Title

Before the storm : Barry Goldwater and the unmaking of the American consensus

Description

Before the Storm begins in a time very much like the present - the tail end of the 1950s, with America affluent, confident, and convinced that political ideology was a thing of the past. "But when John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960, conservatives - Midewestern businessmen, Sun Belt suburbanites, Southern segregationists, and thousands of college students - formed a movement to challenge the center-left consensus. They chose as their hero Barry Goldwater - a rich, handsome Arizona Republican who hated liberalism even mor than he did Moscow - and they grew determined to see him elected President." "Goldwater was trounced by Lyndon Johnson in 1964. The pundits left conservatism for dead. But by the campaign's end, the consensus found itself squeezed from the left and from the right. As early as 1967 Johnson's Great Society programs were blocked by conservatives in Congress, and the movement had arrived; by 1980 a new conservative standard-bearer, Ronald Reagan, was elected President. Today many of Goldwater's ideas are conventional wisdom for Republications and Democrats alike." "Rick Perlstein's original account of the 1960s as the cradle of the conservative movement is also about a revolution in political culture; fears of threats abroad giving way to concerns of disorder at home; campaigns plotted in back rooms giving way to those staged for television; Americans beginning to think of their nation as divided, not united. Filled with portraits of figures from George Wallace to Nelson Rockefeller to Bill Moyers, Before the Storm is a narrative history that adds greatly to our understanding of that controversial era - and of our own."--Jacket.

Subject

"Goldwater, Barry M. (Barry Morris), 1909-1998."

"Conservatism--United States--History--20th century."

"Presidents--United States--Election--1964."

Text

Transcription of Annotations
Notes on front endpapers: "Wed., Apr. 18, 2 p.m. - History humiliated Lyndon Johnson! - Scotty Reston / Walter Lippmann / James MacGregor Burns. - Stephen Shadegg, Walter Reuther - L.A. Times offers Goldwater a column 3 times a week; Stephen Shadegg writes it. - Secret meeting in Chicago, Oct. 8, 1961 - White / Rusher / Ashbrook / 26 others. - Adolphe Menjon / Roger Milliken / Clarence Manion - Robet Welch's relationship to Bill Buckley. - Howard Phillips - one of the conspirators to take it away from the old timers. - H.L. Hunt's radio program hosted by Dan Smoot. - Russell Kirk, Rill Buckley, William Baroody, Jr., Steve Shadegg. - 'Conscience of a conservative' sold fast at colleges; 1/2 million on the market, #14 [on] NY Times - #10 [on]Time Mag. - Lee Edwards - new campaign publicist, son of Welland Edwards. - Nelson Rockefeller. - Would Nixon run? - Did the right wingers kill Lee Harvey Oswald? - Richard Kleindienst, Clif White - ended up being his subordinates. - Dean Bruch - Bill Baroody, AEI told the press he couldn't say whether he was a liberal or conserv., social friend of Goldwater." - Notes on back endpapers: "3.9 million people worked for Gold., LBJ had half as many. - Reporters missed the story. - Hello Dolly - p. 475 - producer got a cease and desist order. - LBJ raised $17 million, Gold. raised $12 million. - 22,000 donated to JFK / 44,000 to Nixon / one million B.G. - A Texan looks at Lyndon; J. Evetts Haley; Carl McIntire - 20th Century Reformation Hour, p. 476. - Walter Jenkins, p. 497; 'Choice': Goldwater pronounced it sick and racist, p. 496. - FBI Bureau's checks on 16 Goldwater staffers "illegal". - 'Social Security' - Ron Reagan, p. 500; the speech - money flowed in - Goldwater jealous - not thanked R.R. - p. 424: speech was written by W. Rehnquist & Harry Jaffa. - Primaries - 1964: Goldwater, Rockefeller, Lodge, Scranton, Romney, Nixon, M. Chase Smith. - Reagan's "A time for choosing", Oct. 27. - Thurmond becomes a Republican. - Geo. Wallace doesn't. - Bill Rusher, John Ashcroft, Karl Hess." -- Annotations by Brian Lamb in the margins and underlining of pertinent phrases throughout the book. - Examples: p. 16: "Barry Goldwater, an oddball, hard to place." - p. 266: "Perhaps that was why Barry Goldwater's nine-year string of good press was about to vanish in a puff of smoke." - p. 429: "There were some times, traveling with Goldwater, .., when one wondered whether the candidate really thinks of himself as a man seeking the Presidency of the United States." - p. 461: "When it came to race, Americans didn't have the words to say the truth they knew in their hearts to be right, in a manner proper to the kind of men they wanted to see when they looked in the mirror each morning. Goldwater was determined to give them the words." - p. 497: "We are not going to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves." - p. 513: "The Johnson majority - at over 61 percent the greatest popular mandate in history - is indisputable proof that the voters are in the center." - "Blacks voted upwards of 90 percent for Johnson." - p. 516: "The GOP seems certain to occupy its current role as a minority party for the foreseeable future."

Creator

Perlstein, Rick

Source

Brian Lamb Booknotes Collection

Gift of Brian Lamb, 2011.

Catalog record

Publisher

Hill and Wang

George Mason University. Libraries. Special Collections & Archives

Date

2001

Program air date: June 3, 2001

Rights

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Relation

Original Booknotes interview

Booknotes Oral History Interview

Format

1st ed.

Language

eng

Identifier

939436

080902859X