The company he kept . . .

Name-Dropping, John Kenneth Galbraith, Houghton Mifflin,
Boston, New York

American liberalism was what men like John Kenneth Galbraith personified, especially from the mid-1950s till the end of the 1960s. And of these liberals, one of the best known was Galbraith himself. With his tall, lanky figure, his boundless erudition and his ease with words, Galbraith came forth with ideas that endlessly tested the imaginations of men everywhere, but especially in America. The Affluent Society, The Anatomy of Power, Annals of An Abiding Liberal and A Theory of Price Control are some of the seminal works he remains noted for. His theories relating to the economy, his prognostications on how finance ought to be handled and his overall view of politics as a force for social good have generally been the themes that have inspired thinking among an entire generation of political philosophers. And, along the way, Galbraith has been a diplomat, one of the foremost that liberal America produced in the 1960s. As ambassador to Nehru's India, he did what no one else has been able to do since: he established a relationship of trust between Delhi and Washington.
It is not broad political or economic theory that Galbraith handles in this slim volume. On the contrary, it is easy reading because of the subject --- all the presidents and other individuals he has had occasion to interact with in his long career. Published a decade ago (and that was quite some years before his death), Name-Dropping is essentially an enumeration of the author's assessment of the individuals he comments on. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, for Galbraith as also for so many others, was an inspirational figure at a time when the Great Depression laid America low and, later, when war of a magnitude yet unimagined loomed on the horizon. FDR's confidence was of the infectious kind. He never let his physical condition (he was a cripple from the waist down) come in the way of his exercise of leadership. Galbraith speaks of all these. And more. Even with Eleanor around as his powerful spouse, FDR carried on an affair with Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd. In the 1960s, following the publication of a book carrying the details of the president's amorous life, Galbraith asks Alice Longworth, daughter of Theodore Roosevelt, about the relationship. Longworth shoots back: 'It means nothing. Everyone knows that Franklin was paralysed from the waist down.'
Galbraith's admiration for Eleanor Roosevelt, especially after the latter began to play a more activist role in politics following her husband's death in April 1945, was as equal to, if not more than, the reverence in which he held FDR. And it was natural, then, for him to be allotted the task of convincing her into supporting John F. Kennedy for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 1960. Mrs. Roosevelt was no admirer of the Kennedys, especially since Joseph P. Kennedy, FDR's ambassador to Britain, broke with the president over war policy in the early 1940s. Her hostility transferred to the young Kennedys. Galbraith argued that the sins of the fathers ought not to be visited on their sons. It did not work. In late 1959, though, Mrs. Roosevelt was persuaded by Galbraith to have JFK over on a television programme she was compering at the time. The result was satisfying for Galbraith. As he notes, '. . . both participants were interesting, even mildly eloquent.' Eleanor Roosevelt finally endorsed Kennedy for the White House in 1960, once the candidate had come into his own and had successfully created a public image for himself.
Galbraith drops other names. And with that he brings his sophisticated assessments of the people he studies as he courses along. Harry Truman, Adlai Stevenson, Jackie Kennedy, Jawaharlal Nehru, Albert Speer are some of history's remarkable figures he shines the light on. And you journey back to an era that abounded in great ideas and, with the exception of perhaps Speer, great men.

Syed Badrul Ahsan edits Star Books Review.