He's History

Went to hear David McCullough speak last night. A real pleasure. He knows how to bewitch an audience, and much of his commentary--on history, education, writing, and culture--was as wise as his grandfatherly eyes were twinkly. McCullough is not an historian to whom I naturally gravitate. Although I admire his warm humanism, in his effort to make history personal he leaves out too much of the intellectual for my liking. Yet his charms are undeniable.

That said, I do have a nit to pick. McCullough claimed that, to be an historian, you must enjoy history as a matter not just of the mind but of the heart. He also argued that the best modern presidents have generally been those who had such an interest in history (TR, Truman, JFK, etc.). And he praised the founders for their immersion in ancient history. The implication was that, by studying the past, these great leaders were best equipped to deal with the complexities of the present. OK. Not an especially controversial claim for an historian to make, but a generally reasonable one. After the talk, McC went on the respond to some questions that had been presubmitted by History Dept. grad students. One question was, "Should historians use their historical understanding to pursue political causes?" His answer, a resounding, "NO!"

Spot the contradiction? How, exactly, can those wise leaders benefit from history if they refuse to apply its judgments to present controversies? And how, pray tell, can historians "take the past to heart" if they don't actively relate it to what they have lived and are living? In one sense, I can sympathize with McC's answer. We've all been in classes, or known colleagues, who used their positions as an excuse to proselytize and harangue for some lame ideological agenda. I'm annoyed by both the lefty sociologist who requires you to acknowledge your own inner racism and the business law prof who relieves his normal schedule of pizza parties and Rambo viewings with diatribes about how any students who vote Democratic are too stupid to pass his (pathetically standardless) class. Objectivity comes first, and we ought to avoid the tedious axe-grinding that is better suited for, well, weblogs like this.

But McC made his point without any nuance. It was a dogmatic, even a silly, claim. He elaborated by saying that he didn't think you could judge a leader until 50 years down the road. Huh? To take an extreme case, did we really need 50 years to know that Mussolini was an asshole? Stalin? Maybe we've gained more universal consensus on those figures over time, as extreme supporters were discredited. But come on! People knew back then. And it wouldn't have done any good for them to say, "Hey, wait, I think Stalin's a scum-sucking commie tyrant, but maybe I'll be proved wrong in 50 years, so I'll shut up about it." You've gotta make judgments, damn it. Yeah, maybe you're wrong, and time will expose the errors. But that doesn't mean you can't--or shouldn't--make them. Why study history if it has NO use in the present? The unwitting endpoint of his argument is raw escapism, or obsurantism.

Back in the USA, of course, things are often more complicated. Truman was unpopular when he left office, but history makes him look a lot better. Harding died a beloved Prez and now lies in utter disrepute. Still, those are exceptions. FDR died a great, and he's only risen. Nixon left in disgrace, and he'll always stay there (no matter how many books his corpse writes). I may like Jimmy Carter, and he may build a lot of houses, but I don't see how he'll ever be redeemed as a successful president. McC may think John Adams got a raw deal, but, ya know, no matter how eloquently he wrote letters to Abby, the Alien & Sedition Acts are still a mightly millstone. Sometimes a trainwreck is what it is. George Bush may tell us over and over that "history will judge," but I can smell his shit now. Maybe history will prove me wrong. I'm willing to take that risk.