Getting It Right

by William F. Buckley

  Yet the dramatic moment in Eisenhower’s speech was not his admonitions against radical suitors. He spoke a sentence which, in the advance text, had not caught the attention of anyone as conveying anything extraordinary. His words were, “Let us particularly scorn the divisive efforts of those outside our family, including sensation-seeking columnists and commentators—” Before he could finish the sentence, the San Francisco Cow Palace Convention Hall was wild. Shouts of approval, sustained applause, hoots of compliant, excited, jubilant, reproachful accord spoke the raucous voice of a convention avenging hours, days, weeks, and months of print and TV commentators who had scorned the emerging GOP, imputing to it reckless inclinations in foreign policy and, in domestic policy, an indifference to civil rights for blacks and a primitive resistance to federal concern for social welfare.

  That night, Youth for Goldwater had a dinner. There were one hundred guests, each paying $3.75 for the chicken. The cash bar sold chits; a beer cost twenty-five cents, vodka or bourbon, one dollar. “ANY SURPLUS IN THE ACCOUNT WILL GO TO THE GOLDWATER CAMPAIGN,” a typewritten notice taped against the side of the bar pledged.

  “Are we supposed to finance the campaign by boozing it up?” asked Dick Cowan jocularly.

  “Not a bad idea,” YAF chairman Bauman winked, bringing his glass to his lips. “After all, we’ve got a whole lot to celebrate.”

  “And a whole lot left to do,” Tom Phillips, another cofounder, interposed.

  It was with concern for what was left to be done that a half dozen young veterans convened after dinner in Bob Bauman’s suite at the St. Francis Hotel. All of them, except David Keene, had been present at the founding of YAF. They had survived wasteful, internecine, opportunistic, factional wrangling, but all of that at this moment was merely bad memory. Now they were united, hoping to bring off at the convention and on election day what had brought them to Sharon, Connecticut—the very idea of a national youth federation that would change American politics.

  “There are three subjects we want to talk about,” said Bauman. “One of them is the civil rights question, a second is the need to fight hard on the anti-Communist movement in Vietnam, and the third is how to handle the John Birch Society problem. Let’s start with this last one, which was pretty much the highlight of the speeches today by Hatfield and Ike. Woody, clue us in.”

  Woodroe Raynor had worked as assistant to Goldwater press chief Karl Hess for two months. He spoke off the record and told his young colleagues that the fight over how to deal with the John Birch Society was going on in the inner council of Goldwater headquarters. “It features Bill Baroody, Clif White, Denison Kitchel, and Dean Burch.”

  “Dean Burch? Is he any relation?” Cowan always looked for an angle that would permit levity.

  Woodroe smiled. “Yeah, Dick. But Dean is an ambiguist. He changed his name to B-U-R-C-H. Burch and Kitchel are both from Arizona and they’re pleading with Goldwater to leave the organization alone, just maybe let out a peep or two against Bob Welch.”

  “The trouble is, Welch isn’t the only wild Birch leader,” said Carol Bauman, Chairman Bob’s wife. “There are others. For instance, what about people like Revilo Oliver?”

  “There’s no way Goldwater’s going to—no way people could expect Goldwater to go down the list of Birch Society members and say yes on him, no on him,” Woodroe said. “The question Goldwater faces is whether to make a corporate disavowal—which is what Baroody is urging.”

  “How would you hope he’d go, Woody?” Keene asked.

  Woodroe paused for a moment. “That runs hard up against my own history, and you all know about that, at least, about parts of it. And Leonora here knows about it in some detail. Right, Lee?” He looked over at another cofounder of YAF. “Lee lived through a lot of it. On the other hand”—he smiled broadly—“I’ve lived through a lot of objectivism.”

  “Hey!” Dick Cowan said. “We ought to call on Hatfield and Ike and demand they go back to the podium and denounce Ayn Rand!”

  “John Galt lives!” David Keene intoned, his lips framing a solemn warning against blasphemy, his eyes alight with amusement.

  “No offense, Lee.” Cowan got back on the road: “Go on, Woody.”

  “It’s just a plain fact that a lot of people are members of the John Birch Society who don’t much care what its Founder or anybody else says in American Opinion but would care very much if the Society was publicly criticized by Candidate Goldwater. They don’t want to hear from Goldwater the same kind of thing Ike got cheered for when he criticized ‘sensation-seeking columnists and commentators.’ These people are out there waiting for Goldwater’s speech, and if he condemns the Society by name, they’re going to be . . . forgive the language, Carol, Lee”—Woodroe was momentarily a proper Mormon— “plenty peed off. We’re not here to formulate moral advice for Goldwater, I say. We know he doesn’t himself believe the kooky things. Whether he denounces the Society is a political question.

  “So to answer your question, Bob, if I were in his inner council, I’d urge him not to go for the corporate rejection. But maybe I’m a late learner on this subject.”

  Back to Bauman. “Thanks, Woody. Let’s ask Tom Phillips to sound off on the foreign policy plank.”

  “It’s going to be good. The language renounces any notion that the Communists are leveling off, tending to accommodation. And it makes an important issue of the Vietnam scene. Last November, when JFK died, the U.S. had seventeen thousand so-called advisers on the Vietnam scene. The Johnson administration keeps putting off a hard position on Vietnam, and Goldwater’s going to have to challenge him on that, the doctrine of containment.”

  “I thought we were for liberation, not containment?” Woodroe corrected him.

  “Of course you are, and we are, and James Burnham’s Containment or Liberation? guides us all on the subject. But the challenge in Vietnam is a challenge to containment. If the North Vietnamese Communists overwhelm Saigon, that makes for the first territorial Communist victory since what they set out to do in Korea. And that containment line has to be held.”

  “Well, no disagreement on that. Alfred, give us the outline of the thinking on the civil rights business.”

  “The attitude the liberals/moderates are asking for,” Alfred Regnery said, “is what Catholics call internal assent. What they’re saying is: Goldwater voted against the civil rights bill and said his reason was that the bill arrogated unconstitutional powers.

  “But now what they’re saying—Hatfield, Eisenhower, Rockefeller, Scranton—is: The country is behind the civil rights bill, it has been passed by a substantial majority, it hasn’t been ruled unconstitutional and isn’t likely to be. Therefore, we want from Goldwater an endorsement of the ideals of the bill, equal rights for everybody. He’s advanced those ideals abstractly, but he is going to have to do that now wholeheartedly in the context of the civil rights legislation. He’s got to back off from the states’ rights people, from the General Walkers and the interpositionists and—the segregationists.”

  Leonora let out an approving “Right.” She went on: “Let’s face it, there are people out there who don’t have in mind so much states’ rights as that they don’t want a Negro sitting in the same classroom with their children.”

  “So do we back the constitutional principle, or say—Whatever the deficiencies of the bill, it aims in the right direction? We should say just that,” Bauman summarized.

  “I think that’s right,” Lee Edwards said. “And maybe, Bob, you could write out just the right wording to convey all that and still encourage the delegations in the South and West to stay excited about Barry.”

  “Well,” Bauman acknowledged, “there are problems.”

  “One problem,” said his wife, Carol, “is how to get some sleep before the 8 A.M. Young Republican rally.”

  “Do I hear a motion to adjourn? There being no dissenters, I declare this meeting adjourned.”

  “Don’t forget sine die, Bob. You’re a lawyer, after all.�
��

  “Not quite. I’ll be a lawyer in about . . . one year. Er, adjourn sine die.”

  43

  THER EWERE VOTES, ON THE FLOOR of the Cow Palace in San Francisco, on the myriad attempts by what the press called the “moderate wing” of the GOP to record victory in something—anything, it sometimes seemed—that might serve as a rebuke to the reigning Right. The proposed amendments all failed, in part because the convention was under control of Goldwater enthusiasts. In pride—and vainglory—they voted against anything they thought would contaminate Goldwater’s coronation. Their obstinacy was egged on by the antagonistic auspices of the amendments. They came in—all of them—as amendments sponsored by the other side: the forces of William Scranton, the governor of Pennsylvania. And Scranton was, after all, the (defeated) enemy.

  When, just six weeks ago, in June, Governor Rockefeller was defeated by Senator Goldwater in the California primary, it was inevitable that somebody would have to step in and contend against Goldwater. Richard Nixon was the obvious figure, but he had sensed the inadvisability of the race. He was handicapped by his smarting defeat at the hands of Democratic governor of California Pat Brown just two years before. And then, too, Richard Nixon was the Republican who had been nominated for president in Chicago in 1960, at the time the little band of Goldwaterites was pressing for its own candidate. The Goldwaterites were now in charge. Nixon was a cool observer of the political balance of forces. He would wait, and make his play for the presidency another time.

  But somebody had to oppose Goldwater. That left William Scranton, the blue-blooded, handsome, rather reserved governor of Pennsylvania. Very early on, a test of delegate strength had shown that as things were going, Scranton would not prevail over Goldwater. Putting their desperate heads together, several of his aides acted to try something dramatic, if risky. A letter to Goldwater was composed. “Dear Barry,” it began. And it was signed “Bill.” The letter, ostensibly the work of Governor Scranton, detailed Goldwater’s disqualifications to contend for the office, let alone to serve as president of the United States. The indictment was done in language appallingly hostile, coming as it did from a brother-in-arms in the Republican Party. The invidious letter ended, “In short, Barry, ‘Gold-waterism’ has come to stand for a whole crazy-quilt collection of absurd and dangerous positions that would be soundly repudiated by the American people in November.”

  Scranton aides proceeded to slip a copy of the letter under the bedroom door of every single GOP delegate.

  Reading it on Sunday, Goldwater rubbed his eyes in disbelief.

  So—it was said—did William Scranton when he first read his own copy.

  Scranton immediately passed out the word that he had never actually laid eyes on the text before it was sent out—it had been composed by staff and signed by an aide who was authorized routinely to affix Scranton’s signature on form letters.

  “Talk about fitness to serve as president!” Karl Hess fumed to his aide, Woodroe Raynor, at breakfast. “I wonder if Bill Scranton’s aide is also authorized to sign petitions for a declaration of war.”

  It was, under the circumstances, imprudent of the anti-Goldwater people to proceed to use Scranton as de facto sponsor of the three amendments that followed, bang, bang, bang. The first, formally proposed by Senator Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania, Scranton’s convention manager, called on the party to “repudiate” the efforts of “irresponsible extremist groups such as the John Birch Society.”

  The second was offered on the floor by Joseph Carlino, Speaker of the New York State Assembly, a Rockefeller-Scranton delegate. It called for “enforcement” of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, declaring it a federal responsibility to superintend equal rights for minority members in voting, education, jobs, and accommodations. Yet the existing platform draft had already called for “full implementation and faithful execution” of the new law.

  What Carlino had done was not only to use the dread word enforce, but to call for a public rejection of Goldwater’s legislative record. When he voted against the civil rights bill in June, Goldwater had charged that the bill usurped states’ rights and exceeded constitutional limitations on federal power. An analysis of the bill had been done for the senator by his young legal friend in Phoenix. William H. Rehnquist (who years later would be chief justice of the United States) had judged it unconstitutional. The motion by Carlino, if now accepted, would have humiliatingly rejected Goldwater’s conscientiously drafted constitutional analysis.

  And then Christian Herter, who had served President Eisenhower as secretary of state, filed a third amendment, again manifestly under Scranton auspices. It reaffirmed exclusive presidential control over the U.S. arsenal of nuclear weapons. This maneuver was designed to bring attention to Goldwater’s having said in a primary campaign exchange that there were hypothetical circumstances in which contingent authority to use theater nuclear weapons might be given to senior military officials in the field.

  “I say it’s spinach and the hell with it,” said Goldwater delegate head Sam Lopez, addressing the Arizona caucus before the vote. “They’re just trying to embarrass Barry.”

  That was the finding of the majority: To hell with the so-called moderates; they’re just trying to embarrass Barry.

  One or two close members of Goldwater’s staff, the Scranton amendments having been defeated, counseled some kind of rhetorical propitiation by Goldwater in his acceptance speech. A conciliatory draft was thereupon prepared. Goldwater read it, judged it anemic and servile, and tossed it into the wastebasket.

  Professor Harry Jaffa, a political science scholar and a close student of Lincoln, sent over to Goldwater’s hotel a memorandum reminding the candidate that Lincoln too had been accused of “extremism” and had handled the charge coolly and effectively, relying, in effect, on Aristotelian logic. Jaffa’s insight, on Goldwater’s instruction, was worked into a fresh draft. When read by vice presidential nominee-to-be Bill Miller, and then by primary campaign manager Clif White, and then by Goldwater intimate Dean Burch, the Jaffa text aroused uniform alarm. But Goldwater had had enough. He drew out his pen and underlined twice the two provocative sentences. These were the words he would speak.

  His staff could think of nothing else to do except hide the text from the press until the last moment.

  Goldwater had correctly sensed in the mood of the majority of the delegates a desire for a show of historic triumphalism. He began, “Anyone who joins us in all sincerity, we welcome. Those who do not care for our cause, we don’t expect to enter our ranks in any case. And let our Republicanism be so focused and so dedicated as to not be made fuzzy and futile by unthinking and stupid labels.”

  FIRE ONE: “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.”

  FIRE TWO: “And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

  The utter jubilation of the delegates corresponded almost exactly to the utter dismay of senior Republican figures. Scranton, of course, as also Rockefeller. And—most perilously—Dwight David Eisenhower. He was appeased the following morning only when Goldwater, calling on him at his suite, reminded him that in 1944 extremist measures were thought appropriate to the reconquest of Europe.

  The happiest man in America that night was the scholarly Professor Jaffa, watching it all at home on television, confident that Candidate Goldwater was showing the kind of strength and self-confidence Abraham Lincoln had shown in one of his own dark hours.

  44

  SENATOR GOLDWATER WAS BACK in his beloved desert home six days after the San Francisco convention. There had been a stop in Chicago and a few days in Washington to catch up on Senate duties.

  The electoral tradition, back then, called for a hiatus in the electioneering activity of presidential candidates between their nomination and Labor Day. The pause gave the candidates six weeks of relative peace, time to deliberate on the campaign, devise strategy, schedule public appearances, and raise money.

  Goldwa
ter’s staff rented office space in downtown Phoenix, and the candidate spent time there, reluctantly. Goldwater enjoyed working, whenever he could, out of his ample house, on the hill above Paradise Valley. Working there, he had the recreation of an hour or two with his beloved ham-radio facilities in the garage wing of the house.

  His own study was decorated with Indian artifacts and framed family photographs. Featured there were native Arizona Indians, men and women, boys and girls, at work and at play. The cactus motif was omnipresent—in outdoor plants, for the most part, springing up, inexplicably, in the seemingly moistureless hot sand; sometimes as cactus flowers inside Arizona’s adobe dwellings. Goldwater kept in his office a modest pile of his acclaimed book of photographs, which he would inscribe and give to special visitors. Routine visitors got only The Conscience of a Conservative, his political book.

  He wanted just two men at his side to help him with special problems he had put to one side, problems he needed to face, however minor in the grand scheme of things. He would give time, of course, to consider the speeches Karl Hess and his assistants would draft, addressing issues on which he intended to campaign. He needed to give attention to a letter from Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home of Britain, who, in writing Candidate Goldwater, had observed protocol by sending a copy of his letter to President Johnson. The prime minister asked about positions a President Goldwater would take on pending questions of state that touched on British policy on NATO, on Africa, and on diplomatic relations with China.