Jared Cohen: Life After Power

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To get the annual plan for less than $2.50 per month, search for Economist Podcasts Plus to start listening today. Jared Cohen joins us now, founder and CEO of Jigsaw at Alphabet, former advisor to two secretaries of state, Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton, and best-selling author of five books, his latest being Life After Bower, Seven Presidents and Their Search for Purpose Beyond the White House. And Jared, thanks so much for coming in. Thanks, Brian.

So first off, the attraction of wanting this job back. This is what Lindsey Graham told me. You know, I met with Trump after he lost and I told him, you don't need to do this. You don't need to run again. Go golf, go do a tour of the world. You know, you don't need to do it.

You know, your celebrity is going to pick up. But yet he wants to get back. That's all he does to get back. From your experience studying what this position's about and how hard it is to turn the page after you leave the White House, do you understand it? You know, presidents don't want to think about their time in office as their penultimate act, right?

They view it as their greatest act, which is why they don't want to give it up. It's the most dramatic retirement in the world, which is why the founding fathers worried about what to do with ex-presidents. You know, Alexander Hamilton pondered this question of, you know, is it good for the republic to have half a dozen men at any given time wandering around the rest of us like disenchanted ghosts or discontented ghosts. He wrote and you wrote that quote before in your book. He writes it in Federalist 72.

What worries him? Well, so I think what worries him is, remember, they were trying to construct a republic in response to a monarchy, right? There weren't a lot of examples the founding fathers had for the peaceful transfer of power. What they were creating was something truly novel.

They just had a lot of things on their plate. And I think what's amazing about this question of what to do with ex-presidents, we never really formalized it in the Constitution. We kind of winged it throughout history.

And there's not a lot of good examples. What I do in the book is I basically highlight seven U.S. presidents who managed to find a greater sense of purpose after they left the office. So one thing that struck people is that President Obama chose to stay in Washington.

I know he's young, but a lot of people say, you know, I'm going to move on. You know, Kenny Bunkport, we're a 41 state and Reagan went to his ranch and LBJ went to his ranch in Texas. How unique is it that he stayed in Washington and seems to still be a player? So John Quincy Adams was the first one to stay in Washington, but the circumstances were very different. His wife was was was terribly ill and it was too icy and he couldn't make the journey back up to Quincy. But I think what you see with President Obama is something that a lot of former presidents, particularly in modern times, struggle with, which is they're constrained by the norm of one president at a time, but they just can't resist the urge to keep their their their their toe in the water.

They can't resist the urge to insert themselves. And the symbolism of a former president staying in Washington to me symbolizes and captures this idea of how difficult it is to let go. Right. And maybe not great for the country, especially with people's perception. People's perception is that your older vice president's president, he is not at the top of his game. Who's calling the shots?

Could it be that guy five miles away? And by the way, it's very confusing if you look at if you look at Jimmy Carter. Right. You know, longest active post-presidency in history, 42, 42 plus years. He's the answer to Hamilton's question of what to do with ex-presidents, which is they can either be a tremendous ally to their successors or they can be a nuisance in their most formidable adversary. And Carter managed to do both, but he didn't do it living in Washington. He still lived.

He went back home to plans. And look, there's there's almost kind of referring Jared to the fact that he went over to North Korea, got involved there trying to get hostages out. He went over to Haiti. He was over there trying to run elections internationally. And a lot of times I think he got a Bill Clinton serves a little bit, too.

I mean, he Carter is a tremendous contrast. And again, he represents the best and and the worst of what ex-presidents can do. So he goes over to North Korea as a messenger for the Clinton administration and Clinton in 1994. And Clinton tells him under no certain terms, are you to make any policy? And Carter says, fine, fine. And then Clinton turns on CNN. And there's Carter announcing a nuclear breakthrough. By the way, when the U.S. when George H.W. Bush was readying to send troops in to get Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, Jimmy Carter, who didn't want to see a war, secretly wrote to four of the five permanent members of the Security Council, urging them to oppose his own country's policy.

Unbelievable. Why do you who are the seven and why do you pick him? So I chose Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, Grover Cleveland, William Howard Taft, Hoover, Carter and George W. Bush.

Each one of those seven men had something that they were deeply principled about. They doubled down on those principles after they left the White House and ended up finding greater purpose than their time as president. Thomas Jefferson went on to found the University of Virginia.

It's one of only three things he includes on his tombstone. He doesn't include being president. John Quincy Adams had arguably the greatest second act in American history. Served nine terms in the House of Representatives were in a much lower station. He found a much higher cause of abolition. Cleveland became president again.

So kind of hard, hard to argue with that. William Howard Taft got his dream job as chief justice of the Supreme Court in his final decade of life. Herbert Hoover's story after a member of William Howard Taft famously went against. Hey, Roosevelt challenged the guy he mentored and Woodrow Wilson does becoming president. But what happened to him after?

Yes. So William Howard Taft, you know, he never he didn't like being president. He was actually happy. All he ever wanted was to serve on the Supreme Court. He turns it down three times in his life before becoming president.

He nominates a record six justices to the Supreme Court, including a chief justice as president. The only reason he seeks re-election in 1912 is to deny to deny his one time friend and former mentor, Theodore Roosevelt, the presidency. It's an amazing story because by the time Taft gets the nomination for the Republican Party, he's basically a political dead man. And as his vice presidential running mate dies just a week before the election. So you literally have, you know, Theodore Roosevelt as a third party bull moose, challenging the incumbent president whose ticket is literally a political dead man and a physical corpse. And he splits the party and gives the election to well, say, Roosevelt actually got the second most votes as a third party. And you end up with Woodrow Wilson, you know, for eight years as president.

Right. And then look, you know, Herbert Hoover is a man who lived to be 90 years old. He's defined by, you know, four years that he was in office, defined by the Great Depression. His story is a great one of recovery. He recaptures, you know, his status as a great humanitarian, which he had before being president. He recaptures his status as a great executive, you know, reorganizing the executive branch. And he recaptures his status in his lifetime as a bipartisan figure when Joe Kennedy calls on him to reconcile JFK and Richard Nixon after the 1960 election.

Wow. Pretty amazing, because obviously there was that was a controversial result. And it was important because the country was sort of in the height of the Cold War showing that bipartisan unity was important. And, you know, I think the tragedy for Herbert Hoover, who's still getting kind of trashed and whose name is still political fodder, you know, even in this election, he actually recovers his good name in his lifetime and then just gets trashed again posthumously.

Right. And you're talking about the fact that Donald Trump said if the economy is going to collapse, I hope it collapses under him because I don't want to inherit something like Herbert Hoover. I mean, the FDR guys, they really did a job on Herbert Hoover, his 12 years of self-imposed political exile. I mean, it just felt like the FDR presidency would never end.

And it's interesting. Harry Truman resurrects Herbert Hoover in 1945 after FDR dies because he's staring, you know, the end of the war, World War Two on the horizon. And there's only one man in history who knows what it's like to be president of the United States and feed a war, a world that's facing starvation. So he and Herbert Hoover, they form this kind of unlikely partnership. But then every time there's an election, Truman goes out and talks about Hoovervilles and talks about Hoover carts. And it's just this torturous experience for Hoover that his entire life, every single election, no matter what he does, he still becomes a soundbite on the election trail.

I think his great granddaughter is Margaret Hoover. And I got to know her a little bit. And she really is making that a mission to enough. You know, and when this came up again, he says, we should correct the record on that. Yeah. First of all, a lot of stuff you inherit.

Let's be honest. Margaret talks about how, you know, you know, her father, who was who was Herbert Hoover's grandson, gets a punched in the face on the schoolyard for for being tied to, you know, a man that that that, you know, it was his grandfather. And, you know, Margaret's one of the great Americans. She and I have talked a lot about Herbert Hoover over the years and we're on kind of a mission to make Herbert Hoover great again. Oh, that's so awesome. All right. I'll join in that I look I got people that make a difference and don't they don't get credit for it.

So if you can rehab it, that's fantastic. So you would one of my favorite all time people is George W. Bush. And I thought I just thought the perfect name of his book was Decision Points because that's him. Like, OK, you're critical. I say, all right, it's fine. Let me just put you in my shoes.

And then if you still you're still critical, that's fine, too. But maybe you should learn a little bit about what my decision what was what was at stake when I made the decisions I made. He wanted to be the education president. Then 9-11 happened. And people say, well, you know what? There was a report over the summer that said bin Laden determined to attack in America.

How did you miss that? So I said, George, the George Bush chapter in the book, I call it moving on, because when I looked at the active living presidents, there was only one whose popularity had doubled. And I figure, you know, even for his. Yeah, and it's his.

And he's accomplished that by investing less in his legacy than any of his active contemporaries. It must drive Bill Clinton completely mad. I love his library.

I had a chance to see it. And look, his library is a reflection of his values. But I think part of why I wanted to understand why Bush's popularity had more than doubled. I think, look, he has this reverence for the Washington principle of when it's over, it's over and you have to separate from from politics after you've been after you've been president. It's aged well, you know, given, you know, you have a former president, you know, Donald Trump, who's now, you know, on the path to the nomination.

And let's just say he's not quiet. But I also think that, you know, Americans have gotten nostalgic about this idea of a president who kind of reveres the Washington principle of one president at a time. And they like watching him paint.

Right. I mean, you know, Bush is in his mid 70s and they're seeing him kind of find a post-presidential voice through painting that allows him to advance causes that matter to the American people like veterans without undermining his successors. Jared Cohen with us. He's got his book out now, Life After Power, Seven Presidents and Their Search for Purpose Beyond the White House. What I also think is fascinating and I saw it up close is Bush 43 is tight with Bill Clinton, who beat his father and his father and Bill Clinton got along. And I look great to see Bill Clinton look up to 41. And they did a lot of things together.

I think the American people love seeing that. And then when Barack Obama became president, he was saying so many negative things about Bush 43 and Gates writes about it in his book. So, hey, guys, I'm here because the secretary of defense carried over to the Obama administration. Now, you know, a lot of stuff that you're saying is flat out wrong. And a lot of decisions we made are a lot better than you think.

And we'll kind of stick up for it. And 43 kept quiet, always kept quiet. And then when it was time to dedicate the library, President Obama shows up and he says some, if I can remember correctly, says you might disagree with George Bush, but it's impossible not to like George Bush.

I think that's right. Look, out of the 45 men who served as president 46 times because Cleveland did it twice, only one president has been so dogmatically disciplined about fading from politics. Bush never mentions his successors by name. He never hits the campaign trail publicly.

He doesn't insert himself. He did once with Jeb. Right. But but it was an act. But but it was it was actually it was a it was a private event. And he described it as one of the most cringe worthy moments of his post-presidency. And it's a moment that he reminded himself that you have to be disciplined, not just in public, but also disciplined in private. And George W. Bush, look, look, the symbolism of two former foes coming together is also a reminder that this very idea of a former president, it's a feature of a democracy.

It's not a bug. And particularly at this moment, you know, people may not like the current set of circumstances, but there's a lot of countries where you don't get to be a former president. Or if you are, you're either in prison for life or suffering some kind of other ill fate. Right. You know who also had those qualities that never became president is John McCain. And I know that when he was able to give credit to Barack Obama after he lost that crushing defeat to him and he just said able to outline that moment, I think it's just so important to learn how to lose. Bush 41 knew how to lose. He hated losing.

We got those tapes later on where he talked about how he thought he let everybody down by losing to Bill Clinton, but he he lost with grace. Yeah, I think that's right. By the way, you know, it's it's a it's a worthy time to reflect on Grover Cleveland as well, because this election is likely going to feature the can I talk about Grover Cleveland when we come back? Yes.

All right. So Jared Cohen, it's great to have him here. He's an adviser to Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton, best selling author, a perspective about the times we're going through, because some of which is unprecedented to a degree, but not as much as you think.

Don't move. Diving deep into today's top stories. It's Brian Kilmeade. If you're interested in it, Brian's talking about it. You're with Brian Kilmeade.

Hey, we are back. The author of Life After Power, Jared Cohen with us right now. He's got a great book out called Seven Presidents and Their Search for Purpose Beyond the White House. Grover Cleveland. We keep hearing about this first time we're seeing we're seeing a president very close to getting back into office as President Trump. He wins, he loses and he wants to win again.

How rare is this? So first of all, historically, you know, the Grover Cleveland chapter is called, you know, the comeback. And it's not historically former presidents have not made good presidential candidates. This is going to this 2024 election is likely going to be the first and only time since eighteen ninety two where two former presidents have had a rematch as nominees.

Was that in eighteen ninety two? So Grover Cleveland versus versus Benjamin Harrison. And Cleveland, when he's elected in eighteen eighty four, is the first Democrat elected president since James Buchanan before the before the Civil War. And what people don't realize about Cleveland is he never loses the popular vote.

So that's already different from the twenty twenty four election. He actually threw away the presidency in eighteen eighty eight on a principle of standing strong on a low tariff. And he said he's never been happier than when he threw away the presidency.

And he also entered office as a bachelor at forty nine years old, married a twenty one year old who's the youngest first lady in American history. And he never wants he doesn't fantasize about going back into office. The only reason he tries to make a comeback is similarly on principle. He's worried the Harrison administration is driving the economy into the ground. He's worried about a rising tide of imperialism and he's worried about runaway populists within his own party and within the Republican Party. And so he makes a sort of reluctant comeback, but he wins the popular vote three times in a row. Well, and so he then becomes president again and somewhere in the between there.

Teddy Roosevelt is cutting his teeth and getting ready in the turn of the century would be the rise and in the beginning of the end of imperialism. Right. That's right.

And look, look, Grover, what I say in the book is Grover Cleveland's comeback is a cautionary tale. Right. You know, first of all, comebacks are easy to ponder. They're hard to accomplish.

And when you accomplish, it's rarely the same and as sweet the second time around. The context changes. You come in overconfident. You think you know how to do it.

The dynamics are different. The day Grover Cleveland takes the oath of office for his second nonconsecutive term as president, he inherits the worst economic depression in the country's history. American settlers in Hawaii have set in motion a process that would lead to the annexation of the islands. And he feels a lump on the top of his mouth and realizes that he may have terminal cancer. Wow.

A couple of things. One thing Trump says on and off camera, I know exactly what to do now. And one thing Bill Clinton expressed is frustration because I get it. I know exactly how to do this job.

Same with Barack Obama. He's like, I get it. It takes a while, especially it's harder now, I think, today. It takes a while, but they seem to get it.

So Trump can't wait to put people in power again. Yeah. Look, I think the second is no ramp up time.

There's no ramp up time, but a lot has changed in the four years. The interregnum is an interregnum that a former president doesn't have a front row seat for. They're not in it day to day, right? They're both nostalgic for the last time around. And their frame of reference reflects a set of biases and assumptions from the last time around. And they bring that to the second presidency. And so Grover Cleveland's second presidency was not a pleasant one. He again, this is a man who won the popular vote three times. He left office the second time, deeply unpopular, deeply depressed. And just having lost valuable years, we could have spent with his young bride. Listen to the show at free on Fox News podcast, plus on Apple podcast, Amazon music with your prime membership or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.