Arthur M. Schlesinger, The Crisis of the Old Order: 1919-1933, The Age of Roosevelt, Volume I
This book is unfortunately a specimen of what Joan Didion called (when describing Bob Woodward) “political pornography.” Schlesinger is in love with the New Deal — which, for all I know, he has every right to be — and wants us to be in love with it too. So he deploys the standard political-pornographic arsenal. Hard-charging politicians don’t just politely smoke cigars; they “chomp” them. People don’t write each other letters; they “dash them off.” There are lots of people sleeping on couches, the better to wake at the crack of dawn, slam down limitless quantities of black coffee, hastily knot ties and return to the service of the people.
For all I know this is exactly how the Roosevelt campaign worked. Maybe it was filled with brilliant political operators who only had the nation’s best interests in mind on their way to crafting the New Deal. Schlesinger hasn’t convinced me that he’s the man to tell me this story dispassionately, however. He has interviewed all the participants in the Roosevelt campaign, and like Bob Woodward he seems to take all their statements at face value. Either the 1950’s were a simpler time, when people really did act virtuously and never misrepresented themselves to interviewers, or Schlesinger was misled. I’m inclined to guess the latter.
As literature, this is a splendid book. All those pots of black coffee and shining beacons of virtue really do add up to a great story; this was a brisk book to tear through on a 10-hour plane ride. I don’t feel like I learned much, though. If you’re an American liberal steeped in the mythos of the New Deal — that time when progressives accomplished much for the less fortunate — then this book won’t add especially much to your store of knowledge. You’ll observe Roosevelt heroically overcoming polio to win the presidency. You’ll watch the nation bow before the altar of commerce, the stock market soar to new heights, a succession of presidents do nothing about it, and the inevitable crash. Herbert Hoover will withdraw further and further from reality before your eyes, and the eventual hollow shell of a man leave the presidency in disgrace.
You know all this already; you can’t not know it as an American in the early 21st century. From Schlesinger’s introduction, it sounds like maybe the world wasn’t aware of Roosevelt’s greatness when he wrote the book in the mid-1950’s; the forces of reaction (including Senator Joseph McCarthy) were still doing their best to tear down what Roosevelt had put up. Schlesinger’s book may be a victim of its own success: what looks obvious now was anything but obvious then.
The second volume in this three-volume series is The Coming of the New Deal, which came highly recommended in Paul Krugman’s Conscience of a Liberal. The third volume, The Politics of Upheaval, may or may not touch on McCarthyism and allied reaction. I’m hopeful that the first volume is just prologue to the real meat of the story in the final two. I expect as much from a man with Schlesinger’s sterling reputation.