NOBODY’S PERFECT: A New Whig Interpretation of History. By Annabel Patterson. Yale Univ. Press. 288 pp. $27.50

The reformist Whigs dominated British politics from the Glorious Revolution of 1688 to the early 1830s, and their political success inspired a historical school. The "Whig historians" believed, in general, that history endlessly repeats the contest between the Whig Party and its opponents, with the forces of progress—the Whig side—invariably prevailing in the long run. The Whig approach predominated until Herbert Butterfield, in The Whig Interpretation of History (1931), faulted Whig historians for imposing "a certain form upon the whole historical story," a form that matched their political agenda. Butterfield’s spirited monograph led generations of historians to dismiss the Whig interpretation as a mere mask for political or moral judgments.

Annabel Patterson, a professor of English at Yale University, seeks to refurbish the tarnished reputation of the Whig approach. Nobody’s Perfect draws from several disciplines, and the prose is lively and relatively free of academic jargon. But after some early jabs, Patterson does not so much refute Butterfield as ignore him. Like earlier Whig historians, moreover, she uses such terms as "left" and "center right" as if they retained a constant meaning through the centuries, which leads her to group contemporary figures such as Bill Clinton with Whigs such as John Milton and the English radical John Wilkes.

Patterson’s treatment of Edmund Burke is revealing. His early support for American independence, she contends, required that he support the French Revolution, and his failure to do so represents a "slide" into "conservatism," the abandonment of principle for self-advancement. She barely considers the possibility that he held fast to a conception of progress or democracy that differs from her own, and she offers no argument to the many Burke scholars who see his views as consistent.

We can learn from the Whigs and their rich tradition of political argument. Indeed, the United States, seeing itself as a "city on our own. Nobody’s Perfect fails to explain a hill," may be the last Whig nation. But— how the "new Whig" interpretation of histoand this was Butterfield’s point—we must ry improves on the old. not view the Whigs’ times as mere prelude to —Gerald J. Russello