After spending years at the helm of Time magazine and then CNN, Walter Isaacson left last year to join the Aspen Institute, an education and policy think tank based in Washington, D.C., and Aspen, Colo. Clearly a busy man, Isaacson divides his time between New York, Washington and Colorado; his Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (see review, this page) comes out in July. He spoke to PW about what a modern-day Benjamin Franklin might be like, and what Bush and the rest of us might learn from him.

PW: If Franklin were alive today, would he be a Democrat or a Republican?

Walter Isaacson: Franklin believed in compromise and that rational people could solve problems by finding common ground. It took a lot to turn him into a revolutionary. He had that wonderful mix of conservatism, populism and liberalism that can be found in the great American middle class. And his philosophy was a great blend of left and right. But he would be very much against the divisive partisanship of today.

PW: Do men like Franklin exist in our age?

WI: He was in his 80s when the Constitution was written, yet he was the only person considered as a possible president beside Washington. He never went to college and was self-taught, yet he was spectacular: the best scientist, inventor, writer, business scientist, diplomat and practical political thinker. It would be hard to be the world's greatest scientist and politician at the same time.

PW: What could Bush learn from Franklin about how to negotiate with Europeans?

WI: Franklin played an astounding balance-of-power game with France, Spain and England during the revolution. He used idealism to push America's interests. He made France want to come in on America's side—it was the last time someone was able to woo France so successfully. If we had Franklin today, France would not have vetoed the U.N. resolution on Iraq.

The lesson to be learned from his style of diplomacy is that America needs to be clear what its ideals and interests are—and the biggest lesson is the faith he had in the virtues and values of the common citizen as being a foundation for democracy. Franklin had to fight to make the system more democratic. He was the least elitist of the founding fathers—he was proud to be a self-educated, leather-apron-wearing shopkeeper. He was proud of his middle-class values. He's got the virtues and values that America really needs to embrace today. He's very relevant to the 21st century and to an age that has lost some of its moral moorings.

PW: What attracted you personally to writing about Franklin? After your biography of Henry Kissinger, it seems unexpected.

WI: I was writing about foreign policy and trying to understand the roots of realism and idealism in American foreign policy. I've been interested in diplomacy, and I've been involved in publishing and editing, new media, the digital world and science. And though I'll never be as adept as Franklin was at any of these things, I was fascinated at how he had touched all aspects of my own career. I wanted to be more like Franklin. He retired at middle age from the world of media to become more involved in education and civic affairs.

He formed a group called the Junto, which was his forum for education and discussion. The Junto was a centrist, practical, pragmatic education and discussion forum that sought common ground on contentious issues. And the Aspen Institute is almost an exact replica: it's supposed to be absolutely centrist and a search for common ground.

PW: Is there one lesson readers should take away from your biography?

WI: I've been working on the Franklin bio for 10 years. Franklin is so lovable that I would spend the nights reading his letters. It was always easy to make time for Franklin. We've all read the autobiography and it's a delight. I was trying to save him from the simplistic popular imagination. People confuse Franklin with the character portrayed in his autobiography and in Poor Richard's Almanac maxims. They think he was a penny-saving, penny-earning virtuecrat, when in fact he was a much more fun-loving and complex person who created his persona in the autobiography for PR purposes. You shouldn't confuse the maxim-spouting Ben Franklin with the wonderfully complex real person.