Arthur Schlesinger Jr., 89, scholar, Kennedy ally, dies

NEW YORK - Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., 89, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and "court philosopher" of the Kennedy administration who remained a proud liberal even as others dared not use the word, has died.

Mr. Schlesinger was dining with family members in Manhattan on Wednesday when he suffered a heart attack, his son Stephen said. He died at New York Downtown Hospital.

He was among the most prominent historians of his time, widely respected as learned and readable, with a panoramic vision of American culture and politics. He received a National Book Award for Robert Kennedy and His Times and a National Book Award and a Pulitzer for A Thousand Days, his memoir/chronicle of President John F. Kennedy's administration. He also won a Pulitzer, in 1946, for The Age of Jackson, his landmark chronicle of Andrew Jackson's administration.

With his bow ties and horn-rimmed glasses, Mr. Schlesinger seemed the very image of a reserved, tweedy scholar. But he was an assured member of the so-called Eastern elite, friendly with everyone from Mary McCarthy to Katharine Graham and enough of a sport to swim fully clothed in the pool of Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

A longtime confidant of the Kennedys, Mr. Schlesinger served in President Kennedy's administration as a special assistant.

"Arthur was a trusted friend and loyal adviser to President Kennedy, and a wonderful friend to me and to all of us in the Kennedy family," Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D., Mass.) said in a statement. "I will miss him terribly, but his contributions to this country will live on."

A native of Columbus, Ohio, and the son of a prominent historian, he was born Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger Jr., but later gave himself his father's middle name, Meier. Family friends included James Thurber, historian Charles A. Beard, and future Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter.

He attended Phillips Exeter Academy and in 1938 graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University. During World War II, he drafted some statements for President Franklin Roosevelt and served as an intelligence analyst for the Office of Strategic Services, forerunner to the CIA.

He emerged as a historian with The Age of Jackson. Published in 1945, when he was 27, the book offered a new, class-based interpretation of the Jackson administration, destroying the old myth that the country was once an egalitarian paradise. The book remained influential despite eventual criticism - even by Mr. Schlesinger - for overlooking Jackson's appeasement of slavery and his harsh treatment of Indians.

In 1946, he helped found Americans for Democratic Action, a leading organization of anticommunist liberals. Three years later, he published the influential The Vital Center, which advocated a liberal domestic policy and anticommunist foreign policy. Kennedy appointed Mr. Schlesinger a special assistant, an unofficial "court philosopher" of symbolic, if not practical, power.

He was soon trapped in the tangle of superpower politics: the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, the disastrous attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro.

Mr. Schlesinger was opposed to the plan, he later wrote, but acknowledged helping the administration suppress a pre-invasion story by the New Republic that correctly reported the United States was training Cuban mercenaries.

Had the press not cooperated, he later recalled, it might "have spared the country a disaster."

His time in government was brief. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, and the historian soon left the administration of his successor, Lyndon Johnson. ("With Kennedy gone, it was no longer exhilarating," Mr. Schlesinger explained.) He supported Robert Kennedy's brief, tragic 1968 campaign.

Other works included The Age of Roosevelt, an acclaimed series on FDR that he abandoned after joining the Kennedy administration but attempted to revive late in life; and The Disuniting of America, a controversial text that warned a "cult of ethnicity" could reduce the country to isolated factions.

Mr. Schlesinger had six children - four from his first marriage, to the author Marian Cannon, and two from his second, to Alexandra Emmet.