Trump, Biden & the Search for Purpose After the White House

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL HOST: Now, it is no surprise that all eyes are on the U.S. as Joe Biden and Donald Trump vie for the presidency and the most influential job in the world. But what happens when leaders leave the White House? In his new book, “Life After Power,” former State Department Official Jared Cohen takes a look, a close look, at seven past U.S. presidents and the paths they took afterwards. And he’s joining Walter Isaacson now to share his key takeaways from their stories.

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WALTER ISAACSON, CO-HOST, AMANPOUR AND CO.: Thank you, Christiane. And Jared Cohen, welcome to the show.

COHEN: It’s good to be here, Walter.

ISAACSON: You know, in 1797, when George Washington leaves office, I was looking at your book, “Life After Power,” and I realized that the world wasn’t really — didn’t have many examples of what happens. I mean, Napoleon hadn’t yet gone to Elba. We didn’t have the life after power syndrome. Tell me, why did you start writing this book? And what are we looking for when we look about life after power?

COHEN: Look, I’ve always been interested in this elusive question of what do we do next? And if you think about where we often look for case studies to inform our own transitions, whoever we are, and whatever we do, it’s usually business executives and its athletes. We’ve never looked at the most dramatic retirement in the world where you have the biggest fall from power to just being an ordinary civilian, which is the presidency of the United States. And at a time when we’re worried about our democracy, it’s important to reflect, even before George Washington, the founding fathers were very worried about this question of what to do with ex-presidents because they hadn’t really experienced the peaceful transfer of power. So, it’s quite amusing. You know, Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers, he asked the question, does it promote the stability of the republic to have a half a dozen or so men who’ve been elevated to the presidency basically wandering around us like discontented ghosts? And more than 200 plus years later, I think we finally get an answer to Hamilton’s question, which is ex-presidents could either be, you know, a tremendous partner to their successor or their most formidable adversary.

ISAACSON: Well, the person who sort of sets the tone right off is George Washington by doing the peaceful transfer of power, stepping down, being Cincinnati (ph), so to speak. How important was that?

COHEN: The George Washington precedent of two terms is one of the most important decisions that cements this, you know, kind of idea that ex- presidents are meant to kind of leave power and stay out of power. What’s interesting is it doesn’t get codified until after FDR is elected four times with the 22nd Amendment. So, just because Washington set the precedent doesn’t mean it was formally codified as law. And so, we kind of winged this from George Washington until it was — the Constitution was amended, and it pretty much held. You know, it’s interesting. We now find ourselves in 2024 in the only time other than 1892, where we are likely to have a rematch between two presidents of the United States were the nominees of the two major parties. The only other time that it happened was 1892 when Grover Cleveland came back to challenge incumbent Benjamin Harrison. So, it gives you a sense of just how off script we’ve gone from our political evolution.

ISAACSON: Well, in some ways, the precedent for ex-presidents, the model was set by Thomas Jefferson. It’s a very interesting chapters in your chapter in your book. Tell me about why, what he did after power was so important and so reflected, the notion of principle being what you do when you do a next chapter.

COHEN: So, one of the things I argue in the book is that Thomas Jefferson was the first former president to make something of his post presidential years. And each chapter looks at a different ex-president and the specific model that they followed. And what I describe Thomas Jefferson as is he’s kind of the quintessential serial entrepreneur or serial founder. He has three things etched on his epitaph that he personally authored, two of which happened before he was president, including the Declaration of Independence and one that he accomplished at 82 years old, which was the father and founder of the University of Virginia. Thomas Jefferson never wanted to be president. He tried to retire three times. But as a co-founder of the Republic, he had a founder’s obligation to continue to serve in the republic. And all that did was make him lose time and get closer to mortality. He believed very strongly that the republic that they had founded was imperfect, and if you didn’t create a proper institution, an arts and sciences institution to train the next generation, you wouldn’t be able to pass the torch to a new cadre of revolutionary minded people who could fix and perfect the mistakes that they made in the Constitution. And so, UVA was meant to be that university. And poor Thomas Jefferson, when he opens the doors at 82 years old to the university that he had literally personally architected, you know, six months in, you have a group of young students, you know, covering their faces with mass chanting down with university professors, throwing bags of urine at professors, beating one with their cane, throwing. And all it takes is Thomas Jefferson at 82 years old to call an all-school assembly before the disciplinary committee that included Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, by the way, the most intimidating disciplinary committee, past, present, and future. And for him to exude such a status with these students, one by one, they confessed. And Jefferson remains the only ex-president to create an institution that’s now lasted more than 200 years, although every president with their center and their library and their institution hopes to achieve the same thing.

ISAACSON: Yes, you’ve said that Jefferson’s principles nowadays and current life are somewhat complex. Being scrutinized. And yet, in some ways, as you mentioned in the book, that’s Jeffersonian to do that.

COHEN: Look, this may be a controversial thing to say. I think the very idea that — I think Jefferson would have found the very idea that his imperfections and his flaws were criticized by later generations as the norms evolved. I think he would sort of smirk at that and say, I accept that. And in some respects, I view that as an accomplishment because that is core to my principles. And yes, very. Jeffersonian. He had a tremendous self-awareness about the imperfections of his own life and what he and his fellow founders had actually architected at the dawn of the republic. And he had a lot of faith and hope that the next generation would fix those problems. And this is why, you know, when his beloved University of Virginia is engulfed in a student riot where they’re chanting down with university professors, it’s so appalling to him because at 82 years old, there’s not a lot of time left, and he wanted to make sure that that institution would survive long enough that he could kind of go out gracefully and be rest assured that the next generation would carry the torch forward.

ISAACSON: I confess my favorite post presidency, at least from deep history, is, of course, John Quincy Adams. Totally amazing what he does, including, going back to the House of Representatives, but mainly fighting for a particular principle. And that sets the tone for your book, which is that your next chapter has to be based on principle. Explain what John Quincy Adams did and why he’s so important.

COHEN: Out of all the seven presidents that I write right about in “Life After Power,” the reason these seven found a greater sense of purpose after the White House is they had a dogmatic sense of and pursuit of what they were principled about, and they doubled down on that in the post presidency. And it’s part of what made them successful. In the case of John Quincy Adams, that chapter I call “The Second Act,” because John Quincy Adams’ presidency, it’s just a one term, was an intermission between two of the greatest acts in American history. The first one architected for him top down and handed to him by his famous parents that set him on a path to being president. And the second act was one that he inadvertently found, which was he went on to serve nine terms in the House of Representatives. Were in a much lower station. He found a much higher cause and became the man who mainstreamed what in the 1830s and 1840s was a fringe and radical abolitionist movement. John Quincy Adams begins his career appointed by George Washington to serve in his administration, and he dies in 1848 at his ninth term in the House, serving alongside a freshman congressman from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln. So, he’s this living bridge between multiple generations. And he goes back to the House of Representatives because he’s already served every other public position, including in the Senate. So, he doesn’t know what else to do besides serve. And so, he does what any congressman does, you know, in the early 1830s, which is you just start reading petitions. And some of those petitions were from abolitionists. And when he saw the reaction of the slaveocracy in Congress, he thought it an affront to the right to petition. And this was the beginning of something that he was so principled about, which was the freedom of speech, the right to petition, and the right to assemble. The angrier the slaveocracy got, the more petitions he presented. The more petitions he presented, the more inundated he was with abolitionist positions. He had not been an abolitionist. And over time he just sort of wakes up one day and finds himself the leader of this movement. And I believe that the abolitionist movement was accelerated a full decade just in time for Abraham Lincoln to join the House because of John Quincy Adams.

ISAACSON: We biographers sometimes think it’s all about (INAUDIBLE) do you think his abolitionist sentiments came from the fact that his father, John Adams, the second president had that as part of his core?

COHEN: No, I mean, I think what’s interesting is John Quincy Adams talks very little about slavery before he goes into the House. And some of that is a function that in between the Missouri Compromise and the time that John Quincy Adams goes into the House in the early 1830s, it’s just not a hotly debated topic, which, again, is why the abolition abolitionist movement around that time is more fringy and seen as more radical. And so, he found slavery abhorrent, but it was not a dominant issue during that kind of interregnum. And so, this is what I find so prescriptive about John Quincy Adams. We always assume for that great second act, you have to know exactly what you wanted to do. Thomas Jefferson knew he wanted to go found a great university. It was the third volume in his life trilogy. John Quincy Adams didn’t know what his cause was. He knew what he was principled about, and he submitted himself to those principles, and the cause found him, rather than him finding the cause.

ISAACSON: One of the post presidencies I have trouble getting my head around and assessing, of course, is Herbert Hoover. You say he was once a hero. And yet, as — I didn’t know this, I read in his book about how, in 1938, he goes and visits Hitler in Germany. Yet he does other things that are very useful. How did he end up becoming so much, I guess, more conservative after he leaves office and even setting the ground for appeasement before World War II?

COHEN: Well, look, some of it is — you know, he was a Quaker at heart. So, he sorts of loathed the idea of war. You know, the book tells the story of Herbert Hoover, a man who lived to be 90 years old and is basically defined by three and a half years of his life because of the Great Depression. People forget that Herbert Hoover, before he became president of the United States, was known as the great humanitarian. He was the man who fed the world after World War I. He was the man who led relief efforts after the Great Mississippi flood of 1927, you know, which affected mostly African American populations. He was an orphan who became a self-made millionaire. He was known as a great business executive. And he waltzes into the White House in 1928 with a sweeping electoral victory. And he had been courted by Democrats and Republicans alike. So, he was a kind of bipartisan figure. And, you know, when the Great Depression happens and he loses his bid for reelection in 1932, he loses all that which he had gained in his life. And, you know, feels no regret over his policies over the Great Depression. You know, he believes that FDR has essentially manipulated and duped, you know, the country into this idea of collectivism, and it breaks the entrepreneurial spirit. He was dogmatic in these beliefs. And, so he’s in this self-imposed political exile, you know, during the sort of 12 years of FDR’s presidency. And he tries to be a great humanitarian again, go to Europe to sort of stop, you know, the tide of war. He doesn’t intend to meet Hitler, but Europe is the one place, you know, in the entire world where he goes and streets are named after him, and he’s popular because he fed them after starvation, you know, following World War I. And so, he goes to Germany to meet with, you know, NGOs and the like, and he gets summoned by Hitler. And he becomes the only president and the only American other than the ambassador who’s there with him to meet Adolf Hitler at that particular time. And he comes back to the U.S. and, you know, the president doesn’t want to read out, he doesn’t brief anybody, was never summoned to Washington. And just single digit days later, Anschluss happens. And so, you know, it just shows you the disconnect. But then when Harry Truman becomes president after his 82 days as vice president, he too knew what it was like to live in FDR’s shadow, and there was only one man in the world, as they’re staring the end of World War II in the face out on the horizon, who knew what it was like to be president, knew what it was like to be in FDR’s shadow, and knew how to feed the world. And so, he resurrects Herbert Hoover.

ISAACSON: Jimmy Carter, I think, has had the longest post presidency. And certainly, he’s helped redefine the idea of service in a post presidency. What lessons did you draw from him?

COHEN: So, if Herbert Hoover was a story of recovery. And getting back the sort of the platform that you once had. Jimmy Carter was a different version of that because he too left office in 1981 deeply unpopular. He made a decision that Herbert Hoover did not make, which was, you know, the moment he got out of office, he knew he wasn’t going to make another run at the presidency. And so, as he began what he described as his involuntary retirement. You know, he was a man commanded by deep faith and incredibly principled about this idea that my faith commands me to do whatever I can for as long as I can, whenever I can. And, you know, unshackled from the presidency, he decided to create the former presidency. And he basically built a post presidential administration that unlike his presidency would never end. And he was the first former president to build infrastructure around this idea of being a former and make it a platform in and of itself. And he becomes both a great partner to his successors and a tremendous nuisance to his successors, right? So, the two examples of a nuisance are, you know, when George H. W. Bush is getting ready to launch Operation Desert Storm to get Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, Jimmy Carter secretly writes to several permanent members of the Security Council, you know, trying to advocate them going against the U.S. position. This was, you know, one of the most successful, you know, U.N. Security Council moments of collective action, not really seen before or after, and Carter is kind of secretly opposing it. Or in 1994 when Bill Clinton sends Jimmy Carter to Pyong Yang to meet with the leader there, he knows exactly what Carter’s capable of. And so, he tells him, you’re a messenger. You’re not authorized to make policy. And then Bill Clinton turns on CNN and finds Jimmy Carter announcing that he’s negotiated a nuclear breakthrough on nonproliferation with the North Koreans. So, look, Jimmy Carter, you know, represents that Alexander Hamilton — you know, the answer to Hamilton’s question of being a formidable adversary or nuisance to your successor being a partner. And at 42 plus years, he’s had the longest active, you know, post presidency. And I think it’s ended up being instructive for every successive presidents that’s followed.

ISAACSON: When you look at the lessons in the post presidencies, what do you — what would you hope that Donald Trump could take from that? What lessons should he learn from your book?

COHEN: Look, the number one lesson from the book is anybody making a transition, whether it’s to retirement or a micro transition in your life, the sooner you figure out what your core principles are and let those principles guide you, the sooner you’re able to extricate yourself from ego and vanity and lust for power. And so, I think it’s — if you’re looking at sort of dangerous power or, you know, discontented ghosts wandering around us, those that feel like they lack principles, those that feel like they’re meandering without principle are oftentimes the most dangerous people to have aggregated power. And so, you know, I think what we’re seeing right now is, you know, in addition to this being the only time since 1892 where you have a presidential rematch, you also have the two oldest candidates in history eclipsed only by the last time, these two same candidates ran against each other four years prior. And you have to ask yourself the question, perhaps we’re in this situation that we’re in where you have the two oldest candidates, they’re less popular than they were four years ago. It’s only once repeated rematch. Maybe we’re in this situation because you have two presidents that don’t want to give up power.

ISAACSON: Jared Cohen, thank you so much for joining us.

COHEN: Thank you, Walter.