You say a sound economy at home is one of the preconditions for an active role abroad, but what we see in the Obama Administration is retraction, i am not calling its population, i am calling it retraction, pulling back from the tra veils of the world, tremendous veils and i dont see anything else who can with housekeeper of the world, Doris Kearns Goodwin and josef joffe, when we continue. Additional funding provided by these funders. And by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. From our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. The great fundamental issue now before our people, it is are the American People fit to govern themselves to rule themselves, to control themselves . I believe they are. My opponents do not. Rose Doris Kearns Goodwin is here, she is a historian, she is an author, . He is so much more, her books have brought to life some of the most fascinating figures in American History and awarded the pulitzer prize, eleanor the home front in world war ii, her 2005 book, teams of rivals of Abraham Lincoln and leading members of his cabinet was part of the Steven Spielberg movie lincoln, this tells the story of roosevelt and howard taft, they door roosevelt, william theodore. Roosevelt. William howard taft. Thank you. Your red sox did it. Oh, my god, we were there. The happiest day to be there when they won in that stadium. Rose game six at home. And that they were winning all the time so i didnt have to run around to the bathroom to be afraid. It was great. Rose and good for boston. It was great for boston. It really was. And that team was a different kind of team that we usually have, scrappy, no big stars. Rose exactly. Except for big papi and they worked together as a team. Rose can you imagine, he hit about 7 30 for the entire series. I know. Incredible. He is magic. Certainly was magic in the playoffs and series. The bully pulpit, you came to this, because the last time i really talked to you, you are writing a book about Teddy Roosevelt, what the hell happened . Well, you know,. Rose you couldnt find enough about Teddy Roosevelt so you had to pull in others. Never can i write just about the person, but the a lot of interest no way could i write about lincoln without including the cabinet. So true with teddy, great books have been written on him, wanted to use him and the progressive err are a so i decide i will have a bigger cast of characters, taft i had an extraordinary friendship i didnt know about and the journal lists are essential to the progressive area so i widened my group of people so hopefully it could be a fresh look. Rose so it really is about their relationship to these journalists, these enormous steps of lincoln. All wrote for one magazine. Sam mcclure who they consider his magazine mcclure the van gawrd of the progressive movement, fabulous, colorful, kind of like teddy, manic and at times and would be in as asylums at time. They are all at this place, they all are comrades, and they create enormous impact, because they mobilize the country to allow Teddy Roosevelt to pressure a reluctant congress to get something done. Rose when did when did Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard taft first meet . They first meet when the they are in their thirties in washington, teddy is Civil Service commissioner and taft is solicitorgeneral, they lived in the same part of washington, and they had kids the same age, so they walked together to work, i love the image of them walking, taft sort of listening to teddy, teddy rose what is the difference in the size of these two men. Taft would have been then at a slimmer level two, 50, 270, teddy, teddy weighed in the two hundreds but teddy is fivenine, five10. Taft is six feet tall but much big store they would have been looked shorter than each other. And what happened to the friendship. It lasted for a long time. And in fact teddy makes taft his hand picked successor in 1908 when he wasnt running again and runs his campaign, gives him all the advice in the world, dont play golf, it is a rich mans game you wont look like a working class guy, fight him,. Rose William Jennings brian. Right and he is so happy when taft wins, taft will carry out my legacy, i trust no one more, he calls him a beloved person in his letters, teddy then goes to africa and gives him space, comes back and his progressive friends tell him that taft hasnt been as honest to the legacy. Rose and is cozing up to ceos. And to the regulars in the congress who he needed he thought to get the tariff bill through, it was more complicated than that, he simply didnt know how to be a public leader and he screwed up the things he tried to do to fulfill teddys legacy and then teddy comes back and he is missing being president and the progressives say we want you so he ends up, of course, running against taft. Rose and Woodrow Wilson wins. Of course when the two split the vote, actually teddy and taft together, teddy as the Third Party Candidate and taft as the regular republican candidate get more than 50 percent of the vote, but they split it and of course the democrat wins and wins the congress and wins the senate. Rose and then world war i and thats the way history happens. Thats the way history happens. Rose so but more about the friendship, i mean they were very different men, one loved the public eye, didnt like the public eye, taft was much more cerebral would you say. Yes, deliberate if the. Rose deliberate if the would be a better word. I think part of sit opposites attracting that teddy was so outdoorsy and taft except for golf hardly wanted to walk, roosevelt tried to drag him on these expeditions where you climb over rocks and mountains and he would just stay home but they a third from early on, they were new reform in other words the early corrupt age of the 18 nineties, 1900s, early gilded age they both wanted to see politics out of Civil Service, they both wanted to see regulation of government, and they were considered new men, so that is what they shared as young people, against the establishment of the Republican Party. Rose it is often said Teddy Roosevelt resided in a transition over americas public life. Before Teddy Roosevelt nothing really had been done to help the social and economic problems of the industrial age, you had this huge gap between the rich and the poor, so many echoes like today, it takes me so long to write this the echoes come back, the middle class is being squeezed out, you have got monopolies that are forming and not doing fairly by people, and you have tenements and slums and they thought then before Teddy Roosevelt that government had nothing to do with that, indeed if it interfered with the economy you would screw up the whole economy, so he begins to be the modern president as a steward of the people and senses through public pressure to get congress to the first regulation of meat packing, the first regulation of labor situations, antitrust suits, it is the modern world that is beginning, modern regulatory world. Rose and correlation zero todays world as we have gone to a new age which i assume you call the. Like. It is really incredible because what happens in the 1900s because of ten inventions, the telephone, the telegraph is coming, everything is speeded up, they talk about nervous disorder at the turn of the 20th century because the pace of life is so much more, you are not writing letters but telegramming and you are moving to the city and you miss the so las of the country. If that is considered speeding up the internet speeded up our life exponentially. And there is a basic question what is the role of the government . Thats right. Rose which is a still a big we looking at the healthcare debate. It was debated philosophically then, laissezfaire was almost a religious fervor, not, the overwhelming majority of people in politics and the people believed you would hurt the prosperous economy if you got too involved thats why you had to used the bully pulpit, he defind the National Platform a real estate has unlike any other political figure to educate the country as to why government had to be important in that lives, it is a big deal what he did. Rose they was the first person who used the bully pulpit of the white house. Indeed was the word and used used the bully pulpit, he loved reporters, if you were a tv guy or a radio guy or a print guy and having his hour saying, you would be in there taking pictures while the barber is trying to keep touch of his moving head. Rose and he never feared the press. He basically felt they were necessary. It is better that he thought they were necessary, he was a o he respected them and he knew that as long as he could accept their criticism, they would step his criticism because he got mad at them if they wrote things that he thought they were stupid and instead of breaking the friendship it kept going. Rose john kennedy was a bit like that, we talk about kennedy on the 50th anniversary. It means you have enough confidence in yourself and enough stebs sense of swagger that i need the public so i need the press, i mean the press is the channel to the public. Rose Lyndon Johnson never got that . No. I mean maybe in the early days he did when he was being treated well, and he liked to think, but after a while, once the press became neck, you know, then the friendship would be broken, that is a very different kind of thing. Rose because i thought it happened earlier because of the kennedy, kennedy was so charismatic and he felt they loved him more than they will ever love me and never give me a fair shake. The johnson was so interesting, nobody is more colorful, except my guy Teddy Roosevelt. Rose you think more colorful than Lyndon Johnson . Well, i will say i didnt know Teddy Roosevelt when i was 24 years old and didnt go down to his ranch, so johnson wins in that regard. Rose have you written everything you are going to write about that . I dont know, i feel so strongly still about lbj and, you know, i think maybe as i get older i would like to think about it, not as a 30year old when i wrote it, right after knowing him, and feeling that sense of friendship, but as a historian, so many years later, yeah i think soso. Rose you really should, i dont know, if any 24 years old had a relationship with a president in terms of how he actually he was crazy about you because of your brain and experience and , no it was my physical being. laughter. rose i was hoping you would say that. laughter. . Rose i wanted you to lead me into that. Squabble i did that. Rose i am so lucky. Jack welch wait until this moment. Anyway rose you cant get out now. I will always be grateful to lbj, i think what happened then, i saw him in a vulnerable stage in his life. Rose exactly. When he needed so las and i developed and empathy for him and i would like to think that empathy is what i brought to all of these people. Even with taft, you start off knowing almost nothing about him except he was fat and lost the 11 election in 12 and won in eight an he is a decent man, not a public leader like teddy but i sense a is, i felt a sense of understanding him and his wife, who he adored and had a stroke in the beginning of his presidency and i am feeling so sad for him and i would like to think that experience with lbj as a historian changed me forever because it meant i am not judging these people, i am trying to make them come to life. I could talk strolls about, this i mean, it is such and extraordinary opportunity and you wrote the, you need to write the book and soon. Uhoh. Rose no. Do it thousand, because really, it is really the perspective of someone i mean to have, with someone as larger than life as linton johnson, everybody says that, to know him at a point in which he is thinking about this life. Right. Rose like. Unparalleled, no one had that access. It was very special. Rose what was it about you he loved so much . I am serious now, other than your physical presence. Where you know what . I think because i listened to him. He told stories, half of them werent true, it didnt matter, i listened, i mean, i would listen and i loved it, i mean, i love history, right. Rose yeah. He knows i love history so how could it not be fun to have a 24yearold thinking about history and looking at this guy and he is telling stories and he is saying yeah, tell me more. Yes and a food listener can make you much more willing to talk. I think so. Rose there is a sense of you dont want to talk to the wall you want to talk to somebody who says, that is fascinating. And then asks questions like, and maybe precipitate answers or thoughts you would not have otherwise if the question hadnt been there. I think thats right. What i find myself do which any of these other people i talk to them anyway but they dont talk back to me. Rose i think also he is certainly sort of a harvard ph. D. Stuff too, didnt he. And the antiwar stuff too. Rose and it was like two people who could not be more different. Right, right. Rose sitting in a room having a conversation about big ideas. Big. Rose about war, about politics, about the country, about change, all of that. Rose i want you to go back today and write this book. But now this guy. Yes, sir. This guy is almost as interesting. Rose thats not true. Is it really . Yes, yes. Rose okay. Make the case. Okay. He was interested in 1,000 things. If he read an article one day and it could be about bushwhacking or about birds, it could be about a syria he would have a person to lunch the next day, now wait just be quiet and then he wrote 40 books, he had manic energy, thats the one who gave maxwell good to the very last drop, he was physical extraordinary, right, he had asthma as a kid, somebody says to him at one point you are becoming an invalid you have to do manager to make your body, i know your mind is great but your body has to be there for the mind so he comes out this exercise maniac. Rose and he think of what happened to him. Not only does he have the life threatening asthma, his father dies when he is at harvard his beloved father and his wife who is young dies in childbirth on the same day that his mother dies in the same house and then he goes to the badlands. Rose thats right. He went to the badlands after. On the same day his wife and mother. His mother had gotten typhoid fever and died a week later, the depression was such he went to the badlands because he thought constant activity would prevent over thought and he could finally sleep at night as he rounded up the ranch hand guys for 200 miles a day, and then he comes back, finally, and sees again the young girl, he dirt car row his best friend as a kid and loved him all his life and finally Manny Ramirez irs her and loved him with a passion of a girl. Rose did he love her with the same passion . I think he loved her not with that kind of romantic passion he had for the first one, for alice but a much deeper love, a sustaining love that lasted the rest of his life, he really loved her and she became his wife, she had a very disordered childhood, her father had been very wealthy man and lost his money and became an alcoholic so all she wanted when she married him was a home, a sanctuary, an anchor and given the energy he had he could always refresh himself at home. That is what is so interesting about these people, nellie taft grows up unconventional and wants to be something and wants to teach and she decides she will never get married and meets taft and respects and adores her and wants her independence and makes her his partner and she is his political advisor and helps them to become president he never would have run if it hadnt been for her and she tragically, eight weeks or so after his presidency starts, has a stroke, had been healthy all the way up until then could never speak connected language again and you wonder why his presidency facility erred, not just because he couldnt be a public leader and didnt understand things and he shouldnt have been a politician, this overshadowed everything so that is what interests me, these people, thats how you look ever netcally it doesnt mean you say sea great leader because of it it is just you feel is a sad. Rose was there a bounty ofs, letters, correspondence, trends who recorded and wrote memoirs about each of well, the great thing was that they had 400 letters they eckersley exchange with each other over a period of time, handwritten, later some of them typed and they really talked, thats the way people communicated them then but then there is this other great character archie butt. I love him he is the military aid to roosevelt and taft. Rose they both loved him. And he loved both of them and wrote daily letters to the family and they are a treasure because they are gossipy and tell a[ telephone ringing ] yout each person is feeling, he was so concerned when teddy was thinking of running against taft, that he didnt know what to do. Do, can i leave taft because i love teddy so much he knew he could never leave taft because he glue to love him too, so he needs to take a vacation. Rose dont they insist on it too. It is so sad, so anyway he is going to europe, and the day teddy announces he decides i cant leave taft now h he he wil need me more than anything so he canceled the reservation and taft says you go on and he comes back and it goes down and devastated taft again. They both cried, taft probably more. Rose and you. That person, you know. Rose that woman who keeps so really amazing story. It really is. I mean, what i think history is about is stories, you tell a series of connected stories, so here i am telling a series of stories about taft and teddy and about tar bell, there is another person, a great journalist, she makes another decision as a woman, a young woman at 14, she praise that she will never get mar recognize. Rose praise . Because she feels the frustration of her mother who had talent and wanted to do nothing and never gets married but becomes the most famous journalist of her era, think we can have those things together that no one of these three women thought they could have. It is good. Rose it is good. Times have changed. I was thinking about your son who went to iraq and all of that, the wonderful sons you have and so proud of. We were here together, you a