The last of the New Frontiersmen-when he died Sunday at 85, he was the last surviving member of President John Kennedy’s 1960 campaign team-he embodied one of Kennedy’s favorite observations, from fellow New Englander Emerson: that “a man must share the actions and passions of his time on peril of being judged not to have lived.” Goodwin didn’t just “share” the actions and passions of his time-he threw himself into them, and in so doing, put his mark on those times. These two anecdotes say much about who Dick Goodwin was: the blend of determination, ability, and, yes, a touch of arrogance but more than that- they point to what made Goodwin so compelling a figure. “Goodwin shared with Robert Kennedy a mordant sense of humor a puckish delight in upending the pieties of politics.” So Goodwin quit his post, jumped into his car, and at midnight, arrived at the Perkins Motel in Manchester, New Hampshire, where he rousted McCarthy’s press secretary, Sy Hersh, walked him to his car, pointed to his typewriter and said, “You, me and this typewriter, Sy together we’re going to overthrow the president of the United States.” His close friend Robert Kennedy had refused to challenge President Johnson for the Democratic nomination, but Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy was embarked on that quixotic effort in New Hampshire. It was early 1968, and Goodwin was increasingly despairing of a Vietnam War that had lost all purpose, and a nation seized by racial and generational tumult. After his service, he went back to Harvard Law, where he finished first in his class, was president of the Law Review, and won a clerkship from Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter.įourteen years later, 2 miles east of Harvard Law, Goodwin sat in his office at MIT, where he held a cushy faculty position. So he turned on his heel, drove back to Brookline, waived his student deferment, and joined the army. It was as if, he wrote years later, that he was in a prison. #Quip promo code dr drew full#For the son of lower middle-class Jews, it was the reward for years of intense study, with summers working as a fry cook at Revere Beach, supplementing a full scholarship to Harvard Law.īut as he prepared for the dreary work of checking footnotes from a law review article, something snapped. In the summer of 1954, Richard Goodwin walked into the Harvard Law School library, ready to begin his first day as a member of the Harvard Law Review a position all but guaranteeing a path to a life of privilege and prestige.
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