Goldwater had won the nomination, but if he had ever had any chance to win the presidency, he lost it that night with that speech.
I felt almost physically sick as I sat there on the platform. Not only did Goldwater fail to close the rifts in the party and heal its wounds; he opened new wounds and then rubbed salt in them. It was terribly sad to see a man throw away his chance for something he wanted and had worked very hard to get. But my major concern was for the thousands of Republican candidates across the country who would now be doomed to spend their campaigns trying to explain away the man at the top of the ticket.
From Goldwater’s point of view, his speech was an unforgivable folly. It should have been his aim to unify the party while moving it to the right. Losing to Johnson, who was running as Kennedy’s successor, need not have been ruinous. If Goldwater could have minimized congressional and state losses in 1964 and then picked up a few seats by campaigning in 1966, he would have been in a very strong position to reclaim the nomination in 1968, when the odds would favor a Republican.
Unless someone got to Goldwater and toned him down, the Republican nomination in 1968 might not be worth anything to anyone.
I knew Goldwater’s speech had greatly disturbed Eisenhower. I waited until he had been back in Gettysburg for a few days before I called him to suggest two ideas.
“General,” I said, “you are the only person Barry will listen to, and you are the only person who can do something that will at least give Republican candidates a fighting chance.”
“Well,” he asked hesitantly, “what do you think I could do?” I suggested that he meet with Goldwater. “I know you have your doubts,” I said, “but I know that Barry can be very reasonable. I am sure that he would respond to any advice you gave him about the campaign.”
Eisenhower agreed to a meeting on the condition I be present. He also agreed to my second suggestion, that a Republican “summit conference” of party leaders be held a few days after our meeting with Goldwater. With Goldwater’s cooperation we could turn this summit meeting into a highly publicized display of party unity. It would give Goldwater a chance to start his campaign anew, on a basis of moderation and unity.
To set the stage, I suggested to Goldwater that we take steps to quiet the controversy still raging over his acceptance speech. I offered to write a letter asking for clarification, and then to make public both my letter and his reply. He agreed, and in his letter he substantially modified his controversial “extremism” statement. He wrote: “If I were to paraphrase the two sentences in question in the context in which I uttered them I would do it by saying that wholehearted devotion to liberty is unassailable and that halfhearted devotion to justice is indefensible.”
When I read this I breathed a sigh of relief. At least he had not used the codeword extremism. Rockefeller had hung the extremist tag around Goldwater’s neck in the primaries, and Goldwater’s acceptance speech had turned it into a noose. I hoped this letter would loosen it a bit, but my hopes were soon dashed. The master political operator of our time, Lyndon B. Johnson, knew that he had a devastatingly good issue, and with invaluable assistance from Goldwater’s numerous gaffes in the campaign, he tied the extremist tag so tight on Goldwater that it choked the political life out of him.
Goldwater came to Gettysburg on August 6. Eisenhower did not want us at his farm so we crowded into his small office in town. He began the meeting with some straight talk. In fact I had seldom, if ever, heard Eisenhower lay it on the line the way he did on this occasion. He told Goldwater that he ought to stop shooting from the hip. He suggested that Goldwater give a speech discussing the charges of extremism that had been made against him and admit that he may have encouraged them by the language of his acceptance speech.
Goldwater responded just as candidly. He said that it was not in his nature to be cautious. He could understand that Eisenhower was particularly sensitive about those of his comments that were taken to be critical of the Eisenhower administration, but he had not meant anything personal by them. On the whole, however, Goldwater took a conciliatory line. This, and the impending publication of our exchange of letters, seemed to bode well for the success of the upcoming summit meeting.
The summit meeting of party leaders, candidates, governors, and aides met at the rambling old Hotel Hershey in Hershey, Pennsylvania, on August 12.
The main session was held behind closed doors. Goldwater made a speech in which he considerably modified some of his most extreme positions. Then Goldwater, Rockefeller, Romney, Scranton, Eisenhower, and I engaged in a rambling and falsely optimistic discussion of how the campaign should be run. Of course, the real purpose of the exercise was to make effective use of the press conference to be held at the end. This was to be Goldwater’s chance to emerge as the leader and spokesman of a united party.
The press conference was crammed with reporters and TV cameras. Eisenhower, Scranton, and I sat flanking Goldwater and his running mate, New York Congressman Bill Miller, as the flashbulbs popped and the cameras whirred. To my amazement and disappointment, after all our planning Goldwater did not grasp the opportunity the meeting had given him. Instead he stated that he did not consider his speech earlier in the day to have been conciliatory, and he would not agree that he had made any concessions on issues of substance. The rest of the press conference was a typical Goldwater performance. He himself brought up his controversial statement that he would consider giving military commanders in the field control over the use of tactical nuclear weapons and, under intense questioning, refused to back away from it. When one reporter asked about his policy toward Germany, I saw Eisenhower wince when Goldwater replied, “I think that Germany originated the modern concept of peace through strength.”
Eisenhower was infuriated by Goldwater’s performance. I learned later that on the drive back to Gettysburg he said, “You know, before we had this meeting I thought that Goldwater was just stubborn. Now I am convinced that he is just plain dumb.”
While the “Spirit of Hershey” may have fooled some of the press and the public, the politicians weren’t taken in for a minute. A sense of doom enveloped the Goldwater campaign, and very few national leaders wanted any part of it. Nelson Rockefeller and most of his major supporters sat it out. George Romney concentrated on his own gubernatorial campaign in Michigan. Scranton was a good soldier and tried to help, but his efforts had little effect even with his own supporters; and Eisenhower played hardly any role.
My office in New York was swamped with speaking invitations from candidates all over the country. Many were old friends and supporters; others were promising new candidates who had the ill fortune to be running their first races in a year of dismal presidential prospects. I decided to devote five solid weeks to campaigning.
It was frustrating for me to see as inept a candidate as Goldwater running for President. It was especially heartbreaking because Republican voters seemed to be interested in the campaign that year; everywhere I went I found the audiences big and enthusiastic. But time after time the senatorial or congressional candidate on whose behalf I was to speak begged me to avoid associating his candidacy with Goldwater. It was a difficult tightrope to walk, but I usually found some way to praise the local candidates independently of expressing, as I did in every speech I gave, my personal support for Goldwater. I made over 150 appearances in thirty-six states. But it was a hopeless task. From the time the campaign began I knew that we were going to lose heavily.
Election Day was November 3. By eight o’clock in New York all three networks were projecting a Johnson landslide. The next morning I got up early to check the final reports on the campaigns for House and Senate. It was a Republican disaster: we had lost 37 seats in the House, 2 in the Senate, and over 500 in state legislatures. Most of the new young candidates Eisenhower and I had tried to encourage failed in their first bids for public office.
One Republican winner was not on the ballot. The week before the end of the campaign, Ronald Reagan made a nationwide
television broadcast on Goldwater’s behalf. Reagan’s views were as conservative as Goldwater’s, but he had what Goldwater lacked: the ability to present his views in a reasonable and eloquent manner. The broadcast started a ground swell of support that swept Reagan into the California governor’s office in 1966 and into the race for the presidential nomination in 1968.
Goldwater took his defeat with grace, and Johnson resisted what must have been a great temptation to crow over his landslide. It was Nelson Rockefeller who tried to turn the disaster to his own advantage. The day after the election, he issued a statement aimed at reading Goldwater and his followers—and, by indirection, those like me who had supported Goldwater—out of the party. I had intended to make no comment on the results until after a “cooling-off” period, but Rockefeller’s attack changed my mind.
On November 5, I held a press conference. I complimented Goldwater, saying that he had fought courageously against great odds. I said that those who had divided the party in the past could not now expect to unite it in the future. At the end, I pulled out all stops and said that Rockefeller was a spoilsport and a divider, and that there now was so much antipathy to him among Republicans throughout the country that he could no longer be regarded as a party leader anywhere outside New York.
As I expected, this press conference stirred up a furor. But I had said what needed to be said in order to avert an irreconcilable split between conservatives and liberals within the party. At first timidly and then in larger numbers, other party leaders joined me in calling for a cooling-off period and for renouncing recriminations over 1964, so that the party could be united for a comeback in 1966.
REVIEWING THE SITUATION: 1965
While I did not have any illusions about the extreme state of disarray in which the 1964 defeat left the Republican Party, I did not completely share the widespread pessimism about the future. Within just a few months after the election I could see developing in the Democratic Party the political climate that would bring Lyndon Johnson down from his pinnacle of popularity and force him to decide not to run for re-election in 1968. Soon Johnson would have to deal with the fact that the left wing of his own party was as extreme and self-righteous as the Republican right wing. Johnson’s magic seemed to be wearing thin even at the height of his power. The Eastern media had been contemptuous of his Texas ways when he was Vice President, and now that he was no longer Kennedy’s legatee but had been elected on his own, a newly critical tone began to appear in some of his coverage.
I saw no reason that the Republican Party could not make a comeback in 1966—if only we could keep it from falling apart in the meantime.
I felt that two things would be necessary to keep the party together: we would have to be on constant guard against attempts by leaders of the left or the right to take over the party; and we would have to convince the party rank and file that there were better times ahead. I knew from experience that this would be hard, boring, and sometimes thankless work. But this was the job that I increasingly saw as my own. It was pragmatism more than altruism that led me to take it on, because I believed that whoever did would gain a significant advantage in the race for the 1968 presidential nomination. This enabled me to reconcile the paradox of having to help my Republican competitors—Rockefeller, Romney, and Reagan. I felt that if the base of the party were not expanded, the 1968 nomination would be worthless. If the party were expanded by the victories of others, I thought I had a good chance of benefiting from its greater strength.
I did not reveal to my family or anyone else that this was what I had in mind. I knew that Pat and the girls would again be disappointed. But I had finally come to the realization that there was no other life for me but politics and public service. Even when my legal work was at its most interesting I never found it truly fulfilling. I told some friends at this time that if all I had was my legal work, I would be mentally dead in two years and physically dead in four. I knew that they thought I was exaggerating; but I was telling the truth about the way I thought and felt.
On January 9, 1965, after a small family party to celebrate my fifty-second birthday, I sat in my study to look back on the past year and look ahead into the future.
I reflected on the fact that Winston Churchill had been in his mid-fifties when he lost his position of leadership in the House of Commons in 1929, and most of his contemporaries had then written him off as a political leader. But Churchill refused to write himself off. I took heart from the example of his refusal to give up just because people thought he was finished. I wrote down some “New Year’s Resolutions for 1965”:
—Set great goals.
—Daily rest.
—Brief vacations.
—Knowledge of all weaknesses.
—Better use of time.
—Begin writing book.
—Golf or some other kind of daily exercise.
—Articles or speeches on provocative new international and national issues.
I put down my yellow pad, turned out the light, and stared into the fire. For the first time in seven years, I started not only to think seriously about running for the presidency again but to think about where I should begin.
It was still much too early to make any final decision, much less any announcement, about running for President again. Besides, I was convinced that any attempt at presidential politics before the party had had a chance to rebuild itself for 1966 would be self-defeating. The party’s best interests and my own dovetailed on this point: until the organization had been restored to the point that the nomination would be worth something to whoever won it, I would be foolish to make any commitment. But if I was interested in running, it would be equally foolish not to begin laying plans and harnessing some of the good will I had built up in the 1964 campaign. Barry Goldwater was a vocal adherent of this view. At the Republican National Committee meeting in Chicago on January 22 he introduced me as the man “who worked harder than any one person for the ticket.” He turned to me and said, “Dick, I will never forget it. I know that you did it in the interests of the Republican Party and not for any selfish reasons. But if there ever comes a time I can turn those into selfish reasons, I am going to do all I can to see that it comes about.”
I began making lists of the odds for and against my nomination in 1968. There was no denying that the odds against were formidable. After 1960 and 1962, I had what every politician dreads most, a loser image. In fact, after the “last press conference,” I had a sore loser image.
Almost equally serious was my lack of political funds. For the first time in my life I was making a solid six-figure income from the law firm and from my book royalties and writing fees. But we had an expensive apartment, and one daughter in private school and the other in college. After all the frugal years in Washington, I felt that Pat and the girls deserved the best, and I would not have them stint in order to bankroll another candidacy.
Another serious problem was the lack of a political base. By leaving California I had become in political terms a man without a country. It was almost unprecedented for a major candidate to build a serious presidential campaign without having the party machinery in his home state working for him. New York, however, was Rockefeller turf, and the New York Republican organization would actually be working against me. Rockefeller had made this clear from the beginning, and I was effectively frozen out of any major role in New York Republican politics.
Although the odds against me were heavy, there were also some points in my favor. One was my position as front-runner for the presidential nomination in polls of Republican voters. In the summer of 1966, for example, the Gallup poll gave me a lead of almost 2 to 1 over my nearest competitor, Henry Cabot Lodge. My many years of labor in the Republican vineyards were being rewarded by the support of the party organization in most of the country.
Another advantage was that, like me or not, the press seemed to consider me the most consistently newsworthy of the potential presidential candidates. Even though I did not hold a
n office, I could count on overflow attendance any time I called a press conference, and wherever I traveled local television usually covered my speeches and appearances.
In my judgment, however, the most important thing in my favor was less tangible and more substantive than polls or press coverage. I was confident that because of my background and experience, particularly in the field of foreign policy, I had the best grasp of the issues and trends that would determine the campaign and the election. Whether this was in fact true, I believed it was true, and the confidence that belief gave me was itself a tremendous advantage.
Since the best way to prepare for 1968 was to do well in 1966, I decided to begin some rudimentary planning for the coming year’s election campaign. In the middle of 1965, Maurice Stans, Al Cole, and Peter Flanigan began raising money for my travels on behalf of the party and its candidates in the 1966 elections.
The issues that were to dominate the political dialogue of the latter part of the 1960s were already taking shape by the middle of the decade. In May 1964 President Johnson had told the graduating class of the University of Michigan that “in your time we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society.” Johnson observed quite correctly that “the solution to these problems does not rest on a massive program in Washington,” but the fatal flaw of his Great Society was precisely its inclination to establish massive federal programs. The price tag was astronomical. In five years, Johnson’s spending for the poor doubled, from $12.5 billion to $24.6 billion. Federal funds for health and education jumped by over $18 billion.
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