For the better part of 40 years now, biographer/historian Doris Kearns Goodwin has been writing about dead presidents. Her focus has been on the greats: Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson, all of whom are the subjects of her new book, Leadership: In Turbulent Times.
One of America’s best-known popular historians, Goodwin is famously engaging as a storyteller; she has the rare gift to tell stories people might think they already know and make them new. Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns found her an irresistible presence as a diehard Brooklyn Dodgers fan in his nine-part series on the history of baseball. As a scholar, Goodwin does not deliver lectures. She’s too alive to what’s weird, wonderful, and amazing about her subjects. She connects the dots between the personal and the political without getting gossipy or surrendering to the amber lights of nostalgia.
Goodwin will be in Santa Barbara on February 22 to discuss her latest book. In some ways, Leadership: In Turbulent Times is an old-fashioned character study, examining how the upbringing, challenges, and heartbreaks helped pave the way for the two Roosevelts, Lincoln, and Johnson to do great things under unimaginable duress. Of the four presidents, Goodwin actually knew Johnson, having served as a Fellow in his White House in 1967. While there, she famously wrote an anti-war article headlined, “How to Dump Lyndon Johnson.” He responded — equally famously — by not firing her as everyone expected but instead by setting about to win her over. It’s unclear who won over whom, but it was Goodwin who wound up helping Johnson write his memoirs.
It’s hard not to read Goodwin’s latest book as an implicit rebuke of Donald Trump — rarely has any president cared less about the craft of governance or the art of politics. As fascinating as Goodwin is to listen to about previous occupants of the White House, the only question people have for her these days is about its current inhabitant. I was clearly one of them, as this exchange with Goodwin indicates.
I know you don’t write about Trump, but as someone who studies presidential leadership and character, how do you come to terms with the Trump phenomenon? If Trump is the answer, what’s the question? What are the structural and institutional preconditions that allow a faux reality-show star to become President of the United States? I know that’s a thesis or three unto themselves, but you must have a few thoughts on the subject other than abject despair. Though Donald Trump’s populist message may seem unprecedented, much of the polarization we see today is an echo of what the country experienced at the turn of the 20th century. Imagine what it was like for Theodore Roosevelt thrust into office after McKinley’s assassination, at a time when there was widespread talk of a coming revolution. The industrial revolution had shaken up the economy at the turn of the 20th century, much as globalization and the technological revolution have done today. Big companies were swallowing up small companies. Cities were replacing towns. Immigrants were pouring in from abroad. A threatening gap had opened between the rich and the poor. A mood of rebellion had spread among the laboring classes. Populists railed against Wall Street, against elites, against the cities. The anxiety many people feel now is caused by the same pressures that made people nervous about an America that was changing then, but with the right leader for the right time, and with citizen participation, we were able to get through the hard times.
