David Rubenstein, Part 2

Co-founder and Co-Chairman of the Board of Carlyle

Everybody will have setbacks, but it's persistence that really makes a great leader.

Summary

In this episode of Leadership Matters, David Rubenstein makes his second appearance on the show to discuss his new book The American Experiment: Dialogues on a Dream. A distillation of his interviews with a variety of historians, public servants, athletes, and entertainers, The American Experiment tells the story of the country's efforts to live up to the ideals of its founding documents and how that struggle has imprinted itself into America's national DNA.

David and Alan dive into some of the modern incarnations of this struggle, how business leaders can be better public servants, and the centrality of the American Dream to driving domestic innovation. David firmly believes that America is a country with much untapped potential — we just have to figure out the best ways to unlock it.

This episode builds on themes discussed by David in his first appearance on Leadership Matters.

Mentions & Resources in this Episode

• The American Experiment: Dialogues on a Dream - click here to learn more about David’s new book

• David Rubenstein Show on Bloomberg TV - click here to listen to the podcast

• Sidney Poitier - click here to learn more about Sidney Poitier

• Birch Bayh - click here to learn more about Birch Bayh

• The Giving Pledge - click here to learn more about the Giving Pledge

Guest Bio

Mr. Rubenstein is a co-founder and non-executive Co-Chairman of the Board of Carlyle. Previously, Mr. Rubenstein served as Co-Chief Executive Officer of Carlyle.

Prior to forming Carlyle in 1987, Mr. Rubenstein practiced law in Washington, D.C. with Shaw, Pittman, Potts & Trowbridge LLP (now Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP). From 1977 to 1981, Mr. Rubenstein was Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy. From 1975 to 1976, he served as Chief Counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments. From 1973 to 1975, Mr. Rubenstein practiced law in New York with Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP.

Among other philanthropic endeavors, Mr. Rubenstein is Chairman of the Boards of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Economic Club of Washington and serves on the Board of Directors or Trustees of the National Gallery of Art, the University of Chicago, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Johns Hopkins Medicine, the Institute for Advanced Study, the National Constitution Center, the Brookings Institution, the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the World Economic Forum.

Learn more, follow, or read David’s writing at DavidRubenstein.com.

Clips from this Episode

• On structures & reforms that America urgently needs to become a more perfect union

• On how we can create a more inclusive version of capitalism in America

• On what needs to be done by the private sector and the government to improve America

• On what we need to do in regards to those that do not embrace growing diversity in America

• On David’s upcoming book about America’s greatest investors

• On what excites David most about America’s future

Episode Transcription

Alan Fleischmann 

You're listening to Leadership Matters on SiriusXM. I'm your host Alan Fleischmann. Today, Leadership Matters has the great joy and pleasure to welcome back to the show an amazing leader, investor, philanthropist, public servant, and author: David Rubenstein.

David is co-founder and co-chairman of the Carlyle Group, one of the world's largest and most successful private equity firms with more than $290 billion in assets under management. A fellow native of Baltimore, David worked in the Carter administration before going on to found Carlyle. He's an extremely active philanthropist who has long championed what he calls patriotic philanthropy — giving money to support everything from preserving original copies of the Declaration of Independence, to repairing damaged for the Washington Monument. For David's second appearance on the show, we're going to focus on his work as an author and a prolific interviewer.

Last September, David published a book — one of his best — called The American Experiment: Dialogues on a Dream, which features his interviews with a variety of historians, public servants, athletes, and entertainers about the DNA of America and the forces that have shaped our national project. An instant New York Times bestseller, The American Experiment is a follow up to David's 2019 book, The American Story, and part of an ongoing series that distills his insightful interviews down to the most significant parts. David's book provides a thoughtful window into many of the challenges that have, and continue, to face the United States, but also our opportunities. I'm looking forward to hearing his thoughts on them. Welcome back, David, to Leadership Matters.

David Rubenstein 

Thank you very much for inviting me back.

Alan Fleischmann 

I am, you know, I am one of the lucky ones that get to count you as a friend, but I am also a fan. In life, you don't get to be a friend and fan too often, but I am that with you. You are extraordinary in all that you do. You even wrote this book, and you didn't dumb it down. You really wrote a book that lifted us up. And I was just telling you before we got the show started how my how my daughters, who are 17 and 15, read the book along with me over the over the holidays and how it really was helpful. We had a really deep and profound conversation about what the American Experiment is, where we aspire to be as a nation, and what we need to do to get there.

And you know, my brief description of your book in the introduction didn't do justice to what this really is. I'd love you to start by telling our audience what it's about and why you wrote it.

David Rubenstein 

Okay, first, I would say that any father that can get a 17 and a 15-year-old daughter do anything with them, really, is an expert in parenthood. So congratulations on that. The book is really designed to say what is America all about and how America diffs from other countries. For example, every country has its own DNA, in my theory. So if you're from Mongolia, Algeria, Germany, you would have certain parts of your DNA that just are part of your fabric. We have them in this country: belief in equality, belief in the right to vote, belief in the rule of law, belief in diversity, and so forth.

I listed 13 different parts of our DNA in the book, and what I tried to do was describe how this DNA has evolved from the time of the Declaration of Independence, the beginning of the creation of our country, through the Constitution, then through the modern era. And the Declaration of Independence has this wonderful rhetoric, as does the Constitution, about having the belief that all men are created equal, but we really haven't really had that kind of thing in the country. We've had fights over the years, about equality, other kinds of rights, and so forth. So I take people through this interviews, from people who have lived the American Dream, or people who have been involved in fighting for certain types of rights, or people that have written about these things. And so, it's really a story about America. How we've tried to live up to the rhetoric of the Founding Fathers, haven't quite done so, but have made a lot of progress since this country was started.

Alan Fleischmann 

The book’s introduction is framed around the coronavirus and the January 6 assault on the US Capitol. With those two events in mind, what's different about the book compared to the previous ones you've authored?

David Rubenstein 

Well, the first book I did was a book about American history only. It was basically a series of interviews that I had done at the Library of Congress. I have a program there where I interview great historians in front of only members of Congress. It’s designed to educate members of Congress about history, and it's worked reasonably well. We've been doing it for about five years. The second book was about leadership. I've interviewed on my Bloomberg peer-to-peer show an enormous number of leaders from around the world. I put those together some of the best of those interviews — Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Oprah Winfrey, people like that — then talked about what it means to be a leader, how one can be a leader, and how other leaders have overcome hardships.

This book is really designed to make people think about what it means to be an American, and how America has evolved. And obviously, we still have some challenges. I said in the book that we've had, throughout our history, a lot of what I'll call stress tests. The greatest stress test was the Civil War. But we've had other stress tests in my lifetime — the Vietnam War, Watergate, and so forth. 

In the past year, we've lived through two enormous stress tests. Stress test #1 was covid, of course, and stress test #2 was the offense on the election, and particularly, January 6. We overcame the events of January 6, to some extent — obviously, I think the election was won by Joe Biden, and Joe Biden was sworn in as president of the United States. So I think the system worked and the rule of law prevailed. With covid, we have developed vaccines, and the vaccines have been lifesaving. But clearly, nearly a million Americans have died. So it's not been a perfect response to the system. And we're still struggling through this, obviously, with Omicron. But just think: how much worse would it be if we hadn't had the vaccines?

Alan Fleischmann 

Your book also has some amazing stories. I'm looking at right now, as I'm talking to you, at the table of contents. Looking at the extraordinary variety and diversity of people that you chose, it must have been very hard to figure out who you wanted to highlight. How did you determine who, and are there certain stories that you highlight that, even for you, were awe inspiring?

David Rubenstein 

Well, anytime I interview somebody, and they don't get in the book, I say it's the publisher’s fault. I say, “I wanted to put you in, but my publisher didn't want you. And so please call the publisher and say, ‘we should have another edition just with you.’” The truth is, I interviewed maybe 70, 80 people for this book, and there's not enough room in these books for all those interviews — we can do about 30. So there's some that I just couldn't put in the book. Hopefully I'll find a way to put them out some other time. And that's just inevitable. You can't always get everything in the book.

In terms of stories, let me just relate one. You are too young to know this, but during my era growing up, we had to worry about the Vietnam War. Many people didn't want to go into the Vietnam War voluntarily — some did, but many did not. There were big draft protests and so forth. I was a student, I had a 2-S deferment. So I never really had to deal with it because I was deferred until my lottery number was so high that I didn't have to go into the military and go to Vietnam. But one young Jewish boy from New Jersey, instead of going to law school as his parents wanted or medical school, said, “I want to volunteer and to go into Vietnam.” And he did. And he became one of the two living Jewish recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor. And he did it because he saved a lot of his colleagues in a military confrontation with the Viet Cong. I wanted to interview him — his name is Jack Jacobs — because I wanted to ask him: why is it that somebody like you would say, “I'm prepared to give up my life to save my country and to protect my country? And I'm prepared to give up my life to protect my colleagues.” It's an interesting story. Why is it that people say, “I'm prepared to give up my life for my country,” but nobody says, “I'll give up my life for my school. I'll give it my life for my neighborhood”? What is it about a country, about America, that makes many people say “I'm prepared to give up my life”?

Interestingly, he describes it quite well. He said that he really felt an obligation to give back to the country and an obligation to help his colleagues who were under enormous fire. He saved many of them. He was injured dramatically, himself. And ultimately, after he recovered, he went back into combat again, which he didn't have to do. When he finally decided that he was ready to retire from the military. His parents said, “well, why don't you stay in the military?” He said, “no, I want to go to law school. I want to go to business.” They said, “no, you should stay in the military,” the opposite of what they had said 20 years before.

Alan Fleischmann 

That's an amazing story. But it also gets to what it is about America and the making of this country that really is special and unique, which I think you're capturing. You also did something which I thought was amazing: you put a poll in the book, which you commissioned, of around 2,000 Americans. So it wasn't just these extraordinary stories. You get the voices not only of those that you wanted to highlight — you interviewed 80, But you got only 30 in there, these pretty amazing people — but you also decided to go beyond that and get the voices of, I guess, the average man and woman. Tell us a little bit that poll because that was very insightful.

David Rubenstein 

Yes. I asked the Harris Corporation to do a poll of roughly 2,000 Americans, which will more or less give you an accurate description of United States, within, say, three or four percentage points. To my surprise, when Americans were asked, “what is it about America that they most like” or “what freedom do they most cherish,” It was their freedom of speech. The right to free speech was what most people said was the most important right to them. Now, obviously, other rights are important. But that was the one that came out. Very few people said that they wanted to leave this country. Most people said, well, while the country has its challenges, it's the best country on the face of the earth. And that's evidenced by the fact that more people come to this country every year as immigrants than go to any other country in the world. We have a country of 47 million immigrants in this country now — no other countries even close to that. And very, very few people leave this country voluntarily.

Alan Fleischmann 

I love that you put that in there, and there's so much to gather from there. You also note in the book, I think in the introduction, that America has never lived up to its ideals. It goes back to the conversations I've had with my daughters about what we're striving to do as America. It is that American Experiment, as you titled the book. What are the structures and reforms you think that we most urgently need in order to create a more perfect union? And how do we do it in a quicker way than we have handled it before? I feel there's an urgency there, and I think you do too.

David Rubenstein 

Well, right now we are going through one of those ways, which is the right to vote. It's generally recognized that if you have the right to vote, you have the right to exercise some power, you have some influence. The reason so many people want to vote is they think they can affect government. And the reason why so many people don't want other people to vote is they're afraid that those people might vote the way that they don't want them to vote.

And so, while we said in the beginning of our country's history that all men are created equal, the truth was, Blacks couldn't vote. The truth is that, if you didn't have property, you couldn't vote. And if you were a woman, you couldn't vote. So we've been struggling over the years. They let minorities, particularly freed slaves and then descendants of those freed slaves, vote. But also to let people who are not wealthy vote, and also let women vote. And now we still are engaged in that struggle, because right now, many people in the country recognize that the country is growing rapidly in the minority area. So probably by the year 2040, this country will be a majority-minority country — which is to say, more people will have minority backgrounds than white backgrounds. And that will be by the year 2040.

Many people are trying to arrest this impact on the electorate, by not letting people vote as much as I think that they should be allowed to vote. Now I think 19 states have passed voter restriction legislation. And obviously, the Congress is struggling with this as well. People recognize that the right to vote is the right to influence and the right to have impact. And it's one of the most important rights we have in our country. Sadly, though, not that many people exercise it relative to what you would think. In the last presidential election, we had about 62% of eligible voters vote. And that was a high percentage. Normally, you got about 55% in a presidential election, in non-presidential elections, you might get 20% of eligible voters voting. In many countries, you have 95% or more voting. We don't really exercise that right as much as we should. But sadly, that's not something we're going to be able to solve anytime soon.

Alan Fleischmann 

You know, I lived in Europe years ago, and I was always struck by the fact that election day was often on a Sunday. A day you went to church, and then you would go vote. There was a cultural push; it was almost a badge of dishonor if you didn't actually vote, you needed to vote. That's why the numbers are so high.

David Rubenstein 

Yeah, in some countries, it's really considered a matter of shame if you don't vote. In some countries, they penalize you if you don't vote. And I'm not talking about totalitarian dictatorships where 99% vote, but really, the vote doesn't mean anything. In other democracies, you have a much higher percentage. While many, many Americans have died protecting the right to vote for other Americans, it's surprising that we don't have a higher percentage of people voting.

Alan Fleischmann 

Part of this gets to, how do we use our institutions, not just public sector, but our institutions and civil society to actually get the word out? How do we appreciate where we've come in the past, but also have optimism and hope in the future, and show that voting is an essential right? That without it, we don't get to have the democracy we need, which is fragile?

One of the things that you that struck me about you as a leader — and we will will get into a whole conversation shortly about leadership — is that you have been extraordinarily successful financially and you've been a great philanthropist. What else strikes me about you, David, is you're very committed to actually leading as well. You've had some of the most extraordinary leadership positions as chairman of the board. And you don't do it as an honorific moment; you do it as really an action moment. You're really hands on, in the arena.

I'm just curious about those experiences, and you still have them now. You're preserving, I would argue, American institutions, things like the Declaration of Independence. You want to make sure that we've got the Smithsonian, we've got the Kennedy Center. So many institutions that you've chaired are not only thriving, but actively participating in showing us the way. Tell us a little bit about that, and a little bit about that role you're playing and why they matter. Why do these institutions matter in our culture?

David Rubenstein 

Well, philanthropy is derived from an ancient Greek word that means loving humanity — it doesn't mean rich people writing checks. So I don't really like the idea that when you say, “who are the greatest philanthropists in the country?”, you only list how much money somebody gave. What you give through your time, your energy, and your ideas can be just as valuable.

Volunteering is a very, very important thing. So in my own view, if you're going to be a good philanthropist, if you have money, fine, give it, but you should also give your time, energy, ideas, and efforts. So when I get involved with a philanthropic effort, I try to give my time and my ideas and so forth. So many of the organizations I've supported, I have been involved through becoming a leader of that organization. But I regard that as part of being a good philanthropist, which is to give your time and energy and ideas. And the institutions I've often been involved with — like the ones you mentioned, the Smithsonian, the Kennedy Center, the National Gallery of Art, the Archives — are organizations that I really think are doing a great job as national institutions, helping to preserve and enhance the culture of our country, which is so important. I really regard it as somewhat of a patriotic act to help these institutions. I wasn't a great soldier, obviously, I didn't risk my life in a war. There are other ways to help your country, I suppose. And I'm trying to help my country in this more modest way of being involved with the cultural organizations that help the country.

Alan Fleischmann 

You're listening to leadership matters on SiriusXM. I'm your host, Alan Fleischmann. And I'm here with an extraordinary leader, investor, philanthropist, and author, David Rubenstein, whose recent book, The American Experiment, is really one of his best. One of the best books I've ever read, actually. We're talking about that book, we're also talking about America and leadership as well. In your previous book, How to Lead, you offer some great insights to business leaders, but also leaders in general, about how to create change. We have an audience here that features many current and aspiring CEOs who are looking to take action themselves and need some direction, and they often ask for best practices. What would you say they could be doing more of to make sure that our exceptional country reaches its goals?

David Rubenstein 

Well, in that book on leadership, I talked about the qualities that I had observed, as a result of my interviews, of other people who are very distinguished leaders. Among those qualities is the ability to pick oneself up off the ground when you have a setback. Everybody will have setbacks, but it's persistence that really makes a great leader. So if you have a setback, or somebody tells you can't do something, persisting really makes a difference. Learning how to communicate with your followers is an important thing. Learning how to talk in a way that other people will follow, or write another way in a way that people follow, or leading by example — communicating with people. Also, it's also important to have a vision of where you want to go. If you're going to take people and lead people, you have to have some vision of where you're going to go. You also, in my view, should exhibit a fair amount of humility. We've obviously had great leaders that were not that humble, but the leaders that I tend to admire are ones that have a fair amount of humility about them. And I also think that sharing the credit is an important way of being a good leader. Those are the kinds of things that I observed in many of the most impressive leaders that I've ever interviewed or met.

Alan Fleischmann 

The humility part — allowing other people to join them as well. On keeping that American Dream alive: how do we create a more inclusive capitalism? You know, one of the things I'm struck by, in your role, your writing, your leadership, and the people that you are highlighting, is that you're not afraid to link that to have a democracy, we need to have an inclusive capitalism. It's also imperfect, but to have really strong capitalism, and we need to have a strong democracy.

David Rubenstein 

There are many weaknesses to capitalism. There's no doubt that capitalism is pretty good for people that are successful and at the top, and not as good for people who are left behind. That's one of the weaknesses of capitalism. But I don't think we should throw the capitalist system out because it's not perfect. We should work to make it better. And so, I do think that capitalism has created more jobs and greater wealth than any other economic system that has ever existed. But I have to recognize that, clearly, some people are left behind, and they're left behind in ways that are getting worse and worse.

As a result of covid, more and more people have been left behind. People that don't have education, people that don't have internet broadband, people that don't have childcare for their children have to stay at home and work, people who have been laid off who have blue collar jobs. Many of these people have really suffered dramatically as a result of covid. And the capitalist system hasn't really worked perfectly for them. But I don't think we should throw the whole system out because it hasn't worked perfectly. We should do a better job than we are doing now to help people at the bottom.

One thing I like to talk about — not because it's a good thing to talk about, it's a sad thing to talk about, but people should know this — many people at the bottom are there because they are functionally illiterate. About 14% of our adult population cannot read past the fourth-grade level. If you can't read past the fourth-grade level, you have a pretty good chance of not succeeding in life. And you have a pretty good chance of being in our criminal justice system as well. A large percentage of our population that is in the federal prison system, or juvenile delinquency system, are functionally illiterate. So if I could do anything to improve the economic status of people at the bottom, it would be to make sure that they can read better, really enjoy reading, and learn how to use reading skills to advance their lives.

Alan Fleischmann 

We just lost the great actor Sidney Poitier. I just saw one of the interviews that he did in recent years, and someone asked him what his greatest challenge was. How did he get into acting? And he said, “you know, I never dreamed of being an actor. Because I was a waiter, I worked in a restaurant.” And he wasn't even a waiter, he was the back kitchen, because he was functionally illiterate. And he confessed it to somebody else, an older Jewish man in the restaurant, that he could not read the newspaper. And that older gentleman spent two nights a week with him, and then increased it after he started showing progress, and taught him to read, which allowed him to read scripts, which allowed him to go for auditions, which allowed him to become Sidney Poitier. And I think about what you just said, because it's a very basic obstacle. If we can liberate ourselves and liberate our minds, we can liberate our lives, we just can't have that be an obstacle. It's a fault of the system, and there’s something to do here. 

David Rubenstein 

I agree with you. Look, with Sidney Poitier went out for an acting role early on his career. And it was clear to the people there that he couldn't read the script. So they told him go learn how to read, and he ultimately he did. It's a great testament to his persistence in doing it. And of course, he became an extremely eloquent speaker later on, a real role model for people.

Today, I would say that reading is part of the way of moving forward. But if you can't use the internet, and you can't really use computers, you’re almost like somebody 50 or 100 years ago who couldn't read. It's very difficult today to navigate modern society without some computer skills and access to a computer. And so, those people that are being left behind now are often people that maybe can read, but have no access to broadband, no access to computers, no access to what's going on around the rest of the world via the internet.

Alan Fleischmann 

Yep. How much of this do you think needs to be led by the public sector? By our, you know, our states, our mayors, our governors, and Washington? And how much — and I think the latter will be the answer too — how much needs to be done by the private sector? I write a lot and think a lot about CEO statesmanship, and you know, there are leaders coming up the private sector, not just because of the companies that they lead, but also because they can actually influence government. What do you think of that balance between public, private, and civil society?

David Rubenstein 

Well, government obviously provides leadership in broad areas. But as we know, government is often dysfunctional. And right now, it's hard to get government to do anything because the country is split down the middle on so many issues. The great changes that have occurred in society in recent years have come about, to a large extent, by private sector groups working on things. A variety of things associated with the internet, cellular telephones, and things like that came about through the private sector. Though there was some government support for sure, at the outset.

But I do think the private sector can make a big difference. And in the end, where is the greatest change in the world right now? Are people changing the way people's lives are effectuated by government fiat or legislation? Not so much. Their lives are being changed by private sector entrepreneurs coming up with new companies, new ideas. And that’s probably changing the world more than the government is. 

Alan Fleischmann 

Are there things that you would say the private sector could or should do more of? Obviously, you don't want to only put pressure on those in the private sector, but are there ways in which they can raise the bar a little bit and put more pressure on government? Obviously, we have to do the same thing from government.

David Rubenstein 

Well, I think private sector leaders increasingly should, I think, speak out on public sector issues. I think people used to say, “well, if you're CEO of a company, you only concern yourself with your bottom line.” But I think if you're a CEO of a public company, or even a large private company today, you should speak out on public issues and make certain that government leaders know what you think, make sure your employees know what you think, and try to take some leadership on these kinds of positions.

Today, somebody that runs a large publicly traded company probably has more influence than any senator or governor, because senators or governors are a dime a dozen compared to somebody that's running Apple, running Facebook, running Google, or something like that. Those people have enormous influence, much more influence today than our government leaders have.

Alan Fleischmann 

I was very struck by the diversity of the folks you've interviewed. I know I can’t count the 50 that I didn't get to read about, but among the folks that you interviewed, you really made a point to really capture all aspects of our greater American society. Diversity is one of the key genes that your book identifies in the DNA of America that makes it special. How has our country harnessed that diversity to become stronger? And how leaders, including listeners here on Leadership Matters, get involved in that and help further that along?

David Rubenstein 

Well, in the early days of our country, I wouldn't say diversity was an issue that many people focused on. Obviously, it has been in recent decades that people have increasingly said that, if we're going to represent society at the government level, or we're going to be a successful business, selling products to people who are of a certain background, we need to have some diversity. We need to recognize that everybody isn't an old, white male. You’ve got a customers and citizens who need to be heard, and 50% of them are going to be female, and then a large percentage of them are going to be minority.

In the early days of our country, all the power was held by white, Christian males with property. Now it's changed. And I think that's good, because it reflects society. How can a government be functional if it doesn't really represent all of society? And today, our society is much more diverse. I think many people in our country now accept the diversity gene as being valuable. In other words, if you're going to be successful in business, government, or any area of life, you've got to have a diverse workforce. You've got to have a diverse sensitivity to what's going on around the country. And I don't think that diversity gene is as popular around the rest of the world as it might be in our country. We are a polyglot country, we have so many different kinds of people from different backgrounds. Not every country has that.

So I'm not sure that diversity gene would mean as much in some parts of the world where you really don't have the kind of diversity that we do have. Obviously, other than gender diversity, everybody has gender diversity. And clearly, some countries are ahead of us on gender diversity. We've made progress in recent years. But interestingly, it wasn't until 1920 that women had the right to vote. And many women in that in era, as pointed out in the book, didn't want the right to vote. Many Southern women thought they would change the Southern lifestyle. Many people thought it would give power to Black women, which was something many white people did not want. So it took a long time before we actually got the right to vote for women. We started in, let's say in the 1780s, with the Constitution, and we didn’t give women the right to vote in 1920.

Alan Fleischmann 

What's amazing though, and a big challenge we have, is that there are parts of our country that embrace the diversity, who understand that America’s is an immigrant story, and appreciate it, and believe it's central to what makes America special. But there's a whole bunch of folks in our country who look at growing diversity as a threat. What do you suggest we need to do?

I know you've been a very big proponent in civic education. What do we need to do in order for people from all walks of life, in every area of our country, from urban to rural, to actually embrace that story? Because we're all immigrants, everybody had to be an immigrant to get here. But we've forgotten that along the way.

David Rubenstein 

Our country initially welcomed immigrants who were from England, and then maybe from Western Europe. France, maybe Germany, the Netherlands. But when immigrants started coming from Eastern Europe, from Southern Europe, who were Jewish, who were of Asian descent, we began to put up barriers. And in fact, in 1925, we passed legislation that made it very difficult for people other than people from Western Europe to come into this country. And that was the law of the land until 1965, when Lyndon Johnson got legislation through to change that.

Ours is a country of immigrants, for sure, but many people have forgotten that their forebears came here, and so they act like they were here forever. The truth is, the people who were here forever, we've kind of pushed onto reservations. When this country was more or less discovered by Western Europeans, there may have been as many as 100 million Native Americans throughout North America. Now there are 5 million, and because of disease and killings, that population is pretty much gone. Many people forget, as you point out, that everybody else is pretty much an immigrant to this country. And many people came relatively late to the game.

Another point I would like to make in reference to what you said is this. One of the things I talk about is the American Dream. The American Dream is a phrase that was invented in 1936, to describe the idea that you could work hard in this country, and because of merit and the merit system prevailing — at least if you were white — you could rise up and achieve something great. You weren't condemned to be living in the same economic and social status as you were born into. And that was the American Dream. And they're always examples of that. Abraham Lincoln coming from a log cabin to become president of the United States. That was the American dream.  

Today, many people who grow up in this country don't believe in the American Dream, particularly those of minority backgrounds. They think that the system is stacked against them. And so they've given up on the American Dream. The people that often believe in the American dream, ironically, are people from other countries, the 47 million immigrants we have in this country. Presumably all of them came because they believe there was something better here than where they were coming from. You don't see the same concept in other countries. You don't hear about the Mongolian Dream, the Algerian Dream, the Czech Republic Dream. Because in many of these countries, and I can cite many countries like this, you're born into a certain social status. And it's very, very rare to rise above it. Some people do, of course, but generally, it's not part of the ethos.

In this country, we've had this ethos, increasingly that immigrants accept, that you can rise up here and make something of yourself. More and more people of minority backgrounds in this country feel that that that American Dream is not so much for them anymore. 

Alan Fleischmann 

This whole idea of the DNA and genes, can you describe that a little bit, about what you mean by that in the book? Because I think that was extraordinarily clear and inspiring.

David Rubenstein 

Everybody has genes in their body. You have thousands and thousands of genes, they come from your parents and your parents got it from their parents. And we know all of this through the study of evolution and biology. And I tried to use it as a metaphor or an analogy, that saying that the country itself has genes, thousands and thousands of them as well. I distilled them down the 13, which I thought were the 13 most important ones. And I would say that they're in their body fabric.

For example, take the rule of law. In the United States, we do believe in the rule of law. Law, and the courts, are very important. When the Supreme Court of the United States ruled, by 5-4, that George Bush was going to be president of the United States, there were not riots in the streets. People accepted the fact that it was a Supreme Court, that there's rule of law, even though many people disagreed with it. And even Al Gore peacefully said, “look, I disagree with the decision, but I accept it.” That’s the rule of law. And the rule of law prevailed as well in the most recent presidential election. 65 cases were filed, saying there was voter fraud, and the cases were thrown out, because there had not been any voter fraud that could be actually described. The rule of law prevailed, and ultimately, the system worked. So I think the rule of law is one of the genes that is very important. Another one, for example, is the belief in the importance of voting. We talked about that earlier. People generally believe that voting does make a difference. People also believe in the importance of diversity and so forth, another gene. 

So I tried to say, there are 13 genes that are the most important genes. Obviously, other people could disagree. But I was trying to use the concept to say that, if you grew up in America, you have these genes, this DNA, that you're kind of educated about as you go through the education system. If you came to this country from another country, you might not have these same genes — though the belief in these genes being important in this country might have propelled you to come here.

Alan Fleischmann 

Are there any genes or DNA traits in other countries that you've noticed that we should adopt here?

David Rubenstein 

Well, every country has their genes. For ones that we should adopt here? I think other countries are doing a better job than we are on gender diversity. For example, you'll see in other countries, more efforts to get women on corporate boards, and more efforts to have women be more equal in terms of the compensation that they get for the jobs that they're doing. Every country has its genes that I would say are valuable. Take England, for example. England has a very important gene in the importance of learning how to speak well, write well, communicate well. People who are British, I think, take great pride in the language that they’ve developed. I think it's an important part of their gene to really be very competent in English, to learn how to read and write quite well and in an articulate away.

Alan Fleischmann 

I guess there's a there's a cultural element to that as well, right? As you were saying about voting, if it becomes the norm where people expect this of you, we can rise to that occasion, even when the systems don't work as well.

David Rubenstein 

Yes. Now obviously, in some countries, there are genes that may not be so wonderful. Some countries might have genes that say, “well, we have a dispute, let's take it out the military way, let’s have a fight.” And people might be killed as a result of it. In our country, I would say we've been a lot of wars, but generally, the country's predisposition is to try to solve things peacefully. But our history is, we've invaded many countries, for sure. And we've been in a lot of wars.

Alan Fleischmann 

You mentioned earlier that our country has gone through many stress tests. None has broken us yet, but we’ve had some real suffering here, most recently with the pandemic being what it is, but also, post-George Floyd’s tragic murder. What can we do to make our systems, our country more resilient to those tests? In a positive way, what do we need to build that up?

David Rubenstein 

Well, right now — just to deal with the virus — we had this so-called Spanish Flu in 1917, and maybe 35 million Americans were killed, we don't know for certain. It was an incredible disease, and at the time, people were told that no vaccine would ever be developed for it. And still there is not one for it. But we were told the three things you can do for it is socially distance, wash your hands, and wear a mask. And 100 years later, those were still the three really important things that we can do.

I think the United States government has done a reasonably good job of trying to deal with some of these challenges. It normally takes four to seven years to develop a vaccine. The polio vaccine probably took seven years, mumps maybe four years. It's very rare to get a vaccine in less than a year. But the government put a lot of money into the private sector, and we got a vaccine in less than a year. If we had not gotten this vaccine, I think multiple-millions of people would have died from this disease. We're fortunate that we have the vaccine, I wish more people would take it. That's a whole separate phenomenon that we can. But I think we are struggling with this vaccine dilemma. And we're struggling with the whole healthcare problem. And I suspect it will be another year or two before it's really behind us.

Alan Fleischmann 

You dedicated the book to “the public servants who protect our democracy.” Both as a government employee and as a citizen, you have placed a high premium on public service throughout your whole career. You made your name in the Carter Administration — I think I remember stories of you sleeping in the White House, if I recall, because you were working through the night. You've always been dedicated to public service in your leadership. What do you think public service will look like in the future? And what should it look like? I grew up after the Kennedy generation, but I grew up with this admiration, being inspired by the JFKs and the RFKs and their call for service. Even though it really was before my generation, and I embraced it. I know it's a big part of you. What do we do to re-engineer and re-inspire public service to our people?

David Rubenstein 

Well, in other countries, there is a commitment to public service. In some cases, you have to go into the military. Israel's a case where everybody has to go into the military as a way of doing public service. We've debated in this country whether or not we should have a public service commitment for a year or so for young people. I think it's probably unlikely that will actually happen — it's too complicated — but I do think everybody should voluntarily figure out how they can do something that's public-oriented public service.

I recommend to many young people, before they get into their major career, their money-making career, if you call it that, they should try some public service. Do it early on before you might be married, have mortgages and child responsibilities. Do something that gives back to the country in some way that you can actually think you've done something useful as a citizen of this country. In cases where you can't do it early on, do it later in life, when maybe some of your responsibilities have gone away a bit. But everybody should find some way, in my view, to try to give back to the country through some public service.

And it doesn't have to be just serving in government. You can do many things through nonprofit organizations and NGOs to give back to society. Everybody should say, “what am I doing to make myself valuable as a citizen? What have I done to justify my role as a citizen in this country? What more can I do” Every time I make a speech, at the end of my speeches, I always say to audiences: think more about what you can do to give back to the country. Try to find something that makes a difference, even in one narrow area. Just do something that that you can be proud of, your children can be proud of, and your parents can be proud of.

Alan Fleischmann 

I am struck by the fact that when something happens — like we saw recently in Boulder with the fires there and globally with the tsunamis — there is something extraordinarily philanthropic about America. And I'm not talking about the famous philanthropists, to your point earlier, but also just giving $25. People getting engaged. The numbers of people who do give has always been a part of the American Dream — or at least, that's how the rest of the world has looked at us, as they try to build a philanthropic culture. But I wonder whether we've lost a little bit of that faith and that hope. Is that still the case here? Are people giving, and is there is there a path to reignite that? Because it was at least a part of the story about America.

David Rubenstein 

Well, when this country was created, we didn't have any wealth. So people decided that we had to volunteer to create things. Benjamin Franklin would get volunteers to create library, volunteers to create a hospital, volunteers to create a fire department. And when de Tocqueville came here in the 1830s, he observed that everybody was running around volunteering, he couldn't get people to talk to him, because they were so busy volunteering. We did that, in part, because we didn't have wealth. In Europe, where many of our ancestors came from, they had a wealthy church or religious institution, or they had a wealthy government, and they tended to pay for all public services and took care of those kinds of things. When they came here, they didn't have that kind of wealth. And so, people had to contribute voluntarily.  

Today, the tradition of philanthropy has continued. We are the most philanthropic country in the world, as a percentage of GDP. We give about 2% a year of of GDP to philanthropy, which is higher than any other country in the world, by far. You could say 2% is still small, but that's about what we give, about 2% or so a year. That does not measure volunteering, which is also, as I mentioned earlier, very important. But this country does have a tradition of volunteering and philanthropy far exceeding anything else in the world. For example, take the Giving Pledge, which is something I was an original signer of. There were 40 of us in the beginning, now there are more than 200. I'd say about 90% of them are from the United States. Bill Gates, Melinda Gates, and Warren Buffett have tried to get people around the world to do it. And they’ve made some progress. But still, most of the people who have signed are from the United States, because we have more of a tradition of philanthropy here.

Alan Fleischmann 

What would you say is the message to those who aren't able to give at the level of the Giving Pledge? There’s a real role for people — as you said earlier — for people who get involved in civil society and get involved in nonprofits. There's a role to write those $25 checks, there’s a role to write that $100 check. And that is needed, and it’s amazing. That does count.

David Rubenstein 

And it's an interesting phenomenon. People do give money philanthropically here. Anything you do can be helpful. When my mother passed away a few years ago, I had given her all the money she wanted, but she didn't want to be wealthy. She just didn't think she had the capacity to deal with the kind of wealth I have been fortunate to have. So she had a reasonable amount of money, but not staggering amount of money. And when she passed away, I found that I was getting letters, that were addressed to her initially, to continue contributions she'd been making something like 500 different organizations. Anybody that got her on their mailing list would find she was sending $25 a month or $5 a month, whatever she felt she could she could afford. There was no organization I think she ever turned down. I'm still getting letters from these organizations, five years after she passed away, saying, “how come you haven't contributed recently?” Because she just felt that, even though she wasn't extremely wealthy, she could contribute to every organization. So she's typical of so many other Americans. They give, even if it's modest amounts of money. And she would give by volunteering as well.

Alan Fleischmann 

That’s amazing. What a wonderful role model. you've alluded a couple of times today, that America is divided — and it is, and we've talked about it as well. In your study of our country and its history, as you are both a student and author of it, and the leader of it, do you see any clues as to how we can heal that division? I mean, are there practical things that we're not doing that we need to do?

I know that in the case of venture capital money and private equity money, there's a lot of focus on not giving just to the East Coast and the West Coast entrepreneurs, but going to the heartland of our country. Are there certain things that you think would be a necessary next step, whether it's private sector led or public sector led, or civil society led that would actually help the country and bring us together?

David Rubenstein 

Well, the country is bitterly divided. It's not as bad as the Civil War for sure, where we were fighting each other militarily and so many people were killed. But the country is politically divided down the middle. And I think as a result, not much is going to happen. Can anybody come along, who's a charismatic leader, and make a difference? I hope so, at some point. But I think the concept of bipartisanship has tended to go away.  

When I worked on Capitol Hill briefly for Senator Birch Bayh of Indiana, as a Democrat, he was known as a pretty good legislator, but other there were also known as good legislators — Pat Moynihan or Jacob Javits, along with others, because they could work across the aisle. Today, if you work across the aisle, you're almost ostracized. So it's a big difference. I think in the old days, legislators were people that could work with people in the opposite party. Today, you're a star legislator if you find ways to criticize the opposite party, and you rise up in your own party by doing it. It's a sad situation.

Alan Fleischmann 

Yeah, that's right. I want to come back to that in a second. I know we have just a few minutes left, but I wanted to ask you something else. I'm always marveling at the fact that you are so engaged. You are writing these books. You're right there to step up when we have moments that are challenging for our country, as when you said, “I will protect and rebuild the Washington Monument.” You are on so many boards, and you're still leaving a very active business life. And if there are some moments here to share with our listenership, how do you do it all? you must have some secrets on how you manage your time.

David Rubenstein 

Well, I don't play golf, that that saves a lot of time. I'm only doing things I want to do. So I don't regard any of this is work, I regard it as pleasure. Giving back to the country is a pleasurable thing for me, and getting involved with these organizations that I think give back to the country is pleasurable. And, you know, to some extent, maybe I was earlier on motivated by trying to show my parents that they had created a child who was worthy of their having created; I was trying to make my parents proud. Later on, maybe I was trying to make my children proud, doing something that they could say, “well, my father has done something useful with his life.” But now, I generally take the idea that I'm trying to give back to the country and be a bit of a role model for others who also came from modest circumstances and should give back to the country. And, you know, you're doing the same thing in your own way. You've given back to the country in many different ways. And, you know, you came from the same kind of background that I did.

Alan Fleischmann 

It's very inspirational to watch you be as active as you are. Are there secrets about how you manage time? Literally, because you really are one of the busiest, if not the busiest person, anyone could name. But as I said earlier in the conversation, but you're not just there in check writing and physical presence, you're actively engaged. So you have to have some magic secrets of how you manage time.

David Rubenstein 

Well, I don't sleep as much as I probably should. I work seven days a week. I don't regard the weekends as much different than the weekdays. I also try to surround myself with people who are actually very efficient and get things done, they can support me. And I guess I get credit for things that other people do. So maybe I don't do as much as you think I do and I get credit for what other people are doing in my name, to some extent. But again, I don't play golf, I don't drink alcohol, I'm not a big partier. And I'm not a person that is probably getting that much pleasure from just relaxing and sitting on the beach. So you're not likely to see me sitting on the beach a lot.

Alan Fleischmann 

Yeah, you’re writing with the purpose of writing your book, as opposed to endlessly reading for the purpose of falling asleep at the beach. You know, I do understand that you have another book planned, you and I have talked about it, for later this year, that centers around your conversations with great investors. You've been an extremely successful investor yourself. Was there anything surprising or unexpected as you were reading that book?

David Rubenstein 

Well, there's a book that will come out next year about our great investors and what made them great, and generally, the things that they have in common. They tend to have in common that they came from generally modest backgrounds, not upper income backgrounds. They tend to be workaholics. They tend to be pretty good with money and numbers. They tend to be iconoclastic, which is, they don't want to go along with the conventional wisdom. They tend to be willing to walk through walls. They tend to be relatively forceful personalities. They tend to be people that want to do things themselves and not delegate that much. And again, I would say, those are some of the characteristics that people have in common. The most important one is to be a great investor is basically to ignore conventional wisdom and do what other people aren't doing. And that generally works out as well for great investors. 

Alan Fleischmann 

Would you say that about great leaders as well? Those are some great qualities you just described.

David Rubenstein 

Yeah. If you're going to lead, you can't go along and do what everybody else says that you should do. Because then you won't be the leader. You have to take some risks, be willing to fail and do something that other people think really can't be done or would be very difficult to get done. That's what makes a leader generally, that makes some leader in the investment world as well.

Alan Fleischmann 

Are there leaders that are out there right now that you especially admire, in public, private, and civil society? Obviously, we're all imperfect, and everybody you talked about would be imperfect. But are there certain leaders that you particularly admire?

David Rubenstein 

Well, she just stepped down, but Angela Merkel was a woman that came from East Germany. And the idea that she could run all of Germany was probably something that no one taught could be possible when East Germany first merged again with West Germany. And she was also a woman, which, you know, was unusual in those days in Germany, to have a woman become a leader. And she was the chancellor of Germany for about 15 years, an incredible leader in my view. And she's now given up that position.

In the United States, I think there are a lot of very competent leaders. I often ask myself, though, if we were going to have a Constitutional Convention today, who would we have at that? We had, basically, 55 white, propertied Christian males at our Constitutional Convention, and we got the document we still live with, largely. But today, if we were going to have a Constitutional Convention, who would you want it that Constitution Convention? Obviously it’d be more diverse, obviously it’d be more reflective of society. Would you want university presidents, would you want foundation presidents, would you want CEOs? It's an interesting kind of thing.

And also, I often wonder, where are the great leaders today, in this sense? When we had only 3 million people in this country, and two and a half million of them were white, a half a million of them were Black slaves that couldn't participate in government. And out of the two and a half million whites we had at the beginning of the country, half of those were women, and they weren't allowed to participate. So out of one and a quarter million people, we got George Washington, John Jay, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson. Today out of 330 million Americans, where are the George Washingtons, the Alexander Hamiltons, the Benjamin Franklins? Well, they're around, they're not quite doing the kind of things that were done at the beginning to country. But we have to get these people have enormous talents doing different things and try to get them to be more engaged in trying to help the country a bit. Because there are great scientists, academic leaders, and business people who, if they got a little bit more engaged with helping solve some of the country's problems, could give us the kind of leadership that we had at the beginning of this country. 

Alan Fleischmann 

It's almost like a laboratory of the next phase of America, you know, bringing people together. Because there is truth in that some of the biggest things that are challenging us, from climate change, to cybersecurity, to cultural challenges with diversity, inclusion, and capitalism, they're all things that can't be done in isolation. So in many ways, bringing a body together to actually… you know, I guess that is what Congress should be. But how do you bring about a body like you just described, to ask, how can we under one roof deal with these issues together?

David Rubenstein 

Well, we need to do some things better than what we're doing. Because clearly, the government of the United States today seems somewhat dysfunctional, even though many people are trying as best they can to make it work. But I think very few people are satisfied with the way the government is working today. And I'd say that's true of Democrats and Republicans. It just not as functional as we would like it to be. 

Alan Fleischmann 

What makes you most excited about the future of America? What I love about the book The American Experiment, is the humility in our journey. There is originality in the journey of this country, but also humility in that we're not there yet. But if you didn't read the book, you might not be so hopeful. I left I left the book with a sense of inspiration and hope. Talking to our listeners here, what makes you most excited about the future of America? And what do you want to challenge our listeners to do?

David Rubenstein 

While there are challenges for people in our society, there's no doubt that if you are talented, and you work hard, and you want to make a difference in this country, you can rise up and do so. And so many talented people now, in the business world or the academic world or the medical world, are coming up with discoveries and inventions and ways to make our lives better. And just think about how, 25 years ago, your life was different than it is today. You didn't have a smartphone, you didn't have a Google search, you didn't have all the kind of social media we have today. And today, could you live without all the things that now we think are common?

Well, over the next 5, 10, 20 years, new things will come along, and they're going to come along from young people who are motivated to make a difference. They're not going to come along from people my age, by and large. Great inventions, great discoveries, and great leadership ultimately come from people who are in their 20s and 30s. Not so much from people in their 60s and 70s.

Alan Fleischmann 

So your message would be, in essence, go for it. And how do you build competence? You know David, with the background that you had, with great parents that certainly gave you a lot of love and inspiration, there's nobody that probably would have imagined the great lengths that you have gone, the great power that you've harnessed, and the great giving that you provided back in the early days in Baltimore. What do you tell young people to help them find their voice? You’ve found your voice. You articulate a voice that's very, very authentic and very impactful. What do you tell people?

David Rubenstein 

I tell people to experiment, I was 37 years old before I started Carlyle, and I really didn't get involved deeply in philanthropy until I was 50. And so I would say, experiment with things, find something you love. You're not going to be successful at something you hate. Nobody ever won a Nobel Prize hating what they do. People that win Nobel Prizes, or the equivalent, are people that have found something in life that they love. And if you find something in life you love, you will be great at it if you work hard at it and you really find it pleasurable, not just work. And so try to do different things. Eventually, you'll find something you love. And you can make a difference in the world if you find something you really care about and you think is worth pursuing. I got lucky in that regard, but other people can get lucky as well.

Alan Fleischmann 

This show is about leaders, and how leadership does matter, and about how leaders matter. And my whole work in life is about helping leaders lead. And there is nobody who is doing more as a public servant, and as a leader in both private and civil society, than you. You're doing so many wonderful things. So I just want to say, on behalf of this incredible audience that gets to listen to you, on behalf of the folks at Leadership Matters, I'm grateful that you were able to join us today. I urge everyone to go out and read The American Experiment. And to take up David Rubenstein’s advice to get engaged. I think, David, you are such a humble and impactful friend and leader, I'm just grateful for you and I can't wait to have you back on here.

David Rubenstein 

Thank you. My pleasure to be here. Congratulations for what you've achieved, Alan. 

Alan Fleischmann 

Thank you. It means a lot, and I look forward to our next together. Thank you, David.