Life After Power Quotes

“My interest in behavioral psychology is part of what drove me to write this book, and appreciating the scholarly foundation that defines the field helped shape this book’s thesis.”
― Jared Cohen, Life After Power: Seven Presidents and Their Search for Purpose Beyond the White House

“Democratic republics only work when the leaders don’t cling to power after their citizens have decided to place power in other hands.”
― Jared Cohen, Life After Power: Seven Presidents and Their Search for Purpose Beyond the White House

“Not every former president uses their position for good. Franklin Pierce, a Northerner who favored popular sovereignty—the idea that democracy allowed citizens, and not the federal government, to decide if the territory in which they lived would allow slavery—tried to rally the living ex-presidents in 1861 to resolve the Civil War. But his efforts were torpedoed by Martin Van Buren, and Pierce became a vocal critic of Lincoln, a sympathizer for the South, and a correspondent of Confederate president Jefferson Davis. Worse still, Pierce’s predecessor, the Virginian John Tyler, defected from the Union and won a seat in the Confederate House of Representatives. He died a traitor in January 1862, and President Lincoln denied his predecessor a state funeral. Instead, Tyler was honored in Richmond, the Confederate capital.”
― Jared Cohen, Life After Power: Seven Presidents and Their Search for Purpose Beyond the White House

“Not every former president uses their position for good. Franklin Pierce, a Northerner who favored popular sovereignty—the idea that democracy allowed citizens, and not the federal government, to decide if the territory in which they lived would allow slavery—tried to rally the living ex-presidents in 1861 to resolve the Civil War. But his efforts were torpedoed by Martin Van Buren, and Pierce became a vocal critic of Lincoln, a sympathizer for the South, and a correspondent of Confederate president Jefferson Davis. Worse still, Pierce’s predecessor, the Virginian John Tyler, defected from the Union and won a seat in the Confederate House of Representatives. He died a traitor in January 1862, and President Lincoln denied his predecessor a state funeral. Instead, Tyler was honored in”
― Jared Cohen, Life After Power: Seven Presidents and Their Search for Purpose Beyond the White House