know scott does, too, with the letters and diaries in private journals so when i found these letters, i realized they had become friends in the early 30s. an odd couple. teddy marched around everywhere during wrestling and boxing. weighing between 250 -- 350. not doing much wrestling or boxing at that time but they liked each other. opposites almost attractive. so he brings him into his cabinet and becomes the most important person in his cabinet. ... >> they want him to run against taft in a brutal campaign and because there are two republicans running so then he runs on the bull moose third-party campaign opening the door for the democratic win so the heartbreak was much greater because of friendship was stronger i love writing about these emotional things it was more than a straight linear story. >> woodrow wilson came into the picture and then went back to progressivism. >> wilson went back to progressivism big time taking the foundation that was there and built upon it. and what wilson wanted to do because most people's image wilson is a presbyterian minister son. when he was human and emotional and passionate where he wanted to do was humanize the presidency so where theodore roosevelt created a relationship with the press , woodrow wilson wanted to advance that so we started to hold press conferences which a president had never done before it was toward personalizing the white house so wilson came in with the most aggressive and progressive agenda we have seen. he brought it about largely through the process of humanization and by showing up at the congress. wilson had an extremely peculiar view how the legislative branch and the executive branch should function. being a political scientist , get ready, he thought they should cooperate. [laughter] [applause] think of it. he thought literally they should co, operate the government so wilson did something nothing is happen he showed up in the congress to conduct business and brought back the president to deliver state of the union and delivering 25 addresses to joint sessions of congress and actually showed up in a little room that sits in congress designed for presidents to come and work with the congress. i think a lot of presidents have failed to find this room. [laughter] i'm not naming anyone but it has a rather tricky name. it is called the presidents room. [laughter] >> lbj found it. >> yes he did. big time. that's why so much legislation was passed. johnson in many ways was in the wilsonian tradition to get in and roll up your sleeves cracking if you legs and arms and that's what wilson did and we immediately saw within the first few months of the wilson administration and the lowering of tariffs the introduction of the modern income tax so the richer paid more and the establishment of the federal reserve which is the basis of the american economy for the last century. putting the first jew on the supreme court. progressivism for wilson was about leveling the playing field he was not anti- wells or wall street he was antitrust and against unfair competition anywhere he saw it he try to fight it. >> you both alluded to there are a lot of parallels between today and those times are we in another gilded age? >> one of the things that produce the great gap at the turn-of-the-century that the old economy shifted if you are living in a country town the richest person could be the doctor or lawyer now suddenly with a massive trust forming with the railroad spinning the country and railroad you have landlords. so the pace of life had sped up with telegrams replace - - replacing letters when people said there were nervous disorders because of the pace of life was sped up think about it today but yes we are in another gilded age but it is that mobilization of the country that this is not seemingly emerged so as a result of not even sure the bully pulpit has the power that it did in wilson and teddy's time it would become a common conversation. even when fdr went to fireside chat 80 percent of the people listen you can walk down the street and not wonder what he said everybody was listening to the radio. by early television you would hear the whole speech now the media is divided the national newspapers that came along in my time even sometimes i write check i write 1913. [laughter] the national newspapers that emerged replace the partisan press in the old days you would only read your newspaper lincoln gave a great speech carried out on the shoulders of his people and they booed and hissed him with the same speech and now here we are again divided media only watching your own station you only hear a part of the speech and our attention span has so diminished and what i wrote about him he was given two years to write 50000 word pieces month after month and people read them and talked about them i'm not sure if anyone is given that amount of time today and the expense accounts and their camaraderie and the attention span. so i went over the country is going with our influence on the government mccluer said there's no one left but all of us sometimes i think that's true for us because we just complain and we haven't figured out how to do something about that paralysis. >> that fragmentation will only continue because people make up their new media all the time it's a fact free media happening all over the place. how was wilson treated? >> pretty well especially by many of those like baker. >> is my favorite. >> and to spend his final years not only working for wilson but and eight volume biography of wilson he so adored him. one of the most glorious pieces was rich and that in fact it was so wonderful i would not quote him because it made me look to partisan in wilson's favor. but it's true what you are both suggesting about the great sexualization of the media because what we have lost any reticulated, we don't think anymore we just react from the guy and that's why we flocked to that cable station that says what we think even though we haven't thought it yet. [laughter] but that is a big factor today. wilson had a very good relationship with the media up to the first world war which wilson ultimately brought us into and one of the great ironies in wilson story that the most progressive president we have had to date but this president became the most progressive of the press which he did during the war to revitalize the alien and sedition act that was quiet certainly since the days of adams but then brought back wilson used to cite lincoln all the time. >> people have asked me what would teddy roosevelt have done in today's world of twitter. i thank you would have loved it. his great strength was to reduce complex problems. everything that he said that was fairness, not going after the rich, not going after the poor to say the rock on the country is founded but speaks softly and carry a big's deck. said he drank 40 caps of coffee a day. even gave maxwell house the slogan good to the last drop. >> and you cannot shut him up. [laughter] he loved to be in the center of things. both his strength and his witness. he was to be the baby at the baptism and the corpse at the funeral and the bride at the wedding. [laughter] >> this made wilson crazy. he thought ter was a caricature of a man somebody once pointed out to tr colonel roosevelt even wilson have the same objectives in the same principles you are so much alike why do you attack him every day? roosevelt said i guess he's just the weaker version of me. [laughter] that's great. he was from princeton before he was president so did that ivory tower environment help with his governing? >> that helped him in a positive way very much because he was trying to tear down the ivory tower. wilson was the relatively poor son of a presbyterian minister and went to princeton in new jersey and there he found a very exclusive campus he presented it as an undergraduate and as a professor and then became president of the college and at this time decided now i have the ability to change what this colleges. his predecessor was a man who used to brag he ran the finest country club in america. he did. question this was for the sons of the very very rich and wilson tried to tear that down and in doing that this is how the most meteoric rise in american history occurred because people began to look at wilson to use the princeton campus is a great metaphor and believed higher education should be the great catapult for people that anybody from any class anybody who is educated and works hard should be able to leapfrog on the latter. he became so famous that the political bosses in the democratic party were attracted to him thinking he was the perfect combination to be there puppet he sounded very progressive best but also a professor so he would be very weak. but once elected governor of new jersey and served 18 months, the first thing he did was take out the very machine that put him in office. everybody saw this was not a week puppet professor. >> let's turn to the women behind the man like i wanted my husband to be more like nancy reagan. [laughter] >> there are three women i'm writing about. and they each made choices they had to make even if there were narrower choices. edith roosevelt came from a family her father was wealthy and lost to shipping business and became an alcoholic. she lived very near teddy and then moved to a more modest home. she loved teddy from the time she was young. they were girlfriend and boyfriend through college. they had a fight they broke up and he fell in love with a girl from boston. he married alice and then she died in childbirth a few years later. he went to the badlands depressed the light had gone out of his life but he married edith and it was an extraordinarily strong and joyous marriage. all she wanted was to give companionship and strength and a sanctuary to her ever restless husband. she said she would not give her views on political opinions what mattered for a woman was only to be in the newspaper twice. when you are married and buried. she was little known by the public at large. but ellie taft had ambitions to do something but her father sent her brothers to harvard and yale she decides to start teaching thinking i'll never come out of society. this work stuff and she may not marry but taft adored her and respected her independence and made her his partner. she is partly responsible instead of the judicial route he was is on she help with the speeches and strategy and became an extraordinary first lady very activist concerned with working women she brought the cherry trees to washington created a public park with free concerts and incredibly sadly to alter his presidency two months after she went on - - he was ignored curated she fell collapsed with a devastating stroke she recovered her power of walking but never speaking sentences again he spent days and days to teach her stock phrases so she could participate but this absently contributed to his troubles as presidency and lastly tarbell watches the frustrations of her mother when their industry is hurt as an oil producer. jd rockefeller comes in and undoes his business. now they have to worry about the family economics so she pray she will never take husband. does not ever become married and the most famous journalist of her era. she writes a standard oil expose she kept reporting that rockefeller would pay anyone to take her on trips around the world. [laughter] but still to balance home and family and work those choices are so much broader. it is so interesting they made a choice to fit their own needs and desires. they were indispensable into first ladies in very different ways. >> wilson has a bunch of women. [laughter] >> he does. [laughter] i feel like queen for a day that old show the most pathetic and romantic story. wilson had two wives. the first he met in georgia as a struggling lawyer in atlanta. he was a presbyterian minister son and met the daughter and they fell instantly in love. he was realizing he didn't have a career as a lawyer so he took up academia. so they began exchanging 3000 of the most passionate love letters i have ever read. yes woodrow wilson. [laughter] they are almost hard to believe. sexual, a viewing on - - revealing and emotional. yes. woodrow wilson it's true. >> and let him believe in god. >> what does that mean. [laughter] >> she became a college president's wife and poured a lot of tea. she was a very good artist and painted extremely well and could of had a career as an artist and gave it up to be a proper wife. as the role of women was dictated back then and the most supportive wife there could be all the way to the white house and wine year into their living in the white house she dies. and the president was crushed. he could barely get out of bed he was so religious and did not talk about suicide but did save more than once he wish somebody would just shoot him. he couldn't deal with it. the very week she died a war broke out in europe now they are knocking on the door to see mr. president something is happening and we need you here. secondly is that woodrow wilson was introduced to a very attractive young widow living in washington dc and over the course of the next year the president went according and had private dinners in the white house, always chaperoned and inviting on - - writing hundreds of the most passionate love letters you have ever read to this one. [laughter] the ones to ellen was puppy lov love. now he's in his late fifties having his last stab at romance he would lose her and windsor and mary's are within one year and now she is the most supportive presidential wife one could imagine. they never left each other side. got to the point wilson used to walk to other departments of the government to stop in mrs. wilson would go with him. she was trained in the memoranda he was writing and almost as though fate was dictating. because after the war and wilson came back with the league of nations and the peace treaty going around the country to convince the american people they should convince the republican senate to ratify the treaty which the republicans did not want to do he collapsed and was rushed home to washington from the middle of the country and then a few days later he suffered a stroke. here is where mrs. wilson comes in. she and a handful of doctors engage what i consider the greatest white house conspiracy in history. because three or four people decided they would never tell anybody the president had suffered a stroke. so for the last year and half of the wilson administration for all intents and purposes edith wilson became the first female president of the united states. she was making no decisions on her own she was merely a steward but nobody saw the president of the thousands who wanted to see him, nobody saw him without passing through mrs. wilson. all the documents requiring signatures or memorandum memorandums, nothing appeared before the presidents eyes until mrs. wilson decided what and when he would act upon. she became a pretty supportive wife. >> i guess so. letters, don't know what will happen in 200 years from now when we don't have those handwritten letters may be e-mail would be saved but it staccato not in that language when people had the only means to communicate it is a treasure. one military aid to both teddy and taft and in those days they were with the president all the time when the break occurred he wrote letters every single day to his family that are gold and talks about how deep that rupture was for taft and recounted as teddy was talking him and this relationship was so strong. finally he was supposed to take a trip in the spring of 1912 before the nomination began to heat up at the last minute teddy throwing his hat into the ring he said i cannot go taft needs me but he tells them he has canceled the shipping order and taft says you have to go. you will be back when they need you. he goes to europe for about four weeks and comes back on the titanic. taft was stricken yet again because he felt he would miss this man. as the titanic was going down telling him that he had storage letters that they would be remembered someday. so just keep track of what you are writing to people so in 200 years you will have stuff for us. [laughter] >> take out a pen every now and then. [laughter] is different and we have shared this. the men we have written about and women wrote so beautifully it when you take the time to write, you compose a thought and put it into lovely language. >> when my question. then we will open to the audience. president obama is having such a difficult time right now. so what advice would you are president give him? [laughter] >> you go first. [laughter] >> president wilson would say get to the presidents room. go there. start a dialogue woodrow wilson had a contentious senate in the end and a contentious house of representatives. he didn't get everything he wanted to hear is what he engaged in, it was a sustained dialogue great years with a lot of consternation and argument and disagreement with an ongoing chat with these branches of the american government. that is something wilson believed in so strongly. and secondly it's ironic because we have an image of us to figure. that wilson personalize the presidency. he wasn't afraid to go down to the congress he was willing to go there and do anything to open the conversation and had a foreign relations committee of the united states senate come to me in the white house. let's do it but always keeping the dialogue going. >> i agree. in addition to going to congress it is using the tool of the white house. the congressman want to come there i know there's difficulties because the president is inviting republican because it want to risk to be seen because it looks like they are disloyal but there is something special about coming to the white house. johnson would have the progressives in the middle of the night at 2:00 a.m. i hope i didn't wake you up the senator said no i was just lying in bed hoping my president would call. [laughter] but the big difference that is harder today is the whole political culture has changed. these to stay around on the weekends before they had to raise home to raise funds for their stupid ad. campaign finance is the answer actually is the poison in the system their wives knew each other they would drink together and formed friendships. when johnson had to get to dirksen they were friends but there are so few friendships now between these people few have served in a war together many were in world war ii together they understood a common mission. they lost that sense of a common mission which is our country and something has to bring that back to bring teddy and wilson and lbj to figure out both sides of the aisle it's time we can start dealing with our problems. [cheers and applause] >> now it's your turn. >> i live in washington dc i have the privilege of being a founded member of the national museum of women in new york. my question is with the education we had in our training we were asked to read a book called jailed for freedom a series of essays written by the suffragettes who are lawyers and physicians and judges who are all women fighting for the right to vote. president wilson totally ignored them. did you a counter this in your research? >> that's not totally right but he was quite aware of what was going on. he believed women should have the vote. he believed there should not be the 19th amendment but he came around that and then famously gone on a train going to new jersey because he thought it was states rights happening state-by-state by 1915 and 16 there were protest outside the white house those that were being arrested and taken to jail he said let them go just let them go. i know the issue i'm not prepared to fight for a 19th amendment. alice could've walked out any time she wanted to stay. she was fighting for attention and making her point. now by 1917 wilson was bringing the country into war so at this time he had a major shift clinging to the morris conservative wing of the suffragettes but beginning in 1917 he was coming around because we were fighting in europe for peace and freedom over there then how can we not have half the women in this country vote? that seem to be a huge mistake to him. second once we were in it is the role women were playing. leaving the house for work, and doing good works for the were movement. wilson had the overnight change of heart and began actively campaigning for the 19h amendment he called the session of congress that's how important it was we had to have national universal suffrage because of the war and he thought that would be a good way to get every you buddy to rally behind it and within one year it was a done deal even alice came around to thank him. he was late to the party but once he got there. >> next question. >> i'm sorry we will move on. >> thank you. >> good afternoon. >> what an honor to hear you to. you alluded briefly regarding president wilson that these three presidents what was their relationship to status and class? we get a sense that tr was with the common man but not of the common man. and tr was friends on the lower east side where my great-grandparents set up shop. so i am wondering on a specific note to the immigrant lower crescent - - lower classes where they part of the america quick. >> it's a great question what happened for theodore roosevel roosevelt, when he first went to harvard he thought he should just deal with the people in his class but underlying that attitude coming from a wealthy family in new york but his father was always interested in social justice and didn't join the business that became him wealthy. that instinct was in teddy but then the real place he began to shift away from that mentality is he became a state legislature and thought that irish guys with their tobacco and cigars were of a different class and he realized he became history guy yelling and screaming and at a certain point he realized he wasn't getting anything done so he said he realized he had to learn how to deal with people of all different classes and then reese became his friend originally he was against regulation but he was from that tradition and saw the conditions and then was for regulation and then these reporters became police commissioner took them in the middle of the night. he had so many different jobs and then in the roughriders had a bunch of people with him and he kept to the relationship with these reporters who were much more involved than he was. and they could criticize. the famous chicago bartender wrote a review of the rough rider book and said he put himself in the center of the action as if he was the only person in cuba he should call it alone in cuba but he says my wife and my entire family loved your review now you only one i want to meet you. come meet me so through the reporters he began to see the conditions of life and later said my harvard buddies think my talks are homely but i know i'm reaching people because now i know them enter train trips months at a time talking to people and even stand up in the middle of lunch and said he was waving so much they seem so in different it turned out it was a herd of cows. [laughter] but something had to jar him away. fdr polio transformed him suddenly aware fate dealt in the unkind and so he reached out to others who had the same things. >> wilson did not believe in a great class structure in this country as from a lower middle-class as a presbyterian minister son but he did believe in the educated class and that's what mattered for him. and he spent most of his life and career on a college campus as a student or professor or president but believed that was the great leveler of all playing fields. so when wilson became a politician, it's a fascinating to will he used as a politician, he never spoke down to the audience. he always used elevator language, he spoke without notes and would deliver an hour and a half speech with a card with five little bullets and speak in perfect sentences, high-end vocabulary , he could just do it and the fans loved it because they understood it and felt elevated and woodrow wilson never look down on them. that was a wonderful thing for them and a great tool. and as such he was pretty effective in that regard. >> correctly for roosevelt he did speak with notes. when he was campaigning he had a 50 page speech in his pocket when the assassin shot him in the chest the bullet remained within and he still delivered the two hours speech despite because he had diana spectacle glasses and went upward otherwise killing him on the spot so the each other a way of talking. >> one more question. >> so about wilson in the league of nations, i heard he was so intransigent and not willing to accept the reservations of the senators if you could reflect on that. and i'm reading no ordinary times that is incredible. this is such a big question has a comparison between tr and fdr and the reflections given that yesterday was the 50h anniversary of the killing of kennedy. how in the world do we get to campaign finance reform? what do you see in the future? >> this is that my job description to answer that. [laughter] but i heard something of the league of nations in there somewhere which wilson desperately wanted you have passed so we could fight the war to end all wars. he was age hands a gym for a couple of reasons one of which he was pretty stubborn but when he was in paris for six month months, the president of the united states left the country for six months to negotiate a treaty. and during that time he says every country to get home to he made some compromises. so he came back he found the senate completely unwilling to accept the treaty that is when the curtain came down and he said i am not giving away another thing. this battle went on for weeks which prompted the tour of the country. even after his stroke the battle still went on in the senate even though compromises were presented he would not buy them in the dean of the republican party henry cabot lodge came in with the 11th hour compromise which was a few sentences and wilson would not buy it. he is the stuff of greek tragedy, man who didn't just shoot himself in the foot but stabbed himself in the heart. >> that raises when we live with these people for so long we do care about them so when they disappoint you and do things you wish they hadn't obviously i adored franklin roosevelt and eleanor but yet wishing fdr had open the doors for more jewish refugees or not incarcerate the japanese americans but yet balancing he is the allied leader ending the threat of adolf hitler even writing these books my kids say they would hear me and say franklin just be nicer to eleanor. eleanor forget that affair. and similarly with roosevelt i have respect for his domestic policy and persona but his views on war i have no respect. the victories of war are greater than piece. iversen who graduated from harvard but then september 11th have bend and volunteered for the army the next day later got a bronze star be he wrote his thesis on roosevelt and loved him after he came back and said he could never understand how anybody could romanticize combat. there are times you want to say stop but that is part of the glory of being a biographer to look at their strengths and weaknesses but it's up to us not forget about that part but at the same time i could never choose somebody ultimately that i don't want to live with i could never write about hitler or stalin so luckily i write people i feel affection for because then you feel like you know them or that you could change them but you can't. >> we have been given a ten minute reprieve. i want to give a chance to those people who were in line first. >> i am the executive producer of forgotten hollywood books he rests on - - series what an inspiration you both are to all authors in the room. [applause] a very simple question. can you both speak to the importance of eugene in the election of 1912 with taft and roosevelt? >> 900,000 votes. >> he was extremely important. he was more than happy to - - paprika in this do there was so much progressivism in the air but it becomes extremely important because he is one of those people who will be arrested under the alien and sedition laws. and delivering the speech set i know i will be arrested maybe 12 or 20 times i look for this addition i just can't find it and telling the people this was a capitalist war they did not have to be cannon fodder. he was arrested and put in jail and found guilty the supreme court ruled against him nine / nothing the war is now over. wilson had a stroke come in the white house about to leave and people in his government a very attorney general who put them in jail came to him and said mr. president he is an old man and sick and clearly not a danger any longer. here is the pardon just sign it wilson pulled out a pen and said denied. you don't cross him more than once because he felt once we had gone to war that sort of speech telling people not to go to war was sedition to him and said as long as i am in charge of 2 million people risking their lives i cannot let anybody speak out against them. >> you said nobody's perfect i read the book called america's original sin dealing with progressives in a relationship and both had very poor records in my estimation especially wilson the mentioning the roughriders and the buffalo soldiers. and wilson race back numbers of years for pre- reconstruction. >> i agree. roosevelt at one point had a symbolic gesture to invite booker t. washington to dinner and sparked such outrage there was the equality of a social relationship that he back down and also held imperialist and racist attitudes. they are men of their generation and those who were arrested they couldn't figure out who started it and all you can say jeff to remember the context in which they are leading. even abraham lincoln in the 18 fifties was sitting on juries saying how can lincoln have done this? but it change the whole course of the war and then him it - - issued the emancipation proclamation so then they see if they are behind the context are in the middle of it or if you're lucky they were ahead of their time. >> this has been such a magnificent and high level conversation i want to go to a different level so what is it like? [laughter] >> having been a passionate baseball fan level life only one victory with the dodgers in 1955. [applause] and then i chose another team after they abandoned us and went to california with the boston red sox and had all those years we lost and lost in almost one like the dodgers we finally win but we have season tickets so we read every game every playoff and every division. to be in our town seeing them winning to share that with boston that's what's so great about baseball. somebody asked what would you have done if the dodgers was against the red sox? but i thought about it the dodgers were my first love my father taught me how to keep score that was how my love of history began going over every single play he thought i was telling him a fabulous story. i also had a first love of a boyfriend before i married my husband but now they are my sustaining love the boston red sox would be my love now. [laughter] >> on that note have to tell you i brought you one gift that my love for you for your writing and all that you have done i always feel you are that tim russert of the today show. >> you could give me a better complement than that. >> a couple weeks ago you could speak to us in a way we understand i love your energy. my wife and i first date was to a cleveland indian game and then they pitched a perfect game. >> and you're still married. >> yes. >> but we have a great thing every summer called the midnight sun baseball game it starts at 1030 at night so my gift to you. [laughter] the alaska gold tanner hat. >> thank you so much and it invitation to come to a midnight sun baseball game junet every year. >> the summer solstice. >> thank you. >> any closing comments. >> what a pleasure it was to have this conversation. [laughter] [applause] >> that was doris kearns goodwin from the 2013 miami book festival. a regular on c-span over 60 times all book discussions are available to watch online. we have one more program from the 2018 national book festival. she discusses her book leadership in turbulent times looking at how american presidents have done with crises. >>. >> good afternoon on behalf of library of congress you like to express our deep gratitude to aarp to make this possible a longtime supporter of the educational initiative and we are very grateful for that. [applause] now it's my honor to introduce the cochairman of the national book festival the champion of reading and literacy david rubenstein. [applause] >> thank you we are very honored to have one of the countries for most historians here. thank you for coming. how many people here have read team of rivals? bully pulpit? lyndon johnson? the kennedys and fitzgeralds? how many people here agree she is one of the foremost writers? [cheers and applause] so for those who don't know her background very briefly growing up in brooklyn and ultimately went to colby college got phd at harvard , white house fellow in the johnson administration and helped him with his memoirs. than ultimately went back to teacher harvard and now has been writing extraordinarily well received biographies and histories and won a pulitzer prize for one of your books as well. you are writing a new book coming out september 18 on leadership. was on the leadership skills of the people you have written about like abraham lincoln when is roosevelt when is franklin and one is johnson. why did you decide to write a book about four different people? why not pick somebody new? >> each time i finished writing one of the books, have to take all the persons books out of my study for the next guy felt like i was betraying the person that was there before like having an old boyfriend and moving to a new boyfriend so i thought if i could keep them together but i knew i would have to do it looking at them in a new way and i've always been interested in leadership and once upon a time as a graduate student we would stay up talking about leadership and thinking of ambition. is leaders born or made talking about boys and girls but those are the things interested us. i do call them my guys maybe that seems disrespectful but i have lived with them for so long. what if i take them through the exclusive lens of leadership. it became a great project for me. it took five years not as short as i thought and i loved every minute of it. >> the only one of the presidents you actually knew was johnson and before we get into the book you may relate how you actually came to know him and almost lost your job with an article that you wrote.

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