Doris Kearns Goodwin speaks at The National Press Club

all right everyone good afternoon and welcome to the National Press Club the place where news happens I'm Andrea Edney I'm an editor at Bloomberg News and I am the hundred eleventh president of the National Press Club before we get started I'd like to ask you to please silence your cellphone's if you haven't already if you're on Twitter we do encourage you to tweet during the program and please use the hashtag MPC live our handle here at the club is Press Club DC for our c-span and public radio audiences please be aware that the members that members of the general public are here in the audience with us today so any reaction that you might hear is not necessarily from the working press and now I'd like to introduce our head table please hold your applause until everyone has been introduced we have we have Barbara Cochran and if you would like to stand Barbara is she is the president of the board of the National Press Club journalism Institute and the Curtis B Hurley chair in public affairs journalism at the Missouri School of Journalism we have fair DOS al-farouq he's a member of the National Press Club Board of Governors and a senior reporter at medtech insight we have Gil Kline he has a former National Press Club president in the Washington program coordinator for the University of Oklahoma's Gaylord College of Journalism and mass communication we have Susan page she is the Washington bureau chief at USA Today we have Lauren potate staff writer at the National Newspaper Publishers Association Katherine Skiba freelance journalist and author and member of the National Press Club headliners team we have Heather for screen weaver who is a freelance journalist and member of the National Press Club headliners team and we have Betsy Fischer Martin executive director of the women in politics Institute at American University and co-chair of the National Press Club headliners team thank you for being here today all of them I'd also like to take a second to thank the other members of the headliners team responsible for organizing today's event if you're in the room today please stand and be recognized we have Lisa Matthews Laurie Russo Tamara Hinton Danny selnick Bill Ward Club staff members Lindsay Underwood and Laura Coker and our executive director bill McCarran thank you everybody so we are so very excited to welcome here today world-renowned presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin she has just published her seventh book leadership in turbulent times and that's the book that we're going to be discussing here today if you haven't already purchased a copy we are selling them outside and this Goodwin will be signing books after today's event the sale of each book benefits the National Press Club journalism Institute which does so much good work to support press freedoms and to promote professional development and scholarships here at the club so leadership in turbulent times examines how four men two of whom are immortalized on Mount Rushmore overcame obstacles to become iconic presidents since MS Goodwin has spent five decades studying the president's featured in this book Abraham Lincoln Theodore Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lyndon Baines Johnson her guise as she calls them today's discussion should be both educational and illuminating miss Goodwin's career studying presidents began when she was chosen as a White House Fellow during the Johnson administration the story of which is worth having her retail today during arts discussion I hope she won the Pulitzer Prize in 1995 for her book no ordinary time Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt the home front in World War 2 her book on Abraham Lincoln team of rivals the political genius of Abraham Lincoln was adapted for the big screen as many of you know Lincoln was directed by Steven Spielberg it earned 12 Academy Award nominations and Daniel day-lewis won an Oscar for his portrayal of President Abraham Lincoln in that movie Spielberg has acquired the rights to her book about Theodore Roosevelt the bully pulpit Theodore Roosevelt William Howard Taft in the Golden Age of journalism maybe she'll tell us whom she envisions is playing Teddy and chief justice attacked MS Goodwin graduated magna laude from Colby College she earned a PhD in government from Harvard University she also taught classes on government there including a course on the American presidency she is a frequent guest on NBC's Meet the Press and her appearance in Ken's Ken Burns documentary on baseball led her to write her baseball memoir wait until next year [Applause] so if you don't already know this she is a die-hard fan of the Boston Red Sox so I'm guessing she's pretty happy after their big win in the World Series this year so with the midterm elections tomorrow and politics on the mind of so many this is really the perfect time to have Doris here to reflect on political leadership and the direction of our country we have a lot to get to and we're saving time for questions from the audience as well I'll let you know when to start lining up at the two microphones we have here in the room there's one right there and one right there please welcome please join me in welcoming Doris Kearns Goodwin to the National Press Club [Applause] can you tell us a little bit about what inspired you to write this book on leadership what inspired you to write this book now well what happened is after I finished Teddy and Taft I usually then go to a new president and I always feel like I'm leaving the old guys behind like I've left an old boyfriend behind live with them for so long I mean my whole life has been spent with these dead presidents I sometimes fear that the only problem with doing that is that they'll be in the afterlife a panel of all the presidents I've ever studied and everyone will tell me everything I got wrong about them and the first person scream out will be Lyndon Johnson of course how come those other books was twice as long as the book she wrote about me so when I came to the end of Teddy and Taft I thought you know oh my what my career I've really been thinking about leadership I taught it when I was at school in graduate school we used to debate the big questions where does ambition come from does the man make the times or does his leadership inborn or is it developed and I realized that if I could focus that lens on the guys that I knew the best as was said Lincoln the two Roosevelts and LBJ then maybe I could think about leadership and even when I started it there seemed to be a problem with leadership in Washington we couldn't get bipartisanship on any signature issue and people were worrying whether or not we were having the right leaders come to Washington since they were so unable to get together and then so I called it leadership in turbulent times because all my guys were in turbulent times never did I realize how relevant the title would be until these last couple of years so I think in some ways I feel what I'd like to think it does is to shine a light on what genuine leadership looks like what are the traits that it that it develops how does one grow in office all the kinds of questions that we can put to our current president and question the leadership capacities of today so you started this book when they were young you focused on them as they were growing up and their home lives and you wrote how they grew in office can you tell us a little bit about that I think that's really important I mean when I did it in part because I was in a college audience and a student raised his hand and said how can I ever be one of those guys they're on Mount Rushmore I need to know what it was like for them in their journey so that's partly why I did it because then you'd see them struggle you'd see them fail but I realized more importantly you'd see them grow in office I mean for example Lincoln he's only 23 when he runs for office the first time and the statement he puts out is just remarkable showing how different he is really from the other three and maybe from any other president we've had he said everyone has his own peculiar ambition mine is to be esteemed of by my fellow man and to be worthy of that esteem which is a huge ambition to have when you're 23 the other three people had ambition for themselves but then it eventually develops into ambition for the greater good which somehow Lincoln had at the beginning but the fun thing about watching him when he's young he says in that statement you know I don't know many of you you probably will not give me this chance to to be your representative and if so I won't be very much chagrin because I'm used to disappointment but then he says but if I lose now don't worry I'm gonna try again in fact I think I'll try five or six times until it's so humiliating and then I promise you I'll never try again so it showed one of those leadership traits in him from the start persistence and then you watch Teddy Roosevelt when he first gets into the state legislature and he's very much like our current president in some ways he loved being the center of attention even then they said he wanted to be the baby at the baptism and the bride at the wedding of the corpse at the funeral and he made blistering statements against his Democratic opponents he made headlines everywhere in New York State as a freshman legislator but then he suddenly realized that he wasn't getting anything done his opponents were too angry with him even the Republicans were embarrassed by what he was doing so he said I rose like a rocket and I failed like a rocket and I had a swelled head so I had to learn how to compromise and collaborate so he understood from acknowledging his errors which is something all these people have to do and all leaders have to do and they also developed what Lincoln had in born Lincoln I think was born with empathy that feeling of wanting to think about what other people were feeling and hopefully helped them Teddy said when he first got in he had no desire particularly to make things better for people he just wanted the adventure of being in politics but and suddenly as he is in the state legislature and then Police Commissioner he sees tenements he sees decrepit living conditions he sees children working in factories and it developed in him what he called a fellow feeling or empathy and then that made his leadership much larger than it would otherwise have been for Franklin Roosevelt he gets in at 28 and he he doesn't really know that this is what he wants to be and the minute he gets on the campaign trail he loves barnstorming he loves listening to people he wasn't a great speaker Eleanor said he would start speaking and then have a pause and you were afraid he would never ever continue until by the end of the campaign he was up there for so long you thought he would never ever end but he realized what the philosopher William James said is every now and then it probably comes to all of us we hope there comes a moment when you say this is the real me this is what I want to be LBJ from the time he was two I think wanted to go into politics and he pursued power through college etc and then eventually his power was used for the greater good so that's sort of the journey that I want to let people follow is how they grew how they made mistakes they went backward and they went forward so you touched on this a little bit earlier but to what extent do you think is leadership warned or made now I think obviously it's both I mean I think there are certain gifts that you might be born with Lincoln was born with the gift for language I'm not sure that however you tried one could easily write the Gettysburg Address in fact Teddy Roosevelt wrote an essay where he said there's two kinds of success in the world one is if you have a talent that no matter how hard somebody tries to develop it like a keith's for a poem or a Shakespeare play you might not be able to emulate it but most success he said comes from people who have ordinary talents that they developed to an extraordinary degree through hard sustained work and that's true of all my guys I think it's probably true of all of us I mean except for that gift for language I think he was in born with empathy I think Teddy was lucky to be born with a photographic memory that helped him in this political world FDR had that optimistic temperament in and that was so important in his leadership and LBJ just had unbounded energy but then most of it is that they take what talents they have and they work hard all of them do I mean they're in the office before everybody there they're staying there before everyone's gone home there's a sense of knowing that it's going to take more work than their opponents to get something done based on your observations does our current president share any character traits with these four leaders that you focus on okay well let's start with humility in fact one of my favorite comments that president Trump made as a candidate he said the reason he loves Pope Francis so very very much is that Pope Francis is very very humble just like Donald Trump but humility means accepting limitations and acknowledging errors and learning from mistakes and so far we haven't seen that the interesting thing about empathy is one has to concede that he must have had some sense of feeling for what the base who eventually voted for him in the election were feeling and what they were thinking and who they were upset with and what they wanted and what their fears and hopes were because he's bound them to his side but then you would hope that that empathy once you get into office would be expanded so that you'd be president of all the people he's obviously knows how to communicate I mean all all of the people that I wrote about learned the technology of their time Lincoln was lucky to communicate at a time when all of his speeches would be printed in full in the newspapers and then reprinted in pamphlets so you'd read the whole speech at home out loud Teddy was lucky to come along at the time when the national newspapers were being born so his short punchy language was perfect for headlines you know speak softly and carry a big stick don't hit until you have to and then hit hard or his even gave Maxwell House the slogan good to the very last drop he could be here in our Twitter world there's no question if if you want somebody to run against President Trump it would be Teddy Roosevelt for lots of reasons an FDR obviously he came of age in the presidency with the voice of radio not just that intimate voice but that conversational style of speaking and he was able to make people feel that he was actually talking to them directly there's a story of a construct jerker running home one night and his partner said we going you said well my president's coming to the living room to greet me I must be there to say hello to him and and so he made people feel he had each individual in mind when he gave those fireside chats and it was such an important bond of trust that he developed with the people then you get JFK and Ronald Reagan in the age of three television networks and then you get today's social media and certainly mr. Trump mastered the social media that cut through his tweets everything in all the cable and and Mott and words he made news everywhere he went I think the difficulty is when you become president even though Lincoln could speak extemporaneously better than anyone once he was president he knew his words mattered so he hardly ever spoke even though he could answer anybody there's a moment when somebody eles at him Lincoln you're to face identified to faceless do you think I'd be wearing this face he could do that that quickly but he said as president his words mattered so I think he shares that the question is has he been able to control his anger like my guys were Lincoln when he would get mad at somebody would write a hot letter put the letter aside hoping he would cool down psychologically and never need to send it so in his papers you see these blistering letters where at the bottom never sent and never signed certainly that's not been true for president Trump when he gets angry that the tweets come out building a team and making the team feel a sense of common purpose so that they feel a family and they don't yell at each other in public obviously hasn't happened so there's a series of leadership traits you know I used to think and Betsy may know this one when Tim Russert was still alive we talked about how if journalists covering campaigns instead of looking at the debates and whose dings who and who has raised the most money could look at like a leadership index they've all been somewhere they've been in Congress they've been senators they've been a mayor they've been you could look at what their leadership was they don't change hugely they may grow when they get into the big office but they've hopefully grown and that's the index that we should be studying our leaders by today mm-hmm what would you have in that index well I would put these kind of things I put resilience there I mean all four of these people went through terrible personal trials and they came out stronger as a result of that I would put humility I'd put empathy I'd put communicating with people I'd put connecting with people of all manner of people outside the office you'd put courage the abilities to sometimes make a decision that might be risky like LBJ did when he first came in and decided to make civil rights his priority and his advisor said you can't do that you'll never get it through the Senate and you'll be a failed president when you go to the election you can't expend your currency on this and he said what's the hell's the presidency for then his great moment of triumph despite of course the shadow of Vietnam so I think there's a series of things you could look at and look at the past and see whether that person had exhibited these traits and how they'll fit into the time in which he's going to lead that would be very interesting is that book eight no you know I I need diaries and letters I mean I I am I don't think I could write about a current president I mean I did get to know President Obama somewhat well and people keep saying what will write about him but I'm only comfortable when I can look over the shoulder of somebody writing a letter read their Diaries I don't know what'll happen 200 years from now historians will know so much more about us they'll see how we walked and talked you know when we were working on the movie link and the only reason we knew that Lincoln had a high-pitched voice was because somebody said that he did not that it was ever heard they knew he walked with a like a laborer coming home at the end of a hard day because somebody described that so they'll know all that about us but will they will emails be saved will tweets be saved but more importantly will the emotions that are described in Diaries and letters from the 19th century or from even the early 20th be available to the historian I'm glad that I was a historian of the past rather than 200 years from now it'll be interesting 200 years from now to I'm sure you can make a go of it I mean learn things can you tell us a little bit about your writing process how do you win oh your ideas how do you know when to stop writing how do you do your research well mostly I'm sure you know to stop writing when they tell you it's it's time because otherwise I could probably go on forever my books have taken so long it took me longer to write about world war ii than it took the war to be fought twice as long as the and what first process is that I've got to choose a person that I want to stay with over a period of time I mean they may disappoint me they're gonna fail in certain sense but I couldn't live with a Mussolini or Hitler I respect so much my fellow historians who can do that but I wouldn't want to be spending my days with them so the first decision is to who I want to write about and then the scary thing is because all the people I've chosen except for Johnson because I met him and that's how I ended up writing my first book but all the others there had been hundreds thousands of books written about them because they were our best-known presidents so the scary thing was how do I create a story that's not just a biography that may tell a story that the other people haven't told and that took a while I mean for Franklin Roosevelt I'd really thought I'd spent maybe a year or so thinking I'd do a biography on him then I realized no I really want eleanor there and if I did Franklin and Eleanor it would be too big but if I just took the homefront during World War two then maybe I could really look at it in detail similarly with Lincoln it was terrifying to think about writing a biography of him and at first I thought I'd do a band marry because I had felt like I'd been able to do it for Franklin and Eleanor but two years later I realized she couldn't carry the public side of the story the way that Eleanor did so I happened to come upon some of the letters that Seward had written to his wife when I was up in Auburn New York and I thought oh my god his thousands of letters he wrote her then I thought about chase and he had Diaries and letters and that I thought about Bates who had Diaries and I realized they saw his rivals and he put them in his cabinet so that became team of rivals similarly with Teddy so many biographies of him I had to do Teddy and Taft so this is my rationale for why it takes so long and it means that you've got big fat books somebody told me they were reading the bully pulpit at night when it was still a hardback and fell asleep and she broke her nose so I promise you this one is not as bad he told us a little bit about how you became how you came to President Johnson's it's a very similar story I mean I was a graduate student at Harvard and I was selected as a White House Fellow a program of show men even know about it's terrific Colin Powell was a White House Fellow was Clark you get assigned to a cabinet officer or the White House staff we had a dance at the White House President Johnson did dance with me not that peculiar we only had three women that year out of the 16 White House fellows but as he twirled me around he whispered to me 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 while I was a graduate student at Harvard like many young people I was active in the anti-vietnam war movement and a friend of mine and I had sent an article to the New Republic against LBJ and we hadn't heard anything and the dance happens in several days later this article pops up in the New Republic and the title they put on it was how to remove lyndon johnson from power so I was certain he would kick me out of the program but 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 accompanied which was ranch to help him on his memoirs I'm not sure I ever fully understood why he had chosen me to spend so many hours with I I'd like to believe it was because I was a good listener and he was a great storyteller fabulous colorful stories there was a problem with them I later discovered that lots of them weren't true and quite the way he told me but they were so entertaining nonetheless but I also worry to be completely honest that it was partly because I was a young woman and he had somewhat of a minor womanizing reputation so I would constantly talk to him about steady boyfriends even when I had no boyfriends at all everything was working perfectly until one day he said he wanted to discuss our relationship which sounded so ominous and he took me nearby to the lake and meanly called Lake Lyndon Johnson wine cheese red check tablecloth French bread all the romantic trappings and he started outdoors more than any other woman I have ever known and my heart sank and then he said you remind me of my mother anyway I ended up living at the ranch in those last years helping him on his memoirs and it was the privilege of a lifetime I took it for granted then but I realized that you know that chance to have talked to him especially when he was so sad and wanted to talk about civil rights and the Great Society and all the domestic stuff that I really cared about it's probably what gave me I hope the impetus to be a presidential historian and then to look with empathy toward each of my subjects rather than judging them from the side in so it sounds like he would have gotten himself into a whole bunch of trouble in the me2 era like many others like example of the presidents who have served since LBJ whom would you pick to write about and why do you think I think I probably wouldn't as I just said I mean they'd be too current for me they'd be I need distance too I think as an historian when you've got a generation between you and the president you can see the context of the time you can see what was possible and you can read not only the Diaries and letters but people's memoirs and all the papers that are now being so I'd feel too naked in a certain that's not the right word probably it was but that's what I mean about a current president or a recent one since we're at the National Press Club today how did each of the presidents that you write about in leadership treat the press and is knowing how to relate to the press part of what makes the president a good leader without a question without a question I mean in some ways when I think about Teddy Roosevelt in particular his presidency would have been impossible without the partnership that he established with the investigative journalists they were able to create the momentum in the country at large to worry about big businesses swallowing up small businesses to worry about the railroads which were corrupt to worry about the corruptions in the cities and the states that then allowed him to use that public sentiment to push the conservative Congress to do the the kind of laws and the things that he wanted them to do but what it took from him and from FDR Lyndon Johnson more complicated but what it took was that sense of confidence that you could be criticized by the press and that didn't mean that the press was your enemy on the contrary even when Teddy Roosevelt was was younger and he wrote a memoir about his experiences in the spanish-american war and a famous journalist wrote a critique of it and he said he said Teddy so made himself the center of every action of every battle of that war that he should have called the book alone in Cuba and everybody's laughing in the country making fun of him what does he do he writes a letter to the journalist that then becomes public I regret to tell you that my wife and my intimate friends absolutely adore your review of my book now you owe me something I've always wanted to meet you so the journalist wasn't sure that he could come to see Teddy because he knew how charismatic he was but he decided that he'd take a chance and he'd still be able to criticize him if they did become friends he still criticized him and Teddy still accepted that relationship and then when I think about FDR just imagine two press conferences a week he said that those press conferences educated him they made him get up to date on things he called them by their first name there was one time when a purported got mixed up on a train and he actually wrote the column for the reporter but it was much more important than that he knew that the press was his vehicle for explaining problems to the country and that without that without the communication that he had through the press he would never be able to do what he had to do I mean it is unconscionable the idea that the press is the enemy of the people I mean the press as you know so well I mean without without the press that democracy wouldn't be what it is despite other presidents getting pissed off as they do an individual press along the way or closing down one newspaper or another never ever has it been what it is right now and that's why I'm so glad you're here in this press Club the camaraderie that I think you must be feeling now you're doing a great job in the midst of all this and I I'm so proud for all of you that you're fighting back in this time when democracy depends on you and it's even more of an honor for me to be here than it would have been ten years ago to be sitting amongst you well thank you so much so you mentioned camaraderie many of the presidents that you've written about have actually visited the National Press Club William Howard Taft was the first Theodore Roosevelt between his administration and running as a bull moose er Franklin Roosevelt addressed the club from this spot here in the balls right yes yeah LBJ Eleanor Roosevelt also was the first woman to address the club again from this very spot in the ballroom so a lot of the presidents used to also come here to sit and to relax journalists founded this club to have a place to socialize and to relax there's a photo upstairs on the 14th floor of Harry Truman as vice president playing the piano with a young movie star sitting on top of it what do you think about the role that the club played in people being able to get together and just relax a little you know from what I've read about the history of it that was the idea in the first place that a couple journalists wanted a place to go where they could play poker they could relax with each other and have a few drinks and there wasn't such a place and then this place eventually develops and it's a larger point I think in the study of leadership or the study of Eddie's career we feel today especially that we have no time to relax because everything goes with us the email or the iPhone but my four presidents were pretty busy maybe busier even than we are ourselves and they all found time to relax and feel camaraderie and and replenish their energies Lincoln actually went to the theater a hundred times during the Civil War they say when the lights came down and a Shakespeare play came on for a few precious hours he could forget the war that was raging and that was so important to him he said otherwise he said the anxiety he was feeling would have killed him if he didn't have those moments of relaxation and then his other favorite way to relax was just through humor through stories that he could tell people when they were anxious that would make them laugh and he said laughing was like whistling off sadness in fact his favorite story I was able to get Daniel de Loup to put into the Lincoln movie it had to do as Lincoln told the story with the Revolutionary War hero Ethan Allen who went to England after the war to a dinner party and they decided to embarrass him by putting a huge picture of General Washington in the only outhouse where you have to encounter it and his Lincoln told the story they figured he'd be very irritated at the idea of George Washington and outhouse but he came out not upset at all and they said well did you see George Washington there oh yes he said I think it was the perfectly appropriate place for him what do you mean they said well he said there's nothing to make an Englishman faster than the sight of General George Washington and he had hundreds of these stories so in the middle of the worst cabinet meeting one of these stories would come out and then Teddy Roosevelt spent two hours every afternoon at the end of the day in some sort of exercise sometimes a wrestling game or a boxing match or a raucous game of tennis but his favorite was a hike in the wooded cliffs of Rock Creek Park where he made a rule 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 so there are stories of journalists and companions falling by the wayside as they're trying to follow him in the woods but my favorite story was the French ambassador came and he was so excited he had its first walk with the president so he has his silk outfit on and he thinks they'll be on the Shaam say lycée and he finds himself chasing after him in the woods and finally they come to a stream and he says thank God it's over then he says judge of my horror as I saw the president unbutton his clothes and heard him say it's an obstacle we can't go around it so no sense in getting our clothes wet so I - for the honor of France took off my clothes however I left on my lavender kid gloves should we meet ladies on the other side it would be most embarrassing to be without so all I could think of was this guy with nothing on and then but the best part of all the relaxing is FDR during World War two he had a cocktail hour every night where the rule was you couldn't talk about the war you could talk about books you'd read movies you'd see in gossip as long as you didn't mention the war and after a while this cocktail was so important to him he wanted the people to go to the cocktail hour to be living on the second floor of the White House to be ready for the cocktail hour so Harry Hopkins his foreign policy advisor came for dinner one night slept over didn't leave until the war came to an end Lorena Hickok Eleanor's friend lived in a bedroom next to her Winston Churchill came and spent weeks at a time princess märtha from Norway was there and and so when I was writing the book on Eleanor and Franklin I became obsessed with the thought of what these people must be talking about in their bathrobes at night as they gather in the Carta that surrounds those six bedroom suites and wishing when I've been up there with LBJ I thought of asking so where did Churchill sleep where was where was FDR where was Eleanor but I wasn't thinking in those terms when I was 24 with LBJ so I mentioned that on what was then the Diane Rehm show here in Washington and it happened Hillary Clinton then in the White House was listening so she called me up at the radio station invited me to a sleepover in the White House so we could figure out where everyone is left 50 years earlier so a couple weeks later she invited my husband and me to a state dinner after which between midnight and 2:00 a.m. with my map in hand we figured out yes Chelsea Clinton is sleeping where Harry Hopkins was the Clintons are sleeping where FDR was we were in Winston Churchill's bedroom there was no way I could sleep he was definitely in the corner thinking was Bradley as smoking his cigar but I think to go back to your major question I think when when anxious anxious times are their being able to relax with comrades is a really important thing LBJ couldn't do it very well he had a swimming swimming pool at his White House I mean at the ranch where there were you'd think you'd be swimming but they were floating rafts with floating telephones and floating memo pads all over the place you couldn't move so I think the fact that the Press Club was formed to provide that komarin relaxation and the fact that we're here now and at least for a few moments we're not thinking about the anxious moments outside is a really good thing thank you that's really wonderful I have so many more questions here but I'd really like to open it up to the audience so we have mics here and here you can line up behind the mics anyone who has a question you can come and line up behind the mics we're going to take questions alternating so first person to get to this mic I believe is this lovely woman in the chartreuse jacket we'll start with you and then we'll go with you please introduce yourself and may ask you to please keep your questions to synched because I think we're going to have a lot to get to so I love your books I love history and it's fascinating to hear about how you gathered it but really worried about that 200 years ahead when everything we do is in tweet or Facebook or I don't know whatever all the other associated ire ease the pieces that we gather as historians won't be as available what do you think that will do for us I think it is a worrisome thing although I suspect they'll figure out something 200 years from now that we don't know now but the value of Diaries or the values of letters are there people are reflecting when they're writing those letters they're taking the time to think about what they're experiencing so you as a historian can get into their heads in a way that you normally couldn't have a friend of mine James McPherson wrote a wonderful book about the letters that the Union soldiers wrote home to their families and these were not educated soldiers but they were that's the way you communicated them before the telephone before you had other ways of communicating and so they learned people had to learn how to express themselves to keep in touch with their loved ones and their families and the letters are beautiful they talk about the ideals of the country for which they're fighting they talk about emancipation versus Union and I worried that not only will we not have access to these things later but our young people are not thinking in these terms now everything's so staccato on emails or on tweets that it's not you're really thinking through a whole problem and trying to source it through a diary or a handwritten letter but my guess is that technology will figure something out and there'll be some other form or things will be saved I sometimes when I talk to college students say don't throw away your emails even if you break up with your boyfriend or girlfriend because some biographer may come along some day the gentleman in the break my question is about president Jackson and president Trump Trump has indicated some sympathy with Jackson and we've been sort of reevaluating Jackson as a president he was at one time just the you know the star of the Democratic Party and so on I just wonder if you have anything to say about them as leaders all right I think it's a good question I think that the reason President Trump turned toward President Jackson was the idea that Jackson was a person who was the people he was a populist versus the elite who had had the presidency up to his time and I mean oddly of course he came from a very different background than President Trump President Trump came from a privileged background but he was assuming that he had somehow channeled the emotions of people who felt left out of the political system and who felt that they needed a champion and someone on their side it you know there's lots of things about Jackson that are troubling you know the Trail of Tears with the Native Americans some of his policies are but I think it was that piece of him that allowed Trump to feel this is my guy and and and to some extent you know he has channeled the emotions of people who felt that the political system had failed them just as Andrew Jackson did but it's always you know it's interesting who these people find as their mentors they interesting about my four people is that each one found the person before them LBJ's mentor and and political hero was FDR FDR's political hero was Teddy Roosevelt Teddy's was Abraham Lincoln and Abraham Lincoln's was George Washington just showing the history of the country in that short period of time sir hi Steve Jones title your book is leadership in turbulent times so there's a connect and intersection of the person and the times what are your thoughts around if each of your four had been in the other's times it's a great question I've really thought about that and I'm not sure that they could have fit into the other people's times I mean they each had a set of strengths which were so suited for what was needed and also you can see it's when people say do you need a great challenge to be a great leader and there's some thought about that that some of our greatest leaders in the historical rankings either had a war or depression or some big challenge because that allows you to mobilize the country but having that challenge can also mean a great failure so even just think about Buchanan is there before Lincoln the country is already beginning to split apart and he exacerbated the divisions of the country that's why he was always at the bottom scale of the presidential historians rankings until recently there was a new historians poll that put President Trump at the bottom so there was a story in the paper saying that the Buchanan family was celebrating they were no longer at the bottom or you take you know Herbert Hoover who was a very decent man a very good man and a pretty good leader up until he hits the challenge of the depression and his ideology was such that he couldn't allow himself to believe the federal government had to step in he kept feeling the states and locals could do it he couldn't experiment and thus he was unable to deal with the depression in the same way that FDR given his experimentation of having had that polio trying everything you can to do it he'd already come to the conclusion as governor that the federal government had to take roles because the states couldn't do it so he was the right man for that time plus his contagious enthusiasm and optimism was able to give people that morale from that first inaugural there were letters that came in and said you know my roof fell off my dog died and my wife's mad at me I have no job but it's okay because you're there it's that mystery of leadership and who else better than going back to Lincoln you needed somebody with patience and perseverance with mercifulness and mercy with the ability to surround himself with people from different factions so they could all be contained in the cabinet and then Teddy Roosevelt was much better suited than McKinley would have been to deal with the Industrial Revolution which is the biggest echo to today I mean think about the Industrial Revolution it shook up the economy much as the global revolution and technological have today a huge gap developed between the rich and the poor immigrants were coming in they were used as scapegoats by a lot of the working people who were feeling that they weren't having a fair share in the glories of the country's prosperity and the working class was in real rebellion there were bombs in the street there were nationwide strikes and yet he came along and channeled that populist energy into a square deal for the rich and the poor the capitalists and the wage worker in a way that McKinley couldn't have and I would argue to that I'm not sure that JFK as may be far better he might have been on foreign policy in Vietnam could ever have gotten the civil rights bill through the Senate I mean Johnson understood every single senator he calls them up in the morning as I say he calls them at night senators you know falling asleep at 9:00 he calls him I hope I didn't wake you know I'm looking at the ceiling hoping my president will call and when you when you listen to those tapes it is so subtle what he does it's not simply I'll give you this when he deals with Dirksen when he tries to bring Dirksen to bring the Republicans to help break the filibuster first they have drinks they know each other they played poker together they live together in a way that they don't anymore today anybody that were veterans in World War two in the Korean War I think knew about a common purpose that has not sustained us in these current congressional people either but he says to Dirksen okay what do you want okay you want an ambassadorship you got it you want a postmaster ship in Peoria you got it you want me to come to Springfield I'll come there but then he also understands about Dirksen so he says you know Dirksen you want to be remembered too and if you bring Republicans to join the northern Democrats and break that filibuster 200 years from now schoolchildren will know only two names Abraham Lincoln and Everett Dirksen so he knew how to put that that mean it was a southerner he believed that it would help the south if desegregation finally occurred he knew when voting rights with the Selma demonstration occurred that he had to go get voting rights the most precious right to vote for african-americans and I don't know that anyone else could have understood that Congress as well as he so maybe they couldn't have even done each other but I think they couldn't the people before them were not suited for the times in the same way they were so it is a question of you know the man makes the times but the times makes the man at the same time thank you hi Bob Weiner Weiner public news and we write op-eds in papers with young journalists a couple of whom are here today great can presidential leadership after Trump returned to respect for people at home and alliances abroad what's the political lesson of Trump for the future and is there a parallel to Trump in the past well the lesson for the future has to be that we can return to a time when there's dignity in our political record course a discourse and when America is again the beacon of hope for the for the world at large I mean we've been through I mean I guess that's in some ways the lesson of the book is that when when I think about what it must have been like to live during that period of the beginnings of the civil war I mean and those people didn't know how it was gonna end and the country's splitting apart you know when 600,000 people are gonna die or think about what it was like in those early days of the depression when the banks are collapsing and your savings and your deposits are out and you can't get the money and you haven't got a job and there's hungry people riding in the streets and you wouldn't have thought how that could have ended or in the early days of World War two when it was not clear that that war was going to be won against the most greatest threat to Western civilization and yet because of two things it worked not just was the leader the right leader in place at the right time but the citizens were awakened in each one of those times Lincoln was called a liberator he said don't call me that it was the anti-slavery movement that did it all without the anti-slavery movement the Republican Party wouldn't have informed Lincoln would not have been president they wouldn't been the foundation for emancipation there's no question that the progressive movement that started in the cities in the States underlay both Franklin and Eleanor and Franklin and Teddy Roosevelt's leadership the settlement house movement the social gospel and without a question the civil rights movement was essential for anything LBJ should do so I think what we have to look to now is an awakening of the citizens and I'm hoping it's already really happening that there's more young people energized there's more people running for political office especially record-breaking numbers of women who never held public office before maybe we need people who are not so caught up in Washington it's almost like they've lived in war so long they don't know what peace is like and there are things we can do I mean Franklin Roosevelt said man makes problems so man can solve problems I mean I keep thinking about we could have nonpartisan congressional committees committees that are non partisan drawing our district lines instead of the gerrymandering we have now we could have States or beginning already to do that four states are there's states that are beginning for a constitutional amendment to overturn citizens united there there are practical problems that can make our political system better a political system needs a revolution right now one of my favorite thoughts and is is just I wish we could really reinstitute the idea of a huge national service program at home Teddy Roosevelt said the rock of democracy will founder when people in other parts of the country or in other parties begin to see each other as the other rather than as common citizens and I keep dreaming of I know there's more people that want to be in the teacher Corps and city year and all these things and they can possibly take we had a huge program where people from the cities could go to the country and vice versa and be working as you would in the military with that common purpose but at home on disaster relief on teaching on service that maybe it would teach people to see each other in that younger generation not as the other but as common American citizens there are answers to these things I don't know them but I have a feeling that if the citizens awakened to this this is their rendezvous with destiny this next young generation and if they don't vote tomorrow then I think we've then then it's it's the problem of our country then it's the collective mirror on us not just the young people but all of us great thank you thank you can I just slip one in really quick before I before you go ahead Alan can I just sorry moderators prerogative sorry yes what is your prediction for tomorrow's midterm elections I am a historian I look backwards I really I really will say that I mean I if you guys aren't sure what it's going to be then I certainly don't know what it's going to be and and because of the past problems in the last election it's much more cherry about it all that I hope is that it's a very good thing that a lot of people are coming out to vote more than before and if it has the kinds of numbers you know that that a general election has then the will of more people will be felt than in a normal midterm when it's such a small group of people that usually vote so so far it looks like a large turnout and we'll see hopefully what that means okay but I'll tell you what it means tomorrow the day I thought on top of it and you'll put it into historical context and perspective which will be of course yes Allen's flavor remember the Wharton School Club and also a member of the Press Club of going back as a historian 250 years approximately Washington's leadership in very turbulent times our American Revolution with the aid of people celebrated in song such as Alexander ham and two other Wars World War one the anniversary of the ending of that is coming up in just a few days in World War two where the 75th anniversary will be coming up d-day next year and the following year so what are the lessons from these three wars and the leaders both here and abroad who we dealt with such as the French who helped us when seemingly insurmountable against insurmountable odds in the Revolutionary War I think you know in fact I'm working on a documentary possibly for History Channel on George Washington I can't wait to learn more about him because I I really need to understand the precedents that he said as president his farewell address worrying about entanglements abroad worrying about partisanship and obviously your I love the idea that these anniversaries are being celebrated it's so important that we remember these moments in our history in fact one of the things that still haunts me now it's chilling is that when Lincoln was 29 years old he wrote an address called that was a lecture called a Lyceum address and in it he talked about the fact that he was very worried about the state of the country at that point that there was a lot of mob violence going on there were anti-slavery editors being killed there were lynchings in the south and the rule of law was not being followed and he worried that in such a time of anxiety there would rise someone above us who might try to tear down rather than build up who would have authority Rhian kind of aspects and he said that you might be a julius caesar or there might be a napoleon coming along and he said the only answer to that is to reinstate the rule of law but more importantly to remember the ideals of the country and he said he was worried that the scenes of the revolution were already fading so that people were forgetting what we were founded for so he counseled every person to read about the revolution as mothers read the Bible to their children they should be reading about American history to their children and that that was the answer to just motivate again the memory of the ideals of the country to fight against the possibility of such a thing happening in our democracy so your question raises that perfectly I mean these anniversaries are incredibly important history is so important so that we think about what these other people did how we got through those times and how it was the benefits of remembering the ideals of how we were found that still as a special nation still as Lincoln said no one would want to change where you are from this country but the country has troubling times we are in one now and the best thing to do maybe it's just because I love history so much with the passion since I was a little girl but I think reading history and remembering these times and celebrating the leaders in the past who helped to get us through it and the citizens who are awakened is our best protection against what's happening right now well we have time probably for about three or four more questions yes go ahead and applaud do you think we're headed toward a civil war wait who said this again do you think we're headed toward a civil war I don't I really think that the the people themselves are strong enough right now that there will be a check put on on the presidency I mean i if I were to predict what will happen I think there'll be some sort of a check tomorrow how big it will be in the house I don't know but but I think in the end it's up to the people and the overwhelming majority of the people don't want this kind of anger against immigrants you look at the statistics about them wanting some sort of path for immigrants they they're so sad about the divisive 'no sin the country i mean i kept thinking it and it turned out not to be right that there were certain moments when the people would just say this cannot hold anymore you know I think obviously when when we had the journalists murder it seemed to me in one of those moments when people were going to say this cannot be happening that that this has taken place and that the president is talking about Saudi Arabia's help for us in buying our weapons and then again when the bombing plot took place I mean think of what that bombing plot meant had it we know that it didn't go off but had it done so it would have been the greatest attack on the whole leadership structure since Abraham Lincoln when John Wilkes Booth was trying not only to kill Lincoln but he had two other assassins one who knifed Seward and nearly killed him the other of whom got drunk in a bar and so never got after Andrew Johnson the Vice President but they were intending president vice president secretary here you had two former presidents their families you had the top leadership and many other places and then again after that when President Trump is able to say that he was gaining momentum until this bombing thing happened and then they have to regain momentum I mean some of these asides that he said I think should all be put aside because that's what he's really thinking at times I mean even today or yesterday when he was saying they'd say why aren't you talking about the economy and so because it's so good and will help people and he said it's not exciting to talk about the economy it's only exciting to be fighting something as what he feels and I just have a feeling that the country itself is feeling exhausted by this waking up every day and having breaking news exhausted by fake news and the idea that there is such a thing that there's gonna be that the people the people know this how it gets manifested and whether it's this election or partly or the next election the one hopeful thing to remember about this midterm I was just thinking about this the other day one of the big things that happens at midterms and we may not know who it is right now is that some of the big figures have arisen abraham lincoln rose up in 1858 in the midterm elections because of his debates with Stephen Douglas and he of course becomes Abraham Lincoln Teddy Roosevelt wins in a midterm in 1898 as governor and he becomes the president who helps us during that tough industrial revolution time Franklin Roosevelt in the midterm in in nineteen in nineteen thirty thirty is the governor who's finally speaking out about the need for taking care of jobs and unemployment insurance so he becomes the leader of the progressive forces and then he becomes Franklin Roosevelt so somewhere out there we may not know who it is probably in the States it's in the local areas maybe it's a mayor maybe it's somebody who's going to win and or not win the election but leaders arise when we need them and and we can't just look for them it's up to us to do it but if we can do it they'll do it we're gonna this is not normal what's happening now and I believe in democracy enough and I believe that we'll turn it back [Applause] [Applause] my name is Venus sir two final questions over here my name is viola Gaynor i'm Washington editor for just security which is online form at NYU lawn national security and human rights in the law we hear a lot of talk up in times especially during election periods but also in between about American values we heard it under we hear it in under this presidency under the previous presidency and and so forth in your historical research have you found some core a core definition of what that really means and is there is their societal agreement as far as you can tell on what American values are and what that means well I mean I guess I'm not sure I know the answer to your question honestly because it's a very thoughtful question and it might take me a little bit longer to think about but I think you know if we look at some of the documents that are part of our founding you know especially probably the Declaration of Independence and and see what those words meant to the people who were fighting a revolution to preserve those I mean what what Abraham Lincoln would talk about was that what he was fighting for in the Civil War was not simply for the south to be reunited for the north but that we believed that people could govern themselves and that if the South could secede from the north it would show all those people who believe they need a dictator or they need a king or a queen that we couldn't do it because maybe someday the West would secede from the East so you take that idea that's that is that is part of America's tradition that we vote our own people into power and we don't need a person on high to be having that authority over us that we have that capacity that's one thing that other democracies may not have or other forms of government rather may not have but then I think you just think about some of those words in the Declaration of Independence and what it means and and I one of the values that that Lincoln talked about the most was the right of everybody to rise to the level of their discipline in town which means mobility and that is something that we used to believe in democracy I think that's one of the things we've failed at in these last decades and maybe that's what's caused the schism in the country that too many people don't have the right education to be able to mobilize themselves up to the level of their discipline and talent and we may be losing those talented people and we may not be providing the education I think we need this is going off in another direction but we need teachers we need to honor our teachers much more than we have in the education system is at the core of what a democracy depends upon so there's lots of things we have to do but I'm not sure I would love to think about but I would look in the Declaration I'd look in the Constitution and find some of those words that I think we still adhere to we still go back to especially a declaration and it's not just American values these are values of democracy their values of human rights their values of social justice and Economic Opportunity which are larger than America just that we seem to embody them and we believed in them and we were a beacon of hope for other people for a while who were not practicing them but anyway I can't think anymore because I think it's too big for me right now it was a great question so there will come a hopefully an easier question that I can answer much more articulately hi my name is Paul coches and my question is excluding 2016 candidates can you think of a couple of candidates who lost the presidency who you think would have demonstrated amazing leadership you mean in the past yes in the last hundred years yeah I mean I think you know interestingly in 1940 when Roosevelt ran against Wendell Willkie I think he was an extraordinary man he was a businessman a socially progressive businessman and he more importantly when he came in he understood despite the Republican Party's isolationist wing which presumably he was supposed to represent he understood the the threat that Hitler posed and he went for lend-lease he went for the draft without that it would have been a really hard kind of election and and he almost beat FDR so I think you know I think it's an interesting thing to think about where he might have been he was a republican progressive he's one of them I think that you know I you trying to think about in our in our recent times Hubert Humphrey what kind of a president he might have been certainly I think he would have been a better president than than Richard Nixon he was he was a man who had his real groundedness in the part of the Democratic Party that was the working class as well as the other people in the party he was a happy warrior he was just there at the wrong time with that convention in 1968 but I met him a few times through Lyndon Johnson and he was just an extraordinarily warm character I mean much much like Joe Biden I think a natural politician who really liked being with people I think he would have been I think he would have been a good leader and I bet you we could find you know a half a dozen I mean somebody's written a book one of my fellow historians which I unfortunately read yet but about these losing candidates and it's a really interesting idea to know why they lost and whether it was something particular at the moment but whether they had the qualities that might have been fit for yet the next time around so I'll think some more about that too we have lots more to talk about we can't stop we have so much more to talk about and I hope perhaps that you will consider coming back to talk to us more at some point in the very near future before we wrap up I have just a couple of housekeeping items first if you would like to have them as Goodwin sign your book please line up over here coming around this way after I gavel the luncheon out second I'd like to take a moment to let our audience know about some upcoming events here at the club this coming Friday two days before Veterans Day on November 9th that we have Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert Wilkie joining us for a luncheon joanna briar is coming on Tuesday November 13th to discuss her book November 14th we're going to discuss issues confronting us youth soccer at a newsmaker event and then that night host Marvin Cal that a book wrap to discuss his book enemy of the people Trump's war on the press the new McCarthyism and the threat to American democracy and also I'd like just like to tell everyone if you haven't already purchased your tickets for our Fourth Estate Awards dinner they are going quickly so this is time to do it we're going to be honoring Marty Baron Dean became the executive editors of the Washington Post and The New York Times respectively Rea so I have a small gift for you and then one I'd like to just get your thoughts on one you're here from you on one other thing this is a National Press Club marais we present one to each of our esteemed bank years we hope that you will use it in good health thank you so much thank you and last question we like to end on a lighter note I understand that you were the first woman to enter the Boston Red Sox clubhouse is that true and if so can you tell us well I don't know about the first woman but the first woman writing a story for journalism about getting in there so what happened is I used to take my kids to spring training every year and I would write an article in order to rationalize why I was there so I happened to be there at the moment when the ruling came down from the court that women had to be allowed into the locker room so the owner of the Red Sox said okay go in so I went in but it's a good way to end on a light note because baseball is really the way that I came to love history in the first place my father taught me that mysterious art of keeping score while listening to baseball games so I could record for him the history of that afternoon's Brooklyn Dodger game I grew up in Long Island and we were all Dodger giant or Yankee fans in my town of Rockville Center and he'd come home at night and I could tell him every play of every inning of the game that had just taken place that afternoon and it makes you think there's something magic about history to keep your father's attention so I would go on and on telling him everything and I realized I learned the narrative art because at first I would blurt out the Dodgers one or the Dodgers lost which took much of the drama of this two-hour telling away so I finally learned you had to tell a story from beginning to middle to end in fact he made it even more special for me he never told me then that all of this was actually described in great detail in the sports pages of the newspapers next day so I thought without me he wouldn't even know what happened to the Brooklyn Dodgers but then of course they were ripped away from me to Los Angeles and I couldn't even follow baseball until I went to Harvard and then my boyfriend took me to Fenway so reminiscent of Ebbets Field a team so much like the Brooklyn Dodgers they almost always won but would lose in the end and I became an equally rational Red Sox fan so we've now had season tickets for 35 years so I must say that it's been an extraordinary part of my life it is my avocation that goes along with my vocation and even though my father died before I even had my three sons so that they were never able to meet their grandfather when I sit with my son sometimes that at Fenway Park I can imagine myself still young at at Ebbets Field watching the players of my youth Jackie Robinson Pee Wee Reese Duke Snider and I must say there's magic in these moments for when when I opened my eyes and then I see my sons in the place where my father once sat I can feel an invisible loyalty and love linking my son's to the grandfather whose face they never had a chance to see but whose heart and soul they have come to know through the stories I have told which I guess to end it is is the reason why I'm so happy to have been an historian constantly looking back into the past is that it allows me to believe that the private people we've loved and lost in our families and the public figures we've respected in history really can live on if we pledge to tell and to retell the stories of their lives so I'm so glad to be able to do that with you today and bring these characters back to life and we are so happy to have you thank you so much thank you very much thank you [Applause]

Channel: National Press Club Live

Views: 969

Rating: 4.7647057 out of 5

Keywords: National Press Club, NPC, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Leadership in Turbulent Times, Mid-terms, Book, Luncheon

Id: KNCQZDVY034

Length: 64min 20sec (3860 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 05 2018