The duty of rewriting history

Press, 23 January 1988, Page 25

The duty of rewriting history

The Cycles of American History. By Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Andre Deutsch, 1987. 436 pp. $64.95. (Reviewed by Alan Conway)

Schlesinger, former professor of history at Harvard and now at City University of New York, has twice won a Pulitzer prize, first in 1946 for “The Age of Jackson” and again in 1966 for “A Thousand Days: JFK in the White House.” Among other studies, he has written three volumes on “The age of Roosevelt,” “The Imperial Presidency” (of Nixon), and "Robert Kennedy and his Times.” In addition, he has written numerous articles and critiques. Until the assassination of John F. Kennedy he was resident historian at Camelot. With such qualifications he has to be considered one of the most important American historians of the twentieth century. “The Cycles of American History” is a collection of articles and lectures published in various journals over the last 20 years, most of them re-written and brought up-to-date. It is a collection aimed primarily at professional historians and political scientists, but he also has a great deal to say of interest to the non-specialist especially as he does not believe in pulling any punches. He writes about the United States as an experiment in self-government, American foreign policy and imperialism, the Cold War, government and the free market, the decay of political parties, the VicePresidency, changing Presidential reputations, and democracy and leadership. To do justice to this distillation of 40 years and more of scholarship is no easy task as each article is packed with inteilectual insights which are stimulating, even if one does not always agree with his conclusions. He is a firm believer in Oscar Wilde’s dictum, “The one duty we owe to history is to re-write it.” Thus, there is nothing stale or static in Schlesinger’s compelling and lucid prose which gracefully clothes his erudition. He is, perhaps, at his best when dealing with American Presidents

whilst honestly admitting his prejudices as a Democrat and a friend of the Kennedys. His sharpest barbs, not surprisingly, are reserved for the Republicans, Eisenhower, Nixon and Reagan. He does, however, have some tolerance for stumble-bum Gerry Ford whose Vice-President, Nelson Rockefeller, was considered to be only a banana-skin away from the Presidency. Schlesinger maintains that American Presidents do more for the reputations of their predecessors than for their own. On this basis, he notes that Eisenhower is undergoing reassessment from being the simple, amiable farm-boy General and President to being a very clever and extremely profane politician; a man who indulged in nuclear sabre rattling, who had no time for Civil Rights, and who thought that Joe McCarthy had the right ideas. On the Civil Rights front Eisenhower later admitted that his biggest mistake was “the appointment (to the Supreme Court) of that dumb son of a bitch, Earl Warren.” The author sees Nixon as the man who placed the Presidency above the law, and who would have effectively ended Congress as a serious partner in constitutional government. Fortunately, the press and the courts exposed his methods as furtive and lawless. He resigned to avoid impeachment and jail. Since then Nixon has changed his image from disgraced politican to respected elder statesman. Schlesinger believes that ,had justice been done, Nixon’s retirement would have been spent in ■the penitentiary and not as his nextdoor neighbour in New York protected by Secret Service agents at great expense to the Government. Where Reagan is concerned, there is a hint of respect for a man who polictically gets away with murder and leaves others to face the music. It is Reagan’s simplistic ideology, however, which frightens Schlesinger most. He writes, “Ideology is the curse of public affairs because it converts politics into a branch of theology and sacrifices human beings on the altar

of dogma.” Harold Macmillan said much the same thing in the House of Lords, “Once you get a doctrine that is the end of you. Pragmatic politics are the only good ones.” Reagan’s strength lies in his charm, histrionic skill, and a genius for simplification. He is a patriot who “stands tall” and often relies upon old movies for much of his information, inspiration and attitudes. This often has him on the same wave-length as a number of younger fire-eaters pushing a hardline against Nicaragua, Libya and Russia. These men have been described by one Democratic Congressman, an ex-Marine in Korea, as “War Wimps” or “men who are eager to send others to war but (as in Vietnam) never got around to going to war themselves.” Reagan, it is noted, fought manfully on Hollywood film lots during the Second World War.

This book was written before Irangate, otherwise Schlesinger would have been even more dismayed. Yet Reagan is a lucky President, or as his 1980 campaign manager put it, “he walks away from more political car crashes than anyone.” Reagan, in Schlesinger’s eyes, is a master illusionist, but seemingly cannot bring himself to accept the fact that Kennedy was also of this ilk. Other topics discussed here which the general reader will find interesting are the importance of television in politics and the covert activities of the C.I.A. which Joseph P. Kennedy, shrewd business-man that he was, described as “an outfit not worth even a hundred bucks a week.” As a liberal humanist, Schlesinger pleads for better leadership in the present world with more rational thinking and less rhetoric. Over the years he has been accused of intellectual arrogance and has made many enemies as the result of his acerbic wit, but he has the one great merit of rarely being tiresome or boring. There is no gainsaying his scholarship and anyone wishing to secure a better understanding of the United States could do worse than read this authoritative work.