Leadership in the Storm: How Four U.S. Presidents Handled Turmoil

When presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin began working five years ago on her newest book, Leadership in Turbulent Times, she didn’t know how apropos it would be to today’s political climate. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author profiled four presidents — Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson — who led the nation through some of its most difficult times. In the book, Kearns Goodwin chronicled their extraordinary strength and leadership acumen. She shared her insights on the Knowledge@Wharton.

Knowledge@Wharton: Is there a bit of irony in the timing of the release of this book? Doris Kearns Goodwin: J Q ! ago, I had no idea how relevant it would be to be studying these four leaders who lived in turbulent times. People kept asking me, “Are these the worst of times ever?” At least I can point back to what it was like for Lincoln when he took office and 600,000 soldiers were about to die. The country was split in two. The economic situation and the social situation during the Industrial Revolution were even more fraught in terms of the gap between the rich and the poor, and the new inventions that were making people feel the country was changing too fast under Teddy Roosevelt, as it is under Trump. [Franklin] Roosevelt comes in during the Depression, and Lyndon Johnson # sination of John F. Kennedy was making people wonder what was going on in the world. They all had the strength to bring us through those situations, so it has given me hope about history and [a feeling of] reassurance. Knowledge@Wharton: When you look at these four men, are there commonalities in their leadership? Kearns Goodwin: They obviously come from really different backgrounds. Both Roosevelts come from a privileged, wealthy background, Abraham Lincoln endured enormous poverty, and LBJ experienced sporadic hard times. They’re different in temperament. But they do have certain kinds of what I call “family resemblances” in terms of leadership. They kept growing through loss and adversity. They had resilience. They eventually developed humility, even if they started without it. They knew how to talk to people with stories. They built teams of more strongminded people who could disagree with them. They had the emotional intelligence to deal with those teams. Those words might not have been known then, but we know now. They somehow were able to connect to the people directly and control negative emotions. All these things shine a light on today, I think. And they all had an ambition that was larger than themselves, eventually. That’s the key thing. Knowledge@Wharton: You knew President Johnson from your days in Washington, and being there with his staff. Tell us your memories of him and what made him unique as a leader following the assassination of President Kennedy. Kearns Goodwin: I think he was immediately aware that he had to grasp the reins # "it like when the cattle are running around and you can’t get them to go in a straight line, you have to sort of take the lead. Someone has to lead on the horse to get the cattle # "civil rights bill of JFK, which was stuck in Congress with little hope it could get out, "by his advisers, “You can’t do this. Your election is 11 months away. If you do this, you’re not going to get anything through Congress and you’re going to expend the coinage of the presidency.” And he said, “What the hell’s the presidency for?” For all the problems that Lyndon Johnson had, and the war in Vietnam will always be cutting his legacy in two, he was the right man with the legislative wizardry to get the civil rights bill through Congress, to get Republicans on his side. At the end of his life, when he worried about it, would he be remembered for anything positive? Civil rights would be it. Knowledge@Wharton: President Johnson grasped what needed to be done domestically, but international policy was a little bit different, correct? Kearns Goodwin: Correct. " ! # wanted to achieve right from ( ! # night when he was watching the Kennedy assassination on television with his aides. "he wanted to get a tax cut through to get the economy going, then he could get civil rights through, then he would get voting rights through, then he wanted aid to education. Finally, he " man’s Medicare bill through. " ! larger domestically in terms of Medicare, immigration reform, PBS, NPR, etc. But on foreign policy, what he was simply trying to do was not accomplish something with a positive goal — he was trying to prevent failure. At the very beginning, it was an impossible " ( Z less you put more troops in here, the war is going to fail. The failure will be on you.” So, he adds troops, and then he adds more troops, and then he adds more troops, and he doesn’t really allow the American people to know \ "keep the Great Society going so that he can have his domestic programs and the foreign policy thing on the back corner. You can’t do that in a matter of war and peace. The people have to know what they’re doing. They need a goal. All of the opposite qualities of his domestic leadership, unfortunately, were there in foreign policy and Vietnam. Knowledge@Wharton: Abraham Lincoln was in of! the country’s history as well. What were the characteristics of his leadership? Kearns Goodwin: What he brought into the presidency was resilience because that had been part of his life all along. You had to be resilient to go through those terrible Union losses in the early part of the war. Yet he kept believing it, in part because he had come through so much # ^! # # ( he warned the people that ! _ times until it would be really disgraceful. Then he promised he wouldn’t try again.

" _ empathy, so that even as he prosecuted the law, he understood where the Southern people were coming from. "that, when it was all over, they could come back together as a union. That second inaugural is the most beautiful example of that. You know, the sin of slavery was shared by both sides. Once the North had won the war, he said that both sides read the same Bible, both prayed to the same God, and neither one’s prayers were fully answered. " ( J none, with charity for all,” let us bind up a nation. "he had to prosecute the war, but he was also merciful. "" " severing. And he had a gift for language that gave that struggle meaning, which probably no one else could ! " \ _ dinary character. Knowledge@Wharton:

" ! significant divisions that existed in the country at that time? Kearns Goodwin: It’s hard to imagine what it was like when he first took office and the country was literally "if he had known what he # # ( \ have thought he could have lived through it. That showed us how intense that time was. You have to have had his sad sense of melancholy that got him through it, but lightened by his extraordinary humor, which he said “whistled off his sadness.” I had no idea how funny he would be. I knew he’d be a great statesman to live with — because I spent about 10 years and now this additional ! Q\! ! with him — and I wouldn’t change it for anything in the world. Knowledge@Wharton: Franklin Roosevelt began his presidency at the height of the Great Depression, which had a tremendous impact on the country. Like Lincoln, FDR had to act for the greater good at a time when people were hurting, not from war but from economic collapse. " ` Kearns Goodwin: The case study that I do on FDR is to use him as an example of turnaround leadership. LBJ’s a visionary, Lincoln is transformative, and Teddy is crisis management. I’ve been giving lectures to business groups for these last 10, 20 years, so it was fun to really try and learn that literature and figure out how these But in FDR’s case, when ( cial system has collapsed. "holiday to close all the banks, reopen them with an emergency banking bill that would shore up the weaker banks and let the stronger ones go forward. But most importantly, even when he gave his inaugural address, his main concern was he has ! very badly frightened people, many of whom thought not having a job was their fault. " ( Q \ system that’s at fault, and we are going to take action to make that system fairer. And if I don’t get the Congress to go with me, I’m going to take executive powers to do it.” Just because of his optimism and his confidence in that one speech alone, thousands of telegrams came into the J " ( # letters saying, “OK, we’re going to go with you because you are there.” That’s the mystique of leadership, I think, that you can project your own optia people. Then he could start taking the action. After he takes the turnaround action, he has to systematically and what had to be changed in the relationship between the government and the business community. Knowledge@Wharton: What made Teddy Roosevelt so unique for you? Kearns Goodwin: It’s his " \ ! ( Q ing that if one of these people had to be president today, he would probably be the most likely one because of the situation he faced after McKinley was assassinated, when the economy had been so shaken up at the turn of the 20th century. It was so much like the situation that faced us in the 2016 campaign. You had rural areas that felt cut off from cities. You had lots of immigrants coming in and "of the centrist philosophy. It was going to be a square deal for the rich and the poor, for the capitalist and the wage worker. And he became a { ! “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” " \ | \ you have to, but then when you have to hit, hit hard.” " ! ! } _ " ( ~ the very last drop.”

They all had an ambition that was larger than themselves, eventually. That’s the key thing