NEW YORK — Over the past half century, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. wrote more than 20 books and thousands of essays, served in the administration of President John F. Kennedy, consulted numerous leading Democrats and befriended countless artists and fellow historians.
He also kept a journal.
“None of us really knew about it,” says the late historian’s son, Stephen Schlesinger. “It never really occurred to me that he actually had been doing this for 50 years.”
Arthur Schlesinger, who died in February at age 89, kept his private writings in dusty manila envelopes above a refrigerator in his office and apparently didn’t think much about them until his agent, Andrew Wylie, spotted them during a visit in 2006 and suggested they be published. The historian handed over his papers, some 6,000 pages, to his sons Stephen and Andrew.
“He never asked us what we were doing with the journals, or made any comments. He seemed to just trust us,” says Stephen Schlesinger, adding that the project was about half completed when his father died.
“Journals: 1952-2000,” edited to about 850 pages and just released by the Penguin Press, allows readers to eavesdrop on all those dinner parties and strategy sessions around Georgetown in Washington, D.C., New York City and Martha’s Vineyard, when the political, intellectual and cultural would gather to socialize and analyze, to review history and attempt to shape it.
Schlesinger was already a Pulitzer Prize winner for his landmark biography of the Jackson administration, “The Age of Jackson,” and a leading voice of liberal anti-communism when he began his journals in his mid-30s.
He became a speechwriter for two-time Democratic candidate (and loser) Adlai Stevenson and an aide to Kennedy. His interest in politics peaked with the tragic 1968 presidential campaign of Robert Kennedy, but up to 2000 and beyond, his advice and approval was sought by Democratic nominees such as George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Al Gore, who phoned the historian for suggestions on his acceptance speech.
“He has good phrases, but he also has a tendency toward mysticism,” Schlesinger wrote of Gore, who was defeated in 2000 by George W. Bush. “I weakly agreed to try my hand at something, but I really don’t understand what he wants or what he was talking about.”
An influence on countless historians, Schlesinger became known for his attachment to President Kennedy, criticized as an apologist, for allowing personal regard to soften professional judgment. But in his journals, Schlesinger seems able to separate his obvious fondness for Kennedy (“this man of such intelligence and gaiety and strength”) from the occasional concern about his performance in office, and even in how he obtained office.
His liberal heart first belonged to Stevenson, the eloquent Illinois governor whom Schlesinger found a “much richer, more thoughtful, more creative person” than Kennedy. But by 1960, Schlesinger had tired of eloquence in defeat; he wanted a winner, and so turned to Kennedy and his “cool, measured intelligent concern with action and power.”
Victory was, at times, an unwelcome education. Writing during the 1960 Democratic convention, when Kennedy stunned and angered liberals by choosing Lyndon Johnson as his running mate, Schlesinger confided that while his “admiration for Kennedy’s strength and ability has increased,” his “affection for him and personal confidence in him have declined.”
“I have no regrets about having backed Kennedy,” he decided, before concluding, sadly, that what made Kennedy a more likely winner than Stevenson — his obvious comfort with power — also made him less attractive.
“I believe him to be a liberal, but committed by a sense of history rather than consecrated by inner conviction. I also believe him to be a devious and, if necessary, ruthless man.”
Although declaring in 1960 that “my own pleasure in national politics is coming to an end,” he was actually peaking. Kennedy narrowly defeated Richard Nixon, and Schlesinger, who had helped bring Kennedy crucial liberal support, was appointed a White House aide.
He regarded his years with Kennedy as the most “exhilarating” of his life, but at the time he was also caught up in the daily pressures and frustrations of government. He was a lone opponent of the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion — the failed attempt to overthrow Cuban leader Fidel Castro. He also worried that the president was too sensitive to media criticism and too passive about civil rights, “acting much as Eisenhower used to act when we denounced him so.”
But the historian loved Kennedy, as a man and as a president. He was shattered by his murder, and shattered again five years later by the murder of Robert Kennedy (a fate Jackie Kennedy had predicted). He remained close to the family for the rest of his life, a regular at family weddings and times of crisis, such as in 1969, when Sen. Edward Kennedy drove a car off a bridge on Chappaquidick Island and his companion, Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned.
“When I first saw Ted, we were playing tennis. He came in from sailing and sat down to watch us,” Schlesinger reported. “He looked terrible and, for a moment, his glance was averted, as if he were not sure whether I would wish to greet him.”
Schlesinger was a Democrat politically, bipartisan socially. Before, during and after the Kennedy years, Schlesinger got around — dinner at the White House, lunch at the Century Club in Manhattan, vacations at Martha’s Vineyard. He wrote affectionately about fellow liberals and socialites such as writers Norman Mailer and William Styron, and actresses Shirley Mac- Laine and Lauren Bacall.
Schlesinger was a player who understood the game. He enjoyed, yet mistrusted, his decadeslong friendship with Henry Kissinger, National Security Adviser and Secretary of State under the hated Richard Nixon. Noting a rumored affair between Aristotle Onassis and Lee Radziwell, the sister of Jackie Kennedy, Schlesinger yawned and noted, “The gossip of the idle rich is exceedingly boring.”
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