Renowned Historian Writes Book on Division in America in 1960s

Tell me about Dick’s experience skinny-dipping with LBJ.

Dick was called to the White House swimming pool to have a meeting with LBJ and [Johnson aide] Bill Moyers. Johnson was already in the pool with no bathing suit, so Dick had no choice but to take his clothes off and jump in. And while the three of them were swimming naked, LBJ started outlining what he wanted his program to be. That was the beginning of the Great Society.

What do you think the ’60s can teach us about our times?

People often ask me, “Are these the worst of times?” I think it’s really important to remember that we’ve lived through really hard times before. The ’60s were one of them. So were the early days of the Civil War and the Depression and World War II. But we know how all of those situations ended. We don’t know the end of our story yet. Going through Dick’s boxes made the ’60s come alive for me with both promise and sadness. There was enormous promise, the real feeling that we were coming closer to our ideals.

But the ’60s also had great sadness.

That’s right. The way the ’60s ended, with the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, riots in the cities, ­violence on campuses, there’s a feeling that all hope had been lost. But, in fact, the promises from the start of the decade — the birth of the Peace Corps, the Great Society program, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, Medicare and Medicaid, and the enormous amount of other legislation the 89th Congress passed — have permanently altered our lives. That’s what Dick came to realize going through those boxes: that the ’60s were a decade of enormous promise and the enormous fulfillment of that promise.

How were the ’60s different from today?

The big difference, obviously, is the media. In 1965, when Alabama’s state troopers descended on the peaceful marchers in Selma, everybody was watching the same footage because there were only three networks. And it fired the consciousness of people and led to a change in public sentiment. Today, because of the divided media and 24-hour breaking news, even if you fire the conscience of people and organize a march, the next news cycle comes along with something else. It’s so ephemeral. I thought Jan. 6 would change the country in many ways, but it’s impossible to sustain that kind of feeling the way you could in the ’60s.

So how do we heal the divide?

The quality we need to engender most in people is empathy. I’ve often thought if we had a national service program — an internal Peace Corps — where we’d take young people after high school and send them to different parts of the country to work on disaster relief and other problems, it might teach them how to understand other people’s points of view and why they feel so angry at the other side. Then the talking can begin.

What kind of leadership do we need now?

I’m often asked who I would bring back among “my guys” — Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR and LBJ — and I always say that I’d bring them all back. If you have to get something through Congress, you’d definitely want Johnson to be there. Teddy ­Roosevelt had that fighting spirit and charisma we seem to be demanding in this world of entertainment. And FDR would help us restore trust in the government. But what we need now are people of character in public life. That’s what Lincoln had in spades.

What gives you hope?

History gives me hope. When I think of the eras I’ve studied — the Civil War, the Industrial Revolution, the Great Depression, the early days of World War II and the ’60s — they all were times of great turmoil, but we got through those times and emerged with greater strength as a nation closer to our ideals.