And now from the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago and CNN Audio, the Axe Files with your host, David Axelrod.

Who better to chat with on July 4th than Doris Kearns Goodwin, a frequent guest here? Doris is one of the greatest American historians and a joyful master storyteller. Her books on Lincoln, the Roosevelts and Lyndon Johnson are classics. Now she's turned her lens inward with a new book, "An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s." It's part memoir of her own journey, but mostly it's a riveting account of that inspiring, heartbreaking decade through the eyes of her late husband, Richard Goodwin, who, as an advisor and speechwriter to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, played a big role in shaping events throughout that momentous decade. We talked about that and the state of our union, and here's our conversation. Doris Kearns Goodwin. It is always such a treat to see you and to be with you. So thank you for being here. There are a lot of reasons I want to talk to you, because this is a momentous time. But you've also just published a book called "An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s." And it reminded me of a visit I made to your house in Concord in, in 2016. And you took me in to see your husband Dick, who was surrounded by boxes. And, it turns out that those boxes, and there were 300 of them, were like a magic portal to back to the 1960s, in which he played such a significant role. And you've now written a book about. You guys took a journey through those boxes together, and now we're taking a journey through that very, very momentous period of time.

So true. I mean, little did I know when I first saw those boxes early in our married life as they moved from one house to another, from the attic to the cellar to a storage place when we didn't have room. I knew that there was stuff in them about the 60s, and I really wanted to get in them, but he'd never wanted to open them for all those years. But he cared about them enough that they went everywhere with us until finally he turned 80. And then he comes floating down the steps one day and says, okay, it's now or never. I've decided it's time to open the boxes, you know? And then, the way he talked, he would say, if I have any wisdom to dispense, I better start dispensing now. So you were right there in the middle of it when we started working on this, me and him in 2014. He, I promised him that every weekend we'd start going through them, but chronologically. So I so that the reason he didn't want to open them for so long was that the decade ended so sadly, as you know, with the death Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy and the riots in the streets and the campus violence. But finally, when he turned 80, he realized now is the time. But we promised ourselves we'd go through them chronologically, not knowing what was going to come later, so that the sorrows of the decade would not be visited upon us as we went through them. So it turned out to be the greatest adventure, really, that we had in those last years of our lives to go back to our lives in the 1960s.

Yeah. Because you, you yourself, you're, this book is part memoir, part history. And the memoir is Dick's, but also yours, of that period. You say the decade ended in such sadness, particularly so for him because he had a relationship with Bobby Kennedy. He was there when Johnson was and Kennedy were dealing with Martin Luther King on civil rights. He, he wrote maybe the greatest presidential speech on civil rights in 1965. Johnson pleading with Congress for the Voting Rights Act. So it's really. I think it's not just a great history, but it's a really eye opening book about the role that Dick played. And frankly, as a former aide to a president, it really lifted the curtain on what goes on behind those doors where big decisions are made and things happen. So talk to me about the collaboration on a book like this. How did you work this through?

Well, what happened is, it was interesting. I realized that in all of my life, in five decades, I've been writing about past presidents who are dead and trying to bring them back to life through reading letters and diaries and journals and newspaper clippings and memoirs and everything. So this was a miniature form of this, because Dick had kept so much, and it was really every part of the 60s seems to be the place where you'd want him to be. He's with the Kennedy in the White House. He's in the White House the night that the body is brought back on November 22nd. He is with LBJ in the central parts of LBJ's Great Society, and the We Shall Overcome speech, and then leaves and turns against the war. He's with McCarthy in New Hampshire, and then he is finally with Bobby Kennedy and is actually with him when he died. So as we went through the boxes, we really just were reliving it as best we could. It wasn't. It was, a great thing for me was that when I studied Lincoln or Franklin or Teddy Roosevelt, I would love to talk to them. And I did talk to them. I used to talk to them all the time, but now he was right there in the same room, and I could ask him questions. And he had a front row seat. I mean, I later had a relationship with Lyndon Johnson, but for those early years, it was he who had the front row seat. And I could ask him, how did you do this? Why did he do this? Why didn't he do this? And it was great because now finally, my guy, he's one of my guys. He answered me.

Yeah. The juxtaposition of historical sources and his testimony is is really, really powerful, and you did go back into what you do. You dug in places where you wanted more information. There was one that I found moving that may not have caught everybody's attention, but it did catch mine for a reason. And that was Kennedy was disgruntled that there were no people of color in the Coast Guard contingent that marched at his inauguration. And the first day in the W House, he turns to Dick and says, we gotta fix that. And, it led you to a guy named, I guess Merle Smith. Was that his name?

Absolutely right. Yeah. No. What was so interesting about that is right after the inaugural parade, Dick went into the White House to inspect his new digs. Where was his office going to be? In the West Wing. And what does he find in there? But John Kennedy doing exactly the same thing, looking at the Oval Office. And it was then that John Kennedy said to Dick, did you see the Coast Guard contingent? Dick said he couldn't remember one contingent from the other. It was so cold that day. Nobody was wearing a coat because John Kennedy is not wearing a top coat. So he just was so glad to be inside and he couldn't remember. And then that's when Kennedy said there wasn't a Black face among them. We have to do something about, and Dick said he was so excited. It was his first directive, you know, he hadn't even started. The next day would be the beginning of it. But he went upstairs and called Doug Dillon. He didn't even know where the trip, where the.

Secretary of Treasury, the Coast Guard worked for him.

Yeah, exactly. And they started the process that got the first Black cadet. And it was an extraordinary man named Merle Smith. And I was able to interview his widow and find out what it was like to be a trailblazer. The first. It's always hard when you're the first somewhere. And and it turned out he had a great career. He became, Bronze Star recipient in Vietnam, then became a lawyer. They sent him to law school, and he taught law school at the Coast Guard for the rest of his life and was a beloved teacher there.

The thing that struck me, the reason it stuck out, and it may be obvious, is, you know, having worked for Barack Obama, you know, we didn't talk much about the pressures that he felt. He wasn't given to be that introspective about that things, at least with those things with us. But when Sonia Sotomayor was appointed to the Supreme Court, he asked or was about to be asked me to talk to her and see how she would hold up, and I said, what worries you about this process? And she said, I worry about not measuring up. And what that would mean to a bunch of other young Latinas and Latinos. And I realized, oh my God, this is what my guy lives with every day. It's hard to be the first.

And, you know, I realized that even more when we came upon a picture in the boxes of his law review group, and he, Dick was the first in his class, and he was the president of the law review. There were 60 guys in the picture, and there were two women, and one turned out to be Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Yes. And she too had said that the hard thing was she felt that she was representing all women, that she couldn't fail. So there was another example. And then, of course, I thought back to Jackie Robinson. And, because he was a hero when I was a child. I'd like to believe because I understood what he was doing in civil rights, but when I was little, it was just that he was so great running around the bases, stealing bases and stealing home. But what a trailblazer. And what pressures? Enormous pressures he was under. So I think we sometimes forget that when its, somebody feels they're bearing the weight of whether it's their religion, perhaps, or their color or their sex. Whichever it is. It's really hard for them. And you're right. You had a greater sense of what it was like every day for President Obama. How interesting.

Jackie died very young, you know, in his 50s. And he aged very rapidly. And you wonder whether those burdens had something, something to do with that. So you mentioned that Dick was a, a law star. Was a clerk for Felix Frankfurter, Supreme Court justice. And then. But he turned to politics and policy, and he was one of two speechwriters who barnstormed the nation with JFK in 1960. And, boy, I sure identified with that experience, as well. But you mentioned that at the end of the campaign that he, that they passed through New York City. And this is how small the world is. One of the stops they made on October 27th, 1960 was in a place called Stuyvesant Town, where a little boy named me.

No kidding.

Was growing up, and I was in the, I was in the crowd when JFK came. And it literally was the thing that inspired me to become passionate about politics. I was just five years old, but I thought, wow, this seems really important, and I bet you Dick was somewhere in proximity of me.

It surely was. You two could have met. Oh, that's a great story. There's something mysterious, isn't there, about what it is that instigates some love of something in somebody, you know, and the leader. And it was also the crowds. I'm sure the reaction to him, you know, something exciting was going on.

What was it about JFK? What's very clear in this book is the reverence that Dick had for him. He was 14 years older, but he was a young man. Dick was only 28 or something. Talk about JFK as an inspirational figure at the beginning of that decade.

Yeah, I think, but Dick saw. I mean, he's watching him grow as a candidate. I mean, the impressive thing about JFK to him early on when they first started in the campaign, even before the actual, you know, during the primaries, for example, was that he wasn't a great speaker at first. He spoke too fast. They they said that he looked like a student wanting to give a report and then get back to his seat as quickly as possible. But the impressive thing was, he then asked the reporters, how did I do? Where did I lose them? Where did it work? And that kind of self growing thing. He watched him grow through that campaign, and finally he saw that there was something that he had been. Dick was with him at the University of Michigan when he spoke to those 10,000 students who'd been waiting for him all night. He wasn't even supposed to speak there. He was just going to sleep at the Michigan Union. But when he got there at 2:00 am, the 10,000 students are waiting. So he figured I better say something. No speech had been prepared, and Dick and Sorensen had gone off, this chief speechwriter, Sorensen, to the cafeteria. 24 hours cafeteria, we got something to eat. You know, you never eat. You know what that's like on a campaign. And then Kennedy just turns around and he just asked a series of questions to the kids. You know, how many of you would be willing to go to Ghana and give your talents and skills to a country that's developing? How many of you would be willing to join the Foreign Service? I think that a college degree should be worth something more than just an economic advantage over others. It should mean getting a sense of purpose. Something happened to those kids. Not only did they applaud in great numbers and wildly, but a several of them, two women, a couple, actually, a married couple that I interviewed later, they're now in their 80s, the Gaskins, they started a petition and within two days a thousand kids had signed up. Yes, we'll be pledging two years of our life to go to these places and help out. And as soon as they found out about that, Ted and Dick, they wrote a new speech for Kennedy. And that's the birth of the Peace Corps. So what happened in those moments where it's a mystery of leadership. What is it? That was it his vitality? Was it that he was asking them about something? And I think it was also it has to be the time has to be right. When I talk to the Gaskins, they said already there was on campus a desire to do something to make a difference, because the civil rights movement had made them, they been reading all about it. They knew about it. They had gone to a Woolworth's or something, you know, to demonstrate. So they were already activated. But this was what stimulated them to do something even more. And then the Peace Corps becomes the signature of the Kennedy administration in many ways.

And another signature of Kennedy's early months in the administration and of his stump speech was this notion that democracy is not a gift, that we all have to participate in that project. I can tell you, Doris, I remember, I remember only because I went back and looked on Google at what he said when he came to Stuyvesant Town, but he said, I'm not running to promise you that everything will be good if I'm elected. Being an American citizen in the 1960s is a hazardous occupation filled with peril, but also hope. And we'll decide on November 8th or whatever the day was, which path we'll take. And I thought that was, you know, in retrospect, that is profound, because democracy is not a gift. We're facing those questions today.

'Right? I mean, it depends so much on citizen action. You know, for all of the leaders that we read about and I study about whether it's, you know, Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt or Franklin Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson or JFK, they were not able to do what they did without citizens being involved. I mean, Lincoln would say, don't call me a liberator. It was the anti-slavery movement and the Union soldiers that did it all. It was the progressive movement at the turn of the 20th century, that's under Teddy Roosevelt. The union movement was enormously helpful to what what FDR was trying to do. And then, of course, the civil rights movement and the women's movement and the gay rights movement. So I think there was some sense. I mean, it's interesting when you read those early speeches of JFK, he's always talking about the 60s, even before it's hardly begun. You know, bring on the 60s as if there was going to be a new mood in that time to not only get the country moving again, but to get citizens feeling they could make a difference and to be out there collectively doing that. And that's the real mark of the 60s, not just the sadness of how it ended, but it was one of those decades when people felt filled by that thought that I can be something larger than myself. I can contribute to the country. And that's a that's a wonderfully heady feeling.

Yeah. Can we recapture that?

I don't see why not. You know, I mean, different decades, you know, when when Roosevelt said, you know, some decades have, have a rendezvous with destiny. I it's a question of, lot's got to come together now to heal the country, to heal the divisions, and to make people believe that they can change things. They don't believe in government. Now, that's a big problem. There's a feeling of not trusting the words of people. There's a sense that to go into public service is to sacrifice one's privacy, is to have to raise money is to not necessarily get things done. You know, you don't see that sense of great achievement, even though lot's happened during the Biden administration. This, I don't think the citizens felt part of it in the same way they did in the 60s. It was sort of done within the inner circle of Washington and on a few votes that made it happen. So but there's no reason to think that generations can't come and become that that generation that has been buoyed. This generation is seeing so many problems right now that sometimes it may just seem too hard. You know, there's a futility. That's what, interestingly, in the speech that Dick helped Bobby Kennedy work on in Cape Town, he said, because danger, because there were kids that were fighting apartheid at the University of Cape Town, and they were feeling they were getting nowhere because the regime was becoming even more oppressive. And he said, the greatest danger is the danger of futility. And then he went on to say, and this is what we have to feel today, I think, because it's hard to think you can change something big, but you can change small things, you know, as Bobby Kennedy said, with with Dick's collaboration, you know, each time a man stands up for an ideal, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope. Then those ripples will come together to generate a current that will be strong enough to break down the mightiest walls of oppression. And that's what I think young people have to believe today. They can't change things overnight. Takes a long time. The civil rights movement took a long time to bring about what they did. So there has to be patience, but a belief that if we come together at home, maybe in our state legislatures, in our school boards, in our states, and then eventually in the government as a whole, that things can get better. And generations have shown that in the past.

In 2007, when we embarked on the Obama campaign, he's a few years younger than me. And I said, you don't remember the 1968 Bobby Kennedy campaign, but, I do, and it was really a summons to idealism. And it took root and it was galvanizing. And we have to try and emulate that. And that really was our model in some ways, and I think that we achieve that in that campaign. But, you know, these young people have had such. First of all, there's been a there's been a determined project to try and devalue government. That's gone on for now, you know, for decades or more. And that is, you know, been amplified by social media and all kinds of insidious forces. But we've gone through two wars, a financial collapse, a pandemic, the turmoil of the Trump years. These kids have not seen a lot of good examples. Whereas when JFK was on that platform in Stuyvesant Town, he was a hero of a war in which America saved the world from fascism. There were a lot of people there who remember the depression and what government did to lift people out of the depths. There are good examples of what could be done through collective action. So it's harder for young people today.

I think you're absolutely right. I mean, I think, you know, what government is. Government is us. And that's the thing we've lost sight of. It's as if it's some entity out there that's unconnected to us. But in a democracy, government is the collect, just like you said, the collective action. So people have to believe in themselves in order to believe in government. And I think part of it, the problem today is just the sociological problem of people not having all sorts of organizations that they used to belong to. That whole book that was written so many years ago, Bowling Alone. Yes, that's a brilliant title, but the idea of it being that because of the way social media works, because of the decline in voluntary organizations, you know, somebody was showing me a statistic the other day that fewer people are volunteering, even for the Army. They haven't met their there needs. Fewer people volunteering the way they used to in their local communities. And and I don't know why we've become a more individualistic society rather than that collective society. But you need to believe in ourselves and their, our capacity in order to believe in government, because it is us, government is us.

I will say a word for young people, because I work with so many of them at the, at the Institute of Politics, the University of Chicago. I am struck by the fact that, even though they have skepticism about government's ability to respond, they feel a sense of obligation, at least the young people that I see, to want to try and change the world. They just are skeptical as to whether government or even democracy provides the tools to do that. They think those tools are so corroded, and that's what we have to that's what we have to repel. We're going to take a short break and we'll be right back with more of The Axe Files. And now back to the show. You knew Lyndon Johnson well. You wrote a, you know, magnificent book about him. You worked for him and with him at the end of his life. Dick saw him through that period. When JFK died, he became president. It seemed as if the the specter of JFK, that shining knight, hung over Johnson throughout his, his, the rest of his life and through his presidency, that he was always going to be measured in some ways against the fallen president.

Surely that is true, but I think it also stimulated him. I mean, the thing that's so impressive about LBJ is the very first decision he made when he gave a speech to Congress four days after JFK died was my first priority is going to be the passage of the civil rights bill to end segregation in the South that had been introduced by JFK and was stuck in the Congress. It was not going anywhere. It seemed at the time when JFK died, it was taking a huge risk. And his advisers said, you can't do that. You'll never break the filibuster. You'll go before they can, your own election in the following November with being a failure, and you've only got a certain amount of currency to expand, and you better not expend it on this. And then he famously said, then what the hell is the presidency for? And then he was able to do, I think what JFK may not have been able to do, to corral that senator, senators. And he had every single congressman over in groups of 30. They would have dinner there. Their spouses would run around the White House while they'd have more imported brandy. Then he'd start calling them the next day. And he was able to get Everett Dirksen, the leader of the minority Republican Party, on his side by promising him everything under the sun.

Yes. We in Illinois, we we appreciate it.

You needed a lot in Illinois, right? You needed projects. It was very, very important. But then he also says to him, finally, you know, Everett, you come with me on this bill and you bring some Republicans. And 200 years from now, schoolchildren will know only two names, Abraham Lincoln and Everett Dirksen. He does bring these 22 Republicans to join the 44 northern Democrats. And then what happens is Johnson gets that civil rights bill passed.

The thing that made that so meaningful and maybe possible was LBJ came from the South. And so it was a little like, you know, Nixon going to China kind of thing. He he had standing that he wasn't a northeastern liberal, you know, and, the fact that he took this up and took it up with such passion and purpose was so meaningful.

And it also was part of the burden, because he knew that in taking this up, he was going to be cutting ties with his closest friends in the Senate, who would obviously, they would be leading the filibuster. And in fact, Bill Moyers tells a story of the night the Civil Rights Act passed, and they all went back to the ranch and the great celebration. But then he went in to see Johnson before Johnson went to sleep. And Johnson was already in a state of depression. And he asked, what's happening? He said, well, I know that we've just lost the South, the Democrats have, for a generation. So he knew the price he was paying. And I think what happens is that once you make that kind of a decision and you know, you've made a difference in the lives of so many people, then you want to keep going. And so the Great Society was still what he wanted to do. I mean, that's my one of my favorite stories that that Dick was able to tell in the book has to do with sort of the origins of the name The Great Society. Yeah. After Dick had gotten there. And first of all, how Dick got there, and we listened to the tape so we know how it happened, he's having a conversation, LBJ is with Bill Moyers, and he says, typical LBJ way of talking, I need somebody over here who can work on my speeches. I need somebody who can put sex into them, who get them into the, who can put Churchillian phrases into them. And and Moyers said, well, the only person I know is Dick Goodwin, but he's not one of us. Meaning, of course, he's a Kennedy.

A Kennedy guy.

He's going to be a problem. But he does go there. And then about a month later, Moyers says the president wants to see us. And Dick said, are we meeting him in the Oval Office? He said, no, no, he wants to talk to us about his plans for a Johnson program now that he's got the civil rights bill going through and the tax cut bill's already happened. We want a Johnson agenda. And so they he said, well, where are we going? You're going to the pool. So they go to the White House pool and Johnson's already in the pool, stark naked, swimming up and down like a whale. And you guys are standing there on the side in their suits and ties. And Johnson says, well, come on in, boys. What are you doing? So they then stripped down and three of them are naked in the pool. And after a while, finally they fall over, they're stroking up and down to the to the side, and Johnson starts orating about what it is he wants for his legislative agenda. He knew everything from the start. He knew he wanted Medicare. He knew he wanted federal aid, education, civil rights and voting rights and immigration reform. And then they decide they're going to make a speech at the University of Michigan, which was a little bit of chutzpah, because that's where the Great Society, I mean, that's where.

They did the Peace Corps. Yeah, a little competitiveness there.

And Dick is tasked with writing the speech and coming up with the name. So they argued inside the White House, what should we call this new Johnson program? Some wanted it to be called a better deal. Some wanted to be called the Glorious Society. Some wanted it to be called the Good Society. But finally Dick tried out, just as in a few smaller speeches, Great Society, and it caught on. So it becomes the Great Society. Then he goes to the University of Michigan to ask a series of questions of those students, but not about foreign policy. Would you be willing to let the affluence of this country be shared more with people who need it, who are experiencing hunger or experiencing racial discrimination? And then they too applauded. And then the Great Society, the great 89th Congress, did more than anything since since the New Deal to change that progressive outlook of the country. So Johnson was a great figure. That's what made it even sadder. I mean, at the end of time, when we're talking about Bobby Kennedy. He thought that Bobby would bring back the Great Society, which he thought had been really undone by the war in Vietnam, which it really hadn't. It was still there. But Dick was so emotionally saddened that the war's having eclipsed it. Then he thought Bobby would bring it back, and then Bobby dies. And then it seemed to him that not just the people that he loved had died, but the progressive impulse had died at that time.

There's there's so much in what you just said, but there's something very relevant. I mean, all of it's very relevant to today. But Johnson very wisely brooded that he had given away the South to the Republican Party for a long time, he felt .we're still living with the legacy of that, the backlash to the civil rights acts that turn the South red, as it were. This issue of race. I mean, we made we've made so much progress, and a lot of it was in the 60s, but since as well. But it haunts us to this day.

Without a question. You know, what's what's sad when you look back at the 60s comparison to today, is that the backlash was a minor chord in the 60s, and you saw it after the Civil Rights Act was passed. When you look at the letters that came into Johnson after the Voting Rights Act was passed in 65, even more, there'd be letters saying, you will rue the day that you are trying to change the country. You know, this, this will not last. And especially saw it after dick and Johnson had worked together on the Howard University speech, where affirmative action was declared and the letters that came in about that, you know, you wait and see. This is going to not sit well with the American people. But it was still a minor chord. And there was a feeling in a society that we were moving toward a better country, and that it was good for the whole country to end segregation in the South. It was good for the whole country to make sure that people should be able to vote as they did. And now it's become more of a major chord as we we face that possibility. I think a lot of people who are obsessed with civil rights feel that the country is moving in the direction where populations are going to make them white people, less, less numbers.

The replacement theory, replacement theory.

And so it's become much more vocal and much more outspoken. And we've we're slid back in a way that in the 60s it was just there, but it wasn't there. And then of course, we had in the middle of that, we had the election of the first Black president, and there was a great feeling. I'll never forget that night. Obviously, you'll never forget that night, you know, in Grand Park, you just felt so great about your country, not just for Barack Obama, but for all of us as well. And that's a great feeling that we have to instill somehow, get back. It's going to take a long time to get that back, because the divisions are so much deeper now even than they were in the 60s without a question.

'And there's no doubt, though we didn't talk about it then, we didn't want to talk about it. But the election of the first Black president gave the opponents of progress a great cudgel to pick at that scab of fear, fear of being displaced that Trump has so mastered. I mean, he he mines it like gold, to this day. So, you know, one of the. Well, let me ask you this about. I wanted to ask you. I was reading the book. I can't you can't help but think about the parallels. The relationship between Obama and Biden. Obama, much like Kennedy was, you know, not, he was only in the Senate for three years. You know, in Joe Biden's world, that barely qualifies as membership. And then he becomes president of the United States. And Biden, who had been in the Senate for 36 years, becomes his vice president. And, and then, ultimately he becomes president. And there is a sort of competition. I mean, people ask me about this all the time. There's no doubt that Biden wanted to bring to bear the this his assets as a master legislator and make some things happen that we couldn't get done. Frankly, I mean, it's an interesting parallel. Now, Johnson's legislative experience was clearly, he was the majority leader. And a master of the Senate is, as his biographer, so, so aptly named him. You, as you pointed, that was really meaningful. How did those things play out? And I want you to talk particularly about, this wasn't about necessarily about legislation, but this conversation that Dick reports between Johnson and George Wallace around the time of the, around the time of the Voting Rights Act coming up. And the problems after Selma. Seemed like a mass, the absolute example of the so-called Johnson treatment that so many members of the Senate and House were familiar with. Talk about that. I love that story.

I think one of the things that Johnson had, he had a psychological understanding of what another person, if he was in close contact with that person, he knew about that person, needed to be moved forward to come together with him on some mission or some project or some legislative act. He knew what mattered to each senator, which one cared about having a foreign policy experience, which one cared about being in the newspapers a lot, which one cared about credit being given? And he was able to turn that. And with Wallace, what happened is that after Selma had happened and there was a big.

The the the horrible beating of, of these young protests.

Alabama state troopers coming in against Joe Lewis and Jose John Lewis and Jose Williams. And we were all watching it on television. I mean, for me, I was a graduate student watching with my friends, and I couldn't believe this was America. It was it fired the conscience of the country. And Johnson knew that. So he decided that he wanted to give a speech, to talk about voting rights. But before that, the civil rights movement was arguing, and the people in the North were arguing, you got to send troops down in order to Alabama to protect the marchers, because they were going to make another march. And Johnson didn't want to do that because he was afraid it would look like reconstruction all over again if the troop, federal troops came into Alabama. So he was holding back from that, and he didn't know what to do. He was really in a depression. I can't figure out what to do. Then George Wallace answered his prayer by saying he wanted to see him. George Wallace, of course, was thinking about national leadership, and he knew that if another march happened and another violence happened, that would not help his national ambitions. So he just came up to see LBJ. And the discussion of the meeting is so incredible. I mean, he comes in, he's in there for a long period of time. And first, what what Johnson does is he's it to put him at a disadvantage. He puts, Johnson, he puts Wallace in a seat that sinks down even more. And he's only five feet four or so. So he sinks down. And then Johnson, massively six feet four, is in a rocking chair rocking over him. Now George, let's talk about all this. You know and finally they they talk it all through. And then he says, you know how do you want to be remembered George? Do you want to be remembered as some guy who had a lot of poor people there, but did nothing for them in there? You've got a little name on a harsh [inaudible], or do you want to be remembered with somebody with a big monument? George Wallace he built rather than George Wallace he hated. Anyway, they made a deal. Then something stirred in Wallace that he would ask for help because he needed the money. He didn't want to spend the money on it. And the federal, federals would send the money. Therefore, the troops would go in not against the South, but with the invitation of him. And that solved that problem, and then he was able to go forward once that problem was solved and go to the joint session of Congress and call for the federal aid, the Federal Voting Act.

He. I love the coda to the story was Wallace telling someone, if I had stayed in there for a few more minutes, I probably would have come out for civil rights.

Exactly right. That's exactly what he said.

Getting back to the the sort of the master legislator piece, I think that's a strength of Biden's that is underappreciated, because there is such skepticism about government and probably an undue recognition of the things that he has achieved legislatively. But there is value to that empathy that you talk about and an understanding of how to deal with political actors, which both of them shared from a lifetime of experience.

I think that's right. I mean, I think in another time we, if we were in a time where we believed in government and we followed those bills and how did they get passed, and it would have been, you know, seen as great celebrations. As they were, they were, it was hard. It was hard. And they got only a couple votes sometimes to get them through. So it didn't seem the same thing as, as for some reason, one bill after another, that each time was celebrated, because the country was following all those big debates in the in the 1960s. But they are extraordinary achievements. But I think the thing you said before is so true. I mean, every president is jealous of every other president. It's not only when they follow you, but, you know, they're all thinking about their rankings now. I mean, this has gotten exponential more than I think in the old days, right. You want to, I got a rank. For example, there was one poll not long ago where Johnson was ranked eight in this poll and Kennedy was nine, and I was the oh my God, would Johnson have been glad to think of that, I mean, one of the hard things about the Kennedy Johnson relationship, when Bobby came in, obviously, and stayed in the cabinet for that year for that period of time after JFK had died, and he watched what happened. And then even as senator, he watched what was happening with the bills. And he knew that Johnson was getting this enormous, enormous amount of legislation through. And one time he said to Dick, it's just not fair. My brother had only three years, and we could have done so much more. I mean, because each one of those bills, he thought, could have been JFK's bill. And they were originally introduced by JFK, but they hadn't gotten anywhere until LBJ. And then Dick, to try and make him feel better, said, well, Julius Caesar only had three years and we still remember him. And then Bobby countered, yeah, but it helps to have Shakespeare write about you. So it's that realization. But I think I think there's an inevitable. I mean, politicians by nature are jealous of any other politician. There's a certain sense, Johnson once said, that a politician is like, you know, like a a sick duck or something. Anybody that has to beg on their hands and their knees for votes at election time, right, in those months before election, or they're going to get sick, as Johnson did actually, he literally got sick before every election. Appendicitis, kidney stones, things. But he said, but once the election takes place, then don't worry. I'll be, I'll be, I'll be healthy again for a while until the next election rolls around. It's a strange vocation, but it's also a wonderful vocation. And that's one of the things that, you know, at least in the 60s, there was a sense that it was something you wanted to strive for. It was an honorable vocation. And now that's again what you want young people to feel. But it's going to take a while. They have to believe in government. They have to believe they can make a difference. They have to see it working in a sense so that they can be part of it.

Yeah, I often talk to them about having worked on the Affordable Care Act and what's that meant, and what that has meant to the lives of millions of people. And there's just nothing more gratifying than playing even a small role in something that can help change people's lives on a large scale. We're going to take a short break and we'll be right back with more of the Axe Files. And now back to the show. One last thing on the really spectacular speech that Johnson made that Dick wrote around the Voting Rights Act. He wrote that speech in nine hours.

It's astonishing to me. I mean, I couldn't possibly work under that kind of deadline. Thank God history is more patient. It waits for, it doesn't matter if I write a book one year or two years later, it's still going to be, the history is still going to be there. But he said that he just learned how to do that. If you don't get it in on time, it's just a scrap of paper. It will mean nothing at all. So when he found out on that Monday morning that he had to give the speech that night, that Johnson was going to give it that night, he went into his office and he told everybody, nobody can bother me the whole day. That's the only way I can do this. I'll send this. I'll send the pages out little by little to my secretary. They'll go to LBJ and they can edit them and they'll come back. But no, I can't, we can't open the door to anybody. So then he put his watch away as if somehow, magically, by putting the watch away, the time wouldn't go by, right? And what happened is he started out thinking the most important thing. And you know this as a writer too, is what is that first line going to be? You know, when you're writing a chapter, when you're writing a book and you can't get going until you get that. And he just came up with this beautiful first line, you know, I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy. I mean, the D's make a difference. It's got a rhythm to it, like poetry, but it's getting both things. The dignity of man, the destiny of democracy. And then that got him going. And then he was able to speed out for a while. You know, at times, history and fate meet at a certain place in a certain time in man's unending search for freedom. So it was in Lexington and Concord. So it was at Appomattox. So it was in Selma, Alabama. And that meant that he's situating Selma in this great historic moment. And then then just goes on to say, this is not a Negro problem, not a white problem, not a northern problem, not a southern problem. It's an American problem. And we're met here to meet that problem, not as Republicans and Democrats, but as Americans. And then in the middle of the day, he just had to take a walk and have one of his favorite cigars. And when he was out there, he heard in the distance, a group of people singing We Shall Overcome. And he came back in. And then that became one of the central moments of the speech, because he said, Johnson said, you know, even if we get the right to vote, there's a long way to go before the full blessings of American society can be shared by by by Black Americans, he called them that Negro Americans, but if we work together, we shall overcome. And the audience in the Congress just was silent for a moment, and then realizing that the anthem of the civil rights movement that had given such courage and bravery to the foot soldiers, was now being lifted to the highest councils of power. And that's when change takes place. When, you and I've talked about that, when the outside movement can meet the inside power. And, and then, you know, Dick was standing in the back of the well that night, in the well of the House, and he said, God, how I loved Lyndon Johnson that night. How I could never have imagined that two years later I'd be marching against him on the war. So it was so sad because their relationship was really the peak of Dick's life. And the thing that mattered so much to me, I think more than anything, and going through these boxes was as we relived 1964 and 65, and he remembered all those high points,and what was like the signings of those bills and what it was like to know that they were making a huge difference, he began to remember that not, he'd always known and intellectually that that happened, but he did not allow it emotionally, and he was filled with grievance about Johnson. And then it just sort of softened and went away. I remember one night we went upstairs and he said, oh my God, I'm feeling affection for the old guy again. And that anger dissipated so that by the end of his life, in those last months, he had really come to feel we really did make a difference. And he had played a part in that. And Johnson would be remembered, and he too would be remembered. And it gave him a sense of purpose and joy to keep working on these boxes as it was, as if as long as he worked on the boxes, he wouldn't die. You know, we kept seeing how many more were ahead of us, he said once, who's going to finish first, me or the boxes? And especially even year when he got cancer, he just wanted to keep working every day on it. It gave him that sense of going forward. So, and then I wasn't sure to do, to be honest, after, after he died, because I was going to be helping him to write a book about it, and it took a while for me to realize, could I do it or would it be too sad? But then I guess I finally realized that I had promised him I would do it. But even more than that, I wanted to do it. I wanted to do it to be able to tell not just his story, but as you said, you know, a while ago, it's the story of America during this period of time, too. And it's a decade that has so many lessons for us. I think not just the sad lessons of where it turned out badly, but the great lessons of where it was moving forward in such extraordinary speed that people could really be proud of what was happening.

Was it cathartic for you? You indicate that somewhat in the epilogue of the book.

I think it was. I mean, I think I afraid that it would just make me remember that he was dead. But on the contrary, I finally realized, this is what I've spent my life on is trying to wake up in the morning and go to sleep at night thinking about presidents who are dead and bringing them back to life so that people can remember what it was to be them. And and in this case, it was not only bringing him back to life, but bringing LBJ back to life, especially for me, because he had such an impact on me by working for him in the White House and accompany him to his ranch. It's what made me a presidential historian, so I felt always an enormous debt to him. And he strides over these pages larger than almost anybody else. I mean, it somehow does. Although I began to feel much more, I was always jealous of of JFK with with Dick, because I'm defending LBJ and he's defending JFK. And yet I could see, as you said earlier, that inspirational role that JFK had that really does mysterious, mysterious, and, you know, you don't know exactly what it is. He went to Ashland, Wisconsin, and he met with a group of people as president, and they changed their lives. As a result of that. They went into social service. They went into working with with politics. And that's the mystery that we never understand about leadership. I mean, it's the same thing you felt when you were a five year old.

100%.

It's wonderful. And I began to recognize that not everybody has that. You can be a very good leader without that. But JFK certainly had that. There was something about the way he connected to people and made them believe what he believed, you know, that things could be better and that you could do things for your country and would want to.

Yeah. You know, just one, one point on the, on, Johnson, you say that he's now ranked eighth and where she talked about how Dick began to embrace him again as he went through these boxes and appreciate the greatness of that domestic agenda that Johnson was able to enact as president. I mean, I suspect that years ago, he would not have been number eight on the list of historians. And I think as history looks back with all his flaws and imperfections and the horrific Vietnam War, Johnson is taking his rightful place. You probably had something to do with that.

Think about that. I don't know, I think what has to do with it is that as time goes by, the memories of the war will always be a scar on his legacy. But they're not as intense as they were when he first left. The same thing happened with Truman. I mean, he leaves office with a very low approval rating. And then over time, over time, the what he was able to accomplish is absorbed by historians, you know, and Johnson's. But even this poll was unusual to be up to eight. But most of the other polls had him, you know, within 11 or 12 something. That's that's really pretty special. And what happened with that, I think, was that as the 50 year anniversaries of Medicare and and Medicaid and education and immigration and NPR and PBS and every national foundation of the arts came up, then I think people remembered, oh my God, these things all began under this one man. So it's a nice thing to say. It's a nice thing to see that. I mean, I feel good every time I hear about people appreciating it more. And I think Caro's books have had a lot to do with it. And they will, especially now, when he finishes this last one, hopefully, which we'll have more of the Great Society as well, sadly, as the war in Vietnam.

Yeah. I want to talk to you about historians for a second, because one of the things that has been, I think, politically flawed for the Biden White House and for Biden is his very, very clear desire to get credit for what I think history will judge as significant achievements. You know, the, the infrastructure bill, which is going to massively update America and some of the things he's done on health care and climate and so on. But when you're in politics in the moment, you're not playing for history, you're playing for votes. And I saw someone on TV say, you know, it would be a good thing for the president to ban historian, historians from the white House for a while. And, you know, it can be motivational, but it also can be destructive if you're thinking about your place in history instead of the political tasks at hand.

You know, it's very interesting. In a different level, I think you're right. You've got to just think about what I'm doing day by day and let, let it all work out in history. Chance that if it's doing the right thing and it's making a good difference, that's going to happen. The interesting thing is Teddy Roosevelt, after his wife and mother died on the same day in the same house, and he went into such a deep depression. And he used to think that he was always thinking about, I'm going to be a state legislator now, and then I'm going to be a congressman, then I'm going to be a senator, and then I'm going to be governor, and then I'm going to be president. And he was being too cautious about what he would do from each because he wanted to run up that ladder. And then he realized that fate can intervene at any moment. And he came back after that adversity, and he decided that I'm just going to take any job that I think is worthwhile because it matters right now, whether or not it's going to get me to that next rung in power. And he took a civil service job because he believed in meritocracy, became a police commissioner, and then he leaves the Navy, where he had a real powerful position, and he decides to lead the Rough Riders. And that's what actually catapulted him. And he couldn't have imagined that at the time. So it's the same thing as a president, I think. You cannot be placing your self in history. Just let it just do the thing that you think is right and makes a difference, and make sure people know it at the time. And then you can worry about how history is going to going to treat you later on.

Talk to me about where we are now, from your perspective, having having banished historians from the White House and now are summoning you to evaluate what's going on right now, which historians don't like to do. But, this is, you know, as we speak, we're recording this on Thursday. There's going to be a debate tonight. You, by the way, have very compelling pages here about John Kennedy preparing for the first major, I guess, the first televised debate and one that will forever be remembered. Nixon versus Kennedy in 1960, in a studio. No audience, much like this one where Kennedy had to prove that he was not too young and callow and inexperienced, to be the leader of the free world. We have a different challenge here, where people are doubting whether Biden is too old to be the leader of the free world. Talk about, first of all, just the run up to that debate, because Dick was involved in it and the cons and the stakes. We don't know how it will turn out of this debate and the general dynamic of this election between two, you know, frankly challenged candidates.

'Yeah, it's an irony that the problem for JFK was that he was too young, right? He would be the youngest president elected. And then the problem now for, for Biden is that he's too old. And and similarly, Nixon was only like four years older than him. It wasn't that much of a difference, but it was Kennedy that seemed so much younger. And here, too, I mean, Trump is only a few years younger than, than Biden, but he seems younger, in terms of the way people view energy. Yes, energy and vitality, I think that's right. But what's interesting is that people have been talking about how how Biden prepared is prepared day after day after day, whereas Trump is just sort of assuming that he'll be able to wing it because he knows how to talk and he's talked all his life and been able to do that. And preparation is a good thing. I mean, I think preparation has to be done. You don't want young children to think, oh, it's it's don't worry about preparing for a test. If you do, your kid, you know, just wing it. And Kennedy worked really hard. So much so that the morning of the debate, Dick couldn't sleep the night before. He was one of three people helping him over. Ted Sorensen and Mike, Mike Feldman at the research. And and he walked into Kennedy's room that morning and he had not slept the whole night before. My husband hadn't. But there was Kennedy relaxed. He's in his bed. He's got his breakfast tray next to him, and he's and he's already looking up. Okay. Let's go. And they had prepared every potential question that might be asked and answer to it. Memorized the answer. And then what Nixon might say, Dick carried around as the younger speechwriter, was his role to carry around this Nixon-pedia thing, which was everything that Nixon had said and misstatements he'd made. And it was actually a whole footlocker filled with Nixon stuff. And, because he was prepared that morning, he felt relaxed. They went through every one of the cards. They had five by eight cards, and he had memorized them. Then he threw them on the floor, you know, so the cards are all strewn on the floor, and then he'd take a break and it's time for lunch. And Dick had left one of his yellow pads in the. They were in a hotel suite in, in Chicago, and he crept back in and he found out that Kennedy was taking nap. He was that relaxed that he could take a nap. And meanwhile. So he got the yellow pad out of there without disturbing him. And then they came back for a final session. And then by the time he got up there, he knew that he was confident in what he knew. And he knew that he knew enough to show that he wasn't, too inexperienced. So he had memorized a lot of facts. Interesting. But the facts made a story, which is the important. Nixon spent that whole day in seclusion. The only person he talked to, I think, or one of the few people was Henry Cabot Lodge, who said to him, be careful not to be an assassin tonight. You have to be a different a new Nixon and Nixon, strangely deferential. I mean, he started off his opening statement saying, I agree with much of what Senator Kennedy said. We agree on our goals. It's just the means to get there that are different. And of course, we all know that he didn't look well and sweat was going down, but it was even more than that. It was just that he was not as much in his element as Kennedy was, surprisingly, for not having been involved in the presidency in the way that Nixon was. And the next day, as Dick said, that's when you saw what happened. Even the night before, Dick was sure that this had made a difference, but Kennedy was much more cool. He and Sorensen are going over where he could have done better. Same thing as earlier when he was learning how to speak. And Dick was just too full of excitement. He said, wait, wait, we've won the debate. We've won the election. Why aren't we celebrating? Kennedy's having, strangely, his comfort food was tomato soup and a beer. I can't, it doesn't seem like a great combination. But anyway. Kennedy just said, we've all got to get some sleep. We've got a long way to go. Next week is Cold War, then this foreign policy. But the next day something had happened. Again, the mystery of television. People had come to see Kennedy, but now they quadrupled. They were screaming. They were breaking the barricades down. What is it that you see him, you saw him in person maybe a week before. But now he's on a screen. You're seeing him in a box on television, and now he's become magic. I mean, who understands what the power of television is? But it was he was the first political celebrity in many ways.

Yes. He was the first president of the the true president of the television era who knew how to use television. In some ways, Trump is the first. I mean, we used social media, but it was right at the infancy of social media as a political tool. Trump is probably the first social media president and he knows how to use it. He's also an insurrectionist. He's also, as we know now, a convicted felon. He has all these charges pending against him, and he's currently in a position to win. If the election were today, I think he'd win. What does that say?

Yeah, it says that somehow the way our social media is today, the way there, that the celebrity or person with that kind of charismatic personality can reach people in a way that I'm not sure they would have been able to without the power of television before. Although when you watch him at the rallies, I mean, he there is a way in which he's connected to people and he's somehow made them feel, as impossible as is to imagine at times, that he's on their side. And that's what FDR used to say. That's what you need to make people feel. And there's something much deeper going on, which we alluded to earlier about race. But it's more than even about race. It's about people who feel that they haven't gotten a fair chance in life. They don't go to college. They look down upon, perhaps by the elite colleges. They don't have the lives that their parents had. They don't have the security that their parents had. And there's a working class feeling about that other class of people that represents the eastern coast. I mean, it was felt at the turn of the 20th century. I think it's the turn of the 20th century is the time that's most echoing to today, because what you found was that the Industrial Revolution had shaken up the economy, like globalization and the tech revolution. People in the country felt suspicious of people in the city, as all those people were moving into the city. They're in factories instead of on farms, and there was a sense of worry about where we were going with our morals, with all these people in the city, there was lots of immigration. So there was a great nativist feeling at that period of time. There were new inventions, so people felt nostalgic for an earlier way of life. Big companies are swallowing up small companies. There's a gap for the first time between the rich and the poor. All the elements that we're feeling today, and we've added in even more race today that was not as relevant, really, at least not as open as it was then, so that there's something deep sociologically going on that somehow Trump has captured into. And we have to understand what that is, because even if he loses, that's still going to be there.

Yeah. And as you pointed out earlier, there is jaundice, great jaundice about our institutions, much as it was then. I mean, I think there was, you know, concern that they had been captured by the big money and so on. Are institutions resilient enough now in a social media age where outrage is currency, outrage is profitable, outrage is the profit model for social media platforms. Do you worry about that?

Yeah, I do think that's a problem. I mean, the bipartisanship of the 50s and 60s and even the 70s and early into the 80s was partly because when you look at the people who are in Congress, overwhelming majority of them had been in the war. They either been in the World War two or the Korean War. So they knew what it was like to cross class and party and religious lines in order to get something done. And they stayed in Washington. I mean, people say you're nostalgic when you talk about this, but this could happen again. You mean you could say to people, you know, we're going to be in session, you know, Mondays to Fridays, you know, and and we're going to have roll calls. And problems created by us. The Electoral College was created by us. You know, the filibuster was created by us. Those things can be changed. But we really need to think about the structure of our system, which is not allowing majority rule to to come through. You need minority rights to be protected. But right now that majority rule is being stifled by the. But, Dick wrote a book. One of the books he really cared about called Promises to Keep, and it was really calling for a political revolution. You know, you needed to do something about campaign finance, something about the filibuster, something about the Electoral College. He believed that political change really needed to happen in order for this, the system to begin working again.

This podcast will appear around July 4th. Talk to me about what that day means to you and what we should be thinking about as we grill our hot dogs and cavort with friends and family.

You know, one of the things I'm hoping about is that this is going to be the 250th anniversary coming up, and people are going to be celebrating, hopefully, and really reeducating ourselves as to what not only July 4th, but the founding of our country and, and and the what happened on the bridge in my beloved Concord. All of those events are going to be brought back to us again. And I think that's a really important thing is, you know, we we decry that there's not civics in schools anymore. This could be a giant civics lesson for the country. And I know they're planning to do something like that. Lincoln worried. There was a time in 1830s when he gave a, maybe the 1840s. But anyway, he's in his 30s. It was a talk about what was happening in the country, and he was worried that the rule of law was being undone. There were mob violence. There were abolitionists being killed. There were slaves being lynched. And he said that we have to just remember the rule of law. And we have to remember the founding fathers and the revolutionary people because they were dying. That whole generation was dying out. So he wanted mothers to read about the revolution to their children. He wanted the preachers in a pulpit to talk about the revolution and the ideals of our country, to remind us of what that was all about. And that's what we may need to do right now. We just have to be reminded and proud again of the special nature of this country and what it took to get us where we were, and all the people who had to fight for it and die for it. Not only soldiers abroad, but foot soldiers at home. Whether in the women's movement, the gay rights movement or the civil rights movement. And if we can do that, then maybe we can stir again that feeling of belonging to something larger than ourselves. I, I the only thing I often I wonder, you may know about whether Obama worked toward it, I know he got more people to get into some of the things like AmeriCorps and and teacher corps, but I think some sort of national service program, we need to get people from one part of the country, into the other part of the country, like an internal Peace Corps and working on a common mission, maybe for a year or two right after high school, and let them learn empathetically what it's like to live in the country versus the city, what it's like to live in the North instead of the South, what it's like to live as a person of poverty rather than a rich person. And that empathy can be stirred. And maybe that's the way to get that younger generation to begin to feel the empathy that will make them want to do something, to make things better for everybody.

And maybe an antidote to the culture that social media, which shoves you into silos and divorces you from people who are different than you. Which has had a very insidious effect. Well, I don't know anybody who has done more to lift up the American experiment, than you Doris. You're the. You, I think you may be the greatest living storyteller there is. And you've done it again with this wonderful, wonderful book, "An Unfinished love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s." I am so grateful for having been able to read this book and take this journey with you and Dick, and I so appreciate you.

I'm so glad to have taken this journey with you, David. Wow, thank you so much.

Thank you for listening to the Axe Files, brought to you by the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago and CNN Audio. The executive producer of the show is Miriam Finder Annenberg. The show is also produced by Saralena Barry, Jeff Fox, and Hannah Grace McDonald. And special thanks to our partners at CNN, including Steve Lickteig and Haley Thomas. For more programing from the IOP, visit politics dot uChicago dot edu.