Word: goodwins
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...Goodwin was young then--young, even for the Kennedy people. In 1958, after graduating first in his class from the Harvard Law School, he clerked for Supreme Court Justice Felix M. Frankfurter. After working for a year on the House Commerce Commission's 1959 television quiz-show scandals, he joined the Kennedy Senate staff. By 1960 he and Theodore Sorenson were Kennedy's two chief speechwriters--indispensable to the campaign and to the formation of Kennedy's foreign and domestic policies. He was, in the words of Kennedy biographer Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., "the archetypal New Frontiersman," a quick-witted...
...Today Goodwin smiles at the assessment, calling Schlesinger "very kind...
After the campaign came years of White House advising--and more writing. Under Kennedy, Goodwin served as deputy assistant secretary for Inter-American affairs and played an important role in the formation of the Peace Corps. And he continued writing speeches--better debated, more thoroughly thought-out speeches than in the hectic days of the campaign. After Kennedy's assassination he helped form domestic policy for Johnson's administration--especially in civil rights. And the speechwriting did not end: "The Great Society" was his phrase...
Writing for the president was different then, Goodwin says. You were in on everything, went to the cabinet meetings and to the National Security Council meetings, helped make the decisions. Once, a speechwriter could bring an issue to the president's attention simply by including a paragraph on the issue in a draft. You didn't always get your way, of course; sometimes you had to write things you didn't agree with. But you were a part of the dynamic, you had a voice, you were chosen because the president trusted you to have a voice. Now, he says...
...Goodwin left the fray. It was Vietnam, mostly, that made him leave. For a while it seemed that Johnson's escalation had been a mistake, but that it was not an irreversible mistake. It was correctable...