An Evening With Doris Kearns Goodwin

good evening i'm mark Updegrove the president CEO of the LBJ foundation it's my great pleasure to welcome you to an evening with Doris Kearns Goodwin I am never as popular as when I walk with Doris Kearns Goodwin tonight I walked through the lobby with her and people burst into spontaneous applause and I really appreciate you applauding for me except that can't you do it when Doris is not around to we're thrilled to have DARS back home here at the LBJ Presidential Library where she spent many hours of her career before we introduce Doris properly I want to thank our friends sponsors st. David's Health Care the Moody Foundation the Ford Foundation and Tito's handmade vodka I'm telling you guys always applauded vodka it's it's absolutely consistent signed copies of Doris's superb book leadership in turbulent times will be sold outside of the auditorium after the program also following the program we invite friends members to join us for a reception on the fourth floor of the library in the Great Hall stay tuned for invitations upcoming for the the balance of this fall we will have see former CIA director John Brennan here on October 24th wait and we will have California Governor Jerry Brown here on November 7th so please come to those programs please tell your friends about the the Friends of the LBJ library as well we love to see a full house that helps us to get the kinds of guests that we were able to bring to the LBJ Presidential Library Larry example the the chairman of the LBJ foundation worked in the Johnson White House for the last year and a half of President Johnson's reign in office and he was there while there was a White House Fellow named Doris Kearns working in the White House as well it's my great pleasure to introduce Larry temple who will then introduce Doris Kearns Goodwin ladies and gentlemen please join me in welcoming Larry temple thank you before I introduce Norris I want to pay tribute to her recently deceased husband Richard Goodwin dick Goodwin was a force in his own right in the 1960s dick called himself the voice of the 1960s and he certainly was that one of the great great wordsmiths of all time dick wrote four books and a multitude of articles on public policy even wrote a play but he was probably best remembered as a speech writer a speech writer for John Kennedy and a speechwriter for Lyndon Johnson and what a speech writer he was he was the premier speech writer for both of those presidents many people say that the greatest of all of the speeches of Lyndon Johnson was his 1965 speech advocating the passage of the Voting Rights Act but because of its importance and because of its impact I'm one of those people that believe that is his greatest speech let me remind you of the context of that speech because I want to tell you one more thing about it the context of that speech is that dr. Martin Luther King and his compatriots the week before had been marching from Selma Alabama to Birmingham to protest the discrimination against African Americans to preclude him from registering to vote and precluding him to vote on what later became known as Bloody Sunday they encountered not only law enforcement people but soldiers with hoses with water with dogs with batons with clubs and they literally beat up those marchers and it turned out they didn't realize it but America was watching that was on public television for the first time and because the public got outraged LBJ knew was his opportunity to try to get the Voting Rights Act passed that was the only provision he could not get the Congress to agree to in the 1964 Civil Rights Act so he gave a speech to Congress he knew what he wanted to say and his main speech writers dick Goodwin provided the prose and because that prose is so resonant even today I want to tell you some of the passages I've strung these together not necessarily in the order in which they okay I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy at times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom so it was at Lexington and Concord so it was a century ago in Appomattox so it was last week in Selma Alabama there is no cause for pride of what has happened in Selma there's no cause for self-satisfaction for the long denial of equal rights for millions of Americans but there is cause for hope and for faith in our democracy in what is happening here tonight for the cries of pain and the hymns and protests of oppressed people have summoned into convocation all of the majesty of this great government the government of the greatest nation on earth our mission is it once the oldest and the most basic of this country to right wrong to do justice to serve man this cause must be our cause because it's not just Negroes but is really all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice and then LBJ paused and uttered the battle cry of the civil rights movement when he said and we shall overcome and I will say to you this country did overcome with a partnership of dick Goodwin and Lyndon Johnson with that battle cry the Rights Act passed five months later dick Goodwin did leave an indelible mark on his time and we ought to all remember him for the many many things that he did now I wanted [Music] I want to move now to introduce our honored guest tonight Doris Kearns Goodwin was a newly minted PhD graduate of Harvard in 1967 she made application to come to the White House and be a part of the White House program that was created by White House fellows created by Lyndon Johnson she made application but she wasn't very confident about being selected in spite of the many many talents and accomplishments she had she didn't think she had much chance simply because she was an open protestor of the Vietnam War and she had written an article that got wide prominence of how to dump Lyndon Johnson well that was just a challenge for Lyndon Johnson and he knew about it and he said that if he couldn't bring her to the White House and get her on his side within a year nobody could do it so she did get to be a White House Fellow I'll say just as inside I think they both got each other on their side ultimately maybe not with regard to the Vietnam War but all other things after in Lyndon Johnson decided and now she was not going to run for reelection in 1968 Doris came really on the White House staff and was actually they're working on domestic policy and anti-poverty work when the president left office in January of 1969 he did his best to get her to come to Texas he wanted her to come down here full-time work with him on his memoir other papers and he cajoled his only Lyndon Johnson could but one of the rare times he was not successful she said that she was going back to Harvard to teach where she did teach on the American presidency for ten years but even though he couldn't recruit her full time he was able to recruit her part-time and over the next several years she did come here from time to time part-time to work with Harry Middleton and Bob Hardesty and Lyndon Johnson on Lyndon Johnson's memoir so she has her finger prints on that book after the president's desk she continued to do her own work and in 1977 she had her first book of as a historian Lyndon Johnson and the American dream that got wide acclaim as a bestseller on the New York Times bestseller list and that launched her career as a presidential historian what a career it's been not in the order that she's written the books but her work on Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt get it out in a minute got a future prize it wasn't the only prize it wasn't the only award that she ever got but it was the most important one she got every Ward you can think of for historian to write a book her book on Lincoln was the source of that magnificent movie that many of us saw pretty all of you on Lincoln she wrote a book on the Kennedys she wrote a book on Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft she is I dare say written and studied more American presidents than any historian we have had in this country and now you have this new book on what she says the four presidents that she's lived with Lincoln FDR Teddy Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson and I look forward to reading that book now let me say that her interest goes a little bit beyond being a presidential historian she's a bit of a baseball nut and she worked with Ken Burns on Ken's video on baseball and one of the great sources of pride that she says she has is that she was the first female journalist that ever went into the Boston Red Sox locker room now I don't know if marquel asked her about that tonight but we'll see in a little bit you see her often today on television probably Meet the Press primarily she is the soft-spoken thoughtful kind person that tries to put the current situation in historical context if anybody can and she is clearly the presidential historian we all gravitate to and it's a great great honor a true honor to have her here tonight so please welcome Doris Kearns good [Applause] [Music] Darce what better way to welcome you home than with a full house it's I'm so glad to be back here 50 years ago oh my god we're glad to have you back so Larry paid tribute to to dick your late husband at one of the great nights of my life just came earlier this year when you and dick and I went to dinner I back in back in March I believe and you showed me drafts that dick had of the we shall overcome speech and he talked a little bit about writing that speech talk about his recollections of writing that incredibly important and impactful speech what happened is that President Johnson decided on a Sunday that he was going to give a speech to the joint session of Congress on Monday so dick came in at his leisurely time the next morning and and said how's goodwood doing on the speech anyway he sat down to write it that morning and only had that morning until that night but I think as Larry said and as we know he knew what was in Lyndon Johnson's heart they both felt this passion not only for civil rights for the Great Society when I listen to those words you know what seems so heartbreaking is to remember what it was like to live in the 60s at a time when there was a common purpose for us all when we were trying to make life better for people when you had words like this not only at this moment but the Great Society and the Howard University speech and Bill's coming out one after the other in the Congress it was thrilling to be young then and I sometimes think about the young people now and wishing that could catapult them back then so that they would know this is what public service is this is what it means this is what it means to follow the ideals of America and we can't forget that we'll talk about that tonight I think it's so important for all of us in this terrible time of anxiety to remember that history has been there before we've been through tough times when President Johnson first came into office the Kennedys bill was stuck they thought it would never come out never come out of the Congress there would be a filibuster if it did nothing else would get done in fact there was an article shortly before he died saying that the Congress is broken you know but there's something wrong with our republic none of his signature bills were coming out and yet yet within that first 18 months you have civil rights voting rights aid to education Medicare Medicaid immigration reform PBS NPR headstart aid to the cities it was thrilling absolutely thrilling to be alive then and I just hope all of you who remember that time will carry that optimism on to the next generation who may wonder will we ever live in such a time again we will I promise you right in leadership in turbulent times about for presence with whom you've spent a great deal of time Abraham Lincoln Theodore Roosevelt Franklin Roosevelt and of course Lyndon Johnson whom you knew why this book what what what led you to write this book after having spent time with these men in books that you wrote about each of them well part of it was that each time I finish a new book an old book write on the president I have to move his papers out of my study and put them somewhere else to make room for the new guy and I always felt like I was leaving an old boyfriend behind like it was kind of traitorous what I was doing so after I finished Teddy and Taft I thought so should I do a new person and I just felt like I really need to think about these four people even more they've occupied my life for 50 years and I hadn't really thought of them in terms of leadership I mean obviously was embedded in these other books but even when I was in graduate school it sounds rather nerdy but we used to stay up at night and think about questions like where does ambition come from does the man make the times as times make the man is leadership born or is it made all these kind of questions we used to stay up at night thinking about and I thought what if I started asking those questions now and and it was such a great adventure to do it because I hadn't thought about when they first thought of themselves as leaders how they were as young people what their pivotal moments were so it was a new adventure for me and I think in some ways they all led in turbulent times far more turbulent than our times now people keep asking me you know is this the worst ever and I can say from the experience of studying these four guys that it's not the worst and that's a good thing because we got through them and we got stronger and we were more unified than before and we can't forget that I mean that's where history is forgotten at its peril because if we can just remember that America has been strong before we look at and and we'll we'll do it the citizens were there when I think about what made that we shall overcome speech and the Voting Rights Act possible was the civil rights movement and always it's that yet when Lincoln was told that he was the Liberator they said don't call me that it's the anti-slavery movement that did it all so the citizens produced the anti-slavery movement they produced the progressive movement under TR and FDR the civil rights movement with LBJ the women's movement the environmental movement the gay rights movement it's up to us as citizens right now to take this banner and figure out how to reform our political system because it needs Reformation you you write in this book about well they actually it's interesting there are links between all these men I don't think that was intentional but it's or maybe it's largely coincidental but talk about how they're linked together I didn't really think about this until near the end book that it just shows how small a history how short a history the American history is because Lyndon Johnson's hero was FDR he called him his political daddy he entered Congress as a New Deal congressman their relationship when they're young is when he's young is so interesting which we can talk about and then FDR's hero was Teddy Roosevelt and he had really been interested in him when he was young because he's obviously he was Eleanor's uncle but more than that he loved the kind of fiery spirit of Teddy and what the Square Deal represented Teddy's hero was Abraham Lincoln in fact in the summer when there was this terrible cold strike that was devastating the country for six months there was no coal getting to New England he spent the entire summer reading the eight volumes of Nicolay and hay on Abraham Lincoln and he would often talk to people about look this is what Lincoln went through and I have a similar situation I'm gonna be like him I'm gonna figure it out and the neighbor ham link hero with the founding fathers in George Washington so there's the history of our country and capsulate in like a family tree of these guises like one of those boxes you open up and the next guy pops out the you right in the in the books introduction your quote American philosopher William James who writes of the mysterious formation of identity this way he says I have often thought that the best way to define a man's character would be seek out the particulars or moral attitude in which when it came upon him he felt most deeply and intensely alive and active at such moments there's a voice inside which speaks and said says this is the real me so you write about the the development of these men of chronologically and there are certain formative periods in their lives where they develop as people they face certain crucibles talk about those for each each of the men that you cover when did they say this is the real me you know it's interesting the reason I decided to go back and start the book when each one of them went into public life for the first time was because I was at a college audience some many years ago I was talking about FDR Lincoln and a kid raised his hand and said how can I ever imagine becoming him or one of them they're too remote they're on Mount Rushmore they're in the currency so I thought what if I start when they're young going into public life for the first time they're gonna make mistakes they're gonna fail they're gonna be confused then we as young people could identify with them are stood there struggles would be like ours so with with Abraham Lincoln that that moment really comes he's 23 years old it's incredible he's a New Salem Illinois he's just been there for six months and he decides he wants to run for the state legislature and in those days you put out a handbill and you had to say what it was that you stood for no political bosses nobody's choosing you anybody could run if they put out this handle and his is amazing it says every man has his peculiar ambition mine is to be esteemed of by my fellow man by being worthy of their and then he talks about the fact that he's pretty sure that he may not have a great chance in this election he has no wealthy relations to support him and he said but if the good voters don't put me in I've been too familiar with disappointment to be very much chagrined but then he says but you know he promises I'm gonna try this even if I keep losing five or six times until it's so embarrassing and humiliating I promise I'll never try again so even at that young age he knows that failure is part of success and and I think when he was out on the campaign trail for the first time even though he did lose and then the next time he won because more people met him in the county the more they voted for him he knew this is what I want to be it is a moment maybe it's one one of the moments for all of us when you find out what is that work what is that avocation what is that thing that makes you feel so good inside that it's connected to you with Teddy Roosevelt it was different I mean when he was 23 he also ran for the state legislature but he was he ran because somebody came to him a political boss and asked him to run because they knew that his father had been a well-known philanthropist in New York and they figured he would have a good name to go with it and he had wealth to help support it and he admitted later that he just went in for the adventure of it it wasn't to make life better for other people he wrote an essay about this but then what happened is as a state legislator he went into the the slavs he went into these dilapidated tenements as police commissioner he's wandering the streets of New York at night as a soldier in the army he's he's sheltering and eating with the soldiers as a governor he finally learns about the corruption between the political bosses in the business world his political career taught him something it makes me sad when I think that in 2016 political experience was considered a liability rather than a strength but in his case he just learned through it and he learned empathy I think Lincoln was born with it he was born caring about his friends who were putting hot coals on Turtles to make them regal and he just told them that was wrong but Teddy didn't have it right away but then through these experiences he said you can gain fellow-feeling you can learn about the way other people think and you may conscious at first if you're coming in from your privileged background being in these slums settings but after a while you're going to feel and think what these other people are feeling and he said something so relevant for us today he said the rock of democracy will found her at that moment when people think of each other from different sections classes or races as the other instead of as common citizens of America so once he started that political career that's when he felt this is what I want to be Franklin took a little longer he was 28 rather than 23 and he hadn't had a very distinguished leadership career up till that point been in a different student at Harvard at Columbia at at Groton before that and he was in a Wall Street conservative law firm and then and then all of a sudden they come to him again and said would you like to run for a safe Democratic seat in Dutchess County and again it wasn't because he had shown makings of a leader unlike Lincoln showing it earlier it was because he had a wealthy mother and he had the Roosevelt name and Teddy Roosevelt they thought some Democrats would vote for Franklin because they think he was Teddy so anyway he says yes and once he got out barnstorming he loved him I mean he was natural with people he would talk to them he would listen to them he wasn't a very good speaker at first eleanor was there at the time and she said he would pause so much that everybody worried he was never gonna go on and then after a little few months on the campaign trail after a while she'd have to come up on the stage and pull him off because he was talking for two hours straight but at a certain point he knew this is what I want to be this is my natural talent I'm for garius I love being with people even though he'd come from that insulated world it was right for him I think with with Lyndon Johnson it was there from the time he was born that he loved listening to his father talking with his friends on the porch he loved going with his father on the campaign trail so there's a certain moment when he too is in his 20s and he's at a picnic this great picnic and they they call people up to stand on the back of a truck like to encourage you to vote for somebody who's running for office and there was a guy named governor Neff running for office and nobody was there to speak for him and suddenly Lyndon pops up I'll speak for him Sam Johnson's boy comes up and he gives this damn fabulous energetic speech and then that was the hit of the picnic and I think that's when even if before I think that's where's ah this is great I like this and that and of course he was the most natural politician of them all anyone with even a cursory knowledge of Franklin Roosevelt can cite a quote or actually more an assessment of FDR by Oliver Wendell Holmes the famous Supreme Court justice who upon meeting Franklin Roosevelt just before Roosevelt took the presidency said he has a second class intellect but a first class temperament and you will underwrite generations of historians have agreed with Holmes pointing to Roosevelt's self-assured congenial optimistic temperament as the key stone to his leadership but you dispute the fact that he had a second class mind how so well they just decide that he is a second class mind because he wasn't academically proficient at school that's ridiculous he had an extraordinary problem-solving mind he was able to be presented with a stiffer problem like for example how are we going to get immediately a bunch of young people when he first comes into office during the Depression into jobs because we're gonna lose a whole generation because my feeling okay you can hear me okay I lose myself that I'm not hearing so he said that um he knew that a whole generation would be lost if they couldn't have jobs when they were young so he comes up with the whole idea of the Civilian Conservation Corps that will get the army to figure out how to get these kids recruited we'll get the Interior Department to set up camps in the in the forests we need to help the trees anyway in the forests we need to have building things and within two months a quarter of a million kids are working in the CCC he thought it all through he figured out the bureaucratic tangles so to when he was on a fishing trip in 1940 and Churchill had run out of money to buy weapons and supplies in the German invasion they thought was going to happen later that year and Churchill sends him a letter saying we have to do something he's on this fishing trip which allowed him to think ten days away thinking he came up himself with the whole lend-lease idea that if you lend these weapons to Britain they could give it to us after the war which cut through all the neutrality acts even I'm saying all that so that's his mind his temperament is critical I mean temperament I think again it's something that it's your basic stance to the world it's how you treat people it's your sense in his case that optimism that he was born with that got him through his polio that got him through the depression that got him through World War two if that's a misconception about Franklin Roosevelt what misconceptions do we have about Lincoln TR and LBJ whoa well I think I think you know with Lincoln's certainly before I really lived with him for those ten years I knew of course that he was a great statesman I don't think I understood what a great politician he was you know how house how really sophisticated he was at figuring out how to do transactional prop you know politics as well as anything else where you he put money in where you'd give somebody something they needed for that but more importantly I know I do have funny I didn't think I'd be laughing as much during the ten years I thought I'd be with that straight-faced sad kind of melancholy face that I knew he had but humor was his way of dealing with with the world from the time he was young he said that he you know that a good story for him was better than a drop of whiskey that it was the only way he could get through the world and just hearing the stories that he told over and over again when he was a young lawyer on the circuit in Illinois they used to travel from one County Courthouse to the other and they'd stay in the same taverns at night and whenever Lincoln was there people would come from miles around to him listen to stories and his stories sometimes what he could talk for hours one morning tale after another and sometimes these stories had a moral like the Aesop's fables he loved as a child but sometimes they were just simply hilarious my favorite story was told by Daniel day-lewis and Steven Spielberg I really hope they would do it and they did in the movie Lincoln Lincoln loved to tell the story of the Revolutionary War hero Ethan Allen who went to England after the war and these the kind of stories he told and they would still upset about losing the revolution so he's at a dinner party they decided to put a huge picture of General George Washington in the outhouse the only outhouse he'll have to encounter it sooner or later they figure he'll be so irritated at the IED of George Washington an outhouse he comes out not upset at all and they said didn't you see George Washington there oh yes he said I think it was the perfectly appropriate place from what do you mean they said well he said there's nothing to make an Englishman faster than the site of General George Washington he had hundreds hundreds of these stories so you can imagine you and so I just was so happy in another moment somebody else of them Lincoln you're two-faced is immediately responses if I'd to faces do you think I'd be wearing this face so that was my misconception about him I think about Teddy the interest anything I haven't thought about this question so this is really interesting to try and think it out in my own head we always think of him as this fiery guy and he was with blistering language in fact when he was a young legislator he said so many terrible things about the opponent's that were after him that he made headlines everywhere but then he couldn't get anything done so he learned that he had a swelled head and the thing is and he also had attitudes toward war that that are really tough to understand that the victories of war are better than the victories of peace that there's nothing like seeing a bullet go by and just crazy romantic stuff about the céntimos ation of war and I knew that stuff so I wasn't sure how it was gonna feel about him as president but the interesting thing as president is he was very peaceful as a president and he won the Nobel Prize actually for peace but more importantly he was able to to ratchet down that fiery spirit when he had to in the coal strike which is one of the case studies at the end of the book there are times when he's so angry at the coal barons who are in a meeting with the miners and they won't come to any agreement that he wants to throw them out the window he said but he holds on to his chair and he keeps his temper down and he actually handled that with great restraint so I think he had more restraint than that I knew he had because I just saw him this is fiery colorful character and you know I would think it's it's hard to know with with with Lyndon Johnson just because of knowing him so much but I think that his understanding of his visionary his visionary sense of where he wanted to take America I was stunned to realize this later I don't think I even knew it at the time that that night in fact I opened one of the chapters with is the night when John Kennedy is he is in the white house I mean you know he's an elm what's it called Nils the Alan's The Elms they're all watching television so he's with Moyers and was it horse before - and yen Valenti and they're watching the television and he outlines right that night all the things he wants to do I'm gonna get a tax cut through and the economy's gonna get stronger and then I'm gonna get Civil Rights through and I'm not gonna change a word of what John F Kennedy had and then I'm gonna get voting rights because that's so important to have voting rights and then I'm gonna get everybody to have as much education as they can possibly get and then I'm gonna get old Harry Truman's Medicare through unbelievable he said that that night he saw it he saw what he wanted to do and by god he did it so I think of him as this guy who can bring people together I think the other misconception about him is the idea that the way he got it done was to trade things with people and he did do that I mean with with Dirksen when he needs Dirksen to help break the filibuster bring the Republicans to go along with the northern Democrats he's they sit over drinks and they're trading everything every llinois would be sunk in all the projects that were going to go there but then what he really understands is that Dirksen wants to be remembered by history just as he did just as everybody whose ambition goes from self to something larger and so he says Everett you come with me on this bill and 200 years from now schoolchildren will know only two names Abraham Lincoln and Everett Dirksen how could Dirksen resist so he knew how to appeal to the idealism of the people to make them understand what this was about for them and their children's children as well as all the bargains he could make make the mistake this is certainly a book about presidents and so it really looks at our history and these men and how they should help to shape it but it's also very much a business book on leadership and Doris writes about the types of leadership embodied by these individuals for Lincoln its transformational leadership and you write of Lincoln transformational leaders inspire followers to identify with something larger than themselves the organization the community the region the country and finally to the more abstract identification with the ideals of that country why was why was Abraham Lincoln successful in guiding the country through the Civil War well I think what what he had to do in for example he had to change the meaning of the war from just fighting to preserve the Union to emancipating the slaves and that was a very big thing because and that's where transformation of attitudes comes because most of the people in the north originally were fighting it just for the Union they they were worried if we introduced emancipation into it the war would never come to an end there would be no peace with the South the army itself only three out of ten people in the army at the beginning we're fighting for something larger than Union being preserved so he had to persuade first his cabinet who were many of them work they some of them said they'd resigned if he did this Emancipation Proclamation they said he'd lose the midterm elections that he would make the war go on forever then he had to persuade the army and then he had to persuade the country and it was his person that was able to do that he believed so much when he finally came to the decision that he was going to issue the Emancipation Proclamation that he was able to deal his cabinet when they finally came to it if they had reservations still they they didn't make them public they had to be a family he had visited so many army soldiers every battle he went to visit them after each battle he told them if they had any complaints they could come to the White House and when he finally said we're fighting for this as well they said to themselves if Abraham Lincoln believes that then I will believe in two and they wrote home to their parents and said we're now doing something different we're waging this war for something different and then same thing for the country his speeches gave them the understanding between the Gettysburg Address later between even speeches before that of why America needed to end slavery as the sin that we had come into the country with and they came to his side because of that that's that's when you transform people's attitudes and they become a different person and we became a different country by ending slavery there's perhaps no president who will ever face a crisis bigger than that that Abraham Lincoln faced what is the the most important leadership lesson we can derive from Lincoln's example I think probably it's the combination of patience and heat combined a lot of things like he was confident but he had humility he would always acknowledge errors when he made them he would he would shoulder blame for other people he was patient and perseverant but he could move on when he had to he could make that big decision he was merciless in fighting that war you had to keep fighting it no matter how many people died for the cause that it was but he was merciful I mean he spent his nights when he couldn't sleep about the war pardoning soldiers so that somebody else didn't have to die learning to the other people and obviously he had a gift for language that gave a meaning to that war that was so important for people at the time so it was a combination I think of qualities that just made him and in the end you know in a certain sense I think he was a good person that became a great leader that's not always true in politics that goodness becomes greatness but I kept thinking if only I could become more like him it wasn't that he didn't feel the normal human emotions of envy or anger or jealousy but he said if you allow those emotions to fester they'll poison a part of you and so every time you feel one of those emotions Lincoln would say stop it you're wasting time dartz talking about Lincoln telling a great story but I want to tell a great story about Doris and Daniel day-lewis who played Abraham Lincoln in the film Lincoln based on her book team of rivals and her manager Beth Lasky told me of a story where the two of them Daniel day-lewis and Doris Kearns Goodwin were having lunch in a restaurant and some one woman breathlessly came up to the table and said excuse me I hate to interrupt but a you Doris Kearns Goodwin it was actually a very funny story because when he first went to Springfield - he just agreed to become Lincoln and and Spielberg was so happy that he asked me to take him to Springfield to show him all the sights but they didn't want to announce that he was becoming Lincoln because he wanted a whole year to become Lincoln so we were supposed to eat in the hotel not go anywhere and of course we go somewhere and immediately that somebody brought us the drinks I thought oh my god it's over but it was me so became a joke between us but so finally after the movie was over we went to a premiere together in LA and then New York so he said well we have to go to a bar now to celebrate that first day when when you were the one that they were looking for so we went to this bar at the Carlyle in New York and I had these ridiculous old Cuban drinks that he liked and everything was fine but then he gets the first of his series of awards and Spielberg comes up to him and gives an introduction to him and says how he rejected the role several times in previous scripts but finally he had accepted and he wrote beautiful rejection letters and Spielberg read the letter so then Daniel gets up there and unaccountably because there's a Wall Street reporter in the room to report it the next day so I don't reject everything when Doris Kearns Goodwin asked me to go binge drinking with her at the Carlyle I accepted Apple Hudson I was proud for Theodore Roosevelt is an example of a crisis leader and his crisis was the great coal strike of 1902 of which you write the unfolding of the president's creative handling of what was viewed as the most formidable deadlock and the history of the country offers a demonstration of groundbreaking crisis management how so how was this grass so what happened is that the miners under John Mitchell an extraordinary union leader had gone on strike the conditions in the mines were terrible and no longer did a local person own the mines so that they knew the workers by now you had companies on top of companies it was part of what Teddy had to fight that the big companies were swallowing up the small companies so the coal barons who owned them didn't care about how long this strike went on and was going on month after month after month and at that point the President had no power no precedent to intervene in a strike between labor and management he neva even didn't have power to invite the two guys to the White House to talk about it and he had to figure out how to cede the ground so that he could gain that power so he did invite the coal barons and the miners to a meeting in the White House and the coal barons wouldn't even talk to the miners the meeting turned out to be a terrible failure I mean they said we're not talking to these guys they're striking they're violent and that's when Teddy had to sit in the chair doing this but what he did was so smart before the meeting began he asked if he could have a stenographer take down the words of the meeting and meanwhile public sentiment didn't know where to fall on this they knew that they were upset about the mines being stopped because of the whole Union and they were they knew the Barons weren't helping very much but still they were kind of mixed but then he published this whole meeting where the Union guys had said we'll make any kind of agreement if you set up a Presidential Commission whatever you come up we'll accept that and they coal Baron said we won't do anything that he agrees to so anyway publishes the notes and all of a sudden the sentiment changes and then as it gets closer to fall people are worried about where is the coal gonna come hospitals are closing down schools are closing down and he can't get any movement from the management and the labor guys until finally he realizes what if somebody else other than me because they're mad at Teddy other than the union leader suggests a presidential commission so he has his one of his colleagues in the cabinet go and see JP Morgan he says if you suggested cuz he J P Morgan's defendants here for all these guys and JP Morgan was a great citizen at that moment he went and met with the coal barons he suggests the idea of a presidential commission and then they say okay because they're saving face and Teddy understood the importance of saving face and then finally they agree the Commission happens both sides are happy with the result and it was the biggest domestic crisis that any president had faced at that time and it was because he had restrained because he had patience because he also understood and again he got this from Lincoln he said okay there's two guys to two forces in this there's labor and management but I represent the people I'm the steward of the people and so he set the narrative that he as president had the responsibility to care for the American people who were being hurt by these two sides not being able to get together the to see actively emulate Lincoln do you think think so I mean I think you know he would he would read about the idea that Lincoln could hold back his anger he would read about Lincoln being caught between radicals on one side and conservatives on the other and trying to forge a middle ground and I think he thought with the square deal his signature program which was to break up the big monopolies to regulate the railroads to regulate companies that were not playing by the rules of the game that he was really a Lincolnesque in the sense because it was for the capitalist and the wage worker for the rich and the poor it wasn't going on either side or another so yeah he would read out loud to nickel and hey his secretaries I've just read this thing you know and here's here we go that nickel and had read actually that written right like Lyndon Johnson Theodore Rosen to the presidency through tragedy the assassination of William McKinley Odysseus when how does he find himself in the presidency what does it become his own office interestingly I think he sort of felt like he was president from the first day I mean he loved being in the center of attention and now he certainly was I mean his daughter Alice said he loves so loved being in the center of attention that he wanted to be the baby at the baptism and the bride at the wedding and the corpse at the funeral but smartly even though he announces to the journalists I am president right away he didn't want people to think he was a caretaker because he was only one year into McKinley's term and he'd been put in the vice presidency to get rid of him because they thought he was too progressive and they figured he'll have nothing to do in the vice presidency and it was a graveyard for future candidates they figured that the bosses thought the conservative bosses this is the end of him and he was so bored as vice president he wanted to go to law school in fact he started going back to law school and but then he suddenly becomes president with McKinley's assassination but very wisely he keeps McKinley's cabinet in in in throws right at that time and his friends say to him how can you do that they're not going to be loyal to you and he says something that's so relevant today he said it's not loyalty to me that matters it's loyalty to their job and to the country and if they do that I'm going to keep them on if they don't they'll be gone so I think he he was always he was always knowing that he was a leader from the tummy was in the Spanish American war where he felt he said I'm not as good a horseman as these other guys I'm not as good an athlete not as good a gunshot person but I'm their leader and I knew it within a week after he was leading them Franklin Roosevelt's crisis is of course the Great Depression which threatened not only our capitalist system but our democracy itself and you write about his turnaround leadership particularly in his first hundred days you write of that Roosevelt knew at once that three lines of attack were necessary first the feelings of helplessness impotence dread and accelerating panic had to be reversed before any legitimate recovery could commence then without delay the financial collapse had to be countered it finally over time the economic and social structure had to be reformed turnaround would forever that the turnaround that ensued you right would forever alter the relationship between the government and the people how does this this remarkable human being manage this extraordinary turnaround I think you're absolutely right I mean it really was a three pronged fight that he had to fight and the first was to give confidence and optimism back to the American people and how lucky that that was his own gift as a temperament but one that was made so much stronger because of the way he handled his polio attack I mean here he was in his 30s he had been an athlete before and he loved to walk in the woods and to play golf and to play tennis and now suddenly he can't walk he's on his own power ever again and what he was able to do was to just years of anxiety and depression and fear to just believe that I'm gonna keep making ones forward movement at a time so in his wheelchair he asks to be let down on the library floor so he can practice crawling so his back will get stronger when he goes to to in a certain sense when he goes to Warm Springs the rehabilitation center that he builds for polio patients he's doing what he needed to do for the country in that inauguration they came there not simply to get physical rehabilitation he knew that they felt their lives had been forever changed and there was nothing that could make them happy again and so he teaches them how and they're in the pools together he's showing his vulnerability he teaches them to play water polo and tag they have cocktail hours at night they watched movies they have amateur theatricals they have wheel chair dances and they all say that we now believed in ourselves again so that very first inaugural much more important than there's nothing to fear but fear itself was that he projected his optimism and his confidence and he made the people feel this is not your fault that you don't have a job it's the system that's at fault and we're gonna attack that system as if it's an army going after a battle and there's gonna be action and there's gonna be action now if the Congress won't give it to me I'm going to assume the powers that I have to have and they right after that one inaugural people felt differently this this wonderful letter I remember once reading came to the Roosevelt Library it said something like the roof fell off my house my dog ran away I've lost my job my wife is mad at me but you are there now so everything's gonna be okay so that was the first step to just sort of stop this downward slide of psychological understanding and then we were in this terrible crisis because of the banking system having collapsed people had been taking their money out of the banks because some of the banks had fallen because they had used the depositors money to go to the stock market stock market crash they didn't have money other banks were sound but people were so worried they're taking all their money out of there too and so he goes the first day he gets in he knows this is the crisis he has to if the banking system collapses then the whole country collapses so he calls the euphemistically name bank holiday for a week all the banks will be closed so he can figure out the legislation's that's needed to shore up the weak banks and to make sure that the strong ones have enough currency and then what he does is he has to persuade the American people that is safe to bring your money back and he has a week to do that the bill passes in that week and then that that Sunday night before the Monday when they're going to open again he has his first fireside chat and those fireside chats were instrumental in his way of communicating with people and what he does that night is he explains to them when you put your money in a bank it doesn't just sit in a vault it goes and makes the wheels of commerce go around in loans and mortgages and industries and then he explains what happened that some of these banks put it into the stock market and then he says I assure you now with this new bill that is safer than being in a mattress to bring your bank money back to the bank so the next line there's huge there's terrified huge lines and everything they're bringing their money back to the bank because they believed in what he was doing and that stopped the financial crisis but then then the the guys who are the elite guys the banking guys said that's it now that's go away but he says no we have to get systemic reforms to figure out why this happened in the first place and that's the next fireside chat he gives that talks about the fact that the system had failed and big changes had to be made in the way government regulates business the way jobs are going to be found for people the way the private system isn't helping we've got to have the public system working we need a TVA we need Securities Exchange Commission and that's the turnaround that by the end of that hundred days the whole relationship has changed but it changes primarily because he was able to establish trust in the part of the people and it's one of the most important things I think in leadership is that your word matters and that the people trust that you will do what you say you can do and those fireside chats were so effective that the people sitting in their living rooms or kitchens thought he was actually talking to them there's a story of a construction worker coming home one night and the partner says where are you going he said well I'm going to my living room my president's coming to see me there and I have to be there to meet him when he when he comes and there's a moment so he established that intimate relationship with people that they felt he was talking to them as an individual not to them as a people and in fact it was borne out when he died there were these extraordinary statements that the New York Times described people standing in in places all over the country strangers hugging themselves and saying to itself we've lost our friend we've lost our friend and then one person the great tribute was he said isn't it extraordinary that one man dies and 130 million people feel lonely as a result it was that bond that he created in a democracy he said if you tell people the truth if you don't pretend that things aren't difficult which they were during the Depression which we were in the early days of the war he trusted the American people would come and do what they needed to do and god they stayed through the depression I mean given what else could have happened the vial that could have happened in this country they they became the backbone that becomes the greatest generation in World War two where does after yards buoyancy this boundless optimism that sustained us through this dark and desperate time come from I think sometimes that it you're born with that I do think there was in one of those questions about our leaders born or made you know I think that empathy was born in Lincoln it was created perhaps in these others I think it was born in LBJ as well and he's pretty young when he's feeling talking to young talking older people on the streets and asking older women how are you doin etc etc and with with Teddy I think he was born with a photographic memory with an extraordinary kind of brilliant brilliant intellect in a lot of ways and with FDR I think he's born with that optimistic temperament I mean I'd like to believe I mean when I think about the greatest gift my parents gave to me even though my mother died when I was 15 my father died in his 20s they both gave to me that confidence and love that I was I was so important in their lives that I think it came to me as a sort of I think I was born with an optimistic temperament but then life allowed me to continue at despite the early deaths of my parents because of what they gave me and I never felt never felt unloved by them for one second and I think that was true for FDR he was the center of his mother's life and his father loved him as well and he had this incredible life and he said all that his in me goes back to the Hudson with that smooth unbroken life and even though things later were very difficult for him that confidence and optimism was so deep within him that they couldn't shake it so while we're on the subject you asked the question are our great men great leaders born or made and you answered for some of the leaders you've covered here but unbalanced is our leadership skills and they or they hone through our experiences much more hone through experiences without a question I mean Teddy wrote and a really interesting essay where he was talking about there's two kinds of success one is if you're born with a talent that nobody else could even if they tried emulate like a Keats a poem or he said a Lincoln at Gettysburg but he said most success is when a person develops ordinary qualities to an extraordinary degree through the application of hard sustained work and I think that's true that's true of all these people I mean and especially true I think of Lyndon Johnson every talent that he had he was the first person in the office in the morning he was the last person there at night he gave that sense of work ethic to the team that was working with him and and his energy just got rebounded by it I mean he's he's uh he's sometimes an outlier with these other people because they all were able to relax more easily than he was he didn't on he didn't unwind very easily he would say when he went to movies he didn't like it because it was dark and you couldn't talk in it we'd go they would go we'd go to baseball games and he'd be talking politics in the middle of the innings I remember going in the once I want to watch the game we're talking politics but these other guys understood more than he did I think but I think Johnson just had more energy than everybody else that he was okay for him but Lincoln went to the theater a hundred times during the war he said when the lights came down and a Shakespeare play came on for a few precious hours he could forget the war that was raging and Teddy Roosevelt exercised for two hours every afternoon he would go on a tennis match or a wrestling match or a boxing match or he'd go on these ridiculous hikes and in Rock Creek Park where he made a rule that you couldn't go around any obstacle you had to go through it so if you came to a rock you had to go up it if he came to a precipice you had to go down and people were following him on these stupid walks falling by the wayside but the great story has to do with the French ambassador Jules juice run he went with him on the first walk in the woods and he's wearing his silk tie and he thinks they're gonna be walking in the shop say they say and they get into the woods and he's scrambling around I finally come to a stream he thinks thank God it's over so then he says judge of my horror when I saw the president beginning to unbutton his clothes and he said this is an obstacle we can't go around and we have to go through it so we don't want to get wet so I to for the honor of France took off my clothes however however I left on my lavender kid gloves it would be most embarrassing if we should meet ladies on the other side I didn't have gloves off so so then FDR has a cocktail party every night in the White House when the war is going on and the rule was you couldn't talk about the war you could talk about gossip he loved gossip you could talk about books you read movies you seen as long as you didn't talk about the war and then after a while the people he wanted to be at the cocktail hour he wanted them to live in the White House to be ready for the cocktail hour so he actually started inviting everybody to live on the second floor of the White House his foreign policy advisor Harry Hopkins came for dinner one night slept over never left until the war came to an end his secretary Missy lehand lived with the family in the White House Lavinia Hickok who had a relationship with Eleanor an emotional sense lives next door to Eleanor and the great Winston Churchill came and spent weeks at a time in a bedroom diagonally across from Roosevelt's so when I was reading about this I just became obsessed with the thought of all these people in their bathrobes at night in the corridor that surrounds the second the bedrooms on the second floor and wishing when I'd been up there with President Johnson I thought of asking where was church so where was Eleanor where was Franklin but I wasn't thinking in those terms then so I mentioned this on a radio program the Diane Rehm Show in Washington when the book came out and it happened Hillary Clinton was listening so she called me up at the radio station invited me to sleep overnight in the White House she said we could then I could be on the second floor my husband and I would be there and we could figure out where everyone has slept 50 years earlier so two weeks later she followed up with an invitation to a state dinner after which between midnight and 2:00 a.m. the president mrs. Clinton my husband and I went through every room up there with my map in hand yes Chelsea Clinton is sleeping where Harry Hopkins was the Clintons are sleeping where FDR was and we were sleeping in Winston Churchill's bedroom there was no way I could sleep I was certain he was sitting in the corner drinking his brandy and smoking his cigar in fact that's that's that bedroom is my favorite story in World War two it's a story of another naked man I'm afraid what happens is that Roosevelt comes in right after Pearl Harbor Churchill's there to tell him that he's come up with a new idea of calling themselves the United Nations against the Axis powers instead of The Associated nations but Churchill's just coming out of the bathtub and has nothing on so Roosevelt said I'm so sorry I'll come back in a few moments but Churchill ever able to speak in a firm floral voice dripping from the table says oh no please stay the Prime Minister Britain has nothing to hide from the president nice day so the next morning I went in the bathtub and I was truly in the presence of the greatness of the past you right of LBJ as a visionary leader and among the things you write about him is everyone we talked about the that the time at the Elms right after the assassination as he's sitting with his aides laying out the what was essentially will be the Great Society and you write everyone agreed that Lyndon Johnson was a master mechanic of the legislative process what became apparent from the first hours of his presidency however was that he meant to use these unparalleled skills in the service of a full-blown vision of the role the government should play in the lives of the people what was LBJ's vision and where did it come from I think it came from long experience I think that from the first days when he went as a principal and as a teacher and as a bandleader everything in the school to that little school in Cotulla Mexican American kids poor and he saw the pain of prejudice on their faces he wanted them to do something to make their lives better it was deep within him and he could do it himself he convinced they there wasn't in the athletic equipment he used his first salary to do it he got these kids into debating societies and I think he carried with him that understanding when he goes into the National Youth administration then that's one of the early times when he's able to use government resources to help young kids get jobs and he loved it I mean this is great moment when and then when he brings rural electrification to the hill country and he's now a young congressman and FDR has the rural electrification administration underneath this other administration but he's been turned down by the REA guy because there's not enough people in the hill country have to have a certain number of people per mile to make it worthwhile the government to put this this whole electrification thing in so he goes to see FDR to ask him because they'd already met and FDR knows how to delay somebody you want to delay them so he starts talking for some huh my god it's gonna be my third naked story for some reason he starts talking about did you know that naked Russian women look different than American women because they do so much out to a work only before he knows it his 15 minutes are up and Johnson's out of there and he wasn't able to convince him of anything so the next time he goes back he has a story to tell and the story has to do with you know people in the hill country and what it's like to not be able to for the wife not to be able to have any kind of electric power to do her washing as his most true for his mother what it's like for the guy to have to get up in the middle of the night with no milking machine and so Roosevelt's beginning to listen and then he so he calls up Roosevelt calls up the REI guy and says you know I've got this young guy Lyndon Johnson you said I know I've turned him down already and so Rawls visits well you know I think this is maybe something we should do and he said you can put it on my account but then he says and I've heard something about those people in the hill country they breed really fast so soon they'll have enough people to make them up so so Johnson walks out of there with this incredible season it was the happiest moment of his life so all of these things happened and then I think what happens to him and I've really been thinking about this I didn't think about there's a lot before but when he loses that race in 41 it's then that he begins to move in a somewhat different direction he becomes a wealthy man through the radio programs and he becomes more conservative than he'd been otherwise he couldn't have won a Senate seat again in 48 if he hadn't been so and then when he gets into the Senate he accumulates power and becomes the most powerful Majority Leader in the history of the country and then he has a heart attack in 1955 and and he comes out of the depression from that heart attack and he asks himself the question you know if I died now what would I be remembered for and I think that just brought back the person that he always was that this is what I went into government for this is what my father said you go into government for to help people and even then he gets the first civil rights bill through the Senate and so when when he's ready to become president all of this accumulated desire to use power to help people I mean when when he decides as president in those first days to give that speech to the joint session of Congress four days later and he decides he's going to make civil rights his priority passing the Kennedy bill will be his priority and as some of his aides are saying you can't do this you're going to facing your own election in 11 months it's going to be filibustered it'll be a failure that Congress won't get anything else done and you can't expend your coinage a president has only a certain amount of coinage to expend you shouldn't expend it on this and then he makes this great statement well what the hell is the presidency for I mean and that's and then when he gives that voting right speak that same voting rights feature we're talking about the very beginning he wanted to talk about Cotulla and he said that's what he wanted to bring up and he told dick about the story of Cotulla many times and this is actually one of the most powerful moments of that speech and he says when I was there in 1928 and I saw the pain of prejudice on these kids faces I never thought then that I would be standing here now with the power to do something to help their daughters and their sons and their children and I'm going to I have that power and I'm going to use it and that's when the huge applause came and that's that sense I think it's that he had always wished that power could be used to make life better for people he learned that from his father he learned that from his upbringing and now he had the chance to do it you you you mentioned the Cotulla that experienced that LBJ had between his junior and senior years in college where he went to Cotulla Texas he taught these mexican-american school kids and he saw through their eyes bigotry and injustice and hatred racial hatred for the first time and you're right about the importance of empathy in leadership so where does the empathy come from in your leaders are they born with it or do they become more empathetic through experiences I think that's that's what when we think about public service or we think about broad political experience that's the best of it I mean you're meeting all sorts of people and if you can feel and understand what they're feeling and you can understand their way of life then empathy deepens so I as I say I do think I if I have to take among the four I would say that that Lincoln and LBJ I believe was born with it I really do whereas Teddy and Franklin were not now is that because they came from privileged backgrounds and they were more insulated in childhood which they were is it because Lincoln and and LBJ saw people you know who were struggling much more than these other two did possibly that's true but but both Franklin and Teddy developed it I mean I think as I said I think Franklin got it through the polio and through being willing to share his vulnerabilities with other people he said you learn humility when you have to try and move your big toe for two years and when you finally do what you have a celebration that let makes you understand the limitations of human beings his own limitations and he began to identify with people for whom fate had also dealt it on Conahan I mean he emerged much more warm-hearted than he'd been before and Teddy I think through his experiences began to develop it but it is probably if I had to choose a quality than you need in a leader not just in a political leader but it's the ability to just know what other people are thinking to understand their points of view so you can anticipate them so you can argue with them so you can have people around you who have different points of view but you're not you know you're not shutting them off you're understanding where they're coming from it's what we need in this country so much right now I mean it's there the thing that that is so worrisome underneath the political structure that is you know which is we know what anxiety is producing us is that what we saw happen in this last election was that a large section of the country felt that they weren't being listened to and that the people in the rural areas felt cut off for the people in the cities you filled these blue loom things on either coast and then you have a whole bunch of people in the middle of thinking different ways and I think the the only thing I've tried to think about it is that when I try to understand why was there more bipartisanship in the Congress than we've seen in the last couple decades really in the 60s and the 70s in the 80s and I think it's partly because a lot of the people who were in Congress had been in the Senate had been in World War two or they'd been in the Korean War so they brought with them that understanding of a common mission that cuts across party lines and you're dealing with all sorts not just party lines race lines section lines and and then also in those days they weren't racing home to raise money for their stupid campaigns you know it's the poison in the system this funding financed it then we have they would stay in Washington as Johnson did in those days you'd play poker together you'd drink together you knew each other as human beings that's what empathy is you know each other as human beings not as the other in a certain sense and so I think you know I think what's happened if I don't think we necessarily have to have military service more but I think the veterans brings something to to public life that wasn't there before I know that my own son graduated from Harvard College in June of oh one and then he joined the army right after September 11 he went to Iraq and Afghanistan he earned a Bronze Star he came out he finally went to law school which is what he was going to do at the beginning but he said nothing will ever equal what it was like to be with those kids in the platoon from all different parts of the country and know that you were welded together as a mission so he's very much in favor now of national service program this is something teddy was for Eleanor Roosevelt was four and short Lyndon Johnson would have loved something like this in fact a lot of his programs were pieces of it but if you think about what a younger generation could do if between high school and either college or vocational school wherever they're going that they could be together in different parts of the country you could learn about each other doing something good I'd love to see that happen if I were younger that's what I'd fight [Applause] while you have brought presents back to life including these these three only you've only really known one of them and that was Lyndon Johnson how has your view of Lyndon Johnson changed since you knew him you know I think I think it changed even just knowing him in those days I mean there's there was a sense when I remember being in the anti-war marches you know and and the terrible things that we would yell and scream you know hey hey LBJ how many kids did you kill today once I got to know him as I think it was said with Larry and the introduction it isn't that I changed my mind about whether this was the war to be fought at that time or whether it had to be fought or whether it was fought in the right way but I certainly understood why he felt that way and that's where the empathy that I felt toward him developed even when I knew him but I must say I I can't even imagine the pride that that that Johnson's family has been able to take in what happened with the 50-year anniversary of all of the great legislation you know all of a sudden I think people began to realize my god the foundation of so much of our lives has been changed in a positive way by him and I remember feeling proud of him you know that I mean I don't know how to describe it it was just sort of I felt like oh my God if only he had been able to see this I mean he did he did hope and we talked about it in those last years when I was at the ranch that if he were to be remembered for anything it would be for civil rights and there's no question that no president has done more since Abraham Lincoln for civil rights than Lyndon Baines Johnson but there's everything else and and the fact that the country is beginning to recognize it the fact that he's coming up in the historians polls I'll never forget one time I was at the White House and I don't think any of the presidents like these historians polls and I happened to be at the White House and a different time not when I went there to see the second floor was right after President Clinton had won the election so it's before Monica Lewinsky but I was at the dinner table with him and historians poll had come out that day and he was like in the middle and he was so mad and he just I'm sitting next to me saying what do you you know like sort of what do you historians know about these things and no presidents like them John Kennedy didn't like them and I understand that and so I was trying to make him feel better and that very day the owner's son of the Los Angeles Dodgers had announced that they were going to sell the Dodgers and there were headlines maybe they're going to come back to Brooklyn of course the Brooklyn Dodgers are my first love and when they left Walter O'Malley and those people I thought I would hate them forever and now suddenly maybe they'd come back to Brooklyn so I said to President Clinton I said look I'll make you a corrupt bargain if you bring them back to Brooklyn I'll put you up a notch on the next restore as well so so anyway he just said I don't know if I have that power to do that but one of the funniest things that has to do with today and I won't talk about that let's go on do you have another naked story you want to show no no it's just that in the old days when you had the presidential historians polls James Buchanan was always at the bottom and so in the most recent poll President Trump is at the bottom so the Buchanan family was celebrating you We certainly live in turbulent times and you quote Abraham Lincoln in the book who said with public sentiment nothing can fail without it nothing can succeed we have a president in office who doesn't seem interested in nurturing public sentiment can he succeed I mean I think the big transition that has to be made for any president is the difference between campaigning and governing president Trump was able as a campaigner to master social media the same way that Lincoln had mastered the written word when he was president when your speeches would be printed in full in the newspapers and they'd be read aloud all over the country Teddy mastered that punchy phrase making when he was at the start of the national newspapers FDR obviously had the the radio and that voice for the radio and then you had three television networks that were easier for presidents at the time of JFK and Ronald Reagan and LBJ to talk to the country as a whole and then everything got divided with the social media and he managed because of his tweets to reach people on his that were on his side who felt they were on his side but once you become president that's why the important thing is you have to then govern as a unifying force and Teddy Roosevelt used to take these train trips around the country to the States he lost as well as the states he won you can't just go to the places where you already have one you need to expand your base and I think you can't govern unless you can begin to expand your base and I think what you know what Lincoln would say is that Lincoln used to be able to debate as well as anybody he was as quick on his feet as anybody could be but he said once he became president he only ever wanted to speak extemporaneously and he would consider these tweets very extemporaneous I mean everybody's getting themselves into trouble by these instant emails and instant tweets and somehow Lincoln had this wonderful ritual where he'd ride a hot letter to the person and all of his anger would get out in the letter and then he put the letter aside and never need to send it because he would cool down psychologically if only that advice could go to not only our presidents with so many people that give themselves in trouble just think before you say something that's going to be hurtful or something that's going to divide the country and I think it's that need that we all feel and but the interesting thing about the Lincoln sentiment about with public sentiment anything is possible that's really telling us right now as citizens that I think you know the way for us to deal with this anxiety is people have to get active in politics whatever side they're on right now nobody can be a spectator anymore it's absolutely essential that that that and that activism seems to be growing this young people getting more interested in public life there's lots of women and record-breaking women running for office for the first time more than ever before but all of us as citizens I think have to just decide how we feel about the country right now we're where we come where we come from why are we in this situation it's deeper than just president Trump we've had trouble for for a long period of time now getting those people in Washington to get together and it's trouble all over the country people seeing each other in different ways but as I say I think that the lessons what I think the most important lesson from the book is and that's why it's titled leadership in turbulent times even though it meant these guys turbulent times is so relevant today because I think if we can just remember that the history of this great country has taught us that we when we have leaders and citizens as Lincoln is saying when public sentiment and the leader can be meshed together civil rights movement and LBJ great things can happen and we can get through this and I I really know we're going to get through it again as long as we believe in ourselves and we act instead of just sitting obsessively looking at what's happening and we do something about it that is a yeah that is a perfect note on which to end although I'd love to continue the conversation the book is leadership in turbulent times the author is the great Pulitzer prize-winning Doris Kearns Goodwin please join me in thanking her thank you thank you so much

Channel: TheLBJLibrary

Views: 20,769

Rating: 4.6976743 out of 5

Keywords: doris kearns goodwin, lbj library, austin, texas, presidential library, lbj foundation, friends of the lbj library, leadership in turbulent times, mark k. updegrove, museum

Id: 8dEMuO5TSTQ

Length: 76min 15sec (4575 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 26 2018