What Happens After the Oval Office? Seven Presidents Tell Us with Jared Cohen

0:04Hello, I'm Anthony Scaramucci and this is Open Book, where I talk with some of the brightest minds out there about everything surrounding the written word, from authors and historians to figures in entertainment, neuroscientists, political activists, and of course, Wall Street. Sorry, I can't resist. Before we get into today's episode, if you haven't already, please hit follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a review. We all love a review, even the bad ones. I want to hear the parts you're enjoying or how we can do better. You know, I can roll with the punches, so let me know.

0:38Anyways, let's get to it.

0:47Life beyond the White House seems like a crazy thought, doesn't it? Where do you go from there? My guest today, Jared Cohen, has written a new book which looks at seven presidents who found an even greater purpose beyond the Oval Office. If we are lucky enough to face the question of what to do in the next chapter of life, it could be a tough decision to make. So let's see what lessons we can take from Jared's brilliant book and what new information we can uncover about some of our former presidents.

1:21So joining us now is a dear friend, Jared Cohen. He's joining us on Open Book. He's a New York Times bestselling author. He's president of global affairs and co-head of applied innovation at Goldman Sachs. He's a former CEO of Jigsaw. And you've written a lot of different books, by the way. You are a polymath. I'm sure your mother's very proud of you, Jared, as she should be. But this book is fascinating, and I think it's well-timed. Life After Power, Seven Presidents and Their Search for Purpose Beyond the White House. I'm a huge fan of your books. I want to talk about a couple of them, if you don't mind.

1:59But before we do that, let's start with an open ended question. What happens after stepping down from being leader of the free world? Look, it's the most dramatic retirement in the world, right? You're literally the most powerful person in the world. And you're either fired by, you know, millions of people, and you go back to being a civilian, or you get termed out and you go back to being a civilian anyway. And you look at these presidents, they're these seemingly unrelatable people, right? They're only dealing with matters of, you know, world hunger and world peace and these kind of big macro level issues.

2:32And then they wake up the next day, and they all of a sudden have asymmetry of information. They watch their successors, whether they like them or not, slowly dismantle their legacy. They're left with the relationships that are often kind of broken and fragile and need to be repaired. Their whole pace of life changes. There's nothing quite like it. And all of a sudden, these presidents become figures that, much to my surprise, you can start to relate to. Right. I mean, we all ask this question many times in our lives of what's next. And it's not just about the last chapter of life. We're going to ask it several times throughout the course of our time on this earth.

3:05And we don't think to look at presidents of the United States, but the more dramatic the transition, the harder the transition is. And the harder the transition is, I think the more prescriptive it is. And so, you know, my last book, What That Happens When Presidents Die in Office, this one looks at what happens when they live. And I look at seven different presidents, each got after it in a very different way, and each represents a different model for how to answer the question, what's next? Okay, so that's a good segue, because we're dying to know on Open Book why you chose those seven. What was the criteria that went off in your mind?

3:36Obviously, list the seven for our viewers, if you don't mind. And then did you consider including any others? So it's an interesting question. Which presidents do you include? Right. And I was looking for presidents that I felt found a greater sense of purpose after they left the White House. And what I was surprised by is the story of post presidencies is not a particularly happy one. You know, they range from presidents developing alcohol addictions to suffering from severe depression, many meandering and not knowing what to do. You know, Alexander Hamilton, by the way, you know, famously asked the question in Federalist 72, is it a good idea for the stability of the republic and the well-being of our country to have half a dozen men who served as president wandering around the rest of us like disenchanted ghosts?

4:20And frankly, many of the ex-presidents wandered around like disenchanted ghosts. The seven that I chose were frankly the only seven that I thought were really worth covering, all for different reasons. And so I look at Thomas Jefferson, who was a lifelong founder, three things etched on his tombstone, none of which was being president. His last act was the founding of University of Virginia. It was the third volume in his life trilogy. The other is obviously the Declaration of Independence and Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom. I look at John Quincy Adams, who is a man whose presidency was an intermission between two of the greatest acts in history, one architected for him by his parents that made him president, the other that he sort of stumbled in as an ex-president serving nine terms in the House of Representatives, where in a much lower station, he found a much higher calling of abolition.

5:04I look at Grover Cleveland, who's the man who made a comeback. He's the only president in history who's successfully run for office again and won. I look at William Howard Taft, who represents a story that I think is familiar to many people, which is you have some dream, something that you want to do, and you have to defer it because the timing isn't right, the circumstances aren't right. And all he ever wanted to be was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. But his wife, his mentor, Theodore Roosevelt, and his brothers wanted him to be president. And it's only in his last 10 years of life that he becomes Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

5:35I look at Herbert Hoover, who represents a story of recovery. The man lived 90 years. He's defined by three and a half of the Great Depression while he was president. He was known as the great humanitarian and a great businessman, self-made millionaire before the presidency. And he spent his 32 years in the post-presidency, not just trying to recapture his good name, but more importantly, recapturing his ability to serve the world as a great humanitarian and leader. I look at Jimmy Carter, who wanted to turn the presidency into a lifelong appointment, and he was the first one to take the idea of being a former version of yourself and build real infrastructure around it and use it as a platform.

6:10And his 42 plus years as a post president is the longest in history. And then when I looked at the active living presidents, right, because Carter's obviously gone into hospice since since last February. So when I look at the active living presidents, there's only one whose popularity has doubled. So George W. Bush's popularity is north of 60 percent, and yet he's done less to invest in his legacy than anyone else. And so I wanted to understand why. And it's a combination of his just dogmatic, disciplined reverence for Washington's principle of one president at a time. The fact that that's aged well in the era of Trump, when you sort of juxtapose the two against each other, and the fact that he's managed to find post-presidential voice that allows him to advocate for issues that he cares about through painting in ways that doesn't undermine his successors.

6:56and he's had a popularity renaissance. And whether you like him or not, it's hard to argue with that. And you compare that with other active living presidents who dogmatically and obsessively focus on trying to build their legacy, they would die for George W. Bush's numbers. Well, I mean, there's so much there and that's why I'm letting you talk because you're brilliant and you're erudite. And I learned so much from you. Accidental presidents, I learned so much because that's a weird circumstance as well. You're sitting there as the vice president in one moment. And John Gardner, I think it wasn't worth more than a bucket of.

7:30And we cleansed it up and called it spit. And then boom, you're the leader of the free world. And those stories were very intriguing. This is different. You know, Reagan said in his book, The American Life, he said that, wow, I got endless number of phone calls and messages. The day I left Washington, I was down to, I think the dry cleaner said I had to go pick up something in Santa Barbara. Bush, in the last couple of pages of his book, he writes about taking his dog out for a walk. And of course, you have to curb your dog in the residential area he's living in in Houston. And so he's down on his knees with a plastic baggie on his hand, cleaning the dog poo from his dog.

8:12And he's just letting people know that he went from being the American president, leader of the free world, and now he's on his knees taking care of his leader, which happens to be his dog. And so you know the story there. I guess what I would say to you that is always fascinating to me about these people is how do they see themselves? I know how you see them. I know I see them. But when you do the homework on these people, how do they see themselves, Jared? So, Anthony, this is one of my favorite parts about writing presidential history is you get to try to really get in the head of these, you know, great leaders who've been deceased for a long period of time.

8:48It's almost like, you know, what you hear about actors doing. right? So Daniel Day-Lewis, before he plays Lincoln, he, you know, spends multiple years like getting in the brain of Abraham Lincoln. And that's one of, I find the most interesting, and it can also be kind of a torturing experience writing these books. But look, I think it varies. They're all, these are, these are seven very different men that I wrote about. And, you know, to sort of begin where we left off, you know, George W. Bush is unique to any other president in the sense that he has this ability to live life as a chapter guy, right?

9:17So when one chapter is done, he just completely detaches and moves on. He's not at all introspective. He feels like you can't long for what you can't have. He tells me when it's over, it's over, and he doesn't miss it. And frankly, I believe him. That bothers people who are critical of him, but that's who he is. But then you look at somebody like Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Jefferson, this is a man who just personality-wise, he was what we would today describe as a serial entrepreneur or a serial founder. And at a very, very young age, he was a co-founder of the United States. And he was well aware that he had built a sort of republic business that, you know, had many, many flaws that they couldn't get around to patching up or weren't right to patch up.

9:57And he had deep, deep anxiety as one of the last living founding fathers that if they didn't train the next generation to improve the product, the product wouldn't last. And so after writing the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom, he wanted to finish the third volume of his life trilogy and found the university, the first arts and sciences university in the country to do this, which became known as the University of Virginia. The problem is, like any founder, he got saddled with obligations, right? They needed him to be vice president. They needed him to be secretary of state.

10:28They needed him to be president twice. And he lost very valuable years. Those were not things that he wanted to do. He wanted to get on to found the next thing. And the poor guy at 82 years old, Anthony, this is my favorite story in the book. At 82 years old, a frail Thomas Jefferson opens the doors of the University of Virginia. And within months, students cover their faces in masks and kind of like an 1825 example of social media anonymity. And they start riding through the campus that he personally designed and architected chanting down with European professors. And they take bags of urine and throw it at the professors.

11:01They beat another professor with the cane. And in sort of a twisted show of Southern honor, none of them will give each other up. So Jefferson, who's the rector of the university, calls an all school assembly the next day for all the students to meet before the disciplinary committee. And the disciplinary committee for the University of Virginia in 1825 was Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe, the most intimidating disciplinary committee, past, present and future. And so Jefferson stands up to address the students and he starts bawling, hysterically crying. And so these students, they're so awestruck by this man that they revere, you know, just being inconsolable.

11:34And at James Madison, all of five foot one tells Jefferson to sit down and he can't get a word out of his mouth before the students one by one confess. And this is the kind of man that Thomas Jefferson was. And each one of these presidents, I think part of why they found a greater sense of purpose after the White House is they figured out how to align who they were with what they did next. and the consistent thread. There's not a lot of consistent threads across all of them because they each did it in different ways, but the consistent thread is each one of them doubled down on something that they were dogmatically principled about.

12:07Listen, it's fascinating. Jefferson, quite the life, got into a big political rub and row with John Adams. Of course, they became very famous pen pals and reconnected as friends years on in life. And then they famously died on the 50th anniversary of our birth on the 4th of July. I believe it was in 1826, although I can't remember who died first. Sort of feel like Adams outlived Jefferson, but I can't remember if that's the case. Go to Jimmy Carter for a second. Longest post-presidency, as you point out. You get into great detail in the book about things that he did, why he did those things. He is ignored, if I'm going to be brutally honest, by the right.

12:49They ignore him. He's loved by the left, and there's been some revisionist biographies of him recently. I've had the chance to go to the Carter Library and I've toured it. He did a lot of really interesting and really good things for the country, including at a time of Cold War escalation, raising the defense budget. People don't give him credit for that, but he did do that. It set up Ronald Reagan quite nicely for the 80s. But how do you think Jimmy Carter feels about his presidency? He left the presidency as a young man. It's 42 years later. Did he do more as president or did he do more as an ex-president?

13:23So it's interesting. When I tell people, I wrote a book called Life After Power about ex-presidents. The first thing, whether it's Democrats or Republicans, the first thing people say is, oh, you must have included Carter. It's always the one that they, you know, Carter, Carter will be known more as a former president than as a president. Some of that is a function of how long he lived and that most people have experienced him more as a former president and as a president, but I also think that he's really the father of the modern ex-presidency. You know, Herbert Hoover was the first one to become an elder statesman and the first one to, you know, kind of enter the global stage as an ex-president.

13:56But Carter was the first one to do it as in turn the idea of being a former president and turn it into an actual institution. And the former president, the former president is an institution. And by the way, you know, I think this is a tremendous part of Carter's legacy because, the idea of former presidents is unique to democratic systems, at least as it pertains to them not being behind bars or under some other ill fate. And former presidents are a feature, not a bug of our American democratic system, even when we don't always like what they do. And Carter really leaned into that and redefined it.

14:27And so if you look at his post-presidency, nobody can accuse the guy of being anything but transparent. From the moment he left office, he sort of described it as his involuntary retirement. He was a million dollars in debt because he had put his peanut farm into a blind trust. He was devastated over having lost the election. He was devastated over the hostage crisis. He was devastated over the economy. And he was a man guided by tremendous faith. This gets back to the point about principles. And his view was, I am guided by God to do the things that I was put on this earth to do. And I'm gonna do it for as long as I can in whatever way I can, wherever I can.

15:02And I'll be damned if my successor has a problem with it. So in that sense, him and Bush are kind of opposites. of each other. But he did some amazing things. I mean, you know, if you look at, you know, this disease called guinea worm, he basically eradicated it from Africa. If you look at, you know, what he does, what he did in Panama, when George H.W. Bush, you know, sent him, you know, when Noriego was trying to put his drug trafficker successor in place, he really elevated this idea of election monitoring and election transparency, which we still hold, you know, you know, hold in high regard today.

15:35But he also caused all of his successors, Democrats and Republicans alike, a lot of annoyance, right? So when George H.W. Bush is getting ready for Operation Desert Storm to get Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, you know, Carter's anti-war mindset kicks in and he writes, you know, secret letters to the heads of state of, you know, several of the permanent members of the Security Council. I mean, who does that as an ex-president? When Bill Clinton sends him to Pyongyang in 1994 as a messenger to Kim Il-sung, you know, he tells Carter in no uncertain terms, you're a messenger, you're not president, You're not to make any policy.

16:08You're to deliver messages. And what does Carter do? He secretly negotiates a deal without any authority, goes on CNN and announces that deal. And that's how the Clinton administration finds out about it. So look, I think Carter is he's an example of a president who was both a tremendous ally to his successors and a formidable adversary to his successors. So in a lot of respects, he's not just the father of the post presidency, but he also kind of represents the best of the post-presidency and also kind of the worst of the post-presidency and everything in between. Yeah, listen, it's a fascinating story about him.

16:41And obviously, there's a messianic feel to Carter in some ways where he's here on a mission. And I mean, generally, I think he's viewed favorably. But I mean, the right has given Carter a hard time. Obviously, current presidential candidate, former President Trump has juxtaposed him and Joe Biden, and he's somewhat used as a rag doll by the right. And obviously, but that's the unfairness of politics. And so I've experienced that and I appreciate it and get it. Let's go to John Quincy Adams for a second because he was groomed to be president. He had two founders. I would think his mother, Abigail, would see herself as a founding woman of the American Republic.

17:19And so he's groomed by these two founders. He goes on to become president himself. But as you say, he does better in the House of Representatives. He's also a former secretary of state. What a fascinating character. So why does he do better in the House of Representatives as opposed to the presidency? So I found writing about John Quincy Adams the most inspiring part of this book. And if I'm biased, I would say that my favorite ex-president is John Quincy Adams. So again, he has this first act that's architected for him by his parents. It's not his choice. His parents are making their son president of the United States.

17:52And he ends up as president because of a deal struck with Henry Clay when the 1824 election goes to the House of Representatives. And it gets sort of called the corrupt bargain. And there's this moment that I write about in the book where John Quincy Adams is swimming in the Potomac and he gets overwhelmed by the current and his clothes get weighed down and he nearly drowns and dies. And he has to strip down naked and him and his, you know, his his valet end up riding buck naked in a horse and buggy back to the White House. and he gets there. And it's just the symbolism is just like outrageous, right?

18:26Which is, you know, he's naked and humiliated at the precise moment where his presidency has fallen apart, and he's still got three more years. And so he gets defeated for reelection in 1828, which is a foregone conclusion. And all this man knows how to do is what his parents set him up for, which is to serve the republic. And it wasn't supposed to end this way. And he obsessively writes in his diary in the most self-loathing, self-deprecating, you know, violin playing manner. And finally, you know, he's wandering around like a disenchanted ghost in Quincy, Massachusetts. And finally, they convinced him to say, look, you just got to go back into service.

19:01It's like the only thing that you know how to do. He's already been president. He's already been secretary of state. He's been an ambassador multiple times. He's already served in the Senate. So the only thing left to do is go and serve in the House of Representatives. It's like the lowest position that he can possibly imagine, but he does it. And so he ends up as an ex-president, sort of a novelty in the House of Representatives, and he doesn't know what to do when he's there. And in 1830, if you were in the House of Representatives and you didn't know what to do, you just kind of read petitions.

19:28And it turned out that the petitions, some of them were from anti-slavery activists and abolitionists. And the abolitionist movement was a fringe movement there. Back then, it was seen as very radical. And there was a norm that you didn't talk about slavery in Congress at the time. But Adams is reading these petitions and he's shocked when the slavocracy in the House lashes out at him for reading these petitions. And he's extremely principled about the right to petition. And the louder the critiques, the more voracious he is about accepting these petitions and reading them. The more he does that, obviously, the more demand there is.

20:00And he's just all of a sudden inundated with petitions from all over the country. And they decide to gag him, right? We talk about cancel culture today. In the 1830s, they tried to cancel a former president turned member of the House of Representatives. But his brain was so outsized relative to all the others in the House of Representatives that his nine terms is just a story of him outmaneuvering and outfoxing and outintellectualizing all of these mediocre men that he served with. And, you know, he sort of wakes up one day as he's sort of, you know, fighting on a daily basis to have all these petitions read.

20:31And he just wakes up one day and realizes that two things have happened. One, he's become an abolitionist. Two, he's taken a movement that was fringy and radical and he's mainstreamed it. And to put this in perspective, I mean, John Quincy Adams began his career appointed by George Washington to serve in his administration. In his ninth term in the House of Representatives, he dies on the House floor serving alongside a freshman congressman named Abraham Lincoln from Illinois. This living connection between the founding generation and two generations later that would go on to emancipate the slaves.

21:03Listen, I could listen to you for hours, Jared. You're a fascinating writer and a great public speaker, I've been dying to ask you this question. So I got to see if I can frame it right. Were we right in terms of the formation of the presidency? And so I want to go back in our history. There was discussion about a potential king. Washington declined it. And we have this weird job. From a parliamentarian perspective, this executive branch is a misnomer from the way the parliamentary democracies got formed in Europe. Were we right to create a presidency? And what is the legacy of the presidency, all 46 of them?

21:47So look, we take the evolution of Jeffersonian democracies for granted, and we often forget just how novel and revolutionary it was at the time, this idea of the peaceful transfer of power and elected by the people, albeit not all people back then. I think there's two things that are remarkable about the presidency. And I think about my two books, right? So accidental presidents and life after power, in some respects, it's a tale of two transitions. It's the transition of somebody who wasn't really elected, you know, transitioning to the presidency, and then life after powers, the transition out of the presidency, both of those need to be peaceful.

22:24And if I look at the founding fathers, they didn't really offer a blueprint for either. When it came to presidential succession upon a president dying in office, it was incredibly vague what happens. I mean, Lyndon Johnson in 1963 becomes president of the United States based on a precedent set by John Tyler in 1841 that's not even codified until 1967 with, you know, the 25th Amendment. Right. And so it shows you just how revolutionary it was that the founders set in motion something that we could basically wing throughout the course of our history and muddle through and not get it perfectly, but more or less get it right.