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

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“It's hard and you can't ask all the right questions, and there is a legal hazard if you know things at certain times. But I think you can, back to your point on hiring, you can hire people who will do that in their domains. And then you have to trust that when they think it's something that's a question you need to ask, they'll pass that on to you. This is why it's not a good idea to have loyalists, because loyalists will shield you from things. It's a good idea to have people of integrity who you can rely on and who you think will ask those right questions and then pass that down through their organization.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Correct. Correct. This is exactly right, and too often mediocre leaders and those who try to protect them try to shield themselves. They don't want to know certain things. So this is part of what happened with the use of torture by the United States, which is a war crime during the war on terror. President Bush at times intentionally did not ask, and people around him prevented him from asking or discouraged him from asking questions he should have asked to know about what was going on. And that's how we ended up where we did. You could say the same thing about Reagan and Iran-Contra.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, presidents like leaders of any complex organizations don't know everything that goes on. They have to ask the right questions. This is Machiavelli. The most important thing a leader has to do is ask the right questions. You don't have to know the answers. That's why you hire smart people. But you have to ask the right questions. So if the president asks the U.S. government, those who are responsible for the aliens or responsible for the cyber warfare against Russia, they will answer, honestly, they will have to. But they will not volunteer that information in all cases. So the best way a president can operate is to have people around him or her who are not the traditional policymakers. This is where I think academic experts are important, suggesting questions to ask, to therefore try to get the information.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, the president has a lot of power, and we are fortunate. Our military uniquely among many countries with large militaries is very differential to the president and very restricted in its ability to challenge the president. So that's a strength of our system. But the way you reform the military is not with individual decisions. It's by having a strategic plan that re-examines what role it plays. So it's not just about whether we're in Afghanistan or not. The question we have to ask is when we look at our toolbox of what we can do in our foreign policy, are there other tools we should build up and therefore some tools in the military we should reduce? That's the broader strategic question.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And if you're reacting to a crisis, you're not controlling access because the crisis is driving you. So that's one element of it. But I also think, and this is the moment we're in right now, presidents have to invest in reforming the system, the system of decision-making. Should we have a National Security Council that looks the way it does? Should our military be structured the way it is? The Founding Fathers wanted a military that was divided. They did not want a unified Department of Defense. That was only created after World War II. Should we have as large a military as we have? Should we be in as many places? There are some fundamental structural reforms we have to undertake. And part of that is who you appoint, but part of that is also how you change the institutions. The genius of the American system is that it's a dynamic system. It can be adjusted. It has been adjusted over time. That's the heroic story. The frustrating story is it often takes us a long time to make those adjustments until we go into such bad circumstances that we...”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's right. I think who has access to the president is absolutely crucial. And presidents have to be more strategic about that. They tend to be reacting to crises because every day has a crisis.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“These wonderful toys we have, and these incredible soldiers we have over there. And when you have Congress, which is always against you, it's also easier to use the military because you send them there, and even if members of Congress from your own party or the other are angry at you, they'll still fund the soldiers. No member of Congress wants to vote to starve our soldiers overseas. So they'll stop your budget. They'll even threaten not to pay the debt, but they'll still fund your soldiers. And so you are pushed by the circumstances you're in to do this. And it's very hard to resist. So that's, I think, the criticism of Obama, the fair one would be that he didn't resist the pressures that were there, but he did not make those pressures.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, a lot of my research is about this exact question, not just with Obama. And my conclusion, and I think the research is pretty clear on this, is that structure has a lot more effect on us than we like to admit, which is to say that the circumstances, the institutions around us drive our behavior more than we like to think. So Barack Obama, I'm quite certain, came into the office of the presidency committed to actually reducing the use of military force overseas and reducing presidential warmaking power. As a trained lawyer, he had a moral position on this, actually, and he tried, and he did withdraw American forces from Iraq, and was, of course, criticized by many people for doing that. Terrorism being one of them. And the tools he has are very much biased towards the use of military force. It's much harder as president to go and get Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping to agree with you. It's much easier to send.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Correct. I think presidents did not have the same kind of military or economic power. We could talk about how a president can influence a market by saying something about where money is going to go or singling out a company or critiquing a company in one way or another. They didn't have that kind of power. No, much of the power that a Lincoln or a Washington had was the power to mobilize people to then make their own decisions. At the start of the Civil War, Lincoln doesn't even have the power to bring people into the army. He has to go to the governors and ask the governors to provide soldiers, so the governor of Wisconsin, the governor of Massachusetts. Could you imagine that today?”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think it happens all the time, and it's not to be conspiratorial. This is how we've fought terrorism by targeting individuals. Now, you might say these were not elected leaders of state, but these were individuals with a large following. I mean, the killing of Osama bin Laden was an assassination operation. And we've taken out very successfully many leaders of terrorist organizations, and we do it every day.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Presents under a microscope, you have to be very careful what you do and what you say, and you're judged by a lot of the elements of your behavior that are not policy relevant. In fact, the things we judge most and make most of our decisions on about individuals are often that. And then third, the power the president has. It's inhuman, actually, and this is one of my critiques of how the office has changed. This one person has power on a scale that's, I think, dangerous in a democracy and certainly something the founder's 220 years ago would have had trouble conceiving. Presidents now have the ability to deliver force across the world to literally assassinate people with a remarkable accuracy. And that's an enormous power that presidents have.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And waited for the newspaper for Horace Greeley in the New York Tribune to publish his letter. That's how he communicated with the public. There weren't even many speaking opportunities. So that's a big change, right? We feel the president in our life much more. That's why we talk about him much more. That also creates more of a burden is the second point. Presidents are under a microscope.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. That's right. And one of the points I've tried to make in my writing about this and various other activities is we use this word president as if it's something timeless. But the office has changed incredibly. Just from Lincoln's time to the present, which is 150 years, he wouldn't recognize the office today. And George Washington would not have recognized it in Lincoln. Just as I think a CEO today would be unrecognizable to a Rockefeller or a Carnegie of one hundred and fifty years ago. So what are some of the ways in which the office has changed? I'll just point to three. There are a lot. One, presidents now can communicate with the public directly. I mean, we've reached the point now where a president can have direct almost one-on-one communication. President can use Twitter if he so chooses to circumvent all media. That was unthinkable. Lincoln, in order to get his message across, often wrote letters to newspapers.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But he's And I think that quickness is part of it. It's different from delivering a lecture where it's the depth of your thought. Can you for 45 minutes analyze something? Many people can't do that. But they still might be very effective if they're able to quickly react, size up the person on the other side of the table, and react in a way that moves that person in the way they want to move them.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Great leaders. Great question. So I think the best writer on this is Max Weber, right? And he talks about the power of charisma. The term charisma comes from Weber, right? And Weber's use of it actually to talk about prophets. And I think he has a point, right? Leaders who are effective in the way you describe are leaders who feel prophetic. Or Weber says they have a kind of magic about them. And I think that can come from different sources. I think that can come from the way someone carries themselves. It can come from the way they use words. So maybe there are different kinds of magic that someone develops. But I think there are two things that seem to be absolutely necessary. First is you have to be someone who sizes up the person on the other side of the table. You cannot be the person who just comes in and reads your brief. And then second, I think it's interactive. And there is a quickness of thought. So you brought up Donald Trump. I don't think Donald Trump is a deep thinker at all.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that's my understanding. And what Lincoln did, I don't want to compare Lincoln to Stalin, what Lincoln did, is he was not confrontational. He was happy to have an argument if an argument were to be had, but actually what he would try to do is move you through telling a story that got you to think about your position in a different way, to basically disarm you. And Franklin Roosevelt did the same thing. Ronald Reagan did the same thing, storytelling is a very important skill.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think, in a sense, it's both. One needs to do both, and most politicians, most leaders are better at one or the other. It's the rare leader who can do both. I will say that if you are going to be a figure who's a president or the leader of a complex organization, not a startup, but a complex organization where you have many different constituencies and many different interests, you have to do the one-on-one really well. Because a lot of what's going to happen is you're going to be meeting with people who represent different groups, right? The leader of the labor unions, the leader of your investing board, et cetera. And you have to be able to persuade them. And it's the intangibles that often matter most. Lincoln's skill, and it's the same that FDR had, is the ability to tell a story. I think Hitler was a little different, but what I've read of Stalin is he was a storyteller too.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And this includes even relationships. There's a politics to it. What does that mean? It means that you have to persuade, coerce, encourage people to do things they wouldn't otherwise do. And Lincoln was a master at that. He was a master at that for two reasons. He had learned through his hard life to read people, to anticipate them, to spend a lot of time listening. One thing I often tell people is the best leaders are the listeners, not the talkers. And then second, Lincoln was very thoughtful and planned every move out. He was thinking three or four moves, maybe five moves down the chessboard, while others were move number one or two.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. And Lincoln never read Carl von Klauswitz, the great 19th century German thinker on strategy and politics, but he embodied the same wisdom, which is that everything is politics. If you want to get anything done,”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I agree. I think it's exactly right. I think freedom is not that I can have any outcome I want. I can't control outcomes. The most powerful, freest person in the world cannot control outcomes. But it means that at least I get to make choices. Someone else doesn't make those choices for me.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think Lincoln had a hunger for success. I think he had a hunger to get out of the poor station he was in. He had a hunger to be someone who had control over his life, freedom for him did not mean the right to do anything you want to do, but it meant the right to be secure from being dependent upon someone else. So independence. He writes in his letters when he's very young that he hated being dependent on his father. He grew up without a mother. His father was a struggling farmer, and he would write in his letters that his father treated him like a slave on the farm. Some think his hatred of slavery came from that experience. He didn't ever want to have to work for someone again. He wanted to be free and independent, and he wanted again every American. This is the kind of Jeffersonian dream, to be the owner of themselves and the owner of their future.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I think you actually hit the nail on the head. I think what he represented was the opportunity, and that was the word that mattered for him, opportunity that came from the ability to raise yourself up, to work hard, and to be compensated for your hard work. And this is at the core of the Republican Party of the 19th century, which is the core of capitalism. It's not about getting rich. It's about getting compensated for your work. It's about being incentivized to do better work. And Lincoln was constantly striving. One of his closest associates, Herndon, said he was the little engine of ambition that couldn't stop. He just kept going, taught himself to read. He went through many failed businesses before he even reached that point. Many failed love affairs. But he kept trying. He kept working. And what American society offered him and what he wanted American society to offer everyone else was the opportunity to keep trying to fail.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Certainly, part of it is about slaves, African Americans, and many immigrants from all parts of Europe and other areas that have come to the United States. But part of it was just for ordinary American citizens. The Republican Party, for which Lincoln was the first president, was a party created to give voice to poor white men as well as slaves and others. And Lincoln was a poor white man himself, grew up without slaves and without land, which meant you had almost nothing.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The greatest American president was Abraham Lincoln. Tolstoy reflected on this himself actually, saying that when he was in the These peasants in the Caucasus, who was the greatest man in the world that they had heard of. And they said Abraham Lincoln. And why? Well, because he gave voice to people who had no voice before. He turned politics into an art, this is what Tolstoy recounted the peasants in the Caucasus telling him. Lincoln made politics more than about power. He made it an art, he made it a source of liberation, and those living even far from the United States could see that model, that inspiration from Lincoln. He was a man who had two years of education, yet he mastered the English language, and he used the language to help people imagine a different kind of world. You see, leaders and presidents are at their best when they're doing more than just manipulating institutions and power when they're helping the people imagine a better world. And he did that as no other president has.”
2021-04-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #180 – Jeremi Suri: History of American Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source