Doris Kearns Goodwin Pre-talk

David Forsythe Author

09/15/2020 Added

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Pre-talk video by David Forsythe for Doris Kearns Goodwin's E.N. Thompson Forum talk "Leadership in Turbulent Times"

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[00:00:00.280]I'm David Forsythe,
[00:00:01.530]Professor Emeritus in political science
[00:00:03.890]at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
[00:00:06.400]I have been asked to make some comments
[00:00:08.090]about the scholarship of Doris Kearns Goodwin.
[00:00:11.400]And I'm happy to do that in very brief version.
[00:00:15.110]She's well known for biographies
[00:00:17.050]of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt,
[00:00:20.770]Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson.
[00:00:25.440]She's also done a recent book trying
[00:00:28.350]to draw lessons about presidential leadership across
[00:00:32.200]these cases and some others.
[00:00:35.930]Her work has been well received,
[00:00:38.040]and I think rightly so.
[00:00:40.720]One thing that struck me
[00:00:42.120]was the way she treated personal ambition,
[00:00:46.040]her general argument is that all
[00:00:48.260]of these people start with narrow,
[00:00:50.800]self centered personal ambition,
[00:00:52.700]but at some point,
[00:00:53.610]they become genuinely interested in broader issues
[00:00:57.170]of the general welfare and the common good.
[00:00:59.810]And that the really great presidents
[00:01:03.630]always develop a broader notion
[00:01:06.950]and link their ambition to other issues
[00:01:11.100]of the common welfare and general good.
[00:01:14.260]So I was very struck by how she treated ambition.
[00:01:17.770]She also talked
[00:01:18.630]about great presidents overcoming personal adversity.
[00:01:22.600]Lincoln had depression, FDR had polio,
[00:01:29.010]Teddy Roosevelt losing members
[00:01:30.860]of his immediate family,
[00:01:33.330]Lyndon Johnson having a heart attack at age 40.
[00:01:37.010]And she believes that overcoming personal adversity helped
[00:01:40.910]these presidents achieve a certain amount of greatness.
[00:01:45.390]She also pointed out that even though she considered
[00:01:48.860]these four presidents to have great achievements,
[00:01:52.220]at least in certain domains,
[00:01:55.030]that they had negatives as well, that Lincoln was not
[00:02:00.290]as interested in racial discrimination in the north
[00:02:04.300]as he was in slavery in the south.
[00:02:07.040]That FDR wasn't as open
[00:02:10.520]as he should have been to doing something
[00:02:12.760]for European Jews fleeing Nazi persecution
[00:02:17.150]as he should have been.
[00:02:18.950]And so she acknowledges
[00:02:22.950]that while these presidents have certain areas
[00:02:25.740]of great accomplishments and greatness,
[00:02:29.150]that they also show negatives as well.
[00:02:32.330]I think it's a very balanced treatment
[00:02:35.730]and a very good background
[00:02:37.140]to some of the discussions we're having these days about
[00:02:41.440]our national leaders and others in other countries
[00:02:45.150]are having the same debates and discussions
[00:02:47.510]about their leadership.
[00:02:49.690]At the end of the day,
[00:02:50.670]she believes that there is no one model
[00:02:53.710]of presidential greatness,
[00:02:55.130]there's no one path to presidential greatness,
[00:02:58.700]that one has to combine the knowledge
[00:03:02.330]of the person with the context
[00:03:06.110]and this is not unusual.
[00:03:08.430]She believes that the record of these four presidents
[00:03:11.320]is a blend of their own personal qualities,
[00:03:15.290]their achievements, their defects,
[00:03:17.620]and the context that they face as President.
[00:03:21.790]I think overall her material
[00:03:24.430]is a very wonderful historical background
[00:03:28.640]for our contemporary discussions
[00:03:31.890]about presidential leadership
[00:03:34.510]in this presidential election year.
[00:03:37.614]Thanks very much.

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