A Personal History of the 1960s
by Doris Kearns Goodwin
I might not have. chosen to read this book had Margaret not received it as a birthday gift from a friend. I'm not sure why that was the case. I was familiar with the author from her time as a commentator on PBS news programs. I guess political memoirs are just not a genre that has held much interest for me. I suppose what ultimately tipped the balance toward the book was the focus on the decade that spanned my own journey from ages twenty to thirty.
While I am about the same age as the author, our lives could not have been more different. Kearns Goodwin was a born scholar whose academic credentials led to a close and enduring relationship to Lyndon Johnson, begun while she was still in her early twenties. Goodwin's husband, Dick Goodwin who is the principal character of the narrative, was a speech writer for both JFK and LBJ. He worked in media relations for Eugene McCarthy's brief presidential bid, and then left that effort to join in Bobby Kennedy's primary campaign for the Presidency.
The book took shape toward the end of Dick Goodwin's life when he and Doris decided to make their way through a mountain of boxes full of speech drafts and other documents hoarded by Dick. Doris made copious notes of their conversations and fleshed out the narrative with her own carefully recorded memories of a lifetime as an historian of the American Presidency.
The Goodwin's were thus the ultimate insiders on the '60s political scene in the U.S.
I didn't come close to that, having spent a good part of that decade out of the country. My life was certainly shaped by the political climate of the times, but my opinions and ideology were responses to the broad strokes of history rather than any real familiarity with the most prominent actors.
"Actors", as it turns out, is a perfectly apt term for describing JFK and LBJ. It came as a surprise to me to learn that their most memorable words on the political stage flowed directly from the pen of Dick Goodwin. The New Frontier, the Great Society and a lot of other memorable themes resided first in Goodwin's brain. Beyond the words, of course, those two presidents did form and guide much of the strategy behind what seemed then to be near-revolutionary transformations of the Country.
Under the two Democratic presidents Civil Rights, Health Care and equal access to opportunity did make great progress toward realizing the prescriptions of the Constitution. The account of those accomplishments as related by the Goodwins made a convincing case that both of the Kennedy brothers and Lyndon Johnson were sincere in their inclinations and efforts to right historic wrongs.
What was not really explored or explained in the writings of either of the Goodwins was how JFK and Lyndon Johnson could let their domestic accomplishments be undermined by militarism and war. JFK's, first by not cutting himself loose from Eisenhower's initiatives in Vietnam, and then the disaster in Cuba's Bay of Pigs. Johnson recognized how the momentum toward war in Indochina was going to destroy the legacy which the Great Society had offered him, but he seemed unable to do anything to change course
Dick and Doris expressed regret at having to turn against their political heroes because of Vietnam, but they seemed to interpret the failures of Kennedy and Johnson primarily as evidence of character flaws. Perhaps that was in part because they -- and I as well -- were burdened to some extent with deep-seated cultural baggage that included elements of unrecognized racism and over-blown conspiracy threats about communism and socialism. It seems to me also that the Goodwins, in spite of their intimate knowledge of the government's vast machinery, did not properly acknowledge the overwhelming power of the Military/Industrial Complex which Eisenhower had pointed out to us, and which the power of the presidency was to some extent subservient, regardless of the preferences of the office holders of the moment.
In reading the book I was aware of a rising level of apprehension as the events of 1968 loomed. JFK's 1963 killing was shocking, but somehow not a very emotional personal experience for me. But the assassinations of Bobby and MLK seemed at the time to herald an irrecoverable disaster. Still, I did appreciate Kearns Goodman's reconstruction which restored some order to the chronology for me beyond the trauma which had muddled my memories of the times.
Kearns Goodwin's book is very well crafted and an important and inspiring story which only she could have told.
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