Core Pillars of Presidential Leadership with William Haldeman

[00:00:00] Lindsay Chervinsky: What can we learn about leadership from six of America's most iconic presidents? Welcome to Leadership and Legacy, Conversations at the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon. I'm Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky, Director of the Library. In this podcast series, we talk with experts about leadership and history, how studying these stories helps us understand our current moment, and how we can apply lessons from leaders in the past to our own lives.

Dr. William Haldeman has experienced leadership in the private sector, educational institutions, and the highest levels of government. He's worked for Democrats and Republicans in the State Department, and at the state level. After seeing how the sausage is made, he got his PhD and has packaged these lessons into his new book, Meeting The Moment, Inspiring Presidential Leadership that Transformed america.

In this episode, we explore the importance of honesty, bipartisanship, and character. We discuss how the presidency has a tendency to shine the brightest of lights on the occupants of the Oval Office, and reveal a person's strengths and weaknesses. Bill identifies some unusual characteristics of leadership, including ingenuity and optimism, which sets his approach apart.

I hope you learn something from this interesting analysis of presidential leadership.

Well, thank you so much for joining us at the George Washington Presidential Library. I'm so excited to finally get a chance to talk to you about leadership, and as someone who writes a lot about presidential leadership myself, this was such a thrill to see someone who really sees the value in that type of work.

I'm curious when you think about presidential leadership, this was obviously a focus that you had going into this book, and there are a lot of different ways we could discuss leadership, but what about. The presidency, do you think reveals characteristics of leadership, highlights, strengths and weaknesses? What about that position was most interesting to you?

[00:01:53] Bill Haldeman: Well, I've always been fascinated with it, and first off, it's great to be with you. It's something I've always been fascinated with. I think if you look at the best leaders, they are people that have tremendous leadership qualities and they're cultivated, which I found in this book, they're cultivated over the course of their lifetimes.

[00:02:07] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:02:07] Bill Haldeman: These are things that they've been building from either, their parents have instilled in them, these are from their experiences that they've had, and these are things that in their key moments it has come out, and I think if you look at key books or things like James Barber's book, when he talks about the presidency and talks about, can you pull out qualities of leadership in leaders in those moments? I think you can see a through line into leaders. I've always been fascinated in that, and what about a leader in that moment? What is it about them in that leadership experience that's gonna gravitate and make them make the decisions that they make? So that, to me, I, that's part and parcel of what I love about it.

[00:02:43] Lindsay Chervinsky: Yeah, I've always thought with, you know, the harder the position and the bigger the challenge is, it's almost like it holds up a very unflattering mirror on a person or a potentially unflattering mirror, like it can either really demonstrate their incredible capacity for strength and decision making and judgment, which is one of the themes that we're gonna talk about, or it can really highlight their weaknesses. And I think the presidency, because it's so big and so difficult, is one of those mirrors that really reveals to us about someone, either what they've learned or what they haven't.

[00:03:15] Bill Haldeman: I agree. Yeah. So I think, you look at someone like Herbert Hoover, right? And I think a great example of that, and if you look at, if you were hiring someone to handle the Great Depression, you would've probably on paper thought that he was the perfect person for that. He was the great humanitarian during World War I. He was two term Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s. There was no one more prepared to handle that crisis than him, but he just didn't.

His weakness was his inability to communicate at a time when that was what was needed. And what we see with FDR when he comes in is this idea that, he had the ability to resonate, the radio was coming on board. This was a tremendous time for him to be able to use his warm Hudson Valley tone to get across the communication skills that Hoover was not able to do.

So, I think you see there's some presidents that are perfect for the moment.

[00:04:02] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:04:03] Bill Haldeman: And they might, they may on paper seem like the right person, but they don't have that intangible, an FDR had that, that Hoover didn't have.

[00:04:10] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm. I think that's a great point, and you know, I always think of John Quincy Adams as a similar president, that on paper he had all of the skills and had he been serving even at a different time, I think his presidency might have gone differently, but when he was serving, it was a moment of real shift in terms of the political parties and the political culture, and people were looking for sort of a quote unquote man of the people and someone who could speak to their interests, and Jackson was a bit of a demagogue and really was able to harness those energies even if his skills didn't necessarily match up, and so I think that's such a great point that the timing and skills are essential, it's not just what someone brings to the job.

[00:04:46] Bill Haldeman: I think you see that in exact opposite, you see it from the, we'd go from a Republican to a Democrat with Hoover and FDR, but you see that with Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. Jimmy Carter on paper, a governor, very well prepared for the job, had the temperament for it, had the integrity, all of the things.

But again, it came down to a communication issue. There's a great speech in July of 1979, gave the crisis of confidence speech.

[00:05:09] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:05:10] Bill Haldeman: And in that he was stressing that there was a crisis of confidence in America, and part of that was his own leadership, and a year later he is voted out of office. And I think you see that again, if you lose the confidence, even if you have a great resume, if you lose the confidence of the people, you're gonna be voted out of office.

And I'll say another example is someone like Gerald Ford. He comes in after Richard Nixon in 1974, after Nixon resigns and Ford comes in and in his first state of the Union address, he says this basically, paraphrasing, but the state of the economy was bad.

[00:05:40] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm.

[00:05:40] Bill Haldeman: And saying that, I think you lose that, even though Ford was on paper another, he was certainly qualified to be president, certainly qualified to have another term on his own, but I think you see that, the challenge with that, if you lose the confidence of the people.

[00:05:54] Lindsay Chervinsky: Well, so that brings up a really interesting question, 'cause those examples you just gave are examples where the president was, I think, actually delivering a pretty honest message, and in some ways they're right, like the economy wasn't in great shape and there was a crisis of confidence. So, is there a way for presidents to deliver an honest message about where the nation is and not lose the confidence of the American people?

[00:06:16] Bill Haldeman: That's a tough line to cross, right? You see with Jimmy Carter, that perfect example of that.

I think from my own experience in government, my own experience working with leaders, I think you need to communicate well, and you need to communicate often, and be authentic. I think when you lose the authenticity of things.

[00:06:31] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:06:32] Bill Haldeman: That's when you struggle.

[00:06:33] Lindsay Chervinsky: I think maybe, and you write about this really well and I think he's the best example of it, but it's so hard to do, is probably FDR 'cause he didn't ever sugarcoat the challenges of the Depression, and he didn't sugarcoat the challenges of World War II, but he still provided an optimistic message, so maybe that suggests that it is doable it just requires an incredible political skill, and most humans aren't capable of merging those things together.

[00:06:57] Bill Haldeman: Well, I think that there's, and there's a reason that Ronald Reagan was the great communicator. That's why people remember FDR speeches for what they are. I think that when you look at his first fireside chat, it was in his warm Hudson Valley tone that he was able to resonate with Americans and give them confidence at a time when there was really no confidence in America. GDP was down 30%. The stock market had declined 33% banks were closed.

I mean, America was at a moment where revolution was on the docket. And in that sense, he had been building towards that, as governor of New York, he had learned to cultivate the radio, and he was able to learn kind of on the fly. So when it came time to be president, he had that experience and he used it.

There was 300 radio addresses he used over the course of his presidency, but he only did the fireside chats 27 times and four in his first year. I think the example, is you need to know when to use something and when you don't. He was able to do that by a little bit by trial and error before he became president, so I think that helped him.

[00:07:57] Lindsay Chervinsky: Haldeman is one of those rare presidential historians who has an actual background in politics, so I wanted to know how that real world experience had impacted his historical work.

One thing he emphasized was the importance of witnessing in real time, how a politician handles a crisis, and what effective communication looks like in practice. Haldeman highlighted the importance of having a sense of history and the needs of future generations in mind.

So you mentioned in one of your previous answers, your government experience, and I wanna dig into that a little bit because that is not a standard background for someone who writes history or writes about presidential history, and so, let's start perhaps with what great leaders did you witness? What great decision making did you witness? How did that teach you things? And who did you learn from?

[00:08:46] Bill Haldeman: I've been fortunate to have really great experience. I've worked at the White House. I've worked at the State Department, the seventh floor at the State Department.

I've seen the Secretaries of State in action, I've seen foreign leaders, I've seen governors in action, I've seen university presidents go through things. So, I've seen crisis, which I think for me, as someone who loves decision making, loves the spirit of that, it's invaluable, I think, in terms of writing history, because I think it just adds another layer into what you do.

As historians, we look at primary sources, we look at secondary sources, we talk about these things. I'll give you an example that's really helpful to me. When I looked at Ronald Reagan's decision around the Berlin Wall speech, a lot of that was the interagency process with the National Security Council, it was with the State Department, it was embassy in Berlin, and from my own experience, I got to experience that when I was at the State Department, so I could understand what was happening, that interagency issues. I've had those issues with folks in those halls myself, because you're in the heat of the moment, there's the crises around that. I just think it's helpful to have seen that in some respects. I'm grateful to be part of that.

A little bit of that tradition where you see folks like Doris Kearns Goodwin, who was with Johnson, or Arthur Esner Jr., who was with John Kennedy, I think it's helpful to see it.

I don't think it's an end all be all, but I think it helps, it's just another layer, like having an oral history. So, I know that you were asking me some of the things maybe I learned in that sense.

[00:10:00] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:10:00] Bill Haldeman: So I think for someone like George W. Bush, I had the opportunity to work in the White House there, and I think if there was one thing I could pull from George W. Bush in terms of a leadership message to come from that, is he was someone that, in terms of like the hub of his life, was something that was very authentic, but it was his life. It wasn't his career. There's people who have career at the center where you have family, you could have your faith, you could have friends, whatever your hobbies. He was very authentic in the sense that in the center of his hub was his life.

And I think from all that, that made decision making easy, it made him to be able to govern through principle, and I found like that was really something that was really authentic for me.

The other thing I really enjoyed about his leadership was his nicknames, he had a nickname for everybody. There was an authenticity with him that I think was really great, but also had really great experiences and worked at the State Department for Condoleezza Rice through Hillary Clinton, so kind of a pink unicorn in that sense to be able to go across parties, or transfer across parties. Really great experiences with them. I think you see someone like Hillary Clinton, in my view, with someone that really whip smart, someone incredibly smart, someone that really understood and asked questions and was really thoughtful about things and looked for new ideas and how to make something better, I think that that was something interesting.

I've also worked for Governor Christie, so I had the experience in the crises of working on Superstorm Sandy. So, I think if you see something in that experience for me was learning about communication, and how to be very clear about what was happening on the ground, being authentic about talking to people on the ground, what were they experiencing.

And I think one of the greatest lessons on that in terms of crisis leadership is this idea that he wanted to return to normalcy around after that storm. So this was 2012, he wanted to return to normalcy around it, and there were three things that he wanted to do was return gasoline, and get people in cars and get buses moving, get that moving, get everyone's electricity back up and running a sense of normalcy, and get all the schools and get kids back into school. So that was my job, was to help get all the kids back into school. So I think that was, he was a very, very good communicator and was very clear to his reports about what he expected and what needed to get done.

[00:12:11] Lindsay Chervinsky: I wanna pull on a couple different threads of the things you said that I think bear a little bit more exploration 'cause they're really fascinating.

One was with your time with Governor Christie in terms of the crisis management and decision making. What I heard you say was that he was really good at figuring out what were a couple of very tangible elements of daily life. Not all, because obviously you have to prioritize in a crisis, but a couple of tangible things that he could focus on and his team could focus on, including you, to get people back to work and to school. And so how did you witness in any of your number of positions when you're in a crisis that the decision making process of picking the things to start with 'cause sometimes, you know, the scope and magnitude of a crisis, I imagine can be paralyzing. So how did the leaders you worked with get the ball rolling when action is required, but there are so many different possibilities?

[00:13:03] Bill Haldeman: Great question. I think, and part of that, I would say Governor Christie got on top of that in terms of looking at what the storm was, he pulled together his cabinet, they were very consequential about what was needed by the people of New Jersey in that moment.

What was gonna get us back into that sense, I mean, there was devastation on the coast. Thousands upon thousands of houses were destroyed, flooded. People were out of work, people were in shelters. It was a really difficult situation. So how do you get people back into that sense of normalcy, and I think that was one of the first questions.

It was asking a question, right? It starts with a question, and I think that that's where he started with his team about what does normalcy look like? What are the routines, as you say, what are the routine things that that need to happen in order for people to feel comfortable and calm and feel like the leadership's in control like that, that's the biggest thing.

[00:13:48] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:13:49] Bill Haldeman: I think, people felt like he was in control, and I think that that's when you see crises, and you start to lose people is he was very good at communicating, but again, I'll go back to Herbert Hoover, the lack of communication, even though he was well-meaning, I think you, you lose that sense.

[00:14:03] Lindsay Chervinsky: It sounds to me like one of the things that he was really good at and, and you mentioned this with FDR and I actually, I think probably all of the presidents, was understanding what the constituents needed, having an understanding of who you are serving, and what they need. And you know, in the case of presidents, that can be really hard because there are so many American people and there are so many different ways to be an American and so many different ways to live, and so what one community needs might not be the same as the other, but that is a real talent to be able to understand who you are serving, and what they need, especially in a moment of crisis.

[00:14:36] Bill Haldeman: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I think you look at leaders that have the ability to do that, and the six that I profile in this book, I feel like they had a sense of not only the constituents of the time, but they had the sense of history, and so George Washington, July 2nd, 1776, as general orders talk about this idea around the unborn millions, and I think that each of these six leaders have a sense of what is happening in terms of the generation to come. And I think there's always that in the back of their mind, like Abraham Lincoln said, went to the state capitol in New Jersey on his way to become president and he said there must have been something more the Continental Army was fighting for in Trenton, and I think in my view, it's this sense of the next generation is my children, their children's children. And I think the best American presidents are the ones that can do that.

[00:15:23] Lindsay Chervinsky: Hmm. Yeah, that forward thinking element is so important, not just planning for their lives or their future, but the nation's future.

That's hard sometimes to keep in mind, especially when there are political crises and moments and so many things demanding their attention in the moment.

[00:15:39] Bill Haldeman: Yeah, it goes back to a quote from John Kennedy when he talks about the definition of judgment. So he says "it's the perceptive nature of the future as well as the past of what we don't know, but also, this aspect of having the candor to admit what we don't know."

And I think it's that sense of you thinking about the future for judgment, thinking about the future, but you're learning from the past in order to do it, and I think that to me, that's the best presidents are the ones that are thinking about that.

[00:16:06] Lindsay Chervinsky: I hadn't heard that quote before, but that's very powerful, 'cause I think you're right, that does really capture a lot of presidential judgment in particular.

[00:16:13] Bill Haldeman: So that's a great speech. Totally recommended. It's 900 words. It was John Kennedy. It was January 9th, 1961, he's 11 days out from his inauguration, he's giving a speech to the Massachusetts State House, and this is his farewell.

[00:16:28] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:16:28] Bill Haldeman: Farewell speech if in a way, or thank you, speech to the Bay State, and in this address, he said that there's four characteristics that he felt like he was gonna be judged on as president.

[00:16:38] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:16:39] Bill Haldeman: And three of these are actually in the book. One is integrity, so it's integrity, judgment, courage, and dedication, and his definition about judgment came from that speech. I totally recommend it. It's a really great piece of literature.

[00:16:51] Lindsay Chervinsky: Especially because it's not too often we can recommend a presidential speech that is less than a thousand words.

[00:16:57] Bill Haldeman: And that one is a good one.

[00:16:58] Lindsay Chervinsky: There are a couple of really good short ones, but that one definitely needs to be added to the list.

[00:17:02] Bill Haldeman: Yeah, we might have to thank Ted Sorenson for that one, but it was pretty good.

[00:17:05] Lindsay Chervinsky: Well, all, almost all great presidents have good speech writers, and if we're really lucky, then someone like Abraham Lincoln is their own speech writer, but not everyone needs to be a Abraham Lincoln, that's okay.

So, you know, you mentioned that you had a bipartisan government career, which in this day and age is frankly not all that common. Are there any characteristics of leadership that you think defy in your experience from what you have seen, defy categorization across party line?

In today's highly partisan world, I wanted to hear more about what qualities Haldeman thought transcended party lines. One thing he emphasized was the importance of things done, not for political expediency, but because they were the right thing to do. This also brought us back again to the idea of judgment and service to future generations.

[00:17:53] Bill Haldeman: In terms of equality or just in general?

[00:17:55] Lindsay Chervinsky: Well, just like the people you worked for. Were there things that you saw that you thought, wow, that's really extraordinary, that was not necessarily policy based or partisan based, but just worth noting for those who are listening?

[00:18:07] Bill Haldeman: I think it's the leaders that do things that it's not politically expedient, but they do it because it's right, those are the leaders that I lean into. The reason I've had a bipartisan, if you wanna call it that, it's because I like to do good work, and I believe in government, and I believe in service.

For example, a policy that touched me was in my time in government was the PEPFAR program from George W. Bush saved countless lives, millions upon millions, probably tens of millions across Africa. Again, could have been something that he didn't need to do that. But it feels like an American creed around that to do the right thing to help others, and I think that's an example of that in the book, talk about Theodore Roosevelt taking that type of experience too, where he didn't need to take on the eradication of natural resources or water and irrigation issues in the west, but he decided to do it because he felt personally attached to it, it was a passionate attachment for him.

I think the best leaders are the ones that lean into that, that are doing things that they feel are gonna be helpful and to move, whether it's a governor, whether it's a president, whatever it is, they're doing something 'cause they believe in it. That's what I gravitate to so far in my leadership journey.

[00:19:11] Lindsay Chervinsky: I think that's great. One of the things about PEPFAR that I always think is so important is, you know, there's a lot of things that the United States doesn't have to do, but we can. And not many other nations can, and so why not?

[00:19:22] Bill Haldeman: Exactly. Hopefully that's something that continues and we see the more of that.

As Ronald Reagan said, it was great quote from him in his farewell address to the nation in 1989. He called it the city on the hill, and he said that we are a tall, proud city. We are built on rock, wind swept God blessed and teaming with people of all kinds, living in harmony and peace. But I think that the best line about that is if that city had to have walls, those walls had doors and they were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get there, and I think we lost some of that, and I think it's good to get some of that back.

[00:19:55] Lindsay Chervinsky: Yes, that should be the American Creed.

You also mentioned that you have worked at educational institutions and so I'm wondering if your experience with leadership, do you think that there are different types of leadership required for educational institutions or government institutions, or do the qualities and the abilities that we're talking about, do they kind of apply across the board regardless of what field someone is in?

[00:20:18] Bill Haldeman: I think it applies across the board. My experience is not only personally, but from the research in this book that I believe that there's really not a set criteria for leadership, I think it depends on the person and the circumstance, and I think you see some occasions where optimism or courage is needed, but others dedication or ingenuity, something to innovate through line in all of that, in anybody is the sense of judgment, and you need to have that if you're beaming with confidence, for example, and you have no judgment, you could lead the country or whatever you're doing in a completely wrong direction. If you have a sense of ingenuity, but no judgment, you could innovate in all the wrong places. If you have dedication and no judgment, you could wake up with the sun and do all the wrong things after, so to me, it's a sense of judgment in people. Whether you are the commissioner of education, whether you're a governor, whether you're the president, it begins and ends with judgment.

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[00:21:59] Lindsay Chervinsky: Haldeman's new book, Meeting The Moment, is organized around six presidents; George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, and Ronald Reagan, and six primary sources that epitomize their approach to leadership.

I wanted to give Haldeman the chance to walk me through what he found for each of the six, as well as to talk a little more about why he organized the book that way.

You've taken this lifelong learning through experiential learning and that you are now taking it into book form, and so I want to move forward to your book, which is called Meeting the Moment, and we're gonna go in reverse chronological order, 'cause I always end the podcast with a question on Washington, so we will end with Washington.

And what I'm found so interesting about the way you organized the book was one, you talked about qualities of each president, but also a specific primary source that you were focusing on.

So why did you decide on that approach? Because one of the elements of writing I find so interesting is the craft of organization, of how to think about these ideas, how to put them together in a package that is compelling, and I'd love to know about your process.

[00:23:04] Bill Haldeman: It really started as I wanted to lean into some places and spaces where some of the most transformational decisions in American history happened. So, I wanted to go into the room where, well, the room where it happened, but for instance, like Thomas Jefferson, I wanted to go into the White House, into the state dining room, now it's the state dining room, but it was then his office. And I wanted to feel what that was like to be in that space. And what was it about that, what was he feeling around the crisis with France? And really for that, it came down to a letter that he wrote on April 18th, 1802, and it was a letter to his ambassador to France, Robert Livingston.

What was it about that letter? What was it about him in that moment? What was he experiencing? That's how, that's the genesis of that, I just wanted to go to, what was the crisis moment for each of these leaders? And is there something that attaches to that? What is the quality that came out in them in that moment, and what exemplifies that quality? In that case, it's that letter.

Or if you wanna use another example around Ronald Reagan, it's his Berlin Wall speech that pulls out this aspect of optimism. But I wanted to also, when talk about a organization, I wanted to also provide a biographical sketch of these leaders. I wanted to show where does this quality come from? Did it come from their childhood? Where did it emanate from? So I wanted to show that, but what was the key document in American history that ties to that quality that defines them? That was the goal.

[00:24:24] Lindsay Chervinsky: Okay, so going in reverse order, you end with Reagan and optimism and this speech. Why do you think optimism was so essential to Reagan's presidential leadership?

[00:24:34] Bill Haldeman: 'cause it was everything throughout his life. It started with his mother, his mother instilled on him the sense of optimism. It was a quality that throughout his life, it was part and parcel of who he was, at all of his experiences. There wasn't always an optimistic hue around it, and I think when you look at Ronald Reagan, he came to the presidency because he was optimistic.

It was morning in America under Reagan. That was the true sense, and I think that's what he, that quality, he embodied that, and when it came to the moment of the Cold War, for him, it was the biggest moment of his presidency around it. It was that optimistic hue that came out, and I think when you talk about it for him, it was this idea about the Soviet Union that this dominated his thought and his process around being president. And a key moment in his presidency was the assassination attempt on his life in 1981, and it was that sense of optimism even in that moment that came out where he pulled off his mask going into surgery and he said, I hope you're all Republicans. Right? And then he, he asked his, he asked his wife and said, honey, I'm sorry I forgot to duck. It's that sense of optimism emanates that, but from that experience, he believed that he was left on earth to be able to do something about the conflict with the Soviet Union, and he felt like that speech in 1987 was his moment to look on the other side of the wall, and tell the world and tell the people across the wall that there was hope for them, that "tear down this wall" meant something, and that was the optimism of Ronald Reagan.

[00:25:58] Lindsay Chervinsky: It's interesting 'cause you, you know, you're talking about optimism, but the idea that one is destined to be in a position at a certain moment to handle a certain thing is a quality that we're gonna talk about when we get to the next president, which is FDR, but I also think to a certain extent, especially now because the presidency is so difficult, then you have to be a little bit nuts to want to do it that every president needs that belief that they are like the one that can make these decisions.

Is that your sense too?

[00:26:23] Bill Haldeman: I think it's helpful. I think that's what I've seen out of these six leaders. I think they were the right people at the right time,

[00:26:30] Lindsay Chervinsky: and critically they believed they were.

[00:26:32] Bill Haldeman: I think each of them certainly believed they were, yes.

[00:26:34] Lindsay Chervinsky: That's fascinating.

Okay, so FDR Confidence. Why? Why FDR? Why confidence?

[00:26:40] Bill Haldeman: Came through again, through Lyme, through his life. It was instilled in him going back, he said all that I am, goes back to the Hudson. And I was going back to his childhood with his mother, instilling on him in him that anything was within reach for FDR. And he believed it. I mean, even overcoming polio, other tragedies in his life that he had overcome, he never lost that sense of confidence.

And again, with the proliferation of radio in the late 1920s, he was the right messenger with that sense of confidence. I don't know if there was maybe a more confident president than FDR, and I think he just believed it, and it was a lifetime of him owning that. And he was, again, one of these situations where the right person at the right time,

[00:27:19] Lindsay Chervinsky: Theodore Roosevelt and courage is probably usually thought of as his physical courage, he had a, a great capacity for enduring physical hardship that he often selected for himself, whether it be hunting out west or going down the Amazon.

My favorite document that he ever wrote was The Man in the Arena speech, which is, I think all about everyone having to have courage. Why did you select courage, and what is the primary source that you chose for him?

[00:27:45] Bill Haldeman: So I, again, I think he has exemplified that throughout his life, the things he overcame. He was an asthmatic boy, in terms of he was sickly. He said he taught himself how to be brave, and therefore he was brave. So you see the San Juan Hill and the dodging bullets with the rough riders. All this, there's this, it's a through line of courage in his life.

He comes into office, William McKinley had been assassinated in September of 1901, and Theodore Roosevelt is 42 years old. He turns 43 in October, but in December, he is up to give his annual address to Congress, which is now what we call the State of the Union address, and in that address, he covered a number of different things from the eulogy to McKinley, which was lovely, but he felt a personal attachment to what was happening out west.

For the natural resources, he had spent time out west in Madora, North Dakota, a beautiful place, totally recommend people going out and seeing it, but he had spent time there because on Valentine's Day in 1884, he lost his mother and his wife, on the same day, in the same house, and he went there to find himself, and in doing that, he cultivated this sense of, of belief in the frontier, in forestry, in wildlife, in all these types of things that he felt were critical to the growth of the United States moving forward. He felt, the, the West over the next century would define the growth of the United States, and it did between 1910 and twenty, twenty, a hundred ten years since then, it had a 15 fold increase in population, so the West has grown and it fulfilled that prophecy for him.

But he felt the eradication of natural resources and the inability to navigate the west in the sense of there was no canals unless you lived next to a river system, you couldn't live there. There would be no Las Vegas, right?

[00:29:32] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:29:32] Bill Haldeman: There would be none of that, so he believed that this was necessary. Again, he called it the most important, vital, natural, or the internal issues of the United States. This is the most important internal issue in the United States, and in doing so, he wanted to bring it to the cloak rooms in Congress. He wanted to bring out these important issues, which again, maybe not politically expedient, but it was the right thing to do, he felt like this was the right thing to do, so it was about 11, 12% of that draft he spent writing about these important issues, and in doing so, he ended up becoming the conservationist president, 150 National Parks.

I, I argue in the book that it's really the culmination of the Louisiana purchase with Jefferson, in that if you take the space from Maine to Florida, it was about that amount of space and land that was cultivated and protected because of what he did, and I think that's a tremendous legacy to have. When you talk about, we talked about this earlier, the children's children and thinking about what that means for moving forward and protecting those lands. I think that's his legacy for sure.

[00:30:35] Lindsay Chervinsky: I think someone said once that there have been more books written about Abraham Lincoln than anyone other than Jesus Christ, which sounds about right to me. So, you know, there's so much to be said about Lincoln, he was such an interesting character, and I believe that he was unbelievably dedicated, but I'm not sure that's usually the first word that people would think of is dedication. So why dedication for Abraham Lincoln?

[00:30:59] Bill Haldeman: Again, you see it throughout his life, you see it in his dedication to the soil, you see his dedication to the Bible, you see his dedication to his father, who he didn't have a really great relationship with, and then he gave him another year of lawful labor to move the family from Indiana to Illinois, when he was turning 17 to 18.

You see it in the love for his mother, when he says all that I am I owed to her, right? You see this in his service to the Black Hawk War.

One of my favorite examples of his dedication though, he had a general store in New Salem, Illinois, and what he said, it winked out. It went outta business, but he called it his national debt because at that time in the frontier, a lot of people would pick up and they would leave the debt, they would leave it behind and disappear and go somewhere else. He felt it was that important to him that he needed to pay that off, and from that, that's how he got the nickname, Honest Abe.

[00:31:46] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm.

[00:31:47] Bill Haldeman: And I think you see that in you, you see it definitely in his experience as president, keeping the union together, that was his defining feeling as president is to keep the union together. And it's his sense of dedication in his Gettysburg address, which I think defines that sense of dedication in a speech that's 272 words. Again, that's,

[00:32:06] Lindsay Chervinsky: That probably tops the list of the under 1000, not, not necessarily in terms of brevity, but in terms of greatness under 1000 word speeches.

[00:32:14] Bill Haldeman: Totally. And we talked about that John Kennedy, who was 900, that's still four times as much. You see this in a speech at 272 words. It's half an op-ed. It is for someone who labored on every word choice like he believed that the difference between the right word and the wrong word was the difference between lightning and a lightning bug, and he believed in every word choice, every syllable that was rolling off his tongue. So when he puts in that incredible speech, the word nation, five times, the word dedicated or dedicated six times, I don't think that's an accident. I that, that embraces his spirit of dedication to the Union and what that meant moving forward.

[00:32:51] Lindsay Chervinsky: Yeah, that's nearly 5% of the words, if I'm doing my math correctly, which is always an iffy question 'cause I was a historian for a reason, but I think it's about 5% of the words that he used in just those two words, which is pretty incredible.

[00:33:02] Bill Haldeman: Pretty incredible. Right.

[00:33:03] Lindsay Chervinsky: Last but not least, although in my very humble opinion, as listeners will know, I think least on this list, because I have my own strong feelings about Thomas Jefferson, but I acknowledge that in particular, one thing he did very well, and I think this is probably your ingenuity component, was to think creatively about expanding the nation, so why Thomas Jefferson, and why ingenuity?

[00:33:22] Bill Haldeman: Well, I think that, again, that defines him going back as far as his childhood, but you think about the ingenuity around, well, I think America itself is a startup in its own way. It's the, the founding documents in many ways is the epitome of creative experimentations, you see, and Jefferson was at the core of writing the Declaration of Independence, and I think you see, it was an opportunity for him, it was one that he didn't see coming. You see these presidents like George W. Bush in 9/11. You see Ronald Reagan gets assassinated and the, or not assassinated, but he, there was an attempt on his life and, it's a pivot point, right?

[00:33:54] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:33:55] Bill Haldeman: For Thomas Jefferson, he wrote a letter and said, we are safely import, basically in 1801, right after the election.

[00:34:01] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:34:01] Bill Haldeman: He thought the election was good, we're good. He didn't know that the French had just worked on a deal with,

[00:34:06] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:34:06] Bill Haldeman: With Spain to get control of the Louisiana Territory and what Napoleon had in store for that in terms of he caught wind and the Napoleon wanted to send 8,000 troops, to New Orleans in a town that only had 7,000 people, so he couldn't have that on a doorstep and feel relatively safe because the Mississippi River at that time was the western boundary of the US that came out of the Revolutionary War.

The Mississippi itself was, as James Madison called it, he said it was the Hudson, the Delaware, the Potomac, and all the navigable rivers of the Atlantic states rolled into one.

It was everything.

[00:34:40] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:34:40] Bill Haldeman: It was driving almost half of the produce and economy out of New Orleans through that port, and when Spain got a little wonky with about 10 or 15 years in there and blocking our freedom to navigate the river, France then was also threatening that, and that was not okay with the southern states in particular, and Jefferson knew it, he knew he had to do something about it.

So he stepped in, used his ingenuity around, he had been a diplomat in France for five years. He knew a number of the key players who could get to Napoleon, which I think is really important in this, using his diplomatic skills, so not only demarching his Robert Livingston, which we talked about earlier, but this aspect of working a back channel through a gentleman named DuPont and knowing that the DuPont was going to work the way through into Napoleon, because the worst thing that Jefferson could do in that space was try to embarrass Napoleon.

[00:35:32] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm mm-hmm.

[00:35:32] Bill Haldeman: He couldn't do it. So in that sense, he knew that it was an active war, but he was able to work through back channels and use his ingenuity around this. Send James Monroe, to help seal the deal. So many different things he was able to do again, shows his ingenuity, showed how important this was to secure this land, they, he really, really just wanted New Orleans and freedom to navigate the Mississippi and it ended up, the rest of it fell in his lap, which is an amazing, serendipitous thing and we'll take it as Americans.

[00:36:00] Lindsay Chervinsky: It strikes me that in a lot of ways his ingenuity could also be described as a reflection on what you were talking about, about the opportunity of the moment, like he was creative with seizing the opportunity of the moment, even if it wasn't the opportunity, he was expecting.

[00:36:15] Bill Haldeman: A thousand percent, and I think given that he seized it because he knew, he saw what it would mean to be a continental nation, he saw what it would mean to, again, going back to this unborn millions, the generations to come. America had that ability because of Thomas Jefferson.

[00:36:30] Lindsay Chervinsky: That's so interesting. Okay. Before we get to George Washington, I like to always provide our listeners with a book recommendation, something that has inspired you on leadership or about a leader or has taught you something different to end new.

[00:36:42] Bill Haldeman: I would argue James Barber, going back to my graduate school days, is the presidential character, and it ties into this book a little bit in the sense of can we predict what leaders are going to do based on what they've done before? And I think it's a tremendous book. It's written in the 1970s, a little dated now, but I think the spirit of this helped inspire this book, and I think it's worth people even just to pick it up and just look at the thesis and think about are there qualities that we can see in our leaders and when we pick them, do we feel like they're gonna show up in those particular moments when we need them, when they're facing crisis?

[00:37:16] Lindsay Chervinsky: That's such an important message for voters and the American people today, because you know, you gave multiple examples over the course of our conversation about often what presidents end up grappling with are not the things they ran their campaigns on.

George W. Bush is the ultimate example of running really on an economic message, and then September 11th happens and his presidency is defined almost entirely by foreign policy, and he's certainly not the only one, you know, Joe Biden ran on restoring normalcy and then, less than a year into his administration, Russia invaded Ukraine. So there's just so much that we don't know that we can't ask presidents to opine on, 'Cause we cannot predict the future. And so character is the one thing we can know about and therefore I think should be pretty important factor with our decision making.

[00:38:02] Bill Haldeman: A thousand percent. And that's why I wrote this book because I think, I don't think, I know, the character does matter and in these qualities, in these leaders, we're transformational not only for America, but what we are to be in the future, and hopefully they inspire leaders. And readers of this generation to think about how can I use my le- is there something I'm cultivating in myself,

[00:38:21] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:38:21] Bill Haldeman: Across my life that I can use to help me meet my moment, whether that's in a, that could be in your career, that could be in a boardroom, it could be in a classroom, it could be anywhere. It could be taking a moral, ethical stand, but I think that that character does matter and a, and it has proven to be transformational for America.

[00:38:37] Lindsay Chervinsky: So true, so true.

Okay, so final question. When you think of George Washington in leadership, what do you think of?

[00:38:43] Bill Haldeman: I think of his judgment, and I think that that's what I wrote about in this book, is the sense that George Washington didn't get everything right.

He didn't get everything right, but he had the innate ability to get the big things right. He got Washington's Crossing right, he turned over his sword in 1783, and I think the most important decision any president has ever made, is his decision to step down after two terms, because I think in doing so, he showed that the office, it belonged to the people. It didn't belong to anybody else. No one had the right to the presidency.

I think that that's really important, and I think his judgment also gave us an incredible document, which I would put up against any document in the founding error in the sense of his farewell address in the lessons that can be gleaned from that 6,000 words probably takes you 40, 45 minutes to get through.

But there's a lot of great messages in there about what we aspire to be as a nation that still are relevant today as the 1790s were some of the most divisive periods or divisive period in American history, and we can learn from him, and I think his judgment shows that. I mean, you look at someone like Jefferson or Adams was classically trained at the best universities and colleges in the country, and Washington had nothing more than a grade school education. He learned from experience. To go back to the quote from John Kennedy, he learned from his mistakes and the mistakes of others, and I think that that's such a great quality, and I would just tack onto that is his approach to decision making, which I love. I loved decision making, but he had a hub and spoke approach to decision making, and I think it's really cool to think about how he would think through decisions. He never acted, as Thomas Jefferson said, I won't belabor Thomas Jefferson quotes on you, but I will say that he never acted until every consideration or every circumstance, as he said, was maturely weighed.

[00:40:28] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm. Mm-hmm.

[00:40:29] Bill Haldeman: And then John Marshall, just to tack onto that, once he made that decision, he did so deciding and he didn't look back.

I think that's, its judgment and I think leaders can really learn from Washington in taking all the information make a decision and not look back. You made the best decision you can at that time, and that's what I would say about George Washington.

[00:40:47] Lindsay Chervinsky: Well, that is an excellent place to leave it. Thank you so much for joining us, I so appreciate your time and sharing your work and I know the audience will enjoy it as well.

[00:40:55] Bill Haldeman: Thanks so much. Enjoyed it.

[00:40:58] Lindsay Chervinsky: Thank you for joining us this week on Leadership and Legacy, and thank you so much again to our guest, William Haldeman.

You can find his new book, Meeting the Moment, Inspiring Presidential Leadership That Transformed America, wherever you buy books. You can also check out a recording of his recent book, talk at Mount Vernon on the Mount Vernon YouTube channel. I'm your host, Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky.

Leadership and Legacy, conversations at the George Washington Presidential Library is a production of the Mount Vernon Ladies Association and Primary Source Media.

In the spirit of George Washington's leadership, we feature the perspectives of leaders from across industries and fields. As such, the thoughts expressed in this podcast are solely the views of our guests and do not reflect the opinions of the Mount Vernon Ladies Association.

To learn more about Washington's leadership example, or to find out how you can bring your team to the George Washington Presidential Library, visit gwleadershipinstitute.org or to find more great podcasts from Mount Vernon, visit georgewashingtonpodcast.com. You can also explore the work of Primary Source Media at primarysourcemedia.com. Join us in two weeks for our next great conversation.