Doris Kearns Goodwin: Pulitzer Prize Winning Author and Presidential Historian

I was asked if I'd be interested in showcasing this interview with former Harvard professor and Woodrow Willson Fellow, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and after looking at her subject - Abraham Lincolh - my all time favorite president - I could not resist. My comments are in red, however.

Ms. Goodwin is the author of several New York Times best-sellers, including No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt which was awarded the 1995 Pulitzer Prize in History and her latest book, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (Simon & Schuster, 2005). She is the recipient of the Charles Frankel Prize and the Sara Josepha Hale Medal. She was the first woman journalist to enter the Red Sox locker room [brave woman!] and has been a consultant and on air-person for PBS documentaries on Lyndon Johnson, the Kennedy family, Franklin Roosevelt, Abraham and Mary Lincoln, and Ken Burns’ “The History of Baseball.” Currently an NBC News analyst, Ms. Goodwin lives in Massachusetts and has appeared on “Meet the Press” and “The Colbert Report.”

Ms. Goodwin is leading the session, “The Ultimate Executive Office: Leadership in the White House” at the Fortune Leadership Forum taking place this week, June 26-27. Goodwin will share what management leaders can learn from leaders in the Oval Office. [would that I could have been there but... time, tasks, and family prevent.] Disclaimer: I did not compose this interview, but it serves its point well, so I am very happy to share it.

1.) Who is the best leader you've encountered during your career and why?

Doris: Abraham Lincoln is the most effective leader I have studied. While FDR's conduct as commander in chief during World War II is a close second, Lincoln possessed a greater array of emotional strengths that grounded his leadership style and allowed him to create the most unusual cabinet in presidential history comprised of his chief rivals for the presidency, each of whom thought he should have been president instead of Lincoln.

Throughout, he possessed an uncanny ability to empathize and understand other people's points of view. Over and over, he repaired injured feelings that might have escalated into permanent hostility. He shared credit with ease, assumed responsibility for the failures of his subordinates, learned from his mistakes. He refused to be provoked by petty grievances, to submit to jealousy or to brood over perceived slights. Time and again, he was the one who dispelled his colleagues' anxiety and sustained their spirits with his gift for storytelling and his life-affirming sense of humor. And he expressed his unshakable convictions in a language of enduring beauty.

2.) What are the two or three contributing factors to the crisis of leadership in this country today?

Doris: People have sometimes asked whether Lincoln could be elected today. I think if he were running today - even with his unfortunate beard (which he might be convinced to cut) and his curious stovepipe hat (which he might be convinced to discard) - he would win hands down for people would recognize instantly how smart, funny, clever and wise he is, but the harder question is whether he would run for office today given the state of our political climate.

Which raises the larger worry about whether our best people are entering public life. I think not -- due to the necessity to spend so many waking hours begging for funds before even beginning to compete, plus the intrusion of the press into one's private life, the ease with which one mistaken remark can undo a reputation and the difficulty of getting bipartisan cooperation even if one  [okay, I disagree on the beard issue... I like it, I would be disappointed if he shaved it.]

For more information on Doris Kearns Goodwin visit her website here.

I truly wish I could have been there to hear Doris speak. I wonder if political leaders can learn from business leaders and vice-versa. I wonder if politics has become too corrupt, to inner-focused, and too wedded to industry. In times like this, I wonder if those in the major levels of business and politics have a clue about the every day citizen, other than what she or he looks like when it's hand-shaking time.

I wonder what Doris would say to that?