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Mark Updegrove
154 Plays1 year ago
This is Move The Needle with Rob Kaplan, where we talk to people who lead, innovate and inspire. Today on Move The Needle, Rob talks with President of the LBJ Foundation Mark Updegrove about Johnson's legacy, and more importantly, what we can learn from him in today's world.
Mark K. Updegrove is a presidential historian and the author of five books on the presidency, including Second Acts: Presidental Lives and Legacies After the White House, Baptism By Fire: Eight Presidents Who Took Office During Times of Crisis, Indomitable Will: LBJ in the Presidency, The Last Republicans: Inside the Extraordinary Relationship Between George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, and, most recently, Incomparable Grace: JFK in the Presidency. He currently serves as the president of CEO of the LBJ Foundation and is a presidential historian. Earlier in his career, he was the director or the LBJ Presidential Library and publisher of Newsweek. He has interviewed seven US presidents.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Move the Needle'
00:00:05
Speaker
This is Move the Needle with Rob Kaplan, where we talk to people who lead, innovate and inspire.
Presidential Impact: Johnson vs. Reagan
00:00:11
Speaker
As a presidential historian, I would tell you my view is that the two most consequential presidents of my lifetime are Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan for almost diametrically different reasons.
Meet Mark Updegrove
00:00:22
Speaker
Today, Rob talks to Mark Updegrove, president of the LBG Foundation, about Johnson's legacy and more importantly, what we can learn from him in today's world.
00:00:33
Speaker
I first met Mark Updergrove when I was speaking at a Texas Tribune conference. Mark was also speaking and we were in the same waiting room and we started talking. I had recognized him from television and he had recognized me from watching me on CNBC and other programs and I started talking to him about the kind of work he
00:00:56
Speaker
does, did and does as a historian. The books he'd written, his great work at the LBJ Library, which I was aware of from a distance. I was really fascinated to learn a lot more about his thoughts and the research he'd done on presidential history.
From Advertising to Historian: Mark's Journey
00:01:15
Speaker
I'm thrilled today to be joined by Mark Updegrove. Mark is an author, historian, journalist, and is director
00:01:25
Speaker
president and CEO of the LBJ Foundation in Austin, Texas. Rob, thanks so much for having me.
00:01:31
Speaker
We're going to talk a little bit about your career. Of all the adjectives I just used to describe you, it might be fair to say in the first 18 or so years of your career after college, you were neither an author, historian, or a journalist. In fact, you started off in a different line of work. And I might ask you to talk a little bit about what you did after you graduated from the University of Maryland.
00:01:56
Speaker
Not much initially, Rob. It was very inauspicious beginning to my career. I started in New York City and worked for Book of the Month Club, which was then a very thriving enterprise. It shows you how long ago I started my career. And I was in the marketing department for Book of the Month Club. I went on to work for a couple of advertising agencies and eventually sold advertising space for Time Magazine when I was in my early 30s.
00:02:26
Speaker
That really started a period where a great excitement and growth in my career and I rose to the top of Time magazine. I ran Time's Canadian edition. I was president of their independent operation and edition north of the border in Toronto.
00:02:43
Speaker
And then went back to New York where I had begun my career to become publisher of
Directing the LBJ Library and Foundation
00:02:48
Speaker
Newsweek. So those were great heights in my career. I left Newsweek shortly after arriving there. It was not a good fit for a variety of reasons in my career. Was it a major crossroads?
00:03:03
Speaker
And I took a series of jobs that were not particularly satisfying to me. They were lucrative enough. And while I was doing that, I wrote my first book called Second Acts, Presidential Lives and Legacies After the White House. And that led to my second act as a presidential historian. And as you were embarking on that book, Second Acts, how long did it take you to write that book?
00:03:27
Speaker
You know, I did it in fits and starts because I would start writing and I would think, well, hell, you're not a presidential historian. You're not an author. And then I would go back to it. I really enjoyed doing it. And then I would because I had devoured books throughout my entire adult life to that point. Writing happened at nights and on weekends and on vacations. And even when I was commuting into New York City, I would be on my laptop writing a book.
00:03:53
Speaker
And I realized it was pretty darn good. Based on the presidential histories that I had read, I realized that it was well-written, that the tales were well told. I had nothing to apologize for, even though I hadn't written a book before. And ultimately, the book did really well and led to other books.
00:04:13
Speaker
So you're working at MTV, you finished this book, it had come out. Did the publishing and the success of that book, 2nd X, cause you to leave your job at MTV?
00:04:26
Speaker
No, it wasn't lucrative enough for me to do that, Rob. But it did get me looking into other things. And one of the things that happened by virtue of having written Second Acts is the National Archives and Records Administration reached out to me to see if I was interested in running the JFK Library in Boston. And while I find JFK fascinating and just wrote my last book about him,
00:04:55
Speaker
I just didn't want for a variety of reasons to be the director of that library. But I told them, if the LBJ library directorship ever becomes available, I'm
Presidential Libraries: Guardians of Democracy
00:05:05
Speaker
your guy. And sure enough, two years later, there was a vacancy. They called me. And that led to my becoming first the director of the LBJ library and then the president and CEO of the LBJ Foundation. There have been a couple of times in my career where I was in very new situations, new jobs.
00:05:23
Speaker
And yet when I walked through the door, I had a very clear vision of what I wanted to do. Everything fell into place. I can't explain that exactly. There were other jobs that I've had in my career that were better fits for me in terms of my resume. And yet I just didn't have the vision that I had with being the director of the LBJ library. Everything fit into place. And sometimes if I'm passion,
00:05:50
Speaker
will have that effect on you. It sounds like you really had a passion for being there in that seat at that time. Yeah, I saw the potential of the LBJ Presidential Library, both in terms of presenting the legacy of Lyndon Johnson and its relevance in 21st century America, but also using this institution as a springboard toward the future by having this robust public programming arm so that
00:06:18
Speaker
people in the community and those accessing the content through virtual means could understand the issues of our times as well. That's what LBJ wanted. He wanted a living, breathing institution that was forward-looking as well as preserving history of the past. What does a presidential library foundation do?
00:06:42
Speaker
All presidential libraries, at least those under the auspices of the National Archives, are public-private partnerships. So they are administered by the National Archives, but there is additional money and support that comes through the private foundation. So I've played both roles. At heart, though, Rob, presidential libraries are the repository of presidential records. Before there were presidential libraries, those records were scattered to the winds.
00:07:12
Speaker
They could be in the hands of the president or of administration officials, or they could be sold on the equivalent of eBay in previous times. There wasn't a central repository, and so that's what presidential libraries do. They keep everything in one place so that those records can be processed and accessed by the American people.
Johnson's Domestic Legacy vs. Vietnam
00:07:38
Speaker
We have a reading room here at the LBJ Library, as there are
00:07:41
Speaker
in other presidential libraries where you can work with archivists to access the records of the administration. At the end of the day, transparency is the hallmark or one of the hallmarks of American democracy and these presidential libraries embody that concept.
00:07:58
Speaker
You've also told me that you have a number of educational programs as well as research initiatives there at the library. There is a desperate need for more understanding of the way our government works. In so many ways, January 6th, 2021 was a failure of civics education.
00:08:18
Speaker
I think there are so many Americans who don't understand what it is to be American. What our common identity is, what are the central tenets to our country are. So there's a pretty robust civics education aspect to this too. And as I mentioned, there's a robust public programming slate that we do in any given time.
00:08:41
Speaker
You were saying that you wanted to be at the Lyndon Johnson Library, even though you had a chance to do JFK. What was it about Lyndon Johnson that you thought was so compelling and distinctive to you? He was so underappreciated. Lyndon Johnson, in my view, I'm now 61 years old. I was born in 1961. And as a presidential historian, I would tell you my view is that the two most consequential presidents of my lifetime
00:09:09
Speaker
are Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan for almost diametrically different reasons. But Ronald Reagan is fully appreciated. He's almost a demagogue in the Republican Party today, even though the Republican Party bears little resemblance to the party that Ronald Reagan led when he was president. But the image of Reagan is enduring and his record
00:09:30
Speaker
celebrated Lyndon Johnson not so much even though Lyndon Johnson's domestic legacy is as consequential today as the legacy of any president then certainly in my lifetime but maybe in the life of our nation the laws of the Great Society are not well known to most Americans today but most historians would tell you that Lyndon Johnson is in the top ten of all presidents I'm certainly one of them
00:10:08
Speaker
The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But most of all, the Great Society is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work.
00:10:36
Speaker
It is a challenge constantly renewed beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor. We simply don't meet our promise as a nation until Lyndon Johnson comes to the presidency with a very domestic, very ambitious, excuse me, domestic
00:10:58
Speaker
Agenda you we don't have all men are created equal this this promise of egalitarian liberty without the Civil Rights Act of 1964 you don't have huddled masses yearning to breathe free seeking admission into America's Golden Door without the Immigration Act of 1965 and you don't have a
00:11:20
Speaker
the full flower of our democracy without the Voting Rights Act of 1965. That's just a triumvirate of the many, many laws that Lyndon Johnson put into place that fundamentally change America in so many ways. And you made the point about him being misunderstood, that the Vietnam War, is that the primary reason and the protests related to it and the divisions it created, was that what undermined
00:11:48
Speaker
maybe part of his memory of his legacy? I don't want to suggest for a moment that Vietnam is an important part of Lyndon Johnson's legacy. And we now know that that was a foreign policy failure. It was a quagmire. It's not the only war we have lost. We've seen that that is not unique with the war in Iraq and to a large extent the war in Afghanistan.
00:12:13
Speaker
But it was the first, I think, really abysmal outcome that we had had in a war to that point. And it was Lyndon Johnson who escalated the war and frankly wasn't particularly honest with the American people about what was happening, what our prospects in the war
Johnson's Legislative Prowess
00:12:29
Speaker
were. So that is a rightful part of Lyndon Johnson's legacy and it's not something that we should
00:12:33
Speaker
shy away from talking about and exploring. But I do think that the bigger part of Lyndon Johnson's legacy is that domestic policy, particularly the fruition of civil rights, which he almost staked his presidency on. Again, you don't have the promises of America without equal rights for all Americans. It's at the heart of the American creed, and it's Lyndon Johnson who ensures that that happens.
00:12:59
Speaker
I know you've written about this and others have written about his tremendous legislative ability given his long career in the legislature. What was it about Lyndon Johnson that made him so effective as a legislator and the role of President of the United States?
00:13:17
Speaker
My third book was on Lyndon Johnson. It was called Indomitable Will, LBJ in the Presidency. And I tried to think of two words that encapsulated Lyndon Johnson, and it is his indomitable will. And that can look like many different things, just as Lyndon Johnson could look like many different people. One time, Bill Moyers, who was an aide
00:13:38
Speaker
to LBJ said Lyndon Johnson was 13 of the most interesting people I've ever met. And so his powers of influence to sway people, to bring him to his side of things.
00:13:54
Speaker
It could take many forms too. It could be flattering somebody or cajoling them or threatening them or promising them something. There were many different looks to what was called famously or infamously the Johnson treatment, but he had this uncanny
00:14:12
Speaker
ability to get people to vote with him. And that takes, I think, almost a certain kind of psychological ability. He could read people really well and know their motivations, but he also had a pretty canny sense of what their political situation was. So that gave him an ability to give them things that would help them politically in exchange for their vote on a particular bill.
00:14:39
Speaker
And I gather he had deep relationships that he'd built over many years.
00:14:44
Speaker
Yeah, and that was at a time too, a very different time in American politics where you could reach across the aisle with facility without being demonized or without being accused of compromising your principles. Compromise wasn't a dirty word. We didn't have ideologues in the halls of Congress for a variety of reasons. I think it was also, I talked to George McGovern one time, Rob,
00:15:10
Speaker
And he talked about why there was such a great bipartisan spirit, pointing to the fact that so many people who were in Congress at that time had been on the front lines of World War II together, and they saw what they could do together, even though they might be very different from different places in America, from different families, from different ethnic backgrounds, from different races even. They could do something big.
00:15:35
Speaker
and defeating the world from tyranny and saving democracy is no small thing. So when they got to Congress, those big, big issues they faced didn't seem so big and they knew what they could do by working together. I think that's one of the factors. Another one, and this is a big one, is that the media landscape was much smaller. You had just several networks and radio stations
00:16:04
Speaker
and magazines and newspapers. And I think the proliferation and fragmentation of media is one of the biggest challenges, if not the biggest challenge to democracy today. I guess I could ask you also, if Lyndon Johnson saw the situation we're facing with deficits, government debt,
00:16:28
Speaker
and also the 11 million undocumented immigrants, the debate over immigration. What do you think would be his advice, although he might be horrified by what he saw, what do you think would be his advice to this generation of leaders? Let me speak to a couple of those things and I can tell you what he might say if he looked at 21st century America.
00:16:53
Speaker
But it's interesting to note, Rob, that aside from Bill Clinton, who delivered a balanced budget, I believe in 1998, the only other president to do so in the last 60 years was Lyndon Johnson in 1968.
Fiscal Policies: Then and Now
00:17:09
Speaker
And there was a lot of debate about the excesses of the great society and these programs that are so expensive and that are debated today.
00:17:20
Speaker
But I will say that they were only moderately expensive relative to some of the government programs that we've put into place since that time. I think he would lament the fact that there are many things that he would lament today. I think in particular, the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, which was given his towering legislative legacy. It speaks volumes that his proudest legislative accomplishment was the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which, as I mentioned,
00:17:48
Speaker
allowed us to see the full flower of our democracy for the very first time. It has since been gutted for a variety of reasons. The Supreme Court decision in 2014 and some of the things, the actions that have taken place since.
The Voting Rights Act's Historical and Current Relevance
00:18:03
Speaker
Decentralizing power to the states has been detrimental to the Voting Rights Act, taking away some of the power of the Department of Justice to enforce voting rights regulations. All those things have undermined the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
00:18:22
Speaker
Bear in mind that the crisis that LBJ exploited in order to get the Voting Rights Act through was Bloody Sunday, that infamous march from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery, Alabama's capital, to demonstrate the need for voting rights. It was led
00:18:41
Speaker
by, very heroically, by John Lewis. And those marchers were roundly put down by Alabama state troopers, empowered by George Wallace, the governor of Alabama at that time, to thwart that voting rights demonstration.
Top U.S. Presidents of the Century
00:19:25
Speaker
you
00:19:41
Speaker
The American people saw this bloody scene play out and LBJ exploited that crisis in order to put the Voting Rights Act into law. So Alabama was enforcing its own voting regulations and in so doing was suppressing the black vote. And so the Voting Rights Act put together provisions that prevented those kinds of things from happening in individual states and regulating it at a federal level. You mentioned that Lyndon Johnson was in the top 10 presidents
00:20:12
Speaker
Who would you say in the last 50, 60 years are the top two or three presidents, or I guess in the last 100 years, who would you say would be the top two or three and why?
00:20:25
Speaker
If you look at the pantheon of presidents, the very highest tier, most historians and most Americans probably would agree it's Washington, Lincoln, and FDR. Probably not in that order. In my opinion, it's Lincoln, Washington, FDR. The first answer is FDR in the last 100 years. There's no question.
00:20:45
Speaker
that FDR, to my mind, is number one. The other ones who would round out the top 10, I mean, you've got Harry Truman, without question, Harry Truman belongs in the top 10, so does Dwight Eisenhower, so does John F. Kennedy, LBJ, we talked about, and I'd put Ronald Reagan in there as well. I think the only two, the only three in my lifetime, and our lifetime's probably, Rob, in my opinion, are JFK, LBJ, and Ronald Reagan, again, for vastly different reasons.
Crisis Management: JFK and the Cuban Missile Crisis
00:21:15
Speaker
What, what made them great presidents? In the case of John F. Kennedy about whom I've written, I wrote my last book called, Incomparable Grace about, about Kennedy and it's by no means hagiography and he had outsized flaws. But I think what, what JFK did, number one, he gets us through the Cuban Missile Crisis, which is I think the most dangerous hour in humankind.
00:21:40
Speaker
a time when we came closest to nuclear annihilation with a possible exchange of nuclear weapons between the Soviet Union and the United States. Kennedy very calmly with great equanimity resolves that crisis by not ever boxing himself into a corner and ensuring that there was a channel of communication between him
00:22:04
Speaker
and his Soviet counterpart Nikita Khrushchev, that's one.
Reagan's Conservative Revolution and Cold War Role
00:22:09
Speaker
But I think too, Rob, he enhanced the American brand. He was extraordinarily eloquent as we know from those great speeches that he made, most notably probably his inauguration speech where he said famously, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. And embodied this kind of,
00:22:31
Speaker
devotion to public service. So that incomparable grace that I referred to in the title of my book is something that Kennedy exuded during the finest hours of his presidency. And again, I think that did a lot to enhance the American brand abroad at a time
00:22:51
Speaker
when the Cold War, this almost death struggle between the Soviet Union and communism and the Western world was the dominant geopolitical issue. Ronald Reagan, for very different reasons, I think belongs in this category. First of all, he championed the kind of conservatism that continues to resound today, even if, as I mentioned, the Republican Party doesn't practice the same kind of politics or have the same kind of ideology.
00:23:19
Speaker
that Reagan had. I think he gets outsized credit for ending the Cold War. He certainly did not do that single-handedly. It was a series of presidents putting forth policies that would ultimately do in the Soviet Union, but he certainly helps to expedite that.
Modern Political Divisiveness
00:23:37
Speaker
And again, Ronald Reagan, the image of Reagan is enduring and for so many reasons, I think helps define what many people believe it is to be American.
00:23:47
Speaker
Let's go to the politics of today, which you knew I was going to get to. And, uh, obviously there's more part, it appears to be more partisanship. You mentioned that the media is so much more fragmented, uh, polarized. Have we been through something like this before, or is this just new territory? How would you assess where we are today and how can it be a, how can we address
00:24:14
Speaker
The current situation was so we can make more progress in this country.
00:24:18
Speaker
I'll answer the first question first, Rob, which is, have we been here before? And the answer is yes, we have. This might be unfamiliar to us. You and I, I don't think have seen anything like the divisions we're seeing today in our lifetimes, although the 60s were an extraordinarily divisive time. But there is a political divisiveness today that I don't think we've seen in the course of our lives. However, we have to remember
00:24:46
Speaker
that the whole notion of America is about celebrating our differences. The whole American experiment is around exercising liberty and using our own voices with impunity, believing what we want to believe in. So we are naturally divided. We have a two-party system in this country. There's a reason for that. We don't all agree on things, and we're allowed not to agree. There aren't penalties for that.
00:25:16
Speaker
So I think division is sort of a natural state, but the divisions today are far more pronounced than they have been in years and years and years. We are catering to specific segments of the American population.
00:25:32
Speaker
through far more politically charged news than we've ever had because of the fragmentation and proliferation of media. And I think we are worse off as a consequence of that. There is no central place to get reliable news that is the kind of mass property that we have seen in previous generations.
Fiscal Challenges Facing America
00:25:57
Speaker
When I look at the country today and
00:26:01
Speaker
A debt to GDP is up to 100%. Present value of unfunded entitlements is 65 trillion and growing. Our fastest growing demographic groups are lagging in terms of early childhood literacy, educational attainment. You know, we have a number of other issues, very challenging issues we face. What would you love to see in a president of the United States
00:26:29
Speaker
as well as other elected officials at the governor mayor level to address these issues.
00:26:35
Speaker
You began with fiscal policy, Rob, and me telling you about fiscal policy is like me trying to give a lesson to Babe Ruth on hitting. So this is really your bailiwick, your expertise. But I would say we have lost sight of fiscal prudence, and I think that's both parties, both Democrats and Republicans have lost sight of what it is to be fiscally prudent.
00:27:00
Speaker
Federal spending is way, way out of hand. We've got to think very seriously about domestic spending and what we are laying out, the programs that we're putting into place that are maybe beneficial to this generation of Americans, but that are going to hinder future generations.
Gerrymandering and Partisan Politics
00:27:24
Speaker
putting an enormous burden on future generations by the irresponsible, profligate spending that we're doing today. Why don't we seem to be able to frame broadly these issues or is it a matter that you've got so much partisanship and balkanization of the press you can't get your message out even if you did do it?
00:27:47
Speaker
I think that's very well put, Rob. I think that's exactly right. It is more and more difficult to do that because everything is politically charged in Washington. And I think if one party were to go along with another party on a particular bill, they could be demonized for doing so that there's a very different
00:28:07
Speaker
culture in Washington today. The culprit really stems from redistricting, from gerrymandering. That's both parties as well. There's no question about it. This is not a new thing. We've had gerrymandering for as long as we've had congressional districts. Everybody's done that, whether they're Republican, Democrat, and it doesn't matter. All political parties have
Youth Engagement in Public Service
00:28:29
Speaker
done this.
00:28:29
Speaker
The redistricting means that the districts themselves are more partisan. Exactly. They're safe for one party or another. They're these safe zones for Democrats or Republicans, and that has bred a sort of extremism in the primary process. So you get a very liberal Democrat or a very conservative
00:28:52
Speaker
Republican, and that's not good for our system. We need moderates that reflect most of the American population in general. 80% of Americans are more or less in the middle, somewhere in the middle. There are different shades of gray there, but you find very few hardcore liberal Americans and very few hardcore conservative Americans. When students come to you,
00:29:16
Speaker
And you get an enormous number of visitors to the LBJ Center, and you travel the country, and you talk to leaders. And people must ask you for advice, what should we do? I think you and I have talked about this, Rob. We're both concerned about the state of our democracy. So that's frequently the question I get, what can we do to bolster our democracy? And there are several things I would suggest to young people.
00:29:40
Speaker
I often suggest thinking about getting involved in public service. I've had the privilege of working as a government employee, and that's something that I very much wanted to do in my career. I had never served my country before, and in a modest way, I was able to do so as the director of the LBJ Library, which is a federal position. One of the things I found, Rob, is that
00:30:04
Speaker
I really admire most federal employees. I think they take the brunt of criticism very frequently, but I saw in my experience as a federal employee some very dedicated folks, and I actually had greater faith in our country and in our government
00:30:23
Speaker
by being a federal employee, so I would suggest strongly to young people to make some sort of contribution, to give back in some way.
Media Fragmentation's Effect on Democracy
00:30:32
Speaker
It feels good to give back to your country and it's the right thing to do. I would also encourage them to
00:30:41
Speaker
to seek elected office, right? To become part of our government. So those are two things. I think we need to listen to one another. That sounds cliche, but if somebody has a different point of view, in fact, if you strip politics and religion out of conversations with most Americans, it's amazing how much they will agree on. Yeah, I agree with that. I'll never forget, Bill Clinton told me one time, he said,
00:31:10
Speaker
He said, you know, you might not like your your mag and neighbor, but if your house is burning, he's going to be the first one with a bucket. So he's not wrong. There are good people who have fundamentally different political views. And we have to listen to one another and find as hard as it might be, find some common ground or these divisions are going to to continue to have this profoundly negative effect on our culture. So those are two things. I would also say finally, without
00:31:40
Speaker
getting on a soapbox here, I think it's important to try to seek news information that's not commercial. Because as I mentioned, you mentioned the bulkonization of our news. That's so well put, Rob. And I talked about the notion of engagement. What media properties do is they engage an audience by being provocative.
00:32:01
Speaker
in many cases, and sometimes that means purveying misinformation or disinformation to an audience. They want an audience so they can sell advertisers and garner revenue. That's just how the business models work.
00:32:17
Speaker
But there's some great public media out there that's offering very responsible news coverage. We have it in the PBS NewsHour or NPR. Here in Texas, we have the Texas Tribune seek out those providers of news information that are not commercialized, where you can get more dispassionate views on our news.
Corporate America's Role in Societal Change
00:32:41
Speaker
We'll ask you a couple of final questions. First, the role of corporate America. Any advice for corporate leaders who want to stay out of being blatantly political, but also want to make a positive difference? You know, I think being vigilant just as good American citizens, I give corporate America a great deal of credit. You and I have talked about this, Rob. In stepping up after the murder of George Floyd, realizing that change needed to happen in our country toward greater
00:33:10
Speaker
racial equity and awareness of racial disparities. They empowered their chief diversity officers and they diversified their ranks. You can't see, partly by the way, Rob, because it was good business. You can't find a commercial for AT&T that doesn't have an interracial couple or a gay couple or something. It is astounding to me what they did and it has had a profound effect
00:33:37
Speaker
on our country, just those changes that corporate America decided to make. But I'm still concerned about our democracy. I am hopeful though, when people talked about the possible collapse of our democracy, I am hopeful that corporate America in that instance, if we really saw a decline in our institutions,
00:33:58
Speaker
and our democracy at risk in in significant ways that corporate america by Consolidating its power could have an effect on ensuring That our democracy did not collapse that it was not compromised in any way because let's face it If our democracy is compromised so too is
Pursuing Passions and Mentorship
00:34:17
Speaker
capitalism. That's not good for any of us. Nope And again, I applaud what corporate and I know he'll be jay would applaud what corporate america did in the wake of the murder of george floyd
00:34:28
Speaker
I think you found various ways in your career to move the needle. First as an executive of media enterprises, and then you shifted and followed your passion, I think, to move the needle and make a difference in the world. In another way that maybe even has surprised you, what kind of advice would you give the people listening who also want to follow their passions, figure out a way to make a positive difference in the world?
00:34:57
Speaker
Any advice should give them personally on what what can they do if I'm talking to young people I would invoke a cliche do what you love the money will follow don't worry about the money now pursue what you have a passion for that again that sounds cliche but it depends on what you are doing one can figure out a way
00:35:18
Speaker
to make a difference. For business leaders, I would say mentoring is vitally important. If you have achieved success in your life and in your career, pass that on to younger folks, and in particular,
00:35:34
Speaker
At a time when we are truly I think making a concerted effort toward diversity and equity Look to those people who could benefit from your guidance who might not have gotten that a generation ago Those are the suggestions that I would have
Closing and Next Episode Teaser
00:35:49
Speaker
Rob. That's great advice Mark up to Grove. Thank you for being with us here today. Thank you for your service. Thank you for your leadership Thanks so much, Rob. What a pleasure it was having this conversation
00:36:05
Speaker
Next time on Move the Needle with Rob Kaplan. At first I thought it was strictly a money issue, but as I've learned more through a couple decades, I realized that the brain is really the last frontier in human health. Rob talks to Valerie Estes, who in the last 25 years has driven research in neurological disease after a sister was diagnosed with ALS. That's next time on Move the Needle with Rob Kaplan.
00:36:39
Speaker
Move the Needle with Rob Kaplan is produced and edited by Sam Zaff and Scott Richardson and I'm executive producer Renele Golden. We want to thank Michelle Brown and Zorik's team from Hello Studios for help with production and logistics. Do not forget to subscribe to Move the Needle wherever you get your podcasts and to Rob's YouTube channel. Until next time, this was Move the Needle with Rob Kaplan.