Before the Storm

by Rick Perlstein

  53 Main biographical source for NAR is Cary Reich, The Life of Nelson A. Rockefeller: Worlds to Conquer, 1908-1958 (New York: Doubleday, 1996). Quote is from page 16.

  53 Steffens on Nelson Aldrich is quoted in Reich, 3. The “suicidal” quote is on 538.

  53 The Rockefeller family good works are noted, respectively, in Reich, 11, 81, 90-91; and Theodore H. White, The Making of the President 1964 (New York: Atheneum, 1965), 95.

  54 “Diligently attend to the Rockefeller rituals”: Reich, Life of Nelson A. Rockefeller , 17. The quote on his presidential ambitions is in Reich, xvii.

  55 “The only justification for ownership”: ibid., 169.

  55 Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs: ibid., 174-244.

  55 NAR’s frustrated bid to become deputy secretary of state is recorded in Stewart Alsop, Nixon and Rockefeller: A Double Portrait (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1960), 79. Insistence on the gubernatorial nomination: Theodore H. White, Making of the President 1960, 73.

  56 Rockefeller Brothers Foundation’s Special Studies: Reich, Life of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 637-67; Farber, ed., The Sixties, 16-17; and Prospects for America: The Rockefeller Panel Reports (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961). It became a literary touchstone: James E. Underwood and William J. Daniels, Governor Rockefeller in New York: The Apex of Pragmatic Liberalism in the United States (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982).

  56 NAR campaigning skills: Reich, Life of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 742-48 (blintz quote on 745); and SEP, March 13, 1964.

  56 NAR Los Angeles appearance: Kyle Palmer, LAT, November 14, 1959. NAR Manhattan campaign apparatus: White, Making of the President 1960, 75-79 (quote on 75).

  57 BMG’s wild ride to Los Angeles is recounted in Stephen Shadegg, Barry Goldwater: Freedom Is His Flight Plan (New York: McFadden Books, 1963), 149-51.

  58 BMG speech: HE, February 18, 1960. For tumultuous reception, see Shadegg, Barry Goldwater, 152; Barry Goldwater, With No Apologies: The Personal and Political Memoirs of United States Senator Barry M. Goldwater (New York: William Morrow, 1979), 98 (for the Mazo quote); Kyle Palmer, LAT, November 14, 1959; and LAT, November 16, 1959. On the Los Angeles Times lunch invitation, see Stephen Shadegg, What Happened to Goldwater?: The Inside Story of the 1964 Republican Campaign (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1965), 25.

  59 For early history of the Los Angeles Times, see David Halberstam, The Powers That Be (New York: Knopf, 1979), 94-122 (quote on the Rockefellers and the Sulzbergers on 94). For its late-1950S professionalization, see Halberstam, 283-86, and Rick Lyman, “Otis Regrets,” NYTM, January 23, 2000. BMG column acceptance: Shadegg, What Happened, 26; and Goldberg, Barry Goldwater, 142.

  59 For NAR’s unsuccessful tour, see White, Making of the President 1960, 79-83 (quote on 83); Michael Kramer and Sam Roberts, “I Never Wanted to Be Vice-President of Anything!”: An Investigative Biography of Nelson Rockefeller (New York: Basic, 1976), 223-25; and James Desmond, Nelson Rockefeller: A Political Biography (New York: Macmillan, 1964), 219-38.

  60 “Many gigantic fortunes”: Manion Forum fund-raising appeal, Patterson to Regnery, September 14, 1954, HR, Correspondence/Manion.

  60 NAR’s statement of withdrawal is in White, Making of the President 1960, 82.

  4. CONSCIENCE

  61 For Manion’s Goldwater committee meeting, see Lee Edwards, Goldwater: The Man Who Made a Revolution (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 1995), 115-19; and Manion to committee members, March 11, 1960, CM, Box 70/2.

  61 Business arrangements in handwritten note, January 27, 1960, CM, Box 68/4; Manion to Milliken, January 29, 1960; Manion to Brewer, February 2, 1960; handwritten notes dated January 1960; typed “NOTES ON THE GOLDWATER BOOK,” January 1960; and Manion to Kimmel, March 22, 1960, all in CM, Box 70/2. For Manion’s bulk-selling techniques, see Patterson to various, January 10, 1955, on Social Security, and February 22, 1955, on TVA, CM, Box 98.

  61 Throughout February, pages were sent: Stephen Shadegg, What Happened to Goldwater?: The Inside Story of the 1964 Republican Campaign (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1965), 28; Manion to Haley, January 1, 1960, CM, Box 70/2. Promotional announcement noted in Manion to Brophy, February 15, 1960, CM, Box 70/2. Bozell’s visit to John Birch Society board meeting: Manion to Love, March 16, 1960, and Love to Manion, March 21, 1960, CM, Box 70/2; and author interviews with Scott Stanley and Robert Love. Publication date: Letter to 350 reviewers from L. D. Lashbrook, Victor Publishing, March 24, 1960, CM, Box 70/2. For South Carolina convention promise, see Manion to Milliken, March 12, 1960, CM, Box 70/2, and F. Clifton White with William Gill, Suite 3505: The Story of the Draft Goldwater Movement (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1967), 20. The 10,000 figure comes from the orders in CM, Box 70/2.

  62 For the 50,000-copy requirement, see Manion to Milliken, February 18, 1960; Manion to Kimmel, March 22, 1960; and pitch sent over Herb Kohler’s signature to seventy-five top Manion Forum donors, February 18, 1960, CM, Box 70/2. For ads, see unidentified newspaper clip, “A New National Leader Emerges,” and New Bed-ford Standard-Times, March 18, 1960, CM, Box 70/2.

  62 For bookstore problems and author copies, see April 12, 1960, and April 13, 1960, typed diary, CM, Box 70/2. For BMG’s lack of interest, see Edwards, Goldwater, 115; Russell to Manion, November 9, 1959, CM, Box 70/2; Shadegg to BMG, February 22, 1960, CM, Box 70/2; BMG to Bozell, February 24, 1960, and, most interestingly, Regnery to Hall, February 26, 1960; March 24, 1960; and April 19, 1960. HR, Correspondence /Jay Hall. There, BMG’s indifference to the project is demonstrated by the fact that he had also casually agreed to sign his name to another ghostwritten book (never published), this one a collaboration between his adviser Jay Hall and Henry Regnery.

  63 The book debuted at number ten: Time, June 6, 1960. By the time voters: WSJ, November 3, 1960. For popularity in colleges, see “Campus Conservatives,” Time, February 10, 1961; “Conservatives on the Campus,” Newsweek, April 10, 1961; and WSJ, November 3, 1960.

  63 My discussion of the existentialist appeal of Conscience of a Conservative is indebted to Doug Rossinow, The Politics of Authenticity: Liberalism, Christianity, and the New Left in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998); John A. Andrew III, The Other Side of the Sixties: Young Americans for Freedom and the Rise of Conservative Politics (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1997); Gerald Schomp, Birchism Was My Business (New York: Macmillan, 1970); and author interviews with Lou Proyect and Doug Henwood. All quotes from Conscience of a Conservative are from the paperback edition (New York: McFadden Books, 1961).

  65 Time and Barron’s review clips (n.d.) in CM, Box 70/2.

  65 “I am at a loss to understand”: Fred C. Koch, A Business Man Looks at Communism, by an American Business Man (self-published, 1960).

  66 For quotes from platforms, see Kirk Harold Porter, National Party Platforms, 1840-1964 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1966).

  5. THE MEETING OF THE BLUE AND WHITE NILE

  69 The “Flopnik” headline is in Jeremy Isaacs and Taylor Downing, Cold War: An Illustrated History, 1945-1991 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1998), 156.

  69 Human Events background: Justus D. Doenecke, Not to the Swift: The Old Isolationists in the Cold War Era (Cranbury, N.J.: Associated University Press, 1979), 39; Edward Cain, They’d Rather Be Right: Youth and the Conservative Movement (New York: Macmillan, 1963), 143; and author interviews with Allan Ryskind and Scott Stanley.

  70 Student Committee for the Loyalty Oath: A. Whitney Griswold, “ ‘Loyalty’: An Issue of Academic Freedom,” NYTM, December 20, 1959; John A. Andrew III, The Other Side of the Sixties: Young Americans for Freedom and the Rise of Conservative Politics (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1997), 26-27; and Gregory Schneider, Cadres for Conservatism: Young Americans for Freedom and the Rise of the Contemporary Right (New York: NYU Press, 1999), 20-23 (193-94 quotes oath).

  70 The Harvard chapter petition is noted in Rebecca E. Klatch, A Generation Divided: The New Left, the New Right, and the 1960s (
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 18. The figure of thirty campuses is from Dallek, “Young Americans for Freedom, 1960-1964” (master’s thesis, Columbia University, 1993), 4. TNR article is Gerald W. Johnson, “An Outburst of Servility,” February 8, 1960.

  70 “I can’t think of any of our students”: Andrew, Other Side of the Sixties, 27.

  70 My main biographical source for Buckley is John B. Judis, William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives (New York: Touchstone, 1990). The profile of Buckley Sr. is drawn from 18-34.

  71 Buckley and Bozell’s relationship: ibid., 55-59.

  71 Buckley’s fight against the student council: ibid., 63. Henry Wallace prank: ibid., 64.

  71 One attacked a popular anthropology professor: ibid., 67-68. Buckley’s valedictory lecture is on 11-12.

  72 Yale’s attempts to suppress, then discredit God and Man at Yale: ibid., 90-94. I owe my interpretation of McCarthy and Its Enemies to Judis, William F. Buckley, 105-6.

  72 My sources for ISI are Cain, They’d Rather Be Right, 147-69; Richard Whalen, Taking Sides: A Personal View of America from Kennedy to Nixon to Kennedy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), 113-16; E. Victor Milione, “Ideas in Action: Forty Years of ‘Educating for Liberty,’ ” Intercollegiate Review (Fall 1993); ISI announcement in WFBJ, Box 8/Ibele-Into; the pamphlets in JCJ, including n.a., The ISI Story in Brief, Admiral Ben Moreell, The Several Faces of Communism, and Frederich A. Hayek, Economic Myths of Early Capitalism; and author interviews with M. Stanton Evans and Carol Dawson, two leaders who attribute their original involvement in conservatism to ISI. The Lippmann quote is in Whalen, Taking Sides, 115. Milione, an ISI founder, traced his inspiration from Friedrich Hayek’s “The Intellectuals and Socialism,” University of Chicago Law Review (Spring 1949): “The main lesson which the true liberal must learn from the success of the socialists is that it was their courage to be Utopian which gained them the support of the intellectuals and therefore an influence on public opinion which is daily making possible what only recently seemed utterly remote.”

  73 The story of Buckley and Schlamm and the founding of NR is in Judis, William F. Buckley, 114-27. The Freeman and its crackup: William Rusher, The Rise of the Right (New York: Morrow, 1984), 33-35. NR business plan is in Rusher, Rise of the Right, 43-44.

  73 Buckley’s fund-raising tour: Judis, William F. Buckley, 118-21; and author interview with William F. Buckley.

  73 The Harper’s review, from the March 1956 issue, is quoted in Rusher, Rise of the Right, 47. For similar reviews, see ibid., 47-51. For “practical liberal” and “fighting conservative,” see Christopher Matthews, Kennedy and Nixon: The Rivalry That Shaped Postwar America (New York: Touchstone, 1996), 17. For Viereck, see E. J. Dionne Jr., Why Americans Hate Politics (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991), 168-69; for Worsthorne, ibid., 173.

  74 Mike Wallace interview: Judis, William F. Buckley, 163.

  74 “We are an opposition”: Rusher, Rise of the Right, 50.

  75 “Would tax the dialectical agility”: Whalen, Taking Sides, 95. My interpretation of postwar conservative intellectualism is indebted to James Allen Smith, The Idea Brokers: Think Tanks and the Rise of the New Policy Elite (New York: Free Press, 1991), 170-74.

  75 For the Midwest Federation of College Republicans, see Schneider, Cadres for Conservatism, 27; and Andrew, Other Side of the Sixties, 27. For Youth for Goldwater for Vice President, see Marvin Liebman, Coming Out Conservative: An Autobiography (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1992), 146; Andrew, Other Side of the Sixties, 27-31; Schneider, Cadres for Conservatism, 27-30; Lee Edwards, Goldwater: The Man Who Made a Revolution (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 1995), 135; and Dallek, “Young Americans for Freedom, 1960-1964,” 4-5.

  75 Rusher on Blue and White Nile quoted in Lisa McGirr, “Suburban Warriors: Grass-Roots Conservatism in the 1960s” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1995), 151. “Catacombs” quote in Andrew, Other Side of the Sixties, 27.

  76 On the South Carolina convention, see F. Clifton White with William Gill, Suite 3505: The Story of the Draft Goldwater Movement (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1967), 20; Stephen Shadegg, What Happened to Goldwater?: The Inside Story of the 1964 Republican Campaign (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1965), 30; and Brophy to Manion, March 26, 1959, CM, Box 70/2.

  76 Progress of BMG column: Shadegg to Manion, March 24, 1960, CM, Box 70/2. BMG meeting with Nixon: Shadegg, What Happened, 30. “In the last six weeks Dick”: Andrew, Other Side of the Sixties, 46.

  76 For spring 1960 Cold War scares, see Theodore H. White, The Making of the President 1960 (New York: Atheneum, 1961), 128-29, 168.

  77 NAR’s bomb shelter obsession is detailed in Frank Gervasi, The Real Rockefeller: The Story of the Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of the Presidential Aspirations of Nelson Rockefeller (New York: Atheneum, 1964), 43; and Michael Kramer and Sam Roberts, “I Never Wanted to Be Vice-President of Anything!”: An Investigative Biography of Nelson Rockefeller (New York: Basic Books, 1976), 219 (for quote). For the Special Studies Fund reports on defense, see Cary Reich, The Life of Nelson A. Rockefeller: Worlds to Conquer, 1908-1958 (New York: Doubleday, 1996), 663-66; “Arms Rise Urged Lest Reds Seize Lead in 2 Years,” WP, January 6, 1957; and Chesly Manly, “Anti-Red Federation Urged by Rockefeller,” CT, October 4, 1961.

  77 For the U2 intelligence and secrecy, see David Halberstam, The Fifties (New York: Fawcett, 1993), 621-25; and Isaacs and Downing, Cold War, 157. Republicans’ attempts to still NAR’s insurgency are in White, Making of the President 1960, 198. “I hate the thought of Dick Nixon”: Kramer and Roberts, “I Never Wanted to Be Vice-President of Anything!,” 222. NAR had worked to keep Nixon from campaigning for him in New York in 1958; see Reich, Life of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 758.

  78 The failure of the summit and NAR’s ensuing maneuverings are in Kramer and Roberts, “I Never Wanted to Be Vice-President of Anything!,” 227; White, Making of the President 1960, 200-201 (for NAR’s statement); Nicol C. Rae, The Decline and Fall of the Liberal Republicans: From 1952 to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 42; and James Desmond, Nelson Rockefeller: A Political Biography (New York: Macmillan, 1964), 256-61.

  79 Percy’s trip to New York, the floor-fight threat, and Nixon’s assurances are in White, Making of the President 1960, 210-11.

  79 For the Republican National Convention generally, see Paul Tillett, ed., Inside Politics: The National Conventions, 1960 (Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.: Oceana Publications, 1962), 53-83. Goldwater’s appearance before the platform committee is described in White with Gill, Suite 3505, 21. Text in Stephen Shadegg, Barry Goldwater: Freedom Is His Flight Plan (New York: MacFadden, 1963), 183-89. The Ford Foundation testimony is in White, Making of the President 1960, 212.

  79 The Chicago scene is set from White, Making of the President 1960, 206-7. For Rustin’s presence, see Tillett, Inside Politics.

  80 My interpretation on the golden age of political conventions is drawn from Alan Brinkley, “The Taming of the Political Convention,” in Brinkley, Liberalism and Its Discontents (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), 249-65. For Stevenson demonstration, see White, Making of the President 1960, 180-83.

  80 NAR’s secret monitoring and press statement is in White, Making of the President 1960, 212-15. For his headquarters, see Desmond, Nelson Rockefeller, 271.

  81 NAR’s demand for a New York meeting and Nixon’s decision to kowtow is in White, Making of the President 1960, 215.

  81 Nixon’s journey to Fifth Avenue is narrated in White, 215-16; and Kramer and Roberts, “I Never Wanted to Be Vice-President of Anything!,” 230-35.

  81 For NAR’s townhouse, see Tracie Rozhon, “A Rockefeller Fixer-Upper,” NYT, October 14, 1999; and Reich, Life of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 122-23 and 151-52.

  82 For the meeting, see White, Making of the President 1960, 216-17. Herb Klein’s denial is on page 216. The “Compact of Fifth Avenue” is reproduced in White, 424-26.

  82 Nixon’s ignoring hints
to pay attention to conservatives: Shadegg, What Happened, 30; Andrew, Other Side of the Sixties, 44-48; Schneider, Cadres for Conservatism, 27-29; Robert Alan Goldberg, Barry Goldwater (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995), 143-45; NYT, July 24, 1960 (noting that Goldwater’s views were “privately expressed by many influential Republican conservatives supporting the Nixon candidacy”); and Newsweek profile of Goldwater, July 4, 1960. Welch postcard is in Goldberg, Barry Goldwater, 144. National Youth for Goldwater flyer is in ML, Box 29/Barry Goldwater. “We have worked”: Andrew, Other Side of the Sixties, 298. “Thousands and thousands of people”: ibid., 45.

  83 Nixon took it all in: Goldberg, Barry Goldwater, 144. “They are against any change”: Andrew, Other Side of the Sixties, 45. The 1 percent statistic is from Goldberg, Barry Goldwater, 143.

  83 The hottest ticket that weekend: author interview with Phyllis Schlafly; and Peter Carol, Famous in America: The Passion to Succeed: Jane Fonda, George Wallace, Phyllis Schlafly John Glenn (New York: Dutton, 1995). Youth for Goldwater for Vice President’s activities is from Dallek, “Young Americans for Freedom, 1960-1964,” 5. Doug Caddy talked like a power broker: Russell Baker, NYT, July 23, 1960. On newsstands: Barry Goldwater, “How to Win in ’60: No Mollycoddling ,” Newsweek, August 1, 1960.

  84 Breaking of Compact of Fifth Avenue news: Shadegg, What Happened, 31; NYT, July 24, 1960; White, Making of the President 1960, 217-18. Len Hall’s reaction is in Barry Goldwater, With No Apologies: The Personal and Political Memoirs of United States Senator Barry M. Goldwater (New York: William Morrow, 1979), 112.

  84 BMG’s sense of betrayal is in Goldwater, With No Apologies, 110-12. BMG’s sometimes naive, blinding trust in those close to him is discussed in Goldberg, Barry Goldwater, 30. Nixon had also broken a promise to endorse a right-to-work plank in the platform. See Barry Goldwater with Jack Casserly, Goldwater (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1988), 256.