About book Before The Storm: Barry Goldwater And The Unmaking Of The American Consensus (2002)
Perlstein’s account of the birth of modern conservatism also provides fascinating perspective for the hyperbole so prevalent today. Fully appreciating how people felt in the past means putting aside knowledge of ensuing events. Take the recent Ebola scare in America. Fear ran rampant, kids stayed home from school, people without symptoms were quarantined, an Ebola Czar was appointed, and rumor had it that radical Islamists were infecting themselves in order to decimate America. Looking back we may see some overreaction, but perhaps not so much at the time. Consider this. In 1963 California Senator Kuchel announced he was receiving over 6,000 letters a month asserting that Chinese Communist troops in Mexico were preparing to invade the US and that a Soviet Colonel was training African troops, including many cannibals, in the swamps of southern Georgia readying for a UN takeover of the US. Think people are more paranoid today than fifty years ago? Think again. Such fears were catalysts to the inception of modern conservatism as they are to its staying power.With the failure of the Dixiecrat movement to affect the 1948 presidential election, the failure of staunch Ohio conservative Senator Robert A. Taft to win the nomination at the 1952 Republican convention, and the censure of Joe McCarthy in 1954, conservatives of every variety were left searching for new leaders. Southern Democrats found themselves out of step with the national party. Eisenhower, viewed as an internationalist and by many as a liberal, enjoyed widespread popularity. By 1958 the number of conservatives in Congress had dwindled. In this vacuum the modern conservative movement was unfolding. The idea of uniting pro-business, anti-labor, anti-tax, balanced budget, isolationist Republican conservatives with states’ rights, segregationist Southern conservatives along with anti-communist conservatives into a single conservative force that could win national elections was championed by Clarence “Pat” Manion. Manion was a retired dean of Notre Dame’s law school, lifelong conservative and disheartened Taft activist who vented on his own radio and TV program. The leader he found to carry the torch and corral the faithful was Barry Goldwater. First elected to the Senate in 1952, Goldwater changed the conservative rhetoric. Instead of identifying communist infiltration as the cause of America’s problem and looking for communists under every bed, Goldwater held the much more cogent view that American’s themselves were the problem. The New Deal had spawned a dependent society that had lost its vigor and industriousness, had grown soft, and could no longer stand up to the communist threat. Only by putting responsibility back on the individual could people develop the work ethic and moral fiber for America to prosper and be respected internationally. Goldwater put conservative philosophy in human moral terms everyone, North and South, could follow and it caught on with a very committed and vocal minority. Meanwhile William F. Buckley and his 1955 startup National Review provided support for conservative causes and reached out to a new generation of young conservatives on college campuses and former communists disillusioned by the revelations of Soviet slave camps. These reformed conservatives were among the most fervent. Manion hired his cohort and Buckley’s Yale debating partner and brother-in-law Brent Bozell to ghostwrite Goldwater’s book, Conscience of a Conservative, which leaped to Time’s and The New York Times bestseller lists in 1960. Manion had hoped to exploit a Nixon-Rockefeller stalemate at the Republican convention. This didn’t happen but Goldwater did gain permanent committed supporters many of whom went on to establish Young Americans for Freedom which mobilized college students across the country.In 1958 Robert Welch founded the ultra-conservative John Birch Society which carried McCarthyism to new extremes holding that even Eisenhower was a communist conspirator and Chief Justice Earl Warren should be impeached. Fred Koch, father of the current conservative activists, billionaires Charles and David Koch, co-founded the John Birch Society. By 1961 membership swelled to tens of thousands with endorsements from Cardinal Cushing, Senator Eastland and Goldwater. Red hysteria was reborn. The Society was particularly popular in Orange County, CA where Ronald Reagan often spoke to anti-communist groups and supported Nixon’s ultra-conservative opponent in the 1962 Republican primary for California governor. Nixon regarded as far too liberal for the OC’s and Birchers to support lost to Democrat Pat Brown in the main election. 1963 was a watershed year in terms of national divide. The fifties’ calm and illusion of consensus had given way to the Civil Rights movement of Martin Luther King and violent reprisals in the South, Boston schools’ crisis in the North, growth of conservative movements such as Young Americans for Freedom and radical liberal ones such as Tom Hayden’s SDS and Malcom X’s black supremacy. Fear stoked the conservatives and moralism the liberals as Rachael Carson’s Silent Spring, Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique and Michael Harrington’s The Other America appeared. George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door and President Kennedy finally took a stand proclaiming equal rights for blacks a moral issue. Americans were splintering from Birmingham to Boston to Berkeley.The polarization of America was critical to LBJ’s decision to escalate the war in Viet Nam in early 1964. Remembering well how the charge that Truman lost China cost the Democrats in 1952 and gave credence to McCarthyism, LBJ wanted no repeat. Faced by the Joint Chief’s judgment that current tit for tat policy was hopeless and only bombing in Laos and the North could stave defeat, LBJ, nervous about a conservative challenge in the upcoming election, felt he had little choice. However, public announcements would wait until after the election.As 1963 rolled into 1964, longtime conservative activist Clif White was getting the job done for Goldwater. White led a fervently dedicated organization in a grassroots campaign to select delegates loyal to Goldwater in state caucuses and primaries. The May California primary went to Goldwater with help from an ineffective campaign by Rockefeller as Lodge and Scranton held back until too late. After California, Goldwater’s nomination was never really in doubt. The party had been taken over by extreme conservatives not representative of the general public, 80% of whom supported LBJ over Goldwater. In July, the 1964 Republican convention in San Francisco was overwhelmed by conservative Goldwater delegates and supporters offering an amazing counterpoint to a city with a different crowd making Haight-Ashbury its home. In June, the first hippies, the Merry Pranksters, had left the area on their school bus “Furthur” to spread cheer and perhaps pick up fresh supplies from Timothy Leary who’s The Psychedelic Experience had just appeared. Back at the Cow Palace, delegates enjoyed the latest dances such as the “Eisenhower sway”, “sway back and forth. But end up in dead center. Do not speak while performing this exercise.”Goldwater, simplistic in his policies and in his politics, kept close his old Arizona friends with similar myopic views and kept distant the professionals like Clif White whose diligent work got him the nomination. Goldwater’s ill-considered, self-righteous pronouncements were authentic, but political disaster. He voted against the popular (except in the South) Civil Rights bill in a time of terrible violence against blacks saying passage would create a police state in America, ignoring the fact that the Deep South already was. He called for nukes to defoliate Viet Nam saying that as president he would just tell the Joint Chiefs to win and to figure out how on their own. He called for reducing the number of American soldiers in Europe and putting in tactical nukes in their place as a front line defense. He called for an end to federal assistance to the poor saying that the reason they were poor was because they were lazy or stupid.Goldwater’s political naiveté was showcased in his acceptance speech, with his handcrafted phrases only shown to his cronies in advance. The famous lines,” …extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice…moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” were cheered loudly by his raucous rabble on the convention floor, but the image on national TV cast him as an extremist in most viewer’s minds. Afterwards, when one state leader was asked how he would campaign with Goldwater at the head of the ticket, he responded, “I’ll jump off that bridge when I come to it.”Both campaigns evolved to campaigns of fear. LBJ played on the recklessness of Goldwater characterizing him as a warmonger who would start a nuclear war. The famous “daisy” ad showing a little girl counting daisy petals switching to a countdown for a nuclear explosion captured this fear perfectly. Goldwater played on crime and cultural fears. Those threatened by accelerating social change (sex, drugs, decline of religious values) were prime targets as were those afraid of race riots, loss of order, miscegenation and of course those afraid of “big brother”, the federal government. Goldwater’s campaign themes presaged many conservative campaigns to come as it recognized a growing split in the electorate reflecting the changing times and the loss of the comfort of 1950’s “Father Knows Best” Americana.And who best represented that homespun image in the 1950’s other than GE spokesman Ronald Reagan. With his GE Theater TV show canceled in 1962, he put all his time into politics, switching parties (he had once been a liberal Democrat supporting Truman in 1948). He became co-chair of the California Citizens for Goldwater-Miller, gave numerous speeches and taped TV commercials for Goldwater. Reagan quickly became preferred to Goldwater as an event speaker. He firmly established himself as an extraordinary orator in his nationwide TV address for Goldwater election eve. Interestingly many of his techniques were copied from FDR’s fireside chats which Reagan listened to as a child. So while Goldwater was headed for sure demise, someone to carry the torch of conservatism through thick and thin was ready, willing and able. A star was rising.Another, whose demise was prematurely predicted by the media, was also more than ready. Richard Nixon traveled the country for Goldwater and gave speeches, not nearly as eloquent as Reagan’s. However Nixon’s focus was on meeting and getting to know the local political leaders, the precinct chairman and the county chairman, relationships that would prove very useful in four more years.Goldwater’s ineptitude and stridency not only lost the election but undermined the conservative cause and enabled the very future he so feared, LBJ’s Great Society. Goldwater’s failure to connect with any but the most conservative voters led to LBJ’s crushing victory. And not just LBJ won, Democrats came away with a huge congressional majority of 295 – 140 and Senate majority of 68 – 32, more than enough for LBJ to get his ambitious liberal programs passed. Perlstein’s book filled in many blanks for me showing the transition of Taft era conservatism to a very different one that took form in the early 1960’s and more or less persists to this day. And while Goldwater’s humiliating defeat left the movement in disarray, the rubble of his campaign paved the way for two future presidents to carry his cause forward. Nixon learned to appreciate the power of the conservative movement and put that knowledge to good use in 1968. Ronald Reagan became widely recognized as the conservative champion who could connect with the general public. Perlstein shows how conservative values developed in response to the rapid culture change and predominant liberalism of the fifties and sixties. Furthermore he shows how the legacy of conservative foundations built then would carry far into the future. While not the flowing dramatic prose of a Caro or a McCullough, Pearlstein’s style is engaging. For those who want to understand how modern conservatism began and gain insight into conservatism today, “Before the Storm” is highly recommended.
Perlstein does a solid job of describing the rise of the conservative movement that began in the late 50s, gained steam in the early 60s, and resulted in Barry Goldwater's Republican nomination - and subsequent landslide defeat at the hands of Lyndon Johnson - in 1964. Perlstein delves into the various elements that came together to almost force Goldwater to run. He details how sometimes Goldwater and his "Arizona mafia" [all close friends of his from Arizona who he insisted on trusting with running his campaign] caused his followers more consternation than Democrats did. Goldwater emerges here as a reluctant, stubborn, and disinterested individual who would have much preferred to have stayed in the Senate (which he went back to by winning a seat in the 1968 election). At times, it almost seemed like Goldwater wanted to lose so he could just be left alone. One of the most interesting segments of the book has to do with the other contenders for the 1964 Republican nomination, and the general state of the party following Richard Nixon's 1960 loss to JFK. Perlstein discusses how Nelson Rockefeller tried to force himself on the Party, how Nixon kept quietly maneuvering for the 1968 nomination, how William Scranton could have made a serious challenge in the primaries but hesitated until the convention was almost ready to begin, and how Dwight Eisenhower was lukewarm towards Goldwater but refused to endorse any of the Republican candidates. Also mentioned is the rise of Ronald Reagan from GE spokesman (and registered Democrat) to conservative icon. The only thing that I would have liked to have seen would have been an epilogue briefly describing what became of some of the lesser known characters who were prominent players in the book.
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A thorough, well-researched account of modern conservatism's first concerted attempt at gaining national power. Barry Goldwater plays the star role of straight-shooting idealist - dedicated to his political principles, sincere in expressing them but also hopelessly naive and unprepared for the tests of a presidential campaign. Also along for the ride are a motley crew of strategists, true-believers, Birchers and doomsayers. Perlstein writes well, lucidly and at times even entertainingly (the last a sadly rare trait among professional historians).Most importantly, Perlstein concludes by detailing how the organizational work done for Goldwater's doomed campaign laid the groundwork for future successes. This book is vital reading for anyone wanting to know more about the beginnings of a movement that has over the years mutated into today's rabidly ideological cabal, with its "Us vs. Them" obstructive approach to governing and contemptuous disregard for long-standing American representative ideals.Highly recommended.
—Jeff Pearson
One would be hard pressed to hit more of my sweet spots as a reader, the writing is fluid and the book hovers at that convergence of history, political science, and philosophy. It is also concerned with my own chief (impersonal) obsession of how civil society fails. While there was no formal revolution in the 1960’s, there was an end to the political culture that came before it. Often told is how the New Left and its associated hippie counterculture attempted to rewrite the terms of American politics, but what is missing from this story is the fact that the New Left failed. Instead, it was the New Right, and its own radical counterculture, that overturned the rules of American politics. In terms of popular history, this may be the best book about the passing of American politics to the rules of today. It may also be a coda to an era, having arrived just as the current governing coalition has started to fail, creating a void for a new, New Politics.
—Aaron
Before the Tea Party and Neo-Cons and the so-called Reagan Revolution, Republicans were actually a very reasonable group of pols for the most part. Since Teddy Roosevelt's Progressive Revolution of 1912, the GOP has struggled to reconcile two branches of its own party: the socially conscious and progressive wing, and the libertarian-leaning conservative dinosaurs who refuse to acknowledge that governmental protections of workers' rights and the personal freedoms that don't reconcile with supposedly Christian ideology are an advance fully within the scope and vision of the Founding Fathers. Ever since the disastrous economic deregulations of Republican administrations in the 1920s, America had been firmly in the grip of The New Deal of FDR. The New Deal was enormously popular, so much so that Eisenhower's Administration enhanced and protected those governmental programs in the 1950s and the mainstream, establishment Republican party, led by Nixon and Rockefeller, all worked to protect government social programs (while perhaps also advocating tough financial responsibility in the budgetary process). This was what the Republican Party had become, especially in the age of Truman, JFK, and LBJ.The genius of Perlstein's book (and further volumes) is that he looks at the era of hotbed liberalism, 1964 - the very year of LBJ's ascendancy and the Great Society, and examines the conservative movement's reactionary reflexiveness against 30+ years of progressive advances in America.Barry Goldwater has often been seen as a curious footnote in American political history. Never possessing a real chance to win the Presidency in the wake of JFK's assassination, and himself far to the right of America, he has often been seen as one of the ill-suited candidates in American history. Perlstein, however, uses the early 60s-the 1964 presidential election, to examine the rise of the modern political movement, one that also includes the "Reagan Revolution". Perlstein examines the origins of the Goldwater campaign, and demonstrates how a group of activists who rejected modern Republicanism began to move the machinery to propel a neo-con libertarian into the candidacy of the Republican party. One only needs to mention Phyllis Schafly and the John Birch Society to see where those true roots come from (the JBS actually literally believed that Eisenhower was a communist plant who was in the White House to impose socialist government on America and to guide the "Negros" into ascendancy in American society and firmly, vehemently protested against the Civil Rights Act and Schalfy protested that American women literally belonged in the home and their ascendance into the workplace was destroying the framework of American society). What is shocking is that these neanderthal beliefs actually succeeded in installing a a puppet candidate into the nomination of a major party in America. Goldwater never had a chance to win, and he and his shadow supporters knew that. This book demonstrates that the Goldwater candidacy was merely a power play to air the grievances that far-right wing America had with the New Deal and Great Society, and to make those far-right forces a "legitimate" force in American politics. The parallels with the Tea Party are obvious and compelling, and Perlstein's book is one of the great political history books ever written. When did American become so violently divided? Perlstein makes the case for 1964, his book brilliantly demonstrates that Goldwater's campaign was a defeat that paved the way for Reagan's dismantling of the social compact, an America that casts mentally ill patients onto the street and calls them "freeloaders", that demands you strike it rich on your own "or else" you are doomed to poverty. An essential look at how the 1960s REALLY shaped America into the Nixonian-Reagan-Clinton-Bush/Obama eras and beyond. Brilliantly conceived, intellectually solid, and compelling for the political junkie.
—Brian Willis
