Jared Cohen, Goldman Sachs President of Global Affairs and Co-Head of Office of Applied Innovation, wrote a new book titled Life After Power chronicling lessons learned from seven former US presidents after they exited their presidencies.

Cohen joins Yahoo Finance to discuss his new book, the current election, and what he has learned from the case studies involved with the book.

"The thing that is so interesting about the timing of the book coming out is it very much relates to this election. First of all, in 2024 we're going to feature what will likely be the only rematch between two presidents as the nominees of the major parties," Cohen says on the 2024 election cycle. "Last time, and the only other time, it happened in 1892 when Grover Cleveland came back to challenge Benjamin Harrison — the only difference is then, he never lost the popular vote... The difference this time, you have the two oldest presidential candidates in history eclipsed only by themselves four years before."

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Editor's note: This article was written by Nicholas Jacobino

Video Transcript

- A new book offering insight on how 7 former US presidents searched for purpose after the White House. Today we're talking to the author of that book about lessons learned from these presidential second acts. With us in studio right now, Jared Cohen, Goldman Sachs president of Global Affairs and author of the new book, Life After Power. Jared, it's great to see you.

JARED COHEN: Thank you.

- So I'm interested, Jared, first of all, just given your sort of experience and background, you could have, Jared, written about any number of topics and subjects. Why this one?

- Well, and you kind of have.

- Yes.

- How did you pick this one?

JARED COHEN: The personal answer is my dad's a psychologist. My grandfather is a psychologist. So I was always interested in behavioral psychology.

But the real answer is I've always been interested in this kind of elusive question of what's next. We get asked that so many times throughout our lives. And this is not a book about retirement, this is a book that takes the most dramatic transition in the entire world.

President of the United States where it's harder to top your last act than any other job imaginable. And when you look at these seemingly unrelatable figures and them coming back down to Earth, what's left behind is a series of prescriptions and really valuable case studies for the rest of us.

- And so what-- so as you were looking at these, what was the most interesting case study that people could look at and draw a lesson from?

JARED COHEN: Well, so I look at seven different presidents. And each of the seven presidents had a totally different model for how they pursued life after power. And I think that in and of itself is interesting.

It tells you that there's no blueprint for this. I think the one that spoke the most to me is John Quincy Adams. His presidency was an intermission between two of the greatest acts in American history.

The first one was his parents basically micromanaging what he did, making him a president. His presidency was a disaster. And after he leaves office, he gets elected to the House of Representatives.

And in a much lower station after serving nine terms, he achieves a much higher calling which is he finds himself stumbling into being the leader of the abolitionist movement. And he takes a movement that was fringy and radical. And he mainstreams it just in time for Abraham Lincoln to take the reins.

- And, Jared, are there lessons learned from when you were researching and writing this book to apply today in the election that we're going to have here in 2024 between Biden and it seems Trump.

JARED COHEN: Well, look, you never know what the news hook is going to be. These books take a long time to write. And I think the thing that's so interesting about the timing of the book coming out is it very much relates to this election.

First of all, in 2024, we're going to feature what will likely be the only rematch between two presidents as the nominees of the major parties. Last time and the only other time it happened was 1892 when Grover Cleveland came back to challenge Benjamin Harrison.

The difference then is he never lost the popular vote. And he'd never been happier than when he threw away the presidency in 1888. The difference this time, you have the two oldest presidential candidates in history. Eclipsed only by themselves four years before.

- And so looking at the book and looking at what we're seeing now, particularly for President Trump who's been not retired over the past few years doing what he's been doing, still campaigning. You know, and I'm also curious in your work at Goldman how you're seeing this election through the prism of your book and what conversations you're having in Washington and with clients.

JARED COHEN: Well, look, the first thing that I'll say and I start off the book by reflecting on what the founding fathers thought about the idea of ex-presidents. Remember they didn't have a lot of examples at the founding of Republic for the peaceful transfer of power.

And Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 72, he asked the question is a good idea for the stability of the Republic to have half a dozen men or so wandering around the rest of us like discontented ghosts. So you fast forward to 2024. And we kind of have an answer to Hamilton's question, which is ex presidents can either be tremendous partners to their successors, or they can be their most formidable adversaries.

In terms of Goldman Sachs, I think what's interesting is if you look at 2024, economists talk a lot about an economic soft landing. On the geopolitics side, it increasingly looks like a hard landing. And the election features quite prominently into this.

And while voters don't vote on foreign policy, the outcome of this election probably has a tremendous impact on foreign policy. And we see this from war in Europe, war in the Middle East, and the escalating tensions between the US and China, the election has kind of a too soon and a too far problem. It's too soon in the sense that all the different players in each of the three geopolitical theaters want more information about what happens in November before taking any drastic decisions. The problem is November is too far away for us to just sit back and twiddle our thumbs and hope the status quo doesn't sustain its volatility.

- And Jared, I want to get you on this. Just given your position at Goldman and other kind of geopolitical question for you. What are the geopolitical issues, Jared, that you don't think are being debated and discussed enough?

Forget we talk a lot on this program about, for example, the risk posed from China it seems to be the one thing Democrats and Republicans actually agree on. What are we discussing enough in your opinion?

JARED COHEN: Well, look, they agree on it. But Taiwan and the South China Sea get all the oxygen. People talk about military confrontation.

What I'm worried about in 2024 which is something much more short term, which is tensions and escalation around supply chains. The US has called out a number of supply chains as being geopolitically important, critical minerals, and rare earths, pharmaceuticals, energetics, microelectronics, to name a few. You can't decouple any of those supply chains.

And so the question is within each of them, where does the integrated economy stop and the diversified economy start? And there's a concern that if the geopolitical aspirations to diversify these supply chains exceed the economic realities of what's possible, you end up with a tit for tat type situation and supply chain choking that happens in an election year. So while we talk about US and China, I'm not convinced that we're focused on the most important of the short-term issues.

- Interesting Jared, thanks so much for coming in. Appreciate it. Jared Cohen, author of Life After Power, President of Global Affairs and co-head of the Office of Applied Innovation at Goldman Sachs. Thank you.