Doris Kearns Goodwin speaks in Madison, recalls life

Doris Kearns Goodwin has spent her career chronicling the lives of former presidents and key moments in American history. The presidential election this November merges these areas of study for the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian, and she says her knowledge of the past informs her perspective on the present.

“It’s great. You can live in lots of different times,” she said of the different centuries she has spent her life studying. 

Kearns Goodwin spoke at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on Wednesday night during the eighth annual Cap Times Idea Fest.

She cited Abraham Lincoln’s quest for a second term as president, holding firm that he must “finish the job,” the same mantra that President Joe Biden held before eventually stepping out of the race this July. 

“I kept thinking about President Biden through all the lenses of other presidents that I lived with as well,” she said.

Beyond her career as a renowned presidential biographer and scholar on American leadership, Kearns Goodwin expanded her reach as a storyteller in 2020 when she produced her first documentary miniseries, “Washington.” Since then, she has produced several others examining the lives of presidents including Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. 

Despite the intermittent threads of darkness that have woven themselves throughout American history, Kearns Goodwin considers herself an< optimist — even when it comes to the current state of politics. 

“The reason I’ve had this optimism, and I’m still holding on to it now, is that history does show us that, even though this is a tough, tough time, we’ve had really, really tough times before,” she said. “There’s something about this country that I think finally the time is going to come when we know what our values are, we know what the choices are.”

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Editor’s Note: This article is provided courtesy of a content partnership with The Capital Times, an independent news organization based in Madison.