Bernard Schwartz was the last person in my life to regularly refer to me as “kid.” When in the course of our many collaborations over the past two decades, he would approve of a job I had done on something, he would say, “Nice work, kid.” It was, when you are, as I am, well into your sixties, a title that was as appreciated as it was misplaced.
Bernard, a philanthropist, political activist, business leader, father, grandfather, husband, and mensch to the very marrow of his bones was born the same year as my own father, 1925. He was of the greatest generation. He remembered the Depression and served during World War II. Those experiences, as much as the great business success he worked for throughout his adult life, shaped who he was and the kind of America he so strongly believed in.
He died earlier this month at the age of 98 after a long and extraordinary life. If, based on that life and the spirit of the man, I were able to bestow a title on him, it would be “the most optimistic man in America.”
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To be optimistic in today’s America may seem detached from reality. It may smack of the triumph of hope over experience. But for Bernard, much like it is for President Joe Biden—for whom Bernard was tirelessly working until his very last days on this Earth—optimism was not a viewpoint as much as it was the foundational reason for his belief in America. To him, this was a country founded on promise and built by those who believed in that promise in order to provide each succeeding generation with new hope and opportunity.
As it was for Biden and generations of Americans who lifted themselves up from humble beginnings—or came to this country in order to do so—Bernard’s optimism was not just some ephemeral dream that we carry in our hearts. It was both a motivation and a reward for hard work.
The American dream is not a gift to which we are all entitled, it is something we had to work for every day of our lives—if it were to be kept alive.
In recent years, with the rise of Donald Trump, the necessity of such work became clearer still. The America in which Bernard and Biden believed was at risk. But even in the darkest days of the recent past—even as I spoke with Bernard as he watched the MAGA mob attack the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and I could hear in his voice despair, anger and disbelief—he retained his optimism.
He knew that the rise of Trump—and the damage he was doing to our country—meant we would have to work harder. But drawing on his own life experience and his knowledge of the history of the nation, he had every confidence that we would once again ultimately preserve what we have so valued for the past nearly 250 years.
A LIFE-CHANGING MOMENT
I first met Bernard thirty years ago when I was a senior official in the Clinton administration. He was the CEO of Loral Corporation, one of several dozen who accompanied us on a trade mission to Asia. We were all exhausted from a brutal schedule and not thrilled to be jammed together into a bus for a drive to another long and very likely boring official meal. I had no idea that happening to sit next to this guy, 30 years my senior, would change my life.
But as soon as we began to talk, it was clear that he was an extraordinary guy and not one who would let a dreary bus ride go to waste. Why, he wanted to know, wasn’t there anyone in the Clinton administration who realized how important it was to invest in U.S. infrastructure? In that 30-minute ride, he provided me with a graduate course in the merits of investing in the United States that was compelling… and that U.S. government policy would not catch up to for nearly three decades.
After I left the government, he and I continued the conversation. We later began to write together on the subject, and to convene meetings of senior officials to advance the idea that whether the market was up or the market was down, the economy was booming or in a trough, that the answer was investing in America and Americans. (It ultimately took a fellow optimist, Biden, to turn the plan into action.)
When Trump loomed as a threat on the horizon, Bernard focused heavily on supporting the campaign of Hillary Clinton, a leader in whom he deeply believed (and who along with her husband, the former president, spoke at his funeral). He, like many of us, was devastated by her defeat—especially because he knew Trump from New York business circles and understood what his election could mean. So he immediately went to work on figuring out where the Hillary Clinton campaign had gone wrong and how to restore the party to leadership.
Bernard Schwartz and Hillary Clinton on June 13, 2005 in New York City.
Jimi Celeste/Patrick McMullan/Ge/Jimi Celeste/Patrick McMullan/GettyI do not recall him once during our work together at that time suggesting we might not succeed.
THE OPTIMISTIC PRESIDENT
Long before I understood the potential of Joe Biden’s candidacy, Bernard recognized it. As I have said, they were kindred spirits in important ways. Biden offered the Rooseveltian optimism that was in Bernard’s DNA.
We worked together to help support his election and then his agenda. We collaborated on more events and columns, and he was supportive as I built a small progressive new media platform into a vehicle that reached hundreds of thousands of people each month.
In his late nineties he became a trusted collaborator of mine on podcasts, virtual events, and web-based media platforms. He supported many other ventures to help get America back on the right track and we, whenever possible, sought to highlight the very real achievements of the Biden administration’s optimism-driven agenda. Because he never lost his optimism nor his commitment to doing what was necessary to make a difference.
That commitment was sustained until the very end of his life. The last article we published together, weeks before his death, was a summary of how he and I saw the threat of re-electing Trump—a wake-up call about how grave it was. But in keeping with his core spirit, he pressed that we write a new article and meet with senior campaign officials to underscore what he saw as the positive agenda that would win this year.
Bernard Schwartz and Joe Biden on October 30, 2017 in New York City.
Mike Coppola/Getty/Mike Coppola/GettyTrump’s threat was to be emphasized, certainly. But the core message that Bernard believed was in pointing out that where Biden had major accomplishments in his first term, Trump and the GOP had none; that whereas Biden was pushing a positive agenda now, all that the GOP was doing was opposing it; and that while Biden had a sweeping set of goals for the next four years, all the GOP could offer was cynicism, division, and obstruction.
Bernard saw the president’s hugely successful State of the Union as an ideal blend of these messages. And he was, again, optimistic about the outcome of the election this November—if we all collectively invested as much work as we could in achieving that outcome. We had a meeting on how we might do that scheduled for March 13 with a top Biden campaign official. We exchanged views on how to approach it in the days before the meeting. But, sadly, Bernard passed away the day before the meeting—still active, still committed, still relentlessly optimistic.
For the past couple of decades, I grew very used to calls or meetings with Bernard every few days, often several times a day. Sometimes they would begin with him asking me what I thought of some recent event. Typically, I would offer a view that focused on problems and risks. After all, my father nicknamed me Eeyore as a child. And then, after letting me expound for a minute or two, Bernard would say something to the effect of, “OK kid, let me tell you why I think you’re wrong.”
While his view was always realistic, in the end it was buoyed by the optimism that served as his North Star throughout an extraordinary life. Mine was just one of many lives he changed. I am just one of many people who he left more optimistic than he found us.
That is why I feel that although he will be sorely missed by his family and his countless friends, as much as we are diminished by his absence, we will also be left much more enriched because he—like the other optimists who built this country—came this way and contributed so much.
