>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington, D.C.
[ Silence ]
>> It is now a distinct
honor to introduce - well,
it'll be a second here -
the cofounder and co-CEO
of the Carlyle Group
and the co-chairman
of the National Book Festival Board
and lead benefactor,
David Rubenstein.
[ Applause ]
David Rubenstein: We're very
honored to have Doris Kearns Goodwin
as our special guest, and before
I give her background for a moment
and start some questions, how
many people here have read a book
by Doris Kearns Goodwin?
>> Hooray!
David Rubenstein: How many
people have read two books?
Three books?
Four? Five?
Six? All of them?
Okay, how many people are going
to buy her book today
and get it autographed?
Okay. So Doris Kearns
Goodwin is obviously a leading
presidential scholar.
She is a person who has
written books on some
of the most important
presidents, and today we're going
to talk largely about her
new book, Bully Pulpit,
which is about Teddy Roosevelt
and William Howard Taft and a bit
about the muckrakers of that era.
Before we do so, I'd just like to
give you a little more background
about her and other
books she's written.
She's of course written books
on Lincoln and Kennedy family
and Fitzgerald family and Eleanor
and Franklin Roosevelt and a book
on Lyndon Johnson,
with whom she worked
when she was a White House Fellow.
She is from Brooklyn.
[Background noise] A big
fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers
and she wrote a book
about them as well.
She's - the Brooklyn Dodgers
don't exist any longer
so she's shifted her allegiance
to the Boston Red Sox [background
noise] and she was the first woman
to go in the Boston
Red Sox locker room.
So that's also a distinction.
She is a graduate of Colby
College, Phi Beta Kappa, and,
naturally, magna cum laude.
Later won a White House Fellowship
and, as a White House Fellow,
was assigned to the
White House and worked
with President Johnson directly.
After she left as a White House
Fellow, she went to Harvard,
finished her teaching
assignment there.
She taught at Harvard and got
a Ph.D. at Harvard as well.
And then she began a
career after teaching
of writing extraordinary books.
So I'd like to start by asking
you this: You've written books
about some presidents that
you obviously couldn't know -
Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt,
Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy -
if you had a chance to have
dinner with any one of those,
and you can only pick one, who
would you want to have dinner with?
>>Doris Kearns Goodwin: I
think it would probably have
to be Abraham Lincoln.
You know, I keep knowing
that people say to you
"suppose you could have
dinner with one of your guys,
what would you ask them" and I
know I should ask Abraham Lincoln
"what would you have
done differently
about Reconstruction had you lived,"
but I know I wouldn't ask him that.
I would just say to him, "Mr.
Lincoln, would you tell me a story?"
And then if he started
telling me a story,
his whole face would change,
his smile would come on.
The story might be a funny
story, it might have an anecdote,
it might have a moral, it
might be a dirty story.
And I would see him come alive.
And the idea of this
man, Abraham Lincoln,
who I thought about everyday
for ten years, coming alive
and soothing his melancholy
by telling a story
to me would be my favorite
dinner I could possibly imagine.
>>David Rubenstein:
Suppose you had a chance
to ask one question to the others?
What question would you want to ask
of, let's say, Franklin Roosevelt?
You have the chance to
ask him one question.
>>Doris Kearns Goodwin: I
guess with Franklin Roosevelt,
and it may well be in
part because I just went
to the Holocaust Museum
today, I would want to ask him
"when you think back, is
there more you could've done."
I understand that once
World War II happened,
the doors Hitler closed
forever to the Jews,
but is there more you could've
done to bring more Jewish refugees
to the country before that moment?
>>David Rubenstein: [Applause] What
would you ask Eleanor Roosevelt?
>>Doris Kearns Goodwin: Oh, I think
what I'd ask Eleanor is - in fact,
it happened when I was
working on the book.
There was so many times when I felt
there was such love between Eleanor
and Franklin, and yet such hurt
because he had had an
affair so many years before.
And I would ask her
again "just forget
that affair; I know he loves you."
And I would talk to her when I was
writing the book and just tell her,
you know, just remember you
are so much better than any
of these other women in his life.
Just absorb the fact that you are
Eleanor and just be closer to him.
Because he was lonely in those years
and there was still a resentment,
understandably, that separated them
from their beds from each other
but made them these
incredibly partners.
But I guess I'd try and
tell her "I know him
and I know he wants
to be with you more.
And if you could stay home a little
more, I think it would be good.
>>David Rubenstein: [Laughter]
So if you hadn't been
a Presidential Scholar,
you'd have been a marriage
counselor, right?
So what would you ask
Teddy Roosevelt?
>>Doris Kearns Goodwin:
These are great questions.
I mean, I think I would ask Teddy
"why couldn't you have waited to run
for the presidency until 1916?
You and Taft were such
great friends.
He loved you.
You knew when you did that daring
act of running against him in 1912
that the chances were the
Republican Party would split
and the Democrat would win.
Why couldn't you wait?"
I mean I think I know the answer in
part; he loved being at the center
of attraction so much that he
couldn't bear being out of power.
This is the part of him that I
least liked even though I love
to rub the fact of him wanting
to be in the center of power.
His daughter, Alice, said he wanted
to be the bride at the wedding
and the corpse at the funeral
and the baby at the baptism.
But had he thought, had
he been able to wait,
he would've been president in 1916.
He would've been the
World War I leader.
He would've gotten what he wanted:
to be in the most dramatic times.
But he couldn't wait.
And I would say, "Why
didn't you wait."
>>David Rubenstein:
What about John Kennedy?
If you could've asked
him any one question,
what would you like
to know from him?
>>Doris Kearns Goodwin: Wow.
You know, I guess this may put me
back in the marriage counselor route
because I would say to him "when
the presidency is so exciting
and it's the greatest job in the
world and you've got such talent,
why would you ever take a chance
by having these involvements
with these other women
while you were president."
It seems to me incomprehensible
that it's not an adventure enough
to be president and yet he was an
extraordinary fellow and, you know,
he had lots of - I better stop.
I'm about to defend him
and I don't know why.
>>David Rubenstein:
Obviously, you would've -
you obviously would've been
a great marriage counselor.
So let's talk about, you
know, Lyndon Johnson.
You worked - how did you actually
get a job working for him?
Because most White House
Fellows don't actually work
for the President of
the United States.
They usually work at
some department.
How did you actually
get to work for him?
>>Doris Kearns Goodwin:
There's no question that every -
every part of my career
as a presidential historian
goes back to Lyndon Johnson.
When I was selected as a White
House Fellow, we had a big dance
at the White House and
he did dance with me.
It wasn't that peculiar;
there were only three women
out of the 16 White House Fellows.
But you're right, you
could've been assigned anywhere
in the White House, but he
whispered to me that night,
as he was twirling me around
the floor, that he wanted me
to be assigned directly to him.
But then it was not to be that
simple, for in the months leading
up to my selection, like many other
young people while I was a graduate
student at Harvard, I'd written
an article against him which came
out in The New Republic
because I was involved
in the anti-war movement,
with the title "How
to Remove Lyndon Johnson
From Power."
And it came out two days after
the dance in the White House.
So I was certain he would
kick me out of the program,
but instead surprisingly said,
"Oh, bring her down here for a year
and if I can't win
her over, no one can."
So I did eventually end up
working for him in the White House.
Not right away.
I was sort of persona non
grata for while and worked
for this fabulous man, Secretary
Wertz in the Labor Department.
But once he resigned from the
race in '68, he said, "Okay,
you said I should be out of power,
not you've got to work for me."
So I ended up staying with him
until his presidency was over
and then accompanied him
to his ranch to help him
on his memoirs the
last years of his life.
I saw him in the sad
last years of his life,
when he knew that his
legacy had been cut in two,
although he had done such
great stuff in Civil Rights.
And he opened up to me in ways
he never would've had I known him
at the height of his power.
So he talked and he talked
and he talked, and I listened
and I listened and I listened,
and it was the greatest
experience in the world.
Half of his stories I later
discovered weren't true,
but they were great nonetheless.
But more importantly, I think
I developed a certain empathy
because I had been so much a
judge from the outside on him
and I saw what it was like to
be president, I saw what it was
like for the joys,
I saw the sadnesses,
and it made me forever onward
try to look inside the people
that I would be studying,
from their point of view
to understand what they
were going through rather
than judging them from
the outside in.
And that lesson I learned from LBJ
I'd like to believe made me the kind
of historian I eventually became.
>>David Rubenstein: So is it
easier to write about people
who you've never met,
or is it easier to write
about somebody you actually me?
>>Doris Kearns Goodwin: In
some ways, it was really heard
to write LBJ having met him because,
you know, I wanted to be fair
to him, but I felt such a
tangle of emotions about him.
And the more you knew him,
the more you wanted him
to hopefully feel good
about you've written.
But I still had that anti-war
feeling as I was writing the book.
I still knew there
were parts of him -
he was a difficult
character to be around.
And yet at some level, I probably
loved the person that I got to know.
So I think there were lots more
emotions involved in writing
about him than there were
about these other people.
But in a certain sense, once I spend
ten years with Abraham Lincoln,
or seven years with Teddy and
Taft, or six years with Franklin
and Eleanor - longer than it
took the war to be fought -
I feel like I'm living with them.
I'm thinking about them.
So that same sense of I
feel intimacy and yet I have
to withdraw myself so that I can
understand them and yet I want
to be fair and I want
to like them and -
I think the tangles have
been there the whole time.
And that's what makes
it so exciting.
>>David Rubenstein: Now your book
on Lincoln, A Team of Rivals,
got enormous amount of attention
because it was a best seller,
it was well written, of course,
and it was made into a movie.
The story that I understand is
that when you told Steven
Spielberg you were writing a book
about Lincoln, he said
"I want to option it"
and you hadn't even
written the book yet.
How long did it take you later
to actually get the book finished
after he optioned the book?
>>Doris Kearns Goodwin:
That is correct.
He was doing a documentary on the
millennium, the century, in 1999
and I met him along with other
historians, and he'd always wanted
to make a movie about Lincoln.
So when he found out I had started
on Lincoln, he said, "Shake hands
and I'll have the first
chance at this,"
as if there'd be 20
people lined up, you know,
other than Steven Spielberg
to make a movie on Lincoln.
So he did option it.
While I was finishing chapters,
he put two scriptwriters on
and they did a really good job,
but he wanted Daniel
Day-Lewis to be his Lincoln.
And Daniel didn't accept
either one of those scripts,
until finally after I had finished
the book, Tony Kushner came on
and wrote a script that Daniel said,
"Yes, I will be Abraham Lincoln."
And as soon as that happened,
Steven called me and asked me
to take Daniel to Springfield,
Illinois,
to go through the Lincoln sites
and he was coming incognito
because they didn't want to
announce that he was Lincoln
yet because he wanted
time to become Lincoln.
He becomes the person.
So we were supposed to
just eat in the hotel.
He was under an assumed name.
But he said he wanted
to go to a bar.
So we went to a bar;
immediately someone came right
up to us and offered us drinks.
And I thought, "Oh, my
God, it's already over."
But they didn't recognize him;
it was me they recognized.
So we laughed and we
laughed and laughed.
So, anyway, we got through it
and then, for an entire year,
he had me send him books about Clay
and Webster and the Revolution.
And finally, I went to Richmond,
Virginia, to see the filming.
But was no longer my friend
Daniel, which he'd become
for a year; he was Mr. Lincoln.
You had to call him "Mr. Lincoln."
You couldn't talk to
him as if he was Daniel.
So I didn't get to see
my Daniel again, really,
until the awards ceremony
started and the premiers.
And so at the first one in New York,
the premier, he said we had to go
to a bar to celebrate, to
remember that night before,
when he was just becoming Lincoln.
So, anyway, he takes me to the
Carlyle, we have a couple drinks -
Old Cuban's his favorite drink
- I only had two and he had more
than me, which is an
important part of this story,
and then a few weeks later he'd
won his first award and Steven came
and gave him the award
and incomprehensibly,
when Steven gave him his award, he
talked about he rejected this role
so long and he finally said
yes and it was so great.
So Daniel gets up, he said,
"I don't reject everything;
when Doris Kearns Goodwin
asked me to go binge drinking
with her, I accepted at once."
[Laughter] And there was a Wall
Street Journal reporter there,
so it was in the paper the next day.
But it was a great adventure.
Here, I saw this man walk the
way we knew Lincoln walked,
only because somebody told us
he walked like a laborer coming
in at the end of a hard day.
He talked with that
high-pitched voice which we knew
because somebody told - not
because we'd ever heard it.
He had that sense of humor.
He told the stories.
He was melancholy, he
was deep, he was wise.
And I truly felt the Lincoln
I knew had come to life.
>>David Rubenstein: So
your book covers much
of Lincoln's life, of course.
Were you surprised that the
movie actually only covers
about four pages of the
book, on the 13th Amendment?
Were you disappointed that only
such a small part was covered,
or you thought that was appropriate?
>>Doris Kearns Goodwin:
No, on the contrary.
I mean, what happened
is that Spielberg -
when Tony Kushner started,
he had 600 pages
and it covered more of the book.
Then it got down to
500 pages and it had
to be 200 pages for a 2-hour movie.
And what they found - and this is
not something I could've found.
It shows that a visual
person is different in a way
from the wording person that I am.
They found a story within the story.
And the story of his
political genius
in getting the 13th Amendment passed
was the larger story that I had told
about his political genius.
The person I knew who was Lincoln
was there, the morality of him,
and that was what I cared about,
that my Lincoln came to life.
It didn't matter that it
wasn't this; it was this.
And I could never have
thought of making it that,
but that was the genius
of Tony Kushner.
>>David Rubenstein: So it is said
that there are more books written
about Lincoln than anybody
other than Jesus Christ.
There may be more than
20,000 books on Lincoln.
So what made you think that you
could write a book about Lincoln
that actually, you know, would say
something somebody else didn't say?
And the "Team of Rivals" concept,
when did that come to you?
>>Doris Kearns Goodwin: To be
honest, when I started to write
about Lincoln, it was
terrifying precisely
because of the question
you're asking.
14,000 books have already
been written about him,
and I knew there were
Lincoln scholars who I'd met,
who had spent their
whole life on Lincoln,
and I was a rookie going
back to the 19th Century.
So it was just because I wanted to
live with him, because it takes me
so long, I have to want
to like the person.
I could never write
about Stalin or Hitler.
I wouldn't want to wake up
with them in the morning.
And I knew I wanted to know Abraham
Lincoln, but I couldn't figure
out how to have my own angle.
So at first I thought I'd write
about Mary and Abe as I had written
about Franklin and Eleanor.
With the Franklin Roosevelt
vibe, I had the same problem:
so many books about him,
many books about her.
So their partnership during
World War II became the theme.
But as I started spending the
first could years on Mary and Abe,
I realized she couldn't
carry the public side
of the story the way Eleanor did.
And then somehow, luckily, I went up
to Seward's house - he was Secretary
of State - very early
in the research,
and it's a wonderful little museum
that has preserved everything
about Secretary of
State Seward's life.
And I began to get
interested in him.
And then I read his letters and
his wife was away from Washington
for year, so he wrote
her letter after letter,
and then I got interested in
the other guys in the Cabinet:
Chase and eventually
Stanton and Bates and Welles.
And they all kept diaries
and they all wrote letters.
So it was probably three or four
years into it that I realized, "Ah!"
This is the story I can tell, his
relationship with all these guys
because they talk about him in a
way that not everybody else has.
And they tell me everyday
what they felt about him
and what they felt about each other.
And then Team of Rivals finally
became the subject of the book.
>>David Rubenstein: So did
President Obama call you and say,
"I have an idea about
a Secretary of State"?
Did he say that his -
your book influenced him?
>>Doris Kearns Goodwin: Well,
what did happen actually is,
when he was running against
Hillary Clinton but way behind her,
way back in '07, I got a
cell phone call and he said,
"Hello, this is Barack Obama.
I've just read Team of
Rivals and we have to talk."
But he wasn't talking about
putting her into the Cabinet.
He was way behind her.
He was just fascinated by
Lincoln's emotional intelligence.
How was he able to forgive
Stanton, who humiliated him
when he was a young lawyer and
bring him into his Cabinet?
How was he able to not
let resentments fester?
So we talked about that in
the Senate office building
and so he had read the book,
and then he read it again,
and then what happened is, when
he finally won the nomination,
a reporter said to him, "Would
you really be willing to put
into your inner circle a
chief rival even if his
or her spouse were an
occasional pain in the butt?"
And he then quoted Lincoln and
said, "Lincoln said this is a time
of peril; I need the strongest and
most able people in the country.
I will do that."
And then when he put Hillary
Clinton into the Cabinet,
then just the luck was
- this is now three or -
this is years after the book has
come out - that the term "Team
of Rivals" became a term
for what he had done.
And she teased me, when I
saw Hillary right before
the Inauguration.
She came up to me, she
said, "You're responsible
for my being Secretary of State."
>>David Rubenstein: So when
you write a book, do you go
and do all your research
and then you write it later?
Or do you do a little research
and write, research and write?
How do you do this process?
What's the process for you?
>>Doris Kearns Goodwin:
It is research
and write and research and write.
I remember when I was in college,
I read Barbara Tuchman's
Guns of August.
And for me as a woman to read that
incredible account of World War I
by a female historian, she
became my mentor in a way.
And she once wrote
an essay that I took
to heart when I started writing.
She said you have to be careful
when you're researching not
to research too much or
you're going to get paralyzed.
You're going to have all this
stuff and you're going to be -
so you have to start writing even
when you've begun researching.
And she also said chronology is
the spine of telling a story.
And I believe that.
I mean, I think academics, a
lot of times, can write a story,
but then they know so much
that they stuff stuff into it
that they only knew later.
And what she said was only tell
the story from the point of view
from what the people
at the time knew.
So because everything I
write is chronological,
I really can research the beginning
and then write the beginning,
and then research more
and keep going
until their lives come to the end.
>>David Rubenstein: So
you write in the daytime,
or night, or how do you do that?
And then you - what do you do
to relax after you write so -
how many pages can
you write in a day?
>>Doris Kearns Goodwin: Oh, I
wish I knew I could say that.
It's the research that
takes more of the time.
So say for the Lincoln
book, ten years of working,
it probably would've been six
or seven that's research
compared to the writing.
But I wake up early -
I love early mornings.
I've always been a morning
person, not a night person.
I used to be a night person
when I was still single,
but once you have kids, you
can't be both a morning person
and a night person.
So luckily my husband doesn't
wake up until 7:00, 7:00, 7:30.
So I wake up at 5:00 and I've got
those two, two and a half hours,
before breakfast is time.
And then he's a writer,
too, thank God.
My husband, Richard Goodwin, who's
actually just had an eBook come
out from his book, Remembering
America: A Voice From the '60s.
It's now finally just now an
eBook and it's a fabulous book
about his experiences
with Kennedy, Johnson,
the Civil Rights Movement,
Bobby Kennedy.
So he's writing in one part of
the house, I'm writing in another,
and we work until 1:00 or
so, and then we go to lunch.
We go to lunch in Concord,
the town we live in,
and bring the newspapers, which
I try not to read in the morning
because I just want that span.
Then we come home, I write
some more until dinner,
and then every night our relaxation,
if we're not going to a ball game -
we have season tickets to the
Red Sox - if I'm not going
to a ball game, is to go to dinner
where we have a couple local bars -
this is going to be the bar stories.
There's a couple local bars in
Concord where friends of ours,
all of whose kids are
grown, go together.
And we've made so many good
friends there, and we sit there
and totally relax, and
then go home and go to bed
and start all over again.
>>David Rubenstein: Okay, so
let's talk about this book.
>>Doris Kearns Goodwin:
This [inaudible] book.
>>David Rubenstein: This book.
>>Doris Kearns Goodwin: I got
a terrible letter from a woman
who said she was loving the book,
but she was reading it before
she went to sleep and it fell
on her nose and it broke her nose.
>>David Rubenstein: [Laughter]
Well, it's - it's, you know,
a few hundred pages or so.
But it's an excellent
book, of course.
Well researched, well written.
It's really - you don't
really want to put it down.
It's a really terrific book.
What made you think the world needed
another book on Teddy Roosevelt?
There have been a lot of great
books on Teddy Roosevelt,
so why did you think that you
needed to write one about him?
And what was the idea - where'd
the idea come from of doing it
between Taft and Roosevelt,
that relationship?
>>Doris Kearns Goodwin: You know,
I think what happens is it's not
when you start that you think
the world might need another book
about Teddy because
I couldn't answer
that question again at the start.
But I knew I wanted
to live with him.
I'd given a seminar when I was
teaching at Harvard when I was young
about the Progressive Era and that
time had always interested me.
That wonderful era where you've
got the robber barons at the turn
of the 20th Century and you've
got the Industrial Revolution
and you've got all those inventions
that are happening, you know,
the telephone and the telegram.
It's just such an exciting era and
yet it was also a difficult era
because the gap between the
rich and the poor was so great
and you had people in
slums and little being done
for Workman's Compensation.
And then Teddy Roosevelt comes along
as a Republican and understands
that he needs to get
the government involved
in softening the aspects
of the industrial order.
So I had taught him that way in
my course 20, 30, 40 years ago.
And I knew what a great
character he was,
so I knew this era was the
one I wanted to go back to.
Because when you go
back to a person,
it's not just that you're living
with him or her, but you're living
in that era, and I wanted to live
in that era, but, once again,
there was so many good
books on Teddy.
There had just been a great trilogy
by Edwin Morris on Teddy Roosevelt,
so I couldn't just do a biography.
So I was searching around
for what can my new angle be,
and I found early on these 400
letters between Teddy and Taft,
and I had known they'd run against
each other, of course, in 1912,
but I had no idea how close
friendship had developed
between them in their early 30's.
And I guess I love
human relationships,
so the idea that these two men
had been such intimate friends
and that eventually, saddenly, ran
against each other and felt betrayed
and then eventually come back,
that story just intrigued me.
>>David Rubenstein: So
Teddy Roosevelt grew
up in a reasonably wealthy
family, but his father died young
and then he married someone
he had met in college and kind
of didn't marry someone
he had known much longer.
Then his wife more or less
right after childbirth dies
at the same time his mother dies.
So he goes into a bit of a
depression and then he moves
out west and he abandons
his daughter a bit.
How did he just kind
of abandon his daughter
and then he made a famous
speech where he - or letter;
Nixon later used in a speech
- saying "the light has gone
out of my life when my wife died."
But yet he never again
mentioned that wife to anybody
in his entire life and he didn't
really take his daughter back
for a few years.
How do you explain that?
>>Doris Kearns Goodwin: It's a
really complicated relationship
that Teddy Roosevelt had
to sadness and death.
I mean, when his father died when
he was a sophomore at Harvard,
he felt then that he
couldn't go forward.
This was the man he
said who I was closer
to than anybody else in my life.
And his only way of dealing
with it was through action,
so he just immediately
got involved in things
so he wouldn't have
to think about it.
Unlike Lincoln, who when he lost
his ten-year-old son, Willy,
felt that the best way
to honor Willy's life was
to keep his scrapbooks and every
time that somebody came in,
he'd show them the little
poems Willy had written.
He would share stories about
Willy because he believed
that you keep the dead
alive by talking about them.
Somehow, Teddy Roosevelt's
different philosophy was you got
to keep moving forward
when something bad happens.
So when his father died, he
just got involved in activities.
When his wife died - and he did say,
as you said, "the light has gone
out of my life" - he thought
he would never marry again.
He goes to the badlands and he
just is on a horse 14 hours a day.
He said finally he
could sleep at night
because constant activity
prevented overthought.
And then he did come back
and eventually married
and had a fulfilling marriage
with Edith, his girlhood friend,
and probably loved her as much
as he could have loved anybody.
But the little girl who was born,
Alice, when his wife died, I think,
represented his dead wife
that he couldn't remember
and didn't want remember
because he had to move forward.
It's a terrible thing, in some ways.
So he did give Alice to his sister,
Bamie, for a while, but then Edith,
the new wife and his old friend,
brought her into the family.
But in his memoir he never
even mentioned Alice's name.
I mean, incomprehensible and just
the opposite of somebody who wants
to believe that the more you talk
about the people you've loved,
the more you keep them alive, he
just had to keep moving forward.
I mean, he even said that
when he was ready to go
for the Ruff Riders experience
in the Spanish-American War,
he loved Edith so much now,
his wife, but if she were
on her deathbed he would have to go
because that was his
mission in life.
So there's a hardness in him as well
as a sentimental soft side I
could never quite figure out.
>>David Rubenstein: Explain this.
He was a civilian and the
Spanish-American War goes forward
and he volunteers to go down there
and lead a troop of civilians.
How did that happen?
I mean, we don't have civilians
kind of just doing that today.
How did he happen to do
that, and did he kind
of exaggerate what
he did down there?
That led to his becoming governor
because of the reputation
he developed down there.
Was that a well-deserved reputation?
And what was he doing leading a
civilian group up the mountain?
>>Doris Kearns Goodwin: Well, in
those days, you really did volunteer
for the Army in a way
that the Army was
so much less a part of our lives.
I mean, similarly in the Civil War,
a lot of those generals started
out just being politicians
and then they became generals.
So he offered to raise a
regiment, which he did.
He was under a general at the
beginning, but then eventually,
when we went up the hill, Kettle
Hill, he did show courage.
There's no doubt about that.
When he was a child, he said
he was afraid of everything
and the only way to get away
from the fear was to try
and do the things you're afraid of.
So they're marching up the hill
and the Spanish are at the top
of the hill and they're
being mowed down by bullets
because they're moving too slow.
So he gets on his horse
and he's got a red bandana
and he moves the troops forward.
He could've been the best
target for the bullets.
And a journalist was there
writing about him, and he gets them
to the top and eventually
they do overtake the Spanish.
So there was raw courage
there, there's no question,
but it's also the fact, I think,
that what touched the country
was here are these Ruff Riders
and they're both cowboys
and bad guys from the West
and then there are these
Harvard and Yale elites.
He brought together
this motley group.
And so it captured the
imagination of the country.
>>David Rubenstein: Alright, that
helped him get elected governor.
>>Doris Kearns Goodwin:
Without a question.
>>David Rubenstein: And
he gets elected governor,
but then his party thinks he's a
little bit too tough on business,
so they promote him to maybe being
Vice President under McKinley.
And the he becomes Vice
President, but then what happened?
He didn't really enjoy
being Vice President;
he was thinking of giving it up.
And then what happens to McKinley?
>>Doris Kearns Goodwin: Oh, I mean,
he hates being Vice President.
In fact, he was going back to
study law, he was so bored.
There was nothing to do.
>>David Rubenstein: While
he was Vice President.
>>Doris Kearns Goodwin:
While he was Vice President.
And he said that at the time
you thought you were being put
into a dead end.
Vice President was not the
stepping point to the presidency
that it has later become.
And then, of course, McKinley
is shot on September 6, 1901,
and it catapults and changes the
whole trajectory of Teddy's life
and he becomes the thing he
would've always wanted to be:
the youngest President
of the United States.
>>David Rubenstein: So he becomes
President at the age of 42.
Taft was, at that time, the
Governor of the Philippines,
appointed by McKinley, and he
was doing a great job there,
but they had met before,
Taft and Roosevelt,
and they had bonded even
though they were different.
How did they develop an
even closer relationship
when Roosevelt was President?
And what did he do with Taft
in terms of brining him back.
>>Doris Kearns Goodwin: Well, what
had happened is when they were both
in their 30's, when Taft
was Solicitor General
and Teddy was Civil
Service Commissioner,
they lived near each other.
Their wives knew each other;
their children were the same age.
And they used to walk to
work together all the time.
And it's a wonderful
thought of just the picture
if somebody described it.
You know, Teddy walking
with all this energy;
Taft even big even then, you
know, sort of listening to Teddy,
who's much shorter and much more,
you know, energetic than he.
But they developed, I think, in
part because they saw each other
for the things they didn't have.
Taft saw in Teddy that fighting
spirit that he might not have had.
Teddy saw in Taft the person
that everybody loved
the minute they met him.
He was so kind and so
gentle and so good.
And then, when he did become
Governor General of the Philippines,
the very job Teddy wanted -
Teddy was so jealous of him.
He definitely would've given up
the vice presidency in two seconds
to become Governor
General of the Philippines.
And Taft did a good job over there.
They kept writing letters and
then he finally brings him back
to his Cabinet as Secretary of War,
as his most important counselor,
and he becomes really the closest
person to him during his presidency.
And then when the time comes that
he has to give up the presidency,
Teddy, because he had promised
when he had won in 1904
after having the first
term of McKinley's
and then he wins the second term,
which would've meant
two full terms almost,
that he wont run again in 1908.
He later said he would've cut out
his tongue to not make that promise
because he so wanted
to stay in the job.
But instead he has his successor,
Taft, he thinks, groomed for the job
and he runs his campaign, he's
giving him all sorts of advice:
Don't play golf; you know,
it doesn't look good
to the working class.
It's a dude's game.
You know, don't get on a
horse; you weigh 350 pounds,
it's not good for the horse.
Incredibly, the song at the
time, which makes no sense,
was Get On a Raft With Taft.
It would be a rather
dubious proposition
to get on a raft with Taft.
But, anyway, he was so happy when
he won, thinking this is my guy,
he'll carry out my legacy.
Then he goes to Africa,
he comes back and begins
to question whether Taft was
the right person to follow him.
>>David Rubenstein: So he goes
to Africa for about a year.
How did he - he left his family
for a year just to go to Africa,
and what did he do in Africa?
>>Doris Kearns Goodwin:
Well, he's shooting game.
You know, big game hunting had been
part of - he had all these hobbies
from the time he was young,
partly because he was asthmatic
when he was young, so
he became a birder.
He later became a hunter.
He wrote books.
I mean, he had more energy
and vitality than anybody
that I've ever written about.
So he's going and he's collecting
things for the Smithsonian.
But mostly I think he went
away because he knew he had
to do something to take away
the loss of the presidency.
He loved that job every moment of
every day, and he knew that he had
to somehow have excitement
in his life.
And that's what Africa represented.
>>David Rubenstein: So the
muckrakers you write about,
Sam McClure and others, they were
very influential - Roosevelt.
He talked to them; he listened to
them for advice, responded to them.
They supported him, but they
kind of turned on Taft a bit.
And do you think their turning
on Taft is why he turned on Taft?
>>Doris Kearns Goodwin:
I think what happened is
when Teddy was President,
what he understood,
which is the one thing
Taft didn't understand,
which is that the presidency
has, as Teddy defined the word,
a bully pulpit to educate
the country,
and it's the most important power
in the way the President
has and was brilliant at it.
I mean, he would take train
rides around the country,
six weeks in the spring
and in the fall,
and he talked in very
simple language to people.
He said, "My Harvard
buddies think I talk
in too folksy language,
but I know I reach them.
Speak softly and carry a big stick."
You know, the Square
Deal perfectly summed
up his entire domestic
administration.
He even gave Maxwell
House the slogan
"Good Till the Very Last Drop."
And he was able, with his
relationship with the press,
who adored him - because
he was so interesting.
I mean, they could come
into his office every day.
He had a midday shave.
When the barber is shaving him
with that straightedge razor
and he's answering their questions
and they say the barber had to keep
up with him as he's moving around.
He understood that the press
was an important channel for him
to reach the public and so he would
read their articles ahead of time.
These investigative
reporters, they would be able
to criticize him; he
would criticize them.
A very unusual set of relationships,
which few politicians can have.
And what happened is
that - and it was partly
because he had a certain sense
of self-deprecatory humor.
In fact, there was a
journalist who wrote
about his Ruff Rider experience,
saying he put himself in the center
of every action, that he should
have called the book Alone In Cuba.
And so what does Teddy do?
He writes the journalist and says,
"I regret to tell you that my wife
and my entire family loved
your title for my book.
Now you owe me one.
You have to come and meet me."
So Taft tried to carry out
Teddy's progressive legacies.
He tried to get a tariff
bill through.
He tried to deal with making laws
out of Teddy's executive
orders on conservation.
But he never understood the
public side of the presidency.
He hated giving speeches; he waited
till last minute to give a speech.
He sometimes said things
in the wrong way.
He didn't really move the Congress
and he didn't have the relationship
with the press that he had.
So the presidency was
kind of drifting
and the Progressives were moving
forward, even further forward
than Teddy was at the time, so
it was both his desire to be back
in office and his feeling that
he had to keep that pressure
on the conservative ideology in
the country, that Taft wasn't
up to the job, that he
decided to run against him.
>>David Rubenstein:
So he runs against him
and he just barely loses
the Republican nomination.
So he decides to run
as an Independent
on the newly formed
Bull Moose Party.
And while he is campaigning,
he is shot.
Somebody shoots right into his
chest, and he nonetheless goes ahead
and makes his speech even
though a bullet has been shot
into him and is lodged in him.
Why did he do that?
>>Doris Kearns Goodwin: It's
just - it's just a part of him.
I mean, it was an extraordinary
moment.
I mean, he was in a car,
the assassin did shoot him,
and it did go into his chest.
And they said, "You
can't give the speech."
He said, "I have to give my speech."
So he goes into like a green room,
the doctor takes his clothes off,
he has a big red spot
from the blood,
but he says, "I can still breathe.
I know I'm okay.
I can still breathe."
So he then says he's
going to give the speech.
And he goes in and he takes the
speech out of his pocket and it was
like 50 pages - a long speech,
a two-hour speech -
and it was folded over.
And he realized when he
took it out of his pocket
that the bullet hole had
gone through the speech,
and it had also gone through
his spectacle glass case,
which was the only reason he
wasn't killed automatically.
So he gives the speech and he
starts throwing the pages down.
Finally, they keep coming up
to him because he's beginning
to get woozy - it's time to leave
and "I can't until I finish."
He finally finishes and he says,
"Okay, take me to the hospital."
He's then in the hospital
for a week and he has
to sustain the rest
of his campaigning.
They thought he might have
had some reaction to the shot.
But it was that crazy kind
of courage that he showed all
of his life that he
felt compelled to do.
>>David Rubenstein: So he came
in second in the election.
Woodrow Wilson's elected in 1912.
Taft came in very poor third.
Do you think had Taft not
gotten the Republican nomination
and Roosevelt had gotten it that
Roosevelt would've beat Wilson?
>>Doris Kearns Goodwin:
Yes, I do think so.
I think Roosevelt was still so
popular then that I think if he -
yes, I think for sure he
would've, because Roosevelt
and Taft together got over
50 percent of the vote.
And so I think it would've happened.
I mean, the sad thing was that
because he did this - I know,
you and I know about this
guy - the guy who really got
so into my emotional head when I was
writing this book was a man named
Archie Butt, who had
been the Military Aide
for Teddy before becoming
the Military Aide for Taft.
And, again, what you look for as a
historian are letters and diaries
and this guy wrote letters to
his family every single day,
and loved both Teddy and Taft.
And so he was - he was
despairing when it turned out -
he stayed on with Taft and Teddy
thought that was fine at first
because they were friends.
And then when Teddy
started running against him,
he felt that he was torn in two.
And he was so depressed
that he was beginning
to lose some of his vitality.
So Taft said, "You better take
a vacation; you need to relax."
And he said, "Okay, I'm
going to go for awhile,
but I'll be back before
this heats up."
But then, as it turns out, Teddy
finally announced he was running
against Taft - it had
been rumored until then -
Archie Butts says, "I
can't leave you now.
I know you need me."
And Taft says, "Go
now; it'll be fine.
You'll be back in time."
He goes to Europe and then he comes
back on the Titanic and he died.
And for Taft, it was
yet another blow.
He said, "Every time I look in
the room, I think he's coming in.
I miss him every single moment."
But those letters are
absolute treasures
in showing how Taft especially
felt betrayed and saddened
by his great friend,
Teddy, running against him.
>>David Rubenstein: So, to
me, the most poignant part
of the book is Taft and Roosevelt
were enemies even though they had
been friends for so long.
So after the election,
Wilson's President,
Taft and Roosevelt don't talk
at all, and Taft tries to talk
to Roosevelt but Roosevelt
ignores him.
And then finally they meet
by happenstance in a hotel.
What happened then?
>>Doris Kearns Goodwin: I
was so happy this happened.
You know, what happened is when
I finished the book up to 1912,
I just didn't want to end it
with this sense of betrayal,
but I didn't really know what
their relationship had been
like past that.
So I followed them in
1913 and 14 and 15 and 16,
and people brought them together,
but it was always, as Taft said,
"like an armed neutrality."
But then in 1918, Teddy was in
the hospital with an operation
that Taft had once undergone and
he'd wrote him a letter saying
"I know how painful this is."
And Teddy wrote him back and it
softened things a little bit.
And so it just happened
then, some months later,
by happenstance they were both at
the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago,
and when Taft checked in,
the elevator operator
told him Roosevelt was
in the restaurant eating alone.
So Taft said, "Then bring
me down immediately."
And he walked over to
Roosevelt and the whole room -
a hundred people are dining
in the room - and he says,
"I'm so glad to see you."
They throw their arms around
each other and Teddy says,
"Please sit down," and the
entire restaurant claps.
And luckily there was a
journalist there to record this.
I said, "Yes!
I have my ending!"
And then what happens is only
six months later Teddy dies.
You know, he's only 60 years old
and he dies in his sleep at night
and there's a private funeral
and Taft is an honored guest
at that private funeral.
And he comes and stands at the
grave longer than anyone else
and tells Teddy's sister, "I
don't know what I would've done
if we hadn't come together
before he died.
I've loved him all my life."
So, I always - I mean,
it's ridiculous
to say you want a happy
ending, but you want an ending
that somehow sums things up.
Like, for example, I
couldn't bear the idea
of Lincoln dying at the end.
So knowing that what mattered to
him so much was to be remembered
after he died - from the time he was
young, that was his greatest dream
that his story would be told.
When I found this incredible
interview with Leo Tolstoy given
to a New York newspaper at the turn
of the 20th Century, I knew, yes,
this shows he was remembered
even then.
Tolstoy told about having gone
to a remote area of the Caucuses,
where there were a
group of wild barbarians
who never set foot outside of this
little part where they were living.
They were so excited to have Tolstoy
and they asked him to tell stories
of the great men of history.
He said, "I told them about
Napoleon and Alexander the Great,
Frederick the Great,
but before I finished,
the chief of the barbarians
stood up and said, 'But wait,
you haven't told us about the
greatest ruler of them all.
We want to hear about that man who
spoke with the voice of thunder,
who laughed with the sunrise, who
came from that place called America
that is so far from here, if a
young man would travel there,
he'd be an old man when he arrived.
Tell us of that man.
Tell us of Lincoln.'" So Tolstoy
told them everything he knew
about Lincoln.
And then said, "What made
him so great after all -
not a great general, not
a great statesmen perhaps
as Frederick the Great - but a
greatness existed in the integrity
of his character and the
moral fiber of his being."
So then I knew, here's
the ending for that book.
So you're always looking somehow
to make it all come full circle.
>>David Rubenstein: So what
is your next book going to be?
>>Doris Kearns Goodwin: So - well,
right now, I'm doing two things.
I'm working on what might be
potential movies about Teddy
and Taft because Spielberg
has bought the rights
for The Bully Pulpit.
Maybe a movie; maybe
even a miniseries.
So I'm trying to think about the
Muckrakers as a possible miniseries.
Ida Tarbell is my favorite
character and the idea
of this great female
investigative journalist.
And then the relationship
between Teddy and Taft.
But then, for a book, I mean,
at this stage in my life I don't
think I can afford ten years
on Millard Fillmore
or Franklin Pierce.
And there's no big person, you
know, to go back to easily.
So I'm bringing all my guys in the
room at the same time and I'm going
to write about leadership.
I mean, that's really what I
care about underneath it all.
So it'll be [applause]
- oh, thank you.
I just started.
>>David Rubenstein: After
you finish that book,
I hope you will do a
great service for America
by writing an autobiography
about your own life
because it's quite extraordinary.
So thank you for everything
you've done.
>> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov.