The Secret Recordings That Reveal How Presidents Really Think

Conversations with Coleman

In this episode of Conversations with Coleman, historian Tim Naftali discusses his deep research into presidential audio recordings from Nixon, LBJ, and JFK. He analyzes

Key takeaways

• Different types of intelligence—tactical, strategic, emotional—are crucial in evaluating presidential effectiveness.
• The abundance of recorded Oval Office conversations from LBJ and Nixon provides unprecedented insight into how presidents think under pressure.

Main topics

• Presidential intelligence and cognitive styles
• The significance of secret Oval Office recordings

Notable quotes

"We had a civil war, which sadly does not make us exceptional."

Conclusion

Tim Naftali emphasizes that understanding presidential leadership requires examining not just policy but the

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Welcome to another episode of Conversations with Coleman. My guest today is Tim Naftali. Tim Naftali is a historian at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, specializing in the U.S. presidency, intelligence agencies, and Cold War history. A CNN presidential historian and former director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, he's the author or co-author of several books on U.S.-Soviet relations, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and American presidential history. In this episode, we talk about who the smartest recent president was. We talk about why George H.W. Bush is underrated. We talk about the revisionist history of Watergate and the rehabilitation of Richard Nixon. We talk about whether impeachment is still a useful mechanism. And finally, I ask Tim to recommend the best presidential biographies ever written. So without further ado, Tim Naftali. Speaker 1 (1:03) Okay, Tim Naftali, thanks so much for coming on my show. Pleasure, Coleman. So before we get into your work as a presidential historian, which is very interesting, a couple questions just about your background. You were born in Canada, right? And you grew up in Montreal? That's true. What's the biggest difference between Canadians and Americans culturally? I mean, we're so similar in so many ways, but you might have a unique vantage point. Oh, there are some subtle. And by the way, Canada is a diverse nation. It's far more diverse than it was when I was growing up, which is a good thing for Canada. And so when one talks about Canadian culture, just as the same with American culture, let's try to avoid assuming that, you know, every single citizen has the same. Speaker 1 (1:57) sense of it. But there are some subtle differences between sort of general Canadian political culture and American political culture that I think are worth pointing out. And I thank you for asking. One of the key ones is that Canadians don't grow up being taught that their country is exceptional. And that's really helpful. I believe, and I'm an American citizen now, and I'm very proud of my adopted country. And I partly chose to become an American because I teach American history. I teach international history, but through an American lens. Speaker 1 (2:39) And I wanted to be able to say we, because I thought it was important for students to understand that I understood the sort of the nature of America's role in the world, not simply as an outsider, but now as an insider. That said, I believe that when we teach our young people in the United States that America is exceptional, we are doing them a disservice. It is a burden. It is a burden because if you have a place that's exceptional, it's hard to argue that it can improve. And one of the joys of studying American history is to see this arc of change. Speaker 1 (3:26) Canadians, I think, have a sense that their country's flawed and they're proud of what it is, but they recognize that, you know, it has flaws and therefore you can tinker with it without really undermining its basic legitimacy. And I believe that having that sense of that there's a flaw. in your political culture is healthy. Because it means you're working together to make it better. And so that's one thing about Canadians. The other is that in the era I grew up, it's changed a little bit thanks to Donald Trump. But the era I grew up, Canadians were not flag wavers. They were quietly proud of being Canadians, but they didn't have to wave the flag and they didn't have to wear a flag pin to be. Speaker 1 (4:25) loyal and patriotic. In fact, Canadians would say to each other, again, when I was growing up and things have changed, I don't live there anymore, that flag wavers were Americans, that Canadians felt we're not insecure, that it's an insecure country that has to wave the flag all the time. Secure countries just know that they exist and are proud of it and they move forward. There's subtle differences. Now, of course, others would say that Canadians say they're sorry all the time. I'm not sure that that's true anymore. Canada is a more self-confident country than it was. But I think that the differences I pointed to are actually worthwhile considering, not to make America Canada. These are very different countries with different, though similar histories. But it's for, I think, for... Speaker 1 (5:20) us as we grapple with the fact that the country, our beloved country, is disappointing us at times. Maybe we should step back and say, you know, maybe we... we have higher expectations of any society because we have been told ours is exceptional, when in fact, we should think ahead about goals to reach that we may reach, but they are yet to be reached. I think Canadians have never had that problem. They know their country is flawed. They still like it a lot. In fact, I believe they love it. Yeah, that's interesting. I was talking to Matthew Iglesias, and he had a very different frame for understanding American exceptionalism. And the argument he made on our podcast was the version of American exceptionalism, which can strike the ear as naive, especially to a historian that is all too familiar with all the flaws and foibles of American history. Speaker 1 (6:28) that nevertheless created a language and a standard which activists, reformers, and writers could point to in contrast with the actual practices on the ground. And as a result of enough Americans believing in that, in principle, exceptionalism, could create an impetus for action on its basis. So under that framework... The idea, like believing that America is in principle exceptional, i.e., that is to say, its principles were exceptional at the founding and have, and are really worthy of flag-waving about, has been actually a spur to action or has made it easier to inspire political action to reform its actual flawed practices. Well, Matt is a super smart guy. Speaker 1 (7:22) And I would just disaggregate a little bit of what he's saying. I absolutely agree that Jefferson's language and the language of the framers has been an impetus for change for activists on both sides of the aisle. Absolutely. Totally agree with it. Jefferson didn't understand what he had unleashed with the language of the Declaration of Independence. But that. So, yes, the founding principles of this country were absolutely exceptional in the 18th century. There's no question about it. We were the first in the modern era to think about how to elect a leader. You know, when they were designing the presidency, they didn't have any modern parallels to choose from. Every other leader. of a major group in the world was either an emperor by divine right or conquest. Speaker 1 (8:32) And so, sure, in the 18th century, those principles being put into action, because those principles existed in books. I mean, Montesquieu, the French philosopher, provided this sort of the idea of our constitutional system of checks and balances, for example. But putting it into practice was truly exceptional. But I would just say that the problem is that As it's been understood, American exceptionalism is not really the ideas, but the practice of the country. We had a civil war, which sadly does not make us exceptional. So the ideas, I would say, are exceptional. How they were put into practice has not been exceptional. And America is not the only democracy in the world. It was in the 18th century, but it isn't in the 21st century. Let's get into your... Speaker 1 (9:34) of research. You've written many books about the Cold War, about Khrushchev. You've been deeply involved in the study of presidential transcripts of Nixon, I believe Kennedy, LBJ. So there's a lot of possible ways to start this interview. But one I want to ask you is, Having spent an enormous amount of time in the archives and with the tapes of all of these presidents from the 60s, 70s, and onward, who would you say was the most intelligent? In other words, when you listen to their tapes or read their writing, you think, okay, this person had a level of intellectual horsepower that is higher than most presidents. Speaker 1 (10:29) Yeah. Great and difficult question. Because as I'm sure you agree, Coleman, there are different kinds of intelligence. There's emotional intelligence. There's rocket science, brain surgeon kind of intelligence. There's, there are different kinds of intelligence. And we only have tapes. of three presidents in any great number. I mean, the first president to tape was Franklin Roosevelt, but we only have about 12 hours of his tapes, and there are only about eight hours of Truman's tapes. And Eisenhower taped a little bit when he was in the Oval Office, but a lot of his tapes are from the time he was actually president of Columbia University. Speaker 1 (11:19) Even they all together, I think it's about 16 hours. It's only when you get to Kennedy with about 250, 260 hours, and then LBJ with six or seven, maybe 800 hours, and then Nixon with 3,400 hours of conversation that you really can get a sense of the presidential brain in action. So if you don't mind, I'm going to parse this a little bit, and I'm going to talk about Presidents with nimble brains, nimble in the sense that they could learn on the job, nimble in the sense that they could get outside of themselves. I'm most interested in presidents who can change their minds because that to me is a sign of intelligence and self-confidence. Speaker 1 (12:11) We have a debate in this country when we think about what we expect of our leaders, our elected leaders, officials. The idea that when I elect you, I elect you to do exactly what you said you would do. That's why. I don't elect you to go to Washington and learn anything. I don't want you to change your mind. I don't want you to become more informed on a certain issue. You do what you said you'd do. Even if you go to Washington and learn, oh my gosh, I didn't really understand how complicated this process was. That to me is a kind of, it's democracy by referendum. But that's one form of leadership. You do what I tell you to do. And don't let Washington, and you can use whatever metaphor you want for Washington, swamp or what have you, change your mind. Speaker 1 (13:03) There's another form of leadership. It's more Burkean idea, which is I elect a smart, good, experienced or experienced in one way or another. It could be business person, farmer. It doesn't really matter. But they were a professional in their chosen trade. And I want their professionalism sent to Washington to examine the issues of the day and to conclude on behalf of our needs what they think is in our best interest and then explain it to us. That's a different kind of leadership. And I'm interested in presidents who act that way, who basically go to Washington and they're not bought by lobbyists, but they realize, oh, my gosh, goodness, these foreign policy problems are trickier than I thought. Or this domestic issue. I'm not sure I really understood it before I became elected. And I I'm fascinated by those presidents. So to give you some examples. Speaker 1 (14:07) And Ronald Reagan, for whom we don't have tapes, had a very interesting evolution on foreign policy with the Soviet threat. He comes into office thinking the Soviets are 12 feet tall, begins to learn that this is a brittle empire. Speaker 1 (14:31) And Gorbachev is chosen by the Soviet leadership, and he realizes, I can deal with this guy. He doesn't have a cartoon vision of the Kremlin's choice to be the leader of the Soviet Union. He interacts with him as a human. I don't really know what Ronald Reagan's, what do you want to call it, mathematical IQ, you know, his IQ for STEM issues was. But in terms of emotional intelligence, he had a lot. And he deals well with Gorbachev and realizes, I can work with this guy. And Gorbachev is really the reason the Cold War ends. But he needed a partner on our side. And first Reagan, and then... George H.W. Bush were those partners. Well, so even though Ronald Reagan wouldn't be mentioned as one of the, you know, as Thomas Jefferson, if you will, of our presidents, he had really high EQ and or emotional intelligence, EIQ. And and that's that's really important. So. Speaker 1 (15:36) Uh, that's one version. Um, John, John F. Kennedy, um, had this capacity to put himself in other people's shoes, which is remarkable on the tapes. And we do have tapes for him. Um, you can hear him thinking about, well, how would the Soviets view this? And putting himself in other people's shoes, which I think is a remarkable talent. But when you're in the Oval Office and you have all these pressures on you, and you're surrounded by people who are expecting leadership from you, and for you basically to say, let's put ourselves in the shoes of a foreign adversary, that takes some guts on your part. In the case of Lyndon Johnson, Lyndon Johnson's... Tactical genius is on the tapes. Speaker 1 (16:30) He may not have been, he was, Lyndon Johnson was not that comfortable in foreign policy. He was not self-assured in foreign policy, not like JFK. But he was certainly self-assured when it came to the sausage making of American legislation. And my God, you want to listen to someone with enormous self-confidence and intelligence in figuring out how to deal with the hundred largely men, a few women, but mainly men of the Senate and the, you know, the over 400 in the House, you just listen to LBJ. So that's a different kind of intelligence. It's not a subject matter intelligence necessarily. It's really a professional intelligence in dealing with Congress. Richard Nixon. Speaker 1 (17:22) He had a different, he had something Kennedy didn't have. Richard Nixon had a strategic sense. So you got LBJ with this tactical genius, okay? And JFK with this pragmatic, very flexible brain. And you have Nixon, and Nixon's term for it was Hail Mary passes. He called them, he loved football. So it was a football analogy. And yeah, now. Nixon was a very, very flawed human being, but we're talking about his intelligence here. Nixon could conceive of reordering the international system. Nixon is the one who came up with the idea of reaching out to China, at least was the American. I think he actually got the idea from the president of France, whom he admired, Charles de Gaulle. And I think he credits him for that. Nixon had this capacity for strategic thinking, which was extremely important and is a different kind of intelligence. So there you go. Speaker 1 (18:33) I think when you ask about smarts, it's, you know, the only way we can really measure it is in terms of how these people, men so far, have used power. You know, obviously Barack Obama and Bill Clinton are both very, very intelligent individuals. Sadly, we don't have tapes for them. So why did these presidents tape themselves? I mean, like, if I were president, I think I would just want, my default would be I don't want anything on tape in case I slip up or in case I'm just entertaining an idea that I don't actually believe. And it's only going to backfire on me, right? Oh, God, Coleman, what a great question. It depends on the president. Speaker 1 (19:24) Franklin Roosevelt had a friend, David Sarnoff, at RCA and Hollywood, and he wanted recordings. This is in 1940. He was making a big decision. He had to decide whether he was going to run for an unprecedented third term. George Washington had sort of set a precedent. It wasn't at that point in the Constitution. be elected as many times as the American people wanted to elect you. And Roosevelt wanted to stay in office. Now, he wasn't sure he was going to do it. He already started talking about a presidential library. And by the way, people don't talk about presidential libraries unless they're on their way out, which is why Donald Trump, for example, we heard nothing about the Trump presidential library in his first term, right? And nothing about it in the interregnum, if you will. Anyway, so FDR is actually talking about a Speaker 1 (20:19) Presidential Library. He's the one who came up with the idea of Presidential Libraries. And he does it in 1940. But in the back of his mind, maybe not quite in