Vive la Difference

Once every four years, the Mr. Hyde in Arthur Schlesinger emerges and he abandons the genteel ivory towers of scholarship for the noisy partisan rigors of politics. This year, according to Mr. Nixon, he and his fellow triumvirs Galbraith and Bowles have also deserted the Democratic Party. Mr. Nixon weeps, "The Democratic Party of Jefferson, Jackson, and Wilson is not the Democratic Party of Schlesinger, Galbraith and Bowles." Kennedy's three top advisors have led him astray into a morass of "liberalism" and huge government spending, and, if one is to believe the vice-President, America can not and will not accept this unholy trio. Unfortunately, Professor Schlesinger has chosen to reply in kind.

Kennedy or Nixon: Does It Make Any Difference? Mr. Schlesinger's most recent literary contribution to the campaign, will not enhance his status in the Republican Party; nor, however, is it likely to endear him to those who want to raise the level of the campaign. A wildly partisan essay, Kennedy or Nixon? adds nothing substantially new to the campaign, and tends to detract from Mr. Schlesinger's reputation as an historian. In a brief foreword, the professor confesses his political bias, but adds, "I will rest my argument whenever possible on hard and verifiable facts; and my way, I hope, will be the way of reasoned analysis." This is the historian's gambit, but the professor is so deeply committed to the Kennedy cause that he overlooks logical inconsistencies, relies on the unsupported generalization, and allows himself to stoop to political smear tactics.

Even to a strong Kennedy supporter like this reviewer, the belief that Nixon is the incarnation of evil and Kennedy all that is good is at best a rather naive generalization. The point of Mr. Schlesinger's little essay is to repudiate the invidious popular notion that there is very little difference between the nominees.

In his concentrated attack on the vice-President, Schlesinger scores some very decisive points. He successfully illustrates that Mr. Nixon can conveniently hold two opposing sides of the same issue and come out unscathed by public opinion. And the wholesale indictment of Nixon's lack of taste ("an instinct for dignity") is being proved almost every day by Mr. Nixon without any help at all from Professor Schlesinger.

But Schlesinger is on more dubious ground in his exploration of Mr. Nixon's personality. One must assume that the professor is not exactly an intimate friend of Dick Nixon, and that he is psychoanalyzing him through public statements--which is a questionable method of probing anyone's psyche, especially a politician's. That Nixon has no political philosophy is perhaps true, but that he is an "other-directed" man who has no sense of his identity is an interesting but dubious conclusion. It is true that Nixon is extremely concerned with his "image" (what politician is not) and that he overplays the "humble bit," but how in the world would Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. know that the vice-President has not solved his "identity crisis"?

Kennedy on the other hand is a friend of the author and hence the rather doubtful procedure of psychoanalysis here has more validity. But for Mr. Schlesinger, Kennedy can do no wrong. If the Massachusetts Senator has changed his views, this is not Nixon duplicity, but a resolution of his own identity. This has an element of truth since Kennedy's record has been one of a consistent growth towards a liberal position. Yet the reader is definitely aware that the two men are not being judged by the same standard.

Kennedy, to Professor Schlesinger, is a "committed liberal." But Schlesinger is careful to point out that Kennedy is not the typical flag-waving liberal, but rather comes to liberalism by intellectual analysis. It is just this seeming lack of deep moral and emotional commitment to liberalism that worried Mr. Burns and that still plagues the unfortunate Stevensonians at whom much of this book is obviously aimed.

The crucial difference between the candidates lies not so much in their personalities as in their policies and their parties, and yet Mr. Schlesinger devotes only a little more than a quarter of his polemic to this aspect of the campaign. For it is here that Schlesinger can score his strongest points without resort to the genteel smear and doubtful psychoanalytic generalizations. Those who argue that Kennedy and Nixon stand for the same things simply have not been following the campaign.

This section of the book comes closer to being the "reasoned analysis" promised in the foreword. The different views on the state of the nation are amplified with recent statements by the two candidates. And the conflict between the two parties is supported by a thumbnail historical digression. Further, the tone of this portion of the essay is, for the most part, clearly less inflammatory.

This is a book that has and will continue to delight Kennedy supporters everywhere. But will it convince the Stevensonians and the undecided voters? Probably not, simply because it is the same kind of partisan literature, albeit better written, that can be found at any Kennedy headquarters. Unfortunately, the author's case against Nixon is stronger than his arguments for Kennedy, and Adlai's fans, although they will not vote for Nixon, are searching for reasons which, in good conscience, will allow them to support Kennedy.

Yet this essay is a wholly worthwhile attempt. Those disgruntled liberals, particularly in New York and California, who are threatening not to vote because they cannot see any difference between the two men, are blinded by their own tears. While these distinctions may not be as black and white as Schlesinger presents them, they are nonetheless very real. It is regrettable that the author's almost fanatical devotion to Kennedy tends to obscure them in rash political rhetoric.

In short, Kennedy or Nixon? is a brilliant piece of campaign propaganda. But sloppy and blindly partisan reasoning render it almost useless as a handbook for the discriminating undecided voter upon whom, if the pundits are right, the election depends.