Presidential speechwriter coined ‘Great Society’ term for LBJ’s ambitious reforms
Richard Goodwin, who has died of cancer aged 86, was an adviser and speechwriter to US presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and was credited with coining the term ‘‘the Great Society’’ to describe Johnson’s ambitious domestic agenda of the 1960s before parting ways with him over the Vietnam war.
Early in his career, Goodwin was something of a prodigy of public service. Before he turned 30, he was a law clerk at the US Supreme Court, a congressional investigator who helped uncover the television quiz-show scandals of the 1950s, a speechwriter for Kennedy, and a White House official.
Known for his craggy face, blunt manner and ever-present cigars, Goodwin had a sharp mind
– he was first in his class at
Harvard Law School – and, some would say, sharper elbows. He was considered one of the closest confidants of Kennedy and his brother Robert, then the attorney-general.
In his book A Thousand Days, about Kennedy’s presidency, White House adviser Arthur Schlesinger pronounced Goodwin ‘‘the supreme generalist who could turn from Latin America to saving the Nile monuments, from civil rights to planning a White House dinner for the Nobel Prize winners, from composing a parody of Norman Mailer to drafting a piece of legislation, from lunching with a Supreme Court Justice to dining with [actress] Jean Seberg – and at the same time retain an unquenchable spirit of sardonic liberalism and unceasing drive to get things done’’.
During the 1960 presidential campaign, Goodwin was one of Kennedy’s most gifted phrasemakers. He then became the top White House authority on Latin America and launched the Alliance for Progress, an economic development programme for Central and South America.
In 1961, soon after the catastrophic Bay of Pigs invasion that attempted the overthrow of the new socialist Castro regime in Cuba, Goodwin had a secret meeting with Ernesto ‘‘Che’’ Guevara while both were in Uruguay to ratify the Alliance for Progress.
‘‘But, of course, when we started this conversation though, he said, ‘Goodwin, I’d like to thank you for the Bay of Pigs,’ ’’ Goodwin recalled in a 2007. ‘‘He said, ‘We were a pretty shaky middle class, support was uncertain, and this solidified everything for us.’ So what could I say? I knew he was right.’’
After Kennedy’s assassination, he joined the Johnson administration as a speechwriter and special assistant to the president.
Goodwin took the name the Great Society from a 50-year-old book by a British sociologist to describe an idealistic vision of America encompassing advances in civil rights, healthcare, education, environmental preservation and what became known as ‘‘the War on Poverty’’. Johnson first used the term ‘‘Great Society’’ in a speech in May 1964.
The following year, after civil rights marchers were attacked by police and vigilantes in Selma, Alabama, Johnson asked Goodwin to draft a speech addressing the country’s racial divisions.
In eight hours, Goodwin composed an address that Johnson delivered before a joint session of Congress on March 15, 1965. Often called the ‘‘We Shall Overcome’’ speech, it was one of the most powerful statements of Johnson’s presidency.
‘‘Our mission is at once the oldest and the most basic of this country: to right wrong, to do justice, to serve man,’’ Johnson said. ‘‘What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and state of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life. Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.’’
After the speech, Goodwin returned with Johnson to the White House, where they sat up talking and sipping scotch until 3am. At 33, Goodwin had, in many ways, reached the summit of his career.
Within months, Johnson signed the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, which banned discrimination in voting and officeseeking. He gave one of the pens he used to sign the bill to Goodwin.
Other Great Society legislation established Medicare, Medicaid, and national endowments for the arts and humanities. At the same time, however, Johnson was escalating the US military presence in Vietnam, leading to an irreparable split with Goodwin, who resigned in September 1965.
The following year, he published a book critical of the war and, under an assumed name, wrote articles for the New Yorker denouncing Johnson’s Vietnam policies.
In 1968, he joined Robert Kennedy’s presidential campaign, which ended with his assassination in June that year. Goodwin later remarked that a decade that began with the youthful promise of John Kennedy’s election ended in sorrow and despair.
‘‘For a moment, it seemed as if the entire country, the whole spinning globe, rested, malleable and receptive, in our beneficent hands,’’ he wrote in his memoir. That sense of hope ‘‘came to an end in a Los Angeles hospital on June 6, 1968’’, with the death of Bobby Kennedy.
Goodwin’s first wife, Sandra Leverant, died in 1972. He is survived by his wife of 42 years, Doris Kearns Goodwin, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian; a son from his first marriage; and two sons from his second marriage. –
In 1961 he met Che Guevara, who told him: ‘‘Goodwin, I’d like to thank you for the Bay of Pigs.’’ ‘‘What could I say?’’ Goodwin later recalled. ‘‘I knew he was right.’’