[ Applause ] >> Good afternoon. On behalf of the
Library of Congress, we would like to express
our deep gratitude to AARP for making this presentation
possible. AARP has been a longtime
supporter of the Library's
Educational Initiatives. And we're very grateful
for that. [ Applause ] It's now my honor to
introduce the cochairman of the National Book Festival,
an indefatigable champion of reading and literacy,
David Rubenstein. [Applause]. >> David Rubenstein: Thank you. So. Thank you. Thank you. So. [Applause]. We're very honored,
very honored to have one of our country's foremost
historians and writers and biographers here,
Doris Kearns Goodwin. Thank you very much
for coming, Doris. [ Applause ] How many people here, how many
people here have read Team of Rivals? Anybody? Okay. How many have read Bully Pulpit? Wow. How many people read
her book on Lynden Johnson? What about the Kennedys
and Fitzgeralds? Okay. Alright. And how many people here
agree that she's one of our foremost writers
and historians? [ Applause ] So, for those who don't know her
background, just very briefly. She grew up in New York,
Brooklyn and ultimately went to Colby College, got
her PhD at Harvard. She was a White House Fellow
in the Johnson Administration. Helped President
Johnson with his memoirs and then ultimately went
back to teach at Harvard. And for the last
number of years, she's been writing
extraordinarily well received and terrific biographies
and histories and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for
one of your books as well. So, you're going to be writing
a new book that's coming out September the 18th. It's on leadership. And it's about a book
on the leadership skills of four people you've
written about. One is Abraham Lincoln. One is Teddy Roosevelt. One is Franklin Roosevelt. And the other is Lyndon Johnson. So, we're going to
talk about that today. And I wanted to ask you
first, why did you decide to write a book about
four different people? You've already written
books about them. Why not pick somebody new and
write a book about somebody new? >> Doris Kearns Goodwin: Well what happened is each
time I'd finish writing one of the books, and I have to
take all of that person's books out of my study to make
room for the next guy, I felt like I was betraying the
person who was there before. It's like having
an old boyfriend and moving to a new boyfriend. So, I figured what if I could
keep my guys together this time instead of doing that. But I knew I'd have to do it
by having a chance to look at them anew in a new way. And I've always been
interested in leadership. I mean, once upon a time when
I was a graduate student, we would stay up late at
night discussing questions about leadership. In those days you're
reading Plate and Aristotle and you're thinking about
where does ambition come from? And does the man make the times? Or the times make the man? Are leaderships traits
born or made? We also talked about
boys and girls and what was going
on in the world. But those were the
kind of things that really interested us. So, I decided what if
I look at these guys. And I do call them my guys. It seems maybe a
little disrespectful. But I've lived with them
for so long each time that I feel familiar to them. What if I just take
them and I look at them through the exclusive
lens of leadership. And so, it became a
great project for me. It took five years. Not as long as some
of the others. But as not as short
as I thought. Because I didn't know
as much about them as I thought I should. And I loved every minute of it. It's really been a
great, great [inaudible]. >> David Rubenstein: Now, the
only one of these Presidents that you actually knew, of
course, was Lyndon Johnson. And before we get into the book, you might relate how
you actually came to know Lyndon Johnson and
how you almost lost your job on an article you wrote. >> Doris Kearns Goodwin: True. So, when I was chosen
as a White House Fellow, I was 24-years-old. And we had a big dance
at the White House. It's a fabulous program,
the White House Fellowship. Colin Powell was a
White House Fellow, Wesley Clark, Senator Tim Wirth. We had a big dance at the
White House the night we were selected. He did dance with me that night. Not that peculiar. There were only three women out
of the 16 White House Fellows. But as he twirled me around
the floor, he whispered that he wanted me to
be assigned directly to him in the White House. But it was not to
be that simple. For in the months leading
up to my selection, like many young people, while
I was a graduate student at Harvard, I had been active in
the anti Vietnam War Movement. And I had written an article
against LBJ, which we had sent into the New Republic. Hadn't heard anything. But it suddenly came out
two days after the dance in the White House [laughter]. And the title of the article was
-- How to Remove Lyndon Johnson from Power [laughter]. So, I was certain he would
kick me out of the program. But instead surprisingly
he said, oh bring her down
here for a year. And if I can't win
her over, no one can. So, I did eventually
end up working for him in the White House. And then accompanying him to
his ranch those last years to help him on his memoires. And I must say, it was the
most extraordinary experience. He's the most formidable,
interesting, strange, brilliant, colorful character
I've ever met. And what a privilege it was
to have spent so many hours with his aging line of a man. I'd like to think that the
empathy that I began to feel for him despite not changing
my mind about the War in Vietnam is what I hoped
I carried over when I went to each President after him. And probably might not have been
a Presidential historian had it not been for Lyndon Johnson. >> David Rubenstein: So, let's talk about each
of these Presidents. And we'll do it in this way. What you've done in your
book is you have each of these four Presidents. And you've, to make it
simple, there are three parts to each description of the
book, of the Presidents. One is how they were
educated and grew up. And whether they were kind of
destined for greatness or not and people thought
they might be. Second -- what was the,
the problem in their life that depressed them, maybe thought they were
not going anywhere in life. And they were even
suicidal at points. And third -- what challenge they
met as President that showed that they had great
leadership skills. So, let's go through
Lincoln first. Lincoln grew up not
in a wealthy family. Did his father try
to educate him? What was the, what
was it like growing up as a son of Mr. Lincoln? >> Doris Kearns Goodwin: The
circumstances that Lincoln grew up in took enormous perseverance
and determination to overcome. He. It was subscriptions
schools in Illinois then. So, the only way you
could go to school was to pay a certain amount. So, he never went past the
age of nine or 10 in school, because the family, not
only couldn't afford it, but the father thought it was
a waste of time for somebody to educate themselves, when he
should be working in the fields. So, it meant that Lincoln had to
scour the countryside for books and get everything he
could lay his hands on. At one point, he walked like
16 miles to get a certain book that he wanted to have. And in a certain sense, somehow
books became much more important to him as a result of that. It was said, when he got a
copy of the King James Bible or Aesop's Fable or one
of Shakespeare's plays, he was so excited he couldn't
eat, he couldn't sleep. And there was a sense in which
books carried him to places that he could never go. Through books, he began to
develop an alternative thought for what he might be in life. He was really smart. In those few years when he was
in school, he was without peer. And I think that's where some
of his confidence came from. After a while, he was teaching
the other kids in his class, rather than the teacher,
because he had learned so much. But in a certain sense,
once he started reading about other people
and other places, he began to think maybe I
can have another life other than shucking corn
or splitting rails. And he had to get
away from the father, who when he would see him
reading would destroy his books. So, he finally left the home. When you couldn't leave until
you were 21 in those days. And he finally left
and went to New Salem. And that's where his
political career began. He ran for office after
being there only six months. And he writes this amazing,
amazing handbill that he gives out to the people
explaining why he's running. And he said, every man
who's 23-years-old, every man has this
peculiar ambition. Mine is to be truly
esteemed of by my fellow man. To do something worthy
to get their esteem. To think that way
when you're 23. And then he said, I'm young and
unknown to many of you and I've, if I, if you don't put me in
office, I won't be disappointed that much, because I've had so
much disappointment in my life. But if you do, I promise I will
do everything to pay you back. And then he said, and if
I don't win this time, I'm going to try five
or six more times until it's too embarrassing
and too humiliating and then I'll never try again. Well, he didn't win
the first time, but it didn't dampen
his ambition. The second time he tries,
he had met more people. They had seen the kind of
person he was, the kindness, the humility, the storytelling
ability, the patience. And he wins that next election. And that's the beginning of this
extraordinary political career. >> David Rubenstein: So, you point out that
he wasn't educated in this traditional
sense of going to school and law school, graduate school. Is there a reason to
think that maybe not going to these schools enables
you to be a great writer? He wrote the Gettysburg Address
without having been educated. What was the secret behind
his ability with words and to be able to
write so eloquently? >> Doris Kearns Goodwin:
Well, he probably had a gift for the rhythm of language. I think maybe you're
born with that. But more importantly
maybe, he read great books. I mean, he was not spending
his time reading a lot of horizontal books. He's just reading
things like the Bible, great poetry and Shakespeare. And he dives so deeply
into them. And he said whenever he read
something that he really loved, he wanted to read it aloud. And then, he would take, he
would take his, his, his knife, if he was on a plank, when
he was working on a rail and he would write out
the words on a rail. And then, he transferred
them to paper. And then, he'd finally
memorize them. And they'd become part of him. So, it's almost like vertical
learning for him was deeper than those of who read
all these wide things and can hardly remember them. He read the best. >> David Rubenstein: Okay. So, he ran for office. And he ultimately is
elected as State Legislature. And ultimately, he served
two years in Congress as a member of the Whig Party. And he was a competent lawyer. But there were a lot
of competent lawyers. Lots of people work in Congress. Was there anybody who said this
man is destined for greatness? Was there anybody who said that? >> Doris Kearns Goodwin: Well,
you know it's interesting. Theodore Roosevelt once wrote
something about the importance of a crisis making
a leader great. And he said, if Lincoln
had not had a war, if there'd been no war, no
one would've known his name. But he's wrong. Because all the people
who'd seen him from the time he was
young, even if they hadn't, if he'd never become
President, they knew they were in the presence of
somebody special. They saw how much he
was trying to learn. They wanted to help him
on his upward climb. They would lend him books. The guy who was the village
cooper would keep his fire on late at night so
that Lincoln could read because that was the one
place where there'd be light. They watched him help widows. They watched him help people who
needed something done for them. They saw his sense of humor. Even as a young kid, he
learned how to tell stories. He used to listen to his father
entertain people who came by the street and tell stories. The father had the one
thing that he valued, which was being a
great storyteller. And Lincoln became this
fabulous storyteller. And he had a sense of humor
that matched his melancholy. Because there was a sadness
about him when he was young, because he had these
huge ambitions and he thought I'll
never reach those goals. But the way he whistled off
sadness was through his humor. They saw all these traits
and they knew he was special. Whether they knew he would
ever become President, I doubt that they could
have thought that big. But they knew that there was
something about this guy. >> David Rubenstein: Let's
talk about Teddy Roosevelt. He did not grow up
in a poor setting. His father was a
very wealthy person. But did that mean he was going to be necessarily a
very smart person? Or did it mean he was going
to be very good athlete? What was it like growing
up as Teddy Roosevelt? >> Doris Kearns Goodwin:
Well, the most important thing for Teddy Roosevelt growing
up was that he suffered from an almost life threatening
asthma when he was a child, which meant that he
couldn't participate in physical activities. But it meant that he
developed his mind. He read books too,
like Lincoln did, in every spare moment
he could find. Unlike Lincoln, however,
all he needed to do was pull a book off
his vast library shelf. Or if he told his
father, who he loved and who had a fabulous
relationship with, that he wanted a certain book. It would suddenly
magically appear. In fact, there's one time
when he wrote in a letter that he had written,
he had read 50 novels that summer on a vacation. And then, the father took him
on trips around the world. He would teach him. The father was like
the tutor for him. And eventually, that sense of reading became
a huge part of him. He said that books were
the greatest companions that a leader needs know
about human nature more than anything in the world. And the best way to learn about
human nature is through books. But for him too, books
created an alternative future because here's this
little kid who wants to be a fearless person. And he's very timid. And he's got this asthma. So, he reads about
explorers in Africa. He reads about soldiers. He reads about deer slayers. And he begins to imagine
himself one of those. And later, he becomes
this courageous guy, this strenuous guy,
because what, at a certain point his
father says to him, Teddy, you've got the mind,
but not the body. And without the body, the mind
cannot go as far as it should. You must do something
to make your body. So, the little kid
says, I'll make my body. And he goes into all
these strenuous exercises. And he becomes a champion
and a very strong person by the time he gets
to be past Harvard and into, into the Presidency. >> David Rubenstein: Okay. So, he goes to Harvard. And is he well respected there? >> Doris Kearns Goodwin:
Well, he's rather an odd duck at Harvard, because he really
wants to be an ornithologist. And he collects dead
snakes and dead birds. And they're all in his room. And when he first comes,
he's kind of a prig in a way. He doesn't want to make
friends with anybody, who was not on the social
register, because he wants them to be part of his same class. And he's also different
from the other kids. He speaks up in class. He interrupts the professors. And those were the times when
you just sort of a C student and that's what you're
supposed to be. And he worked hard
and he did very well. But the interesting thing
is that once he gets out of Harvard, he ends up
at the age of 23 running for the State Legislature. Because, again, somebody comes
to him and says, you know, maybe you'd be a good candidate because your father
had been well known. He was a philanthropist,
his father. And once he starts going
around meeting people from the working class,
meeting people that were in the other part
of the district. He's in the silk
stocking district. But there's also
tenements in that district. He began to feel
at ease with them. He was easily able
to talk to them. And he lost that kind of sense
of privilege that he had before. And he became a natural
politician. >> David Rubenstein: Alright. So, he is in the
State Legislature. But he's kind of full of
himself a bit, doesn't make as many friends as
he might want. Did anybody say this man is
very smart, he's a good athlete and he's going to President
of the United States? >> Doris Kearns Goodwin:
Well, what happens to his. Is you're absolutely right. When he was first in
the State Legislature, he developed what he himself
admitted was a swelled head. He used to. He had a great way of language. So, he could make
headlines in everything. He would pound his desk
when he was mad at somebody. He would say these
outrageous things. And he became well
known in New York. But after a while, he
couldn't get anything done in the State Legislature because
he had burned so many bridges. So, he finally realized this
is where humility came him. An important quality
in all my guys. When they finally
develop humility, which means the ability to
recognize your limitations, to acknowledge your mistakes, he realized that he
couldn't fix it alone. Well, he didn't quite
say it that way. He said, I can't do it alone. I need cooperation
of other people. And then he became a
more mature politician. People knew again
that he was special. Whether they could
predict at that point that he would be a
president, I don't know. But they knew they were in
the presence of somebody with charisma, somebody
with energy, somebody with quite
a lot of brilliance. >> David Rubenstein: So,
his, he's related to FDR how? How is he related? >> Doris Kearns Goodwin: Well,
he's like a sixth cousin to FDR. But more importantly,
Teddy Roosevelt's brother, Elliot Roosevelt, was the
father of Eleanor Roosevelt. So, that's what the
real connection is. So, Eleanor's uncle is Teddy. And her father, Elliot,
Teddy's younger brother, was, had epilepsy as a child,
became an alcoholic. And died young. So, Teddy Roosevelt really
became like a father to Eleanor. And Franklin loved
Teddy Roosevelt. So, all three of them become
this wonderful circle. >> David Rubenstein: Now, FDR grows up in a very
wealthy setting as well. He's the only child of his father's marriage
with his mother. But it's a bucolic setting
in, up in Hyde Park. But was there anybody who
thought this man is going to be President of
the United States? >> Doris Kearns Goodwin:
Certainly not FDR. But the interesting
thing about both FDR and Teddy Roosevelt is
they were the center of their parents' love, which
gave them a certain confidence. I mean with Teddy Roosevelt,
not only was he the center of his father's love
and his mother's love, but the other siblings made
him the center of their lives, because he used to
tell them stories. After he read books, he
would tell them stories and they would sit around and
he would organize their games. And so, too was FDR the
center of his parents' life. In fact, Teddy so wanted to be
the center of everybody's life after having experienced that
as a child, that his daughter, Alice, once said, he wanted
to be the baby at the baptism, the bride at the
wedding and the corpse at the funeral [laughter]. So, so, FDR had that
same sense, I think, of being adored as a child. But he. And he had any
book that he wanted to in this magnificent
library that he could have. But when he was young, he
learned in a different way. He liked to read aloud. He liked to listen
to his mother read. There's a story one time when
his mother's reading to him and he's playing with
his stamp collection. He loved stamps. He loved maps. He loved collecting things. I think it was his way
of having an independence from the smothering of the
parents' who loved him so much. And his mother said, oh,
you're not listening to me. I'm not going to
finish reading the book. And then he recited back the
whole passages of what he said. He said, I'd be ashamed
of myself if I couldn't do two
things at the same time. But because he was
not a regular student. I mean, he became a C student at
Groton, at Harvard, at Columbia. People thought he really wasn't
as smart as he turned out to be. In fact, that famous quote where Oliver Wendell
Holmes meets him much later and says he has a
first rate temperament, but a second rate intellect. He was right about the
first rate temperament. The being born with that
optimistic temperament, which got him through everything
he had to get through later in life was probably
the greatest gift that he was bedowed
[phonetic] with. But he was much smarter
than people knew. He had a problem
solving intellect. For example, when he studied the
stamps, he would want to know. He's a little kid now. He wants to know
where the country that issued the stamp came from. So, he'd look in
the encyclopedia. He'd read everything
about the country. And then, he would
finally figure out if he didn't know the words. He would, he said to
his mother, I'm half way through Webster's Dictionary. He studied maps. He studied atlases. And he wanted to know all
about the terrain and he'd read about mountains and
the environment. And all of that became so
important when this man had to lead us through World War II. And when he becomes
much a leader later on, he has a brain trust. He can bring information out from the other people
by listening to them. So, the idea that he wasn't
smart because he didn't do well in school is something we
make a terrible mistake about. >> David Rubenstein: Now,
Lyndon Johnson is sort of in between all of them. He is not poor, but
he's not rich. He's not a book learner,
but he's pretty smart. So, how do you describe
his background and his father's
relationship with him? >> Doris Kearns Goodwin: Well,
the most interesting thing at the beginning is
that what I learned, which I hadn't known
all that much before, was that when he was
two-years-old he learned the alphabet. When he was four-years-old
he learned to read. And he could recite long
passages of Tennyson and Longfellow, because
his mother wanted him to be that kind of a kid. The mother had been
college educated. She wanted to be a writer. She was a journalist. She had met her husband,
a State Legislator, when she interviewed him. And so, this mother really. He said, when he would recite
these passages, he told me, and she would hug him so much. She was so proud of him. That he felt like he was going
to be smothered to death. In fact, there's a funny
story relating to the mother. Which is that when I was
working with Lyndon Johnson, everything was going great. You know, I knew he had
a womanizing reputation. But I was constantly talking
to him about steady boyfriends, even when I had no
boyfriends at all [laughter]. And so, you know,
everything was going great until one day he wanted to
discuss our relationship, which sounded ominous when he
took me nearby to the lake, conveniently called
Lake Lyndon Johnson. And he had wine and cheese
and a red checked tablecloth. All the romantic trappings. And he started out, Doris, more than any other
woman I have ever known. And my heart sank. And then, he said, you
remind me of my mother. [Laughter]. It was pretty embarrassing, given what was going
on in my mind. But I guess somehow
I was at Harvard. I was an intellectual. And here was this mother. But the interesting thing is that even though he had those
talents when he was young, all he really wanted was
to be following his father. And after a while, he
only wanted to read books. He said, is it real? Is it about somebody in history? And he didn't want read fiction. He didn't want to
expand that mind. He wanted to go with the
father on the campaign trail. He wanted to go with him to the
State Legislator, Legislature. And politics became his love. And the father and the mother
never got along very well. So, choosing one over the
other was more complicated. But the sad thing is because
he never did well in school, because he was too restless
to sit, even though he had that extraordinary
mind, he always felt like somehow he would never be
appreciated by the Harvard's. His father said to him, if you
brush up against the grindstone of life, you'll have more
polish than any of those Harvard and Yale people ever did. And he said, I wanted
to believe him. But I never could. And even when I was first
starting to work for him and he had wanted me to
work full time for him. And I told him I couldn't. I was going back to Harvard. I was going to start teaching. And so, he said, all or nothing. You can either come
all or nothing. And so, I thought I
wasn't going to go. The last day of his
Presidency he called me in and he said, alright part time. And then he said, you know,
it's not so easy to get people to work for you when
you're no longer at the height of your power. I won't forget what
you're doing for me. And then, he said, now I know
you're going back to Harvard. You'll be coming on vacations. Don't let those Harvard's
get to you. Don't let them make you hate me. So, always that feeling
toward that larger world that he easily could've
been a part. He was as smart as McNamara, as smart as Bundy,
any of those guys. >> David Rubenstein: As a young
man, though, did people think that somebody who's father
was a State Legislator, he wasn't a wealthy person,
not particularly well educated, that he would be President
of the United States? Was that anybody's dream
that for Lyndon Johnson? >> Doris Kearns Goodwin:
Well, yes. This is what's interesting. So, once he gets into politics,
he's an absolute natural. And he, as a young. And when he was young, he was
a real new deal Congressman. He wanted to do for people
what would help people. And he meets FDR for the first
time when FDR is President. And he's a real. I was about to say something
that I know I can't say on television [laughter]. Anyway, he was, he was
a natural storyteller. He could make up
things, for example. Let us say it that way. [Laughter]. So, you can guess what
that word might have been. So, he knows that FDR
is going to fishing. He knows nothing about fishing. And he starts telling how
much he loves fishing. Anyway, they get
along terrifically. And FDR tells somebody, I've just met this
amazing young Congressman. Do you know, he's the kind of
uninhibited pro I would've been if I hadn't gone to Harvard? I think some day he may be
the first southern President of the United States. >> David Rubenstein: Okay. So, let's talk about the
depression crises that each of these men experienced
relatively early or in their career
in their lives. So, Abraham Lincoln
gets to the point where he's almost suicidal. They're so afraid he
might commit suicide, they take away the razor
blades and so forth. What were the things that
caused this enormous depression? >> Doris Kearns Goodwin: Well,
what happened to Lincoln is that he broke his word
to his constituents. And he broke his word to
Mary when he asked her to undo their engagement. And for him, his word
meant everything. He had promised his constituents that he would bring
infrastructure projects into their area so that they
could get their goods to market. Dredging the harbors
and making the roads. And then, a huge
recession hit the state. And they had to stop
the projects in halfway. And the state went into
bankruptcy and debt. And he was blamed. He took responsibility for it. And he said, he was going to
leave the State Legislature. At that same time, he broke
his engagement with Mary, not sure he could
support a wife. But also not sure, as he said, that his heart was
going with his hand. But he knew what it meant
to her to be humiliated. And the fact that he
had hurt these people, that he had hurt his
constituents was so painful to him that he went into
this suicidal depression. And he stayed in his
room for weeks on a time. And the friends came. And as we say, took
all knives and razors and scissors from his room. And his best friend, Joshua
Speed, came to his side. And he said, Lincoln, you
must rally or you will die. He said, I know that and I would
just as soon die right now. But I've not yet
accomplished anything to make any human being
remember that I have lived. So, fueled by that
worthy ambition, always from the beginning, he had this double ambition,
not just for himself. But for doing something
larger than that. He returned to finish
out that final term in the State Legislature. And, as you said, eventually
won a seat in Congress. And then, he loses
twice for the Senate. And yet, instead of it again
undoing his ambition, he said, we've made a mark on the
enduring problem of the age, slavery, because of his
debates with Stephen Douglas. And then, he still losing
twice is willing to try as a Dark Horse Candidate
for the Presidency. And the rest, as
they say, is history. >> David Rubenstein: So,
with Mary Todd Lincoln, he was engaged to her. And then he broke
up the relationship. And why did he decide
to go back? And, and you might talk about his earlier
girlfriend, who died. >> Doris Kearns Goodwin: Right. I mean, the, the hardest
thing for Lincoln was that death really
surrounded him. I mean, his mother died when
he was only nine-years-old. His only sister, Sarah, died in
childbirth a few years later. And his first love, Ann
Rutledge, died at the age of 22. And the hard thing was that when
his mother died, she didn't say to him, we'll meet
in another world. She simply said to him, Abraham,
I'm going away from you now. And I shall never return. And that's when he
began to be obsessed with what happens
to us after we die. And when he began to think that if I can only
accomplish something, maybe somebody will
remember me after I die. And they'll still be
telling the story of me. I will still live on. It was true, I think. People have studied this
more and more even than me that he did love Ann Rutledge,
who died suddenly from one of those things that
comes through. And when he first
met Mary, I think, he really did care
greatly for her. She loved poetry. She loved drama. She came from a very
educated, wealthy family. And she was one of the
few people at the time who loved politics
and that world. She'd come to live with
her sister in Springfield. And her sister was married to
the then Governor of the state. And when he first
asked her to dance, she later remembered she said,
he said, Mary, I want to dance with you in the worst way. And after they finished
the dance, she said, he certainly did [laughter]. But. >> David Rubenstein: And,
by the way, by coincidence. Who was the other suitor
to marry Mary Todd Lincoln? >> Doris Kearns Goodwin:
Stephen Douglas. That's what's so amazing. It's a very small circle
of these politicians. >> David Rubenstein: But
she was dating somebody who was six foot four and
somebody who was four foot six. >> Doris Kearns Goodwin: Right. >> David Rubenstein: Okay. >> Doris Kearns Goodwin:
So, she'd have to stretch or go back down, right? >> David Rubenstein: So. Okay. Let's talk
about Teddy Roosevelt. He has an experience in
life that nobody wants to go through on one day that really
put him into a depression. You might describe
what happened. >> Doris Kearns Goodwin: Yeah. I mean, he's in the
State Legislature. And his wife, Alice,
who he dearly loved. He had fallen in love with
her when she was at Harvard. And she was a beautiful
young woman, was having their first child. And he got a telegram
saying, Alice's child is born. And they have cigars. They were all celebrating. And then, an hour later he gets
another telegram saying you must come home immediately. Your mother is dying
and Alice is dying too. The mother had come
to take care of Alice. She was only 49-years-old. And she got typhoid fever. And she was dying. And then, he goes
back home immediately. His brother, Eliot,
meets him at the door. And says, there's a
curse on this house. He goes inside. His mother is dying. He holds her in his arms. She dies at three AM. Twelve hours later,
Alice died in childbirth. They said that he walked around
in a dazed, stunned state. He couldn't stay in the
State Legislature anymore. He had to get away. So, he had gotten a
ranch previously just to think he might go
every now and then out west in the Badlands. And he went for two years. And he became essentially
a cowboy, a rancher in the Badlands. He said, as long as he could
ride his horse 15 hours a day, physical activity
prevented over thought. And he was finally
able to sleep at night. But later, he said, this was
the best educational asset that he could have
possibly developed, because he developed this love
of the land, of open spaces that was permanently
associated with his name through the Conservation
Measures. >> David Rubenstein: Now, the
daughter, who was born then. His first daughter named Alice. >> Doris Kearns Goodwin: Right. >> David Rubenstein: Why would
he not really mention her name ever? Why did he kind of ignore her? He had his sister, I
guess, raising her. What was the nature
of that relationship? >> Doris Kearns Goodwin: Yeah. He had a very peculiar
attitude toward death, which was that once, once
his wife, Alice, died, he couldn't bear to even say
the name of the little girl, who they called Alice. So, he only called her baby. And he didn't even want
to bring her up somehow because she reminded him too
much of the woman who had died. So, he did give her to
his sister to bring up. But then what happened is he
had once been very friendly with a young woman named
Edith, whom he'd grown up with. And who was in love with him
from the time she was young until he lost her
by going to Alice. And eventually, when he
started to get healthy again in the Badlands, he started
corresponding with Edith. And in the end, he had a
marriage with her that was as good a lifelong love of
marriage that he could possibly. I mean, a whole bunch of kids. But somehow when something hurt
him in the past, unlike Lincoln who would talk endless about
the people who were in the past and who wanted to remember them because he thought that's the
way you bring them back to life. He thought if somethings gone, you just exercise
it from your mind. It wasn't a health part
of him in my judgement. >> David Rubenstein: So,
when his wife and mother died in the same day, he later wrote
a letter, a very famous letter, saying the light had
gone out of his life. >> Doris Kearns Goodwin: Right. >> David Rubenstein: And he essentially felt
his life was over, right? >> Doris Kearns Goodwin: Right. >> David Rubenstein:
And the idea that he would ever become
President of the United States at that time certainly didn't
exist in anybody's mind, right? >> Doris Kearns Goodwin:
The most interesting thing that happened to him,
I think that's right, is before this all
happened to him. He looked at his life,
as many people do when they're ambitious,
as a series of rungs that he would like to go up. Okay, I'm in the
State Legislature now. I'd like to get in
the State Senate. You know, and then I think
I'd like to go to Congress. And then I could be a Senator. He was ambitious. And then, who knows what
might happen after that. But once this fatalistic
thing happened to him, he decided that you can't plan
your life that way anymore. So, I'm just going to take
whatever job looks good to me at the time where I can broaden
my horizons, where I can want to do it a worthy job. So, he comes back to New York. And he becomes a Civil Service
Commissioner in Washington. A job that his friends
think that's way below you. You have huge talents. But he wanted to make
the merit system work. And then, he becomes Police
Commissioner of New York. And they say, why in the
world are you doing that? And it turned out to be an
extraordinary experience for him. He goes into tenements that
he had never seen before. He's walking the
streets at night. He made himself when he was
in the police department, he would disguise himself so he
could go and walk on the beat between midnight and four AM. And just to see if the
policeman were on the beat. And they didn't recognize him
until finally he would say, I'm the Police Commissioner,
why aren't you on your beat? And after a while these
cartoonist had pictures of these big teeth of Teddy's. And those funny spectacles. And the policeman terrified of the thought they
might encounter him. But those experiences. And then, he becomes a soldier
in the Spanish American War. And then, he becomes a Governor. And then, he becomes
Vice President. And then, he becomes President. He had the broadest experience. And he was the youngest
president. And he said that he learned
fellow feeling or self, you know, he was no, not
self conscious anymore going into places that he of his privileged
background might never go. It's one of the things
that's saddened me about the last 2016 election. That politic experience
was considered a handicap. In his case, it broadened him. It made him learn other
ways of life that he from his background
would never have known. >> David Rubenstein: Now, for
Lincoln and for Teddy Roosevelt, the depressions, the
problems they had in life were somewhat
psychological. Franklin Roosevelt has
a physical problem. What is that physical problem
and how'd that come about? >> Doris Kearns Goodwin:
Well, he's up at Campobello. And he doesn't feel
well one morning. But he goes out and
exercises all day. And he comes home so tired that he can't even take
off his bathing suit. And he goes to bed. And within 48 hours,
he was paralyzed from the waist down,
having gotten polio. And years of striving
would follow him from that. And it changed his life. There's no question. I mean, he. When he was in a wheelchair in
the early days and they told him that the only chance
he really had was to strengthen his upper body. So, he would ask to be taken
out of the wheelchair and put on the library floor so he
could crawl around the floor so that his back
would get stronger. And then, he decided
to crawl up the stairs. And he would hoist himself up
the stairs one rung at a time, holding onto the banisters,
sweat pouring down his face. And Eleanor said, the
extraordinary thing was when he made it to the
top, they would celebrate as if a mountain
had been climbed. And she realized
that when each one of these small wins
was celebrated, he began to get his
joy in life back again. Because it had been
a terrible depression when he thought not only that he
would be paralyzed for the rest of his life, but he thought
that his own ambitions in politics would be undone. Because at that point, he'd not
only been in the State Senate, he'd been Assistant
Secretary of the Navy. And he'd been a Vice
Presidential candidate in 1920 before he got polio. So, he was definitely thinking
he was going somewhere. The polio changed
that possibility. Or so, it seemed. But then, amazingly, in
1924 Al Smith was running for the Presidency. And they asked if
Franklin Roosevelt -- he hadn't really been in
public since the polio -- would give the nominating
speech. And he knew he would
have to somehow traverse from there to the podium. And the only way he could
appear to be walking -- he could not walk
on his own power -- was if he had braces
locked in place. And he could lean
on somebody's arm. He could appear to be walking. So, he practiced for weeks
at home, measuring he steps that he could do leaning
on his son, Jimmy's, arm. When he finally got to
the podium that night, the sweat again is
pouring down his face. But he delivers this
incredible happy warrior speech. And he comes home that night
and he said to his family, we made it, we made it. And then, much more importantly,
he's still not ready to go into public life. He still thinks he
cannot be a politician, he can't be a President
unless he learns how to walk. But he goes to Warm Springs,
because he hears that's a place where the hot waters
can help you. And once he gets there,
something much larger happens. He develops it into a rehab
center, first real rehab center. And it's not simply to help
his fellow polios learn how to use the water to
help their muscles. But he wants them to
have fun in life again. He wants them to enjoy things. So, he arranges dances
with the wheelchairs. He arranges poker games, soccer
games and things in the pool. And he learns what it's like to
make other people feel better. And as Frances Perkins,
his Labor Secretary, said, he emerged different from
that whole experience. Completely warm hearted with an
understanding of other people to whom fate had also
dealt an unkind hand. He became a leader,
a much deeper leader than he had been before. >> David Rubenstein: Now, it
wasn't a secret to most people in the political world
that he had had polio. But most people in the United
States probably didn't know it or it wasn't as well advertised. But why was it that the
press was willing to go along with the idea of never
photographing him in his wheelchair? >> Doris Kearns Goodwin: Yeah. It's an extraordinary thing. Even though people
understood that he had polio, they didn't understand
that he was a paraplegic. They didn't know that. And everybody around had made
a code of honor on the part of the press that they'd
never photograph him and never shows him
with his braces on. The most amazing moment
is in 1936 when he came to give the acceptance
speech, he was being helped to walk down the aisle. He reached over to shake the
hands of somebody and he fell. His braces unlocked. His speech sprawled
all over the floor. And he finally said
to the Secret Service, get me together again. They put his braces on. They get him up on the podium. And he delivers the great
rendezvous with destiny speech. But most importantly,
not a word was said in the press the next
day that he had fallen. They simply gave the
words of the speech. When I think about where
we've come since then. When President Bush is sick in
Japan, when President Ford falls down a plane step, we
can't wait to find them in those embarrassing
situations. There was a code of
honor, as I said. If a new photographer came
along not knowing it and tried to take a picture of him, an
older one would knock the camera out of the [inaudible]. There was a dignity
to the Presidency. I mean, you wished that he
didn't feel he had to do that. You would hope nowadays that
he could be a paraplegic and still be the Franklin
Roosevelt that he was. But he made the decision then
that that was not possible. And if he said that and his
political instincts are better than mine, looking back,
then I believe him. But there was a sense that there
was a way of treating people with dignity in the way
press handled politicians that I wish we could
restore today. >> David Rubenstein: So,
now Lyndon Johnson's setback or depression is something that only Lyndon Johnson would
think was quite comparable to the other ones. He lost an election. But can you describe why that
would be such a terrible thing. >> Doris Kearns Goodwin:
It does seem crazy, right? I mean 1941 he loses a Senate
Election that he should've won. At the last minute, he lost. And it did catapult him
into such a depression, because for him, losing an
election was a repudiation of his deepest self. I mean, that's what he was. He was a politician. I mean he loved his wife. He loved his children. But politics had to fill
this big hole in him that was too hard to fill
without politics being there. And what happened is he
went into a decline really. Sometimes these kind of adversities can send you
backwards, rather than forwards. And in his self, he's, he decided that he would pursue
wealth instead of just working as he always had in politics. He turned his back
on the New Deal. He realized if he ever were
going to win another chance at a senate seat, Texas
was becoming increasingly conservative, so
that he would have to become conservative as well. And when he wins finally in
1948 and gets into the Senate, then he pursues power. And he becomes incredibly
powerful. I mean he knows how to do it. He becomes majority leader. But then, the incredible
thing is he has a second big adversity. Just six months after he
became majority leader, he had a nearly fatal
heart attack. And when he was in the hospital
and he began to say to himself, the proximity of death was right
there, you know, if I died now, what would I be remembered for? I mean all of these people it's so interesting they
think about that. It's something larger than
what maybe ordinary people think about. And then, he comes
back to the Senate and he becomes once again
the progressive person he had once been. And he gets the first Civil
Rights Bill through the Senate, even though it's a strong Bill. It's the opening of
door to Civil Rights. And then, of course, when
he gets into the Presidency that becomes the
thing he wants to do. To do something that
he'll be remembered for and it becomes Civil Rights. >> David Rubenstein: And that
election, one of the things that depressed was that he
could have won the election. He was maybe supposed to win. But he thought the election
was stolen from him. And did he resolve never
to let that happen again? And how was it stolen? >> Doris Kearns Goodwin: Well,
what happened is in those days, in 1941 and then again in 1948, people knew that there
were certain counties where you could put as many
votes in as you wanted to. I mean they could
just make people go and add up extra votes. So, if they were your
counties, you usually would wait to say how many votes
you had in them. And to know how many you needed when you knew how close
you were to the other guy. But he was so sure
he had won in 1941, he wanted to make
it happen earlier. So, he announced that
he had X number of votes from one of his counties. And then, he was carried around
on the arms of his people. Well, the other guy
had his county still. He could then put more votes in
his county than LBJ had in his. So, he happens to win. So, in 48 he reversed
the process [laughter]. >> David Rubenstein: So, let's go through the
leadership examples you go through in your book. You could, have cited many. But let's talk about in the
case of Abraham Lincoln. Obviously, a great leader. But you cite principally the
Emancipation Proclamation. Why do you think that is an
example of great leadership? >> Doris Kearns Goodwin: Well,
if my just say something first, which is that in dealing
with them as leaders, I realized that all of them
lived in turbulent times. And thus, the title
of the book -- Leadership in Turbulent Times. I mean, think about it. It's become a little bit
more relevant now than it was when I thought about
it five years ago. But each one of them faced
an extraordinary situation. And in Lincoln's case, of
course, he comes into office. And the Civil War
is about to begin. The country is on fire. It's divided into two. And he says if he had
ever known that the terror of what he would face, he
wasn't thought he could live through it. But the big question
he has to face is that when the war starts, it's
predominantly being fought to preserve the Union,
to bring the south and the north back
together again. He had always hated slavery. And there were some
people who were hoping even at the beginning
of his Presidency that he would do something
about liberating the slaves at the same time as
preserving the Union. But he was stuck by the idea that the Constitution protected
slavery in those states that wanted to keep slavery. And so, he. And he knew that most of the
Union Army was fighting simply to preserve the Union. Not to emancipate the slaves. But as the war went on and as
the north was doing so badly in the Peninsula Campaign
in the summer of 1862, he went to visit the
soldiers, which he always did in the middle of any battle. He knew he wanted to walk
amidst the thinning ranks of the soldiers. To, you know, to visit the
wounded in the hospital. And to get a sense
of the situation. And while he was there, he
began to realize more and more that the slaves were helping the
Confederates in an enormous way. They're serving as teamsters. They're serving as cooks. They're, they're
tending the plantations so that the soldiers
can be liberated to come to the battlefield. And he realized that he had
powers as the Commander in Chief that if something were
a military necessity, he could use those powers. He went to the soldiers home
that summer and he was able to think this all through. So, he came to this
cabinet and he said, I'm going to issue an
Emancipation Proclamation as Commander in Chief. The south is benefiting
from the slaves. If we take that benefit
away, it'll help the north. So, it's military necessity. He finally convinces
his cabinet, even though some
didn't agree with him. They thought it would make
the midterm elections lose. It would make the war go on
even longer than that it would. But somehow he had so created
a sense of trust in him that they didn't make
their disagreements public. And then, he had to
convince the Army, who at the first were upset
about the idea of this. But so, trusting had
the Army become in him because he had visited
them so many times that they went along with it. And so, finally,
in January in 1863, he actually makes the
Emancipation Proclamation real. And the question some people
thought is, would he go back on his word, because
there was a lot of outcry about it, even at that point. But when he went to sign the
Emancipation Proclamation, his own hand was
numb and shaking, because that morning
there'd been a huge New Year's reception. And at that New Year's
reception, he had shaken a thousand hands. So, when he went to
sign the Proclamation, his own hand was
numb and shaking. He put the pen down. He said, if ever my soul were
in an act, it is in this act. But if I sign with
a shaking hand, posterity will say he hesitated. So, he waited and waited
until he could sign with an unusually bold hand. And then, the amazing
thing is that Joshua Speed, his old friend, came
to the White House soon after the Emancipation
Proclamation was signed. And they both remembered that
terrible moment when he was in that near suicidal
depression. And when he said that I would
as soon die now, but I've not yet done anything to make
any human being remember that I've lived. And he said to Joshua, I hope in
this Emancipation Proclamation that my fondest hopes
will be realized. That this will be something
that will be remembered. And so, it surely has been. >> David Rubenstein: So, in the
movie Lincoln, which was made after the book, Team of
Rivals, it's only about, although you wrote about
500 pages or so in the book. It's only about three or four
pages in the book is the movie. And that's a whole
separate story. But it's about the
13th Amendment. Why did we need the
13th Amendment after we had the
Emancipation Proclamation? >> Doris Kearns Goodwin: Well,
just to mention about the movie. The thing that was so
wonderful about the movie was that even though they wisely
choose a smaller subject, the 13th Amendment, rather than the whole horizontal
atmosphere of the war. It still gave everything that I
cared about that most important that Lincoln would've cared
about, about his character, his humor, his melancholy,
his storytelling ability, his moral convictions,
his political genius. And that was the
important thing to show. And also Spielberg wanted
Daniel Day-Lewis to play Lincoln from the very beginning. And he had not said yes to
these more horizontal scripts. When he finally said yes, he
knew that he had gotten his man. but the reason the 13th
Amendment was so important was that Lincoln worried that
once the war came to an end that then military necessity
would no longer be a valuable, a viable way to have
undone the Constitution. So, he wanted a permanent
Constitutional Amendment that would end slavery forever. >> David Rubenstein: Let's
talk now about Teddy Roosevelt. There are many examples of
leadership that he gave you. And you focused on
the Coal strike. What was the Coal strike? >> Doris Kearns Goodwin:
So, what happens is that this is the pivotal
moment in Teddy's Presidency. I tried to choose moments
that were pivotal in each one of their Presidencies, instead
of doing the whole Presidency. Partly because I knew that
I didn't want the book to be as fat as some of these
other books were [laughter]. When a woman was
reading the Bully Pulpit, she told me she was
reading at home at night. And she was reading
it in hardback. And she fell asleep
and it broke her nose. So. [Laughter]. So, I figured I'm going
to try and make this book on leadership not as fat. So, if I went through
their whole Presidencies, it would be fatter
and fatter and fatter. So, I chose the pivotal moments. So, in Teddy's case, the pivotal
moment was there was a strike. A six month strike between the
miners and the coal barons. And in New England, coal was
the only way you got fuel. So, as winter and
fall were coming, hospitals were closing down. Schools were closing. It could've been a
national emergency. And certainly a New
England emergency. But the problem for
Teddy Roosevelt was that the President
had no precedent to intervene a labor
management strike. Everything was considered
private then. The government had no business
being involved in these things. So, he had to begin
to see the idea that there were three
parties to this strike. There's labor, there's
management and there's the public. And he represents the public. So, he started to go around. And he loved to go around
on a train to talk to people and create public sentiment. To tell people that perhaps the
President did have some power to get involved in this,
because the public was involved. And these train trips that he
took were such an important way of creating public sentiment. He loved to go sometimes
six weeks in the spring and six weeks in the fall. And he would stop at little
stations along the way. And then, he would continue
to go and wave to people who would just be standing on
the tracks in these small places when the train wasn't stopping. There's a great story that he's
waving frantically at a group of people and they're not
responding rather coldly until he's told because
of his near sightedness that he's waving
frantically at a herd of cows [laughter] little wonder
that they weren't responding. So, anyway, he starts
telling people that I think a President
has a steward, a stewardship role
to this office. And he decides finally to invite
both sides to the White House. Never had labor management
come to the White House before. This is so different
from what we imagine now. So, they come. And they have this really
unproductive meeting, because the coal barons won't
even talk to the minors. They say, we're not
talking to these guys. They're outlaws. We can't even have a
conversation with them. And so, the lucky thing
Teddy does, though, he had had a stenographer
at the beginning take notes. And he asked them
if he could do that. So, and the minor guys
happened to be very open. They actually suggested
arbitration. They said, we'll do. If you put into arbitration, whatever you decide,
we'll go with you. And the coal barons said, we're not even listening
to these guys. They're outlaws. So, he publishes
the whole meeting. And it sounds terrible on
the part of the minors. I mean on the part
on the coal owners. So, they finally decide that
they will go to arbitration. But they won't go if Teddy
suggested, they won't go if the minors suggested. So, Teddy gets JP Morgan
to go and suggest it. And then, that saves
face for them. They get together. They settle it. It's settled on the
matter of both sides. And it really was the
symbol of his square deal, which was the program that, that really symbolized
his entire Presidency. Square deal for the
rich and the poor, the capitalist and
the wage worker. And that's really
how he made his mark. >> David Rubenstein: Now,
FDR may be associated with the leadership of
helping us win World War II. And maybe he's most
remembered for that. But you focus on your book
on something that happened when he just took office. We were in a depression. Hoover had not been able
to solve the depression. What does FDR do in
your book that is so ex, a good example of leadership? >> Doris Kearns Goodwin: Well, what happens is the real thing
he has to face when he comes into the office is there's
a terrible banking crisis that in the weeks before
he was inaugurated, banks were collapsing
all over the country, because people were
going to, they'd heard that banks were collapsing. So, they started going
to their own banks to try and take their money out. Long lines would be coming. And the banks didn't have
enough deposits on hand to give the money back. So, it was becoming violent. So, once he gets into office,
he decides the very first day that he's going to call,
what he calls a bank holiday, ironically named. Close the banks for a week until
he can get Congress into session and get Congress to shore up
the weaker banks with currency that needed the money. Almost like a bail
out of the banks. So that he gets a law through
the Congress that week. They do it. They know which banks are
strong, which ones aren't. But then he has to
persuade the public that what he's done
will make it safe to bring their money back again. So, he decides to give the
first of his fireside chats on the radio, which
will become a symbol of his entire Presidency. And in patient, very
simple terms, he explains to people
how banks work. He said, you put
your money in a bank. They don't put it in a vault. They invest it. They invest it in mortgages. They invest it in businesses
to keep the economy going. And he says what's happened
in this situation is some of those banks invested their
money in the stock market. The stock market fell, so they
didn't have the cash on hand. Others were strong enough. But they don't have the
assets to do it at the moment. So, we're going to
help those banks. We're going to figure
out which is strong. And I promise you that if
you bring your money back to the bank the next Monday when
the banks are going to open, it's safer than keeping
it under your mattress. But they still worried
would they bring it back? That Monday there's long
lines all across the country. And they worry, but they're
bringing their money back. They bring satchels
in to bring it back in the bank because of his word. They trusted his word. And then, those fireside chats
become the most important way that he communicates
with the people. That first one was followed
by 29 more, 35 fireside chats in his 12 years in office. And his voice was so reassuring. People felt he was coming
into their living rooms. Saul Bellow has this great
memory of being in Chicago on a hot summer night. And he's walking down the
street and he looks inside and everybody's sitting
with their radio on. And they're watching the radio. And they're listening
to his voice. And his voice came
out the window. And Bellow said you could
still walk down the street and not miss a word
of what he said. And then, there's a story of a construction worker
going home one night. And his partner said,
where are you going? He said, well my President. He's coming into my
living room to talk to me. It's only right that I
be there to greet him when he comes [laughter]. But what a difference
it was in that time when we could trust the
word of the President. [ Applause ] >> David Rubenstein: President
Kennedy had a very ambitious Legislative program. But many of the things that
he wanted didn't get very far. When Lyndon Johnson becomes
President, he decides I'm going to push Kennedy's agenda and
do a better job than Kennedy. One thing you write about that
he particularly pushed is the Civil Rights Legislation. Why was it so important to him? And how could he, being
from a southern state that wasn't really that
interested in integration and his best friends in the Senate were not
integrationists, let's say. How did he manage
to pull that off? >> Doris Kearns Goodwin: Well,
he knew when he first came into office that he had
to do something to show that he had grabbed
the reins of power. Because there was a real vacuum
after John Kennedy was killed. And a lot of people had
no real understanding who Lyndon Johnson was. So, he decided that he would
make his first priority passing the Civil Rights Bill, which
had been stuck in the Congress. Indeed, none of John Kennedy's
domestic initiatives had gotten through. Congress was as broken then,
as it seems now, surprisingly. I hadn't fully realized that until I went
back to look at this. Somebody was writing about
the Republic was not going to live anymore if Congress
couldn't figure out how to get something done together. His friends warned him
that if you do this, your own election
is 11 months away. A southern filibuster will
inevitably materialize. It'll probably paralyze
this Bill. You won't get any
other Bill through. You're going to be expending
all your power and all the coin of the Presidency
on this one thing. And he said to that person,
well what's the President, what the hell is the
Presidency for then? And he said, I'm
like a poker player. I'm going to put all my
chips on this one thing. I think he believed that
if he could get the south to desegregate, it would
be better for the south, even though they might not
believe it at the time. He knew that the Civil Rights
movement had reached a stage where something had to be
done or violence or dis, problems would really arise. And he wanted to do it. And so, he took that risk. It was one of the great
moments of his Presidency. And, you know, despite the
fact that he did so much more in the next 18 months,
Medicare, Medicaid. It's extraordinary. NPR, PBS, immigration reform. And voting rights. And fair housing. The War in Vietnam obviously
cut that legacy in two. So, when I knew him in those
last days at the ranch, there was such as
sadness as he talked about these early 18 months
and how extraordinary it was, because he got Congress
to do things. I mean, that Bill would
never have passed, in my judgement, without him. He understood that he needed
the Republicans in order to bring Republican supports to break the Democratic
filibuster from the south. So, he knows that Everett
Dirksen, the minority leader, is the guy he got, has to get. So, he has drinks
with him every night. He's telling him, what
do you want in Illinois. These are the days when
earmarks were fine, you know. You want a postmastership? You want an ambassadorship? You want a project in? Anything you want,
Everett, anything. I'm going to give
you all the credit. I'm going to give the
Republicans the credit. And then, finally, he knows that Everett Dirksen wants
to be remembered too. So, he said, you know, Everett, if you come with
me on this Bill. And you bring your Republicans
to break the filibuster. And we get this Bill passed, 200 years from now school
children will know only two names, Abraham Lincoln and
Everett Dirksen [laughter]. How could Dirksen resist? >> David Rubenstein: So,
let's suppose you say I, I, I admire your books, but I don't
have time to read this book. Can you give me the
essence of leadership? [Laughter]. What would you say these four
individuals had in common? And what can other leaders
of our country learn from these four people? >> Doris Kearns Goodwin:
I did feel that I, after exploring this,
that there were certain family resemblances. There's no master
key to leadership. And they're all very different
in their style of leaderships. But they do share
certain qualities. I mean they shared eventually
an empathy toward other kinds of people. So, that they could bring them
together and unite the country, rather than dividing
the country. They had a humility that allowed
them to acknowledge their errors and to learn from
their mistakes. They had an ability to
communicate to the public in their own technology
at the time. I mean, Lincoln, as I said, because he was such
a good writer. His speeches would
be written in full and people would read them
allowed in their places. Teddy Roosevelt had
the perfect language, that punchy language was
his phrases speak softly and carry a big stick. He even gave Maxwell
House the slogan, good to the very last drop. He was perfect for
the newspaper age at the turn of the 20th century. FDR had the perfect
voice for radio. When you think about
JFK and Ronald Reagan, they had the perfect ability to
talk on television in the time of the three television
networks. And then, Obama becomes a
master of the internet wold. And then, Mr. Trump masters
the social media at the time when he was running
for campaigns. But there's a problem, in
that there's a difference in campaigning and governing,
which we've discovered that these instant comments
can become more troubling. When Lincoln was President, he
could've debated with anybody. He was the best debater. He could have spoken
extemporaneously whenever he wanted to. When people would go
after him, somebody said to him you're two faced. He immediately responded
if I had two faces, do you think I'd be
wearing this face? [Laughter]. But as, but as President,
but as President, he never spoke extemporaneously. He only wanted to be prepared. He knew something that we need
to know today that words matter. That they have consequences. And he knew that. [ Applause ] So that, that was one
skill, that was one skill, that was one skill they shared. But the other skill that I think
is too often unheralded is they all knew how to relax and
replenish their energies to find time to think. Something that we think in our
24/7 world think we can never do because we're so busy. Well, they were pretty busy. But they somehow figured it out. Lincoln actually went
to the theater more than 100 times during
the Civil War. He said when a Shakespeare
play come on, he could imagine
himself back in the war of the roses with Prince Hall. And he could forget the
war that was raging. He said, people may think
my theater going peculiar. If I didn't do it, this
terrible anxiety would kill me. So, that's. And he also had his sense
of humor that allowed him. When things were
tough, he would come up with one of his
funny stories. And he would entertain
the cabinet meeting. And they'd have to
relax for a few moments. When he couldn't sleep
at night, he would wake up his two aids,
Nikolay and Hay. And he would read them comic
passages from Shakespeare. He said, so then he could
go to bed at night thinking of those comic passages instead
of thinking about the war, which meant that
he could survive. Teddy Roosevelt, not
surprisingly given his asthma and his need to build
up his body, was able to exercise two
hours every afternoon in the White House. And again, we think we
don't have time to go to the gym for 30 minutes. And he's doing something pretty
important while he's doing this. He would have a boxing
match, a wrestling match. Or his favorite exercise was
to walk in the wooded cliffs of Rock Creek Park, where
he had a very simple rule that you had to go
point to point. You couldn't go around
any obstacle. So, if you came to a
rock, you had to climb it. If you came to a precipice
you had to go down it. So, these companions who are
on these ridiculous walks with him are falling by the
wayside all the along the way. But the best story was told by
the ambassador, Jules Jusserand. He was from France. And he was so excited for his
first walk with the President. He said, he had his
silk outfit on. You know, he thought they'd
be on the [foreign language]. He found himself in the woods. He was dying. He couldn't wait
until it was over. They finally come
to the big stream and he thought thank
God we're going home. So, he said, [inaudible]
my horror, I saw the President
unbutton his clothes and say, well it's an obstacle
we can't go around it. So, we don't want to
get our clothes wet. So, we might as well
take our clothes off. So, he said, I too for the honor of France took off my
clothes [laughter]. However, however, I left on my
lavender [inaudible] gloves. Why? It would be
most embarrassing if we should meet
ladies on the other side and I didn't have
gloves on [laughter]. So, anyway, they found. Now, the most interesting
person though is FDR. So, he had a cocktail party
every night during World War II, where the rule was that you
couldn't talk about the war. You could talk about books you
had read, movies you had seen, gossip that was going on. And after a while, this cocktail
party was so important to him that he wanted the people who
would be at the cocktail party to live in the White House to
be ready for the cocktail party. So, for example, his Foreign
Policy Advisor, Harry Hopkins, came for dinner one
night, slept over, never left until the war
came to an end [laughter]. Princess from Norway in exile
in America during the war lives with the family on the weekends. Lorena Hickok, who's
a friend of Eleanor's, has a bedroom next to Eleanor. His secretary, Missy LeHand, lives with the family
in the White House. And the great Winston Churchill
came and, weeks at a time spent in the White House
with Roosevelt. So, when I was working on
the book, I became obsessed with the thought of all these
people in their bathrobes at night in the corridor and what amazing conversations
they must have had. And wishing that when I had
been up on that second floor with Lyndon Johnson when I was
24-years-old, I had thought of asking where did
Churchill sleep? Where was Roosevelt? Where was Eleanor? But, of course, I wasn't
thinking in those terms then. So, I mentioned this on a Diane
Rehm Show, here in Washington. And it happened that
Hillary Clinton, then in the White
House, was listening. So, she promptly called me
up at the radio station, invited me to sleep overnight
in the White House [laughter]. She said, we could then wanter
the corridor together and figure out where everyone had
slept 50 years earlier. So, two weeks later,
she followed up with an invitation
to a State Dinner. After which between midnight
and two AM, the President, Mrs. Clinton, my husband and I
went through every room up there and figured out yes,
Chelsea Clinton is sleeping where Harry Hopkins slept. The Clinton's are
sleeping where FDR. And the room they gave us was
Winston Churchill's bedroom. There was no way I could sleep. I was certain he was
sitting in the corner. He was drinking his
brandy, smoking a cigar. In fact, that bedroom is the
scene of my favorite story in World War II when
Churchill came there right after Pearl Harbor, he
and Roosevelt were set to sign a document that
put the associated nations against the axis powers. But no one really liked the
word associated nations. So, that morning he awakened with a whole new idea
calling them United Nations against the axis powers. So excited that he was
that he wheeled himself into Churchill's bedroom, our
bedroom, to tell him the news, but it so happened that
Churchill was just coming out of the bathtub and
had absolutely nothing on [laughter]. So, Roosevelt said,
I'm so sorry. I'll come back in a few moments. But Churchill amazingly
still dripping from the tub has the presence of
mind to say, oh no, please stay. The Prime Minister of Great
Britain has nothing to hide from the President
of the United States. [Laughter]. Now that's a guy you can love. [Applause]. >> David Rubenstein: Now,
you mention your husband. And unfortunately your
husband passed away recently. In his honor, you're
working on another book. You might describe that book. >> Doris Kearns Goodwin:
Yes, indeed. My husband had cancer this
last year of his life. But he had started five
years earlier a book that meant a lot to him. It was really a biography
of his mind in a way. Public service was something
he valued so much in his life. Despite graduating first in
his class at Harvard Law School and clerking for Frankfurter. He really never cared about
going in and making money and turning money around
from one place to another. He wanted to do something
in public. So, he went to do
the investigation of the [inaudible] shows. He then was a young
speech writer for JFK. And then, with LBJ and wrote all of LBJ's great Civil
Rights speeches. That incredible we
shall overcome speech. The great society speech. The Howard University speech. Bobby Kennedy's ripples
of hope speech. Al Gore's concession speech. But more important
than the speeches even, is that he devoted his
life to public service. And he's watching. He was 86-years-old
when he died. And he was watching, he said,
what was going on right now. And he realized that through his
long life, he had seen the turns and the twists in
American history. And like me too, he
believed, he said that the end of America has loomed
many times before. America is not as
fragile as we think. So, he wanted to write a
book that would show people that politics and public service
can be an honorable vocation, wanting to make young
people believe once again that they could enter public
life and have a fulfilling time. And he hadn't quite
finished the book. He got cancer this last year. But the book kept him going. I mean it was so incredible to
watch that he wanted to live, not just for the book,
but because he was happy. And there was nothing I could
care about more than knowing that this man, who I've
known for 45 years, married for 42 years, wanted to
go through everything he could. He went through surgery and they
thought they got it, the cancer. He went through radiation
for seven weeks. They told him he got it. And we came and had
champagne with the doctors. And then, he came
home and he got. Two months later, two
months before he died in May, it came back again. And this time the only thing
they could do was immunotherapy. And he finally got pneumonia. And came home to Hospice. But it was the most
extraordinary thing. I've never seen death the
way I saw it with him. My parents died when
I was young. And they had heart attacks. So, it was over in a minute. But he knew. I don't know that he
knew he was dying. But he would wake up
from his pain medicine and it was like an Irish wake. All our friends came in. day after day they'd come in and
he'd wake up and talk to them. And he'd say something to them. And he had this light
in his eye. And I must say, the
last thing he said to me was you are a wonder. Something I will never
forget for as long as I live. [Applause]. >> David Rubenstein:
Thank you very much. [Applause.]. Thank you, Doris,
for a [inaudible] story. Congratulations. Thank you. [ Applause ]
