YouSaid · the spoken record

Jeremi Suri

lines on the record: 124
first: 2021-04-30
most recent: 2021-04-30
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“It's the latter with him. He's backstabbing quite a lot and he's self-serving But he also makes himself so useful that even though Nixon knows he's doing that, Nixon still needs him.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so he builds this personal dependency through ego and through performance. And then he's so skillful at making decisions for people who are more powerful because he's never elected to office. He always needs powerful people to let him do things. But he convinces you it's your decision when it's really his. To read his memos are beautiful. He's actually very skilled at writing things in a way that looks like he's giving you options as president. But in fact, there's only one option there He”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some of this sounds like BS, but it's serious, right? He's feeding the egos of those around him. Second, he is willing to get things done for you. He's effective. You want him around you because of his efficacy. So Richard Nixon is always suspicious that Henry Kissinger is getting more of the limelight. He hates that Kissinger gets the Nobel Peace Prize and he doesn't. But he needs him because Kissinger's the guy who gets things done. So he performs. He builds a relationship. And almost, I say this in the book in almost a gangster way. He didn't like that. He criticized that part of the book. But again, I still think the evidence is there. You need something to be done, boss. I'll do it. And don't forget that I'm doing this for you. And you get mutual dependency in a Hegelian way, right?”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, Kissinger is the ultimate kiss up. He is, as some used to make fun of him, in fact, even the filmmaker from Doctor Strange Love, whose name I'm forgetting, Stanley Kubrick. Called him kiss up at that time. He had a wonderful way of figuring out what it is you wanted. Back to that discussion we had before and trying to show how he could give you more of what you wanted as a leader. It was very personalistic, very personalistic. And he spends a lot of time, for example, kissing up to Leonid Brezhnev, kissing up to Mao. He tells Mao, you're the greatest leader in the history of the 20th century.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We don't want the Soviet Union to get ahead of us. We negotiate to limit their abilities, right? We play to our strengths. So it's a combination of keeping your adversary down and building tight webs. Within that context, military force is used, but you're not using war for the sake of war. Using warfare to further your access to the resources, economic, political, geographic that you want.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The second element of the strategy is not to go to war with your adversary, but to do all you can to limit the power of your adversary. Some of that is containment, preventing the Soviet Union from expanding. That was the key element of American Cold War policy. But sometimes it's actually negotiation. That's what detente was about for Kissinger. He spends a lot of time, more time than any other American foreign policymaker negotiating with Soviet leaders, as well as Chinese leaders. What does he want to do? He wants to limit the nuclear arms race. The United States is ahead.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Short philosophy behind it. So there are two key elements that then end up producing all kinds of tactics, but the two strategic elements of Kissinger's way of thinking about realpolitik, which are classical ways, going back to Thucydides and the Greeks, are to say, first of all, you figure out who your allies are and you build webs of connection so that your allies help you to acquire what you want to acquire. This is why, according to Herodotus, the Greeks beat the Persians. The Persians are bigger, but the Greeks, the Spartans, the Athenians, others are able to work together and leverage their resources, right? So it's about leveraging your resources for Kissinger. This makes Western Europe crucially important. It makes Japan crucially important. It makes Israel and Egypt crucially important, right? In building these webs, you build your surrogates, you build your brother states in other parts of the world, you build tight connections and you work together to control the resources that you want.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So realpolitik for Kissinger is really focusing on the power centers in the world and trying as best you can to manipulate those power centers to serve the interests of your own country. And so that's why he's a multilateralist. He's not a unilateralist. He believes the United States should put itself at the center of negotiations between other powerful countries, but that's also why he pays very little attention to countries that are less powerful. And this is why he's often criticized by human rights activists. For him, parts of Africa and Latin America, which you and I would consider important places are unimportant because they don't have power. They can't project their power. They don't produce a lot of economic wealth. And so they matter less. Realpolitik views the world in a hierarchy of power.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Correct. And China in particular, they were one of our key enemies in Vietnam. And in Korea, American forces were fighting Chinese forces directly. Chinese forces come over the border. Thousands of Americans die at the hand of Chinese forces, right? So for a long time, the United States had no relationship with communist China. He opens that relationship. And at the same time, he also creates a whole new dynamic in the Middle East after the 1973 war, the so-called Yom Kippur War. He steps in and becomes the leading negotiator between the Israelis, the Egyptians, and other major actors in the region. And it makes the United States the most powerful actor in the Middle East, the Soviet Union far less powerful, which is great for the United States in the 70s and 80s. It gets us, though, into the problems we, of course, have thereafter.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The most important moments in terms of making his reputation, making his career or two sets of activities. One is the opening to China and his ability to, first of all, take control of U.S. policy without the authority to do that and direct U.S. policy and then build a relationship with Mao Zedong and Joan Lai that was unthinkable just four or five years earlier. Of course, President Nixon is a big part of that as well, but Kissinger is the mover and shaker on that. And it's a lot of manipulation, but it's also a vision”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think what made his career in many ways was his experience in the 1950s building a network, a network of people across the world who were rising leaders from unique positions. He ran what he called the International Seminar at Harvard, which was actually a summer school class that no one at Harvard cared about. But he invited all of these rising intellectuals and thinkers from around the world. And he built a network there that he used forevermore. So that's what really, I think, boosts him”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's hard. It's hard. I mean, most of us, if we've had drama, it's believable that it's traumatic because you don't talk about it. I have a friend who interviews combat veterans, and he says, as soon as someone freely wants to tell me about their combat trauma, I suspect that they're not telling me the truth. If it's traumatic, it's hard to talk about it.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he's forced to flee and he becomes nothing. His father never really makes a way for himself in the United States. He becomes a postal delivery person, which is nothing wrong with that, but for someone who's a respected teacher in Germany, and Gimlazim Lehr are like professors there, right? To then be in this position, his mother has to open a catering business when they come to New York. It's a typical immigrant story, but he sees the trauma. His grandparents are killed by the Nazis. So he sees the trauma, and he realizes how perilous it is to be without power.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think he develops an obsession with gaining power because he sees what happens when you have no power. He experiences the trauma. His father is a very respected gymnasium in Germany, even though he's Jewish, he's actually the teacher of German classics to the German kids.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, both of those things. Both of those. And I think I explained this in the book. He doesn't agree with what I'm going to say now, but I think I'm right. And I think he's right. It's very hard to analyze yourself, right? Yeah.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, he has a knack for that. I spend a lot of time talking with him. And what comes through very quickly is that he has an eye for power. It's, I think, unhealthy. He's obsessed with power.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Encounter intelligence. He forms a network there that stays with him the rest of his career. There's a gentleman named Fritz Kramer who becomes a sponsor of his in the emerging Pentagon Defense Department world. And as early as the early 1950s, he sent them to Korea to comment on affairs in Korea. He becomes both an intellectual recognized for his connections, but also someone who policymakers want to talk about. His book on nuclear weapons, when it's written, is given to President Eisenhower to read because they say this is someone writing interesting things you should read what he says.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because they need German speakers. He came when he was 15, so he actually understands the society. They need people have that cultural knowledge. And because he's Jewish, they can trust that he'll be anti-Nazi. And there's a whole group of these figures. He's one of many, and so he's in an elite circle. He's discriminated against in New York. When he goes to Harvard after that, he can only live in a Jewish only dorm. But at the same time, he's in an elite policy role.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. So he actually in the 40s even it's an extraordinary story. He comes to the United States in 1938 just before Kristallnacht, his family leaves. He actually grew up right outside of Nuremberg. They leave right before Kristallnacht in the fall of 38. Come to New York. He originally works in a brush factory cleaning brushes, goes to a public high school. And in 1942, just after Pearl Harbor, he joins the military. And he's very quickly in the military, first of all, given citizenship, which he didn't have before. He's sent from the first time outside of a kosher home. He had been in a kosher home his entire life. He sent to South Carolina to eat ham for Uncle Sam. And then he is, and this is extraordinary at the age of 20, barely speaking English, he is sent back to Germany with the U.S. Army in an elite counterintelligence role. Why?”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Never would be at the university before, training them and then enlisting them in Cold War activities. And so Kissinger is a representative of that phenomenon. I became interested in him because I think he's a bellwether. He shows how power has changed in the United States.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And what does that really mean? It's not just about being Jewish. It's the internationalism. It's the cosmopolitanism. And that's one of the things I was fascinated with with Kissinger. Someone like Kissinger is unthinkable as a powerful figure in the United States 30 or 40 years earlier because the United States is run by WASP. It's run by white elites who come from a certain background. Kissinger represents a moment when American society opens up not to everyone, but opens up to these cosmopolitan figures who have language skills, historical knowledge, networks that can be used for the US government when after World War II we have to rebuild Europe, when we have to negotiate with the Soviet Union, when we need the kinds of knowledge we didn't have before. And Harvard, where he gets his education late, he started at City College, actually, but Harvard where he gets his education late is at the center of what's happening at all these major universities at Harvard at Yale, at Stanford, at the University of Texas, everywhere, where they're growing in their international affairs, bringing in the kinds of people who”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Henry Kissinger to me is one of the most fascinating figures in history because he comes to the United States as a German Jewish immigrant at age 15 speaking no English and within a few years he's a major figure influencing US foreign policy at the height of US power. But while he's doing that he's never elected to office and he's constantly reviled by people, including people who are anti-Semitic because he's Jewish. But at the same time also his exoticism makes him more attractive to people. So someone like Nelson Rockefeller wants Kissinger around. He's one of Kissinger's first patrons because he wants a really smart Jew. And Kissinger is going to be that smart Jew I call Kissinger a policy Jew. There were these court Jews in the 16th and 17th and 18th centuries in Europe. Every king wanted the Jew to manage his banking. And in a sense in the United States in the second half of the 20th century, many presidents want a Jew to manage their international affairs.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He didn't do enough to stop, in particular the killing of Jews. And there were a number of historians, myself included, who have written about this, and it's an endless debate. What should he have done? There's no doubt by nineteen forty four, the United States had air superiority and could have bombed the rail lines to Auschwitz and other camps. And that would have saved as many as a million Jews. That's a lot of people who could have been saved. Why didn't FDR insist on that? In part because he wanted to use every resource possible to win the war. He did not want to be accused of fighting the war for Jews. But I think it's also fair to say that he probably cared less about Jews and East Europeans than he did about others, those of his own Dutch ancestry and from Western Europe. And so, you know, even there, race comes in as also the explanation for the internment of Japanese in the United States, which is a horrible war crime committed by this heroic president. 120,000 Japanese American citizens lost their freedom unnecessarily.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The New Deal that he didn't want to jeopardize by alienating an isolationist public. That was the reality. We talked about political manipulation. He had to be conscious of that. He had to know his audience. And second, there were no allies willing to invest in this either. The British were as committed to appeasement as you know. You're obviously very knowledgeable about this. The French were as well. It was very hard. The Russian government, the Soviet government, was cooperating to remilitarize Germany. So there weren't a lot of allies out there either. I think if there's a criticism to be made of FDR, it's that once we're in the war,”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But it's clear in his papers that as early as 1934, people he respected who he knew well told him that Hitler was very dangerous. They also thought Hitler was crazy, that he was a lunatic. Hamilton Fish Armstrong, who was a friend of Roosevelt, who was actually the counsel on foreign relations in New York, had a meeting with Hitler in 1934. I remember reading the account of this. And he basically said to Africa, this man is going to cause a war. He's going to cause a lot of damage. Again, they didn't know quite the scale. So they saw this coming. They saw this coming. FDR had two problems. First, he had an American public that was deeply isolationist. The opposite of the problem in a sense that we were talking about before. If we're an over militarized society, now we were a deeply isolationist society. In the 1930s, the depression reinforced that. FDR actually had to break the law in the late 30s to support the Allies. So it was very hard to move the country in that direction, especially when he had this program at home.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think FDR had a sense of what was coming, not quite the enormity of what Hitler was doing and not quite the enormity of what the Holocaust became. I also lost relatives in the Holocaust. And part of that was beyond the imagination of human beings. Yes.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, and it's what people say about Austin, for example, all the time. A talented people who come here like yourself. And here's the interesting thing. No one person creates that. The words emerge. And part of what FDR understood is you've got to find the words out there and use them. You don't have to be the creator of them. Just as the great painter doesn't invent the painting, they're taking things from others.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is an art. And I think it's exactly an art for the reasons you laid out. It's aesthetic. About feeling. It's about emotion, all the things that we can't engineer. We've tried for centuries to engineer emotion. We're never going to do it. Don't try it. I'm a parent of teenagers. Don't even try to explain emotion. But you hit on the key point and the key challenge for Biden. He's got to find the right words. It's not finding the words to bullshit people. It's finding the words to help express we've all felt empowered and felt good when someone uses words that put into words what we're feeling. What he needs. That's the job of a leader.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“FDR built Hoover Dam. Hoover Dam turned the lights on for young Lyndon Johnson who grew up outside of Austin. FDR was the one who invested in road construction that was then continued by Dwight Eisenhower, by a Republican with the Interstate Highway System. FDR invested through the WPA in building thousands of schools in our country, planting trees. That's the kind of work that can bring people together. You don't have to be a Democrat or Republican to say, you know what, we'd be a lot better off in my community if we had better infrastructure today. I want to be a part of that. Maybe I can get a job doing that. Maybe my company can benefit from that. You bring people together and that way it becomes a common mission. Even if we have different ideological positions.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I think that is what President Biden is trying. I'm not saying he'll succeed, but I think that's what he's trying to do. The way you do this is you do not allow yourself to be captured by your opponents in Congress or somewhere else. FDR had a lot of opponents in Congress. He had a lot of opponents in politics, governors and others who didn't like him. Herbert Hoover was still around and still accusing FDR of being a conspiratorist and all these other things. You don't allow yourself to be captured by the leaders of the other side. You go over their heads to the people. And so today, the way to do this is to explain to people and empathize with the suffering and dislocation and difficulties they're dealing with and show that you're trying to help them not an easy solution, not a simple statement. But here are some things we can all do together. That's why I think infrastructure makes a lot of sense. It's what FDR invested into.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fighting in World War II, whether in Europe or Asia. It was that that prepared them. They knew what it meant to be in American when they were over there. So that to me is a model of leadership. And I think that's as possible today as it's ever been.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How banking works, right? They don't actually hold your money in a vault. They landed out to someone else. And then he explains why if you go and take your money out of the bank and put it in your mattress, you're making it worse for yourself. He explains this. And then he says, I don't have a solution, but here's what I want to do. I'm going to send in government officers to examine the banks and show you the books on the banks. And I want you to help me by going and putting your money back in the banks. We're all going to do this together. No simple solution, no ideological statement, but a sense of common mission. Let's go out and do this together. When you read, as I have so many of these oral histories and memoirs for people who lived through that period, many of them disagreed with some of his policies. Many of them thought he was too close to Jews and they didn't like the fact he had a woman in his cabinet and all that. But they felt he cared and they felt they were part of some common mission. And when they talk about their experience,”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I think what FDR does from his first hundred days in office forward, and this begins with his fireside chats, is he helps Americans to see that they're all in it together. And that's by creating hope and creating a sense of common suffering and common mission. It's not offering simple solutions. One of the lessons from FDR is if you want to bring people together, don't offer a simple solution. Because as soon as I offer a simple solution, I have people for it and against it. Don't do that. Explain the problem. Frame the problem, and then give people a mission. So Roosevelt's first radio address in March of 1933, the banking system is collapsing. And we can't imagine it, right? Banks were closing and you couldn't get your money out. Your life-savings would be lost, right? We can't imagine that happening in our world today. He comes on the radio. He takes five minutes to explain how banking works. Most people didn't understand.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The number of immigrants I read oral histories from or who have written themselves Salbello is one example of the great novelists who talk about how as immigrants to the US, Salbella was a Russian Jewish immigrant. He said growing up in Chicago, politicians were all trying to steal from us. I didn't think any of them cared until I heard FDR. And I knew he spoke to me. And I think part of it was FDR really tried to understand people. That's the first thing. He was humble enough to try to do that. But second, he had a talent for that. And it's hard to know exactly what it was. But he had a talent for putting himself, imagining himself in someone else's shoes.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Franklin Roosevelt had the power of empathy. No leader that I have ever studied or been around or spent any time reading about was able to connect with people who were so different from himself as Franklin Roosevelt. He came from the most elite family. He never had to work for a paycheck in his life. When he was president, he was still collecting an allowance from his mom. You couldn't be more elite than Franklin Roosevelt, but he authentically connected. This was not propaganda. He was able to feel the pain and understand the lives of some of the most destitute Americans in other parts of the country.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure, sure. And let's hope it continues to. No, I mean, we're into a third century and democracies on this scale rarely last that long. So that's a point of pride, but it also means we need to be attentive to keep our house in order because it's not inevitable that this experiment continues.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And even Sergei, for example, has stepped back, right? He plays less of a day-to-day role and is not running Google in the way he did.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely, absolutely. They can go become CEO somewhere else, but don't stay CEO one place too long. It's a problem with startups, right? The founder, you can have a brilliant founder, and that founder doesn't want to let go. It's the same issue”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Owned right, this is the problem with monarchy, with aristocracy that you own power. We don't own power. We are holding it in trust.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If it's in Putin's context, it's billions of dollars every year that he's able to take for himself or give to his friends. It's not that he'll be poor if he leaves, he'll still be rich, and he has billions of dollars stored away, but he won't be able to get the new billions. And so that's part of the trappings of power are a big deal. And then second, in Putin's case in particular, he has to be worried about what happens next. Will he be tried? Will someone try to come and arrest him? Will someone try to come and assassinate him? Washington recognized that leaving early limited the corruption and limited the enemies that you made. And so there was a strategic choice. Putin is at this point bring in power too long. And this comes back to your core insight. It's a cliche, but it's true. Power corrupts. No one should have power for too long. This was one of the best insights the founders of the United States had, that power was to be held for a short time as a fiduciary responsibility, not as something.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there are two reasons why this is really hard for Putin and for others. One is the trappings of power are very seductive, as you said before, they're corrupting. This is a real problem, right? If it's in the business context, you don't want to give up that private jet.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very self aware of this and very sophisticated in understanding this. And I think there are many other leaders who recognize that. You can look to in some ways the story of many of our presidents who even before there is a two-term limit in the Constitution leave after two terms, they do that because they recognize that their power is the power being a statesman. Not of being a president.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How do you explain that? So it's actually the most important thing about George Washington. It's the right thing to bring up. The historian Gary Wills wrote years ago, I'm going to quote him, was that Washington recognized that sometimes you get more power by giving it up than by trying to hold on to every last piece of it. Washington gives up power at the end of the Revolution. He's successfully carried through the Revolutionary War aims. He's commander of the revolutionary forces, and he gives up his command. And then, of course, he's president. And after two terms, he gives up his command. What is he doing? He's an ambitious person, but he's recognizing that the most important currency he has for power is his respected status as a disinterested statesman.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's not trying to hold on to the past. It's trying to use the knowledge from the past to better inform the changes today.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And what are we studying then in history? We're studying the patterns of change, and we're recognizing we're part of a pattern. So what I would say to the historian who's trying to hold the engineer back, I'd say no, don't tell that engineer not to do this. Tell him to understand how this fits into the relationship with other engineering products and other activities from the past that still affect us today. For example, any product you produce is going to be used by human beings who have prejudices. It's going to go into an unequal society. Don't assume it's going to go into an equal society. Don't assume that when you create a social media site, that people are going to use it fairly and put only truthful things on it. We shouldn't be surprised. That's where human nature comes in.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd love to have that desk if I had a few extra million dollars, I'd acquire it, right? So in a way, that's antiquarianism. That's trying to capture and hold on, hold on to the past. The past is a talisman for antiquarians. What history is, is the study of change over time. That's the real definition of historical study and historical thinking. And so what we're studying is change. And so a historian should never say we have to do things the way we've done them in the past. The historian should say, we can't do them the way we did them in the past. We can't step in the same river twice. Every podcast of yours is different from the last one, right? You plan it out and then it goes in its own direction, right?”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think there's a difference between history and antiquarianism. So antiquarianism, which some people call history, is the desire to go back to the past or stay stuck in the past. So antiquarianism is the desire to have the desk that Abraham Lincoln sat at. Wouldn't it be cool to sit at his desk?”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Career and you become a historian because you realize that the formulas and the technical knowledge that you've gained got you to where you are. But now your decisions are about human nature. Your decisions are about social change. And they can't be answered technically. They can only be answered by studying human beings. And what is history? It's studying the laboratory of human behavior.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think, I mean, I'm obviously biased as a historian, but I do think it comes with a job. Every president I've studied had a serious interest in history. Now, how they pursued that interest would vary. Obama was more bookish, more academic. So was George W. Bush in strange ways. George H.W. Bush was less so, but George H.W. Bush loved to talk to people, so he would talk to his historians, right? Ronald Reagan loved movies, and movies were an insight into history for him. He liked to watch movies about another time. It wasn't always the best of history, but he was interested in what is a fundamental historical question. How has our society developed? How has it grown and changed over time? And how has that change affected who we are today? That's the historical question. It's really interesting to me. I do a lot of work with business leaders and others too. You reach a certain point in any...”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, and he's a unique individual. But he fascinates me because he's a figure of such enormous talent and enormous appetite and such little self-control and such extremes. And I think it's not just that he tells us something about the presence, he tells us something about our society. You know, American society, this is not new to our time, is filled with enormous reservoirs of talent and creativity. And those have a bright and a dark side. And you see both with Bill Clinton. In some ways, he's the mirror of the best and worst of our society. And maybe that's really what presidents are in the end, right? They're mirrors of our world that we get the government we deserve. We get the leaders we deserve.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source