Best-selling author, philanthropist, and National Constitution Center Trustee David Rubenstein discusses his new book, The Highest Calling: Conversations on the American Presidency. The book features interviews with living American presidents and top historians and journalists who reflect on the U.S. presidency, the political genius and frays of the presidential role, and the wisdom that emerges from it. Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, moderates.
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David Rubenstein is the New York Times bestselling author of How to Invest, How to Lead, The American Experiment, and The American Story. He is cofounder and cochairman of The Carlyle Group, one of the world’s largest and most successful private equity firms. Rubenstein is Chairman of the Boards of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Council on Foreign Relations, the National Gallery of Art, the Economic Club of Washington, the National Constitution Center, and the University of Chicago. He is an original signer of The Giving Pledge and a recipient of the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy and the MoMA’s David Rockefeller Award. He is the host of PBS’s History with David Rubenstein, Bloomberg Wealth with David Rubenstein, and The David Rubenstein Show: Peer-to-Peer Conversations on Bloomberg TV and PBS.
Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization devoted to educating the public about the U.S. Constitution. Rosen is also professor of law at The George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic.
Additional Resources
- David Rubenstein, The Highest Calling: Conversations on the American Presidency (2024)
Excerpt from Interview: Rubenstein discusses how the U.S. presidency became the most influential global role, the challenges faced by presidents, and suggests that talented individuals now choose private equity over politics.
David Rubenstein: Even when Lincoln was president, he wasn't a world leader. He was known and admired but not a world leader. But when Wilson went to Paris to negotiate the Treaty of Versailles, when he entered Paris, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people were cheering him. We'd never seen a US president treated that well abroad, and most presidents had never gone abroad. He spent six months six months in Paris, and it became clear then that the president was the most important person, certainly in the Western world and maybe in the world.
While his successors were less significant, let's say, around the world Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover when Roosevelt became president and we went into the Great Depression and we went into World War II, he became the leader, as Wilson had been. Ever since that time, whoever is president of the United States, even if they're low-key like Harry Truman, they are the most important person in the world. When I go around the world on business trips, people ask me more than anything else, "Tell me what's going on in the presidency, what's going on in the White House?" People have an obsession with it 'cause, although we have 7 billion people on the face of the earth, people around the world wanna know what the president's gonna do 'cause it's gonna affect them more than any other person can affect them.
So we have great inventors and we have great people that create internet-related companies and maybe devices that all of us use, but the life of most people around the world is probably gonna be affected more by what the president of the United States does than by any other single person, and that's why it's really the highest calling, and that's why so many people who are so ambitious and wanna help their country decide to become president, and I'll just find a point on this. Why should somebody wanna be president? Think about 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. Ronald Reagan was almost assassinated and then had the scandal of Iran Contra. George Herbert Walker Bush couldn't get reelected. Bill Clinton had impeachment and so forth. Donald Trump was impeached twice. So why do people want this job? To get it, you have to spend two years of your life basically running around the country begging for money, bad hotels, bad food, no exercise, no family time. Why do people want this 'cause I think they feel it is an obligation to give back to the country, and this is the best way to give back to the country, and I think a lot of very talented people have tried to get this job, and sadly, we don't get as many people trying to get it as I think we should.
And final point, I would say, the real final point is when this country started, 1776, we had 3 million people in this country, 3 million people. Half a million of them were slaves, and they couldn't be in government. 1.25 million were women. They weren't allowed in the government. 10,000 were Jewish. They couldn't be in government. There were 500,000 people who were white Christian men who didn't own property, so they couldn't be in government. So you got about 400,000 people who could be in government and serve, and out of that, you got George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Monroe, James Madison. Think about that, plus not to mention Hamilton and Franklin. Why did we have such great leaders then, and now we have less? And my theory is that the really talented people in our country now go into private equity. That's my theory.
Excerpt from Interview: Rubenstein reflects on his personal experiences interviewing and interacting with presidents and hinting at future projects Biden may undertake before leaving office.
David Rubenstein: I've known him for, while I interviewed him one time before he was president, I got him to come to the Economic Club of Washington. And in the Green Room, he said, asked me if I'm gonna run for president. I said, president of what? He said, president of the United States. I said, you're not gonna be president of the United States. He said, I know, but it helped my brand a bit. He exaggerates sometimes. For example, he called me the day after that interview. I joined the Economic Club. He said, David, it's the highest rated show ever carried on C-SPAN. I just said he got the ratings and C-SPAN the ratings were the highest of any show ever on C-SPAN. So I called the head of C-SPAN and said, what were the ratings? He said, we don't have ratings, but I've gotten to know Trump.
And actually one-on-one, leave the policy things aside. One-on-One, he can be a very charming person. I had dinner with him to prepare for this. Went down to Mar-a-Lago. And I've known Mar-a-Lago for a while because before he got involved in politics, my parents who lived in Baltimore when they moved to a suburb of Baltimore called West Palm Beach, Florida, I used to go down there and have events there. And it was very pleasant. And then I had dinner with him there, and we agreed to do the interview, but the only time we could do it was on the day of the trial. And I said, you're really gonna be able to focus on this interview. He said, no problem. So I had the interview, and then a couple minutes later, he went into one of the trials.
The interview with Joe Biden. I've known Biden for a long time, and it's public knowledge that I let him use my house in Nantucket for Thanksgiving. For he likes to go to Nantucket for Thanksgiving. It's a 40 year family tradition, and I don't like to be in the cold weather on Thanksgiving. So he goes there, he likes my house. And I would say I've known him a long time. I'll see him this weekend because we have a celebration of the Blair House. I think the 200th anniversary of the Blair House, and I've helped reconstruct it. And so I've known him for a long time. He's a, he's pretty much what you see is what you get. He's a blue collar kind of guy, snap you on the back, really cares about relationships. I don't think he, at the time I did the interview, expected to win one, to run.
And I think when the history is written, the biggest mistake that either party made or either person made in this campaign was to agree to an early debate. If Donald Trump loses the election, it'll be because he agreed to an early debate. Had he not had an early debate, and he had the same debate with Joe Biden in October, it would've been too late to substitute. And probably I think Trump probably would've won. From Biden's point of view, the biggest mistake was having an early debate because the debate forced, in effect, other Democrats to push him out and had a debate been in October, he would've not had time to really push him out. But in any event Joe Biden is, I spent an hour alone with him in the Oval Office, no staff, nothing.
And you all know him probably pretty well because he regards this as his adopted state. I would say he's a nice person for sure. Hail Fellow well met he is, he's really a guy that really gets along with people with a blue collar mindset. And, but the most interesting part of the interview and the thing that I knew would be the most interesting is when he talks about his parents' very close relationship with his mother, very close relationship with his father and his family. And you know he's now he's got an opportunity to do some more things before he leaves office, but no doubt he'll be heard from again. And, I saw with other presidents, when you know you're not gonna be president again, you have a couple months to go, all of a sudden the energy kicks in and you try to get things done 'cause you're not gonna be able to do it much longer.
And so I think he ought to do a couple things. And I know of some things he is already getting ready to do, and they'll be announced soon. So he's not just sitting around waiting for the time to come up. He's actually gonna do some things. And I also interviewed well, I interviewed for this book Bush. I interviewed Clinton and the Clintons and Biden and Trump. And then I had to have it write an addendum to the book saying, I'm sorry, I thought Bush and I'm sorry, Biden and Trump are the candidates. And then I had enough time to say, actually, it turns out that Kamala Harris is gonna be the candidate. I have interviewed her, but I didn't have time for this book to interview her. So maybe my next book.
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