Journalist Bill Moyers & Presidential Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin: Part Two

from unity temple on the plaza in kansas city at our present lessons on leadership from the white house art sale i'm j mcintyre each year the truman library institutes my answer's the bennett forum on the presidency again this year the forum featured journalist bill moyers who also served as press secretary for president lyndon b johnson moyers was joined by pulitzer prize winning historian doris kearns goodwin goodwin is the author of six critically acclaimed bestsellers including team of rivals and the bully pulpit her latest book is lyndon johnson and the american dream today show is the second part of the battle for him recorded november fourteenth two thousand fourteen if you missed last week's keep your present the first half of moyers and goodwin's conversation it's now archived on our website k pr that kay you that edu again that's k pr that pay you that edu and now bill moyers

and doris kerns goodwin to what extent do you think religion is responsible for much of the ignorance of this reality that those that strike you that myth top and superstition all of which get wrapped in to religion have such a tight grip on people's imagination that they can't possibly dare to dream are barricaded beyond the confines of that releases i mean i see the essence of many of the folks back in my home palin east texas are who are on questioning the early leaders in the bible so that and their primary means of information they are believing a large fox news and rush limbaugh and christian broadcasting which is but for the most popular than that and i can go home and the word talk to that we

talk about the world's we're discussing to what extent you think religion has such a hold on the belief systems of some people that they put into not trespass time all that the teachers i mean you would hope in a certain sense that religion would do the opposite that if religion provided fuel insecurity about life and death and and the transition from one to the other that you could then hopefully given what most religions seem to profess which is a belief and goodness and moral codes that you would treat other people that way but i think what happens is especially in times of anxiety than religion becomes something that turns people into work rather than outward and obviously we're seeing in what's going on with isis in the world at large right now that for a lot of people and it's become a skier rather than the solace to have that religion when was i was on some television the race was morning joe a couple weeks ago and they were talking

about a few would you be willing now if you could to kill hitler as an infant if you had the chance and then somehow i transitioned into the idea that when i was growing up as a catholic you know we some i somehow would have to confess and my first only confession which is that the new york yankees players to break arms legs and ankles to win their first world series and and i remember this horrible thing we used to say in brooklyn which was what if you're in a room with hitler stalin and and walter o'malley the first lady and what if you had only two bullets what would you do in our heartland it was that we'd shoot the ball that walter o'malley repeated dodgers in brooklyn a rapid way historical understanding this now i would kill the internet without a question but i think i don't know there's something about that the desire i mean i think about growing up as a catholic and what did was that it gave me that sense of ritual and rhythm and belief system on and yet i also believe that if i

ever set foot in a process in church i'd be stopped at at the threshold i mean that's not right arm and yet i'm somehow come through remind me that i grew up in the southern town in east texas one time capital of the confederacy after a barber of missouri after the rubble report outages are about the yankees though he went into exile and marshall five weeks in military capital of the confederacy after richmond fell deep southern town of ten thousand white ten thousand bikes all i never were actually refund the first lady of twenty it's an awful a lot about how these using cruel will love will target and we'll talk and still be indifferent to the lived experience of other people that we haven't made that cross over

yet and in politics is supposed to be another rally coalition not it makes it something that you talked about how it's in effect politics collapsed in making fifties when we couldn't resolve the moral question of slavery in a bloody civil war ensued i'll cut that happen again a moment a bloody civil war where could we become who shattered nation is in effect if we fail to come to grips with the racial epithets that are built into the foundation of america i think we're all realizing now with what's happened with black lives matter with ferguson police brutality problems that the racism that's been there forever is still there though we thought and remember you know what it felt like the sixties when the civil rights act passed and the voting rights act at their housing past and what it felt like when the first black

president was chosen there was this superficial sense that we've come a long distance we have come a long distance i mean things are much better now then they were when you couldn't you know when you can move to the south in certain places black but there is still learning to talk ill talk about this season ever america within a founder it would be on that question of race and we still have a long way to go in its it's still it's still mystifying in a certain sense and i think it's in part that racism is connected to poverty it's connected to the inner cities it's connected to people who are living in a place where the other people don't understand what's happening to them again going back to hunger and malnutrition and poverty religious what again our old buddy lbj was trying to deal with in model cities in the great society of the howard university of grass saying that this thing is really connected to so many other things in society and we haven't solved the problems of race or poverty

at an arm and one of the things that lincoln worried most about when he was fighting in the civil war was not simply an anti slavery mean obviously that was something that had to happen eventually but he was worried that if you allow the south to secede from the union then maybe someday the weston secede from the east and the whole experiment that is america this is an experiment that was a beacon of hope to people over the world would berate people could govern themselves without a king without a queen without a dictator and that experiment is still an issue right now can we as ordinary people govern ourselves and make all the people in our country the immigrants in there and the black people and the mexicans and the rich people on the poor people feel connected that common mission and that the leader could make us do that again and that's a bad thing with a woman we'll vote for i spoke not long ago to the whole black college in my hometown wily politician as the college that defeated stanford

in the great debate became the bar yeah yeah and i but that was that it seemed to just indifferent i i i tried i tried to talk about how racial have it's likely that white supremacy was with as i said they came to the foundation of the structures of this government it and i said you were three fifths of a person for the constitution and that was designed to make sure the segregation in the south are stronger in the new double cd john adams said to ward king george vi columnist will not be integrated i said to the structure of our society the architect of the architecture of the house was framed around the fact that white lives that year more ragged workmen this was before this all became for

all end and then isis somehow we have to restructure america to make it possible to overcome these habits of two hundred and fifty and three hundred years ago this is the case that whether we recognize and a lot we have created a system the structure that white supremacy is gonna take a remarkable media one of them said that we have a black man in the presidents and i suggest that we have a hundred we have a medium but many women in the big guns and then there still something small and destructive the society that makes the film gravity shut about a white man in the white house that the terrible about them in mutt minute women in the big house somehow some leader and that's when lbj was talking about how universities victory said you can't expect to bring black people to the starting line of a race and expect them to compete when they haven't had the chances to get up there and i think that's still true with what's

happening in your city is what's happening the poverty the education education is still if i could change anything to besides the money in politics i mean getting an educational system that touches the lives of people who need to feel inspired and feel that they have a chance i mean the great thing now that i'm looking at this new book on leadership about where its ambition come from how does a person like lincoln begin to dream that he can be other than his illiterate father that he can move away from this farm life where nobody reads with things beyond what he's hoping for what has that come from sometimes it comes from within i mean sometimes it's a mystery but sometimes it's an educational system as a teacher and mentor the new every now and then read somebody who comes out of this terrible line in an inner city and they become somebody if only we could do that more often in the educational system could inspire these kids to believe you have a chance and that's why i think so much more effort to be put into public education that sort the

poem i got the mini documentaries over the years all the inner city and the single largest missing ingredient to be capital money that stores the system they most people that's turned into a craft with it but to journalist and you're my history and mentor so i i want my mentors at the university of texas city when i was a kid news is what people want to keep it and everything else is publicity and i think that's true and so i wonder what you think we know so little about how power worked how decision makers reach their decisions is it because they want to keep it hidden in is that the chorus of the cost mainstream media have become so much a part of a partial power structure

that they don't have that they don't want to speak our truth to power they don't even tell truth about what would what's at work there i mean you would think that for young journalists the most interesting thing in the world would be to figure out why was that decision made what were the forces behind it what's what's what's bubbling up that made these people decide to do this in that way i mean that's the whole i mean that's what my guys in the progressive era right now they were trying to give people an inner sense of why that corporations had become so powerful and some of them using arm illegal means to become so why had the railroads monopolize in a while or factories not giving workers their chance to have workers compensation and they hear i think there was something about that group of journalists at that time that felt they had a mission as journalists to explain the

underbelly of decision making and society to the people so that the people would rise up and do something about it and it wasn't just me relating things it was creating stories that would mobilize people's feelings sentiments so they would push their government to do something about it it was a sense of calm was like an admission that was like them a religious enterprise was rainy i mean where is that today i was struck when i went to get my copy of the bully pulpit theodore roosevelt and william howard taft and the golden age of derivatives that was a despicable time at night is the early part of the twentieth century the gap in income and wealth wrote the grand canyon proportions the industrial revolution which is bringing a lot of material benefits nonetheless was built on the sweaty brow and the crushing of workers on the avenue was full

of mentions and the homeless were sleeping on the streets families were going hungry it was a despicable time in the history of this country and yet you call it the golden age of viewers for one thing every time i think of that book the bully pulpit it's a rather that book and i got a letter from a woman who was reading when she went to sleep at night now on her nose and broke her nose about serena do not read it when you go to sleep and i heard it i think what happened during that time and as i said earlier this was one of those decades artists listened to writes about this that there are these rhythmical decades in american life where the public gets excited about what's happening and they become active when they become not as spectators of participants such was the decade under teddy roosevelt the term the twentieth century partly his leadership but partly what these journalists did i mean compared to today hears what happened i mean there was this one magazine quartz magazine i love the

guy who's the head of a chorus in the news this extraordinary character much like teddy roosevelt it was restful energy manic depressive and a fortune in those days if you are depressed or they knew was to send him to a sanitarium in europe and have now for three weeks goes nope would replace your blood so the bad blood would be undone by mail and isolation obviously never thought well when he came back into the us when he was in hispanic phrases and he's journalists they can research subjects for two years and salary before they had to write words so that means ida tarbell and write about john d rockefeller and standard well and how he's made his fortune and his company in part by herding independent businesses but more importantly i'm doing things that were illegal lincoln steffens and write about corruption the city's rademaker about the rose lee now online about corruption and they found there was a camaraderie and they were given the time and resources even if you have some places today and you must tell them like public that

there are places around that do investigative reporting but these articles would be ten thousand words long and people would read them in the magazine was the most famous magazine at the time he would pass it around to their friends he would talk about it they were then push congress to do something and i don't know that people would read it ten thousand word article to all the world that there really is but it doesn't seem to get traction the way they look and i think partly people back what we said earlier they understood the source at the publishers set the story is the thing and he said i want you to tell stories about people whose then they'll feel about and it's the same thing it's this that the lighting to what we've been saying so ida tarbell when she's fourteen years old her father has gotten into the independent oil business in pennsylvania making more money than he ever could have imagined even a teacher prior to that john rockefeller scoops in and does all the independents and he loses everything and she goes down underneath a fourteen and says i never wanna get

married as i wanna fight social justice at that time a woman with pain you could never get married and have a career first woman in her class in allegheny becomes a writer writes about standard oil in her writing about it becomes the supreme court's research to breakup standard oil into thirty eight companies and so she told a story about this man and what he did and somehow we've lost the storytelling art i mean it used to be i think in the old days when before printing before we could relapse one generation would tell the next generation council an advice and wisdom to storytelling and our best presidents i think i've been storytellers i mean that's what certainly abraham lincoln was the main way he would be able to get through his depression was to tell funny stories that when they when they were making a movie about lincoln the one thing i said to spielberg into tony kushner the scriptwriter if you have to have a lincoln tell story after story cause that's him that's the guy i knew and he has to tell my favorite story

in the movie and they actually had in which daniel day lewis houpt upon which was lincoln's story of the revolutionary war hero ethan allen who went to england after the war british were upset still about moving revolution so they decided to embarrass him by putting a huge picture of general george washington in the only outhouse we have to encounter it sooner or later if he get at in demand at the idea of george washington placed in such a terrible place he comes out of a outhouse has not said it always wanting you see george was oh yes he said i think it's a perfectly appropriate place for what you mean they said well he said there's nothing to make an englishman after on the side he told stories as his way the house divided was a story on with malice toward none with his story he understood that that's how people learned franklin roosevelt when he's trying to sell in ways to the country says if your neighbor's house is on

fire argentina lender hose so that their houses say put your house to save two people think metaphorically and storytelling i don't know where the kids are learning today how to tell stories are we telling stories to our kids i mean the one thing that i always hear about the most and that comes back to the kansas city royals and the brooklyn dodgers is the great thing about my father having taught me how to keep score and telling me how to tell those stories was that at first i didn't understand how to make a story real so i would start out right away saying the dog is one of the doctors last week took much of the drama ally to our story away so i can learn to tell a story right along as when i find the lead read an essay by my heroine barbara tuchman said even if you're writing about a war as a narrative historians you have to imagine you don't know how that war ended they can only tell your readers only what they the people at the time knew before the war ended was otherwise you're imposing itself on the actual narrative so somehow i just keep thinking that there's got to be a way to teach kids how and when you when i want them to love

history instead of just a bunch of random facts if the teacher can just hear passionately about it the people at the time and tell the stories of what it meant to live seventy years ago a hundred years ago why would you care about our ancestors and the drama that they lived in their people just like us but instead somehow we've been learning so abstract that we've lost that linkage to our past i've set your the bully pulpit to many of my fellow journalist who had been taken by the coast was in the law for all of them passages like this out our belt says she learned from her mother that quote monopolies are fearful evils apply to confront about peaceful means or both were set it must be that day and i said i hope you have a mother like that and you're saying that these margaret of replacing no role in browsing the country the need for political and economic reform was there is there a clue what they kept saying that

i think they're they felt the worry about what they were saying because they had spent so much time researching it so they felt a sense that they weren't just producing something that came out of thin air and that they really believed in what they would say that much later the same group of my records got together when they were in their seventies and eighties and by then it was the nineteen twenties and things have changed and they look back on this period and they look back when this downturn that they say we thought we would change in the country had turned out harder to change than we thought but what a great time it was you know and the great thing was that there was a relationship between theodore roosevelt and he's the craters where he valued them he valued journalists lot so many times now politicians are defensive about journalists and what was so good about teddy roosevelt was that he understood that wouldn't have to criticize him because otherwise their partnership could never work and he could get man in private but not necessarily stay man in this is great moment where one of these famous journalists writes a memoir i mean

an arm a critical review of the memoir that he wrote about his experience in the rough riders shared during the spanish american war ii says that teddy sell placed himself in the center back of every bottle of every moment of the war they should have called the book alone in cuba slapping in the country and what is it do you like the journalist he set it back to tell you that my wife and my intimate friends are actually collided with your review of my book now you owe me something you have to come visit me the next time you're in washington i wanna make your acquaintance so if i was nervous about visiting him because that whole relationship between a journalist and a politician has to remain somewhat became friends with them may still be criticized and teddy except that and they became friends i mean it's so much harder to do today i think and i think it has something to do with what we touched on before that people then didn't have to worry in the same way that their private life would be exposed by the by the journalists i mean when i think about fdr and i think about that white house that fdr had with journalists ever really understood what was going on in the

white house under fdr or to any of that fdr you've got eleanor you've got a beautiful princess from norway that has a big crush on roosevelt was there on the weekends you got to read a hitchcock a i'm a woman journalist who has a big crush on eleanor living in the white house about new zealand and who loves franklin roosevelt living with a family in the wind as you got harry hopkins his foreign policy advisor comes for dinner one night sleeves all remember leaves before the war comes with an idea that winston churchill drinking all day with him in the white house for weeks at a time what we journalists make of this right now this is the group of people that got us in the war i mean when i was writing the book on franklin and eleanor i became obsessed with the thought of all these people in the second floor of the white house has dropped it in their back rooms at night and i kept picturing like incredible conversations they must've had and then i started thinking oh my god when i was up there with lbj was in that second floor watching i asked when churchill stay where was roosevelt was eleanor was a way to get back because i wasn't thinking in

those terms so luckily i mentioned this on a radio program in washington after the roosevelt book came out and it happened hillary clinton was listening so she probably call me up a radio station invited me to sleep overnight in the white house she said it would then wonder the car together and figure out where everyone has left fifty years earlier so two weeks later she invited my husband me to a state dinner after which between midnight and two am with my map in hand we went to every worker and figured out yes chelsea clinton is sleeping where harry hopkins was bill clinton a sleeping fbi was and we were in winston churchill's bed and which meant there was no way i could sleep i was so i pointed and changing its brand hands smoking a cigar fact that bedroom with my favorite story and we're overdue again a story that may be somewhat fantastical but it's so good that we have to believe it's true when churchill was there he wrote about was set to sign a document right after pearl harbor put the allegations against the axis powers but the allegations were calling themselves and the associated nations no i'm like the

word so early that morning roosevelt awakened with the whole idea of calling them the united nations against the axis powers so excited and self willed into churches back to our bedroom to telling the news but so had injured who was just coming out of a bathtub and had absolutely nothing i said i'm so sorry our comeback in a few moments but churchill ever able to speak in a very formal voice still naked with nothing on says oh no please day the prime minister of great britain has nothing to hide from the press in a night you know in the presence of them what if we had known that what we had known that roosevelt had an affair with consumers are in nineteen eighty would we have lost its leader and it's crazy what were doing in a certain sense ever since gary hart saying follow me around and then people follow him around and he is having an affair with donna rice in them they ask them have you ever had an affair and now and maybe we turned a corner because now these people seem to have affairs and it doesn't even matter in warsaw material on the full circle like they were on

the sea john kennedy's well researched ladybird and then there are a number of these laws and then i never heard it never heard of and they were happy or as quickly ken democracy that too many lines and i think what worries some now it's not simply the lies but we don't even agree on what the facts are i know it's one thing to argue about the answer's issues but when you think about the neighbors split now between people watching their favorite cable network it's not like three networks at night where you had a common news where people and i think about the ability of you know jfk or even ronald reagan to communicate to the country it's in part because the nature of the media at that time allowed them and they gave a speech people would listen and then you have the pundits interrupting before the big finish you know people saying unfair things about a speech that were even sure we're

telling lies about the speech before it absorb it like i think in a democracy information this gets back to what i'm sure you believe in with all the passion to be a journalist information and understanding in a democracy when people are making decisions about who the candidates are given a lead them it's actually essential that it be at least basically true of when it is right now i'm not sure that we know how to distinguish of because we get so many different points of view and then nobody believes anything anymore what about the law the legal fiction i'll concede that money a speech and corporations are people was that going on well i i still am convinced as i said earlier that that's something has to be done to end and everybody knows that even the politicians who support citizens united even the politicians who are raising the money and making that super pacs they have

to understand that it's not as much fun to be in public life anymore with money at the center of arguments always been there i mean mark hanna who was mckinley's political boss of the turrets place every summer he said one of the most important things to winning the presidency so we say well i think the first one is money on second one is money and money but it's escalated and it's it's much much different than it was before and to the extent that you know corporations and now individuals were really wealthy can actually fund these people's campaign so we don't even know who they are i mean that kind of transparency is so important and somehow somehow the country most of whom i think i honestly believe the majority of home including all the politicians know that something's corrupt about the system and yet his psyche what's a thing called disarmament in you know unilateral disarmament nobody wants to stop it as they ok i need my money for this campaign now we're gonna when i win i gather you agree with one of our great

supreme court justices louis brandeis who said you can have great wealth concentrated in a few hands or you can have a democracy but you cannot have now and i think you know what is true about america i think is that the twin pillars of our success as a country my husband wrote this at one point our capitalism and democracy and we need them well but democracy is supposed to be the foundation you know and and i think somehow it may have gotten on you know the factions as madison worried about may have gotten control insurgents last question a senator or disrespected were restarted were you most part of the rig in this discussion does not and they were given some questions from our audience as i said earlier i was with lbj and the problem is part of the first three years of tradition you were there as his power wayne as his health way as he lost control which he so

really relished are what was it like when you work on his remorse within and wrote that harvest what lyndon johnson then the american dream what was it like to be spent hundreds of hours with this aging i mean i would give anything to have been with him when you were i mean to have been with him in those glory days and just think of nineteen sixty five when you were there you know you've got voting rights immigration reform to cut medicaid got medicaid paid education you've got higher education to me it must've been that sense of just the country is moving fallen i mean i think about i was just at the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of medicare and of course i'm sure as many of you know at the last minute johnson decided i've got to go into pensions or actively with harry truman he's the one who started this and i want to be there in a lot of the other candidates about the last minute we can't go and was posted in

washington no we're going and then he gets there you know and he talks to truman and he says you're the one that started this we owe this deal and two men at that time has not become virtually all alone now in the public perception and he was really honored he said people haven't been coming to see me a lot and you're hearing it means so much in the lbj said to him are we need to remember you i hope someday somebody will remember me in the same way and as i read that again and does not remember that piece of it until this year and i thought about the fact that so sad was the man that i knew so fearful that the history would record him badly because of the war in vietnam he he knew it had caught his legacy and to renew the great society been stopped in some ways from what he was hoping it would be and every now and then there'd be the buoyancy that you know when he'd start remembering what it was like to pass voting rights are civil rights past and i think i'm i just so wish he could know what people are now beginning to

appreciate which is nobody knew how to deal with congress and he did that oh my god the guide bryan cranston plays lbj did you see it is you know the way anyway it was a broadway planet was in boston and he's become a friend of mine and i'm going to consult and they're making a movie now are all the way so i was out at the film about this overall california and i happened to come on the scene and lbj in these blue striped pyjamas in his bedroom in the white house and i had seen lbj in his pajamas in the bedroom and i suddenly c bryan cranston so much like lbj it was the most eerie thing in the world i walk in the room is it's really a lot of that he's the most interesting political figure i've ever known and i suspect you to mean who else could have that endless energy to keep going to call the congressman and he wanted to have

breakfast lunch or dinner he calls a senator to mr hogan and wake you up the senate said no no i was just lying here looking at the ceiling hoping my president talked to turks and when he's trying to get him to go along with the republicans to bring the republicans to help break the filibuster in the civil rights bill in first and promises in everything under the sun which would be impossible today given transparency that's a problem you know dams public works projects job arms whatever you want but that he understands church into cares about i remembered by history dirksen a few comedy on this bill two hundred years from now schoolchildren lonely two names abraham lincoln and everett dirksen ha ha yes so anyway here you know the congress and had these charts where he knew every bill was an every moment you know having talk about our listeners senator what they cared about and more importantly he knew we had only a limited time and he had to get it on this quickly and then by the time i knew him o sixty seven sixty eight sixty nine he's so lonely at the ranch

on there was a sense that he knew his health was failing and he didn't help it because he couldn't go and speak to anybody anymore you knew there'd be protests that places and and you know i'd started out with as being an anti war person he never persuaded me about the war on he never persuaded me to come he wanted to become full time to work formed down at the ranch but i suspect you'll understand this about and it was scary to let him have control of you and i knew if i ever went down their full time i wasn't sure i was strong enough to twenty four years old to suggest b without being in his aura so i kept telling him now i just want to go back and start teaching at harvard he said what's the matter with you come down to the ranch you you want boyfriends are providing millionaire a new little house by the lake blake lbj army would travel out of traveling around the world like the presidency of the president would never do you got homework from a full time i said now i think i really don't wanna come full time but i'd love to work part

time and i'll go back to teach at harvard and upper nile into full time or nothing but i think that i almost let it go by saying no the last day in the presidency call me up and went to be a latina or a part time i would've lost the thing that meant so much to me on down there with him listen to him all those hours developed an empathy for a person that i had originally been able to look and abstractly and argue against i would not become a president john wooden historian but my field was supreme court history so a phd was in nowhere near as foreigners living with lincoln and fdr and teddy and all these ten eleanor and all these great people but more importantly i think i tried to understand the inner person behind the public figure because of my relationship with him and it created i like to believe that the desire to bring these other presidents to life that has been my lifelong career so iowa a lot of it and i'll never forget him the rows of his religious devotion you're listening to a presidential historian doris kearns goodwin and journalist

bill moyers their conversation is part two of the better form on the presidency sponsored by the truman library institute and recorded at unity temple on the plaza in kansas city you're listening to a pr presents on kansas public radio for the rest of this hour lawyers and goodwin take questions from the audience may i make a small speech and say this one was magnificent political discussions that we been privileged here ninety years the question is this with the behavior of the republican conference the makeup of the supreme court and that proclivity to sue the president in the exercise of his powers is the office of the present danger today i see how much i don't know i mean i

think you know for example the question of executive orders on have always been something that congress fights against and teddy roosevelt issued a whole series of executive orders on conservation which luckily preserved millions of hours of our national heritage trust because congress would pass a lot of the time when he was considered a decade when he did it that's part of what they're arguing about with with obama i mean the continuing assault on obamacare and you know as if they can somehow begin to detect terror read it when it is the law of the land and this is the typical just because it takes energy isn't a certain direction but i think there's still that stellar role of presidential power that is there potentially for a leader but it does depend on that the reader's ability to somehow develop relationships with those characters in congress the question that i think history is going to ask is was an impossible during this period of president obama because of

the makeup of the congress during his time or was there more he could have done by having them more often to the white house by dealing with them often answer that question that's going to take some time to figure out and i think you know the moral situation for exactly how our online think the presidency and still has an enormous set of resources i do something that until i talk about the bully pulpit doesn't have power at once did because the president needs to have a megaphone where people listen whether it's lincoln in his time and he gives the speech it's written people read a read a speech over and over again they pass it around teddy roosevelt's party aligned with fdr's fireside chats with until twenty percent of the radio audiences people listening to jfk and jfk and reagan on television now so many other people have access to the bully pulpit and and you know the president's words are only a piece of a stream that we're following felt that sense of a president how i think has been reduced

for sure not the great presidents have all been surrounded by men of ways what men and women of great wisdom and judgment and if the next president would happen to call you mr maurice unicef goodwill and ask you or your advice on who he or she i should do that as if isis could you rattle off a few names who would you think of the other great thinkers today in american society it oh i regret all these years later have regretted three years that i was so young at the wisdom i have lots of energy but no wisdom and the present always consultants and wisdom from the great bears and i actually both are and i

don't have any name suggests at the moment because there are so many wise people out there ever that over the years there were certainly get it and i think obama has done the historians like doris had together cause i would think if i can pause in the one thing it would be the fire and get tenure to get it cannot be fired one person who will read the press every day and report to you the things that they say even though they make you very uncomfortable over obama i would have asked him to have the reader and a truth teller who comes in and says this is policy's been interviewed this is the consequence of your decision that person should not be fired that person should not be party not be denied access to a nation where the and it was very compelling

in the book presents quote the authors can truly show how that presence work with that former president like president johnson effort eisenhower's best chief of staff in and out president clinton when the first ncaa was close to president reagan and as riggan thomson and so on we'll all our presence forty one forty two forty three get the other but president obama that there's a great no animosity to him man and the clintons an anti for the first that a part of his administration claimed his predecessor so how do you think he will be treated woods becomes a part of the president's plan you know it's it's a very interesting question because you would hope that there's such an explosive class people who've been president that they could rely on one another for advice for wisdom you know ford only other people that know what it's like to be president are these people and now they're living more years so they're around in a way that they weren't before and there have been examples that you wrote i think when the person has

an office there isn't there something about where these presidents that feels jealous of their predecessors in life you know lyndon johnson used to you know worry about these people on the walls and my team is great is these characters and that this is their final contest if they'd been running for office or they're like the final contest is how his treatment regarding them so they feel a certain sense of wanting to be better than the ones before so there is a natural jealousy and there immediate predecessors but i mean nowadays when you become a post president's a pretty cushy situation compared to what it is today you have money and secret service to a celebrity in the book deals you're invited to lecture i mean think about harry truman who had difficulty economically getting along and was going up and doing those lectures and think about even the old days that people you know have to make their own way in a certain sense it now probably that residents are happier than they were when they were present certain i'll never forget the story about eisenhower and it became an ex president he'd been a

general and then president for so long and had made our phone call a long period time to get back to pennsylvania except the party uses buzzing sound that he says is only one is that the basis of dial tone but you would wish and we've seen some wonders of it that it could be used more often because it is an explosive club after show billions in terms of educating the next generation's i'm wondering if you could comment on artistic endeavors that and portray historical figures and i'm thinking particularly of them myself lbj for trail in selma and having read so many books and it had an effect on me to see him being portrayed as antagonistic to the civil rights cause it was such an unfair

movie in so many ways in fact really knew something about it because the screenwriter was a british playwright screenwriter named paul where had written the second draft of the lincoln movie before tony kushner and he got interested in the lbj story because he got to know my husband and he wanted to write a movie about the partnership between lbj and martin luther king and then he had great scenes in there about them working together on an african american director took over the movie and sadly i think wanted it to be a movie where the whites were the bad guys in the black for the good guys and she changed the scripts he was so upset about the way it was portrayed and it's really unfair to lbj i mean is it that was the one thing he absolutely cared about voting rights and to think that he was and it made his speech flattery shall overcome speech they made him arguing with martin luther king in a way you can not you know when you make a movie as cause i

learned in working with spielberg on lincoln you have to fill in gaps that the historians don't know about conversations about how people are thinking and that's the imagination of a movie maker but what you have to hope is that you would least portrayed a character failing and they knew enough about lbj to know what the truth was and they got screwed as a result remember we had a lot of good parts to it i think it would have won some awards and smuggling historians and journalists in dance and it wasn't fair and as a result the movie didn't do what i think it would otherwise have done so i hope it's a lesson people when they take history you have only way i mean you know certain things you don't know when when they were working on lately and you know we knew we had a high pitched voice because somebody had said he did even though people say that these you know we knew we want at the end of the our day but looking like a laborer and he did that for most importantly the demand that daniel day lewis portraying was the lincoln i lived with for

ten years when i saw the first cut of the movie had spielberg house and he said what you think i just i think when kids come alive this is the person i think i know and and that's what people who knew eliot wanted to sell my left arm i thought it was just at the time when the fiftieth anniversary is this coming just at the time when people were beginning to appreciate him domestically on just at the time when all the way was making this incredible figure come alive comes this movie and a lot of young people will think he was an antagonist to the civil rights movement and that's just lonely hundred over here yeah i haven't always been fascinated are interested in the drinking habits of our presidents and so here's a perfect chance to comment on that for president you go about putting luxury mr johnson there they're now called and it's an account of our habits of presidents in general

and alcohol habit we have sometimes when i think about those old days in an astounding about the nineteen sixties when the political class well coming across party lines they were having poker games and reading together so maybe things were better but interestingly lincoln not very much at all i'm not going to need to squeeze this is the best part of him he gave a speech one time and temperance where he said there's no reason for us to the people who are drinkers back in sort of a forerunner to a what we should do as how former drinkers how people are drinking this doesn't suggest screening at them they had difficulty and let's help them get through it but he was not a very her teddy roosevelt was an uber releasing people actually people had written about the fact that he was a an alcoholic because he had so much energy a muscled man in a body had to be drinking all the time and he didn't he didn't ever wanna lose control it so he anthony just so you just to be in the

center of attention without ever during his daughter alice said he still wanted to be in the center of attention that he wanted to be a baby in baptism and the bride at a wedding in the water to feel about it being an alcoholic and he sued the publication and he won because he really nobody could point at drank wine that was about a cocktail hour at night so during world war two he had a cocktail or renewal where you can talk about the war you could talk about movies you've seen what you've read gossip about people he would mix the crazy drinks for everybody and totally relaxed in fact is this is great scene where the king of england comes over in nineteen thirty eight and his mother didn't believe that they should be drinking in high part of the house so they had to bring in this little closet area and so you know fdr's as my mother doesn't think we should be drinking and so then the case as a leader his mind let's drink a toast you know i mean i

you know i don't remember share that he had that you know that have some you know there's something of a national security something for a fresh start it up or then you have a suburban at night and on when i used to go see him at the end of the day when i was working for many just want to relax and sit in that room right off the oval office and he would have a burger or whatever industry you have a greater intolerance has had the director but i think fifty five when he had a heart attack while reason iranian i really bonded in nineteen sixty when i travel with roses right hand ballet in the campaign of nineteen sixty eight and one of the tests and writing speeches for most of the jury just gotten so the end of the day he had to make his campaign and it was known around town than in the kennedy camp that he was having a drinking problem he continued to drink as vice president he was morose and much of that time

he was melancholy he felt like his career was tennis the day of the assassination for whatever song taking drilling opportunities for victory in the white house that we got back to the vice president's residence for those three years with him rather write your book by a lot of assassination speaking back then it like the south grounds of the white house was in the white house the vice president's office which is an executive office building as we walk into one of his signature sit can i get your drink he said no he never actually recruit a half hours calling i start having meetings with members of congress and try to put together a staff and had no sense really ready for that one and he had been very very close to sam rayburn speaker of

the house rihanna even drinking session called the board of education and lbj would overload the other members of congress and spend two or three hours with a recall and so that night he raised a toast severance members portrait was in the living room or a sitting around less than eight hours after the assassination many races but i'm totally disintegrate and it hit me that is a classic mr rj lyman and so for the next year or so i'm never sure that the derivatives piece that was i was told after he left the navy toward the end of the sixteen year you lose your tv begin to drip i guess that's in melancholia brought it back i mean he knew after he left the white house when he had that other mild heart attacks shortly thereafter that he had to lose weight and not drink and i think by then he had he really had given up to a certain extent in believing in the future so probably

alcohol and more back for him how interesting i didn't know that the top of the list each side i am reluctant to cut anybody all just isn't reluctant moderate of the troop cuts beyond who were selected a new openness to one they're two people ask a quick question each of the stars of the predicament on the fiscal year i have actually too short questions one is why do people always voted against their own interests and the second question is what is your definition of a statesman first as a politician the guy was you know i think i think part of the answer to the first question which was a really important one you know is it why do people who would be benefited by certain kinds of laws that

provide better access to education provide better medical care they didn't vote against it and it's in part because they have abstract ideas about what is right or wrong about government what is right or wrong about how our federal vs state and there's other issues that are going in their minds of the social issues that seem more important than some of the economic issues and it gets confusing when they figure out what is their own interest and i think that we can remember he's been dead for twenty years says the propaganda works that's why they use our dictators you think

that's why government's use of that's what corporations propaganda work people can be persuaded that would be all that is necessary because they're voting for the right thing that probably the propaganda this is what a lovely report american politics back in nineteen forty four five prisoners in wallace talked about sort of the american fascists almost easily recognize either deliberate version of fact and to the newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate empathy of disunity they kind of be super patriots but they would just your every liberty guaranteed by the constitution they demand free enterprise spoken from vested interests their final objective which ordered to see is directed is the captain political power so they're using the power of the state and the power of the war simultaneously they need to become a nurse in any

presidential historian doris kearns goodwin and journalist bill moyers this is part two of the bat forum on the presidency sponsored by the truman library institute if you missed last week's k pr prisons are one of the bennett forum it's archived on our website k pr decade you died edu that's k pr that can use dot edu this event was recorded by kate pierson ted slept on november fourteenth two thousand fifteen you know the temple on the process in kansas city and kinect entire k pr percent is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas