Courtier-historian

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. was not really a court historian but a historian who was also a skilled courtier.

ARTHUR M. SCHLESINGER JR. died on February 28. His Journals was published on October 22, a week after his 90th birthday. He twice won the Pulitzer Prize, for The Age of Jackson and A Thousand Days, the latter a memoir of President John F. Kennedy whom he served in the White House. This volume is edited by his two oldest sons, Andrew and Stephen, at his request. Six thousand pages were reduced to 1,000.

He wrote some 13 books during the period of these recollections even while logging these diaries, teaching at Harvard, helping out on political campaigns, participating in the Kennedy Administration, serving as a university professor at the City University of New York, and leading a crowded social life. Schlesinger had a wide circle of friends in the academia, politics and in theatre and films.

It is a pity that the editors omitted an entry their father could not have omitted to write. It is about Nehrus disastrous visit to the United States in 1961. Schlesinger wrote in his memoir: During dinner Nehrus daughter, Indira Gandhi, assailed the President about American policy, praised Krishna Menon, the professional anti-American of New Delhi, and otherwise elevated the mood of the evening. Nehru listened without expression. he displayed interest and vivacity only with Jacqueline. The next morning B.K. Nehru, the astute and delightful Indian ambassador to Washington, summoned a group of New Frontiersmen to the Indian Embassy for an audience with the Prime Minister. This session confirmed ones feelings of the night before. I had the impression of an old man, his energies depleted, who heard things as at a great distance and answered most questions with indifference. at times Kennedy was hard put to keep the conversation going. Kennedy described it to me as a disaster. the worst head-of-state visit I have had.

That meeting convinced Kennedy, Theodore Sorensen recorded, that Indias potential role in world affairs had been overestimated by his admirers.

Schlesingers is a classic case of an intellectual who craves proximity to power and celebrity. He flitted with ease from Adlai Stevensons camp to Kennedys, giving advice to Hubert Humphrey in the interregnum. He was sought by them, but his initiatives ensured against neglect. They were made in wise, witty remarks and unsolicited but timely advice, which impressed upon the powerful that he had much to offer. He was not really a court historian but a historian who was also a skilled courtier.

He witnessed a lot the McCarthy era, the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Berlin crises, Vietnam, Watergate, the fall of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and the presidencies of the two Bushes. He was one of the most consistent liberals the U.S. has produced.

His comments on men and situations are perceptive. Adlai Stevenson has a natural and honourable dislike of the kind of speech which seeks to buy votes by making promises. There is a brilliant comparison between Stevenson and Kennedy.

The thought of power induces in Stevenson doubt, reluctance, even guilt. He is obsessively concerned with the awesome responsibilities of the presidential office the exercise of power does present a problem for him. Kennedy, on the other hand, is like FDR [Franklin D. Roosevelt]. The thought of power neither rattles nor discomposes him. He takes power in his stride. He has absolute assurance about his own capacity to do the job, and he has a sure instinct about how to get what he wants. In Jack Kennedy the will to victory and the will to command are both plain and visible. I am quite sure now that Kennedy has most of FDRs lesser qualities. Whether he has FDRs greater qualities is the problem for the future.

But the more relevant bits are the flashes of insight. Truman once mused about McCarthy. He then began to muse about the incidence of periods of hysteria in American history. He told me (as he has before) that he had completed a monograph on this subject. As he figures it, the periodicity is about 8-10 years: thus, from the Alien and Sedition Acts to the trial of Aaron Burr; the Know-Nothing and anti-abolitionist sentiment of the fifties; Reconstruction through the election of 1876; from A. Mitchell Palmer to the campaign of 1928. So he guesses that it will take McCarthyism 810 years to burn itself out which means anywhere from 1956 to 1960 before it is over. But he affirmed, both touchingly and impressively, his faith in the decency of the American people.

One hopes they will recover from their present phase of Islamophobia and neoconservatism.