Doris Kearns Goodwin Will Try to Avoid Her Fate

Today, Imus and Doris Kearns Goodwin eloquently discussed the relationship between Martin Luther King, Jr. and President Lyndon Johnson, the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and President Obama’s clout. But it all came down to this: Doris is going to inherit the karma of a tortured chicken.

Before things turned spiritual, Doris, a presidential historian, commented on the good fortune of any author when Imus becomes obsessed with the subject of their book (see: Chambers, Whittaker). That most recent beneficiary has been Hampton Sides, whose book Hellhound on His Trail, about the hunt for Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassin James Earl Ray, isn’t even on sale yet.

Doris was working for LBJ at the time of King’s death, and explained their complicated association. “They needed each other, and created the great Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Fair Housing, all together,” she said. “Without Martin Luther King pushing in from the outside, without LBJ on the inside mobilizing Congress, those great historic achievements could not have happened.”

A rift occurred when King made a speech about Vietnam that “felt like a break in the heart” for Johnson, whose Voting Rights speech had brought tears to King’s eyes.

She admittedly has no idea who really killed King, but invoked historian Taylor Branch’s belief that sometimes when larger-than-life figures are killed, it’s difficult to believe one insignificant person can account for the pain and suffering of multitudes.

Sort of like what Goldman Sachs has inflicted on the public. Doris likened recent Wall Street woes to the uproar in 1933, when Congress held hearings about the fact that “the privileged few had taken advantage of an unsuspecting public.”

“The country got so outraged that that’s why the SEC was finally created, with Joe Kennedy as its chairman,” she said. “That was one of the most significant New Deal reforms. The same junk is going on again: the SEC is serving notice on Goldman Sachs using unsuspecting people's money to fund their own profits.”

In Doris’s view, Democrats would be crazy not to press for stronger financial regulatory reform. “The free market works—there’s no question it creates the economy we have—but every now and then, they go too far,” she said.

President Obama is now available to deal with this and other issues, like brokering Middle East pace, since passing the health care bill last month. “People in the world like to see a winner,” said Doris, picking up on the theme of Tom Friedman’s New York Times column today. “Had he lost, it would have been devastating for his reputation abroad, as well as at home.”

Also devastating: news that Doris Kearns Goodwin will take on the karma of tormented chickens. Her plan to avoid this fate? Stop eating. Continue drinking. Sign us up.

-Julie Kanfer