>> here we talk to the national constitution center for its experts. scott who is the editor-in-chief at the ncc joins us to talk about the filibuster. we appreciate your time. >> thank you. we are pleased to be partnering with our neighbors across the plaza one of the university of texas austin and archival treasure trove for history andbe we are proud to be cohosting tonight's special guest. our good friend pulitzer prize-winning historian doris kearns goodwin who's been called by president biden america's historian. they include no ordinary time, franklin and eleanor roosevelt the home front during world war ii. a team of rivals the genius of abraham lincoln that served as s the basis for the steven spielberg film lincoln. tonight we celebrate the centers acquisition of the paper throughout her illustrative career and of those of her late husband richarde goodwin. a renowned figure in his own right, he was a land of liberalism c before it became dirtyoc work. crafting speeches for democratic icons including kennedy, robert kennedy and ourns own lyndon johnson among other accomplishments, and american speech for lbj, police for the voting rights act in the wake of blood he sunday in selma alabama that spurred immediate action from congress ranked as one of the most eloquent, effective and underrated presidential speeches in history. the papers include holding the document key issues in the 1960s including the civil rights movement, the vietnam war and of the invaluable archives of doris goodwin will add to the briscoe center as one of the prestigious centers for study in history and the combination of the archives of the briscoe center and archives of the lbj presidential library make this a mecca for the study of the 60s. joining on stage tonight are two other authors and friends. a don carlton the founder of the briscoe center. he's published 13 books including offering red scare, conversations with cronkite and last years the governor and at the kernel a dual biography of william hobbie and evita. moderating tonight's conversation is the director of the lbj presidential library mark lawrence the author of the end of ambition united states and third world in the vietnam era that recently won the prestigious book prize. ladies and gentlemen, thankle yu join me in welcoming doris kearns goodwin. [applause] thank you, mark and everyone in the auditorium for the memorable evening to mark the arrival of important archival material. the archival collections of goodwin and doris kearns goodwin. a memorablee event for the briscoe center that will be the home of this material into for the university of texas more generally. it's alsoo a wonderful event for the lbj library, who is holding and whose mission intercepting so many ways with both goodwin and doris kearns goodwin. i think this corner of the campus can vary reasonably claim to be one of as mark mentioned one of the places to go without question for the study of the 1960s in the united states. ofof course i want to spend some timein tonight of diving into al this material that's on its way to us. and to talk about some examples. start us off by speaking generally about the importance of the material. what makes it so important as he and archival collection? >> he saved everything over many years. the boxes that were 350 boxes traveled with us everywhere we went and were in basements and attics and finally we got open to them but it is an extraordinary archive because he was in the right place at the right time. some people said he was the zealot of the 1960s and it just pops up wherever you want him to. starting in the late 50s when the seeds of the 1960s are set he was at harvard law school and clerked for justiceo frankfurtr or the follow-up on the desegregation cases and then the person that investigated the show the $64,000 question in 21. it was his idea that he saw a grand jury hearings that hadn't come up with an indictment or they never opened so he knew that investigation was made into a movie by robert redford then he gets to work with john kennedy as the speechwriter under ted sorensen. he kept everything related to that and then he ends up meeting with and creating the alliance for progress and he's sort of at the peak of his power then he gets a meeting in the middle of the night and he gets taken to the state department instead. then he is about to come back to the white house and john kennedy is killed returning as a special consultant. he is there in the middle of the planning and it's an extraordinary account of then he writes a speech for john for lyndon johnson and he becomes and in johnson's speechwriter and that is the most extraordinary time. not only that we shall overcome speech but all the campaign stuff and the civil rights act and voting rights act and signing statements and he is in the middle of the most m extraordinary period of amerin liberalism in many ways then he leaves and gets involved in the antiwar movement he turned against the war and he is up at new hampshire with mccarthy. they call him the che guevara and he loved that experience but bobby kennedy was his best friend in public life so he left and went to bobby kennedy's campaign and was with him when he died. he was close to jackie kennedy working on projects in the white house so he knows all those characters in the 60s and he's an important figure but not the central figure so he's thinking about all these other people. you hear what he thinks about jackie and bobby and lbj and has relationships with them also it allows you to time travel by going through this roller coaster of the decade that had extraordinary triumph santa said messes and in a certain sense it is a metaphor for how we lookoot history because we remember the sadness of how it ended of martin luther king and bobby kennedy, the antiwar violencehen the streets, the riots and it seems like a decade of sadness but it was great accomplishments, civil rights, voting rights, immigration reform, education, so many things johnson was able to accomplished in some ways john kennedy tried to and johnson got them through in the end so it allows you to relive a time that i think will be talked about for years to come. you can see memorabilia and menus of things, newspaper articles, magazines, memos with ispresidential writing and his comments on everything. for me as a presidential historian, his archives it was my husband i was able to go through these boxes with so it's pretty exciting. >> how did you come to the realization that you had all of this under your roof? >> at the beginningle it was a pain because if traveled with us everywhere and we didn't have room.e much of the time when our kids were youngst we lived in a house in mainstreet and it was more like a townhouse but we loved it. i always wanted to live in the city. we had to send them off to storage and finally our books overran the house we had to so manyfi we finally moved to a big house that had room for our books but we could also bring them back from storage. what happened is during the years we had them he never wanted to go through them and one day he comes down the stairs and says it's time i'm going to go through the boxes. if i have any wisdom to dispense it better start being dispensed now so the wonderful thing that happened in the last years of his life including the last year when he had cancer and i gave a sense of purpose we went through the boxes together and we started in the 50s and 60s right up tor the end but by reliving it together he came to a different feeling about lyndon johnson and remembered the great moments and the anger that he felt and the respect he had at the beginning. i'd always been an lbj fan so i was thinking john kennedy never got anything to the congress it was lbj that got it through but i began to see the inspiration john kennedy provided and it made me feel differently about them. it's like they were two halves of the whole and i know in the last years of his life especially the last months and he kept thinking i was going to help him write a book about this but it gave a sense of purpose that made him handle the fact he knew cancer was taking his life away but he felt a sense of fulfillment as he looked back not only at what he had done but with the people around him had done and the people he worked with and colleagues and it was a sense of seeing your legacy before you die that gave a sense of feeling good sohe it meant these boxes mean everything to be here.w they will [applause] >> what were your first impressions when you first discovered this trove of material and how did your thought process develop as you learned more? >> this was right before covid and theyre called me and said ae you sitting down and i said i'm always sitting down. [laughter] but i said what's up what are you up to now. a new scheme of yours and he said no and i thought maybe he was still in concord i don't remember now. he was working on this wonderful jfkd book and he said he'd just gone through the archives and papers and so we talked about that and he was pretty much freaking out over the telephone and got me excited so we agreed i think the next thing that happened we got on the telephone with you and that's how i met doris is on the telephone and then we got hit with covid and that sort of froze everything. finally when things started opening up last summer we had doris come down here and we had a very nice dinner. the chief of staff that is the key to much of this as well it was a wonderful dinner and doris impressed the president tremendously and i have to give full credit none of this would be happening right now if it wasn't for jay and he deserves tremendous credit. [applause] but at any rate, he pulled me over' while we were in the president's office and said what do we do next. you need to go to boston where the papers are stored to make sure there's not a 500 bags of sawdust instead of papers. he said okay go to it so i flew to boston and met you there and we started going through the material. i was like a little boy going through a rare collection of baseball cards. you said the packrat thing and i was thinking thank god for packrat's this is what saves history this is why we have cothese materials. this is an enormous collection. the two archives and a very large. all i could do was a sample and i didn't have to see very much. it was a gold mine. if you are a historian it's just one thing after another. everything described about her late husband's career is documented. every document i would pull out would have some key relationship with all the things you were just talking about so i just was terribly excited and so i realized this would be a huge thing to come to us. thankfully we worked out making that happen. but when i was there, we went to dinner with a friend of hers and her house and we were able to talk a lot. in the car going back to the hotel i said that there is no question about the value of this incredibly important, significant, historically significant collection of your late husband's but we want your paperspe to. [applause] i said you are a significant cultural figure in this country. your late husband was also an incredibly important figure but you your self as everyone here it's not the knowledge that she is an important cultural figure and also a very significant public intellectuals so yes we need to bring both of these and she consented to that so we have this enormous collection now and we couldn't be more excited. it covers all the bases you mentioned. >> and if you are a famous red sox fan, why the briscoe center for your latete husband's material? like i was coming home. the presidential career started with lbj there's no question about that. my phd was in supreme court history and i would have been studyingng those people except r the fact i was a white house fellow in as many of you know and ended up working for lyndon johnson despite having written an article in the new republic how to remove lyndon j johnson from power and somehow it i came out two a days after that celebrated the white house fellowship instead of taking me out of the program he said bring her down here for a year and if i can't win her over, no one can. i t look back now and i just wih i had known what i know now i would have asked so many questions because there were times i wouldn't even be there. how would you think of not spending every minute you could with this president. he took me into his family in many ways and i stayed at the ranch many times and listened to him talk and talk. did he ever talk and never really stop. as some of you know i always felt the story i was doing well and worried he had a womanizing reputation. i was a young girl but i kept talking about boyfriends even when i didn't have any and things worked out perfectly till he said he wanted to discuss our relationship. he took me to theon lake, nearb, wine, cheese, red chalk tablecloth and said more than any woman i've known and my heart sank and then he said you remind me of my mother. [laughter] so this was the beginning of my presidential historian career. i am so grateful to him. he's probably the most interesting political figure i've everon met. my first book was on him and i think what mattered so much was iro looked at it from the outsie in whenr i was in the antiwar movement yelling things about him and feeling a sense of judgment from the outside. when i got to know him it wasn't that he changed my mind about the war but he changed my mind about him and i became empathetic and would like to lii brought that empathy to the subjects after that as i moved to kennedy and franklin roosevelt and abraham lincolno and finally teddy and taft not just to judge them but understand them from the inside out. so that is a huge part of the reason. then another part of the reason dawn was irresistible when i met him and i could see that the briscoe center was going to make these papers come alive they were not just going to be sitting there. they had been able not only to open them to the public but to get documentaries written about them and books, to have exhibits made about them and i want them to live and i just love history so much and have a feeling in f today's world i worry about so many people not studying history anymore and it is heartbreaking to me so if this place can help to get students interested in primary sources and history, it would mean an enormous amount. i owe them to back to texas and if i can make that happen and i love to be with students and i loved teaching when i was young and ended up becoming a full-time writer. i'm hoping i will be able to be with the students and tell them stories like ifr would listen to stories from lbj. [applause] we are certainly glad you feel that way. talk about how these new collections fit within the holdings and mission of the briscoe center. >> as far as the mission is concerned, we go out and gather the evidence andin bring it in r people like yourself toal do research in history. there is also, we contribute to teaching as well. so,dn any couldn't fit better in terms of our mission because it is a rich collection for researchrp but also teaching purposes, so that's why we are really helping but it also fits very well with work that we've already done for several years and that is bringing in collections that relate to we are going to collect this because it relates to his career but it certainly does. i mean, everything from the collections that document the period that he was active beginning if you just think about it, the walter cronkite archive who embodies the 60s more in terms of that but also we have james farmers archive who was the head of congress and racial equality. we had the agitator. these are quintessential 1960s collections and we have a huge photojournalism documentary archive with about 9 million images and at hand several of the photographers whose work we have, whose archives we have documented the civil rights movement and antiwar movement and i think particularly for example his entire archive is with us and whenhe i say we have the photo archives of these individuals, i'm not talking about a ten or 12 that we have selected. we are talking about everything. the contact sheets, the papers and so forth. so, this was martin luther king's personal photographer. we have the largest collection and images in existence in one place. we have the photo archives talking about dick goodwin, we had the archives of charles moore who photographed and has the most famous photographs of the birmingham movement and 64. his images when you see the images of the fire hoses being directed at protesters and dogs -- that is charles moore. then finally also the photography that goes along with this collection is documenting the selma movement. we had the photo archives of a photographer by the name of spider martin who is the person took all these famous photographs that when you think of selma when you think of that as seen on the edmund pettis bridge with john lewis getting beaten nearly to death, those are all spider martin's photographs. those were two alabama boys by the way, so we've got all of these collections that really directly -- we have a massive collection of congressional papers, peoplele that certainly goodwin worked for at one time or another. people like congressman jack brooks who was a powerful chair of the judiciary committee. in speaking of photographers,ote have low that was close to the kennedy family and photographs that jackie kennedy was taking. these are all at the briscoe center, so -- >> they will all be side-by-side. >> that is exactly right. so it's fit. we also have lbj related to, mcpherson papers are with us. you know, -- >> bill moyermo is another. if it's another -- the connections are all over the haplace. >> you and your staff already set up a small exhibit of the items from thehe collection and everyone should see this as i did for the third time i think this afternoon there's a wonderful object. a cigar box, there was a gift buthi i think that my favorite items are ones you alluded to in the introduction, the draft of speeches. you can see how those famous words that were often spoken by a jfk were crafted through drafts and memos and all the rest that goes into a speech. those are some of my favorite items and i've only seen a small number. let me ask what are some of your from theitems collection we are getting? >> i think from me personally what matters the most is that i always wanted to know what my was ad was like when he young man because he was 12 years older than me and i envy people that married their husbands or wives from high school that you'd known them all the way through. i kept asking what were you like asan a young guy and he would sy i don't know. but meanwhile it turned out that while he was in college he made a best friend who he wrote 50 letters to from the time i he ws in college to harvard law school ndall the way through and the friends saved the letters and gave them back to him and they are incredible. i just fell in love. i would have loved him back then it just meant so much to see what he was like he was so earnestly and started a diary when t he was at tufts and it talks about how when you have a diary it's your friend and you have to be honest and will you be faithful to the diary and i was so excited. then it turned out that was the only page. he got too busy and he resumed it when he got to the kennedy administration but these letters took thett place of that and the letters from harvard law school are golden. he is under enormous pressure like everybody was at the time. but he's really funny. it was the best part of him no matter how mad i would get it made him even matter if you can feel that humor and the letters he is talkingng about how he kns it's crazy his first year in law school he's worrying about every minute he's spending eating because he isn't studying. then he will get the girl into the job and have a wonderful life. i know i'm nuts but this is the way i feel. then they get to the practice exams and he p says only seven people had to be hospitalized last year. anyway then finally his writing and has aps on the note after in july in the first year i wanted to mail you this letter but i have huge news. i'm number one in the classes. i can't believe it. but the most amazing thing that happens is he then goes back for the second year on the lowell review he is supposed to be working for the other professors. he's in the library and feels claustrophobic. he leaves andea goes out and volunteers for the army. then he was afraid he was going to need to and he had an incredible time in the army in france in southern france and he would write 100 letters to his parents at that time so i read that and they are just wonderful. .. i just thought i brought thatta letter to him and said this is the guy fell in love with. anyway, it is important stuff happens at the same time he becomes a president of the law review. they found a picture of him and the wall review holding the baton, 50 white guys into women, went on on side and the other one being ruth bader ginsburg. then i'm reading these letters he wrote to george about the fact they are traveling us in that lower view all run the country. i could have any jobch i want to see burden of choice so take a special thing abroad or should a clerkdo for justice, should geta big job? meanwhile ruth bader ginsburg couldso not get interview for js i got mad at him as if it was her or his fault. then if i saw the other picture, i passed it for years to decide that woman i would like to and who she was. which interview her in california, nancy baxley was her name for it she told a great story. she actually got a job in the summer and she got a start at that. the reason she was jewish like ruth was and she was a woman but she had not children, she was not married. so that kept her on until she got pregnant then she told me they came to her as a we are not embarrassed by your situation, pulling out the >> but our clients might be. to the letter go. but then she described how she went toni harvard reunion some years later and her professor was a young woman with short skirt, boots and pregnant and she thought progress has been made. just to be able to follow herm inll the early days of candy through these letters to george. personally that meant the most to me. that from the young guy i never knew. >> a lot of the collection of course showedonon light on the relationship with jfk with lbj pretty much as given a document that's on display. it really has jumped out at me. dick goodwin writes to lbj in march 1965. when suggest the president give dick goodwin permission to write an article for something called show magazine. dick goodwin says is an opportunity to really highlight all the johnson restoration is doing for the arts. lyndon johnson presumably sends us back with the note scrolled at the bottom. and the note says, i don't want you to get too occupied with speeches and articles where you won't have time to think and write for me. [laughter] what does this tell us about the relationship between dick goodwin and lyndon johnson? or culturally funny. when he gotir over to the white house and the first place is very reminiscent of this in a sense. heas was asked to work on a message on poverty. he was still working in the peace corps at that point. he did one draft and then another draft and johnson like too. i finally listen to the tapes. one point he's talking to bill morrison says we need somebody to be speechwriter here that can have a little church alien rhythm. we have to have some in her speeches. who do we think and do that? he'd work with dick and the peace corps he said dick goodwin. but says interestingly there's a real fault line between the candy people johnson people but is not one of us. and others is not a kennedy person is not a johnson person. but finally decides is going to take him on because of that vent another and he really likes. it's a long complicated story at bristol been paid by the state department even those in the peace corps. he called dean rescue him on the tapes i want that goodwin boy to come over here and i think you better give a 50-dollar raise if you have to take it out of my mother's group you can take it out ofve that. but i want him over here and going to work him day and night. i'm going to put them in the room and make them right. it was great. that a very complicated relationship because johnson i think really didn't respect what dick was able to do. despite me sending my personal favorite knowing him as a young man, nothing mattered more to me than see the draft of we shall overcome speech. the idea is what happened is on sunday night a week from blood he send a present johnson decided was going to give a speech to congress to talk with the voting rights act. m it meant that dick only had monday morning from monday morning until monday night to write that speech. i could not have done that if my life depended on it. you see the draft and it's so beautiful. every once in ocscs meet a certn time in a certain place it wasn't appomattox. sono it was in selma, alabama fr this is not a negro problem not a white problem not a northern problem not a southern problem. it's not a moral problem is and it simply wrong to deny your fellow americans the right toea vote. at this a beautiful doctor was a real hero, the only time he bothered dick that whole time that day he knew what pressure he was under. he called him up that he liked to talk i knew what that meant in those days the speechwriters were in the west wing there were not in the executive office there were thousands ofis than there just a few of them. what happened was when johnson was teaching at southwest state teachers college he took a year off i went out in a small mexican american community, could too low. he saw the pain and prejudice he often said i want kids faces and want to dold our thing is good r them. i did everything he could ease his money for soccer and baseball and things he could make a play. but that was written into the speech was when i was there 19207 and i saw these kids i could not do t what i wanted too for them but nowi i am here its 1965 and i have the power and i intend to use it. that was a great part of the speech. [applause] for one more minute, i wasiv at the civil rights march in 1963 as an young person still in college. inwh graduate school we were all listening together to what happened at thedg pettus bridgen selma. if i ever thought when i was watching that and then listening with my friends in graduate school at harvard to that selma speech and tears were in our eyes that speech was so beautiful if i ever could've imagined three years later i would be working for the president delivered that speech in 10 years later would marry the man who helped craft those wordsn i could not have believd that brett is extremely thing that matters enormously. >> i went to say, will give you some applause. [laughter] the connections we are talking about here but we do at the center and the collections weor have and with this collection with the goodwin collection could not be more beautifully illustrated than that story you just told about selma. and how he was inspired to write that incredible speech. and i am just thinking here you have got goodwin's thought process, is the great thing about the papers. it's not just asp finish final copy of the speech. as a whole history of the speech. how it was conceived, how was onthought about, going back and forth, edited, annotations onm it. and thinking how exciting it is to think about having that. and then having the illustrations of margins. you just mention the pettus bridge. the interactions of that. i'm johnson, goodwin and all the others were looking at these images is what really inspired them. to bring them together at the briscoe center is e exciting. thanks to don's persuasive techniques apparently, your archive is also coming to the frisco center. how is it different from dick goodwin's collection? >> it is really different. it's really about all of the research i did for all the books i've written. i was a packrat about that. not as much about myself. i tried to think back i started a diary when his back in high school. then my mother died when i was 15 and i could not figure out what am i going to say? i am not up to that idea by being able to absorb this unwritten page. i never finish the diary, never kept the diary. i didn't keep what i wrote to people. some people have sent letters back to me just like george did to myy husband. what i did do is every piece of research i did for every book i wrote. so i think that people will be able to find for it is the whole process should go through in writing a book at the beginning there's a story you want to tell. one of the things that's been difficult for me is always chosen people to write about other people have chosen to write about their as messengers and characters. when you choose abraham lincoln and scared because 16000 books have already been written or franklin roosevelt about how much has been written in each case at a figure when i started what is a story i can tell that won't simply be a biography of these characters. what you see in the papers are seen original outline of what i thought i was going to write. i thought it was going to write about abe and mary like i'd written about franklin and eleanor because franklin and eleanor had worked. but i worked for two years they'de been married but didn't work she was on a public figure that could carry the story. and finally found out of these other characters stewart and jason bates that meant a quadruple biography. you can write a biography about each one of them no wonder it might get so fat paris going to write about teddy i was so interested in their relationship they had letters. as always letters that i want. you feel like you're looking over the handwriting someone is erlooking over their shoulder to hear their feeling not just about the other person that writing to their wives, their children diaries i love you can have those in the olden days. all that stuff is in this material. turnedme out teddy and taft i wrote about the muckraker and became a quadruple biography. people will be able to see how your mind goes in different directions you have thousands more research than even my fat books can carry. so think they'll be able to watch the evolution just addressing the watch the evolution of a speech you can watch the evolution of a book. i'm really excited to think there'll be a lot of material there for people but they can take theirn own book or their n article there is so much more you could write a bookk about mcclure newsmagazines important progressive during teddy roosevelt's timer ida tarbell who i adored, brought down standard oil. or lincoln steffens or william white . and similarly you could write another book about taft or you could write a book about blacks in the army. there are so many different subjectsbj that become -- i feel really proud of having all of out there. it is a different kind of thing. i wish i'd saved everything. how was i is a good story and not saved he knew more about me than about myself. it is a different kind of archive does complement his in a very interesting way. >> going to say something about that. her archive is distinct from dick goodwin's archive. this is truly eight writers archive. and by that i'm saying and go into her papers and as she has mentioned you can see the creative process. as far as i know and i haven't met and he sits down and writes it all down, that's it and they publish it. there is a process to this creativity. she has got all of that they are. it is right there. for many years i have a historical methods course in historical department to young beginning some not so young but beginning phd students. and if i had had this collection, it is a perfect example a case study of how a historian works. how they come up with a topic. the research they do their pulling things together maybe there are things that wind up not being related to what you are working on. but it is a process. if i was still teaching that course i would assign those papers, your papers to the young historians to show them how this is done. it's real practical kind of thing. that is one of the great attractions of her papers. fialso she herself is i have sad earlier is a significant figure. anyone who wants to do any work on you, doris as a topic has it right there. there will be a biography of doors where the like that are notuf doris. [laughter] and the staff is there. not only that but it is more than doors two. as a historianma myself, mark, e know we can go into someone's papers and we may not be working onin that person. but that person may have been involved in things that we are actually working on. met as true preachers think about all the books she has written and the topic she has covered. and all of us know who publish books you do the research and so forth there's a tremendous amount of material that your publisher is not going to publish in less you want to do a fiveve volume book. so that research she has assembled, think of all of these books. that is all sitting there basically just there waiting to be used. i may be nothing to do with you were originally looking at. >> i got interested when i did the fitzgerald's and the kennedy in medical history because john fitzgerald wrote kennedy's father went to harvard medical school. two sisters who were nurses and a brother who was a doctors have always loved medical history. wrote entire chapter i want medicines like in the 1880s when he was in harvard medical school over the publishers came to me and said this to be fine if you become a dropped her but he dropped out after your became a politician. so i couldi not use her the end of it. it was horrible but it's there. >> was just going into an archive that will be available. >> doris, your papers are full of research into the lives of the presidents use them because sometimes called my guys. let's talk a little bit about your relationships with the presidents about whom you have written. both those you've gotten to know and others you got to know through the archival record. what is your most memorable expense of the living president? >> thing at some ways it's with president obama. what happened is when he is running for the presidency one day he was still way behind heller in the polls. one day i got a call on my cell and he said hello this is barack obama i've just finished reading team of rivals and not we have to talk. so interest center office lbuilding and he just wanted to talk about lincoln's emotional intelligence. he was just really overtaken by the idea he could forgive past resentments. he could put these rivals into his cabinet. he was able to tamp down human emotions like anger, and jealous at it we talked about lincoln's emotional intelligence at that point. it was the beginning of a relationship that we established. i will never forget on then what happened is of course the campaign goes on and eventually he wins the nomination.ul and somebody is said to him after he won would you really be willing to put into your cabinet a rival even if that rivals spouse was an occasional paint in the butt he had problems with bill clinton during the campaign. he then quoted lincoln. the countries in peril these are the strongest most able people in the country i will put them by my side within team of rivals became a codeword for what he had done for him never forget i was down for nbc the night of the inauguration. there's a party the night before. and hillary clinton was there but she came over to me and said you are responsible for becoming secretary of state i said no not me but abraham lincoln perhaps. soso then he had me come into a series of historians or dinners for him which were really fun and i fell historians and i went we didn't get dressed up as our presidents but we brought them in our heads to give him whatever advice was happening on whatever he was going through at that time to president biden has had a couplest of those dinnerss well now. it's a a wonderful thing as a historian to be able to look at what a president is facing right then and tell them what another president in the pastds might be able to advise them for because they are in our heads. the presence of steady jefferson or jackson or reagan, we were all there together it was wonderful for all of us. the other experience with president obama brought me i didn't exit interview with him before he r left. it was a really wide ranging talk aboutut lincoln, and i told him the story he knew the story team of rivals that lincoln when he got mad att somebody he would write what he calls letter to the person. and then he will cool down psychologically put it aside and hopefully never need to send it. suffice it to president obama said you ever do this and he said yes, i do it all the time i write letters to people in a mad at them i said what you do them i throw them in the wastebasket. i thought oh my god if we'd only known that. but what a great thing to be able to do. thein last thing i will say abot this because what we been going through and watching the whole festivities surrounding or the celebrations or the sadness during the queens at death, he invited me to the dinner that the queen had for him in 2011. the next night there is a smaller dinner he had for the queen. it was an extraordinary occasion. there is something about that pageantry. i had to have a dress made my husband had to be in white ties. we had to wear gloves, you didn't't have to curtsy it all worked out fine. it was so much fun anticipating all of this. she gave a lovely speech the night of buckingham palace.we she just talked about what america had meant to england and how we had rescued england twice. marshall plan had kept them on their feet after words.co there were common values and common language. common language even if we don't speak the same words actually. it was so graceful. it was late at night and she wat in her mid- 80s i would suspect by that time period than the next night we had the ambassadors dinner at the ambassador's house of bama did for her for some godforsaken reason there's a table of about eight people and i was at that table. tom hanks was there, queen, david cameron's wife they are separate, admiral, me and david beckham. [laughter] if i had not known obama i would not have gotten to meet the queen. but anyway i've been friendly with obama since then. i think the great thing about being a presidential sort you know which mark knows is you cross party lines because you are hey story and so mark is been able to know the bush presidents well. i've been able to meet them. i've been able to meet the various peoples along the line because they care about history at least most of them do. [laughter] [applause] clique that just slipped out. [laughter]yo >> if you could offer actually maybe you have done this or should not phrase it that way. when you speak to president bidenri, how do you draw on your knowledge of american history in the presidents in particular to offer advice. what is the advice you offer based on your knowledge?ee >> when we hado that presidentl meeting with him we were not supposed to talk about with and everyone went on television and talked about it anywhere so i can talk about it. he had asked each of us to say something to him. he askedus me too talk about fireside chats and just how it was fdr was able to establish that intimate bond with the people. it meant using short words rather than long words. it meant having a conversational tone in speaking. somehow roosevelt was able to make people feel his friends. he would explain things to them for he explained the banking crisis to them so that they understood what it meant when he first came into office he was going to have to solve that crisis. i was able to talkbo with him jt about how i don't remember this but i read this, was saying he would walk down the street sometime in hot chicago night and you could look in the window and see everyone staring at the radios in their living room or their kitchen. he said you could keep walking and not miss a word of what he said. there is a story of a construction worker in common is partisan where you going? he said my presidents coming to speak to me my living room tonight it's only right and i be there to greet him when he comes. so we talked about that. but so much harder today because in those days eight out of 10 people will be listening more than any other radio in the entertainment or big sporting events. some of the people to didn't like it might've thrown the radio outbu the windows that did not have to listen to him. most people where there is a common sense ofi the country listening as a whole. and i think of one advice one could give to president biden or any of our current presidents, president roosevelt understood if he spoke too often they lose their effectiveness. people they'd gotten on the radio every night it's only to gain the routes in my speeches ever become routine they won't have the same power pretty only delivered 35 sire wrench and fireside two or three.ha now there's a compulsion to be on the air allch the time and speak they do not have the same they had when you're waiting and waiting for those kind of speeches. i think that's one thing we did talklk about. if i were to go back to talk to him again i still feel so strongly about one thing i would love to see done if i were younger and i would it my cause right now. that would be we have got to figure out some way to get people from different sections and countries and parties to feel a common sense of humanity and americanism. and feeling a part of the country. [applause]e] teddy roosevelt warned democracy would be in peril if people began to regard each other as the other rather than common citizens. i keep thinking about and teddy roosevelt was for this and so is eleanor roosevelt and so are people today. some sort of national service program to take kids from high school before they go to college before they go to v vocational schools and just think if the kid from the city can come to the country the city can go to the country breadri we have rect projects throughout the year. if it could be a real thing where people didn't and they worked on disaster relief or teaching older people or helping people and they had a sense of admission knew what they liked just like you do in the military have a common mission that crosses all party lines and all class lines maybe we could break this terrible plague of the otherness that's facing us today. i didn't mention it to president biden when i was there he did lik' the idea is going to take somebody with a passion to really make that happen. if there's one thing if i can mobilize all my guys to come back and make it happen i would love to see that happen. >> of course it's so easy these days to feel a sense of despair about polarization. and to feel a. yearning for new effective leadership. is there a leader out there whom you particularly admire? >> i think when you look at president zelenskyy, how can one not admire the extraordinary leadership? i have a special connection to it in my heart because my youngest son i joey who graduatd from harvard in june of 2001 and then join the army right after september 11, was in iraq for a couple tours of duty, earned at, bronze or came out and came back as mary jo woman from ukraine and her parents are there for the parents are likee my parens and theyy cannot leave right now they are stuck in the same city where zelenskyy grew up. so i knew, i feared putin was going to retaliate and he did not long ago last week and took the hydraulic system out for a while. most importantly, just watching him has got rings of churchill, rings of fdr. what is that magic when it leaders able to project his own confidence and courage ontoch te people? as aby said about churchill they went into battle armed by his words. he just seemed picture-perfect is it partly because he was an actor and he knows how to projectte himself? he understood the importance of theater, walking around. but it was real with him. i remember this video they had at one point where people were talking about the rubble that was in their city that had been almost destroyed. this was my car, this is my dog, this is my father. he said we will buildld again. we will hold those responsible forr these war crimes. we will sing again. it was an extraordinary moments. that is what churchill was able to do. he would give those talks at night when the bombing was going on. and then the next day thereat would be somebody out in the same area that was bombs, the entire shop at been shattered and the windows were gone and they put a big sign out calm right in we are more open than usual. come in. that is the magic of leadership you can transpose your own belief in your countrymen so much so there is a recent poll that said 98% of ukrainian people think they're going to win the war. 91% support 92% support zelenskyy. any leader in our country would give anything for that kind of approval rating. i just shows what happens when a country is unified. and again you wish it for us on ourselves some degree of that roosevelt was able to do that during world war ii were even before pearl harbor was begin to get out of the isolationism. and we yearn for that connection between the citizens and the leader once again. >> you are both such accomplished o historians. let me throw this question to both of you. do you see a role for historians and addressing what seems to be going wrong in american society? dorsal start with you. >> history can come to the rescue without question. i actually do. i think when we think now -- my people will say to him on the streets when i walked down sometimes, if they know who i am and they know i am a history it's the worst of times tell me is this the worst of times? clearly we've been through really tough times before. if history can remind us of what it was like during the civil war. what it was like when the depression was at rock bottom part was like in the early days of world war ii when it was not at all clear we could win. we are on 18th and military power in england desperately needed our help. i just imagine my mind sometimes what lincoln must face when he came into office 11 state seceding fromet the union and te anxiety he later said he felt he had ever known what it was like he would not of thought he could live through. fdr would he took over somebody is said to them if your new deal program works and where the great presidents. if it doesn't you'll be one of the worse he will said no i'll be the last president democracy itself will fail. ischemic democracy was failing at the turn of the 20th century and bombings in the streets of the big business was smelling up small business for when the industrial revolution and shaken up the economy like the tech revolution and globalization. there is a real sense of hatred on the part of the people in the country but the people in the city there's a lot of immigration. it was a tough time he was tough to and lbj took over after the assassination of jfk. in each of those instances may not only had the leaders that we needed for this moments in time, we had citizens that were willing to fight for what was necessary. that is the connection is not just a matter of looking for somebody. when lincoln was called a liberator he said don't call me a liberator's antislavery movement and the union soldiers that did it all. it was a the progressive movemet that was already active in the and states before teddy roosevelt came in the settlement house the social gospel and religion. and of course was a civil rights movement behind lbj. and that women's movement for gay rightsso movement. he think we have to look for is the answers not necessarily history is going to tell us and just searching for that later. in fact that is something my husband came to at the end after all these leaders he had loves so much someone died some had failed, it's up to us the citizen somehow to write the next chapter of the story. and i think that is what history can teach us. we have been through this countries been through really tough times there is a strength in this country still believe. and i know he believed in that can come through. but we have to be active. we have to be the ones they are not spectators we have to vote, we have to votes. that is what lyndon johnson said is the most important thing of all is voting. it's the indispensable right upon which all others depends. and unless we get out and make our views felts and begin to heal our divisions then democracy is in peril. i suspect the citizens will be waking up more and more and more things are going to happen. i have to believe that as a historian and i think it is right. [applause] >> don i would love your thoughts because i cannot possibly top that. [laughter] but i would add as a supplement maybe what can historians do? if you are really a historian if you don't do this you're not a historian. an historian bases her judgmens and conclusions on the evidence. ifri you don't you are not a historian print you may call yourself a historian. but historians, real historians the credible historians reputation have the evidence to back up what they are saying. and of course this is our mission for this is the mission of the library it is to a keen night all this evidence about what really happened in the past. everything has a history. everything has a a history. everything thatyt you look at hs a history. everything belongs to history. and it is a fundamental part of understanding our culture. much less the political environment that you live in. and i think it is incredibly important spirit particularly now to the health of our civil society and our very existence of our democracy that we use evidence to show, to be available there when politicians just make it up. when they just make up the history without anything behind it. while we have these the goodwin archives for example is the evidence of what happened in the 60s that dick could goodwin was involved in. some politician could all make it up. the other thing about this evidence that we have is we live in an age where truth itself is totally under assault. the whole idea of truth. this is again something that is so fundamental that we have this evidence. people can go back. they can go to our collections and do research and do this. historians do that.u they tap into what we have. mark, you know this i know this door certainly knows this. we have a saying as historians where there are no records there is no history. nonedo. and that is what we do print we have to do this to preserve the history. this evidence that we accumulate, what other protection doro we have from history deniers without actually having the evidence to disprove the lives they have peddled. the conspiracy theorist. we have the evidence that you can go to mcf that is correct or not. ifth it really happened or not. it is a fundamental thing. like i said it is incredibly important to the good health of the democracy of what historians do. [applause] >> hear! hear!. [applause] and don, it is tempting to and on such a resounding note. but i have to ask you to spend a minute or two telling all of us how we can experience these treasures that are already at or coming soon to the briscoe center. how can we see the papers? >> what a great question. [laughter]br we have a sample of materials that we brought back from boston when aaron purdy on my staff went up there in works with doris. we have some of those as marcus already mentioned on display now and kind of a sample or show in the center. but we are moving most of the archive from boston this coming monday. we will have the entire thing in hand. >> a big truck. [laughter] >> a big truck. many, many boxes as they say. it will take us a while to digest that and process it and cataloguean it. i am hoping the collections will beea available at least for some level of research and reference late next year. in the meantime we have a philosophy at the center we don't close everything up until the last letter is catalogued. we don't do that. we will open some phases of the collection before maybe the whole collection iss available. we are also going to do a major exhibit. if we have 3000 square-foot exhibition gallery in the briscoe center right next door. we are going to really show off the treasures that are in this collection. and so people can come in and see and look at them. so between that and we hope to have the exhibit by the way open in april. the staff and i have a whole lot of work to do to make that happen. but we will have a formal opening of the archive in april. we will have doris back down to cut the ribbon on the exhibit. we will even provide the scissors. [laughter] >> if i could just make one more comment about history. i think that was such an important way to end this. lincoln wrote something when he rowas young about the fact the revolutionary war heroes were dying and he was a worrying the ideals of the nation were not being taught to the next generationfo as a result because the living and battles were no longer there for people to remember. he was wishing every mother could read it to every child what that revolution wasy' abou. i remember the ideals they become real in their mind. i think that's what we need more than anything for us. remember what it was this nation was founded upon for the declaration of independence. the ideals were not meeting in some ways right now the gap between the reality in those ideals, just so they are not lost but in a metaphorical way as i say, the people from the 1960s are dying off right now. that's the one thing i am so proud of persimmon and people i'm talking to right now are in their 80s remember this. and i went that decade with all the trams as well as its sadness to live on so that we can learn from it. we can learn from mistakes we can learn why it worksng and why it was a time in young people cared about the country. they are out there active there is extraordinary activism which is what we need now. just to help young people get into those archives and read about what it was like when young people felt they'res makg a difference. when they were public lives cut across private lives and the thousand different ways. whether it was even fighting against the government in vietnam there's a sense they were fighting for their country. and clearly civil rights movement was an extraordinary whoment of young people were willing to give up their lives and everything else for cause that mattered. and that is what we need again is that feeling of people comment citizens as i said earlier feeling a sense of belonging to fight for this country. fight for the rights they feel are being taken away. and if they can feel that from looking back at history when that happened in those times are extraordinary times that live on inll our memory maybe that will give them a spur to want to get active today even more so. [applause] [applause] quick so beautifully put. i hope that everyone here will have a chance to go over to the briscoe center and see these small exhibit that is already there and everythingom that is, the months ahead. doors thank you for all you have done to bring this extremely collection to austin and make it available to all of us into scholars and interested parties everywhere. thank you to our speakers. thank you all so much for being