Learning from past presidents - Doris Kearns Goodwin

[Music] [Music] so indeed I have spent my life looking into the lives of presidents who are no longer alive waking up with Abraham Lincoln in the morning thinking of Franklin Roosevelt when I went to bed at night but when I try and think about what I've learned about the meaning in life my mind keeps wandering back to a seminar that I took when I was a graduate student at Harvard with the great psychologist Erik Erikson he taught us that the richest and fullest lives attempt to achieve an inner balance between three realms work love and play and that to pursue one realm to the disregard of the others is to open oneself to ultimate sadness in older age where is to pursue all three with equal dedication is to make possible a life filled not only with achievement but with serenity so since I tell stories let me look back on the lives of two of the presidents I've studied to illustrate this point Abraham Lincoln and Lyndon Johnson as for that first sphere of work I think what Abraham Lincoln's life suggests is that fierce ambition is a good thing he had a huge ambition but it wasn't simply for office or power or celebrity or fame what it was for is to accomplish something worthy enough in life so that he could make the world a little better place for his having lived in it even as a child it seemed Lincoln dreamed heroic dreams he somehow had to escape that hardscrabble farm from which he was born no schooling was possible for him except a few weeks here a few weeks there but he read books in every spare moment he could find it was said when he got a copy of the King James Bible or Aesop's fables he was so excited he couldn't sleep he couldn't eat the great poet Emily Dickinson once said there is no frigate like a book to take us lands away how true for Lincoln though he never would travel to Europe he went with Shakespeare's Kings to marry England he went with Lord Byron's poetry to Spain and Portugal literature allowed him to transcend his surroundings but there were so many losses in his early life that he was haunted by death his mother died when he was only nine years old his only sister Sara in childbirth a few years later and his first love and Rutledge at the age of 22 moreover when his mother Lay Dying she did not hold out for him the hope that they would meet in an after world she simply said to him Abraham I'm going away from you now and I shall never return as a result he became obsessed with the thought that when we die our life is swept away dust to dust but only as he grew older did he develop a certain consolation from an ancient Greek notion but followed by other cultures as well that if you could accomplish something worthy in your life you could live on in the memory of others your honor and your reputation would outlive your earthly existence and that worthy ambition became his lodestar it carried him through the one significant depression that he suffered when he was in his early 30s three things had combined to lay him low he had broken his engagement with Mary Todd not certain he was ready to marry her but knowing how devastating it was to her that he did that his one intimate friend Joshua speed was leaving Illinois to go back to Kentucky because speed's father had died and his political career in the state legislature was on a downward slide he was so depressed that friends worried he was suicidal they took all knives and razors and scissors from his room and his great friend speed went to his side and said Lincoln you must rally or you will die he said that I would just as soon die right now but I've not yet done anything to make any human being remember that I have lived so fueled by that ambition he returned to the state legislature he eventually won a seat in Congress he then ran twice for the Senate lost twice every one is broken by life Ernest Hemingway once said but some people are stronger in the broken places so then he surprised the nation with an upset victory for the presidency over three far more experienced far more educated far more celebrated rivals and then when he won the general election he stunned the nation even more by appointing each of these three rivals into his cabinet it was an unprecedented act at the time because everybody thought he look like a figurehead compared to these people they said why are you doing this Lincoln he said look these are the strongest and most able men in the country the country is in peril I need them by my side but perhaps my old friend Lyndon Johnson might have put it in less noble fashion better to have your enemies inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in but it soon became clear that Abraham Lincoln would emerge as the undisputed captain of this unruly team for each of them soon came to understand that he possessed an unparalleled array of emotional strains and political skills that proved far more important than the thinness of his external resume for one thing he possessed an uncanny ability to empathize with and to think about other people's point of view he repaired injured feelings that might have escalated into permanent hostility he shared credit with Eze assumed responsibility for the failure of his subordinates constantly acknowledged his errors and learned from his mistakes these are the qualities we should be looking for in our candidates in 2008 he refused to be provoked he refused to be provoked by petty grievances he'd never submitted to jealousy or brooded over perceived slights and he expressed his unshakeable convictions in everyday language in metaphors in stories and with the beauty of language almost as if the Shakespeare and the poetry he had so loved as a child had worked their way into his very soul in 1863 when the Emancipation Proclamation was signed he brought his old friend Joshua speed back to the White House and remembered that conversation of decades before when he was so sad and he pointing to the proclamation said I believe in this measure my fondest hopes will be realized but as he was about to put his signature on the proclamation his own hand was numb and shaking because he had shaken a thousand hands that morning at a New Year's reception so he put the pen down he said if ever my soul were in an act it is in this act but if I sign with a shaking hand posterity will say he hesitated so he waited until he could take up the pen and sign with a bold and clear hand but even in his wildest dreams Lincoln could never have imagined how far his reputation would reach I was so thrilled to find a interview with the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy in a New York newspaper in the early 1900s and in it Tolstoy told of a trip that he'd recently made to a very remote area of the Caucasus where there were only wild barbarians who had never left this part of Russia knowing that Tolstoy was in their myths they asked him to tell stories of the great men of so I said I told them about Napoleon and Alexander the Great in Frederick great and Julius Caesar and they loved it but before I finished the chief of the barbarians stood up and said but wait you haven't told us about the greatest ruler of them all we want to hear about that man who spoke with the voice of thunder who laughed like the sunrise who came from that place called America which is so far from here that if a young man should travel there he would be an old man when he arrived tell us of that man tell us of Abraham Lincoln he was stunned II told him everything he could about Lincoln and then in the interview he said what made Lincoln so great not as great a generalist Napoleon not as great a statesman as Frederick the Great but his greatness consisted and historians would roundly agree in the integrity of his character and the moral fiber of his being so in the end that powerful ambition that had carried Lincoln through his bleak childhood had been realized that ambition that had allowed him to laborious Lee educate himself by himself to go through those string of political failures and the darkest days of the war his story would be told so as for that second sphere not of work but of love encompassing family friends and colleagues it too takes work and commitment the Lyndon Johnson that I saw in the last years of his life when I helped him on his memoirs was a man who had spent so many years in the pursuit of work power and individual success they need absolutely no psychic or emotional resources left to get him through the days once the presidency was gone my relationship with him began on a rather curious level I was selected as a White House Fellow when I was 24 years old we had a big dance at the White House President Johnson did dance with me that night not that peculiar they're only three women out of the 16 White House fellows but he did whisper in my ear that he wanted me to work directly for 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 had written an article against Lyndon Johnson which unfortunately came out in the New Republic two days after the dance in the White House the theme of the article was how to remove Lyndon Johnson from power so I was certain he would kick me out of the program but instead surprising he said I'll bring her down here for a year if I can't win her over no one can so I did end up working for him in the White House eventually accompanied him to his ranch to help him on those memoirs never fully understanding why he'd chosen 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 anecdotal stories there was a problem with these stories however which I later discovered which is that half of them weren't true but they were great on the last so I think that part of his attraction for me was that I loved listening to his tall tales 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 constantly chatted to him about boyfriends even when I didn't have any at all everything was working perfectly until one day he said when he's discussed our relationship sounded very ominous when he took me nearby to the lake conveniently called lake lyndon baines johnson and there was wine and cheese in a red check tablecloth all the romantic trappings and he started out Doris more than any other woman I have ever known and my heart sank and then he said you remind me of my mother it was it was pretty embarrassing given what was going on in my mind but I must say the older I've gotten the more I realized what an incredible privilege it was to have spent so many hours with this aging line of a man a victor in a thousand contests three great civil rights laws Medicare aid to education and yet roundly defeated in the end by the war in Vietnam and because he was so sad and so vulnerable he opened up to me in ways he never would have had I known him at the height of his power sharing his fears his sorrows and his worries and I'd like to believe that that privilege fired within me the drive to understand the inner person behind the public figure that I've tried to bring to each of my books since then but it also brought home to me the lessons which Erik Erikson had tried to instill in all of us about the importance of finding balance in life for on the surface Lyndon Johnson should have had everything in the world to feel good about in those last years in the sense that he had been elected to the presidency he had all the money he needed to pursue any leisure activity he wanted he owned a spacious ranch in the countryside a penthouse in the city sailboats speedboats he had servants to answer any whim and he had a family who loved him deeply and yet years of concentration solely on work and individual success meant that in his retirement he could find no solace in family in recreation in sports or in hobbies it was almost as if the hole in his heart was so large that even the love of a family without work could not fill it as his spirit sagged his body deteriorated until I believe he slowly brought about his own death in those last years he said he was so sad watching the American people look toward a new president and forgetting him he spoke with immense sadness in his voice saying maybe he should have spent more time with his children and their children in turn but it was too late despite all that power all that wealth he was alone when he finally died his ultimate terror realized so as for that third sphere of play which he never had learned to enjoy I've learned over the years that even this sphere requires a commitment of time and energy enough so that a hobby a sport a love of music or art or literature or any form of recreation can provide true pleasure relaxation and replenishment so deep for instance was Abraham Lincoln's love of Shakespeare that he made time to spend more than a hundred nights in the theatre even during those dark days of the war he said when the lights went down in a Shakespeare play came on for a few precious hours he could imagine himself back in Prince Hal's time but an even more important form of relaxation for him that Lyndon Johnson never could enjoy was a love of somehow humor and feeling out what hilarious parts of life can produce a sidelight to the sadness he once said that he laughed so he did not cry that a good story for him was better than a drop of whiskey his storytelling powers had first been recognized when he was on the circuit in Illinois the lawyers and the judges would travel from one County Courthouse to the other and when anyone was knowing Lincoln was in town they would come from miles around to listen to him tell stories he would stand with his back against a fire and entertain the crowd for hours with his winding tales and all these stories became part of his memory bank so he could call on them whenever he needed to and they're not quite what you might expect from our marble monument one of his favorite stories for example had to do with the Revolutionary War hero Ethan Allen and his Lincoln told the story mr. Allen went to Britain after the war and the British people were still upset about losing the revolution so they decided to embarrass him a little bit by putting a huge picture of General Washington in the only outhouse where he'd have to encounter it they figured he be upset about the indignity of George Washington being in an outhouse but he came out of the outhouse not upset at all and so they said we'll teach you see George Washington there oh yes he said 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 so you can imagine if you are in the middle of a tense cabinet meeting he had hundreds of these stories you will have to relax so between his nightly treks to the theatre his storytelling and his extraordinary sense of humor and his love of quoting Shakespeare and poetry he found that form of play which carried him through his days in my own life I shall always be grateful for having found a form of play in my irrational love of baseball which allows me from the beginning of spring training to the end of the fall to have something to occupy my mind and heart other than my work it all began when I was only six years old and my father taught me that mysterious art of keeping score while listening to baseball games so that when he went to work in New York during the day I could record for him the history of that afternoon's Brooklyn Dodger game now when you're only six years old and your father comes home every single night and listens to you as I now realize that I in excruciating detail recounted every single play of every inning of the game that had just taken place that afternoon but he made me feel I was telling him a fabulous story they think makes you think there's something magic about history to keep your father's attention in fact I'm convinced I learned the narrative art from those nightly sessions with my father because at first I'd be so excited I would blurt out the Dodgers won or the Dodgers lost which took much of the drama of this two-hour telling so I finally learned you had to stell a story from beginning to middle to end I must say so fervent was my love of the old Brooklyn Dodgers in those days that I had to confess in my first confession to sins that related to baseball the first occurred because the Dodger catcher Roy Campanella came to my hometown of Rockville Center Long Island just as it was in preparation for my First Holy Communion and I was so excited first person I'd ever see outside of Ebbets Field but it so happened he was speaking in a Protestant Church when you were brought up as a Catholic you think if you ever set foot in a Protestant Church you'll be struck dead at the threshold so I went to my father in tears what are we going to do he said don't worry he's speaking at a parish hall we're sitting and folding chairs he's talking about sportsmanship it's not a sin but as I left that night I was certain that somehow I traded the life of my everlasting soul for this one night with Roy Campanella and there were no indulgences around that I could buy so I had this sin on my soul when I went to my first confession I told the priest right away he said no problem it wasn't a religious service but then unfortunately said and what else my child and then came my seconds and I tried to sandwich it in between talking too much in church witching harm to others being mean to my sisters and he said to whom did you wish harm and I had to say that I wish that various New York Yankee players would break arms and legs and ankles so that the RET so that the Brooklyn Dodgers could win their first World Series he said how often do you make these horrible wishes and I had to say every night when I said my prayers so he said look I tell you something I love the Brooklyn Dodgers as you do but I promise you someday they will win fairly and squarely do not need to wish harm and others to make it happen oh yes I said but luckily my first confession to a baseball loving priest well though my father died of a sudden heart attack when I was still in my 20s before I had gotten married and had my three sons I have passed his memory as well as his love of baseball onto my boys though when the Dodgers abandoned us to come to LA I lost faith in baseball until I moved to Boston became an irrational Red Sox fan and I must say even now when I sit with my sons with our season tickets I can sometimes close my eyes against the Sun and imagine myself a young girl once more in the presence of my father watching the players of my youth on the grassy fields below Jackie Robinson Roy Campanella Pee Wee Reese and Schneider I must say there is magic in these moments when I opened my eyes and I see my son's in the place where my father once sat I feel an invisible loyalty and love linking my sons to the grandfather whose face they never had a chance to see but whose heart and soul they have come to know through all the stories I have told which is why in the end I shall always be grateful for this curious love of history allowing me to spend a lifetime looking back into the past allowing me to learn from these large figures about the struggle for meaning for life allowing me to believe that the private people we have loved and lost in our families and the public figures we have respected in our history just as Abraham Lincoln wanted to believe really can live on so long as we pledge to tell and to retell the stories of their lives thank you for letting me be that storyteller today [Applause] [Applause] really wonderful thank you what does a machine know about itself can it know when it needs to be repaired and when it doesn't in industries like manufacturing and energy they're using predictive analytics to detect signs of trouble helping some companies save millions on maintenance because machines seek help before they're broken and don't when they're not that's what I'm working on I'm an IBM er let's build a smarter planet

Channel: TED-Ed

Views: 71,850

Keywords: \Doris Kearns Goodwin\, president, presidents, \president, United, States\, \America, president\, \USA, \Abraham, Lincoln\, \Lyndon, Johnson\, \George, Washington\, TEDEducation, TED-Ed, \TED, Ed\

Id: KzSAFJBLyn4

Length: 19min 16sec (1156 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 21 2013