Before the Storm (100 page)

And so history did record. George H. Mayer concluded in a chapter added to the second edition of his
The Republican Party,
called “The Amateur Hour and After,” that without besting the Democrats in meeting “the burgeoning problems of the city, the GOP seems certain to occupy its current role as a minority party for the foreseeable future.” (As for Vietnam, “unless it spreads elsewhere it is no more likely to produce a lasting realignment than the Korean War.”) The nation's leading students of American political behavior, Nelson Polsby and Aaron Wildavsky, speculated that if the Republicans nominated a conservative again he would lose so badly “we can expect an end to a competitive two-party system.” Arthur Schlesinger put it most succinctly of all in volume 4 of his magisterial
History of American Presidential Elections
,
1789-1968
: “The election results of 1964,” he reflected, “seemed to demonstrate Thomas Dewey's prediction about what would happen if the parties were realigned on an ideological basis: ‘The Democrats would win every election and the Republicans would lose every election.' ”

At that there seemed nothing more to say. It was time to close the book.

AC: Author's Collection

AHF: Barry Goldwater Papers, Arizona Historical Foundation, Tucson

AHFAV : Barry Goldwater Audiovisual Collection, Arizona Historical Foundation

AHFCP : 1964 Campaign Photo Album and accompanying text, Arizona Historical Foundation

A R :
Arizona Republic

BMG: Barry Morris Goldwater

C M : Clarence Manion Papers, Chicago Historical Society

C T :
Chicago Tribune

DDE : Dwight David Eisenhower

D K : Denison Kitchel Papers, Hoover Institution, Stanford University

FCW : F. Clifton White Papers, Cornell University Special Collections

FL: Hillsdale College Freedom Library

FSA : Free Society Association Papers, in Denison Kitchel Papers, Hoover Institution

GP : George Gallup,
The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1935-1971
(New York: Random House, 1972)

GRR:
Group Research Report
newsletter

HE :
Human Events

HI : Hoover Institution, Stanford University

HR : Henry Regnery Papers, Hoover Institution

JCJ : Jameson Campaigne Jr. Private Papers (unsorted)

JFK : John F. Kennedy

LBJL : Lyndon Johnson Papers, Lyndon Johnson Library, University of Texas at Austin

LBJT: Recorded LBJ phone conversations, LBJ Library

LBJWH: Johnson Papers, White House Central Files

LBJWHA: White House Central Files, Aides' Files

LBJWHAM : Aides' Files, Bill Moyers

LBJWHAM53: Aides' Files, Bill Moyers, Box 53, “Campaign, 1 of 2” and “Campaign, 2 of 2” folders

LBJWH6 - 3: White House Central Files, EX: PL 6-3 file

LBJWHN: White House Central Files, Name Files

LBJWHNG: Name Files: Goldwater, Barry

L N : Leonard Nadasdy Private Papers (unsorted)

MCSL: Margaret Chase Smith Library, Skowhegan, Maine

M L : Marvin Liebman Papers, Hoover Institution

MTR: Museum of Television and Radio, New York, New York

NAR: Nelson A. Rockefeller

N R :
National Review

NYHT:
New York Herald Tribune

NYHTEN:
New York Herald Tribune,
Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, “Inside Report” column

NYP:
New York Post

NYRB:
New York Review of Books

NYT:
New York Times

NYTM:
New York Times Magazine

O H : Oral History

PPP:
Public Papers of the President
(Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office)

RAC: Rockefeller Archive Center, New York Office, Series III 15 22, subseries 2, Sleepy Hollow, New York

S E P:
Saturday Evening Post

SFC:
San Francisco Chronicle

SHBGS: Barry Goldwater Scrapbook, Sharlot Hall Historical Museum, Prescott, Arizona

SLPD:
St. Louis Post Dispatch

TNR:
The New Republic

USN:
U.S. News and World Report

WAR: William A. Rusher Papers, Library of Congress

WFBJ: William F. Buckley Jr. Papers, Yale University Special Collections

WGN: WGN-TV news footage, Chicago Historical Society

W P:
Washington Post

W S :
Washington Star

WSJ :
Wall Street Journal

 

 

 

Noel Black

Alan
Brinkley

William F. Buckley Jr.

Jameson Campaigne Jr.

W.
Glen
Campbell

Elsie Carper

Mel Cottone

Jack Craddock

Ron Crawford

Carol Dawson

Don Devine

Richard Dudman

M. Stanton Evans

Rep. Barney Frank

Milton Friedman

Robert Gaston

Henry Geier

Patricia Geier

Ryan Hayes

Margot Henriksen

Doug Henwood

John Higham

David Keene

Richard Kleindienst

Charles Lichenstein

Robert Love

Wes McCune

John McManus

Graham T. T. Molitor

Judge Daniel Manion

Steve Max

Leonard Nadasdy

Gus Owen

Tom Pauken

Howard Phillips

Lou Proyect

Alfred Regnery

Jonathan Rosenblum

William A. Rusher

Allan Ryskind

John Savage

Sara Jane Sayer

Phyllis Schlafly

William Schulz

Scott Stanley

Angie Stockwell

Richard Viguerie

Pamela Walton

Eric Wunderman

Wirt Yerger

Herbert York

 

 

Paragraphing of the source citations follows the paragraphing in the text. Page numbers indicate the page on which each paragraph begins.

Phrases in italics are passages taken from the text.

LBJ conversations reviewed and transcribed by the author are indicated by the abbreviation LBJT and a citation number; ones transcribed by Michael Beschloss are cited from his book
Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963-1964
(Simon and Schuster, 1997).

 

PREFACE

ix
“He has wrecked his party”: New York Times,
November 5, 1964.
“The election has finished the Goldwater school”:
Lee Edwards,
Goldwater: The Man Who Made a Revolution
(Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 1995), 344.
“By every test we have”:
NYTM, June 28, 1964.

ix
“The Democrats would win every election”
: Arthur Schlesinger Jr., ed.,
History of American Presidential Elections, 1798-1968
, vol. 4 (New York: Chelsea House, 1971), 3021.
“A recrudescence on American soil”
: Philip Rahv, “Some Comments on Senator Goldwater,”
Partisan Review
(Fall 1964): 603.

ix For 1966 off-year elections, see Andrew E. Busch,
Horses in Midstream: U.S. Midterm Elections and Their Consequences, 1894-1998
(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999), 100-106; and M. Stanton Evans,
The Future of Conservatism
(New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1968).

x For DDE's preservation and extension of New Deal programs, see Samuel G. Freedman,
The Inheritance: How Three Families and the American Political Majority Moved from Left to Right
(New York: Touchstone, 1996), 162. Lippmann quote: transcript of May 1, 1963, interview on
CBS
Reports, RAC, Box 10/755. My interpretation of the sense of inevitability of progress in consensus thinking is indebted to Christopher Lasch,
The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics
(New York: Norton, 1991), especially the chapter “The Politics of the Civilized Minority,” 412-75.

xi
“To meet the needs of the people”
: “Atlantic Report on the World Today,”
Atlantic Monthly,
September 1964.

xi
“Not really a coherent, rational alternative”
: Stewart Alsop, SEP, September 29, 1964.
“A kind of vocational therapy”:
Young Americans for Freedom,
Newsletter,
May 1962, quoting speech in Los Angeles, cited in Matthew Dallek, “Young Americans for Freedom, 1960-1964” (master's thesis, Columbia University, 1993).

xiii
“We must assume that the conservative”: The Progressive,
May 1961.

xiii
“The year 2000 has all
”: Daniel Bell and Stephen R. Graubard, eds.,
Toward the Year 2000: Works in Progress
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997 [original ed. 1967, reporting on conference held in 1965]), 3.
“Think of how wonderful the year
2000”: Jack Sheppherd and Christopher S. Wren, eds.,
Quotations from Chairman LBJ
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968), 37, 106.

xiv
“I first learned that the government”:
Taylor Branch,
Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963-1965
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998), 521-22.
Three decades later, half:
David Boaz,
Libertarianism: A Primer
(New York: Free Press, 1997), 1.

 

3 Background for Manion cadre drawn from the correspondence in CM, Boxes 69 and 70; A. G. Heinsohn,
Anthology of Conservative Writing in the United States, 1932-1960
(Chicago: Regnery, 1962), and
One Man's Fight for Freedom
(Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers, 1957); Clarence Manion,
The Conservative American: His Fight for National Independence and Constitutional Government
(New York: Devon-Adair, 1964), and
The Key to Peace: A Formula for the Perpetuation of Real Americanism
(Chicago: Heritage Foundation, 1951); Frank E. Holman,
The Life and Career of a Western Lawyer, 1886-1961
(n.p., 1963), 717-31; Thomas E. Vadney,
The Wayward Liberal: A Political Biography of Donald Richberg
(Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1970); Fred C. Koch, “A Business Man Looks at Communism, by an American Business Man” (self-published, 1960); and David M. Oshinsky,
A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy
(New York: Free Press, 1983). For foreign policy matters, see Robert A. Taft,
A Foreign Policy for Americans
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1951); James T. Patterson,
Mr. Republican: A Biography of Robert Taft
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972); Justus D. Doenecke,
Not to the Swift: The Old Isolationists in the Cold War Era
(Cranbury, N.J.: Associated University Press, 1979); and Michael W. Miles,
The Odyssey of the American Right
(New York: Oxford, 1980), 57-221.

3
“Up till then a river”
: Clarence Budington Kelland,
Mark Tidd
,
Manufacturer
(New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1918).
“The man who builds a factory”: Publishers Weekly,
April 24, 1995, 67.

4 For the divergence in the Depression era and wartime economic interests between small and large manufacturers, see David A. Horowitz,
Beyond Left and Right: Insurgency and the Establishment
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997); Alan Brinkley, “The New Deal Experiments” and “The Late New Deal and the Idea of the State,” in Brinkley,
Liberalism and Its Discontents
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998); and Nelson Lichtenstein,
Walter Reuther: The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 154-74.

5 On the postwar strikes, see James T. Patterson,
Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 39-60.

5 On the GOP Eastern internationalist wing, see Wendell Willkie,
One World
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1943); and Donald Bruce Johnson,
The Republican Party and Wendell Willkie
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1960).

5 For humiliation over the Korean War truce, see General Edwin Walker's letter of resignation in “Thunder on the Far Right: Fear and Frustration,”
Newsweek
, December 4, 1961.

6
On the first day of June 1959
: Manion to various, “
CONFIDENTIAL
, ” May 27, 1959, CM, Box 69/4.

6 Manion biography: Manion,
Lessons in Liberty
(South Bend, Ind.: Notre Dame University Press, 1939),
Conservative American
(the Wilson chant is on page 25), and
Key to Peace;
William F. Buckley, “My Secret Right-Wing Conspiracy,”
The New Yorker,
January 22, 1996; and author interview with Judge Daniel Manion.

7 For America First, General Robert Wood, and Colonel Robert McCormick, see Horowitz,
Beyond Left and Right,
175-86 (“despotic” quote is on page 175).

8 For
Wickard
v.
Filburn
, see Manion,
Conservative American,
96.
Manion assured high school students:
Manion,
Lessons in Liberty,
189.
“Government cannot make man good”:
Manion, Key to Peace, 61.

8 Harry Dexter White theory in Fred J. Cook, “The Ultras: Aims, Affiliations, and Finances of the Radical Right,” special issue,
The Nation,
June 30, 1962.

9 For Manion in DDE's Administration, see Robert J. Donovan,
Eisenhower: The Inside Story
(New York: Harper and Brothers, 1956), 105, 239; Manion,
Conservative American,
93-125; and Doenecke,
Not to the Swift,
236-38. For the Bricker Amendment, see Doenecke, 235-39; and Donovan,
Eisenhower
, 231-42.