It wasn’t until years later, when David Rubenstein began studying the effectiveness of speeches, that he understood why John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address impacted him so as a sixth grader.

At his teacher’s behest, Rubenstein listened to the speech in class. He was struck, he recognized later, by the hallmarks of many powerful speeches — a focus on the whole rather than the self, a rallying call for a nation.

That 1961 presidential inauguration and the resulting Kennedy administration helped ignite a lifelong interest in public service, the presidency and the men (all men so far) who have served in the office. Rubenstein, the billionaire philanthropist who owns the Baltimore Orioles, put that passion into his latest book: “The Highest Calling: Conversations on the American Presidency.”

Rubenstein follows an interest kindled long ago through detailed conversations with historians and presidents. Rubenstein conversed with political analysts. He sat with President Joe Biden and met with former Presidents Barack Obama, Donald Trump and George W. Bush.

And with these conversations, Rubenstein aims to make clear the importance of the American presidency, not just for the U.S. but for the Western world. As the 2024 presidential election approaches, there’s no better time for Americans to understand the impact of their choice, Rubenstein believes. Throughout history — and throughout Rubenstein’s book — that importance is conveyed.

“The presidency is still the most important job in the entire world,” Rubenstein said. “Having known presidents, I know their flaws. But we all have flaws as humans. Some of these people have really changed the world for the better. Some make terrible mistakes. Some, we’re lucky they became president. Some, we’d be much better off had they never gotten involved in politics.”

Rubenstein, in interviews with Semafor and other outlets, notes how close this election between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris will be. Rubenstein acknowledged that Trump has done “brilliantly” and is an “amazing phenomenon” in the way he has convinced lower-class Americans that he’s one of them, despite the fact that Trump is “not a poor person, didn’t work his way up from nothing, and lives a lifestyle that’s not one that a lot of his constituents could ever dream of.”

Either way, next month, there will be ardent supporters for Trump and Harris. And whoever wins will take center stage in American life.

“American people pay so much attention to what the president is doing: what he’s eating, how he’s exercising, how he gets along with his wife, what clothes he or she wears,” Rubenstein said. “It’s like our royal family. It’s just something that we’ve been taught as we grow up as Americans, to respect the president, even though some presidents probably don’t deserve that much respect. Respect the office, I guess.”

With that in mind, Rubenstein — ever curious — asks hypothetical questions to historians, breaking from the strict history lesson to instead offer a thought-provoking exercise of what could’ve been. For instance, Rubenstein wonders at one point what might’ve happened to Abraham Lincoln had General Ulysses S. Grant, whom the Lincolns had invited to see “Our American Cousin,” been at Ford’s Theatre on the night the president was assassinated.

Thus, in a conversation with Rubenstein, The Baltimore Banner asked him a hypothetical: Given his passion for the presidency, does Rubenstein wish he made a run at the White House?

He replied, initially, with his usual dry sense of humor.

“People say to me today, ‘David, why don’t you run for president?’ And I say, ‘I’m too young; I’m 75 years old. You need to be more experienced. I need to be aging more.’ I mean, who wants a young guy as president?”

His actual answer has more to do with Rubenstein’s preference for a behind-the-scenes role — even though he recently became the front-facing owner of the Orioles who throws hats to fans from his seat near home plate.

“I never really thought about it because I just never thought I had the charm, the good looks, all the things you need,” Rubenstein said. “I thought I was more of a back-office adviser type.”

Perhaps before television Rubenstein would have not had to think about his appearance so much in a hypothetical presidential run. In the book, Rubenstein recounts how many citizens would not have seen Lincoln, a tall, gangly, awkward-looking man, or heard his voice until he conducted a whistle-stop tour from Illinois to Washington, D.C., after winning the 1860 election.

Rubenstein pointed to Kennedy in the 1960 presidential debate, with his youthful appearance playing a positive role in winning an election, especially contrasted with Richard Nixon’s unkempt appearance.

Rubenstein has been around the White House before. Before embarking on a career in private equity — which he has jokingly called the “highest calling” before — Rubenstein served in Jimmy Carter’s administration as the deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy. In that role, Rubenstein garnered a “greater sense of the history of the country,” and since then has taken interest in historical preservation.

It led him to make key donations for the restoration or repair of the Washington Monument, Mount Vernon and the Kennedy Center, among other landmarks. He has provided the U.S. government with long-term loans of rare copies of the Magna Carta and Declaration of Independence.

His latest book, then, is a different sort of historical preservation.

“The more and more I was interviewing people about historical figures and more and more read about [Thomas] Jefferson and the Founding Fathers and all of that, it stuck in my mind that what we need is a more-informed citizenry,” Rubenstein said, referencing a line Jefferson uttered. Rubenstein uses that phase — an informed citizenry — in the introduction to his book, and it galvanized him to preserve stories and documents to teach the populace about the past and present.

Rubenstein has written other books about investment, leadership and the founding of America. He also has television programs on PBS, such as “Iconic America” and “Peer to Peer Conversations.”

“More and more, I just want to kind of educate people about things, and I enjoy teaching people, and I enjoy when I give talks — I give a lot of talks on history around the country talking about the documents I have or the things I’ve done,” Rubenstein said. “I’m just amazed at how many people are interested in it, because they don’t know much about these subjects.”

With his book, he hopes to convey the weight and the long-standing history of the presidency before people head to the ballot box in November.

Two studies often pop into Rubenstein’s mind. In one, he notes that most Americans wouldn’t pass the citizenship test required of immigrants seeking naturalization. In another, Rubenstein notes that ⅓ or more of Americans don’t vote in elections.

Why is that?

“In part,” Rubenstein said, “because they don’t really know much about what’s going on.”