Doris Kearns Goodwin

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Senator Barack Obama discussed with Doris Kearns Goodwin the thesis of Team of Rivals, her history of Abraham Lincoln and his cabinet staffed with one-time political adversaries. An aide said the candidate, claiming the book as inspiration for how he would staff his own administration, talked about it “all the time.” While serving as an assistant to the Secretary of Labor Willard Wirtz in 1967, Goodwin coauthored an article in The New Republic entitled “How to Remove LBJ in 1968.” Knowing her views, President Johnson asked her to dance at a White House party and later named her as his special assistant. The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian published Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream in 1976.

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