05-02-24 Interview - Doris Kearns Goodwin is Making History

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN IS MAKING HISTORY Or rather should I say writing history, as she has for decades. She is the author of acclaimed biographies of American greats like Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson and others. She is now writing her own history and that of her husband as they navigated Washington DC in the 1960's as they both worked in government. The result of that is An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s. You can buy the book here but her book signing at Tattered Cover is sold out tonight!

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
I am very, very excited aboutmy next guest. She has been intertwined
with history since the nineteen sixties,has written some of the best biographies and
historical nonfiction that I've read, becausenot only as it informative, it is
interesting and well written, which isa nice change. And now she's got
a new book out with a slightlydifferent approach because she is part of the

(00:24):
story. Doris Kerns Goodwin, thankyou so much for making time for me
and coming on the show today.Oh, I'm so glad to be with
you. Mandy, thank you verymuch. Well, first of all,
I meant what I said when yourbooks are extremely accessible. Whereas some books
written about historical figures can be awee bit dense, your books make it
easy to learn about some of thegreatest Americans in our history. And I

(00:47):
wanted to ask you this, howaside from the fact that you started your
career in Lyndon, Maine Johnson's office, right, so that seems like a
great place to start, how doyou choose what you write about after that?
Well, the main thing, becauseI know it's going to take me
so long to write these books,I have to find somebody that I want
to wake up with in the morningand think about when I go to bed

(01:07):
at night. I really want tolike the person. Of course, they'll
have their flaws and strengths like anybodyelse does. But I chose Abraham Lincoln,
Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, afterLyndon Johnson, and each one took
you eight ten years, so Ihad to want to wake up with them.
And then you want to tell astory, and you hope that you've
got an era that people are goingto care about and characters that they can

(01:30):
relate to that era through. Andthere were a bunch of great characters around
each one of the people that Iwrote about. Well, and I'm wanting
to get to the book that youhave out now, and it is called
An Unfinished Love Story, a PersonalHistory of the nineteen sixties. This is
slightly different in that you and yourlate husband are a big part of this.
How was that a different experience foryou writing where you are part of

(01:53):
the story. Well, especially inthe early years of working on it was
so different because what happened is myhusband came down the steps one day after
his eightieth birthday and he decided hewas singing that he was going to open
the boxes, and I knew exactlywhat that meant. Through our entire married
life of over forty years, hehad carted around three hundred boxes that were

(02:13):
really a time capital of the sixties. He was like Zellig He was everywhere
he wanted to be in the sixties. He worked for JFK in the campaign.
He was in the JFK White House. He was there when the body
was brought back. He then workedfor Lynnon Johnson at the heyday of the
Great Society. He then went towork for Eugene McCarthy in New Hampshire when
he turned against the war in Vietnam, and then when Bobby entered the race.
Bobby was his closest friend. Hewent with Bobby and was with him

(02:36):
when he died. All those yearshe didn't want to look at the boxes
because it had all ended so sadlywith Bobby's death and Martin Luther King's and
the riots and the campus violence.But finally turning eighty, he said typically
him, if I have any wisdomto dispense, I better start now.
It's now or never. So hehad this great adventure of reliving the sixties
together. He was twelve years olderthan I, but it was my decade

(02:58):
too, And during that period oftime, it was so different because I'm
used to my guys. I usedto call them that I never could get
an answer to a question I mightask. Of course, I'd talked to
them, but they wouldn't come backto me. But there was Dick sitting
right there in the room with me, talking and you could correct me and
argue with me. It was thelast great adventure of our life. I'm
definitely going to read this book,I absolutely because I think it's such an

(03:21):
interesting time and we're now seeing notto get into a whole other political conversation,
but we're seeing echoes of that oncollege campuses now. And I wanted
to just ask you, what arethe differences in your mind, since you
just came out of writing this bookabout an era which was both camelot and
also incredibly turbulent, how do yousee or if there are any parallels between

(03:44):
then and now. Well, Ido think one of the parallels that I
thought before the campus outbreaks occurred wasthat the decade of the sixties did not
last in terms of that sadness.Most of it was fired by a consign
during the conscience of the American peoplethrough the civil rights movement. I mean
all those people who marched for arguingagainst segregation, who marched against the denial

(04:09):
of the vote. They sacrificed themselvesand they were successful. A civil rights
back passed, a voting my sackpass. So there was a great feeling in
the early part of the decade thatif you could be powered by the conviction
that individuals can make a difference,things will happen. Government will respond.
It was a very heady, wonderfultime. And then when the warre in
Vietnam came and the anti war violenceoccurred late in the decade. In the

(04:31):
early part of the decade, whenthe young people crisscrossed the country to go
vote for McCarthy in New Hampshire andjoin the New Hampshire Primary, thousands of
kids came. They cut their beards, they cut their long hair, the
girls wore long skirts instead of shortskirts, and McCarthy did incredibly well in
New Hampshire because of them. Theyhugged one another, they felt they'd made
a difference. And then Lyndon Johnsonactually started negotiations with North Vietnam, pulled

(04:56):
out of the race and was beginningto talk about, you know, stopping
the bombing. Then fate intervened andBobby's killed, and Martin Luther King has
killed. The peace course breakdown,and then at the end of the summer,
the Democratic Convention becomes chaotic, andthen law and order becomes the theme,
and Richard Nixon wins the election.So there's lots of pieces to the
sixties that have to be unpacked.But it was a great decade to be

(05:18):
alive. You felt tired by thefeeling that you might be able to do
something to make life better. Iwas in that march on Washington in nineteen
sixty three, and actually Dick wasthere too, though we didn't meet because
there were two hundred and fifty thousandother people fair so he always claimed he
was looking for me the whole time. And there was that feeling when people
sung Wayshell Overcome, and I carrieda sign Catholics and Jews and Protestants unite

(05:41):
for civil rights. And I reallyfelt like I was helping to make the
country a better place. So thatfeeling has to be remembered. We can
learn from that feeling. Is whatwas it like when that all came to
an end. Was it a crushingdisappointment? Was it exasperation? What was
the emotional toll of living through whatyou just described as a very heady time

(06:01):
with such a tragic ending, somany tragedies, not just one. Well,
you know, the interesting thing thathappened in my personal life was that
Dick and I had gotten through theboxes of the sixties before he died from
the cancer that finally took his life, And before he died, he had
come to the realization he had beenso angry with Lyndon Johnson, who he
had loved because he had been hismain speech writer in the nineteen sixty four

(06:25):
or five period. He was soangry about the war that he carried that
resentment most of his life. Butas we relived those moments, those moments
stood out, and he began tosoften in his feelings. I remember one
night we went to bed and hesaid, oh my god, I'm beginning
to feel affection for the old guysagain. And because he felt that,
it really made him feel that hehad made a difference to and that the

(06:45):
great society had not been destroyed bythe war in Vietnam, that still so
much of it remained Medicare, medicaid, aid to education, voting rights,
civil rights, immigration reform, NPR, PBS. It was extraordinary and that
softened his feelings and it made himas he faced his death, feel better.
I think everybody wants, when whenyou're facing death, possibly to think
that maybe you've done something that youmight be remembered by. So even though

(07:09):
there was that sadness at the end, by remembering the part in the middle,
it made those last months of hislife, he gave him joy and
a sense of purpose to be workingon this book before he died. See.
I think when I hear you talkabout that, Doris, I think
that that's probably what these young peopleare trying to tap into. It is
that wanting to believe they're going tomake a difference. I think that's absolutely

(07:30):
right. I mean, all ofus want to do that in our own
lives, whether it's on a smallerscale or a larger scale. And I
think it's a there's a hopefulness inthe fact that they've come together to be
arguing for something. There's so muchto be thought through in this decade.
There's so many things that really needto be fixed. We've gone backward in
lots of ways, and I justhope that that activism keeps going and works
itself in a disciplined way. Imean, that's one of the things you

(07:53):
can learn from the sixties that onceviolence comes into the play, then people's
fired conscience has turned the opposite wayand you lose that message as you're trying
to deliver. That's an excellent point. So when you began, when you
set out to write your first bookabout Lyndon Johnson because you worked in his
administration, even though I find itinteresting that you had written anti Johnson articles

(08:16):
before you were invited to come workat the White House. You must be
quite charming in person to pull thatone off. But when you started writing
that book, did you foresee inany way, shape or form that this
would become your legacy, that youwould be the woman who writes these incredibly
interesting and well researched historical books thatyou know people would look to for as

(08:41):
reference books. Oh thank you forsaying that. No, of course not.
You know what you would do isI wrote that book because I had
had these long conversations with Lyndon Johnson, And You're right, I've been involved
in the anti Vietnam War movement myselfand had written an article against him before
I became a White House fellow andwas chosen to work with him, and
I thought he would kick me outof the program when he found out,

(09:03):
especially because the title of the article, not put on by me by the
New Republic, was how to removeLyndon Johnson in nineteen sixty eight, And
anyways, he said, bring herdown here for a year, and if
I can't win her over, noone can. I think I would have
become an historian if I hadn't hadthat experience with Lyndon Johnson, because I'd
loved history all my life, fromthe time my father taught me how to
keep score at baseball game, soI could record for the history of him,

(09:24):
the history of that Afternoons Brooklyn Dodgergame. But it might have been
some other kind of history were itnot for Lyndon Johnson. And then somehow,
once I wrote that book, Istarted to write books about other presidents,
Franklin Roosevelt and Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, And before you know it,
I had become a presidential historian.It just happens, you know, and
people will achieve me how could youlive with dead presidents all your life?

(09:45):
But I wouldn't change it. Myonly fear is that in the afterlife,
There'll be a panel of all thesepower characters that I've studied, and each
one will tell me everything I missedabout them, and the first person that's
came out will be Lyndon Johnson.Howcome that damn book on the Kennedy or
the FitzGeralds, whether Lincoln's was twiceas long as the book you wrote about
me. I was going to askyou if your feelings or reflections on Johnson

(10:07):
had shifted or changed over the yearsfrom the first book that you wrote about
him to now when you're writing thisretrospective about his era the sixties. Has
that changed at all or do youstill have the same opinions of him.
Well? I always felt empathy forhim, even though I had disagreed with
him about the war, just bythe experience of being down there with Lyndon

(10:28):
Johnson and with Lady Bird. ButI think what we've seen in the last
year is not just on my feelings, but the country's feeling, is that
as the war recedes in time,people are beginning to realize what an extraordinary
master of the bipartisanship of the Congresshe was. And since we've had no
one since it's been able to dothat, we look back, I think

(10:50):
with more pride. He's rising inhistorians polls. I think one of the
last polls I saw, he wasnumber eight in the top presidents and Kennedy
was number nine. How he wouldhave loved to see that. Actually,
when he yells at you in thePearly Gates, you can just say,
wait, did you see that you'renumber eight over Kennedy? Exactly? Yeah,
distracts. I have a message foryou, a message for you.

(11:13):
But I think, really he's oneof the great figures in American history,
a tragic figure in some ways,but a formidable figure in others. And
I think more people have realized that. And I'm so glad to see that
happen. You know, I foundthe title of the book, an Unfinished
Love Story, to be interesting.What is the unfinished love story from the
nineteen sixties for you? Well,it really meant two things for me.

(11:33):
One was unfinished love story for myhusband, because I promised him before he
died that i'd try to finish thebook that I was going to help him
write, and then it became somethingdifferent because I became an historian writing it.
But it was also an unfinished lovestory for America that the promises not
only of the sixties that weren't fulfilled, but the promises are never fulfilled from
our country. We always have anideal and we try to move closer and

(11:56):
closer to that ideal, and soit was really a love story to America
as well as my husband. Well, people can buy the book. I
put a link to the Tattered Coverswebsite because they're a local bookstore and Doris
Carn's Goodwin is going to be theretonight, but it is sold out.
I hate to talk people with that, but good for you and thank you.
But I will be signing extra copiesfor people. I want to go

(12:16):
in early so that I can signtheir stock copies. So if people can
come tonight, they can come andget it. I'd love to do that.
It's a wonderful bookstore. I justgot a question. We have a
text line, and I just gotthis question. I think it's kind of
interesting because you mentioned NPR and PBS. What do you think about the recent
controversy with now former employees saying,you know that they've lost their way in

(12:39):
terms of middle of the road journalism. Yeah, I know. I think
one of the complications of our roadthat we're living on today is this question
of split cable, split radio.And I think so many people in the
country are looking for where is therea place that I can just trust the
facts and I don't have to haveopinions into those. And I don't think

(13:01):
it's just there. I think it'ssomething we're all looking for all over the
country right now, and it willemerge again. I think it does emerge
in places. I think in localnews it's more likely to be there than
sometimes on the national level. Iagree with that wholeheartedly. We actually have
some very good networks here in Denverthat do a really good job covering our
area and do so in a verystraightforward manner. Doris Kern's Goodwin. I

(13:22):
so appreciate your time today, andI hope you have a wonderful event tonight
and have great success with this book. Dare I ask what dead president you'll
be waking up with for the nexteight years? Is there a third other
plan for another book? Now?The only thing that's in the works right
now is The last book I wrotewas called Leadership in Turbulent Time and it

(13:43):
was about my four guys, andit's going to be adapted into a young
adult book will be coming out inthe fall. I just would love to
have young people understand what it meansto be a leader and what are those
qualities of humility and empathy and resilienceand accountability and acknowledging errors, all the
qualities that made these leaders great.You have to start develop being them when

(14:03):
you're young. So I'm hoping thatthat that's going to come out. I
can't believe it in the fall.Somehow I've managed to do these two things
at once at my age, itseems to be crazy. Oh you know,
you've got plenty more in you,Doris, You've got plenty more in
ye. You know my friend,my friend Larry Reid, who's an economic
history and he calls what you justdescribe all those characteristics character and like its

(14:24):
exactly right. Yeah, And itsounds like what we need in this country
exactly right now is character one hundredpercent. Thank you so much for making
time with us, and I hopeyou enjoy your time here in Denver.
Thank you so much. I'm soglad we could talk together, all right,
have a great day. That isDoris Kerns Goodwin. Her book An
Unfinished Love Story, a personal historyof the nineteen sixties is available, and

(14:45):
I linked to the chattered cover,but it's available everywhere. And if you've
never read one of her books andyou want to be a lot smarter about
Abraham Lincoln, about Teddy Roosevelt,about William Taft, about the Kennedy's and
the Fifthgerald, go read her booksbecause they read like a novel. But
they are so well researched and sogood and just a really great way to

(15:07):
dip your toe into history without youknow, having a weighe your way through
a book that's, you know,a thousand pages long,