Before the Storm

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Before the Storm Page 78

by Rick Perlstein


  85 “This might cost Nixon the election!”: Goldwater, With No Apologies, 112.

  85 BMG’s press conference: ibid., 112; NYT, July 24, 1960; White, Making of the President 1960, 112; and Shadegg, What Happened, 31.

  85 Press release of the “Munich” speech is in ML, Box 27.

  85 “This man is a two-fisted, four-square liar”: Goldwater with Casserly, Goldwater, 256.

  85 For NAR’s snub of his fans, see White, Making of the President 1960, 203-5.

  85 The pickets against the Compact of Fifth Avenue on Michigan Avenue are pictured in NYT, July 25, 1960, A1.

  86 The story of John Tower and the battle in the civil rights platform subcommittee is told in detail in Karl A. Lamb, “Civil Rights and the Republican Platform: Nixon Achieves Control,” in Tillett, Inside Politics, 53-83. See also White, Making of the President 1960, 218-24.

  87 Point nine would also, added Louisiana’s flamboyant Tom Stagg: Tillet, Inside Politics, 66; White, Making of the President 1960, 203.

  87 On DDE’s consternation, see White, Making of the President 1960, 218-19. He called Nixon in Washington: White, Making of the President 1960, 224.

  88 One of the aides Nixon brought: author interview with Charles Lichenstein.

  88 For NAR’s Liberty Baptist Church appearance, see NYT, July 25, 1960, A16.

  88 For platform committee chaos, see Tillett, Inside Politics, 76-79; White, Making of the President 1960, 219-20 (placard quote on 220); and White with Gill, Suite 3505, 21 (for Barnes story).

  89 “I’ve heard enough rumors”: Time, August 8, 1960. “We can’t expect to come here”: Life, November 1, 1963.

  89 “Get me three hundred names ”: White, Making of the President 1964, 112. See also White with Gill, Suite 3505, 22; and Shadegg, What Happened, 32 (for “political neck” quote).

  90 For Nixon’s Monday arrival, see “Nixon Says Rights Plank Must Be Made Stronger,” NYT, July 26, 1960.

  90 “I believe it is essential”: ibid.

  90 For Nixon lobbying, see NYT, “Nixon Says Rights Plank”; White, Making of the President 1960, 223; and Edwards, Goldwater, 137.

  91 For BMG speech Monday night, see Andrew, Other Side of the Sixties, 51.

  91 For negotiations with DDE, see White, Making of the President 1960, 224.

  91 “Was it the Republicans who”: ibid., 225.

  91 “NIXON SAYS RIGHTS PLANK”: NYT, July 26, 1960. Platform Committee’s final session: Tillett, Inside Politics, 80-82; Edward G. Carmines and James A. Stimson, Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation of American Politics (New Brunswick, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989), 39 (for final platform language); and Lichenstein interview.

  91 For the honoring of the Eisenhowers, DDE speech, and E. Frederic Morrow, see Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-1963 (New York: Touchstone, 1988), 321-23.

  92 “All right. You go out”: Edwards, Goldwater, 136.

  92 “We were instructed”: Shadegg, What Happened, 32.

  92 “You aren’t going to let”: author interview with Richard Kleindienst.

  92 For the preparation of BMG’s withdrawal speech, see Shadegg, What Happened, 33; Edwards, Goldwater, 137; and Richard Kleindienst, Justice: The Memoirs of an Attorney General (Ottawa, Ill.: Jameson Books, 1985), 26. For BMG meeting with young backers, see SLPD, January 4, 1964; and (for quote) Time, June 23, 1961.

  92 Nixon’s acceptance speech: White, Making of the President 1960, 227.

  93 BMG demonstration: Edwards, Goldwater, 138; Life, November 11, 1963; Schlafly interview.

  93 BMG’s withdrawal is printed in full in James M. Perry, A Report in Depth on Barry Goldwater: The Story of the 1964 Republican Presidential Nominee (Silver Spring, Md.: National Observer, 1964), 84-85. It can be seen in part on A&E Television Network, Barry Goldwater: The Conscience of Conservatives (1996, cat. no. AAE-14345).

  95 “That son of a bitch”: Liebman, Coming Out Conservative, 159.

  6. QUICKENING

  99 JFK inaugural address: PPP: JFK, 1.

  100 DDE farewell address: PPP: DDE, 1035-40.

  100 On CIA complicity in the Lumumba assassination, see U.S. Congress, Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Frank Church, chair, final report, Congressional Record, 1976. Khrushchev speech, quoted in Francis X. Winters, The Year of the Hare: America in Vietnam, January 25, 1963-February 15, 1964 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997), 8. On broken arrows, see John May, The Greenpeace Book of the Nuclear Age: The Hidden History, the Human Cost (New York: Pantheon, 1990), 140; and Robert C. Williams and Philip L. Cantelon, eds., The American Atom: A Documentary History of Nuclear Policies from the Discovery of Fission to the Present, 1939-1984 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), 239-43.

  101 The Rutgers showing of Operation Abolition is described in Dan Wakefield, “Un-Americanism Plays the Colleges,” The Nation, January 28, 1961. “The Communist Party itself”: House Committee on Un-American Activities, “The Truth about the Film ‘Operation Abolition,’ ” supplemental report to House report no. 2228, Eighty-sixth Congress, Second Session, in JCJ.

  101 The Bay Area and Berkeley roots of Operation Abolition are covered in David Lance Goines, The Free Speech Movement: Coming of Age in the 1960s (Berkeley, Calif.: Ten Speed Press, 1993), 68; Milton Viorst, Fire in the Streets: America in the 1960s (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), 168; Max Heirich, The Spiral of Conflict: Berkeley, 1964 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), 78-94; and The Nation, January 28, 1961. The Air Force training manual incident is described in Walter Goodman, The Committee: The Extraordinary Career of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968), 405; quote can be found at http://mag-net.com/~maranath/rsv.htm.

  102 The showdown at City Hall is described in Heirich, Spiral of Conflict, 81.

  102 Production described in HUAC, “The Truth about ‘Operation Abolition,’ ” content and distortions are described in Bay Area Student Committee for the Abolition of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, “In Search of Truth: An Analysis of the HCUA Propaganda Film ‘Operation Abolition,’ ” both in JCJ.

  102 Communist Target-Youth is available from International Historic Films, Chicago. Operation Abolition’s distribution: NR, July 28, 1961.

  103 A history professor: John Higham, “The Cult of American Consensus: Homogenizing Our History,” Commentary 27 (1959); and author interview with John Higham.

  104 For Liebman biography, see Marvin Liebman, Coming Out Conservative: An Autobiography (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1992).

  104 For the Committee of One Million, see Harry W. Ernst, “Behind the Handout Curtain,” The Nation, March 17, 1962, which strenuously debunks Liebman’s claim. For another typical Liebman product, see the full-page ad for “Fighting Aces for Goldwater,” NYT, October 28, 1964.

  105 The call to Sharon is in 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), 55.

  105 Hungary as a spur to conservative activism: author interviews with Tom Pauken and M. Stanton Evans; Nick Salvatore, “You Say You Want a Revolution?,” The Bookpress, September 1997; and Liebman, Coming Out Conservative, 113-16.

  105 They read schoolboy equivalents: James Michener, The Bridge at Andau (New York: Bantam Books, 1957), Catholic Digest Book Club edition; Thomas Dooley, Deliver Us from Evil: The True Story of Vietnam’s Flight to Freedom (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1956); and Whittaker Chambers, Witness (New York: Random House, 1952). Lionization of JFK at parochial schools: author interview with John Savage. For young people who became conservatives in reaction against urban Democratic machine corruption, I rely on Samuel G. Freedman, The Inheritance: How Three Families and the American Political Majority Moved from Left to Right (New York: Touchstone, 1996), 188—89; and author interviews with Henry Geier and Pat
ricia Geier.

  106 Sharon Conference: Gregory Schneider, Cadres for Conservatism: Young Americans for Freedom and the Rise of the Contemporary Right (New York: NYU Press, 1999), 31-37; Andrew, Other Side of the Sixties, 55-60; Liebman, Coming Out Conservative, 151; Lee Edwards, “Rebels with a Cause,” in Lee and Anne Edwards, You Can Make the Difference (Westport, Conn.: Arlington House, 1980), 240-52; and author interviews with M. Stanton Evans, Lee Edwards, Howard Phillips, Scott Stanley, and Carol Dawson.

  106 Sharon statement reprinted in Andrew, Other Side of the Sixties, 221-22. Debate over including God is in Schneider, Cadres for Conservatism, 34; for the discussion on the name: ibid., 36; Marvin Kitman, “New Wave from the Right,” The New Leader, September 18, 1961; and Phillips and Edwards interviews. American Youth for Democracy: David A. Horowitz, Beyond Left and Right: Insurgency and the Establishment (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 192. A similar debate ensued at the founding of Americans for Democratic Action—after John Kenneth Galbraith’s idea to call the new group the Liberal Union. Galbraith “Dear Friend” fund-raising letter to author, July 20, 1998.

  106 For Schuchman and board of directors: Schneider, Cadres for Conservatism, 36-37. For Bronx Science students at von Mises’s lectures: Richard Whalen, Taking Sides: A Personal View of America from Kennedy to Nixon to Kennedy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), 113; and author interviews with M. Stanton Evans and William Schulz. “Ten years ago”: William F. Buckley, “Young Americans for Freedom,” NR, September 24, 1960.

  107 YAF office, and original membership claim, is described in The New Leader, September 18, 1961. For the first YAF wedding, see Robert E. Bauman, The Gentleman from Maryland: The Conscience of a Gay Conservative (New York: Arbor House, 1986), 95.

  107 The February 10 Time: “Campus Conservatives,” Time, February 10, 1961. Time didn’t notice: Howard Phillips interview. For the Yale chapter’s Cuba petition, see ML, Box 37/98; for Polaris march, Tom Hayden, “Who Are the Student Boatrockers?,” Mademoiselle, August 1961.

  108 YAF soon reported 24,000 members: The Nation, May 27, 1961. “You walk around with”: Time, February 10, 1961. McCarthy-Evjue lectures: David Keene to author, April 29, 1997. For the University of Wisconsin’s left-wing culture, see Paul Buhle, History and the New Left: Madison, Wisconsin, 1950-1970 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), 111, 138, and passim.

  108 The pages of the Conservative Club’s handsomely produced: Insight and Outlook, October 1961, AC.

  108 In February YAF published: Raymond Moley, “Youth Turns to Right,” Newsweek, March 13, 1961. “A flock of little Buckleys”: E. J. Dionne Jr., Why Americans Hate Politics (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991), 176. They read twice as much: Edwards interview. The Michigan Daily: January 1962 YAF newsletter cited in Matthew Dallek, “Young Americans for Freedom, 1960-1964” (master’s thesis, Columbia University, 1991). Various numbers are given for SDS’s membership in 1961. Nick Salvatore, “You Say You Want a Revolution?,” has it at 75; James Miller, Democracy Is in the Streets: From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994), 65, gives the number in the fall of 1961 as 575.

  108 YAF’s Greater New York Council: Edward Cain, They’d Rather Be Right: Youth and the Conservative Movement (New York: Macmillan, 1963), 17, 171, 256 (which gives a membership figure of 2,200); Schneider, Cadres for Conservatism, 38, which claims YAF had sixty chapters in New York and New Jersey; “Breaking the Liberal Barrier,” New Guard, March 1961; Noel Parmentel, “The Acne and the Ecstasy,” Esquire, August 1962; Dan Wakefield, New York in the Fifties (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992), 269-73 (for White Horse anecdote); New Leader, September 18, 1961 (for quote about picketing); and author interview with Don Devine.

  109 Manhattan Center rally: Robert Conley, “3,200 at Rally Here Acclaim Goldwater,” NYT, March 3, 1961: Cain, They’d Rather Be Right, 172; William Dunphy, “The YAF’s Are Coming,” Commonweal, April 14, 1961; New Leader, September 18, 1961; and Murray Kempton, “Growing Up Absurd,” The Progressive, May 1961. Counterprotest: The Nation, May 27, 1961, and NYT, March 3, 1961.

  109 For NSA, see Cain, They’d Rather Be Right, 261-62; Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1963-1965 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998), 273; Alan Brinkley, “Allard Lowenstein and the Ordeal of Liberalism,” in Brinkley, Liberalism and Its Discontents (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), 237-48; and Nan Robertson, “A Press Release Tells Story Different from Accounts Given by Students,” NYT, May 15, 1962.

  109 Incursion at “Youth Service Abroad”: Cain, They’d Rather Be Right, 171; and Hayden, “Who Are the Student Boatrockers?” “We must assume that the conservative”: The Progressive, May 1961.

  110 The day Young Americans for Freedom rallied: “The Americanists,” Time, March 10, 1961.

  110 For the scoreboard issue, see Cain, They’d Rather Be Right, 80; TNR, May 28, 1962; and Welch to Regnery, December 20, 1960, HR, Box 78/1.

  110 For four goals, see John D. Morris, “Birch Unit Pushes Drive on Warren,” NYT, April, 1961, A1. For meetings disturbed by shouts of “republic!,” see Stanley Mosk and Howard H. Jewel, “The Birch Phenomenon Analyzed,” NYTM, August 20, 1961. For PTA: The Nation, March 11, 1961.

  110 The daily barrage of reports: A few articles had appeared in 1960 in the Chicago Daily News, Racine Journal Times, Amarillo News-Globe (a positive report), and San Marino Tribune. The publisher of the Santa Barbara News-Press won a Pulitzer Prize on April 4, 1961, for his coverage in January and February. But the explosion followed the Time report. See above, and, for a sample, LAT, March 5, 6, 7, 8, 12 (a front-page editorial), and 18, 1961; SFC, March 9, 19, 21, 23, 28, and 30, 1961; NYT, March 19, 1961; Boston Globe, March 30 and 31, 1961; Des Moines Register, March 31, 1961; and NYHT, April 1, 1961 (editorial). See also Martin J. Fuerst, Bibliography on the Origins and History of the John Birch Society, 3rd ed. (Sacramento, Calif.: n.p., 1963).

  110 Welch biography: Who’s Who; author interviews with Scott Stanley, John McManus, and registrars at Naval Academy and University of North Carolina; Time, December 8, 1961; and Michael W. Miles, The Odyssey of the American Right (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 246.

  111 The frustrated writer’s first book: Robert H. W. Welch, The Road to Salesmanship (New York: Ronald Press Co., 1941); and Cain, They’d Rather Be Right, 70. See also Welch to Regnery, March 17, 1953, HR, Box 78/1. For work with OPA, see Cain, They’d Rather Be Right, 88. For his postwar investigations and travel: McManus interview; Gerald Schomp, Birchism Was My Business (New York: Macmillan, 1970), 54; and Robert Welch, The Blue Book of the John Birch Society (Appleton, Wis.: Western Islands, 1997), 131. For lieutenant governor run, see Schomp, Birchism Was My Business, 34; and Guild to Staley, n.d., HR, Box 78/1.

  111 “A great hunk of God in the flesh”: David Halberstam, The Fifties (New York: Fawcett, 1993), 115. For Welch’s 1951 travels, see Welch, May God Forgive Us, A Famous Letter Giving the Historical Background of the Dismissal of General MacArthur (Chicago: Regnery, 1952), 3-4; and A. E. Staley to various, May 1, 1952, HR, Box 78/1.

  112 For Welch Mailing Committee: Welch to Regnery, April 9, 1952, and April 29, 1952; and Staley to various, May 1, 1952, HR, Box 78/1 (for quote).

  112 For Regnery Company history, see Whalen, Taking Sides, 197; John B. Judis, William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives (New York: Touchstone, 1990), 88-89; Henry Regnery, Memoirs of a Dissident Publisher (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 1979); and Scott Stanley interview. For Regnery’s pacifism, see A. J. Muste Folder, HR, Correspondence. For financial troubles, see Judis, William F. Buckley, Jr., 89; and HR correspondence with Jay Hall and the Erhart Foundation. Regnery went in the black in 1960, after buying out the holder of the American rights to L. Frank Baum’s Oz series. Welch bet Henry Regnery: Welch to Regnery, July 7, 1952, HR, Box 78/1.

  112 At the opening meeting: Lee Edwards, Goldwater: The Man Who Made a Revolution (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 1995), 118. For t
he argument over May God Forgive Us sales figures see Regnery to Milbank, HR, Box 51/10; Welch to Regnery, April 9, 1952, April 29, 1952, and June 14, 1952; and Staley to various, May 1, 1952, all in HR, Box 78/1. “Highlighted a definite turn back”: Welch to Regnery, December 1, 1952, HR, Box 78/1. For his allegorical novel, see correspondence with Regnery, HR, Box 78/1 for 1953, passim.

  113 Regnery accepted one more book: Robert Welch, The Life of John Birch: In the Story of One American Boy, the Ordeal of His Age (Chicago: Regnery, 1954). For the composition of The Politician: Cain, They’d Rather Be Right, 77; Robert Alan Goldberg, Barry Goldwater (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995), 137; NR, April 22, 1961; and William Rusher, The Rise of the Right (New York: Morrow, 1984), 60. For resignations from Manion’s BMG committee after receiving The Politician, see Thompson to Manion, September 14, 1959, CM, Box 70/1.

  113 “We have allowed our detractors”: Elizabeth A. Fones-Wolf, Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism, 1945-1960 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 70. For NAM’s publicity activities, see Fones-Wolf, 25, 32-57, 259-269.

  113 For FEE, see Sara Diamond, Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States (New York: Guilford, 1995), 27-28; Milton and Rose Friedman, Two Lucky People: Memoirs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 150-52; and “An Accounting of FEE’s Activities,” in Milton Friedman Papers, Box 82/FEE, HI, in which the cited pamphlets can also be found. See also Barry Goldwater column, LAT, January 14, 1960, for an example of how FEE spread its message.

  114 For One Man’s Opinion, see Welch to Regnery, November 27, 1957, November 9, 1957, November 21, 1957, May 23, 1957, and June 4, 1957, HR, Box 78/1; for American Opinion, see Welch to Regnery, October 31, 1957, November 6, 1957, December 12, 1957, HR, Box 78/1; and McManus interview. For possible Senate run, see Cain, They’d Rather Be Right, 79.

 

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