Moving the Needle

David Gergen: [00:00:00] Well, if you think about it, I, I graduating from Harvard Law School with honors, and within less than a month, I was down on my hands and knees with a toothbrush cleaning with the train in the Navy. That was my introduction,
Christopher Gergen: the humbling experience, and also not quite understanding your way around an engine room.
Jonathan Holifield: Welcome to season two of Moving The Needle, A podcast with change making leaders who are driving big ideas to address economic inequities and opportunities in our communities. This is Jonathan Holifield, and today's show is a special episode. My co-host, Christopher Gergen, was joined by his father, David Gergen, for a public conversation leading authentically in a fractured world.
Held at the renowned Carolina Theater in Durham, North Carolina, David and [00:01:00] Christopher drew on lessons they have learned through their respective leadership journeys. They explore the power of authentic leadership and collaboration, illuminating themes such as trust, mentorship, intergenerational relationships, and the spirit of service.
So, without further ado, I'm pleased to bring you David and Christopher Gergen discussing leading Authentically in a Fractured World.
Christopher Gergen: Alright, it is such a privilege and pleasure to be here with you all, uh, here in the Durham community. We're gonna be talking quite a bit about Durham, given the fact that we've got a Durham native here, uh, and a Durham resident, proud Durham resident.
Uh. And we're just also so happy to be here in support of the Durham Public Library and all of the great resources it provides. I'm here to be glad to be here with, uh, my wife and our son, who is a sophomore at [00:02:00] Riverside. And it turns out that Durham main library is like their place to hang out. Uh, so, which is pretty cool, uh, that this next generation is embracing the resources of the library.
And, uh, we're just so pleased also to be, again, among this community that really feels like a homecoming. And in that spirit, I wanted to share that in life's journey. Uh, we have our ups and downs, we have really great opportunities and we have some challenges. Um, one of the things we wanted to share is that my dad's been recently diagnosed with early stage, uh, dementia.
And the reason I mention that is because we know we're among friends and in this great community. Uh, and also because so many of us have loved ones in our community who have struggled with this disease before. And rather than hide it, uh, we thought it's important to talk about it, put it on the table, and recognize the fact that among my wife's sort of favorite, uh, authors and, uh, somebody who's here in the Derham community that, uh, life is hard.
Life is so [00:03:00] hard, but life is also so beautiful. Uh, and it's in that spirit that, uh, I'm so grateful that we are here together in this moment in time with this community. Um,
dad, any word of, uh, sure. Thanks and gratitude before we get started.
David Gergen: Well, I do want to echo your, your thoughts and praises. It is really like coming home for me. If you come back to this community, to this area. Uh, to see many of you that I haven't seen in years, but I'm very grateful to be here at all. Um, but I'm particularly grateful to be here and I hope I can do your justice.
I'd like to have you walk out of here feeling like, oh, I learned something, or I didn't know that. And it's helpful to help in the process of trying to heal this country. It's so important that we begin to have conversations before the elections, not after the elections. And it help us understand each other and heal the wounds that are already there.
I do want [00:04:00] also, um, Christopher, I want to say, you know, the Gergen family has been in this community for well over 90 years, not unlike Bill Witch's family. And there four generations, uh, have come through here starting in the 1930s, and it's been continuous. All the way through. So Heather and Liam Christopher's Kiss and wife are here.
Where, where are the Stand up and make sure people can see you. I can't see you.
Christopher Gergen: What a 16-year-old
you. Great. So, uh, so let's get started and, and we're gonna frame this up a little bit. Uh, as Robin mentioned, this is a conversation about leading authentically in a fractured world and. We wanted to sort of break that apart a little bit. Uh, we'll be talking about where we are, of course, in today's society, thinking about it within the context of the presidential election that's coming up, the gubernatorial election that's coming up, but [00:05:00] also just thinking about how we are facing some of the divides that are within our country and, and frankly globally.
But then importantly. Thinking about leadership in that context, how are we preparing next generation leaders? How do we think about our own leadership? How do we think about our own community engagement? What are the ramifications for here in this community in Durham? How do we think about it in the context of North Carolina?
How do we think about it nationally? And so we thought it might be helpful to think a little bit about leadership journeys. And, and do it through the path of, of my dad's leadership journey and some of the formative experiences in particular because one of our shared beliefs is that leadership, uh, often has its early imprint when we are young.
Uh, and we have experiences that really shape who we become, which is all the more reason why the role of the Durham Public Library and, uh, Durham Public Schools and everything else in this community are so critically important. And so we're gonna start there. Especially specifically, we're [00:06:00] gonna start here, uh, in Durham, uh, growing up in the 1940s and fifties.
I'd love for you just to reflect a little bit about what this community has meant for you, uh, in terms of your own foundational elements. Well, you
David Gergen: know, it's interesting that, uh, we often learn as much through our failures and our mistakes, uh, as we do through our successes. And you, you have to pay attention to that.
I had one of those rude lessons early on when I was here. I used to want to be a baseball player. And, uh, in fact I often worked with John Jernigan who went here to school and was also the head of the North Carolina Bar Associ the issue. He was my catcher. I was a pitcher and I was pretty good early on.
And over a six month period, I grew about six inches and I totally lost control throwing the baseball I tried out for the high school baseball team. And we held the tryouts in a gym because that day, the first day it was raining and I had a catcher. It wasn't, he would've resisted this, [00:07:00] but any event, first two or three pitches we're fine.
They're okay. My fourth pitch, totally lost control. The ball that I threw. Went through a window on the second floor. I decided then and there I was not gonna be a baseball player. And I never let anybody see me throw a baseball ever since, no matter what the circumstances are. But I did, uh, have fun memories of, uh, Durham High School, Durham Car Junior, and then Durham High School.
I remember Bill Wier and I were talking about the fact we both had the same person teach US physics in high school. His name was Bunting. He was also our baseball coach. You can imagine what kind of teacher he was on electricity. He had us stand in a circle holding hands, but he was gonna generate electricity.
By turning the wheel really fast. And the question was, who could stand the dead electricity longest? And that person was gonna be the winner for the day. And [00:08:00] Coach Bunning, he was having this circle and he'd start doing it, and everybody was sort of looking like this. Then it got faster and fed. I remember this to this day, formative experience, but I'll tell you what I miss were the days I was in the last segregated class at Durham High.
And I didn't understand race at that point. And, and the very, very family, McKissick family took it upon themselves to get the doors open. McKissick had been here for four generations too. He's here in the audience here tonight. And you know, they did wonders for this community. We were not doing well. I didn't know Floyd McKinsey, but I personally had the honor.
I'm working for Terry Sanford, who was our governor. I was assigned to work with something called the North Carolina Good Neighbor Council. That was something. Terry set up groups of men and women, blacks and white leaders, various communities, and [00:09:00] I was a fellow named David Coltrane, who ran the North Carolina Good Neighbor Council for Terry.
David had been old Hardhead segregations, but he had a conversion. And he became very ardent integrationist to deal with the racial problems. I got a chance over three summers to work regularly. He didn't have a staff. I was his staff, I was his driver, his communications director, his policy person. I was supposed to be doing it.
It didn't work out as easily as I suggested. There was a time, frankly, Christopher, when I thought I was not gonna make it out. I thought we might well be murdered on the scene, but we were in a very rough place together. Um, another fellow and I named Russell Richie, who's a very dear friend and went to high school together.
We went to a rally called KKK Rally, and there we were surrounded by these really angry folks who were just awful. They were vile to us, but we got into our car to leave and got out and got away from 'em, and they [00:10:00] jumped on our car and they started dancing on the roof. And they were rocking the car and saying, we're gonna teach you never to come back here again.
And we were surrounded, we must have been 300 people surrounding us, yelling at us, beating up on the windows and everything like that. And I turned to our driver and said, I think his name was Jim N. Turn on the ignition and drive very slowly, but drive and get, we gotta get through this. And he did that and they started parting the ways and we got to toward the end of that and we said, let's speed up, let's go.
We got out on the highway and they followed us. These Klansmen followed us in cars, yelling and screaming. It was a, it was a really tough go, but it taught me a lot. And I, I think some, I made a mistake and was responsible, and that is, I should have understood how angry the Klan would be, that somebody with their territory, mm-hmm.
They saw this as their territory. Who were you to come in here, we're gonna teach you a lesson. And you know, frankly, we shouldn't have daunted them like that. But we've learned a lot since, and I [00:11:00] will forever be grateful to the McKissick family.
Christopher Gergen: Let me connect also historical dot on that one, which is that you mentioned you were in the class of 1959.
Yeah. Uh, graduated spring of 1959 in the last segregated class. The fall of 1959 is when Joycelyn McKissick Floyd's sister, enrolled as a senior in Durham High School in the first integrated class. So when Floyd and I connected on this a few years ago, it was such a neat connection of family histories and family connection.
Joyce subsequently graduated in the. Spring of 1960. So then the immediate year after that was the first integrated class of Durham High School, which is really interesting. Alright, well let's keep moving now. Sure. From Durham, there's so many stories that we could go on and on about growing up in Durham off of Nation Avenue, right where the old Foursquare used to be.
Uh, and. Well, at one point, let me just tell one really quick anecdote on this one, Heather and I said, early days when we were here, uh, that we're gonna take my folks out to dinner, and we went to [00:12:00] Foursquare and my dad walked into Foursquare and said. Oh my God. This is where the two spinster sister used to live and this house is haunted and they used to come and, and get these two sisters really wound up and they'd start shooting guns off their front porch.
And the stories that come from this, we could go on for hours about
David Gergen: stories. It was unfortunately very true. The sisters had a fairly big piece of land and the path, get to the bus, uh, which was about a block and a half away, ran through their yard. Anyway, they used to hide by the tree, and you'd be going up there to catch a bus and they'd jump out from it too.
Scare the hell outta you. But you went on at the, the reward was, in those days, if you went to the Movings, it was not exactly an expensive proposition. Nonsense, nonsense that got you in.
Christopher Gergen: Yeah, that's great. All right, so let's, uh, let's keep moving. So you graduate from, uh, Durham High School. Yeah. You end up going off to college and to law school.
Uh, and [00:13:00] when you come out of law school, um, it was the late 1960s. Yeah. I felt I'd never get out by that point. You'd met mom, which was neat, and you set off to go to the end. It was perhaps the worst match of talent to need within the military, which they got him in as a engineer in a ship. For the least technically competent person I know on their face.
Uh, you just have enough people.
I have met plenty of people that have a lot more competence, dad, but we've got talent in other ways, which fortunately found its way to the right places. The Navy did prove to be a formative leadership experience
David Gergen: for you. Well, if you think about it, I, I graduated from Harvard Law School with honors and with less than a month.
I was down on my hands and knees with a toothbrush cleaning the train in the Navy. That was my introduction.
Christopher Gergen: A humbling experience and also not [00:14:00] quite understanding your way around an engine room, but the Navy actually provided, again, not only some immediate formative experiences for your early career, but your commitment to veterans to this day, including serving as one of the co-founders to with honor, which is dedicated to trying to recruit veterans.
To then run for Congress with a particular commitment to bipartisan cooperation. And, uh, it's a, the reason I've surface is 'cause this is exactly what our country needs. And we're gonna be talking more about this, but can you share a little bit more about your thoughts on a, your experience in the Navy, uh, and also your commitment to continue to support veterans, especially within political leadership?
David Gergen: Yeah. Well, I'm gonna say that I have come to believe that serving in the United States military is an honor. And frankly, I try to encourage young people, you don't have to serve in the military to serve. There are many different ways to serve. And if you don't want to be in the motor theory, that's fine.[00:15:00]
The main thing is try to give back to the country, try to give back to your community. And if you do that, you know we'll all be a lot happier in the long run and so will you. 'cause you'll have more purpose in life. Uh, I came out of the Navy feeling like that was a community. It was a tight knit community.
And some of the people that I became most attached to were the enlisted. Most of 'em had just finished high school. I had one suicide. But there were some tough times with that, but it was a really, really good experience to have. And so I'm a champion of the whole idea of a call to service that can't do the military.
Think about what FDR did in that first four years of his presidency when we were in the middle of the depression, and he, that's when, in his first year in office, and April was his first year of office, he issued a call for service. For young people, young men, in those days, young women didn't serve in this way they do today, but his [00:16:00] call was for people to serve in the Civilian Conservation Corps.
He issued that call in April by midsummer. There were 2,500 young men and forests and parks around the country, refurbishing things, rebuilding and polishing up and so forth, and everybody gave at least a year. And for that, they got a chance to get, they made a little income, they had a place to live, they had a job and it, and they were very grateful.
It was the most popular program in the new Deal and service job was the most popular job in the New Deal, and I think we ought to be moving in that direction again. The governor of California, Gavin Newsom, has been pushing very hard on this idea of national service. Wes Moore, who's a favorite of mine, a black guy who is now governor of Maryland, he's been pushing on national service.
There are a growing number of people in in positions of some authority who believe in this. And I think the time has come [00:17:00] to, we're gonna have to change the culture before we change our politics. We're not gonna do it just by going into the ballot box. There's gotta be a real effort made to try to establish relationships across boundaries, across lines.
Christopher Gergen: That's great. 'cause I think, again, within the spirit of, with honor Yeah. Uh, it is in that same spirit by which, uh, these candidates are getting selected. Yeah. And that they're ultimately making a commitment, right. In their own service to, yeah. I happen to
David Gergen: be chair of the advisory board for this, and what we've set it up for with honor is if you, you can join with honor if you're running for Congress.
As a person who believes in bipartisanship, you have to sign a pledge. Before you can come in that way, but we only take people whom we think we can trust to do that, to be good civic citizens and good leaders. And we've got about 30 people in the House of Representatives now have come through that process.
And what we do is we try to look for people like that and then we try to persuade them to get involved to run for office. And if they run for [00:18:00] office, we help them get a team by how to build up their team. How to deal with donors, how to do all the inner workings of it. And some really good people have come through that program.
This fellow, Adam Col Kininger is one of the latest do that. Mike Gallagher is a Republican doing that. So it's possible to do, uh, and I think something like what John Gardner did after he left LBJ in the sixties, John Gardner was a wonderful man. And he set up common cause and it was beckoning people from all across the country to put down their differences and put their shoulder to the wheel and get this country back on track again.
And Gardner was pretty successful at it. And even today as common cause is no longer the powerhouse that it was even today there 1.5 million Americans who are signed up with common cause. So it can be done, but it's gotta be done with energy. It's gotta be done with passion and purpose.
Christopher Gergen: Yep. One of the things, uh, that, uh, we have talked about in the context of leadership development [00:19:00] is actually a great quote by Howard Thurman, who was the dean of the Howard Divinity School.
Uh, and he says, don't ask what the world needs from you. Ask what makes you come alive and go do that, because we need more people who are alive that's interesting and committed to that purpose and that passion. Uh, and the concept around this is that in within the context of with honor, one of the values is courage because it takes a lot of courage to buck the trend of what's happening in our national political environment right now.
And you've got 15 Republicans, you've got 15 Democrats who are committed to this, and it requires an enormous amount of. Fortitude and courage. Yeah. To be able to, again, buck these trends and it's gonna be what we're gonna need to be able to see through. Yeah. A time of,
David Gergen: I, I believe Christopher, um, after this election is over, there's gonna be anger in the country.
Somebody's gonna lose and they're gonna be angry. They're gonna think it was taken away from whatever it is. There's a whole bunch of excuses and everything [00:20:00] like that. It's gonna be hard to get through this process. The next two or three years I think are gonna be very bumpy. But I can tell you if we do this well now there are a good crop of political leaders coming up through the system today who often are, are governors or mayors who are gonna be, who are the bench for the Democratic party especially.
But even for the Republican party, uh, this is true. And I think in 20 28, 4 and a half years from now. What you're gonna see is the real chance for the pendulum to go back the other way, because people like Whitmer, who's the governor now of, of, of Michigan, a woman who is first class possibility, a former, a woman who was a former governor of Rhode, uh, west Moore, whom I mentioned who is, and um, Maryland, who he West Moore is, is I think, the best politician I've seen in the last 25 years.
Now, maybe he'll stumble. Maybe there are things in the closet. I don't [00:21:00] know that. But at this moment, he's the most promising person out there.
Christopher Gergen: So you are an advocate in your new book, heart's Touch With Fire about looking forward. Yeah. And we're gonna be spending some time looking forward. Uh, but also in your book, eyewitness to Power, you talk about being really a, in the front seat of a lot of presidential leadership.
Yeah. Um, having served four different administrations, four different presidents. Uh, learned a lot about different leadership styles and thinking about what's effective, what's not effective, uh, where are their shadow sides, uh, how do those play out?
David Gergen: Yeah.
Christopher Gergen: So help us understand that. Contextually, if you think back on the four presidents that you've served, can you showcase a couple of really good leadership examples, uh, where you thought, Hey, this is something we can learn from and build on, and then here's some things that we've learned from in the past that we should make sure we avoid.
David Gergen: Well, I, I, I must tell you, I think anybody looking at my record would say it was somewhat mixed in terms of the service. I actually [00:22:00] started, I came into the White House in the Watergate and left the White House in Whitewater.
Hard to do that, but I did learn a lot from this list. There surprises, you know, take Richard Nixon, Richard Nixon. Was was the best strategist that I've ever seen in public life. He's a person who could go up on the mountaintop and look into the future because he had thought a lot about the past. He was like Churchill.
He had least spent a lot of time thinking about the lessons of history. He, in the morning, sometimes when he was talking to Pat Moynihan, who was then working for him as an advisor, they would compare notes on the, the top German generals of the First World War. And so Nixon was a great strategist, but he had demons inside him.
That he had never learned to master, to take under control. And the result was that he self-destructive as he told David Frost the BBC reporter [00:23:00] after Nixon left office. Now Frost said, what happened? Mr. President, what happened to you? And Nixon said, I gave my enemies a sword. And then they ran me through.
And boy, that was really the truth. You know, Jerry Ford was a very different kind of president. Thank goodness he was a healer and I think we should be grateful. I think he's one of the people that looks better and better through the rear wind mirror. Looking back at his time. I'll give you a quick story.
Jerry Ford produced some of the worst speeches, political history. They full of sentences with one syllable. He was a dear, dear man, but his speeches left something to be desired if he were sort of wanted some intellectual channel. So things ended. Everybody went their own way. I went my way after his presidency and about three or four months after he became president, I got a call one day in my office from his secretary or his assistant saying, president Ford's got a draft of his speech.
That he has to give in about a few days time, [00:24:00] he's asked if you would please read the speech and give him your thoughts, and can you do that before tonight? I said, sure, I'll put everything aside and do that. I read this speech and Ford called me and I could tell he was puffing on his pipe and I heard him chuckling, but he said, David, I really want you to read this speech.
What do you think? And I said, Mr. President, this is a wonderful speech. It's full of interesting ideas. It's nuanced. It's got three and four syllables, maybe even more time. Everything about this speech is Mr. President, are you calling me? 'cause you want me to rewrite the speech and put it in your language, you know, make sure it looks honest with you.
He said no, no, David. He said, I just have to tell you, this is the first time I've ever had the chance to write my own speech and I wanted to see what you thought. And I said, oh, Jesus, thank goodness I didn't go overboard.
So [00:25:00] Reagan, I think, uh, I've not as conservative Colonel Reagan, but I'm a believer in his leadership and I think he cared deeply about this country. He had a great sense of humor. He was really, uh, there's much about Reagan that I admire. I was there when he got shot. And you know, I was supposed to be with him.
I was supposed to be in that little entourage, but something happened in the office and I decided to stay in the office, and I missed by that punch. But he had such a respect for the office of the presidency When he was shot, they took him back in the limousine and the press was standing over here. Here was the limousine.
Here was Reagan. And Reagan had to get from here to here. And before he did anything, he put in his coat, straightened himself out, and walked across this barrier where there were flashing pictures of him. It didn't look like he was having a time of the day, and when he got to the other side, when the cameras were no longer able to see him, he collapsed and he came with about that much time.
You know, the [00:26:00] bullet was about an inch away. So there's much about that. And Bill Clinton, I listen. Can I pause you on Reagan real
Christopher Gergen: quick? Sure. Because I think also one of the interesting things that we have talked about in the context of teaching and other context is also. Reagan's sense of timing. Yeah.
About when to advance a given policy. Yep, yep. Uh, in terms of the nation's readiness. Yeah. And from a leadership perspective, you've gotta sort of navigate that. You've gotta understand when is the right time to be able to advance.
David Gergen: Yeah. Some skills are instinctive and there are people who are much more effective because they are distinctive.
You know, it was Al when he died. Dugal was not great because he was in France. Dugal was great because France was in him. And the same thing was true of Reagan. A lot of good things about Reagan came from inside him. And he also had a good sense of humor, I must say, as good as anybody. I'll tell you a brief story about that if you give a minute.
So, um, [00:27:00] there's so many stories about Reagan that are. Well, I'll tell you one. Jim Bakker, who was his chief of staff, my judgment Bakker, was the best chief of staff we've ever had in this country. The Eisenhower chief of staff became close, but nonetheless, Bakker really was really smart. And at that time, Bakker had in place at the White House a regime of what to do with GS that came in from the outside.
'cause if you're in the White House, in the West Wing, there's a steady stream of people who want to be thankful for you, what you're doing. They'll send you something to drink, they'll tell you something to eat or whatever. And you've gotta be able to drink it in one setting in order to keep it. So that took away about 5% of what people were doing.
So at any event, one day there's this coming through the front door. Bakker didn't know this, and Reagan didn't know this. There was a portrait, a baker had a friend somewhere in the world, in the United States had painted or taken a lot of time painting this portrait, and it was a big portrait like this.
And so I grabbed Mike [00:28:00] Di and we said, we gotta make something of this. So we took the portrait and put it in the closet because Bakker didn't know it was there. Reagan didn't know was there, so it's Reagan's birthday. And he and Nancy, when they went off to camp David, they would usually go into the diplomatic receiving room for a few minutes to talk.
And then they got, they'd go on a helicopter and go to Camp David. Uh, any event, Reagan and Nancy, we knew they were going down the hall and gonna go out to the helicopter. And we had gone, Mike and I went and take that portrait. And we covered it with, with, uh, wrapping paper. And took it down where Reagan was and said, Mr.
President Jim was running late, be asked us to come down and bring this because it's your birthday. And Reagan said, oh Jim, I'm so thankful. Can I open it here? Oh yes, Mr. President, you should open it right now. So he opens this thing up and it says, portrait of Baker.
He looking at us, looking daggers because he knows he's just been had moments like. Uh, that's [00:29:00] great.
Christopher Gergen: Uh, alright. You were going to Clinton. Yeah. But again, let's keep going to the idea of being able to find the right time and moments. Sure. In terms of leadership decisions. Yep. Courageous leadership decisions about things that may not be popular at the time.
Right. But, you know, you've got just enough of a constituency or you've been able to build enough momentum. Right. Uh, around a particular policy. Well, and how do you navigate that? 'cause I think that's relevant to pretty much every leadership experience that we've always I think
David Gergen: so. And if you really want to see it and, and work, you really have to look at the life of someone like Western Churchill and Churchill.
Churchill wrote courage, the single most important quality for a leader. 'cause without that, nothing, it was very, very persuasive. But Churchill was, you know, he was sort of read out of politics. He was in the wilderness for 10 or 12 years. He made some mistakes in the First World War and he was sort of banished from power and the only thing he was known for giving these tough [00:30:00] anti-Nazi speeches, but he kept warning the people in Parliament, the people in the country at large.
I. We've got to get our defenses in place. These are enemies. They're gonna try to kill us, and we need to be prepared for that. And it turned out that he was right. Everybody else had been wrong. And so he came back after being in the wilderness. He went from being a guy who was no longer regarded well to a guy who was terrific because he had courage and he had foresight about what was gonna happen.
And you can see that again and again and again. That the people are willing to take on the, you know, like a Liz Cheney is one of the most recent examples of that. That was a tough set of calls for her and her dad, who probably disagreed with much of what she said, was really proud of her. You were really proud that she stood up and had the courage to say something.
Christopher Gergen: Yep.
David Gergen: And say something important.
Christopher Gergen: Sort of the marriage of courage and integrity. Yeah, exactly. And character. Absolutely. Uh, and the other thing I would offer up in that context too is that, uh, the leadership models have [00:31:00] changed. For a long time it was leading others top down leadership. Right. I think we've now come to appreciate more and more the importance of interdependent leadership.
Absolutely. Leading with others. Finding ways to build coalitions, broad-based coalitions agree to be able to really have something sustain over time.
David Gergen: Yeah, that is very true. We always had the notion of leadership being some guy on a white horse coming into the crowd, standing for something and mobilizing people, inspiring people, and you know, let's go take Char and Leader.
People are gonna realize more and more that leadership is a group exercise. And really, really effective leaders. Leaders who, who, who work for the long term. You know, it's a little bit about what's gonna go on in getting people into college now. It's about looking for, what you're looking for in leadership in a team is you want somebody who can do this part of it.
The policy making really, really well. This part of it, to work with the outside groups, this part of it, to work with the nonprofits there. There are a lot of different kind of [00:32:00] adventures you have to go through. But it makes a difference if you can do it in a group. And extremely importantly, you have to have a, a serious modicum of trust in the people you are working with.
If you can't trust 'em, it ain't gonna work in the long run. Yep. Then you gotta be very clearheaded and you gotta be
Christopher Gergen: able to foster that trust. And
David Gergen: that can't be just verbal. It has to be, you have to show it.
Christopher Gergen: Yep.
David Gergen: You've gotta do some things that people say, ah, I can work for that guy, you
Christopher Gergen: know? Speaking of courage, it is now 1992.
Yeah. And Clinton reaches out to you about serving in his administration? Mm, he worked for three Republican presidents. Mm-hmm. Uh, and so that required some courage to be able to ultimately shift over to the Democratic party. It was not without cost, uh, cost associated with it. How did you make that decision and, uh, and why
David Gergen: it was easy?
This was the president of the United States calling for help. And I told him, Mr. President, I can't work with you [00:33:00] on campaign that's coming up because I don't wanna go and work against the people I just worked for and whose money I took. I'll help you become president, but I'm not gonna help you become a campaigner.
And he took me on that basis. There were some tough moments, uh uh, and I can understand that, uh, George Opolis, if I busted my tail for four years to put somebody in the White House, and first thing he does is put a Republican in charge, or at least giving a major role to, I can understand why a lot of Democrats were objecting to that.
It just happened that I'd known Bill Clinton and he was a friend. I'd known him for a long time, and he wanted help. And frankly, I thought that we need an effective president. It doesn't matter the difference what happens to me, really what matters is whether he can, well, there are too many important things going on in the world.
To have a somebody who's limping along as present.
Christopher Gergen: Yeah. I mean, it brings us to today. Yeah. Right. In the context of the fact that, uh, do you really want to go there? That was [00:34:00] sadly not very long. Yeah, not very long. We will spend, uh, just a couple of minutes, uh, on the current predicament that we're in. Uh, and as you talk about, you are a short term pessimist, long term optimist, and we're gonna turn our attention to the optimism that we'll follow.
This will return to. Regularly schedule hope. But we're gonna, we're gonna start just for a few minutes, uh, with the reality that we're in. Yeah. Uh, sort of the classic Stockdale paradox of realistic optimism. Uh, so how do we deal with this? Uh, you know, we are in, uh, a, a very divided, very difficult time. One of the questions that had been presented early on in, in, uh, one of the q and a, uh, questions that came forward is that there's a lot of meanness.
Uh, that's now present within our current political climate. Yeah. Uh, how do we navigate it? How do we think about it? Uh, do you see any, any sort of reason for hope?
David Gergen: Yeah, I do. I think, I think it's still within our grasp in the last few weeks for other reasons. [00:35:00] Uh, I've been trying to sort out my books. You know, I talk about a library, but any event, I, I've got over a thousand books.
That I need to do something with. I've been looking at them and a number of the books have come from the sixties and seventies, and there are books like Crisis and Democracy. This is in the sixties. Can we make it, you know, never been so badly divided. People are disillusioned. It goes on and on and on.
Those were quotes out of the sixties and seventies. People found the same agony back then that they now have. And so yet we came through that period and many of us believed that the sixties and seventies actually strengthened our democracy over time, that it brought a lot more people in. Women became much more powerful and appropriately so, people of color were able to advance more and more easily.
And all of that was very good. So lesson number one is don't give up. We're all exhausted. We're all tired. We're tired of the repetition, but good [00:36:00] God, you can't put it down. You just can't walk away from it. It's gotta be, keep working at it and eventually we're gonna get this turned around. It could come sooner rather than later.
It could come that bench comes off the bench and gets in the fray. Four years from now, I don't know when it's gonna come, but historically what historians will say is we've had maybe four to five existential threats to the country, to the republic. You know when Washington nearly lost the revolution, you know, Washington lost the first six out of eight paddles that, for which he was the commander.
He lost and looked very bleak, and he turned it around and saved the country. You look at when Lincoln went through, and that was another existential threat, it came very, very close to going under another existential threat with the Great Depression back in the thirties. And then on top of that, the second World War.
You know, we came very close to losing the second World War and you know, thank goodness we went in, when we did the Churchill talked us [00:37:00] into it. But if we came through these things before, we can do it again. This is a very resilient country. This is a very innovators, and we have a lot of strengths still left.
We were in a conversation with an academic earlier about the importance of ai, artificial intelligence going forward, and this person who knew quite a lot about what she was talking about said. You know, we're gonna, if we, we say three to five years ahead of the Chinese and others on this AI business, they're never gonna catch up.
We're gonna have a permanent advantage over it. Well, I don't know if that's true or not, but it's a hell of an interesting idea. But what I would suggest to you is there are a lot of things like that going on, but it's gonna take fortitude, it's gonna take courage, it's gonna take people stepping out and away from sort of, you know, my, my hope is that if the Republican party goes down.
That it will open the door for a lot of people to start talking realistically about the world. Uh, and that would be, I think that'd be, that would be really positive for the country. So I, I, I think it's [00:38:00] possible to come back, but it's also true if we don't attend to these issues, if we just let it slide along, it's often true.
The things that are bad, go wor get worse. From, yeah, there's a, there's a book written by a colleague of mine, Barbara Kelman, that just came out all from bad to worse. And it's the whole theory that, and she studied a lot of things in government and studied a lot of CEOs in the private sector and how many cases there were of people that were not good leaders.
And then, and then things went terribly wrong.
Christopher Gergen: Yep. I mean it feels, it really is a call against complacency. Yep. Absolute. This moment of time. Absolutely. Absolutely. Right where we can, no, we cannot be on the sidelines. Okay. Lemme ask
David Gergen: you this question. One of the big issues is the younger generation. The Wall Street Journal had a big piece a few days ago that said Gen Z, which are people born 1997, up to today, is the most disillusioned generation experts have seen in the last 40 or 50 years.
That's disquieting [00:39:00] more trouble ahead, so it could go either way, but we have a real shot if we're smart and consistent about it. If it's a steady hand on the tiller. We'll come to it. What do you think about that?
Christopher Gergen: Yeah. Well I think one where young people in particular are finding some degree of agency, at the end of the day, it's about learned optimism, agency feeling like they can make an impact.
It comes through local activities, local relationships, and feeling like they can get involved in something that actually will make a difference in the immediate community. Mm-hmm. And so while I think there's a lot of despair about what's happening at the federal level, yeah. Uh, there is. I think potentially more engagement and sense of possibility at that local level.
That's good. I think that's right. Um, where you can, and it may not just be political by the way. I think at the end of the day, people are finding a lot of possibility within the context of social entrepreneurship. Yeah. And launching new organizations that are gonna have a meaningful impact, right. Uh, both within the for-profit sector [00:40:00] and the non-profit sector about ways that they can actually change.
The context of our community. Right, right. Uh, and looking at different outcomes Yeah. Uh, that we're striving for. I'm engaged here with NC Biotech and my colleague here, Sarah Emh on some amazing stuff that's happening in North Carolina's bio economy, for example. And if you look at some of these sectors and some of the possibilities that are going on here, uh, you can't help but get excited about that.
And I think that's a way to get young people engaged in it. And I think, uh, being able to get more towards the service dimension that we were talking about earlier, looking at ways that we can increase opportunities for service and be able to help people create these types of boundary spanning leadership relationships.
Mm-hmm. Uh, and terms of possibility. One of the things that, uh, we've talked about, uh, is the importance of multi-generational relationships. Yes. Um, you know, as we think about, again, the future and we think about. This from a political context, we think about this from a relational context.
David Gergen: Yeah.
Christopher Gergen: We don't, I think, do a good enough job being able to foster [00:41:00] multi-generational relationships and be able to glean the wisdom from people who have been, uh, in the trenches, uh, for now generations, but also harness the energy that, uh, young people are exhibiting.
How do we get there?
David Gergen: Well, thankfully we haven't talked about too much about social media. A subject is, it's one of these things, you just tell us how you really feel.
The, uh, I, I think Christopher so much depends upon how you and your generation, you, you're the millennial generation.
Christopher Gergen: I'm the gen, I'm, I as, as, as a flattering as that is sadly, I, I am part of the older generation, let's
David Gergen: say. Let's put the react, like Liam's
Christopher Gergen: generation is who we need to be paying attention to on the millennial side.
David Gergen: Yeah. But the multi-generational issue is important. It is hard to solve because a lot of people no longer trust, [00:42:00] uh, folks in the other generation, you know? Gen Z does not trust people who are running things in Washington. They have a real disregard for them, and because they think they failed and it's, they, they charged 'em a lot of money and they, you know, if you're Gen Z, you've got the, the debts that built up.
You Choices in life are limited. Finding the job is really hard to do when people are, you know, coming outta college, you're getting jobs for $35,000 a year and you just can't make it on 35. Um, so it's no wonder there's a lot of people or generations Z are unhappy, but we've gotta find a way to bring them back.
I know this sounds like we have too much to do. We do have too much to do, but, but nonetheless, we can do more than one thing in one time, and I think to make a difference. If we could get people working on service projects together, [00:43:00] we have one of the country's, one of the world's best analysts for changing the world.
And you, especially through nonprofits, who's here in the Tonight in the audience? Tom Tierney. Where's Tom Tierney you? There he is right there. I'm his old friend who moved here from uh, he was in Cambridge and he recently moved here to chapel, I think Chapel Hill. Um, we're, but any event, one organization after another has approached him for help in locating CEOs who can run companies or run non-profits.
He's a leader of leaders and he makes a substantial difference in working with the younger generation
Christopher Gergen: and was able to actually help to, again, in the spirit of boundary spanning leadership, be able to leverage the. Wisdom and knowledge and experience of Bain to be able to channel that into the launch of Bridgespan, which has just done some tremendous work.
So in the context of mentorship and relationship, yeah, we've talked about service. Can we marry service and mentorship kind of [00:44:00] initiative? And it would be great, frankly, if we could get a state like North Carolina to really take the lead as we think about being able to establish a service-based agenda.
And be able to do more service based leadership that calls young people to service, but then has that mentorship component to be able to build those cross generational relationships.
David Gergen: Yeah, but I think you were really pointing toward the the importance of mentors. I think the mentors are out there. There are some positive things happening, but the interim generational conversation is not running just in one way.
It's a conversation. And people are talking back and forth to each other and they're conferring back and forth with each other. If we do this right and we work at the local level and the state level, especially with the nonprofit world and the innovators and entrepreneurs, the business entrepreneurs and the social entrepreneurs, if we can put this engine back together, but it's gotta be done, frankly, with a lot of honesty.
Christopher Gergen: A couple of things that we haven't [00:45:00] had a chance to talk about as we start moving towards wrapping up. As we think about setting tables right, and we think about the kinds of relationships that need to be built, we need to be thinking about that also within the context of racial and demographic. Yeah. Uh, table setting, uh, and to be able to increase the amount of representation, power sharing.
Yeah. Opportunities for ownership, generation of creation. We have a really important. I think mission before us to be able to figure out how we actually get to a place of inclusive growth in this country, in this community.
David Gergen: Listen, it's alarming to see on one hand what's happening now, what's called DEI, you know, diversity, um,
Christopher Gergen: equity and inclusion.
David Gergen: Corporate America was getting to embrace that. The idea that they had a responsibility to try to close the equity gap. They were getting better and better at that, and there was promise that was coming from that. Uh, and then, then alone came the, [00:46:00] the various kind of, uh, controversies we've had, and especially this, the uproar that's going on in American universities right now.
A lot of corporations are intentionally asking their chief legal officer to give them advice on what to do and to do it in such a way you stay within the Constitution as it's interpreted by the current court. Um, but you also try to take. You know, you try to preserve what you can. I mean, if we walk away from diversity, if we walk away from apathy, for example, we're we're gonna lose something.
Yeah. And you know, universities are faced with the same thing. The conservatives are now arguing that the universities are gone bankrupt in this country and that they're empty and they're terrible. I asked a number of people like Larry Summers, who was former president of Harvard, if you look at the top 10 universities in the world.
How many are American? And he said, he says there are about three or four now. [00:47:00] Sometimes they're up to five. There's nobody else that can challenge that. There's nobody else who can, who can do that. We have a lot of these kind of things going on that what's going on in healthcare. The world is in our wake over, you know, we're, we're doing very well on the research side of healthcare.
We've got some other issues, but. Nonetheless, we, we shouldn't abandon the ship on this DEI stuff. It is, it is, you know, we, we ought to be looking for ways to achieve greater equity. If we get greater equity, we're gonna have greater, frankly peace.
Christopher Gergen: Yeah. And as a colleague of mine, uh, and good friend and co-host of our podcast talks about, uh, it's about inclusive competitiveness.
Yeah. Right. How do we actually get to a place where we can continue to compete and drive, uh, some of the innovation that we've been talking about? And the only way we can do that is actually if we're able to include more people into that equation. Right. Um, so not only is it good for [00:48:00] peace, but I think it's also good for prosperity.
Yeah. Uh, in that same breath is we get ready to wrap up. One of the things that, uh, we've also talked about is the importance of studying the classic. And we talk about the fact that, uh, you know, when Socrates wrote the unexamined life is Not Worth living. Yeah. And we've talked a lot about the idea of the external challenges that we can take on.
Uh, but it's also about looking inward and being able to find a place of reflection and purpose, as we talked about earlier, uh, and really continue to wrestle with the things that are important in life. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. As you think about sort of. Your own journey, how has that played out and where have the classics helped to inform that context?
David Gergen: Well, I, I've actually been spending more time reading, I'm semi-retired now, so I've had a chance to do more reading and I'm trying to reading up on the stoics because I think they have an awful lot. The lens of this conversation, I, I [00:49:00] remember very distinctly one day getting on the Air Force one with Bill Clinton when he was flying somewhere and I was going with him.
And as we got on, he was walking up down the aisle and he came up upon Ted Koppel who was reading the book, and Clinton says, oh, Ted, I'm impressed. You're reading here. What? What are you reading? And, and said, president, I'm reading Marcus Aurelius. And Clinton said, oh, I love that book. I read it once a year.
And there, there are books out there now on the Socratic dialogues. There are people like out there about Epic TEUs. There are people that made such a difference as John McCain, for example, when he was shot out of his plane and he was coming down on Parachute, he writes that. He told himself, I'm entering the world of epic TEUs, and he was brutally beaten when he got down and he nearly lost his life in many ways.
But he kept something inside him alive. Yeah, he was beaten up, but he [00:50:00] kept something inside him. That's what man believed. You know, he gave advice to Clinton about how Clinton ought to handle Monica and uh, Clinton would just not hear that anymore. But nonetheless, I think people who have become wise and do believe in serving others, I think I have moved partway toward learning how to have a good life.
I see this with my wife a lot now. She meditates a lot and I think it's really made a big difference in her. A sense of what life is all about. Being willing to, you know, we're all gonna have a hard times, but you can embrace other ways of doing it and be grateful for what we have.
Christopher Gergen: That's a good place to stop.
David Gergen: Good place to stop. Thank you.
Christopher Gergen: Thanks so much for listening to Moving the Needle. [00:51:00] If what you heard resonates with your mission, do something about it. Leaving a rating and review and sharing our show with your network is definitely appreciated, but what we really want is for you to get involved and find a way to move the needle in your life and your community.
Jonathan Holifield: Moving The Needle is hosted by me, Jonathan Holifield and Christopher Gergen, editing and production by Earfluence Music from Bart Matthews and cover art from Devin Lewis Designs. We hope each episode introduces you to leading edge change makers informs you about what's possible and inspires you to action.
So let's get out there and do some needle moving shit.