Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

In a typically Cornerite way of honoring the dead, Mark Steyn decides to take on someone who can longer respond.

My only contact with Arthur M Schlesinger was at one remove. A few years ago, he used to write periodically to The Spectator to complain to my editor about me that no-one other than Christopher Hitchens so misled the world about America under the Clinton Administration. He began one letter with the words “As one of those disgraceful American liberals…” to which my editor, Frank Johnson, wrote back: “Actually, I’ve always thought of you as a graceful American liberal.” Which he was. His defense of the President during that period - that “a gentleman never tells” – was at least quaintly charming in its preposterousness.

Nice. I'd say a lot more than "one remove." You'd think a conservative writer would take a few moments to lament the passing of one of the last "cold war liberals," a staunch believer in civil rights who based his fervent post-war anti-communism on that belief in civil rights.

No. Instead, it's all about Mark Steyn. And Bill Clinton. Pathetic.

But then Steyn decides to take on Arthur Schlesinger Jr., the historian.

After 9/11, he was less graceful. His fall 2001 paeans to the mighty Pushtun warrior were among the first to predict Vietnam quagmires in the new war, for no other reason than that Afghanistan was in the same vaguely east-of-Martha’s-Vineyard direction as Vietnam. Had the historian troubled himself to pick up any history book, he’d have realized that in a ramshackle way pre-Commie Afghanistan was actually one of the more pacifiable and manageable spots on the map.

Right. Just ask Dr. William Brydon.

And, of course, one wouldn't dream of calling Afghanistan a quagmire, would one?

But anyway, "Had the historian troubled himself to pick up any history book..." What is it with these reactionaries, for whom the passing of one of their intellectual or artistic betters is an opportunity to show-off their utter lack of class?

The passing of Arthur Schlesinger Jr. is the passing, as Josh Marshall put it earlier today, of an era. His death is also a reminder of how far this nation has lurched to the right and how far the distance between our political leaders and the intellectually curious has grown the past few decades.

Mr. Schlesinger saw life as a walk through history. He wrote that he could not stroll down Fifth Avenue without wondering how the street and the people on it would have looked a hundred years ago.

“He is willing to argue that the search for an understanding of the past is not simply an aesthetic exercise but a path to the understanding of our own time,” Alan Brinkley, the historian, wrote.

Mr. Schlesinger wore a trademark dotted bowtie, showed an acid wit and had a magnificent bounce to his step. Between marathons of writing as much as 5,000 words a day, he was a fixture at Georgetown salons when Washington was clubbier and more elitist; a lifelong aficionado of perfectly-blended martinis; and a man about New York, whether at Truman Capote’s famous parties or escorting Jacqueline Kennedy to the movies.

In the McCarthy era and beyond, he was a leader of anti-Communist liberals and a fierce partisan who called for the impeachment of Richard M. Nixon, which never happened, and just as passionately denounced that of President Bill Clinton, when it did.

In his last book, “War and the American Presidency,” published in 2004, Mr. Schlesinger challenged the foundations of the foreign policy of President George W. Bush, calling the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath “a ghastly mess.” He said the president’s curbs on civil liberties would have the same result as similar actions throughout American history.

“We hate ourselves in the morning,” he wrote.

For me, he was the embodiment of post-war liberalism, clubby, a little elitist, but philosophically rooted in both reality and humanity.

He began to carve out a political identity, one committed to the social goals of the New Deal and staunchly anti-Communist. In 1947, he was a founder of the Americans for Democratic Action, the best-known liberal pressure group.

In 1949, Mr. Schlesinger solidified his position as the spokesman for postwar liberalism with his book “The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom.” Inspired by the Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, he argued that pragmatic, reform-minded liberalism, limited in scope, was the best that man could hope for politically.

“Problems will always torment us,” he wrote, “because all important problems are insoluble: that is why they are important. The good comes from the continuing struggle to try and solve them, not from the vain hope of their solution.”

There seems fewer and fewer who think that way...and can articulate what they're thinking.