No ordinary historian: an interview with Doris Kearns Goodwin - Interview

Information Outlook, May, 2002 by Leslie Shaver

IT HAS BEEN ALMOST 40 YEARS SINCE DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN WAS A GRADUATE student spending the summer in the House of Representatives. During that summer of 1965, Goodwin had the opportunity to see Lyndon Johnson's administration at its highest point as a flurry of historical social Legislation went from the president's desk through Congress. Little did Goodwin know at the time that she would also be there during Johnson's Lowest point--when the public outcry about his decision to escalate the conflict in Vietnam grew so Loud that he was forced to drop out of the 1968 presidential race. But Goodwin, an opponent of Johnson's Vietnam policy, was with him during his final days at the White House and his retirement to his ranch in Texas.

This experience gave Goodwin an insight few would have into Johnson--a colorful figure, who rose from meager beginnings in the desert of West Texas to the height of world power. Goodwin turned this experience into a New York Times bestseller called Lyndon Johnson and The American Dream. After this smashing success, she moved onto other major 21st century American figures--the Fitzgerald and Kennedy families and Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. She won a Pulitzer for No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The American Home During World War II and spent five months on the New York Times bestseller list for The Fitzgeralds and The Kennedys. She also has appeared regularly as a commentator on NBC, written about her beloved Brooklyn Dodgers in Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir (another bestseller) and became the first female journalist to enter the Boston Red Sox locker room.

Yet, even one of America's most-respected historians has not been able to avoid controversy. It recently came to light that Goodwin did not properly attribute quotes in The Fitzgeralds and The Kennedys. These revelations and the resulting controversy has forced her publisher, Simon and Schuster, to destroy unsold copies of the book and the University of Delaware to cancel a speaking engagement.

Throughout the ordeal, Goodwin, the closing speaker at SLA's 2002 Annual Conference, has admitted she made mistakes and fought to maintain her integrity. In this month's Information Outlook, Goodwin speaks with Editor Leslie Shaver about this recent controversy, her experiences with Johnson and how she became interested in history.

Leslie Shaver: What sparked your initial interest in government?

Doris Kearns Goodwin: History was my first love. I think back to childhood when I kept scores of baseball games and recorded the history of those games. I also listened with great interest to my mother's stories of the days when she was young. The past always had a hold on me.

But what happened to me is what often happens with many young people--there was a fabulous teacher in the government department at Colby College. We [the students] gravitated toward him. He was magical. I went on to get my Ph.D. in government, but it was still political history that absorbed me.

LS: How did you end up working for LBJ?

DKG: I had an active desire to have some experience in government during school so I worked in the House of Representatives for one summer during graduate school. That was the fabulous summer of 1965 when most of the Great Society legislation was passed. While I was still in college I interned in the State Department.

But my biggest experience in government was when I became a White House Fellow in the spring of 1967. That was the program started under Lyndon Johnson by John Garner, who just recently died. It was a fabulous program. Colin Powell was a White House Fellow. So was Tom Johnson from CNN. You go down for a year and you are assigned to a Cabinet member or White House staff.

It was funny how I began working for LBJ. There was a dance at the White House on the night we were selected and I danced with President Johnson several times. That was not so unusual because there were only three women there. During the course of dancing, he told me he wanted me to work directly for him in the White House. But it was not that simple. In the months before my selection, as a graduate student at Harvard, I had been active in the anti-war movement. I had written an article against him, which came out days after this dance at the White House. I was certain he would kick me out of the program, but surprisingly, he said, 'Oh, bring her down here for a year and, if I can't win her over, no one can.'

LS: There are all these great stories about Johnson being this guy who was, for lack of a better description, rough around the edges. How true were these?

DKG: He was the most colorful political figure I have ever encountered. He was a great storyteller even if half of his stories were not true.

When I worked for him, I was young--24 or 25--and in some ways he just wanted someone to listen to him. And I would listen avidly to these great stories. It was such a luxury to spend so many hours with him. I was not doing critical stuff during those days.

Johnson brought me to the White House right after he withdrew from the presidential race in 1968. I spent the last few months of my fellowship in the White House. He asked me to stay on for six more months until he left the presidency and to accompany him to his ranch to help with his memoirs. I went down to the ranch part time while I was teaching at Harvard. It meant walking with him up and down a dirt road that went to his ranch and talking with him early in the morning when he was in his pool.