Before reading A Glorious Disaster my knowledge of the 1964 presidential election was shallow. I knew Lyndon Johnson defeated Goldwater in a landslide, but I never really knew anything about the nuts and bolts of the campaign. The 1964 election is an odd one. Johnson had just become president after the Kennedy assassination (killed by a Marxist; go figure). As senator, Johnson served as a conservative southern Democrat. He voted against every Civil Rights bill while he was in Congress. Johnson only shifted his opinion later because of the popularity of the measure. Johnson’s ambitions were much stronger than any ideology. Wishing to leave his mark on history, Johnson moved rapidly to the left as president.
Goldwater become the conservative choice in 1962. The liberal wing of the Republican party was always hostile to a Goldwater nomination. Unable to rally behind the candidate, it was Nelson Rockefeller and George Romney (Mitt Romney’s father) who ultimately torpedoed any hope for Goldwater. Early on they branded the Arizona Senator as a tool of the extreme right. It was an absurd accusation, but one that Goldwater was never able to shake during the campaign.
I got the sense reading this book that Goldwater wasn’t exactly warm and fuzzy. His campaign was run by a bunch of Arizona loyalists who weren’t involved in the draft movement. From the beginning Goldwater was consigned to defeat. He didn’t want to run against Johnson, whom he felt would do anything to win the election. Goldwater’s fears were indeed founded. LBJ used the CIA and FBI for campaign surveillance. These abuses of power by the executive branch dwarf anything Nixon ever did, and perhaps anything anyone has done who’s ever served as president. However, it’s not likely it affected the outcome of the election. Goldwater never communicated a clear vision, and was constantly on the defensive. The campaign was run poorly and most of the major newspaper editors throughout the country were adamantly opposed to Goldwater.
Despite the election setback it was the birth of the conservative movement. I don’t think Goldwater was ever really the right person for the cause. He didn’t communicate well enough, but at that time he was the closest thing to an electable candidate. During that election the former actor Ronald Reagan made his now famous “a Time for Choosing” speech that would ultimately make him the face of the conservative movement. His speech is still relevant today.
The author of the book J. William Middendorf II, served as the treasurer during the campaign and later for the RNC. His meticulousness attention to detail paints a clear portrait of that period. Middendorf later went on to serve as the Ambassador to the Netherlands under Nixon and later became the Secretary of the Navy. The book is a nice little historic insight into the birth of the conservative movement. A movement that ultimately changed our current political landscape and brought us Ronald Reagan.
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