Life After Power

navigating our next chapters from the stories of the post-presidency. Thankfully, unless they were around in 1963, few of my friends and colleagues could relate I wrote about in Accidental Presidents. But everyone could understand what it's like to have one role that is all-consuming and leave it all behind. For some, it's a liberating experience. For others, it can feel like there's nothing left. As the former presidents show, the next chapter is what you make of it. American history provided plenty of material. Many of us are interested in the presidents, and we all need models to follow in our own lives. Why not look for the latter in the former? If we do, we'll understand American history and the kinds of choices we'll all make at some point a little better than we did before. J.A.C., February, 2024 Introduction King George III looked across the Atlantic and mourned. He was witnessing the downfall of the luster of the British Empire. It was September 3, 1783, and earlier that day the king had proclaimed peace with his thirteen former colonies across the sea. The American Revolution was over. The British Empire was defeated. What came next would prove how revolutionary the war had been. General Washington would soon do something that a king would never do. Give up power. During the war, the king had asked Benjamin West, a Loyalist artist, what he thought General Washington might do in the unthinkable event of a colonial victory. West, who knew something of Washington's reputation, answered quickly that he would return to his farm. If he does that, the monarch replied with skeptical disbelief, he will be the greatest man in the world. West was right. Washington resigned his commission that year. When he gave up the presidency a few years later, voluntarily bidding farewell after two terms, King George III described his former foe as the greatest character of the age. The Washington precedent has held, and that has made all the difference. Democratic republics only work when the leaders don't cling to power after their citizens have decided to place power in other hands. But few leaders in history have had that ability. From Julius Caesar to Oliver Cromwell, revolutionary commanders throughout history held on to power until the day they died. Planning his own return to Paris while living in exile in Elba, Napoleon Bonaparte defiantly told his aides, they wanted me to be another George Washington. To the bellicose Corsican, that would be a fate worse than Waterloo. Washington set the precedent for other presidents to follow, but his precedent hasn't taken hold around the world. In many countries, leaving from power is dangerous. That's part of why Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping have no intention to step down. It may also be why Kim Il-sung, who died in 1994, is still honored as North Korea's eternal ruler, making the Hermit Kingdom the world's first and only necrocracy. Even in the United States, after the terrible events of January 6th, 2021, the peaceful transfer of power cannot be taken for granted. For those leaders who do follow Washington's precedent, leaving high office means leaving behind the powers and pomp of state and returning to everyday concerns like relevance, professional jealousy, and ego. Away from power, leaders come face-to-face with their neglected relationships, finances, legacies, and the after-effects of a job that leaves them older, grayer, and closer than ever to their own mortality. Life After Power tells how seven former presidents decided what to do with the rest of their lives, and how they made history in the process. The book examines these men as human beings who searched for purpose in their final decades. They had left the most important job they'd ever had, and they had nowhere else to climb. They offer lessons, as well as cautionary tales, to anyone contemplating the next chapters of their own lives. The post-presidency is still an undiscovered story for most presidential biographies. They often treat their subjects' final decades as little more than denouements at best.