The Florida Roundup - Summer reading special: Authors Lauren Groff, Doris Kearns Goodwin and Dick Batchelor on Florida

Episode Date: May 24, 2024

This week on The Florida Roundup, we spoke with three authors — novelist Lauren Groff (02:00), historian Doris Kearns Goodwin (20:28) and former Florida lawmaker Dick Batchelor (37:18) about free expression, leadership, and discovery civility again.

Welcome to the Florida Roundup. I'm Tom Hudson. Thanks for being along with us this week. Today on our program, three themes with three authors, free expression, leadership, and discovering civility again. We spoke with three very different writers about these topics and how their writing relates to us here in Florida. Think of this as a summer reading list as the 2024 political season heats up. Some history, some fiction, and a call to build bridges across our divides. Doris Kearns Goodwin has seen presidential leadership up close. She worked in the Oval Office during the Johnson administration. She's an internationally known historian known for her presidential biographies of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Franklin Roosevelt. People have to remember what a democracy is. A democracy is the chance

for people to vote their leaders in or throw them out. And understanding that you accept the loss of an election. You will hear Doris Kearns Goodwin talk about how America has gotten through troubled times in the past, our politics as we age, and character. Dick Batchelor spent eight years as a member of the Florida Statehouse in Tallahassee and has been a Democratic consultant for years. After this election, no matter who wins the presidential election, the toxicity is not going to go away. In fact, it might be amplified. We'll see. He has some ideas on how to build bridges to get things done in your community. But first, a novelist who has made Florida her adopted home.

I did not love the state of Florida for the first 10 years I lived here. It's been 18 years now. Lauren Groff has written five novels and two short story collections, including one she entitled Florida. And this spring, she opened her own bookstore in Gainesville, partly as a response to book restrictions in public school districts across the state. Her store is called The Links, named after one of the two predatory big cats native to our Sunshine State. We asked her about the store and how she hopes it will become a beacon of free expression, but we started our conversation talking about writing. Lauren, thanks for joining

us. How would you describe the literary genre that is the state of Florida through the years? I think the state of Florida is a monkey bread of a state, right? It's a lot of different things all stuck together. Even environmentally, it's not the same all over. We're very varied. So I think that this state of Florida is glorious, spectacular. So I think that, you know, the state of Florida is glorious, spectacular. A lot of fiction involving Florida through the years usually involves humans versus nature. There's some natural component in a lot of writing that involves the state of Florida. Corruptibility of people is a theme that oftentimes happens when people write about the state of Florida, have novels set in Florida. And occasionally there is some individual heroism that shines through in some of these stories.

What do you think is the draw of Florida as a setting for fiction writers? Well, I think it's wonderful to be able to write from the margins. Nobody has ever written anything good from the center because you can't see enough, right? You don't have perspective. written anything good from the center because you can't see enough right you don't have perspective and florida is very much viewed as on the margins of the society of the united states of america right so um i think it's partially because of the whole florida man man meme but that our status existed before then partially because of walt Disney, partially because of the fact that, you know, 63% of us, I believe, are from elsewhere. And so it's somewhat hard to create a sense of

cohesion in a place like that, or to have a narrative that's complicated and rich and is able to be projected outward to other people in other states. What do you think the appeal is to readers to consume stories that are set in Florida? I did not love the state of Florida for the first 10 years I lived here. It's been 18 years now. But through books like The Yearling by Marjorie Kennan Rawlings, through Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, right? Through Rivers of Grass by Marjorie Stoneman Douglas. There's so many. Oh, Peter Matheson, right? Like so many great books have been written by Floridians and about Florida that has actually taught me the treasure, the unbelievable beauty of this state, right? Not just the environmental beauty, which

is so spectacular and profound, but also the history and the people here, right? Even though we are often teased by other places for being a mess, and we are, we're a beautiful mess, I think. It is a rich tapestry upon which to pull from and to be influenced by. And of course, you, as you mentioned, have lived here for 18 years in Gainesville. You have a collection of short stories with the title Florida. How would you describe, though, Florida as a theme in your writing that may not be directly about the Sunshine State or even set here in Florida? I think I use the pathetic fallacy a lot.

You know, John Ruskin has this beautiful thing about pathetic fallacy, which is, you know, nature and emotion sort of correspond in literary fiction. And I do that a lot with Florida because I do find that my mood is profoundly influenced by the weather here. My mood is profoundly influenced by the weather here. And an excruciatingly hot day will turn me into, you know, a hibernating owl. But one of the gorgeous days in January when the flowers are out and the sun is shining and everyone else in the country is suffering turns me into a lover of all humanity. So I do think, you know, the weather and the natural aspect of this place is unique in that it really does inform

a lot of the stories coming out of people. The feeling perhaps of danger in this state when it's hurricane season, you never know what the storm on the horizon is going to bring. There is this extra pepper, this extra salt of maybe danger being put into the daily meal of our lives. So I think it's an interesting place to be in terms of the way that our placement between the Gulf and the Atlantic makes us into a place of coasts and a place of storms and a place of humidity and profound heat and all of this.

This brings different things out of every writer. Weather is fairly shallow, right? When we have nothing else to talk about it, we can talk about the weather. But there is something to be said about sand in our shoes in the state of Florida. And for a creative professional like yourself to find something deeper than the heat index as an inspiration for you

as you're waking up early before sunrise in Gainesville to write. Yeah. The other thing too is, I came from the north where we didn't really have termites. We didn't have alligators in every retention spot. We don't have things that constantly want to eat you. Even walking off-piste in a forest here, you're liable to get thorns and palmettos slicing up your legs and things like that. It's not the most hospitable place on the surface, right? Nature has teeth here,

and that's one of its beautiful things. Survivability is a theme of yours that comes in a number of your novels. The most recent novel is about a young girl who survives servitude in the wilderness of colonial America, for instance. You write another story about a 17-year-old in medieval England and surviving running a convent there. Is that something that you think has come into your writing because of your 18 years here in Florida where nature bites, perhaps more than in Western New York State? That's a wonderful question. I write because I can live on the page beyond the confines of my own human life here in Florida. So it's partially, I think, trying to find a way to live in this place that I found deeply inhospitable at first, right?

Trying to find a way to love the place where I was planted. The other thing is I'm also, I think, a very fearful person, a very anxious person. Let's just call it that. And I think writing my way through stories is a way of having courage or gaining courage or teaching myself how to be in the world. You know, there's this great theorist named Bruno Bettelheim. I love him so much. And one of the things that he talked about in terms of folk tales is, you know, the fairy tale was this sort of inoculation against terror in a certain way. It was a way for children to see the very worst thing that could possibly happen to them, right? So they're starving and

their parents send them out into the forest to die of starvation, right? That's the worst possible thing that could happen to a kid. But told in story form, it becomes this little inoculation, a little vaccine. It allows the child to eventually be able to handle life issues, anxieties that come out of life. I think that's what talking about Florida, talking about the terror of the weather and the things that went to each you in the state did for me. It sort of inoculated me and made me more courageous to be able to actually deal with life, to survive whatever Florida threw at me. I want to move from the meteorological threats to some of the public

policy threats that you have perceived that led you to open up an independent bookstore in Gainesville. It was a response to the culture wars that Florida has been at the center at for the past several years. Clay, my husband, and I in April opened a bookstore called The Links in Gainesville. And we are a general interested bookstore. We have over 8,000 books at this point, but we have a special emphasis on banned books and books by LGBTQI writers, books by Floridians, books by Black, brown, marginalized, indigenous people. So we're really intentionally pushing back against the authoritarianism that is rising right now in the state of Florida. I've always listened to what people have been saying in the past about the rise of book bands.

So I've been watching it very, very carefully. There's this German poet from 1829. His name is Heinrich Heine. And he said, So in the places where people burn books, they will one day burn people. I've held this within me as a direct warning because I do think it is the tip of the wedge

of authoritarianism and it is being inculcated by the state. It's not just individuals doing this. The state of Florida is actually doing this to its citizens. So I think we need to stop that wedge now before it gets much, much worse. And so we opened this bookstore in order to reverberate love through the state of Florida. Tolerance, acceptance, we have a plan to give out. Now, at this point, it's going to be thousands of books, banned books, children's books, all over the state. We want to be the Dolly Partons of Florida. We want to make conversations happen. We want to allow- Dolly Parton being well known for giving away books throughout her musical career.

That's right. Hundreds of millions of books at this point. I love her so much. She's an angel. So what we really want to do is engage? We want to have freedom of expression. We want to have freedom of ideas. We want to engage with the people who are doing this and have them open their minds. We're doing this as an emanation of love. We're not doing this against anything. What we really want is Floridians to feel loved and accepted for who they are. The store's motto is watch us bite back.

How do you hope to influence public policy, influence parents that have filed these objections with school districts over books, one of which is your book in a school district in the Panhandle, for instance? Right. So if you actually look at the people doing the banning, it's a very tiny group of people. It's

sort of the will of the minority being enacted upon the majority, unfortunately. And the other thing that's happening too, is that there is a sort of shadow chill that's actually happening as well. So I have a friend, she's a brilliant fifth grade teacher of language, arts, and history. And she used to teach the Holocaust by teaching mouse by Arch Fugelman. It's this wonderful, wonderful graphic novel about the Holocaust, which has been banned in some places, not in our county, but she doesn't feel comfortable teaching the Holocaust through mouse anymore because she's so afraid of what if one of these parents comes into the room, will she lose her job, right? So there's this shadow chill that's much, much more insidious and much worse than even the 5,000 individual titles being challenged

or banned in the state of Florida right now. That is more than 2,000 more than the next bad state, which is Texas. So we are definitely the nexus of this book banning and book challenging that's happening in the state of Florida. Let me just say one thing, though. If these tiny, tiny, tiny minority of people really cared about what was happening to kids, they'd ban the things that are collectively maiming and killing children on a daily basis, which is guns. But books cannot kill you, right? Books can just give you ideas. The supporters of the state law that has led to these book restrictions and Governor Ron

DeSantis have said it's not the state of Florida that's banning books or restricting books. The state has approved laws and rules that, what they say, empower parents to object to obscene material. You're shaking your head at that explanation, though. Well, I mean, there's a very, it's very cynical, right? I mean, it empowers parents, I guess, but it allows teachers to be under the gun in a very real way. It allows librarians to be threatened, right? It's this larger environment of chilling and a lack of freedom of expression that we're really, really worried about. I think in some ways, too, it's really, really important that we stop this now. But it's also a major

distraction from the larger ways the state is taking some of the freedoms away from the people of the state of Florida. So the freedom of bodily autonomy, right? The freedom to learn our own history, which the state actually is not allowing us to do at the moment. This is actually a governmental decree, right, that we cannot teach Black history the way that it should be taught, which is with the definition of slavery as a bad thing. So you can listen to the rhetoric or you can look with your own eyes and understand that this is actually being enacted by the state of Florida. Lawmakers and the governor did okay and sign a bill that tightens rules around those book objections that adults and parents have been

filing. But that's something that I take it you're not satisfied with. No, no way. No, no. You know, free people read freely. And just because that there is a moderation in this challenging and banning process doesn't mean that those 5000 books are now suddenly, you know, you know, free to be read by all people. Your husband's family ran an independent bookstore in Gainesville for a number of years. I looked on Google Maps. The location is now a Wawa convenience store and a medical marijuana dispensary. It's 2024, Lauren. There's this thing called Amazon. Your stance on the policy of books, notwithstanding, how difficult is it to run a physical bookstore in Florida these days? Well, okay.

So first I do have to shout out my husband's family. They ran the Florida bookstore on University Avenue right across from the university for over 60 years. So in 1932, my husband's grandfather, in the middle of the Depression, started out of his dorm room to sell books in order to pay his way through college. And I thought that that was really gorgeous and wonderful. You know, yes, you say Amazon, but I actually think people are longing for independent bookstores. Independent bookstores are the nexuses of a community, right? They're the linkage between authors and readers, between communities, between people who love the same kinds of books. So what we are doing is we're creating a community center, we're creating a third space. So our role is much larger than that of just a retailer. Our role is really the beating

part of any city and all independent bookstores are like this. Do you see your creativity continuing to be based in Florida? Oh, who knows? You never know what the muses are going to hand you on a day-to-day basis. I know I have a few Florida stories building in me at the moment, but I don't really know what the future holds. And will you be writing them from the state of Florida? Oh, yes, for sure. I mean, now that we have a business, we're stuck. Actually, my husband hasn't always had a business,

so we've always been stuck. Yeah, we're here. We're here for the duration. Lauren Groff, author of many books, some including Florida, many written in Florida. Lauren, thanks so much for your time. Oh, such a pleasure. Thank you.

Still to come, Doris Kearns Goodwin on navigating troubled times. History does suggest that we've somehow managed through the combination of finding leaders and, more importantly, citizens who are active and who fight to get where they want the country to be. You're listening to the Florida Roundup from your Florida Public Radio Station. This is the Florida Roundup. I'm Tom Hudson. Next week, our program will be dedicated to Florida's teacher shortage. We will examine efforts to fill the need in public school classrooms. School districts are using tax money to fund internships and scholarships, hoping to attract new teachers, especially in elementary schools, special education, and science, technology, engineering, and math subjects. If you're a teacher or used to be a teacher and left the profession, we'd love to hear from you.

What have your experiences in the classroom here in Florida been like? How do you balance the ever-increasing demands of curriculum and classroom management? What about the pay? If you're a parent or student, have you been left without a permanent teacher? Have you had a stable presence in the classroom? What has that meant to you? Radio at thefloridoundup.org is our email inbox. Email us now, radio at thefloridaroundup.org. Share your experiences now, and we may feature

them next week. This week, we're bringing you conversations with three writers and the state of Florida. It's our version of a summer vacation reading list, writers on free expression, a handbook for how to connect with people you don't agree with, and leadership. Doris Kearns Goodwin has examined presidential leadership from inside the Oval Office in the late 1960s with President Johnson to her presidential biographies of Lincoln and both Roosevelts. We spoke with her during a visit to Florida for her new book, An Unfinished Love Story, part history, part memoir of the late 1960s. You've said that the United States has experienced more troubled times than we're in today, more polarized times. There's been a civil war, the end of the Gilded Age, World War II, the Great Depression, even the 1960s. We know how those ended, and you've made that point. What does history tell us about the possibilities

of how this period of polarization may end? I think you've hit it exactly right that we know that the Union was secured and the emancipation happened. We know World War II was won by the Allies. They didn't know that, so the anxiety we feel is what they were feeling then. And I think it's going to take a long time before this heals. But history does suggest that we've somehow managed through the combination of finding leaders, and more importantly, citizens who are active and who fight to get where they want the country to be. And we've seen that time and again. It's always the citizens from the ground up that have made the difference. When Lincoln was called a liberator, he said, don't call me that. It was the anti-slavery movement and the Union soldiers that did it all. And that tends to be our history. So we've got to just depend upon right now that people take

an active role, that they absolutely vote, and that the direction of the country will be set by them. That expresses a lot of faith in the American electorate, especially moving forward. As polls have shown in this 2024 election how divided we are, what fuels that faith that you have in citizens voting and voting in a certain way that addresses this polarization? I mean, one of the difficulties is that the polarization and the polarized media makes it more difficult for a common message to appeal to people. When FDR gave his fireside chats, 90% of the audience would be listening to the radio audience, you know, and they could walk down the streets, as Bellow said, on a hot Chicago night, and you could look

in the kitchen and look in the living room and watch people staring at their radios, and you could hear his voice coming out. We don't have that common voice right now, and that's a real problem. I mean, that happened in the 1850s, but that's a scary thing. I remember once there was a woman on the plane that said, tell me things have been worse. So I told her, yes, don't worry, they were even more polarized. The 1850s, you only read your partisan newspaper. And one fact would be completely different from the other. And then she said, rightly, but that didn't end up too well, right? It did not at all. There was a lot of lives lost. The only reason you have to have faith is if you don't, then there's no chance of it working. You're just going to have people who are out there

willing to exercise their duties as citizens right now to protect. If they feel things are backsliding, they protect that. If they feel they need to have a voice, then they go and they vote in the polls and they get other people to do so. Do you think even that statement is polarizing in this environment? To some extent it is. I mean, because one party may think that it's not a good idea for lots of people to vote. I think in a democracy, though, you've got to be able to willingly accept the results of the election and hope that as many people as possible vote. And then you take your chances. And then at least you know that it's been a fair election if most of the people have voted. So let's talk a little bit about that, Doris, because you've told NBC's Meet the Press you're worried that a peaceful transition of power may not happen after this next presidential election if there is a transition in power that voters decide. More people from Florida were charged in connection to the January 6th insurrection than people from any other state.

What is that message then for Floridians as we're coming up to this pivotal decision point? I think people have to remember what a democracy is. A democracy is the chance for people to vote their leaders in or throw them out. And understanding that you accept the loss of an election. When you think about it, if you raise a child, you don't want them to not accept that they've lost and to go tantruming or leave the room. And so I think every part of our history except 1860.

And what 1860 was about, Lincoln said, that really what happened is democracy was at peril right then because if you could secede from the Union because you lost an election, which they did, the Democratic South lost that election, then democracy would be an absurdity. So when you look at all the presidents or the candidates who have lost, it's really hard. It's hard to lose. Your supporters have been hoping you're going to win. You thought you'd do better for the country. You're exhausted. And yet they each one came through until 2020 with the willingness to say, this is hard. Like Jimmy Carter said, I told you I'd never tell you a lie. The truth is this hurts. It hurts badly. But this is a cherished tradition, etc.,

etc. What does it tell us about the character of the voters that further don't accept perhaps an election result that they did not support at the ballot box? You know, I think character is the most important question that we have right now. Sometimes when I look back at Abraham Lincoln, and I think he was perhaps our greatest president, it's not just what he did, but who he was. And it's that set of qualities that you have humility, you're willing to acknowledge errors when you make mistakes, you're willing to take responsibility for losses, you have empathy for other people, you're accountable, and your ambition is for something larger than themselves. And those are the qualities we have to get in our citizens again. We've got to get them in

our leaders again. I sometimes wonder whether we've made running for office a very difficult task for many people. You have to sacrifice your private lives. You have to raise so much money. You're going into a polarized atmosphere now. You haven't seen them do a lot of stuff in Washington that makes you feel good about things. So maybe we haven't had the kind of people they've chosen to do other things with their lives than enter public life. There are certain periods when people feel a rendezvous with destiny and they want to be in public life and other periods when they don't. And I think this is one of those periods. You have spent a career looking at the long arc of history, particularly presidential politics. You tell the story in your book of your husband when he was 80 years old, realizing that a third

of American history had happened during his lifetime. What a realization. He then wrote, quote, from the long view of my life, I see how history turns and veers. The end of our country has loomed many times before. America is not as fragile as it seems. So Doris, what has fed moderation and compromise in the past? And are those forces present at all in today's politics? Well, I think in the past, just looking at Washington, for example, you had senators and congressmen who stayed in Washington and their kids were there, and they got to know each other as people as opposed to being a party, partisan person, and that helped. You had a tradition, when I think about the great Civil Rights Act passing in 1964,

it could not have happened without minority leader Everett Dirksen. He wanted to be remembered too. I mean, Johnson finally went to him, and he was making all sorts of deals. You could make deals then. Maybe we need that again. Compromise. Compromise. You know, you do this, and I'll get you this. But then he also said to him, Everett, you come with me on this bill, and 200 years from now, schoolchildren will know only two names, Abraham Lincoln and Everett Dirksen. So how does Dirksen resist?

Dirksen now is known for saying a billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon we're talking about real money. But this is the other side of Everett Dirksen. But it was really important that he was willing to do that and bring the Republican, 22 Republicans joined 44 Northern Democrats. So when traditions are lost and rituals, it's like people have been at war for so long, they forget what peace is. We've had a broken Congress now for so long. Every now and then something sparks through, but it doesn't seem to then go to the next thing that's talking about.

That's what Teddy Roosevelt said, that when you get to a point where people in different sections, regions, and parties review each other, view each other as the other rather than as common American citizens, that's when democracy is in peril. And that's what's happened now. Rightfully or wrongfully, Florida has been pointed to as a crucible, perhaps, of contributing to some of the polarization of politics and certainly politicians. Moms for Liberty started here, the public education debate that we've had here in the state of Florida. Governor Ron DeSantis, when he won reelection, proudly said, Florida is where woke goes to die.

We've seen other states follow, like Iowa and Texas, two very different states than Florida. What role is Florida and Florida leaders, do you think, Doris, playing in shaping history today? Well, Florida has a big voice. It's a big state. And what their leaders say gets national attention, perhaps more than other states, I think. And there's a lot of people here who are older, just as I am older. Of course, I'm older in Massachusetts, and we have a somewhat different politics, I suppose, in Massachusetts. I don't know, you do change your feelings as time goes on. My husband actually, I think, became more radical. I would say that I probably became a little bit more centrist as time went on. But I think he was just so saddened by his

feeling that the Great Society had been undone by the war in Vietnam that he thought structural changes were needed in the country. When we went through these boxes, these 300 boxes, however, and he remembered what it was like in 64 and 65 when all the Great Society legislation came through, he began to feel again his feelings of affection. He said, oh God, I'm feeling affection for old Lyndon Johnson again, and he began to realize that things had made a difference. Huge changes were made, and he thought for the positive. Seismic changes in the 1960s, and some would argue that led to some of the backlash from the late 70s and 80s, and perhaps what we're experiencing today. You mentioned going through these 300 boxes of

memorabilia and letters from your late husband, Dick. Florida is joining us in getting older, Doris, right? We're all aging at the same speed. Reflect a little bit more about how age, how your political philosophy and even how you view political history has perhaps evolved as you have aged yourself. Yeah, I think, you know, when I was young, I was an activist in the anti-war movement. I look back on that period of time with pride in having taken a stance against the war, but with sadness that sometimes that anger was directed at soldiers. And I realized how wrongheaded that was. It was not their responsibility. It was the government that had sent them there, especially when my youngest son, Joe, joined the army right after 9-11 and went over to Iraq and Afghanistan. I remember when he came home one time and he was

wondering, would there be a crowd of people like a young me who would be, you know, booing him when he got off? And that happened not to be true. People did learn from that experience. And you look back at things you said and did, and you really can, with reflection, get wisdom. Or you can just get rooted in something even more. It depends on where it goes. With this book, An Unfinished Love Story, subtitled A Personal History of the 1960s,

you delve into a lot of great anecdotal stories, a lot of personal stories, but pull those threads into really kind of what has shaped modern society here in the 21st century and some of those large issues. One of those big issues, of course, is Israel and its war against Hamas militants. That has sparked campus protests that have been likened to the campus protests of 1968, for instance, against the Vietnam War, although significant differences in both instances. Florida universities have responded in much different ways than universities in the Northeast and on the West Coast. And Florida university leaders and state leaders stepped in right away, made students take down tents, essentially reminded or threatened students that any

breach of a student conduct would result possibly in them being banished from campus for up to three years. What do you make of the differences of how school and school officials have responded here in Florida compared to elsewhere and compared to what the response was on campus in the late 1960s? What you saw in the late 1960s was that there were two different modes of anti-war protest. One was very successful, and that was when young students came from all over the country for McCarthy's campaign in New Hampshire in the primary to run against Lyndon Johnson for the nomination. They cut their beards, they cut their hair, the girls wore long dresses, and they went door to door, and they just listened to people. It was a hawkish state, but they made people feel a new direction was necessary.

And that led to Lyndon Johnson saying he would negotiate the war, saying that he was going to stop the bombing and withdrawing from the race. So that was an ideal kind of confrontation. It wasn't a confrontation. It was really a political—there was a channel for it. Then what happened is Lyndon Johnson, despite withdrawing, then Bobby Kennedy was in the race. He's dead. Martin Luther King is dead. The peace talk stalled. Then you get to the Democratic Convention. wanted mayhem, who wanted to disturb things. You had a police force waiting and waiting and waiting, provoked perhaps, but then non-provoked at other times. And Teddy White, the great reporter, said that night the Democratic Party lost the election. Whenever violence takes place,

whenever you take over a building, whenever you prevent other people from getting where they need to go, you're going to lose public sentiment. And that's what you're after. You're trying to persuade people of a cause. And when that is not met and violence comes, whether you're responsible directly for it or not, then your cause is lost. I'm Tom Hudson, and you're listening to the Florida Roundup from your Florida Public Radio station. What do you make of the differences in responses on campus that you've seen, that we've seen as Americans

to this campus protest? I think it has to do with leadership. It has to do maybe with the culture on the campus. It would be a very interesting study? I think it has to do with leadership. It has to do maybe with the culture on the campus. It would be a very interesting study, I think, to figure out what it was that made other leaders eventually do what Florida did right away, but took a longer time in doing it, and how they balanced free speech, how they balanced faculty attitudes, how they balanced their own understanding of leadership. It'll tell us a lot about the states, perhaps, as well as the universities. It has to do with leadership.

It has to do with who they're responding to. And I think probably what the atmosphere is among the students and the faculty as well. You have written about Republican presidents. You've written about Democratic presidents. You've written about leadership in general. What do you make of leadership and the party system as it exists today? Yeah, I really worry that one of the problems we're facing with leadership right now is what it demands to run for office. We've allowed ourselves to have the race for money

be a huge part of what a candidate has to do. They know that their private lives are going to be exposed. They know that they're going to be attacked and that the attacks are more and more brutal and more personal. And maybe those people who might have gone into public life are deciding, I'll try and fight for public values in other ways. And yet you need to have people that are good in public life. I mean, this is a democracy. And that's what I really worry about, is that when we look at what's happened in the last 20, 30 years, you can't say that people can feel, oh, this is so exciting to be in Washington or even in the state houses. How do you square the ideal of character and the reality of how voters make decisions in October and November? And primarily what I mean by that, to cut to the chase, Doris, is a pocketbook issue. It's an economy. We see that time and time again as the singular issue that voters tend to identify with. You know, it's really interesting. You're making me think about something, which is that, I mean, that's a natural thing. You can't take away from that. That makes the difference in how their family is going to be able to take a vacation or they have to worry about paying

the mortgage the next week. So that's understandable. And maybe the very fact we've been talking about leadership hasn't existed for them in the same way. At other times, they really do care about who's going to help them through this crisis. And although sometimes they may not have known how Lincoln was going to turn out, but they certainly knew what Franklin Roosevelt represented, I think, and certainly in 1936 after 32. He comes in and he said, this is not your fault, people. This is a failure of leadership, and I'm here to provide that leadership. And I think that still is an important thing to think about for your country, but it's understandable why people vote the other way around. But that's what you need, the citizens, to have that larger view that maybe the leader will make a difference and make it, in the long run, it'll be better for your pocketbook.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, thank you so much for your time, Doris. Oh, what a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you. Still to come, how to bridge the political gulf between so many of us. You try to find issues that are demanding and require solution that are not partisan in nature. You're listening to the Florida Roundup from your Florida Public Radio station. This is the Florida Roundup. I'm Tom Hudson. Thanks for being with us. When Dick Batchelor first was elected to the Florida legislature in 1974,

a U.S. president resigned. America was about a year away from leaving Vietnam. Inflation was in the double digits. A war had just been fought in Israel and abortion had just been legalized by the U.S. Supreme Court. It was a divisive time for politics and culture. Batchelor served eight years in the Florida House representing Orlando and became a business and political consultant. He has written and published a new book, Building Bridges in Toxic Political Times. Dick, thanks for joining us and congratulations on this book. Thank you very much.

How does the political toxicity of 1974 compare to today? Well, it might have been somewhat toxic then, but it does not compare. In fact, it pales by comparison to the toxicity in politics today, in my opinion. And you see that in Congress, you see it, the mean-spiritedness. It's on the extreme left and on the extreme right. As I talk about bringing people together, you have to admit up front, there's some people you just don't invite. If they're innately toxic, you don't invite them to the conversation. You have to work around them. What are some of those characteristics

of people that you would not invite to the conversation this country is trying to have? If they're not really looking for a solution, if they really just want to hear themselves blabber, not to be blunt about it, if they really are not willing to set aside some differences, which is the biggest thing. I know who I am politically. I'm a traditional liberal Democrat. That's the lane I'm in. But can I reach across the aisle to somebody who's a traditional, maybe an economic conservative, maybe a conservative Republican, maybe not a MAGA Republican? But can you reach across the aisle and say to them, look, we will never agree on these things. Let's set those aside now. But for the moment, are there things we can convene around which we might find a solution? In fact, while it was very long and circuitous, the Congress

finally came together and found funding for Ukraine and Israel and Taiwan. So it came together. When you get involved in politics, you've got to decide if you want to be well-known for getting things done, or do you want to be well-known for simply being well-known? That applies to the far left and the far right. Can you set aside some of those toxic differences and come together on some things you can agree on?

And I think the answer is yes, in most cases. But again, I'm not naive. Not all cases. How do you think today's political environment influences the types of personalities that are attracted to serve those that, as you say, perhaps genuinely have some kind of passion to serve and find solutions and those that perhaps are there for more grandstanding purposes? I think one of the worst Supreme Court cases prior to the decision on Roe v. Wade was the Citizen United case. This was the case regarding campaign contributions.

Right, and unlimited campaign contributions. And it's always been said that money is the mother's milk of politics. Well, I contend it's sour. Now there's so much money poured into politics after a Citizen United case, basically the Supreme Court saying corporations are individuals and they can give unlimited campaign contribution

and influence. Let me give an example. The legislative seat is about one-sixth of the size of the county, just generally speaking. But these candidates running for the legislature, the House of Representatives that pays $45,000 at the top, they're spending a half a million, up to a million dollars to get elected.

Now, let me ask you this. If you raise a million dollars, and a lot of it comes from one or two sources, and you're elected, are you unduly influenced by that contribution? It would be hard not to be. So I think politics is added to the toxicity of the debate. And I think social media, social media is because a lot of these elected officials are satisfied with their Twitter account, X account, their Facebook account, their followers. And again, they kind of feed that. It's an echo chamber. They just kind of feed that. So I think echo chamber. They just kind of feed that.

So I think the toxicity there, I think it's amplified by the unlimited amount of contributions that one can receive and spend. I think it's undue influence. And I think the voter feels miniaturized in the process and discouraged by participation in the process. How important is it, do you think, Dick, to recognize one's own contribution to toxicity as a citizen, as a voter? Toxicity is not defined by somebody who disagrees with me or somebody who disagrees with either side of the issue. The toxicity is when you innately do not want to find a solution. It's better to politicize the issue than it is to solve the issue. it's better to politicize the issue than it is to solve the issue.

Politics, Dick, has never been starved of cynicism, spurious motivations, or purposely vague language. We've seen that for generations since the beginning, arguably, of the republic. How is it different today, and how can a citizen, a voter in Florida, who wants to build a bridge, to use the title of your book, begin putting those building blocks and that foundation in place? You try to find issues that are demanding and require solution that are not partisan in nature. Let me give an example. In our community, we have Project Opioid because the opioid deaths are on the rise. Fentanyl is 50 times more powerful than heroin. That's an issue. Fentanyl killing does not discriminate politically. It will kill Democrat, Republican, NPA, non-registered voter. I mean, fentanyl is dangerous. That is not a partisan issue.

Let's say domestic violence is a major issue in your community or childhood abuse, whatever the issue might be. So what I'm trying to stress here is identifying an issue that needs resolution, that needs solving, needs to be addressed, but it's not inherently political, thus not inherently toxic. inherently political, thus not inherently toxic, convene the community, the faith community, Hispanic community, African-American community, all communities around the issue and address that. So frankly, after this election, no matter who wins the presidential election, the toxicity is not going to go away. In fact, it might be amplified. We'll see. I'm Tom Hudson, and you're listening to the Florida Roundup from your Florida Public Radio station. We'll see. That may be toxic. Let me give you two examples just to reflect upon, Dick. A Florida Republican may rail against what they perceive to be socialism, for instance. I suspect we're going to be hearing that word quite a bit, certainly here in South Florida during this election cycle. But some of the highest rates of enrollment in Obamacare, accepting government subsidies, are in Florida. in Florida. Now, likewise, a Florida Democrat may talk about upholding democracy, but the state party canceled its Florida presidential primary. So how do we square

these words and slogans versus the actions that parties, politicians, and voters ultimately take? A good question. You're looking, what is it, the consistency of the hobgoblin of mankind or something like that? Well, the unique human capacity to hold two conflicting ideas in our head at the same time. Right. Yeah. Obviously, the both parties bring a lot of uncertainty in public policy and they do things that appear to be in conflict with each other because i've always had uh major issues with any with the incumbent governor whether it's uh woke don't say gay you can't teach aps courses in african-american history you can't make people uncomfortable with the history of race in America, those kind of, I'm going to call those kind of social issues, the whole wokeness thing. And I've always had an issue with that. But by the same token, I don't think the Democratic Party has really been able to

define where we are on those issues. In fact, they're being defined by the Republican leadership issues. In fact, they're being defined by the Republican leadership and put in a defensive position. So I am not encouraged, frankly, by the Democratic Party of the state of Florida. You say, and I think a lot of people would agree with you, that there's a high risk of worse toxicity after the November election and after a January inauguration. You point out in your book to folks, you caution them to be prepared to be provoked. I think a lot of people would say that they are exhausted of being provoked, regardless of what side of the political aisle they may identify with most. of the political aisle they may identify with most. If we're prepared to be provoked, what should voters and citizens and residents, community members, be prepared for now come the next six months and the next post-election cycle?

Yeah, and excellent question, because I think inherently the toxicity is there and it will be amplified. I was thinking this morning, if you look at Roe versus Wade, you look at Citizens United case and other Supreme Court cases, they're getting very close to the First Amendment and right of free speech. And that is the one thing that is sacrosanct. It's very important. It's critical. And Sacker saying it's very important, it You see that also as a First Amendment case? Well, I do see it as a First Amendment case, the right of free speech, because, you know, you cannot advocate for women's health care, particularly as it regards specifically to abortion. And so there are restrictions on that. Well, how so? I don't quite understand that. I think you see a lot of pushback from the administration and from the really conservative wing of the Republican Party. Their suggestion that you can't even talk about

abortion being a choice. Now, whether or not that's abortion, whether it's contraceptive, whether it's a warning after appeal, whatever it might be, but they're hampering doctors. And maybe it's a perception of the First Amendment right being violated, but they are intimidated by the issue. Intimidation leads to people being nonresponsive, and that, in my opinion, impinges upon the First Amendment right. The chilling effect there is what you're referring to. Yes. I really do think we're on the verge of seeing whether there's a big transformation in this country. I think it's worth the debate between now and the election as do all of our rights. Dick Batchelor is a longtime political consultant, former legislator here in the state of Florida. He is the author of Building Bridges in Toxic Political Times. Dick, thanks so much for your time. I appreciate it.

Thank you for your time. And that's our program for today. It's produced by WLRN Public Media in Miami and WUSF Public Media in Tampa by Bridget O'Brien and Grayson Docter. WLRN's Vice President of Radio is Peter Meritz. We get engineering help each and every week from Doug Peterson and Charles Michaels. Additional help from Richard Ives. Our theme music is provided by Miami jazz guitarist Aaron Leibos at AaronLeibos.com. Thanks for listening this week and for supporting public media in your community. I'm Tom Hudson. Have a terrific weekend.