Doris Kearns Goodwin's "An Unfinished Love Story"

Introduction renowned presidential historian Doris Karns Goodwin is famous for her award-winning books about iconic American Presidents her subjects include Franklin Roosevelt Lyndon Johnson and Abraham Lincoln her new book an unfinished love story is also a history but a more personal one when her husband dick Goodwin turned 80 they began sorting through 300 boxes of documents in memorabilia a time capsule of Dick years as a speech writer to presidents Kennedy and Johnson standing beside the country's leaders dick Goodwin saw the most tramatic moments of the 1960s unfold such as the civil rights protest in Selma the beginnings of the Peace Corp and the assassination of Robert Kennedy he really knew how to write public poetry in a way he knew how to compress the thoughts and the ideas of the country into its history into its future into the meaning of the moment an unfinished love story is both a tribute to the good one's marriage and a fresh look at a historic era in American [Music] politics Doris K Goodman it's so great to have you here to talk about your book an unfinished Love Story oh thank you I'm very glad to be with you Cathy so this book is the result of going through some 300 boxes of memorabilia and Diaries and notes with your husband dick Goodwin tell me a little bit about that The process of opening the boxes process with him it um it went on on for several years did it not oh yes and in fact there were many years before that where these boxes slept around with us from one house to another and he just wasn't willing to open them even though they're really a time capsule of the 1960s because he was sort of everywhere you'd want somebody to be with Kennedy with Johnson with Senator McCarthy in New Hampshire and then with Bobby with Jackie but he was so sad about the way the decade had ended Bobby Kennedy had been one of his great friends and he died of course and Martin Luther King the riots and the campus violence that he just wouldn't open them all those years even though they kept coming with us so I knew he cared about them and I had seen what was in them so I couldn't wait till that moment finally he turned 80 and he said okay it's now or never if I have any wisdom to dispense I might as well start now dispensing what was that like to go What was it like to go through the time capsule through that time capsule if you will of both of your lives really because you had a very Monumental exciting decade in the 60s as well what was it like to relive all of that well it was so different from the way I normally do my research although it had similarities because it was memos Diaries letters Journals newspaper clippings all the things I usually use when I'm studying the presidents who are no longer alive Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt or Franklin Roosevelt but now it was my husband right there right across the room from me and I used to talk to all my guys beforehand Lincoln and Teddy and Franklin but they never answered me now dick could talk to me so it really was the the last great adventure of our life to relive our youth he was 12 years older than me but still the 60s were my decade as well and to be able to talk to him him and to have those memories come back to life um it was an extraordinary time you and Dick met actually in 1972 How did you and Dick meet and we're married in 1975 can you tell us a little bit about how you met yes what happened is that I was a young assistant professor and he was given an office in the very building where my office was and we heard that he was coming we were all kind of nerds we we knew that dick had worked for lynon Johnson for John Kennedy with Bobby when he died and I'd heard that he had wild eyebrows and kind of wild hair and was kind of arogant and captivating he sounded really interesting to me but he just walked into my room and where my office was and he sat down in the chair and he said so you're a graduate student right and I said oh no I'm an assistant professor and I told him all the courses that I was teaching and he said of course I know I'm just teasing you I know you worked for Lyndon after I left so we started talking that afternoon and we talked about everything he knew so much about science and philosophy and we talked about the biger Red Sox which we both loved and we talked about JFK and LBJ and Bob Kennedy and then he invited me to dinner that night we kept talking and then we ended up talking for the rest of our lives for 42 years so it was an extraordinary marriage it was a great adventure to be married to him I can't What was most important about opening the boxes imagine your conversations Through The Years about all of those experiences well I think the thing that was most important about opening the boxes was that he had always kept a grievance toward LBJ because of the war in Vietnam and I always felt loyal to LBJ he was loyal to the kennedies because they gave him his first first start in public life really in many ways he was close to Jackie and Bobby so we argued for many years about who was the better president I would argue that l lynon Johnson got everything done that JFK had inspired to act he would argue that maybe JFK would have ended the war more early but as a result of that when we went through the boxes we decided we would start from the beginning without knowing what was going to happen later and so we relived the great parts of JFK and I began to see why he was so emotional about him and then as he went through the boxes from 1964 and 65 reliving the Great Society and his involvement in the great speech on we shall overcome speech The Joint session of Congress he remembered remembered Johnson before the war and I remember one night after we'd gone through them he finally went upstairs he said oh my God I'm feeling affection for the old guy again but it was really important to let those grievances go it made a difference in those last years of his life that he could feel and remember the great things Johnson did the legacy of the would always be cutting his own legacy into but still he remembered the great parts and the decade had extraordinary things that happened in it it did there was one point point in the The great things LBJ did book where you seemed almost a little bit like you you were defending LBJ and you guys had a little banter going here and there that probably continued at certain times until he kind of looked back and realized all the really great things LBJ really did no you're absolutely right I mean when we went through the boxes that deal dealt with Medicare Aid to education Civil Rights Voting Rights you know National foundation of the Arts Aid to the cities immigration reform and you realize that excitement of the F the beginning of the Great Society and he was there right at the beginning I mean he was there right with the origin of it swimming in a pool with with LBJ and Bill Moyers nude I might add nude you might add yeah it was a crazy moment I mean Bill Moyers came to in the morning and said that the president wants to talk to us about a Johnson program he's now got the um Civil Rights bill is on his way the tax cut had been passed and so he said are we going to the Oval Office dick asked no to the White House swimming pool and there's Johnson swimming dark Stark naked in the pool up and down looking almost like a whale John dick said but then he said to the two guys standing there in their suit and ties well come on in so they had no choice also to become Stark naked then three of them are swimming in the pool but eventually Johnson pulled over to the side and just outlined what he was hoping to to do for America and it was that complex wonderful group of programs that we were just talking about so the task was for dick to work on a speech for him that's the way often things happen a speech is a way of announcing a program so they had to get the program ready in that month or so and they had to get a name for it and they didn't know what to call it some people wanted to call it a better deal than a new deal other people wanted to call it the Glorious Society or the good Society but finally my husband in a few speeches tried out the Great Society and that's what it became so this was the origin of the Great Society in many ways he he was such a Writing public poetry brilliant Wordsmith wasn't he he really knew how to write public poetry in a way I mean there's a whole art to it that I I'm not sure I I I could ever do it's under such enormous pressure that you have to write as he said if you don't get the speech done in time it means nothing at all at least when I write history it's more patient I can take my several years to finish something but he knew how to compress the thoughts and the ideas of the country into its history into its future into the meaning of the moment I mean he would always say that a great speech depends on the moment that it's delivered if Patrick Henry went into a chamber of commerce meeting in a prosperous time and said Give me liberty or give me death it would mean nothing it was at the beginning of the Revolution that he made those famous words so the words have to fit the moment and the person he knew how to change the dialect for to fit JFK or Bobby Kennedy or Lyndon Johnson but as he would always say the most important thing was it had to be authentic to the person you can't write for somebody at some level where it's not going to be the way they speak or the way they think or the way they emotionally feel well those are such moving words that he always came up with in those moments and so Not only was he witnessing history unfold but also shaping the way we all see it yeah I think that's right what you're really doing is you say for example the speech that he made after Selma demonstrations had taken place and Johnson decided that he wanted to give a talk to a joint session of Congress that's the highest kind of talk you can give right everybody assembles and he wanted to call for a federal Voting Rights Act and my husband had only that day to help work on that speech and how he was able to as you say you come up with sentences that first sentence of that speech will always make me feel awesome I speak tonight for the Dignity of man and the destiny of democracy it's just the D's and the D's work together and the whole theme of it is dignity of man and Destiny of democracy and then you know at times history and fate meet at a certain time in a certain place so it was in Lexington and Conquer so it was at aamas so it was in Selma Alabama and then go on to call for voting rights and and somehow Johnson spoke with a conviction dick stood at the back of the House of Representatives that night and he said oh my God I loved him so much that night never could he have imagined that he would later March against him on the war but that's a moment to remember and because five months later the Voting Rights Acts passed that's the point of the rhetoric of speeches it's not just what they say either they help to fire the conscience of the country or they get something done and in this case it did both by helping to change public sentiment the push for getting that Voting Rights Act which probably might not have passed without Martin Luther King having produced that protest against the the ways in which the South was denying the right to vote to so many black Americans you were very close to Young LBJ LBJ because you were a White House fellow uh in his administration and he seemed to see a lot of talent and and really wanted you close by for his Memoirs later on and what do you think about the young Doris Kerns that you know made LBJ see so much potential you you know I'd like to think that in part what Drew Lyon Johnson to to me was that he knew I was a young historian he was wanting to talk about the days when he was young when he was in the National Youth Administration when he was a young Congressman bringing electricity rural electricity to the Hill Country and luckily I was on a small team working on the Memoirs and my two chapters were civil rights and Congress the two things that he really wanted to talk about so he just talked everywhere he talked as we swam in the pool he talked as we went to the movies he talked as he walked around on the ranch and I think part of it was that I was then at Harvard and he had somewhat of a thing about Harvard he used to say that his father told him if you brush up against the grindstone of Life you'll have more polish than any Harvard or Yale man ever had but he said I never quite believed him and I think part of it was just I really did just listen to him and part of it was that I was a young woman but I was constantly chattering to him about steady boyfriends even when I had no boyfriends at all and and it it all worked out that that we had a relationship that was friendly his wife was an extraordinary woman ladyb bird is somebody that I will respect forever more and she became my friend got to know the daughters I was part of the family in many ways one of the things that was so amazing about lady bird is that she could smooth ruffled feathers when he would hurt somebody or somehow yell at a person she knew how to come along and make it possible for him to change course or to be softer or to stop yelling whatever it was about a year or so after Team of Rivals came out um Lucy Johnson her daughter um called me up and said that her mother wanted to tell me how much she had loved the book she had listened to it on audio and she wanted to to talk to me about it and I couldn't imagine what that could be because I knew that she'd had a stroke and that she couldn't speak and that she couldn't see anymore actually so that that's why she couldn't read but she had listened to it on audio and so she said wait she'll tell you what she felt and I didn't know what would happen but then I heard her clapping at the other end of the phone and it just meant so much to me and then I called Lucy later to remember that conversation and Lucy's so wonderfully dramatic so Lucy said that her mother was clapping louder and louder and louder more intensely she wanted me to know that she was so proud of you and she wanted you to feel part of our family again so it really meant so much to come full circle from those days when I was in my 20s when I really was part of that family and now so much time had passed and she still felt the same way she was an extraordinary woman and so it The formative years was nice to get that glimpse of you in the book as well those formative years for you what is it about those years that made you want to M told you you would be a presidential historian or was there anything no I don't think I knew I was going to be a presidential historian what I knew was that I loved history from the time I was a little girl and then I had a teacher in high school as so often happens with many people Miss Austin who was a great history teacher she made us feel like she really knew these figures in the past I remember when she was talking to us about Abraham Lincoln dying she actually cried and then I thought to myself she must have known him cuz she's actually crying and because she was such a great teacher I went to college thinking I'd be a high school teacher and then I went to graduate school and probably thought I would be a teacher even more than a writer even at that point and then that experience of being a White House fellow for Lyndon Johnson and being able to go down to the ranch afterwards and help him on his Memoirs that set me off on my first book on Lynden Johnson and The American Dream and then then after that you just suddenly go to FDR and then you go to Lincoln and then you go to Teddy Roosevelt and before you know it 50 years has passed and you've been living with Dead Presidents for 50 years my only fear in all of that is that there'll be in the afterlife a panel of all these presidents and each will each one will tell me everything I missed about them and the first person to scream out will be Lyndon Johnson how come that damn book on the Roosevelts was twice as long as the book he wrote about me but I'll be forever grateful to him for there's no doubt that that experience was what made me turn into I could have done some other kind of history but not necessarily presidential history yeah you seem to have s such a love and passion for it and that's why everyone enjoys reading them so much I think I do love history and I wish everybody did it's always about other people it's other times in our history and history can provide perspective and it can provide lessons and it really can give a solace in this particularly hard time we're living in now because we've been through dire times for democracy before with Lincoln with the early days of the depression with the early days of World War II and somehow we came through them and if we can remember those times and people can relive them in a certain sense and realize how anxious the people at the time were I think it'll give us Solace for today it reminds me of one spot in the book where you talk about how many years later dick was um he was hired to write Al Gore's speech for the The 2000 election concession speech for the 2000 election in such a way that everybody felt very good about democracy no I think it was that moment as you say of the presidential transition of power which had taken place with every other president um until 2020 um except for 1860 when the south deeded from the union when Senator gor called him to ask him to help on that speech he knew that it was a moment when it would matter he said would you like to help me on a victory speech or a concession speech but dick knew the concession speech would matter and it talked about the rule of law and Senator Gore was So Graceful in saying that he would give his blessings to the president elect um and that's what we need from every president that loses an election or every candidate that loses an election to accept it with Grace and he did why The Voting Rights Act do you think LBJ was able to pass the Voting Rights Act and Kennedy had not I think that part of it had to do with the fact that the Civil Rights Movement was gathering a certain strength at that time and after the Civil Rights Act of 64 had passed the country felt good about it I mean that's the thing we should remember right now it wasn't just that black Americans felt good the entire country felt a good thing was happening that the South was willing to finally change segregation laws that had been there for 75 years and there was a worry then that there would be violence but they handled it very well as it turned out overnight night it changed the daily life changed down there and then the next problem was Voting Rights and I think what happened is that with that speech and with what happened at Selma when when people saw on television that peaceful Marchers were coming across the bridge and that they were met by Alabama state troopers who tore into the crowd with clubs and whips and the horses then went over the Fallen bodies they knew something was wrong with that and they wanted something changed and so LBJ knew that moment was rip for going before the joint session Congress and the speech and the firing of the conscience and the timing and what Martin Luther King had done all came together at that moment that's why the great moment in the speech is when President Johnson uses the words that we shall overcome that we needed a century of bigotry and Prejudice had to be overcome but we shall overcome which means that the outside movement was being drawn into the highest councils of power and somehow that's when change takes place in the country so it was a magic time dick is working with lb you were not that's not where you two met you met later at Harvard and um you were still a student I believe or I was a graduate student graduate student watching it on television not when I when I was when I was listening to the Selma demonstrations yes exactly and I remember being with my friends and when we saw what happened at Bloody Sunday you just said to yourself how can this be our country and then I got involved in marching to Boston because one of the Boston ministers was killed during that period of time James ree so then we would gather together again to watch the we shall overcome speech and everybody just jumped up and hugged each other there was a sense of something great is happening the only time I had felt that before personally was being at the March on Washington in August of 1963 but that too was a time when I felt I was part of something larger than myself and that we were working toward a better America I was carrying a sign Catholics and Jews and Protestants unite for civil rights and it was a great feeling and then again that was the feeling that young people had in that decade starting with Kennedy and then carried out by Johnson which was that young people felt they could make a difference that they could make the country a better place that they wanted to be something involved with something larger than themselves and that's a terrific feeling to have when you're young it's a terrific feeling to have at any How do we bring that feeling back time how do we bring that feeling back now I don't know we just have to battle the feelings that young people have of futility it's so hard when the problems are so large like climate change or gun safety or women's right to choose right now and and there's a feeling of what can we do but one of the other speeches that dick worked on for Robert Kennedy really I think gives part of an answer to that he talks about the fact that each time this was in Cape Town at in South Africa at a time when the students were battling aparte and feeling like they were getting nowhere the regime was so oppressive they've been battling it for some time and he he cautioned against the danger of futility each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to increase Justice he sets forth a tiny Ripple of Hope and then those ripples come together and they can form a stream that can break down the the mightiest walls of Oppression so each little act can can catapult to another one is really what he was saying and it gave those kids in South Africa a sense of purpose and a sense that they could keep fighting and they did and it took many years to happen but it finally did Break Down The Walls of apar so I think what people just have to believe they have to work in their local city their local state and just make a difference and then feel that sense what we can follow on with even more actions after that I mean the young people are the future that we're going to have and we've left them really hard time right now um but but we saw them acting in the 60s it wasn't only the Civil Rights Movement it was the beginning of the women's movement the beginning of the gay rights movement there was something in the air then that people felt that sense and it is a contagious feeling so you got to hope that somehow these people will feel it again so you began going through the Going through the boxes boxes when dick was 80 um what was that what was that like for you to emotionally to kind of go back and relive those years together it really did have an emotional connection to it I mean I remember the night that we were going to be going through the boxes that had to do with the first debate between Nixon and Kennedy and Dick said let's have a debate date tonight and we'll have a bottle of wine and we watched them actually on YouTube so we talked about how he had prepared helped with Ted saorin and to prepare Kennedy for the debates and then we actually watched the debate he said I remember he said are you anxious are you wondering how it's going to come out and of course we knew how it came out but there was something fun about doing what we were doing there were times when it was emotional there were times when it was sad when we recounted what dick did the night that Kennedy died and his body was brought back to the White House and dick was there helping to get the Eternal Flame helping to recreate the East room so it would look like it did as Lincoln laid there which is what Jackie wanted somehow she had the presence of mind even in those moments after President Kennedy was killed to relay those instructions to the people in the white house that she wanted the Eternal Flame which she had seen in Paris and she wanted to have that room looking like it did for Lincoln's time so when we did that of course those were the sad moments when we listened to Bobby Kennedy's speech right before he was killed in that kitchen he couldn't watch it anymore he left the room so it did touch on things but it also touched on Great Moments at the same time just the excitement when when dick was present at the University of Michigan in the fall of 1960 during the campaign with JFK and they went to the university and 10,000 kids had been waiting for him he wasn't supposed to speak to them just go to sleep that night and go to a tour of of the state the next day but he figured he better say something no speech had been prepared dick and Ted senson had gone off to get something to eat in the 24-hour cafeteria and so he he just asked them a series of questions would you be willing to go to Ghana and maybe help the people there to to develop be a teacher be a somebody as an engineer and they responded with such enthusiasm and then these two graduate students went up and got a petition which a thousand kids signed within two days saying yes I'll be willing to give two two or three years of my life and that was the beginning of the peace score you know and when you go back and you do that you just feel the excitement all over again so a whole range of emotions happened probably the hardest thing was just in the last years after dick was diagnosed with cancer and there were still boxes left and I remember he was teasing he said I wonder who's who's going to finish first me or the boxes but really the boxes gave him a sense of purpose I think when you've got some sense of purpose when you're older as he was and when when you're facing an illness every day there was a certain kind of joy and excitement so I kept thinking as long as we have the boxes to open everything will be okay yeah there was a little certain The poignancy of the book level of poignancy in that you know understandably so which was which was nice it was a nice you know to kind of see that the lovely relationship you had you know and I'm sure for him looking back on all of the you know really great work he did it it puts context in your in your life in context you know and you see that it was a life well lived yeah I think everybody wants to think before they die that they've done something to contribute and I think he did feel then again he remembered the contributions he had made and so it made me think about the fact that I know so many people have scrapbooks they may not have this huge amount that he had but they'd have scrapbooks or pictures or or memorabilia that they've kept and somehow the child or the or the grandchildren are left to open them after the death takes place and I just hoping that you know thinking about this book and thinking about the process that was so valuable for the two of us that will allow younger people to ask their grandparents hey let's go through the stuff you've got so they can hear the stories I mean that's what you want to do you want to leave stories on to your children or grandchildren so that your life can be told by them later on and I I would hope that they would they would think about that right now The meaning of the title what is the meaning of the title for you an unfinished Love Story well I think on one level it meant that this was an unfinished project that dick and I were working on together and we talked about it becoming a book and then in those last months when he knew that he probably wouldn't be able to finish it I promised him I would so that's the unfinished love story part of it but I think it's also an unfinished love story about America I mean always our democracy is unfinished and even when dick was young he and then when I was writing my books later felt that what we were trying to do was to work on whatever way we could to take that next step toward making America the better place that it would hopefully be that are ideals you never get those ideals but you keep reaching toward them and I think Dick's work through public life and hopefully my work through choosing presidents who lived through really tough times but each of those times came out making America a better place or the way we could contribute in our own way The Leadership Journey are you working on anything else well during this period of time leadership in turbulent times the most recent book that I completed before this one is about the leadership of four guys that I knew well Lincoln Teddy Roosevelt Franklin and and LBJ and it's been adapted now for for a young adult book for a young Reader book and I worked on that during this last year so I will be running around talking about that but what I think is important about it it it starts with when all of these leaders were young because one time I was in a college campus and a student raised his hand and said how can I ever become one of those icons I was talking about Roosevelt and Lincoln you know they're on Mount Rushmore they're on the currency they're in movies they're too far removed and I realized if you can make a young person see these people when they were young when they first start for office and they're going to have some arrogance they're going to make mistakes they're going to grow as they go along then maybe they can connect with the values because mainly what the book is trying to talk about is what are the qualities that make for great leaders there's no master key but there are there are certain qualities humility the ability to acknowledge errors empathy most importantly to be able to understand other people's points of view resilience to get through adversity accountability kindness compassion and an ambition for something larger than oneself you see them developing in these young people and then they become the older leaders that they are and I'm hoping that's why young people can think about what does it take to be not just a good leader in government necessarily but a good leader on your team a good leader in your college a good leader in your workplace um a good leader in your family and and that's so that's coming out under the title the leadership Journey how four kids became president great so this book struck me I there were certain spots where you talked about about sort of the current you feel when you find a historical document an original document that maybe nobody had seen or really examined before and you found some things like that so some of the process with Dick's papers was probably similar to your other books with you call them my guys the presidents but this is with my guy The Presidents Papers your long beloved husband and so there was this nice um feeling that this was a project of the heart and the head no I think that's absolutely right I mean I know when I would go into presidential libraries and you actually had to go in with gloves on your hands to be able to to hold an original document but here all of a sudden I come upon the telegram that Martin Luther King had sent to the president after the Howard University speech that my husband had also worked on which was the beginning of affirmative action and it's the blue Telegram and he said this is the most profound speech ever given by a president and just holding holding that you you just can't believe that this is a moment that you're participating in or earlier even before the 1960s it turned out that my husband had written 50 letters to his best friend George Cuomo and George Cuomo who became a novelist gave them back to Dick before he died and as I held those letters and saw a young dick who I'd never known before and just heard how he was so excited to go to Europe for the first time and almost crying when he went into a great restaurant with these beautiful young girls and they were talking about the world um it just made me feel a sense of connection to him when he was young which I'd always wanted to or I remember letter to George Koo where he talked about the fact that because he was first in his class at Harvard Law School and was editor of the law review he was getting flown around the country to have a choice of whatever Law Firm he wanted to go to and then right after that found this picture of the law review where you see 60 guys and two women one of whom was Ruth better Ginsburg then I went into the room and I was yelling at him how can this be she couldn't even get an interview at one of these law firms and you were able to be flown around and of course he was teasing it's not my fault this is what happened then but those are the moments when you could you realize that was the prejudice against women at that time but obviously all those doors were closed to her when she was young but she spent her life opening doors for other women so that was a pretty emotional moment as well so a Learning Journey for you and um but also a call it a Talisman at some point yeah I I guess I just kept feeling so long as there were boxes to open he would stay alive and um I knew that in my mind you couldn't know that but in your heart you could imagine that would be true so we kept doing them right till the end yeah Doris Kern's goodwi it has been so great to talk to you today about an unfinished love story and uh just enjoyed it very much oh Kathy I enjoyed it so much too thank you very much for having me [Music] 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