Presidential Power with Doris Kearns Goodwin

Discussion post for December 27, 2024

Earlier this year, we were honored to speak with legendary historian and author Doris Kearns Goodwin about her latest book. This conversation was a highlight of our year and also still feels full of wisdom for us as we head into a second Trump administration and consider presidential power.

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Episode Resources:

• Doris Kearns Goodwin (Website)

• An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s by Doris Kearns Goodwin (Amazon)

Episode Transcript

Sarah This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

Beth This is Beth Silvers.

Sarah You're listening to Pantsuit Politics.

Beth Where we take a different approach to the news.

Sarah Thank you for being with us today. Our team is enjoying time with our families this week as we celebrate the holidays. But we wanted to return with you to one of our favorite conversations from this year. We spoke with legendary historian and author Doris Kearns Goodwin this spring about her new book and the way her life and her husband's life intertwined with so much presidential history. As we ourselves are living another tumultuous, historic time in presidential politics, it seemed like a wonderful conversation to revisit. Plus, Doris is unsurprisingly, such an absolute delight. We know that you will love hearing this conversation for the first time or again. So enjoy Doris Kearns Goodwin.

[Music Interlude]

Beth We are truly honored to have Doris Kearns Goodwin with us today. Your new book, An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s, is, as it says, a personal history. And because of that, we thought it might be fun, if you'll humor us to tell you our personal Doris Kearns Goodwin stories.

Doris Kearns Goodwin I would love to hear them.

Sarah Is it the ones we tried out at cocktail parties.

Beth Yes. We've each had a very memorable experience with you. Mine was in the green room at Morning Joe. I think that Sarah was still in hair and makeup, and you were just coming into the green room and an MSNBC anchor who was also kind of darting from hair and makeup-- I remember she had rollers in her hair, and the big smock on-- came up to you in the hallway. This was like maybe January, February, early days of the Trump administration.

Doris Kearns Goodwin Oh, wow.

Beth And she said to you, "I just need to know if we're going to be okay." Just like panicked expression. And I couldn't overhear the entire conversation, but I remember watching you respond to her and wondering how many times a week right now does someone ask you to draw on your extensive understanding of history; to make the present and the future feel better to them?

Doris Kearns Goodwin It is so true. I mean, in airports, sometimes on streets, people will come up to me and just say, "Just tell me, tell me it's going to be okay." And I really think it's because they know that I love history so much, and that history does provide us with solace and perspective and lessons. I can talk, then I start talking to them. I say, "Ohno, it's okay. Just remember what it was like in the Civil War. Remember what it was like in the early days of the depression? Remember what it was like in the early days of World War two? Democracy was at peril then, much more even than it is now, and somehow, we got through it. And the important thing is that the people living then didn't know how it was going to end- just like we don't know now. We now know that the Union was restored and emancipation secured." I tell them all this and that. Then finally I'm going on and on and on, trying to make sure they feel okay. We know the depression came to an end when the mobilization for war began. We know the allies won World War Two. So, America comes through these things and somehow history will guide us through. So, by that time, they're ready to say, "Okay, thank you. Bye." Not imagining that I was going into this little tirade, but I care so much about it.

Sarah Well, and my story is not just man on the street accosting you in an airport. I was at a very important Lincoln anniversary. I'm sad to say I don't remember which one it was. It was when I was a Senate staffer, and you came to the Capitol rotunda during the Obama presidency. And, again, Barack Obama was there. The president was in the rotunda, and he walked away and you were still standing there, and all the senators swarmed you like groupies. I thought it was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen. They just all ran up to you like, oh, can you sign my book? Can you do this? They wanted to take their selfies with you, and you were so kind and generous. And I thought, okay, it's even people in power that I think recognize that you are more than a historian. And this book felt like you coming to that realization that you had lived history, not just written about it inside your marriage and inside your career. And what made you want to tell your realization of this in this book?

Doris Kearns Goodwin That's a wonderful way to put it. I think it really was in large part at the beginning because I wanted to tell my husband's story. It was both of our stories in the 60s. But in those last years of his life, right after he turned 80, he finally decided that he would open these 300 boxes we had schlepped around for our entire married life. I had peeked into them early on, so I knew they were a treasure of the 1960s because he was everywhere. He was with Kennedy. He was with Jackie. He was with Bobby. He was with JFK. He was with McCarthy in New Hampshire. He was with LBJ, most importantly. And he was really where Zelig would be at any moment in time. But he was so sad at how it ended that it took him until he turned 80 to say, okay, it's now or never, let's do it. And it really was a great adventure for us.

So it started out that I was going to help him do this. We spent every weekend going through the boxes and we decided to do it chronologically, not knowing what was going to happen. The same thing I was talking about before. History, you have to experience it as you're experiencing it, not knowing how it's going to end. So, we were able to not think about the losses that would come, the assassination deaths, and just remember what it was like in the early 60s with JFK for Dick on the plane in the white House. They were also young. And I felt like we were reliving our own lives, even though I was 12 years younger. So, I was littler than him during this period of time, but I finally catch up when I go to work for LBJ.

Beth The book is so much a portrait of your marriage, as well as a portrait of this period in time. And you tell a lot of stories about conflict inside your marriage or tension. Tension is the word that I think of when I think of the 1960s, that so many issues were gripping people's relationships because of the social fabric at that time. And Sarah had this observation as we were talking about the book, that it seems like in your reflection with him on this period, you came to see everything as much more tied together than maybe it felt when you were living that history. And I wondered if you'd be willing to talk a little bit about that.

Doris Kearns Goodwin You're absolutely right about this. I mean, what happened is we came into the project as we were through our entire marriage with two different sets of loyalties. He was loyal to the Kennedys, having been so close to Jack and with Bobby and with Jackie. And he was with Bobby when he died, so there was a real sense that this was his public life. I felt loyal to Lyndon Johnson because I was a White House fellow for him, worked for him in the White House, accompanied him to his ranch. And he's the one who made my decision to become a presidential historian. My first book was based on all those conversations with Johnson at the end of his life.

And my husband had his best moments with LBJ, working on the We Shall Overcome speech, being involved deeply in the Great Society, but had broken with him on the war. And for the rest of the time, until we started going through these boxes, there was just a sense of sadness and resentment toward Johnson for having stopped the progress he thought of the Great Society. And I couldn't break him away from it. I wanted to make him care about LBJ again. But finally, when we went through the boxes that dealt with what happened in '64, how would the Great Society came to be named, naked guy swimming in the pool, all sorts of great stories. How he was involved in writing the speech after Selma.

I remember we went to bed one night and he just, "Oh my God, I'm feeling affection for the old guy again." And it soothed those old-- it doesn't do any good to hold resentments and sadnesses. And the Great Society still lives on in our everyday lives. So, he came to an understanding much more deeply of the emotions he had felt toward LBJ. And I began to feel much more of the inspiration of JFK, just watching him grow as a candidate through those early 60s. So, it's like they became one person. What a great president they would have been, JFK and LBJ as one. My God, the guy who's inspired the guy who gets things done.

Sarah Well, and it just felt so tied together. It was these administrations tied together. I also thought-- not accidentally as you're writing this inside a marriage-- that the way you would weave in Lady Bird Johnson and she would just appear, and you would see her strengths and the role she played inside the Johnson administration. And I had no idea about your husband and Jackie and the Egyptian temple, all these beautiful moments where you see were tied up. Even the brilliance of Johnson, so often understanding how far I can push people because these protesters be it about race, be it about war, they're tied together, too. And it was something about you writing inside your marriage that you just beautifully illustrated that we are all just tied up together.

Doris Kearns Goodwin And nothing could matter more than hearing something like that, because that's really what I wanted to be able to have people do. To relive this decade and to remember not so much how it ended so sadly with campus violence and riots in the streets and the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. But more importantly, it really was a time-- you guys are too young to remember that. But it was a time when people felt powered by the conviction that they really could make a difference. And they joined the Peace Corps, and all the civil rights marchers that are sitting in and marching against segregation and for voting rights and putting their lives on the line, really, and feeling that sense of making a difference. When I was at that March on Washington in 63 when I was 20 years old. It was just the most fulfilling sense to be a part of something larger than myself. I'm carrying a sign Protestants, Jews, and Catholics unite for civil rights, and that feeling never went away in a certain sense. Maybe it's idealistic, maybe it's naive, but it allows you to do things I think that are larger than yourself. And that to me was the decade that I was describing.

Beth Well, it's certainly relevant today. I mean, you have impeccable timing with this book. I wonder, what do you see today that the '60s have something to teach us about? What feels unfinished from the '60s? I just I would love to hear your reflections on the current moment.

Doris Kearns Goodwin Yeah, I think in so many ways the unfinished love story was not only with my husband who died before we were able to complete this project and then I then finished it, it was also the unfinished story of America. We were always never quite at the promises that the ideals of our country were set before us. And there were so many promises, even in the '60s, that seemed to be met. I mean, when the Civil Rights Act passed, just think what that meant. That meant that 78 years of Jim Crow legislation was overnight overturned, and then black people could go into hotels, they could go into restaurants, they could go into department stores, things they could not do before. White only signs were taken away. And as a result of that, the whole face of the South changed. And then you think of what happened with voting rights.

And the idea that for the first time since reconstruction, all those devices that were being used to prevent blacks from registering throughout the South were taken away by the federal law. And then suddenly mayors were formed, congressmen, senators. It changed the face of the South again in that way. I just felt when reconstructing this, you felt a sense of you want people today to understand that what changes people is not so much only the leaders at the top, it's people fighting on the streets for what they want. And those movements, you not only had the civil rights movement, you had the beginning of the women's movement, you had the beginning of the gay rights movement. It was a time when people felt powered. And I'd love for us to feel that way again, because we're the ones that have to get us out of the trouble we're in now. We can't depend on people necessarily at the top. It's up to us as citizens.

Sarah How do you hold that with the end of the '60s, with the complexity of the protests and how they played into the election of Nixon? As we're facing this election, and you have protesters that are very unhappy with the incumbent president, how do you hold all that as you've taken this trip through the 60s, and we're looking at that same balancing act again?

Doris Kearns Goodwin Yeah. I think what I try to remember is that there were two phases to the antiwar movement in the '60s. The first one that ended very successfully in many ways, except that fate overtook it, was the kids who went to McCarthy's campaign in New Hampshire to run against Lyndon Johnson as a presidential candidate. And they came from all over the country. They cut their beards. They cut their long hair. The girls wore long dresses. And they worked 24 hours a day going to every household in New Hampshire and simply talking to the people, saying, "Don't you want a different direction for the country? We want you to look at McCarthy." And somehow, they were able to get 42% for him, which was a huge win. It led to Lyndon Johnson deciding to stop the bombing, which is one of the things that critics wanted; to start saying he'd negotiate with the North Vietnamese and then to withdraw from the race.

I think partly he wanted to do that not only knowing he would have a tough time in the primaries, but more importantly, if he could bring peace to Vietnam before his term ended, that's what mattered to him then. And it looked like it was going to happen. This is where faith comes in. He withdraws on March 31st. On April 1st and 2nd, he's running around New York. There are signs. Thank you. You've done a wonderful thing. All sorts of editorials saying that he sacrificed himself for the good of the country. April 3rd, the North agreed [inaudible] the table that night. The next day, he's going to go to Hawaii with his whole plane already filled with the White House staff. And then he hears that Martin Luther King had been shot and killed. And then things tumbled down. There were riots in the streets that went on for days. And then a couple of months later, Bobby Kennedy is killed, and then the peace talks stall.

And then you get the frustrations in the summer of '68, and still those same McCarthy kids come to the convention and there's peaceful demonstrations and protests. They just want a peace plank to come out of the delegations and the convention. But there's other people there who are just frustrated with the whole system, and there's some who want mayhem and some who just want anarchism. And then protests spiral out of control, the police spiral out of control. And exactly as you said, it leads to law and order and Nixon wins the election. So, all that hope was diminished. But it didn't have to be that way. I mean, faith comes in so many times in the '60s, one of those decades when history and fate continually meet. But I think we can remember that some part of that antiwar movement was very successful because they were disciplined, they were peaceful, they had a message that they wanted to deliver, and they knew public sentiment was what mattered.

Beth How often did you and your husband rewrite history? Like, imagine, but for this, here's how things might have played out.

Doris Kearns Goodwin That's a great question. I think we do that. Historians do that anyway. It's sort of the game we always play. And it's a crazy game because you can never know what would have happened. But it allows you to think. I mean, obviously thinking what would have happened if JFK had not been killed, would he have gotten the same legislation through the Congress? I don't think so. I think Johnson had that mastery. On the other hand, as Dick might have argued, would he have maybe ended the war earlier than LBJ did because he had more confidence in foreign policy, more confidence in himself? Maybe so. And what would have happened if Bobby Kennedy had not been killed? That was the person that was his closest friend.

He'd become a different person by the end of the '60s than he was when John Kennedy was still alive. There was a sense of wisdom and reflection and deep empathy that he had, and he was able to build in that coalition in 1968, black people and working-class people and all manner of people that maybe he could have put that country back together again. And, of course, what would have happened if Martin Luther King hadn't died? I mean, all these things change the face of that decade. And that's where faith comes in. And it does allow for us to talk. We used to argue about what if, what if, what if?

Sarah That role as a historian-- I read your book. I had just finished James Traub's Hubert Humphrey biography.

Doris Kearns Goodwin Interesting. Wow!

Sarah Yeah, they were very interesting to read back-to-back. And I had read Beverly Gage's J. Edgar Hoover biography. And so, you're getting all these different versions of the president, you're getting different versions of Lyndon Johnson. I mean, the legislative mastery is consistent through all three books. But they're from different perspectives. How do you sort that out when you're writing your book about your guys, as you say? How do you figure out, okay, if I'm reading this historical recollection and this sounds like a completely different person than this historical recollection-- how do you put the pieces together? You do some of that a lot with Johnson in this book, because he is definitely a good practice case. But you have to encounter of that with Lincoln and Roosevelt.

Doris Kearns Goodwin Yeah, you always do. I think what you have to figure out is, you have to get your basic understanding of the person, and then different sources will come into play. And then you have to look at what are those sources coming from, where are they biased? Just as you have a certain feeling now toward the character. Johnson's case, it was so complicated because he was so complicated. As Bill Moyers said, they were like 13 or 15 different LBJs you could encounter in any one day. One moment, compassionate, one moment yelling at somebody and publicly humiliating them. And then the next day sending a Cadillac to their house to apologize for having done that.

Sarah I was glad when I got to that chapter because I was like, okay, well, because that's how I feels as I'm reading all these books. And he was just like, there's 13. I'm like, good, I've checked off several through these different memoirs and biographies.

Doris Kearns Goodwin I think more unusual than most characters, he had that manic kind of excitement and energy. He had moments of depression. He had moments of kindness and compassion. He had moments of meanness. Dick and I talked a lot about that because at times he really was upset with Dick because Dick became a public figure. People knew that he was writing these speeches, and Johnson wanted it to be seen like nobody helped him to write the speeches. And he was very crediting Dick in private. I'm so proud that you're there. But then once his name got mentioned by somebody else, he got mad at him. He said his name wasn't even Goodwin, it was Goodman. As if he was some low down on the totem pole. And then the next day, though, he probably invited him to the ranch and tried to make up for it.

I didn't experience that complete change of mood. I did experience in the end, though, when he was wanting me to come to work for him full time at the ranch, and I wanted to go back to Harvard and start teaching, and I really wanted to work for him, but I wanted to be part time. And he kept saying, it's all or nothing. All or nothing. And when finally at Christmas vacation before January, when he was going to leave the office, and I still was holding out that I wanted to come part time-- I would have been terrible if I'd lost this opportunity. I now look on it how crazy it was. But nonetheless, I was hoping for that. And he was then just turned against me by not talking to me. It was ice rather than fire, and Dick and I talked about that. I'd be in a room with him at the ranch, I was living there, and he would talk to everyone else but me, wouldn't look at me.

And then finally, one day, Ladybird came over, she said, "Don't worry, I know what he's doing. It's going to be all right." And then somehow, within minutes, he came over with his same old warm self again. And then finally, the last day of his presidency, he called me into the Oval Office and he said, all right, part time. And so, it was a wonderful experience. I'm so glad that I did it. I was able to go down on weekends and spend summer vacations there and live on the ranch for part of the time, be in Austin part of the time and get to know Ladybird as well as Lyndon Johnson. And as you mentioned earlier, she was an incredible figure. Without her, he couldn't have had the presidency he did, because she's constantly soothed ruffled feathers whenever she saw something happening.

Sarah Well, it seemed like that was his secret power, that he held all these different complexities. It was like through those he could see what levers other people needed to have pushed and pulled.

Doris Kearns Goodwin That's exactly right. And one of the things that mattered to me so much with Ladybird, is many years later her daughter Lucy called me one day after a Team of Rivals had been published, and she told me that Ladybird had been listening to it in audio. She had a stroke, so she couldn't speak anymore, and she couldn't read anymore. So, she was able, however, to listen to audiobooks, and she wanted to tell me how much she loved it. I couldn't imagine what was going to happen. And then there was just a pause and Lucy said, just wait a minute. And then I heard her clapping on the other end, and it just meant so much to come full circle from those long days before.

I call Lucy up later. Lucy is so dramatic like her father. So, I said, "What do you remember about that call?" And she said, "Oh, I remember. She started clapping slowly, more slowly, louder, louder. More intensity, more intensity. She wanted to let you know how proud she was of you and how you were part of our family again." And those are the moments when all these things, you know, you take for granted. When you're in your 20s, you're working with a president, you're living down there at the ranch. The older you get, the more you realize what a great privilege it was to be in their presence for all that period of time.

Sarah That story made me cry.

[Music Interlude]

Beth I wonder how different it was. You examine artifacts for your work all the time, but to have them be so personal, to have them carry the energy of these moments that you lived that were integral to your marriage. What was that like and how did it differ from other projects that you've worked on?

Doris Kearns Goodwin You're right. I mean, most of the stories that I've done have required looking at letters and diaries and journals and trying to sort out what things really matter. And then I would talk to the guys who I was studying" Lincoln and FDR or Teddy Roosevelt, but they never answered me when I would ask them questions. Now my guys right across from me, talking to me, arguing with me, correcting me, but also, I'm actually holding some of these things. The draft of the speech that LBJ gave to the joint session of Congress after Selma, when the Alabama state troopers had gone after the peaceful marchers. And we all saw it on television, and we saw them with clubs and whips going with their horses and hospitalizing so many of them. It felt like it wasn't the America we knew. And Johnson decides to give a speech a week later, and Dick is tasked with writing that speech and helping him with it.

And just watching the draft of that speech, which starts so incredibly, "I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy." How he wrote that in one day as that every now and then history and fate made it a certain time in a certain place. So, it was in Lexington and Concord. So, it was in Appomattox. So it was in Selma, Alabama. And I saw his typewriting and the little changes made on it, and then afterward read a telegram that Martin Luther King had sent to him about that speech and about another one at Howard University, the actual telegram you're holding in your hands. So, it was a pretty heavy experience to actually... And then the diaries I was reading were my husband's diaries, they're journals, when he's talking to Jackie, when he's talking to Bobby. Letters that are written from Jackie. And the actual handwritten letter is there. So, it was a much more intense experience, even though it was like a miniature archive of the ones that I went through for all my other big guys.

Sarah Well, he got the same treatment your big guys got. When I finished Team of Rivals, I was on a car trip with my husband and I was weeping. And he was like, "You knew the ending of this book. You knew what was going to happen." I was like, "You don't understand. You just fall for it." And that's how it felt with your husband. I just became so enamored with him and the way he saw the world and the way he moved through these historical moments. And it's like with the speechwriting, because you hear the word speechwriter-- and I don't really think it does it justice to those moments that you're describing and what happened when he put words to things. And I wondered, as you were doing this work and watching politics now, did he still think speechwriting had the impact? Our media environment is so different. And the way people take in the State of the Union or a campaign speech or even an address to the nation, they're going to get it in snippets on TikTok or Instagram and not take it in in the same way. Did he see that change? Did he think it was real change, or did he think, no, what the president still says has the same impact?

Doris Kearns Goodwin I think he was beginning before he died to see that even when a speech was given, and you have it on a different cable network, having been discussed, the pundits are kind of criticizing it even before it's finished, right?

Sarah Yeah.

Doris Kearns Goodwin Not a sense to just absorb it. I think back on FDR when he gave his fireside chat, Saul Bellow, the novelist, said, "You could walk down the street on a hot Chicago night and you could look in the window of everybody who was staring at their radio, and they were in the kitchen or the living room, and you could hear his voice come out, and you would keep walking and not miss a word of what he was saying." And it was a construction worker who came home one day and his partner said, "Why are you leaving early?" He said, "Because my president, he's coming to speak to me in my living room tonight. It's only right I'd be there to greet him when he comes." So that was that sense of what radio was able to do. And then you had the television with JFK and Ronald Reagan, and you still had it at big moments like the We Shall Overcome speech or a State of the Union speech. But still, what you need even more than the speechwriter, is leaders with convictions that they want to do something greater than themselves. And Dick said, "You could never write for Lyndon Johnson what he wrote, unless Lyndon Johnson believed in civil rights, believed very deeply in it."

And that was the thing at the end of his life, when I was with him on the ranch and he was talking about knowing that the war had cut his legacy into, but just hoping that people would remember him for civil rights. And they have. I mean, now historians’ polls are bringing him up because of all the domestic achievements of the Great Society, Medicare and Medicaid, aid to education, civil rights, voting rights, NPR, PBS. Unbelievable what he was able to get through. But he believed in it. He believed in trying to make poverty go away and make affluence shared more. He believed in civil rights. As Dick said, you couldn't write as a speech.

Suppose you took Patrick Henry, who says, "Give me liberty or give me death" on the eve of the revolution and he's speaking to a Chamber of Commerce meeting in a prosperous time. He's up there, "Give me liberty or give me death." That wouldn't mean anything. So, the time matters and moments matter. But we're certainly in a time now when words are diminished. People say something in the morning, and then they take it back in the afternoon. And then by the next day, they've said they never said it. And that's the real scary thing because words can inspire, but words can also divide. And we're seeing the divisive part of words today.

Sarah Well, and I think the gift you've given to Johnson's legacy is understanding how media can flatten if it's not their best medium. So, if you just watch television clips of Johnson, you're going to get one perception. But that exchange you wrote about with George Wallace, I was cackling. I was cackling, reading the book. It's so good. And you just get a sense of him. You never get from watching archival footage of him just speaking to the American people. It's just so unfortunate that media can manipulate so much about these very, very complex historical figures.

Doris Kearns Goodwin Well, you're absolutely right. In fact, technology affects the way a president speaks to the nation. I mean, Lincoln was lucky that in his time, the written word was king. If you wrote a speech, then everybody would have a pamphlet of that speech. They'd read it in their homes aloud. And so, that meant that the words meant even more. Teddy Roosevelt comes along when the national newspapers are just coming into being. And he's great with his short phrases, speaks softly and carry a big stick. Or the square deal for the rich and the poor. And he's got a kind of charisma, and he gives the same message over and over again. And then FDR comes the radio. As I said, JFK and Ronald Reagan for television. And Lyndon Johnson's greatest strength was a one on one with persons. I mean, that treatment, as they famously said, he could just know what it was that would make you change your mind and go with him on something.

He knew what deals to make. These were the days when transparency wasn't around. So, you could say, okay, Everett Dirksen, you come with me on this bill on civil rights. And you bring Republicans to join the Democrats to break the filibuster. What do you want? You want me to [inaudible]? You want a public works project? You want me to come to Springfield? I'll do all of it. But finally, he says, "Everett, you come with me on this bill, and 200 years from now, schoolchildren will know only two names: Abraham Lincoln and Everett Dirksen." How can he resist? And that's what Johnson had, charm and bullying and threats and all things combined. And it doesn't show on television the same thing.

Beth Well, you mentioned his legacy. Famously, the Biden administration has been thinking about legacy from the beginning, seeking your counsel and others about how history might remember them. Is it too soon to assess some of that, or are you able, in real time, to think about what the big moments might be from the past four years?

Doris Kearns Goodwin One of the things that happens, I think, in general with presidential legacies, is it does take sometimes even a generation. Because if there's a crisis during the time, as was true with the war in Vietnam, or say, you take Truman's legacy, he went out so unpopular. And then as time went on, people realized what he had done to integrate the army, the Cold War, aid to Greece and Turkey, the Marshall Plan. There was so much that we didn't think about at the moment when he was leaving. I think we can know, obviously, what substantive changes that were made during the Biden administration in Congress. The big legislation that passed, which many think was next in size to the Great Society.

I think the difference between the '60s and now, though, is that when those bills were passed in the '60s, they were part of a movement in society, they were part of a civil rights movement. And so, people felt that they were part of the success of those bills. So, there was a sense of forward moving that the whole country was feeling. We were feeling better. And when the Voting Rights Act passed, all over the country, people felt, yeah, we've done something. The majority felt that way. Here you've still got a polarized country. The bills passed by a squeaky minority, and it's not a feeling that it's coming up from the ground up. It was some deals that were made in Congress. So, it doesn't have the same feeling now, but they will have a lasting measure, I think, when we look back at them later.

Sarah My favorite, favorite parts of the book is when you talk about Johnson and the way he treated Truman as he came to the end of his life, how he treated other senators that he knew were looking out for their legacy, and he had this ever-present perception of getting older and being forgotten. And I just thought it was so-- to read this as your husband was in his 80s, you're now in your 80s. We have a president in his 80s. How is all of that coming together for you? Because something tells me if you'd written this book in your 20s, you wouldn't have included that treatment of Johnson and Truman. And you are incredible. And this book is so good and such a gift and infused with wisdom. So how are you thinking about this conversation we're having around these two candidates and generally in America about age right now?

Doris Kearns Goodwin I think one of the things you're referencing was, to me, one of the most moving moments too when Johnson went to sign the Medicare Act. He deliberately went to Independence, Missouri, because he wanted to be where Truman's house was, because Truman was the first person who really put his own power behind the whole idea of a health insurance plan. And Truman was old at that time. He said not many people were coming to see him, and it meant so much to him to know that he was being remembered in this way. And Johnson felt that, I think, knowing that he was getting older. And I think for me, too, I think the reason this mattered to me so much, to work for my husband, was that everybody wants to leave something behind. I mean, it may not be like Mount Rushmore, it may not be in currency the way we have that now, or in movies the way that the great presidents are remembered. But it's going to be through the stories that your children and your grandchildren tell about you.

So that for me to know that I could help to make the stories of Dick, that my kids knew some of these stories, but I didn't even know a lot of these stories until we went in-depth into all these materials, that he comes alive so that they can then tell their children. And for me too, just wanting to be remembered as somebody who cared enough about history, to love it my whole life and try to make other people feel what it was like to live in another era. So, you feel larger than yourself when you're partly in the Civil War, you're partly in the depression, you're partly in World War Two. It matters. I think we all want to be remembered somehow. So that when you get older, I think it matters even more, because what are you leaving behind? And we all want to leave behind a legacy. It may be a legacy of kindness and compassion and maybe a legacy of holding the family together. It may be a legacy of the children you do bring into the world or the work you do. But whatever it is, you want people to know you lived a good life if you can.

Sarah Well, some of those stories, I'm just going to treat as my own personal family stories. That story about the ice skating with Robert Kennedy, I'm just going to tell that like it happened to somebody in my family. That story was incredible.

Doris Kearns Goodwin I know. Just the idea that Bobby came in one day when Dick was having a drink with Jackie because they were good friends and wondering, what is Dick Goodwin doing here? This is before they became really good friends. And then he suddenly says, "Well, let's go ice skating. We were supposed to go ice skating." And he says to Dick, "Do you know how to ice skate?" Dick says, no. He comes from Brookline, Massachusetts. He was not an ice skater. So, he said, "Well, you can rent skates there." And he had to watch them twirling around the ice-skating park in Central Park. And then finally Bobby said, "Let's go for a drink." They go to the Plaza Hotel.

And Bobby was beginning to learn a lot after JFK died about science and astronomy. And he starts talking about things traveling faster than the speed of light. Dick knew a lot about science. He said, "No, they don't," Bobby said, "Yes they do." It's like they're jousting for Jackie's attention and Jackie just watching these two go back and forth. Finally, they bet a case of champagne on it. They call the science advisor to JFK, who of course confirms that Dick was right. And then, as Dick said, "I never got the case of champagne, but my best friend was formed in Bobby." A few weeks later, he invited him to go to South America with him. And the two of them became really, really close buddies. But it was a fun story. That's how their relationship began.

Sarah Oh my gosh.

Beth Whenever you use the word fate, I find it very settling. And I think that has to be part of what has made you so successful that you combine this rigorous scholarship and exacting analysis with a lot of care and love for the country. You and your family have been in the arena. You're not just a cold observer. And at the same time, there is a release of control. The reality that life unfolds as it unfolds, even with our best efforts and our greatest dedication. So, I just wonder, as you think about people who will do this work in the future, what advice do you have for future presidential historians, future writers who try to help us make sense of our past, as you have?

Doris Kearns Goodwin Yeah, it's going to be so different for them, because I think when I look at the sources that matter the most, for me, it really are letters and diaries. There's something about looking over the shoulder of a diary or reading what they said at the time. And, for example, when I was doing Lincoln, the ability to have Seward and Chase and Bates have diaries and letters that they wrote to their family, you feel like you're a viewer of their life, you hear the emotions, not just what they said happened. And now there'll be emails that people may save or may not save. There may be tweets that save. We'll know a lot more about how the person walked and talked. When we were working on the movie on Lincoln, based in part on Team of Rivals, the only reason we knew that Lincoln spoke with a high register voice was because somebody said he did.

We never heard him, of course. We knew he walked like a laborer, coming home at the end of a hard day because somebody described that. So, Daniel Day-Lewis allowed himself to do that. He walked that way. He talked that way- the high-pitched voice. So, we'll know a lot more about us, but will we know the intimate details that come when you share a letter, as Seward, the Secretary of State, did for Lincoln? He wrote to his wife almost every night because he was in Washington. She was back in Auburn, New York. I'm seeing the moon, and I'm thinking about you. At the same time, he's saying, this is what Lincoln did today. This is what I'm mad about. This happened today. I don't know what it's going to be like, and there'll be so much material for them to sort through. I mean, it was bad enough for me to go to these big presidential libraries, and there's so much stuff. It'll be monumentally more.

But the hope is that still what you want from a historian is a narrative story that makes people feel connected, and they feel sad when the person dies, or they feel mad when the person does something that they are disappointed in, that they're part of their story. And I think storytelling will still be the skill that takes people becoming historians to bring it to-- I wish everybody could have a great history teacher. I had one in high school. She made me feel like she loved history so much that when she talked to us about Lincoln, she actually cried when he died. I thought she must have known him. How could she cry when he dies? And that's magic. When you can tell a story like that. And I think what you said before is so true. The best thing you could hope when you write a book is that you don't want the person to die at the end because you're part of their life.

And then they really do influence you and some of their traits, you can Revere. Like Lincoln's empathy and his courage and his resilience and his ambition for something larger than himself. I felt like it was better in his presence in a certain sense. So, I mean, all these people have now come together in a certain sense. And you're right, as you said at the beginning, it was such a treasure for me to be able to make those talents or whatever skills I've had over the lifetime and experience, bring to bear for something that mattered so much to me, which was my husband and his legacy and the legacy of the '60s. That decade that mattered so much to both of us that I really do think has great lessons for us in the future.

Sarah Well, you absolutely have a gift. And you made me feel so much better just then, because I have to tell you one time I was watching the Civil War, the big Ken Burns documentary, and Shelby Foote with that gray hair and the accent, and he's telling these stories. And I looked at my husband and I said, "Wait, was he there?" And he was like, "Sarah, do the math." And I'm like, "But he's so convincing." I was like, "I don't know. I thought maybe he was a little boy carrying a flag. I don't know." You just felt like he had been in the room. He knew these people inside and out. And that's exactly how I feel when I read your books. I'm like, "I must have got in a time machine." I feel like I was there. She was there. She's conveying the emotion of the moment. You're just such a master historian and storyteller, and we cannot thank you enough. What an honor to have you on our show.

Doris Kearns Goodwin I can't thank you enough. What a wonderful time this has been with both of you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

[Music Interlude]

Sarah We'll be back in your ears next week with new episodes, including the finale of our Democracy in America's slow read along to cap off the year, and a wonderful conversation about friendship with New York Times reporter Anna Goldfarb.

[Music Interlude]

Sarah: Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production.

Beth: Alise Napp is our Managing Director. Maggie Penton is our Director of Community Engagement.

Sarah: Xander Singh is the composer of our theme music with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima.

Beth: Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers:

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