Arthur M. Schlesinger (1) (1917–2007)

The foreward to this slender volume states its premise:
"Every Presidential campaign has its facile and fashionable cliches. The favorite cliche of 1960 is that the two candidates, John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon, are essentially the same sort of men, stamped from the same mold, committed to the same values, dedicated to the same objectives [...] this essay is an attempt to explore these cliches."

You'd be hard pressed to come up with two modern-day presidents that play such different roles in the American consciousness than Kennedy and Nixon, so it's an historical object lesson to realize there was a time when they were perceived to be virtually identical and interchangeable. That anyone would feel the need to write an essay forcefully arguing that Kennedy and Nixon have personalities that are poles apart is literally inconceivable today.

From our vantage point in time, some of Schlesinger's observations have uncanny prescience. Regarding Nixon, he writes: "He seems not to understand that he is the only major American politician in our history who came to prominence by techniques which, if generally adopted, would destroy the whole fabric of mutual confidence on which democracy rests." (Watergate anyone?) But his description of Kennedy is full of surprises: " Kennedy himself is a bookish man" (Football on the beach?) "Kennedy's political manner is studiously unemotional, impersonal [...] "he presents himself as he is, giving his critics who cry 'cold' and 'machinelike' the target they desire" (cold? machinelike? -- the man who romped in the Oval Office with his little children and fought passionately for civil rights?)

This essay is a time tunnel into a world that is by turns entirely familiar and utterly foreign. It's a fascinating and fresh view from a period when events that are now seared into the American psyche hadn't yet taken place. Kennedy or Nixon allows you to shuffle off fifty years of memory and step into 1960 as though it is a new day.… (more)

1570 History of American Presidential Elections 1789-1968 Volume II Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Editor (read 24 May 1980) This volume, which is the only volume of this four-volume work I've read, covers the elections from 1848 through 1896. Since National Conventions have been of extreme interest to me since I discovered there was such a thing when the Republican Convention of 1940 was on the radio and I spent the rest of my youth trying to get out of farm work so I could listen to the conventions on the radio, I read this volume (1874 pages) word-for-word. It is uneven, since each election's account is by a different author, and each election account is followed by platforms, speeches, and editorials concerning that election. But in general each account was absorbing reading, and I slogged through platforms and speeches because they too had some interest. I would think this one of the best books I've read this year. It is true the subject matter is very familiar, but it has been quite a while since I've read in the field and so much was like a visit with old friends. Among the speeches reported was my old friend, Bryan's Cross of Gold speech, and I was thrilled to re-read those so familiar lines.… (more)