The Paula Gordon Show |
American Stories | ||||
What do Franklin Roosevelt and PeeWee Reese, captain of the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1950s, have in common? The greatness of leadership, according to Pulitzer Prize winning historian and baseball fanatic Doris Kearns Goodwin. Ultimately, we can never completely understand the mystery of leadership, but we can learn from the stories of those whose greatness we can now see. Roosevelt had a genius for letting people release their energy, feelings, and emotions for a common cause. Reese’s personal acceptance of Jackie Robinson, organized baseball’s first Black player, helped America’s baseball fans accept Robinson, too.
The subject here is much more than celebrity. The subject is nothing less than how does one release the energy of individuals -- whether in a family, an organized sport or in the big world -- for a greater good? Dictators just can’t release that energy -- not at home, not at the office, home plate or on the world’s stage. The subject, it turns out, is democracy. Which takes us back to baseball and politics. Both are about how people cooperate over time. Both create a bond, provide the energy required to make things happen. Both require one to think, to resist getting caught up in frenzied activity. And both politics and baseball were at their best when they empowered people, a condition which is diminished today in both sports.
Goodwin is convinced we’ll never fully understand how great leaders attain their greatness, but that does not diminish her fascination with their human-ness. The Roosevelts, Fitzgeralds, Kennedys, Lyndon Johnson and the men who filled the starting lineup of the Brooklyn Dodgers through most of the 1950’s were regular, ordinary human beings with failings and flaws and domestic troubles. And they were leaders at the same time. Goodwin works to understand the mixture. The answers to many of her questions, she believes, are buried in the details of everyday life. Hence, her meticulous historical searches.
What’s today’s challenge? To draw people together without the artifice of war, to make people feel their public actions are part of their private lives, to find ways for people to feel connected. Goodwin is an optimist (remember, she was a Brooklyn Dodgers’ fan.) And it is her sense of history that gives her hope. Goodwin believes great leadership will return.
Known for her savvy political analysis, Goodwin offers us America’s stories -- in the tradition of Franklin Roosevelt -- and she’s confident we can recapture our connectedness. Still mesmerized by how the ordinary and extraordinary come together to create great leaders, you won’t be surprised by her next book: the life and times of Abraham Lincoln and those around him who came to measure themselves by him.
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Conversation 1 Doris Kearns Goodwin shares her love of stories and history with Paula Gordon and Bill Russell. She describes the origins of that love, setting the stage with stories from her childhood when baseball and storytelling were central. She recalls a transforming childhood moment in Franklin Roosevelt’s study when she understood the power of stories, “if you get it right.” |
Conversation 2 Ms. Goodwin describes what led her to Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and the times in which they lived. She describes the process by which she wrote No Ordinary Time, the resources from which she drew and how she fit the pieces of the puzzle together. She uses Rose and Joe Kennedy as examples of how historians gather information and tells stories of how differently people understand (or fail to understand) their place in history. With Abraham Lincoln (the subject of Ms. Goodwin’s next book) providing examples, Ms. Goodwin describes the historian’s hope of recreating a time which is inaccessible to most of us, the process by which that historian puts together the pieces gleaned in research to create a larger sense of what actually was going on. She salutes the power of details and stories with examples from her youth. |
Conversation 4 Ms. Goodwin makes her points about both the mysteries and the art of leadership with baseball tales. She describes how baseball took its place in the American psyche in an earlier time and the powerful good sports can do. She relates sports to the political arena and our connections to our leaders. The role of the press is examined in this context. Ms. Goodwin is optimistic we can restore balance to the relationship between our leaders and the press, concerned about the high price we pay for our current lack of perspective. She worries about the diminished lack of connection Americans have to each other and to being American. |
Acknowledgements Ms. Goodwin was as generous with her time and attention as she is meticulous in her work. The gathering she occasioned in The Pub of The Commerce Club of Atlanta was special. We thank her.
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