Review: The Making of the President 1964

The Making of the President 1964 by Theodore H. White
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Hillary Rodham Clinton was a high-school Young Republican and "Goldwater Girl" in 1964 but swung to supporting Democrat Eugene McCarthy’s campaign in 1968 and George McGovern’s in 1972. "I wasn’t born a Democrat," she writes on page one of her autobiography Living HistoryLiving History, but was a "rock-ribbed, up-by-your-bootstraps, conservative Republican and proud of it" (page 11). Her 9th-grade history teacher was also a very conservative Republican who encouraged her to read Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater’s 1960 book, Conscience of a Conservative, which inspired Clinton to write a term paper on the American conservative movement. "I was also an active Young Republican and, later, a Goldwater girl, right down to my cowgirl outfit and straw cowboy hat emblazoned with the slogan 'AuH20.' … I liked Senator Goldwater because he was a rugged individualist who swam against the political tide."

I think this association with Clinton and similar contexts had given me the perception that "Goldwater Republican" meant someone more progressive or at least centrist compared to a typical Republican. However, as the excellent and detailed reportage clarifies, here, ultra-conservative Goldwater differs from today's libertarians (both big-L and little-L) in that he was an advocate for strong national defense and even a hawkish interventionist and pro-tactical nukes, etc.. This is the guy, remember, who suggested we should “lob a nuke into the men's room at the Kremlin." This alarmed many and reinforced LBJ's determination to defeat him - the Trump of his day it seems - and eventually out-hawk him with The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and run the unforgettable "Daisy" ad. I wish the book went into more detail on the Johnson machine that led to that ad and the organized operatives detailed to hound and disrupt the Goldwater campaign.


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