Wrapped in the Flag (29 page)

I’d known about Barry Goldwater ever since my parents forced me to read
The
Blue Book of the John Birch Society
. In it, Robert Welch praised “Barry” as a “friend, a great American, and someday, God willing, the president.”
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To Birch members, Goldwater was far more than the senator from Arizona—he was Our Senator.

In the run-up to the 1964 election, when sniping at the Birch Society became the favorite pastime of Republicans, Goldwater resisted joining the fray. “Every other person in Phoenix is a member of the John Birch Society,” Goldwater explained. “I’m not talking about Commie-haunted apple pickers or cactus drunks; I’m talking about the highest caste of men of affairs.”
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Eventually, confronted by the impossibility of becoming president while
hugging the Birchers, Goldwater kind of, sort of distanced himself from the society and embraced Bill Buckley’s more acceptable version of conservatism.
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My father didn’t appreciate Goldwater’s “sell-out,” as he called it. He reminded everyone in hearing distance that “the JBS made Goldwater.” Dad had a point.

In 1959, it was Clarence (Pat) Manion, my Dad’s friend and a Birch council member, who had convinced Goldwater to write
The Conscience of a Conservative
. When Goldwater had complained that he wasn’t a writer and “wouldn’t know how to go about it,” Manion hired a ghost writer—Brent Bozell, editor of
National Review
and Bill Buckley’s brother-in-law.
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In an effort to guarantee that
The Conscience of a Conservative
would have a substantial readership, Manion committed to printing fifty thousand copies from his own press, Victor Publishing Company, in Shepherdsville, Kentucky. According to Rick Perlstein, the push to sell Goldwater’s book went all the way to a JBS council meeting, where none other than Fred Koch, then a Wichita oil refiner, ordered 2,500 copies.
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By the end of June of 1960,
The Conscience of a Conservative
had sold over five hundred thousand copies. In college bookstores, it flew off the shelves.
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Pundits were not surprised that college kids loved Goldwater’s book. Perlstein explained: “Freedom, autonomy, authenticity: he [the student] has rarely read a writer who speaks so clearly about the things he worries about, who was so cavalier about authority, so
idealistic
.”
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A young Patrick Buchanan put it a bit more bluntly: “
The Conscience of a Conservative
was our new testament. . . . For those of us wandering in the arid desert of Eisenhower Republicanism, it hit like a rifle shot.”
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In the winter of 1964, while I wrestled with matters such as Willmoore Kendall, Greek tragedy, and Western civilization, Goldwater was focused on neutralizing the liberal wing of the GOP and its surrogate, Nelson Rockefeller. The New Hampshire primary in March was supposed to be Goldwater’s first big win, but blunders and missteps created uncertainty. Some supporters wondered if Barry could deliver a winning message.

On
Meet the Press
, Goldwater was uncomfortable and gaffe-prone. During the half-hour program, he said he’d break the nuclear test-ban treaty and hinted that he’d let the Senate withdraw diplomatic recognition from the Soviets. On questions of disarmament, Goldwater said, “I don’t think negotiations are possible. If you mean what you say, Mr. Khrushchev, put up or shut up—as we Western poker players say.”
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The press was put off by these comments and began to paint Goldwater as a dangerous hawk. Many Americans were also concerned, but Goldwater’s
base—the far-right flank of the GOP—loved him. The right wing, which had been ignored in elections, relished the idea that they’d finally have a real conservative candidate, not a half-liberal, almost Democrat who just happened to be a Republican.

At the University of Dallas, politically savvy young conservatives cheered when Goldwater accused the Democrats of measuring “welfare by the number of votes it produces.”
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People were thrilled when their guy promised to eliminate poverty by getting government “off the backs of business.” Goldwater sealed the deal with his college battalions by declaring that contributing to Social Security be made voluntary. After all, many of us thought we shouldn’t be taxed for a program that would be broke long before we were old enough to collect our share.

College students weren’t alone in their enthusiasm. Goldwater’s positions resonated with the editor of the
Manchester Union Leader
, New Hampshire’s most important paper, which offered an enthusiastic endorsement. In those days, when newspaper endorsements influenced elections, this was a big get. It was evident that Goldwater would win the New Hampshire primary and win big.

I was as positive as anyone. Then I went to the movies.

Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
chronicled an insane general’s delight in starting a thermonuclear war. Some of my friends blamed the media for equating Goldwater with General Jack D. Ripper, the cigar-chewing, lunatic in the Stanley Kubrick movie.

A month later,
Seven Days in May
outlined the rise to power of a militaristic senator from the Southwest who plots to overthrow the president rather than accept a nuclear disarmament treaty. General James Mattoon Scott sounded a lot like Goldwater.

I wouldn’t swear to my skill at analyzing movies, but Goldwater did sound like a warmonger when he proposed adding more nukes to our arsenal. I worried that this man could start a nuclear crisis.

Beyond my concerns about nukes and war, I struggled with Goldwater’s anti–civil rights position. He stood firmly on states’ rights, a smokescreen designed to protect the interests of white folks in the Bible Belt.

On the other hand, I couldn’t stand Lyndon Johnson. He personified the worst of horse-trading and back-room dealing, the stuff that gave Washington a bad reputation. No doubt about it: compared to Johnson, Goldwater looked good.

Making a decision was, for me, academic. I could enjoy all the political bantering and assessment without actually doing the deed. I would only be
nineteen years old on November 3, 1964, two years from that magic age of majority.

Still, I was disappointed when Goldwater lost the New Hampshire primary to Henry Cabot Lodge, our ambassador to Vietnam. It was a humiliating to lose by twelve points to a man who was not even in the country. Worse, Lodge was a write-in candidate.
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In response to the embarrassing loss, Goldwater said, “I goofed up somewhere.”

Even Bill Buckley—who’d supported the Goldwater movement since 1960—began to have doubts about the candidate. In his personal papers, Buckley referred to Goldwater as a man “who, after all, did not really have his heart in the campaign, and was not as well qualified to run, or serve, as (fill in the new hero).”
¹⁹
Apparently, many Americans shared Buckley’s reservations. After New Hampshire, national Gallup polls recorded the senator’s approval rating as a dismal 14 percent.

The rank-and-file Goldwater supporters hung their heads. Little did we know that an ace political strategist, Clif White, had spent the last four years gaming out paths to Goldwater’s victory. White had figured what most politicos missed: the majority of convention delegates—those folks in funny hats shaking noisemakers and dancing in the aisles—came from non-primary states, states that picked their convention delegates at their state conventions.

In those days, the party nominee actually was chosen at the convention, and primaries were not held in every state. In 1964, thirty-one states held no statewide primary. White homed in on those places and made sure that the delegates chosen from those states were committed to Goldwater or strongly leaning in his direction.
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Though his boss lost fourteen New Hampshire delegates, White lined up dozens of others from Southern, non-primary states.
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In this election, Dixie mattered. Goldwater’s Senate vote against the 1964 Civil Rights Act made him the go-to candidate for angry whites, many of whom renounced their lifelong Democratic ties and became Republicans. One conspicuous defection was the staunch, bombastic Democrat from South Carolina, Senator Strom Thurmond.
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Ironically, while Thurmond was railing against integration, he was also supporting Essie Mae Washington-Williams, the daughter he had fathered with his family’s African American maid.
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No one breathed a word of the scandal for thirty-nine years, however, and the 1964 primary season rolled on.

Goldwater struggled to break away from the GOP pack. He was seen as a weak front-runner, a situation attributed to “disarray” in the Republican Party. Even after Goldwater pulled in more than 50 percent of the Illinois
vote,
Time
downplayed the result, emphasizing that “200,000 Republicans who voted for a gubernatorial candidate did not bother about the presidential primary.”
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Goldwater’s win in Texas, with 75 percent of the votes cast, was described as “low-key and lackluster.”
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Goldwater had a different perspective on the primaries. As he waited for the results of the California primary, he said, “I don’t worry about it. We take what comes. We’ve done the best we can.”
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The best he could do was good enough. Goldwater squeaked through the California primary with a slim fifty-nine-thousand-vote margin and headed into the convention with almost enough votes to win. Everyone who had worked for him crossed their fingers, said their prayers, and waited.

In the middle of July, I camped out in front of the television in the basement of my parents’ home to watch the convention. After all the ups and downs of the primary season, after all the hand-wringing and in-fighting, Goldwater captured the nomination on the very first ballot. On the last day of the convention, Richard Nixon, Goldwater’s arch-nemesis, introduced the Republican nominee as “Mr. Conservative and Mr. Republican,” adding, “And here is the man who, after the greatest campaign in history, will be Mr. President.”
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I wasn’t sure about that “greatest campaign” business or the “Mr. President” part, but my parents were grinning from ear to ear as they heard those words. I guess they thought the inauguration of President Barry Goldwater was inevitable.

A few minutes later, after the convention band had played “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and San Francisco’s Cow Palace was deluged with red, white, and blue balloons, Goldwater addressed the crowd. “Our people have followed false prophets,” he said. “We must and we shall return to proven ways—not because they are old but because they are true.”
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Then Goldwater returned to the standard conservative words: freedom and liberty with dashes of honesty, destiny, and vision thrown in for good measure. Finally, he worked up to his climax: “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is . . . no . . . vice.” The place went wild with cheering. It lasted a long time.

When Goldwater finished speaking, the far right wing was ecstatic. The rest of the GOP, who’d expected Goldwater to make nice with the moderates, was horrified. The 1964 election was under way.

The next morning, my father left an AuH
₂
O button on my desk with a handful of Goldwater pamphlets and instructions to put them in the neighbors’ mailboxes. I was officially marching in the Goldwater army. I continued
in the Chicago contingent until late in August. Then, it was back to Dallas, where the pro-Goldwater forces at my school were big and bold.

For Goldwater’s supporters, his campaign slogan said it all: “In your heart, you know he’s right.” Unfortunately, the country seemed to lean toward a more satirical version of it: “In your guts, you know he’s nuts.”
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In early September, after a summer of “can he, will he?” I came face-to-face with the fact that Barry couldn’t and he wouldn’t. I knew—in my heart—that the blizzard of pamphlets and phone calls, radio spots and contributions would make no difference to his cause. The final nail in Goldwater’s political coffin was a one-minute television ad that was only shown one time.
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This ad, tagged “Daisy,” began with a toddler standing in a field pulling the petals from a daisy. She counted: “1 . . . 2 . . . 3 . . . 4 . . . 5 . . . 7 . . . 6 . . . 6 . . . 8 . . . 9 . . . 9 . . .” Then a deep adult voice picked up the count from 9 and counted down to 0, followed by an explosion, a stream of smoke, and a mushroom cloud. “We must either love each other or we must die,” President Johnson said, followed by a reminder to vote on November 3. “The stakes are too high for you to stay home.”

Another Johnson ad, also shown just one time, cemented the image of Goldwater as a “bomb-dropper.” Goldwater’s campaign manager admitted that he lost sleep trying to figure a way to “lick” that image. No commercial or ad could change the perception that Goldwater was dangerous. Americans had made up their minds. “Barry Goldwater scared them.”
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