Arthur M. Schlesinger's playbill for the American century

His personal journals unveil the glory and corruption of postwar presidents with emotional truth and power. Alas, the age of the great historian is over.

By Sidney Blumenthal

Read more: Politics, Memoirs, Sidney Blumenthal, History, Henry Kissinger, John F. Kennedy, Opinion

Photo: AP

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. in Cambridge, Mass., on Jan. 25, 1961.

Oct. 18, 2007 | Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., who died this past February, would have celebrated his 90th birthday this week, on Oct. 15, an event commemorated with the publication of his "Journals: 1952-2000," culled by two of his sons, Andrew and Stephen, from 6,000 pages down to a mere 858, far too short. If the American century were cast as a Broadway show, this would be the playbill.

Schlesinger lived many lives, in academia, in politics and in cafe society. Of course, he was among the greatest historians of his generation, continuing the tradition of his distinguished father, the originator of the cycles of American politics, and his reputed ancestor, George Bancroft, the 19th-century historian and political intimate of Democratic presidents. Schlesinger was also a speechwriter and advisor to Democratic politicians and presidents, serving famously in the Kennedy White House. Before he went to work with John F. Kennedy, he had already published his magisterial histories, "The Age of Jackson" and the three volumes of "The Age of Roosevelt."

After the White House years, Schlesinger wrote his indispensable chronicles of John F. and Robert F. Kennedy, "A Thousand Days" and "Robert F. Kennedy and His Times," respectively. As one of the few people who had experienced the presidency from the inside out, he used his knowledge to explain in "The Imperial Presidency" the winding path to Richard Nixon's transformation of its positive powers into negative ones. And he revisited his father's theory in "The Cycles of American History."

Perhaps most important, Schlesinger was preeminent among those thinkers who worked out post-New Deal liberalism during the long twilight struggle of the Cold War. In books such as "The Vital Center" and "The Politics of Hope" he provided renewed coherence. He was not a do-gooder progressive concerned with projecting earnestness and protecting purity. There was nothing precious about Schlesinger. While the progressives despised and feared politics itself, he saw it as the only way to conduct human affairs in a democracy. He believed in conflict, the battle of many contending interests, and in giving way to the other side when you lose and fighting hard to get back in. His politics were imbued with a sense of humility and tragedy, irony and paradox, and contempt for the utopian. He had sheer disdain for the militantly innocent in politics, often prey to sanctimonious fanaticism. He felt a kinship with those who grasped the ambiguities of politics but who also lacked ambivalence about being in politics. It was no accident he wound up with John F. Kennedy.

Schlesinger loved politics -- "the greatest fun" -- and believed in it. He was one of its happiest warriors. He preferred martinis and bourbon. This sparkling book is his champagne. To understand "Journals" one has to have either read all the histories of the 20th century or known the dramatis personae. There were only a few people who crossed all the social worlds he did, the spheres of the arts, movies, academia, international affairs and politics, not only in Washington and New York but also in Europe and Latin America. Few people lived as fully in as many places.

"Journals" is a record of only some aspects of his political and social life. For years, really decades, his effervescent social whirl was a kind of compensation for his losses in politics. While seemingly everybody makes an appearance in "Journals," there are no descriptions whatsoever of Schlesinger's intellectual influences and closest personal and professional relationships, such as those with John Kenneth Galbraith, Isaiah Berlin and Reinhold Niebuhr. Very little of Schlesinger's intellectual life or method is present in "Journals." He notes how much he enjoyed spending time with manuscripts in libraries, but we do not learn how he developed his thoughts or composed his histories. Unlike his proper books, which are filled with brilliantly drawn profiles, "Journals" is catch as catch can. It is the record of a sensibility.

"Journals" opens with a scene in Washington, in 1952, at a quintessential political event for hacks, a Jefferson-Jackson dinner, where the young Arthur is having a ball, judging President Truman's speech, jumping into Averell Harriman's car and hanging out afterward with Adlai Stevenson. Harriman pushes Stevenson to run against Eisenhower. "Adlai groaned, looked as if he were going to cry, put his head in his hands, and finally said, half humorously, half agonizedly, 'This will probably shock you all; but at the moment I don't give a god damn what happens to the party or to the country.'" Harriman ascribes Stevenson's comments to a cold. Schlesinger is soon recruited as a speechwriter and advisor for the Stevenson campaign. He discovers that he loves just about everything about politics, the plotting, the gossip, schmoozing with pols and press, spending time in hotels, the rallies, the whole picaresque life.

Schlesinger had the great good luck to catch the upside of the political cycle. He was almost exactly the same age as Kennedy, six months younger. He finds in JFK a personification of how to conduct politics and, indeed, of liberalism.

In the late 1950s, Schlesinger faced a mood of resignation and detachment even after Kennedy was nominated. There was a feeling that politics couldn't accomplish much. Kennedy was probably the first candidate to be labeled inauthentic, setting off the pseudo-omniscience of the chattering classes against all grimy politicians as packaged products. After all, he wasn't Kennedy yet as we understand him, though Schlesinger saw the possibilities where others disdained what they saw as a callow and merely ambitious politician. Schlesinger felt compelled to write a short book to meet the malaise head-on, "Kennedy or Nixon? Does It Make Any Difference?" Even in his book his hopes for Kennedy are measured while he gleefully eviscerates Nixon. Liberals were still captivated by the high-minded romantic image of Stevenson, whose ambivalence about politics was taken as inspirational and authentic. Until his dying day, Stevenson remained a beautiful loser, because by losing he remained pure.

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