- [Narrator] This program was funded by the following: Laura & John Beckworth, BP America, Joe Latimer & Joni Hartgraves.

And also by.

(no audio) And by.

(no audio) A complete list of funders is available at APTonline.org and LiveFromLBJ.org.

- I could never write about Mussolini or Stalin or Hitler.

I have such respect for fellow historians who can do so.

As you say, I wanna wake up with them.

I wanna think about them when I'm going to bed at night.

I got to know my guys, you know, LBJ starting, and then Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt.

I lived with them longer than anyone except my husband.

(regal music) (regal music continues) (mysterious music) - Welcome to the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas.

I'm Mark Updegrove.

As an author, journalist, television commentator, and CEO of the LBJ Foundation, I've had the privilege of talking to some of the biggest names and best minds of our day, about our nation's rich history and the pressing issues of our times.

Now we bring those conversations straight to you.

Tonight is part two of my conversation with renowned presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin.

As we continue to discuss her latest book, "An Unfinished Love Story," about her late husband, presidential advisor and speech writer Richard Goodwin, we also talk about the presidents she's written about throughout her storied career and the fragile state of American democracy today.

(mysterious music continues) Doris Kearns Goodwin, welcome back.

- I'm glad to be back with you.

- So when we last spoke, we were talking about your husband, Dick Goodwin, and his working for not only John F. Kennedy but Lyndon Johnson.

But we didn't get to Robert Kennedy, with whom he worked as well in the latter part of the 1960s.

We talked in the last episode about Dick being in Washington when John F. Kennedy's body was flown back from Dallas where he was assassinated and how Dick helped Jacqueline Kennedy prepare for the funeral and the world saying goodbye to John F. Kennedy, a tough moment in the history of our country.

But he was also with Bobby Kennedy when he was campaigning for the presidency in 1968 and was gunned down at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

How did that experience affect Dick Goodwin?

- Oh, I think that experience was the hardest thing that he had to bear during the 1960s.

He had been a young aide to John Kennedy.

He had a hero worship of him.

He was a great friend to Bobby Kennedy.

They had become as close as anybody that he was with in political life ever.

And he had been part of the campaign.

He'd been in California doing the media for the campaign.

And when Bobby came out, all those last days, they spent together.

The morning that Bobby was killed, he was at the house of John Frankenheimer, who was doing the films with Dick for the campaign, the media, and they'd spent that whole day together.

He was really certain that if Bobby had become president, that he would be a really, really good president.

So that last day was the excitement was building.

It was clear that he was gonna be winning California.

And at the last minute, Dick was going with him down to the place where he was gonna deliver his acceptance speech.

And he got a call from somebody who said that maybe they could get Eugene McCarthy, who Dick had also worked with beforehand, to, if California was won, as it looked like it was going to be, to not stay in the race.

Because otherwise, Hubert Humphrey was running around not in any primaries at all, gathering up delegates, and they had to come together somehow.

So he said to Bobby, "I'll just take this call."

"And I'll meet you later," Bobby said, "At The Kitchen," which was a place where they were all gonna go to celebrate.

He put his hand on Dick's shoulder, and he went down to give the speech.

And then Dick was watching it with Ted Sorenson, as it turned out.

They were in the same room, and then they heard all the commotion and what was going on.

And then he realized what had happened.

And then he went to the hospital, and he was in the hospital those last hours until the moment when they turned off the machines and Bobby died.

And I think he really did feel that this person had been able to form a coalition between Blacks and working class people, as was shown in the Indiana primary, that he was, as I said, a much more deep person than he would've been had it not been for his brother's death.

So when we went through the boxes, what we made a promise we'd do as we started opening these 300 boxes, that he had saved during this whole period of time, was we made a pledge that we would suspend knowledge of what was gonna come later.

So that we went through Kennedy's campaign and Kennedy's White House when everything was exciting.

We'd suspend knowledge that he would die in 1963.

When we went through the boxes of '64 and '65 with all the glory of the Great Society and so many programs being passed and civil rights and voting rights, suspend knowledge that the war would escalate in '65.

And similarly with Bobby, just go back through the experiences he had with him.

He went to South America with him.

He wrote with him about the South Africa speech, the great Vietnam speeches, suspend knowledge that he would die so that they could once again restore the emotional memory of the best part of the '60s.

And really, the '60s was an extraordinary decade, 'cause people felt they could make a difference.

I mean, the civil rights movement was the main champion of that, but a women's movement started during that time, a gay rights movement, and thousands of people joined the Peace Corps.

It was a wonderful time to be young.

And as we were old in our 80s and 70s, we relived that decade together.

So it was the last great adventure that my husband and I took before he died.

- And I was out to dinner with you and Dick and our friend Beth Laskey in Dick's last days.

And you were still debating the 1960s.

It was a time of great hope, as you mentioned, but it was also a time of great volatility and great tragedy.

We haven't talked about Vietnam, which raged throughout the decade.

Talked about the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy, but there were those of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King too.

So there was great turbulence in America.

Where did you and Dick finally net out on the 1960s and its impact on the United States of America?

- Well, there's no question that what happened to Dick, which gave him a great serenity in those months before he died, was he remembered the best parts of the '60s, not just the sadnesses.

And especially with Lyndon Johnson, because he remembered how extraordinary it was to work beside a man like that with such deep convictions on civil rights.

I remember one time we went to bed, and we talked all night, he said, "Oh my god, I'm feeling affection for the old guy again."

'Cause he had carried grievances with him about the war, thinking it had swallowed up the Great Society.

It hadn't.

The Great Society is still all around us, in Medicare, in aid to education, in scholarships, in voting rights, in civil rights, in what became affirmative action, even if it's been cut back.

And it meant that he came to peace with his own contributions to American life and to Lyndon Johnson.

And I think we both realized, and I too, I'd always been defending Lyndon Johnson against his being a hero worshiper of Kennedy's, and I would always argue that only Johnson got these bills through.

And he would say, "Yeah, but Kennedy might not have escalated the war in Vietnam."

And I came to realize the inspiration of John Kennedy, that he had made the promise of that decade possible from his early days, and that that then Johnson was able to channel that into these Great Society programs.

So that we both came to understand they were two sides of the same coin.

It was John Kennedy with the inspiration and Lyndon Johnson able to get it done.

And they both were necessary.

And both of their legacies were greater because of each other.

- Right, very complementary historic figures.

Let me, you and I have talked about through the years that when you choose to write about a subject, you live with that subject.

You wake up to them and you go to sleep with them.

So how do you choose the subjects you're going to write with and consequently live with?

- Well, the most important thing is that I wanna respect them at the beginning.

They're all gonna have their faults.

They're always gonna disappoint us.

They will do things that you wish they hadn't done.

They will say things you wish they hadn't said.

We view them from a different context of time than when they lived.

But I knew that I could never write about Mussolini or Stalin or Hitler.

I have such respect for fellow historians who can do so.

As you say, I wanna wake up with them.

I wanna think about them when I'm going to bed at night.

I got to know my guys, meaning my four guys, essentially, which was, you know, LBJ starting, and then Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt.

I lived with them longer than anyone except my husband.

I would talk to them, you know?

I remember one time my kids were little and they heard me in the study, and I was talking to Eleanor and Franklin.

And I was saying to Eleanor, "Just forget that affair that he had so many years ago.

(Mark laughing) He loves you and he couldn't be what he is without you."

And, "Franklin, just be kind to her.

She's sensitive about this."

They came in, "What is happening in this study?"

But I did feel like I knew them.

And I wanted to like them.

I wanted to be able to wake up and think, "I wanna know what they did today."

And I wanna know that they've done things that mattered in the country.

And it also meant that I was choosing turbulent times to write about.

You know, I was choosing deliberately the Civil War, the turn of the 20th century with all of its turmoil, the Great Depression, World War II.

But those are the most exciting challenges in history, and we luckily had people there who were right for those challenges.

- Who do you find most companionable of the people that you've written about, your guys, as you say?

- I think probably Abraham Lincoln.

I mean, there was something about Lincoln, his sense of humor, I loved.

Dick had a great sense of humor.

That's a great, great quality to have.

I hadn't known that when I started writing the book.

I mean, I'd heard that he did, but I didn't realize that it would be such a life-saving resource for him.

You know, he said that a good story was better than a drop of whiskey.

That humor could whistle off sadness.

There was something about Lincoln that, I went to see David Donald, who was the great Lincoln historian, when I was starting the book.

And he said, "You will never regret living with Lincoln.

You'll feel like you're a better person at the end of this."

And I asked him what he meant, and he said, "Well, Lincoln had the normal human emotions that we all do of, you know, envy and anger and jealousy, but he knew if you allowed those emotions to fester, they would poison you."

And every time one of those emotions came up when I was working on Lincoln, I could think, he was saying to me, "Stop.

Stop thinking about this."

And I told that to Steven Spielberg when I met him to talk about, he wanted to do a movie about Lincoln, he'd feel a better person.

I told it to Daniel Day Lewis.

And they both told me at the end that they felt the same thing.

It wasn't simply what he did, but who he was.

There was something about that magnanimity, that compassion, that kindness, that empathy, that humility.

I think the most extraordinary thing about him was that he had this great combination of confidence and humility.

You know, he had very little schooling, and as a result, he had humility to know, "There's so many things I don't know.

I never learned them in school."

He's 23 years old and he asks a schoolmaster, "I don't know any grammar.

What can I do?"

And he told him there was a grammar book, a famous one, 20 miles away that somebody could lend him.

He started walking immediately to get the grammar book.

But that was a humility to be able to acknowledge, "I'm 23 and I don't know grammar."

But on the other hand, because he had been so smart in school, nobody could equal him.

Even the teachers, obviously, didn't have the mind that he had.

So he had a confidence that came from that.

And that combination of confidence and humility allowed him, the night he wins the election, to decide, "I can't do this alone.

Seven states have seceded from the Union.

I've only had one term in Congress, a few terms in the state legislature.

I need powerful people around me."

And he put famously his three chief rivals into his cabinet.

He made that decision that night, knowing that they may think that he was beneath them.

Friends said to him, "You're gonna be a figurehead.

You know, you're not gonna look powerful with these people who are more educated and more celebrated, more important than you are."

And he said, "The country's in peril.

These are the strongest and most able people in the country.

I need them by my side."

But I've always imagined that Lyndon Johnson would say the same thing in less noble language.

He loved to say, as I think you know, "Better to have your enemies inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in."

(laughing) (Mark laughing) Same concept, different way of putting it.

- So hence, "Team of Rivals, as Lincoln populates his cabinet with those who were formerly rivals and they become a team, I think fighting the biggest fight that we've ever had in American history.

So much has been written about Lincoln, Doris, including David Donald's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Lincoln.

As you embarked on "Team of Rivals," what did you find most revelatory about Lincoln?

- You know, I think the reason why I ended up writing the "Team of Rivals" was that I knew I couldn't just write a biography on him, 'cause so many great biographies had been written.

But I thought, maybe if I studied the other people who became his team, Seward, Chase, and Bates, and I could figure out what his relationship was with each one would mean a multiple biography.

But it would give a different aspect, 'cause they would have their own understandings of Lincoln, and then I could use them to help me understand Lincoln.

But I think, one of the moments that was most revelatory had to do with Edwin Stanton.

So Stanton had been a famous lawyer in the 1850s.

Lincoln only known in Illinois.

Stanton had an important case that was gonna be tried in Illinois.

And they went to interview Lincoln.

They thought, "Oh, he'll be good for the case 'cause he knows the people in Illinois."

Turned out that the case got shift back to Cincinnati, where Stanton came from, and Stanton then, but Lincoln went anyway.

They didn't want him anymore, but he went anyway to think that he'll help in the case.

And Stanton took one look at Lincoln on the street corner, and he saw that he had a stain on his shirt and his sleeves were too short for his long arms, his trousers too short for his long legs.

And he said to his partner, "We have to lose this long-armed ape.

He will hurt our case."

Lincoln was humiliated by this.

And he almost didn't wanna go back to Cincinnati again.

But the most revelatory thing was, in 1861, when his first secretary of war has failed, Cameron, everybody says to him, "The only person you can bring in is Stanton.

He's tough, he's mean, and he's a bully at times, but he'll be the person for you."

And he was able to put that past hurt behind him and bring him into the cabinet, no retribution.

And the two of them became so close that Stanton said he loved him more than anyone outside his family.

Again, another thing I wanted to learn from him, where you don't look back at people.

If they can be helpful to you in the moment and you can make a new relationship, let those past hurts go.

That was incredible.

- So you write about these men in the darkest of times, Lincoln during the Civil War, Franklin Roosevelt during the depths of the Depression and World War II, Lyndon Johnson during Vietnam.

What sustains these men in these darkest of hours?

- It's the mystery, really.

It's the mystery of leadership.

I mean, Lincoln knew that democracy was in peril.

He said early on in the war that the central idea of it was that, if you could take the Southern states, who lost the election, the Democratic Party, and they could decide to break up the Union because they didn't win the election, then democracy would be an absurdity.

And he wasn't sure, he later said, if he had known what those first three months would be like, he wasn't sure he could live through it.

But somehow what sustained him was he just had faith in the country, faith that we would come through this, faith in the North, and faith in himself, I think, and the people that he had surrounded him with.

And then you get Teddy Roosevelt coming at the turn of the 20th century, another time when democracy is in peril.

And he said that, "If people in different regions and sections and parties are beginning as they are to view each other as the other rather than as common American citizens, then democracy will be in peril."

And what sustained him was that he had been in various parts of America.

His whole life had been a winding path to the presidency.

So he'd been a cowboy out West, he'd been an Eastern dude, he'd been a police commissioner, he'd been a civil service commissioner, he'd been a soldier.

And he was able somehow to unite the country in rational reforms for the Industrial Revolution, which had shaken it all up, much like tech revolution and globalization have today, under the Square Deal for the rich and the poor, the capitalist and the laborer.

So he had the confidence to do that.

And FDR, I think, when he came in with the Great Depression, again, democracy was in peril then.

Somebody said to him when he started out, "You know, if your program that worked in New York works for the nation, then maybe you'll be one of the great presidents.

If it fails, you'll be one or the worst."

And he said very soberly, "No, I'll be the last American president."

Think of it.

I mean, democracy was failing in Europe.

We had Mussolini, we had Hitler coming.

The Great Depression had done its part.

And yet, he somehow, having been through his polio, known what it was like to have your life cut out from under you, as all the people in America were feeling, one out of four out of work, safety nets not there, people losing their homes and their farms and their mortgages, and he had been paralyzed himself and had somehow worked himself, through experimentation, through patience, through hard work, through empathy when he created the great Warm Springs for other polio patients.

And he learned what it was like to give them joy back in their life.

He could minister to a paralyzed nation.

That first inaugural was almost a rendition of his own life.

It had taken from 1921 to 1928 before he went back in public life.

He was trying so hard to walk on his own power again.

Never was able to do it, but was able to become president of the United States.

So he's ministering to a paralyzed nation, and he has this internal confidence, "I did it, we can make it happen for the country."

And then, of course, World War II, the same thing happens.

Those early days in 1940, when Hitler went all across Western Europe, we were 15th, no, we were 18th in military power, became 17th when Holland surrendered.

And he was able to say, "I'll get the business community, who don't like me and I don't like them, together, and we'll form a partnership."

And they start mobilizing for the war.

And by 1942, we get a plane every four minutes, a tank every seven minutes, and a ship every single day.

And America then was able to lend our weapons to our allies all around the world.

But they didn't know the Allies would win.

We didn't know that the Civil War would end with Union restored and emancipation secured.

They had to live with the anxiety we're living with now.

But I think what's so great about history is you read about these times, you see how hard it was for the people before us, and we somehow emerged from each one of those challenges bigger even than the one we're facing today.

And we emerged with greater strength.

And it gives you hope and perspective.

That's why I love it so much.

(Mark laughing) - But you talked about Lincoln and FDR and the problems they faced, and essentially, these were existential crises that they were facing, Doris.

Where our very democracy, as you suggest, was at stake.

Once again, we find ourselves in a place where our democracy is in question.

Why, when we celebrate our founding documents, which creates American democracy, on which our government is founded, why do we have such a fragile hold on democracy itself?

- No, I think what we're realizing now is that the things we take for granted in democracy, the rule of law, peaceful transition of power, the independence of the judiciary, those are norms.

They're not written in that they have to be followed.

So if you get people in power that don't follow those norms, then democracy is fragile.

You know, but as Churchill said, "It's the worst form of government except all the others that have ever been tried," right?

So it depends what that means.

It depends not only on having the right leader in the right place at the right time.

We were lucky in those other periods of time.

But there were leaders right before them in each case who might not have done it as well.

McKinley was probably not gonna be able to deal with the Industrial Revolution and the exploits on the working class the same way that Teddy Roosevelt was.

And clearly, Buchanan couldn't deal with it, made things worse, and he exacerbated situations before we got FDR.

Hoover was unable to deal with the Depression in the same way.

So we didn't always have the right leader at the right moment.

They did come along, but more importantly, it's citizens that have to take up the movement.

You know, as we were talking earlier, the great changes in social justice and economic opportunity have come from movements in this society, not from the top down.

And we have to depend now in this time of anxiety on our citizens as well.

When Lincoln was called a liberator, he said, "Don't call me that."

It was the anti-slavery movement and the Union soldiers that did it all.

The progressive movement was there at the turn of the 20th century before Teddy Roosevelt set foot on the stage.

The settlement houses were working with dealing with the problems of the Industrial Revolution.

There was a social gospel in religion at that time.

And of course, the civil rights movement was central and the women's movement and the gay rights movement before those changes took place.

So it's really up to citizens to figure out how to deal with the polarization, deal with these divisive times that we've been living with, and deal with the problems that have arisen for democracy in these last years.

- So what can you do to ensure that the great American experiment continues?

What can we learn from those social movements to take action ourselves today to ensure the future of our country?

- You know, one of the things I'd love to see happen in America is a national service program.

Because one of the things that we're facing today is what Teddy Roosevelt went against at the turn of the 20th century, people in different sections and parties viewing each other as the other rather than as common American citizens.

If we took kids out of high school and we had an internal kind of Peace Corps, where the kid from the city goes to the country and the country to the city, North to the South, East to the West, and there's a mission that they work on together, that's why the Army is so able to meld people from different races and classes together.

Because they have something they have to work on together.

And there's so many projects that could be worked on.

You think of all the natural disasters, if they were trained to help as volunteers for that, helping with literacy in local areas, so many things they could do.

And if they break from high school to wherever they're gonna go later, to college or vocational school or to work, and they learn about other people and live with them rather than view them as some silo, as some other, then maybe that will begin for that younger generation to break through the divisions that we have right now.

- You've written many books, but one of your most recent books is a children's book.

So why did you write a children's book?

- Well, I felt that at a time when history is being lessened in schools, it's so important for young people to read history.

And the way they can identify with leadership, I wanted them to see what leadership was like.

Because we haven't had great examples in these last years of a country where people can come together in Washington and form legislation without the anger that's been attached to our polarization.

So I wanted them to read about Lincoln and Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt and LBJ.

But I figured if I started when they were young, that young people could identify with them.

They'd see them growing into leaders, evolving, developing the qualities that good leadership needs, humility and empathy and resilience, accountability, responsibility, and developing an ambition for something larger than oneself.

Everybody starts off with a drive for success for oneself, but eventually the great leaders become something larger than that.

And they'll watch them grow.

They'll watch them make mistakes.

They'll watch them not know how to speak well at first.

It was said of Franklin Roosevelt that he had so many pauses in his early speaking that Eleanor was afraid he would never go on.

(Mark laughing) Then when he finally got confidence, she was afraid he's never go off the stage.

(Mark laughing) But you watch them grow and then you can think, "I can become one of them.

They're not yet on Mount Rushmore.

They're not yet in the history books.

They're just young guys like I am," or hopefully young women as some day they are as well.

You can read about Eleanor.

And that's where you can model yourself on those qualities that are so important.

They're emotional qualities.

That's what makes.

They're all about character.

And in the end, as you know so well, character is the most important thing.

And you want your kids to develop a character where you can lose with dignity, you can have triumphs without arrogance, and you can have kindness and empathy and compassion.

And all those emotions you want in a kid, you want in your leaders as well.

- Doris, we're a very forward-looking nation.

We just saw that in the election last fall.

Americans look forward.

We don't look at the past.

So why is history important?

- Oh, I think it's more important in times of trouble than ever before, because people have to look back at times when we did have challenges and we met them.

And it gives them perspective.

It gives them lessons.

We can learn.

We can learn from our parents.

Why not learn from our ancestors how they came through triumphs, how they came through tragedies, what mistakes they made, what opportunities they missed, what great things they did?

And this is a very time when history's being diminishing in schools, and in fact, one of the reasons why the other book I worked on in this last year was to make a kid book out of leadership in turbulent times.

So it's called "The Leadership Journey: How Four Kids Became President."

And I wanted young people to be able to see these great leaders when they were young, when they would make mistakes, when they would acknowledge them, when they would grow in empathy, when they would have chutzpah, when they'd be too arrogant, when they'd be unconfident and not good speakers.

Otherwise, they can't imagine that they could ever become someone who's already on Mount Rushmore, in the newspapers, or in the currency.

So it's so important now that just at a time when history is being undone in courses, we're banning books when we should be reading books rather than banning books, it's so important that we remember what history can do for us.

It gives us confidence.

It gives us hope.

It gives us solace.

And that's why I love it so much.

- Doris Kearns Goodwin, our national teacher, our historian in chief, thank you so much for being with us.

- Oh, I'm so glad we could do this together, Mark.

(regal music) (regal music continues) (regal music continues) - [Narrator] This program was funded by the following: Laura & John Beckworth, BP America, Joe Latimer & Joni Hartgraves.

And also by.

(no audio) And by.

(no audio) A complete list of funders is available at APTonline.org and LiveFromLBJ.org.

(bright flute music) (bright music)