Sam Hinkie

They were not a number one seat at all.

They were quite low, quite without many advantages.

And to get all the way to the top, you probably had to sacrifice everything to the effort.

There could be nothing left behind.

I think the meta lesson from there is if you zoom out, then you should say, if you're not willing to pay that price, presume someone else will.

And if you're trying to win a tournament that's that popular and try to chase something as shiny as call it the, God forbid, the US presidency, you should presume there will be someone out there that will and that will devote their whole life

Their whole life and all their time, of course, all their money, that's relatively inconsequential to people driven this way.

All of their relationships, most of their sense of ethics, everything in sacrifice of that one goal.

And of course, that person, given a high enough starting point, given a high enough set of natural abilities, of course, that person would win that race.

Moses and LBJ are complicated, interesting characters for sure.

Disgusting in a whole bunch of ways to see how it's made is like, oh, just like turn your stomach inside out.

What quality in both those men is most redeeming in your opinion?

What quality in both those men do you respect the most having studied them?

I want to be super clear.

I very much don't like Carol's books because of those men or because of what they represent.

In fact, it's the opposite.

But to your point, there's admirable characteristics within there.

They could build a system that compounded over time, over decades, and they could see how if you could get on that trajectory and

and turn the wheel like this, that it would ever increasingly turn faster and faster and end up at that place, which I think is amazing.

There's an amazing scene in Passage of Power where JFK gets shot and they're in Parkland Hospital in Dallas and LBJ's behind a curtain and