A Word on Words; 3820; Doris Kearns Goodwin

fb liz from nashville studio way celebrating offers literature and ideas for more than three decades this is word on words with john c johnson and all welcome once again to word on words my guest today is a familiar face the most in doris kearns goodwin she won the pulitzer prize in history for no ordinary time franklin sheila claim historic elections around the world she's frequently called on

by the media and was fundamental issues a month very glad to have my friend but you know that's how great is the heavier to talk about the team of rivals and the band other great books let's just begin let me ask you what is it that draws you to certain personalities i mean lyndon johnson's activity abraham lincoln now imitating roosevelt and so many books by subway or those are all great president and still you come up and again and again and again give your publisher and your readers a twist the bridge on a bus odors with the kleinman toward what is it what's the magnet that brought you the one politician with women

i think for me it takes me so long to write these books that the most important question at the start is what i wanna live with for that long so i don't wake up with them in the morning go to bed with a midnight and so there's a reason why so many people are drawn to these same larger than life figures because they're the most interesting in our history and they lived in dramatic times but then the scary thing about that is exactly what you said if you don't write about them as opposed to writing about millard fillmore you're going to have to come up with some angle and that's what takes time and it really is the hardest part for me it took me ten years to write the lincoln book took me longer to write a book about franklin and eleanor than it took to fight the war again wow it's not exactly so it bought it for lincoln it took like three years into this survey research i was due to do a big merry at first that i'd done franklin and eleanor i have confidence with

franklin owner and i realize she couldn't carry the public side of the story the way owner could and then as i got into the diaries and letters i realized oh my god you spend even more time with members of his cabinet many as with mary he's married to them in a certain sense and then i realized they were his rivals i knew i had the story i wanted to tell that that took three years out of the ten years look you know robin shows and it was a subject that nobody really engaged yet so hard to not understand why either because everybody knew these diaries were out there on some of them were published and they always such an interesting cast of characters and they've been one book years ago that had a chapter on each one of the cabinet officers but nobody had looked at them and you know coincidentally with lincoln in the mill during this entire period of time i think the reason i gravitated to it through was that it was scary to do lincoln are not only does so many books have been done that he's like the moby dick for the story and i figured if i i could get to know solidified a get to know chase and stanton many various people and bates then i would bring

something to him so they could almost be a comparative lark i loved to talk so i was when i was little balls that those wonderful essays written thousands of years ago where they compared various people and then the comparison you learn some things i figured if i knew my guys i could look at lincoln and i have maybe a different look at him because i can compare him to these other people you know a little more costly wandering through the village seven candidates they're for these debates and their own dating each other and neatly joe are as a huge over and insult each other and i went there to tell us you know johnston have a chance to learn a lesson from the book candle on the whole obama wrote it and acknowledged that he wrote and he's got biden and hillary on his team team of rivals no i think that was delivered on his party somebody asked him after he won the nomination would you really be willing to

put somebody into your inner circle even if his or her spouse were an occasional pain in the butt and he went right back he quoted lincoln he said what matters in a time of peril is two of the strongest and most able people in the country i want them by my side that's more important than holding grudges from the past and so it was a deliberate act on his part to try and surround himself with people not just of different points of view but strong people who could argue with him and question his assumptions which i think was a very strong thing to be able to be as i think back on as you pointed out so well you hold him in low esteem did you ever i mean when he first was elected first of all the newspapers didn't even know what his name was they were calling in a broom for a population of abraham and yet to write is that i think my name is a broom closet and they thought he was a fourth or a black sure that he told dirty stories that there was no command no dignity to the people who know him differently which is why it's not like he arose out of never being confident to suddenly being president in his

own circle that's how we keep forgetting in illinois they knew who he was especially the people who know him well knew he was special so we carry that confidence to washington but he had to reestablish himself all over again and it took a while but he certainly that had an interesting thing is that he'd puts him in position that really make a difference and it's not as if we were both left the job of nature while the males will the president delivered on that but you know you get this sectarian war the secretary treasurer secretary of state attorney general both forty positions and put his enemies in the seventies you know the interesting thing is to worry about whether it really could work in that degree today because we know about what these cabinet member said about each other when they didn't like each other either one say he's a traitor his line one wouldn't come to the cabinet meeting if another one was there today with our cable news to be impossible for that to just be found out about your diaries after the fact we know about it every day when this

person was saying about the other which makes it harder to contain these kind of emotions today i think you wrote about this it's yours than the kennedys so i knew about lyndon johnson the american grain lyndon johnson and the american grain i didn't know this until i was talking to a mutual friend of ours who told me that before you were an intern anna johnson a shrewish and you had written a very mean in almost cruel was a woody shrub to be i tried to find it online and what you said about lyndon johnson before i think more embarrassing because what happened is when i was chosen as a white house fellow which was in the spring of sixty seven we had a big dance at the white house the night we were selected and president johnson did dance with me that wasn't so strange says there are only three women out of the sixteen white house health but as he drove me around the floor he said

he wanted me to be assigned directly to him in the white house one is audible command the new republic several days later and i've been active in the anti vietnam so and the title of the article is how to remove lyndon johnson i wish to really kick me out of the program which is what he net necessarily you know didn't you know that's easy for him to do his daddy said to somebody oh bring her down here for years if i can't win her over no one can so i ended up working foreman the white house eventually i didn't get assigned to right away i went to work for willard wirtz in the labor department were fell in love with he was a fabulous mentor but then as soon as johnson withdrew from the race he called me into the wide eyes and you said i should get out and remove myself but now remove myself you have to work and i did an album on his memoirs yes that's the value that's exactly what rights act right exactly and how much work did you do with well i guess we're going to arrange an hour that was the end his party was allotted jackson that in the surgery a

curve ball he had a heart attack very soon after he got into retirement and the doctors told him that do you have to stop smoking have to stop three have to take care of yourself i think he was wanting to die he was so sad in those last years on the ranch so vulnerable knowing that his legacy had been cut into it done so much as you know so well i mean three great civil rights lawyers medicare age education national endowment for the arts and yet all that was nattering at that time to everybody was vietnam so i worked on two chapters on which are the fun chapters one was on congress and the other one was on civil rights so on but he had full time people down there and working on it round the clock but i love the experience it was i was teaching at harvard at the time so i would come down a week and spends vacations and actually stayed at the ranch a lot of the time so i got to know him and cause a kid you knew they didn't

work inform then goodwin who work for john f kennedy they going through they lose the alliance for progress that there were lots of co invented goodwin and smiles and wrote the great civil rights speeches i mean i didn't know him personally at the time i was in graduate school when johnson delivered that speech to the joint session of congress where he said we shall overcome the speech that did produce the voting rights and some weeks later and i remember sitting there thinking but that was a highlight in some ways of my young young no school like to see such a speech and now i've been involved in the civil rights movement nothing like you just marching going and washington in nineteen sixty three and saudi media get all then not until nineteen seventy two he came to harvard to finish a book and he got in office right near mines at the lake and the little light bill kennedy institute as it was before the kennedy school of government and i of course knew he was and he had heard that i knew johnson so he asked me out for dinner the rest is history i think you will see your of

that you will shortly i hope you will of collaboration is talking with time for john that with who quoted afterward we talked about it and then johnson so do you know that but then johnson said once would that good one instance on some tips on rides with driver for jonathan and i said no for that on both the whole long the whole environment the white house is something you haven't made it and again and again and again and now once again with teddy roosevelt was the magnet they're like and selling books and good books have been written about teddy roosevelt so what i'm doing is two different things and doing the progressive period so essentially what i'm interested in is how did the country i'm so able to pass legislation for the first time

regulating business how did the country get so excited about social justice and economic justice during his period of time essentially from nineteen hundred to nineteen twelve by telling it through teddy roosevelt and taft they were great friends before they ended up running against each other in nineteen twelve they met in washington in the eighty nine these are children knew each other and then he makes taft has set the territory that makes taft the president he actually runs tax campaign telling everybody in the country that no tax a wonderful guy and giving advice to tap saying don't ever be seen playing golf it's the dunes game and a working mammal i get tapped wins and then teddy feels when he goes off to africa furrier giving tap room the taft is not as progressive as the thought comes back runs against him breaking their friendship was a wonderful human story but then in addition to that what creates the progressive period is the muckraking journalists your forebears and i love them they're all at one magazine quartz magazine sam accords a crazy america

press a brilliant guy that ida tarbell ray baker upton sinclair and we now and why and they they expose what's wrong with these come within these institutions they expose corruption the cities and the state's standard oil and the trusts well i love my job now so somehow i'm gonna get all those people together and again that's the hardest thing to get the structure but it brings an angle to it that that doesn't mean that you just took a period i'm talking with the pulitzer prize winning author and historian doris kearns goodwin my friend somebody friend you have that you don't know your books have made new friends around the world and we see is often on television and until recently i didn't miss your obsession your love affair with the brooklyn dodgers oh now i don't know about you in the brooklyn dodgers say well you know why would she write about

the dodgers it is a story about the murders but it's more about i think or how baseball created a community that touched the lives of families brought people yelling deputy jailer at the orange scorecard to score more so as part of the story it's a change of pace for you the book a song will about a zombie plague politics and ominous of deeply embedded most of your well i don't think i would've done it had it not been for ken burns who did a documentary on his baseball and i came to interview me and i thought i'd be on for two minutes but it turned out my two beloved teams the brooklyn dodgers and the boston red sox she's lovable losers were going to be the central part of his story it's almost everything i told him that appeared on the air

and so everywhere i went that came out the documentary at the same time as franklin and eleanor roosevelt and people would come up to me and tell me they had a similar relationship with their father with a grandfather with the mother is something i realize how deeply embedded some of these relationships work and that that's really what i was writing about that i still didn't think of writing a publisher came to me and said what you write about this so it turned out to be about the fifties about growing up in a neighborhood at a time when the dodgers giants and yankees are all in new york at the same time divided loyalties on a block but more importantly than that just what that era of the fifties was like but unlike these other books it only took like eight months to write it all got i'd give anything to have that again oh a baseball meant in terms of changing the country i mean it was the time of jackie robinson times and duncan wasn't time campanella a main branch rickey broker absolution rejoice and i think people began to see that

these people were heroes to them and it broke down perceptions and prejudices in ways we can even begin to understand even today in the airport i saw a sign about jackie robinson and it's amazing the impact that he's had how you've how you feel about the transition and we just not long beyond the latest world series and new york still is producing championship games let's see the dodgers and our call one world series and fifty they're alive and they defended the house and fifty turtle lightly i want to now and the senate as terrible saying in india or what if you're in a room with hitler stalin and walter o'malley family had only two bullets what would you do on the heartland surreal you have to get out now but you know the big difference now from when i was a girl is that

in those days players stayed on the same team all the time and it wasn't a good thing even have free agency but still in that they were loyal to you when you were loyal to them now at the clink of the high school and they go somewhere else a little kid who falls in love with a player wakes up at spring training to find out he's gone somewhere else if you don't have that same degree i think loyalty that we have about openness in this live series and they were great heroes it was johnny damon right or else your red sox won it with damon and stamina susan way and he does so much i mean and if you say the guards hit rate for most valuable player this time was months you had a game on syria mean no in fact it was very embarrassing at one point i was on tim russert show on meet the press on new year's and he asked everyone with their new year resolution was and it was just at the time when damon had gone to the yankees so i have to admit that when i was trying to resolve not to hopi would

break arms legs and they left us when i was in my first confession which i told a priest that i was wishing various new york yankees and fall down still smuggled on the streets so we could win the first world series for essentially how often do you make these horrible wishes and i'd say every night when i say listen i promise you they'll win sunday family is grilling don't well if you look at it you'll get how baseball insider politics you know that the politicians understand well the cruel people have instigated other authors on out the first pitch ever done they're invited to and a good thing to do is allow them get booed at that point is that the people who are in the sporting arenas don't often like that mixture of partisan politics but i think when a president

goes hell and then there's a sense of excitement you at an all star game when president obama came into out the first ball and i heard that he was very nervously trying to make sure that even one hop i remember actually my son joey who served in iraqi after he joined the army after september eleven and won a bronze star in iraq in combat came home an inventor of the first ball at fenway park so the week before he threw it out he was so nervous he seems more nervous than even his entire time in iraqi known as harvard friends are calling others and you better not one house i said to joey doesn't matter that it's a just back from iraq and he said mommy don't understand is a guy saying to president obama well that raises back to president obama and his presidency and having no laws and from roosevelt to johnson he's trying to a role of the

final subject and into lyndon johnson i think you can see pieces of various presidents and ham there's no one president that he resembled completely mean he obviously has developed an enormous love for abraham lincoln and i think there is something about his temperament that it had its best resembles that kind of and flap ability serenity that lincoln had that willingness to put past grudges beside willingness to surround himself with his rivals the kind of cool that he projects sometimes reminds me of jfk what he doesn't have yet his lbj as ability to go to that congress and to just control limon charm them and tell you to do and harass and threaten them and tr to teddy roosevelt had a way of being able to you know yell at the people in wall street that he wanted to change or whoever was in big business he had good for you know an epigrams to talk about them and obama's just a more measured person but at certain times you may need that kind of toughness with congress and even with the

people you're trying to regulate review this cool her son blair was worth it so was gone through a great pride among it strikes me that that's the president i recall a trap from wish he'd kennedy usually the states you've written about polygamy and lows well all four presidents two written by wright and wartime experiences or obama said none how are crippling student in the process of decision making

well i think one of the reasons why he's taking such a long time now to make this decision and that he's aware that he needs to have on the opinions of others and lincoln had a very minor war experience of it later tees that you know that the only bloody ever saw with a mosquito bite and actually franklin roosevelt had been assistant secretary the navy if it hadn't seen more time should i don't think that's the problem and i think being thrown in to a war that's already under way with very few options left arm i'm glad he's taking time to figure out what to do my son was called back actually has a second two or three to afghanistan after he was home for two years from iraqi and he just got back from afghanistan so we know firsthand how complicated that what that place is and how difficult it's going to be to turning around and the only way can be turned around is if it's going to take a long period of time and as the american people have the pack patience for that and i think the real problem with iraqi and afghanistan was on september eleven if we were going to be in war as long as it turned out we have been in war you have to mobilize the spear the country behind it and that was never

done the soldiers have been fighting these wars over and over again that's why they keep going back for two to three tours of duty really great thing that fdr was able to do in world war two is to make everybody feel they were part of that war obviously there was a draft which made a huge difference but still we had the rubber drives in the aluminum drives the fact we couldn't get armored humvees over to those kid's an iraqi in world war two we had twenty four hour day working around the clock to get whatever they needed to them and i think that's been the hardest lesson i think that if we're going to stay in afghanistan and it's going to be a lot more troops going that somehow has to become america's responsibility not simply the soldiers and keep getting sent over there we only have a couple minutes left kind of flies by when your friend i'll walk when the stroke just couldn't on way out about the about teddy about the next book are there lessons in two yards terminal five move abroad who will

buy think absolutely because when obama was elected we thought it was a transformative election and that it was going to change citizen activism because those young people minorities came to the polls and i want to keep that progressive impulse going which teddy roosevelt was able to do it was because the country stayed active under his it had to do with journalism but even churches universities social scientists they were all park talking about how good government related business in order to sell it somehow onto that huge gap in income between people in the ninety turning the twentieth century the tenements and what to do about social justice it became part of any big conversation if he's going to become the president that people hoped he was when he was first elected somehow he has to re energize and get that civic engagement that we saw in the election back cuz that's what made the progressive era successful just blues and that connection we have to worry

about the moderate groups meat is changing right now will change more dramatically in the days ahead who's to say that they're going to be online margaret those who can capture free market concerns of the country indeed these muckraker is at that time they were paid for an entire year to do research and then come up with these reports which are really honest and factually based so they could change opinion in the country and then even when they went on to other journalistic scientists later in life they looked back on this era of progressive heir as the happiest time in their life that they felt they were being fulfilled they were giving voice to the country and i don't know how many journalists are going to feel that in the future if that on the resources to do this kind of work and it's such an import more you know journalism is critical to the operation of democracy it is so great to have you know i'm so and so happy to have all of you here and johnson over world words keep reading