Reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book, one wishes she had expressed some doubts about the efficacy of this or that New Frontier/Great Society initiative. But it is clear that the author has no doubts about the goodness of her country.
An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal Story of the 1960sby Doris Kearns Goodwin (Simon and Schuster, 2024, 467 pages
Doris Kearns Goodwin’s long-standing weakness and anxiety are on full display in this combined history and memoir of the 1960s. More specifically, this is a portrayal of her attraction to the presidencies of John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, and the possible presidency of Robert Kennedy, an attraction reinforced by the words and memories of her husband, Richard Goodwin, who served as speechwriter and non-speechwriter for all three men.
Not that young Doris Kearns didn’t play a direct role in this story, because she did. But this is essentially a story told three times. It is simultaneously the story Goodwin told his wife, the story of her own political awakening, and her story of both the larger story of the decade and the smaller story of her marriage to Goodwin.
The starting point of the entire project was their mutual decision to examine and then discuss the contents of boxes full of Goodwin’s papers. This decision was made towards the end of Goodwin’s life. Goodwin was born in 1931 and died in 2018. By that time, he and his wife had already been married for 42 years. Both Goodwins viewed their marriage as a love story, but their relationship may not be the only love story in that story, unfinished or not.
In the truest sense of the word, Kearns Goodwin has been devoted to her greatest weakness and preoccupation for more than half a century. In fact, this book brings her historical mining activity full circle. It began with Lyndon Johnson in the late 1960s and returns to Lyndon Johnson in this volume – and ends with him.
Her attraction to powerful presidents has led her to write striking and imaginative accounts of the administrations of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt. And to think that it all began when a wide-eyed student, about twenty, was swept away by LBJ. Or was he swept away by her?
In the decades since that time, which may well have been a mutual infatuation, and her later publication of Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, Kearns Goodwin has managed to transform herself into a scholar of the American presidency, focusing her newfound attention first on Lincoln and his “team of rivals,” then on TR and his fellow progressives, and finally on FDR and his New Dealers.
Now that she’s less of a stare-in-the-sky kind of guy, Kearns Goodwin has chosen to focus on not one but two presidents in a single volume. And yet, in doing so, she rarely glances sideways at the foibles or concerns of JFK or LBJ. Instead, she seems quite content to avert her gaze and focus on the hopes and dreams, ideals and visions of both presidents.
And what were the successes? Here, Johnson was clearly superior to Kennedy in domestic policy. And what were the failures? Here, too, Johnson was superior to Kennedy, since his presidency was dominated by the Vietnam War, although this was her husband’s view rather than her own.
One wonders where Kearns Goodwin, now 81, will turn her eyes next as she considers possible future themes. Could she look to Truman as a bridge between FDR and the 1960s? Or will she present us with the Obama he thought he was? Or will she turn the tables and tell the story of a president who challenged Washington rather than strengthened it?
The latter is unlikely, given the history of her stories. But it is possible that her current history might one day prompt Kearns Goodwin to reflect on her past weaknesses and worries. It is possible, but also not likely, given the missed opportunities in this volume, to give serious consideration to the decade and its leaders.
By and large, the imperial presidency that Arthur Schlesinger challenged is a good thing for Doris Kearns Goodwin, if not necessarily for Richard Goodwin. And their differences occasionally become clear as they sift through the many boxes of the speechwriter and husband’s papers, especially those relating to the Vietnam War.
It must be admitted that Richard Goodwin was an extremely talented and prolific speechwriter. At least, that’s what John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Robert F. Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy thought. Goodwin wrote for each of them since Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign. He even switched between some of them, most notably in early 1968, when he switched from McCarthy to RFK and then back to McCarthy.
Throughout the 1960s, Richard Goodwin was always in the thick of things. As civil rights issues, civil rights demonstrations, and civil rights legislation dominated the first half of the decade, Goodwin was often frustrated by Kennedy’s reluctance to take political risks and ultimately delighted – and surprised – by Johnson’s willingness to do so.
In the second half of the decade, it was Johnson’s turn to grapple with Goodwin’s concerns, concerns that escalated into anger at the fact and course of the American war in Vietnam. “We’ll make it” meant something different to Goodwin when applied to Mississippi and something quite different when applied to Southeast Asia. For Goodwin, it made sense to impose or impose his understanding of American ideals on the states of the old Confederacy. Trying to do that in Vietnam didn’t make sense to him. And trying to do it in both places at once made even less sense to him.
After failing to persuade Robert Kennedy to challenge Johnson’s re-election bid, Goodwin joined McCarthy in late 1967. When RFK stepped in after McCarthy’s strong showing in the New Hampshire primary in March 1968, Goodwin returned to RFK.
Despite being an old baseball player, McCarthy insisted he was not offended. Nor did he question Goodwin’s loyalty: “Goodwin is like a professional baseball player. You could trade him from the Braves to the Cardinals and he wouldn’t miss his pitching turn or give away your signals to the other team.”
That may be so, but Goodwin’s greatest political loyalty was to the Kennedys. For them he would have stolen signals and demanded a no-trade clause from them.
Kearns Goodwin’s hierarchy of loyalties is probably more than a little different. Before she leaves baseball behind, her youthful weakness and passion for her beloved Brooklyn Dodgers will likely still be at the top of her list, with or without Richard Goodwin.
In any case, the clarification of all their loyalties will have to come in a full-fledged, undisguised memoir. Perhaps such a memoir could also offer us a sharper view of the 1960s than this love story does.
Such a perspective is certainly missing from these pages. But the insertion of the adjective “unfinished” in the title offers possibilities. Because what exactly is unfinished in Doris Kearns Goodwin’s mind? According to her own statement, her marriage to Richard Goodwin was a solid and happy one, which ended with his death in 2018.
To be sure, the two had political differences from time to time, especially over LBJ, whom Kearns Goodwin had long considered a sad, tragic figure rather than someone to be loathed. She was – and is – saddened by his political decline, but she cannot – and does not – despise him.
Of course, Johnson and all the other key players, with the exception of Goodwin’s friend and ally Bill Moyers, are long gone. So what love affair is still unfinished? Maybe it’s the entire agenda of New Frontier and Great Society liberalism. And maybe that entire agenda now includes today’s left-liberalism.
There is no suggestion in these pages that there was anything wrong with the domestic agenda of 1960s liberalism. There is no suggestion, for example, that it shares Christopher Caldwell’s concerns that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 amounted to a second and very different American Constitution. If anything, Kearns Goodwin seems to believe that the 1960s were merely the first phase of a much larger project of American renewal, thanks to an ever-expanding federal government.
Perhaps that prospect is the crux of their unfinished love story. Or perhaps it is her love affair with her country that will never end for Doris Kearns Goodwin. In that respect, many on the left today could learn something important from both Goodwins—namely, that it is possible to be both an American reformer and an American patriot.
After reading this book, you wish that Kearns Goodwin had expressed some doubts about the effectiveness of this or that New Frontier/Great Society initiative. But you also put the book down knowing that she had – and has – no doubts about the goodness of her country. Of course, this is a country with flaws, but neither irremediable nor systemic flaws.
Whether Kearns Goodwin will be around to chronicle the accomplishments of the next Lincoln-Roosevelt-Roosevelt-Kennedy-Johnson is far from certain. The best that could be expected is a standalone treatise on her appeal to men who wield power, whether in the White House or on a baseball field, most likely somewhere other than our nation’s capital, where baseball teams are first in war and first in peace, but last in both leagues.
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