My American Historian ‘Guru’…& the US Presidential Election

As polling begins in the US presidential marathon, a race described as “the most expensive, unpredictable and crucial in modern US history”, I am reminded of my memorable few days of intense interaction in the mid-1960s with a wonderful American historian at the Delhi University where I was studying political science. James MacGregor Burns kindled in me an abiding interest in the US constitution, politics, and the presidential election.

James MacGregor Burns and his gracious wife were on a visit to India. I was assigned the duty of taking them around the Delhi University and organising his lecture in my college. But we got enough time to discuss different aspects of the executive and legislative branches of the government. I was more than happy to answer his queries on Indian politics and culture (whatever it was worth…coming as it did from an undergraduate student!!!).

After my univesity days, I lost track of him. So you can understand my joy when I learnt that the distinguished scholar is active even at age 89. “After more than 20 books, a Pulitzer Prize and many other honours for his work on the executive and legislative branches of government, 89-year-old historian James MacGregor Burns is ready for a new subject,” reports AP.

” ‘ I’m working on the politics of the Supreme Court,’ he says, seated in a small armchair in his converted farmhouse, a sunny, cluttered, book-filled loft just down the road and up the hill from Williams College, where he studied as an undergraduate and later taught for decades. ‘I felt I had treated presidents and Congresses a lot, and here was this other branch I didn’t know that much about. I had a feeling it would be even more political than I expected, and it is’.

“He is white-haired and wide-eyed, an ever curious scholar dressed smartly in khakis and a striped shirt for this afternoon interview. Although clearly slowed by age, he remains active enough that when his car broke down in town earlier in the day, he walked back home, uphill, for more than a mile…

“First published nearly 60 years ago, Burns is a longtime expert on presidential leadership and leadership in general. He has written often about the ‘transformational’ leader, one with the vision to change the world, and the ‘transactional’ leader, one who knows how to negotiate and compromise. His 1978 text, ‘Leadership,’ is widely studied by business and political science majors, while his two-volume biography of Franklin Roosevelt is a model for books on the late president.

“But he also knew much about life beyond the campus. He was an Army combat historian during the Second World War, recording the memories of soldiers just off the battlefield in Okinawa and elsewhere in the Pacific, and earning four combat medals and the Bronze Star. Later, he worked on a task force headed by Herbert Hoover and served as a congressional aide in Washington, where private scandals surprised him (he recalls hearing one drunken legislator brag about his womanizing), and the public record intrigued him: How does government work? What is the relationship between presidents and Congress, and presidents and their political parties?…

“From Kennedy on, Burns has been tough on modern presidents. He believes Kennedy started a tempting, but self-defeating trend, running not only ‘against Washington’ but against your own party. Kennedy relied on his own people more than Democratic officials to get elected and, once in office, had a difficult time building support in the Democratic-controlled Congress. Other presidents, from Nixon to Carter to Clinton, would have similar problems.

” ‘I think it’s an even more difficult situation today with our government because the system has become increasingly divided and fragmented and problems have become more complex,’ he says.

” ‘To put it simply: The constitutional checks and balances that we read about every day were deliberately established to prevent tyrannical government. . . . But if you need a strong government to meet the needs of the people, this becomes quite a danger. The government cannot act in the face of major challenges’.”

More here…

Reading his views in the AP story, I became nostalgic and recalled how Burns patiently explained to me in a simple manner the nuances of American constitution and politics nearly four decades ago. I wish I could visit your home (I have never been to the United States) to express my gratitude to you and say ‘Thank You, James’, and wish you best of luck in completing your book on the Supreme Court.

(Photo above: Historian James MacGregor Burns poses at his home in Williamstown, MA., courtesy THE ASSOCIATED PRESS/Nathaniel Brooks)