Doris Kearns Goodwin: Leadership in Turbulent Times (HD)

[Applause] [Applause] ladies and gentlemen welcome to the National Constitution Center it is wonderful to see all of you hungry for historical and constitutional knowledge I am Jeffrey Rosen the president of this wonderful institution which as those of you who've been here before no is the only institution in America chartered by Congress to increase awareness and understanding of the Constitution among the American people we have such an exciting series of programs that are coming up and those of you who are not members must sign up so that you can come see them in the next few months we have Michael Beschloss Kenneth Starr in Washington DC applause there on the news at every moment here we're doing a wonderful collaboration with the Atlantic it's new special issue on the future of democracy is done with the National Constitution Center and we'll have events in Washington on October 2nd and here on November 28th and then a series of federal judges on Bill of Rights state to discuss the future of the Constitution so sign up and become members I also have to just share with you how excited we are that our online interactive Constitution which brings together the leading liberal and conservative scholars to discuss every Clause of the Constitution has just been adopted by the College Board which will require all Advanced Placement students to study it before they graduate from high school [Applause] it is such a thrill it's such a great learning opportunity and I want each of you to download the app interactive Constitution org and learn from this great document ladies and gentlemen the fact that all of you are here means that you share with me my excitement that our guest tonight has honored us by coming to the National Constitution Center she is one of America's greatest public historians who's done more to increase awareness and understanding of the Constitution and American history than almost anyone else of our time I became passionate about history I think as a high school kid reading LBJ and the American Dream and then read and reread and read again books like no ordinary time team of rivals and of course the bully pulpit ladies and gentlemen please join me in welcoming the great Doris Kearns Goodwin I've been so looking forward to the conversation it's such an honor to meet you I want to just begin with that moment in the LBJ book that I remember as a high school kid where he's left the White House you're at the ranch you get up at 5:30 every morning and get dressed he comes into your bedroom and gets in your bed because he's cold and afraid and he wants to talk about what it was like to be President and what was that experience like how did that convince you to become a presidential whoa what a great beginning let me go backward first for a minute before he's in the bed which is that so what happened is I was a 24-year old graduate student at Harvard and was selected as a White House Fellow this fabulous program that still exists today and we had a big dance at the White House than that we were selected he did dance with me not that peculiar they're 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 I'd been active in the anti-vietnam war movement and in written an article against him with a friend of mine which we sent into the New Republic and they hadn't said anything but suddenly two days after the dance in the White House it appears with the title how to remove Lyndon Johnson from power so I was certain he would kick me out of the program but instead surprisingly he said bring her down here for you 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 accompany him to his ranch to help him on his memoir as the last years of his life I'm not sure I ever fully understood why he chose to me to spend so many hours with I like to believe it was because I was a good listener he was a great storyteller fabulous colorful stories there was a problem with these stories I later discovered that half of them weren't true but they were great but I also worried that part of it was that I was then a young woman and he had somewhat of a minor-league womanizing reputation so I was constantly chattering to him about my steady boyfriend's even when I had no boyfriends everything was fine until one day he said he wanted to discuss our relationship which sounded ominous when he took me nearby to the lake conveniently called Lake Lyndon Baines Johnson wine cheese red Chuck table of all the romantic trappings we started outdoors more than any other woman I've ever known and my heart sank then he said you remind me of my mother pretty embarrassing so anyway I worked for him that last year in the White House went to the ranch and he was so sad those last years at the ranch he knew that the war in Vietnam had cut his legacy in two so he'd wake up early in the morning I would stay at the ranch with him and his wife and he would wake up and he just couldn't go back to sleep and he would be cold as you say so he would come in I knew he would be coming in so I would get up and sit in the chair and he just needed to talk he needed to talk about what he had hoped he would be remembered for for civil rights for the Great Society for everything else he did Medicare Medicaid aid to education immigration reform a extraordinary higher lower education PBS NPR but he knew that his legacy had been cut in two and that sadness just meant he had to talk about it and that's how we talked in the early morning hours not quite as sexy as it sounds I was in a robe in the book you say that he was frustrated by the fact that Lincoln's bog reversed couldn't bring Lincoln to life but you say that he was inspired by FDR as FDR was inspired by Theodore Roosevelt as Theodore Roosevelt was inspired by Lincoln and Lincoln by Washington to what degree did Johnson learned from his predecessors lessons of presidential leadership you'd really hope that the presidents would look to their previous presidents not to compete against them not to feel they have to undo what they've done in the past but rather to be able to learn from the best parts even from the triumphs and the tragedies of the previous presidents no question that FDR he called him his political daddy when Johnson first went into public life it was as a young congressman during the New Deal and xvr actually met him when he was a young congressman and he was so impressed with Johnson's energy he said do you know if I hadn't gone to Harvard he said that's the kind of young dude almost the Bronco that I would have been if I had not gone to Harvard and had that elitism he predicted that maybe someday he might be the first southern president so he saw that way back in 1937 sadly you know you wish he had learned from from eisenhower or from Truman or from FDR himself about the importance of talking to the public when a war is going on and sharing with them the fate and the fortunes of that war and that's what he could have learned but they there's small club it's 45 people they should learn from each other like we learned from our parents and grandparents you have the amazing scene where FDR is trying to be lobbied by Johnson to give money for a non-profitable Dam and Johnson just gets his attention by telling stories yeah it's amazing he so he wanted the hill country where he lived they didn't have enough people per mile to be able to get the federal money to have a electricity brought in rural electricity into the area so the first time he went in to see FDR FDR did away when he didn't want to do something of just talking so he started talking about did you know that naked Russian women look different from American women and poor LBJ doesn't know what to do and before you know it the time is up so he then asks somebody what should I do the next time I go in they said bring Maps bring charts he likes to see things so he brings in these charts and then he says to him look let me tell you what those women in and it's like his mother in that area have to do and he talks about them having to wash things by hand the men having to go out at night and there's no milk machine because there's no electricity and he's so impressive that FDR says okay let me see what I can do so he calls the head of the rural electrification company says I've got Lyndon Johnson here I know he's been turned down they don't have enough people per mile so FDR says look I know those people down there they breed really quickly they'll have enough people super so he gives Johnson the loan Johnson walks out of there he said it was the happiest day of his life and he brings electricity to the hill country here's a thought experiment you're the young Doris Kearns then and you're advising LBJ about the lessons of his hero FDR and he's in the middle of the Vietnam War and you now know all these lessons about FDR and his conduct in the war how would you distill them for Johnson and how could they be useful for him well I think part of the problem was that he he didn't feel confident about his understanding of world affairs he thought he could extrapolate from his experience with the Congress where if he would meet with min-hee could persuade him that somehow you could have a Mekong River television TV a Tennessee Valley Authority and that would make him want to end the war an FDR would understand I think to him that you're fighting ideology as he was in World War two you fighting nationalism you're fighting much larger issues and there may not be in this instance a compromise I think Johnson thought which was a good thing he thought in domestic affairs that you could somehow get people to bargain with something but maybe you can't and obviously there was no way that FDR could bargain with Hitler or with Mussolini and I think he would have told him that that you have to understand that and maybe this is not a war that needs to be fought what what are you doing in trying to change people's feelings about nationalism in Vietnam and but most importantly as I suggested I think what he would say to him is if you're going to go into this war you have to go into it and educate the American people because the citizens are going to be sending their sons and daughters into battle and there's nothing more important than understanding why they're there Johnson so wanted to keep the Great Society going that he didn't want to talk about the war he hid the appropriations he didn't have the National Guard come out and he just thought maybe I can run these two things together and then what he was afraid of was not so much even winning the war he's afraid of losing the war so he kept putting more troops in to prevent the loss of the war instead of having a philosophy of whether is this war worth winning or not but it lost it lost him his presidency it lost him his place in history and he was as I say he suffered from that as well so they even though I was so angry with him when I first knew about him when I was in the war being with him just made me feel more empathetic toward somebody who I believe this isn't what he wanted when I see yell how many kids did you kill today LBJ hey hey that's not what it was about and I came to feel sad about him and sad about the heartbreak of the country that this guy could have been and was in many ways an FDR except for this failure of leadership epic in the war one one last question on LBJ you talk about the qualities that the great leaders you described had and empathy is a crucial one and the ability to listen if Johnson had more of that would he have been a better leader well he's certainly had empathy in the domestic affairs I mean one of the most important experiences he had when he was young he had to leave college for a year in order to get money because he could they couldn't afford to stay in and he worked as a principal in a mexican-american school in Cotulla and he saw the pain of prejudice he said on the faces of these kids and he did everything he was the principal he was the teacher he organized the soccer games the organized basketball games those kids said they've never been in the presence of such an energy and the oral histories of those kids say he changed their lives and then much much later in 1965 when he's giving the we shall overcome' speech for the voting rights after the Selma demonstrations which I'm proud to say my husband Richard Goodwin worked on that speech and and he was working he only had that day to write the speech because Johnson decided on the Sunday night that on the Monday night he was going to give a joint session of Congress speech so my husband came in that morning he said you got to write the speech and somebody had assigned it to a different person the night before so Johnson said how's good one doing on the speech I couldn't have done this in my heart depended on from 9:00 in the morning till 6:00 at night he wrote that speech if you look it up it's so beautiful you know every now and then history and fate meet at a certain time in a certain place so it was in Lexington and Concord so it was in Appomattox so it was in Selma Alabama and then at a certain point this is not a Negro problem not a white problem it's an American problem it's going to take us a long time but we shall overcome the moment when a president connects to an outside movement and the two of them joined forces together that's the critical moment but the only time Johnson interrupted my husband working on that speech that day was to call him up and say I'd like to talk about Cotulla and he told my husband the story so the in the speech he says he remembered being there in 1928 and he saw the prejudice on their face and he didn't know what he could do about it but now he had the power to do something and by god he was going to do it I'm gonna use it so those are the moments that Lyndon Johnson should be remembered for as well you lost your beloved husband Richard last May and we do have all of our thoughts and prayers and you've found though his notes for that speech and for others what was that light to discover that oh my god he had kept evidently in those days you could just take your papers out of the White House so all these boxes came with us for years and years they were in basements and finally about six or seven years ago he decided let's bring them up and we started going through all the boxes and it's it was amazing just to see the first draft of not that only that speech the Great Society speech the Howard University speech Bobby's ripple of Hope speech which is on his grave Al Gore's concession speech JFK's Alliance for promise trees and you see the draft you see these little edits it's amazing it's the only thing we have in a safe-deposit box that was our most valuable possession I just didn't want to lose it whatever magnificent well this wonderful book has such a clear and compelling structure and you begin with chapters on the youth and then the formative experiences of each of your presidents and talk about how they were formed by their parents and early experiences with certain ambition and qualities and then had a traumatic event which alter their perspective and gave them an empathy and ability to listen that showed them up as leaders and I think we just need to go through them and talk about the those formative experiences and we have to begin with our greatest President Lincoln and his Chama wouldn't seem that traumatic in the scheme of things a depression that made it impossible for him to fund the internal improvements that he hoped for but it had a tremendous effect on him describe that and how it formed him yeah I mean what happens to Lincoln is he runs for the state legislature when he's 23 years old he just puts himself forward even though he's only been in this little town of New Salem for six months and he writes this amazing handbill which you had to do to put yourself forward in those days saying every man has his peculiar ambition mine is to be esteemed of by my fellow man and to be worthy of their esteem and then in this handbill he promised the constituents that he would fight for infrastructure projects they could allow poor farmers to bring their goods to market dredging harbors joining rivers building roads and then he becomes when he gets in the state legislature the chief architect of this infrastructure plan the wonderful thing about his 23 year olds statement he says I've been so much by disappointment if you don't vote me in I'll be okay because I'm used to this disappointment but then he says but if I lose I promise you I'll come back five or six times to try to win and it's so humiliating I promise you I'll never try again amazing right so anyway the prot what happens is the state goes into a recession the projects aren't finished they remain half-finished the state loses its debt rating people aren't coming into Illinois and he feels like it's his failure and the fact that he hadn't kept his word what he said the chief chemist gem of his character was to keep his word that same winter he had broken his engagement with Mary Todd not sure certain that he really loved her enough to marry her but he humiliated her and he felt he'd broken his word to her so he went into this depression so deep that his friends took all knives and razors and scissors from his room fearing that he would kill himself and his best friend Joshua speed came to his side and said Lincoln you must rally or you will die he said I would just as soon die now but I've not yet accomplished anything to make any human being remember that I have lived so it was fueled by that worthy ambition that he goes back and finishes his term he has a single term in Congress he tries for the Senate he loses he tries again he loses and then he's a dark horse candidate for the presidency and the rest is history but that resilience through adversity is one of the things that leadership scholars say is critical for not just a leader but for any of us Ernest Hemingway said everyone is broken by life but some people are strong in the broken places and that was true of him his extraordinary humanity and empathy comes through throughout his early career he picks up drunk man from the gutter and he sat at the killing of a pig he believes that even harming animals is hurtful what was the role of his spiritual beliefs in forming his character well he didn't belong to an organized Church he was like so many I think of the founding people were a deist who believed there was a god but he wasn't interfering in daily life and I think what happened is however and Mary belong to a church he didn't go to church but once he got into the presidency and with what was had the turmoil of the Civil War God became much more a part of his speeches much more a part of his thought that somehow you know things were being out there there was a destiny and I think he became a very spiritual man whether it was a organized religious man or not he's his humanity is almost unexampled in my mind I kept thinking if I could be more like him I'd be a better person I don't feel that way about the other leaders they may have been a great leader but he was the kind of person who said if you allow the emotions like envy or or jealousy or anger to fester they'll poison a part of you and just said you don't have time for those kind of emotions and he was able to forgive people who'd hurt him he I mean he had extraordinary human qualities that the people around him saw even when he ran for office that first time he wins the second time because they'd seen this young guy trying to educate himself scouring for books wherever he could find them helping people in carriages just doing things naturally and his cabinet who first underestimated him they saw that he was a leader in their midst in a way that before the country saw anybody who saw him saw it so I think it is human nature is leadership underneath it all it applies whether you're a community leader a presidential leader you know a governor a senator or a business leader it's all the same if you understand human nature and you treat people the way they should be treated those words of Lincoln that you just use mastering anger and envy because they are not productive emotions were spoken by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg about a year ago sitting in the very seat that never sitting she said precisely the same thing in the same words that Wow I talked about what a good listener she was and she said that she learned to think before she spoke and that anger and jealousy are not productive and it's important to achieve self mastery so essentially then you can serve others to what degree is that's a that's a a lesson of many of the great wisdom traditions and it's also an important lesson of leadership how did Lincoln exercise it he advised people to write angry letters and then throw them away he had what he called a hot letter when he'd be angry with somebody he would write everything down in the letter and then he would put his side hoping he would cool down psychologically and never need to send it so when General Meade failed to follow up with General Lee's our after the victory at Gettysburg he wrote him a long letter saying we asked you to get his army now the war is going to go on month after month year after year I'm immeasurably distressed that this didn't happen but then he knew it would paralyze the general in the field so he put the letter aside and it was never even seen until the 20th century when his papers were open and underneath was the notation never sent and never signed and he did that time and time again when I went to interview President Obama for an exit interview for Vanity Fair we talked about these hot letters and I said do you ever do this he said what do you mean he said I'd do it all the time I said what do you mean he said I write letters all the time to people I'm mad at and then I crumpled them up and I put them in the basket how much better it would be if our current leadership would do the same thing everybody not just the presidency look how many people get in trouble by writing these emails and then or saying things on Twitter and then letting it go out instead of thinking before you say something hurtful to somebody else well the idea of thinking before you speak and that only through slow thoughtful deliberation can Reason prevail was central to the framers could Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt have thrived in the age of Twitter I have to believe they could I mean I think the one who would be the most at home in the age of Twitter would be Theodore Roosevelt because he had these short punchy phrases he was colorful he liked to be the center of attention just like our current leadership does and they said in fact that he was so liking to be 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 he had all these punchy sayings speak softly and carry a big stick you know don't hit until you have to but then hit him hard I can picture him he had a very quick mind that he could have done that but he also had a reserve on that mind and wood there was one time and he's in the middle of this coal strike and he got so mad at the coal barons because they were yelling at him for even having him in a meeting with the miners he didn't think they should be and I mean but he had to grab the edge of his chair he said he wanted to throw them out the window but he killed that anger in bay I think he could have done it Franklin Roosevelt had a similar situation to the hot letters when he got mad at somebody his fireside chats used to go through five or six drafts and then he'd read them aloud to the speech writers and in the first draft he would say terrible things about an isolationist congressman he might say the guise of traitor he would name his name he said what's he doing in the country and a young speechwriter was there as he's reading this first draft he says what's he doing this is terrible the oldest speech try to said don't worry wait till the second draft by the second draft the guy's name is not mentioned by the third draft he's a good guy by the fourth dress everything is fine but he got it out of his system somehow we all have to figure our way to get it out of your system because you feel it the anger of frustration without losing the dignity of the office without losing the presidency and without losing yourself the centrality of the first and second and third draft is crucial to democracy and to writing let's talk about Theodore Roosevelt inspired by your book I did a short biography of William Howard Taft as well and this understood taps criticism of Roosevelt that he was a sort of proto demagogue in the election of 1912 who would assisted the president was a steward of the people who directly channeled popular will was that an excess after he left the presidency or did he show some of that tendency toward populism in the presidency itself and how did it affect his lead no I I think he showed it right from the beginning actually I mean the time at the turn of the 20th century is very similar to today in many ways the Industrial Revolution had shaken up the economy much like the tech revolution and globalization have done today you had people in the rural areas feeling left out of the cities you had a gap between the rich and the poor for the first time you had a lot of immigrants coming in from abroad and you had people in the working class feeling that they were under siege and there was almost a revolutionary feeling in the country lots of strikes violent strikes between labor and capital and he came in but even though he was appealing to the people by saying I'm the steward of the people I'm not on labor side I'm not on management side I'm on both sides because I represent the people and that's what the square deal was about and it was a very it was a very moderate set of reforms that were absolutely centrist that most people could agree with I'm not for the capitalists I'm not for the wage worker I'm not for the rich I'm not for the poor but if either one of them screws up I'm gonna go against them if they play fairly before them and it was the right for the moment at the right time and when there was this big coal strike he said I represent the people on either both sides are at loggerheads I rep on the Stuart of the people and he said he got that from Abraham Lincoln that he was the steward of the people and that the kinds of presidents who are powerful see that they're not they're not just the steward of Congress they're the steward of the people but it's true once he ran against haft in 1912 he had so loved being in the office he should never have said he wouldn't run again after two terms he said he would have cut off his wrist not to have written that statement and then he goes against his great friend Taft he did believe the Taft was more conservative than he as a progressive should be so he believed in what he was doing but it turned out that it split the Republican Party in two it hurt the progressive cause that he cared about and it destroyed their friendship I was so glad only to find at the very end that just before Teddy Roosevelt died the two of them met each other in a hotel and they they came together and they both felt that their lives were better for having forgiven each other for that terrible 1912 campaign that's what I always want at the end some sort of happy ending to all this and people applauded in the diner exactly well this is the National Constitution Center so I have to ask was Teddy Roosevelt's idea that the president was a steward of the people who could rule by executive order rather than going through Congress as Taft insisted at odds with the Constitution as Taft believed what is the connection between a devotion to the Constitution and a devotion to popular leadership and it's a really good question I mean clearly the checks and balances is an important part in the Constitution that's why there's these three institutions that can balance each other and Teddy Roosevelt when he was onic on a tear would argue that he as president had the powers as the steward of the people that oversees either one of those two things at one point he even wanted the Supreme Court if they passed a law that the people themselves could reject could undo the law so I mean that that's pretty scary what was happening there when when when he was moving in the right direction in the country where is was he wanted to be that it's fine but but I think I think you're and he would argue that the Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order and and Lincoln worried about issuing that whether that was constitutional to do until he could finally come up with arguing that as a military necessity he had to do it because the slaves were helping the Southern cause so he can use his commander-in-chief powers but that's why he wanted to have the 13th amendment so that it could be legitimized by the Constitution by an amendment eventually absolutely Lincoln was a much greater constitutional lawyer than Roosevelt and when he had to act by emergency always asked for congressional or constant authorization after the fact we have downstairs at the Constitution Center I don't know if you came up through the lobby but a quotation from Theodore Roosevelt the people alone are the makers of their own Constitution this is 1912 the my predecessors left out the next line and as a result they should be able to overturn judicial decisions by popular vote it's a crazy quotation to have at the National Constitution so now I'm just showing a call to you dear dear friends we must come up with an alternative scour the works of James Madison send me an alternative to that quotation because as much as we love Roosevelt that's not right quotation for the Constitution sir how interesting yeah I know it's just too you know you have to read the next sentence never nevertheless Roosevelt what will work back to Lincoln and the Constitution for me one of the most inspiring of the extraordinarily inspiring things you talked about with Lincoln was his speech to the Lyceum of where he talks about the importance of the rule of law and gives the most eloquent defense of civic education and need to study history in the Constitution ever describe it no it's an amazing thing so he's a young guy and he gives his speech to the Lyceum and the context of it is that there's a lot of violence in the country at that time abolitionists are being killed by pro-slavery people blacks are being lynched in the south and he's worried that the rule of law is not being followed so he gives a speech and he says he's worried that in such a time of concern like this anxiety that people will put somebody in power who wanted ten wants to tear down rather than build up and he warns us again against a Julius Caesar or some sort of autocrat that might come into our being and the answer is for the people of the United States to keep reading about the Constitution keep reading about the Declaration of Independence he said that the scenes of the revolution were fading and he worried that we were forgetting what we submit what we fought for and the ideals of our country's founding so he said people should be reading these things like you read the Bible to your kids read them every night you know just make people understand what it is that we as a people are and then that's the way we'll be able to tear down that kind of dictator should he arise it's an incredible statement and it really is talking about civic education and the importance of our remembering as citizens what this extraordinary beacon of hope is that we were founded on I mean what he kept arguing always was that it wasn't just that he was fighting for the north and the south to remain together as physical entities that what the Constitution and the Declaration meant was that ordinary people could govern themselves we didn't need a king we didn't need a dictator and if the South could siphon off from the north and maybe someday the West would leave the East and it would prove to the world that ordinary people can't govern themselves that you need that larger authority and that was what he was fighting the revolution for it I mean the civil war for it was that big that idea and he wanted everybody to remember that idea he was the best I think we've solved the alternative to our Theodore Roosevelt quotation mas this is a very exact the need to study the country ever in American okay thank you so much yes exactly you're an honorary member of our exhibits team he Lincoln read Madison before he gave his speech at the cooper-hewitt insisting that the Constitution took no position on slavery he found in Madison's notes recently published in 1840 that the Constitution wasn't supposed to take a position on whether there could be a property in man Sean Wilentz told us that last week when he was here and when Lincoln stood at Independence Hall behind us he said I'd rather be assassinated on this spot right then abandon the principles of the Declaration of Independence what did the fount do you say Washington was his hero but what did the founders Madison and Jefferson mean to him well I think what they meant to him and that's right when he gave this famous speech at Cooper Union he studied the founders and what they said and what he was trying to say was that slavery was was was just something that they had you know this probably far better than I that slavery was something they had to deal with because it was there but it wasn't that they thought of it in any idealistic way and that if if he could understand what they were saying and if he could look at what was happening right then mainly he wasn't arguing then about ending slavery he didn't think he could at that point because it was in Const in the property definition but what the main thing the Republican Party was fighting against was don't let the slavery go into the western territories because those are not States yet there's a freedom to decide what we want to do about slavery and if we if we could undo it there it would eventually die out that was his hope and then obviously that hope was not realized in the Civil War had to be fought and the war came and the war came as he said and the war came amazing talk the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation is your case study for Lincoln's virtues of leadership and it's a riveting chapter and you draw lots of lessons tell us about some of them well I mean mainly what he when he finally decided that he had to think through the question right from the start there were some people in his cabinet more radical than he who thought he should have ended slavery from the beginning they were conservatives in this cabinet that told him if you ever touch slavery then the war will never end there'll be no peace talks only three out of ten soldiers at the beginning of the war were fighting for ending slavery seven out of ten were just fighting for Union they didn't want to do anything about slavery so he knew that if he was going to do something he had to be able to persuade the cabinet he had to persuade the army and the country and he had to think so the first lesson is he went away from Washington he went to the soldiers home three miles from Washington cuz he couldn't think in those days anybody who wanted to see the president could come in in the morning and ask for a job you know can I be a postmaster can I be a clerk and he would have long lines of people coming in and he couldn't think and so I think one of the things he teaches a leader is you sometimes have to get away to think he also teaches leaders I think that in order to get rid of the terrible anxiety or to soothe it that you're in the middle of he went to the theater actually a hundred times during the war he said when this when the lights came on and a Shakespeare play came on for a few precious hours he could forget the war that was raging and while he was trying to sort out what to do about slavery in the Emancipation he said people think my theater going strange but if I couldn't go it would kill me so he goes to the soldiers home he comes up with the whole draft of the Emancipation Proclamation and he presents it to his cabinet but he doesn't say I'm coming to talk about it with you he talked about it with them for months he now said I've made a decision and I want to tell you my decision I will listen to your ideas about its implementation its timing but I am taking responsibility for this and when he first presents it to him several of the cabinet members still one of them says he'll resign another one says I'm going to write written objections and he said well you'll have to do that if you can but I want you to think about this and by the time he in July presented the draft and when he's going to present it to the country in September he had persuaded all of them that they had to stick together that even if they had private reservations the same thing I'm just seeing in the founders all there yeah and you know Ben Franklin is saying even if you have private reservations we have to stick together and they did by God not a single one of them said anything against that the guy didn't resign and it meant that the cabinet went before the country as a whole which was critical and then because he had seen these soldiers every time there was a battle he would go and visit the soldiers he told any of them if you have any complaints come see me in the White House he knew them so when he decided to transform the meaning of the war into ending slavery not just Union they went along with him because they trusted him and then he had to fight the country northern legislatures were so upset by the Emancipation Proclamation they passed decrees saying sometimes they were going to secede from New England that terrible radical place but eventually the elections were won and he was able to convince the country as well so it was this enormous persuasive power that was because he believed in it and conviction is what produces persuasion how much did he listen to competing arguments before deciding to issue it and how much did he figure out on his own I think he really listened to all the people in his cabinet for months he listened to the different points of view and when he finally came to the decision it was like a huge relief wrestling thought with him was almost a physical exercise he would get exhausted and in fact when he went to sign the Emancipation Proclamation finally that morning he had sign he had shaken a thousand hands at a New Year's reception in January of 1863 so when he went to sign the proclamation his own hand was numb and shaking he put the pen aside 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 a bold hand and then not long after he signed it his old friend Joshua speed who'd been by his side in that serious depression came to the White House and he said to Joshua speed maybe in this act my fondest dreams will be realized maybe I will be remembered over time for having done something worthy and so he has been what for Lincoln was the relation between a sensitivity to what public opinion would bear and a willingness to do what he thought the Constitution and law he was very sensitive to public opinion I mean he he would read newspapers he would talk to the people who was coming in he talked to the newspaper reporters he understood that in a democracy public sentiment is everything he said without public sentiment nothing can be accomplished with public sentiment anything can be accomplished so he was constantly educating the country about what he wanted to do he was figuring out not public opinion polls but where public sentiment was and he knew that the timing was right he said if he had issued the Emancipation Proclamation six months earlier he would have lost the border states and lost the war if he'd waited any longer would have lost the morale boost it provided so he was very clear about the importance of bringing the country along on major issues like that I think it's time to turn to our next president Franklin Roosevelt well first off I was so excited by the answer to the question I asked you upstairs so I'll ask you again what your favorite book is of all the ones I think you know I I think probably no ordinary time there was just something about Franklin and Elinor's relationship and I had a woman at the center of the book which made it really special I mean her relationship with him during the home front during World War Two was just astonishing I mean she she could be the person who told truth to power she could be as he said a welcome thorn in his side he was oh she was always willing to argue with him always willing to question his assumptions he was such a powerful guy that he needed somebody like that when she sent so many Jen so many memos to general Marshall during World War two about discrimination in the army that he had to assign a separate general whose only task was to deal with Eleanor Roosevelt she had a weekly press conference every week where the rule was only female reporters could come to her press conferences so all over the country stuffy publishers had to hire their first female reporters an entire generation got their start because of Eleanor Roosevelt and I think writing about the homefront rather than the war front seeing what America could do it's a terrific lesson for today there had been this great division in the country between the isolationists and the interventionists and the war came you just got a hope you don't need a crisis to bring the country together there have been huge fights between business and labor in the 1930s the business community hated Roosevelt in a lot of ways and then he talks to them about the importance of building the ships the planes the tanks and the weapons we were so far behind Germany we were only 18th and military power we became 17th when Holland surrendered to Germany he gets the factories going and actually 60% of the factories eventually by 1943 the jobs are held by women of course because the men are in the Armed Forces and they had worried the factory owners before the women came in they said we can't have a social revolution in the middle of the war these women will never learn how to operate these machines the productivity will go down but of course once they got in there productivity went up so they decided we better do a study and figure out how would these women learn to operate these complex machines so well and so quickly I love the answer on the study form it said when a woman unlike a man was asked to operate a noose piece of machinery she would ask directions any of us who ever drove with you guys in the old days but anyway I think I think what I loved about working on that book was that the whole focus was on the second floor of the White House because Roosevelt couldn't go easily outside he needed the world brought to him so his way of relaxing during World War two was to have a cocktail hour every night in the White House and he wanted everybody who was going to come to the cocktail hour to live in the White House with him so his foreign policy adviser Harry Hopkins came for dinner one night slept over never left until the war came to an end Missy lehand his secretary lived with the family in the White House a princess from Norway is there on the weekends Lorena Hickok who's got an emotional relationship with Eleanor's there and when Sid Churchill came and spent weeks at a time in a bedroom diagonally across from Roosevelt's so when I was working on the book I just became obsessed with the thought I was up there with Lyndon Johnson why didn't I ask him where did Eleanor sleep where was Franklin where was Churchill but I wasn't thinking in those terms then so I mentioned this on a radio program in Washington and it happened Hillary Clinton then in the White House was listening so she called me up at the radio station she invited me to sleep overnight in the White House that we could wander the Carter together and figure out where everyone has slept fifty years earlier so two weeks later she followed up with an invitation to a state dinner after which between midnight and 2:00 with my map in hand the president mr. Clinton my husband and I went through every room up there and figured out yes Chelsea Clinton is sleeping where Harry Hopkins was are sleeping where FDR was and we were given Winston Churchill's bedroom there was no way I could sleep I was certain he was in the corner drinking his brandy smoking his ever-present cigar I was in the presence of the greatness of the past what a story and what a book and I just read it and reread it because the stories stick in the mind and their relationship you bring to life so vividly and during that famous cocktail hour as you were count Franklin Roosevelt became infuriated because Eleanor was lobbying him and he threw his papers down but then there's that wonderful moment when her brother Hall died and he just sidled up to her and tenderly embraced her and consoled her yeah I'm convinced that they really had a deep relationship with one another I when I when my kids were little they used to hear me in the study when I'd be writing the book and I'd be saying Eleanor just forgive him for that affair he had so long ago he's with you now and I'd say to Franklin just be nice to her she loves you and they wondered what in the world is going on in this daughter but but there's no question that when he died I mean Eleanor realized that he had given her a platform she never would have had that she had become after he died a much more honest politician because before she could be the agitator and he had to be the one who had to concern itself with public opinion but then when he was gone she became this extraordinary political figure as well as a moral figure they together and he separately are such towering figures and of course his his life-changing trauma was polio he'd had this sheltered life with the smothering devoted but much-loved mother and he was an aristocrat and he learned well you described what he learned from polio and how it affected and transformed his leadership style you know without a question I mean he was a natural political figure before that he was charming he was well-spoken but somehow when the polio came it did change him I mean he when he went to Warm Springs he made himself vulnerable to his fit to his other polio victims and he taught them that they could be joy in life again before he wasn't just simply giving them that giant pool to swim in he was saying let's play water tag let's have polio let's have boots of polo let's have on wheelchairs let's play poker at night we'll have cocktail hours at night he taught them that their lives could be filled with pleasure as well and he took out years to learn to try and learn to walk again it was said that at the beginning he was told that there no no nothing would come back from the waist down but if he could strengthen his arms and his chest and his back then he could probably manipulate a wheelchair and appear to be stronger than he was so he would get on his library floor he would ask to be moved from his wheelchair to the floor so that he could crawl around the floor for hours learning to strengthen his back then he would go up the steps one at a time sweat pouring down him and make it to the top and then he would celebrate getting up there each little triumph was a celebration and people who knew him said he emerged completely warm-hearted from this experience he was vulnerable he learned humility he said if you've tried to move your big toe for two years and you finally do then you learn humility and and he became closer to other people to whom fate had dealt an unkind hand because he understood what he himself had gone through his vulnerability and I'm convinced that it changed the kind of leader she would have been a leader but not the great leader he became and and such a transformation from the glib Callao rather snobby aristocrat who had been much pampered but but there were elements of his character his optimism his determination to conceal unpleasant news because he was afraid of hurting his father who was ill and his fierce ambition that mellowed and forged by the polio created that one of the greatest presidents of all time and and what he was able to do I think which was so important in in a democracy like ours is he established an intimate relationship with the people I mean those fireside chats are really extraordinary when you think about them I mean he was talking on a radio but as he was talking on the radio people who were listening to him as he's got the microphone of him he would smile he'd be moving his hands as if he really were talking to individuals not just the people of the United States but individual people and he'd say my friends and they thought he was talking to them there's a story about a construction worker coming home one night and his partner said where you he said well my president he's coming to speak to me in my living room it's only right I'd be there to greet him when he comes and Saul Bellow said you could walk down the street on a hot Chicago night look in and see everybody in their living rooms or their kitchens listening to the radio he could hear his voice coming out the street and you could keep walking and not miss a word of what he said and it was that intimacy that he was able to convince people when the depression first started his first day in office the banks were being bombarded by people taking their deposits out the banking system was collapsing he has a bank holiday he has an emergency banking rule and then he goes on his first fireside chat to convince people bring your money back I've got a system now to shore up the weaker banks the stronger banks will have your money it's safer than keeping it in a mattress the day after this week-long holiday is there are huge lines forming up and people are thinking oh my god are they gonna take their money out now that the week is over they were bringing their money back because they trusted him and in fact when when he died one of the most interesting sentiments was that person said in the streets the New York Times was reporting people would be strangers meeting one another and saying we've lost our friend and then one citizen said the greatest tribute to him was that one man died and 130 million people felt lonely so it was that connection that he'd established with the people that he always trusted if you tell the people what's going on then there'll be something that they will do for you so we made two press conferences a week rather than the press being the enemies of the people two press conferences a week he respected the people's intelligence he was a teacher and he shaped public opinion by giving people the facts those fire that first fires had attacked my friends I want to talk to you about banking and then I run through the details of the banking system so he could slowly lead people to have the confidence describe that delicate combination of being sensitive to and guided by public opinion even as he molded it by public education absolutely I mean the same thing happens he gives this famous speech in 1942 we've lost at Pearl Harbor we're losing battles in the Pacific and he asks everybody to get a map and have it before them so we can educate them about where the battles are taking place so there was this great story of the guy who ran CS mapstory said he sold more maps that week than he had sold it in his tire year and he said then this real thing he said even my wife of 50 years who hates maps asked me to bring a map home and then it'll cause something what kind of a marriage did they have if he's selling maps and she's hating maps and I said no wonder your books take so long this is totally irrelevant anyway he shows them what's going on with the war and then he talks about how many times America had been through trouble before you know we'd been through Valley Forge we'd been through the early days of the Civil War the Pioneers going over the Rocky Mountains and there's gonna be losses before there are victories again and we have to remember that he said but I know we will come through in fact if I could just take a moment to say in a certain sense I think the theme I'd like to believe of this book even though it was written before the current turbulent times is that each one of these leaders led through really hard times much harder than what we're going through people keep asking me are we in the worst of times as if I have an answer because there being a historian and of course it's not the worst of times I mean when Lincoln takes over 600,000 people are about to die he said if you've ever known what he was going to go through he couldn't have thought he'd could live through it as I say that problems in the industrial era were greater than the problems now FDR is there in that first day of the depression at the bottom level of where it's going to be and LBJ takes over after the killing of JFK and there's worried that there's a conspiracy from the Mafia or from Cuba or from Russia and each one of them had the skills at that time to bring the country through and I think the lack of moorings were feeling has to do with where is that leadership that can honor the kind of values here which are compromise and collaboration and humility and empathy and resilience and connection to the people and if we can just remember I think that we've been through those times before and reaffirmed that America has the strength to do it again we'll know what we have to do and each one of these times it wasn't just the leader it was the leaders connection to the citizenry as I'm saying it was all those movements that I think made the citizens active and I think the most important thing whatever side once on right now we can't be spectators anymore in in our democracy and I think the signs of an awakening of young people getting involved in politics of more people entering public life than before more women record numbers of women trying to run for office these are all the signs of an awakening of our system and it's not just what's happened in the last few years something's been broken in Washington for decades really no bipartisanship that's really worked for a long period of time I think it has to do with the campaign finance system the poison in the system is the money that we have to spend to run for office congressional districts have to be redrawn everybody should be able to be registered to vote when they're 18 and they should probably be a holiday the day we vote there's so many things FDR said problems created by man can be solved by man whatever situation we feel about our political situation today it can be changed if we as citizens get active and that's what I would hope the founders would want it's an extremely optimistic message because it suggests that the dystopian scenarios are not right so by many accounts we are more polarized today than at any time since just after the civil war in 1960 there was a 50% overlap between the most conservative Democrat in the most liberal Republican in Congress today there is no overlap much of that is the result of Geographic and virtual self sorting read and who America just live in different geographic areas and watch different social media the dystopian story says that this polarization will be exacerbated by social media and the speed of deliberation will unleash populist forces that will lead as in Athens to demagogues and the mob is your story different does it suggest that leaders who exhibit the qualities you described empathy a willingness to compromise humility and a desire to engage in public education can summon our better better angels and save American democracy absolutely I absolutely believe that I mean I think about what it was like in the 1850s we worry about the divisiveness of media today in the 1850s you only got your news from your partisan newspaper and they would be completely different set of facts I mean if it's as if the lincoln-douglas debate and you're reading the Republican newspaper it might say Lincoln was so great in the debate he was so triumphant they carried him out in their arms and triumph the democratic paper would say he was so embarrassing he was so terrible that he fell on the floor and they had to sort of carry him out in dejection and somehow the national newspapers arose after that national radio Rose we had three television networks it is a problem that we're so divided in the media today and I think that's a problem what I keep wishing is that I think part of the bipartisanship that we enjoyed in the 60s the 70s the 80s even had to do with a lot of the congressmen and Senators had been in World War two together had been in the Korean War so they knew what it was like to have a common mission to go beyond race class or sectional lines and so I I keep thinking of my youngest son joined the army right after 9/11 he had graduated from Harvard College in June of o1 and he went to Iraq Afghanistan earned a bra star and eventually went to Harvard Law School we would have gone at the beginning he said nothing will equal that experience of having out a platoon of kids from all over the country from different sections and races and knowing that they were working together for a common mission and he's now a huge proponent of national service and I think if there's some way we could figure out because military service military now is seventy-four percent of the people respect the military more than any other institution only 11 percent approve of Congress right now even the presidency in the Supreme Court or in the 30s and somehow if we could get more people from different parts of the country to be joining together in national service after high school so that they learn to work with other people and this cultural divide which is huge now people see each other as the other it's much more tribal in fact Teddy Roosevelt warned that the way democracy would founder would be is people no longer have a fellow feeling or an empathy for one another as citizens and we have to hope it's not going to come from a war and maybe there's some equivalent of that that we could create in a national service program I know Teddy Roosevelt's forward Eleanor Roosevelt was for it John McCain was for it general McChrystal is for it and my son has been talking about it in lots of places because he knows what that experience was like coming from this elite Harvard Concord background to be in that situation and it does develop empathy and fellow feeling and it would on both sides all sides of this dilemma so there's answers out there we just have to figure them out well that's a word exactly what we're gonna do [Applause] I've been monopolizing your time because I'm so riveted by the discussion we have all sorts of great questions from our audience and just a few time for a little bit of them and I will ask were there presidents that demonstrated great leadership but aren't recognized as such because there were no major crises during their administrations yeah it's interesting I mean that's a good question because Teddy Roosevelt had said if there's not a war we wouldn't know Abraham Lincoln's name today if there's not a war there wouldn't be a general that was famous and he didn't think it was possible without a national crisis at first to mobilize the country together to get through the checks and balances to be able to get people to work together at all levels of the society I think he was wrong I mean I think even his own presidency in the best days belied that because he was able to mobilize a national spirit to deal with the worst problems of the industrial order to break up some of the monopolies that weren't playing by the rules of the game to regulate the railroads to do what needed to be done and child labor and it got a majority support but it's true I mean Abigail Adams said great necessities create great virtues and that you want to live in a time of crisis because that brings people together and obviously the story that's here is told of that time but I think we have to believe that with the citizen activism and with leaders you can we're in a crisis now there are problems in the society that need to be figured out we still have a lack of mobility in this country I don't care about the gap between the rich and the poor what matters is if people have talents and discipline and they can't rise to the level of their talents and discipline that's what Abraham Lincoln talked about he was constantly worried about there'd be some kid out there who didn't have a chance and he thought that was this sense of what a democracy was about and our country was about was giving everybody who had the will to do it a chance and we have too many people that don't get that chance because of where they come from from where they could where their situation is and that's at the key I mean Lincoln talked about education in that same hand bill we talked about civic education and the Lyceum address that it was the key and we have to do something about our education system there's still things to do about health care there's so many things we need to do and we're not focused on any of it right now because we're obsessed with what's going on but Wilk will get back to it I really think so I mean maybe I'm just an optimist because I was originally a Brooklyn Dodger fan and I had to wait for so long and then it was a Red Sox fan and we were waiting eighty-six years but I think it's more than that I think the evidence of the past is telling us that we've been through these worst times and if you just reaffirm the belief that this is the great country most of us would never want to live anywhere else and we just have to keep remembering that when we get distressed at what's happening right now since you mention it I have to ask a question on many people's minds will the Red Sox get past the first round of you know here's what happens when you get older like me I no longer am obsessed with what's gonna happen in the playoffs in the World Series they've given me so many happy days this summer when the Red Sox don't win a game I don't even want to read the paper the next day which is rather a problem if I have to be on television talking about the news that night so I've read the paper happily oh you know over a hundred games this year and and that's good enough for me I mean I otherwise if we never won in O four I would be completely sure now that we would screw up in the playoffs because that's what we would always do we'd had this best record and then we screw up I don't know honestly I don't know I mean maybe it's the old lingering Red Sox feeling that somehow we've got to have done this great thing all season and something will happen in the end but it's okay if it does now that I'm so mature here's a me to question since LBJ was known for his sometimes uncouth behavior was there ever a time you can recall where he said or did anything outrageous in your presence well he did something outrageous but it had nothing to do I realized at the time with with being a woman when I start to tell you about it it's gonna seem very odd and I think we're being some this is going somewhere what we're talking about it's other people are seeing it we were on friends anyway he had this bizarre habit of never wanting a conversation to end so that if you were talking to him and he had to go to the bathroom you came into the bathroom while he's going to the bathroom now that could be seen as something that's particularly for me but I didn't feel that way because he did that with everybody it wasn't I felt like I was just one of the gang and for some crazy reason I just understood that this was him and so we'd keep talking and I'm not really looking at him when were just talking but he tells a story about McGeorge Bundy who was the national security adviser and he was kind of uptight and so he was in the bathroom like everybody else was with LBJ and he didn't want to watch him so he put his back against him and he's looking at the wall and here's the LBJ sitting on the toilet and he kept saying Mack I can't hear you come closer so he said he kept backing up he kept backing up I thought he was gonna sit on my lap so I don't know what I would have felt in today's movement but not in today's movement but I know I didn't feel it had to do with me being a woman and felt like was part of the staff and I was like all the other guys Harry Truman sent his hot letters and many historians seem to love him for this your thoughts might say this again Harry Truman sent his hot letters letter about Margaret singing right right I certainly understand why he would send a hot letter to a critic who had maligned his daughters piano recital I mean everybody could understand that's a father speaking up I think that's different than sending a letter to a cabinet officer where you're mad at something they've done and you're humiliating them by the letter becoming public I I think everybody understood when he said he wanted to hit the guy in the face that this is a father speaking that's different but he he was plain speaking Harry and that was part of his appeal at the time I don't know how it would play today I mean it seems like we can say lots of things today and they don't have consequences so maybe it would be fine I don't think it was the face that he wanted to hit him in no it was I think you're absolutely right I'm trying to be delicately ready you know but there's a story that George Bush Senior has told that he somebody screwed up a teleprompter the engineer who was working on it and and and made him fail at what he was doing and he yells at the guy and then he leaves the guy leaves the room and then he goes back and brings him back in he said I shouldn't have done that the dignity the presidency tells me even though I felt that I shouldn't have told you that I'm sorry something like that which is great I mean when you're a president there's a dignity to it when you're a leader you've got to rein in these emotions and that's part of your responsibility of being a leader are good presidents good people the smallest interactions according to Lincoln the smallest expressions of anger can have consequences is it important to be a good person in all of your interactions if you're gonna be a great leader I don't know I wish that were true I think in Lincoln's case goodness equaled greatness and I don't think that always happens in leadership because the things you have to do to become a leader the things you have to do to stay being a leader may go against some of the things that you would want to be in terms of kindness or say you've got to fire people you've got to you've got to let people know what you're feeling at times and you can't be maybe the good person that you might want to be at all points except for Lincoln I mean he's somewhere an outlier in that I mean the interesting thing about Lyndon Johnson is that well he defied all the normal habits of what you should be to be a good leader which is an emotional intelligence to helping the people and never humiliating them in public I mean god he could get mad at people his people said you know he would sometimes if he saw a cluttered desk he would yell at the person you're disorganized if he saw a clean desk you say what's the matter with you and you idle you know or he sees somebody writing a letter this is when he's in the nya to his mother and he says can't you do that and take a crap on your own time son so but yet the people stayed with him and the reason is if you have a common mission which he had when he was in the nya they're providing thousands of people jobs the rural electrification when he's in the great society and the civil rights stuff they feel like they're doing something larger than themselves and I think that's the key to all four of these guys at some point personal ambition gets transferred into an ambition for something larger than themselves and they all wanted to be remembered over time for having done something worthy and their staff if they feel that they're part of something then some of that behavior that you would think is just bad behavior can be accepted if there's no common mission then it's impossible the team will disintegrate your last chapter is about death and remembrance is it possible or did these great leaders aspire to be remembered for themselves on an ego basis or did they aspire to serve a cause greater than no I think that's that is the distinction I think they did aspire to be remembered for having done something that made people's lives better and and that comes at a certain point in a leader I mean Teddy admitted when he first went into public office when he was 23 he wasn't going in to make people's lives better he just liked the adventure of being a politician but then he went into tenements that he was investigating in the state legislature he saw when he was police commissioner what the slums were like in the middle of the night when he was a soldier in the spanish-american war he's sharing food and shelter with his soldiers when he was governor he saw the corruption that was going on between the political bosses and the business community so by the time he became president he'd had this huge winding path where he'd learned through political experience he'd learned empathy I think Lincoln was born with it as you say he had to learn it and I think one of the difficulties of this last election was that political experience or even leadership experience was considered a liability and and we were looking for somebody outside the system because the political system had failed us it was understandable but unless somebody has experience to learn how to deal with all sorts of people to learn how to lead to learn how to acknowledge errors and learn from their mistakes to learn how to shoulder blame for other people all the things you learn as a leader then what the time you get to the presidency is pretty hard to learn that so I think we have to reevaluate what we're looking for in our leaders it doesn't have to be political experience I think you could have a great business leader who's led a huge company and has led that company well and the company's made a difference in people's lives and they've learned how to navigate shareholders and customers and people all over the world but it's just a matter of are they a leader that we can see these strengths are in before Tim Russert died Inouye we used to talk about the fact that if only the media would cover the people who are running for office in a different way not simply to talk about who things who went in a debate who's raised the most money who's the most interesting guy at that moment what their even what their standing for because they may not carry out what their standing for we should look at their pasts they'd all been leaders somewhere usually as a governor a mayor or a senator or congressman you could talk to their staffs you could do an analysis what kind of a team builder were they what kind of traits did they show what kind of weaknesses do they have could they acknowledge era and was something Tim and I were planning to hope that we could talk about on his shows and then make that the way journalists covered campaigns so we got to figure that out too how we cover campaigns and what the primary system is all about and what these stupid debates are about which aren't debates at all you know there there's a moment in one of LinkedIn one of Lincoln's debates that I loved where somebody said to him Lincoln you're two-faced and his immediate response to us if I to faces do you think I'd be wearing this face [Laughter] but he understood he understood that there was a difference in campaigning and governing that once you were governing you had to worry about your words he never spoke spontaneously extemporaneously really hardly ever as president he was afraid he might say something that would not be taken the right way so he prepared almost everything he said when soldiers when people would come after a victory and they want him to they'd serenade him at the White House and they want him to give a speech and he would just thank the soldiers thanked them for coming they'd sing some songs and saved his words because he knew that words mattered that you're setting a tone for the entire country and I think all of us need to remember that again now in this uncivil climate where people say things and bully each other even on on social media and they those words can hurt where those words can inspire it could be either way we have unfortunately time for one more question and then I'll ask for a closing thought how has your understanding of political power and presidential leadership changed over the years and what do you understand about leadership now that you didn't when you began writing about the president well I think it's interesting the reason I wanted to write this book was that each time I finished one of the other books I felt like I had to move all that person study like FDR's books out of my study and make room for Teddy and Taft or before that move Lincoln away and make room for FDR and I felt like I was leaving an old boyfriend behind that it was kind of disloyal to get rid of the old guy and have a new guy so I decided instead of studying a new person this time I just looked at them through the lens of leadership and I think I hadn't thought about a lot of things like where does ambition come from these are when I was in graduate school we used to talk about these things at night these big questions where does ambition come from does the man make the time for the times make the man our traits born leadership traits born or are they are they developed over time and it was so much fun to come back and look at these questions that I saw where did they each feel that they were a leader for the first time I never thought about that before I think Lincoln saw it early on especially when he won that election the second time Teddy as a young child I think even felt it leading his siblings because he would tell them stories all the time and they would listen FDR didn't feel it until he got on that campaign trail he'd been a rather indifferent student at Groton at Harvard at Columbia he was working in a Wall Street law firm he hadn't impressed them with his work ethic they'd come to him and say run for this office will guarantee you the seat mainly because his mother could support the campaign not because he'd shown the makings of a leader he gets out on that campaign trail and suddenly he's found this is what I love he listened to people he'd talked to them he wasn't a great speaker then they used to Eleanor said he used to make so many pauses she was afraid that he would never go on but by the end of the campaign he was talking so long she had to go and get him off the stage because he wouldn't leave but the important thing is he found what William James says what all of us want to find the philosopher William James is that voice within that says this is the real me this is what I was meant to do so they each found that in public life and I hadn't thought about that before I just hadn't thought about it in a personal way or even the thought about how they wanted to be remembered so it was a much personal look at these leaders even though I'd shown them with their families and their colleagues and the historical moments and these big fat biographies in this one I think I was just looking inside and trying to answer the questions that I wanted to answer and and it also came out shorter I mean you'll be happy to know that when one woman was reading the bully pulpit which was the fattest of them all she read it whilst she was going to sleep at night and she fell asleep and it broke her nose so I will not break your nose or even mind on my foot hasn't even formed well I'm loathe to close as I would say I'm loathe to close because it's such an honor and a treat but I have to ask it is the National Constitution Center you've done so much to increase awareness and understanding of history and the Constitution all of these great leaders were students of history and read about the Constitution why is it important for citizens to study history and learn about the Constitution I mean I think there's no question that by understanding where we've come from we understand where we are and where we're going and that's what Lincoln would always say in almost all of his speeches he would tell a story stories have beginnings and middles and ends and so he said if we're trying to figure out in the middle of the struggle of the Civil War where are we going you have to know where we came from where we are now what is our identity as a people and I think that's so important for us right now I mean to go back to what I was saying about history being able to give us reassurance and perspective my husband who was older than I was used to say in these last month's before he died he said you know I've lived through the depression when it was seen that capitalism was undone we I lived through World War two when people thought that democracy was undone he said I remember of course those early days of the civil rights movement in the 1960s when it seemed like the country was going to be split apart on racial to met on racial grounds and he said we came through those things and he said is it reaffirmed his belief that the history and studying the history of this country and remembering the times that we've been through remember what we were created for remembering an importance of the beacon of hope that America provides to the world at large that that reaffirms our sense that we can do something now and I really believe that he believed that with every fiber of his being and he kept telling me the optimism of that I feel was not just me it was from him as well and to know how he'd given public service his entire life I think we have to respect public servants again look at these people and what the Founding Fathers did by being public servants and going into political life and right now there's a sense that we have to just want people to do that my husband did that his whole life he graduates from Harvard College first in his class president of the Harvard Law Review never practiced law a day in his life because he goes to work for the quiz show investigation with John Kennedy for for Bobby Kennedy for LBJ and then writes about history for the rest of his life believing that that is what Americans can do and will do and all of us have to just as I said before we have to be citizens first and more important than partisans and we I think will do it I really do so I'm just so glad to be with you today [Applause] [Applause]

Channel: National Constitution Center

Views: 29,184

Rating: 4.8375001 out of 5

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Id: wv5AMdb6-C0

Length: 74min 5sec (4445 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 25 2018