Jonathan Soffer on Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus
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Rick Perlstein. Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus. New York: Hill & Wang, 2001. xvi + 671 pp. $30.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-8090-2859-7. Reviewed by Jonathan Soffer Published on H-Pol (July, 2001) Rick Perlstein's Before the Storm is good evi‐ the medical system, reregulating the communica‐ dence that political history can be exciting. Perl‐ tions and electrical industries, establishing a guar‐ stein, a journalist who also writes for The Nation anteed minimum income for all Americans, and and Lingua Franca, absorbs the reader with vivid equalizing funding for all schools regardless of language without abandoning historical sophisti‐ property valuations--and who promised to fre cation or fdelity to his sources. This narrative his‐ Alan Greenspan, counseled withdrawal from the tory of Goldwater's two presidential campaigns in World Trade Organization, and, for good measure, 1960 and 1964, based on exhaustive research in spoke warmly of adolescent sexual experimenta‐ published primary and secondary sources and tion." Such a candidate would lose massively in significant (but more limited) archival work, is today's political climate, but "if the precedent of more successful than most in drawing the reader 1964 were repeated, two years later the country into a sympathetic and complex understanding of would begin electing dozens of men and women its cast of characters, whatever the reader's politi‐ just like him" (p. xii). cal bent. Few historians manage so successfully to get The Goldwater mobilization represented, ac‐ their readers to transcend their own ideological cording to the author, a "tectonic shift" in Ameri‐ predilections. To imagine what it must have been can politics, one almost completely missed by con‐ like to be a different person (a disagreeable per‐ sensus school historians and social scientists at son perhaps), in a different place, is an important the time--the "Unmaking of the American Consen‐ antidote to the sort of identity politics that sug‐ sus" in the title. Perlstein deftly dares his left and gests that only members of a group can fully un‐ liberal readers to imagine a victory of such a mag‐ derstand their own history. Drawing careful, but nitude: "Think of a senator winning the Democrat‐ imaginative images from the sources, Perlstein ic nomination in the year 2000 whose positions takes us into the minds of diverse characters: con‐ included halving the military budget, socializing servative activists including Notre Dame Law H-Net Reviews School Dean Clarence Manion, John Birch Society low students while working his way through Duke founder Robert Welch, and Republican political Law and fnished third in his class; since he operative Clif White; Goldwater confidants such begged Los Angeles's plutocrats, Navy cap in as Denison Kitchel and Stephen Shadegg; and hand, for their sufferance of his frst congression‐ even non-conservative fgures such as Lady Bird al bid, since he trundled across California in his Johnson and Richard M. Nixon. He also has a feel wood-paneled station wagon to bring his Senate for the politics of conservative places such as Dal‐ campaign 'into every county, city, town, precinct, las, and (the other) Orange County, in upstate New and home in the state of California'; since he was York. These portraits, along with his gift for con‐ forced to plead cloth-coated poverty on television textualization, should make this book a very use‐ to keep his spot as vice-presidential candidate in ful one for graduate students, who like Perlstein 1952; since his vice-presidential career was inter‐ himself, are too young to remember these charac‐ rupted every off year when he hit the road to ters frst hand. While the parts of the book that campaign for other Republicans, pounding deal with Lyndon Johnson, such as Perlstein's ac‐ whiskey in the back rooms when his companions count of the Walter Jenkins scandal, are often pounded whiskey, drinking juice in church base‐ gripping, there could be more on Johnson in this ments when his companions drank juice. Richard volume. Johnson's ad agency, Doyle, Dane, Bern‐ Nixon: collector of chits. And now, when it was f‐ bach, curiously looms larger than LBJ himself. nally time to call them in, would the whole thing In one instance, Perlstein crosses the line in disintegrate before his eyes?" (pp. 80-81). his dramatic characterizations, as when he puts Unlike most other liberal or radical writers, an imagined soliloquy into the mouth of Richard Perlstein seems to have genuine empathy for Nixon, whom others have often drawn as Hamlet, many of the conservatives he writes about, while Macbeth, or Lear --making him possibly one of the retaining his ability to criticize both Republicans most overly-Shakespeareanized politicians in and Democrats. Nor does he fall into the self-serv‐ American history (p. 88). Perlstein "chooses" Ham‐ ing smugness of histories written by some of the let: "Now we come to the key question--what participants in the period. He makes his readers should the answer be?" Unfortunately, this seems share the exhilaration and enthusiasm of the ear‐ insufficiently Shakespearean (or Nixonian). But ly Young Americans for Freedom, without sparing most of the time Perlstein's rhetorical devices en‐ them from criticism for the same consumerism hance rather than obscure a scrupulous interpre‐ and narcissicism as some of their New Left oppo‐ tation of the sources. Indeed, his resume of nents, as suggested by their "adolescent" adora‐ Nixon's resentment when faced with last minute tion of William F. Buckley, Jr. He highlights Buck‐ challenges at the 1960 Republican convention ley's own observation at the time of YAF's "ap‐ (quoted in the next paragraph) reads almost like a petite for power" (pp. 105-109, 372). He demon‐ beat poem of the period. strates the unfairness of the concerted efforts of "[Nixon] had been working for this moment, the Johnson campaign advertising that Goldwater cringing for it, bowing and scraping for it, since-- (if elected) would blow up the world. Instead, since when? Since he was denied the chance to go Perlstein convincingly argues that Goldwater said to Harvard because he could only afford to live at little that could not be found in the apocalyptic home; since he was blacklisted from Whittier Col‐ cold war rhetoric of JFK (pp. 150, 338-350, 466). lege's one social club because he was too poor; Far more sympathetic to Goldwater voters since he was reduced to sharing that one-room than to the Senator himself, Perlstein attributes shack without heat or indoor plumbing with fel‐ the weakness of the 1964 campaign to the candi‐ 2 H-Net Reviews date's reluctance, provinciality, and even laziness. history of the grassroots, precinct-level organiza‐ After the 1960 Republican convention, which tion of the conservative movement, or the impact marked his emergence as the standard-bearer of of changing notions of gender on it, readers the conservative movement, Goldwater did little should consult Lisa McGirr's Suburban Warriors: to help organize the movement or to put its ideals The Origins of the New American Right (Prince‐ into legislation. Instead, Goldwater "spent more ton: Princeton University Press, 2001), which Perl‐ energy that winter organizing a congressional stein draws upon in its dissertation form. wing of the Air National Guard, the 9999th Air Re‐ One of the great historical and moral ques‐ serve Squadron. He was never one for legislating; tions raised by the Goldwater movement is its re‐ his business was casting 'no' votes" (pp. 138-39). sponsibility for the racial polarization of the party The Arizona senator's mistrust of Easterners and system and this book makes some interestingly people he didn't know led him to put the 1964 nuanced, but only partially persuasive arguments campaign under the management of old friends about Goldwater's racial attitudes. Goldwater re‐ like Denison Kitchel who lacked contacts and ex‐ ceived only six percent of the African American perience, while freezing out experienced Eastern‐ vote. Besides his native Arizona, Goldwater car‐ ers like Clif White (pp. 256-58). Perlstein shows ried only states in the Deep South. Eight years ear‐ that while the idea of Goldwater created unprece‐ lier, Eisenhower had carried the African Ameri‐ dented enthusiasm, the man himself was intellec‐ can vote. Was the Goldwater campaign a coded tually lazy, ill prepared, a bad speaker who was appeal to segregationists, and did the Senator remarkably indifferent to his own candidacy; he himself promote such an appeal? then contrasts these qualities with Ronald Rea‐ Perlstein suggests that Goldwater slowly con‐ gan's in the same campaign. Here, however, he is verted to southern views over the course of the surely too kind to Reagan, whose repeated deliv‐ campaign, but in trying to prove this is excessive‐ ery of "the Speech" was probably more intellectu‐ ly charitable to Goldwater on civil rights. Relying ally lazy than Goldwater's genuine, if ill-consid‐ on accounts by two of his southern campaign co‐ ered, spontaneous remarks (pp. 418, 509-11). ordinators who met with Goldwater (just before Unlike many journalists and popular histori‐ he went to the foor to explain his vote against the ans, Perlstein engages with ideas current in the Civil Rights Act of 1964), Perlstein characterized academy, though the book's strength is most often the Senator as "a shaken man afraid he was sign‐ in the support it gives to particular interpreta‐ ing his political death warrant. Goldwater was tions that have already been advanced. With the convinced (by fellow Arizonan William Rehnquist exception of his stimulating, but not entirely con‐ and Yale law professor Robert Bork) that the Con‐ vincing discussion of Goldwater's complex rela‐ stitution offered him no other honorable choice," tion to segregationism, there is little here that will yet a no vote clearly was in his political interest rock the seminar room.