Jared Cohen on 'Accidental Presidents'
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 15 May 2019
⏱️ 48 minutes
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Summary
Jared Cohen is the founder and CEO of Jigsaw and Alphabet Inc., who previously ran Google Ideas and served as a member of the Secretary of State's policy planning staff and as an advisor to Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton. He is also the author of a new book on the presidency called, "Accidental Presidents: Eight Men Who Changed America." It describes the times in American history when a president has died in office, forcing eight other men, who are neither the voters' nor their party's choice, to confront unparalleled challenges. David Priess spoke with Jared recently about their stories and the lessons we can learn from their experiences.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair |
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| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:32.6 | At the time, the only people who became vice presidents were people who were at the |
| 0:38.1 | tail end of their career and kind of looked apart or were from a particular state |
| 0:42.7 | or people who needed to be punished. In Teddy Roosevelt's case, the party bosses |
| 0:47.6 | wanted to exile him to the political grove of Oren of Elda and the vice |
| 0:50.8 | president was the perfect place to do that. And Teddy Roosevelt himself as young |
| 0:55.1 | as he was, he was conscious of the fact that this could be his political end. |
| 0:57.8 | And you're right that Mark Canner, who was a close confidant of William McKinley, |
| 1:02.2 | was terrified of this. And you know, he's the first one to really talk about a |
| 1:06.3 | heartbeat away from the president. He tells McKinley after Teddy Roosevelt gets |
| 1:11.1 | the nomination as vice president that your job, Mr. President, is to live for the |
| 1:15.8 | next four years. And of course, McKinley is shot in September of 1901, not |
| 1:20.5 | long after the election. And Teddy Roosevelt, who his entire life has dreamed of |
| 1:25.6 | being president, can probably contain his enthusiasm for the fact that he's about |
| 1:29.4 | to become president. Right? So he asserts himself very quickly and he has the |
| 1:34.1 | most amazing quote of any of the accidental presidents, which is a terrible |
| 1:38.0 | thing to come into the presidency this way, but it would be far worse to be |
| 1:41.3 | morbid about it. I'm David Priests and this is the Law Fair podcast for May 14th, 2019. |
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