Doris Kearns Goodwin

- A Pulitzer Prize winning historian's unfinished love story this week on "Firing Line."

- The great thing about history is I think it really gives us solace and perspective and lessons when we think about other times that we've lived in.

- [Margaret] She's renowned for her presidential biographies.

Doris Kearns Goodwin's latest book, "An Unfinished Love Story," explores a topic close to home, her late husband, Dick Goodwin.

- When I would be writing about Teddy or Franklin Roosevelt or Abraham Lincoln, I would call the other presidents my guys 'cause I felt so close to them after all those years.

But now this was my guy.

- [Margaret] It revisits the 1960s through their lives and work.

As a speech writer for John F. Kennedy- - [Kennedy] Liberty and progress walk hand in hand.

- [Margaret] Lyndon B. Johnson- - [Johnson] And we shall overcome.

- [Margaret] And Bobby Kennedy.

- [Bobby] He sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.

- [Margaret] Dick Goodwin wrote some of the most memorable speeches of the civil rights era.

- Always when he wrote a speech, it wasn't just necessarily to make pretty language, it was to provoke people to action.

- [Margaret] Later, he helped draft Al Gore's 2000 concession speech.

- This is America and we put country before party.

- [Margaret] Can we learn from the past to help us navigate today's challenges?

- [Doris] We're in a very tough time right now, but these other times were even rougher.

- [Margaret] What does Pulitzer Prize winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin say now?

- [Announcer] "Firing Line" with Margaret Hoover is made possible in part by Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, the Fairweather Foundation, the Tepper Foundation, Peter and Mary Kalikow, the Asness Family Foundation, the Beth and Ravenel Curry Foundation, the McKenna Family Foundation, Charles R. Schwab, the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fund for Strategic Innovation and by the following.

Corporate funding is provided by Stephens Inc and by Pfizer Inc. [upbeat exciting music] - Doris Kearns Goodwin, welcome back to "Firing Line."

- I'm so glad to be with you.

This is great.

- You recently published your eighth book, "An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s."

This book was born out of a project that you and your late husband, Dick Goodwin, undertook when he turned 80 years old, to finally go through 300 and some boxes of archival material that he had collected and kept safe for many years.

He had been the speech writer for John F. Kennedy when he was a Democratic primary candidate, first running for president.

He had gone back to work for LBJ and the LBJ White House and also worked for Eugene McCarthy and also Bobby Kennedy.

He was, you sort of refer to him as a Zelig of the 1960s and in many seminal moments.

- And he just seemed to be there at defining moments with each of the major characters, including Jackie.

He was very close to Jackie, as well.

He happens to be in the White House the night that the body is brought back.

And he's responsible for getting the eternal flame.

He's with LBJ with the Great Society speech and the Selma speech.

And then he's with Eugene McCarthy in New Hampshire in that great New Hampshire primary when the kids came from all over the country.

And then with Bobby Kennedy when he died.

So, somehow he was at those moments, and it was an extraordinary decade.

It's a decade that has remained one of the historic decades in our country.

- As a historian, your subjects have included Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln.

This was the first time you wrote about a figure with whom you could actually ask questions at the kitchen table.

Tell me about that process.

- It's so correct.

I mean, when I would be writing about Teddy or Franklin Roosevelt or Abraham Lincoln, I would often ask them questions, but they never answered when I said, "Why did you do this?"

Or, "What was this for?"

But there was Dick, sitting right across from me.

I used to call the other presidents my guys 'cause I felt so close to them after all those years, but now this was my guy right across the room for me.

He could correct me.

I could ask him, "Why did you write this?"

Or, "What did the president say to this?"

Or, "What was the motive behind this?"

So, it was really an extraordinary thing for me as a political scientist and a government person and a history person, to be able to have the subject right there.

Also maddening at times 'cause he'd correct me, but it was great.

- Well, did you always know this would ultimately become a book project?

- Not really.

I think at the beginning I just knew that it would be a wonderful thing for him to relive those memories.

And somehow, we both wanted to go back to our young days.

But at the beginning, I was gonna help him to write the book.

And then when he got sick and died, it really mattered to him that this process be finished and we weren't finished.

We hadn't explored all the boxes, and it gave him a sense of purpose in those last years of his life.

- How far in the boxes did you get together?

- Well, we had gotten through most of the '60s boxes, but then there were a hundred other boxes of everything he did after the '60s, and he considered that part of his life important, as well.

And there were important speeches he wrote later.

He worked on the Al Gore speech for the 2000 concession speech.

He wrote a play and we hadn't gotten to those boxes yet.

In fact, at one point he said, "I wonder, who would you bet on?

Would you bet on the boxes or me?"

As he got older, which one would be finished first.

But I made him a promise before he died that I would finish the work that we were going to be doing, that I was gonna help him do.

- What does it take for a participant in history to remain clear-eyed about your subjects and the events?

- I don't know that you're ever fully clear-eyed.

I mean, you go, I choose my subjects in the first place, somebody that I want to live with.

I don't think I could ever write about Mussolini or Hitler.

I have to have a basic respect for them and an affection.

They're gonna disappoint you.

Everybody has flaws, as indeed my husband did, as well.

But as long as I have a basic respect and liking for them, then I feel like I'll give them a fair shake.

But by choosing them, that means you are already on their side.

And that's okay with me.

But that doesn't mean that you're not hopefully truthful about where they fail, where they make mistakes.

I don't wanna be tearing them down.

I don't wanna be making a brief for them.

I wanna just make them come to life with all their strengths and their weaknesses.

- You were a junior staffer in LBJ's White House, but worked within very close proximity of the president himself, even though you disagreed with him on the war effort.

- I had been an anti-war activist, but he had taken me into the White House Fellows Program anyway.

You know, I'd written an article against him, which came out several days after I was selected as a White House fellow.

And it was given the title by The New Republic "How to Remove Lyndon Johnson in 1968."

And I thought he would kick me outta the program.

- Well, he finds out you had authored a piece about how to get rid of him and what does he do but call you and say, "Work directly for me in the Oval?"

- No, it was an extraordinary thing that he did that so that I came into this project of going through Dick's papers with a great loyalty to Lyndon Johnson.

I mean, I never changed my mind about the war, but what he did domestically I thought was an amazing thing.

But more than that, I felt a real kinship to me.

He opened himself to me.

He talked to me hour after hour.

And I felt like those conversations gave me my first book on LBJ that gave me the foundation for my career.

So there was a loyalty to him, to Lady Bird, to his family.

Dick came into the boxes with an equally strong loyalty to the Kennedy family.

- [Margaret] Right.

- That had been his first career job, working for John Kennedy in that campaign, being so close to him on that small campaign, being in the White House, being close to Jackie, and then becoming Bobby Kennedy's closest friend.

So, we argued for much of our married life.

He would constantly say that Kennedy was the one who inspired all these programs.

I would say, "But LBJ got them through.

Kennedy couldn't have done that."

- This was a persistent rift in your marriage?

- It was.

It was a rift.

I mean, I look back on it.

It wasn't anything deeply wrecking the marriage in any way, but it was a resentment that he felt toward LBJ 'cause he became a very strong anti-war activist, and that broke his relationship with Lyndon Johnson.

It was never repaired.

But during the process of writing the book, what happened is that as he began to remember what it was like to be with him in those extraordinary moments, he began to not only soften, but he said, "Oh my God, I'm feeling affection for the old guy again."

And he had truly cared about him.

And I was so glad to see those resentments fade because it had been probably the most important part of his public life to be with Lyndon Johnson.

And at the same time- - He coined the phrase, the Great Society.

- Yeah.

In fact, we found out in going through these tapes of Lyndon Johnson's that in part, the way he got into the White House in the first place after having worked for Kennedy was that he was in a conversation that's recorded on his tapes with Bill Moyers.

And he says to Moyers, "I need a speech writer."

And it's so wonderful the way he talks.

"I need somebody who can put sex into my speeches, who can put rhythm into my speeches, music and great Churchillian phrases."

And Moyers says, "Well, the only one is Dick Goodwin, but he's not one of us," because the fault line even there was there, the Kennedys and the Johnsons.

But he does bring him over.

He does write a speech and then stays as his main speech writer.

But two months later, he is called to the swimming pool with Bill Moyers, and naked swimming between the three of them, skinny dipping, to discuss what would be the Johnson program, the vision of the future.

And so, they talk about it.

And Johnson outlays that he wants more than what Kennedy wanted.

He wants to have Medicare and Medicaid and aid to education, NPR and PBS and immigration reform and civil rights and voting rights.

"And I want you to write a speech and I want us to have a vision for where we're going."

And so, it was Dick who came up with the word, Great Society.

- For in your time, we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society.

The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all.

It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice to which we're totally committed in our time.

- And then that speech was given at the University of Michigan and the Great Society was off and running, and the 89th Congress producing all that legislation.

- Retrospectively, looking back on the full scope of his life, there was a persistent drive for change and action.

How do you contrast that with the spirit of service today?

- You know, it's very interesting.

I think you're right.

I mean, words are not rhetoric for him.

I mean, the words were to produce action.

He once said something about, you know, if Patrick Henry had said, "Give me liberty or give me death" at a Chamber of Commerce meeting in a prosperous time, it would've been ludicrous, but he was saying it on the eve of the revolution.

So always when he wrote a speech, it wasn't just necessarily to make pretty language.

It was to provoke people to action.

I mean, the Selma speech being the great example of that.

That was to get a voting rights bill passed and to get public sentiment fired to wanna push the Congress to do something that it might not have been willing to do.

- What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement, which reaches into every section and state of America, because it's not just Negroes, but really it's all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.

And we shall overcome.

[Congress applauds] - That speech he made during the joint session of Congress after Bloody Sunday in 1965, a speech that brought Martin Luther King and you to tears.

What does that tell you about the weight of that moment and the ability of words to drive change?

- Yeah, I think I was listening to that speech when I was in graduate school and was so moved by it that we all ended up hugging each other.

To me, I think there was nothing more meaningful than listening to those words that night and knowing, listening to the congressional response that they were gonna change.

That's what Martin Luther King said after he cried.

He said, "Now the voting rights bill will be passed."

And Dick had only nine hours to write that speech.

It still seems astonishing to me that it could be done in that short period of time.

Normally, those speeches would be worked on for weeks or months, but he knew the timing was necessary.

It had to be done then.

- And the sentiment of the nation changes.

- The sentiment of the nation changes.

Yes.

- There's another story about the power of words to change a community.

And it's early in his time writing for John F. Kennedy when he goes to Ashland, Wisconsin, a small city on the banks of Lake Superior that has had an economic downturn.

The shores are polluted.

The industry has left.

You interviewed the mayor of the town 50 years later, Edward Monroe.

He told you, quote, "He made us feel good about ourselves.

We needed to feel good about ourselves to believe that we could make our town better.

He had challenged the country to put a man on the moon and now he was challenging us.

Little by little, we began to clean up the harbor and the beachfront."

I mean, it strikes me that this is the story of the power of words to inspire collective action.

- And not only the power of words, but something about John Kennedy's presence.

That when he met these people, each one of them said, you know, he looked at them and he made them feel that he wanted them to do something for their country, too, just like his whole mantra was in the inaugural address.

- I find it so remarkable because it's the power of his presence, his visit that inspires the community.

And yet, in the speech, he actually promised federal aid, which you write that when he returned as president, the aid had not filtered down to the town yet.

- Exactly so.

- And yet it wasn't the federal aid that turned the city around.

It was the initiative of the people, inspired by the president's belief in them.

- Correct.

I mean, he had hoped that that aid would reach this town, but it hadn't bureaucratically.

And so that promise wasn't kept, but there was something about his persona and more importantly, about what they took from it.

And that's the magic of leadership that it's hard to understand sometimes, but this was a little example of how it worked.

- It feels to me also, and I say this from the position of the current host of "Firing Line," an inadvertent commentary on the power of individual and collective actions.

- I think that's right.

- Perhaps over federal aid.

- It does.

No, that's fair enough.

That's fair enough.

They took it on themselves.

It wasn't the government that helped them.

It was they themselves.

They did get certain kind of philanthropic grants.

They got a Superfund because there was pollution from the deep pond plants.

- And there was litigation from the plants.

- And all of these things had to come together.

But it was the individual action.

You are right with that.

- In 1966, Dick joined William F. Buckley Jr on the original "Firing Line," his eighth episode of "Firing Line."

I want you to take a look at the conversation they had about the Great Society.

- I can't wait.

I've heard about this.

I can't wait.

- What is it that gives you the idea and gives President Johnson the idea at this moment that the government is the instrument by which we can bring poetry and meaning and spiritual satisfaction to our lives?

- Well, I don't think that's what we think or what the president thinks.

I think we think that insofar as these things can be dealt with publicly, I mean, the government obviously isn't gonna bring happiness or spiritual meaning into people's lives.

But insofar as there are public ills, like the decay of our cities, the pollution of our environment, the destruction of beauty in our life, the quality of education, then the public, through its instruments of government and other organizations at every level, state, local and federal, is the most appropriate organ to deal with those public ills.

- [Doris] Wow.

- It's remarkable that there, he is making the case for the Great Society right in the middle of selling it to the American public.

- Yeah, no, that was a very good case that he made, that when there are certain public ills that are too large for individuals to contemplate and work on alone, then the government, individual people can't necessarily work on some of those projects.

The interesting thing about Dick is that he also wrote in commentary a famous article about federalism and the importance of state and local governments and individuals.

And Barry Goldwater wrote him a letter thanking him for that article.

So, he always was a thinker who was at all levels in different ways, - Not ideological.

You and Dick together were invited to Havana for a conference commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis with many of the major figures from the Kennedy Administration at the time, as well as Soviet statesmen from the time and Cuban leadership, including Fidel Castro.

What do you remember about those few days in Havana?

- I think what was so special about it is that everybody realized that the people who were there from Castro, who was 76, to the Kennedy Administration people who are mostly in their 70s, some in their 80s, McNamara and Schlessinger and Sorensen and Dick, and then the Russians were there, as well, the Russian generals and the Russian diplomats who had been there, that this may be the last time they were all meeting.

So it had a special aura to it, that this kind of reunion was an emotional thing.

And it was so interesting to see that the Cubans and the Americans were sort of more friendly.

The Russians were on the outs at this point 'cause they had not supported Cuba over that period of time.

- How did you consider, I mean, at this point, it's 2001, 2002.

How did you think about a visit to Cuba at that time in our history, even though Dick had a personal connection to that moment?

Fidel is still a Cuban dictator with a varied, actually pretty bad history on human rights, media freedoms, political prisoners, no free and fair elections.

I mean, what was the consideration?

- I think what happened is I don't know that I was feeling any concern about going with this group of people because we were going as an historical moment to record, you know, a history of this 40 years.

But while I was there, what I did feel was that there was an entrancement of Castro, as you could see why he had been a charismatic leader.

But then you remember who Castro was, and exactly as you said, that he was a man with his enormous talents, but they weren't used for the benefit of the people as a whole.

He became a dictator.

There was a violation of human rights.

And it made you sad.

It made you sad to realize maybe this might have been different, too.

If he had been different, if he had allowed himself to be a democratic leader, he probably would've won the support of the people.

He had that kind of charisma.

- You're right that one might be lulled into forgetting the grim decades of ruthless repression under the Castro dictatorship.

- Exactly right.

- Were you all lulled into forgetting?

- Perhaps momentarily when you're watching him.

You're aware of the talents that he has.

You might've felt that lulling, but then when you went around the countryside, you saw what had happened to the country.

So, it was sad, as well as a memory that we will always hold dear because it was the last time we saw a lot of these people ourselves.

- Trust among Americans in American government is at an all time low.

In 2023, according to the Pew Research poll, only 16% of Americans trusted what the government tells them.

And you talk about a credibility gap and how it grows when presidents fail to tell the truth.

And you've traced the decline in trust, actually, back to the Vietnam War, a period that you cover in the boxes.

You write on LBJ in Vietnam.

You said, "I understand now far more than I did then.

The passing of time has revealed the tragic consequences of the president's failure to level with the American people on that pivotal time, a mistrust that has permeated attitudes towards the federal government to the present day."

As you reviewed your time with LBJ, you say Dick softened.

How did your perspective on LBJ's presidency change?

- That's a really good question, Margaret.

I mean, I think it did make me understand more the terrible loss that the country underwent because of the war in Vietnam.

And it did have to do with trust in government.

You can see those polls that it starts declining in the late '60s.

And what he was never able to do was to level with the people, as you say, what I wrote, and to tell them what the dimensions of the war were, how many people were dying, how we were doing.

He so wanted to somehow make it work all right that he kept escalating it and escalating it without being straight with the American people.

You can't do that when people are going into battle and gonna be losing their lives.

That's the most important time to be straight with the people.

And when people lost credibility in the government there, and then Watergate came and Nixon exacerbated it, and then it seemed over the decades, we've never regained that sense of trust fully in the government.

And unfortunately, that sometimes means we don't have the trust in ourselves for collective action, as well.

And I had to make Johnson responsible for that.

I certainly had known that before, but I felt it emotionally when we went through the boxes.

Just as Dick felt emotionally the greatness of Lyndon Johnson, I felt that other side and the sadness of Lyndon Johnson because of what happened with the way he handled the war in Vietnam.

- You write about the early days of election denialism.

In the 1960s when Kennedy beats Nixon by the smallest margin in the 20th century.

You write quote, "In the weeks following the election, Republicans press claims of voting irregularities, but those efforts were short-lived.

The rancor died down and a peaceful transition was initiated."

Why did those allegations eventually fade?

- Well, there's a possibility that part of it was that Richard Nixon, like all the other presidents who lost elections until 2020, was willing to understand that there was an important, peaceful transition of power.

It's so hard to lose an election.

Their feelings are so raw on that night when they've lost.

And yet everyone until 2020 has been willing to say that this is more important for the country.

In fact, my husband was involved in helping Al Gore- - That was my next question.

- [Doris] In 2000.

- Yeah.

- He came back out of, you know, private life to become a speech writer once again.

- You said that Dick believed when tasked by Gore to write either a victory speech or a concession speech, that the concession speech would be the far more important of the two.

- He knew that.

I mean, the victory speech would be a fine thing, but if, and he was already aware that the decision was being postponed and it was going through the Florida Supreme Court and then to the main Supreme Court.

So he started working on the concession speech, and when I saw it, I could see that it was such a good speech.

I said, "We gotta get it down there right away."

He said, "He will never wanna see it until he has to concede."

And he was absolutely right.

So he waited until the Supreme Court voted against him, and then Gore asked him to send it down.

Gore worked on it.

And what it said was essentially that he was very disappointed, Gore said, in the decision of the Supreme Court.

He did not agree with it, but the law was the law.

- And tonight, for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession.

I also accept my responsibility which I will discharge unconditionally to honor the new president-elect and do everything possible to help him bring Americans together in fulfillment of the great vision that our Declaration of Independence defines and that our Constitution affirms and defends.

- He said, "I will help the president-elect."

And I think that's what the country needs at a moment like that, especially when it was so drawn out to believe that both sides have at least come to make the country and patriotism above partisanship.

- You're perhaps the greatest living expert on American tumult.

You have written about how the country has been divided in civil war, and many people don't make comparisons to the '60s, now, the 1960s now, but also the 1860s.

- Right.

- Is a second American civil war something you think about?

- The great thing about history is I think it really gives us solace and perspective and lessons when we think about other times that we've lived in, that we're in a very tough time right now, but these other times were even rougher.

I mean, think about the 1850s, and the country was not only divided north and south, but there was a sense that they didn't even have the same facts.

That's what's happening to us today.

And sadly, of course, in the 1850s, it ended with a civil war.

But somehow, the only thing that gives me solace about it is that in most of the other times that we've been in great trouble, somehow America came through those strengths because the people responded and the leaders responded.

So we're still writing the chapter of where we are right now, and I still have hope that somehow that chapter will turn out better than it did in the 1850s, leading to the Civil War.

- Why is the love story unfinished?

- Well, I think for me it was unfinished because I wanted to finish the promise I had made to Dick to tell his story.

But it's also unfinished because America's love story, the love story I feel for America is unfinished and perhaps it always will be.

And we've come a long distance.

I mean, I think about when the hundredth anniversary of the women's suffrage amendment took place, and women have come a long way.

People of color have come a long way, but there's still a long way to go.

We're still fighting the battles about voting rights, about the right to choose, battles about gun safety, battles that still need to be fought.

And that's the way it's always gonna be to get us closer to our ideal.

So, it's always gonna be an unfinished love affair, but as long as you still love the country and work to make it better, then somehow, it will come around.

- Doris Kearns Goodwin, thank you for returning to "Firing Line."

Thank you for joining me.

- Oh, what a great pleasure to be with you.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

- [Announcer] "Firing Line" with Margaret Hoover is made possible in part by Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, the Fairweather Foundation, the Tepper Foundation, Peter and Mary Kalikow, the Asness Family Foundation, the Beth and Ravenel Curry Foundation, the McKenna Family Foundation, Charles R. Schwab, the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fund for Strategic Innovation, and by the following.

Corporate funding is provided by Stephens Inc and by Pfizer Inc. [upbeat exciting music] [upbeat exciting music continues] [upbeat exciting music fades] [bright music] [inspirational music] - [Narrator] You're watching PBS.