Ron Gruner - Author of We The Presidents | How American Presidents Shaped the Last Century

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The name I guess is Ron Gruner. He is the author of We The Presidents. Now We The Presidents is not just another history book. You have to understand Ron's background. So Ron was chief executive of three tech companies. A lion computer shareholder.com and sky analytics. Each of his companies were pioneers at their time in their industry. So a lion was parallel processing shareholder.com was investor relations sky was a legal analytics. Each of his companies was successful. They delivered healthy financial returns. The lion when public in 1986 shareholder.com and sky analytics were profitably acquired by major public corporations in 2006, 2015 respectively. So he's had an incredible careers of chief executive. He faced all the challenges of a chief executive balancing the interests of shareholders customers employees focusing on long term vision while executing against short term goals. He did all the CEO things. Now he took that experience and he wanted to write a book that it takes into history and understands the outcome of different presidents different administration. So he wrote We The Presidents. The book focuses on effects rather than causes on results rather than politics on economics rather than ideology. It focuses on linking presidential administrations to outcomes rather than just isolated presidencies in the actual podcast. We spoke about some of his career success. But then we went into discussing US policy, US current cultural economic climate through a business lens. We spoke about inflation. We spoke about we spoke about equitable opportunity. We spoke about modern monetary theory. We spoke about the current social climate. And we spoke about past social climates past economic economic environment past a monetary theory to show the parallels in the dichotomies between what we're experiencing now versus what you've experienced as a nation for the past 100 years through different policies, a different presidents have deployed. We also spoke about some of the stories behind some presidents. We spoke about most liked most hated and why we spoke about most overrated, most underrated, most successful, largest failures with different presidents, different administrations. Because he went into all the history, he understood the personal lives of presidents, which allowed him to understand how presidents through periods of time have led to the current social economic environment that we're currently living in and experiencing. So history, policy, climate, all through a business lens. It was an incredible book. It was an incredible interview. He's an incredibly smart man. I hope you enjoy. Let's jump right into it. This is Ronald Gruner. He is three times CEO, but most recently the author of We The Presidents. I'm Ron Gruner, and I was born and raised in a small town in Oklahoma called Ponca City. And Ponca City was a town of about 25,000 people. It was a famous at one time for the formation of continental oil company. It was an oil town. I grew up in Oklahoma, but in high school, I fell in love with computers. And that sounds like a strange thing to say, but that was in the early 60s, in the mid 60s, and computers were like black magic then nobody took him for granted. So I wanted to spend my whole career in computers. And to do that, I had to move from Oklahoma to Massachusetts, namely Boston, when the Boston was a major high technology center, even before Silicon Valley. So I've had two experiences living. I grew up in Oklahoma, one of the reddest of the red states. And I spent 40 years in Boston and Massachusetts, one of the bluest of the blue states. So I've seen both perspectives. And one of the things that has trouble being in the last few years is how divided we've come both as a country, as friends and as family. And the aspect of my two states, Oklahoma being very red and Massachusetts being very blue kind of characterizes that. Now, I decided to write a book about 2017. And that was very presumptuous because I had never written a book before. I have no history of background. But I have been an entrepreneur. And I've started three companies and so three companies successfully one went public in the 80s and then two other sold to public companies. And I decided that writing a book wasn't a whole lot different than starting a new company. You have to do research, you have to be objective, you have to be persistent. And that's what I tried to do. So I spent four years writing We the President starting in 2017 and finishing last year in 2021. And it was published on February 11th. And the whole idea of the book is to write it from a perspective of might say a chief executive who's got to make very hard decisions and can't let Protestant politics or ideology creep into those decisions. So I wrote that with a heavy emphasis on economics. And I did I never use terms like Democrat Republican left right wing conservative liberal never used any of those Protestant terms and always just try to focus on what the issues were. Whether they're economic issues or domestic international issues, rather than ideology. That's that's what got me started on writing the book. That's incredible. And that's that so this is this is a completely different view. It's not historians view it's it's someone that is trying to educate themselves. That they I am assuming is somebody goes into this book they're educating themselves on on how policies actually affect business decisions financial economic environments. And and you're doing that through the lens of the people that are potentially the most the most persuasive in basically start in in affecting those decisions through presidents through through different governments over the years. Now it is the goal to unpack the history and then understand lessons and maybe for example understand that you know all the things that we experience in our lifetime are not so new and novel and history does repeat itself is that the goal of the book or what is the actual takeaway for somebody who's reading this. Well I think one takeaway I don't think I caught the goal but one takeaway is that history does repeat itself. Let me just give you one or two examples. President Donald Trump ran on the notion of America first and for most Americans they had never heard that phrase before but we're actually hurting the first president I covered my book ran in 1920 on exactly that phrase America first. That was later adapted by a group trying to group campaigning against America's involvement in World War II called America first. So hurting ran on the notion of a return of normalcy which is a very similar what Donald Trump ran on make America great again both of those are looking backwards just as Ronald Reagan ran on let's make America great again Trump actually shorten that to make America great again. So that theme of America first and looking back to better times and trying to return America to those better times goes back at least a hundred years. But to answer your question more specifically in terms of policies that presidents invoke and how they affect us today that was the primary purpose to really understand how we got where we are both the good bad the good aspects and the bad aspects of where we we think we are as a nation. And so I focus a lot for example on taxation policies in that regard and on international policies in that regard I mean one of the major topics we as Americans are dealing with and actually the world is dealing with today is the crises on the borders of Ukraine. I actually cover that in quite a bit of detail anticipating that in the Clinton chapter where president Clinton actually encouraged the expansion of NATO eastward into former Warsaw pack countries which was predicted by George Keaton probably the top diplomat in the state department at the time 50 years of experience as a diplomat when he made that when he made the prediction in 1997 he says when NATO moved into Hungary Poland and the Czech Republic in 1999 he says this is going to cause a second cold war. He predicted that in the 90s I talk about that extensively in my book and then nobody listed to him unfortunately here we are faced with a situation where right or wrong the former Soviet Union now Russia feels threatened by NATO advancing onto its borders and that was predicted by some very smart people 30 years ago. Now when you go through this incredible history and you start to understand that there's been similar situations before you must start to wonder why haven't we done things differently why haven't we improved as a country. So do you have an understanding as to why we always default to making the same mistakes making the same foreign policy decisions that have been predicted 30 years previous by very smart people why do we forget that's my main question. In 1921 and 1924 which would design to keep seven Europeans and Eastern Europeans out of the United States namely Italians and Slavs who were Catholic and Jews and they were quite explicit about that keeping Catholics and Jews out of the United States would maintain the racial homogeneity in the United States. We never do that anymore we that's that that was a horrendous thing to think about but that existed a hundred years ago and it wasn't until 1952 that Asians could become naturalized citizens so if somebody immigrated to the United States safe from India or Japan. They cannot become a US citizen until 1952 so we've scrapped all that aside in our immigration policies although we still have perhaps a ways to go much much better and more open and more more caring than they were even 50 to 60 years ago it's really a hundred years ago. I guess you don't realize how recent some of these things are when you say 50 to 60 years ago that doesn't seem that long. No it isn't. When I did my research to discover that. So so Asians could not be naturalized citizens up up until 50 years ago 60 years ago. With one exception the Chinese could and that was made possible in 1943 because the Chinese were allies of America during World War II and they allowed the Chinese to be naturalized during World War II but they were the only Asians that could. So that's a really interesting point and I guess when I look at America today and you make a good point that times have been and policies have been much harsher and our general disposition towards other people has not been great in history. I don't think anyone argue that but but I still feel like we always default to and us versus them very polarized very separated always angry and I think it's reached a boiling point in the past two years. So yes we have made massive improvements but I still feel like there's a lot of anger and frustration and stress in the country and I'm wondering if there's. To say we've moved forward obviously we have but do you feel as though we've properly learned lessons from the past or could there be a better emphasis so that we don't always feel so separated and segregated and angry at each other what's the what's the way that we could properly move forward and. Basically stop what's happened over the past two years from occurring in the next two years in the next five years 10 years. Well we have a political party system which in my introduction I I point out quotations from George Washington during his administration in the first president. How we felt that the embryonic parties that were forming in the United States around Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson one focused on federal government one focused on states rights was badly dividing the nation. This was talks he made in a speech he made in 1797 so much of what we have is the fact that we have two political parties that are always striving for power we don't have term limits we have huge amounts of money flowing in financing these these attacks on each other and as long as we have that I think we're going to be divided I think. Another aspect that tends to make America revert back to the isolationism is both a strength and a weakness of American that's what Alex took real card American exceptionalism he saw Americans when he visited us in the 1830s and 40s as an exceptional race big your part I don't want to use that phrase as an exceptional people in exceptional country so we've always thought about ourselves a very very special many countries of course do that but I think we do that in the extreme and that's caused a lot of the isolationism in the division. For example over the immigration of Hispanics now that we have the United States because many people want to keep American exceptional. No, I find it very interesting and you know you mentioned this two party system which is a system that we're all very used to but has there ever been in any point in American history and alternative to a two party system where an additional third party. So you know like I'm Canadian so right now we have liberals conservatives but we also have NDP which is new democratic party which definitely takes a significant a significantly larger portion of votes than I would see a third party take in the US. So how do we is there any precedent for moving away from a pure two party system if so what was that but also how could we do that how could we encourage that. Well we've we've had many attempts at forming independent parties of third parties are going back to the no nothing party in the 19th century that was basically taking a position regarding reducing immigration. John Anderson ran as an independent back in 1980's I recall we had Ross Perot who started essentially an independent movement that was quite successful in the 1990's but they typically have a lifetime of one or two elections and then they die out. To basically run for election in the United States you need tons of money and a small independent money party can't raise those funds to compete against the two major parties so for all intents and purposes we're a two party country we will be indefinitely. That's unfortunate because I don't even know like when when Trump was running that was a conversation too and then he defaulted to Republican because I think that that's the only way that he found that he could capture enough of the base. Of the base he couldn't run you couldn't run independently so you pull out all these lessons which I think are our fabulous lessons from past presidents lessons that are things that we should learn from today in this in this book. I want to go down two separate paths for this interview I'd like to understand some of the lessons learned in economics Adam Smith modern monetary theory and why that's such an important piece of the book and then I would also like to just walk through some really interesting stories that you discovered doing research that maybe people don't know about past presidents. Some things about successes failures that that that would be great if we just like brought to light and sort of like act as a teaser for what else people would get in the book but first like monetary policy because I know that you put in a huge amount into economics. So why why when you're writing because you sort of touched on it you wanted to write a book that speaks to business individuals and business people but but why is economics such a huge portion of a book that could really just be a history lesson. Well to me history is a means and not an end I mean what we really want to accomplish is to improve the well being of American citizens and for most people that comes down to their pocket book okay their health and the pocket book but much of that relates to economics and that's why I focus on that and one of the greatest realizations and I think a. A shocks that I had and during the research on the book is the amount of income inequality that exists in the United States today and I know people are skeptical about that but let me give you some hard figures in 1968 the middle 60% of taxpayers the middle class and the lower 20% the lower income people typically making minimum wage or slightly above that had their peak incomes and since then it's been flat to down. So let me give you a specific let's take a family of four with one spouse working full time one spouse working half time that's 3000 hours a year these are not slackers these are hard workers. In 1968 they were making a minimum wage as I recall the dollar 60 in that range in twenty twenty dollars today's dollars that's worth about twelve dollars an hour eleven dollars and eighty cents an hour and if you calculate that out that family was making thirty four thirty five thousand dollars a year basically putting them into the lower middle. Income class a comfortable lifestyle and they were working at minimum wage now today minimum wage is seven dollars and twenty five cents here in the United States and that same family working just as hard. Has taken a thirty eight percent pay cut and they are now well below the poverty line and if they're going to survive they're going to have to get food stamps and other support from the government which is what. Up until recently workers at Walmart for example and in all the fast food chains although they may be working full time they were all exactly required to survive taking food stamps so one of the reason social spinning is increased so much in the United States since the nineteen sixties is because pay is gone down for much the United States and that's what's happened. On the other hand a family in nineteen sixty eight that was making thirty four thousand dollars strictly on dividends from a stock fund like a trust fund that's called it. Family of four not working taking dividends today their income wouldn't be thirty five thousand dollars it would be two hundred fifty seven thousand dollars it went up by a factor of seven. So you've got two families one basically living off capital and dividends and one living off the minimum wage one gets a pay cut of thirty eight percent and one gets an increase in their income of seven times. Now I'm not saying capital is bad capital finances everything we do but we need to spread I think some of that down to people that are working hard and barely surviving and that's not socialism that's basically just being equitable in the distribution of how we. A credit work in this country because without those people working as they are in the middle and the lower classes we wouldn't have the lifestyle America enjoys today. I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode hub spot now the new year might have you thinking ahead to what you want out of your career. 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HubSpot CRM platform optimizes your content for multiple devices so that you can reach your customers wherever they are which is just smart learn more about how you can transform your customer experience with a HubSpot CRM at HubSpot.com. But we've been trying to be more equitable and there's been so many initiatives to support the lower and middle class. And you always see like you know I think Biden just put out a stat like there's 460,000 or 100,000 of jobs that were just create obviously a lot of that has to do with employment that was created that was probably lost during the pandemic but there seems to always be moving forward. But it seems like the like you mentioned that that lower middle class is always is always losing out there losing a disproportionate amount of income versus inflation but when did that start moving in that direction was there a policy was there was there a particular attitude in the culture of the U.S. Was there one item like how do where do we trace that back to because you mentioned in the 60s right I think it was the 60s that you said when yeah so that people were making this so much and they could afford like a decent lifestyle. What was the what was the point that we stopped protecting and stopped supporting so that it all got away from us because now it just seems incredibly disproportionate. Well I think in the 60s a number of things were happening obviously we began to lose a business and jobs overseas starting in the 60s automobile for example in consumer goods I mean that's when Japanese cars and Japanese televisions began and radio began to come to the United States in the 60s and 70s that was one factor. Another factor was growing automation but another factor which I think gave business and believe me I've been part of business my whole life I've started three companies I believe in profits absolutely but another factor was an economist milk Friedman who wrote a landmark paper there in the 1960s and was published in the New York Times magazine in 1970 that basically said business has one and only responsibility. To make the largest possible profits for shareholders as long as it stays within the law and so nothing in terms of other stakeholders the environment the community customers or employees came second to making as much money as possible. Now when I first started working in the 60s firms like IBM and General Motors were very proud of the fact if you look at their annual ports from those years they were very proud of the fact that they were a good corporate citizen and they supported their community they supported their employees they were good to their customers but by after Friedman put that out I remember distinctly and you can look this up it's easy to find. That McDonald who is the chair chief executive of a large computer company burrows corporation was following meant Friedman's guidelines saying our policy is to be so tight handed we keep our customers so but not rebellious so he was just focusing on maximizing profits even though his customers might be so and because he had him locked in. So that's I think that's the time frame in the reasons I think that we see things kind of peaked in the late 60s and have been flat to down since then I think it's good news though in that the American business council about five or six years ago began to move away from that notion milk Friedman's notion that profits are profits over everything in a trying to treat their employees more fairly and if you look at the rising wages even before we began to see the issues just before and after the pandemic. Pressure on wages upward places like McDonald's and Walmart began raising the minimum way that the lower wages of their of their workers pretty significantly and that's that's improved very much over the last six or seven years so that's a positive sign. It is a positive sign I guess it just has to be like it's it's good to continue the initiatives the the item that's unfortunate is that there's so much inflation that it's still going to like the inflation is outpacing the increase in salary so the quality of life is not going to prove dramatically until we can sort of tackle both issues at the same time. That's pretty much the inflation issue is only the last six months or so correct. We'll get that in hand but you know when I talk about McDonald's and Walmart raising raising wages I mean they were doing that starting about twenty fifteen and they were workers they were really beginning to benefit but now patients of course become has become a major concern. A main takeaway from that why was why was Milton Friedman so influential I understand the rationale like if somebody says make more money but why did that shift the course of business thinking across all of the US it doesn't make sense to me why that one individual impacted it's such a such an extreme level. I mean he wasn't very well respected economist for good reasons he had many insights into the economy and how the economy works and I guess it's it's hard for me to say from this distance but I think the feeding was to the extent that money is if companies make a lot of money. I'm going to use and Andrew Mellon's original phrase that money will trickle down into the rest of the economy. Andrew Mellon in the 1920s was the first to use that phrase that if if companies are successful and wealthy people become successful that money trickles down through the rest of the economy. And I think I'm presuming this I think that was as operating assumption that there's got to be something that's got to be a locomotive driving the economy that's companies. And if they're very very successful if they're very very successful that'll feed everything else and it just wound up turning it fed the shareholders but a lot of it didn't trickle down to anybody else. And do you feel like the the current version of modern money modern monetary theory and socially conscious business and businesses that are focused on not just the shareholders but stakeholders. Do you feel like that is something that is being championed by by any is it a partisan conversation or is it something that is currently moving forward regardless of whether or not Republican Democrat. It's something that's sort of the business environment is changing regardless. Well, there's kind of two topics there one modern monetary theory and I'll discuss that in a second. The other is income equality or income that's called normalization for a larger proportion of the US workers and in the latter regard in terms of income normalization. I think I think that is improving and I will give a former president Donald Trump credit for that basically point to the forgot the American worker forgotten because of jobs flowing overseas because of taxation policies for a number of policies he made that a major theme of his campaign and he's built a very loyal political base because of that. So he has given this building that issue is going to be hard for anybody now to say well is shareholders above all and workers take second or third tier that's going to be very difficult. So he's really brought that to the to the forefront to his credit modern monetary theory will see what happens on that. But I think that's going to be wishful thinking that basically says United States can issue as much debt as it wishes as long as it can find buyers for that debt and as long as I can find buyers that just keep pushing it out. That just seems to be like you're just begging for a fall because once the people saying you know I'm beginning to lose a little bit of trust in the dollar for some reason. We can't predict what that might be and buyers begin to back away interest rates go up and that whole thing collapse like a house of cards. Now to give you an analogy on that in the well for decades and certainly through the 90s and the 2000s the house prices were rising every year by you know 358%. Just inextrably and they had never really decreased they might slow down you know from 1950 to 19 2005 they might have slowed but they never took a steep drop and so the whole mortgage industry in the finance industry was based on the fact that house prices were always going to rise. And once they took a dip and then fell everything collapsed. In 2008 2009 and I'm worried that with our national debt climbing like it is based on the theory that would just keep pushing debt out we can always refinance is going to be repeat of 2008 on steroids. Interesting and why and why so and help me understand because I'm a layman in in in monetary theory and and the ID like the like the theories that drive some of the policy decisions so modern monetary theory is really that concept is a concept that we can keep printing money to support our economy as long as there's a buyer for our products and services that just like a very basic simple definition. I think that's an excellent definition now economists might kind of spruce that up a map of ribbon around that but you know you've got the essence of it right there. Interesting and and why another silly question why is this considered modern monetary theory when it seems like this has always always been the way that we operate. Well it hasn't always been I mean people for you know up until fairly recently we're worried about the national debt. You know the many people were concerned about Obama issuing more debt during 2008 where they were worried about the national debt and kicking off inflation. So there were worries about increasing debt up until a few years ago in this whole idea of modern monetary theory is a fairly recent concept that's only been around a few years and it says don't worry it's not going to be a problem we can keep issuing this stuff because the dollars of the reserve currency the word and that's not going to change. Interesting it doesn't seem like a logical the thought process behind that doesn't seem logical at all. I don't I don't understand how that could be something that people could get behind it like there seems to be so many flaws in that argument. But the dollar has been supreme from at least the end of World War II and the dollars the reserve currency the world I mean and the United States almost daily is kicking out sanctions against people and that hurts them badly financially because most of the world's business and even personal transactions are conducted in dollars. And if those dollars that that gives the United States tremendous control over the economy of the world so I think many people are confident that's going to stay around for a long time. But they've never pushed it this far since they moved off the gold standard they've never pushed it to this level have they in history. No I mean well there's lots of ways to measure the debt if you measure the debt as a percentage of GDP gross domestic product so think of your a family that has an income of a say $50,000 versus $25 a family with income of $50,000 can afford a lot more credit card debt than when making $25,000 exactly it's exactly the same thing with our national debt. So the ratio of the national debt to the GDP of the gross domestic product is important and the probably the largest single increase in that occurred. One of the largest was during the regular administration where that went up I don't recall exactly about 40% there was a huge increase as a percentage of GDP. The increase of debt relative to GDP over the last few years has gone up but not quite as much as it has historically. And that's an important factor so in some respects this this increase although people talk about trends and trends of dollars are new debt there's lots of ways to measure that. But the most the best way is as a percentage of GDP and it's not as bad as it looks it's bad I worry about it but it's not quite as bad it doesn't make a historic compared to times in the past. Very interesting okay let's so that's a good segue so I want to talk about I want to talk about sort of the second piece of the book because I want to talk about some of the lessons learned from presidents historically some of the some of the stories that you the you research and that you that you speak about in the book. And I guess I'll ask you as well are there any any because I'm going to I'm going to close this sort of this section out but are there any other thoughts that you have on modern monetary theory the future economic state of the US just prognosis you know forecast that you have because you've done the research you've lived in this for so long like where you see the economy going in the next five 10 years positive negative some thoughts on that. Well if you look back at the the economic crashes in the last 100 years the the crash of 1907 the great depression in early 1930s the savings the long crash in the 1980s many people have forgotten about 2008 it's all based on optimistic thinking that what's happening now is going to continue happening in the future modern monetary theory is based on that same thinking what's happening now is going to continue happening in the future. And so something politicians and leadership would ideally do is to have the courage to tell people that may not be the case and we may have to basically tighten our belt whether that means cutting spending raising taxes or both to get our fiscal house in better order. And we haven't had many presidents wanting to do that Eisenhower did that when he was bringing down the war debt in the 1950s he said I'm not cutting taxes we got to cut this war debt and people respected him for that but we don't have many people now that do that but we need somebody that steps up and gives us some better medicine because I think it's going to be needed. Let's go into some of the stories that you that you discovered as you're doing research so you you how do you even begin to to research some of the the presidents you're you're going in like what is the because there's so much information on every single one of them I'm sure every single one will there is probably a book in many books on every single president's lifetime so what are you trying to cover in the chapter that covers one particular president what's the main takeaway. Kind of related to that question people ask me around you do an outline and I I can I surprise myself I absolutely do not I do not do I do not do other than knowing I'm going to have at least 17 chapters one for each president that was my outline and so doing research now is much much easier than it was just a few years ago the all most of the records of the presidential libraries the White House the Department of State et cetera they're all available online so. The way I begin a new chapter let's say a cabin coup d'ach who I do very little about a few years ago I would go on the web and do classic web surfing and starting with the White House archives presidential library in Vermont and just let into broader and broader topics and I would spend a couple of weeks just during research unstructured research to kind of begin to form an opinion about who this man was. And that's how I that's how I proceeded and the chapters grew organically no chapter all 17 chapters have a somewhat different structure each one being individual the president because I think each one was slightly different and in how they approach things. Okay no that's fair so let's let's dive into a little bit of history here so I'm going to promise with this so love him or hate him Trump was very polarizing but I'm sure there's been a lot of other polarizing. So let's go into interesting stories from presidents past that probably would shock people if they were the acting in the way that they did several years ago in modern day so what are some what are some presidents that and some ridiculous you know very controversial things that people are going to do. You know very controversial things that people have done that have impacted that have impacted the country. Well there's I can name an ever presence who took a tremendous amount of heat and criticism during their time Franklin Roosevelt perhaps the most Roosevelt basically took the notion and reversed what Herbert Hoover was doing. Herbert Hoover said the government needs to stay out of people's affairs and the people need to bootstrap themselves up out of the depression and there's have actual quotes of that in my book about Hoover. Franklin Roosevelt said look if businesses aren't giving jobs to people and people are starving then the government's got to give them jobs and that's what he did. He basically put the people to work building roads and highways and dams and all kinds of things but he did that also he raised taxes and the business establishment weren't very happy about he also put a lot of regulations in place which they weren't happy about so he took a lot of heat in the 1930s and it was called a socialist and a communist because of that and he was moving the country towards communism. But then when World War II happened he didn't nationalize those companies they all remain private they were all allowed to make a small profit there was coordination at the government level but the all the companies all ran themselves so he certainly wasn't what was predicted. The same thing happened with Eisenhower who was he had never belonged to a political party much less the communist party before he became president but when he added on the social security in the 50s that even when he did the interstate highway system. He was accused of succumbing to creeping creeping communism creeping socialism by having the federal government get involved in that and when the administration before Eisenhower when Harry Truman advocated for broader healthcare coverage he was called a follower of the Moscow line a socialist so they all took a lot of heat. They all took a lot of heat when they made decisions that people disagreed with so what we're hearing now where you've got one party calling one side socialist and the other party calling up the other side deplorable is chasing religion and guns that's not new unfortunately. Who was who was the most hated president in the United States history well I can't wait to go back to the 19th century credibly but since 1900 the president that left with the lowest ratings was Harry Truman. Why was the primary reason was that when the Korean War happened General Douglas MacArthur was running that he did a good job of chasing the South Koreans the North Koreans out of South Korea but then he chased to bend the North Korea and he was right on the edge of the Chinese border and wanted to go into China possibly nuclear weapons. Truman said no don't do that we treat come back he then went to Congress and try to go around Truman who was the commander in chief and Truman fired him on the spot. Now MacArthur was very very popular he was voted the most popular man United States in 1946 I think he was a great general in World War II and so when Truman left he left with the lowest popularity ratings at least on average his last year of any president. Today he's considered one of our best presidents studying the top 10 and I think some ratings rate him like number six so he certainly was one of them another one I mentioned that I think is underrated is a former president Jimmy Carter many respects let me just say that many people consider Carter a very failed and terrible president. That was because he lost so badly to Ronald Reagan and knew the end of his president so he gave a speech we basically chastised the American people for moral and spiritual fanings as called the Malay speech but he in many ways laid the groundwork for Ronald Reagan. He did more deregulation than Reagan or any subsequent president did he deregulate the airlines he did the railroads and trekking also energy he did all that in the like 77 to 79 time frame. He was the first to say the issue with energy is not energy production it's energy conservation energy growth in the United States was growing 1.2% per year had been for decades and Carter said we can't continue this because otherwise it's going to become an impossible situation which would never produce enough oil or energy to counter that. So if he he fostered legislation in 1978 to reduce energy consumption and focus on conservation and that immediately plateaued energy consumption per capita and then began declining and today Americans on as a per as a people per capita used 15% less energy today than they did in 1978 whereas energy production per capita has only gone up roughly 7 or 8%. So it's conservation that's made this country energy independent not energy production and Carter should get Carter to get credit for that one other thing about Carter he is a very moral and honorable man he basically learned his communication skills teaching kindergarten and I don't say that in pejorative I mean I beg your pardon my apology teaching Bible Bible school or Sunday school starting at anapolis when he was a naval cadet all the way through his presidency and even today in the Baptist church in Georgia. In contrast Reagan learned his skills as a radio announcer corporate spokesman movie star the governor of California Reagan had superb communication skills Carter had skills communication skills that were more focused on being a sermon or a minister. So for example the Iranian hostages the negotiations were completed by Jimmy Carter the day before Reagan took office the Iranians had concluded well we've been negotiating with Clinton for a Carter for nine months let's get this wrapped up rather than starting over with Reagan. So they signed a deal the day before Reagan took office Carter did not announce that he did not announce that because he said my foremost objective is that those people get out of Iran and so he that didn't happen until inauguration day and they didn't get out of Iranian airspace until about an hour after president Reagan speech at which point Ronald Reagan announced the hostages were free and 90% of Americans believe where Reagan did that. And still believe that Reagan never corrected himself and Carter never asked for a correction. Very interesting. So to flip the script on that then who do you think is the most overrated president? That's a hard one to say. You're going to upset some people that like whoever you're going to say. No that's really not it. You know one thing when you write a biography and you really study people everybody has faults including the most recent president and clearly president is going back 200 years. But I believe for the most part every president tried to do his best for the country. Now they made a lot of mistakes and I personally strongly disagree with the fact that the election was stolen in 2020 for example. And I think to address that issue I think former president Trump is doing a huge disservice to American and democracy by claiming it is a building distrust but he did many things good. So you can put him where you want to but I think that for the most part of the president overrated you can't say that Trump was overrated because a lot of people don't like him. Well no he's got a very strong divided he's got a very strong following with people that have him. And so you can you can you have to say from what perspective is being overrated from a historian perspective if you look at professional historians you may or may not trust their opinions but if you look at professional historians. The most recent survey of of Trump put him like I think number three from the bottom just below below war and g hurting so he's not rated highly at all by professional historians will see what history brings up but not today no. Very interesting. January six has there ever been other events like that in history at that level. No, not there has not been an attack on the US Capitol since the war of 1812. That was unique and other than the Civil War where you had outright insurrection for four years during the Civil War we've never had an incident as serious as what happened January 6th 2020 and what's shameful is we're divided as a nation where there even matters or whether it actually happened as most people believe it did. I think I think that's so you know you mentioned you mentioned the issue with Trump is is the service that he's doing to democracy and I think that's the biggest the biggest blemish on his on his presidency is this entire this entire January 6th the culmination of all these negative things that happen on January 6th. No, it's just interesting to me because being a Canadian I didn't realize that I didn't realize how serious that was until you start to look at history and realize that nothing like that has ever happened in US history. And I guess like you start you do understand how serious it is but the fact that you know you don't realize it that has never happened before at any level outside of like because protests are one thing going into a state capital is a very different thing that's where the lines are crossed and I don't understand why that seems to be a discussion point is to why that is a good or bad thing doesn't really make sense. It's politics and what I call the American political industry where you've got a lot of interesting parties with this cable news or players on the internet or various people who make a lot of money by spreading information that some people want to hear and they tell them what they want to hear and it may be disinformation it may not be true but it's a good way to make money. I talk about that in my book. I think the the insurrection and the attack on the capital the national capital was bad but I think the thing that is even worse is the doubt and distrust that's been spread about the American the American electoral process where you can't trust who's elected. For 200 years we had elections where people won and lost and people oftentimes were very distressed that their favorite person lost but they accepted the results of the election and they said we're going to try harder and we're next time in four years. We had a very divisive election in the year 2000 between Gore and Bush but when the Supreme Court ruled against Bush he accepted that welcome the abortion of the presidency and we moved on as a nation. What's happened in 2000 what happened on January what happened really in November of 2020 when President Bush did not accept the results of the election that was unprecedented and it really undermines democracy because if you can't trust the election and who's been elected you don't have a democracy. Correct correct yeah um do you feel as though do you feel as though he's going to run again um I guess it would be in 2024 correct that's when well I can't say Scott I mean that's uh like I said my book really hasn't focused on politics I think that but I always try. I don't know. I don't need to. I don't need to. I don't need to. I don't need to push you down. I know. I always try to answer the question as best I can. I think he may well run if he thinks he has almost a lock on winning. Yeah but I think if he doesn't isn't almost certain he's going to win I don't think he's going to run because I think he can't play that game twice saying okay I got cheated again. Yeah I don't think that's going to work so he's got to be confident he's going to win if he's going to run. Um let's let's forget about Trump um so main takeaways from studying uh these these presidents um what if somebody was to pick up your book and read your book what do you hope for them to take away from it. Um I think the first thing I would hope for is that the situation that we're in today isn't totally unique many of the issues we're we're arguing over as a nation uh the role of the United States in the world world affairs in Europe and NATO for example the issues of immigration okay whether we should have higher or lower taxes for example all those are issues that have been discussed to debate it now for for decades if not several hundred years but certainly in the time from a my book those are all old issues that go back to warranty harding and and and even beyond so those are new and in general not always in general things are improving like I gave you the example of immigration I mean that was horrible back in the 20s where it wasn't just a small group of people that being excluded as Catholics and Jews and that that Congress talked about that they were they did not contribute to racial homogeneity in the United States Catholics and Jews who would say that now so that's a very positive trend um but we still have many things to do but the the the collapse of trust in American institutions uh from uh new systems to science to the government is distressing and that's something I think is as unique as a nation and that's something that we're going to do. And that's something I think is as unique uh in today's times so so we have to figure that out ASAP to figure that out very very quickly um okay what I'd like to do is I'd like to pull out some rapid fire questions from your career you've had tons of success and I think that will uh really really help uh the listeners um understand you know as you've navigated your career some lessons that you've learned and also what's allowed you to be so successful in your career but also with some of the things that you've learned and you've learned and also what's allowed you to be so successful in your career. But also with some of the other things that you've taken on including writing this book but before I pivot um the most important question is where do people connect with you where do people get the book if they want to to read it or they just want to ask questions um what's the best uh outlet social media website any of that. Well the uh the books website is we the presidents dot us we the presidents dot us you go to that you can read about the book and what people are saying about it you can also find a like six links that take you where you can buy it you can you can buy it at your independent bookstore uh if they don't have it in stock you can ask them to order that because it's in all the computer records they can order that and have it for you in a few days or you go to the big online retailers of course Amazon and uh Barnes and Noble have it so there's lots of places to get it but you can start it we the presidents dot us okay perfect all right let's ask a couple rapid fire questions um like I said you had a great career over your career what was the biggest challenge that you've had to overcome and how did you overcome it. I think that the first company I started uh was publicly financed we raised a hundred seven million dollars in the eighties and when that was serious money and I was a chief executive and it was a public company and so managing a public company was very very challenging. And you had to meet quarterly rate of the new objectives and profit objectives and uh and that really drove how you ran your business in a negative sense. So after 10 years of alliance we hit a brick wall with what was happening happening in computers we were manufacturing computers that sold for half a million dollars and everything was moving to desktop and the company basically unfortunately pretty much folded. I took a year and a half off and started a what evolved to the internet company but I decided then that I was going to grow that organically with my own money and maybe just a little bit of outside money so I raised just a quarter million dollars in the early nineties uh plus my own money and started showed it. I got a lot of money and I got a lot of money and I got a lot of money and I got a lot of money and I got a lot of money and I got a lot of money and I got a lot of money and I got a lot of money and I got a lot of money and I got a lot of money and I got a lot of money and I got a lot of money and I got a lot of money and I got a lot of money and I got a lot of money and I got a lot of money and I got a lot of money and I got a lot of money and I got a lot of money and I got a lot of money and I got a lot of money and I got a lot of money and I got a lot of money and I got a lot of money and I got a lot of money and I got a lot of money and I got a lot of money and I got a lot of money and I got a lot of money and I got a lot of money and I got a lot of money and I got a lot and I got a lot of money and I got a lot of money heaven heaven heaven heaven heaven for heaven heaven felt you felt much more comfortable I'm assuming when you were running the bootstrap company even though it's like like significantly more work. Yeah, it's on set of challenges and pressures, but I felt much more comfortable that way. Amazing. You've had many people that have impacted your life if you had to pick one person, who was that person who acted as a mentor and advisor and what did they teach you? Well I've had two and I'm talking about professional, I'm talking about my dad, but I should mention my dad, I'm going to have to do that because my dad is a German immigrant. He immigrated from Germany when he was 18. He spoke no English, had no money. He went and went up in the Oklahoma oil fields and after being there 20 years, he started his own company manufacturing drill bits, rolled-eat drill bits that drill on the ground for oil. And he competed with successfully with Howard Hughes. Howard Hughes was a billionaire, a famous billionaire back in the 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s. And all his wealth came from the drilling business and my dad competed with him. So he was the model entrepreneur that hugely influenced me as a child and teenager. But two people professionally were the founder of Data General and the Castro, who I'm still very much friends with. And Tom Perkins, who was one of the founding members of Kleina Perkins, the venture capital firm, Tom Perkins was a chairman of my board of directors for 10 years when a line was a public company and it was just a superb mentor, had a great sense of humor, just a wonderful individual, just like Ed DeCastro is today and was back in the 60s when I first went to work for Data General. So I had some very good mentors, my dad, Ed DeCastro, Tom Perkins. Amazing. A book or podcast or something that's influenced your life, what is it, what would you recommend, what did you learn from it? Well, I've read so many books, it's hard to pick one out. I think if I were to kind of just focus on this topic here about the presidents, I believe was Sharon always book on Eisenhower, I believe was Sharon, I run Sharon, I wrote that on Eisenhower. I read about five or seven years ago, about 2015 and I thought that really an excellent biography of Eisenhower and the issues the president has to deal with and that picked my interest on the presidency and I would say that as much as anything influenced the fact that I might want to write one of my own on the presidency but take a different cut at it, not so much about the issues and the politics of being president, looking backwards to how he got to be president but basically looking forward as to what happened when it was president, how do policies of yesterday's presidents affect today? I love that and I think that that's it, first of all obviously, people have to go redure book but I think that to peak curiosity, books that are great at peaking curiosity about history and sort of pushing people down that rabbit hole so that they do understand history and civic history a little bit more, I think is a positive thing, so it's a good recommendation as well. If you could tell your 20 year old self one thing, what would it be? My 20 year old self, don't be so impatient, I think what are my strengths is I have a high energy level that I'm driving, driving, driving all the time, whether that was with my companies or sometimes with my family and my wife who has a tremendous tolerance for some of my personal folks, okay? And I think if I had it, would it tell my 20 year old self and my 74 year old self would be calmed down, don't be quite so impatient, okay? I think that's good advice I have to still take. Good, good, good, and then last question, what does success mean to you? You know success is important but I give you an example and an insight I had when I so shared it.com in 2006, I was always comfortable, I made good salary, I made money off stock as a client but I was never really wealthy or absolutely independently wealthy and when I so shared it.com, we sold that for a substantial amount and I realized that, okay, I'm very much independently wealthy and my kids might be true and I realized, you know, I'm an engineer so I think in numbers, I said, if happiness is on a scale of 1 to 100, before I so shared it.com, I think my happiness was like 93 or 94, I was very happy. Of course there's one or two things that you were worried about. That's why it wasn't 100 and I said, you know, after selling this company, maybe my happiness takes up to 95 or 96 but it doesn't take up that much, you know, it's nice to have the money but it's not that important and people say what Ron, you can say that because you've got it but I can say with you all sincerity, that's exactly how I felt as I was making this deal and so shared it.com that having that money is nice but it's relatively small compared to your family, your health, your friends, having something, a job or a hobby or something that captures your attention makes you feel like you're contributing. All that is actually far more better than having a bunch of money saying, you know, I don't have to work anymore, I can get up and play golf all day.