History's Verdict

His other contribution was to remind us that as citizens and leaders, we must never stop turning for guidance to our political past. It wasn't by accident that he wrote about Andrew Jackson, FDR and the Kennedys. As a liberal Democrat, he wanted to reach back and seize the best from those eras.

Edward Kennedy
Democratic Senator of Massachusetts

My brother Jack inherited Arthur Schlesinger from Adlai Stevenson, and for nearly half a century he was a beloved member of our family. As Arthur said at the beginning of their beautiful friendship in 1960, he was "nostalgically for Stevenson, ideologically for Humphrey and realistically for Kennedy." One of the principal contributions to Jack's victory in 1960 was Arthur's campaign book, "Kennedy or Nixon: Does It Make Any Difference?" In that very close election, Arthur's book made a very real difference—perhaps all the difference. Jack couldn't have had the New Frontier without him.

We loved everything about Arthur, even his bow ties. He told us he learned the habit at Harvard—"It's really impossible to spill anything on them, and they don't get caught in zippers."

Jack and Arthur were almost exact contemporaries. They were born the same year, and Arthur said he vaguely knew Jack by sight in Harvard Yard in the 1930s. The U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce named them both in its list of the Ten Outstanding Young Men of the Year for 1947. Jack had just been elected to Congress, and Arthur had just won his first Pulitzer Prize for "The Age of Jackson."

Arthur wrote about history with unsurpassed eloquence and insight, and he also helped shape history with his wisdom and scholarship. He was appalled by the war in Iraq and believed deeply that if we don't learn from history, we're condemned to repeat it. As he said last November, "Thirty years ago, we suffered a military defeat fighting an unwinnable war against a country about which we knew nothing and in which we had no vital interests. Vietnam was hopeless enough, but to repeat the same arrogant folly 30 years later in Iraq is a gross instance of national stupidity." To me, Arthur Schlesinger represented the best of the liberal and progressive ideal of the 20th century—and the 21st century, too.