[YaYa123]

I'm certain you are correct, which is why I think Brinkley should be identified as such when on television, not accoded the pretense that he's an honest presidential historian.

[Verginius Rufus]

A lot of the professional historians who appear on TV are even more blatantly partisan...maybe that means that Brinkley is more dangerous because he tries to come across as fair-minded.

There was an event in mid-February, rebroadcast yesterday on C-SPAN, which featured 5 authors of recent books on Presidents--3 of the historians were openly identified as Democrats and 2 claimed to be Republicans (including Kevin Phillips, author of a recent book defaming the whole Bush family). The Democrat who had written a book about Rutherford B. Hayes (Hans Trefousse) used his talk as an opportunity to make a number of cracks at Bush's expense, which went over well with the audience.

Meanwhile, the main professional organization for historians in the US, the American Historical Association, recently gave an award to Robert Byrd.