The Historian as Romanticist

Good storytellers have a way of convincing their audiences that they are describing times that were somehow more vivid, more intense, more alive than anything happening now.

They have a tendency to assert that people don't live as well as they used to, or as carefully as they used to, or as high as they used to. They instinctively retreat to the past for their heroes. The next generation, the storytellers' audience, is left to figure out which characters are worth emulating, which adventures are worth repeating, and which are best dismissed as the folly of another time. The storytellers can't know what will be of use; it is not theirs to act upon the lessons their history offers.

Kennedy. The magic name. Thirty four years since the first of the brothers, Joe Jr., died when his plane exploded over England. Fifteen years since John was shot in Dallas. Ten years since Bobby was shot in Los Angeles. A lot of idealism has washed away since then; a lot of liberals have perceived a rising of the dark. And now Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., sometime teacher, sometime reviewer, sometime adviser, sometime historian, but always consummate storyteller, has come out with a massive remembrance of Bobby: Robert Kennedy and His Times. And the times, for Schlesinger, rise and fall very much in accordance with the fortunes of RFK, a man "who embodies the consciousness of an epoch, who perceives things in fresh lights and new connections, who exhibits unsuspected possibilities of purpose and action to his contemporaries." It will be hard to criticize such a man.

On a visit to Boston, Schlesinger is in fine form. The classmate, counsel and biographer to the Kennedys reflects for a moment, takes the large, unlovely cigar away from his mouth, and begins to speak. The Kennedy brothers are not easily imitated, he says. No other politician, except Teddy, can match the passion with which John and Bobby approached life, public and private. Maybe in the '80s a new breed of concerned and committed leaders will arise, in a new convulsion, with a new concern about the poor and the powerless in America. Maybe. But things just haven't been the same since that watershed year, 1968, when Bobby came so close, so very close.

So many possibilities were cut short by the gun of Sirhan Sirhan on the night of California's primary. Schlesinger says that in the '70s none of America's politicians--a terms he rarely uses to describe Bobby--are anything like Bobby was. None have the same commitment, the same commitment, the same concern for the "desolate and disenfranchised." Except, of course, Teddy. It is in the '80s Schlesinger predicts, that Bobby's ideas will be remembered and revived, as the country renews its concern for the havenots. It is in the '80s, he says, that Robert Kennedy and His Times will be studied more closely and respected more highly.

In the current media Schlesinger's book has received, at best, mixed reviews. He is called a "court historian of Camelot," and his remembers of RFK are called a view through the "rheumy eyes of an old Cold War liberal." It is a shame, many write, that such a wealth of information about Kennedy had to come from the typewriter of such a loyal adherent of the clan. That Kennedy was an idealist, they don't dispute. But they resent Schlesinger's portrait of Kennedy as an ideal idealist--an untainted saint. Sure, Schlesinger received a Pulitzer Prize for history (1945) and one for biography (1965), but he also served on the campaign staff of Adlai Stevenson in the '50s and as special adviser to President Kennedy in the '60s. Can he hope to write true and objective histories or biographies on any public figures from that era? After all, the epoch he says Bobby embodied was one Bobby represented to him all along.

Schlesinger's answer is simple. He attacks the foundation of these criticisms, he lays into the "false notion of historical objectivity." Rather than a final determination, history is an ongoing debate, he says, the logical extension being that his book is one more argument entered into the fray. But argument is not really the way to describe the book; eulogy is more like it.

The book's more than 900 pages provide the story of one very unique man's struggle with an inherited place in history. It is well written and very readable; Schlesinger has crafted it into a rising drama. But always, Kennedy is the hero. Problems or crises are considered only as they appeared to him. Those who disagree are always "critics" their criticism are always presented as obstacles to be overcome. Schlesinger does not rise above situations to try and figure out who was right; he always writes from the inner circle.

When Kennedy worked on the staff of Senator Joe McCarthy's Red-baiting committee--a job arranged by Kennedy's father--he was not, Schlesinger quickly points out, one who loudly accused and named traitors. Kennedy prepared a report calling for the cessation of all trade with mainland China, but says Schlesinger, "it was an able job, its facts well marshalled, its argument well organized, its tone cool." Schlesinger even manages to turn instances in which Bobby defended McCarthy around to Kennedy's advantage, saying the defense came from a "fondness" for McCarthy and an understanding of the old commie hunter's complexity.

Likewise, those who criticize the Kennedy brothers' approval of an FBI wiretap of Martin Luther King Jr. are, in Schlesinger's book, "outsiders." Those on the inside understood the exigencies of the time and understood why the tap was necessary. Those on the outside really could not grasp the whole situation.

But the distinction between insiders and outsiders, made repeatedly in the book, is a dangerous one to draw when examining the careers of public figures. The reassurance that the insiders knew they were doing the right thing is really no reassurance at all. Insiders can rapidly start thinking of themselves as aristocrats and of outsiders as, well, just outsiders.

Schlesinger, of course, was an insider, one of those who had direct access to President Kennedy. He was one of those invited out to Hickory Hill, Bobby's mansion, "the most spirited social center in Washington." And as this colleaguecum-historian writes, "It was hard to resist the raffish, unpredictable, sometimes uncontrollable Kennedy parties." So this is biography written by the Washington equivalent of a drinking buddy of the subject. And the book's credibility is cut still further when, in a passage set in the early '60s, the author suddenly enters the picture, standing at poolside at Hickory Hill. And once the reader learns that he was pushed in, fully clothed, by Mo Udall's wife, the image of Schlesinger as scholar is suddenly transformed to the image of Schlesinger as hanger-on, as Kennedy groupie.

He has been charmed by the magic, like so many others, and charmed by his own status as a friend and trusted adviser. And that is perhaps the real secret of the Kennedys' popularity--their exceptional personal ability to make people feel trusted and respected, to create a large circle of insiders. The ignored, the abused, the poor-- the traditional outsiders--can find a sympathetic ear in a seat of power, and very suddenly feel they are on the inside.

Schlesinger's book is not to be dismissed lightly simply because of his connections. If not the most balanced, it will stand for a long time to come as the most comprehensive account of Robert Kennedy's life. And if Kennedy could be a tough, shrewd politician, behind the calculations he had a true feeling for those on the outside--for the poor, for minorities, for the young. His life very much deserves the attention drawn to it by this new book. As pure history, the book will undoubtedly be sneered at by many. As simply a story, however, it is captivating. And as a tale of commitment and idealism told in a age that pays scant attention to those on the outside, it offers hope.