Doris Kearns Goodwin is afraid her afterlife will feature a panel of dead American presidents who all point out facts she got wrong in her extensive career of digging into presidential history.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author spoke at Friday’s Westmont College President’s Breakfast about the presidential qualities of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, and the time her love of the Brooklyn Dodgers made her go to confession.
Her love of history started at age 6, when she would write down the play-by-play of Dodgers games for her father and keep his rapt attention while she gave him the details. She learned you can’t blurt out the ending — to a game or a historical story — but have to take the reader along the way. Her love of baseball is chronicled in her own memoir, Wait Till Next Year.
In her first confession as a child, she admitted she had wished harm on others — she prayed that certain New York Yankees players would break their arms or otherwise injure themselves.
The priest insisted that wasn’t necessary, that the Dodgers would win “fair and square,” and told her to say a prayer “for our Brooklyn Dodgers,” Goodwin said. “How lucky my first confession was to a baseball-loving priest.”
Throughout Friday’s event, Goodwin spoke quickly and excitedly. Her enthusiasm is infectious and every listener — and reader — knows that for every story she tells, there are hundreds more where that came from.
For the last five decades, “I spent my days and nights with dead presidents,” Goodwin said. Her work helping Lyndon B. Johnson with his memoirs inspired her to become the presidential historian she is today, chronicling the triumphs and trials of American presidents.
Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln was based on Goodwin’s Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln and he has reportedly acquired the film rights to her newest book as well, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism.
Goodwin talked about leadership lessons from two American presidents she knows well: Lincoln and Roosevelt.
Both men were able to motivate themselves past obstacles and defeats, with Lincoln overcoming his lack of formal schooling and Roosevelt forcing himself past his childhood asthma onto a physically strenuous life, Goodwin said.
Lincoln and Roosevelt’s leadership styles showed both men had the confidence to surround themselves with critics and inspire good performances out of their teams, Goodwin said.
As Johnson said, “it’s better to have your enemies inside your tent pissing out than outside pissing in,” Goodwin said.
Roosevelt’s work ethic was legendary and “procrastination became a mortal sin” among his staff, she said.
When Spielberg was making Lincoln, Goodwin said she insisted that Lincoln had to be funny, since he was known as humorous and a natural storyteller. A comeback to someone calling him two-faced was, “If I had two faces, do you think I’d be wearing this one?”
Throughout both of their presidencies, Lincoln and Roosevelt communicated effectively with constituents, whether it be Lincoln’s morning meetings with members of the public or Roosevelt’s whistle stop train tours around the country, Goodwin said.
The age of the written word was well-suited for Lincoln, whose speeches would be published in full in newspapers and on pamphlets, and the rise of the national press was ideal for Roosevelt’s “punchy language” and advocacy for the progressive movement, Goodwin said.
Friday’s event was the 10th annual Westmont College President’s Breakfast, and past speakers include microfinance banker Muhammed Yunus, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
— Noozhawk news editor Giana Magnoli can be reached at gmagnoli@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
