Leadership in Turbulent Times</em></strong> by Doris Kearns Goodwin, which focuses on the leadership styles of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnso
A note of warning: This is a pretty long summary because the book has a lot in it about four extraordinary leaders. Next week’s will be a lot shorter. I’m getting tired.
Doris Kearns Goodwin has written excellent books about the American presidency as well as writing Wait Till Next Year, her ode to baseball and the Brooklyn Dodgers, her hometown team. Leadership was published in 2018. She writes about four presidents - Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson - who had extraordinary leadership qualities.
She looks at three stages of each president's life: their formative years; how they overcame adversity on their way to the presidency; and how they exerted effective leadership to overcome challenges and accomplish their goals.
Formative Years
We know that Abraham Lincoln had humble roots. Abe read a lot of books as he educated himself, something his father thought was a waste of time. That led to Abe’s bouts of depression, a condition that plagued him for much of his life. He left home when he turned 21 and did a variety of jobs including a stint as a clerk at a general store and as the local postmaster in New Salem, Illinois. He ran for the state legislature and, after losing his first campaign, was elected. As an legislator, he took his time figuring out how politics worked and eventually became an effective legislator.
Teddy Roosevelt was born wealthy and attended Harvard. He was nothing special as a student but he did work hard to overcome his asthma and other physical problems while in Cambridge. He was a voracious leader and had a natural curiosity about lots of things. TR’s dad died during his sophomore year which was rough, but a few months later he met and married Alice Hathaway Lee and was a happy young man.
After graduating from Harvard, Teddy returned to New York City and was chosen to run for the assembly by the local Republican boss. TR spent a lot of time campaigning in saloons and easily won. He, like Lincoln, was in his mid-20's when he took office. Like Abe, he studied how the legislature worked and made friends with the right people. He quickly moved up the leadership ladder, although one of his colleagues observed that he became “indulgent and self-absorbed” sometimes. He failed at moving his legislative agenda, and he learned that perhaps he needed to work a bit more with his colleagues to be effective. He began to work with Democrats and managed to get things done.
Franklin Roosevelt was raised on a country estate on the Hudson. His father suffered a stroke when Franklin was 8 years old and was an invalid for the last ten years of his life. This led FDR to become more introverted. He was an indifferent student and not a very good athlete. He was interested in journalism and worked his way up to being editor of the Harvard Crimson. After graduation from law school, he was not very successful as a lawyer; Oliver Wendell Holmes said FDR had, “A second-class intellect. But a first-class temperament.” Unlike TR, Franklin was not much of a reader and seemed to lack curiosity. Local Democratic political bosses picked him to run for a Democratic seat in the state senate against a strong incumbent. He was a natural politician who was helped by being a Roosevelt, and he barnstormed his way around the district to victory.
FDR decided to take on the local political power, Tammany Hall. That didn’t go well, but he did get the attention of President Woodrow Wilson who appointed him assistant secretary of the Navy where he thrived. He had a knack for figuring out how to get things done in a sluggish bureaucracy.
That got him the Democratic nomination for vice-president with Governor James Cox of Ohio running for president. They lost, but FDR learned how to campaign across the nation and how to assemble a top-notch support team.
Lyndon Johnson grew up poor in south-central Texas. His dad was a local legislator and LBJ learned a lot traveling around the district on constituent business. Lyndon was a good student who was exceptionally bright. He also was a great schmoozer; he knew that you got ahead in this world by getting close to people with power. While at Texas State Teachers College, he got a job cleaning floors in the administration building. He spent a lot of time mopping the floor in front of the president's office and eventually was hired as a messenger, a job he turned into a type of appointments secretary. After graduation, he taught Mexican kids and by all measures was a great teacher.
LBJ had done campaign work for a successful local politician who got him a job in Washington as chief of staff to newly-elected Congressman Richard Kleberg. LBJ assembled a young staff and worked them around the clock, developing a reputation as an effective administrator with great political instincts. He was 25 years old.
With pressure from Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn (a Texan!), FDR appointed LBJ to run a small New Deal agency and he did a great job there. Soon the congressman from Lyndon’s district died, and LBJ announced his candidacy early, cleared the field, and was elected to the US House of Representatives at age 29.
He did well as an FDR protege and, among other things, brought electricity to rural Texas. He was seen as someone to watch.
Adversity
Resilience is a characteristic that all great leaders share, and the next section of the book looks at how each man handled adversity.
Abraham Lincoln was a successful legislator who worked to bring public improvements to the state - roads, bridges and such. By 1840, the third year of a recession had caused the legislature to stop the program, which Lincoln saw as a failure that would ruin his reputation. (It seems kind of silly to Bob in the Basement to blame yourself for a national financial meltdown, but I digress.) At the same time, he broke off his engagement to Mary Todd because, now that he was a failure, he could not support her financially. This led to severe depression, which drove Abe to bed day after day. After some time, and with a lot of help from his friends, he came out of his funk, started a successful law practice, and courted Mary again. He got back to his legislative work and was chosen to go to Congress for one term, which is what they did back then - many politicians would get one term in DC. Abe made the most of his tenure and began to develop his anti-slavery position.
Around this time, slavery was becoming a major issue. The Kansas-Nebraska Act set up popular sovereignty in the territories that wanted statehood - the people would vote and decide on whether or not slavery would be allowed. This set up the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, all 7 of them. The two Senate candidates would go on for hours, with Douglas calling for letting the people choose and Lincoln saying that slavery was not something that should be enabled by a vote; it was wrong. Lincoln lost the race to the incumbent, but he made a national reputation that would lead him to the presidency. Abe wasn’t depressed now.
In 1884, Theodore Roosevelt was working on the floor of the legislature when he learned that he had a new daughter. This was good news since his mother was dying of typhoid fever. TR went home to see his mother die and, a few hours later, be with his wife, Alice, as she passed on.
A few months later, TR was working to defeat James Blaine for the Republican presidential nomination. He lost and managed to irritate many of his political colleagues, so it was off to the Dakotas for two years to get his act together. The journey reformed him and sanded down some of his more elitist edges. He saw himself as a New Man.
Teddy got back into politics and was appointed as a civil service commissioner where he did well. He then became the New York City police commissioner where he cleaned up the force which had been corrupted by the Tammany Hall political machine. He made friends with reporters and held press conferences, a novel concept. He knew that the only way to reform the police was to have strong support among the people which the positive news coverage gave him. He got rid of the bad apples, walked patrols with street cops, created a system of recognition for work well done, and did reform the NYPD. He then took on broader reforms - shutting down the system of graft that saloon owners had to pay to stay open on Sundays - but that was a non-starter with most people. The local politicians had created a monster; he had to go. He did go, and became William McKinley’s assistant secretary of the Navy.
He excelled there and set the country up for what he saw as an inevitable war with Spain over Cuba. That happened, and TR formed the Rough Riders, a diverse military unit of blue bloods, immigrants, doctors, saloon keepers, and such. They did a great job during the Spanish-American War and his legend grew, pushed by those reporters he had befriended along the way. After the war, he was elected governor of New York State. He did bring about serious reforms, but his crusading irritated a lot of the bosses. This time they moved him out of the governor’s office by making him William McKinley’s 1900 running mate. In September of 1901, McKinley was assassinated and TR became president.
At age 39, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was struck down with polio while vacationing at the family island retreat at Campobello, Maine. He had lost the vice presidency when Warren G. Harding was elected president in 1920. That put FDR back in the private sector.
There were no effective treatments for polio, just exercises to regain the use of limbs. FDR planned on fully recovering, which he never did, but he worked tirelessly and got himself into as good shape as he could, given his illness.
Franklin was planning a career in politics but now he needed help to do that. Hs wife, Eleanor, and his long-time assistant, Louis Howe, kept his name in the public spotlight, became his surrogates at various events, and kept the dream alive. In 1924 he was chosen to nominate Al Smith for president. Al lost the nomination on the 103rd ballot, but FDR gave a rousing nominating speech in his first public appearance since being stricken. He was back.
Roosevelt set up a recovery spa in Warm Springs, GA, where he experimented with all sorts of devices and exercises to get stronger. It was the first accessible spa in the country, with everything available to people with mobility issues. Working there gave him humility and a new purpose in life, and he gradually came to relate to the situations of others, people he could not relate to in his pre-polio privileged life.
Al Smith did win the 1928 presidential nomination and supported FDR in his run for governor of New York State. Smith lost to Herbert Hoover, but Franklin became governor. He put together a top-quality team of advisors and went out to help his constituents deal with the Great Depression. President Hoover took a hands-off approach to the economic crisis. FDR passed a comprehensive relief act that became a national model and set him up to become the 1932 Democratic presidential nominee.
Lyndon Johnson’s setback was losing a 1941 US Senate race by a handful of votes which were probably stolen. Johnson had grown weary of the House of Representatives - it was just too big for him to dominate with his outsized personality - so he went for an open Senate seat. After the loss, he was depressed for a while but eventually got over it. He went back to the House but also focused on making a lot of money with his wife’s investments. Ladybird came from money and LBJ did his best to up the family wealth.
The other Senate seat opened up in 1948. He toured the state with a helicopter and made his campaign stops into variety shows to draw a crowd. This time he didn't let the other side steal more votes than his side did. “Landslide Lyndon” won by 87 votes.
He thrived in the small, intimate Senate chamber, making friends with the leadership - from southern states - and used his schmoozing skills to be elected minority whip, a leadership position, in 1951. He made a point of getting to know and pay attention to each senator - there were only 99 besides him, no big deal to LBJ. In 1951 he became the youngest majority leader in Senate history and promptly had a serious heart attack. It was a rough road back, and he fell into a funk. He got over it, buoyed by thousands of best wishes letters from Texans.
During his convalescence, he thought about a lot of things, including his legacy. He decided that it was time to go for a bigger goal than just being successful in the Senate chamber. His first public appearance after his heart attack was a call to action to help those who needed help, a switch from his cautious post-New Deal conservatism that got him elected. He worked with his southern colleagues and passed the Civil Rights Act of 1957. LBJ hoped that he’d be the 1960 presidential nominee but that went to John F. Kennedy. LBJ became JFK’s vice president and then president.
Leadership Qualities
The author examines how Abraham Lincoln enacted the Emancipation Proclamation. One problem with promulgating any sweeping policy act like freeing slaves was that the North wasn’t really winning the war. It had been a muddle, due in part to poor military leadership in the Union Army. Lincoln went and talked to the troops to get an understanding about what needed to change to be successful. He replaced the top Union generals until he got to Grant, who was competent.
Another Doris Kearns Goodwin book, Team of Rivals, shows how Lincoln stocked his cabinet with former rivals, many of whom did not favor the proclamation. The president had to convince his people of the merit of the action, and he finally prevailed, winning over the skeptics by allowing a lot of internal discussion. Lincoln’s cabinet knew that he would take the blame if things went wrong, which was a great comfort to them. He sometimes took the blame even when he was not at fault.
Many of the strong anti-slavery people did not trust politicians on this issue. However, Lincoln had a reputation for keeping his word.
Lincoln used every trick in the political playbook to build support for his policies, especially the Thirteenth Amendment that ended slavery. That was a tough sell. He used transactional politics in order to be transformational. He would appoint politicians, friends of politicians, and relatives to various positions, invite people to participate with him in various functions, grant pardons, and do whatever transaction was necessary to get the job done.
After the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in January,1, 1863, good things happened. Union troops understood that they were fighting to free the slaves as well as save the Union. The North had 200,000 Blacks join the army.
Teddy Roosevelt had to deal with the Great Coal Strike of 1902. Coal heated the nation, and labor and management were far apart and not even negotiating. The owners disdained the workers. Back then, there was no legal way for the president to intervene in a private sector strike. In May of 1902, 147,000 miners walked off the job.
TR first had his Commissioner of Labor pull together the facts about the strike. After weeks of no progress negotiating, the president released the report to the press, which educated the public about what was going on. The mine owners did not look good here, as they were quoted belittling the workers. This motivated the people to call for action.
He assembled a crisis management team led by Massachusetts Governor Winthrop Crane. The group developed a course of action that involved bringing the parties together in a hotel, but got nowhere. Shuttle diplomacy – sending representatives to bring information and proposals back and forth to the parties – did not work.
TR was set back by this failure but the team kept on working. The coal mines were tense with picket lines and company sympathizers confronting each other. Roosevelt had the Pennsylvania governor request federal troops for the only reason they could come into a state – to keep public order. The presence of the soldiers ensured the peace and took away the owners’ argument that miners would willingly return to work if safety were guaranteed. The mines were safe and still no one returned to work.
Finally, TR brought back an idea that had been proposed by labor and rejected by the owners – a blue ribbon commission to work out a settlement. Once the commission was active, the miners would go back to work. The owners determined which groups would be on the commission, and the president appointed the members. This time, TR had JP Morgan, a business tycoon, propose the idea to the owners who agreed to it.
In the early fall of 1902 – right before winter – the miners voted to return to work and the commission did come up with a proposal that satisfied both sides.
TR worked hard and smart to end the strike. He was creative in his approach to solving the problems that needed to be solved.
Franklin Roosevelt came to office in the depths of the Great Depression. He knew that the people needed to be given hope to avoid panic; that the financial collapse had to be countered; and that over time the economic and social structure that had led to the collapse had to be reformed. His inaugural speech set out these points while assuring people that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” He asserted that the current crisis required a massive executive effort that was the equivalent of fighting a war. This was similar to Abraham Lincoln’s using an executive order to issue the Emancipation Proclamation and Teddy Roosevelt’s stretching executive power to intervene in the coal strike.
HIs cabinet was the engine that drove the recovery. They met constantly to craft the plan for the first 100 days. FDR reached out to the Congress and the banking community early to keep them in the loop and make them part of the solution. He held press conferences bi-weekly, and he ended the policy of responding only to pre-submitted questions. He wanted a freewheeling exchange of information. His fireside chats were the vehicle with which he educated the people about what was being done and why it was being done.
He was a tough task master. Bills that normally required weeks to draft were done in days. One major challenge was to identify the financial health of each bank. This could have taken months; it was done in a week. His bill to save the banks by giving them federal money was drafted and passed within days, as the Treasury Department presses printed money that was sent by planes to banks all over the country. It was impressive.
His remedies flew in the face of all that had gone before in American commerce, where elites ran things the way they wanted to with the belief that prosperity would trickle down to the masses. The New Deal essentially set up a regulatory system for capitalism as well as providing jobs and financial stability.
During his first 100 days, 15 major programs were enacted. The Civilian Conservation Corps, which gave work to 250,000 young men, opened its first camp two weeks after its creation. Try doing that today with government at any level.
FDR was a superb communicator, and he was also very good at thanking people – business leaders, the press, legislators and all of those who helped accomplish his goals.
Lyndon Johnson was determined to pass John F. Kennedy’s two major pieces of legislation: a tax cut and a civil rights bill. He set out those goals in his first speech as president, four days after the assassination. As a congressman, the new president had learned a lot from FDR about how to get things done. He kept JFK’s cabinet but did bring in his own team of trusted advisors.
LBJ had been majority leader so he knew how the Congress worked. The civil rights bill would be a tough sell to southern legislators so he did the tax cut first. Conservative senators had a problem with increasing federal spending, so LBJ had to cut the proposed federal budget by 5 to 7 billion dollars to get their support on the tax cut. He ordered agencies to cut spending and even got the Defense Department to trim a billion dollars from its funding. Three months after the assassination, the bill passed.
The civil rights bill ended Jim Crow laws that prohibited Black people from using white-only public accommodations. It was not popular in southern states whose senators chaired key Senate committees. He worked his opponents personally, over dinner and drinks, telling stories about how Black people he worked with couldn't find a bathroom on motor trips, and schmoozing as needed. He also mobilized outside interests to lobby for the bill. Many civil rights activists had friends in high places, and they pressured the holdouts. The Washington Post was recruited to run editorials critical of elected officials who did not support the bill.
He needed to get Democratic and Republican support. To get the GOP, he recruited Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois, who was friends with many of those against the legislation. LBJ gave Dirksen center stage and also gave him all kinds of goodies for his state – a post office here, an ambassadorial appointment there – and it worked, Everett came through and the bill, which was being held up in committee, got the 67 votes needed to move it ahead. On July 2, 1964, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law, LBJ gave out 75 signing pens.
LBJ enacted sweeping legislation. In 1964 he created the Office of Economic Opportunity (the War on Poverty) and also set up 14 task forces of experts to work on other public policy areas. The next year he enacted legislation on Medicare, Medicaid, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, and many other smaller programs. He met with every member of Congress as he moved the legislation ahead, and kept the press informed about what he was doing and why. He used outside events to bolster his arguments. Without the Bloody Sunday police beatings in Selma, AL, in March of 1965, the voting rights bill probably would not have passed.
Vietnam Doris Kearns Goodwin discusses how it all fell apart for LBJ with Vietnam. She observed that he had no outside experts advising him on the war, a major problem. He mainly relied on the military who turned out to be unreliable. He also wasn’t pushing ahead enacting affirmative programs; he was trying to defeat an enemy in what was essentially a civil war between North and South Vietnam, a tough job. He kept a lot of war activities secret, in contrast to his transparency in enacting his domestic agenda. He never brought the American people in as a partner as he had done in creating Great Society programs.
Deaths One thing all four of these leaders had in common was dying relatively young. Lincoln was 56; TR was 60; FDR was 62 and LBJ was 64. Lincoln was assassinated, while TR and FDR had underlying health issues. LBJ had a history of heart attacks, but the author suggests that he died of a broken heart for failing in Vietnam, which greatly tarnished his legacy.
Bob's Take
This was a great book, albeit a depressing one given how totally different the presidency is today – and has been for several decades – compared to what it was when these four men held the office. They shared several traits.
— They were nimble in their politics and able to pivot to meet new challenges that arose as they pursued their goals. Each of them faced obstacles in reaching the finish line and each overcame them.
— They all had great people skills, with FDR probably being the most affable. They were good at connecting to constituents, the press, and opinion leaders.
— They assembled top-shelf support teams that went beyond their cabinet members and close advisors.
— They each overcame adversity that usually involved depression. Lincoln was the leader here, but TR was devastated by the death of his wife and mother essentially at the same time. FDR’s polio was the first adversity he faced, and he was afraid that it would derail the political career that he so wanted. While this is not on the same scale, LBJ was devastated by his Senate loss in 1941 and saw himself as a complete failure who would lose face with his political colleagues.
— They knew early on that they were made for politics. Each had been elected to office before the age of 30.
— They had great empathy for people.
o Lincoln was born that way.
o Teddy was a spoiled rich kid when he was elected to the assembly. As an assemblyman, his empathy increased after he saw how poorly treated laborers were in New York City and how they lived in slums. The deaths of his wife and mother also gave him greater appreciation for what others were going through.
o FDR was also a rich kid. Polio brought him in contact with other disabled people in his spa in Warm Springs, GA, where he developed great awareness of the plight of others.
o LBJ's work as a teacher of poor Mexican students gave him a sense of how the other half lives and also increased his empathy.
Random thoughts The current president is rewriting the book on the presidency, but we have not had leaders like these four in many years. What is striking to me is that they were the right people at the right time to overcome big challenges that threatened the country. It’s too bad we didn't have someone like them today, since the pandemic will go down as one of the biggest challenges of the past hundred years yet we just keep spinning our wheels.
While being impressed by how well each of these presidents performed, I realize that It is probably harder to exert transformational leadership today than it was when the people profiled in this book held office. Each of them utilized the press masterfully to communicate with the public to build support for their positions. Today, there is no powerful press to do that. Media are very fragmented, with digital platforms vying with traditional news outlets to get noticed. Whatever “news” makes you happy, you can find something on the web to support your beliefs and biases. It is almost impossible to create the uniformity of opinion and common consensus that is needed to deal with major challenges. That fact of modern life may explain why we have the Tweeter-in-Chief in the White House.
