The annual Fogelson Honors Forum brought popular presidential pundit Doris Kearns Goodwin to campus in October.

As she told her Ed Landreth Hall crowd, “No president I’ve studied offers a better case study in leadership than Franklin Roosevelt; probably his greatest gift as a leader was his absolute confidence in himself and, more important, in the American people.”

It’s a trait, she added, that she saw lacking in the presidential candidates during the campaigns.

“I regret that they only talk about their specific programs rather than something larger,” she said. “Underneath, I think they both have a difference of opinion, there’s no question about that, but they both go to the same voting booths, they both go to the same pollsters, and they both learn that their only real obstacle is the swing voters. As a result, we lose interest in them.”