T. Harry Williams (1909–1979)

The only historian to look past Long's flamboyance and see the unparalleled genius who singlehandedly destroyed the best-entrenched political establishment in America and built a machine that outlasted his death by decades. Unafraid to grapple with the tough questions a figure like Long raises. Is the corruption of an alleged demagogue different in kind or degree from the corruption he seeks to uproot? Is there such a thing as a demagogue at all in American politics, or is its utterance the last refuge of a beaten incumbent? Does an earnest, heartfelt desire to help people justify cutthroat political praxis? Can a sufficiently strong political will overcome all barriers before it?

Harris not only has the guts to proffer his own answers to these questions but he boldly refuses to accept as a mystery the notion embraced by other historians that Long must remain forever an ideological and methodological enigma. He does not defy categorization, classification, and analysis. He was an American politician, only moreso. He had his own notions of things like the constitution, limits on government (which led him to oppose the NRA), and states' rights (which led him to oppose the manner in which the New Deal was being administered), although historians and contemporaries refused to take his ideas on these things seriously. Was a government run by Huey Long closer to or further from the intent of the founders than the modern two-party system? I wouldn't venture to guess. I think Harris would.

Harris backs down in his defenses of Long only once, in the matter which Harris must know best - university operations and academic freedom, when he seems to side with the Reveille staffers who resigned in protest over censorship more stridently than he ever did the Old Regulars or any other political operators who moved in arenas with which he was less familiar. That isn't the best indicator of his own consistency in applying judgment, but that doesn't mean he was wrong in the majority of his assessments either.

Worth re-reading.… (mere)