Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion On Good For The Money 20160515

Ive thoroughly enjoyed before will all of you. See is a greats friend. Thank you for coming and having your insight. [applause] thank you. Thank you. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] cspan, created by americas Cable Television companies and brought to you as a Public Service by your cable or satellite provider. Next, peter marks reports on the late aig ceos to revive the company after the 2,008th 2,008th crisis. Bob benosche are i thought it was an amazing story of leadership. So, tell me, why tide you want to do this book . It actually started with my wife, who at the time was an aig employee. She was one of she wrote a lot of bobs the letters to employees in the communications deposit, and bob reached out to her, wanting someone to tell his story. He loved the way show wrote, and i subsequently became intime platly involved in the piece intimately involved in the piece as. We it needed some outside perspective, someone who didnt know the company so well at the beginning and could come in, and i was thrilled by the idea of penetrating this mans mind because i heard so much about him from val, who really admired him. She has worked for many companies, big companies, citibank, citigroup, and she greatly admired his leadership. There was a tremendous devotion within this company to him. And so finding out the story of how this man turned this company around and paid back the country 180 billion was just too delicious. I want to come back to that. Want to read this from the New York Times obituary when we took the job running aig after the crisis and looked like the company would never recover when the aig board comes to him. My first responsible to them was, you must think im crazy. Then i thought and said to myself, theyre right. The financial industry is in chaos and i have the skills, and the bit wear said the trauma and selfregard were typical. Mr. Benosche, an imposing physical presence at 64. Not only did he restore aig to health by 2012 but also repaid the entire debt to the american taxpayers and returned 22 billion to them in profit as well. Guest its a remarkable achievement. He was the only person who thought this was possible. Essentially. The government didnt think this was going to happen. The company certainly didnt think it would happen. They were ready to sell it for spare parts. And certainly the American People had no expectation this would happen. So that idea he was little crazy, you that be a little crazy to take this on. He was the right kind of crazy. He did he was approached earlier about the job when they chose his predecessor, ed liddy, but i think he was spoiling to do it. I think he really the idea of taking this on just appealed to a guy like this who really was a guy who got stuff done in the corporate world. Host what did you think when you met him . What stood out about him when you met him . Tell us about the first meeting. Guest the first time i met him, we met in i was immediately struck by what a people person he was. If my idea of a ceo was someone reserve expend kind of arrogant and had some kind of some level of not arrogance would be the word i found him the opposite help was immediately accessible. He was funny. He wanted his story told. Obviously in the mere fact he picked my wife as the first person to tell it to, endeared me to him. And he wanted it told honestly, bethany him didnt want his story to seem just the story of someone who was flawless, as a human being, or as an executive, but who had tremendous, tremendous desire to tell the American People and correct the record of their perception of the company. So when i immediately liked him. He was the kind of man who you asked him a question, he didnt think about his answer. He just gave his answer. It was all what you saw is what you got. Plus the fact he was charming and handsome. You could see all the charisma. It was palpable in the room in his office, and so that was it was an immediate like. An immediate enjoyment of him. Host this not a guy who came from privilege. He talked. Working at a cocacola truck driver and being in the army. Tell us about his Early Childhood and how it shaped him. Guest one of the critical moments in his life was at the age of 10 he grew up in the cat dash cat skills, this family had a bar and grill and they ended out rooms and at the image of ten his father died suddenly of a heart attack, and the really poignant part of the story was in terms of financially, anyway, was that he left the family with a quarter Million Dollars in debt. This is in 1953 or so,. Host quarter million of dollars really meant something. Guest really meant something, and his mother had no idea what she was going to do. So i this led to the feeling that bob had was always on intimate terms with debt. The concept of debt, and the desire his mother had to pay back that obligation, which she never wafered from and eventually did pay it back. Extraordinarily. The reason that changed his life is because he had to become intimately involved in their business at a very young age. He was the oldest son and his mother leaned on him very heavily in the business. So that instilled in him a real sense of commitment and responsibility. I think, at a young age he was a really independent kid. He wasnt a perfectly behaved young man. Had to do his things his open way, and but always worked. Always wanted to make money. He often said, through his life, the motivating factor for what he did very often was making money. It meant the value of money was extremely important to him. So thats why he always had a job, whether and learned about workers at the ground floor level. There was no trust fund. There was no extra boost by a relative to give him a job. Never. So, by the time he was in the army, he had inculcated this very strong sense of earning a buck. Host tell us about two stories about his mom put one stood out. You give them the pen. Telephone us about that one. Guest well, they owned this motel in monticello, new york, and he would sometimes work behind the desk. His mother was incredibly pragmatic woman, lillian, and one day he was behind the desk and a couple came up and they asked about a room, and he proceeded to describe to them the options they had for what they could rent for and what the price was, and he after the transaction was done, his mother was furious with him, and he said, what is the matter . She said, son, you didnt give them the pen. And he said, dont know what you mean by that. She said, when theyre asking about the room, you describe what you want them to rent, and you hand them the pen so they can sign for the room. Dont let them make the depression. You make the decision. Just give them the pen. And this became sort of a mantra for him, understand what, the transaction in sales was. You had to effectuate the sale. You had to make happen. Host the one i loved when his mom cold him when he was complaining about being bored, she avoid you got a better job . No. Then go do it. Talk about how this shaped his philosophy, you live the hand you were dealt. Guest exactly you play the hand death you. Very important. If you find Something Better do that. But for the time being, her philosophy always was, son, whatever is available to you right now is the thing you have to go for. That was essential to him and it plays out later in his career. He was always on the verge of another job, something that possibly he wasnt even perfectly qualified for. But he knew that he had to take the leap. He knew he had to go for it because that us what was being dealt him. Host i loved this, he talks about his leadership lessons. Saying theyre not the lessons of the Business School variety. Never been to one, never enrolled in a single Business Class ever. These are ideas gleaned from a life in business with emphasis on the life part of the business. Talk about that a little because i think in this day and age with expensive harvard mbas, his approach and training were interesting. Guest yeah. He didnt really he had no particular interest in schooling. He went as a high school for high school he was sent as a he worked actually in a work study thing at a new York Military academy. One year ahead of donald trump at this school. He didnt do particularly well gradewise ever. In fact, in college, went to alfred university, which he had never heard of, and he decided on his major, math, because he thought thats what smart people would major in, not particularly he had some facility for numbers but his grades were abysmal. He had no interested in studying. It really wasnt book learning wasnt his thing at all. And i think he respect education. Its just that everything he greens was not from a book. It was from the hasnts on experience that started when he was a young man working for his mam. Theres program called getting things done and bob describes him as a gfd person. Whose it that. Guest gsd is theres a pejorative its get stuff done. And he was very early on the n his career he was pegged as the get stuff done guy. And it was a remarkable facility he always had for coming into a situation, being able to analyze it, and even if he didnt have the skills that the job required, finding them. He was he came up through operations in early days of information technology, and data processing, its really where he got his he cut his teeth, and he always was the man, the person, that his higherups could go to with challenging new situation that required him to figure oust something that he didnt know before, and he knew how to marshall people he needed to help hem figure those things out. At paine weber he didnt know about the cash accounts. They created those accounts that became very essential for places like Merrill Lynch and he knew how to find the people that needed to instruct him. He was just a really quick study that way. So that gsd stuff continued on and on, through all the jobs he head, going into metlife where he took on this huge responsibility for demutualization, taking the company public. And i think that was sort of an operating talent of his, that just got more intense as he got older. There are lot of epithets in the book. Suspect thats very true to how he spoke. But he has another phrase, and we probably wont be able to say this one but he described if theres anything i loathe, its the business person who looks at you with a pastedon smile, spouting the company line or nodding and completely unconvincing agreement. So has hand expression for that maybe you can come inwith a way to describe and tell me how he taught of it. Guest he called it grin fing, and its it was probably one of the reasons i wanted to write the book. I helped him write the book, because it was so colorful and so perfectly a perfect distillation of everything ive observed in my work life, that i thought, well, heres a man who is sort of a natural philosopher, and of course its refers to people who smile at you and nod in agreement and lavish praise on you, you being the person in charge, to make you feel secure and everything youre saying is brilliant, but in fact walksway and goes, what a walks away and says, what jerk. Host we have all met them. Guest and bob part of his Emotional Intelligence was he could uss that out in people. The knew the first time he met them whether or not he was been grin fd or not. It was an amazing intuition he had. And i was actually thrilled every met him that i certainly didnt want him to have that impression of mean, even before i heard the term, and somehow bob accepting you into his world was a real badge of, i think, honor, because he recognized immediately when he was being talked to and not in a honest way. Host one of the thing is thought about as i read this, he talked about Emotional Intelligence and clearly cares a lot of employees and also talked about his own transparency and being exactly who he is and quotes someone saying about him you need somebody who will not be afraid to say f. U. , and i mean everybody and thats the way he is. How do you balance those qualities . Thats the balance in those things is what is hard to achieve. We meet a lot of people would arent afraid to say exactly what they think but they trample over everybody else and he seemed to have something that prevented that a little bit . Guest i think it probably varied on the audience. Think he was kind of if bob was angry, it was terrifying. He had a very, very strong point of view, and didnt really i dont i think he wanted some debate but ultimately i think he was so sure of himself and want he wanted to do he didnt want challenges that were going to thwart him in any way or change his course. And to that point about balancing, he had tremendous charge and i think the key for him to running this company, and what was extraordinary about his ability as a leader was that he understood and i think truly empathized with the people who original for him and wanted them to feel that. He had the able to communicate that and i think he was i often said that he was more himself in front of a large group of people than he was oneonone. There was a performance aspect to bob put also very real. I think he loved the idea of taking people into his confidence in large groups, and they responded to that. The employees of aig felt and he truly thought about them. Thats an extraordinary skill for a ceo because we all know anyone who has worked in a Large Organization knows the person at the top is usually very remote, spares his appearance or her appearances just for the sake of control, to a minimum. Bob wanted the exchanges. So, that gave him tremendous capital with people, and i think for those moments when he was also being bob and being angry, when he came into a room and told off the people who worked for him that they were not doing well, it had even more power because they wanted to please him. They werent just afraid they would lose their jobs. They really wanted him to be happy. He made them happy. He it was an exchange. Its an amazing balance he could strike. Host from a leadership point overview its very counterintuitive book because today ceos say they listen to all opinions in the room and want to take everybody elses point of view into account. Sounds like he did that but in the end he ultimately wanted it to be his decision. Guest i think thats true. I think thats totally true. Thats because especially in the case of aig, he had a mission. He knew what the mission was. He i mean, he could he had to shift the mission because, lets face it there are other strong people involved in the process as well, one particularly the chairman of the board, and so he had to be a negotiator that way, but he knew, as i said he relied so much on his own sense of value of things and the value of people, and thought he knew it so well that he didnt really need a colloquy constantly him didnt need to have a brain trust that told him the opposite. I think he that drive really did serve him incredibly well. That intuition. Host getting to aig, what did you know of san diego you had a better understanding of it given that your wife worked there what did refresh the audience why aig mattered. Guest well, aig was the Largest Insurance Company in the world. It had been dominated for decades bay legendary leader named Hank Greenburg who built it into a con groom rat conglomerate. Elizabeth warrencast its frankenstein because it had so many working parts but an enterprise that covered every part of the globe. What i knew was most see duck tonight to me about the company was its adventurousness in terms of what it insured. It insured kidnappings and military things. All kinds of highrisk customers, all over the world, and it really did change the nature of what a big Insurance Company could do, i think, and so that was my whole understanding. I didnt know anything about the operations of the company. I didnt understand the workings at all and how byzantine it was and how much i was broken into little speakses especially after hank left in the mid2000s. So, i didnt insurance, lets face it, is not the most the sexiest business on the planet. Host it is as you mentioned. And aig in some ways was a very glamorous company. Guest even the name, aig, didnt have much sounds so vague and so almost like an james bond movie, you name the company that somebody was running. That vague quality. So i didnt really have a great understanding, and i think that was part of the problem that the company had when the dam burst because i think the American People, particularly, knew what citigroup was and what golden sack was anddoor golden sachs or Lehman Brothers but didnt know much about the Insurance Company. It had a very foggy public image. Host aig was the poster child, one of the most, i think, if not the most, hated recipient of the governments bailout and it was 187 billion. Right . One of the controversies of the financial crisis was this idea that the money went to aig bailed out firms like Goldman Sachs who received payment in full. So talk about how bob felt about that. Guest it infuriated him they were being bailed out at 100cents to the dollar. It made no sense to him, and he called them vultures. And then it was additionally, they were all in the building. They were reaping hundreds of millions more in consulting fees, they were all brought in to do studies. There was a huge plan called project destiny, which cost untold millions that were supposed to sell off the company very quickly into its contingent parts, and that all drove him nuts. He thought it was unconscionable they got paid off before the public did. Host he sounds like he was ended up running a firm that in some ways epitomized wall street but yet he was not of wall street and a ton of contempt toward the institutions, the countrys powerful institutions, to the consulting firms to Goldman Sachs permeates the book. Guest he had friends on wall street but when it came to aig and what he wanted to do he saw it very black and white him understood that something was amiss. But there were only so many fronts on which he could fight at any one time. Host before we dom back to project destiny, talk about who Hank Greenburg was and then what bobs relationship with him was. Guest well, hank bob had been the ceo of metlife in the 90s and early 2000s, so they were competitors. Bob had greats a mr. Racing, i think i think he had Great Respect for what hank did at aig. I think he thought he was a visionary and knew him as a competitor and hank had tremendous respect for bob and thought he shepherded metlife through a difficult time and there is a symbiosis. Hank left under difficult circumstances having to do with the attorney general of new york. A long, sordid story. Hank was one of the people when the government and aig were looking for a new leader after ed liddy resigned, he was one of the people urging the government to look at bob, and they had some meetings over time. Bob respected hank. I think he thought that aig was too big. He came to the conclusion that they had created something that really wasnt was unten everyone what bob would say that that hank created a company that was so huge only hank in other words it. By the time that bob came along, he knew that there had to be some sensible reduction in the size of the company. And he i think he over time continued to want hank as a sort of a silent ally, wanted him to be someone who supported, at least but i think thats because bob thought he was a really smart businessman. Host so bob comes into this company that it is on a lifeline from the u. S. Government. Incredibly controversial, getting you can argue a disproportionate share of the blame for the financial crisis. Talk about what he encount at thed in terms of what was going on with the employees when he got there and the widespread hatred toured aig employ toward aig employees. Guest most because of one small unit that created the in connecticut and london, the holm of the create default swaps and all that horrible stuff. Those people were the focus of a tremendous amount of american anger, particularly because of this issue around the bonuses they were contractually entitled to. But it played out in the press so these bone is ins became a symbol of hearing what was wrong it was not that much money considering the billions of people the government had invested in aig, it was something on the order of 60 million. I cant remember the number. Bit of it was a focus focal point for the anger and got to the point where organized groups went and protested at the homes of Financial Products executives and workers. There were threats against Death Threats against people in the company. Security people had to be hired. I mean, it was extreme. It was way over the top. Anit got to the point where aig took its name off its building. Its started creating things like the profit and Casualty Company that didnt want any association with the name aig. And people didnt wear if the i. D. Tags. Host how did bob feel about that. Guest furious. Another thing to be wildly angry about. He felt it was he felt that it was congress and even the president who fed the anger, that they in their statements, might even some of. The might be privately much more conciliatory but publicly were condemning and used language that inflammed and made everybodys job harder. The government wanted aig to pay back the money and was basically telling people if was a disreputable organization and made no sense buts he couldnt believe that he had an outside amount of empathy for his own people, but you can understand. He felt responsible for these people. He says congress seemed intent on a strategy of corporate sabotage. Guest he would watch is a there were these things would unfold, like there was a congressional hearing about a retreat at the st. Regis hotel in california that had been organized two years before any of these things happen. Nonetheless he does something critically remarkably handson because there is a huge demand from congress and so what does that do . Well, bob eventually decides to get the money back and it had to do with ken feinberg. He was in charge of setting the salaries for the top executives with those thatgot the money from the treasury and what he did was, he called a clawback. He promised feinberg and return for allowing him to set executive compensation fairly he promised to get the money back and he sat at his desk and did what he called dialing for dollars and got a list of people who had taken bonus money over a. Neck of time got all of the money back through the areas persuasion . Host i think that is astonishing, by the way. Guest that he did it himself took that to the man was. Thats who he was. Host talk about his attitudes towards pay an unpopular things like Corporate Jets and ceos paid a lot of money. His predecessor famously took a dollar a year to serve as aigs cleanup guy. What was bobs attitude . Guest he wasnt working for a dollar, thats for sure. He valued his skills and set eight, i mean, what he would consider a reasonable price for his skills. I mean, he got a package when he came to aig, he negotiated a package of about 10 million a year at the time, the government was setting it way load slower, but the government also knew they needed him and one important thing to remember, bethany, is who was going to do this job . I dont think they had many really smart alternatives to bob and also, bethany, someone who believed that this could be achieved. Remember there was no one who thought this could happen. Bob truly did. Ultimately it was a small price for the American People to pay to get this done and remember also bob had nothing to do with the damage that had been done. He came in to fix it, so when he did come in, he knew that compensation and this goes back all through his career, again. The importance of money to him. It was very central. You didnt do this because he did it partly because he wanted that American People to be made whole. He was a patriot, but he was going to get paid and even after the agreement was set on his salary it took several months before he was paid. The Corporate Jet was also i think a very important symbol for him. It had a terrible pr impression for people, partially because the year before when that executives of the three Auto Companies came to washington to talk about their bailout, they threw in gluing on Corporate Jets and left a bad taste in everyones mouth, but bob felt the jet was a Main Extension of his ability to do his job, a vital part of it. Remembering Global Company everywhere around the world and they had very specific guidelines from the government about how much it could be used, which basically made it almost impossible for him to use it and it drove him crazy. Remember, this is a guy who was retired when he took this job on. Happy life with this beautiful place in croatia. He let growing grapes there and i know it sounds elitist to people, but it wasnt so much about like sipping fine wine, he loved the process and the people they are. He got incredibly close to the wine makers, some of who out i actually met. These tough people who eat out a living growing grapes on the sides of hills. Host he might make even the most i heard skeptic think twice that Corporate Jets, i have to say. So, we had this meeting with tim and then the secretary of the treasury before he takes the job, but it is supposed to be a nice meet and greet your tell us what happens instead. Guest it was a fiasco. Jim milstein who is probably the other hero of this book, he was the structuring chief for treasury and it was very fortuitous for the country that these two men form a alliance. Jim was his biggest booster and also he was the recipient of the most grief when bob did things the government was sort of terrified by. In terms of outspokenness and iconic, but jim had recruited bob essentially they had meetings and advocated him getting the job and bob said, you know what jim, before i take this job this is in the summer of 2008 before i take this job i want to meet who is really making the decisions and jim said i am happy to go to washington. Bob wanted to know who he was dealing with, so he went jim arranged for him to meet milstein and Larry Summers who was then one of obamas chief economic advisers. He brought him into a meeting, which was supposed to be a session between geisler and who had also been leery of bob to begin with some of by the way because he was not sure he was the right fit because of his outspokenness and they sat down and instead of having this kind of like orientation session, bob read him the riot act and basically lectured geisler about how dare the government treat the employees of aig this way. You will not get anything done if there are threats to people. Basically, told him off in this session and guide snare was furious, furious is the theme of the hour. He was really anger and milstein took him out of the room and said to bob, what you doing, why would you do that bob said i just want them to know what i thought and i think it was really a test for bob out how far he would be allowed to go, number one. Number two, it was a statement of independence, declaration of independence. You will not have a guy in this job that will just take phone calls from you and do what you tell me to do. He had a better session with Larry Summers after that and by the time he got over to Summers Office apparently it had gotten worse and had not gone well and geislers office, but summers believed in bob two, i think very strongly and explain to him some of the nuance and political stage and said that was going on and why there had to be so much aimed at aib publicly even if they wanted him to do a job right. Guest he did not like that kind of, the wonderful thing about bob is you read his town halls with his employees in his interviews with reporters and it is the same story that is told privately. There is no subtext. Host i was struggling as i read the book to figure out who he liked least and kite near becomes a relatively minor character in the book, but chitin or, the press were harvey talk about his relationship with harvey. Guest people described it as oil and water. These were two very strong men, very talented man, very bright man, but both had a vision and leadership that they were central according to bob. It became during bobs first year harvey came on almost simultaneously with bob and for the first time in the companys history that job of ceo and chairman was divided between two people. Bob had mixed feelings about this decision, but ultimately thought, you know what, if the chairman comes on and will deal with the washington stuff, that is fine. I will be with the company. I will deal with figuring out when we select portions of the company and morale building and i will deal with the value of how we will enhance the brand. Over time though, they really never formed a relationship. I do think it was the one blind spot that bob had that he didnt really establish he had so much else on his plate its sort of understandable with eight i mean, he was doing this most this time a compensation issues with the government for the first several months of his job, but something never connected between those two men and they both had visions in the company that were never reconciled and harvey held sway with a lot of the board members. Bob tendency to speak his mind unnerved in a lot of people and there became a kind of went in bobs mind anyway campaign to undermine him in the press. He had his theories about where came from. He told a famous story, he loved to tell the story of someone who went to the doctor and of the doctor said, the good news is youre not paranoid. You know, its like and that was his sort of you know, he saw the way things works and there were times for example right after he took over the job and he along promised he would go back to croatia for harvest his grapes and here told the government and the board and he felt he got signed off on that and when he went , two weeks after he started at the company all hell broke loose with stories ran that the company was floundering and he was out as a happy grape harvester with pictures of him and it was like dave and called him over there and said what you doing because he was giving interviews to european reporters for some American News organizations and he was explaining that these were putting them all together and he was getting long interviews and it was a pr disaster. Host ultimately there was a showdown with harvey. What happens . Guest they went back and forth. It really crystallize over the deal to sell the largest unit that aig wanted to d as to self of, aia, which was a chinese based insurance, life Insurance Company, huge crown jewel of aig, part of the original vision of the company, of a company that proceeded it founded by cornelius in the late 1919, i think. Bob had secured what he thought was a cool in getting a huge amount of money from a british Insurance Company for aia that was way over what the original evaluation was by other people at the company and the deal was not it did not do that well over time. It looked like the tlc, not related to the american credential didnt have the resources to make it happen, but it really brought the factions to a head on the board and after the board refused to back bob on a lower evaluation for the company to still so and so the prudential the relationship was in tatters and at a meeting in that july 2009, bob decided that it was either he or harvey who was going to have to go. He had talked about meeting before. He had another famous saying that he thought he had something called f, u money that allowed you to walk away from a bad situation and he decided at this meeting he was going to announce one of us has to go and milstein described it as the most dramatic Board Meeting he has ever attended from a restructuring guide. Over the course of that afternoon as the debate ensued with harvey and his office and bob in his and the board wrestling with the question of where this company was going to go and who was going to lead it, its might have been a foregone conclusion of that point that bob was the person to do it. They were so down that road with his plan and it made sense and bob probably knew that at some level. Nevertheless, at some point in the afternoon harvey went into bobs office and said i think we have to repair our relationship and bob said, harvey, we dont have a relationship you you can imagine this incredible scene between these guys with so much on the line here and to his credit, harvey conceded at that meeting. He said i will be the one that goes. Bob is still sitting in his office waiting for the results of the announcement. Walked over about a hour later had with meeting have broken up and everyone was gone and he did not know if he had a job or not. He had to ask i pick it was a secretary he said what happened and they said they had left and he calls milstein who was on his way to visit his daughter at camp and he said harvey is gone. You are the new ceo i mean, new chairman of the board. Host january 2011, aig is really his company and this is when the loans are scaled back at neil cavuto says it is a come back nothing short of breathtaking. In the meantime, something happened to bob. He has found out he has cancer and did he do what some people might do and cut back on work . No peer tell us how he handled that what that discovery was like for him. Guest yeah, that was a extraordinary moments and i only met bob after he was already diagnosed and being treated for cancer, so his whole persona was somewhat informed by that. But, that month in october 2010, he had been coughing and went to a doctor and ultimately at nyu a wonderful oncologist that he had, they informed him he had lung cancer. He was going to go on a treatment regiments. They went through a treatment regimen and they were going to decide which one to do and on there was actually a important meeting to set the price of aia on the day that happened he was having chemo at nyu and was on the phone. He had not told anyone in the company yet, i believe, that this was happening and he told nyu this is a regiment he was supposed to take over several days, but he did not have time for the chemo to be administered so he said you have to give it to be only once. So, he sat for hours and hours. I think it was three, i mean, i dont remember how many actual where the regiments were compressed for the one set sitting, but it was a terrible ordeal for him in part because he was terrified suddenly with the confronted by mortality. Obviously, the personal pain was intense for his family, but also the idea suddenly that he would not get this job done that he and invested so much of himself in it that, that was you know alarming to the core of what he was. The other interesting question is how much do you disclose, what you tell, who do you till and when do you tell it when how would that affect. He was worried they would as her him right out the door and it would be okay, we are done and we will go with someone else. He ultimately decided shortly thereafter to till the board and the press and the company and the people at the company that he had cancer and it was being treated, which it was. At that point they were sure the outcome would be and he did not reveal he had lung cancer. He never revealed it and in light of steve jobs and his pancreatic cancer, which was another it became an issue. Although, that was disclosed early on. It is kind of amazing he was able to keep that to himself basically to himself. He didnt feel it was anyones business what kind of cancer he had especially since he was in treatment for it. The prognosis at the beginning was a year, i think. He was pretty i remember he had a conversation and said i asked him on the phone i said will you be around to do this and bob said it depends on how this work. I hope it will. It was that if the and by the grace of god the first treatments he had were very very successful. He didnt live a year. He lived for an half years with various interventions and he never missed a days work. Host i thought it was interesting what you said about his fear of dying before this job was finished and he writes a very poignant line in the book on my plan to work as hard as possible to erase regret from my vocabulary, which shows you how important this was to him. One place perhaps where he didnt get it and it is still something that is eight issue in our campaigns today at night is partly attribute up to Bernie Sanders popularity, which is the continued anger of the American People and bob seem to have no time for that. He wrote it was mistakes basically and if we blame people for their mistakes the entire company would be in jail and he said he didnt follow the actions the nation took, but the viciousness that took off after it was taken. Guest he compartmentalized it, think. I think you really could in his own mind i tried on many occasions as we talked to him we tried to in many ways to get him to talk about a understanding of how much pain there was on main street as a result of what happened and i dont think it was that he was not a compassionate man. I do think, though, that he believed so strongly in what business could accomplish, the good that could be done by business, by American Enterprise that he had to almost seal off the idea of the damage not the damage so much as the reaction, the response. It was like get over it. We are not there anymore and i think that was key to how this all happened. I dont know that he could have achieved this extraordinary result, which was paying back at a prophet within three years this massive amount of money that even the Congressional Budget Office said would never be paid off, the Government Accounting Office and in these organizations wrote this company off as a 50 billiondollar loss. I dont think if he had dwelled on the fact that people were hurting come i dont think he could have achieved everything he did because he thought he was helping them to stop hurting. And its almost like i know you want to shake him and say just say yes, this is criminal. But, he didnt see it that way. Host what highlights this lunch he has with president obama after. Guest finally it was like he often talked you know, there was a famous article about him in new york magazine, which had a great sort of summarizing headline. It was a picture of the bob looking, robust, looking like a Great American Success Story and over the headline the headline was youre welcome, america. He did feel as if the country did not have much gratitude for what he and the company had achieved in paying them back. You know, it was all like in the negative con there was no plus column , so that was extremely upsetting to him. Partly because he thought it would so help the company to have a acknowledgment of what it had done in his opening was his legacy would be leaving a healthy edge, leaving the company and proving the naysayers wrong by making sure this company survived the on the payback and so milstein arranged for bob to have a meeting with obama. You know, remember he didnt excuse me, bob was not a huge fan of this administration, i think its fair to say. He felt some things he admired about it, but others he thought obama was not a forceful enough voice on many issues including the role of American Business. I think he thought it was cowardly when obama went after fp. Having he thought there was something truly unfair about, the platitudes that obama voiced trying to sort of like it almost did encourage, he thinks, the anger towards the company. So, in january of 11, milstein arranged for bob to go to white house to sit down for a short meeting with obama. Once again, in the midst of this pleasantries bob laid out what he thought was this, you know, lack of fortitude about American Business on the part of the president and, you know, i wish i could tell you i had great insight into the back and forth that happened on that day, but bob left it at that. He left at his sort of instructing obama on this issue and so he was never going to get a president ial medal of honor for which, i think he actually deserves frankly for what he did with his company, but his heroism was of a sort that didnt necessarily meet political establishment for them to recognize its. Host so, you and he right at the beginning of the book that this is much life lessons as it is a leadership lessons and he writes in the book, which i was interesting, i discovered it all comes down to what you mean by happy in the reality of a working like has ups and downs occurring and nothing is forever, not even life itself. What did he mean by that guest well, thats a great question. I mean, i reflect and hearing them back its like i cant hear him sort of thinking about where his life is taking him and, you know, i think there was some regrets that in that, you know, he wasnt going to other get to spend those sort of sunset years in this place he loved far away from the United States in croatia where he spent a lot of time with his family, with the people he loved and there was that sacrifice , you know, that he made. In spite of the fact that it might have extended his life just having this in his life. Just the adrenaline, who knows. I mean, i think he was deeply aware of the fact that work can only a key so happy that that was not the beall and endall in spite of the fact that he was a workaholic in many ways. He also had some perspective on it. Host he had eight, the kidded personal life. Headed that affect your view on him . Guest we talked a lot about in what we describe here and what we are talking about here, bethany, for audience members is that he had relationships outside his marriage particularly one very important one to him. He had been legally separated from his wife for many years and had remained very close to her. It was a complicated situation and it was someone who he worked with at that life and when he was ceo. So, its not a life that is tied up neatly in those, but whose life is and we debated a lot and we talked to him long and hard including with other people involved in the situation about whether to include all aspects of his life in the book. It had been publicly known before, so it wasnt a complete surprise, but he said it quite powerfully and i quitted his justification in the book he said i am not a saint. I dont want people to think i was a saint. I think that made him all the more credible. You know, to be cheryl that let you know, heroes are flawed human beings and we learn so much more from people who have the spectrum of experience than we do from someone who is just creating a image for themselves that we are supposed to believe in and we ultimately know we are ultimately disappointed by those people spirit i think that is a wise observation and it really is a great book. Congratulation. Guest thank you. Lovely talking to you about it. Cspan, greeted by a americas cabletelevision companies and brought to as a Public Service by your cable or satellite provider