Nation: The Moonlight Writer

Most job holders in Washington have specific duties laid out for them either by the Constitution or by the Civil Service or by the dictates of the job itself. The White House doorman, for example, mans the door. The White House gardener tends the rose garden. But what about Arthur Schlesinger Jr.? Well, he has a lot of jobs. But nobody seems to know quite what they are.

Aside from falling into pools, Schlesinger, 44, is a former Harvard history professor and prizewinning author (The Age of Jackson, etc.), who serves as President Kennedy’s court philosopher, instant historian, vice president in charge of sparkling conversation, memo composer and occasional speechwriter. He also keeps Kennedy up to date on Latin America and the United Nations. White House staffers who need to try out new ideas often put them on Schlesinger’s thought-train to see if they get off at Hyde Park. New Frontier hostesses prize his wit.

Hard at Work. Betweentimes, Arthur’s pen is hard at work. He writes book reviews, recently did a piece for the Saturday Evening Post (“The Failure of World Communism”) and another for the New York Times Magazine (“The ‘Threat’ of the Radical Right”). For the monthly magazine Show, he writes snappy movie reviews. As to Summer and Smoke, starring Geraldine Page and Laurence Harvey, he loved her, hated him; as to Lolita, he loved it, loved her. He will soon have a new book, The Politics of Hope-which, contrary to rumors, is not about Bob.

Though an executive order forbids White House staffers to use their positions to earn money on the outside, Schlesinger justifies his moonlighting with the argument that none of his extracurricular writings impinge on Administration policies or pursuits, and that he turns his extra earnings over to worthy causes, including the Harvard Fund, class of 1938 division.

Even so, Schlesinger’s activities last week got a raking over from United Features Columnist Henry J. Taylor. Taylor had phoned Schlesinger to ask whether his outside writing was not in conflict with the executive order. Somewhere along the line, Arthur called Taylor an idiot, and said: “It is obvious to me that I write for people who have higher intellectual qualities than you possess.” Finally, Schlesinger hung up on Taylor. And in his column, Taylor hung one on Schlesinger. “Any citizen,” he wrote, “who thinks for one minute that the risks in general from the Schlesinger mentality, operating in abundance at the policy level, are overstated is tragically, tragically mistaken.”

A Long Time. In quick time, newsmen were pressing Press Secretary Pierre Salinger for an explanation of Arthur’s activities. Said Salinger: “He has been a historian and a writer for a long time, and his views have been published over a long period of time, and I think people still are interested in what he thinks on some of these issues.”