Wisconsin's Weekend Morning News
David Rubenstein's New Book - The Highest Calling
David, you worked in the Carter White House as a young aide. What impressed you most about the former president? Well, President Carter was a very smart person, an engineer by background, and he always thought he could engineer a solution to almost any problem. He wasn't as attentive to politics, and I think he would have been re-elected had we not had the hostage problem. He did not want to let the Shah in the United States, but was impertuned by a member of people who do so, so ultimately he did, and that resulted in the hostage taking, and ultimately I think the end of his presidency, and particularly after the failed rescue mission. I think Carter was smart. He never thought he was going to lose the reelection effort. Since he left the presidency, he spent 40 years doing many great things around the world, eliminating river blindness, guinea worm, things like that, and election monitoring. He won the Nobel Peace Prize for many of the things that he did post-presidency. Will history improve the view of the Carter presidency as time goes on? Of course, because he had 40 years, 10 times as long as he served as president, to be an ex-president, do good things, and he didn't really have political opponents in his ex-presidency, so his image, I think, improved a great deal. It will be by far the oldest president of the life that we've ever had. Carter is a very smart person, and the fact that he became president in the way he did really set the tone for many people subsequent to him, because he had no chance of being president, as many people thought he was a southern governor and an ex-governor, and yet he went to Iowa, went to New Hampshire, and won the nomination. Since that time, many people followed suit, so Barack Obama became president, even though people didn't think he had the traditional qualifications, went to Iowa, went to New Hampshire, Donald Trump did the same thing. He didn't have the traditional qualifications, and so anybody has had the view that they could be president in the United States, so you follow the pattern of Carter, get a good loyal group of people following you, and go out to Iowa, New Hampshire, and go from there. David, in your book, The Highest Calling, you write about all of the presidents, and you have the opportunity to speak to all of our living ex-presidents. Let's talk about Bill and Hillary Clinton. You say that they were the most powerful couple to ever be in the White House. Who was really calling the shots there? Was it Bill, or was it Hillary? Bill Clinton was a powerful person on his own right, governor, six terms in Arkansas, but he got elected president at 46, very, very young, and obviously had some challenges in the personal area, but he did a lot of great things as president. In fact, he balanced the budget three over the last four years as president. We haven't had a balanced budget in years since that time. Hillary Clinton was his partner. It was said at the time you get two for the price of one. She was more involved in policymaking than any other First Lady that we know of, and she was so involved and interested in it that she later got elected to the United States Senate while she was serving as First Lady. Even Eleanor Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt didn't have quite that kind of relationship. Do you think that we made a mistake when Hillary was not elected in 2016? Well, I would let the American people decide whether it was a mistake or not, but I think if any woman was qualified to be President of the United States, she certainly was, because she served as secretary of state and served as a senator, no other First Lady had done either. Very smart person, very knowledgeable about public policy, the night of the election, she thought she was going to win. I thought she was going to win, but it shows you you can't really predict who's going to win a presidency. And I think right now, the election we have coming up in November, although I spend a lot of time on the presidential matters, I cannot tell you who's likely to be elected President of the United States. How important do you think the debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris was? Historically, debates really reinforce the views of people. They don't really change views very much. So we've had one debate in this election cycle that changed the history. After the first debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, Joe Biden effectively was forced to step down. When history is written, Trump doesn't win. People will say that the biggest mistake he made in the campaign was a green and early debate. And from Biden's point of view, the biggest mistake he made was agreeing to an early debate, because if he wanted to be the nominee, and he agreed to a later debate as the first debate, there wouldn't have been time to substitute somebody else. As to answer your question, on that debate, I think that most people would say that Kamala Harris won the debate. I think some people would say that Donald Trump didn't do as well as he wanted to do or that they wanted to do if they were Trump supporters. But I think when history is written, it will probably be the case that it didn't change the election that much, because the polling data we now have already suggests that not many votes were changed by the debate, but it certainly didn't hurt Kamala Harris to do as well as she did. Going back to 2020, why did Joe Biden select Kamala Harris as his vice president? Well, I think he had a feeling he wanted to pick a woman, and I think he committed to do that. And he didn't commit to pick a black woman, but I think he was inclined to do that. He had another woman that he had thought about, who was named Mrs. Bass, who was the member of Congresswoman from LA. She later became, and is now the mayor of Los Angeles, but at the time that he was making the decision and in a lot of support for Mrs. Bass was there, Raoul Castro, Fidel Castro's brother died, and so people in the media had zoomed statements that Mrs. Bass had made when Fidel Castro had died, and she'd said some favorable things about him. And as a result, I think the Biden people thought it wouldn't look very good to have some people, somebody as your vice president who said very favorable things about Fidel Castro. So he pivoted, and he picked somebody who was well regarded who he didn't really know that well. So I think it was a combination that she was a woman. I think being African-American probably didn't hurt from the base that he wanted. Remember the most loyal constituency Democratic presidential candidates have had in recent years is African-American women, but 96% of African-American women traditionally vote Democratic and presidential elections, and therefore it was assuring up an important constituency. You had the opportunity to interview former President Donald Trump, how did he impress you? I've known him for many, many years. I've interviewed him before he was president. Donald Trump is a unique character. He got to be present without any government experience. We never had somebody become present without any government experience at all, either in the military or in civilian life. Donald Trump is unique. He doesn't rely on a lot of advisors. He's very self-assured. He says things that sometimes are difficult to fact check and prove that they're accurate. On the other hand, he's the only person ever to be nominated three times in a row by the Republican Party. So even though the last election he lost, the Republicans really are in love with him, and he got the nomination pretty handily. He's a smart person. He doesn't read a lot, but he does get his information in other ways of watching television and talking to people. He's not a big reader. How seriously ill was Trump when he had COVID? You write about that in the book. I think he was much more ill than he realized at the time, either his staff realized. He was given some medication that was really terrific for him, and it helped him. But I think he didn't realize that people would say elderly because he was over the age of 65, and I think people didn't realize that COVID could be really damaging to people that age, and while a lot of people died, I don't think he could die because he thought it was invulnerable. But I think he was very, very ill. Finally, David, which presidential candidate do you think is going to be added to the paperback edition of your book? If I knew who the next president was going to be, I would be happy to tell you. But I think even though I've spent the lifetime really studying the presidency and talking to people who run for president and knowing presidential advisers, I honestly don't know. I think it's too close to call, and if you go either way, honestly, I really think it's too close. David Rubenstein, the highest-calling conversations on the American presidency. Thanks for joining us. Thanks very much.