Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
01 March 2007 5:37 pm by Taylor Marsh
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
To say this is the passing of an era is to mistake history for just another
day. Mr. Schlesinger was present at our finest hours in the 20th century and
chronicled them for all who came after. He was a quiet man among giants, with
a mind as big as the personalities and president he served so shortly.
After Kennedy’s thin conquest over GOP candidate Richard M. Nixon,
Schlesinger served in the White House as a speech writer and presidential
special assistant for Latin American affairs. At the time of Kennedy’s
assassination in 1963, Schlesinger was left with voluminous notes he’d
taken for the president, which Kennedy planned to use in writing his autobiography.
Instead, Schlesinger used them to craft his own book, A Thousand Days: John
F. Kennedy in the White House, which won both the Pulitzer and the National
Book Award in 1966. He returned to the Kennedy family more than a decade later
with Robert Kennedy and His Times. …
Josh Marshall\’s post about explaining what a blog is to Mr. Schlesinger is classic.
Today we are left with small men in government and even smaller men of history
around them; all of whom seem content to serve a particular party or constituency
in the name of secrecy. It\’s the times.
We lost a very big man after he lived a very large life, leaving behind great
days of history on record. He was an unabashed liberal, who couldn\’t
bring himself to vote for Jimmy Carter. Schlesinger thought Carter too conservative.
It\’s a big day in the passing charts of history. Duly noted.
