ON RECORD

Doris Kearns Goodwin, historian, author

“Leadership is more important now than ever before.”

oris Kearns Goodwin is a How do you define leadership? presidential historian and Clearly it has to do with a person’s -winning author ability to influence other people to move in Dof six books. Five of them are a common direction that hopefully is for about presidents: Lincoln, Kennedy, the common good, an ability to mobilize Johnson, Franklin Roosevelt. Her latest the energy and spirit of other people, and is “The Bully Pulpit,” about William Taft have them look to you for direction and and Teddy Roosevelt. guidance. I’m trying to write something called “the making of leaders,” so that it Where did you get the idea for your would be applicable to young people in new book? lots of other fields. I realized that underneath all these fat books that I’ve written over time was really Is there a correlation between a study of leadership, and that’s what I was baseball and leadership? most interested in. When I was in graduate Obviously, what happens to make a school, you used to ask: Are leaders born team win is often a team spirit. Somehow, or are they made? How do they get through there’s a leader, whether it’s a player adversity? Is it a matter of the man versus the or the manager, and sometimes it’s times or the times versus the man? So I figured not the teams with the greatest talent I’d just take four of my guys, as I like to call individually, but somehow they work them, starting with Lincoln, and then Teddy together. That’s true in leadership in any Roosevelt, Franklin and LBJ domestically, level of life. and figure out: How did they become leaders? And there’s going through adversity. How many of their leadership traits were As we know from the , inborn? How did they develop into leaders? there’s something about adversity that How did they get through adversity? And welds the people in the town together then: How did they meet the moment that they so that when you finally win it’s just were called upon to lead? glorious. I remember one of the times we It’s really fun, and it turns out I had to lost one of the playoffs to the Yankees, This is a very polarized country learn a lot more than I thought I knew. again, of course, before 2004, and as right now. Do you think your we were all filing out of the park, some research will uncover ways to Did you come up with the idea old guy stood up and he said, “Year convince leaders that compromise for this book before the last after year after year after year!” And is a good thing? presidential election? everybody just laughed in this common Our whole system, created by I did. Leadership is more important now misery. So it was pretty thrilling to watch the Founding Fathers, was built on than ever before, and I’m hoping that it can the Cubs win last year. compromise. I think we have to have reach not just people who like history, but nonpartisan district commissioners create people who want to be leaders in any field, Does it take a crisis for leadership districts that are reasonable—that don’t just because there are lessons to be learned from to emerge? allow one kind of person or one political the people who have been our great leaders. A crisis, whether it’s war or depression, party to dominate. One of the things we’re creates an opportunity for a historic missing today is that many leaders in the leader, but you have to have the right ’50s and ’60s, and probably even into Gene Rose, founder and chief sinergist with the Sinergie Project, interviewed Doris Kearns Goodwin before she temperament and the right leadership the ’70s, had been in war together, had a spoke at the Legislative Summit in Boston. skills to make use of that opportunity. common mission, whether it was World

OCTOBER/NOVEMER 2017 22 STATE LEGISLATURES ON RECORD

War II or the Korean War. They knew what What lessons from history can our when you haven’t seen something for a it was like to forge compromise and work elected officials use to navigate while, then you lose the desire for it and as a team, and not allow the fact that you’re the current political landscape in you think it’s impossible. in one or the other party, or you’re black Washington, D.C.? or you’re white, to make a difference. I Remember there were great times when Who would you like to sit down sometimes think we need a national service Democrats and Republicans worked and have a conversation with? program. If we had such a thing, maybe together and could produce legislation It would probably be Lincoln. And I young people would learn to get away that they knew their children would be know that if I was supposed to interview from the polarization that they’re all being proud they had been involved with. When him now, I should ask him a question brought up in now. I think about the Civil Rights law, which that everybody wants to know: What would you have done differently about Reconstruction had you lived? But instead, I’d ask him to tell me a story because then I know he’d come alive and his whole face would crinkle up and he would laugh louder than even the storied people would imagine, and I’d see him alive. If there’s somebody else, it would be Winston Churchill. I would love to have studied him. I would have loved to have met him. What a character—living till 90, drinking a lot, smoking, being a public figure, and having that extraordinary verve. So I’ll take Lincoln and Churchill; then I’ll bring FDR along too.

What is your message to state legislators? They have to provide examples for America right now of parties getting together and passing legislation and dealing with the administration and the enactment of the laws that are coming down, and making people in their own Author Doris Kearns Goodwin, left, talks with Gene Rose, states feel that government is working. former NCSL co-director of communications. It’s great when, like at the Legislative Summit, there are lots of Republicans and Democrats, and they’re out of their What advice do you have for state LBJ was able to get through in 1964, there polarized settings and they can talk to legislators who want to restore was no way he could do it with Democrats each other and share ideas: What made it faith in government? alone because the Southern Democrats work here? What did you do there? They I think it’s important for political leaders would filibuster it. So, he had to reach can see each other as human beings. to talk about why they want to be in politics, across the aisle to Republicans, and he I still love political life. I think we have to remind people that they’ve chosen this says to Everett Dirksen, “You come with to project that feeling more, because it’s as a profession because they believe that me on this bill and schoolchildren will been denigrated for so long now. I worry politicians can do good things, and they know only two names 200 years from now: that the best people may not want to enter believe in their state legislatures. There’s a and Everett Dirksen. public life as a result. And if we don’t have lot of experimentation going on in the states. And Dirksen brings 22 Republicans to that, then the democracy is in trouble. And I think it’s important to talk about join the 44 northern Democrats. That the pleasures and the joys of it, and remind sense of bipartisanship is remembered on Editor’s note: This interview is part of a series themselves why they became a public figure, both sides now as having done something of conversations with national leaders. It and letting young people know that, so that really, critically important. It happened has been edited for length and clarity. The they see something other than the kind of during Reagan’s time when Reagan and opinions expressed are not necessarily those vitriol that’s coming out of Washington. Tip O’Neill were friends. The trouble is of NCSL.

STATE LEGISLATURES 23 OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2017