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Meet the Press
Full interview: Doris Kearns Goodwin says America’s history ‘can give us hope’ in uncertain times
00:34:15
Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin joins Kristen Welker for a special edition of Meet the Press marking America’s 250th anniversary, reflecting on how the nation has overcome its darkest chapters and why history can offer hope in uncertain times.
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- [00:00]
Charles Barkley
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- [00:28]
Doris Kearns Goodwin
Wayfair, Every style, every home.
- [00:31]
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- [00:53]
Kristen Welker
Welcome back. And joining me now is presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. Doris, welcome back to MEET THE press.
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Doris Kearns Goodwin
Oh, I'm so glad to be with you.
- [01:03]
Kristen Welker
It's so wonderful to have you to talk about this huge milestone that the country is about to mark, America approaching its 250th birthday. And I wonder, what are your thoughts as the country prepares to celebrate this significant moment?
- [01:22]
Doris Kearns Goodwin
I think the most important thing is to remember the difficult times that we've lived in before. We're living in a tough time right now, but history can give us perspective. It can give us, I really think it can give us hope. I mean, just imagine what it was like to live through the Civil war. More than 600,000 people were dead. Or live through the Great Depression, one out of four people out of work, the banking system collapsed. Or to live through the early days of World War II and it was unclear that Hitler might conquer the rest of the world. And the important thing to know is that in each one of those times, the people who lived then, they didn't know the end of their story. They were like us. They were anxious. They were fearful. They didn't know that the Union would be restored and emancipation would be secured. They didn't know that the Great Depression would come to an end with the mobilization for the war. They didn't know the Allies would win World War II. So they lived with the same worries that we harbored. But somehow we showed strength and we emerged with greater strength from each one of those troubles. So remembering the troubled times right now and how we came out of them, that's the progress that we've made as a country. And I think for 250, it's so important for history to be there. And it's time when history is being diminished. We need just the opposite, because history is what's going to give us hope.
- [02:30]
Kristen Welker
Well, to that point, one of the biggest challenges I think, that the country is facing right now is that it is divided. And as you look back at some of those moments you talked about at the nation's history overall, what gives you confidence that the country can push through this moment and get to the other side?
- [02:52]
Doris Kearns Goodwin
Well, I think what we've seen in divided times is that the country's been fortunate to find leaders who can help us through those times with the qualities that leadership needs and citizens who responded to the challenge. So that combination of change sometimes coming from the ground up for social justice, when Lincoln was called a liberator, he said, don't call me that. It was the antislavery movement and the union soldiers that did it all. There was a progressive movement at the turn of the 20th century when we didn't have the right leadership until Teddy Roosevelt came in to really be able to deal with the problems of the big trusts and the class divisions. But it was already there in the settlement houses. It was already there in the social awakening of the religious orders. And then you had, of course, the civil rights movement and you had the gay rights movement and the women's movement in the 60s. So always there have been leaders that were there. And if the leaders weren't there, then the movements were there. So that combination, I think, has been pretty magic for the country.
- [03:45]
Kristen Welker
Well, and to that point, what is the role that citizens can play right now based on what you've witnessed in history?
- [03:54]
Doris Kearns Goodwin
You know what I think about when I think about these movements for social justice, it always starts with individuals feeling that they can make a difference. I mean, that's what the inauguration of John Kennedy was. That's what the civil rights movement was all about. I remember being at that march on Washington in August of 1963 when I was 20 years old, showing that I'm 83 years old today. And there was a sense in that feeling of being there that you were something larger than yourself. I carried a sign, Protestants, Jews and Catholics unite for civil rights. And I felt for the first time that I was something larger. And I carried that with me, I think, the rest of my life. Obviously, people in the civil rights movement felt that even more deeply. People in the anti war movement felt that people in the. In the Gay rights movement, the women's movement, the union movement earlier on. And I think that's the sense we have to feel today that if we feel changes are needed, it's going to come from us, the citizens, maybe at your local level, in the. In the city, in the state, maybe. I'd love to see some national service program come today where kids in different parts of the country could come together to have a mission, just like military people have a mission with different classes and sections coming together. The city kid goes to the country, the kid from the coast goes to the heartlands. They work together. They feel they're making a difference on disaster relief or helping older people. And they come away from that not feeling that the other people in the sections or the classes are the other, rather than as common American citizens. That's one of the things Teddy Roosevelt warned against at the turn of the 20th century. He said that the classes were divided. There was a big gap between the rich and the poor. The industrial revolution had shaken up the economy, and there was a feeling from people in the country suspicious of people in the city. And he said, if democracy is really going to be in peril, and if people in different classes and sections regard each other as the other rather than as common American citizens, and I think nothing more could. Could make us feel common American citizens than letting that younger generation come together on a common mission and feel like they're doing something for the country.
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Kristen Welker
Well, and we're talking about the birth of the nation. So let's talk about the very first president who of course, governed when this was still an American experiment. I guess it's still an American experiment, but at that point, it was anything but certain. And one of defining features of the Washington presidency was his ability and his ability to see that he had to walk away from the power that he had. Why was that so important and significant for the future of this country?
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Doris Kearns Goodwin
Well, just think about it, Kristen. If he had stayed after those two terms and he could have easily done so, they would have elected him without a question. It would have meant that we don't have a transition of power, that there's a sense in which people are. Are just in there until they die. And instead he became an ordinary citizen again. And he said that power was temporary. The White House was the people's house. You know, he starts out with such humility. On the way to his inauguration, he writes a letter to his great friend Henry Knox, and he says, I feel like a culprit going to my execution. He said, I'm going to face an ocean of difficulties. Do I have the talent, do I have the inclinations to be able to deal and manage the helm? And he said all he knows is that he will bring firmness and integrity to the job. And what a to have that humbleness to come in. You know, they all wanted to call him maybe His Majesty or His Highness, and he wants Mr. President, a more simple title. And then, most importantly, as you say, he decides that when his term is up, it's not his ambition for himself, it's not the ambition for power, it's the ambition for the country. And it's good for the country if he leaves and someone else comes in and we get that rotation in power, that would be the mark of a democracy rather than a monarchy.
- [07:35]
Kristen Welker
Just extraordinary.
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Doris Kearns Goodwin
He was pretty special.
- [07:37]
Kristen Welker
Yes. Just extraordinary that he had that foresight. And you think about another president, President Abraham Lincoln, who quite frankly governed the country when it was on the brink of collapse. What made him the right leader for that moment?
- [07:55]
Doris Kearns Goodwin
You know, it's so interesting. Abraham Lincoln said that if he'd ever known later what the first three months of his office would be like, he would not have thought he could have lived through it. That's how much tension he had to live through. But on that very first night when he was elected president In November of 1860, he had the humility and the combination of confidence to make the extraordinary decision that before dawn came, he would put his three chief rivals into his cabinet. Seward, Chase and Bates. And that meant his friends said, how could you do that? They're all more powerful than you. They're more celebrated, they're more educated. They each think they should be president instead of you. And he said, you're wrong. The country is in peril. These are the strongest and most able men in the country. I need them by my side. But, you know, it's often say, perhaps my good friend Lyndon Johnson might have put that same noble concept in less noble language. He liked to say, it's better to have your enemies inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in. But the most important. He had a colorful way of speaking. But the most important thing was by having those rivals in his cabinet, it meant that he had every day beside him the different opinions. In the north, it wasn't just the problems of the north versus the South. It was that in the north there were factions that were radical that wanted emancipation right away. There were people who wanted only the Union to be restored, and there were others that were in the middle. And he had to navigate. And he listened to them over a period of time, a year or more. As to trying to bring consensus, he couldn't bring consensus. But he finally made the decision. It was time for emancipation. And because he had listened to them for so long and created a culture of respect, because he had confidence that he could somehow become their leader, and he did, they kept their disagreements private, which meant that when they went before the country with emancipation, even though some did not still think it was the right time, they backed him because of the respect that he had given them and the culture of. He had taken credit. He had given them credit when something good had happened, he had shouldered blame. When bad things happened, he spent lots of time with them all and created this crazy team of rivals.
- [09:57]
Kristen Welker
Well, and of course, you wrote a book about it, Team of rivals. What did his ability to work with those who would disagree with him and each other teach us about how he governed and how that might be applied for other leaders?
- [10:16]
Doris Kearns Goodwin
I mean, I think it means the greatest strength is to know what you don't know and to know what your strengths are, but to know what your weaknesses are. And if you know where you're falling short, then you follow, put people around you who can help you with those areas. And that's what the people did by surrounding him. And he was able somehow, as I say, to bring them together because of the culture of respect that he developed. But then the extraordinary thing, besides humility and confidence that combined in him is that he had extraordinary empathy. And if the humility shows up at the beginning of his presidency, when he puts these characters around him, the empathy shows up at the end. After Appomattox, when it was clear that the war had been won for the north, there was a lot of push on the part of radicals to execute the confederate leaders, bring them to trial, hang them, so that there could be retribution and vengeance. And he just said, that's wrong. No more bloody work. We've had all we need of that. I just want to bring the south back into the union. And he dealt the south with empathy, as we saw in that great second inaugural, when he said, both sides read the same Bible, both prayed to the same gods, neither's prayers were fully answered. And then the famous words, with malice toward none and charity for all, let us bind up the nation's wounds. So I think had he lived on to deal with reconstruction, he said, it would have been the hardest problem, maybe even harder than winning the war. But you would have trusted that he would have tried to produce empathy for the coming in south at the same time as protecting the rights of the freed blacks. No one could have done that better than him.
- [11:43]
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- [12:28]
Charles Barkley
Charles Barkley here with Wayfair, and let me tell you, game day is serious business at my house. If I'm grilling, chilling and watching hoops, my outdoor setup better be ready to play. That's where Wayfair wins. From patio seating and umbrellas to grills and grill accessories, Wayfair's got it all and it shows up fast. I'm talking fast and easy delivery. So level up your grill game and your outdoor chill game and head to Wayfarer.com to get your outdoor space ready for the season.
- [12:55]
Doris Kearns Goodwin
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- [12:58]
Kristen Welker
Yeah, it's just extraordinary to think about how many different factions he was able to bring together in that moment. And at America's 125th anniversary, the country tested again. When President McKinley was assassinated, it thrust Theodore Roosevelt into office again. A very deeply divided moment for America at the time. What was it about Roosevelt, do you think, Doris, that allowed him to be able to bring the country together at this incredibly turbulent time?
- [13:31]
Doris Kearns Goodwin
Well, you know, it's so interesting that the beginning, when he first comes into power, you're not sure that he'll be the one that can unite this incredibly divided country because it's divided by classes, it's divided by sections. And he comes from a very privileged section. He was a dude, kind of a dude guy. And when he first went into office, he was very fiery. He would complain about the Democrats. He made rookie headlines. But then adversity touched him. And oftentimes all the leaders I've studied somehow have gotten through adversity. Hemingway once said that everyone is broken by life, but afterwards, some are strong in the broken places. And what Happened to Teddy was when he was 25 years old. His wife was about to give birth to their first child in New York. He was up in Albany. His mother, who was only 49, came to be with her in the house. And he got a telegram saying, the baby girl was born. They have cigars and they're congratulating him. And a couple hours later comes a second telegram, and it says, you've got to come home at once. There's been a crisis in the house. His mother had contracted typhoid fever that week, and he got home in time for her to die. And 12 hours later, in that same house, his wife died of complications of childbirth. He was so depressed that he wrote a big X in his diary. He thought, for joy or sorrow, my life has been lived out. I will never love again. He left the east coast and he went to Medora, North Dakota, where he lived in. Lived for two years and really became a working sort of cowboy and ranch person. And he learned a different culture as a result of being with all those people. He said he never would have been president had he not lived in another part of the country because it allowed him to be not only an easterner, but now he was a Westerner. And that was part of the big gaps in the country. But more importantly, what happened is he changed his mind about his life. He said he used to feel like he was moving up a resume from state legislator to congressman to senator, maybe to governor, maybe to president. And you're cautious as you move up each step along. But now he knew that fate could take away anything at any moment. So he decided, I'm just going to take whatever job I think is important, and I don't care if it's up or down or sideways. So he comes back and he becomes Civil Service commissioner. And his friends say, that's below you. He said, no, I believe in the merit system. And he did that for six years. And then he became police commissioner. And again, his friend said, why are you doing it? It's the most corrupt department. That's why I want to do what he said. And then he goes into the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, but he leaves that as soon as the Spanish American War has. He has much more power as Assistant Secretary of N. Secretary of the Navy. He wants to be a soldier, and he creates the Rough Riders, which combine all of his friends from Harvard and Yale with all the cowboys and wranglers on the west coast. And he brings them together as a unit. And then, of course, he becomes vice president. And then when McKinley dies, he really has embodied different parts of the country together. And so what he does is to come up with the right slogan, I think, even for today, a square deal for the rich and the poor, the capitalists and the laborers. And he goes out on the train more than any other president. He's on a train and thousands of miles, 24 states. He goes to all the states at the time, and he gives the same message everywhere. And he creates a feeling of common Americanism to withstand those divisions that were there, and creates legislation to help the exploits of the Industrial Revolution, to get at some of the monopolies, to get labor to have some strengths to it. So he surprisingly comes out to be the guy who can be that combined American, American person.
- [16:48]
Kristen Welker
Well, let's talk about fighting spirit. Yeah, go ahead, Doris.
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Doris Kearns Goodwin
No, I was just saying he had a fighting spirit, too. I mean, he made the square deal something exciting. You know, sometimes I think people in the center, they might have a center kind of personality, but he had a fighting personality, fighting for that progressive center between the conservatives on the one hand and the radicals on the other.
- [17:12]
Kristen Welker
Let's talk about another Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, who led the country through the Great depression, World War II. What did he understand about leadership, about the fabric of the country that allowed him to stay in power for as long as he did and lead the country through both of those crises?
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Doris Kearns Goodwin
Yeah, it is an extraordinary thing because there's such different crises that he had to show different styles of leadership, I think, for each one. And most importantly, I think when the Depression came, the country was paralyzed. There was a sense of not knowing how to move forward in so many different arenas. And he had suffered his own paralysis. Once again, I think that adversity set him up for that job. He knew what it was like to have to optimistically move ahead, to try and walk on his own power, which he never was able to achieve, but he was able to achieve enough strength that he could appear to be walking on his own power, which he thought could finally allow him to be a leader. And at the same time, he comes into the inaugural, right before he gives his inaugural address, somebody says to him, you know, if your program works, the one you did in New York State, you'll be one of the great presidents. If it fails, you'll be one of the worst presidents. And then he said, no, I'll be the last American president. That's how fragile the democracy was at that time. But he gives that inaugural address, and what he does, understanding from his own point of view that you have to understand the realities of the moment of his own paralysis. But what you can optimistically hope for the future. His first line is, only a foolish optimist would deny the brutal realities of the moment. But then he makes his famous comment. But the only thing to fear is fear itself. And what he did in that inaugural, he told the people, this is not your fault. It was the fault of leadership. And I'm here to provide that leadership. He was hungry to take that responsibility for leadership and to be accountable for it. And he promised he would bring an emergency session into Congress to deal with the banking crisis and to get jobs. I'll get jobs. Now will be action now. It was so impressive that suddenly there were headlines all over the country. We have a leader. We have a leader. We have a government. And hundreds of thousands of letters went into the White House telling him they were so glad he was there. My favorite one came from a guy who said his roof had fallen off, his wife was mad at him, his dog had run away and he had lost his job. But now everything was all right because you are there. It's that magic of leadership. And somehow he followed through with those words. Bring the emergency session in. They solved the immediate banking crisis. And then he kept them in power until 100 days. And during that time all the safety net, the Social Security department and the. Not Social Security, yeah, Social Security is going to come later. But the SEC and the getting people in jobs in the public works jobs and all of those safety net programs, unemployment insurance coming over time and somehow he's able to bring the country through the depression until the mobilization for the war ends, the depression. And then what he has to do is to pivot. Because in his relationship with the business community at the end of the 1930s, he had developed a kind of hostile relationship with them. But he knew that the only way we could help England in 1940 when Hitler came in one week's time conquers Western Europe. Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, all surrender to Germany. Soon France is going to fall. And Churchill is desperately looking for us to help him. But we are only. It's incredible, Christine. We're only 18th in military power. We become 17th when Holland surrenders. That's how low down our military establishment was. We let it fail from the Great Depression and World War I. We had only 500 fighter planes and that was a one day supply in the war. We had more horses than tanks. We had very few. So very few modern weapons. So he knew that he had to change his relationship with the business community. Only they could Build the ships, the tanks and the weapons. So he reaches out with an olive branch. He brings in two top production people, the head of General Motors, the head of Sears Roebuck, to become his production people in Washington. He puts two top Republicans into his Cabinet, Stimson and Knox, and he offers antitrust easings, better contracts, depreciation easier. And he starts the assembly line going right in the spring of the of 1940. So even before Pearl harbor, we begin to incredibly move out these weapons that can help England. And then once we get into the war with Pearl harbor, that business government partnership is absolutely simply magic. And by 1943, we're producing a plane every four minutes, a tank every seven minutes, and a ship was launched every day that used to take in 1939, 250 days to be able to launch. So somehow when we imagine that and we can think, if we can do that, then why can we not do something like that, like that now? Why can there not be these partnerships that are working together for the history of the country and hopefully it doesn't have to take a war to make that happen. But he was able to do that. And somehow the most important thing he had throughout that all, he communicated with the people through those fireside chats, and they felt that they trusted him. You know, he would start those fireside chats, even from the first one during the banking crisis. My friends, I'm here to talk to you tonight. And somehow people thought he was talking directly to them. There's a story about a construction worker hurrying home one night and his partner said, where are you going? He said, well, my president, he's coming to be with me in my living room tonight. It's only right that I be there to greet him when he comes. How great is that? And he spoke in simple words. He never liked to use two syllable words, if it could be one syllable word. Somebody wrote a draft for him once saying, we want a more inclusive society. And he changed it to, we want a society in which no one is left out. How much better is that? And he made people feel, he was explaining the problems to them and he was telling them why we were moving in that direction. So they felt they were going with him. And actually when he died, they said that people stood on those little village squares with their arms around one another. And the most important thing they said almost in unison, without knowing the other people had said it, is, we have lost our friend. We have lost our friend. So that was the direct bond he had established with people to help carry them through the depression and the war. And then the people of course responded, the soldiers responded, the home front respond. And it was an extraordinary thing to live in that time.
- [23:26]
Kristen Welker
Well, it underscores the magic component to his presidency, the fact that he was able to create that direct contact with so many people across the country. And another magic moment came with the leadership of John F. Kennedy, who arrived in Washington as one of the youngest presidents in history. And his inauguration became one of the defining moments of the era. Why do you think that was and why is his loss still felt so deeply today?
- [23:59]
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- [24:29]
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- [24:52]
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- [25:19]
Doris Kearns Goodwin
Find a pro for your project@angie.com yeah, it's so interesting. I think part of the reason why it was so extraordinary for him as a young president to say the torch is being passed to the next generation and to say the famous phrase, ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country is it was already welling up up in the late 50s, a desire to move forward. The civil rights movement was making strongholds and there was a lot of feeling that we needed to work together. And then the signature program becomes the Peace Corps, which was an answer to what you can do for your country. And what it meant was somehow, throughout the 60s, that sense that individuals could make a difference. You know, the sad thing is, we so often remember the 60s with the assassinations of JFK and RFK and Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and the riots in the streets and the fires in the streets. And yet the greatest spark of the 60s was that belief that individuals held through much of that decade that they could make a difference. And when people feel that there's a collective idealism and you can move your country forward to the ideals that you're fighting for, it's a really extraordinary moment. And as I was saying much earlier, that's when social justice changes. And I think that's what we need to remember about him, not the sadness of it. And maybe that's why the. That feeling for him is still alive, because it's connected to the feeling that we want to feel as individuals, that we can work together to make a difference. And he somehow sparked that feeling in that inauguration and in his whole Persona.
- [26:47]
Kristen Welker
Well, you talk about the assassinations of that moment, Dorison, for many Americans, it frankly felt like the country was coming apart. My parents have said that, and some people actually see echoes of that period in today's political climate. Given the fact that we have seen this uptick in political violence, how do you see it?
- [27:10]
Doris Kearns Goodwin
Well, you know, when I look back at that time of 1963, and when I later worked for Lyndon Johnson, he told me that he couldn't imagine a more difficult time. I mean, not only had the assassination taken place, but it had taken place in his state of Texas. And then Oswald had been killed. And people are watching all this on real time. And he said, I don't know how in the world he'll be able to unite the country. He knew that people didn't have a great sense of. Of trust in him, especially coming from the south, when the major issue at that time was the civil rights bill that was formally introduced by JFK in June of 1963 was the main issue before the country. And again, we think of the assassination, but we have to think of what happened after that. And the extraordinary thing was that when Lyndon Johnson took office, he made the decision the night he took office as president after John Kennedy died, that he would make the priority, his number one priority, the passage of that civil rights bill. And his friend said, you can't do that. It'll never get passed. There'll be a filibuster. You'll get nothing through the Congress. You'll go before the country if you want to be president in 11 months from now, and you'll have nothing to achieve. You only have a certain amount of currency to expend, and you better not expend it on this. And then he famously said, then what the hell is the presidency for? And then he went for it. And he had talents, Interestingly, maybe John Kennedy wouldn't have had to get it through Congress. He started calling every congressman, every senator. He would call them at 6 in the morning. He would call them at noon. He would call them at midnight. He even called a senator at 2am and he said, oh, I hope I didn't wake you up. And the senator said, oh, no. I was just lying here looking at the ceiling, hoping my president would call. But then he would tape these conversations, and he would know what these people needed to make a deal. So he would keep track of what kind of. Of what he could do for them. Dams, public works projects. You need this. I'll go to there. And he gets to Everett Dirksen, the minority leader of the Republicans. And the arguments between them are so incredible. Finally, he says to him, after promising him everything, I'll be in Peoria, I'll be in Springfield. I'll go wherever you want me to go. And then he says, you know, Everett, if you come with me and you bring Republicans to help break the filibuster, because obviously they needed Republicans because the Democratic Party was split in two. He said, 200 years from now, now school children will know only two names, Abraham Lincoln and Everett Dirksen. How could Dirksen resist? He brings the Republicans, they break that filibuster, the Civil Rights act passes, ending 78 years of Jim Crow. And maybe there was the combination. In fact, when he went to the country and said it was my number one priority, he said nothing would be more important for the memory of John F. Kennedy than passing that bill. So it was John Kennedy inspiring and Lyndon Johnson making it happen.
- [29:54]
Kristen Welker
And your late husband, Dick Goodwin was also a part of that pivotal moment.
- [30:02]
Doris Kearns Goodwin
No, he surely was. I mean, in fact, most importantly, he was involved in the Civil Rights Signing act, and he went down there for that. But most importantly, the Voting Rights act comes the next year. And what had happened is Lyndon Johnson had said that he thought voting rights couldn't come until 1966. We had to absorb the Civil Rights movement first. And he had a whole Great Society program that he wanted to go through. In fact, when my husband first got to the White House, he was called over by Bill Moyers to say Johnson wants to talk to us about a Johnson program. Now that he's getting the civil rights bill through, he's got the tax cut bill through, he wants to have a Johnson program. So my husband said, so are we meeting him in the Oval Office? He said, no, we're meeting him in the White House pool. So they go to the White House pool and Johnson's in there swimming naked in the pool, up and down, up and down. Dick said he looked like a whale going up and down. And then here's Moyers and Dick in their suit and tie on the edge. And Johnson said, well, come on in, boys. I have a lot to talk to you about. So they have no choice but to strip as well. So now you have three naked guys swimming in the pool. Finally, Johnson pulls over to the side and he said, now this is all the things I want to do that will be part of the Johnson program. And he mentions Medicare and aid to education and immigration reform and voting rights and aid to the cities. It's extraordinary. It's all a vision already in his head. And then they decide they have to figure out a name for what is this program going to be. So they try out a bunch of names and they finally come up with the Great Society. And so my husband liked to tease. So the Great Society was born in a pool with three naked guys swimming around. So anyway, that's the story of that. But the most important thing was that Johnson thought that if he postponed voting rights until the 66, he could get the Great Society through and then deal with voting rights. But Martin Luther King had other timing in mind, and he had the Great Selma March to protest the problems for blacks for registering in the South. And as we all know, when they came over peacefully, the Edmunds Pettus Bridge, the Alabama state troopers were waiting and clubbed them, had horses pushed them to the ground, hospitalizing many of them. And it was all captured on television. The rare footage of television came up to the network and they broke in on regular programming. I remember watching, I was watching Judgment at Nuremberg that night, a Sunday night movie. And they broke in with this footage from Selma, Alabama. And we just all turned to each other and couldn't believe this was our country. And then Johnson realized that the conscience of the country had been fired by seeing that. So he changed his whole timing and decided, I'll go for voting rights now. But it meant that my husband had only one day to write that speech. He came in in the morning and they said, you have to have it done by six at night. I don't know how he did it he put his watch away in a draw, somehow thinking that that would mean that he would forget time, and he started writing. It took him two hours to write the first line of that speech that so often happens when you're writing something. The first line of a paragraph, the first line of a chapter, mostly the first line of a book or a play. And he wrote a beautiful first line. I speak tonight. He would have Lyndon Johnson say, for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy. And then he said, every now and then, history and fate meet at a certain time in a certain place. So it was in Lexington and Concord, so it was at Appomattox, so it was in Selma, Alabama. That meant he was positioning Selma in those great moments of history. And then he said, this is not a. If only we could think of this again today. This is not a Negro problem, not a white problem, not a Northern problem, not a Southern problem. It's not a moral problem. It is simply immoral to deny your fellow Americans the right to vote. It is not a state rights problem. It's a human rights problem. And then once he got all of that done, and we are met here tonight as Americans, not as Republicans, not as Democrats, to meet that problem, he decided, okay, it's time for a break. So he went out and had a cigar. And in the distance, he saw some kids, and they were singing. The faint echoes could reach him. We shall overcome. So he came back in and he wrote the lines that have now made that speech called the We Shall Overcome speech. But Johnson said, but even if we get voting rights, there's still 100 years of discrimination to overcome. But if we come together, we shall overcome. And the audience was in uproar, crying, clapping, knowing that that meant that the anthem of the civil rights movement that had been fighting for so many decades for these kinds of changes was now going to be reached to the highest chambers of power in the Congress. And it was said by John Lewis that Martin Luther King cried at that moment, knowing that would mean the Voting Rights act passed. And it did indeed pass in August of that summer. And my husband was able to get one of the pens from the passage, plus a picture of Johnson shaking his hand. And that stood on the wall of my husband's study and is now on my study in Boston. And it was probably the proudest moment in his life and one of the great moments in Lyndon Johnson's life. And, of course, voting rights is under attack today. How they would be thinking about this, I can't even imagine.
- [34:52]
Kristen Welker
Well, it is just so powerful to hear you retell that. Doris, I just want to ask you, as a final thought, as we prepare to mark America's 250th birthday, what does the story of our country, everything that you and I have just discussed, ask of these citizens today?
- [35:14]
Doris Kearns Goodwin
You know, I think when I look at the people who are our great leaders, it's not just what they did, it's who they were. And what we have to look at is what qualities do the leaders in our own hometowns, in our schools, our teachers, our governors, as well as the leaders who will become in this contest for the presidency. What kind of character do they have? That's the most important thing. When I think about Lincoln, it was the combination of humility and empathy and resilience and accountability, responsibility and compassion and an ambition for something larger than oneself. And when I think about his legacy, he wanted so much to be remembered from the time he was young, and he could never have imagined how far he would actually be remembered. I was thrilled to find an interview with the great Leo Tolstoy to a New York reporter at the turn of the 20th century. And it described how far Lincoln's memory had gone. He said he had just come back from the Caucasus, and there were a group of wild horsemen there who had never left that part of Russia. They were so excited to have Tolstoy in their midst, they asked him to tell stories of the great men of history. So I told them about Napoleon and Alexander the Great and Frederick the Great and Julius Caesar, and they loved it. But then the chief stood up and he said, but wait, you haven't told us about the greatest ruler of them all. We want to hear about that man who spoke with the voice of thunder, who laughed like the sunrise, who came from that place called America that is so far from here that if a young man should travel there, he'd be an old man when he arrived. Tell us of Abraham Lincoln. Tolstoy was stunned to know Lincoln's name had reached this remote corner. But he told him everything he could about Lincoln. And then the reporter said to him, okay, so what made Lincoln so great after all? And Tolstoy said, well, maybe he wasn't as great a general as Napoleon or Washington, not as great a statesman as Frederick the Great, but his greatness consisted in his character and the moral fiber of his being. I think that's what we've got to ask of all of ourselves. We want character to be taught to our students in school. It's what parents want to teach their kids. It's really what we should be judging our leaders at every level by are those qualities of character that make a good person as well as a great leader. And that's what I think I'd love to leave us with.
- [37:22]
Kristen Welker
Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. Thank you for all of your thoughts and perspective as we prepare to mark this monumental milestone for the country. Thank you so very much. We really appreciate it.
- [37:35]
Doris Kearns Goodwin
I'm so glad. It's an exciting time to be remembering all of this.
- [37:39]
Kristen Welker
It's so exciting and it's so exciting to have your perspective. Doris, thanks so much.
- [37:44]
Doris Kearns Goodwin
Thank you. Kristen.
- [37:45]
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