Political Gabfest - Gabfest Reads: Everything You Need to Know About Choosing a President
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4.2 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 17 December 2022
⏱️ 41 minutes
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Summary
John Dickerson talks with author Gautam Mukunda about his new book Picking Presidents: How to Make the Most Consequential Decision in the World. They talk about how Mukunda’s first book, Indispensable: When Leaders Really Matter laid the groundwork for Picking Presidents. Later, Dickerson and Mukunda dig into why ‘intellectual brilliance’ – which goes beyond IQ - is a strong predictor of presidential performance and how the human portion of the job of president is changing.
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Podcast production by Cheyna Roth.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to GabFest Reads. |
| 0:09.3 | For the month of December, I'm John Dickerson, one of the hosts of the Slate Political |
| 0:12.6 | GabFest, as you know. |
| 0:14.6 | My guest today is Gotham MacKundah, author of Picking Presidents, how to make the most |
| 0:18.9 | consequential decision in the world. |
| 0:21.0 | He is a research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Center for Public Leadership and |
| 0:25.5 | also the author of Indispensable when leaders really matter. |
| 0:29.8 | Welcome to the show. |
| 0:30.8 | Thank you, John. |
| 0:31.8 | A pleasure to be here. |
| 0:32.8 | Let's start with Indispensable because we have to tell the backstory of how you and I |
| 0:36.0 | know each other. |
| 0:37.6 | So I am reading Eric Barker's book and in it he cites you and that he cites the study |
| 0:44.4 | you did on Presidents. |
| 0:46.1 | And I thought, this is something I've been trying to get my hands around for so long. |
| 0:51.1 | Talk about that book Indispensable before we get to your current book. |
| 0:55.4 | The backstory for Indispensable is simple. |
| 0:58.6 | Everybody. |
| 0:59.6 | Everyone who has ever had a dorm room debate in college has sort of thought about this |
| 1:03.5 | question, do individuals matter? |
| 1:06.2 | Right? |
| 1:07.2 | And this goes back to the ancient Greeks. |
... |
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