Transcripts For CSPAN2 Summer Series With Doris Kearns Goodwin 20240701

the whole thing she could have walked out anytime and she clearly wanted to stay and it was i knew she was fighting for attention and making her point. now, by 1917 wilson was bringing the country into war and it was at this time he had a major shift and he had been clinging to the more conservative wing of the suffragettes for years who believed in state-by-state adoption but beginning in 1917 he was coming around for two big reasons, first of all, we were citing fighting in europe for peace and freedom over there and he said how can we not have half the women in this country vote and that seemed to be a huge mistake to him. the second thing he saw during the war, once we were in it, was the role women was plain that were leaving the house for work and doing a lot of good works for the war movement so wilson had an overnight change of heart and actually began actively campaigning for the 19th amendment. such that, even by the time he came out and called another session of congress and told them this was a war measure that that is how important it was. we had to have national suffra suffrage, universal suffrage in the united states because of the war and he thought that would be a good way to get everybody to rally behind it. within a year it was a done deal and even alice paul came around to thank woodrow wilson for it. i think he was late to the party but once he got there he had the lampshade on. [laughter] >> we will move on now. >> but what i'm -- >> i'm sorry ma'am, we go to the next question very thank you. >> good afternoon. what an honor to hear you and to be able to ask you a question. mr. berg, you alluded briefly to the answer to this regarding president wilson at princeton but these three presidents, what was their relationship or comp kid in relationship status and class? we get a sense that tr was with the common man but not of the common man and he was a harvard man, taft was a yield man but we know -- >> princeton man it's been a guest we know tr was friends with jake who brought him down to the lower east side where my great-grandparents set up shop 100 years ago. i am wondering -- on a specific note, did the immigrant lower classes where they part of the america of these presidents? what was the class issue? >> great question. what happened for theater roosevelt was that when he first went to harvard he kind of was a prick and thought he should be just dealing with the people of his class but underlying that kind of attitude from that he came from a wealthy family and from new york but his father had always been interested in social justice and not doing the real estate business but had become a philanthropist and worked with young newsboys and that instinct was somewhat in teddy but then the real place where he began to shift away from that harvard class mentality was that he became a state legislator right after congress and at first went in with the irish guys with my forbears whether tobacco and their cigars were of a different class than the ones he wanted to and he started becoming a histrionic rhetoric guy even in the state legislator yelling and screaming about the political bosses and was always against that and at a certain point he realized that he wasn't getting anything done because he wasn't reaching across these other people and said he was or came a proper and had to learn how to deal with people of all different classes and just as you said, jacob rees, became his great friend and originally he was against regulation of the tenements that were making cigars because he was from that laissez-faire tradition and saw the conditions of most that changed his mind and was for regulation. these reporters when he became police commissioner where people were living in the middle of the night what helped him a lot was that he had so many different jobs and then when he was in the rough riders he had a whole group of people with him and kept his relationship with these reporters who are much more involved in the nitty-gritty then he was and they were able to criticize him which was the key, rather than just becoming sycophantic towards him pick my favorite one was the sky, reverend dooley who wrote in a column said the roughriders book and he said he put himself so much in the center of the action that it was as if you were the only person in cuba and he should've called it alone in cuba and what does teddy do but he writes them and says i regret to tell you my wife and my entire family love your view of my book and now you owe me one and i want to me to come here and meet me. through the reporters and through people like jacob reese and people who are involved in the settlement houses and he began to see the conditions of life and later said when he gave his talk that my harvard buddies think that my talks are too folksy and that they are homely but i know i'm reaching people and i now know those people and took train trips months at a time going around the country and talking to people in village stations waving to people in the trains and even stand up when he was in the middle of lunch and at one point he said he was waving so much in these people seem so indifferent and cold but it turned out it was a herd of cows that he was frantically waving at but -- [laughter] but something had to jar him away from that background just as fdr's polio transformed. [audio difficulties] and then he reached out to other people. [audio difficulties] >> wilson did not believing great class structure from a lower middle-class being a husband henry and minister son but he did believe in the educated class and that was a class a matter for him and as i said before this man who spent most of his life and career on a college campus either as a student, professor or president this is a man who believed that was the great leveler of all playing fields in this country. and so, the interesting thing when wilson became a politician and it was a really fascinating tool he used, as a politician he never spoke down to the audien audience. he never got folksy. he always used rather elevated language and spoke invariably without any notes and he would just get out there and he could deliver an hour, hour and a half speech with a card with five little bullets on it and speak in perfect sentences, heightened vocabulary, metaphors left and right and he could just do it and the fans loved it. they understood it and they felt elevated by it and woodrow wilson, you see, never look down on them. that was a wonderful thing for them and a great tool he used. as such he was pretty effective in that regard. >> lucky for roosevelt he did speak with notes. in fact, in 1912 when he was campaigning he had his 50 page speech in his pocket when an assassin shot him in the chest and the bullet, he went to the hospital and the bullet remained within him but he still delivered this to our speech from his notes despite bleeding inside but because he had the 50 pages of his speech in his pocket and an spectacle glass it went upward rather than probably killed him on the spot so they each have their own way of talking and living. [laughter] i'm afraid we only have time for one more question. >> for mr. berg, about wilson in the league of nations. the thought is i have heard he was so intransigent, not willing to accept some of the reservations and i am wondering if you could reflect on that and first i want to thank you because i'm reading [inaudible] [audio difficulties] choose whatever part you would like but either comparisons between tr and fdr similarities and dissimilarities, reflections given that yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the killing of kennedy and how in the world do we get to campaign-finance reform? everyone is so disheartened about where we are so what is the or what you see in the future. thank you so much. >> i don't think this is in my job description to answer that question. [laughter] but i heard something about the league of nations summer and there's so woodrow wilson just fully wanted to have passed so that we might have fought the war to end all wars. wilson wasn't intransigent and i think for a couple of reasons. one of which he was a pretty stubborn guy, as a rule but when he was over in paris and was there for six months i should add the president of the united states left the country about six months to negotiate this treaty and among month five and six when he has a country to get home to he began to make some, rises, small ones and one or two very big compromises in the end. he came back and when he found this senate that was going to be completely unwilling to accept the treaty with his lead that is a moment i think the curtain came down for wilson and he said i am not giving away another thing and this congressional battle went on for weeks which is what prompted his tour of the country and even after his stroke and after he had come home the battle still went on in the senate and wilson even though compromises were presented when not by them and at the very end the dean of the republican party of the head of the foreign relations committee, henry talbot lodge, came in with an 11 hour compromise which was a few sentences and largely seen as tactical and wilson simply would not buy it. i feel, he is the stuff of greek tragedy that he did not just suit shoot himself in the foot but truly stabbed himself in the heart. >> you know, i think what that raises is when we live with these people for so long we really do end up carrying about them so when they disappoint you and they do things that you wish they had not done and obviously, i adored franklin roosevelt and eleanor and yet, wishing that fdr had opened the doors for more jewish refugees before hitler closed the door forever and wishing he had not incarcerated the japanese-americans and yet, balancing in the end that he was the allied leader that won world war ii, ended the threat of adolf hitler the greatest threat to civilization and even when i write these books sometimes my kids say they used to come in and hear me frankly, just be nicer to eleanor, she really loves you. eleanor, forget that affair that happened so long ago. and similarly with theater roosevelt while i have such respect for his domestic policy and just his persona and his views on war i have no respect for him and he would say the victories of war were greater than the victories of peace at any moment. he had that romanticized nation of war. i have a son who graduated from harvard college in june of 01 it was going to go to law school but september 11 happened and he volunteered for the army the next day and he was up but saloon later in baghdad and later got a bronze star and later went back to afghanistan but importantly for this discussion he wrote his honored thesis on theodore roosevelt and loved him but after hearing back from combat he said he could never understand having been in combat how anyone could romanticize combat. there are times when he does want to say, stop, what is the matter with you but that is part of the glory of being a biographer. all human beings have their strengths and weaknesses and it is up to us to really forget the part this week and not bring it up but i can never choose someone ultimately to write about the day i did not overwhelmingly want to be with because i live them for so long. i can never write about hitler or stalin. luckily, i found people that i overwhelmingly feel affection and liking for and when they do these things that disappoint you it's even more because you feel like you know them and if you had been there you could have changed them but you can't but this will not be the last word but hold on one second print we've been given a ten minute reprieve so those who wanted to ask questions can come back and ask those questions. i want to get the chance to those people who were in line first. go ahead, sir. >> my name is manny potential, serve the forgotten hollywood book service but what an inspiration to hear, to everyone here at this affair. [applause] just a very simple question. you both speak to the importance of eugene v debs in the election of 1912 regarding wilson, taft and roosevelt. >> well,. >> 900,000 votes. >> he did mighty well pit he was extreme important and i think this has more than just paprika in the big stew of that election which was a really fascinatin fascinating -- this was an election really of ideas and was so much progressivism in the air. debs becomes extreme important in wilson's life later on because he is one of those people who will be arrested under the wilson law with alien and sedition laws for speaking seditious lady and debs when he was delivering a speech said i know i will be arrested for this and now i will tell you, i've gone through the speech he gave at least 12, maybe 20 times and i keep looking for the sedition but i just can't find it. he was basically telling the people some workers that this was a capitalist war and that they did not have to be cannon fodder in it. for that he was arrested and was put in jail and was found guilty with the supreme court and they came down against him nine-nothing and he was in prison and this will tell you a lot about woodrow wilson that the war is now over and woodrow wilson has had a stroke and is in the white house and about to leave the white house and people in his government and his very attorney general who basically had put debs into jail came to him and said, mr. president, debs is an old man now and sick and has served his time in the war is over and is clearly not a danger any longer and here is the pardon all written and all you have to do is put your signature on it and where the signature would go wilson pulled out a pen and wrote denied. you didn't cross wilson more than once. it was simply because wilson felt once we had gone to war that sort of speech, telling people not to go to war, that was sedition to him. he said as long as i am in charge of 2 million people in their lives i cannot let anyone speak out against them and that is why he was just in transit on the subject. >> doors, you answered part of this question when he said no one is perfect, no president is perfect. i've written of book called [inaudible] and deals with aggressive's and their relationship with race and most of them had poor records in my estimations especially woodrow wilson but you mentioned tr in the roughriders and that could very easily be called teddy roosevelt and the buffalo soldiers and as many black soldiers were really in puerto rico as whites. woodrow wilson, my gosh, he set race back numbers of years and he wanted to go back pre- reconstruction. would you comment on each of those? >> no, i agree that theodore roosevelt one point had a symbolic gesture where he had invited booker t. washington to dinner and it produced such outrage in the south and in other parts of the country that there was this equality of a social relationship that he back down, i think. he also held imperialist attitudes, racist attitudes and these people are men unfortunately of their generation and his record on race there was a riot in brownsville and the group of blacks were arrested because they cannot figure out who started it and it was wrong and he was wrong and these are those moments where you are absolutely right where all that you can say is that you have to remember the context in which they are leading. even abraham lincoln in the 1850s was against obviously against intermarriage and against blacks sitting on juries and for the black laws and you just say how could lincoln have done this but the important thing is he grew from those attitudes and eventually allowed the blacks to come in and they were so important as soldiers in the army and it change the whole course of the war in many ways and of course the issue of emancipation proclamation but there is no answering for them but to paint a context in which they are ruling and seeing if they are way behind the times. or sometimes if you're lucky the person who is dealing with is ahead of that time. >> this has been such a magnificent high-level conversation and i want to go to a moment of history and passion at a different level. what did it feel to be like in fenway park? [laughter] >> having been a passionate baseball fan all my life and having only experienced one victory with the brooklyn dodgers in 1955, and then obviously i chose another team after the dodgers abandoned us and went to california and i chose harvard almost like falling in love again with the boston red sox and had all those years where we lost and lost and we lost and almost one just like the brooklyn dodgers but finally we win in 04 and 07 but we have these season tickets to the game so we were at every game and every playoff and every division and to be in our town and see them winning and share it with boston, that is what is so great about baseball and somebody asked me what would you have done if the dodgers had been against the red sox and how would you have dealt with a divided loyalty but i thought about it in my answer was that the dodgers were my first love and my father growing up in brooklyn talking about how to keep score as many of you know and that's where my love of history began and that's where we began to record from the history of the brooklyn dodgers game going everything a play in excruciating detail and maybe feel i was telling of a fabulous story so they were my first love and so too i had a first love of a boyfriend before i married my husband but the boston red sox has not been my sustaining love for almost 40 years and as my husband, i've been married to 438 years but the boston red sox would be my love now. [laughter] >> we have time for one more. >> on that note, i've got to tell you something, i did not you have a co-author so i brought one gift to you but that is baseball, my love for you is through your writing and all would you have done and i always feel you are the [inaudible] of the morning show. >> you cannot give me a better compliment than that. i loved him so much. >> you are able to speak to us and we were able to understand and i loved the your [inaudible] on baseball. my wife and i's first state to work to a cleveland indian game and we went to the boston red sox farm team in the 70s an and -- >> and you are still married. >> hooray. [crowd boos] but we have this great thing that we have every summer and is called the midnight sun baseball game that starts at 1030 at night and plays so my gift to you is to ask for a gold pin or hat. >> beautiful, thank you. >> an invitation to you if you would like to come to a midnight sun baseball game in fairbanks, alaska. june 21, every year and there is if there is a way we could get you up there it be so great. >> thank you. thank you. i will absolutely wear the hat. [applause] >> any closing comments from our history historians? >> just what a pleasure to have this conversation. [applause] >> that was pulitzer prize winning historian doris kearns goodwin from the 2013 miami book festival. doctor goodwin has been a regular on book tv and c-span over the years appearing over 60 times and all of her book discussions are available to watch online app booktv.org. we have one more program we want to show you and this is from the 2018 national book festival. she discusses her book leadership in turbulent times which looked at how american presidents have dealt with crises. [applause] >> good afternoon. on behalf of the library of congress we would like to express our deep gratitude to aarp for making this wasn't asian possible. aarp has been a long time of the library's educational initiative and we are very grateful for that. it is now my honor to introduce the cochairmen of the national book festival and in the 50 couple passion of reading and literature. david rubenstein. >> thank you. we are honored, very honored to have one of our countries foremost historians and writers, biographers here, doris kearns goodwin, thank you for coming to ours. [applause] how many people here have read team of rivals? >> how many have read bully pulpit? wow. how many people have read her book on lyndon johnson? what about the kennedys and the fitzgeralds? and how many people here agree that she is one of our foremost writers? [applause] for those who don't know her background very briefly she grew up in new york, brooklyn and ultimately went to colby college and got her phd at harvard and was a white house fellow in the johnson administration and helped president johnson with his memoirs and then ultimately went back to teach at harvard and for the last number of years she has been writing extraordinarily well received and terrific biographies and histories and winner of the pulitzer prize for one of your books as well. you will be writing a new book coming out september 18 on leadership and it is about a book on the leadership skills of people you have written about print what is abraham lincoln, one is to the roosevelt and one is frank and roosevelt and the other is lyndon johnson so we will talk about that today and i wanted to ask you first, why do we decide to write a book about four different people and you've already written books but why not pick someone new? >> what happened is each time i finished writing one of the books and i have to take all of that person's books out of my study to make room for the next guy i felt like i was betraying the person who was there before us and it's like having an old boyfriend and moving to a new boyfriend so i figured what if i could keep my guys together this time instead of doing that but i knew i would have to do it by having a chance to look at them anew in a new way and i've always been interested in leadership and once upon a time when went to graduate school we would stay up late at night discussing questions about leadership and in those days your reading plato and aristotle in you wonder where the ambition comes from and is the man at the time or the times make the man or our leadership traits appoint or made and then we forget about boys and girls what was going on in the world but those of the things are really interested us so i decided what if i look for these guys and i do call them my guys because maybe it seems disrespectful but i've lived with them so long that it feels familiars what if i just take them and look at through them exclusive lens of leadership and so it became a great project for me and took five years not as long as some of the others but not as short as i thought because i did not know as much and i loved every minute of it. it's really been a great -- >> the only one of these presidents that you actually knew of course was lyndon johnson and before we get into the book you might relate how you actually came to know lyndon johnson and how you almost lost your job from an article you wrote. >> sure, one was chosen as a white house fellow i was 24 years old and we had big dance and was a fabulous program and wesley clark and we had a big dance of white house the night i was selected he dance with me that night and that's not peculiar because there were only three women out of the 16 fellows but he whispered he wanted me to be assigned directly to him and white house but it was not to be that simple. in the monthly note to my selection like many younger people i was a graduate student at harvard and had been active in the anti- vietnam movement and written an article against lbj and he had not heard a thing but it's only came out two days after the dance in the white house and the title of the article was how to remove lyndon johnson from power? i was certain he would pick me out of the program but instead surprisingly he said bring her down here for a year and if i can't win her over, no one can. eventually i did work for him in the white house and then went to the land to help them with his memoirs in the last years and was most extraordinary experience and the most formidable interesting, strange, billion powerful character i've ever met and what a privilege it was to spend so many hours with this lion of a man for it i think the empathy i began to feel for him despite not change my mind about the war in vietnam is what i hope i carry over when i went to each president after him and probably might not have been a presidential historian had not been for lyndon johnson. >> let's talk about each of these presidents and do it in this way but what you've done in your book is he of each of these four presidents and you have to make it simple there are three parts to each description of the book or of the presidents. one is how they were educated and grew up and whether they were asked in for greatness or not and people thought they might be. second, what was the problem and their life that depress them or maybe thought they were not going anywhere in life and they were even suicidal at points and third, what challenges they met as presidents that showed they had a great leadership skills so let's go through lincoln first. lincoln grew up not in a wealthy family. his father tried to educate him so what was it like growing up as the son of mr. lincoln? >> the circumstances that lincoln grew up in it took enormous perseverance and determination to overcome. it was also christian school in illinois then so the only way you could go to school was to pay a certain amount so he never went that path at the age of nine or ten in school because of family, not only could they not afforded but the father thought it was a waste of time for someone to educate themselves when he should be working in the field. and meant lincoln had to scour the countryside for books and get everything he could lay his hands on at one point he walked 16 miles to get a certain book that he wanted to have and in the certain sense somehow books became much more important to him as a result of that and it was said when he got copy of the king james bible or shakespeare's place was so excited he cannot eat and he cannot sleep and there was a sense in which books carry him to places he could never go and through books he began to develop an alternative thought for what he might be in life. he was really smart and in those few years he was without fear and i thought that is where the cabinets came from and after a while she was teaching the other kids in his class rather than the teacher because he learned so much but in a certain sense once he started reading about other people and places he began to think maybe i can have another life other than shucking corn for splitting rails and he had to get away from the father and he finally left the home and he cannot leave and he finally left and went to new salem and that is where his political career began. and he writes is amazing handbill that he gives out to the people explaining why he is running and said every man and he is 23 years old, every man had this peculiar ambition and mine is to be truly esteemed of by my fellow man to do something worthy to get their esteem and you can think that way when you're 23 and he was young and unknown and if you don't put me in office i won't be disappointed that much because i had so much disappointment in my life but if you do i promise i will do everything to pay you back and then he said if i don't win this time i will try five, six more times until it is too embarrassing and too humiliating and then i will never try again. he did it when the first time that he didn't dampen his ambitions in the second time he tried he met more people and they had seen the kind of person he was in the kindness and humility in the storytelling ability and the patients and he wins at next election and that is the beginning of his extraordinary political career. >> you point out that he wasn't educated in the traditional sense of going to school in law school and graduate school but is there a reason to think that may be not going to school has enabled you to be a great writer? he wrote the gettysburg address without having been educated so what was a secret behind this ability with words and people to write so eloquently? >> he probably had a gift for the rhythm of language. i think maybe you are born with that but more importantly he read great books. he was not spending his time reading a lot of horizontal books but just reading things like the bible, great poetry and shakespeare and he dived so deeply into them and said whenever he read something that he really loved he wanted to read it aloud and then he would take his knife if he was on a link where he was working on a rail and write out the words on a rail and then transfer them to paper and then he finally memorize them and they would become a part of him so it's almost like vertical learning for him was deeper than those of us who read these things and can hardly remember them he read them. >> he ran for office got elected to state legislator and served two years in congress as a member of the whig party and was a confident -- competent lawyer but lots of competent lawyers were in congress what was there anyone who said this man is destined for greatness or was there anybody who said that? >> that is interesting, theater roosevelt once wrote something about the importance of the crisis making a leader great and he said if lincoln had not had a war no one would have known his name but he is wrong because all the people who had seen him from the time he was young even if they had never become president, they knew they were in the presence of somebody special. they saw how much he was trying to learn and they wanted to help him on his upward climb and they would lend him books and the village cooper would keep his fire on late at night so he could read because that was one place where there would be light and they watched him help widows and help people who needed something done for them and they saw his sense of humor and even as a young kid he learned how to tell stories and used to listen to his father entertain people who came by the street and told stories. that was the one thing he valued which was being a great storyteller and lincoln became his fabulous storyteller and had a sense of humor that matched his melancholy because there was a sadness about him because he had these huge ambitions and thought i will never reach those goals but the way he withstood this was through his humor but they saw the strengths and knew he was special, whether they knew who become president, i doubt they could've thought that big but they knew there was something about this guy. >> let's talk teddy roosevelt, he did not grow up in a poor setting and his father was very wealthy person but did that mean he would be necessarily a very smart person or did he mean he would be a very good athlete so what was it like growing up as teddy roosevelt? >> the most important thing for teddy rose about growing up was that he suffered from an almost life-threatening asthma when he was a child which meant he couldn't participate in physical activities but it meant that he developed his mind and read books like lincoln did in every spare moment and unlike lincoln however all he needed to do was pull a book off the lever self or if he told his father who had fabulous relationship that he wanted this book it would magically appear. one time he wrote a letter that he had written and read 50 novels that summer on a vacation in the took him on trips around the world and would his father was like a tutor for him and eventually that sense of reading became a huge part of him and said that books were the greatest companions that a leader needs to know about human nature more than anything in the world and the best way to learn about human nature is through books. but for him books created an alternative future because here is a little kid who wants to be a fearless person is very timid and has this asthma so he reads about explorers of africa and reads about soldiers and reads about deer slayers and begins to imagine himself one of those and later he becomes this courageous guy, at a certain point his father says to him teddy, you've got the mind but not the body and without the body the mind cannot go as far as it should see must do something to make your body so the little kid says i'll make my body and goes into all these strenuous exercises and becomes a champion in a very strong person by the time he gets to be past harvard and into the presidency. >> he goes to harvard and now is he well-respected there? >> he is probably an odd duck at harvard because he wants to be in or apologist and plucks dead snakes in dead birds and they are all in his room and when he first comes he's kind of a prig in a kind of way. he doesn't want to make friends who was not on the social register because he wants to be part of that class and is different from the other kids and speaks up in class and interrupt the professors and those were the times where you was a student and that's what you're supposed to be paid work hard and did well but the interesting thing is once he gets out of harvard he ends up at the age of 23 running for the state legislator because again, someone comes to him and says maybe you would be a good candidate because her father has been well known and was a philanthropist his father. once he starts going around meeting people from the working class and those in the other part of the district there were tenements in that district and he began to feel at ease with them and easily able to talk to them and lost that kind of sense of privilege that he had before and became a natural politician. >> so he is in the state legislator but is full of himself a bit and doesn't make as many friends as he might want but did anyone save this man is very smart and a good athlete and he will be president of the united states? >> you're absolutely right that when he was in for state legislation he developed was a swelled head and he had a great way of language so he could make headlines and would pound his desk when he was mad at someone and say these outrageous things and became well-known in new york but after a while he could not get anything done in the state legislator because he had burned so many bridges so he finally realized this is where humility came in an important quality in all my guys when they finally developed humidity which means the ability to recognize your limitations to acknowledge your mistake. he realized he couldn't fix it alone or did not quite say it that way but said i can't do it alone and i need cooperation of other people and then he became a more mature politician. people knew he was special, whether they can predict at that point that he would be a president, i don't know but they knew he was in the presence of somebody with charisma, someone with energy, someone with quite a lot of brilliance. >> so he is related to fdr how? >> he's like a sixth cousin to fdr for more and partly teddy roosevelt's brother, elliott roosevelt, was the father of eleanor roosevelt. that is what is the real connection. eleanor's uncle and her father elliott is teddy's younger brother had an epilepsy as a child and became an alcoholic and died young so teddy roosevelt really became like a father till eleanor so franklin love teddy roosevelt. all three of them become this wonderful circle. >> fdr grows up in a very wealthy setting as well and is the only child of his father's marriage with his mother but it's a bucolic setting in hyde park but if anyone with a thought he would be president? >> certainly not fdr. the interesting thing about teddy roosevelt and fdr's they were the center of the parents love which gave them a certain confidence. with teddy roosevelt not only was he the center of his father's love and mother's love but the other siblings made him the center of their lives because he told them stories after he would read books. they would sit around and he would organize their games and so to fdr was a center of his parents lives but in fact teddy so want to be the center of everyone's life after having experienced at that his daughter alice that he wanted to be the baby and the baptism, the pride at the wedding and the corpse at the funeral. fdr had that same sense, i think, of being but he got any book that he wanted to end this magnificent library but he learned in a different way when he was young. he liked to read aloud like to listen to his mother read and there was a story one time was mother was reading to him and he's playing with his stamp collection and love stamps and loved collecting things and i think it was his way of having an independence from his smothering of his parents would love him so much. your mother said you're not listening and i will not finish reading and he recited back the whole eight book. i would be ashamed of myself if i could not do two things at the same time but because he was not a regular student and became a c student at harvard and columbia people thought he really wasn't as smart as it turned out to be in fact that famous quote were oliver wendell holmes meets a much later and says had a first-rate temperament but a second intellect he was right about the first temperament but being born with that optimistic temperament which got them through everything had to get through later in life was probably the greatest gift that he could be endowed with but he was much smarter than people knew but he was a problem-solving intellect. he's a little kid and want to know where the country that issued the stamp came from so he would look in the in cycle pd and read every thing about the country and then he would finally figure out because he did not know the words and he said to his mother and halfway through webster's dictionary and he studied maps and alice's and wanted to know about the terrain and read about mountains and environment and all of that became so important when the man had to lead us through world war ii. when he becomes a leader later on he has a brain trust that he can bring information out from the other people by listening to them and both the idea that he wasn't smart because he didn't do well in school is something you would make a terrible mistake about. >> now, lyndon johnson is between all of them. he's not poor but he is not rich and he is not a book learner but he is pretty smart so how do you describe his background and his father's relationship with him? >> the most interesting thing at the beginning is that what i learned which i hadn't known all that much before was that when he was two years old he learned the alphabet. when he was four years old he learned to read. he could recite long passages of tennyson, and longfellow because his mother wanted him to be that kind of a kid. his mother had been college educated and wanted him to be a writer and she was a journalist and met her husband at state legislator when he interviewed him so his mother said when he was reciting these passages he told me she would hug him so much and she was so proud of him that he felt like he was going to be smothered to death. in fact, there's a funny story relating to the mother which is that when i was working with lyndon johnson everything was going great. i knew he had a womanizing reputation but i was talking to him about steady weapons even when i had no weapons at all and everything was going great and one day he wanted to discuss our relationship which sounded ominous when he took me to the lake and he had wine and cheese and a red tablecloth and all the romantic trappings but he said doris, more than any other woman i have ever known in my heart sank but then he said you remind me of my mother. it was pretty embarrassing giving what was going on in my mind but i guess somehow i was at harvard and an intellectual and like his mother but the interesting thing is that even though he has that talent when he was young all he wanted was to follow in his father. after a while he only wanted to read books and he said is a real or about somebody in history and he did not want to read fiction but he wanted to go with his father on the campaign trail wanted to go with him to state legislator and politics became his love. the father and the mother never got along very well so choosing one or the other was more complicated but the sad thing is because he never did well in school and because he was too reckless to sit even though he had that extraordinary mind he always felt like somehow you never be appreciated by the harvard. his father said if you brush up against the grindstone of life you will have more polish than any of those harvard and yell people ever did. he said i wanted to believe him but he never could. even when i was first starting to work from him he wanted me to work full-time for him and i told him i couldn't that i was going back to harvard going to start teaching but he said you need to become all or nothing so i thought i wasn't going to go but the last day of his presidency he called me and said all right, part time and he said it is not so easy and i won't forget what you're doing for me and then he said you're never going back to harvard but you'll come back from vacation and don't let harvard make you hate me. always that feeling toward that larger well that he could have been up partner. >> as a young man to people think somebody whose father was state legislator and not particularly well educated but that he would be president of the united states and was that anyone stream that for lyndon johnson connect. >> well, yes, that is what is in choosing. once he gets into politics he's an absolute natural and when he was young he was a real new deal congressmen and wanted do for people what would help people and he needs fdr for the first time when fdr is president and he's a real, i was about to say something i couldn't say on television but a natural storyteller and could make up things. for example, let's say it that way. you can guess what that word might have been. fdr is going fishing and he knows nothing about fishing and tells how much he loves fishing and they get along terrifically and fdr tells somebody i just met this amazing young congressman and he's the kind of uninhibited pro i would have been if i hadn't gone to harvard. i think someday you may be the first president of the united states. >> let's talk about the depression crises that each of these men experienced relatively early in their career or in their lives. abraham lincoln gets to the point where he's almost suicidal and they are so afraid he might commit suicide that they take away the razor blades and stuff so what were the things that cause this in norma's depression? >> what happened to lincoln is he broke his word to his constituents and broke his word to mary when he asked her to undo their engagement and for him his word meant everything. he promised his constituents that he would bring infrastructure projects into their areas so they could get their goods to market and making the roads and a huge recession hit the state and they had to stop the projects halfway in the state when into bankruptcy and debt and he was blamed and he felt and took response ability for her and said he would leave the state legislator. at that same time he broke his engagement with mary, not sure he could support a wife but also not sure that his heart was going with his hands but knew what it meant to her to be humiliated and the fact that he had heard these people and hurt his constituents was so painful to him that he went into suicidal depression and stayed in his room for weeks sometimes and the friends came and said but as you say took the knives and razors from his room but his best friend came to aside and said lincoln, you must rally or you will die. he said i know that and i would just soon die now but i'm not yet a calmest anything to make any human being remember that i lived. fueled by that worthy ambition always from the beginning had this double ambition not just for himself but for the doing something larger than that he returned to finish up that final legislator and eventually loses twice for the senate and yet instead of it again undoing his ambition he said we've made a mark on these enduring problem of the age of slavery because of his debates with steven douglas and then he still was will to try is the dark rest candidate even after losing twice and they say the rest is history. >> with mary tad lincoln he was engaged to her and broke up the relationship and what did he try to go back? talk about his earlier girlfriend who died. >> right, the hardest thing for lincoln was the test surrounded him. his mother died when he was only nine years old, his only sister sarah died in childbirth a few years later and his first love and religion died at the age of 22. the hard thing was that when his mother died she didn't say we'll meet in another word but that abraham, i'm going away from you now and i shall never return and that is when he began to be obsessed with what happens to us after we die and when he began to think that if i can only accomplish something maybe somebody will remember me after i die and still be telling the story of me and i will still live on. it was true, i think, people have studied this more and more that he did love and rutledge who died suddenly from one of those things that come through when he first met mary at thank you really did care greatly for her. she loved poetry and drama and came from a very educated wealthy family and she was one of the few people at the time loved politics in that world and she'd come to live with her sister in springville and her sister was married to the then governor of the state when he first asked her to dance she later numbered and said mary, i want to dance with you in the worst way and even after they finished she said you certainly did. >> by the way, the coincidence who was the other suitor that mary married todd lincoln connect. >> steven douglas, that is what is so amazing. very small circle of these politicians. [laughter] >> she was dating someone six for and for 6'". >> right, so -- >> let's talk teddy roosevelt and he experienced old day that might've put him into discretion. describe it. >> in the state legislator and his wife, alice, who he dearly loves and fallen in love with her when she was at harvard and she was a beautiful young woman and they were having their first child and he got a telegram saying alice's child was born and they were celebrating then an hour later he gets another telegram saying you must come home immediately, your mother is dying and alice is dying too. the mother had come to take care of alice was only 49 years old and got typhoid fever and she was dying and then he goes back home immediately and his brother elliot meets him at the door and says occurs on this house. he goes inside, his mother is dying and holds her in his arms and she dies at 3:00 a.m. and 12 later alice died in childbirth. as he walked around in a daze and he couldn't stay in the state legislator anymore but had to get away so he had gotten the ranch previously where he might go every now and then out west in the badlands and went for two years and became essentially a cowboy, a rancher in the badlands and said as long as he could write a source 15 hours a day physical activity prevented over thought and he was finally able to sleep at night but later he said this was the best educational asset he could possibly have developed because he developed a love of the land and of open spaces that was commonly associated with his name to the conservation measure. >> his daughter was born then, first daughter named alice. why would he not mention her name ever? why did he kind of ignore her? what was the name -- >> yes, he had a very peculiar attitude toward that which was that once his wife alice died he couldn't bear to even say the name of the little girl who they called alice. he only calls her baby and didn't even want to bring her up somehow because she reminded him too much of the woman who had died so he did give her to her sister to bring up but then what happened is he had been friend lee with a young woman named edith would been in the love with him until he lost her by going to alice and eventually when he started to get healthy again in the badlands he started corresponding with edith and in the end he had a marriage with her dad was as good of a lifelong marriage he could -- they had a whole bunch of kids but somehow when something hurt him in the past unlike lincoln who talk endlessly about the people who were in the past and who wanted to remember them because he said that's the way you bring them back to life he thought if something's got you exercise it from your mind. >> when his wife and mother died the same day he later wrote a letter, very famous later, send the lights had gone out of his life. he essentially felt his life was over and the idea that he would ever become president of the united states at the time certainly did not exist in anyone's mind, right? >> i think that is right. before this all happened to him he looked at is life, as many people do when they are ambitious, as a serious wrong he would like to go up. i'm in the state legislator but i would like to get to the senate and then i'd like to go to congress and he was ambitious and then who knows what might happen after that. once this fatalistic thing happened to him he decided that he can't plan your life that way anymore some just going to take whatever job looks good to me at the time where i can broaden my horizons and want to do it and a worthy job so he comes back to new york and becomes a civil service commissioner in washington, a job his friends think is way below you that he had huge towns but he wanted to make the merit system work and then he becomes police commissioner of new york and they say why do you do that and turns out to be an extraordinary experience for him. he goes into tenements you never seen before and walks the streets at night and made himself when he was in the police department was beside himself so he could go and walk be between midnight and 4:00 a.m. just to see if the policeman were on the beat and if they did not reckon i sent him until finally he would say on the police commissioner so why aren't you on your beat and after a while these cartoonist had pictures of these funny spectacles of policeman terrified at the thought they might encounter him but those experiences and then he becomes a soldier in the spanish-american war and governor and then vice president and president and he had the broadest experience and the youngest president and he said he learned fellow feeling or you know, he was not self-conscious going anymore into places that those of the privileged backgrounds might not go. one of the thing that sadden me of the 216 election is the x little expanse was considered a handicap but in his case it brought in tim and helped him in ways he may never have known. >> for lincoln and teddy roosevelt the discussion they had were somewhat psychological and frequent roosevelt's of physical problems what is that physical problem and how did that come about? >> he was up at camp and did not feel well when money but goes out and exercises all day and comes home so tired that he can't even take off his bathing suit and goes to fed. within 48 hours he was paralyzed from the waist down having gotten polio. years of striving with follow him from that. it changed his life. no question. when he was in a wheelchair in the early days and they told him that the only chance he really had was to strengthen his upper body so he would ask to be taken out of the wheelchair and puts on the library floor so he could crawl around the floor so his back would get stronger and then he decided to crawl up the stairs and hoist himself up the stairs one wrong at a time holding onto the banisters with sweat pouring down his face and elinor said the extra dinner thing is when he made it to the top they would celebrate as if the mountain had been climbed and she realized that when each one of these small wins were celebrated he began to get his joy in life back again because it'd been a terrible depression when he thought not only that he would be paralyzed for the rest of his life but thought his own ambition and politics would be undone but at that point he not only been in state senate and assistant secretary of the navy and even vice president joe kennedy in 1920 before he got polio so he was definitely thinking he was going somewhere and the polio changed that possibility or so it seemed but then amazingly in 1924 alice smith was running for the presidency and they asked of franklin roosevelt and had not been a public since polio would give the nominating speech and he knew he would have to somehow traverse from there to the podium and the only way she could appear to be walking because he cannot walk on his own power was if he had braces locked on his legs and lean on someone's arms that he could appear to be walking so he practice for weeks at home measuring the steps that he could do, leaning on his son jimmy's arm. when he got to the podium that night with sweat pouring down his face but he delivered this incredible happy warrior speech and comes home that night and sisters family, we made it. we made it. much more importantly he is still not ready to go into public life but feels he cannot be a politician or president unless he learns how to walk. he goes to warm springs because here that is a place for the hot water can help you and once he gets there something much larger happens pretty develops a rehab center, the first real rehab center not something to help his fellow polio learn how to use the water to help their muscles but wants them to have fun in life again. he arranges dances with the wheelchairs and poker games, soccer games and things in the pool but warned learns what is like to make other people feel better. he emerged different from that whole experience, completely warmhearted with an understanding of other peoples of whom had fate had dealt an unkind hand and became a much deeper leader than he had been before. ... everybody around made the code of honor on the part of the press it would never photograph impartially with his braces. most amazing moment is a 1936 when he came to give the acceptance speech he was being helped to walk down the aisle. he reached over to shake hands at somebody and he fell. his braces unlocked, sprawled all over the floor and he said to the -- to be together. they put his braces on, giving up on the podium and it delivers a great rendezvous with destiny speech but not a word was said in the press the next that he had followed. they gave the word to the speech. when i think we have come since then went president bush was taken japan, president fort foster, we can't wait to find it and doesn't present situations. the was a code of honor. if a new photographer came along and try to pick a picture of them, the older ones would knock the camera out of the sand. there was a dignity. he wished he didn't feel he had to do that. you would help nowadays you could be a paraplegic and still be the franklin roosevelt was but he make the that was not possible. if you said that and his political instincts are better than mine than a beleaguered but there was a sense there was a way of treating people with dignity in the way the press handled the politicians that it wish we could restore today. >> lyndon johnson said something on vince johnson was comparable, he lost an election. could you describe what it would be shot at in such a terrible thing? >> 1940 when he loses the city election he should've won at the at the last minute he lost. and did catapulted into such a depression because losing an election was a repudiation of his cell. that's what he was. he was a politician. he loved his life and children but politics had fulfilled this big hole in him that was too hard to fill without politics being there. he went into a decline. sometimes these adversities continue backwards rather than forwards. he decided he didn't do well instead work as it always had a politics turkey turned his back on the new deal. he realized if he ever was going to win another chance, texas would be coming increasingly conservative so it have to become conservative as well. when he wins in 1948 and gets into the senate he pursues power and becomes incredibly powerful. he knows how to do it. he becomes majority leader. the incredible thing is he has a second big adversity just six months after he became majority leader he had a nearly fatal heart attack. when he was in hospital and began to say to himself the proximity of death was right there, if i died now what would i be remembered for? all of these people are so interesting to think about that come something larger than what may be ordinary people think about. he comes back to the senate and he becomes the progressive person he had once been and he gets the first civil rights bill through the sent him though it's not a strong bill, if the opening of doors and, of course, when he gets into the presidency that becomes the thing he wants to do, to do something he will be remembered for any become civil rights. >> one of the things, he could've won the election he was maybe supposed win but he thought election was stolen and did he resolve to never let that happen again and how was stolen? >> in those days making 41 and again in 1948 people knew there were certain counties you could put as many votes in as you wanted to. they could just make people go and added extra votes. if they were your counties you would wait to say how many votes you had entered know how many you needed when you how close you were to the other guy. he was so sure hit one in 1941 he wanted to make it happen earlier so we announced yet asked him them about someone os counties and he was carried around on the arms of his people. the other guy had his county leaked but more votes in his county than lbj had so he happens to win. in 40 he reversed the process. >> lets go through the leadership examples you go through in your book. you excited many but let's talk about in the case of abraham lincoln, a great leader but you cite principally the emancipation proclamation. why do you think that is an example of great leadership? >> if i may something first which is dealing with them as leader i realize all of them lived in turbulent times. that's the title of the book "leadership in turbulent times." think about it, it's become more relevant now than it was what i thought about it five years ago but each one face an extraordinary situation. in lincoln's case he comes in office and the civil war is about to begin. the country is on fire. it's divided and he says if he had ever known the terror of what he would face, he didn't think he could live through it. the big question he have to base is when the war starts its predominantly being fought to preserve the union, to bring the south and north back together again. he hated slavery and there were some people who are hoping even at the beginning of his presidency he would do something about liberating the slaves at the same time as preserving the union. he was stacked by the idea that constitution protected slavery in the states that wanted to keep slavery. he knew most of the union army was fighting simply to preserve the union not to emancipate the slaves but as the war went on and as the north was doing so badly in the peninsula campaign and the summer of 1862 he went to visit the soldiers which he always did in the middle of any battle. he knew he wanted to walk amidst the soldiers to visit the wounded in the hospital and get a sense of the situation. while he was there he began to realize that the slaves were helping the confederates in an enormous way, serving as teamsters, cooks. they are tending the plantation so the soldiers can be liberated to come to the battlefield. he realized he had powers as commander-in-chief that if something were a military necessity he could use those powers. he went to the soldiers home and is able to think this all through so i came to the cabin and he said i'm going to issue an emancipation proclamation as commander-in-chief, the south is benefiting from the slaves. if we take that benefit the way it will help the north so with military necessity. he convinces his cabinet even though some didn't agree. they thought it would make the midterm elections lose come make the work on longer but somehow he had created a sense of trust in him that they didn't make the disagreement public and then he had to convince the army who at first upset but so trusting had the army become in him because he visited them so many times that the went along with it. finally in january 1863 he makes emancipation proclamation real and the question some people thought is would you go back on his word because there was outcry even at that point back. when he went to sign emancipation proclamation his own hand was numb and shaking because their data big new year's reception and at the reception had shaken 1000 hands. when he went to sign the proclamation of his own hand was now and shaking. he put the pen that and said if ever my soul were in an act that was in this act but if i signed with a shaking hand, posterity would say he didn't make it. the amazing thing is that joshua speed his old friend came to the white house soon after the emancipation proclamation was signed and both remembered that terrible moment when he was in the near suicidal depression and what he said, said i would soon die now but i've not done anything to have any human being make me live. i hope my fondest hope will be realized that this will be something that would be remembered and so it surely has been. >> in the movie lincoln after the book of team of rivals is all about 500 pages or so into book. it's only about three or four pages in the book is the movie. that's a whole separate story but about 13th amendment. why did we need that? >> just to mention the movie, the thing so wonderful about the movie was even though they wisely chose a smaller subject, the 13th amendment rather than the whole horizontal atmosphere of the war, it still gave everything i cared about that most and poorly that lincoln would've cared about, about his character, his humor, melancholy, storytelling ability and moral convictions, his political genius and that was the important thing to show. also spielberg wanted daniel day-lewis to play lincoln from the very beginning and he had not said yes to these more horizontal scripps pier when you finally suggest he knew he'd gotten his man. the reason the 13th amendment was so important was lincoln word once the war came to an end that military necessity would no longer be a valuable, a viable way to have undone the constitution. he wanted a permanent constitutional amendment that would into slavery forever. >> let's talk now about teddy roosevelt many examples of leadership he gave you but you focus on the strike. what was a big deal about the strict? >> this is a pivotal moment in teddies presidency. i tried to choose pivotal moments instead of doing the whole presidency. partly because i knew i didn't want the book to be asked that smes of the books. when a woman who is reading the bully pulpit she told me she was reading at home at night and she was reading it in hardback and still sleep and it broke her nose. [laughing] i'm going to try and make this book on leadership not as that. if i went through the whole presidency speed would be fatter and fatter and fatter so i chose these pivotal moments. the pivotal moment was there was a strike, a six-month strike between the minors and the coal barons. in new england hall was the only way you got fuel cell as winter and fall were coming hospital were closing down, schools are closing. it could've been a national emergency and in new england emergency but the problem for teddy roosevelt was the president had no president to intervene in a labor-management striker the government had no business being involved in these things. he had to begin to see the idea that there were three parties to the strike, there is labor, management and the public. he represents the public. he started to go around, he loved to go rent on the train to talk to people and create public sentiment to tell people perhaps the president did have some power to get involved in this because the public was involved. these train trips are such an important way of creating public sentiment. he loved to go six weeks in the spring and six weeks and fall and he would stop at little stations along the way and continue to go and wave to people who would be standing on the tracks. there's a great story he's waving frantically at a a grouf people and their not responding, rather coldly until he told because of his nearsightedness he's waving frantically at a herd of cows. [laughing] he starts telling people i think the president has a stewardship role to this office and he decides to invite both sites to the white house. never had labor-management come to the white house before. this is different from what we imagine that. very, to visually -- the coal barons were will not talk to the minors. they are outlaws come we can't even have a conversation. lucky thing katie does is to take note and asked if he could do that. the minors guys happen be very open. they suggested arbitration. they sit if you put in arbitration whatever you decide we will go with you. the coal barons said were not even listening, , they are outlaws. he publishes the whole meeting and it sounds terrible on the part of the minors, i mean on the part of the owners so they decide they will go to arbitration but they won't go as teddy suggested, said teddy gets j.p. morgan to go and suggested and that saves face. a get together and settling, settled on the matter of both sides and it was the symbol of these squared it which was a program that symbolizes his entire presidency, square deal for the rich, the poor, the capitalism and the wage worker and that's how he made his mark. >> fdr baby associate with the leadership of helping us win world war ii and maybe most remembered for that which you focus on what happened when he just took office. we were in a depression. hoover had not been able to solve the depression. what is fdr do indie book that is so -- in your book that is a good example of leadership? >> the real thing has to face when he comes into the office is there's a terrible banking crisis that in the weeks before he was inaugurated banks were collapsing all over the country because people were going, they heard banks were collapsing so they started going to their own bank to try to take the money out. long lines and the banks didn't have enough deposits on hand to give the money back. it was becoming violent. once he gets into office he decides the very first day he's going to call what he calls the bank holiday, ironically named, closed the banks are weak until we get congress into session and get congress to shore up the weaker banks with currency that needed the money almost like a bailout of the banks. he gets a law through that week. they know which makes or strunk and which ones are not but then he has to persuade the public that what he is then we'll make it safe to bring their money back again. he decides to give the first of his fireside chats on the radio which will become a symbol of his entire presidency. very simple terms he explains to people how banks work. he said you put your money and come they don't put in a bowl. they invested in mortgages, invested in businesses to keep the economy going. he sits what's happened in the situation is some of those banks invested their money in the stock market, the stock market fell so they don't have cash on hand. others are strong enough so they don't have assets at the moment. we we'll help those banks and figure out what's wrong and i promise you if you bring your money back to the bank, and next monday when the banks are good open it safer than keeping it under your mattress but they still worried would they bring it back? there's this great memory of being a chicago on a hot summer night and is walking down the street and you looks inside anybody is sitting with the radio on and watching the radio and listening to his voice and his voice came out the window and you could still walk down the street and not miss a word of what he said. there's a story of a construction worker going home one night and is partisan where are you going? my president is committed to my living room to talk to me. it's only right i'd be there to greet him when he comes. what a difference it was when we could trust the word of the president. [applause] >> president kennedy had an ambitious legislative program but many of the things he wanted didn't get very far. when lyndon johnson becomes president he decides i'm going to push kennedy's agenda. one thing to write about the particularly pushed is the civil rights legislation. why was it so important and how could he being from a southern state that wasn't that interested in integration and his best friends in the senate were not, integrationist let's say, how did he manage to pull it off? >> he knew when he first came in office he had to do something to show he had to grab the reins of power but there was a real vacuum after john kennedy was killed and people had no real understanding who lyndon johnson was. he decides he would make his first priority passing the civil rights bill which had been stuck in the congress, indeed none of john kennedy's domestic initiatives have gotten through. congress was is broken then as it seems now, surprisingly. i didn't fully realize that. someone who's writing about this republic was not going to live anymore. if congress couldn't figure how to get something done to get it. his friend thwarted if you do this your own election is 11 months away. a southern filibuster will materialize. it will probably paralyzed this bill. you will not give any of the bill through. you will be spending all your power and all the court of the presidency on this one thing and he said to the person what the hell is the presidency for then? he said i'm like a poker play. i'm going to put all my chips on this one thing. he believed if he could get the south to desegregate the would be better for the south even though they might not believe it at the time. he knew the civil rights movement had reached a stage or something had to be done or violence our problems would really arise. he wanted to do it. he took that risk. as one of the great moments of his presidency. despite the fact he did so much more in the next 18 months, medicare and medicaid, extraordinary, npr, pbs, immigration reform, and voting rights and fair housing, the war in vietnam cap that legacy in two so when i knew him in the last days at the ranch there was such a sadness as it talked about these early 18 months and out extraordinaire it was that he got congress to do things. that bill never would've passed without him. he understood he needed the republicans in order to bring republican support to break the democratic filibuster from the south. the minority leader as you he is got give. your strengths with him every night, what do you want in illinois? these were the days when earmarks were fine? you want a project? anything you want, anything. i'll give you of credit, give the republicans the credit and finally he knows everett dirksen wants to be with him so he says if you come with me on this bill and you bring the republicans to break the filibuster every get this bill passed in 200 years without school children will know two names come abraham lincoln and everett dirksen. [laughing] >> let's suppose you say i admire your books by don't have time to read this book. can you give me the essence of leadership? [laughing] would you say these individuals have in common and what can other leaders of our country learn from these four people? >> i did feel after exploring this that there were certain family resemblances. there is a master key to leadership and they're all different in the style of leadership but they do share certain qualities. they shared eventually and empathy toward other kinds of people so that they could bring them together and unite the country rather than dividing the country. they had a humility that allow them to acknowledge their errors and to learn from their mistakes. they had an ability to communicate to the public in their own technology at the time. lincoln as i said because he is such a good writer, his speeches would be written in full and people would read them aloud in their places. teddy roosevelt had the perfect language, phrases, speak softly and carry big stick and even gave maxwell house the slogan good to the last drop. fdr had the perfect voice for radio. when think about jfk and ronald reagan they had the perfect ability to talk on television in the time of the three television networks. and then obama becomes a master of the internet world, and then mr. trump masters the social media at the time when is running for campaign. there's a problem in that there's a a difference in campaigning and counting which we discovered that these instant, , can become more troubling. when lincoln was president he could activate it with anybody picky was the best debater. he could've spoken extemporaneous whenever he wanted to get somebody said you are to face, he responded if i'm to face do think i would be wearing this face facts. [laughing] as president he never spoke extemporaneously. he knew some things that we need to know today that words matter, that they have consequences and he knew that. [applause] >> so that was one skill they shared. the other skill that i think is too often unheralded, they'll knew how to relax and replenish the energy to find time to think the we are so busy. they were pretty busy but they somehow figured it out the lincoln went to the theater was in wind of times during the civil war. he said when a shakespeare play came up he could imagine it's up back in the war of the roses with -- and forget the weather was raging. people may think my theatergoing is peculiar. if i didn't do it, terrible anxiety would kill me. he also had his sense of humor that allowed him when things were tough you would come up with a funny story and entertain the cabinet meeting and it have to relax. when he couldn't sleep at nighe would wake up his two aides and read them comic passages from shakespeare. then he could go to bed at night thinking about comic passages instead of thinking about the war which meant he could survive. survive. teddy roosevelt not surprisingly given his asthma and need to build up his body was able to exercise two hours every afternoon and the white house. we think with time to go to the gym for 30 minutes and he's doing something pretty important while he's doing this. he would have a boxing match, wrestling match his favorite exercise was to walk in the wood cliffs of rock creek park we had a simple rule that you had to go .2 point. you couldn't go rent an obstacle. if you came to a rock you had to climb it. if you came to a krebs you had a good candidate so these companions on these walks are falling by the wayside all along the way the best story was told by the ambassador. he was from france and uso excited for his first walk with the president picky said, he had the silk outfit, , he thought he would be on -- found itself in the woods picky was dying. he couldn't wait until was over. they finally come to the big statement he said thank god we're going home. he saw the president unbutton his close and say it's an obstacle. we can't go around it. we might as will well take a cs off. he said so i for the honor of france took off my clothes. however, i left on my lavender gloves. why? it would be most embarrassing if we should be made on the other side and they didn't have gloves on. [laughing] so anyway all found -- the most interesting parts of the is fdr. he had a a cocktail party every night during world war ii where the rule was you couldn't talk about the war. you could talk about books to read come to be shooting, gossip. after while this cocktail party was so important to him that he wanted the people who would be at the cocktail party to live in white house to be the cocktail party. for example, his foreign policy advisor harry hopkins came to get a slap night and never left until the war came to an end. princess martha from norway live with the family on the weekends. lorena hickok had it bedroom next to eleanor. his sector live with the family in the white house and the great winston churchill came weeks at a time spent in the white house with roosevelt. when i was working on the book i became obsessed with the thought of all these people in the bathrooms at night in the corridor and what amazing conversations he must have had. wishing when it's up on on the second floor with lyndon johnson when i was 24 i thought of asking what a churchill sleep? what was roosevelt? of course i wasn't thinking in those terms then pick i mentioned this on on the dianew in washington and it happen hillary clinton senator whitehouse was listing. she. she probably caught up after me to station and invited me to sleep overnight in the white house. then we wandered the quarter to figure out where and when it slip. two weeks later to follow up with an invitation to a state internet with him, my husband and i went up there and figured yes, chelsea is looking for harry hopkins slip. the clintons are sleeping fdr was and the purpose was winston churchill that there was sleep. i was certain he was sitting in the corner drinking his brand in smoking his cigar. he and most of him sit and think i can still put the associate nations against the axis powers but no one like the word associate nations so that morning he awakens with a whole new idea collington united nations gets the axis powers. so excited he wasn't wheeled himself to churches bedroom, our bed and to tell them the news but it's a labyrinth just coming out of the bathtub and had actually nothing on. roosevelt said i'm so sorry i'll come back in a few moments but churchill and basically still dripping from the tub at the presence by to say no, please stay. the prime minister of great britain has nothing to buy from the president united states. [applause] now that the guys you can love. >> you mentioned your husband and, unfortunately, your husband has to recently pick in his honor your working on another book. you might describe the book. >> yes, indeed. my husband had cancer this last year of his life but he started five years earlier and book that meant a lot to him. it was really a biography of his mind anyway, public service was something he valued so much in his life despite graduating first in a class at harvard law school and clicky for frank-footer he never cared about going in and making money and turning money around from one place to another. he wanted to do something in public so he went to do the investigation of the gracious. with lbj and all the great separate speeches that's incredible we shall overcome speech, the great society speech, howard university speech, bobby kennedy's ripples of help speech, al gore's concession speech but more important than speeches even is he devoted his life to public service and he's watching him he was 86 when he died and he was watching he said what what wasg on right now and realize through his long life he'd seen the turns and twists in american history. like me he believed come he said the end of america has loomed many times before. america is not as fragile as we think. he wanted to write a book that would show people that politics and public service can be an honorable vocation come want to make young people believe once again that they get into public life and have fulfilling time. he had not quite finished the book if you get cancer this last you but the book kept them going. it was so incredible to watch that he wanted to live not just for the book but because he was happy and the stuffing i could care about more than knowing this band wide known for 45 years married for 43 years one to go through a thing he could. he would the surge and they thought they got it, the cancer he went to radiation for seven weeks. they told him he got it. we had champagne with the doctors and then he came home and he got, two months before he died in may it came back again. this time only thing they could do is immunotherapy and he got pneumonia and came home to hospice. it was the most extraordinary thing to guide never seen death the within the my parents died when i was young and they had heart attacks sues over in a minute. i don't know he knew he was dying but he would wake up from this pain medicine and was like an irish wake. all the friends came a day after day do would come in and you wake up and talk to them and he would say something to them and he had this light in his eye and msa the last thing he said to me was you are a wonder. something i will never forget. [applause] >> thank you thank you very muc. thank you, doris kearns goodwin, for great stories. congratulations. [applause] >> that props up a look at some of the programs with historian doris kearns goodwin. idea and you can watch these in any of the other 60 appearances she sat on booktv and c-span by visiting our website booktv.org and searching her name. >> tonight on "the communicators" texas republican congressman will hurd talks about cyber issues facing the u.s. and why he thinks china wants to surpass the united states as a superpower. >> by 2049 they want to surpass the united states of america as the sole superpower in worker why 249? that's 100 years of communist rule in mainland china and the way they will surpass the united states as a soul hegemon in full is by being a leader in future technology, ai, quantum, 5g, and that's why they then stealing intellectual property. that's why they had been laying mother countries -- other countries and that's why they are trying to be a leader in these technologies. >> congressman will hurd tonight at the eastern on "the communicators" on c-span2. >> weeknights this month we're freaking booktv programs as a preview of what's available avt the weekend on c-span2. >> enjoy booktv on c-span2. >> you are watching booktv on c-span2 every weekend with the latest nonfiction books and authors. c-span2, created by america's cable-television companies as a public service and brought you today by your television provider.

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