Manion, for many years dean of the Notre Dame Law School, firmly supported the foreign policy of Washington's Farewell Address. Among his many endeavors on Goldwater's behalf, Manion commissioned Brent Bozell to write Conscience of a Conservative, the widely circulated manifesto of the conservative movement that appeared under Goldwater's name. Goldwater could have avoided difficulties had he followed the policy of Clarence Manion, a longtime conservative activist who organized the first drive to draft Goldwater as the Republican presidential nominee.
Had Goldwater returned to the noninterventionist foreign policy of the Old Right, he could have turned the campaign of fear against his accusers. Perlstein shows that his "extremist" nuclear rhetoric merely echoed earlier remarks by Kennedy, Rockefeller, and other stalwarts of the cold war consensus. Ironically, in foreign policy, Goldwater stood squarely within the liberal consensus, which was itself extreme. Goldwater enthusiastically championed the cold war, and many who might otherwise have been well disposed to him found frightening his apparent haste to bring nuclear weapons into play. Though his domestic policies stood squarely within the American tradition, he accepted the appellation "extremist" that his enemies sought to pin on him.Īnd in one essential area, the leftist charge was right. Goldwater fell right into the trap set by his leftist foes. The Johnson forces skillfully used shock over the Kennedy assassination to fuel a mendacious assault on the supposed right-wing atmosphere of hate that, it was alleged, bore responsibility for President Kennedy's death. What, then, happened? In part, an inept campaign led to electoral rout, but the major cause lay elsewhere. Ronald Reagan, an ardent supporter of Goldwater during the campaign, won the presidency on a platform that resembled Goldwater's and the Arizona senator's sharp assault on the welfare state, once dismissed as extremist, is today a commonplace.
Why did Goldwater fail? Was his cause one with at most a minority appeal to the American public? Our author, though decidedly not a Goldwater partisan, thinks otherwise. Goldwater's remarkable act of defiance had for him an unhappy outcome: Lyndon Johnson, a quintessential practitioner of New Deal politics, trounced him in the November 1964 election. (I was a high-school student at the time and can testify to how well our author evokes the atmosphere.)
Perlstein brings to life those decisive days. At last, a candidate who dared to challenge the prevailing liberal consensus! Mr. 3 (Fall 2001)īEFORE THE STORM: BARRY GOLDWATER AND THE UNMAKING OF THE AMERICAN CONSENSUSīarry Goldwater's campaign for the presidency in 1964 decisively influenced American conservatism.
0 kommentar(er)
