Given the evolved Barry Goldwater, the incorporation into mainstream politics of some of what were then regarded as his most outlandish ideas, and a once hostile establishment’s own devolution into a kind of chuckley affection for the man, it will be hard for those who were not around to imagine what it was like in the summer of ‘64. It was war, and it was hysteria – hysteria on the part of Goldwater’s hard-core John Birch Society-type supporters who believed the country had already been secretly seized by the KGB, and hysteria from the other direction on the part of many of his opponents in both parties who saw Goldwater and his entourage as wanna-be storm troopers. In fact, much of the battle over religious-right political activity and dogma in the news now has parallels in that earlier time: Just as is said to be happening now, in some states in 1964, ensconced Republicans awoke to find that highly organized newcomers had taken over their party apparatus and – guess what? – were refusing to let them be delegates to the convention. When draconianly enforced this ban did not even make exceptions for the party chairman or chief moneybags or members of the national committee. Stray displaced big shots were to turn up in the lobbies of the convention hotels, later that summer, uncredentialed, ticketless, voteless and forlorn; they were like officials of a government-in-exile and would tell their horror stories of “infiltration” and “putsch” over and over to the press. An especially disgusting and widely protested feature of this year’s far-right onslaught is a repeatedly broadcast allegation that Bill Clinton and his supporters may have arranged murder, no less, to protect his political well-being. The same kind of scurrilous stuff was being disseminated about Lyndon Johnson during the campaign of ‘64, not by Goldwater, to be sure, but by zealots who were promoting his candidacy very hard. During that campaign I was assigned by a magazine to plow through a wealth of published right-wing tracts alleging that Johnson had actually caused some plane to crash, among innumerable other felonious deeds. (Eventually, of course, Johnson was to be arraigned in comparable ways by the left wing.) While some of the unorthodox views associated with the Goldwater movement have since become Republican orthodoxy and even acquired a tinge of boring, bipartisan consensus, in parts of his constituency a kind of off-the-wall fanaticism was always present that could match anything being served up today. It was typified for me by the activist couple who never tired of bragging that they always ordered their steaks “Communist-blood red.” There were the predictable strong-arm types, too. And there were people, lots of them, whose perception of the world around them was so remote from reality as to give normal, truly conservative Republicans the willies. I stood by on the convention floor as a Goldwater delegate from Utah patiently explained to another reporter that while Richard Nixon was unquestionably a member of the Communist Party, he was probably not a card-carrying member, because the Communists were too smart for that, knowing he might get caught.
It is true that there was not so much of a religious component to what was known simply as the “radical right” as there is to the movement that people are fighting with and about today. So you didn’t have anything similar to the dispute over whether the current right-wingers are promoting and seeking to institutionalize religious intolerance or are, as seen from the other side, themselves victims of secular, liberal intolerance because of their particular religious beliefs. And times were different, too: 1964 predated gay liberation, Roe v. Wade and any number of other social and cultural sea changes that have generated their own angry political response.
But even so, that earlier experience has something useful to say now. First, it says to look very hard at the issues that seem to be roiling the constituency in question and winning it new adherents. This isn’t so easy to do in a dispassionate way because the action plays out on two levels, the reasonable concern and the nasty uses to which so many put it, tempting you to dismiss the whole subject out of hand. In 1964, for instance, it was conventional wisdom to consider it illegitimate and extreme for the Goldwater campaign to have introduced two new issues into national politics: crime and the power of the media. The manifest ugliness of purpose and spirit in which many took up these causes, however, did not mean that there was not plenty there for politicians and press to be thinking about.
The second useful reminder is that crying “No fair!” and denouncing the people who were clever enough to outmaneuver and outvote you in your own meetings doesn’t get back your party or much appeal to those who are watching. The dispossessed Republicans of 1964 paid a price for having condescended to their Goldwaterite antagonists to the point of ignoring them and then at the last minute shrieking “Foul!” They found they had to do at least three things instead: take seriously the discontents that had helped to create such a formidable political movement in their midst; take on and fight what was antidemocratic, deranged and vicious in and around that movement, and do the nitty-gritty organizational work required to justify and reclaim their say-so in the party. Of course, Goldwater’s rout by Johnson didn’t hurt. I’m not saying they need or should be praying for or are likely to get a rout by Clinton in 1996, only that their own history has an awful lot to teach them.
title: “The Goldwater Precedent” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-27” author: “Darryl Lewis”
Given the evolved Barry Goldwater, the incorporation into mainstream politics of some of what were then regarded as his most outlandish ideas, and a once hostile establishment’s own devolution into a kind of chuckley affection for the man, it will be hard for those who were not around to imagine what it was like in the summer of ‘64. It was war, and it was hysteria – hysteria on the part of Goldwater’s hard-core John Birch Society-type supporters who believed the country had already been secretly seized by the KGB, and hysteria from the other direction on the part of many of his opponents in both parties who saw Goldwater and his entourage as wanna-be storm troopers. In fact, much of the battle over religious-right political activity and dogma in the news now has parallels in that earlier time: Just as is said to be happening now, in some states in 1964, ensconced Republicans awoke to find that highly organized newcomers had taken over their party apparatus and – guess what? – were refusing to let them be delegates to the convention. When draconianly enforced this ban did not even make exceptions for the party chairman or chief moneybags or members of the national committee. Stray displaced big shots were to turn up in the lobbies of the convention hotels, later that summer, uncredentialed, ticketless, voteless and forlorn; they were like officials of a government-in-exile and would tell their horror stories of “infiltration” and “putsch” over and over to the press. An especially disgusting and widely protested feature of this year’s far-right onslaught is a repeatedly broadcast allegation that Bill Clinton and his supporters may have arranged murder, no less, to protect his political well-being. The same kind of scurrilous stuff was being disseminated about Lyndon Johnson during the campaign of ‘64, not by Goldwater, to be sure, but by zealots who were promoting his candidacy very hard. During that campaign I was assigned by a magazine to plow through a wealth of published right-wing tracts alleging that Johnson had actually caused some plane to crash, among innumerable other felonious deeds. (Eventually, of course, Johnson was to be arraigned in comparable ways by the left wing.) While some of the unorthodox views associated with the Goldwater movement have since become Republican orthodoxy and even acquired a tinge of boring, bipartisan consensus, in parts of his constituency a kind of off-the-wall fanaticism was always present that could match anything being served up today. It was typified for me by the activist couple who never tired of bragging that they always ordered their steaks “Communist-blood red.” There were the predictable strong-arm types, too. And there were people, lots of them, whose perception of the world around them was so remote from reality as to give normal, truly conservative Republicans the willies. I stood by on the convention floor as a Goldwater delegate from Utah patiently explained to another reporter that while Richard Nixon was unquestionably a member of the Communist Party, he was probably not a card-carrying member, because the Communists were too smart for that, knowing he might get caught.
It is true that there was not so much of a religious component to what was known simply as the “radical right” as there is to the movement that people are fighting with and about today. So you didn’t have anything similar to the dispute over whether the current right-wingers are promoting and seeking to institutionalize religious intolerance or are, as seen from the other side, themselves victims of secular, liberal intolerance because of their particular religious beliefs. And times were different, too: 1964 predated gay liberation, Roe v. Wade and any number of other social and cultural sea changes that have generated their own angry political response.
But even so, that earlier experience has something useful to say now. First, it says to look very hard at the issues that seem to be roiling the constituency in question and winning it new adherents. This isn’t so easy to do in a dispassionate way because the action plays out on two levels, the reasonable concern and the nasty uses to which so many put it, tempting you to dismiss the whole subject out of hand. In 1964, for instance, it was conventional wisdom to consider it illegitimate and extreme for the Goldwater campaign to have introduced two new issues into national politics: crime and the power of the media. The manifest ugliness of purpose and spirit in which many took up these causes, however, did not mean that there was not plenty there for politicians and press to be thinking about.
The second useful reminder is that crying “No fair!” and denouncing the people who were clever enough to outmaneuver and outvote you in your own meetings doesn’t get back your party or much appeal to those who are watching. The dispossessed Republicans of 1964 paid a price for having condescended to their Goldwaterite antagonists to the point of ignoring them and then at the last minute shrieking “Foul!” They found they had to do at least three things instead: take seriously the discontents that had helped to create such a formidable political movement in their midst; take on and fight what was antidemocratic, deranged and vicious in and around that movement, and do the nitty-gritty organizational work required to justify and reclaim their say-so in the party. Of course, Goldwater’s rout by Johnson didn’t hurt. I’m not saying they need or should be praying for or are likely to get a rout by Clinton in 1996, only that their own history has an awful lot to teach them.
