Speaker 1:
From the Library of the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, you're inside the ICE House, our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange on markets, leadership and vision and global business, the dream drivers that have made the NYSE an indispensable institution of global growth for over 225 years.
Speaker 1:
Each week, we feature stories of those who hatched plans, create jobs, and harness the engine of capitalism, right here, right now at the NYSE and at ICE's exchanges and clearing houses around the world. And now welcome inside the ICE House. Here's your host, Josh King of Intercontinental Exchange.
Josh King:
You look at the most enigmatic CEOs these days and you wonder, do they have a close trusted friend that they can bounce their most outlandish ideas off of? I mean, take Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter that's NYSE ticker symbol TWTR. And he also runs square which is ticker symbol SQ.
Josh King:
When he makes the call to ban Donald Trump for life from his platform, does he call up his buddy to ask if it will fly before he brings it to the board? Then there's Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. When he's tapping out a tweet hinting at the merits of Dogecoin, can he count on a friend to say, "Hey, back off, buddy boy, it only spells trouble."
Josh King:
And then there's Jeff Bezos. We talked about him a few weeks ago on this show with Brad Stone, author of Amazon Unbound. After that show aired, we learned that Bezos, hot to be the first CEO in low Earth orbit, would take a flight in his own Blue Origin New Shepard spacecraft on July 20th. Is there someone he could call before making that announcement who might say, "Pal, maybe that's a pretty tall risk."
Josh King:
The fact is we don't know. Public company CEOs are required to disclose a lot of things, their pay, their financials, their lawsuits, their competitive threats, their use of corporate aircraft. But they're under no obligation to tell us who their friends are. It's their little secret, one that they can carry to their grave. If we did know who they palled around with, maybe we could make wiser investments.
Josh King:
CEOs, no. But presidents of the United States, that's an entirely different matter. Our regular listeners know I used to work for one, Bill Clinton. And one of my jobs was to travel in his close proximity and I wasn't alone. A standing rule of being president, ever since John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, is that the leader of the free world must have a press pool of about 13 journalists travel with him everywhere he goes outside the White House.
Josh King:
One of those reporters is what's called the print pooler. When their shift is finished, they have to file what's called a pool report, noting for every other member of the White House press corps, all the people, places and things that the President meets goes and does. While the record isn't 100% complete, over the course of four or eight years, the public gets a general sense of who he, some days she, is hanging around with, where they went for dinner, what house they used for their vacation, what time they finally made it back home.
Josh King:
More than a staff, more than a cabinet, occasionally more than a family. The President's first friends can sometimes have an outsized influence on the commander-in-chief's mood, demeanor, outlook and actions. It puts the chosen few confidants at the pinnacle of power and occasionally, in precarious positions.
Josh King:
Our guest this week knows a thing or two about that special relationship between the occupants of the Oval Office and the person most likely received their phone call when the shit hits the fan. Our conversation with my friend Gary Ginsberg, author of the newly released book First Friends: The Powerful, Unsung and Unelected People Who Shaped Our Presidents. It's coming up right after this.
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Josh King:
Our guest today, Gary Ginsberg has spent his career with close access to power, both in the political and business worlds. A lawyer in the Clinton administration, he partnered with the son of another president on his business pursuits, and then occupied the rarefied orbits of the CEOs of News Corp, Time Warner and Softbank before stepping down from that last role last year to write his new book, First Friends: The Powerful, Unsung and Unelected People Who Shaped Our Presidents out now from 12, an imprint of the Hachette Book Group.
Josh King:
Gary, welcome inside the ICE House.
Gary Ginsberg:
Thank you, Josh. Great to be here.
Josh King:
The preface of your book starts out on a personal note. You're not far out of Columbia Law School, the summer 1992, when you find yourself working on a special project for Jimmy Carter's old Deputy Secretary of State, a lawyer named Warren Christopher, and an old LBJ hand from Texas named Harry McPherson, what did they have you doing?
Gary Ginsberg:
Well, around the end of March when it became apparent that Bill Clinton was going to be the nominee, they asked five lawyers to assemble in an unmarked office in Washington, DC, and start vetting the vice presidential potential nominees. So, I went up to Washington with four others. And we just spent three months basically vetting potential candidates.
Gary Ginsberg:
There were two lists. There was the private list that was unknown to even us that then Governor Clinton was working off of. There were three people whom he really wanted at the start. Never before disclosed, the three people did not include the ultimate choice, Al Gore.
Gary Ginsberg:
But what we did was we did public record searches, private searches, and we ended up coming up with a list and there was five finalists, one of whom was Al Gore. And I was asked to write a series of memos to the campaign staff back in Little Rock that disclose the results of my vetting. And at a certain point, they realized that when it came down to the really important interview, the one where we sit down with the potential nominee and asking the tough questions, it didn't make a lot of sense to have a 29-year-old former Gore staffer, I may add, in his 1988 presidential campaign to the hard questioning.
Gary Ginsberg:
So they asked me to meet with an old LBJ hand named Harry McPherson who was LBJ's counsel and speech writer who was in his 70s, didn't need or want anything from the process. So I go to his office on Connecticut Avenue, and I open up my folder, I have reams of data about his voting record, his finances, his dad's finances. And he stops me at one point, he says, "I don't really care about all that. I have one question for you." "What's that, Harry?"
Gary Ginsberg:
And you have to understand, I'm 29. I know who Harry McPherson. I'm a little bit intimidated to begin with. And he says, "Who's his friends? Does he have any friends?" And I looked at him and I think, "Why do you care about whether he has friends?" He says, "No, this is a serious question. Who are his friends?" So we have a discussion about his friends.
Gary Ginsberg:
And I tell him whom I think he will actually give an answer to which is a couple of members of Congress and his brother-in-law. He says, "Well, it would trouble me if he doesn't have a lot of friends. And I plan on asking him that question." So, we go to Gore's parents' apartment which is right next to the Supreme Court building one afternoon about three weeks before the final decision is made. And in the afternoon, it's a bit of a darkened room, we sit down, we exchanged pleasantries.
Gary Ginsberg:
And then Harry asked the question, he says, "Senator, who are your friends?" And Al Gore looks up. He's stunned as I was earlier when he asked me that question. And he says, "Harry, what are you asking?" And he says, "It's a simple question, Sir. Who are your friends?" And he names the two members of Congress that I had predicted he would, Tom Downey and Norm Dicks.
Gary Ginsberg:
Harry says, "Well, who else? Anybody outside of family, anybody outside of members of Congress?" And he says, "Frank Hunger." Now, Frank Hunger was his brother-in-law. His sister had unfortunately died and he was very, very close to Frank. And I think it surprised Harry that he ultimately couldn't come up with a name that was beyond his fellow members of Congress or his family. And when we got in the car to go back to his office and Gore, obviously, just aced the exam. He answered all the questions credibly well. He satisfied all the criteria that Clinton was looking for in a running mate.
Gary Ginsberg:
But it bothered Harry because Harry said, "If you don't have friends, it's a real problem once you're in that lonely seat in the Oval Office. And I saw it with LBJ. I saw it during his travails over the Vietnam War. He didn't have anybody who he could unburden himself to, somebody who could speak the blunt truth to him, somebody who could give him solace and respite. And that worries me that if Al Gore ever does ascend to that top office, to not have that will be a real detriment to him."
Josh King:
You note that McPherson relayed his concerns to Secretary Christopher, future Secretary Christopher, but those views were discounted. In retrospect, knowing what we know about Vice President Gore, both in the eight years that he's served and the 20-some odd that followed, the man's certainly cut a singular path of righteousness. How does your friend's thesis hold up on what would have been a President Gore?
Gary Ginsberg:
Well, that's a great question because President Bush who beat Vice President Gore had a lot of friends. And his presidency was, in many ways, an abject failure. He had a lot of people who could provide him with the things that Harry was looking for. So I don't think there's a direct correlation between having friends and having a successful presidency. That's not the point of the book. That's not a thesis that I can actually support.
Gary Ginsberg:
What I say is that if you have a best friend, if you have somebody who can give you all those things that friends give each of us in our own lives, it makes you a better president, it makes you more effective because you are hearing and seeing things that others around you who serve at your pleasure can't necessarily say. And that's what I find so interesting about so many of the characters in my book is that they have that ability, born of decades of intimacy with somebody who wasn't president before. And they could speak to them in ways that they can continue to speak to them as president.
Gary Ginsberg:
And so it would be foolish of me to suggest how Al Gore would have done. I mean, Al Gore has friends. Let's be clear. He's not a friendless person. But it was very clear to me in his campaign '87 that he wasn't surrounded by the fogs, the friends of Gore, as Bill Clinton was in '92. You saw it as well as I saw it. The friends really lifted him up at a crucial moment, particularly during the New Hampshire primary when he was struggling.
Gary Ginsberg:
And President Clinton, when I interviewed him said, "In fact, it was my friends who elected me president." He said that straight out. No other president I think will ever say that. And then as I show in my book, Vernon Jordan I think played a really crucial role both on a substantive level, on a personnel level, and on a very personal level to help him through the years of his presidency.
Josh King:
Before we get into the substance of your book, let's talk about another set of fogs which is the friends of Gary. You are a convener. What's the secret sauce to making and keeping friends?
Gary Ginsberg:
That's an interesting question. I think curiosity, being interested in other people and what motivates them, being able to empathize, to have I guess a strong emotional quotient that allows people to get a sense of you and for you to get a sense of them, a sense of loyalty that you're going to stick with people through good and bad.
Gary Ginsberg:
I think some of the strongest friendships that I have in my life were born out of either mishaps, tragedies, etcetera. It's being there in the good and the bad. And also, I think sharing values. Aristotle talks about different kinds of friendship. And the most perfect friendship for him is where you have shared values and shared interests where you're rooting for me and I'm rooting for you. And I think generally, I approach my friends in that way. And I hope my friends approach me in that way.
Josh King:
I've read some of your published writing on growing up in Buffalo and he doesn't qualify as a friend using that definition of he can't be family because he was family. But what kind of friend was your father, the guy who you'd go to the racetrack with to bet on the ponies?
Gary Ginsberg:
Yeah. I mean, I think my father was my best friend as a lot of I think we all feel about our fathers. We shared a lot of the same interests, whether it was going to the tracks on Saturday and betting on the ponies or playing a lot of tennis or rooting for the heartbreaking team with the Buffalo Bills for decades and decades. And I think I learned a lot about friendship from my father in fact, and that sense of empathy and that sense of giving and sharing.
Josh King:
Did you get a sense of the writing skill that would ultimately lead you to publish First Friends?
Gary Ginsberg:
I've always been interested in writing. I was the editor of my high school newspaper, law school paper, not the law review, mind you but the newspaper, which didn't really get you clerkships I should add. I guess on my bucket list, I've always wanted to write a book. I really spent a lot of time looking at writing a book about Chiefs of Staff in 2012 and then just couldn't really get the time to do it.
Gary Ginsberg:
And then Christopher Whittle obviously wrote the seminal book. And I got this idea in 2018, just one day just kind of came to me. And this time, I said, "Okay, I'm going to do it. I have to do it." And I'm glad I did because I love the process. I love the topic.
Josh King:
We're going to get into the process in a second. But moving on in this chronology in your life, Gary, in 1995 after your time working in Bill Clinton's White House, you burst onto the New York scene at your friend's side for a major announcement. I want to take a listen to that.
Speaker 6:
The premiere issue of George looks red hot with supermodel Cindy Crawford on the cover and a lot of big name advertisers inside, a very big launch and no small part because John F. Kennedy Jr. is Editor in Chief.
Gary Ginsberg:
Certainly, it helps and it draws attention and what any new launch needs is that. But ultimately, this magazine is going to stand or fall on whether or not it's a good magazine.
Speaker 6:
The magazine aims for a hip look at politics without heavy partisan ideology.
Josh King:
Tell me about your friendship with him and what that day felt like for you. And what did you think his potential was?
Gary Ginsberg:
Well, it was right down here in fact, that announcement. And it was a thrilling morning for us all. I had worked on it really from the days of the campaign in 1992. John became fascinated with the personalities that emerged from the '92 campaign, in particular I think George Stephanopoulos, James Carville. He saw that merger of politics and personality in the campaign with Clinton going in Arsenio and playing the saxophone.
Gary Ginsberg:
And the campaign staffers becoming really public figures. And that was where the germ of the idea of George came from, for us to launch it to the kind of fanfare. I mean, it was just presidential events. This was on par with the biggest presidential events. I mean, there was a bank of 30 cameras. There were 100 journalists. There was a buzz in the room as if he were announcing his own candidacy for president.
Gary Ginsberg:
But to come up with a product that we were all proud of, we work our butts off for months to get that finished product. And it was an enormous success. We sold 1,000,002 copies right off the bat. And I think we were just unfortunately ahead of the zeitgeist that people weren't ready for a political magazine that was in four-color that was non-ideological, and that didn't approach politics from the serious perspective of issues. It looked at politics from the standpoint of personalities and process.
Gary Ginsberg:
We didn't want it to be 80% male readership. We wanted women to read it. We wanted the young people to read it. And unfortunately, by bucking the trend, some of the intelligentsia of Washington didn't like it. And so, while the public liked it, the critics really savaged it. And ultimately, I think it was hard for advertisers to define what it was. The ending, obviously, is quite tragic and sad and the magazine died.
Gary Ginsberg:
But I think today, if you were to launch it, it would be a big hit because people would just intuitively get it.
Josh King:
Our mutual friend Brian Steele often says that John could have run for governor shortly thereafter and then maybe as a stepping stone for even [inaudible 00:17:43] by that.
Gary Ginsberg:
I spent the last night of John's life with him. I actually have never spoken about this publicly. But we had a long talk about what he was going to do because he'd been thinking about the Senate as you know in 2000 when Pat Moynihan was stepping down and then Hillary Clinton decided to run so that foreclosed that opportunity. And I think he was just looking at what else made sense.
Gary Ginsberg:
He was always somebody who preferred to be an executive to a legislator. I think his father felt the same way. I think he was somewhat bored and restless in the Senate, in the House. And I think John was born to be an executive. And the idea of being a chief executive of New York State appealed to him very much. But look, who knows? A lot had to go right for that to work. And unfortunately, the story stopped in 1999.
Josh King:
George focused on politics and processes you said. Let's talk about the process of writing the book. In your case, diving into the personal lives of Jefferson, Franklin Pierce, A. Blinken, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Harry Truman, JFK, Nixon and Clinton, that's a lot of worlds, a lot of different times of history to immerse yourself in. In the process of writing the book, how powerful was the draw to leave this crazy world we are in, 2018 through 2020 and live with these former presidents and their buddies in their times?
Gary Ginsberg:
That's exactly right. I mean, that's what made this process so much fun because you would ... I just randomly picked which ones I was going to do when. And you just get submerged in their worlds and you would live it. And I just got endlessly fascinated by it by the research, thinking it through, trying to call it to its essence. I didn't want to write an 800-page book which I could have.
Gary Ginsberg:
It was such a wonderful, solitary, internal experience. For somebody who was in external affairs his whole life, this was a radical departure from anything I had done before. And I have to say, I really, really relished it.
Josh King:
For the start of the book, you credit your father-in-law, Howard Aaron, for making sure that you include this obscure relationship between Franklin Pierce and Nathaniel Hawthorne in First Friends. Tell us about the people and sources that help to make the best book possible and how this PR man became a writer.
Gary Ginsberg:
Yeah. With my father-in-law, I said ... we were talking about the book early days. And he said, "You know, Nathaniel Hawthorne was best friends with Franklin Pierce." And I said, "What? It doesn't make any sense." He said to me, "Look it up." And I said, "How do you know?" He goes, "I just know it." My father-in-law has a lot of arcane knowledge stored upstairs.
Gary Ginsberg:
And he was right. It was a really rich story that has not been told in any single book. It's obviously mentioned in biographies of both Pierce and Hawthorne, but nobody's ever spent 40 pages looking at it. On Kennedy, I was going to take the traditional route of Lem Billings or Ben Bradlee or Dave Powers. And I talked to somebody very close to the family who steered me to David Ormsby-Gore. And I said, "I don't know who David Ormsby-Gore is." And this person said, "I'm going to give you 48 hours. Do some research and come back to me and tell me if you liked it."
Gary Ginsberg:
And I was just mesmerized. That was the story that really captivated me because it's there. It's hiding in plain sight. And there are writers like Barbara Leaming who have covered it in her books, but nobody has really brought it out as a solitary piece of work. So for me, that was a lot of fun. Bebe Rebozo as you and I both know growing up in the '70s was an obvious choice.
Gary Ginsberg:
Clinton, I actually called and asked him, "Who would you like me to do because you know better than I do." There are a number of people who could have fit that description of first friend and he chose Vernon.
Josh King:
Your section on Thomas Jefferson starts to unfold just a few blocks from here, 57 Maiden Lane in a dinner with two fellow Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, five rare ones, two courses of Virginia ham, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Is this the room where it happens? And how was Madison's relationship with Jefferson which began at the Virginia Convention in 1776 so instrumental to American history in the decades that followed?
Gary Ginsberg:
Yeah, it's '57, right around this corner, I went down there to see if the house was still there. It's obviously not. And it also had warm vanilla ice cream which apparently Hamilton just loved. And if you want to get the menu for that, it's actually in a book that I found. They have every single course with every single recipe.
Gary Ginsberg:
So I think that this is one of the extraordinary friendships in American history, if not the most extraordinary friendship. It started in 1776 and it went till 1826, exactly 50 years. They exchanged 1,250 letters, some as long as 17 pages, all of them incredibly descriptive of the times and what they were thinking. And I think for Jefferson to be Jefferson and Madison to be Madison, they needed that collaboration and that friendship.
Gary Ginsberg:
They brought out the best in each other. And they were very different. Jefferson was 6'2", Madison was 5'4". Jefferson was dashing and brash and full of eloquence both with the pen and with his voice. Madison was this little guy, sickly, suffered from hypochondria which comes from excessive studying, if you can believe it. He went to Princeton, graduated in two years, stopped only five hours a day. He was the quintessential intellectual philosopher.
Gary Ginsberg:
But Jefferson needed Madison's practicality, his grounding to center him and to take his lofty ideals and turn them into action, into legislation, into programs, into things like the Louisiana Purchase. And Madison needed Jefferson to dry him out and to act as the front person for a lot of his creativity that he couldn't actually articulate as effectively as Jefferson.
Gary Ginsberg:
And I think that friendship is responsible for some of the seminal vestiges of our democracy today, whether it's a second party which was a Democratic-Republican Party that was formed as a result of a trip that the two of them took in 1791 when they decided they were going to go against Washington and Hamilton. He was responsible for Jefferson staying in the game. He was going to quit politics in 1782 after he was basically run out of the governorship of Virginia. And it was only Madison who pushed him.
Gary Ginsberg:
And then Madison pushed him to go to France. He would have stayed in Monticello and basically retired to the plantation. Madison is the one who basically orchestrates his race for the vice presidency in 1796. And then the two of them usher in this revolution of 1800 which effectively then last until the Civil War. And it was their decision to go against this monarchical, heavily-centralized view that the Federalists had of the government, and to make it a more populist government that ushered in that 50-60 years of American history that ultimately led to the Civil War.
Josh King:
The next president you tackle is a little closer to home for me because he hails from my wife's home state in New Hampshire. But more of a cipher for historians, Franklin Pierce, in fact, his best friend, as you note in the book is probably more famous in the long view and that's Nathaniel Hawthorne. Pierce was a gregarious, hard-drinking man who wanted everyone to like him, but he was disliked by almost everybody by the end of his presidency. Much earlier classmates at Bowdoin College. What did Hawthorne see in this guy?
Gary Ginsberg:
Franklin Pierce is the belle of the party. He comes from a famous family. He's good looking. He's quick witted. He's a prankster. He's bottom of his class the first two years. He's not an intellectual. Hawthorne comes as a poor kid. He only goes to Bowdoin because that's the only school he can afford. He's quiet. He's boring to some people.
Gary Ginsberg:
And I think Pierce pulls him out. And that's where opposites attract. And he needed Pierce to become the person that he was. But what did Hawthorne need from Pierce? I'll tell you what he needed. Money, jobs. He's a celebrated author by 1852, House of the Seven Gables, The Scarlet Letter which generations of American schoolchildren have been subjected to, but he couldn't make a dime. And Pierce either offered him patronage or money.
Gary Ginsberg:
And I'm not saying that it was only a transactional relationship. It wasn't because I think Hawthorne actually had quite an affinity for Pierce. But ultimately, as my chapter shows, the friendship allows Hawthorne to live a noble life, in the sense that he can provide for his family, he's got a job, and it's a job that allows him to continue to write. He writes the campaign biography of Franklin Pierce in 1752 which is akin to the killer ad of our generation. You needed a really good biography to sell your candidacy.
Gary Ginsberg:
So, who better to get than the most celebrated writer in America? Now, Hawthorne's never written a nonfiction book before. He writes this glowing biography of Pierce. And anyone who knew Pierce at the time said he's really not worthy of it. And a lot of people thought it was another work of fiction by Hawthorne. But it helps get him elected.
Gary Ginsberg:
He gets the second most prestigious post in the Foreign Service. He gets become counsel to Liverpool. He goes over there. Peirce has just an abject disastrous presidency. And we can go into why and I don't think your listeners desperately want to hear the details. But he loses three boys in quick succession. His third son, 11-year-old Benny dies two months before his inauguration. He gets decapitated.
Josh King:
A railroad accident.
Gary Ginsberg:
A railroad accident. He gets decapitated. The third son, the only remaining son dies. It is a tragedy beyond comprehension. Mrs. Pierce, who didn't like politics to begin with, takes to her bed, never really comes out of her bed. She sits upstairs on the second floor of the White House writing letters to her dead son Benny and throwing them in the fireplace and burning them up the entire time they're there.
Gary Ginsberg:
Pierce is unable to stop the violence that becomes the powder keg that leads to the Civil War. And he is the first sitting president to not be renominated by his own party. And I think as a result of his failed presidency, it leads directly to the beginning of the Civil War four years later.
Josh King:
So now, we're in 1837. A man walks into a Dragon Store, wants to buy a mattress, sheets, blanket and bedspread. The provider tells him the cost of all these goods, 17 bucks. The customer instead climbs up a winding staircase and throws down his saddlebags. Two guys end up sharing the same bed for four years. What's up with that?
Gary Ginsberg:
So the two guys are Joshua Speed who owned that store and a young Abraham Lincoln who is 28 years old. He walks and he's a new lawyer in Springfield, Illinois. And he's going to about to start a new job with his new patron in the law. And he needs a bed and he needs bedding. And this guy Joshua Speed I think knew Abraham Lincoln was. He too was an ambitious young man, eight years younger than Lincoln.
Gary Ginsberg:
And he senses a chance to form a real bond with him. I mean, a bond unlike how we form with our friends. And he says, "Why don't you share my bed essentially?" And it ends up being an extraordinary friendship. They spend four years in that same bed. They eat all their meals together. They have a social club downstairs in the store every night where Lincoln is really the raconteur who keeps everybody amused with his anecdotes and his wit and witticisms.
Gary Ginsberg:
And where it reaches this denouement is in 1841, the first of January, when Speed tells him he's going to move back to Kentucky. They're so close by that point that it sends Lincoln into a deep depression. This is a man who was already prone to depression. He lost his mother. He lost a sister. He had had a lover back in New Salem in 1835 who died, and that too, it sent him into quite a depression. But this was a depression unlike any other he had had.
Gary Ginsberg:
In addition, he had proposed to Mary Todd earlier that fall. He had misgivings. He basically took back the proposal and then regretted that terribly so that the combination of Speed going back to Kentucky and the broken engagement put him in his bed. And Speed ministered to him in the most loving way. He recognized how suicidal he was. So he took every sharp object that was in his room away from him so that he could not kill himself.
Gary Ginsberg:
Lincoln at one point said, "You know, if I off myself, no one will ever know that I lived on this earth." And Speed made sure that the world would learn of Abraham Lincoln by tending to him. Lincoln obviously then recovers, goes on to a political career, a brilliant legal career speak, goes back to Kentucky, runs plantations with a lot of slaves. They don't talk for a number of years. In part I think because of their differing views on slavery. And in part because Speed wanted Lincoln to handle a lot of legal affairs for free. Lincoln didn't want to do it.
Gary Ginsberg:
But they come back together again around the issue of slavery. And ironically, in 1860, when Lincoln was elected, one of the first letters he writes is to Speed. And he says, "I want you to meet me in Chicago." So a couple of weeks after his election, Speed is in a hotel room with Abe Lincoln. And Abe Lincoln says, "Will you join my administration?" Now, this is a guy who's a Democrat. Lincoln is a Republican. He is proslavery. But in that theme of team of rivals, he wanted Joshua Speed around him because he knew that Joshua Speed could talk to him and knew him in a way that nobody else could.
Gary Ginsberg:
Speed interestingly says, "No, I don't want to join your administration. I am a businessman. I want to go back to Kentucky, but I'll help you from Kentucky." Now, Josh, what you remember is that Kentucky was a border state. And Lincoln realized that if he lost Kentucky, he could easily lose all the other Border States. So Joshua Speed goes back and does everything he can to make sure that Kentucky stays in the union.
Gary Ginsberg:
He basically gets armaments to Union loyalists in the state. He advises Lincoln on how to talk about the Civil War so it's not just about slavery so that people who are on that fence would still want to be unionists.
Josh King:
At this point, we're into Lincoln's administration. And Speed is doing his work for Lincoln in Kentucky, but politics and the discourse is continuing at the White House. Here's Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln, advocating before his cabinet for the Emancipation Proclamation.
Daniel Day-Lewis:
... spilled to afford us this moment now! Now! Now! And you grousle and heckle and dodge about like pettifogging Tammany Hall hucksters! See what is before you. See the here and now, that's the hardest thing, the only thing that accounts. Abolishing slavery by constitutional provision settles the fate for all coming time not only of the millions now in bondage, but of unborn millions to come.
Josh King:
Lincoln's confidant Speed counseled otherwise. What was the disconnect among friends?
Gary Ginsberg:
Well, I think Speed was very much like Franklin Pierce. He didn't necessarily support slavery although he used slaves. But he thought the union was more important, that preserving the union was more important than abolishing slavery. And that was a position he took in the 1850s. As the war progresses, Lincoln comes to him ... before he shows it to really anybody else, he solicits the opinions of both Joshua Speed and his brother James Speed. Both of them say don't do it.
Gary Ginsberg:
Joshua Speed wasn't saying, "I'm not going to support the ultimate emancipation." He thought it was too early. He thought that if you put this proclamation in front of people, you're going to lose people like my fellow citizens of Kentucky who don't want this war to be fought over slavery. It's more about preserving the union. He thought that Lincoln needed more victories. That the outcome needed to be more settled before he would do that.
Gary Ginsberg:
Ultimately, he came to support it. And I think it was interesting to Lincoln because he said to Speed, "You know, when I was on that bed in 1841, I was worried about never being remembered. With this proclamation, I know I will now be remembered."
Josh King:
After the break, we're going to dive deeper into the world of presidents and their best buddies now into the 20th century with Gary Ginsberg, author of First Friends: The Powerful Unsung and Unelected People Who Shaped Our Presidents. That's all coming up right after this.
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Josh King:
Welcome back. Before the break, Gary Ginsberg, author of First Friends: The Powerful Unsung and Unelected People Who Shaped Our Presidents, we're talking about the relationships that he dove into between iconic leaders of the 18th and 19th centuries. Now, we're going to dive headlong into the 20th century presidents and their confidants who've helped shaped the world we're living in today.
Josh King:
Gary, you bypass a lot of history between Abraham Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson as you head into the 20th century, 11 administrations by my count, including Grant and Teddy Roosevelt. Were friends hard to come by in those years?
Gary Ginsberg:
No. In fact, I really wanted to write about John Rollins and Ulysses S. Grant. But Ron Chernow in his seminal biography of Grant really covered all the territory. And I just didn't think that I'd be able to find enough new material to warrant it, but that's a great friendship. I think without John Rollins, Grant is not president of the United States and maybe doesn't even become the victorious general that he does since he kept them off the bottle, essentially, in addition to other things.
Josh King:
And so let's move past Woodrow Wilson and make our way into the years just before World War II. FDR has served two terms, but is erring on calling it quits before running for a third. Now, you and I both read books on Roosevelt and there's going to be more. And we've seen Edward Herrmann as FDR in Eleanor and Franklin.
Josh King:
But the lesser known portrayal is Bill Murray of all people and Laura Linney of Ozark fame as Daisy Suckley. Here they are in Hyde Park on Hudson from 10 years ago.
Speaker 9:
Hello. Who was that?
Laura Linney:
The President wishes to see me. I'd been invited to visit with Franklin at his home in Hyde Park.
Bill Murray:
Daisy. What a rare treat!
Laura Linney:
His mother said he needed to take his mind off his work and the pressures of being the president.
Bill Murray:
What do you say you and I get out of here? Go someplace quiet.
Laura Linney:
That spring, Franklin showed me a world I never knew existed. Where is the police car going?
Bill Murray:
Sometimes that catch a crook or something I suppose.
Laura Linney:
And soon, we became best friends.
Speaker 12:
Mr. President.
Josh King:
Miss Suckley is the only female among all of your presidential confidants. What does it say about FDR and her that brought these two people so closely together?
Gary Ginsberg:
Well, first of all about the movie, it's tawdry. It bears no resemblance to history or whatsoever, but it does capture this unique friendship. Although I will say it makes it into a overtly sexual relationship. And I don't believe it even was sexual by any stretch. Maybe a kiss, not much more of that.
Gary Ginsberg:
It says that Franklin Roosevelt actually preferred the company of women to men. And I say that in my chapter. He didn't get into the Porcellian Club at Harvard which is one of the great rejections of his life. I think it really stems from his childhood. His father was 56 when he was born, quite sick. He was raised by a very strong and domineering mother, Sara. And he just naturally gravitated to women. Women naturally gravitated to him.
Gary Ginsberg:
And so, even in his White House, he had a lot of really strong women around. And I had a choice of women to pick in fact, Frances Perkins, Missy LeHand who was really the first female Chief of Staff, his wife Eleanor although I don't obviously do first wives or anybody in the family. But more than any other president to his time, he empowered women in a way that nobody else did.
Gary Ginsberg:
But Daisy I think was different because Daisy didn't advise, didn't speak the hard truth, but she provided a kind of emotional ballast that he needed Jon Alter, an FDR biographer who first really encouraged me to look at Daisy as a first friend, said that he was emotionally wired for this friendship. He needed it in this administration. He said that Daisy at one point in his administration, he said, "You know, Daisy, I'm either Exhibit A left entirely alone."
Gary Ginsberg:
And I think what that reflected was a deep loneliness on his part. His wife was off gallivanting around the world on behalf of her causes. His kids were either in the military or basically ne'er-do-wells, I hate to say it. His daughter does come back in 1944 and minister around. But for a good chunk of his White House years, he is alone. And when the cameras turned off and the applause died down, he'd go back upstairs and he was by himself and he didn't want to be because he was a convivial guy by nature.
Gary Ginsberg:
And Daisy was kind of his antidote to that loneliness. And as I show in my chapter, she plays not an advisory role. As I say, she doesn't say, "No, FDR, you shouldn't do this. You shouldn't do that," other than his health. But she's kind of the emotional rock at a time when the country and the world is teetering, and I think plays a very important role.
Josh King:
In some ways, Daisy Suckley is the quintessential pool reporter bringing color to an event that would otherwise be lost to history because no press was allowed to witness for instance that 1939 visit of King George and Queen Elizabeth at the Hyde Park which is a hell of a trip. Tell me about it and why was Daisy there? And how did we discover her writings?
Gary Ginsberg:
Well, Daisy was there because she was really at every event, barring none. We discovered Daisy's role really by happenstance. She died in her 100th year in 1989. Underneath her bed, when her belongings were being cleared out, was a trunk. And in the trunk were 38 letters from Franklin Roosevelt and a diary that she had kept of her time really from 1933 when she's invited to the inauguration right up through the end.
Gary Ginsberg:
And what it showed was just this enormously layered, beautiful relationship. So no one had a sense of the key role she played until the diaries were discovered. And then Geoffrey Ward put it together in a book called Closest Companion, which is essentially a compendium of all the letters with some notes from him and diary entries. And it was an invaluable tool for bringing Daisy Suckley to life.
Josh King:
Ward and you talked a lot as you were getting the book together?
Gary Ginsberg:
Ward was very nice to me. He read the chapter. He gave me comments on it. I actually wanted to know how he felt about Daisy's portrayal in Hyde Park on Hudson. He says in the book, "I don't think that Franklin was capable of having sexual relations by the time that he and Daisy became so close." And he also interestingly doesn't think that Daisy Suckley ever consummated a relationship in her life.
Gary Ginsberg:
She was never married. She was a very modest woman. In fact, she needed a job at one point because she was so broken. She had been such a voluminous collector of all things of Roosevelt that when he opened up his library, he needed an archivist and she became his archivist. And it gave him another excuse to just spend inordinate amounts of time with her both in Hyde Park and in Washington.
Josh King:
Hyde Park, Washington, also Warm Springs, Daisy is there at the very end when he utters those famous words, "I have a terrific pain in the back of my head." The next friendship that you focused on is between a Presbyterian guy and a Jewish guy in a friendship that's forged in Missouri and at war. I'm talking about Harry Truman and Eddie Jacobson.
Josh King:
And as I'm reading the chapter, compared to this unconditional idolatry that Daisy Suckley bestowed on FDR, Jacobson seems like this unrelenting lobbyist for the Jewish state. How did your research deepened your understanding and thinking about the forming and the present state of Israel?
Gary Ginsberg:
Well, I think anybody who grew up in the '70s grew up with a lot of stories about the founding of Israel because it was obviously a magical moment. I was taught by somebody who was a Holocaust survivor who had her numbers tattooed on her arm. And so, I was vaguely familiar with that story as [inaudible 00:43:16] a lot of Hebrew school students in the '70s words just vaguely.
Gary Ginsberg:
But when I dug into it, I was really impressed with Eddie's persistence. I guess that the closeness that the two of them had that allowed him to just get on a plane and walk up that north driveway and walk right into the President's Office and basically say, "I don't give a damn that you don't want to deal with this issue. You got to deal with this issue."
Josh King:
Talk about Truman's reticence a little bit going into it because this is a complicated guy himself.
Gary Ginsberg:
Yeah. Truman is a complicated guy because his wife's family were basically anti-Semites. And as close as Eddie was to Truman as a judge and then as a senator and then as vice president, president, he was never allowed in the Wallace house, if you can believe it. He could get on the porch, but he would not be allowed inside as nor were any other Jews.
Gary Ginsberg:
But they were great friends. They would go hunting. They would eat meals together. They actually ran a shop together, a haberdashery for a couple of years in the early 1920s that went bankrupt when commodity prices dropped. But Eddie was a very strong Jew. He wasn't religious, but he believed that the Jewish people in 1948 needed a state of its own after the Holocaust and the death of 6 million Jews. And there were a lot of refugees looking for a place to live. And a lot of countries weren't letting him in at that point.
Gary Ginsberg:
And so, for the Jewish people, it was a seminal moment. It was a life or death moment for millions of Jews who needed a home. And Eddie to his credit, he wrote a letter to Truman when he found out that he wouldn't see a man named Chaim Weizmann who was ... it's a fascinating story in his own right. He's a scientist in 1917, came up with a process for mass-producing acetone which is the key component of gunpowder. And because of his discovery, it allowed the British to win the war quicker in the First World War.
Gary Ginsberg:
And as a result, the British government said, "Well, what do you want as a reward?" And he said, "I want a Jewish state." This is 1917. And out of that request or ask came the Balfour Declaration. So here, now 31 years later, he's sitting in New York waiting to see Harry Truman. Harry Truman knew them. They'd exchanged a bunch of letters about the Negev a year before.
Gary Ginsberg:
And Truman won't see him. And he won't see him because he's just sick and tired of all the hectoring by all the Jews. He's like, "I don't want to listen to another Jew. Tell me I have to do this. I am tired of it. I ain't going to deal with it." It's what he basically says back to Eddie. So Eddie gets the response from Truman, knows he's now back in Washington. So he just gets on a plane, as I say, walks into the Oval Office and Truman won't even talk to him about it.
Gary Ginsberg:
Once he realizes why he's there, he turns his back on him. And Eddie says in that moment, "He was as close to an anti-Semite as I could have imagined." And this is a guy who knew him for, at that point, 40-some years. And Jacobson is looking around the Oval Office like, "How can I get to this [inaudible 00:46:19] guy, the future of my people?" He's basically resting on whether I can come out of this office with the right answer.
Gary Ginsberg:
And he sees a little statue of Andrew Jackson that was a replica of a bigger statue that was out in front of the courthouse that Truman was the chief judge of back in the '30s in Independence, Missouri. And he realizes, "Okay, now I got my little inroad." And he says, "You know, you have a hero, Harry. Your hero is Andrew Jackson. And Andrew Jackson always did the right thing. He knew what the right thing was and he wasn't afraid to do it. You know what the right thing is to do here and that is to see Chaim Weizmann. You're a better man than this, Harry. You owe it to him. You owe it to yourself. And I can tell you that because I know you."
Gary Ginsberg:
So Truman drums his fingers on the desk. He's furious. And then he wheels his chair back around at Eddie and says, "Goddammit, you bald-headed son of a bitch. I'll see him." And he did see him. And 11 minutes after the state was declared on May 14, 1948 in Tel Aviv, Harry Truman was the first leader to recognize the Independent State of Israel.
Josh King:
To move forward 14 years, another geopolitical crisis, October 22, 1962. Here is President John F. Kennedy.
John F. Kennedy:
Good evening, my fellow citizens. This government, as promised, has maintained the closest surveillance of the Soviet military buildup on the island of Cuba. Within the past week, unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned island. The purpose of these bases can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere.
Josh King:
The world never closer to Nuclear War. Two days earlier, JFK fakes an illness and flies home from Chicago to get ready for that moment. He does four things as you write. He gets his wife and kids back home to the White House. He schedules the speech we just heard. He decides to do a blockade of Cuba instead of a more aggressive move pushed by Curtis LeMay and the members of the ExComm.
Josh King:
And finally, he sends for his buddy, the British Ambassador David Ormsby-Gore. So, bring us back to that moment. Why was a friend in need with such a galaxy of friends of Kennedy, and why was the call made to David Ormsby-Gore?
Gary Ginsberg:
Well, I think the call was made because for 25, at that point 24 years, the two of them had been discussing the role of a leader in a democratic society. Is the role of a leader to do what is popular, what the electorate wants or is it to lead the electorate and do what is unpopular to do the right thing? And it was debated in 1938 in the context of the British response to the Nazi military buildup.
Gary Ginsberg:
And Stanley Baldwin, and then Chamberlain basically is seated to the wishes of the British people and didn't do anything. And then Winston Churchill comes in and basically says, "We're all asleep and we're allowing the German military to control the continent. And we're going to suffer as a result." And he takes his very bold stand, ultimately becomes prime minister.
Gary Ginsberg:
But in 1938, it's still a Chamberlain-Baldwin government and the two of them are really going at it on what that role is. In 1962, by this point, Ormsby-Gore is by far his most important foreign policy adviser and nobody knows it, in part because Kennedy loved his mind and in part because he loved his company. It was the perfect combination of intellect and personality that melded for the two of them.
Gary Ginsberg:
And it had been going on since '38 when they both met as second sons with powerful older brothers, both two powerful dads, both from moneyed backgrounds. Ormsby-Gore was a lord in waiting. Kennedy was the second son, his brother Joe was supposed to be the politician. Both were aimless. They both loved to play. They loved to talk fast. They loved intellectual discussion. They hated to be bored.
Gary Ginsberg:
So they were born to be best friends. And although an ocean separated them, they stayed incredibly close until '60 when he then says to Ormsby-Gore basically, "I don't trust my foreign policy advisors, I really need you to help me think through these issues as I run for president." And that's when it even becomes more intense.
Gary Ginsberg:
Ormsby-Gore comes to Washington in '61. He immediately starts having dinners with the president on a regular basis. One dinner, he basically says to the president, "You got to save my government from falling." There was an issue in the Congo involving the UN. And Kennedy listens to the explanation for a few minutes over dinner, picks up the phone, calls Adlai Stevenson and has a complete reversal of policy.
Gary Ginsberg:
And he says, "Listen, I got David Gore here. He wants us to do x, complete reversal." And there was such faith and there was such trust in each of them that he was willing to do it just because Ormsby-Gore asked him to do it. Luckily, it didn't involve US interest so he could do this abrupt reversal. So, by the time the Cuban missile crisis starts in '62, that's the logical person to ask.
Gary Ginsberg:
He's been meeting with the EcComm, but Ormsby-Gore hasn't been read in yet because he's a British ambassador. And Macmillan by this point is aware of the presence of these missile sites. He brings Ormsby-Gore now on a much deeper level and tells him what the decision has been ... the decision's been made and says, "Let's argue it out." They spend the afternoon of the 20th of October discussing whether it should be a blockade or bombing.
Gary Ginsberg:
You actually played a clip of that speech that Monday night. Part of what Ormsby-Gore did with Kennedy both in the afternoon of that Sunday and then that night was talk about how he should present it to the American people, and worked on that speech with Kennedy. The next night, Tuesday night, he goes back to the White House to have dinner with Kennedy and then retires to the long gallery for a long night after the dinner where they discuss the intricacies of how they're going to impose a blockade.
Gary Ginsberg:
And Ormsby-Gore, without any instructions from US government, looks at the plan and says, "Jack, this perimeter at 800 miles is dumb. We should move it to 500 miles to give the Russians more time to decide whether they really want to break the blockade or not." And sure enough, that blockade was moved from 800 to 500 based on Ormsby-Gore's observation and brilliance in recognizing that it was a smarter move to give them that time.
Gary Ginsberg:
He also, I think, was so present during the remaining days of that crisis that I think there was a lot of resentment towards Ormsby-Gore because of the unique relationship he had with the President. But it was really important to Kennedy to have that familiarity and that intellectual bonding that they had. And also that rigorous debate that I think helps sharpen Kennedy's view about how to approach an adversary.
Gary Ginsberg:
The debate about how a leader should react to his electorate really plays out the next year in '63 with the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty. Kennedy really grows passionate about disarmament because of Ormsby-Gore. Ormsby-Gore starts negotiating with the Soviets in the '50s as a member of the Foreign Ministry of Britain. And he becomes a big advocate for a limited Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty. And he's been pushing Kennedy, as I say, from really the early '50s when he starts in the Senate to take it up as a cause, and he does.
Gary Ginsberg:
And in '62 after the success of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy has a lot of political capital that he can use and he decides, "Okay, this is the right time to go for something as pacifistic as a test-ban treaty." Imagine, the Soviets just basically tried to put missiles 90 miles off the Florida shore and now Kennedy is saying, "It's time to start limiting our nuclear threats."
Gary Ginsberg:
And he starts moving down that path. He then takes a step too far and the Republicans start blasting him. And he's now afraid that he is going to lose the election in '64 if he continues to argue for a Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty. And it now calls right into question that debate about what is the responsibility of a leader.
Gary Ginsberg:
He knows it's the right thing to do. But now he's saying, "Well, if I push this test-ban treaty in '63 and the Republicans are successful in exploiting it as a sign of my weakness in the face of Soviet aggression and I lose the election, then the Republicans are in power and we'll never have a Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty. So I'm better off not doing it."
Gary Ginsberg:
Only because of Ormsby-Gore and forcing Kennedy to confront his conscience and what he knew to be right, Kennedy ultimately agreed to go forward even with a political risk of losing the election. It was a bold and courageous decision by Kennedy. It ultimately did get the public's approval in part because of the way Ormsby-Gore and Kennedy talked about it.
Gary Ginsberg:
The fact that Kennedy became the evangelist and chief for the measure, it was signed into law in August of '63. It was the signature legislation that Kennedy passed and it was really the beginning of the end of the Cold War. It was the first major step toward the end of this aggression.
Josh King:
The end of the Ormsby-Gore story really takes us finally into the years that I think you and I remember well. He dies in a car crash in 1985 during the Reagan years, ironically, after he's been interviewing potential Kennedy scholars. The ties between the family stayed incredibly close with David actually asking Jackie to marry him in 1967.
Josh King:
And because you and I are also familiar with the Lem Billings' route and the Dave Powers' route, very different friendships, but was Ormsby-Gore at all involved in the Dave Powers, Mimi Alford world of JFK?
Gary Ginsberg:
No, not at all. He had a very happy marriage with his wife Sissy, as far as I can tell, completely devoted. Kennedy had a very compartmentalized life. This was not part of Ormsby-Gore's interactions with him. In fact, he married very young. Ormsby-Gore married during the war. He married Sissy who was a great friend of Kennedy's sister, Kick.
Gary Ginsberg:
As far as I know, it was a really clean, intellectually-driven, shared love of golf. And as I say, fast talking and debate and just reveling in each other's minds and personalities.
Josh King:
Again, sort of plot twist that makes your book so riveting is not really discovered until much later until these government's satchels of Ormsby-Gore are discovered I guess after his death and talks about how his relationship with Jacqueline Kennedy and featured Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis continued. What happened there?
Gary Ginsberg:
So, in 2017, his family, just as you say, they found a trunk full of documents. They found a lot of letters that were exchanged between David and Jackie. At some point in 1967, Sissy had died in the spring. They go in the fall to Angkor Wat. They may or may not have had a romantic relationship. I think some say they didn't. Some say they did. I think Ormsby-Gore, in one moment, acknowledged that they did. I don't know how serious it was.
Gary Ginsberg:
But clearly, there was a very deep emotional relationship between the two. Remember, the two couples spent more time together than any other couple during the 1,000 days of his presidency. So, when Sissy dies, he's lonely, Jackie's very lonely. They spend time together. At some point, he does propose to her. We know that from the letters. But Jackie, in a letter, that was part of this trove of letters discovered says, "Look, David, I can't marry you because we share too much pain and hurt. And if we're ever going to find happiness, we have to do it apart."
Gary Ginsberg:
It was an incredibly touching and mature response to Ormsby-Gore. She then goes on to marry Onassis. He then goes on to marry a Vogue Editor living in Britain a year after Jackie marries. But they stayed very close friends. And as you said, at his funeral in 1985, there is Jackie quite upset. I spoke to Ormsby-Gore's daughter Jane. And she talked about the sorrow that was etched on her face at her father's funeral. He died very young. He died at 66.
Josh King:
I got some of my first teaching in presidential history from the comedian David Frye doing his Dick Nixon imitation. And on those albums, Bebe Rebozo's never spared as the butt of Frye's routine. But in another book that you and I both have on our shelves, The Haldeman Diaries, there's the matter of $100,000 and $100 bills that Howard Hughes gives to Bebe.
Josh King:
From these absurdist screenings of patent over multi-martini dinners at Camp David that you write about to the slush fund created for Haldeman and Ehrlichman, what's the legacy of Bebe Rebozo as first friend?
Gary Ginsberg:
Yeah. But for Watergate, it would be the silent partner right who is just there for Nixon to relieve him of his dark brooding moods. But because of that $100,000 loan which was more like a bribe and because of the slush fund, we will always remember Bebe Rebozo as Nixon's bagman. And that's just the shorthand but unfortunate truth of their ultimate relationship.
Gary Ginsberg:
If you talk to people, and I was fortunate to be able to talk to a very close Nixon family member who did not want to be disclosed, he played a really important role in Nixon's emotional life. There's no question about it. I mean, they were best friends from 1950. And this curious first outing on Rebozo's boat where Rebozo finds him a total bore and thinks it was a disastrous outing. And Nixon writes to him and says, "I loved it, let's do more."
Gary Ginsberg:
They end up spending just ungodly amounts of time together relaxing in Key Biscayne or San Clemente or Camp David. Rebozo was the anti-Nixon. He was not intellectual, didn't want to devour books, never went to college.
Josh King:
His work was owning carwashes.
Gary Ginsberg:
Yeah. He was a Pan-Am steward. So he knew how to serve really well. And he's served burgers and martinis. Good company. He could interject with just the right quip to get Nixon out of his brooding moods. I think I mentioned in my book how a Secret Service agent was listening to their conversation and got worried at one point because an hour gone by not a word was disclosed when he peered in to the state room and realized they were just staring out at sea, not saying a word to each other.
Gary Ginsberg:
And this is from John Dean. And so John Dean goes and asks a Secret Service agent who would walk behind them in San Clemente, said, "What do they talk about?" The Secret Service agent in California said, "Sit down. They don't talk about anything. They just walk in silence." But again, the presidency is a lonely job. And sometimes just the physical presence can help give stability to a president and give him comfort.
Gary Ginsberg:
But Rebozo at the end of the day was a flawed man. There's no question because he couldn't say to Dick Nixon ... when Nixon comes to power, as you used noted in the Haldeman Diaries, he immediately sees enemies. And he immediately starts in on his nefarious schemes to kill his enemies and to promote himself. And he brings Rebozo right into all of the schemes. And Rebozo, as a great friend, should have been able to say, "No, Dick, this is wrong. You shouldn't be doing it. You don't need to do it. You're the president of United States now for God's sake."
Gary Ginsberg:
But no, he aids and abets everything. And I believe and I write in my chapter, I think it was that $100,000 loan that ultimately led to the breaking of the DNC at the Watergate and led to Nixon's downfall, ironically. So this friendship, one could argue had a direct causal relationship to the downfall of a president.
Josh King:
We're coming finally to this relationship that I witnessed firsthand. The only one that you chronicled that includes a person of color, the friendship between Bill Clinton and Vernon Jordan. Here's the former president at Jordan's funeral earlier this year, March 9, 2021.
Bill Clinton:
Vernon used to joke with me about whichever one of us survived the last would have to take the other one's back. We'd have to take care of each other with a service, say all the right things. It's a wager. I felt ambivalent about prevailing it. He said, "You know, both of us had quite a lot when we were really young and the real danger is by the time we get around to leaving, nobody will actually remember what we did. And we're just at the mercy of whatever the needs of the moment are."
Josh King:
This has to have been the most fraught chapter for you to write because Bill Clinton did prevail in that way that Vernon certainly took some secrets to his grave and the former president was the only living witness to all of the relationships that you write about in your book. And he sat down with you to talk about his friend.
Josh King:
So, take us through how you reconcile this complicated friendship. As you write, "If Bill Clinton's presidency had ended after one term, his friendship with Vernon Jordan would be a relatively straightforward story for the history books." And the next 13 pages are going to end your book.
Gary Ginsberg:
Yeah, it pained me. I'll be completely honest with you because I'm loving writing this chapter. It's so much fun for me whether it was the scene at the new home in 1981 when he talks Clint into staying in the game or going to Bilderberg in 1991 and awakening Clinton to his promise on a global stage. Or 1992 helping him pick a vice president or assemble his cabinet. Or in 1993 staying up all night with him when Vince Foster dies, staying up really till the sunrises as his consoler-in-chief. The moments that they spent on the vineyard, the substantive advice he gave him.
Gary Ginsberg:
I mean, it's a really lovely story of a man from the first public housing project in Atlanta, son of a postman, son of a caterer who builds this incredible business in Atlanta, rises to become the most powerful connector in the country, and the best friend of the President United States. So, I'm writing the story and I'm loving it.
Gary Ginsberg:
And then, you just get to December 1997, God, why did it have to take this turn? Why do I have to cover this? I didn't want to. It was painful. But of course, you cannot tell the story of this friendship without telling the story of Monica Lewinsky and the president because he unfortunately and unwittingly becomes the center of it.
Josh King:
In your discussions with President Clinton, did he talk about from December '97 on?
Gary Ginsberg:
Very little. And I, of course, wanted to get as much material as I could. So I held off on some of the Lewinsky questions till the end. He did talk about it. He talked about it in the context of their final dinner in the White House which I thought would be the end of the chapter until Vernon died. Vernon died on March 1st. I didn't have to close the book until about two weeks later.
Gary Ginsberg:
So I was able to include some of the comments that I quote what you just played. But I was able to get a fair amount of material from other people. I think it's pretty clear to me now that after he confessed to the relationship in August of '98, he did this dispatch, Vernon Jordan to talk Hillary out of leaving him. And I think that was emblematic of the trust that he put in Vernon to do that really important, messy work.
Gary Ginsberg:
And I think the relationship may have suffered. I think that it's clear to me that they never really had a come to Jesus conversation about how Clinton allowed Jordan to get into the center of that scandal. Because the reason why Vernon was able to testify that he didn't know about the relationship is I don't think he did know that it was a sexual relationship. I think he suspected it, strongly suspected it. But he was smart enough to never ask Clinton and Clinton was smart enough to never tell him.
Gary Ginsberg:
But Clinton does have Betty Currie call Vernon Jordan to get Monica Lewinsky a job. He had done that for a Webb Hubbell in 1993. Monica knew that Webb Hubbell had gotten a job from Vernon and said very shortly to the president in the Oval Office ... now imagine, she's a former White House intern. She says, "Bill, I think she called him Bill, "you need to get me a job. And you're going to get me a job through Vernon Jordan."
Gary Ginsberg:
So Vernon starts meeting with this woman and he ministered to a lot of kids. A lot of people got their jobs and their entrees through Vernon Jordan. So it wasn't unusual for him to do it. So he does it. And of course, when Betty Currie is calling on behalf of the president, you do it. That's what a first friend does. And then, of course, he ends up right in the crosshairs of prosecutors who think he's getting her a job to basically get her out of town and cover up the relationship.
Gary Ginsberg:
And so he spent 20 hours in front of a grand jury. And I think I used the phrase verbal jujitsu to get himself out of it. But he was able to because I don't think he ever really joined the question. And I think Clinton felt really guilty about it because it caused a real tension in the relationship that I don't think was fully talked out until that late night conversation upstairs in the White House.
Josh King:
$10,000 bottle of wine.
Gary Ginsberg:
$10,000 bottle of wine which Clinton laughed about when we talked about it last summer. I don't think he even appreciated it and Clinton doesn't drink as you know. So I think Vernon did most of the sipping out of the bottle. But I think that night, they finally came to an understanding that Clinton didn't intentionally try to put Vernon in harm's way.
Josh King:
Vernon is the one friend in this book I think whose life is most closely connected to the New York Stock Exchange. His book that he wrote Vernon Can Read and the episodes that Malcolm Gladwell did about his relationship with Donald Hallowell speak volumes about the man that he was. But as it relates to the NYSE, this fact in your book stands out, a director at Bankers Trust and Xerox and concurrently, a director of Monsanto, Callaway, Revlon, Dow Jones, occupying if you add it all up a total of 6% of all black board seats at the time.
Josh King:
Forgetting what happened in those two years from '97 to '99, what's to make of this man?
Gary Ginsberg:
An extraordinary man. I mean, we both knew him. I met him in 1992 during the vice presidential selection process, and like everybody fell in love with him because of his charisma, his attention to you. And I was a nobody, but he just embraced everybody, those who were powerful and those who were powerless. And he just had a twinkle in his eye that just made you melt in front of them.
Gary Ginsberg:
The book Vernon Can Read is one of the great biographies I ever read. The first interview I had for this book was actually in the summer of 2018 when I went to see if he would cooperate for the book. And he said, "You know, Gary, I stopped Vernon Can Read in 1992 for a reason. I'm going to tell the story of my friendship with Bill Clinton, nobody else." And I wish he had been able to tell the story. But he unfortunately took ill in 2019 and then obviously couldn't write that book.
Gary Ginsberg:
But I think anybody who knew Vernon recognized the huge role he played in integrating boardrooms across this country. Vernon was such a force in the boardroom, outside the boardroom, as an advisor to CEOs, as a great ambassador to the constituencies of the companies that they cared about, and just a shrewd observer of human beings and what motivated them, understood boardroom politics, understood Washington politics, and could overlay that into boardroom discussions.
Gary Ginsberg:
Yeah, I think the country's lost one of the great figures of our time, and obviously just a great civil rights icon who did so much for the cause.
Josh King:
We started this conversation with this musing that I had on what if we knew as much about the first friendships of CEOs like Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos as we do the nine friendships that you've chronicled. But you have been in the room with iconic CEOs like Rupert Murdoch, Jeff Bewkes, and Masa Son, how did their first friendships steer their business outcomes?
Gary Ginsberg:
Well, with Rupert, most of Rupert's friends actually came from his business. There were a couple from the outside who would sometimes you would hear their voices expressed through conversations that Rupert would relate. But by and large, he relied really on his lieutenants inside the office. He did talk a lot to other CEOs to get ... he was the ultimate gatherer of intelligence. He had his fingers on the pulse of everything and everybody across ... every continent on this planet.
Gary Ginsberg:
But he really entrusted his senior aides with big decisions and took a lot of counsel from those who were right around him. I didn't get the sense that there was an outside friend that played a dominant role. Jeff Bewkes, he had a couple of really good friends who he would invoke from time to time. But he too I think relied primarily on his senior staff for most of his decision making.
Gary Ginsberg:
Masa interestingly, I did present once to him on a plan I wanted to institute. And there was somebody at the end of the table, a Japanese friend of his who basically just tore apart my proposal. And I'm looking at him. He doesn't work in the company. I don't know who he is. And he's basically destroyed two months of preparation. And I found out later that he's an old friend of Masa's who he totally trusts.
Gary Ginsberg:
So I saw unfortunately that impact right then in there. But I think that CEOs are no different than presidents. They too need that same respite, that same blunt talking to, that same emotional release. And I think CEOs like presidents usually are better for having someone like that.
Josh King:
You chronicled these nine relationships in your book. For now, we'll absorb fully First Friends: The Powerful Unsung and Unelected People Who Shaped Our Presidents and look forward to your next book, First friends of CEOs. Thanks so much for joining us, the New York Stock Exchange and inside the ICE House.
Gary Ginsberg:
Thank you for having me, Josh.
Josh King:
And that's our conversation for this week. Our guest was Gary Ginsberg, author of First Friends: The Powerful Unsung and Unelected People Who Shaped Our Presidents now out from 12th, an imprint of Hachette Book Group.
Josh King:
If you liked what you heard, please rate us on iTunes so other folks know where to find us. And if you've got a comment or question you'd like one of our experts to tackle on a future show, email us at [email protected] or tweet us @icehousepodcast.
Josh King:
Our show is produced by Pete Asch and Ian Wolff with production assistants and editing with [inaudible 01:14:22]. I'm Josh King, your host, signing off from the library of the New York Stock Exchange. Thanks for listening. Talk to you next week.
Speaker 1:
Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified, neither ICE nor his affiliates make any representations or warranties, express or implied as to the accuracy or completeness of the information and do not sponsor, approve or endorse any of the content herein. All of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes.
Speaker 1:
Nothing herein constitutes an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy any security or a recommendation of any security or trading practice. Some portions of the proceeding conversation may have been edited for the purpose of length or clarity.
