Doris Kearns Goodwin: Presidential Stories, the TRPL, and the Enduring Lessons of Theodore Roosevelt

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN:

I remember with somebody when I wrote The Bully Pulpit was somebody said to me, who would you rather marry, Teddy or Taft? And at first I said, well, Taft really was good about pursuing the career of his wife, Nellie, who was very ambitious and she did a lot of things and that might be good, but oh, there's no way I'd have to marry Teddy.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

Welcome to Good Citizen, a podcast from the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library. I'm Ted Roosevelt. This week we're going to try something a little bit different. I recently had the great privilege of sitting down with Doris Kearns Goodwin for a live conversation in front of a small audience at The Explorers Club. Doris Kearns Goodwin is of course one of the most respected presidential historians and storytellers of our time, a Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times bestselling author. Her book, The Bully Pulpit, explores the complicated relationship between Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft and how Roosevelt used the presidency to usher in a new era of progressive reform. Today she actually likes to say she's spending time again with her old boyfriend TR as she works on a new book about the titans of the Gilded Age. For generations of Americans, Doris's work has shaped how we understand leadership, power and character, especially in moments like the one we're living in right now where there's national turmoil. That's very much the terrain we explore in this conversation. What you're about to hear is the interview in its entirety, unedited. And Doris frankly takes advantage of that and turns the tables on me and asks me a few questions along the way. But there are still clear themes that run throughout: how adversity shapes leaders, why character matters, and how history when we truly engage it, can help guide us through the present. I'll drop you in just after the introductions. Enjoy.

Well, listen, it's not every day you get introduced with your bio, and the next one includes the term national treasure in it. But you guys, Doris Kearns Goodwin, I mean, how awesome is this? It's a little bit of an inauspicious state for two reasons. One is, it is 107 years and one day since the passage when TR died on January 6th. And so if you feel his spirit in this room, he spent a lot of time in this clubhouse, it may be because of that, and it's also six months till the opening of the presidential library. And Doris, the last time I saw you, we were both out in Medora, North Dakota and we haven't had a chance to catch up, but I would love to get your initial impressions of that.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN:

It's hard to describe how extraordinary it is. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it, and I've been to most of the presidential museums in the country. There's a sense of wonder about the place, and I think it fits TR so well because John Morley, an Englishman, said about Teddy Roosevelt — and I know I shouldn't call him Teddy, he didn't like that, but I feel so intimate with him 'cause I lived with him for 15 years between Bully Pulpit and Leadership in Turbulent Times in a documentary on Theodore Roosevelt, I feel like he's one of my guys. And I don't mean to be undeferential about that, just I wake up with him in the morning, I think about them when I go to bed at night. But at any rate, John Morley said, of TR I will try to stick to TR that he was like a wondrous force of nature, a force of wonder.

And the only two that he had seen in the United States like that was Niagara Falls and Theodore Roosevelt. And I think the museum is that. There was a sense of childlike wonder in seeing what they've done there. It's just breathtakingly beautiful, number one. It's built into the land so that it's not sticking out from the land. It's part of it. And it's not only that he found solace there, it's that he grew as a leader there and I think the whole rest of his life was shaped by that place. So it's the right place for this memorial to be, but it's not, as Hillary said, it's not a library. It's not a museum, it's something other than that. You're going to feel his presence. I mean, one of the things about Niagara Falls that this guy John Foley said was that it was filled with torrential energy as was TR, and somehow the place is like that. You feel him there. I went when I was a little girl to Franklin Roosevelt's place at Hyde Park, and it's a very different kind of place, but I really thought he was alive because his glasses were left on the desk and I figured somebody has to be there to take his glasses. His cigarette holder was there, he'll be back. Then I saw the leash of Fala on the chase lounge in the bedroom, and I said, of course Fala's running around. But in a certain sense what you think they are there. That's what history's about. We are going to bring him back to life and there's nobody more relevant, I think right now. I hope my other guys, my boyfriends Abraham Lincoln and FDR and Lyndon Johnson won't be mad at me, but there's nobody more relevant to us today.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

Well, let's get into that, and it's easy to talk about the Badlands and how that shaped him, but I want to first contextualize this moment in time because when TR was around during the rise of the progressive party, it was very similar to this moment in time. Democracy was being tested in this country. It was extremely polarizing. Talk to us about what made that moment in time so polarizing.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN:

Well, I think if we talk about the turn of the 20th century, it really does have that sense of a parallel to today because the industrial revolution has shaken up the economy, much like globalization and the tech revolution have today. First time you had a huge gap between the rich and the poor, the first time that there were so many immigrants coming in from abroad more than before, and nativist spirit had risen against that. You had class structures that were beginning to develop, you had new inventions, so people were fearful of this changing pace of life. They were sort of worried about it, and they wanted to go back nostalgically to an earlier place without the automobile, without the telephone, without the telegraph. And there was a sense, as Roosevelt said, that people in different regions and classes were beginning to feel each other as the other rather than as common American citizens. And that was his major worry at that time. So I think when we look at today, I mean what he was arguing for was you need to feel a sense of commonality that goes across the parts sections of the country, that goes across religion, that goes across classes. He called it fellow feeling — that for a democracy, fellow feeling is the most important quality. And when I think of the silos that we're living in today and what would it take for a leader to be able to connect us — and that's what he did somehow magically, I mean the square deal for the rich and the poor, the capitalist and the laborer. So simple but so clear. I think it's what all of us want.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

TR's early life was really marked by a lot of adversity. He was a sort of weak young child. We talk about his time in the badlands, but he had a ton of health challenges. Talk about how that influenced his ability to overcome these struggles. How does that become a defining characteristic of his character?

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN:

I think from all the studies of leadership that I've done in 50, almost 60 years, I mean actually 83 years old — when I get a happy birthday, I think, oh no, is this possible? Is that leadership is often shaped by adversity. Ernest Hemingway once wrote that everyone is broken by life, but afterwards some are strong in the broken places. And how true that was for TR, I mean, as you suggested right away from asthma, he said he remembered hearing his parents say that he might not live. I mean, can you imagine a little kid remembering that? And then the father was so instrumental in helping him when he couldn't catch his breath in the middle of the night, taking him out in the carriage and going fast so the wind would get in his lungs. And he loved his father perhaps more. He said his father was his best friend and he wrote letters from Harvard saying how much he loved him and then for the father to die when he was a sophomore in college with a sudden attack of a cancerous decision, he said he felt like part of his life had been taken away.

And how did he respond to that? By plunging himself back into work — by motion. In fact, he went not long after that, that summer to Maine and he was camping with woodsman, and then he felt a sense of communing with nature even there, right? That's his response to the first death that he experienced. And then of course, as was witnessed by everybody here tonight, the death of his wife and his mother. I mean, think about it, she was only 22 years old. His mother was only 49 years old and dying in the same house at the same time. And he wrote this famous motion in his diary — can we say that that's going to be at the library? Anyway, this famous diary that we know — he just wrote an "X" and said, "the light has gone out of my life." We're going to actually see that at the museum and the library or this thing we're calling a participant place.

And then again, how does he respond to that death? He goes out there and he says that he needs to ride his horse 15 hours a day so that he can sleep at night. He needs to feel a part of something larger than himself. And that's where the haunting beauty of the place took place. And that's where he found not only solace, but I think the idea to go forward and always it was forward motion. And sometimes that meant putting things aside that maybe he shouldn't have put aside and not wanting to talk very much about his first wife, loving her so much that he didn't want to remember her. You would hope that somehow — and her stories has come out through Ed right now, which is wonderful. I mean, these people have to be remembered. That's what history does. But I think it is an extraordinarily important role. He said not only that he wouldn't have been president had he not been in the Badlands, but more importantly, if he had to choose one part of his life to go back to even after the presidency, he would go back there. There was something about that, and he wrote some of his best writings when he was there just sitting on that porch and somehow communing with some spiritual — nature became his healer. And it will be for the people that go there. That was an incredible story that you told about people coming. I don't think I'd fully realize that. That's wonderful that they can find that same sense there.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

Well talk a little bit about his time in the Badlands. I've heard you refer to it as sort of the fulcrum moment in the hero's journey. It was clearly hugely influential in his later life. What was it about that experience that influenced his leadership style?

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN:

Yeah, the biggest thing that happened really there was that he said that he changed his attitude toward his career. Before that, he was thinking about, well, I'm now a state representative, maybe I'll be a state senator and then I'll be a congressman, and then I'll be a senator, and then maybe I'll be a governor and then maybe president, that resume building. And he talked about the problem with resume building is that you're too cautious at every step along the way because you're thinking about how is it going to affect the next thing. He had now lived a life where fate had intervened, and he knew that that could happen at any moment now. So he said, instead, I'm just going to find any job that I want to do because it matters, because it has a purpose. I don't care if it's downward or upward or sideways.

He didn't say — I'm saying that he said that. I talked to him as if I knew him, but I know that's what he meant. And so he takes civil service commissioner when he comes down and people say, "Why are you doing that? That seems to be below you?" And he said, "No, I believe in the merit system. And boy, have we seen the importance of that in these recent years." And then he becomes police commissioner in New York. And again, people say, "What in the world are you doing? It's the most corrupt." "That's what I want to do," he said, and then he finally becomes something he did want when the resume building was there, Assistant Secretary of the Navy. But then he leaves that to become a soldier. And I think what happens is that he then inhabits different parts of America through each one of those jobs. He sees the tenement, he sees the places, the Badlands, he goes south, he goes north, east and west, so that he's the mosaic that can bring the country together. But just before we talk more about him, thinking about you and this character that we're now talking about, how old were you when you realized, this is my great great grandfather, and what did you hear about him and what did that make you feel?

TED ROOSEVELT V:

I had a weird moment, sort of flashes of memories, but the first one that I can remember, I was in kindergarten and somebody approached me, an adult and asked me if I was related to Theodore Roosevelt. And I was like, I don't know who that is, so I don't know. And so I went back and talked to my parents and they explained things to me. But throughout my childhood there were sort of indicators along the way, like Ronald Reagan would send me letters and they would be addressed to, he would be Dear Bear, which was my nickname. I mean, he was such a sweet man, but it was really the moment that sort of put it together was when I was around 10, they christened the USS Theodore Roosevelt, which at the time was the largest and most advanced battle aircraft carrier in the Navy. And it's a 10-year-old. You look at this enormous monolith of steel, this nuclear powered submarine, and then you see the name Theodore Roosevelt on the back. And for the first time I was like, huh, this seems to be a thing.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN:

I think I like it. Right?

TED ROOSEVELT V:

Maybe I should pay attention to this. So let's jump ahead to TR's Governorship of New York. It sets in motion a chain of events that sort of seem almost preordained all of a sudden in terms of how quickly he rises to the presidency. Talk to us a little bit about that experience.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN:

Yeah, I mean, what happens is when he comes back from the Rough Rider's experience, he's a hero and the people who are in charge of the political bosses in New York State have no desire for him to become the governor's candidate because they know he's already a progressive more than they are, but they just had a corrupt administration, so they needed somebody who could win, and they knew that he could win. And so he's in there sort of with them looking at a scance — at as — first, he gets along pretty well with his boss, Tom Platt. But then he decides that corporations who are getting franchises with millions of dollars owe something back to the state. And so he passes a franchise tax, which they said just hit them in the solar plexus. They decide we've got to get rid of him because he was about to run for a second term, and they were afraid that that would only catapult him further.

So they tell him that he can't really have a second term, but they will give him something in compensation, they'll make him vice president, which he hates. The idea of being something like — in fact, he was so bored when he was actually vice president that he was almost starting to study law again. He'd only had one year in law school. So he said, I'll become a lawyer now. And he just hated not feeling purposeful. He wrote a letter to Taft and said, the worst thing in the world is to wake up and not feel that you have a purpose for your day. But then of course what happens is he's on a camping trip. McKinley is assassinated. The assassination thing is an extraordinary thing because it takes place in Buffalo. And the whole Buffalo Exposition Fair was about electricity and the wonders of the new world of electricity.

So they have a 400 foot spire that's all monitored by electricity in Niagara Falls. They have electric cars, electric elevators, and when he gets shot, he has to go to a makeshift hospital and there's no electricity in the room where the doctors are working on him. They have to use a mirror to reflect the light outside. Thomas Edison's electric x-rays are there on display, but they think that it might be a problem if they use the x-ray and they never find the bullet that's in him, which stays in him, and then that causes his death. So then Roosevelt comes there, and right from the start, he just handled it so brilliantly. He knew that this guy, Mark Hannah was the person who had said to McKinley, "Do you realize that that guy, that damn guy is only one life away from the presidency?" And he warned him against it.

And yet he understood that the old man, he was an older man then, was feeling sensitive. He goes down and reaches out for his hand, and I hope I can be to you what McKinley was. There was a side of him that people don't often know. They think of him as somebody who's running — a bull running into a place, and he immediately was able to establish himself, but he then makes a problem for himself because right before he is a giving the presidential oath, I can never pronounce his name, Elihu Root, I wish they'd named him something else. Elihu says to him, you've got to say something about keeping continuity with McKinley or the stock market's going to be hurt. So he pledges that he will continue McKinley's policies, but they're really not his policies. So that's a problem that he has to face as soon as he comes in. But he figures out how to deal with the corporations. He deals with the leaders of them, and he slowly moves away from them, but he's not just going after them in the way we think he does is a trust buster. So it's an extraordinary beginning to his presidency.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

Your book on TR and Taft and the muckrackers is called The Bully Pulpit, which is a term that came from TR. He was an extremely effective communicator, but he was also sort of this Harvard educated, I'm sure you've heard a recording of his voice — it's not what you think it's going to be. It's this sort of high pitched squeal almost. I mean, it's exactly the opposite of the sort of alpha male that he's portrayed as. But what was it about his communication style that was so effective? And are there things that you think would be effective today in that style?

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN:

It's so interesting about a high-pitched voice because Lincoln had a high-pitched voice too, and that could go over a crowd 'cause speaking without microphones. And so in the debates, like with Steven Douglas, Lincoln's voice could go way to the back of the crowd, whereas Douglas the baritone, everybody could hear him right there. And when in fact, the movie was made on Lincoln, people were stunned that "Where's that voice coming from? This high pitched voice? It can't be real." Same thing with TR, but I've listened to his descriptions of what he was like when he talked. It wasn't just his voice. He talked with his whole body. He's clapping his hands up there, he is making points, he's leaning over the rail. There was a sense that his body was alive, but he also knew, and I think it was from the experience in the Badlands as well, he knew how to communicate.

He said, I'm better at talking to people in the west even than in the east. And my Harvard friends think I speak in homely language because I don't use big words. And FDR felt the same way — rather one syllable words rather than three syllable words. And he could communicate with metaphors. He communicated through his life experience, the fact that he had been a rough rider, the fact that he'd been a police commissioner, the fact that he'd been civil service commissioner, the fact that he'd been in the Navy somehow, and the fact that his mother came from the south, that he lived in the west, that he was a privileged guy from the east, meant that he could communicate everywhere in the country. And what he did as soon as he came in was to get friendly with the press. He understood that that was really important because he needed his voice to be communicated.

So the first day in the office, he invites the three wire surfaces to come, and he sits them down. He says, "okay, we're going to a — I'm going to call you by your first names. I'm going to talk to you all the time, which is really what he promised to do as long as if I ever say that this is off the record, if you ever violate that, you'll be banished." So they knew what they were up to, but that meant that every day when he was being shaved, they could come into the barber — they called it the barber's hour. They could ask him questions. Somebody's doing barber's, doing a straight razor. They said the barber had to have the best hand in the world, but most importantly, what he understood about the press was that they were going to criticize him and that he had to deal with that, and he dealt with it with humor.

I think humor is one of the most important qualities that any of the leaders I've studied have. I mean, I'm sure you famously know the story when he wrote his memoir about the Spanish-American War and his experience in it, this great humorous Mr. Dooley, Peter Dunn wrote, and he said it was an interesting book, but he put himself in the center of every single battle, every moment of that war. He should have called it "Alone in Cuba." So what does TR do rather than being mad? He writes. So he said, "I regret to tell you that my wife and my intimate friends are very interested in what you said. They agree with you, but now you owe me one. You have to come meet me. I want to know you." So they became friends. And then later there's a story about a fancy woman coming up to him in a party and saying, "I've read all your books." And he said, "oh, which one did you like the best?" And she said, "oh, that one Alone in Cuba. That was the best one." But again, he could laugh at himself. There's another story when he is police commissioner and he has to exercise the Sunday closing law. And so the people hate it. The working class people hate. It was the one day of the week that they could sit in a saloon and relax, and he didn't agree with the law, but he had to enforce it 'cause he was police commissioner. So there's a huge parade against him where there's all these floats showing him drinking wine and then the poor working man not being able to get in the saloon, and there's posters against him and he stands in the receiving line waiting with all the other people to watch the whole parade. And he says, "oh, that's a great poster. Can I look at that?" He goes over and then the audience, the newspapers, the next day, write, "They came to cheer and they ended up cheering." They said to him, "Teddy, you're a man. You're a man." So that he had that ability, I think, to look at himself and laugh at himself. I mean, we know the famous quote that Alice Roosevelt said that he so wanted to be the center of attention that he wanted be the baby at the baptism, the bride at the wedding and the corpse at the funeral. But even then, he recognized when he was state legislator that he was firing and jumping up so much and talking all the time, that even his fellow Republicans were pissed off at him. And he said, I've developed a swell head. He could see that about himself. And the press loved him. I mean, the cartoons were made of him, and he loved the cartoons even when they're making fun of him, that he said, there's something about seeing yourself in a hieroglyph. It makes you feel that you're lasting forever. So there was a sense of him, I think, that understood the press. He felt he was one of them because he wrote as well. He invited them to lunches, to dinners. He would send his speeches to them. They would have rocky times sometimes together, but they kept coming back. And that was the bully pulpit. That's what he named that the presidency as a pulpit unlike any other, to be able to educate the country. So what he does then from that first day on is not only does he have a great relationship with the press, but he goes out among the people and he took constant train trips. I love the idea of his being on a train all the time — whistle stop trains, the Pullman trains. And he would go from one place to the other, get off and talk to the people, and then people would be waiting on the roadsides.

There was something electric about — there was a charisma. There's no question. There are people, when you'd hear them describe it, because of what I'm working on later, which I'll talk about, a million people came to see him on July 4th in 1902 in Pittsburgh. A million people — never had that many people ever gone to see somebody. That's because he was out in the country. So he's on this train, and the great story I love is that he's waving to everybody, even when he's just standing there the whole time at little roadsides. There may be five or 10 people there, and he's waving at a group of people and for once they're not really responding well, and somebody tells him, because he's nearsighted, he was waving at a herd of cows. Little wonder that they were. But that's what he did. He was away from Washington more than probably any other president, because he wanted to be with the people, and he educated them. He changed their mind about what government would be, what the presidency was, what the stewardship was, and he was with the people, and he needed the press as a result. So that's his key. And he spoke in the language that they understood. He used metaphors, used humor, and I'd love to have actually listened to him one time. My God, that would be great. I mean, not just watched him. You can't tell until you watch him.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

It would be amazing. And anybody who reads any or any biography about him, one of the first things you see, and you're alluding to it in your comments, is just he's this endless stream of energy. He's a whirling dervish. How does he ever relax? What does it look like when he relaxes?

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN:

Well, he relaxes by exercise. So I mean, it's kind of a weird relaxing. I mean, boxing — in the afternoon, there'd be a couple hours that would be devoted to exercise. So it could be a boxing match or a wrestling match. He would hurt his body for these things. But his favorite form of relaxation was a hike in Rock Creek Park, and the rule was you couldn't go around any obstacle. You had to go through it. So if you came to a rock, you had to climb it. If you came to precipice, you had to go down it. So the people hated these walks with them. I mean, the journalists are all falling down and people are having a difficult time keeping up with him. But the greatest story is told by the French ambassador, Jules Jusseron. He came and he said he was imagining he would be going into the Champs Elyssé and he's wearing his silk suit and he finds himself in the woods climbing these things. He can't wait till it's over. And finally they come to a stream, a river. He says, "Thank God it's over." And then he said, "Judge of my horror, when I saw the president unbutton his clothes and say, well, it's an obstacle, so we can't go around it, no sense in getting our clothes dirty." And so he said that "I then, for the honor of France, removed my apparel as well. However, I left on my lavender kid gloves. Why? Because we might meet ladies on the other side." So anyway, that's part of the way he relaxed. The other way, of course, was through reading. I mean, he had a book with him at every moment during the day, if he's waiting for Edith to come down the stairs, he's reading a book. There's a great letter that he writes in the middle of the coal strike to the Librarian of Congress asking for books on Mesopotamia so that he can think about something other than the coal strike or the Congress.

But all my guys found ways of relaxing. I mean, Franklin Roosevelt, Teddy was his hero. He relaxed in a different way from Theodore Roosevelt. He relaxed with cocktail hours every night in the White House during the war. And the rule was you couldn't talk about the war. You could talk about books you'd read, movies you'd seen, just as long as the war didn't come up. And after a while, this cocktail party mattered so much to him that he wanted the regulars who would be at the cocktail party to live on the second floor of the White House with him. So it became the most exclusive residential hotel you could possibly imagine. His foreign policy advisor, Harry Hopkins, came for dinner one night, slept over, never left until the war was coming to an end. His secretary, Missy Lehan lived right there. Eleanor Roosevelt's great friend, Lorena Hicock lived next door to her, Princess Martha came from Europe during the war, and she was there on the weekends, and of course, the Great Winston Churchill spent weeks at a time there, and they all were at this cocktail party together. So when I finished the book on No Ordinary Time, I was on a radio program in Washington and I was mentioning I'd love to see the second floor of the White House again and figure out who slept where. And it happened that Hillary Clinton was listening. So she invited me to a sleepover in the White House where I could then wander the corridor and figure out where everyone has slept 50 years earlier. So two weeks later, she followed up with an invitation to a state dinner, after which between midnight and two, the president, the first lady and my husband and I, with my map in hand, went through every room and figured out, yes, Chelsea Clinton is sleeping where Harry Hopkins was.

The Clintons are sleeping where FDR was. We were in Winston Churchill's bedroom. There was no way I could sleep. He was there drinking his brandy and smoking his cigar. In fact, there's a story about another naked man that has to do with that room when right after Pearl Harbor, when Roosevelt and Churchill were set to sign a document that put the Associated Nations against the Axis Powers, Roosevelt awakened that morning with a whole new idea of calling them the United Nations against the Axis Powers. He was so excited. He had himself wielded into Churchill's bedroom to tell him the news, but it so happened that Churchill was just coming out of the bathtub and had absolutely nothing on. So Roosevelt said, "I'm so sorry. I'll come back in a few moments." Churchill amazingly standing up, still dripping from the tub, says, "oh, no, please stay. The Prime Minister of Great Britain has nothing to hide from the President of the United States." So the next day, I couldn't wait to go in the bathtub, and then I truly felt I'm in the presence of the greatness of the past. But Roosevelt Franklin Roosevelt's hero was TR. So the connections between them, they're also, Eleanor is connected because of course she is Elliot Roosevelt, Franklin, Teddy Roosevelt's brother's daughter. And when they get married, one of the great things that Theodore Roosevelt says to Franklin and Eleanor, well, you can at least have the same monograms on your towels. The Roosevelt Roosevelt.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

I think he also said it's good to keep the name in the family.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN:

That's exactly right. That's exactly right. But that's so important I think for all of us today with cell phones going with us everywhere we go, we think we're too busy to find the time to think, to relax, to replenish one's energy. But the guys that I studied, they were pretty busy with civil wars and depressions in World War Twos, and they all found the time to relax and replenish energies and think, just get away from things and think.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

The library is going to focus on, and Ed talked about it earlier, but leadership, conservation, and citizenship. I wonder what lessons you've learned from TR that you think are the most applicable or would be the most useful for the nation to know from the learnings of TR at this point?

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN:

I tried to think, people have always asked me, is there a magical key to leadership? Is there one quality? And it really isn't one quality, it's a combination. I think of emotional qualities like we think of emotional intelligence. I mean, humility is one. And I think, as I say, even though we don't often think of that with TR, he was able to understand himself well enough to be able to correct his own behavior when he thought it wasn't right. Empathy is one of the most important qualities that a leader needs to have, and empathy is an understanding of other people, listening to other people, and he had that in spades. That's what's missing mostly in our country I think today, is that inability to understand and feel what other people in different circumstances are feeling. Resilience is absolutely critical, and we've talked about that. He had an ambition for something that was larger than himself.

He had compassion, he had kindness, and he had the communication ability. I can see him today tweeting more than almost any of the other presidents with all those little sayings he had speak softly and carry a big stick, don't hit until you have to and then hit hard. He would be perfect at it. He was also very quick and he could be biting, he could be satirical, he could be funny. I'm not sure. I can see the other ones too easily being able to communicate in today's world, and he could communicate with his body as well. But I think most importantly, what he talked about, if you look at the speeches he made when he was out in the country, they all come down to one thing, which is the most important part of leadership, and I think it's connected to citizenship and conservation — it's character. He constantly talked about character. That's what matters. When we think about what we want in our leaders right now, it's people who have good characters, and he wanted citizens who felt that they had a responsibility to the country. He wanted people to be educated for that. And so that's so exciting to me about the library, is that I think it's going to hit young people

Like a little Ted, if you were going to be coming there, it would be before you at five years old. I mean, what I could see what's happening, they're going to be experiencing him as if he's there. It's a participant, as you said. And if we could get young people to care about history and care about Theodore Roosevelt — my heart breaks when I think about history being reduced in schools right now, civic education being diminished, young people not caring about history, not able to read books in the same way that they would before. They're going to experience something, and then maybe they'll want to read more about it. Maybe they'll want to know more about it, and maybe they'll learn to love history. It would matter so much because history is the thing that's going to get us through right now. I mean, we're all feeling a sense of loss of what can we do?

And we have to remember that we've been through these times before. I mean, Civil War, Lincoln said democracy was on trial right then because if people could just simply decide as the Democrats did that the Southern people were not going to stay in the Union because they'd lost an election, then democracy was an absurdity. And yet we somehow with terrible price preserved democracy and the union and emancipation making us better. As I've mentioned with Theodore Roosevelt, it was on trial in the turn of the 20th century, certainly on trial in the Great Depression. And Franklin Roosevelt said as he was about to be inaugurated, somebody said, if your program works it, you're going to have, you're going to be considered one of the great presidents. If it fails, you're going to be one of the worst. He said, no, I'll be the last American president.

And when World War II came, we were 18th in military power. We had let everything go down. It didn't look like we could help England survive. And we mobilized and business and government came together, and by 1943, we were producing a plane every four minutes, a tank, every seven minutes, and a ship was launched every day. So somehow we come together and history reminds us of that. And we have to remember that the people living then, they didn't know how it was going to end. We don't know how our troubles are going to end. We know that the allies won World War II. We know that Civil War ended with union and emancipation. They didn't know that. But somehow we know that we got through these before and we can get through them again. That's my hope of history, and I think that's what's going to be so wonderful. Nothing could matter more than seeing how tumultuous the turn of the 20th century was. It was a time when there were riots, when there were strikes, when labor and management were at each other's ends, and when there was a real sense of whether the country was going to be able to hold together and somehow that he held it together and we'd look at him, and I think that leadership is going to help us. And as I said, in the end, it's all about character. And I think that's what he had in spades.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

You were talking about how TR was FDRs hero and somebody else. You've written a lot about Abraham Lincoln was TR's hero. And so to your point about history is that there's this connective tissue that sort of one great leader almost leads to the next great leader. And it's only through understanding the historical context that enables that to happen.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN:

You're so right. In fact, when I think about the guys that I've studied, I mean Lyndon Johnson's hero was Franklin Roosevelt, he called him my political daddy. And then Franklin Roosevelt obviously patterned his life on Theodore Roosevelt when he was a clerk in this law firm, business firm. And somebody was saying to him, what are your ambitions for the future? And he said, "I want to be in the state legislature and I want to be an assistant secretary of the Navy. And then maybe governor and then maybe president." He was imagining himself as TR's kind of person. And when he was at Harvard and TR came to speak as a police commissioner, that's how he got his first job on the Harvard Crimson. He had a coup because TR had told him I'm coming. So he was able to announce it. And so there was a sense — and then of course, TR is Lincoln.

He writes about Lincoln. During the summer of 1902 when the coal strike was on one of the most difficult problems he had to face. He read all nine books of Nicolay and Hayes' Lincoln. I mean, can you imagine that? And he would then say, I feel like he was, I'm stuck between the far left and the far right and I've got to have a middle course. And then of course, Lincoln's hero was George Washington. So what a small country we have, but how great — I mean, I don't mean a small country, I mean a short history in that country, but how great when leaders themselves can look and find solace from other leaders, and that's what history will do.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

Just quickly, can you tell a little bit about that story of there's a picture of TR looking out at Lincoln's memorial as a small child with his brother Elliot, but just, I mean, to connect it even more.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN:

Yeah, I mean, he's almost like your age when you're little, little Ted and he's at the window and the funeral cortege is going down the street, and you see that picture of him just looking out the window, and then somehow I think he gets an asthma attack even then or something like that and has to be taken away. But there's that sense of that connective tissue between our country. I think that's incredible.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

I think he also locked what was going to be his future wife, Edith in the closet 'cause he was annoying him so much during that parade.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN:

She was upset. Yes, that's right. I think that's exactly right.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

She was upset by all the black.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN:

How great though that in the end, as Ed O'Keefe knows so well, I mean having loved Alice as much as he did, and yet he found in what had been his best friend when he was young, the woman who could give him such enormous fulfillment and become the mother of the kids and become his soulmate.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

You, and it's been alluded to, but I think it's not entirely public. You are working on another book right now. Can you share with us a little bit about that book?

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN:

Just before I do, I want just hear from you a little bit more. What about —

TED ROOSEVELT V:

Awesome.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN:

What about your sense of what is the legacy that you hope that the museum will be able to leave about Theodore Roosevelt, not just what he did, but maybe who he was or what he did? How would you like — how do you think about it when you've been out there more than us, so tell me what you think about all this.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

I think there are a lot of important lessons from TR that are applicable to today, and it's less about his policies and more about his orientation than anything else. And you've hit on a number of these, but kind of duty before comfort was something that he believed in very much the idea that privilege brought an obligation to it, and that if he held the power, he held it in a trust for the people, particularly those who didn't have power. He was very much — moral courage was a big part of who he was. He left the Republican party when it stopped living up to the ideals that he thought were in the best interest of the country, which was certainly not a smart political move for him to do. He believed in striving over perfection. If you've read the "Man in the Arena" speech, you know that it was about effort.

It wasn't about even accomplishing your goals, it was about being in that arena. And finally maybe kind of patriotism with responsibility. For him, he loved America deeply, but it didn't mean that you could only flatter the country. You had to challenge the country. You had to encourage it to be better than it already was. You mentioned this sort of over under through, but never around idea, which was one that he used with his kids when he walked through the woods and he used with diplomats that came to the White House. It's something that Serena and I actually use with our kids. This idea of that when you're going from a point to point, you got to go through whatever the challenges are in front of you. And I think this nation right now, more often than not, will use political expediency to go around the challenges that we're facing and leave it for the next generation a more complicated problem. And so I would love to see the country, and Ed, you mentioned this earlier, this idea of TR being a Rorschats test. I'd love to see both sides of the aisle, independent alike, be able to come to this library and take away that sense of duty, that sense of obligation, that sense that we are only going to succeed if we do this together, and that it's not a zero sum game for us.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN:

Oh, I think you're so right. I mean, I think in some ways too, one of the things that he really resembles in — or allows people to think about is politics is an honorable vocation. I mean, he talked about the fact that the great thing about politics, and that didn't mean necessarily even elective office, it just mean public service, is that you get to see people that you might not ordinarily see and deal with as just from your own little life.

It expands your understanding of human nature. He was for the idea of some sort of national service. And I think if there's any, one thing I'd love to do right now is to have every kid after high school go to a different part of America and have a common mission that they're working on in that from the kid, from country to the city or the west to the east or the south to the north, working together so they understand who the other people are in the country and how much they have in common. I mean, it sounds so simplistic to say more in common than what, but that has to be what we feel again, and that sense of empathy and understanding is so important. And so that's something that my youngest son joined the army right after 9/11, and he will say that nothing was more important than leading his platoon of kids from — he had just graduated from Harvard that June.

So he'd come from a privileged background, but he led every single kid from different classes. They formed a mission together. Nothing will be prouder than him, than bringing that platoon to — but it doesn't have to be military service only. It can be national service. So I think if we can get in the library, people feeling by the end of that participant experience that they want to do something, I mean, the change that's taken place in the country is never just from the top down. And I think that's what I think the museum is going to illustrate as well. It always comes from the ground up. And 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 already in the cities and states. Jane Adams and the settlement houses were there before TR comes in.

And then obviously the Civil Rights Movement was essential for what Lyndon Johnson was able to do in the sixties. And I think we just want to inculcate in young people again, that belief, they can make a difference. They can be that person, the kid in the arena, not simply the man in the arena. And if we can do that, then this thing that's being built out there will have an enormous impact. It's just lucky in a way that it waited all this time to happen. If it had been built earlier, it would've been a normal museum.

We would've been looking at all this stuff, and that would never have fit. His personality. He would've said, "No, I want action. I want motion. I want people to go out of here and do something." And that's the hope. When they leave this place, they say, what can I do? It doesn't have to be a big things. So what can I do in my school to make it better? What can I do in my neighborhood? So it's pretty exciting to think that that's going to — I agree with you. Totally. That's what the legacy should be.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

The other thing that I love is that we have a hundred plus years to look back at the legacy and the principal's not actually involved in the project. So it's not about the ego of the man, right? I mean, we get to really be able to look at this and look at the American century and say, what is this man's actual impact? And if you look at some of the more modern presidential libraries, unfortunately, the principle often is thinking about his legacy from his perspective, and it can sometimes miss the mark when you think about the impact for the country. What does it really mean? What did this person's impact really matter? So now you got to tell us about your next book.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN:

Okay. So I'll tell you how it came about was my publishers, knowing my age came to me and knowing that it takes me very long time to write these books. I mean, it took me seven years to write The Bully Pulpit. It took me 10 years to write about Lincoln and the Civil War. So they know that if I'm going to write another book and maybe not a 10 year project. So they say, why don't you choose one of the four guys that you've lived with and find an aspect that you didn't work with in that person? So I was playing around with Lincoln for a while, and then finally I just decided that I would do, there's something about the Gilded Age right now. There's something about a showdown in the Gilded Age and that I would deal with Roosevelt's relationship with the business Titans of the time, not just antitrust.

It's so interesting. He's so complex about it. He's not upset about corporations just because they're big — only if they're not responsible, only if they're not treating the employees well, only if they're not sharing the stock, if they're crushing opponents, and if they're not treating their employees well, and they're using the monopoly status to foist price increases on people and he's going to go after them. But, so I'm dealing with JP Morgan and Rockefeller and Harriman and Armor and how he deals with 'em all, and he courts them at times. He needs Morgan over and over again in the coal strike. He needs him in the panic of 1907. They have an interesting relationship. The interesting — Harriman was his friend and then was his enemy. And Rockefeller, he sued, and I'm loving it. I'm learning about things that I didn't know about before corners on the stock market, and oh my God, I have to learn a lot of economics.

But that's what's exciting when you're older, if you can feel like you're still learning. And mostly I'm just living with Teddy Roosevelt again, so I wake up. It's fun. One of the things that Franklin Roosevelt said about Churchill after they first met, which I love this comment, he said — he wrote to him and he said, "it's fun to be in the same decade with you." I mean, what a sense of self. It's fun to be in — well, I feel it's fun to be living with Teddy Roosevelt again. Each time I move from one president to another, I'd have to move my books from that president out of my study and bring the next guys in. And I felt like a little disloyal that I was leaving an old boyfriend behind. So I remember it was somebody, when I wrote The Bully Pulpit was somebody said to me, who would you rather marry Teddy or Taft? And at first I said, "well, Taft really was good about pursuing the career of his wife, Nelly, who was very ambitious, and she did a lot of things, and that might be good, but oh, there's no way I'd have to marry Teddy."

So anyway, I feel like I'm back with my old boyfriend right now, and I wake up every morning at 5:30 and between 5:30 and 12, that's all I do is to think about him, write about him. I'm on chapter four. They've actually got me on a timeline. Every two months I have to produce a chapter. So I'm so far, I'm actually ahead of it, but they don't know that because I'm afraid I might fall back. So if I'd only had a deadline for my life before, I might've written 20 books instead of the number I've written, but it's real. And then all the rest of my life Beth and I are doing documentaries or doing movies and stuff, and that's the afternoon. But the morning, it's so exciting to wake up and think, I'm going to be thinking about him tomorrow and today and even tomorrow morning, hopefully at 5:30, I'll be living with him in 1902. That's where I'm up to right now.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

Doris Kearns Goodwin, thank you so much.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN:

Thank you.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

It was really great. Thank you.

Doris, once again, thank you very much for the conversation and for your enthusiasm and support for the library. Your understanding of TR's legacy and the clarity you bring to its meaning for our time is invaluable. We're fortunate to have your voice championing this work. Thank you. Listeners, what did you think? If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review or reach out to the TRPL. We'd love to hear from you. Good Citizen is produced by the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in collaboration with the Future of StoryTelling and Charts & Leisure. You can learn more about TR's upcoming presidential library at trlibrary.com.