Right hand woman

The life and legacy of four US presidents are explored in this fascinating insight.

As a young aide in Lyndon Johnson’s White House, Doris Kearns Goodwin observed presidential leadership up close. Johnson was so enamoured with the young historian that he begged her to help him write his memoirs at his ranch in Texas Hill Country after he left office in 1969.

It is an experience seared into her memory. At 5.30 each morning, the pyjama-wearing former president would wander into her room to talk. Already showered and dressed, Goodwin would sit in a chair by the window and Johnson would climb into bed and pull the sheets up to his neck to warm himself.

This “curious ritual” between the “ageing lion” and the graduate student underscored his craving for companionship. In that room, and on long walks and drives around the ranch — once with John Gorton alongside — he confided to her his dreams and ambitions, his sadness and longing, and wrestled with his legacy.

“I realise much more today what a great privilege it was,” Goodwin, 76, tells Review. “It was extraordinary to have him speak to me for so many hours. It was what prompted me to become a presidential historian. He had a huge impact on my life.”

Goodwin is one of the leading historians of the US presidency. Her Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (1977) remains a classic insider account of Johnson in his twilight years, drawing on their conversations and filled with perceptive insights into his character and presidency.

Leadership by Doris Kearns Goodwin

She went on to write The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys (1987), the Pulitzer prize-winning No Ordinary Time (1994) about Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt during World War II, and Team of Rivals (2005) about Abraham Lincoln and his cabinet. The Bully Pulpit, dealing with the era of Theodore Roosevelt and William Taft, was published in 2013.

In Leadership in Turbulent Times, Goodwin examines how Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt and Johnson, practised the art of leadership. We understand how their ambition was formed, how they responded to adversity and demonstrated particular leadership: Lincoln on slavery, Teddy Roosevelt ending the coal strike, FDR’s New Deal and Johnson on civil rights. Goodwin hopes these examples prove “instructive and reassuring” to leaders in all fields.

Lincoln’s moral courage and conviction, she writes, outweighed his ambition. He had a strong work ethic, rhetorical eloquence and a shrewd political mind. His emotional intelligence — empathy, humility, generosity — were the foundations of his leadership style. But he did not recoil from base politics; indeed he embraced it to achieve his goals.

Teddy Roosevelt was brash, determined and possessed by a manic energy from a young age. “I rose like a rocket,” he reflected. Goodwin shows how he steadily but patiently resolved a protracted capital-labour dispute in a way that both sides could accept. “Speak softly and carry a big stick,” was his approach.

FDR was confident and assured but often concealed his actions. When polio crippled his body, his ambition intensified and his empathy increased. He rescued the US from the Depression and helped save the world from tyranny, but Goodwin concedes he would not have been elected president if voters knew he could not walk unaided.

LBJ did not suffer depression like Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt, or saw his dreams threatened like FDR, but he shared their goal of improving the lives of others. His chief tools were a mastery of legislative tactics and a skill for dealmaking, whether by flattery, intimidation or both.

Doris Kearns married Richard Goodwin in 1975, while she was teaching at Harvard University. He worked for John and Robert Kennedy, and Johnson, as an adviser and speechwriter. He authored, among others, Johnson’s “Great Society” speech in 1964 and the “We shall overcome” speech that paved the way for the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

He died last year. “One of the nicest things about being on a book tour these last few months is that everywhere I went, people mention him and what he did,” Goodwin says. “He’d written some of the greatest speeches of the 20th century.” She is completing a book her husband left unfinished, which deals with “his love affair with the ideals of America”.

Goodwin is among the most prominent US presidential historians. She regularly comments on contemporary issues, bringing historical context and perspective to bear on issues. “I’m glad if I can help people understand what lessons there might be from the past which can shine a light on actions today in our troubled world,” she says.

Asked which of her “four guys” — as she calls them — would most likely succeed in US politics today, Goodwin nominates Teddy Roosevelt. “He would have the best temperament for the current political scene because he was a fighter, he could command attention and he was a popular figure who wanted a square deal for the rich and the poor, the capitalist and the worker,” she says.

Goodwin despairs that politics today is not attracting the best and brightest, congress is chronically gridlocked and leadership that appeals to “the better angels of our nature” seems to be a thing of the past. She wants politicians, including Donald Trump, to look at how previous presidents were able to bring people together and change the country for the better.

The ability to learn from mistakes and understand other points of view and experiences is a key element of leadership, she says. This was a common attribute of the four presidents in her book. But at a time when there is a deficit of democratic leadership around the world, it might be up to citizens to take action.

“It is not always a question of finding the right leader but changing the political culture,” Goodwin says. “In history it is often a movement that creates the possibility for a new leader to emerge. It is easy to think that a leader can change things. Sometimes it is the citizens who have to take responsibility.”

Leadership in Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin is published in Australia by Penguin Random House.

Doris Kearns Goodwin as immortalised in The Simpsons. Picture: Getty Images