My interview with John Kenneth Galbraith began with his asking me a question. Peering down from his 6 feet 8 inches, the 88-year-old Galbraith inquired, “Just how many hours do you plan this series to be on my life?”
Standing tall at 5 feet 4 inches, I sheepishly replied “Well, just one hour,” knowing that, at the time, funding for only a half-hour television documentary was available.
Over the next three days last March the Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics, Emeritus, B.S.A., S.M., Ph.D., A.M., LL.D., LL.D., Litt.D., Litt.D., L.H.D., S.D., held court, remembering detail after detail of his life, relating historical anecdotes and offering incisive analyses. The result was a compelling, first-person account of much of the last 60 years of American history.
For me, as the producer/interviewer, it was an extraordinary experience. Having William F. Buckley, Jr., the narrator and host of the program, edit my script increased the tension but helped make the story a success. The documentary, titled, “Thus Galbraith ... The Life And Times of John Kenneth Galbraith,” will be aired on PBS early in the new year.
Galbraith wove a tapestry of history seated comfortably in the study of his home off Harvard Square, surrounded by ceiling-high bookshelves and photographs of himself with various heads of state and newsmakers. (A needlepoint in the parlor says “Galbraith’s first law: Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue.”)
With little help from my one course in undergraduate economics and much more help from some willing Kennedy School professors, I began the interview. What unfolded over the course of three days of filming was a description of many of the pivotal events Galbraith was witness to or architect of since 1933.
The first thing that became apparent was the value of Galbraith’s storytelling, something I enjoyed when he visited Lippmann house during my year as a Nieman Fellow, 1993-94. Galbraith doesn’t just tell you about the events he witnessed, he places you in the room where history was occurring. He remembers where people were seated, the size and shape of the table on which they leaned, even the color of their ties. Galbraith’s uncanny ability to recall even the smallest detail makes you feel the presence of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson or even “Cotton” Ed Smith, Chairman of the Senate Agricultural Committee in the 1940’s.
“Cotton Ed would sit down at the end of the table and he would take a plug of tobacco out of his pocket, and we always said he’d put the plug in his mouth and the bite back in his pocket. He’d sit up and look for the spittoons and they had been removed so the brown streak would go down on the floor and come closer to your shoes and you’d keep moving your feet around and this was a supreme achievement of Cotton Ed Smith.”
He vividly recalled scenes from early in the century — he was born in Ontario on October 15, 1908 — to this year. The one person most influential in his life was his father, Archie, a school teacher turned farmer. “He was head of the Liberal party in that part of Canada ... he was known as a famous figure, he was in the best sense of the word, a community leader.”
When Galbraith’s mother died of a heart attack he was just 14 years old. Being left under the influence of his strong-willed father guaranteed his leaving the farm and going off to college. “I’ve often thought that if my mother had lived I would have been kept there on the farm, because she regarded that as the ultimate way in which one served oneself and one served the community .... She was much more committed to that than my father was. He was more inclined to encourage me to go off to college.”
With $500 dollars borrowed from his sister, Galbraith attended the Ontario Agricultural College, 85 miles away. His major? Animal husbandry. “One of the few economic insights of impeccable character that I had at that time was why worry about producing more and better cattle if you couldn’t sell the damn things. So the real problem was the economic rather than the technical aspects of efficient production. So I shifted in the final year from the study of animal husbandry to economics.”
After graduating in 1931, the “sour point of the Depression,” Galbraith moved west to attend the University of California at Berkeley, which was surrounded by Hoovervilles, the make-shift housing of the homeless and unemployed. “There was at Berkeley at that time a very alert and active Communist community and a more cautious group to which I belonged, which had as its major commitment improving the economy ... .”
From Berkeley, Galbraith received a fellowship to the “other Cambridge,” Cambridge University in England, to study at the feet, so to speak, of economic revolutionary John Maynard Keynes. By 1934, during the depths of the Depression, Galbraith was a devoted Keynesian, believing in government-funded programs to increase employment and stimulate business. He began testing the theory working in the Roosevelt administration. “FDR was conveniently exempt from ideology. He was responsive to what you needed to do. His only ideology was to action.”
But action aside, given the media sc1utiny of candidates, let alone one with a physical disability, I asked Galbraith, “Could Roosevelt be elected today?”
“Whether FDR could be elected today would depend on the economic situation more than a little bit. FDR was the product of the Great Depression ... but there was the Roosevelt personality. He couldn’t walk without crutches. Nonetheless he had the impression of strength .... [His election] would not be possible today, because Roosevelt was a cripple and he had to be helped, moved, supported and that would be featured on television. This would be a great disadvantage without a doubt but he did not suffer at the time.”
From setting prices as the chief inflation fighter during World War II to writing speeches for Adlai Stevenson’s Presidential campaigns in 1952 and 1956, Galbraith witnessed the power elite and industry lobbyists on Capitol Hill. He sees a more informed Congress today. “There are reasons to criticize the Congress today and it is the subject of great criticism but on the whole, the level of intelligence has improved very much since those days of Cotton Ed. He would be a figure of fun today, which he wasn’t at the time.”
During Galbraith’s five years at Fortune magazine, from 1943 to 1948, under Time/Life founder, Henry Luce, he learned to cultivate the style and expression that define his 30 books and countless articles.
Learning how to inject life and clarity into writing on the so-called dismal science — economics — brought special insight into his job as a writer. About those years he has written, “No economist ever had the slightest influence who wrote only for economists.”
During my interview he explained more: “Henry Luce discovered he had a choice, between conservatives who couldn’t write and liberals [who could but] he couldn’t print. He chose the liberals on the whole because that was at least a start. That was the role I found myself in there.”
Galbraith still writes every day, from after breakfast until noon. If he doesn’t, he says he is “psychiatrically disturbed.”
After Fortune, Galbraith would “enter into one of the most interesting jobs” he ever had, the Strategic Bombing Survey. Reporting on the United States bombing of German munitions factories during World War II, the findings concluded, “the air raids had no appreciable effect on production.”
The results did not make him too popular with the Air Force or another member of the survey, Charles Cabot, who came to different conclusions. Since Cabot also served as an overseer at Harvard, his opposition toward the young Keynesian was voiced during Galbraith’s nomination for a full professorship. There was a standoff until Harvard’s President, James Bryant Conant, threatened to resign if Galbraith ’s nomination was denied. Shortly after Conant’s threat it was approved.
The 1950’s brought the publishing of Galbraith’s epochal book, “The Affluent Society,” making him close to a household name. Millions of copies were sold worldwide. Ten years later, by the time of the United States involvement in Vietnam, his name would also be known as an ardent opponent of the war. As Ambassador to India under President Kennedy, Galbraith admitted to “interfering with all manner of things, but mostly Vietnam.” He believes that, if he had lived, Kennedy would have limited United States involvement in Vietnam. “I was always under the impression — the valid impression — that he wanted himself to limit his commitment there and was subject to the pressures of the generals and the Cold War liberals who wanted to go on with the war and that he was grateful for, indeed welcomed, those of us in opposition.”
In 1964, Galbraith’s opposition to the war meant breaking with his friend, President Johnson, whom he respected. When Johnson ordered an escalation of the war, Galbraith made his move. He accepted every proffered speaking engagement in Texas, knowing the President was an avid reader of his home state’s newspapers. "I went to him several times to tell him my opposition and his answer, which was not wholly unpersuasive, was always the same. He said, ’Ken, if I weren’t here you would be in much worse condition for what the generals want to do. You should be glad that I’m keeping this thing under control. ‘”
By 1968, Galbraith gave up on his persuasive efforts and increased his political efforts. At the Democratic convention in Chicago, he seconded Eugene McCarthy’s name in nomination for the presidency. “I was more strongly moved by the need for opposition to Vietnam than any other major issue of my lifetime.”
Galbraith has always worn his liberalism on his sleeve, proud and not afraid of the label. Today, he explains the shift towards conservatism in terms of economics and what the media, he claims, has made “fashionable.” “I think that when people are happy, comfortable, they tend to be more conservative ... but I am prepared to argue that the next time there is a slump, liberals will be back and it will be conservatism that is unfashionable.”
I chose the conservative Buckley as narrator of the program because of his stature on the opposite end of the political spectrum, for his 30-year history of debating Galbraith worldwide and, most importantly, for his profound respect of Galbraith. “But don’t expect me to suppress my differences,” Buckley warned me back in May when I approached him with the idea of hosting the program. I assured him that was part of the charm.
As agreed, I wrote the script, then Buckley worked on it. My nerves were more than a bit frayed waiting to hear back from him. What he delivered three days later was a producer’s dream, a narrative deftly weaving both the unique Buckley-esque style and nuance with his differences, political and economic. I was thrilled and awed by the clarity of his writing. Best of all, the main structure and content of the script were still intact.
While Buckley was recording the material to camera in New York, I watched his presentation on a monitor. It became clear why he and Galbraith have remained respected friends so long. Both possess a passion for their beliefs and convictions based on intellectual brilliance and integrity. Their differences only livened the discussion.
Buckley wrote this ending standup:
“John Kenneth Galbraith is celebrated not for formal economic explorations but because of his resonance as a political moralist. ’The Affluent Society’ isn’t about economic policy, it is about social priorities.”
Or, as Galbraith himself said:
“I would like to be remembered as somebody who wanted to go beyond analysis, beyond explanation and to the social action. I spent a certain amount of my life in practical politics and I would like to see that as proof that I wanted to go beyond pure economics, pure description, pure analysis to practical action.”