TONIGHT

• Home
• Video
• Podcasts/RSS 
• Local Showtimes
• Past Shows
• Blogs
• About the Show
• Tell Tavis
• Features
• Mobile

RELATED LINKS

• "Historian Douglas Brinkley takes a long, fond look at Theodore Roosevelt"
• About The Wilderness Warrior
• James Baker Institute for Public Policy
• Dr. Brinkley's bio

E-mail a friend

Historian talks about the absence of someone fighting for New Orleans at the federal level. (1:25)
 

Full interview. (12:54)
 

Tavis Smiley: Douglas Brinkley is a noted historian and best-selling author whose definitive look at Hurricane Katrina is called The Great Deluge. His latest is, once again, a New York Times best seller, The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America. He joins us tonight from Houston. Doug Brinkley, nice to have you back on this program.

Douglas Brinkley: Always great to be on your show, Tavis.

Tavis: Let me start by asking you about Ted Kennedy. You are obviously an historian of note and I know that there already have been any number of books written about his life and legacy thus far. God knows how many more will be written now that he has departed. Your thoughts on the life and legacy of Ted Kennedy?

Brinkley: Well, you know, this past year, he has done an oral history project at the University of Virginia which will be helpful to scholars and he's been working on his own memoir which is supposed to come out in October, so there will be a lot of new information there. This is our giant. This is the legislative giant.

I mean, people talk a lot about John Kennedy and his eclipsed life and Bobby Kennedy in his eclipsed life. Ted Kennedy fought for the disenfranchised, for the poor, for the elderly. He's been pushing for universal healthcare since almost day one in the Senate in 1962. He had a full wind at his back pushing for voting rights, civil rights.

He's an unambiguous liberal icon and an American icon and an international icon, who even went to South Africa and spent time with Bishop Tutu in the really heated days of apartheid and came back and denounced the apartheid regime there. Everything Ted Kennedy did had the stamp of caring about people and he's really truly one of our great, great political figures.

Tavis: As an historian, you well know that we have had these ebb and flow conversations about liberalism, about the L word. It seems to me, though, to my read, for the balance of his career, he never shied away from the L word where others have. What do you make of that?

Brinkley: That's exactly right. He, really, for the Democratic Party was very important because, remember, Bill Clinton was trying to say, "I'm a new Democrat" and people started playing with the word "progressive". They didn't want to be called a liberal. He was a proud liberal. He thought that being liberal was part of the tradition of Theodore Roosevelt's New Nationalism and FDR's New Deal and Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society, and his own brother's New Frontier.

He was a proud liberal and now liberal is back in vogue. Barack Obama has really learned a lot from Ted Kennedy. Remember, President Obama's sort of my age and, John F. Kennedy, we were children during the Cuban Missile Crisis, little two and three-year-olds. But Ted Kennedy, he was out there fighting my whole teenage years and into my 20s and 30s and 40s.

The great act of heroism when he endorsed, I thought, Barack Obama made such a big difference, basically taking the baton of Camelot and handing it to Barack Obama and doing it in conjunction with Caroline Kennedy, dramatic moment in 2008 election. I know that President Obama's sorely going to miss Ted Kennedy not because he was a healthcare warrior, but he always gave Senator and now President Obama unvarnished advice.

Since Chappaquiddick, he was not trying to run for president. He was trying to help the American people in many ways as acts of redemption for perhaps some of his ethical lapses in his life. He worked triple hard to try to make up for it and the net effect of his life is just really stunning. Bill after bill, law after law, Ted Kennedy's stamp is on it.

Tavis: To your point, finally, here about those ethical lapses, it seems to me that, for the balance of his career, he was trying to balance his personal failings, his personal shortcomings, and we all have them. We're all cracked vessels. But it seems to me that he, in a public space, was trying to balance his personal failings, personal shortcomings, with his professional work. How do you think history is gonna regard how he navigated that journey?

Brinkley: Oh, it's a great lesson for all of us that when we do something that has us down, we feel defeated, rise up and reach your hand out and help others. Much has been made of having to absorb the assassination of both of his brothers, but I think when he was in that plane crash also and broke his back and had to be hospitalized and realizing what people that spend their lives in wheelchairs have to deal with, he started fighting a great deal for disabled people at that point and became a great champion of them.

So his whole life is a roller coast ride, but at the end, it's just one great American story because he accomplished more than, you know, ten U.S. Senators combined did.

Tavis: It's been four years since Hurricane Katrina. Ted Kennedy, as we just discussed, spent the balance of his life working for those who are disenfranchised, dispossessed, and yet here we are four years after Katrina and one could argue that, while the city is rebounding, the pace is really, really slow. What do you make of it?

Brinkley: I've been very disappointed at what's happened in the flooded neighborhoods, the below-sea level or, you know, neighborhoods like the Lower Ninth Ward and New Orleans East. Yes, the port business is back in New Orleans. Yes, tourism is hanging in there and the French Quarter and the Garden District uptown are doing pretty well. But the outlying areas, not enough has been done.

You know, people have short memories and I think the more we talk about Katrina and the need for proper federal attention is necessary. There was a story not very long ago that ran in USA Today about new reports coming out saying that the pumping systems aren't properly built in New Orleans. It still seems to me it's a city that America has forgot. The same is true with other communities in Louisiana too.

Meanwhile, the wetlands keep disappearing. That famous statistic, losing a football field of land a day, every day the Gulf of Mexico gets closer to New Orleans. So it's still a very troubled region and a region that needs a lot of federal help.

Tavis: You mentioned a moment ago, Douglas, that the city has been forgotten.

One of the things that Ted Kennedy tried to do was to remind us so that we wouldn't forget those who are left out, which raises for me the question of who now four years later - with all due respect to Mary Landrieu, she's in the Senate, and others - but who's fighting for New Orleans? Who is that voice on the federal level that has the clout and the power and the stature at this point to make something happen four years later?

Brinkley: We don't have a voice down there. You know, it's interesting. I had breakfast with Ruby Bridges who in the early 1960s was in New Orleans. She was famously integrated by Federal Marshals into her school and people threw tomatoes at her. Norman Rockwell did a famous painting about her. That school she integrated is now boarded up.

You know, there's some signs of schools doing a little better, but by and large, peoples' feeling of New Orleans is that there's just too much damage to deal with it, so neighborhoods are rotting away. I think history is going to show the abandonment of New Orleans as one of the tragic results of recent American history.

I don't know how we get the momentum with our deficit, with Iraq, Afghanistan, healthcare debates. It's hard to focus with such a full agenda, but we can't forget about New Orleans. We have to keep talking about it and keep reminding people.

Tavis: Finally here, your new book already on the New York Times best-seller list, as is every Brinkley book, it seems (laughter), The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America.

 

Strange question maybe, but since we were talking about earlier New Orleans and the environmental concerns there, what's happening even now environmentally in that city, juxtapose for me Roosevelt's legacy and the drama that we still see happening every day in New Orleans.

Brinkley: Well, Roosevelt was very worried. In the State of Louisiana, I mean, he created the Federal Bird Reservations. Breton Island, Barrier Islands, Protection Island spoke for birds, but also to protect the city of New Orleans. It's now a very vulnerable city.

TR's big legacy that I write about is trying to champion green space in the United States, making sure that people didn't live in toxic conditions, keeping rivers clean and making sure that we have fish in the streams and he created Federal Wildlife Preserves. Today we have over 100 National Wildlife Preserves in the United States and that's Theodore Roosevelt's great legacy. He began with birds, but started rehabilitating everything from buffalo to antelope to elk.

Tavis: We're gonna talk to Ken Burns on this program some days from now on the eve of his wonderful series about America's parks. I'm told that you're one of the persons who put in the president's ear that he might want to visit the national parks. We're gonna talk to Burns about the fact that the timing could not be better that the president took his family to visit two national parks this summer.

Brinkley: Yes.

Tavis: I raise that, Doug, just to ask you what part of Theodore Roosevelt's commitment, his legacy, do you think President Obama ought to build upon?

Brinkley: Thanks for asking that. I think there are a few new national parks that need to be created for the administration, ANWR in Alaska; Big Sur National Park, California; North Woods in Maine, but the problems shifted. When TR left 100 years ago, he called for global conservation accords because, you know, migratory birds don't know borders. Neither do rivers. One country pollutes and the other doesn't, it's still a polluted river. And we haven't had that kind of global conservation corps, if you'd like.

The Obama administration is willing to start talking about climate conservation and really focus on global standards. I mean, China is polluting mightily right now. How can we stop that from happening or at least curtail it somewhat? These are big questions, questions the United Nations is going to have to deal with. But the Obama administration is starting to already do this. They're starting to look at how to create wildlife corridors, how to more properly use BLM land, redefining some areas as wilderness.

So I think you're going to find it a very progressive and energetic conservation agenda that the Obama administration is going to have in a year or two. Right now, they're focus is, you know, on healthcare and it's hard to get parks in there. But with Burns' documentary coming out, hopefully my book's helpful and reminds people that we have a great park system, forest, monument, scenic wonders, clean waters, but you've got to fight to continue to protect them. That was TR's legacy.

The presidents that get honored in history, ones like John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, fought very hard to protect wilderness areas also. So the hope is that the Obama administration will do that and, so far, the appointments have looked very good, so it looks encouraging.

Tavis: Finally here to the subtitle of your book. I know you've talked about some of this already, but just for greater clarity, when you refer to Theodore Roosevelt's crusade for America, great phrase. What did you mean by a crusade for America?

Brinkley: Well, it was a crusade. He believed if we deforested like a lot of Europe was doing, that we'd be in terrible trouble. We'd have soil erosion, that we would end up being a denuded nation, so he put aside these vast millions upon millions of acreage of land, safe places ranging from the Grand Canyon which was voted to be mined for zinc and asbestos and copper. He saved Crater Lake and Mariposa Grove and Muir Woods in California. I could go on all day.

He gave us a great gift and the crusade was a Darwinian crusade in this sense. The Origin of Species taught Roosevelt in his mind that we had to take care of lesser creatures than man and he believed that to lose an animal was like losing a masterpiece of old. We used to have a billion passenger pigeons flying around. There's not a single one left. Many animals are going extinct around the world.

TR, who was a hunter - and that's part of the paradox in my book - the great hunter president was also our great conservationist and wildlife protectionist. There's still a lot we can do as we're looking at species vanishing regularly all over the planet right now.

Tavis: At a very young age, he's fast becoming an iconic historian in this country. His name, of course, Douglas Brinkley, perennial New York Times best-selling author. The new one is called The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America. Doug, nice to have you on. Thanks for your work and for sharing your insights tonight.

Brinkley: Thanks so much, Tavis.

Tavis: It's my pleasure.