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PARTISAN REVIEW
most remarkable political achievements of contemporary American his–
tory," a movement within Democratic ranks to defeat a sitting President
who expected a clear sail toward renomination.
There have been other, highly unsatisfactory, books about
Lowenstein, including memoirs by some of his proteges, such as David
Harris, and one scandalous attack by lawyer and actor Richard
Cummings, which took off on the Old Left charge that Lowenstein was
a paid CIA agent. But finally Lowenstein has a biographer his life de–
serves. William Chafe has combed all the sources, including Lowenstein's
personal diary and his vast collection of correspondence, and he has in–
terviewed virtually every one of his old political associates and personal
friends. The result is a textured and magnificent study that succeeds not
only as political history but also as a deeply felt personal portrait of the
unknown and insecure man behind the bravado.
William Chafe's examination of this one liberal activist's personal
and political life points the way toward an examination of American lib–
eralism in the 1960s and provides a mechanism to evaluate its strengths
and weaknesses. What was unique about Allard Lowenstein was that just
as he sought to have America live up to its promises, he worked equally
as hard to contest and oppose those who linked themselves to liberal
causes only to gain cadre for their own attempts at the creation of a
revolutionary movement, one that would oppose the entire system rather
than work for catharsis. This seems at times to disturb his biographer,
who writes that in contrast to liberals who saw the Bill of Rights as in–
divisible, some like Lowenstein "felt that the Communist menace was
both real and pernicious, that Communism itself had to be fought at ev–
ery turn," and hence if one defended civil liberties, one had to acknowl–
edge "how evil the left was."
From the standpoint of the 1990s, one might ask whether
Lowenstein's experience confirms rather than denies his clear centrist
stance. Communism, after all, was indeed evil and pernicious, and cer–
tainly it was possible to defend the political rights of Communists while
strongly opposing their secretive political agenda. This, of course, is what
Lowenstein did with a passion. Because a thug like Joe McCarthy used
the Communist issue to sully the political landscape, certainly it did not
mean that the correct response was to ignore the issue and act as if
Communist attempts to create a Popular Front were worthwhile.
Indeed, so strong was Lowenstein's commitment to opposing the hard
left that at a critical point he abandoned the Freedom Summer effort,
over the issue of Communist infiltration into the civil rights movement,
just as the effort took off
What frustrated Lowestein were two things: the slow and ponderous
decision-making process within the SNCC, whose most prominent lead-
