Presidential historian says she's 'concerned' transfer of power 'may not happen' in November

doris kearns goodwin welcome back to meet the press i'm so glad to be here and to be with you well i am so honored to be with you and to talk to about your latest book an unfinished love story you have typically written presidential biographies this is a biography to some extent of your husband and it is also a love story what was the process like of writing this book is compared to all of your other incredible works i was so used to writing about presidents who had archives and i would want to talk to them i knew them so well because it took me so long to write those books longer too write the book about world war two than the war to be fought long right about the civil war than twice the civil war and i would always ask them questions and they never answered me so this time i had this guy my guy right across the hall from eight in the same study and i was able to talk to him and he could answer my questions and he had an archive that was many archive of what presidents have memos diaries letters he just it saved everything in three hundred boxes and finally decided when he turned eighty to open them and what it really opened was a door to the nineteen sixties a decade that i lived in but i was able to learn through him starting at the beginning with john kennedy ending with bobby kennedy's death in the democratic convention so we went from beginning to end it was a great adventure for both of us and it turned out to be much larger that i thought it was not a biography of him but really a history of the sixties at the same time and i want to ask you about that treasure trove of boxes that you both discovered you do talk about the incredible love the meeting of the minds that you had with your husband did this project working on this with him bring you even closer as you say you could ask him questions directly no no question it did i mean we had shared feelings about jfk and lbj for example all of our lives we argued about them i was an lbj loyalist having worked for him when i was twenty-four and helped him on his memoir and really knew what an extraordinary president he was despite the war in vietnam and he had always been loyal to jfk even though he's crest greatest work was with lbj so he constantly fought about him you know he would say well the war might not have gone on the same way if it hadn't been for jfk's assassination i would say the bills never would have gotten through it had been for lbj we went through the boxes all of us off and he softened his feelings remembered how much he loved lbj i remembered what an inspirational figure jfk was but more than that we lived our lives together we never known him when he was young and i came to know this young guy that i would have fallen in love with even then twelve years old i would've been twelve when he was twenty-four but anyway it was it was something much more than i knew it and it helped him in those last years of his life to feel a sense of worthiness that what he had done really mattered and that gave him great solace and perspective as he was in those last years of his life you talk about the boxes that you discovered was that moment like and what was it like to go through all of those boxes that material that had been saved of of your husband's work and his life you know when when you're studying presidents and you you might be able to see a memo or you might be able to see in the library under plastic a draft of a speech that i could actually see and pick up the draft of the speech is that he helped to work on voting rights are on civil rights are the speech for bobby kennedy on cape town which was on his grave and and see a telegram that martin luther king had actually hold it that he had written after one of j of lbj speeches and you felt like you were part of history all over again so that's that those things are treasures letters and hand written letters and diaries and journals i don't know what happened two hundred years from now people will have that same degree of intimacy that you have from that material and that was so good he saved everything one of my favorite discoveries was the picture with ruth bader ginsburg and his law class he's just become president of the harvard law review and you look at it and you see yes you're young husband there but you also see the fact that there are only two women in that photo you're so right i mean the photo shows him holding the baton and then two women in circles one is ruth bader ginsburg another woman named nancy boxley and right before i came upon that picture i've been reading a letter he wrote to his best friend acted in which he said they're flying me all over the country to get a job i can choose it anywhere i can go i could choose a fellowship i can be clerk to justice and it's a burden of choice and i got so mad at him and for none of choice she could even get an interview for a job and he said well it's not my fault and then i found a letter that he had written to her that was on the wall of the harvard law review where he she was asking for some grayson coming back the second year because she had a baby and he wrote me said i know you already have a new law firm in the baby's now part of the law firm not reading mother goose but reading briefs and and he was able to say to her you know just take your time but we'll make it work and it was such a warm letter to her he understood that she was working as a mother as well as a second-year student but then the great thing was i went interview nancy box the other woman to find out what happened to her and she was the stately beautiful woman in her eighties and she too had gotten a job unlike she unlike cruz had gotten a job but then after she got pregnant they let her go and she told me that they said to her well we don't feel embarrassed about this is the simpson thatcher law firm but our clients might be making the notion that her stomach was sticking out but then she told the story that she went back to a thirty year reunion at harvard and her professor as a young woman wearing boots short dress and was pregnant and then you knew the changes taking place in those thirty years and that's what makes this such a captivating account because so much change happened in this time and i and i want to talk about all of it you do describe though getting to learn your husband and learn about your husband as a young man before you knew him what surprised you most i had all i was always wondering whether or not when he was young he was happy because most of our mary life there was a sadness to it his first wife had died john kennedy had died his best friend bobby kennedy had died martin luther king his career taken a change because of all that his life in public service would have been really different had bobby lived and yet the man i saw as a young man in the letter said he wrote to his best friend in hundred letters to his parents greeted every day with a cheerful smile and he was so filled with joy and happiness and i was reading those and i came down to breakfast i said i would love this guy i love you and he said i don't i'm so glad you do but it's not me i rather envy him i said what do you mean but you said no it's not and it's not just that and much much older now i've lost something along the way and it's sort of explain this low level of depression that he had had which interestingly because we went through the boxes in those last years and he remembered all the things that had really matter that he'd been part of the change the country he loved the country it's really an unfinished love story not just about me and but about our feelings about america he shaped changes and i'd like to think i was able to record them as an historian and when he realized that those changes that happened under lyndon johnson in particular voting rights and civil rights and medicare and medicaid immigration reform and npr and pbs all of that was still there they were part of our daily lives and he felt a solace in a sense of fulfillment and those last couple years he was probably happier than he had been in a long time so the book became something really important to both of us what a gift that was you talk about the fact that after your husband past it was a struggle for you to finish this project that was a labor of love you right i found myself edging toward a commitment to finish the project influenced by headlines announcing divisions between black and white old young rich and poor divisions that made it increasingly evident that the momentous issues emanating from the sixties remain the unresolved stuff of our every day lives i think that's what really decided i knew if i were going to work on it was going to take years my books take so long so it's a huge commitment and i was going to be writing us in a story and not simply of somebody running about my husband and so once i realized that the sixties really had a message to the people today and i believe that so because we look at the sixties in a sad way because it ended with the riots and with antiwar violence that ended with martin luther king and bobby kennedy being killed but when you start at the beginning it was a decade in which young people in particular are powered by the conviction that could make a difference and they join the peace corps the people who are in the freedom rides in the sit ins and the marches against segregation marches for the denial about the beginning of the women's moment is that the gay rights movement it's a time when the air is filled with that belief that if you work together you can change the government and those outside movements were essential that's what allowed the civil rights movement it was those children's crusade in birmingham that fire the conscience of the country when bull connor sentence dogs against those kids and then it was the head and then practice bridge and what happened in selma what was what happened in selma that made the voting rights act possible that's when change happens and that's what young people have to realize today there's such a sense of can we make a difference they feel a sense of they have deep values about gun safety about right to choose about climate change about democracy and wondering can it really matter and it you look at the sixties and they have patients they had discipline they marched and it took a long time but it came so they change the system of segregation they change voting rights they change social justice in the country so i really want young people to look back at that decade and feel empowered by it that's the real message of the book it did in addition to the possibilities that exist today are the parallels what are the biggest parallels that you see the biggest unresolved issues from the nineteen sixties will surely race is still an unresolved issue i mean when you think about remember dick said and i felt too i was listening to the speech that johnson gave a joint session of speech and when he talked about we shall over come he didn't do in the anthem of the civil rights movement to the highest chat channels of power and you knew then that voting rights would be passed that was a huge change i mean black people were unable to register to vote in all those southern states with the civil rights act passed and all of a sudden jim crow laws that have been there for seventy-five years now anybody can go into a restaurant they can go into a hotel they can go into a school and know that they can they can be integrated so systems tumble down and that's what we need systems to tumble down now there's a lot of problems in this society social justice has not been fully but never is progress is never a straight line and i think that's what we have to realize we get so impatient this it seems to be going backwards today and that's happened before but then you have to just push it forward again by that same collective action so i just be at fire young i'd be out all those marches right now he will die well you write about you and your husband really is is being incredibly engaged as activists you say he recognized that his greatest loyalty lane either to kennedy nora johnson but to his country and to his long-held mission to pursue whatever work might help to close the gap between our national ideals and the reality of our daily lives did you gain a deeper understanding of what drove him and what drove you really i think i did you know use you look at your life and it somehow seems to be random how it all happened but then i look at his in particular and ever since he was young he somehow had that desire he loved the country very much he was a patriot i mean we lived in concord massachusetts and he would go to the north bridge and drag everybody there and we cite the old days of the revolution but there was a gap between what the country stood for and where we were at any time in history and those are the people i've written about myself i've always chosen people who were moving toward social justice they all had flaws like all leaders do but at least i could wake up with him in the morning and know that i like them and i respected them and you talk about that element of your husband particularly as it relates to the great society this notion of the great society you say there was a motion in dixville says he recounted for me these developmental months of the great society this is what it was all for we wanted to know not wanted to we believed we were about to make the country far better from top to bottom it was an awesome intoxicating time i love that word intoxicated and what did it feel like what did that intoxication actually feel like to live through it i mean i was an intern in this in the summer of nineteen sixty-five when the eighty-ninth congress was in fifth session and every time a bill would pass we go out and celebrate we really felt just as you say that the country was becoming a better place i remember particularly even two years before that being at the march on washington and it wasn't the first time it ever felt a sense of something larger than myself i carried a sign jews catholics and protestants unite for civil rights and i felt like we were part of something bigger and i think everybody wants to feel that way there's a sense of your ambition is for yourself but you want in addition for something larger than yourself for the country and i think in the sixties we had leaders who believed in that i mean they are historic leaders and part of that reason is because at a certain point their ambition become something larger when lbj came into power for example i was told you can't possibly go for the civil rights bill now it's stuck in the filibuster you'll hurt yourself you can't run in november after if you've done that nothing will get through and he said well then what the hell is the president's before that's a great moment when when a leader realizes that there's something larger than their own career and that's what we need in public life today is just that sense john kennedy talked about politics being an honorable vocation we need young people to feel that again to want to go into public service people did in the sixties they did in the thirties they did at the turn of the twentieth century the lincoln said don't call me liberate or is the anti-slavery movement the did it all it's always the outside movements from the ground up change takes place so we can search for heroes right now we've got a search for ourselves and for the people that are willing to fight for making our country a better place well when you look across the political spectrum do you see leaders right now we're meeting this moment where so many people wonder if our democracy will stay intact i mean i don't know that we're fighting at the same way we need to be this is one of the most perilous moments and there are people obviously in local areas to people in states there are some people in washington but the overall sense is sometimes we become too much of spectators watching what's happening to our south and and that you know one of the things dante said is that the lowest place in hell are for those people in a moral crisis to remain neutral or remain silent we are in a moral crisis right now and that's what history i always feel so so positive about what history can teach us because we've lived through really hard times before these are hard times however and it won't get better unless we act unless we take seriously our citizen responsibilities and use the qualities of character that we need to bring into politics the story that you tell about johnson basically saying he's willing to put his presidency his re-election on the line in order to push through voting rights right now in our politics that's an anomaly politicians rarely are willing to put their reelection prospects on the line it's really hard to understand because you would hope when people go into public life they have a larger ambition it's such it's such a great thing to be a politician if it works right into your learning different kinds of people you learn in diverse environments that people are and if you got em but they you can understand larger things and if you've got the right character you can it be an example for people that's what teddy roosevelt said the most important thing about a politician is suing example we want our politicians to be examples for our children and what does that mean they have to have humility they have to have empathy they have to every zillions they have to be accountable they have to be have integrity and compassion and the kind of things you want for your kids you can acknowledge an era when they make them and learn from it and grow in one of the fun things was watching john kennedy grow when i when i learned what dick was on the campaign trail with him that he really wasn't a good speaker at the beginning he spoke so fast they said he was it was like going back to a kid going back to his seat because he didn't want to be up on the stand and then he would ask reporter so how did i do what i lose them where was i good and he learned to slow down he learned to become a better speaker when the bay of pigs happened and he made a terrible mistake he made himself honor that mistake and acknowledged that mistake he went to a breakfast meeting before it was going to meet with the press that first week after the they had pigs and everybody was blaming the cia and the state department or the national security council and he said no it's my responsibility and just saying that lance all the problems things have been terrible for a week and he took responsibility and then suddenly he said that great set stay saying that you know defeat is an orphan success has a thousand fathers defeat is an orphan and then his polls went up to eighty-three percent because he had done a human thing and then he learned from it and he made much different decision making structures for the cuban missile crisis which is so much important later on and that's what you want in your leaders they can have humility enough to learn and grow and it and go if you don't and if you don't allow your ambition to be something larger than yourself they're just stuck in a place and i think a lot of people are stuck in that place today you have compared this perilous moment that we are in right now actually to the eighteen fifties when slavery expanded and then obviously the civil war happened what are the parallels that you see in our political divide right now do you think it's that dangerous that the country could in some ways split apart well this this to parallels that are scary one is that the media at the time was very divided the only way you get your news basically in the eighteen fifties was by your party newspaper so if you are a way you read the newspaper if you're democrat up the democratic knows babe republican neuse river so it's lincoln's in a debate with stephen douglas and you're reading the republican tape but he did so great they carried him out on their shoulders and was triumph it will be the same debate in the democratic papers he was so terrible he fell on the floor and embarrassment it was carried out and so that's one of the the similarities in terms of the divided networks we have today and invited cable channels social media divisions the other one is that what lincoln warned about when the civil war was starting was that if you allow the reason he had to fight for the union to be restored if you allow the southern democrats lost the election to secede from the union one state after the other because they didn't like the results of the election then democracies and absurd today and that peaceful transition of power has been with us ever since eighteen sixty and that's the scary thing about what happened in twenty twenty and january sixth and still people not not accepting the results of that election how afraid how concerned are you that january six could happen again well because we're not remembering it correctly that's that's what history i was so certain has a story and that was on television saying this is going to change public sentiment just as certain things happened in the fifties that made people understand in the sixties as slavery had to be ended public sentiment finally got changed i thought it had but everything is so breaking news today and one thing tops on another i thought the summer after january six when the hearings took place that would change public sentiment but i still think in the end that the majority of the people understood what happened in that election i think the majority of people are for the basic values that we're talking about right now for democracy and it's just a matter of them speaking out and recognizing that it is in danger and it's up to us it's not up to somebody else it's up to us to say that you often quote president lincoln as having said that the public sentiment is the most the important thing and you add that public sentiment is different than public opinion what do you mean what he meant by that was that public sentiment is when a settled feeling comes upon a people that they know something is right or wrong and they finally knew that slavery was wrong and then he knew that the war would be won he knew that slavery would end public opinion could be more fleeting can depend upon an event and go back and forth and i do think that in the end if people really do feel that they have a role and saving democracy in the peaceful transitions of power and and and and people putting themselves in government who are going to put the country ahead of themselves it's going to happen i mean it's happened before that's where that's where history helps us you know we forget because we know we know that certain things ended the right way we know world war two we know that world war two ended with the allies won they didn't know that at the beginning and we're living in that time we don't know the ending of our story but it's up to us to write that next chapter so that's what gives me hope and history tells us we've gotten through these times before this a really tough time but i think we'll get through it you said something very notable shortly before the twenty twenty election you are asked what kind of leader it would be needed for this moment and you said someone with empathy who can see the other side resilience because we are going through a crisis courageous optimism ambition for the greater good not just himself someone who can build a team that will question his assumptions and someone who can be trusted in twenty twenty-four as we sit here today would you add anything to that list i think the most important thing that is the sum total of what all those qualities are his character we meet people of character it's what you want in your children you want them to be the person who if they lose except us you want a child to accept loss we want them to glory in triumph you want them to share and try and you want them to have empathy toward other people that are different from them you want them to be resilient when when a tragedy or an adversity occurs and those are the kind of things we want in our leaders right now so character i think i would add that all of those together mean that we want people of good character teddy roosevelt once said that what you wanted a public leader is the personal lives next door to you who's your friend we'll never make a promise he can keep it will keep his word and i think words matter and we've learned that now one of the one of the things i think i learned the most from the sixties where that words could inspire where it could change people's feelings about themselves in the country we're learning that words can hurt and words can divide right now and words matter and the catches be taken back at the end of the day when something is said in the morning do you think that people still value character in the way that they did in the context that you're describing it i don't know i mean i think i think people value character in their friends and their children if they only realize that that's what they need in their public leaders as well more importantly what than what they believe in and policy you really need somebody in character if somebody is a good character then they'll figure out what the country needs if they're simply being voted in because they agree with you on policy and have a bad character then there's really no hope that you can really trust what trustworthiness i think when you asked what i might add to that man his trustworthiness because people used to trust in the government and trust in our leaders and ever since i think the credibility of the war in vietnam and then watergate and then all the succeeding decades and now different facts being partly at issue people don't trust and that means they don't trust in themselves either to to change things trust in collective action they don't trust in government government got out there it's us the other thing that you say about teddy roosevelt is that he thought it was a threat to democracy that have different people from different regions of the country different economic classes different parties look at each other as being the other do you worry that that has infused our politics our culture today and is that part of the challenge that the country's i do worry about that i mean i think that's the real problem is that as he was warning at the turn of the twentieth century which was a time echoing ares in many ways that if people in the country felt suspicious of people in the city and saw them as the other if people in the east felt suspicious of the west of people are republicans or democrats felt suspicious of each other then we don't have a commonality as american citizens and what's going to draw us together as american citizens if covid didn't do it if the january six didn't do it i just somehow feel the impulse to want to have that happen again has to be brought out and maybe it's by state leaders it's by local leaders it's by kids standing up for what they believe in right now there's no easy answer to it i mean i sometimes used to think about national service is an answer where young people could go from one part of the country to another part of the country a common mission because the mission combines people my youngest son joined the army right after nine eleven and he was in iraq and you'll say that the fondest memory he'll ever have of his life maybe is getting a group of kids from different classes and sections and religions together in a common mission in combat and we need that in peaceful combat at home and a miss this so many things that could be done disaster relief helping people to learn teaching older people if only they could get together but i know how hard it is to do that and that's that's a a long-range project but one that i wish we could get started on and when you think about teddy roosevelt's concern with the other when you think about some of the language that we're hearing from the republican presumptive nominee who has referred to migrants for example is poisoning the blood of the nation do you have concerns that that type of language creates a sense of the other no question in rhetoric matters words matter you talk about immigrants as as animals and then people begin to think of them as something different than humanity and on the other hand you're talk about all the people being part of a country with common ideals and they feel collectively connected to one another and they feel empathetic toward different kinds of people we're different religions are different sections the reason why the turn of the twentieth century so echoes ours is it was also a time of great change the industrial revolution and shaken up the economy much like the tech revolution as today you had a gap between the rich and the poor for the first time you had a lot of immigrants coming in you have people in the country feeling less although sinful people in the city we don't want to be like them and you had all these new inventions that changed the pace of life but somehow teddy roosevelt was able to come up with the idea of a square deal for the rich and the poor the capitalist and the wage worker and soften the the worst exploits of the industrial revolution and capture middle progressive america and i that's out there now i still think it's out there to be captured if they could be and the republican nominee has yet to accept the results of the last election within the context of this conversation in your concerns about the nation's democracy how much of a threat do you think the democracy is facing right now do you think the country can survive this threat i think the real threat is when the republican can former president says that if he doesn't win he won't accept the results of this next election which means that we may have a recurring battle for who's really cook who's really elected each time we do this and that's a real problem in all the candidates when you look at the ones who lost its really hard to lose every single one was able to say as as carded i promised i'd never tell you like this hurts it really hurts or al gore working on that concession speech that my husband was honored enough to help him on where he talks about the fact the law of the land has said that this election is lost i don't agree with it i must do it and hillary clinton say we not only believe in the transition of power we cherish it i looked at all those and it just makes you so proud of each one of those candidates would been two election they lost it they let down their constituents and they were able to make that transfer of power and it's a central part of our democracy that has to happen this next november as we sit here today how concerned are you that it may not happen i am concerned that it may not happen but i somehow think if the majority of the people come out who have different values from that and they vote voting is absolutely essential it's the premium value as as lyndon johnson said it's the it's the one thing that all the rest of our democracy depends on and what is democracy you tell a candidate out are you calling in either want him to come in we want to throw in that we have to be able to do that and i think if the if the majority comes out to vote and the majority never comes out in enough numbers to vote not only young people they've made a big difference in twenty twenty twenty eighteen twenty twenty-two and they're saying now that they may not vote if they're not happy with either candidate again if they only could know what we felt like in the sixties when we felt we were making a difference you feel larger you feel a sense of of exhilaration the word to use earlier and i just hope they feel that this election could turn on them and the uncommitted people in the undecided people have to come out and vote and we have to just take the results of the election that doesn't mean we know how it's going to happen but if the overwhelming majority vote then somehow maybe it won't be as close as we think it is going to be and then we'll have a clear cut choice you have said history is always going to take a long time to look at a president how the sink history the historians the future doris kearns goodwin will write about these moments right now i think it's going to be really hard period to understand i mean already historians polls that was recent one that put president trump at the bottom of the paul it's early to do that except for the peaceful transition of power i mean i think it would have taken a while to figure out what twenty sixteen was all about but to be able to to look at that and say that this was the time when one president did not accept the loss i think that's what historians are basing a lot of it on but it still will take time i think fifty years from now it's going to look different a hundred years from now the one thing i wonder about is that i'm glad i'm in a story and now because the gold for us is letters and handwritten diaries and was and and the kind of emotional connections that people established in hand written letters will know much more about ourselves we'll see ourselves and in full to mention we'll see our videos of ourselves we'll have e-mails perhaps we'll have staccato tweets but that's not going to be the same as what it was like when you could really read seward writing a letter to his wife during the civil war and telling her not only what lincoln was doing all day in the cabinet but they were looking at the moon and i miss you so much and you get that full blooded person in it so that i'm really glad and that was that the treasures that we had in the boxes with dick that there's nothing like looking over the shoulder of somebody writing a letter and feeling you're connected to them they're still alive in your mind i mean the whole the whole hope of a trend the whole hope of a historian is to bring somebody who's not a life back to life again and that's what i hoped i was able to do with lincoln and teddy roosevelt and franklin and lbj but but if i've been able to do it here you know to bring the people from the sixties back to life that i knew and those people that are closer in in my memory that i will feel i've done something good and this is also a way of keeping your husband here and all of his work and the lessons and the legacy that he left you know even even as he was living in those last couple years after the tent cancer had taken hold he kept feeling that we both did as long as we're still exploring exploring the boxes as long as we were going through their day by day and laughing and learning and finding new things that that was our talisman that we both still be alive and even to the end of his life almost the last day he told his oncologist he knew he didn't have a lot of time left but i hope to finish the book so it it's amazing but in a certain sense it's a metaphor for what in a story and wants to do that people really aren't dead you can bring them back to life and it's not just for the people who are on mount rushmore or the people who are in movies all of us think about the fact that we've lost somebody we love to parent or grandparent how do you keep them a lot to tell their stories to your children and your friends and your family and then they live that way so storytelling is at the heart of it all i hear so much optimism in your voice still i think i was born that way and i think it's the only way we can live i mean it sometimes may sound naive mean i remember thinking what i was feeling when i was at the civil rights march that we're going to change america maybe we didn't change america completely but we made huge changes at that time and if you have optimism at least you have the confidence that if you act something will happen and it may take a long time as martin luther king talked about the arc of the universe all that stuff is is takes a long time but it moves toward justice and i do believe that thank you doris kearns goodwin for the edible conversation i'm so glad to have been with you so glad to be with you this is wonderful thank you

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Published: Sun Apr 21 2024