a thousand waves

 

In his writing, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. discusses the phenomenon of "revisionist" history -- where, right after events the picture looks one way, and then years pass, and then the picture looks a different way, because of additional information that has come out, and also because of the perspective from a distance.

 

(Also -- I think -- people's emotions get in the way of the "view" ...first it's, "He's terrific."  Then it's "He was great."  Then after more years, "He wasn't so darned great!"  For some reason it goes like that.  Professor Schlesinger says reputations of historical figures go up and down like stocks on Wall Street, or like ocean waves.)

 

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A Thousand Days:  John F. Kennedy in the White House.

written by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

Copyright 1965  Houghton Mifflin.

2002 edition, Mariner Books, with a Foreword by Schlesinger

 

--------- [excerpt, from the 2002 Foreword] ----------------------- Revisionism, it should be said, did not affect popular admiration of Kennedy.  Americans remembered a strong and stirring president who

 

saved the peace in the most dangerous moment of the Cold War,

 

assumed leadership in the struggle for racial justice,

 

initiated the exploration of space,

 

laid the foundation for federal aid to the arts and humanities,

 

tapped the republic's latent idealism

 

and infused a generation with a passion for public service.  They cherished the idea of Camelot and its brief shining hours.

 

And recent years have seen a perceptible recovery of Kennedy's reputation among scholars.  This is partly due to the passage of time; we are now on the crest of the next wave. ...

 

"The reputation of a commanding figure is often at its lowest in the period ten to twenty years after his death.  We are always in a zone of imperfect visibility so far as the history just over our shoulder is concerned. ...

-- Dutch historian Pieter Geyl

 

A Thousand Days was written in the grim months after...November 22, 1963.  It has the advantages and disadvantages of a book composed so soon after the fact.  Immediacy gives it vividness.  It also gives a kind of knowledge denied those who were not around when history happened. 

 

As Alexis de Tocqueville once observed, participants understand better than posterity "the movements of opinion, the popular inclinations of their times, the vibrations of which they can still sense in their minds and hearts."

 

Posterity of course has its compensating advantages -- a cooler perspective, knowledge of consequences, access to declassified documents and private papers, the diverse illuminations of hindsight.  Also, as Mr. Dooley pointed out, "Ye are not subjict to interruptions be people who were there."  [LOL] ------------------ [end excerpt]

 

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