2011.03.03 Speech on Presidential History

We went to a speech on Thursday night at Queens and it was DKG about presidential history. She told story after story about Presidents that were humorous and informative and we had a wonderful time there.

We also went to see Doris Kearns Goodwin give a speech Thursday night. She talks fast but clearly and told great stories about LBJ, FDR, and Lincoln. She worked for LBJ as an intern "in the days when that was an honor". There were only 3 female interns out of 20 or so and LBJ liked her a lot from the beginning. Within a week of meeting him, a national magazine published an article she wrote titled something like "How We Can Get Rid of LBJ" and she thought she was doomed from there. The article was something she did because she was so against the Vietnam war and she wrote it before she got the internship. Anyway LBJ kept her on and she said she loved listening to his stories which he told with great flair. Later she learned they were in fact all tall tales with only a sprinkling of truth in any of them. Then she was afraid one time she had gotten herself in too deep with him when he took her for a picnic beside a lake named for himself in Texas. She said it started to look romantic when he put out a blanket and flowers. She was nervous and started talking about her boyfriend (which she made up). He told her she reminded him so much of his Mother!!!! She said she was relieved and insulted at the same time. Another great one is that some city during Roosevelt's time had a group of mass transit people go on strike because an African American had been hired. The guy had made 95% on a proficiency test and had certainly more than qualified for the job. Eleanor was adamant that Franklin do something to support the black population's rights. So he individually addressed a letter to all the striking men saying if they didn't return to work by Monday, the government would start sending them draft letters for the army on Tuesday. Every last one of them returned to work. She said she is working on a book about Theodore Roosevelt and after that, she thinks she is about out of Presidents to write about that she has any interest in. She said Obama and more modern presidents use electronic media so much she doesn't know what historians are going to use for source material. She uses actual diaries and notes made by the parties involved to do her research. One other interesting note is she said it took her twice as long to write her book on Lincoln as it did to fight the whole civil war and it took her as long to write the one on Roosevelt as it did to fight WWII. The Roosevelt book won her a Pulitzer Prize.