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00:00Why did you decide to write a book on leadership. What really intrigues me from the time I was in graduate school was Are leaders born or made. Does the man make the times at this at times make the man Lincoln wrote considered suicide at one point his best friend came to his side and said Lincoln you must rally or you will die. Leadership generally means taking a risk when they become great leaders is when ambition for self becomes ambition for the greater good. A leader needs to help the citizens come together to feel that they have a sense of common destiny. Would you fix your time please. People wouldn't recognize me if my time was fixed but just being to sweet all right. I don't consider myself a journalist and nobody else would consider myself a journalist. I began to take on the life of being an interviewer even though I have a day job running a private equity firm. How do you define leadership. What is it that makes somebody tick . Why did you decide to write a book on leadership as opposed to another biography. What really intrigued me from the time I was in graduate school was questions revolving around leadership . These are the ones we used to debate when we were young . Staying up at night reading Plato and Aristotle are leaders born or made. Does the man make the Times as does at times make the man. When does a person recognize themselves as a leader . Where does ambition come from that big mystery. So when you write a book you do the research read write. How is it typically take to do a book. Well it's embarrassing I mean it took me longer to write about World War 2 and Franklin and Eleanor than it took the war to be fought. It took me 10 years to write about Lincoln. It took me seven years to write about Teddy and Taft. You're really catapulting yourself back into another time and you want to think about how they thought. It takes a long time but I love it. When you were thinking about writing a book on Lincoln didn't you know that there were already 10000 books written on Lincoln. The world need another book Lincoln. And what is it that you brought to it that made it so distinctive and such a bestseller. It was really scary to do Lincoln and it wasn't out of huts but thinking that I could make a huge contribution. I just knew that I wanted to live with him. I mean that's the way I choose my subjects. If I'm going to spend so much time I want to be with the person that I really will be happy. Getting up with the morning and thinking about him when I go to bed at night and Abraham Lincoln was somebody I always wanted to learn more about. So I just hoped that if I started in I could figure out a different angle . Lyndon Johnson was famously colorful in his language. I always thought the Johnson Treatment was yelling at people screaming at people or things like that intimidating people. But when you listen to tapes you don't hear any curse words released. I didn't hear any where they excerpted or he just didn't talk that way. No. The interesting thing is when he was on those tapes he had a button in his desk office and whenever he was talking to a senator or congressman in particular he wanted to tape the conversation because they would make deals on the phone and he wanted to make sure to hold the guy to the deal later on. But it's never just force it's charm. It's knowing what each congressman or senator wants. You know one might want gun and one quick trip to Europe. So he said you want to go on this commission. I'll send you to France. Another one might want to be on an intellectual historical committee. You want that. You got that. He's talking to Dirksen he's trying to bring Dirksen to bring the Republicans to break the Senate filibuster on civil rights in 1964. And he offers him everything you want an ambassadorship in Illinois. You want me to come to Springfield I come to have a postmaster ship in Peoria it'll be there. But then finally he knows that Dirksen wants to be remembered for something too. So he says Everett if you can bring some Republicans with me to help break the Southern filibuster on civil rights you know what will happen 200 years from now schoolchildren will know only two names Abraham Lincoln and Everett Dirksen and Dirksen says Yes I'm coming. So these tapes are just fantastic. We worked on them when we were working on the memoirs. When I went down to his ranch to help him on his memoirs and I got a funny story from a CEO that maybe some of you know Don Kendall from from Pepsi-Cola he was a friend of Richard Nixon's. And when Nixon first came into office he asked Kendall to go to Johnson's ranch to talk about some sensitive matter. Johnson's working on his memoirs and he looks up grumpily said How am I supposed to remember what happened 30 years ago 20 years ago. The only chapters that are any good at all. I had this little tape machine in my oval office I used to press a button for Batum conversation. Those chapters are coming out great. You go back and tell your good friend Nixon as he starts his presidency. There's nothing more important than a taping system and thereby Lyndon Johnson contributes to the downfall of his good friend Richard Nixon or presidents or leaders born or are they trained to think certain qualities are inborn perhaps empathy is one of them. I think one of the most important quality in a leader is empathy and you can't have a natural born empathy. Lincoln from the time he was a little kid when his friends would be putting hot coals on turtles to make them wriggle he would go over and say that's wrong. I think Lyndon Johnson had a certain empathy when he was young. Maybe both of them having come from poor backgrounds made them closer to seeing people who were in trouble and feeling for them. He taught at a small Mexican-American school and he saw the pain he was just a kid in college at that time taking off the year to make money. He saw the pain of prejudice on their face and he really wanted to help them. And he changed those kids lives whereas for Franklin and Teddy Roosevelt empathy didn't develop until they actually went into politics. Teddy said when he first went in that he was just going in for an adventure to get in the state legislature and he thought it might be fun. But once he got there and he saw tenement houses and he was a police commissioner later and he saw what the slums were like at night then he developed what he called a fellow feeling a desire to help make their lives better. And FDR ise polio clearly made him much more warmhearted man to whom other people had had fate deal an unkind hand and now him so he could relate to them better the leaders you write about many of them had problems early on. It wasn't predictable was it that Lincoln or FDR would be presidents United States was it. No in fact I think my guys had winding path than that normal projection that you're developing. I mean to a certain extent clearly. Lincoln all that Lincoln wanted was to somehow get away from the world in which he had been born. He loved to read. He had to scour the countryside for books. His father didn't like him reading because he thought it made him useless on the farm sometimes took books away from his son so he couldn't escape until he was twenty one. You've had to work for your father until you were 21. Soon as he was he went away to this town of New Salem and he began to dream through literature that he could have another way of life that somehow he wasn't gonna be stuck doing this all his life. But there was no one that would have predicted unless you really listened to him carefully. I mean even at twenty three he said everyone has this peculiar ambition mine is to be esteemed by my fellow man. But then he went through terrible turmoil all of my guys went through. I called them my guys because I'd lived with them for so long I don't mean to be un deferential to them but they all went through terrible crucible and I think that's what made them stronger. On the other end no straight path for any of them. Let's talk about that. Each of them went through a point that was so bad that some of them considered suicide. I think Lincoln wrote considered suicide at one point Lincoln had gotten into the state legislature and his great hope in being in the state legislature was to bring infrastructure projects to his section of Illinois so that poor farmers could bring their goods to market and so towns would grow up. They bustle and there'd be no isolation. The way he had grown up and so he sponsored a million dollar bill in the state legislature to dredge harbors and build roads and widen rivers and then the state went into recession and all the projects were half finished and he was blamed and then the state went into debt and he had to leave the state legislature in really in disgrace. And he felt his word had not been met. And at that same time he had broken his engagement with Mary Todd not certain he was ready to be married but knowing it had humiliated her having broken his word twice to his constituents and to Mary set him into a depression so deep that they took all knives and razors and scissors from his room and his best friend came to his side and said Lincoln you must rally or you will die . He is in his early thirties at this point and he said I know I would just as soon die but I've not yet accomplished anything to make to make anyone remember that I have lived so fueled by that ambition which was his lodestar in a way. He finally came out of the Depression he eventually wins a single term in Congress . He's going to lose two Senate seats and finally run as a dark horse candidate for the presidency. But that desire to leave his mark on the world to be esteemed by other fellow man which is so unusual that ambition in a young person already being the ambition for the greater good. My other three guys go into it for themselves and eventually it becomes something for the greater good. But that kept Lincoln going. Lincoln lost four Senate twice and then ran for president once. I guess you don't have to be elected the Senate to run for president right . Absolutely we have a lot of those people around. Lyndon Johnson chose not to run for re-election in 1968 surprising many people with his famous speech in March of that year. He then retired to his ranch and worked with you on his memoirs. He was so sad in those last years of his life. He talked to me in ways he never would have had I known him at the height of his power because he just needed somebody to listen to him. And I had many of his stories weren't true but they were great nonetheless I loved listening to this character so let's talk about what happened to Teddy Roosevelt. He had a tragedy on one day that's hard for anybody to imagine. Can you tell us what happened. Yeah it really changed Teddy Roosevelt's life. He was in the state legislature. He gets the word that his wife has delivered their baby first baby Alex's wife's name . His mother has come to take care of his wife his mother's only forty nine. Everybody's celebrating then he gets a second telegram saying your wife is dying and your mother is dying too . Turned out the mother had contracted typhoid fever just when she came to New York to help with the kid. And then the wife was dying in childbirth by the time you get home. Both women died that day on the same house and the same day. And so he retreated to the badlands where he went for two years. He said he just had to get away in order to beat black hair which was his word for depression. You have to be on a horse that rides fast enough. So he rode his horse 15 hours a day and became a cowboy and a rancher. And gradually gradually began to heal . But the interesting thing that goes back to your question is before that he did think he had a winding path. He was a state legislator he saw himself doing that maybe the state Senate and then maybe Congress and then Senate and then governorship and then presidency he could see an upward path but now he just had a fatalism about life and he realized I'm just going to take any job that comes my way. That looks good to me that I can learn from it maybe my last job because he had the sense that nothing lasts forever. So he comes back from the Badlands and he becomes a civil servants commission or his friends and what are you doing this for. It's two below you he said No I believe in the merit system and I think this is something I can do well which he really does. And then he sees the police department in New York is corrupt. Let's take it on. I'd like to make it uncorrupt. I think I can do that again. They say why you're doing that is below you. It's a thankless job. He does it. It is a difficult job but he does it pretty well. And then he gets what he had really wanted originally. The assistant secretary of the Navy but then there's this war the Spanish American War . He leaves this powerful position to become an ordinary foot soldier because that's what he wants to do and then of course that makes him the rough rider gives him the heroism. He then becomes governor and president and it falls in line. But it wasn't. It was almost as if he's just doing something different from moving up the ladder by just deciding this is what I can worthily do I'm going to do a job good somebody is going to notice that and a winding path will get me where I want to go rather than that straight up path. Well let's talk about FDR . He had a tragedy in his life. How did that come about it . Better medical attention early on could have cured his polio . Yeah I mean he's only you know he's only in his 30s when he gets infantile paralysis all of a sudden one day he comes home from swimming very tired climbs the stairs to go to bed and is never able to walk on his own power again. They miss diagnosed it at first. It's possible that he could have been made more whole but in the end his lower body was never really able to walk on his own power. So what he did however was to spend years between 1920 and 1924 trying to walk. And it meant that he had to strengthen his chest muscles and his back muscles. And one of the stories that I'd heard was that when he was in his wheelchair he would ask to be lifted from his wheelchair to put on the carpet so that he could crawl for two hours strengthen his back muscles and then he would take the stairs one at a time and hoist himself up from one Banister to the other and by the top sweating he would celebrate. He was learning to get toy out of small little victories and eventually goes to warm springs which is where his healing really comes place brings fellow polio patients there. And it's not just the giant warm waters that they can exercise it and he makes himself vulnerable in those warm waters his legs thin legs are hanging out. They play water polo. They play tag. They have wheelchair dances they have cocktail parties at night. And that's what the other patients said he made us feel we had joy in life again. He had that optimism that he was born with a natural trait. It resumed itself and he finally realized that maybe I can be president even if I can't walk on my own power they will accept a man they are not going to know that I'm in a wheelchair and credibly they made an honor code among the press that they never show him in his wheelchair I never show him with his braces never show him really unable to walk he could seem to be walking if he held onto two strong arms there's a moment I wanted to press do that because they honored him because they they thought they thought maybe if he believed that the press the president had to be strong and the country wouldn't accept a paralyzed man as president they liked him and they were giving him that honor and dignity it's impossible to imagine today. Now leadership generally means taking a risk in the end you can't be leader just taking easy decisions. So each of these people took presidents took very difficult decisions. Let's talk about Abraham Lincoln first. What was the most difficult decision he had that you wrote about. Well the most difficult thing clearly was his decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. I mean he knew when he came into office that the majority overwhelming majority of the Union and the union people were fighting not for emancipation but simply to restore the South and the North to restore the Union. Once he made that decision that he was going to emancipate the slaves he had to convince his Cabinet he had to convince the troops and he had to convince the country. And he used his powers of persuasion. He visited the troops over twelve times two active battlefields. And he would talk these soldiers. He told them and come to my house anytime you want to complain about what's going on in the army. And they began to trust him. And then the most amazing thing happens in August of 64. This war is still going badly after Gettysburg has been won the year before. And it looks like he can't win the election in November and all the big wigs come to him and say you have to go back and have the peace table starting talking about just union let the emancipation go and this war will go on forever. We've lost hundreds of thousands already. And you're going to lose the election. He turns them out without a single mom and he said if I did that if I turned my back on the black warriors I would be damned in hell in eternity. They leave his office thinking that he's going to lose the election. What happens is a month later Atlanta falls. The whole mood of the North changes and he wins but he wins with union and emancipation intact and that is a risk. Lyndon Johnson is from Texas from the south. Why did he make civil rights legislation. His domestic hallmark. Why did he want that legislation so badly . You know somewhere in Lyndon Johnson's being he too wanted to be remembered for something that would stand the test of time. He had pretty much accumulated power through most of his presidency and became the most powerful majority leader the country had ever seen without a great sense of purpose to the power. I mean I think the moment when these leaders become something different than simply good leaders when they become great leaders is when ambition for self becomes ambition for the greater good. And what happened to him is in 1955 when he as majority leader he had a massive heart attack and he woke up from that depression and he said to himself If I died now what would I be remembered for. Nothing. And so he then set out to get a civil rights bill through the Senate even when he was majority leader not a pretty moderate bill. But then once JFK dies he decided that his first priority was going to be to get the desegregation bill through the Senate. It was a huge risk. His other advisers said you can't do that the South will filibuster the bill you've only got 11 months until November to be elected on your own right. And if they filibuster no other bill will get through the Senate and you'll be failed president and then somebody else says to him you know the presidency only has a certain amount of coinage to expend. And you want to expend it on this. And then he says well what the hell is the presidency for. And he made that risk of going for civil rights as his first priority. And the important thing was he knew how to get it done. I mean he knew that he needed Republicans to go with the Democrats from the north because he needed to break the two thirds filibuster . So he sets out to really get those other people on the Democratic side and the Republican side together. If we had that bipartisanship today it would be such a better place. He knows how to deal with them. He has every single senator and congressman over in groups of 30. He calls the senators at 6:00 in the morning he calls them at midnight he calls one senator 2:00 a.m. He said I hope I didn't wake you up. No I was just looking at the ceiling hoping my president would call. So Lyndon Johnson chose not to run for re-election in 1968 surprising many people with his famous speech in March of that year. He then retired to his ranch and worked with you on his memoirs but he retired when he was in his early 60s and he died when he was only 64. He was so sad in those last years of his life. I mean he knew that he'd accomplished a lot of things that he thought were important and indeed they were. I mean civil rights voting rights Medicare aid to education Headstart PBS immigration reform but he knew the war was always going to be hanging over that legacy and he just you know he that's why I think when I was there he talked to me in ways he never would have had I known him at the height of his power because he just needed somebody to listen to him. And many of his stories weren't true but they were great nonetheless. I love listening to this character. What are the lessons that somebody who's business might take away from your book. Without a question I think leadership is about human nature and the way a business man or a politician builds a team I think has similarities. Are you able to build a team that's got diverse opinions people that can argue with you and question your assumptions and then yet bring that team together at critical moments we've had forty five people service pros in nine states. Most people watching will not be present United States I assume very few people get to be president and states. So what are the lessons that somebody who's in business might take away from your book because are there lessons that are applicable to the business world from the book that you wrote about presidents . Oh without a question I think leadership is about human nature and the way a businessman or a politician builds a team I think has similarities. Are you able to build a team that's got diverse opinions people that can argue with you and question your assumptions and then yet bring that team together at critical moments. I mean that's what obviously Lincoln did with his team of rivals. It's what Franklin Roosevelt did by having Eleanor Roosevelt on his team. She was as he said a welcome thorn in his side always willing to question his assumptions always willing to argue with him. But that speaking truth to power I think any team needs that whether it's in business or not. I mean they said about her that whenever she wanted something done she would bring a person who wasn't wanting him that he'd want to speak to because he was tired of that person right to the dinner table so she'd have to speak to him because she'd brought an alternative point of view. And it's so important today I think in 24/7 world to be able to think and relax and replenish their energies. Lincoln actually went to the theater one hundred times during the Civil War. He said When a Shakespeare play came on for a few precious hours he could imagine himself back in Prince House time and forget the war that was raging. I mean you guys all feel you're so busy somehow. They were pretty busy. I feel this way too sometimes about our 24/7 world. It is civil war and World War Two and a depression to deal with and they all found ways to really take time off. I mean Lincoln wasn't a golfer though no likely and wasn't a golfer . No Lincoln liked to play handball though really. But mostly Lincoln liked to tell stories. I mean he loved telling funny stories. That's how he could relax when he told stories in the middle of tough cabinet meetings he would somehow come up with this funny story and all these serious guys would have to relax for a few moments and Teddy Roosevelt two hours every day would exercise it could be a boxing match or it could be a wrestling match or a raucous game of tennis or his favorite was a hike in the wooded cliffs of Rock Creek Park where he would make a point . You could only move point to point couldn't go around any obstacle. And then there's FDR relaxes every night with a cocktail hour during World War 2 where he made a rule that you couldn't talk about the war. You could talk about gossip books you read movies you'd seen as long as the war didn't come up and this cocktail hour mattered so much to him that he wanted the people to be living at the cocktail hour to be ready for it. On the second floor of the White House were incredible group of people. I kept picturing them in their bathrobes at night and what incredible conversations they must have had. Final question time is up. If President Trump called you and said I didn't have time to read this book what would you recommend that I do as a result of your studying these four individuals. I think the most important thing to say is when we talk about humility it doesn't mean humbleness. It means an awareness of one's limitations an ability to grow in office to acknowledge errors when you make them. And that's not a weakness it's a strength and that that's where he has to just look within himself and reflect is what I'm doing really making myself grow in office. Am I learning from this office. Am I surrounded by people who can really speak truth to power. Am I really broadening my horizons from the base that developed me to expanded to people in the country. But I think most important I think I'd say am Teddy Roosevelt warned that the rock of democracy will founder when people from different regions sections or areas of the country feel that they are the other rather than common American citizens. And that's where we are today it's where we were before President Trump and a leader needs to help the citizens come together to feel that they have a sense of common destiny again. Every change that's taken place in this country it's when the citizens and the leaders come together they tried to say to Lincoln your Liberator is a no as the antislavery people that did it all for Franklin and Franklin and Eleanor and Teddy Roosevelt was the progressive movement in the cities and states that made things happen was the civil rights movement with with Lyndon Johnson who couldn't have done things. We're in a state right now where we need the citizens to be active and becoming part of healing our nation which is more polarized than any time since I've been alive even since my presidents have been a lot. We'd have to go way back to the 18 50s and we need leadership to somehow remind us of what this great country is and bring us together in a common sense of mission. Thank you very much for your time. Thomas .

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The David Rubenstein Show: Doris Kearns Goodwin

David Rubenstein sits down with Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin to talk about the presidents she's written about and their lessons for today, as described in her book "Leadership: In Turbulent Times." The interview took place at Bloomberg's headquarters in New York on Nov. 28, 2018. (Source: Bloomberg)

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