Doris Kearns Goodwin: How assassination attempts shaped U.S. history

Teddy Roosevelt assassination attempt an assassination attempt on a presidential candidate is unusual in modern history but it's not unprecedented we're joined Now by historian Daris Kerns Goodwin who knows a thing or two about American political turmoil darus is a Pulitzer Prize winning historian best-selling author her latest is the fabulous neark times number one bestseller an unfinished Love Story a personal history of the 1960s darus it's great to see you thanks so much for being here glad to be with you we're so great to talk you again uh Doris so let's start with this story that I had totally forgotten about Teddy Roosevelt and the assassination attempt tell us it's an incredible story I me here he was always known as a fighter with great resilience but boy did he show it that day so he's outside his hotel in an open car just ready to go to deliver a speech in Milwaukee at the Milwaukee Auditorium and he's waving to people and all of a sudden somebody comes to the front of the line and shoots him point blank in the stomach he falls down on in sort of in the chest area in the chest area he falls down onto the seat and then he pops right up again and he says we're going to the speech and the doctor said no you've got to go you've got to go to the hospital he said we are going to this speech so he goes to this speech they get in the green room they take his shirt off and they realize that the blood is as large as a man's hand oh my God and they say you have to go to the hospital no I'm giving the speech so he goes up and he's on the platform for 84 minutes each one page by pagee gets thrown on the floor they finally come up after half the time and they say you've got to stop and he's laboring to breathe but he said I have to finish the speech so he finishes the speech they finally take him to the hospital and they discovered that the incredible thing that had happened his speech had been in his pocket and it was so fat no wonder 84 minutes right that it deflected the bullet which would have gone into his heart into the other part of his chest so he had to stay in the hospital for days because they were afraid of an infection um and then he finally comes out and he's of course made a hero and he was running in a very difficult situation he was a third party candidate running against his good friend Taft who was the Republic former good friend former certainly at that moment his former good friend and the Democrat woodro Wilson but the Democrats said at one point the bullet that is lodged now in Teddy Rosevelt chest has killed Wilson's chance for the presidency um and and he was I mean could imagine I mean Trump was able to achieve that heroic status by and it was a good thing he did standing up and saying fight fight fight he did this for 84 minutes but in fact as it turned out it didn't change the trajectory even though he got the biggest um third party vote ever in 20% um but the incredible thing is he gave he could only give one more speech the doctors wouldn't let him out on the trail but it was different from all his other speeches he was a big name caller he called he called Taft a pin head Taft called him a dictator in fact the New York Times was so upset about the vitriol in the campaign they said this should be the first primary we've ever had this is the first primary system it should be the last we should go back to those old convention systems they were rational but the last speech was filled with nothing about his opponents only the forward-looking and was the best speech he made in the whole campign you know talk about one little factoid by the way about the speech the factoid is it was a 50 page speech 50 pages and it was doubled over in his pocket so essentially the bullet had to go through 100 pages of speech I mean how great is that it's just a great little story you before we we leave Teddy Rosevelt as you said that the pin head and the dictator of a name calling so um was that unusual then because we think of all this name calling that goes on now is is somehow say something about the 2000s I guess but that was a long time ago well what happened then was it was the first time that the primary system had been used so they're out on the campaign Trail screwing at each other usually it happened in the conventions themselves so it was contained but now that's what the New York Times said everybody should blush that this is our system we look like idiots everybody yelling and screaming at each other so it had started then it was pretty bad then but anyway here here we go so the Teddy Roosevelt despite that incredible heroism didn't change the outcome of the race something which did change history despite the horror of the moment is what lb J did and was able to do after the How LBJ continued JFK’s legacy assassination of JFK can you share that with us yeah I I think I'll never be able to understand even more the respect we should have for what JFK's death did to LBJ and what he had to do he told me because I worked with him on his Memoirs and he talked to me about this that everything was in chaos that he knew that he had come from Texas which was the home of the murderer and then the home of the murderer of the murderer he knew that people didn't trust him to become the president that they didn't have good feelings about him especially in the Civil Rights community he knew he had to take the Reigns of power so what he did was to make a a bet that he would make a speech to a joint session of Congress that could somehow settle things down and his advisers didn't agree with it he said he was going to make civil rights the first priority in the country to pass the bill that JF gay had wanted to pass interestingly none of JFK's bills had gotten through the Congress at this point there were talks about Congress is broken we have to change it it's dangerous we can't do anything and he promised that he would get all those bills through but more importantly what he's promising is I'm going to take the memory of JFK and I'm going to make that part of who I am to get done what he would have done had he lived so it was a very powerful speech and that speech was just days after the assassination wasn't it that's right and he had only that amount of time to think of what it would to know what it might do if he said that Civil Rights was his first priority and it got stuck in the filibuster and he failed then he would fail himself when he went before the elector in 11 months and his advisor said don't do it and then he they said you only have a certain amount of currency to expend and you can't expend it on this and then he famously said then what the hell is the presidency for and then he got the Civil Rights bill through and he got Medicare through and he got a education through and all of it he said was to make John F Kennedy's memory so he he combined the inspiration of John F Kennedy with his Mastery in the Congress and that was a a great way to and finally there was a there was an editorial by by Reston in the New York Times in the spring they said the handsome stranger who was your first boyfriend is gone and now the old boyfriend is back and it's it's beer instead of sh campaign it's not as exciting but he's getting things done you know not to leave the assassination uh Focus here but I wondered if there is any uh analogy between the you mentioned the Mastery in Congress of LBJ and the relationships which Joe Biden has built up over the years that have helped him at least in his first term get so much past that he couldn't uh that uh if Barack Obama for example could never get done I think there's absolutely an echo in that because here is Barack Obama the inspirational speaker the young guy that everybody feels an emotional connection to and Biden comes in as the work a day guy again who's able to get everything through but hasn't been able to develop that inspirational feeling for him and I think there were tensions between the two especially when Obama went for Hillary Clinton in 2016 rather than saying to Joe you should run but he feels like LBJ did that sometimes that desire and that ability to master the Congress isn't respected as much as a big speech or a rhetorical thing like that well you also wonder now in retrospect it Obama probably was wrong because Biden might have be beaten Trump the first time yeah it's very interesting to wonder about that but I mean those are the things I mean she lost by so little something else might have changed it anything might have changed it seems absolutely you know speaking of Wonder and speculation one more second on LBJ I know this is total conjecture how much of this massive legislative agenda would have happened had it not uh uh been inspired to use I think the word used by the assassination of Kennedy I I think that certainly I don't think the Civil Rights Act and the tax cut would have gotten through necessarily in ' 64 now if JFK had run against Goldwater and Goldwater was the extremist that he was perceived to be and had a huge liberal majority the way LBJ did I think many of those other bills would have gten through but not probably as many because Johnson had an assembly line one bill passes and he's already ready with the messages for the other one and he got hundreds of bills through like that so I don't think that would have happened under JFK then of course the question is would JFK have ramped the wore down in Vietnam earlier than LBJ so in a certain sense they're both the same sides of a coin they both have strengths they both have weaknesses if you could Clum them together and we had John Fitzgerald Johnson it would have been a great character talking to D I'm sorry Doris kin pull surpriz winning historian bestelling author latest book is an unfinished love story of personal history of the 1960s so for our younger listeners who may not have remembered much about the assassination attempt Ronald Reagan assassination attempt against Ronald Reagan tell us about that yeah here again is another attempt where something happens that's positive and forward-looking as a result of it in 197 in 19 um 81 there was he was outside a hotel and he was shot and then he sort of like Trump he said to the to the people of the Secret Service let me walk into the hospital alone when he got there not alone but not on my feet as soon as he got into the hospital he collapsed I mean he was really badly hurt and he already showed that humor and Grace that he had I mean we all famously know he said to the doctors just as he's about about to be put under anesthesia tell me that you're Republicans and the doctor said today we are all Republicans right I love that and but then what happened is the first visitor that he invited into the hospital is tip O'Neal I mean this is such an incredible story and tip comes in and he goes over and grabs President Reagan's hands and he um and he kisses him well F no first he grabs Reagan's hands and he kneels down and he cites the the 23rd psalm and then he takes his hands and then he kisses him and then he leaves and that's the beginning of that friendship that turned out to be so important for getting bipartisan legislation and it was said that they'd call each other at 6:00 and say okay at 6:00 we can stop fighting each other and now we can go and have a drink and talk I mean how important that was and then he too decides to go to a joint session of Congress about four months after the problem had happened the assassination attempt and he again Is So Graceful at the beginning he talks about he's going to be there arguing for his tax bill and it hadn't been doing very well before the assassination attempt but his politics his pole went up to 68% after the attack later it would go down but that was the highest it ever was so he knew this was the time to go back to Congress but he starts off referring to the well-wishing that everybody had given him and all the letters he had gotten and he's he tells funny ones he said somebody wrote me he was 5 years old he said you better get well quick or you'll have to give your speech in pajamas and I I warn you it might not look too good or something like that and then what he does is he talks about the fact this is not a sick Society people were saying what we're saying now that it was a sick Society he said just imagine is it sick to have a secret service person who saved my life by timing on top of me is it sick for J John BR for Mr Brady is it sick for all the people that have wished me well no no this is a healthy society and we love the society and it was just the perfect tone for that I know the sample size is really small I we have teddy Rosevelt we have Ronald Reagan there not that many either candidates for president or presidents themselves who are shop had survived I'm assuming because we've speculated about what Saturday shooting will mean at least in the short term in terms of the prospects for uh for Donald George Wallace assassination attempt and redemption Trump I'm assuming in almost all those cases the popularity of the surviving candidate or president increased yes that is correct I mean it's it's a rally around the flag thing it happens during crisis but it certainly happens when you have to feel empathy for the person who's gone through something really troubling and then you know after a while ordinary stuff comes back again you know the one person that um that I'd love to talk to you about as well is what happened with Wallace's I mean this is one that I only really learned about recently I mean I had known about it but I hadn't gotten into the story so he's he's been Governor he's been a racist government Governor um Martin Luther King said he was the most dangerous person that was in the entire country he said at one point segregation today segregation tomorrow segregation forever and and yet after his assassination attempt and he was hit um when he was running for president again in 1972 And he was hit right in his stomach and he was very seriously hurt he was never able to walk on his own power again he was in a wheelchair share but in the years that followed something changed in him his daughter talked about it people talked about it he decided that he had been wrong on segregation he went to Black communities he talked to people saying I was wrong I now recognize that I want to take responsibility for the harm that I caused he ends up running for governorship again and he gets 90% of the black vote and then as Governor he's a good Governor they more than twice as many people were registered under his regime he gave a lot of appointments to Black Americans and um and he then eventually John Lewis um writes when he dies that he had forgiven he said I will never forget what he did but I've forgiven him that's what the Civil Rights Movement is all about if somebody takes responsibility and they move forward you got to go with love and that's what we do so his is an extraordinary Redemption story you know Dar Kern's good one one last thing before we come to current events with you which I I think is one of the most moving moments in American history for a lot of reasons after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr uh Bobby Kennedy is in 196 in Indianapolis and he Robert Kennedy assassination gives a speech that I've probably watched on video a hundred times uh the crowd is majority black and here's just a little piece of what Robert F Kennedy uh said to the crowd in Indianapolis I have some very sad news for all of you and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in [Applause] Memphis Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love love and do justice between fellow human beings he died and the cause of that effort in this difficult day in this difficult time for the United States it's perhaps well to ask what kind of a Nation we are and what direction we want to move in incredibly beautiful what was the impact of what Kennedy had to say I mean this is one of those moments when you realize that words really matter because he was telling everybody there I lost a brother I know you might be wanting revenge and hatred that's not the way to go we have to go through love as he said but mainly when they went home that night this Community Indianapolis was one of the few cities that remained calm all around the country riots broke out in one city after another it was a terrible Siege I was in Washington at that time and every road was closed and buildings were burned whole blocks were burned and that happened in city after City but not in Indianapolis somehow he'd been able to share was the first time he talked about his brother he had not talked about it in private I mean in public and um and the just he just said it I know what you're feeling I had a brother who was shot too I mean it was and it was all extemporaneous he was told on the way there that this had happened obviously as you can tell from the crowd they had not heard until he said it and his advisor said you better not go there it could be a Tinder Box but he went right in and he did it just shows words can hurt words can divide but words can also extraordinarily help a situation talking to DAR G's good one needless to say so you talked about the dramatic change in in George Wallace and the less dramatic but significant change with Teddy Roosevelt after he was shot in the chest uh Donald Trump of course was his ear was pierced by a bullet on Saturday some people have remarked that he seemed looked a little bit different last night we didn't really hear much from him but he was there with the bandage on his ear what do you think well he said himself Trump assassination and the 2024 race? in an interview I guess that they asked has this impacted you and he said well yes it has that's what we'll see in the days and weeks ahead I mean coming so close to dying has got to have an impact that the hard thing is that it is coming right in the middle of an election campaign you know if if this were not an election campaign then maybe the the hope that everybody has on both sides to tone down the rhetoric would be realized but it's a campaign where these things are already baked into these people what they've been saying about each other both campaigns for the last years and is it going to be easy to go rewind that I mean he says he's going to make a speech that's talking about Unity Unity is a funny word in the middle of a campaign I mean you don't need unity in a campaign you need Unity against violence you need Unity against rhetoric that produces that but divisions open up and that's a good thing to be able to fight for policy arguments on either side but we could at least ask I think for decency you know for compassion for empathy for the qualities that you should be having as you run against somebody you see the other person as your opponent not as your enemy you see the other person as a human being that's what they should both be talking about by the way uh Menendez is guilty on all 16 counts in the federal corruption Tri this is his second trial by the way bribery obstruction of justice acting as a foreign agent and by the way so much for the notion that Joe Biden controls the justice department since this is a Democrat who is uh convicted I want don't foret the gold bars and the in the all over the house allegedly locked into the closet he blames his wife for this whole thing who has cancer by the way it's love that quality in a person uh uh uh can we get back to this Unity thing for a second Marty and I discussed this a lot on the are yesterday I don't understand how you lower one lowers the temperature to use and overuse the expression of the last several days when one side in my opinion is credibly accusing the other side the Trump side as being an existential threat to democracy how do you do that in a civil way that lowers the temperature darus current's good one I think it's really hard I think that's what I'm saying this is the hardest time for this to come if it had come in the middle of a presidential time and things were calm then you could somehow hope that rhetoric would change um there still is a tone that might be able to be changed but they're going to have to make their divisions they're going to have to make the arguments they've been making in fact just as by is claiming that um the democracy is an issue so sometimes the the Trump people are claiming that democracy is an issue because of the bid right yes I have and and you saw even in the first hours after the assassination attempt on Trump that JD Vance who's now going to be the vice president was one of the first to say that it was Biden's campaign's fault I mean that's the kind of stuff that maybe they'll try to have people stop saying um but they've got all these followers in both sides that are you can't control people in a certain sense but you can set a tone and maybe we can hope hope that it'll be somewhat of a better tone but as I'm saying I I feel less hopeful because it's right in the middle of a campaign it's hard to change people's way of thinking these things are all in their heads they're going to come popping out they say the same things over and over over again Doris C's good when I I I am not a fan of of the former president uh but it was an incredible thing he did after being having his ear pierced by the bullet when the Secret Service were trying to move him and he said I want my shoes I want my shoes didn't want to be barefoot ear in his socks coming off the stage and then he wanted them to wait while he put his fist up in the air you've looked at a lot of presidents I found that extraordinary that he could manage that at that particular moment what do you think I think it was too I mean that means that at that moment he's aware of the impression he wants to make as a former president as a candidate for the presidency and he's able to pull himself together and his emotions and his fears to do something that would calm the people who were watching that all those people in that rally they needed to know he was okay if he'd been escorted out you know sort of limping along or they hadn't allowed him to be shown and that meant his head was up in the air he was taking a risk again who knew else who else might have been there no I think he should be honored for what he did that day it was theatrical it was dramatic but it was the right thing for a president in in hoping or a president he always always thought to he's the former president no he's the president hoping um to to do and I think similar to Reagan similar to Reagan that's why he wanted to walk into that hospital even though he was obviously so um hurt by that shooting that he they said he almost fell on the floor luckily the Secret Service agents were able to keep him from falling on the floor the minute he got inside so nobody could see him so last few minutes uh stay on current events if we can Doris Kern's a good one I think I think you said somewhere in Anderson Cooper somewh the other day that if Joe Biden was to step down the perfect spot to do it was it his Saturday speech I think it was Saturday scheduled at the LBJ Library which obviously was cancelled here's a little sound from lynon Johnson announcing he would not be seeking re-election it's from LBJ's decision not to seek reelection 1968 I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office the presidency of your country accordingly I shall not SE and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president you know one of the issues that's everybody talks about Barry Goldwater leading three Republicans in to see Richard Nixon the next day he stepped down uh uh Joe Biden continues to say including last night with Lester HT the decision has been made Nancy he doesn't say these words Nancy Pelos he doesn't have to wait for me to make a decision I've done it and then we all speculate who does he listen to is it Jill Biden is it huner whoever who who who did Lindon Johnson listened to well what happened was a couple things the Ted offense of it occurred at the end of January so the Vietnam War was in a tough place and he was told by the generals that the only way we could get a stalemate just a stalemate was to send 200,000 more troops so he decided he had to wind the war down that was the first decision he made before he went and withdrew from the race and then he realized that if I try to say I want to go to the peace table and I want to stop the bombing which he was going to do they won't believe me if I'm a political candidate so that was made it was certainly talked about with Lady bir Johnson she was his main adviser he didn't talk about it to very many other people was a total surprise to most people even the people on his staff but what he was saying there and that's what he got enormous claim for doing that I mean all of a sudden his public opinion disapproval had been 58% now the next day it was 58% approval it had flipped he went around the streets people are carrying signs thank you thank you instead of signs hey hey how many kids did you kill today and more importantly every editorial said he had put principle above politics that after 37 years in office this was the most unselfish act he had done for the country and he was so happy and and then sadly on April 3rd goodly on April 3rd first North Vietnam and said they're coming to the table and he had all the White House plane filled with everybody going over to Hawaii to start the talks then April 4th Martin Luther King is killed so fate keeps intervening time and again that's why even now it seems like we've been through so much that the campaign is set um all we can bet on is we have no idea what's going to happen between now and September and now and and October and now and November but for LBJ it really was a moment that historians will give him credit for because politics had been his whole life his daughter Lucy said it was like political suicide for him to commit to be able to say I'm not going to be in public life anymore in that way and he gets honored for it well you know we're we're premature because we don't know what's going to end up happening with with Joe Biden but so far he said he's staying in the race and you're an historian um you know he could be viewed as doing it looks like he's losing big time he could be viewed as doing a very unselfish act for his country or not do you have any predictions Doris K good Will Biden step down? one if you ask me 50 years from now I'll tell you what he did I'll come right back here and say maybe even one year from now I tell it's really hard to know I mean I know there's lots of pressure on him to step down not because he hasn't been a great president but a good president during this period of time he's gotten more done in one time although when he sometimes says I've gotten more done than anyone since since FDR then I get mad because LBJ thinking you just last night actually but but I think that the question would be if somebody put persuade him that he's been a great president for now but is are the concerns about his age and health such that it will hinder his chance of running and what he's running for is an election that he thinks is more important than any other election democracy is at stake he could then still be an elder adviser to the person who was going to run he's always said and this is what presidents always feel I want to finish the job and you understand that Lincoln said that in 1864 when it looked like he wasn't going to win the election because the war was going still on and so many thousands of thousands of people dead people thought emancipation was hurting the effort because the South would never come to the table so long as emancipation was on the issue so they tried to make him compromise on it the Republican big dogs came to him and said unless you compromise on it you'll lose the election November and he said then I want to finish it that's what any president wants to have your own Administration endorsed and to know you can finish the job that you started but he said I will not compromise an emancipation even if I'm going to lose and then of course Atlanta happens and all of a sudden the mood of the north changes he wins the election but emancipation is in attack so when I heard those words from Joe Biden I understood why he feels that way but he could finish it with whoever the partner is that comes out if if they were going to run somebody else and he could say and then I can bring all my Elder wisdom along which which it doesn't matter whether they're concerned about it because I'm there with my wisdom I don't know it is going to be up to him and it's hard to know where that pressure is it's now gone underground I think during this this week of the convention during the reaction to this whether it will resume and and have an impact on him we'll know we'll know it we've got to know in a couple weeks no matter what's going to happen I know I speak for marrey I cannot tell you how much we enjoy talking to you Doris K it is a thrill thanks so much for here thank you and watching all over the television at CNN all the time it's wonderful I absolutely love that on the new shows on Sunday as well thank you so much for being so to be with you thank you too