thirty seven, and I thought Okay, if
Speaker 2: I'm going to go out of the practice law, I
Speaker 2: better do it now before I have more family obligations
Speaker 2: or other kinds of personal obligations.
Speaker 1: So you've been in DC for the previous couple of
Speaker 1: years working in the Carter administration. How did you figure
Speaker 1: out how to piece together? Hey, I know a lot
Speaker 1: of people in this town and a lot of buyouts
Speaker 1: are tied to what's going on with the government. What
Speaker 1: was the aha moment there?
Speaker 2: Well, whenever you're trying to start business, you try to say,
Speaker 2: here is my special area of expertise, or here's what
Speaker 2: I can do that maybe nobody else has done. And
Speaker 2: so my idea was to say, we understand companies heavily
Speaker 2: affected by the federal government, maybe better than the guys
Speaker 2: in New York. Those would be companies like aerospace, defens telecommunications, healthcare,
Speaker 2: all of which are heavily regulated by the federal government.
Speaker 2: So I thought that that would be something that would
Speaker 2: enable me to get some people to give me some
Speaker 2: money to invest. And we did raise money deal by
Speaker 2: deal initially, then later a fund, and I recruited people
Speaker 2: who actually knew more than I did for sure about investing.
Speaker 2: So that was a big plus.
Speaker 1: So I'm glad you brought up recruiting for two reasons. First,
Speaker 1: a lot of CEOs say it's the hardest part of
Speaker 1: their job is attracting high quality talent. But you managed
Speaker 1: to recruit some very talented investors with outstanding track records
Speaker 1: early on. Was it tell us what enabled you to
Speaker 1: do that? Was it the novelty of what you were doing?
Speaker 1: Was it just something different? How did you bring in
Speaker 1: the top notch talent that you did well?
Speaker 2: Initially I was hiring people that had investment experience who
Speaker 2: were living in Washington, because it was easier to get
Speaker 2: people to stay in Washington that moved to New York,
Speaker 2: and so I did get people who had been CFOs
Speaker 2: or treasurers or the equivalent at companies base in the
Speaker 2: Washington area. Later, I went out and recruited big names
Speaker 2: who had been in government, people like former Secretary of
Speaker 2: State Jim Baker, former Secretary to Fans Frank Carlucci. And
Speaker 2: that gave us a certain allure because people are wondering
Speaker 2: what are they doing in an investment firm. But in
Speaker 2: the end it worked out quite well.
Speaker 1: Early on, you focus on quote returns rather than fees,
Speaker 1: which really helped not only contribute to the firm's success,
Speaker 1: but its image of trying to take care of clients
Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about the philosophy there.
Speaker 2: Most private equity firms of any consequence were built in
Speaker 2: New York by people who had been investment bankers. And
Speaker 2: while investment banking is a great profession, you tend to
Speaker 2: reconnize when you're in investment banking that you need to
Speaker 2: make sure you click the fee. We didn't really have
Speaker 2: that kind of background. None of our people had been
Speaker 2: in investment banking. So we were investing our own money
Speaker 2: alongside our investors, and we were not, let's say, very
Speaker 2: fee obsessed, and so we didn't focus on the fees
Speaker 2: so much as we focused on the returns. And that
Speaker 2: was a plus because our returns turned out to be
Speaker 2: pretty good.
Speaker 1: So you're coming up on half a trillion dollars, which
Speaker 1: is not an insubstantial amount of money when you look
Speaker 1: back from eighty seven until today. Any particular milestones or
Speaker 1: markers that stand out on the path. What's the secret
Speaker 1: of Carlisle's success.
Speaker 2: Well, we've made many mistakes, and I could have a
Speaker 2: show about twenty four hours long about all the mistakes
Speaker 2: that I've made. But what enabled us to move forward,
Speaker 2: aside from a very good track record, was the business
Speaker 2: concept that at the time people made fun of, but
Speaker 2: in the end worked out. And the idea was this,
Speaker 2: Historically private equity firms or venture capital firms only did
Speaker 2: one thing. They did private equity, or they did venture
Speaker 2: capital or the great growth capital, whatever it might be.
Speaker 2: I decided I would do many different things in the
Speaker 2: under the Carlisle rubric. So we'd have a buyout fund.
Speaker 2: If we did well in it, I'd say to people,
Speaker 2: we'll give us a chance to do something in venture capital.
Speaker 2: If you liked us on buyout, maybe you'll like us
Speaker 2: in venture capital and so forth. And then I decided,
Speaker 2: once we had multiple funds that we would globalize it.
Speaker 2: So I spent a long time going to Europe, Asia, Africa,
Speaker 2: Latin America, Japan, Middle East, setting up funds all over
Speaker 2: the world. So we became a multi discipline firm and
Speaker 2: also a global firm. So that was relatively novel at
Speaker 2: the time.
Speaker 1: You said there was a decent amount of pushback to that.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of surprised how often I hear that. When
Speaker 1: Vanguard launched, there was pushback to then there was a
Speaker 1: lot of skepticism about Black Rock when they went to
Speaker 1: do what they did over and over some of the
Speaker 1: most successful companies in the world. People looked as scance
Speaker 1: at it early on. What does it do to your
Speaker 1: psyche when you're found and running a firm when the
Speaker 1: traditional form of finance gives you kind of a hard time.
Speaker 2: If anything is easy, it probably is not worth doing.
Speaker 2: Anything that's very hard is probably going to be hard
Speaker 2: because many people say it can't be done. But the
Speaker 2: best ideas in time and best companies start from people
Speaker 2: who say, I'm going to try something that hadn't been
Speaker 2: done before. Who thought that you could sell books over
Speaker 2: the internet? Jeff Bezos did. Who thought you could have
Speaker 2: something like Facebook? Well, Mark Zuckerberg did. Who thought software
Speaker 2: would be so important?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 2: Bill Gates did. But people didn't give them money in times,
Speaker 2: and many people thought that they weren't going to be successful.
Speaker 2: So anybody that's built the company really has people saying
Speaker 2: that it's not going to be possible. For example, the
Speaker 2: company that we're now talking about Bloomberg. Mike Bloomberg, when
Speaker 2: he left Salomon Brothers, he was starting a technology company
Speaker 2: people didn't think of would ever get anywhere, and obviously
Speaker 2: now become the biggest in the world at what it does.
Speaker 1: So I guess it's consistent because there are different points
Speaker 1: in your career. Early on and the standard forms of
Speaker 1: conventional wisdom look askance at what Carlisle does. Later on
Speaker 1: in your career, you start this side project of publishing
Speaker 1: a series of books based on interviews with various leaders.
Speaker 1: You speak to historians, you speak to people, focus on
Speaker 1: business leaders, on other sorts of leaders. I'm kind of
Speaker 1: intrigued by how you went from Hey, you know, the
Speaker 1: conventional wisdom says what we're doing is wrong. To let
Speaker 1: me find the most interesting visionaries, builders, commanders and decision
Speaker 1: makers and see what wisdom I could pull out from
Speaker 1: the people who have been really successful. Tell us how
Speaker 1: years of top Carlisle led you to this really fascinating
Speaker 1: series of books. We'll get into the new book and
Speaker 1: a little bit, but I'm intrigued by the arc of
Speaker 1: publishing that you've created.
Speaker 2: Well, when I was a little boy, people would come
Speaker 2: over our house for dinner and I would ask them
Speaker 2: lots of questions. My mother said, don't be such a yenta.
Speaker 2: The yenta being a Yiddish word for asking other people
Speaker 2: they're about their business in effect, and so I was
Speaker 2: always inquisitive and intellectually curious. And what happened was I
Speaker 2: became the head of the Economic Club of Washington, where
Speaker 2: I was supposed to get people to come in and
Speaker 2: give speeches. And the speeches that were being given by
Speaker 2: business people were boring and I could see members were
Speaker 2: watching at their watches when they could get out of there.
Speaker 2: So I decided I would try interviewing them, maybe make
Speaker 2: it a little bit more interesting. And it turned out
Speaker 2: that people liked the interviews. I use some humor. I
Speaker 2: had really spent a lot of time researching the people
Speaker 2: I was interviewing, and eventually Bloomberg saw it, and Bloomberg said,
Speaker 2: let's make a TV show out of it, and so
Speaker 2: I began doing some interviews that way. I also started
Speaker 2: a program at the Library of Congress where I interviewed
Speaker 2: great historians in front of only members of Congress once
Speaker 2: a month, doing it for ten years.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's fascinating.
Speaker 2: And the theory was, let's get members of Congress to
Speaker 2: come and sit with each other from different parties in
Speaker 2: different houses, which they rarely get a chance to do
Speaker 2: no press, nobody can see them talking to somebody who's
Speaker 2: a different member of a different party. And that's been
Speaker 2: going over ten years, and I took some of the
Speaker 2: interviews from that, some of the Bloomberg interviews I've done.
Speaker 2: I've also had a program at the New York Historical
Speaker 2: Society to interview great historians there and taken these interviews
Speaker 2: and altering put some books together from them. This particular
Speaker 2: book is one that is a compilation of interviews I've
Speaker 2: done about presidents, asking great presidential scholars about particular people
Speaker 2: they've written about. And I also had some interviews presidents
Speaker 2: themselves in the book.
Speaker 1: So let's go back to what you did with members
Speaker 1: of Congress interviewing historians. You know, we live in a
Speaker 1: kind of cynical era. What was the impact of getting
Speaker 1: people from both parties to sit and listen to a
Speaker 1: scholar who could give them deep historical perspectives on various topics.
Speaker 1: How was it received? Did it move the needle in
Speaker 1: terms of comedy or any form of allowing people to
Speaker 1: work together.
Speaker 2: As you know today there are very few people you
Speaker 2: can criticize without being criticized yourself. You can criticize lawyers,
Speaker 2: and you can make jokes about lawyers and you get
Speaker 2: away with it. You can make jokes about members of
Speaker 2: Congress and always get away with it because members of
Speaker 2: Congress aren't as highly respected as maybe they should be.
Speaker 2: So members of Congress actually are pretty hard working. They're
Speaker 2: very poorly paid, and they have incredible a workload. But
Speaker 2: occasionally they like to come together and actually talk with
Speaker 2: each other in ways that they don't get criticized for
Speaker 2: talking to someone from the opposite party. So I thought,
Speaker 2: if I had a dinner at a neutral site, the
Speaker 2: Library of Congress, and members of Congress can come there
Speaker 2: through underground tunnel so they don't have to go drive
Speaker 2: to it, and I would have a nice dinner and
Speaker 2: a really good speaker or interviewee. So Darris Kern's goodwinner,
Speaker 2: the late David McCullough, people like that. Most recently I
Speaker 2: had Ken Burns. People want to hear from them, and
Speaker 2: so I'll do an interview. Then members of Congress will
Speaker 2: ask questions, and they'll do an effect and interview as well.
Speaker 2: And then what I found is that members of Congress
Speaker 2: don't really talk to people from the opposite party very
Speaker 2: much anymore because of the ethos in Washington. Also, they
Speaker 2: don't know people from the opposite house. It used to
Speaker 2: be conference committees to work out difference between the House
Speaker 2: and Senate, but there's not much legislation anymore, so there's
Speaker 2: not a lot of conference committe And there used to
Speaker 2: be Codell's which is members of Congress going overseas, and
Speaker 2: that got heavily criticized. That doesn't happen very much. So
Speaker 2: I've been surprised at how many members of Congress don't
Speaker 2: know people from the opposite party of the opposite house.
Speaker 2: This gives them a chance to come together in a
Speaker 2: setting that no press person can see. There's nothing secretive
Speaker 2: about it in the sense that it is doing anything wrong,
Speaker 2: but there's no press there. They don't have to worry
Speaker 2: about somebody saying you were talking to somebody from the
Speaker 2: opposite party, why were you doing that? And so members
Speaker 2: like it. It's been going on for ten years now.
Speaker 2: We get people who are leaders coming from the both
Speaker 2: houses and rank and file members.
Speaker 1: So I'm hearing that whoever the particular historian is to
Speaker 1: borrow a phrase from Alfred Hitchcock and the mcguffin, what
Speaker 1: really The goal is is to get a little mixing
Speaker 1: going on between Congressmen and senators, Republicans and Democrats.
Speaker 2: The theory is that if you get people talking to
Speaker 2: each other and they're not yelling at each other all
Speaker 2: the time, it better for the country. And so I
Speaker 2: don't want to make it sound like I'm solving all
Speaker 2: the country's problems. I'm obviously not, but I do think
Speaker 2: it has some benefit in getting some members of Congress
Speaker 2: to understand the other side better. And members of Congress
Speaker 2: tell me this is maybe sad. This is one of
Speaker 2: the most interesting things they're doing in Congress is coming
Speaker 2: to these dinners. Now, obviously there's hyperbole there, but clearly
Speaker 2: they enjoy it. And we get you know, about two
Speaker 2: hundred two hunred and fifty members of Congress coming every
Speaker 2: time I have a dinner.
Speaker 1: Wow, So you're moving the needle, however incrementally it is.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's better than these folks not talking
Speaker 1: to each.
Speaker 2: Other, better than food fights. And remember and during the
Speaker 2: Civil War we had over sixty times during the Civil
Speaker 2: War members of Congress would get into fights with other
Speaker 2: members of Congress on the floor of the House or
Speaker 2: the Senate. Sixty times fights, fist fights. Their most famous
Speaker 2: one was one one member of the House took a
Speaker 2: cane and bashed ahead of a senator he didn't like
Speaker 2: and took a long time for that center recover. But
Speaker 2: that we're not doing that now.
Speaker 1: For although sometimes it feels like we're coming pretty close.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of division in the Congress, but the
Speaker 2: division that Congress really affects, it reflects the division in
Speaker 2: the country. Members of Congress really reflect our constituents. And
Speaker 2: as you know, we now have blue states in red states.
Speaker 2: In nineteen sixty, for example, Richard Nixon campaigned in all
Speaker 2: fifty states because he didn't really know who would win
Speaker 2: the particular states. They weren't red in blue states necessarily. Today,
Speaker 2: most people running for president are going to campaign in
Speaker 2: about seven states because those are the only states we
Speaker 2: don't know for certain how they're going to happen or
Speaker 2: what they're going to do. So, for example, if you
Speaker 2: became a candidate for president United States tomorrow and you're
Speaker 2: the Democratic candidate, you're going to win New York or California.
Speaker 2: It doesn't make a difference what you say or what
Speaker 2: you do. And if, by contrast, you became a Republican,
Speaker 2: you're Republican nominee. You're going to win Texas or Mississippi
Speaker 2: or Alabama. So most those states are not relevant for
Speaker 2: the presidential election because we know how they're going to go.
Speaker 2: So we're now really focused on seven states, the so
Speaker 2: called five swing states, and maybe two more swing states
Speaker 2: that now might be swing states. And it's an interesting
Speaker 2: phenomenon that you can have people in just a few
Speaker 2: states really decide the presidential election.
Speaker 1: You've been in DC most of your life, you're in
Speaker 1: astute observer of both business and politics. What should we
Speaker 1: credit this this huge We're no longer purple, we're blue
Speaker 1: and red. Some people point to Citizens United. Some people
Speaker 1: talk to how toxic social media. I'm assuming it's much
Speaker 1: more complex than either of those answers. But what's your perspective?
Speaker 2: Well, it's a very complicated subject. But I think a
Speaker 2: lot of people who are not happy with what goes
Speaker 2: on in Washington feel that the country has moved away
Speaker 2: from them and that the country is much different than
Speaker 2: the country they thought it was going to be when
Speaker 2: they were in the grade school. Remember in nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: when John Kenny ran for president, the country was ninety
Speaker 2: percent white, eight percent black, two percent Hispanic. That was
Speaker 2: basically it. Today we're a much more diverse country, obviously,
Speaker 2: and I think the diversity has upset some people, rightly
Speaker 2: or wrongly. And therefore I think some people feel that
Speaker 2: the country has gone away from them, that the globalization
Speaker 2: of the economy has taken jobs away from them, that
Speaker 2: a lot of them feel they're not yet the benefits
Speaker 2: of America. For example, only forty percent of American adults
Speaker 2: are college educated, I mean sixty percent or not. So
Speaker 2: if you are not college educated, your job has been
Speaker 2: lost on an over offshore company, you're going to be
Speaker 2: very disappointed. And many of those people are disappointed and
Speaker 2: looking for people who are maybe more xenophobic than maybe
Speaker 2: we should be the case. So I do think it's
Speaker 2: the case that you have many people now in the
Speaker 2: country who are very disaffected from the country's image that
Speaker 2: they grew up with.
Speaker 1: I saw something a couple of years ago about the
Speaker 1: impact of gerrymandering that has shifted our elections to the primary.
Speaker 1: If you're in a safe district for either a Democrat
Speaker 1: or a Republican, it's the primary that matters, not the general.
Speaker 1: And when the primary matters. You tend to get Republicans
Speaker 1: who are more right rightist and Democrats who are more leftist.
Speaker 1: Any truth to.
Speaker 2: That, Yes, that's a very good point. For example, it's
Speaker 2: something like ninety five to ninety six percent of people
Speaker 2: who run for reelection in Congress get elected. Now, it's
Speaker 2: in part because if you win the primary, you're probably
Speaker 2: going to win because your district has been probably gerrymandered,
Speaker 2: or it's probably a very Republican or very democratic district.
Speaker 2: So how do you win ninety five percent of the time, Well,
Speaker 2: whoever has the most money usually wins, not always, but usually.
Speaker 2: So what do you do is you spend a lot
Speaker 2: of your time raising money. So about forty percent of
Speaker 2: the time members in the House is raising money. It's
Speaker 2: because whoever has the most money will probably win, and
Speaker 2: therefore there's a lot of emphasis on raising money. And
Speaker 2: you don't raise money typically by saying I want to
Speaker 2: go to Washington and be right down the middle. I
Speaker 2: want to be a person who decides what's right or
Speaker 2: depending on the facts as I look at them, they
Speaker 2: tend to tend to say I'm going to be very
Speaker 2: far to the right or very far to the left,
Speaker 2: and that's what enables people to raise money. If you
Speaker 2: went to Congress and you were a member of Congress
Speaker 2: and you said, your constituents, I want to go and
Speaker 2: assess each matter on a deal by deal basis, and
Speaker 2: I want to be right down the middle. What is
Speaker 2: really the best compromise? You probably won't raise a lot
Speaker 2: of money, right.
Speaker 1: And that's how we end up with a deeply polarized
Speaker 1: Congress that arguably is much more polarized than the nation
Speaker 1: at large.
Speaker 2: Well, typically you're seeing some people on the far right
Speaker 2: and maybe on the far left as well. They are
Speaker 2: making speeches on the floor of the House at the
Speaker 2: very moment that their campaign operation is saying, see what
Speaker 2: our member is saying on the floor of the house.
Speaker 2: Give us money, Now, give us five dollars, ten dollars,
Speaker 2: fifteen dollars. And the fundraising that comes in from small
Speaker 2: donations is quite large.
Speaker 1: Really quite fascinating. So you've written a number of really
Speaker 1: interesting books based on conversations with various leaders. The Highest Calling,
Speaker 1: What was the motivation for this book on not just
Speaker 1: presidents but policy and politics.
Speaker 2: Well, let me talk about the presidency for a moment.
Speaker 2: The title is The Highest Calling Historically I've said the
Speaker 2: highest calling of mankind is private equity. Obviously tongue in cheek,
Speaker 2: it gets a laugh from people because they recognized that
Speaker 2: private equity is probably not the highest calling of mankind.
Speaker 2: But the highest calling really reflects maybe the most important
Speaker 2: job in the Western world, which is the presidency of
Speaker 2: the United States. When George Washington was elected president, he
Speaker 2: wasn't the most important person in the world. Probably the
Speaker 2: President of the United States did not become the most
Speaker 2: important person in the world until Woodrow Wilson went to
Speaker 2: Paris in right after World War One, or at the
Speaker 2: end of World War One, to negotiate the treaty that
Speaker 2: in World War One, and as he went there he
Speaker 2: was descended upon by hundreds of thousand people thanking him
Speaker 2: for winning the war. And then after wilson presidence, he
Speaker 2: became less significant, as we had some presidents who weren't
Speaker 2: so well known or so historic, hardang or Coolidge. But
Speaker 2: then when FDR became president, he took over in effect
Speaker 2: the Western world and became the most important person in
Speaker 2: the Western world. And ever since that time, the President
Speaker 2: of United States has been the most important person I
Speaker 2: think in the Western world. Certainly, if not the world.
Speaker 2: And so I tried to do in the book is
Speaker 2: interview great scholars about great presidents, what made them important,
Speaker 2: what made them do well or do poorly, and then
Speaker 2: talk about from presidents directly that I've interviewed. And I
Speaker 2: have a number of interviews in there with presidents of
Speaker 2: night states that I did the interviews myself. So what
Speaker 2: I'm trying to do with the book is simply this
Speaker 2: say to people, learn your presidents, learn your presidential candidates,
Speaker 2: and vote. In this country, about two thirds of the
Speaker 2: people vote for president. That means about eighty million people
Speaker 2: who are eligible to vote don't vote. Eighty million people.
Speaker 2: In the year two thousand, only five hundred and thirty
Speaker 2: nine votes made a difference about who was elected president.
Speaker 2: I states the votes in Florida. So I want everybody
Speaker 2: to think about this, maybe read the book, think about
Speaker 2: why the president's so important, and go out and vote.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm trying to do with the book.
Speaker 1: So you describe the presidency as the most important, at
Speaker 1: least in the modern era, as the most important job
Speaker 1: in the world, is it safe to say this is
Speaker 1: the single most difficult job in the world.
Speaker 2: Well, other than the job of doing interviewing as you
Speaker 2: and I are doing.
Speaker 1: I'm going to let you in a little secret. I
Speaker 1: think you and I have the best gigs in all
Speaker 1: the finance. You find this difficult dinout.
Speaker 2: It's fun. I'm just being facetious. I would say the
Speaker 2: presidency is often said to be the hardest job in
Speaker 2: the world, and so it does have enormous amount of
Speaker 2: difficulties to it because everything you do affects everybody in
Speaker 2: the world. If a president makes a decision, it's going
Speaker 2: to affect people all over the world almost all the time.
Speaker 2: So it's a tough decision. If you talk what people
Speaker 2: who become president, they age, they age a lot. When
Speaker 2: you look at somebody who's been in there for four
Speaker 2: years or eight years, you see what they look like
Speaker 2: at the end, what they look like in the beginning,
Speaker 2: you kind of realize how it can really aige you.
Speaker 2: And the reason is the toughest decisions get resolved only
Speaker 2: by the president. If it's not that tough, it'll get
Speaker 2: resolved at a lower level. When it comes to a
Speaker 2: president making the final decision, it's usually the very difficult decision.
Speaker 1: So you do a poll in the book on the
Speaker 1: best and worst presidents in US history. What motivated that
Speaker 1: poll and what surprised you and those results.
Speaker 2: I had a poll commissioned to just figure out who
Speaker 2: people thought were the best presidents, who were the worst presidents,
Speaker 2: What are the qualities you want? And not surprisingly, the
Speaker 2: poll shed that Abraham Lincoln was probably the best president,
Speaker 2: George Washington and maybe the second best. But in some
Speaker 2: respects more modern presidents have very high ratings as well.
Speaker 2: President Kennedy is extremely highly regarded today, even though interestingly,
Speaker 2: only seventy percent of Americans. It's hard for you and
Speaker 2: I to believe we were alive when President Kenny was alive.
Speaker 2: Only seventy percent of Americans. Thirty thirty percent of Americans
Speaker 2: were alive when President Kenny was alive. Seventy percent of
Speaker 2: Americans don't know anything about him. They were very little
Speaker 2: about Hi because they weren't alive when he was president.
Speaker 2: I'm the chairman of the Kennedy Center in Washington that
Speaker 2: we've built an exhibition recently to show people of who
Speaker 2: President Ken Kenny was and what he's done. What I
Speaker 2: think overall, what I'm trying to do with the book
Speaker 2: is say to people, have a civic responsibility and learn
Speaker 2: your president's presidential candidates be informed, learn about their personalities,
Speaker 2: their characteristics, their programs, and then make a decision to vote.
Speaker 2: In this country, we have pretty much the lowest percentage
Speaker 2: of people in Western democracies who are actually voting. So
Speaker 2: in some countries maybe they get financial incentives to vote,
Speaker 2: but you get ninety ninety five percent of people or
Speaker 2: more voting in a major election. Here, we get maybe
Speaker 2: two thirds in a presidential election. In non presidential election years,
Speaker 2: we sometimes can get mayors elected in let's say New
Speaker 2: York City or someplace else with twenty percent of the vote.
Speaker 1: You know, it's kind of fascinating. I always wondered is
Speaker 1: that a function of a dysfunctional democracy or is it
Speaker 1: a function of an economy that's so robust that people
Speaker 1: almost don't care. Hey, we're so wealthy as a nation,
Speaker 1: whoever's president is almost irrelevant.
Speaker 2: There are many different reasons why people don't vote. Some
Speaker 2: people have a theory that people are generally happy with
Speaker 2: where the situation is, and they think the outcome is
Speaker 2: likely predictable, and so why would they make a difference
Speaker 2: by voting. Some people can't really vote easily because you
Speaker 2: have to wait in lines if you don't vote early.
Speaker 2: And sometimes people don't have the ability to wait in lines.
Speaker 2: Sometimes people don't know much about voting in advance or
Speaker 2: doing the ability to get a valid in advance. There
Speaker 2: are many different reasons, but I think it's unfortunate that
Speaker 2: people don't vote, and I really encourage people to vote,
Speaker 2: and whatever your decision is, vote and just make the
Speaker 2: democracy stronger. If you have ninety five percent of the
Speaker 2: people voting who are eligible to vote, more likely than
Speaker 2: not that government is going to have be empowered to
Speaker 2: really do much more than would do if only you
Speaker 2: know sixty percent voted.
Speaker 1: You know you look. In Europe and many other democracies,
Speaker 1: election day is a national holiday. The stock markets closed,
Speaker 1: the banks are closed, people at schools are closed. It
Speaker 1: encourages people to go out and vote. Is that something
Speaker 1: we should be thinking about here?
Speaker 2: We should look at things like that. For example, people
Speaker 2: have suggested we allow people to vote on Sundays or
Speaker 2: basically make election Day Sunday now for religious reasons. People
Speaker 2: don't like that in some cases, but having it as
Speaker 2: a national holiday wouldn't be a big idea. Now with
Speaker 2: advanced vote or early voting. We've mitigated that problem to
Speaker 2: some extent, but making it a national holiday, we have
Speaker 2: a lot of national holidays. Adding one more probably wouldn't
Speaker 2: be the worst thing in the world.
Speaker 1: So let's get back to the highest calling to the book.
Speaker 1: One of the things that really struck me were the
Speaker 1: last two chapters, on Trump and on Biden. Those two
Speaker 1: chapters felt very different to me than the rest of
Speaker 1: the book. And I don't know if it was the
Speaker 1: conversation or just because it's so present and current and fresh,
Speaker 1: but they felt qualitatively different than me. It's also as
Speaker 1: you're reading it, the things that are being discussed are
Speaker 1: just so fresh and vivid in my recollection, but I
Speaker 1: found those two chapters to be really intriguing. Both journalists
Speaker 1: you interviewed and both subject matters really fascinating.
Speaker 2: Well. Maggie Habram is a New York Times reporter who
Speaker 2: covered President Trump when he was at the White House.
Speaker 2: She also covered him before he became president. Like many
Speaker 2: books about the Trump administration, her book, called A Confidence Man,
Speaker 2: was not probably that favorable. Franklin four is a journalist
Speaker 2: at the Atlantic and he took the first two years
Speaker 2: of the Biden administration and wrote about it, and it
Speaker 2: was one of the best books that had been written
Speaker 2: so far about the Biden administration. So while I do
Speaker 2: have an interview with President Biden in the book, and
Speaker 2: I do know him reasonably well, I thought having a
Speaker 2: journalist perspective would add something to the book. And Franklin
Speaker 2: Ford did a really good job in the first two
Speaker 2: years of the Biden administration. Obviously didn't cover the last
Speaker 2: two years of it. But the books about presidents probably
Speaker 2: are best read twenty or thirty years after the or written,
Speaker 2: but probably best twenty or thirty years after the president served,
Speaker 2: because you really get more data. Then you have more information.
Speaker 2: But I think for a book that's really relatively contemporaneous
Speaker 2: with the president, Franklin Ford did a very good job
Speaker 2: describing Biden. It's just you have to bring your own
Speaker 2: perspectives to it. But I try to be as balanced
Speaker 2: as I can. And as I point out in the book,
Speaker 2: while I did work in the Carter White House, I
Speaker 2: do not give money to politicians. I make no political contributions.
Speaker 2: I don't advocate any candidate or at any given time,
Speaker 2: so I'm as apolitical as probably you can realistically be.
Speaker 2: I also have you know, because I chair the Kennedy
Speaker 2: Center and chair the Smithsonian share the Library of Congress board,
Speaker 2: I felt that I would be best to be a
Speaker 2: political So.
Speaker 1: You interview Biden, you interview Trump, you interview George W. Bush,
Speaker 1: You interview Bill Clinton. Both journalists you interviewed. They seem
Speaker 1: very forthcoming. It doesn't feel like they're hedging their words
Speaker 1: or being guarded. Some parts of the conversations with presidents,
Speaker 1: it seems like they are very intimately aware that everything
Speaker 1: they say impacts their legacy.
Speaker 2: Sure, journalists, their job is to penetrate the information that
Speaker 2: is available and kind of give it the perspective that
Speaker 2: they have and write as fully as they can about it.
Speaker 2: Presidents are more guarded. All politicians are more guarded. Some
Speaker 2: presidents don't have filters, but generally presidents have filters and
Speaker 2: they say things that you know they're going to probably
Speaker 2: appeal to their constituents. There was a movie where Warren
Speaker 2: Batty played a Canada candidate named Bullfinch. I think it
Speaker 2: was Oh Sure, and basically that candidate had no filter
Speaker 2: and was saying things you shouldn't say. You rarely get
Speaker 2: candidates getting to be the president United States without some filter. Obviously,
Speaker 2: some candidates in recent years have been thought to be
Speaker 2: having not enough of a filter, but generally they have
Speaker 2: some kind of filter. Journalists don't have a filter as
Speaker 2: much because they're not basically trying to run for election
Speaker 2: and get votes.
Speaker 1: Do you find when you're talking to a president and
Speaker 1: you're past the thirty or forty minute mark, their guard
Speaker 1: drops a little bit. You can get a little more
Speaker 1: to the core without that facade or media training show
Speaker 1: getting in the way.
Speaker 2: Well, they're pretty experienced. If you interviewed Bill Clinton or
Speaker 2: George W. Bush, and I've done that several times, they're
Speaker 2: very experienced, and they're not likely to say some things
Speaker 2: that are going to be get them in trouble. I
Speaker 2: wouldn't think, because at this point they're so experienced and
Speaker 2: so used to doing interviews. But sometimes people say things
Speaker 2: off the record that you don't publish, but that you
Speaker 2: do get a better sense of them in that way.
Speaker 2: But off the record is something that people don't do
Speaker 2: as much anymore because nobody thinks anything's really off the
Speaker 2: record anymore.
Speaker 1: My sense of George W. Bush is that he wasn't
Speaker 1: Obviously Trump is the ultimate unfiltered president, but I never
Speaker 1: really got the sense that despite growing up in a
Speaker 1: political family his father was first head of the CIA
Speaker 1: and then vice president, then president, he doesn't strike me
Speaker 1: as someone who was especially filtered. He doesn't reveal what
Speaker 1: he doesn't want to reveal, but it seems like there
Speaker 1: are broad areas he's very comfortable talking about what was
Speaker 1: your experience like interviewing Bush.
Speaker 2: I've known the Bush family for quite some time. George
Speaker 2: Herbert Walker Bush joined my firm as an advisor after
Speaker 2: he left the presidency, so I got to know him,
Speaker 2: and I got to know his son reasonably well. George
Speaker 2: Herbert Walker Bush and George W. Bush are really very
Speaker 2: different personalities. George Herbert Walker Bush grew up really in Connecticut.
Speaker 2: George W. Bush grew up in Texas. George W. Bush
Speaker 2: I think reflects his mother's personality more than his father's.
Speaker 2: And his mother was very had a sharp tongue, and
Speaker 2: she was fairly critical of certain things, and she would
Speaker 2: tell you what she would say thought without a filter.
Speaker 2: And George W. Reflected that to some extent as well.
Speaker 2: As he became more experience in politics, I think he
Speaker 2: had a little bit more of a filter. But still
Speaker 2: he's willing to make fun of other people. He's willing
Speaker 2: to use humor in a way that I think is
Speaker 2: advantageous for him. And so I think the interview in
Speaker 2: the book is it does reflect his personality.
Speaker 1: So you had the interview with Peter Baker about Obama,
Speaker 1: I would have loved to see your interview with Obama.
Speaker 1: How come that didn't come about.
Speaker 2: I did interview President Obama at a Carlisle event years ago,
Speaker 2: but it was not recorded, and it was right after
Speaker 2: he left the presidency, and just for space and other reasons,
Speaker 2: I couldn't get every in there in his scheduling problems
Speaker 2: and so forth. But I think that the Peter Baker
Speaker 2: book on Obama does reflect pretty well what Obama did
Speaker 2: as president.
Speaker 1: And he is another one that he seems very structured
Speaker 1: and controlled, but occasionally will tell you what he really thinks.
Speaker 2: Yes, President Obama is an extremely smart person, very intelligent.
Speaker 2: President of the Harvard Law Review, and early on he
Speaker 2: decided to get into politics and not really become a
Speaker 2: lawyer or law professor, which he had the opportunity to do.
Speaker 2: I got to know him reasonably well when he was
Speaker 2: President of the United States. Very cerebral, a person who
Speaker 2: would like to would read a hundred page memo and
Speaker 2: go through it quite well. He's a very, very talented writer,
Speaker 2: maybe the best writer who's been president since Woodrow Wilson.
Speaker 1: Wow. Really interesting. So when you the manuscript is locked,
Speaker 1: I don't know if people are where. You know, when
Speaker 1: a hardcover comes out, it's months in advance. So in
Speaker 1: between the time the is locked and published, we had
Speaker 1: a pretty substantial shift in the political scene here. When
Speaker 1: you submitted this, you could take surveys of Republicans or Democrats,
Speaker 1: they were both unhappy with their presidential candidate. We've now
Speaker 1: had this massive change in the paperback version that comes
Speaker 1: out in six months. What's the addendum you're going to
Speaker 1: do about the twenty twenty four election.
Speaker 2: Well, when this went to the printer, it was really
Speaker 2: in June, and at that point Biden and Trump were
Speaker 2: likely to be the nominees. As it was getting ready
Speaker 2: to be printed, all of a sudden, President Biden said,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to be the nominee, and as we
Speaker 2: now know, Vice President Harris is the nominee. So I
Speaker 2: did write it in addendum to the book on the
Speaker 2: very back that does say, look what happened in just
Speaker 2: the three weeks after I submitted the manuscript until today,
Speaker 2: which is that you have a new person running for
Speaker 2: the Democratic presidency, you have President Trump was shot at,
Speaker 2: and then things like that have changed a great deal.
Speaker 2: So I did try to reflect that. But there's no
Speaker 2: doubt that when you're writing a book about the presidential
Speaker 2: situation and you're having the middle of a presidential election,
Speaker 2: things can change. And so even after the last week
Speaker 2: or so, things have changed from what we knew. I
Speaker 2: didn't have a chance to put the Tim Walls selection
Speaker 2: in the book either.
Speaker 1: So the book runs from George Washington to Biden. Let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about how the important roles of
Speaker 1: the president as both leader of the country and leader
Speaker 1: of their party has changed over that two and a
Speaker 1: half century era. How has the role of the president
Speaker 1: of the United States evolved in modern times.
Speaker 2: Okay, so initially when the president was the president George Washington,
Speaker 2: it was not a global figure. Really in the United
Speaker 2: States was not a global country. Today, the United States
Speaker 2: president is the most important person in the Western world.
Speaker 2: For sure. He plays or she will play if she
Speaker 2: gets elected, a role where you are not only the
Speaker 2: head of the government, but the most important person in
Speaker 2: the political arena. You're also a global figure who are
Speaker 2: making decisions about war and peace from time to time.
Speaker 2: So it's an incredibly important job. It's hard to think
Speaker 2: that anyone human can do it perfectly, and nobody really
Speaker 2: has done it perfectly. But it's a role that very
Speaker 2: few people would say that there's an equivalent anywhere else
Speaker 2: in the world.
Speaker 1: You've written that as a twelve year old boy, you
Speaker 1: were deeply inspired by President Kenney's inaugural address, particularly his
Speaker 1: call to public service. Tell us about that.
Speaker 2: Yes, I was young, and my sixth grade teacher went
Speaker 2: over that speech with us the day after it was given,
Speaker 2: and I recognized what he was saying is that people
Speaker 2: should give back to the country. He was not from
Speaker 2: a wealthy family. I didn't know what I wanted to
Speaker 2: do at twelve years old, but I thought serving in
Speaker 2: the government in some way would be a thing that
Speaker 2: would be a worthy goal, and so I ultimately did
Speaker 2: try to do that by working in the White House
Speaker 2: for President Carter. So that led to other things, and
Speaker 2: it led to the company that I created, Carlisle, after
Speaker 2: we left the government, and then that became successful and
Speaker 2: I decided to vote a large part of my life
Speaker 2: now to philanthropy.
Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit about some of the
Speaker 1: things you do, because it's really a fascinating arc of things. First,
Speaker 1: you're one of the original signers of the Giving Pledge.
Speaker 1: Tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 2: Bill Gates, Melinda Gates, and Warren Buffett conceived of a pledge.
Speaker 2: It's informal, it's not binding in some ways, but it's
Speaker 2: basically an informal pledge that you would give agree to
Speaker 2: give half of your net worth away during your lifetime
Speaker 2: or upon your death. And there were forty of us
Speaker 2: who signed it initially. Now they're probably more than two
Speaker 2: hundred have signed it, mostly from the United States, but
Speaker 2: are some certainly from around the rest of the world.
Speaker 2: And it's a commitment that I've tried to honor. I
Speaker 2: have given away a fair amount of money in my
Speaker 2: lifetime to things that interestingly get some more get more
Speaker 2: attention than others. So a large part of what I've
Speaker 2: done is met research and universities and scholarships. The thing
Speaker 2: that has caught the most attention is what I've called
Speaker 2: patriotic philanthropy, which is to say, giving money to remind
Speaker 2: people the history and heritage of our country. So fixing
Speaker 2: the Washington Monument, fixing the Lincoln Memorial, fixing the Jefferson Memorial,
Speaker 2: fixing Mount Vernon, things like that, Monticello, Montpelier. I've been
Speaker 2: willing to kind of put up the money to help
Speaker 2: get these things restored on the theory that if they're restored,
Speaker 2: people will visit them, and if they visit them, more
Speaker 2: likely they'll learn more about presidence, more about our history
Speaker 2: and heritage. And I've done the same in trying to
Speaker 2: buy historic documents like the Magna Carta Declaration of Independence,
Speaker 2: preserve them, have people see them, hopefully learn more about
Speaker 2: our country's history.
Speaker 1: So it's a fascinating phrase, patriotic philanthropy. How did you
Speaker 1: find your way into that space? It didn't seem I
Speaker 1: remember when there was a problem with the Washington Monument
Speaker 1: and there was a cold raise capital kind of repair it.
Speaker 1: It didn't seem that, like very many people are spending time, efforts,
Speaker 1: and money repairing the great monuments of the United States.
Speaker 2: Well, many people think that the federal government has the
Speaker 2: responsibility to put up the money for that. So when
Speaker 2: I called the head of the Park Service and said
Speaker 2: how long is it going to take to fix it?
Speaker 2: And where you're gonna get the money? He said it's
Speaker 2: going to take a while getting the money from Congress.
Speaker 2: I said, forget that. I'll put up the money.
Speaker 1: And I was, wait a secon I got to stop
Speaker 1: you right there. Which monument are we talking about?
Speaker 2: Washington Monument?
Speaker 1: And that was not an insubstantial job. That was tens
Speaker 1: of millions, hundreds of millions.
Speaker 2: No, it wasn't that significant. What happened was the Washington Monument,
Speaker 2: which was opened around eighteen eighty eight or so. They
Speaker 2: had earthquake damage in twenty eleven, and so the head
Speaker 2: of the Park Service said he didn't know exactly what
Speaker 2: it would cost. I said, well, tell me what it
Speaker 2: would cost, and I'll put up the money. And he
Speaker 2: ultimately said that maybe Congress would put up some of
Speaker 2: the money, but he was worried initially that Congress wouldn't
Speaker 2: move quickly enough give him the money when he needed it.
Speaker 2: So I decided to move quickly to do it. I've
Speaker 2: been surprised at how many people think about that because
Speaker 2: it was not the largest gift I've ever given, right
Speaker 2: by far, but it was then Wash the monument the
Speaker 2: symbol of our country, and then a private citizen would
Speaker 2: put up the money for it kind of struck people
Speaker 2: as strange. Why wouldn't let the federal government do it?
Speaker 2: And I've tried to do many things that the federal
Speaker 2: government could eventually do, but maybe they can't move quickly enough,
Speaker 2: or they don't have the resources to do it in
Speaker 2: some cases, or they can't allocate their resources. I've tried
Speaker 2: to buy historic documents for the same kind of reason.
Speaker 2: The federal government doesn't buy historic documents typically, but I
Speaker 2: think by preserving them, we give people a chance to
Speaker 2: see these documents and have them think much more about
Speaker 2: our history and heritage. And the reason that's important is
Speaker 2: Jefferson said that to have a representative democracy work, you
Speaker 2: need to have an informed citizenry, and very often we
Speaker 2: don't have as informed a citizenry as we should have.
Speaker 2: We don't teach civics in high school or junior high
Speaker 2: school as much as we used to. Americans don't pass
Speaker 2: civics tests very well at all, and as a result,
Speaker 2: we don't have people that actually know as much as
Speaker 2: I think they should know about our country, its history,
Speaker 2: and its heritage.
Speaker 1: So you buy a lot of these documents, how are
Speaker 1: they visible to the public.
Speaker 2: All my documents are on display. I put them on
Speaker 2: the Smithsonian or the National Archives or the Library of
Speaker 2: Congress or equivalent organization, National Constitution Center, so people can
Speaker 2: see them and there'll be obviously a curator describe it
Speaker 2: more detail. And the theory is that, well, if you
Speaker 2: could look at what's in the Declaration of Independents on
Speaker 2: a computer slide, you don't need to go see the original.
Speaker 2: But the human brain still works in a certain way.
Speaker 2: If you know you're going to see an original, you're
Speaker 2: probably going to read about it before you go there.
Speaker 2: When you go there, you're going to have a curator
Speaker 2: tell you about it, and Effroich, you'll probably read more
Speaker 2: about it. So the human brain still gets much more
Speaker 2: out of seeing an original. Am I view original building
Speaker 2: or an original document than just seeing something on a
Speaker 2: computer slide.
Speaker 1: So the documents that you have purchased and made available
Speaker 1: to the public, the Declaration of Independence, an original copy
Speaker 1: of the Constitution? Did you say Magne Cartas, Yes.
Speaker 2: I bought the only copy in private hands of the
Speaker 2: Magna Karta, and I put it on permanent loan to
Speaker 2: the National Archives.
Speaker 1: Besides those three, which are not insubstantial, any other is worth.
Speaker 2: Well, the Bill of Rights. I recently bought a rare
Speaker 2: copy of the Bill of Rights and put that on
Speaker 2: display at the National Archives as well. I have the
Speaker 2: first printings of the Declaration of Independence, the first printings
Speaker 2: of the Constitution that were printed actually in newspapers at
Speaker 2: the time, and a lot of other historic documents like that.
Speaker 2: The thirteenth Amendment is also one that I have, which
Speaker 2: is the amendment that abolished slavery.
Speaker 1: Huh really really quite fascinating. Let's talk about boards. You
Speaker 1: sit on a number of boards. Your chairman of the
Speaker 1: John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Council
Speaker 1: Law and Foreign Relations, and Nasal Gallery of Art, the
Speaker 1: Economic Club of Washington, the University of Chicago. That's a
Speaker 1: pretty busy schedule. What are you doing with these various
Speaker 1: boards in terms of helping them raise money and helping
Speaker 1: them do programming.
Speaker 2: Nonprofit boards are ones that are time consuming, like for
Speaker 2: profit boards, but there's no compensation. You do it because
Speaker 2: you really want to help the cause. I joined all
Speaker 2: these boards thinking I wanted to help in that particular
Speaker 2: cause or project, and I got elect to chair in
Speaker 2: some cases of it to those boards, and I try
Speaker 2: as a chair to be a representative of the organization
Speaker 2: and to help them raise money. And obviously if you're
Speaker 2: the chairman, you're going to be expected to give money
Speaker 2: as well. So I've been the chairman of the Kenny
Speaker 2: Center for the last fourteen years, and I'm now the
Speaker 2: chairman of the National Gallery of Art as well and
Speaker 2: the chairman of the Library of Congress Board. And the
Speaker 2: Library Congress Board reflects my interest in reading. This weekend
Speaker 2: we'll have the National Book Festival in Washington, and I'm
Speaker 2: the chair of that as well, and with the Carla Hayden,
Speaker 2: who's the Library of Congress, and I just love reading.
Speaker 2: I love promoting books, and that's one of the reasons
Speaker 2: why I enjoy the Library of Congress.
Speaker 1: So we'll talk a little bit about books in a
Speaker 1: few moments. I want to stay focused on your alliance
Speaker 1: on scholarships to attend college and law school, and now
Speaker 1: as part of your philanthropy, you're aiming to expand access
Speaker 1: and opportunity for young people from disadvantage backgrounds to get
Speaker 1: a better education.
Speaker 2: Tell us about that My father did not graduate from
Speaker 2: college or high school. He went into World War Two,
Speaker 2: came back, got a job in the post office, married
Speaker 2: my mother. They were very young. I was their only child.
Speaker 2: My father had a blue collar salary his whole life,
Speaker 2: and so to go to college I needed a scholarship,
Speaker 2: and I got the biggest scholarship from Duke University. I'm
Speaker 2: sure it was not a basketball scholarship though. And then
Speaker 2: I got a scholarship to go to the Universiticago Law School.
Speaker 2: So I've tried to help those universities by being board chair.
Speaker 2: I've been the I was the board chair of Duke
Speaker 2: University for a long time, and then now I'm chair
Speaker 2: of the Universiticago. I've given a fair amount of money
Speaker 2: those universities for scholarships for people who didn't have the
Speaker 2: chance to get there if they didn't have a scholarship.
Speaker 2: And I have something I'm very interested in doing because
Speaker 2: I think scholarship money is the best money you can
Speaker 2: give to see some progress in the near term. Very
Speaker 2: often when you make a philanthropic gift, it may be
Speaker 2: decades before you see the progress. But with scholarships, you
Speaker 2: know you're giving somebody money to go to school who
Speaker 2: otherwise wouldn't go to that school or probably couldn't attend
Speaker 2: that school.
Speaker 1: So let me change gears on you in the last
Speaker 1: few minutes we have. You grew up how far from Baltimore?
Speaker 2: I was in Baltimore.
Speaker 1: You grew up in Baltimore. Now you're the principal owner
Speaker 1: of the Baltimore Orioles, which you purchased this year. Tell
Speaker 1: us what motivated you to buy the team and how
Speaker 1: it's been going.
Speaker 2: I did play Little League baseball, but I assure I
Speaker 2: was not a superstar, and like the all kids who
Speaker 2: play baseball, you always want to play in the major leagues,
Speaker 2: but you realize the time you get to fourteen or fifteen,
Speaker 2: now that's not going to happen. I spent most of
Speaker 2: my career living in Washington post the White House years,
Speaker 2: and I've given a fair amount of my money and
Speaker 2: time to causes in the Washington area or national causes.
Speaker 2: But I felt that I hadn't done enough for Baltimore,
Speaker 2: my hometown, which had given me a public school education,
Speaker 2: where my parents were born and raised, where I was raised,
Speaker 2: where my parents are buried, and where i'm no doubt
Speaker 2: will be buried as well. And I just thought if
Speaker 2: an opportunity came along to do more in Baltimore, I
Speaker 2: would try to take advantage of it. And an opportunity
Speaker 2: came along to buy the Baltimore and Oriols, which is
Speaker 2: very important to Baltimore. Baltimore has lost a lot of
Speaker 2: jobs in recent years, a lot of businesses in recent years,
Speaker 2: and as a result, Baltimore doesn't have as many things
Speaker 2: to brag about as maybe New York City or Los Angeles,
Speaker 2: and therefore the Oriols, which have been there since nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty four, are really central to the ethos of the city,
Speaker 2: and I just thought I wanted to help contributing that way,
Speaker 2: and so I put a team together to buy the Oriols.
Speaker 1: What surprised you most as an owner of a Major
Speaker 1: League Baseball.
Speaker 2: Team how dedicated the fans are. I've met fans who've
Speaker 2: had season tickets for forty five years, fifty years in
Speaker 2: some cases, and I'm just surprised how people regard baseball
Speaker 2: and the Oriels almost like a religion, and people know
Speaker 2: every statistic, they watch every game. People are much more
Speaker 2: dedicated than I actually knew, and I was surprised how
Speaker 2: important Baltimore really regards the Oriols es central to it's fabric,
Speaker 2: and so that's been one of the most important things
Speaker 2: I've learned.
Speaker 1: So let me give you an opportunity to put push
Speaker 1: back on some nonsense I read when it was first announced.
Speaker 1: Oh no, a private equity guy is buying the Orioles.
Speaker 1: Ticket price is going to go up. Hot dog price
Speaker 1: is going to going up. This is going to be
Speaker 1: a disaster.
Speaker 2: Well, there are private equity people before me who have
Speaker 2: bought sports teams and the results have been reasonably good.
Speaker 2: I think. You know, baseball is a complicated sport because
Speaker 2: it doesn't have kind of the arrangements that the NFL
Speaker 2: has or the NBA has, and so it's a much
Speaker 2: more challenge for small town teams to do as well
Speaker 2: as big town teams. But you know, I don't think
Speaker 2: that's the biggest focus is increasing prices on food or
Speaker 2: something like that. Our focus is winning a championship and
Speaker 2: giving the best team we can on the putting the
Speaker 2: best team we can on the field, and that's what
Speaker 2: I'm really focused on, and that's what our energies are
Speaker 2: are devoted to.
Speaker 1: And arguably, you have the best stadium in all of
Speaker 1: major league sports. What makes Baltimore so special.
Speaker 2: In the nineteen fifties and sixties and seventies, stadiums were
Speaker 2: being built around the country that are were what I
Speaker 2: would call androgynists. They could be used for football, they
Speaker 2: could do used for baseball, and they were not really
Speaker 2: baseball centered the way let's say Wrigley Field or Fenway is.
Speaker 2: And as a result, baseball kind of went away from
Speaker 2: its roots and having very unique kind of designs in
Speaker 2: its stadiums. When Camden Yards was open about thirty years ago,
Speaker 2: it returned baseball to its roots and building a stadium
Speaker 2: is built only for baseball and which has some of
Speaker 2: the unique characteristics. And it's now thirty years old. We'll
Speaker 2: rehabit over the next three or four years with money
Speaker 2: that the State of Maryland is providing us, and so
Speaker 2: we wanted to make it one of the best experiences
Speaker 2: in all of baseball. To come to a game like that,
Speaker 2: experience what a great stadium is like, and actually enjoy
Speaker 2: the team on the field. It's an historic stadium in
Speaker 2: many respects. It's not old, but it's thirty years ago
Speaker 2: when it was built, but it now is iconic. It's
Speaker 2: iconic because many stadiums that are being built since the
Speaker 2: Camden Yards have built, are trying to pattern themselves after
Speaker 2: what Camden Yard cas is looking like. And so today
Speaker 2: when baseball stadiums are built, they're built to be like
Speaker 2: the old stadiums. They're not built to be ready for
Speaker 2: football or some other sport.
Speaker 1: I grew up as a long suffering Mets fan and
Speaker 1: spends a lot of afternoons at Shea Stadium, and when
Speaker 1: the new city Field was rebuilt, Camden Yards seems to
Speaker 1: be the blueprint for that. Arguably city Field is a
Speaker 1: better experience for a fan than the new Yankee Stadium.
Speaker 2: Well, I've been to the Yankee Stadium and I've been
Speaker 2: to city Field recently. In fact, the last two days
Speaker 2: we had games in there with the Mets, and unfortunately,
Speaker 2: as we talked today, we lost two of the three
Speaker 2: games to the Mets, and I in kind of walk
Speaker 2: off home runs in the last inning. But the stadium
Speaker 2: is very modern in many respects. It's it's iconic and
Speaker 2: the fact that it does look like a baseball stadium
Speaker 2: but has electronics and a scoreboard and other kinds of
Speaker 2: fan services that are really unique. So I think people
Speaker 2: should be press out in new York of that stadium.
Speaker 1: Yep, they did a really nice job. All Right, I
Speaker 1: only have you for a few minutes, so we're going
Speaker 1: to jump to our speed round. Let's go through these
Speaker 1: as quickly as we can, starting with who are your
Speaker 1: mentors who helped shape your career?
Speaker 2: Well, I worked in the White House for a man
Speaker 2: named Stuart Eisenstadt. I dedicated the book to Ted Sorenson,
Speaker 2: who I mentioned earlier, and to Stuart eisenstadd he was
Speaker 2: my mentor who helped me work at the White House
Speaker 2: and been very helpful to me, and I would cite
Speaker 2: him as a mentor.
Speaker 1: I know you're a big reader, supposedly used to read
Speaker 1: four or five books a week when you were younger.
Speaker 1: What are some of your favorites and what are you
Speaker 1: reading right now?
Speaker 2: Well, right now, I've just finished reading a book called
Speaker 2: g Man, written by a professor at Yale, and the
Speaker 2: book won the Pulitzer Prize. It's about Jaegar Hoover, a
Speaker 2: really good book. I just finished reading a book on
Speaker 2: Martin Luther King that also won the Pulitzer Prize by
Speaker 2: Jonathan Eig. Those are really really good books. I just
Speaker 2: finished reading a book about Winston Churchill by Eric Larson,
Speaker 2: about Churchill's first year in office. And I think that's
Speaker 2: an excellent book as well. I like reading books that
Speaker 2: are non fiction books, and typically books that are, you know,
Speaker 2: books about history. But I did read a book by
Speaker 2: a very famous author, James Patterson recently, on his new
Speaker 2: book on Tiger Woods. I'm going to interview James Patterson soon,
Speaker 2: and he's written enormous number of books, but this one
Speaker 2: on Tiger Woods is quite interesting and I enjoyed that
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 1: Huh, really intriguing. You mentioned McCullough early. Did you ever
Speaker 1: read his book on the Wright Brothers.
Speaker 2: Of course, I interviewed him about that book, and I
Speaker 2: think if it's a great book. I didn't really know
Speaker 2: much about the Wright Brothers compared to what I should
Speaker 2: have known, and he didn't know much either, and he
Speaker 2: dug into it and he actually he did a great book. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Really fascinating. Right. Our final two questions, what advice would
Speaker 1: you give to a recent college grad interest in the
Speaker 1: career in either private equity, philanthropy, or invest in.
Speaker 2: Learn how to read. Keep reading. You can't read too
Speaker 2: many books. Learn how to write in a simple way.
Speaker 2: Learn how to communicate orally, experiment, try many different things.
Speaker 2: Don't take the path of least resistance. Don't make ethical mistakes,
Speaker 2: because in the end you could ruin your entire life.
Speaker 2: You only have your reputation to give. You only have
Speaker 2: your reputation to walk around with, and if you ruin
Speaker 2: your reputation, you'll never be able to recover it.
Speaker 1: And our final question, what do you know about the
Speaker 1: world of private equity investing today? You wish you knew
Speaker 1: back in nineteen eighty seven when you were first launching
Speaker 1: the firm.
Speaker 2: Well, I wish I knew how big and complicated it was.
Speaker 2: It wasn't as big and complicated then. I wish I'd
Speaker 2: known many different types of deals that I could have
Speaker 2: done that we didn't do. I passed on some great deals.
Speaker 2: We had a chance to invest early on in a
Speaker 2: company like Amazon, and we passed up on that, and
Speaker 2: we had stock in it, but we didn't really hold
Speaker 2: it as long as we should have. So I've made
Speaker 2: a lot of mistakes, but on the whole, I'm reasonably
Speaker 2: satisfied with where my career now is.
Speaker 1: Well, this has been just tremendous. Thank you, David for
Speaker 1: being so generous with your time. We have been speaking
Speaker 1: with David Rubinstein, founder of the Carlisle Group and author
Speaker 1: most recently of the Highest Calling Conversations on the American Presidency.
Speaker 1: If you enjoy this conversation, check out any of our
Speaker 1: previous five hundred interviews we've had over the past is
Speaker 1: it ten years? Wow? Over the past ten years. You
Speaker 1: can find those at iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you find
Speaker 1: your favorite podcast, And be sure and check out my
Speaker 1: new podcast, At the Money, short form interviews with experts
Speaker 1: on specific topics ten to twelve minutes with various people
Speaker 1: talking about your money, earning it, spending it, and most
Speaker 1: importantly investing it. At the Money wherever you find your
Speaker 1: favorite podcast, and in the Masters in Business podcast feed.
Speaker 1: I would be remiss if I did not thank the
Speaker 1: crack team that helps with these conversations together each week.
Speaker 1: My audio engineer is Meredith Rank. My producers Anna Luke.
Speaker 1: Sage Bauman is head of Podcasts at Bloomberg. A Teak
Speaker 1: of Albron is our project manager. Sean Russo is my
Speaker 1: head of research. I'm Barry Ritolts. You've been listening to
Speaker 1: Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.