Barack Obama and Doris Kearns Goodwin
The ultimate exit interview
Doris Kearns Goodwin
OVAL TEAM The 44th president and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin share a West Wing tte--tte.
His presidency is winding down. A contentious electionfought largely over his record and legacyis about to be decided. With that in mind, Barack Obama recently invited the presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin to the White House for a long, personal, open-ended conversation. The meeting, arranged by Vanity Fair, took place in the presidents private dining room, just off the Oval Office.
Doris Kearns Goodwin is no stranger to these precincts. She has been in and out of the West Wing ever since 1967, when, as a 24-year-old White House Fellow, she worked closely with Lyndon Johnson during the last year of his presidency (and then afterward as he wrote his memoirs). She has earned a raft of literary prizes, including a Pulitzer, for books about J.F.K., L.B.J., Franklin Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and, most notably, Abraham Lincolnthe subject of her landmark history, Team of Rivals, whose title gave Americas political language a new and permanent catchphrase. (Steven Spielberg would use Goodwins book as the basis for his film Lincoln, and when Daniel Day-Lewis won the 2012 best-actor Oscar for his portrayal of the president, he entered the Vanity Fair after-party with the author in tow.)
Goodwin likes to tell the story of the day in the spring of 2007, when a young Illinois senator phoned her, out of the blue, requesting that they meet because hed just finished reading Team of Rivals. That call would begin a friendship. Since taking office, Obama has occasionally invited Goodwin, along with a small cohort of presidential historians, to come to the White House to discuss past presidents, their legaciesand his. And over the years she has had the presidents ear and provided historical context and, on occasion, counsel.
In their conversation, the president and Goodwin exhibit an easy camaraderie, sometimes completing each others sentences. They touch on everything from comedy Web sites to bodysurfing in Hawaii. But the central focus is on history, and on enduring questions. What is presidential temperament? How does a leader maintain perspective? When does the job of president feel the heaviest? What is good and bad about ambition?
Obama and Goodwin spent more than an hour over coffee, water, and scones (I wont be eating those, said the president), followed by a brief chat in the Oval Office. Obama, in shirtsleeves, sat in a straight-backed chair, his long frame relaxed, legs crossed, as he responded or parriedalways thoughtfully, sometimes intensely. V.F.s Annie Leibovitz photographed at the start of the session and then re-entered, periodically, but mainly let them be.
The walls of the private dining room and the hallway nearby are lined with telling mementos: images of Martin Luther King Jr.; a photo of the president with Nelson Mandela; and a Life-magazine cover showing the 1965 march on Selma, signed by civil-rights leader John Lewis (who, inside the House chamber the next morning, would lead a sit-in against gun violence). Tables in the room hold framed family photos, a bust of J.F.K., and a pair of Muhammad Alis boxing gloves.
Looming over everything is The Peacemakers, an oil painting of Lincoln and his war council. And in its way the picture, by George P. A. Healy, with its none-too-subtle rainbow shining above Lincolns shoulder, seemed to visually reinforce the discussion at hand. Obama, for his part, noted at one point that even in the nations darkest moments he gains strengthand perspectiveby tapping into an abiding sense of optimism. It is a heartening notion in an era of blaring headlines, instant analysis, and perishable sound bites.
The conversation between Obama and Goodwin, above all else, is a conversation between two writers, each steeped in history.
GOODWIN: Preparing for this conversation today, I realized that it was nine years ago that you first called me on my cell phone: Hello, this is Barack Obama. Ive just read Team of Rivals and we have to talk about Lincoln. Soon afterward, I came to see you in your Senate office. So what was it about him? What made you give your announcement speech in the shadow of the Old State Capitol? What spoke to you about Lincoln to make you say, I love this guy?
OBAMA: Well, look, Im from Illinois, and I spent eight years down in Springfield. So the location and the announcement, to some degree, made sense optically. My particular passion for Lincoln, though, dates back from my earliest memories of politics. And weve talked about this beforethat theres no one who I believe has ever captured the soul of America more profoundly than Abraham Lincoln has.
Not just his biography, of somebody who genuinely rose from nothing, self-taught, striking out along the borders of our Great Frontier. Somebody who worked with his hands and then worked with his mind, and somehow became one of the greatest writers in the English language. And I think, most importantly, somebody who was able to see humanity clearly, see the fundamental contradictions of the American experiment clearly, and yet still remain hopeful and still remain full of humor, and still have a basic sympathy for the human condition, even in the midst of a terrible war and having to make terrible decisions. And having a forgiving spirit.
I mean, I could go on and on for hours about Lincoln. For me, Lincoln is like just a handful of peoplea Gandhi, or a Picasso, or a Martin Luther King Jr.who is an original and captures something essential.
GOODWIN: When Lincoln was 23 years old, and running for office the first time, he said, Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. And then, a decade later, when he was in the midst of a depression so severe that his friends took all the knives, razors, and other dangerous things from his room, he said he was more than willing to die but that he had done nothing to make any human being remember that he had lived. Isnt that incredible? So how would you describe your peculiar ambition that every man has? And when did it develop?
OBAMA: Its always dangerous to amend the words of Abraham Lincoln, but let me see if this is a friendly amendment. I actually think, when youre young, ambitions are somewhat commonyou want to prove yourself. It may grow out of different life experiences. You may want to prove that you are worthy of the admiration of the demanding father. You may want to prove that you are worthy of the love of an absent father. You may want to prove that youre worthy of other kids or neighbors who were wealthier than you and teased you. You may want to prove that youre worthy of high expectations. But I do think that there is a youthful ambition that very much has to do with making your mark in the world. And I think that cuts across the experiences of a lot of people who end up achieving something significant in their field. I think, as you get older, thats when your ambitions become peculiar
GOODWIN: Oh, well said, sir. We can amend Lincoln.
OBAMA: because I think that at a certain stage those early ambitions burn away, partly because you achieve something, you get something done, you get some notoriety. And then the particularities of who you are and what your deepest commitments are begin expressing themselves. Youre not just chasing the idea of me being important, but you, rather, are chasing a particular passion.
So, in my case, you could analyze me and say that my father leaving and being absent was a motivator for early ambition, trying to prove myself to this apparition who had vanished. You could argue that me being a mixed kid in a place where there werent a lot of black kids around might have spurred on my ambitions. You could go through a whole litany of things that sparked me wanting to do something important.
But as I got older, then my particular ambitions started cohering around creating a world in which people of different races or backgrounds or faiths can recognize each others humanity, or creating a world in which every kid, regardless of their background, can strive and achieve and fulfill their potential.
And those particular ambitions end up being rooted not just in me wanting to prove myself, but they end up being rooted in a particular worldview, a recognition that the world only makes sense to me given my life and my background if, in fact, were not just an assortment of tribes that can never understand each other, but that were, rather, one common humanity that can meet and learn and love each other.
RELATED VIDEO: President Obamas Pitch to Make America Great Again
GOODWIN: And at some point politics becomes the channel for that, right?
OBAMA: Right.
GOODWIN: For example, young F.D.R. seemed a pretty ordinary guy. At 28 hes a clerk in a law firm. He hasnt done anything particularly great in college or law school. He gets his first chance to run for the state legislature, and somehow, when hes out there on the campaign trail, something clicks in. William James said, At such moments, there is a voice inside which speaks and says, This is the real me. And F.D.R. knew then thats what he wanted to be.
OBAMA: I think F.D.R. is a great example of what I mean. If you look at his early life, it is ambition for ambitions sake
GOODWIN: Absolutely.
OBAMA: Its like hes just checking off boxes. Theres no sense of what he wants to do with power; he wants power. Theres no clarity about where he wants to take his notoriety; he just wants to be famous. And theres a hunger there, right?
GOODWIN: And thats partly because of Teddy Roosevelt
OBAMA: Absolutely.
GOODWIN: Because Teddyhis distant cousin and Eleanor Roosevelts uncledid this, so Im going to be this at 25, Im going to be this at 30; Im going to be president. He says this at 28, but he doesnt have that inner
OBAMA: And some of it is his mom, right? Whos just been telling him from day one
GOODWIN: Youre the best. Youre the center of the world.
OBAMA: Youre the center of the world and all that. So there are all these things going on. And then he gets polio. And then suddenly theres this intersection between a personal crisis and what is beginning to happen in the country. And that thing in him that was great but untapped suddenly is released in a way that reflects compassion
GOODWIN: And empathy.
OBAMA: and empathy. And the innate optimism that early on might have been cockiness now is leavened with tragedy in a way that makes that optimism that much more profound, right?
GOODWIN: Theres no question. Adversity in almost all the presidents Ive studied changes them. For Teddy Roosevelt, in 1884, losing his wife and his mother on the same day, in the same house. He goes to the Badlands, and hes suddenly out among people. Both he and F.D.R. had to move beyond their privileged class. Polio and his time at Warm Springs, Georgia [rehab facility], allowed F.D.R. to do that. And then they created a different sense of themselves, connected to other peoplepartly what youre talking aboutwanting to make other peoples lives better. Fate had dealt them an unkind hand, like it does to many, and they suddenly felt more deeply toward a wider range of people.
OBAMA: Exactly. And so I think theres a process you go through. I found during the course of my political career on the national scenewhich is relatively compressed compared to some of these other presidentstheres a point where the vanity burns away and youve had your fill of your name in the papers, or big adoring crowds, or the exercise of power. And for me that happened fairly quickly. And then you are really focused on: What am I going to get done with this strange privilege thats been granted to me? How do I make myself worthy of it?
And if you dont go through that, then you start getting into trouble, because then youre just [gesturing, as if climbing a ladder] clinging to prerogatives and the power and the attention. Theres an expression that my daughters use: You get thirsty.
GOODWIN: And the thirst is unquenchable.
OBAMA: And the thirst is unquenchable. And thats what you see, I think, sometimes with somebody like a Nixona brilliant person who, early on, had ambitions that probably were not that different from an F.D.R., certainly not that different from an L.B.J. But that thirst overwhelms everything, and you start making decisions based solely on that.
GOODWIN: So that brings us to the question of temperament, which is probably the greatest separator in presidential leadership. Theres that quote when [retired Supreme Court justice] Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who met with F.D.R. after his inauguration, famously said Roosevelt had a second-class intellect but a first-class temperament. How would you describe your temperament and why its fit for this office if, in fact, you think it is?
OBAMA: Well, whether its fit for this office or not is up to historians like you to determine. I think its fair to say that my temperament is [pause, seemingly in search of the right word] steadyand on the buoyant side.
GOODWIN: Do you think of yourself as an extrovert?
OBAMA: No. On the spectrum of successful politicians, Im not introverted the way some have been, but Im not an F.D.R. or a Bill Clinton, who are just constantly
GOODWIN: Needing the people all the time.
OBAMA: in a crowd and just relishing it. I like my quiet time. There is a writers sensibility in me sometimes, where I step back. But I do think that I am generally optimistic. I see tragedy and comedy and pain and irony and all that stuff. But in the end I think life is fascinating, and I think people are more good than bad, and I think that the possibilities of progress are real.
Huffingtonpos
