Voice of the Vital Center: Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
As an ideal defining America's post-World War II politics, the "vital center" faded long before the demise of its most articulate proponent, Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
But the historian's death this week, at age 89, recalls both the achievements and the shortcomings of a vision that guided America at least through the opening decades of the Cold War and arguably, in a lesser way, to its end. It also raises the question of whether America needs to forge a new consensus to address challenges at least as great as those posed by the former Soviet Union.
The son of a prominent Harvard historian and a lifelong liberal, Schlesinger never earned a Ph.D. but garnered almost every major award in his field. He chronicled the presidencies of Andrew Jackson and Franklin D. Roosevelt, charted liberal-conservative cycles in American politics, warned against the rise of an "imperial presidency," and deplored the shift from melting-pot assimilation to multiculturalism. Known as much for his association with JFK and other Democratic grandees as for his 27 books, he was often criticized–and not just by conservatives–for an overly partisan reading of history.
That charge raises a crucial question: Was the vital center, a phrase Schlesinger coined in the title and text of his 1949 book, simply a liberal notion? Or did it express a more capacious political outlook, embraced by leaders of both parties who saw compromise and consensus building as the only way forward in fighting a powerful Communist adversary?
The answer, probably, is a little of both. True to his New Deal principles, Schlesinger advocated strong state intervention in the market economy, and only reluctantly did he later own up to the perverse consequences of a too-heavy reliance on state welfare and regulation.
But his uncompromising stand against communism transcended party loyalty. Alienating him from Henry Wallace and other peace-at-any-cost Democrats, it connected him with the tragic realism of Reinhold Niebuhr, George Kennan, and others of both parties who saw the need to contain the Soviet threat–by force when necessary.
But the center did not hold. Blamed rightly for the Vietnam quagmire, the center's ruling elites faced mounting challenges from populist movements in both major parties. While the antiwar left divided Schlesinger's Democratic Party down the middle, a different populist uprising made the Republican Party more southern, more blue collar, and even more fiercely antigovernment.
Old elites do not die overnight, of course, and those of the vital center worked with the new men, whether Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan. Sometimes, as in the case of George H. W. Bush, they returned to the top. But just as the Soviet threat was the ultimate reason for the center's existence, the collapse of the Soviet Union was its final undoing.
If Schlesinger bore witness to the center's demise, he became no less adamant about the danger facing a nation without a governing consensus. His last book assailed the current president for taking the Iraq war mandate as a reckless warrant for ignoring all counsel beyond that of a narrow circle of advisers. That admonition now rings louder than ever.
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