>> funding for overherd with evan smith is provided in part by mfi foundation, improving the quality of life within our community. and from the texas board of legal specialization, board certified attorneys in your community. experienced, respected and tested. also by hillco partners, texas government affairs consultancy and its global health care consulting business unit, hilco health, and by the alice kleberg reynolds foundation and viewers like you. thank you. >> i'm evan smith, she's a best selling pulitzer prize winning historian, whose latest book has just been published. it's called the bully pulpit. theodore roosevelt, william howard taft and the golden age

of journalist, she's doris kearns goodwin, this is overherd. [ applause ] >> actually, there are not two sides to every issue. >> i guess we can't fire him now. >> i guess we can't fire him now. >> being on the supreme court was an improbable dream. >> it's hard work and it's controversial. >> without information there is no freedom and it's journalists who provide that information. >> window rolls down, this guy says, hey, goes to 11. [ laughter ] >> doris so good to see you. >> i'm glad to be back. >> thanks so much, congratulations, what another -- another great book and wish you great success with it. >> thank you. >> i had to say you had me at journalism. [ laughter ] and the reality is, as much as it may be unexpected, a book about teddy roosevelt is a book about the media, about journalism. in fact journalism does play i a

part. >> huge part. >> yeah. >> i mean more than i even realized. i mean i think the real success of teddy roosevelt was his relationship with the journal i, the congress was grid locked or actually controlled by the old republican guard wanting nothing to do with the progressive legislation he knew to be passed to deal with the problems of the industrial revolution. unless he could mobilize the public, bully meaning splendid, not what we think of today, and pulpit presidential platform to educate the country. she developed this extraordinary set of relationships with them, for them it really was a golden age, they felt they were part of something big happening. >> some of the issues you just mentioned and others you haven't, are familiar. the times in which we live. this book takes place 100, 101, 102 years ago. it's set a century ago. we're talking about the pernicious influence of money and politics. we're talking about a grid locked congress, we're talking about the possibility of the two

party system being insufficient, and we need a third party. so many of the things we're talking about, income inequality, i mean this book is really almost about now, except it's really about 100 years ago. >> i know, people tease me somehow, do i come up with these topics so that they relate to the present day. >> perfect. >> for example, when president obama point -- appointed hillary, just as lincoln appointed seward, the rival. by the time i started that book, i didn't know who president obama was. similarly for here, the whole question of income distribution has been more rivetting in these last couple of years. i think there's a reason why there's a parallel, which is when the industrial order came, it fundamentally changed the economy. people could make it on their own. now, they're suddenly living in the city. they're wage workers, the unions are not strong enough yet. there are these giant corporations that are becoming monopolies, people are feeling squeeze. we have the technological

revolution, we have a similar economy having changed with these billionaires side by side with the ordinary people being squeezed and with money and politics being a problem now as much as it was back then. >> maybe these problems don't get solved, they just get recycled. >> except you've got to hope with history that you can learn from the struggles and the triumphs, in this case the progressive era was the answer to the gilded aget. it really did help with many of the problems that the gilded age had posed. we have to look back and say they did something, why didn't they do something. >> we have to channel. >> i think so. >> obviously the books you've written before have featured larger than life characters, people who railroad naturals to have an entire book be about them, fdr, and eleanor roosevelt or lbj, or abraham lincoln, most famously. teddy roosevelt is of course a large figure in our history. but i don't know that i quite appreciated where he came from politically and how he got there until this book. talk about what appealed to you about him.

>> well, i think there's two things. one is that most of the leaders that i've studied including teddy roosevelt at some time with stood adversity when they were a kid and it gives them a sense of understanding other people for whom fate has dealt an unkind hand. he loved the father. he loses his father when he's a sophomore at harvard, his first wife whom he adores dies in the same house on the same days a his 49-year-old mother, he goes to the bad lands in a great depression, constant activity prevents overthought, as he said, and the depression subsides, he comes back, finds his childhood friend, edith, marries her, returns to the generally optimistic temperament, he said i've known sorrow too deep and joy too keen to let any election throw me so it gave him perspective but i think also his father, very wealthy, cared about the social life in new york city at the

time, he transferred that to young teddy, he was a young reformer from the time he enters the state legislature from 22 years old, 23 years old. >> part of the problem as others saw it was he was almost too much of a reformer as governor, didn't they essentially stow him away in the vice-presidency hoping they could avoid him continuing in his reforming ways, right? they wanted to get him off the stage. >> that's what is so important to realize, the vice-presidency was a dead end at that time. he didn't want to be vice-president, he felt like he was so bored, he was going to study law and get his law degree, he had nothing to do. >> suddenly president mckinley is assassinated and he's elevated to the presidency. >> oh, my god, that damn cowboy is now going to be president, this is terrell. >> i have to say there were echos of johnson in that to me. how many times was johnson referred to as that damn cowboy or worse. >> and look what lbj finally did in terms of civil rights and medicare and aid to education. >> walked out a shadow of the

guy who was president and in his own right became a historical figure. >> i will never forget, that's where my fascination with the presidency began, just being back here in austin, it just bridges back floods of memories. it feels great. >> teddy roosevelt and william howard taft had an interesting relationship, they were, i think frenemies was a contemporary word what the kids might use. they were frenemy, they weren't exactly enemies, sort of somewhere in between. >> what happened that i didn't really until i started doing the research and found 400 letters between the two of them from the time they were in their early 30s, they had met when taft was solicitor general and teddy civil service commissioner. they both knew something had to happen with the corruption of the age from the the civil war to the 1900s there was so much corruption. teddy was this physical, manic, exercising character, and taft was rather overweight.

>> not -- >> not. that's a nice way to say it. >> fair. >> but also they had different temperaments, teddy said of taft, i enjoy somebody with his personality, everybody loved taft. >> right. >> they say they love him on first sight. it takes longer for them to love them. taft envied teddy's rhetorical ability, fighting spirit and his love of the game. then of course what happens is he hand picks taft to be his successor. he basically runs the campaign. gives him all sorts of advice, stop playing golf, golf is a dude's game. it's not a working man's game. the only thing he didn't influence was the song for taft, which was getn a raft with ta if y ga rt wit 340-pound taft -- >> wouldn' go well, exactly. might not have gone well. >> taft wins and roovelt goes off to africand a he assumes, well, great, the legacy of the work i've done as president has been preserved, this guy and i are in sync around we work together on everything and turns out not so much. >> the way teddy thought about

it, he thought that taft had betrayed his legacy and had become too cozy with the old guard in the congress. they go after teddy, they want him to be a champion again. th wan h to run against his old friend and at first he resists but then i thinke can't not be -- he loves it. alic roosevelt, his daughter, said of him he so loved being in the center of action that he wanted to be the bride at the wedding and the corpse at the funeral and the baby at the baptism. so once that channel was opened and he really believed that he needed to carry -- had had gone further left by that point he and tt had been sort of at one when taft was secretary of war. taft believed government had to solve some of these problems, he believed in workmen's compensation, he believed in antitrust. he believed in making better for the women and the people in the factories, but he wasn't willing to go as far as ted eye eventually went in 1912. they run against each hero in a devastating campaign for taft emotionally. >> teddy runs as the candidate

of the bull moose party, and the result is woodrow wilson wins the presidency. >> it was almost inevitablence that happened. to speak of corpses again, as soon as teddy bolted the party and formed a third party, now it's only a question of which one of the two corporations, taft or roosevelt gets the most flowers. >> now, of course, again, i'm moved to say look where we were right now, you know, a third of the countries say is democratic in the traditional sense. a third might be business republican. and then the last third is the tea party and often you've got that republican party at lager heads, right? >> i mean the key to teddy's leadership before 1912 is he could keep those two wings together, even though the conservative wing of his party didn't want to pass the legislation he wanted passed because he got the public pressure to make tm dot. they did it and then they won as a result. in the mid term election, he won the election --

>> he forced them to vote on legislation, and once this legislation came to a vote, because the public was so much in favor of it -- >> absolutely. >> congress had no choice but to do -- >> once they got out of committee, they would bottle him up, he forced them to get on the floor. people liked the meat packing legislation, they liked the food and drug stuff. they loved the antitrust. once he gets into 1912 and they split, then that is a cautionary tale, i think, for the republican party. i don't know who the leader is that could keep these two sides together, but if they can't, then history would suggest it would not ome well. >> somehow i'm imaging chris christie as the william howard taft in this scenario. that may be more of a visual than anything else, the fact as much as a cautionary tale it is for the republicans, the reality is you can say president obama needs to go back and channel teddy roosevelt giving the problems he's had dealing with an intransgent congress, legislation that might be more popular in the public than in

that building, getting bottled up to the committees and not getting to the poor. >> that's the question today, he's talked recently again about using the bully pulpit in order to mobilize the sentiment to do something in congress and the question is whether the bully pulpit is as powerful as it once was. he was great at shorthand phrases. i mean the great thing teddy has a a communicator, he said i know how to speak in ways that connect emotionally, my harvard buddies might think i talk to folksy, he speak softly and carrie a big stick. >> right, he knew how to speak in sound bytes before there were sound bites. >> he gave maxwell house the slogan good to the very last drop. he loved coffee. fdr comes along, he understands perfectly the voice of the radio, and everybody would listen, 80% of the audiences, you could walk down the street on a hot chicago night, not miss

a word of what he was saying because you could see everyone in their living rooms lit up, listening to the radio, even in the early day of television, before the cables, everybody listened to those three networks. now, even if obama makes a speech, you might be listening to your favorite cable network, you might hear the pundits sometimes including me embarrassingly tearing it down, while it's going on. i don't even like to do that when i'm asked to do that, and then you don't agree on the facts of what's happened, then our attention span is so broken up now. >> in some ways the way the media has changed has made it harder for any president, not just this president, to avail himself of the same opportunity. >> i think that's right. the reason i talk about it in the golden age of journalism, this one magazine i talk about, mcclures, i love the guy who founded it. legendary reporters in journalism courses, these are the big heros, he would give

them two years of research time before they wrote a single word. >> oh, it's just like that now. [ laughter ] >> yeah. >> no different at all. >> what is so important is they then wrote stories, tarbell, the trusts were an extracts, what does it mean to have a trust or a monopoly, she writes about how john d. rockefeller used undue means to gain control. suddenly the country says we've got to do something about standard oil, around ray baker writes about railroad abuses, sinclair writes about meat packing plant. makes it much easier for roosevelt. >> in a book full of cautionary tales, another one may be for the media, when you t up these issues for the tub lick to care about, they vote and to be active in all of that, when you stop doing that, as many media organizations sadly has done, the public goes gray on this stuff, right? >> right. the other thing connected too, during teddy's time they passed

a law. that's what citizens united. >> citizens united actually overturned the existing order back in -- >> that's right. >> back in roosevelt's day, the book has incredible resonances for the contemporary scene and the situation we all see ourselves in. >> somewhere somebody has to do something about money and politics. it's the.in the system right now, sam mcclure said at one point, there's no one left but all of us. we can't deal with these characters in washington anymore. they're not doing anything. how do you mobilize the public to do something about our common problems. >> it's a great book. the characters are lively, and the themes are wonderful, i guess i could see it as a movie, it's less important that i see it as a movie than steven spielberg sees it as a movie. you've been down that road with him before, he's actually optioned this book, he intenlds to make this into something. whether it's a movie or men any series. all the characters would come in

if it's a ninny series. it was just a great joy to work with him on lincoln, so i became part of a team, when you're writing, you're writing alone, the movie making is collaborative, as soon as daniel day-lewis agreed to be lincoln, spielberg asked me, would you take him to springfield and show him all the site,. he became lincoln. i went down to filming in richmond, you couldn't call him daniel anymore. >> he disappeared into that character so he will play taft. [ laughter ] >> i think you have to gain maybe 150 pounds for taft, and a hundred for -- but he can do it. >> i was thinking, well, who could play these guys? i know this has come up before, but i'm seeing john goodman. >> i think somehow -- why that comes on our horizon, i'm not sure. >> robin williams has already played teddy roosevelt. >> i know at "night at the museum." >> work is done, send a check

mr. spielberg. >> he's a great guy. it will be a great journey. >> the phenomenon of lincoln the film and 0 of the book itself, but really of the film makes me want to ask you about the ways in which presidential histories or histories of eras like this one have become really part of the popular conversation. everybody is a historian. everybody's got a book about a president or presidents. not only people who have the actual background or credentials or have done the work, but almost what used to be paraplegic back books about presidents, now cable tv hosts, not that i'm thinking about anybody in particular, chris matthews, seems to have a book out about this one, or bill o'reilly, every other book on the best seller list seems to be a popular history. is that bad for the profession? >> you know what, my feeling is if you get somebody to like history, then hopefully they're going to go in deeper and find out more about your character, whoever it is that you've become interested in, because you've read it. i think it's good.

>> do you welcome all these people into the pool with you. >> it's not my pool, i guess i have to say come on in. >> fair. i get that. and so what do you do now? what's the next thing that you -- because you work on these books for so long, so many year, that surely you estarted to think if not started to work on next one. >> you always feel a sense that you're betraying the president that you're leaving behind, when i had to leave my fdr books to make room for lincoln i felt bad for fdr. my real fear is there's going to be a panel, and every single one is going to tell me what i got wrong about them. how about that damn book on the kennedys was twice as long as the book on me. anyway, what i'm thinking of doing now is bringing them all together and writing a book about leadership, that's really what i write about in all of these books. >> what is your view? you've studied some of the great leaders of our age. you must have taken away a

couple of things that -- >> i think there are universal traits. when you think about it, even though the problems shift over time, the human relations that leadership are about are pretty much the same, so that ability that i mentioned before to with stand adversity is one that you see fdr when he had polio became transformed in a way that he hadn't had before. and lincoln of course had adversity his whole life, the ability to communicate in a democracy is huge. the ability to somehow now have emotional intelligence, to share credit with the people around you, to take blame when things go bad and the chance to stir a purpose in people, all of those things i think really you see in all the great presidents. so if i can bring them back in a room together and just think about what are those traits. >> what makes a great leader? >> one of the surprising ones is the ability to relax and replenish energies. lincoln told funny stories all the time which whistled away his sadness, fdr had a cocktail hour every night during world war ii where the rule was you couldn't talk about the war, you could

only relax, he had everybody living at the white house ready for his cocktail hour. you know, teddy roosevelt took he's ridiculous walks in the park where you had to go over a rock and down a precipice, take off your clothes when you hit a stream and swim across the stream. the french ambassador was so excited when he was walking the first time with roosevelt on this real job, he had his suit on and silk hat, and he's racing after roosevelt, and they finally get to a stream, he says thank god it's over, better take off our clothes. well, for the honor of france, i stripped, then he gets to the other side of the river, however, he has his lavender kit gloves on. you might never tell, you might meet ladies on the other side. i just picture this naked guy with lavender gloves on. we'll have him in the movie. >> right. seriously. so of the leadership skills, the attributes that you enumerated,

the communications is really interesting, because you think about ronald reagan, the create communicator, so named, right? perceived to have been for that reason so great. john kennedy, a brief time in office as president, but what a wonderful communicator, george w. bush, famously had troubles in the communications area. and oddly barack obama, despite having been this magnificent communicator as a campaigner, has turned out to be a not terribly good communicator as a president which may in part be the source of some of his problems. >> it's really interesting, what happens with president obama when he's on the campaign trail, he gets energy from the people, that makes him speak well, he needs that back and forth, so one time when i was talking to some of the people in the white house, i said when rosevelt, fdr used to do his radio chats, he would have an audience there. instead of the tele-prompter, when he speaks from the white house, he should have audiences there. it's much better for him, and i think that's true.

reagan, on the contrary, however, used to being an actor, all he needed was the tele-prompter and he could make it seem like he was talking to the whole country. >> yeah. >> you have to figure out the technological understanding of your age and fit your temperament to that, i think. >> a leadership book would be perfectly timed and i bet it would be fantastic. enough of all of this unimportant stuff that we're talking about, let's talk about the red sox. >> all right. >> in post here, we're going to edit it so that you and i have big beards later in the show. the rest of the country, people looked at the red sox probably a little bit differently than you did, and as a baseball fan, as a new englander, can you brag a little bit on your guys and what just happened and -- >> well, i told you, i was so late finishing the book, the fact the red sox did so well all summer long, i wasn't going on vacation, i had to think about 1900, but i did read the sports pages. the red sox won so many times

that i promised myself, this team, i adore it, they're a bunch of kids who seem to love what they're doing. they've been in last place. it didn't matter to me if they got into the play-offs or the world series. we have season tickets, and to be at the sixth game of the world series, to be in your own home town when your team wins, because that had never happened before, i don't think there's anyone alive that had been there when it actually happens, it's amazing what sports does to connect people across racial lines, class lines and interest lines. >> in a more serious way, given what boston had been through in the previous year with the marathon bombing, it was probably right even more people who may not be red sox fans or boston fans to ultimately come back around. >> it was a mystical cord, the players understood that, they felt proud they had been able to give something so good because it was such an iconic moment at that race, the game had been taking place, that it just ended the season on a so much happier

note than the sadness of the spring. >> you seem -- speaking of happier notes, you seem to be so happy in the last minute or two that we have left. i want to understand this. you are a very joyful person by nature, it seems. you love the things you do. >> i think people are bosh to some extent with a temperament, my father had that same joyful temprament even though he had been orphaned as a child, he walked in the room, he had that twinkle in his eye, he's the one who taught me how to keep score, which is where i love to keep history. he listened for me for two hours as the game that just took place that afternoon. >> the presented catted. >> if you can keep your father's attention by telling history, even if it's only five hours old, then it's something special. i think i learned the narrative art, at first i would blurt out the dodgers won, or the dodgers lost, which took the drama away.

i finally learned you had to tell a story, beginning to middle to end. i do love what i do. it's such a treat to catapult yourself back into the civil war, the progressive area, the new deal, or the great society, and to feel like you're learning at every point along the way. i think one of the reasons why it was so much fun living with teddy roosevelt, he love what he was doing. he was a joyful person despite all those things that happened to him, his basic temperament was joyful and optimistic, i felt akin with that. >> you're inspiring, great to see, thank you for doing what you do, good luck with the book, doris kearns goodwin. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> we'd love to have you join us in the studio, visit our website at klru okay organize/overheard. >> one of the encouraging things about history in the last 50 years is that there has been a widening of the perspective of what become as subject for

history, so native american history, women's history, minority histories, all of those -- in fact my field is the old fashioned field, these dead presidents, and it's a good thing. >> funding is provided in part by mfi foundation. improving the quality of life within our community, and from the texas board of legal specialization, board certified attorneys in your community. experienced, respected and tested. also by hillco partners. texas government affairs consultancy. and its global health care consulting business unit hilco health. and by the alice kleberg reynolds foundation. and viewers like you. thank you.