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BARACK OBAMA AND DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: THE ULTIMATE EXIT INTERVIEW
http://media.vanityfair.com/photos/57db0ce40a8ec0db67d1fd02/master/w_900,c_limit/barack-obama-doris-kearns-goodwin-annie-leibovitz-03.jpgAs his two-term presidency draws to a close, Barack Obama is looking back—at the legacies of his predecessors, as well as his own—and forward, to the freedom of life after the White House. In a wide-ranging conversation with one of the nation’s foremost presidential historians, he talks about his ambitions, frustrations, and the decisions that still haunt him.
a snippet:
GOODWIN: There’s no question. Adversity in almost all the presidents I’ve studied changes them. For Teddy Roosevelt, in 1884, losing his wife and his mother on the same day, in the same house. He goes to the Badlands, and he’s suddenly out among people. Both he and F.D.R. had to move beyond their privileged class. Polio and his time at Warm Springs, Georgia [rehab facility], allowed F.D.R. to do that. And then they created a different sense of themselves, connected to other people—partly what you’re talking about—wanting to make other people’s lives better. Fate had dealt them an unkind hand, like it does to many, and they suddenly felt more deeply toward a wider range of people.
OBAMA: Exactly. And so I think there’s a process you go through. I found during the course of my political career on the national scene—which is relatively compressed compared to some of these other presidents—there’s a point where the vanity burns away and you’ve had your fill of your name in the papers, or big adoring crowds, or the exercise of power. And for me that happened fairly quickly. And then you are really focused on: What am I going to get done with this strange privilege that’s been granted to me? How do I make myself worthy of it?
And if you don’t go through that, then you start getting into trouble, because then you’re just [gesturing, as if climbing a ladder] clinging to prerogatives and the power and the attention. There’s an expression that my daughters use: You get thirsty.
GOODWIN: And the thirst is unquenchable.
OBAMA: And the thirst is unquenchable. And that’s what you see, I think, sometimes with somebody like a Nixon—a brilliant person who, early on, had ambitions that probably were not that different from an F.D.R., certainly not that different from an L.B.J. But that thirst overwhelms everything, and you start making decisions based solely on that.
GOODWIN: So that brings us to the question of temperament, which is probably the greatest separator in presidential leadership. There’s that quote when [retired Supreme Court justice] Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who met with F.D.R. after his inauguration, famously said Roosevelt had “a second-class intellect but a first-class temperament.” How would you describe your temperament and why it’s fit for this office if, in fact, you think it is?
OBAMA: Well, whether it’s fit for this office or not is up to historians like you to determine. I think it’s fair to say that my temperament is (pause, seemingly in search of the right word) steady—and on the buoyant side.
OBAMA: Exactly. And so I think there’s a process you go through. I found during the course of my political career on the national scene—which is relatively compressed compared to some of these other presidents—there’s a point where the vanity burns away and you’ve had your fill of your name in the papers, or big adoring crowds, or the exercise of power. And for me that happened fairly quickly. And then you are really focused on: What am I going to get done with this strange privilege that’s been granted to me? How do I make myself worthy of it?
And if you don’t go through that, then you start getting into trouble, because then you’re just [gesturing, as if climbing a ladder] clinging to prerogatives and the power and the attention. There’s an expression that my daughters use: You get thirsty.
GOODWIN: And the thirst is unquenchable.
OBAMA: And the thirst is unquenchable. And that’s what you see, I think, sometimes with somebody like a Nixon—a brilliant person who, early on, had ambitions that probably were not that different from an F.D.R., certainly not that different from an L.B.J. But that thirst overwhelms everything, and you start making decisions based solely on that.
GOODWIN: So that brings us to the question of temperament, which is probably the greatest separator in presidential leadership. There’s that quote when [retired Supreme Court justice] Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who met with F.D.R. after his inauguration, famously said Roosevelt had “a second-class intellect but a first-class temperament.” How would you describe your temperament and why it’s fit for this office if, in fact, you think it is?
OBAMA: Well, whether it’s fit for this office or not is up to historians like you to determine. I think it’s fair to say that my temperament is (pause, seemingly in search of the right word) steady—and on the buoyant side.
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/09/barack-obama-doris-kearns-goodwin-interview
