at this point the debacle is worse than even i conjured for vietnam
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Cannot even dare to check them back, which would incur a fifth-reading duty for own sake, but point taken, and conceding for the conclusion.
- Naah, you will read them again, don't you filcat? - Yep. - Mate, you are mental.
Nevertheless, taking this as an opportunity to reiterate the appreciation of the writing, because the previous praising-post was addressed to the main writAAR on the basis of law of the mentions (and avoid necro as much as possible). This time including the king of the highest peaks, for the ninety-ninth time: Kudos, for the impeccable quality of the contributions, resulting in an admirable collaboration; kudos, @99KingHigh.
...and yes, it was also yet a catastrophic shocker despite unsurprisingly expected to see the definition-of-banality-face of willi*m fucking b*ckley while reading in may-june of the year two thousand twenty one in the common era. The junior one.
Nope, the decency censor is correct. One does not block out the micro black hole when a supermassive black hole exists in the equation.
The war takes its toll.
- Mate, that escalated rather quickly, don't you think?
- Sorry, first blood was -
- You were the one to mention it first, moron. And you even spelled it wrong then.
- Yeah, right. Whatever.
- Never thought you would go berserk on such a claim. Look, an olive branch was offered:
- Yeah, but...
- No, just listen. You remember the first time you heard it. Gimme some nostalgia love.
- Yeah, I was very young back then, but it still doesn't mean -
- Mate, shut up. Gimme gimme gimme.
- Sigh. All right.
- Gimme gimme gimme.
- I said all right dammit!
- Gimme gimme gimme.
<the camera zooms on the annoyed bird meme>
<then the frame zooms out from the television screen. An unknown speaker announces, while showing the cheering crowds>
Peace! War of the Music ends with white peace! The madness ends! It is time to heal, it is time to prosper!
Coming next our segment -
<then the camera further zooms out to the room. A figure is sitting on an armchair, watching the screen>
- Huh.
<The figure sighs, mutes the television, then goes back to reading the book he has been holding. The title of the book says The Longest Year, written by Roy Jenkins, an analysis of the premiership of David Lewis. This will be a long night, the figure thinks before diving into the pages of the fifth chapter, Make This Your Commonwealth. Next to the armchair, countless books leaning are seen, some open, others on top of each other; with titles of The Death of Nye Bevan series; The Birth of the American Age about the Transatlantic missile crisis; Downwards; on top of others with titles as Transcript of Interview with Roland Barthes: The French Connection, CBC 2, 1965>
<Yes, this will be another very long night, he thinks while reading>
<the camera slowly zooms out. Eduard Artemiev's Bach from Solaris (1972) starts to play in the background>
<the screen slowly fades into darkness>
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Some of you may have noticed I’ve been generally absent from the boards for the last couple of weeks. Blame a heady cocktail of starting a new job and spending the rest of my time battling the London rental market… With any luck I’ll be about more reasonably soon, dependent on being able to stop worrying about where I’m going to live in a month’s time, but until then I wanted to make sure I did the community-minded thing and stopped by to remind people that the ACA’s end this weekend! If you haven’t already done so, please do take five minutes to fill out a ballot over in the thread.
As for the Echoesverse, @99KingHigh is working on an epic portrayal of the mess that is “the Republican Party” for before we get to the long-waited Buckley v. Vidal episode. I think we can look forward to those coming soon.
In the meantime, I’m glad to see that peace in the “ABBA Wars” has endured. Long love the cause of global harmony!
As for the Echoesverse, @99KingHigh is working on an epic portrayal of the mess that is “the Republican Party” for before we get to the long-waited Buckley v. Vidal episode. I think we can look forward to those coming soon.
In the meantime, I’m glad to see that peace in the “ABBA Wars” has endured. Long love the cause of global harmony!
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Chapter 10: The Northern Strategy (I)
"And good morning to all you irresponsible Republicans..."
Charlton Heston, 1964
Charlton Heston, 1964
Shortly before his death in 1962, George Sokolsky assumed his coruscating pen to devour a new victim. This time the misfortune belonged to Senator Jacob Javits of New York, that sedulous liberal and intimate compatriot of Governor Rockefeller. “I think that man…Senator Javits,” Sokolsky wrote, “has about as much business in the Republican Party as Leon Trotsky…If you vote for this man, then you are voting against yourself.” Harsh—but perhaps his calumny was as affected by the wintering of his years as his political foresight had been. After all, surely, this was the man who announced that Vice President Kennedy would herald the “Tory revival” in American politics. But no, I don’t think so. Some years later, in December 1967, Richard Nixon found himself all alone, in front of a microphone, the spotlight fixed remorselessly upon him, at a testimonial dinner to, of all people, Jacob Javits. What did Nixon do? Examine the range of choices. To begin with, there he was—he had accepted the invitation. What to do now? Well, he might have fainted. But as I wrote at the time, “there are dangers in that too—voters might reason that a President Nixon might face a crisis as serious in the course of his stay in the White House as finding something pleasant to say about Senator Javits.” The next alternative would have been to say something more or less neutral about the state of the world and to sit back down. But that course would have offended the liberals. They wanted a little unction. The third alternative was to give in to them, which Mr. Nixon did. He spoke favorably of Senator Javits in a flattering way. And then he added a specific piece of information, most dreadfully upsetting the New York conservatives, that if a primary fight developed, he would support Mr. Javits. “Conservatives ‘Startled’ by Nixon’s Backing Javits” was the headline in the New York Times.
Richard Nixon and the Author on Firing Line (September 1967).
This was the state of the Republican Party, wrenching and querulous. And yet, some years earlier, I would not have hesitated to bring out National Review to voice my displeasure with Mr. Nixon’s conciliatory course. In fact, at the time, I did, for I held that it was the function of the conservative movement to present the voters with an authentic choice at election time, and not simply submit to the defaults of Republican liberalism. But what was the reality of his dilemma? It was one thing to say to Mr. Nixon: stay out of the contest and we’ll see who wins; if Javits wins we’ll step aside. The conservatives of New York, however, intended to support a right-wing challenger to Mr. Javits even if Sokolsky’s casualty triumphed in the primary. Mr. Nixon understood that there was no choice at all when it came to Javits against a typical New York Democrat. He spoke very eloquently on Firing Line in the fall of 1967 when he told the audience that “Republicans could not win elections with only liberals behind him [as Governor Rockefeller had demonstrated in 1964], but also that they could not win without them...the same must be said of the conservatives too.” He spoke principle and political theory without shirking consistency in action. Indeed, this was the man who disregarded his personal apprehensions about Governor Rockefeller (a feat I still cannot accomplish)—ignoring predictions of electoral oblivion amid the Golden Years of Kennedy—to campaign unhesitatingly for the Republican Party against abstemious conservatives and confident Democrats. Nowadays we could not conceive of falling into Sokolsky’s trap; Kennedy appointed liberal establishmentarians (or as they are known in the Buckley household, the conservatives) to key policy posts (most of whom were accommodationists of the Soviet Union and the socialized welfare state), embarked on massive campaigns of federal spending for the “New Frontier” (one can only wonder so much why we heard the exchanges tremble in 1969), provoked social and fatal upheaval with their topsy-turvy approach to civil rights (we should have known it was impossible for Democrats to succeed on race relations) and destroyed America’s credibility in South Vietnam (requiring no parentheses). Of Mr. Rockefeller’s hypothetical election in 1964 we could only reasonably accuse him of the first.
Senator Javits of New York and Governor Rockefeller of New York (May 1966).
I do not know why we should have been surprised by Nixon’s pluralism at the time. In point of fact at first we found his behavior problematically deferential. I mentioned to Time magazine, on their cover story, that my ideal ticket would be Heston—deservedly Goldwater’s heir—in the top spot with Javits as the running mate. Of course, this was on the promise that I would throw myself on the presidential funeral pyre if Heston died. Evan Galbraith had written to me a few weeks before asking if I would accept newly elected Senator Charles H. Percy of Illinois as an acceptable compromise, suggesting that he thought that I had been put in the position of a “king-maker.” I responded that he was the only person who had heard me mutter in my mind...and that was the desirability of conservatizing Percy as Cheston was not a plausibility.” Nixon, it turns out, was equally wary of us. Kissinger later confirmed that Nixon felt “uneasy” with me. Some years earlier, our publisher had sent Nixon several letters, asking quite forcefully what Nixon had meant when he told Evans and Novak—this was all during my brother’s unsuccessful third-party race for New York Mayor in 1965—that the “Buckleyites were a threat to the Republican Party even more menacing than the Birchers.” The National Review followed, insisting upon an explanation for the matter. Nixon put Patrick Buchanan in charge of restoring his favorability. An Operation Downfall hero and an editorial writer for Foreign Affairs, Buchanan is an extraordinary liberal, of whom enough has been said, and so it will suffice to say that he is a man of awesome determination, and perhaps the American rhetorician of the most enviable quality. Nevertheless, as his Republican preferences, however Rockefellian, were widely known, and his belief in unity was Nixonian, he wrote a letter explaining that it was Nixon’s view that, by having repudiated the John Birch Society in his column and in National Review, I had made it impossible for liberals to dismiss him as a radical, and this was a great advantage to the Republican movement. Furthermore, according to Mr. Nixon, my brother, the Conservative Party of New York, and myself had inadvertently posed a greater threat to the official GOP nominee than might have otherwise been the case. The note concluded with a passage that went “I hope that, as Republicans, in the future the disputes of our movement can be settled within it.” Yes, it was not a conciliatory outreach, but after the disgraces of the decade, right-ecumenism was not without its appeals. National Review replied: “So, all’s well that ends well...and if Richard Nixon is willing to give personal leadership to Republican conservatives, he will find them ready to follow him.”
"Conservatism Can Be Fun," the cover of Time magazine (November 1967).
The media enjoyed very much revelling in Mr. Nixon’s personal shortcomings and political failures. A friend of mine, Senator Allen K. Lowenstein, a liberal Democrat, later speculated that their animosity was “simple enough...that man is the heir to MacArthur.” In 1962, The Washington Post thought it delightfully disparaging to brand him and his allies from the previous administration as “neo-MacArthurites,” as if association with the Old General—however much anguish he stirred in the slushy redoubts of the liberal intellect—could tarnish the reputation of Mr. Nixon. New York City was, of course, the capital of the anti-Nixon world, and it never tired in its vocation of disparagement. James Wschler, editor of the New York Post, confessed that even after years and years of thunderous anti-Nixonism, he had reached the conclusion only in late 1968 that he was “more dull than dangerous, more mediocre than menacing.” But the Big Bertha was fired by our old friend Arthur Schlesinger Jr, in, appropriately, New York Times Magazine. Mr. Schlesinger’s interest in Nixon dated way back. Indeed he wrote an entire book about Nixon in something like thirteen hours during the 1960 campaign. It was called Kefauver or Nixon—Does It Make A Difference? And the was: Yes, the Difference Between Life and Death. During the 1968 campaign, Professor Schlesinger announced his retirement from active politics and then proceeded every couple of days to engage in active politics. In his piece, Schlesinger criticized Mr. Nixon as a representative for the “possessing class,” even though the possessing class to me appeared to be anyone who had exerted himself so as to acquire some education, some property, some skills, and a family; and I would think it altogether appropriate to speak for the possessing class, in a society which seeks to constantly expand that class by inviting others to join it. Still, it sounded grubby to be such a spokesman, and that is why Mr. Schlesinger so referred to Mr. Nixon. But his main crunch, à la Senator Lowenstein, was that Nixon was mired in that “admiration for Lewis Strauss, the nuclear scientists of the Teller-Libby variety, as well as for the General and the generals.” Schlesinger might have saved himself and the reader from his lazy composition if he had simply branded him a MacArthurite and called it a day.
Of course, Mr. Nixon was a MacArthurite. He made no pretense of concealing this attitude. In 1950 the freshman senator from California roared for MacArthur during his spat with President Byrnes, warning that the "happiest group in the country will be the Communists and their stooges...The President has given them what they have always wanted--MacArthur's scalp." On he drummed, “he has been maneuvered out simply because he had the good sense and patriotism to ask for clarity in America’s Pacific strategy.” He drafted a resolution declaring it to be the sense of the Senate “that the President of the United States has not acted in the best interests of the American people in contriving to force the resignation of Supreme Allied Commander Douglas MacArthur.” In classical Nixonese he told his colleagues: “Let me say that I am not among those who believe that General MacArthur is infallible. I am not among those who think that he has not made decisions which are subject to criticism. But I do say that in this particular instance he offers an alternative vision which the American people can and will support. He offers a change from the policies which have led us almost to the brink of disaster in Asia.” In twenty-four hours the senator received over one thousand telegrams commending him. Nixon told me later that “it was the largest spontaneous reaction I’ve ever seen.” Certainly this allocution brought him to the attention of the Old General for the first time, but it was not on account of his flattery alone that he was conscripted into MacArthur's administration three years after. In his investigation of the Hiss case, Nixon’s methodical intensity vindicated his decision to stand by our mutual friend, Whittaker Chambers (Nixon called him “Uncle Whit”), who had been abandoned by the weight of the political establishment over the issue. By his extraordinary immersion into the details of the case (for all his intelligence, which was in great abundance, he was perhaps better served by his reputation as a ‘workaholic’), Nixon redeemed Whittaker from what had been described as a “lost cause,” all while striking a commendable blow for anti-communism. His credentials in that latter regard were already quite favorably augmented by his charges during his first congressional race, during which he accused his rather wealthy and progressive opponent (another Yale graduate) of “voting the London-CIO-PAC-Moscow-Henry Wallace line.” For his reputation for hard campaigning and political exaggerations, President Kefauver mused that “Nixonland is a land of slander and scare, of sly innuendo, of the poison pen, the anonymous phone call, and hustling, pushing, shoving—the land of smash and grab and anything to win.” The nickname “tricky Dick” gave permanence to the reputation. And yet, Nixon was precisely the sort of man that MacArthur would need in the murky waters of Realpolitik and the unfamiliar swamps of the capital.
Junior Congressman Nixon and Robert E. Stripling of the House Un-American Activities Committee examine microfilm from the Hess case (December 1948).
While in Congress, House leaders slotted him into the House Select Committee on Foreign Aid. During this period his views on foreign policy were sharpened—he visited the Balkans to assess the looming Communist onslaught and concluded that, despite the advice of several MacArthurite isolationists, the United States had no choice but to supply the economic and military wherewithal to combat the Marxist assault on the West. At the same time, a House proposal to rein in union excesses gave him instant visibility as a political ascendant. “I was elected to smash the labor bosses and my one principle is to accept no dictation from the CIO-PAC,” he somewhat melodramatically announced in Congress. He revelled in participating in the draft of the Taft-Hartley legislation that became law and remained so until Kefauver’s repeal in 1957*. In the end it was Hiss’ conviction in January 1950 of lying about stealing State Department documents and contacts with Chambers that enabled Nixon to run for the U.S. Senate in 1950. He won in a landslide, aided by his usual stratagems of relentless attack and forceful anti-communism. The great majority of voters deferred their concerns about the state’s economic future; everywhere Nixon spoke throughout California he was asked about communism and Hiss. “There’s no use trying to talk about anything else,” he remarked, “because it’s all the people want to hear about.” Although the campaign fixed the notion of “Tricky Dick” among the public, it also schooled Nixon in the importance of foreign relations and stimulated an interest in finding realistic responses to national security threats. In 1964, Nixon entirely agreed when President Kennedy rhetorically asked him, “it really is true that foreign affairs is the only important issue for a President to handle, isn’t it? I mean, who gives a shit if the minimum wage is $1.15 or $1.25, in comparison to something like the invasion of Cuba?”
Less than two years after entering the Senate, in 1953, Nixon became General MacArthur’s Secretary of State. During the preconvention, Nixon supported MacArthur over the governor of his own state, Earl Warren, demonstrating his talent for sensing the country’s political direction. The nation saw MacArthur’s military credentials as desirable amid the intensifying Cold War. He hammered the Democrats for losing China, instigating the Korean War, and jeopardizing Indochina. One of MacArthur’s loudest advocates, Senator Vanderberg, himself redeemed from his isolationist past and rebaptized as a Cold Warrior, instructed Nixon in 1951 that MacArthur would require constant guidance in navigating the politics waters, for the General was an officer by profession and a Caesar by disposition, neither of which were favorable attributes in conquering Congress. “Caesar after all,” he humored, “took more liberties with the Senate than Doug could even dream of.” As Secretary of State, therefore, Nixon served as the de facto liaison between the grandiloquent MacArthur White House and the oleaginous occupants of the Capitol. President MacArthur greatly valued Nixon’s capabilities, but in private, Nixon worried that Vanderberg’s advice had proven uncomfortably precise. MacArthur was prone to courtship by various extremes, and he dismissed advice from subordinates, including Nixon, for his indomitable self-confidence often flattened those who disagreed. Nevertheless, Nixon did succeed in securing a certain degree of independence for his European policy over the “Pacific First” anti-communists and the isolationists, both of which were nearer to MacArthur’s own preferences.
President MacArthur and Secretary of State Nixon following the January War (February 1956).
The President’s acquiescence opened the way for Nixon to carry out his frenzied diplomatic invasion of Europe. He confirmed America’s commitment to a free continent and squashed German apprehensions that isolationist Republicans and liberal Democrats would renegade on their European security commitments within the APTO. In 1954, he collaborated in the formulation of the ECZ and anointed the agreement with Washington’s oil (quite literally), thereby opening Central Europe to American capital markets and goods. The following year, he negotiated the basic framework for what would become the 1957 Amsterdam Conference, an inheritance which the Kefauver administration justifiably recognized as of the greatest historical consequence. Even when the German socialists were elected in 1955 and MacArthur recalled his peripatetic Secretary of State, Nixon continued to argue within the administration for a forceful American deterrence in Central Europe, warning that the Soviet Union would not long endure “free states denying that their collective future is destined for communism.” The January War confirmed the prescience of Nixon’s arguments, for it destroyed the nonchalance of the Pacific firsters and the isolationists, and induced MacArthur to lay out a European doctrine of anti-communism. Secretary Nixon’s televised anti-communist speeches during the crisis invigorated the public, and he employed this popular reception to formulate a policy, in fact a very resolute one, against Soviet expansionism in Europe. By the time the Red Army arrived in Sofia, it was clear to the Kremlin that further continental adventures would not be tolerated by Washington. After the crisis, former Secretary of State Dean Acheson called him “the greatest secretary of state since Charles Hughes.”
Nixon and Khrushchev, shortly after the creation of the EZJ (December 1954).
It was Nixon’s misfortune that his insight was again to be validated. MacArthur, the Titan, by his dispassionate attitude towards those below him, allowed creatures and conspiracies to fester. The extortion and suicide of Senator Hunt by MacArthur’s Attorney General, in collaboration with two other Republican senators, destroyed the Presidency. MacArthur, never a valetudinarian, cited ill-health and resigned in March, leaving Vice President Stassen to lead the Republican Party into electoral oblivion. But though it would have been perfectly profitable for Nixon to have avoided the campaign, he felt a deep sense of obligation to the party. Stassen later wrote about the campaign of 1956: “we were climbing a mountain of manure, and out of us all, only Nixon brought his grapnel.” MacArthur and Nixon’s shared sense of political fidelity was in part what had endeared them to Chambers. On Chambers’ advice (counsel he extended to me prior to his tortured resignation from National Review), Nixon adopted what he called the “Beaconsfield position” in domestic and international affairs. Taking its name from Disraeli, the accommodationist stance advocated repositioning the conservative movement from the champion of free enterprise to a voice for the aspirations of the working class. “To live is to maneuver,” he pressed, as he urged National Review to make peace with the New Deal so that we might forge in the future a majority coalition behind checking Soviet expansion. We would both, at various inflections, suborn our individualist impulses to the immediate goal of curbing the spread of communism.
Despite his premature death in 1961, Whittaker Chambers was a seminal influence on the American Right of the 1960s, primarily through his superb writing and personal intimacy with many of those constituting the political and intellectual leadership of the GOP.
In the run-up to the 1960 Republican National Convention, Chambers confided in me that he had met with Nixon, then the forerunner for the nomination, and came away pessimistic about his prospects. He did not sense that he had been in the company of a “vital man” bursting with energy and ideas. He even confessed feeling “dismay,” almost “pity” as he watched Nixon assume the “awful burden.” With his own propheticism, Chambers speculated about the impact defeat might have on the former Secretary of State. We did not make his road any easier. As Nixon courted Governor Rockefeller, the impression grew among conservatives that we were being taken for granted. Collective frustration prevented us from noticing that on defense policy, for example, that Rockefeller was pushing Nixon well to the right of MacArthur. Senator Goldwater’s The Conscience of a Conservative, ghosted by my friend, Brent Bozell, had called for a defense buildup that would make American military forces “superior to the attacking power of any potential aggressor or aggressors, regardless of the costs in dollars and manpower.” Yet when Goldwater learned of the Nixon-Rockefeller accord, he hastily denounced it as “a great treachery.” I myself wrote at the time that “illusions of liberalism dominate Mr. Kefauver and influence Mr. Nixon...he is less the leader of the GOP than he is the amalgamation of all the forces that compose it.” The only person giving proper attention to this Nixon-Rockefeller rapprochement, as it later turned out, was Pat Buchanan.
For the next four years the luster left Mr. Nixon. Perhaps it was because of his personal failings as a slash-and-burn politician, or simply because he was out of sync with the public mood. His self-pledge to undertake Herculean exertions in the 1960 election exhausted him, particularly in contrast to the ever-energetic Kefauver. A startled Mayor Daley, during the initial television debate, quipped: “My God! They’ve embalmed him before he’s even died.” Once, sick with flu and frustrated with the small crowds in Iowa, Nixon lost his self control, kicking the driver’s seat until the car stopped and his aides could calm him down. His rhetoric lacked the punch that had made him so successful, and one former admirer joked that his speeches were “a steady diet of pap and soothing syrup.” All of this unfolded against the backdrop of an exceptionally popular incumbent and a disgraced opposition. When he was expectedly defeated in the election, Nixon, still determined, returned to California for the 1962 gubernatorial race. He knew that the odds of defeating Governor Edmund Brown were slim. His knowledge of California’s issues was pitiful, and he freely acknowledged that fact. Moreover, the Californian public sought to reward Governor Brown for having presided over the state’s prosperity. Why not beat a temporary retreat? Nixon’s whole life had been donated to politics and he could not sit on the sidelines for another seven years. Why not try for the Senate or the House? Well for Nixon that would have been a step backwards—he’d done it all before. But to take a stab at governing the country’s second-largest state would offer him the chance to exercise executive duties, presumably as a prelude. Once again, he struggled to find traction. Birchers seized on the issue of anti-communism and thus neutralized it as an effective force for Nixon; Brown impressed voters with his homey style and intimate awareness with the issues; Kefauver closed the whole affair with an opportune visit to Los Angeles. The Democrats beat Nixon by two-hundred and fifty thousand votes out of six million. After his loss in 1960, Nixon had played the role of magnanimous loser, offering congratulations to Kefauver with a praiseworthy concession speech. Two years later, his mask of control slipped off; trembling with rage, fatigued, and probably a little drunk, he stumbled into the press room of his campaign HQ and lashed out at assembled newsman (never famous for their generosity towards wounded politicians) in a rambling sequence of remarks that prompted more embarrassment than empathy from his audience. For ten minutes he oscillated between self-pity and calumny, violently blaming the press for his defeat. “Well, you won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference,” he concluded. His stunned aides, H. R. Halderman and Herbet Klein wrenched him from the room, but he was unrepentant. “I finally told those bastards off, and every Goddamned thing I said was true.”
"And as I leave the press, all I can say is this: for 16 years, ever since the Hiss case, you have gad a lot of fun, a lot of fun, that you've had an opportunity to attack me and I think I have given as good as I have taken. It was carried right up to the last day.""
That was not, to no one’s particular surprise, the end of Richard Milhouse Nixon. Nixon himself recognized that his exile was provisional: “there was no other life for me but politics and public service...even when my legal work was at its most interesting [Nixon worked for a New York law firm between 1963 and 1968]...I would be mentally dead in two years and physically dead in four if that was all I had.” For the next five years he kept in close contact with party contacts and cultivated Republican leaders throughout the country. He traveled abroad under the pretense of promoting several corporations, though clearly he was sharpening his public image as a world statesman, meeting government officials and political leaders and deepening his understanding of international problems. He made three trips to Europe, six to Asia, two to the Middle East, and one to Africa, employing his image to sell himself as a master of foreign affairs.
Still, as the heir to MacArthur had retreated into the political wilderness, it became clear that an ensuing succession battle would only be a matter of time. If the American people truly wanted a New Frontier, they could always turn for leadership to the junior Senator from Arizona, Barry Goldwater, one of the few genuine radicals in our public life. He would reorient America back in the direction of minimum government and maximum personal responsibility: in that sense he was a conservative, and a radical too. His proposals derived from two central beliefs: the first that the Constitution of the United States enumerated the powers of Congress and denied it the right to do exactly the kind of thing that had been done under the name of the New Deal, the Right Deal [1], and the New Frontier. The second was that human freedom was best served by keeping the government small. That kind of drastic conservatism was not easy to find in those days. Even so, Senator Goldwater firmly believed that the United States was a thoroughly conservative country, and that it would be well served by it, if only the people had a chance to get a taste of the real thing, and would realize more completely where they were heading under the waves of statism. His emergence had much to do, of course, with organic political and social developments in America. Many people were disillusioned with the kind of world we had lived in, and sought other solutions than those that were advanced by the Liberals during the years of our national decline. But his rise was to a considerable extent the result of Goldwater. Very few people escaped from exposure to him unscathed. You could find diehard left-wingers who would insist that Goldwater had no personal attraction whatsoever, just as you could find diehard right-wingers who would say the same thing about Franklin Roosevelt: both were fooling themselves. Goldwater, like Roosevelt, had a first-class political personality, and like Roosevelt, was accepted as a partisan of a political position. In backing him, his followers fused personal and ideological passions. That is what accounted for his success, notwithstanding a political position that could hardly be identified as in vogue. Many suggested that Senator Goldwater was so conservative as to be out of this world. Senator Jackson told him at a cocktail party in 1963 that “you’re one of the handsomest men in America...you ought to be in the movies. In fact, I’ve made just that proposal to 18th Century Fox.”
Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, giving a speech in Phoenix (January 1964).
At the 1960 Convention he and Rockefeller and Nixon stood before the cameras, arm in arm, the idea was that all the forces of the Republican Party were present and accounted for: Left, Center, and Right. The camera had never been off him during the hectic few days before the Convention, beginning the day Nixon traveled to see Rockefeller in New York, there to consummate what Goldwater denounced as a “great treachery,” and ending with the exhortation by Goldwater to his fellow conservatives to fight hard for a Nixon victory. Here was a remarkably versatile man, who on Sunday could denounce Nixon as an appeaser, and on Wednesday, in the interests of party unity, embrace him and the man to whom Nixon had allegedly betrayed the Republican Party. There was a flurry of resentment, a sense of disappointment here and there among his followers. But Goldwater gained, rather than lost, prestige. He had proved he was what most truly successful American politicians have to be: an Insider. He had made his criticisms of Nixon, of Rockefeller, of “Progressive Republicanism,” in language remarkable for its candor; but now it was time to strike camp and move on. He is a man so attractive, so plausible, so energetic, as to cause the kingmakers to deplore his obtrusive disqualification, mainly his “ultraconservatism”—a designation, by the way, that he deeply resents (why didn’t they call Stevenson, Williams, McCarthy, and that gang ‘ultraliberals?’). The ideal candidate for public office, he wrote in his best-selling book, The Conscience of a Conservative, would speak to the people as follows: “I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is ‘needed’ before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents’ ‘interests,’ I shall reply that I was informed their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.” That was a staggering statement, the likes of which have not been heard from any President since Grover Cleveland.
His program for 1964 was completely at odds with the programs adopted in 1960 by both the Democratic and the Republican parties. Those manifestos called for soft living at home, and send the bill to Washington; and abroad, more of the same—negotiations with the Soviet Union, based on the assumption that we can soften Communism by a massive parliamentary offensive, plus foreign aid for everyone who asks nicely. Here is what Barry Goldwater would have had the government do. He would have gotten government out of agriculture and welfare, altogether; applied anti-monopoly legislation against the big labor unions; abolished the progressive income tax; eliminated foreign aid except to nations actively prepared to assist in the anti-commnuist enterprise; scrapped economic and cultural programs, which he saw as counterfeit considering the actual relationship between the Soviet Union and the United States; continued nuclear testing; and be prepared to undertake military programs against vulnerable Communist regimes in the cause of pressing for victory over the Soviet Union. For instance, a Monroe Doctrine for Africa, imposed by the NATO powers. A striking force of anti-communist Asians that would help the pro-Western government in Laos, and the anti-Sukarno rebels in Indonesia. When pressed by a student audience about the difference between his program and the official program of the Republican Party, he reminded them of the difference between the official Democratic program of 1932 (in which Roosevelt promised to cut federal spending!) and the program of the New Deal (in which spending was elevated to a Sacred National Duty). It was Goldwater’s program, of all those extant in 1964, that most faithfully reflected the political philosophy of the men who forged the United States, and hammered out its Constitution. On this point there simply wasn’t any doubt, and the question therefore was whether the insights of men like Hamilton and Jefferson and Madison and Marshall still held good in our modern age. Goldwater thought they did, that they have not been, essentially, invalidated; that government, unless it is kept in hand, grows tyrannical; that the diffusion of government power, among the respective states, is the key to the maintenance of individual liberty. And so it followed that while he disapproved of segregated schools, he could find no warrant in the Constitution for giving the federal government any say on the matter; that the genius of the federal government is that it allows “the individual states to experiment”; and that on topics like social security, it was best left to the states to decide whether or not to indulge themselves. And as for the Cold War, his premises were sound; that Soviet Communism intended to colonize the entire world, if necessary by force; that the United States will never surrender; and that the best means of opposing Communism is also the best means of effecting peace; we must fight, fight hard, at every front, with courage to oppose Soviet advances by the threat of force. When Pravda roared in its lead editorial that “Goldwater will end up in a pine box,” Goldwater responded, “if Communism took over the world, that’s just where I’d want to be.”
Against him stood a tradition of an antagonistic disposition—the variation that Sokolsky so deplored—the Rockefeller Republicans. That was so because at their helm was Nelson A. Rockefeller, grandson of the founder of Standard Oil, who had already enjoyed a long career of public service. He had been inducted into the MacArthur government as a Special Adviser to the President for Foreign Affairs. He had previously held the post of Chairman of the International Development Advisory Board under Byrnes, and during the Pacific War as Assistant Secretary of State, during which his purview was Latin America, an occupation he exercised admirably with his formidable opposition towards the exportation of syndicalism to that region. Within the MacArthur administration, Rockefeller was a reliable proponent of increased defense spending and a hard-line against the Reds, but in his mind he could not reconcile his experience in the administrations of Rooseveltian Democrats with the exercise of power by what he rather euphemistically termed “crass reactionaries.” Not long after the 1956 election, newly elected Governor Harriman of New York, in an attempt to rally bipartisan support for state constitutional changes, named Rockefeller as Chairman of a commission that would call for a constitutional convention. Later, he headed a group pressing for the recommended changes as he persuaded himself, against the judgement of some fellow Republicans, that the surest road to executive power resided in the Senate, and not through Albany. As the 1958 election approached, Rockefeller and Westchester Assemblyman Malcolm Wilson, a favorite of the conservatives, conducted the “first listening tour,” traversing through forty-nine of New York’s sixty-one counties. Wilson’s decision to offer his support to Rockefeller dampened the gubernatorial ambitions of the Right. We were astounded by the efficacy of his public relations campaign, even if we cautioned, as the National Review did, that the “multimillionaire turned citizen politician” posed a formidable challenge to the burgeoning conservative movement within the Republican Party. Exercising influence through a vast network of foundations he controlled, commissions he inaugurated, and press-policy operatives he retained, Rockefeller earned a grudging respect for his methods from his critics. My own reaction, and that of my brother, was to make the case for a Conservative Party of New Which, which, if it achieved nothing else, would at least force a liberal Republican to pay attention, and at most, force the state GOP to reach an accommodation with it.
Governor Rockefeller and his Attorney General, Louis J. Lefkowitz, enjoy a deli sandwich in the Lower East Side of New York City (June 1958).
This was a family that, in New York, could accomplish nearly any task. They decided to clear a midtown slum and then erected the greatest executive building complex, or scrutinized the merits of a decaying tenement area, and finding it wanting, transformed it into Lincoln Center. What they decreed, came to pass. Their attitude to America was not on the whole patronizing; rather, America was their patrimony. The magnitude of their power and the fact that their interests were affected by all American interests ensured that by disposition they would be inclined to the status quo, and not the kind that appealed to radical conservatives, but the status quo of the welfare state, of expansive government, and of establishmentarian preferences. Our fears, later justified, were that he would not govern as a conservative, and National Review pressed this apprehension to the movement at large. In the magazine, J.P McFadden wrote that Rockefeller was one of the “tame millionaires” whom the Syndicalist-sympathizing Treasury Secretary, Harry Hopkins, had ushered into the Roosevelt administration to embellish it with a bipartisan flourish. He identified former New Dealers as among the most vocal enthusiasts (and associates)—all belonging to a particular caste which rocked back and forth between the private sector, government, and charitable institutions. I noted that, on the eve of his formal nomination, that “we should like to make it very clear that we have nothing, nothing in the world against Nelson Rockefeller...we have maintained, very simply, that he is not a Republican. Or, if it is better put another way, if he is a Republican, ‘Republicanism’ is a farce.” When he defeated Harriman in a year in which the national party fared rather poorly, the chattering classes resolved that his inaugural, littered with references to Lincoln, was a sort of presidential State of the Union. Fortunately for our reputations, once the pleasant phrases had left him, Rockefeller governed exactly as we had apprised in National Review. He indulged in unsustainable new expenditures on education, roads, housing, and energy. He raised taxes multiple times and introduced both a state sales tax and a payroll withholding system. He expanded the state universities and formed 230 new agencies and independent authorities (the latter of which were bestowed with the special privilege of issuing their own bonds, mostly for the purpose of avoiding the legislature for tax revenue). All of these violations of Republican principles were enough to trivialize his credentials as a Cold War hawk. In 1960, these betrayals spurred the creation of the New York Conservative Party, the main program of which was to overawe the Dewey-Rockefeller machine and upend the undemocratic nature of the state party’s procedure of nomination.
Rockefeller on the cover of Time magazine ahead of his victory over Harriman (October 1958).
In 1962, Rockefeller pulled out all the stops to discourage the Conservative Party from organizing. James Desmond, Rockefeller’s publicist by avocation, reported in the New York Daily News that “some far out conservatives,” many from the extreme Right, were surveying the feasibility of fielding a candidate against Rockefeller. Naturally, we were identified as the malefactors, though this provocation only intensified our efforts. One of our allies, state Senator Walter Mahoney, charged that Rockefeller’s campaign had deployed state employees and party officials to threaten economic retaliation against the party. Rockefeller also employed his banking connections to assure that the mortgages of people who signed Conservative Party petitions were foreclosed, and our candidate for Comptroller publicized this accusation. This time the Daily News could not ignore the transgressions and ran an editorial called “Call off your Dogs, Rock,” while the Buffalo Courier denounced attempts to abridge the right of petition. Reeling from these attacks and the unanticipated popularity of our movement, Rockefeller and his forces finally relented. In the general election, the Conservative candidate, David Jaquith, pulled 153,453 votes, and though Rockefeller prevailed over Robert Morgenthau by a majority of half-a-million, his winning margin fell by one hundred thousand voters. The showing had put a damper on Rockefeller prospects of running as an out-and-out liberal for the GOP nomination in two years later.
Who's Next?
Rockefeller’s advantage in 1964 was the party structure. The vast majority of convention delegates were selected by party caucuses and conventions, not exercises in democratic primaries. Detested in the South on account of his advocacy of civil rights, disliked because of his divorce and controversial marriage, and distrusted by conservatives for his record of unconservative administration, Rockefeller instead sought to flatter the media and party grandees, interests which undoubtedly would extoll him as a more competitive candidate than Goldwater in the general election. He decided his best strategy was to enlist in a limited number of primaries, particularly those of New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Oregon, and California, all in an effort to validate his claims of electability to the Republican leadership. Much to our chagrin, Goldwater’s integrity and candor supplied an additional boon to Rockefeller. Before an audience in Florida, Goldwater recommended that Social Security be allowed to evolve into a voluntary program; in a nationally televised interview, soon to be an imbroglio of sorts, responding to a hypothetical, he suggested that U.S. forces could employ tactical nuclear weapons, similar to those that had been employed in Korea, to clear the underbrush concealing the Viet Cong along the Ho Chi Minh trail. Both comments, however exemplary, attracted great controversy from the press and the Kennedy administration. To the surprise of many, Rockefeller scored the New Hampshire primary. Goldwater’s campaign, which refused to admit us “ultra-conservatives” into active cooperation, frustrated the movement by the amateurishness of both the candidate and his managers in conducting a modern campaign. I devoted roughly seventy-five percent of my columns to running interference for Goldwater and cleaning up after him, if ever there was a need to evince my belief in the man and his principles. To make him more palatable to party moderates, I publicly recommended that Goldwater offer the vice presidential nomination to Thomas Dewey, and even sounded this idea out on Walter N. Thayner, the doyen of liberal Republicanism and the President of the Herald Tribune. That stratagem was not pursued by the campaign.
Rockefeller and Goldwater at the 1964 GOP Convention (July 1964).
After Rockefeller triumphed in New Hampshire, the candidates prepared for a dramatic showdown in delegate-rich California, which would award all of its delegates to the victor of the June primary. Both candidates needed a big primary victory to show that their appeal extended beyond the functionaries to voters at large. In the intermission between New Hampshire and Oregon, only a month before the California primary, the two candidates fought proxy battles in the intervening geography. Wisconsin, on April 7, picked thirty convention delegates ostensibly in favor of the state’s own Representative John W. Bynes, the favorite son, as none of the national contenders openly campaigned, though Bynes preferred Goldwater. A week later, in Illinois, the Goldwater campaign failed to break the 80 per cent his campaigners had confidently predicted, but scored a supermajority ahead of Mrs. Margaret Chase Smith. Then, in Pennsylvania, Rockefeller won a plurality, but only a narrow one, and much of the victory was credited to the influence of Governor Scruton. An identical story unfolded in Massachusetts, where the popular blue-blood and former Secretary-General of the APTO, Governor Henry Cabot Lodge turned the state for Rockefeller. The tide abruptly reversed, first in Texas, on May 2, and then in Indiana, three days later, as Goldwater mopped up the local dignitaries who were nominally standing to lend their support to the absentee Rockefeller. Ohio had no Presidential candidates on its Republican primary ballot, but in a race for the Senatorial nomination, Ted W. Brown, a Goldwater man, defeated Representative Robert A. Taft Jr,, son of the late conservative and himself a liberally-minded Republican congressman. Rockefeller managed to scratch one more victory before Oregon in West Virginia, where he ran opposed, and took home two-thirds of the voters casting ballots. Goldwater earned a less triumphant victory in Nebraska, where Nebraska Republicans took the trouble to write-in Nixon and Lodge, thereby denying Goldwater a majority.
Our confidence in Goldwater was rising steadily—and with good reason. Behind the scenes, at state party conventions, he had already locked up 280 delegates, approaching half-way to the winning number of 655. His decisive attempt, he knew, would come in California, and failing that, Goldwater privately committed himself to withdraw from the race, even though he could have been nominated without it. Oregon was the final skirmish before the California primary, though at the time few viewed it as anything but an otiose interlude. Within the Goldwater campaign, there was open murmuring that the appearance of an abundance of contests would preclude a conservative majority. In early March the Oregon Secretary of State nominated Goldwater, Rockefeller, Nixon, Lodge, Scranton, and Romney. Three days before the deadline for candidates, Romney withdrew, but despite the abdication of the moderate, a shock poll disclosed that Goldwater was far ahead with Rockefeller and Nixon deadlocked for second. By mid-April the picture began to radically change as discontent at the feuding between the Republican wings mounted; the undeclared candidacy of Lodge surged, and one pull put him at 46 percent with Nixon in a far second. Two other findings of the poll were damaging; four out of ten Republicans denounced Goldwater as being too far to the right and 34 percent said they could not vote for him if chosen by the convention. Similar findings, albeit reversed (i.e. “too liberal”), were given for Governor Rockefeller. Lodge’s followers, who had opened their campaign HQ in a vacant Portland store, were skeptical of the findings. They had barely started to campaign (not to mention that their candidate had done everything possible to disavow presidential ambitions). Almost all the other campaigns disputed the findings, but Goldwater felt it had confirmed his suspicions that Oregon would swing left, and it was the principal reason the Senator decided to bypass Oregon for California. Nixon activists, much in the same stew as the Lodge campaign, intensified their own efforts to draft Nixon into the race with little success. That left Rockefeller as the only active and committed candidate who could charge for the primary; he dismissed the Lodge ratings as a flash in the pan and enlarged his campaign’s presence. Throughout the state the Governor flashed his smile, shook thousands of hands, and enunciated his philosophy of Republican moderation. Goldwater’s belief in the poll and his effective abandonment of Oregon had been critical. The final results gave Rockefeller a victory with 101,000 votes, 20,000 more than Lodge, 50,000 more than Goldwater, and 45,000 more than Nixon. The victory put Oregon’s delegates firmly in Rockefeller’s grasp for at least two convention ballots, and more importantly, indicated to him that the West Coast could be conquered for progressive Republicanism. He followed his victory by charging that Goldwater’s views “do not reflect the thinking of the great majority of Republican voters.” Psychologically, the victory was rejuvenative, confirming that Rockefeller could succeed in popular competitions and forcing the party leadership to take a hard look at his candidacy, in spite of his publicized divorce. It abruptly broke the prospective primary candidacies of Nixon and Lodge (whose activists found Goldwater’s views generally unpalatable), and reaffirmed that California was the fulcrum upon which all depended. Then, on May 18, the California Lodge campaign threw in its lot for the Rockefeller slate of delegates. Goldwater declared that liberal attempts to thwart his nomination would be “suicidal for the party” and the alliance would fail, though he admitted “it will have its effect.”
Partisans of both candidates have their way with a Barry Goldwater billboard (March 1964).
The 1964 California primary was an extravagant affair. It would cost more money than some presidential campaigns. In play, for one thing, was the resources of Nelson Rockefeller. They were copious, supplementing the self-designated “moderate” wing of the GOP, which appeared always endowed with hard cash and credit. His strategy was to persuade Republicans in his lavish appearances that a vote for Goldwater was a vote for internal collapse and international chaos. That was the burden of his statements, in which, to use his words exactly, he indicted Goldwater for “irresponsibility and extremism on foreign policy,” and recklessness with respect to “the vital issues affecting our security and the security and well-being of the free world.” Let us force ourselves to suppose that Mr. Rockefeller was sincere, i.e., that he seriously believed the things he said about what would happen to the United States if Senator Goldwater were nominated, let alone elected. If Rockefeller was sincere, then the call of duty was very plain indeed; to quit his own campaign for the presidential nomination, instantly, dramatically, decisively, and pool his strength with a coalition of anti-Goldwater Republicans. If he had any eye at all for political reality, then he would have recognized that his own cause was utterly forlorn—the Republican Convention would as soon nominate Tommy Manville as nominate Rockefeller unanimously, so that he might be forced to fight and stumble through to the nomination with factions and fractions, and deny himself exactly the conservative interests that would be his base and his campaign. His failure to get out of the way suggested the obvious psychological difficulty, namely, that the Governor of New York was in the clutch of a roaring, housewrecking, party-smashing egomania; that he was trying to convince the voters that the conservative option is a looming national catastrophe not because really believed that is what he was—in which event he would take the patriotic step to get of the way of Nixonian or Lodgeist Stop-Goldwater movement (either of which were bound to earn the approbation of all the party’s ideological wings)—but because he simply desired to hurt Goldwater. What he wanted, the facts seemed to indicate, was to rule or ruin. He simply could not stand the thought of any Republican other than himself achieving the nomination or, later, the presidency. He was thus engaged in doing everything he could to distort Goldwater’s views and frighten the public sufficiently to keep him from winning. The act would always become truly insufferable when, after his lengthy apocalyptic excoriation of Goldwater, he capped his tirade with the political punctilio of a regular feller: “Whoever is nominated,” he would say limply, performing his formal kowtow to the Party, “all Republicans should get behind that candidate and see he gets elected.”
Goldwater supporters responded with an equal and opposite venom, accusing the liberal Republicans of conducting the “most vicious and venomous campaign against a candidate the party had ever seen.” The Senator was more detached, but he too spoke out vigorously, denying the charges of extremism and recklessness, and insisting that he was not “out of the mainstream of Republican and American thought.” He declared that his philosophies were not at variance with those of many prominent Republicans and charged that his positions on Social Security and the United Nations had been distorted by his opposition. To this escalation the Rockefellers went one step further, complaining of right-wing fringe telephone calls, social ostracism, and even bomb scares. Naturally, such claims drove the Right into bitter irritation and sarcasm. At one rally, Charlton Heston greeted his listeners with the words, “And good morning to all you irresponsible Republicans.” He then, humorously, went on to say there were two ways of introducing the Senator, one as the authentic voice of Republicanism, or as “a Neanderthal man, a bigot, a warmonger, looking out at us from the nineteenth century?” Their opponent, meanwhile, was pledging an all-out fight no matter the odds, telling his listeners again and again that he embodied a can-win Republican philosophy of moderation while Goldwater was outside the mainstream. At Anaheim, in the heart of Goldwater country, five thousand came out to hear him, and the receptions became larger and more enthusiastic wherever he spoke. The Senator’s lead began to dwindle, and then it seemed to have vanished.
In the closing days of the California primary, Goldwater camped in perfunctory fashion. The atmosphere in his camp was one of resigned fatalism, and that the decision of the voters could be changed by oratory. Several times Goldwater surprised journalists by insisting it was up to the precinct workers to rebut and counter the charges that had most injured his campaign. Luckily for him, he had one of the best organizations of volunteer workers ever seen on the national stage, and one vastly superior to Rockefeller’s. Undyingly loyal and undismayed by the polls, they assumed a heroic attitude and strove to get every possible pro-Goldwater voter to the ballot box. A week before the primary, on May 27, Rockefeller suffered a serious blow when Loyola University of Los Angeles, a Jesuit institution, withdrew an invitation for him to speak as the result of pressure by a group of regents led by a Bircher. The cancellation gave the impression to some Roman Catholics that the hierarchy opposed Rockefeller, and in a bitter speech two days later, Rockefeller complained about supposedly “dirty methods” (Call Off Your Dogs, Goldie!).
Rockefeller campaigning in California (May 1964).
The election was close, much closer than expected. With over 70 percent of the state’s registered Republicans voting, Mr. Rockefeller won with 1,141,243 votes to Goldwater’s 983,435 votes. Senator Knowland, the top Goldwater leader in California, urged Goldwater to postpone his expected withdrawal from the race, as he was still in the advantage with the delegate count. But Goldwater had privately concluded that his defeat in California was an indication that the country was unprepared for a conservative, and that if he did continue his campaign, even victoriously, the convention would destroy the Republican Party, and so shortly after the disaster of the Hunt Scandal. Though, in hindsight, this choice ensured the survival of the conservative movement, at the time it appeared that whereas the moderates had been enervated by their inability to unite upon a candidate, the conservatives would lack a candidate at all.
The moment belonged to Rockefeller. But it could not last for long. Whatever the ideological winds blowing in the Republican Party, and the various claims that each strand would attain general electorability, the fact of the matter was that the Democrats were extremely popular. Supplementing that advantage was the electoral silhouette of the Cuban crisis—an emergency that accentuated the loyalties of American citizens to the incumbent over those who might be inclined to more hawkish purposes. The cherry on top was the convention in San Francisco. With Rockefeller, Lodge, and Scranton actively conspiring to prevent a mass conservative defection to an alternative candidate (or perhaps a Draft Back Goldwater Movement), the progressive committed their ultimate blunder. Rather than attempt to reconcile, the conspirators published an open letter that excoriated the Goldwater movement, accusing the “Goldwaterism” of standing for “nuclear irresponsibility...fear of condemning right-wing extremists...refusing to stand for law and order in maintaining racial peace...in short, Goldwaterism has come to stand for a whole crazy-quilt collection of absurd and dangerous positions.” Several hundred copies were delivered to the newsroom in the Hilton Hotel, but when the press pressed, as they do, the authors got cold feet, insisting that it had gone out without their consent, though somehow they maintained “full and (un)repudiated responsibility.” It was not Goldwater who lost his cool, although he did refuse to appear with the authors during the convention (the Arizonian did endorse Rockefeller after the Convention for the general election), but Richard Nixon. For the neo-MacArthurites, this fresh perfidy would send the Right in droves to the Democrats. Worse yet, it violated the central principle of Republican unity. Nixon, as his conscience demanded, went out onto the 1964 Republican Convention and proclaimed Rockefeller “Mr. Republican.” He would go on to support the party in its darkest hour with the same force and conviction that had defined his career. But behind closed doors, his attitude had morphed. Political legend has it that shortly after the convention, when John Mitchell asked Nixon which wing of the party he would rather support, he responded, “Neither. I ought to clip 'em both."
[1] The Right Deal was the effective continuation of New Deal policies under President Byrnes.
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Whoa, that was a doozy of a ride. Interesting to see the reality of politicking from an aspect so beautifully written.
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Glad you enjoyed! I think if anything we’re trying to give a proper send-off to the mid-century crisis
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Only Nixon can go to China...to submit to the Communist Overlordship.
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Had to save space for other delights like “LBJ the oil executive” and “Teddy Heath the openly gay yachtsman-organist”
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Dicky is perfectly welcome to try selling his second-hand Volkswagen imports to a country nicely hooked on the train
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Hi up to date people.
I'm just butting in to say how much I like @DensleyBlair 's piece on 'new brutalism' as the architecture of Mosleyism (#393)
The Hunstanton school does look very van der Rohe now that you mention it. It is interesting that variants of modernism and brutalism have sprung up and been used as the defining style for a variety of government forms, from the Communist block, to the US, through post-war Europe and South-American dictatorships. There is a lot of irony in the instrumentalisation of a rather international style that breaks with regional and national traditions as the architecture of a nation. There is this beautiful scene in the movie 'Playtime' by Jacques Tati, where he's looking in the window of a travel agency, and all the big destinations are being advertised with pictures of near-identical steel and glass towers, all proud displays of their respective national identities... Of course, there is more variety than that in modernism, but that doesn't negate the point that these architects often saw their work as internationally applicable and not tied to local custom or history.
As an almost-architect (only the Master's thesis to finish) I have had professors both deify and denigrate (more the former than the latter) this period in European architecture, including the Smithsons, Le Corbusier, van der Rohe, Aalto etc. Often this is coupled with an equal and often opposing admiration or disdain for post-modernism, though I did have one professor who seemed to genuinely admire creations from both periods.
Anyhow, I hope there will be another update that describes the evolution of the very British new Brutalism into the late '60s and '70s. Have a nice day everyone. Back to slowly catching up.
I'm just butting in to say how much I like @DensleyBlair 's piece on 'new brutalism' as the architecture of Mosleyism (#393)
The Hunstanton school does look very van der Rohe now that you mention it. It is interesting that variants of modernism and brutalism have sprung up and been used as the defining style for a variety of government forms, from the Communist block, to the US, through post-war Europe and South-American dictatorships. There is a lot of irony in the instrumentalisation of a rather international style that breaks with regional and national traditions as the architecture of a nation. There is this beautiful scene in the movie 'Playtime' by Jacques Tati, where he's looking in the window of a travel agency, and all the big destinations are being advertised with pictures of near-identical steel and glass towers, all proud displays of their respective national identities... Of course, there is more variety than that in modernism, but that doesn't negate the point that these architects often saw their work as internationally applicable and not tied to local custom or history.
As an almost-architect (only the Master's thesis to finish) I have had professors both deify and denigrate (more the former than the latter) this period in European architecture, including the Smithsons, Le Corbusier, van der Rohe, Aalto etc. Often this is coupled with an equal and often opposing admiration or disdain for post-modernism, though I did have one professor who seemed to genuinely admire creations from both periods.
Anyhow, I hope there will be another update that describes the evolution of the very British new Brutalism into the late '60s and '70s. Have a nice day everyone. Back to slowly catching up.
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Thanks for this comment, @roverS3. I had forgotten your architectural background, so it was a nice surprise to see you get so much from the Meades update. (His films are well worth checking out if you're not already aware of them, by the way. Most if not all are available freely online.)
I adore the film Playtime and that scene in particular is very relevant, as you say. I'm of a mind to introduce some Tati into this timeline, but I haven't had the chance yet… This is an excellent reminder to do so. No doubt Volume 2 will need a look at how the Commonwealth moves towards Kenneth Frampton's school of 'critical regionalism'. Tati could be a nice source for that – an idea of syndicalist attitudes towards the totalising nature of the International Style.
I also have in mind to give some coverage to the Italian Radicals, the Dutch Structuralists (Aldo van Eyck, it turns out, lived in Britain during his youth…) and my all-time hero Cedric Price (whose Fun Palace actually gets built this time around!). I think the main advantage the Commonwealth will have going for it compared to OTL will be the total lack of inclination towards privatising either the housing stock or architectural design. So going into the 70s and 80s Britain will retain its mid-century tradition of 'municipal. architecture' – which should ensure a bit more ingenuity than offered by the sad decline into dominance of the builder–developers.
No doubt the ecological movement, just around the corner, will also feed into things – perhaps sparking a more critical return to the garden city, which is one of those curios of British utopian socialism that I've never fully been able to reconcile myself with…
Anyway, that's all to come if I ever get around to it. Really glad to hear your thoughts, as I say!
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Funnily enough Pip just brought up architecture in Imperial Cheese. The idea of the hyper experimental mussolini faction gaining power all over Europe and likely to say yes and fund every new idea for cities and buildings is...interesting.
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I think I was summoned to that one. Was it about the expos/world fairs? Sorry… still massively behind with everything.
I was going to chime in and say that we had a whole lecture series on exactly that topic in third year… although I didnt take the module. That period is very ripe for that sort of thing, though. Lots of zany people trying to get autocrats to fund their schemes. One example alluded to in the update @roverS3 just brought up was Le Corbusier trying to convince Mussolini to raze Adis Abeba so he could redo it as a Modernist ‘paradise’. Beyond deranged…
Have you seen this film ever, Butterfly?
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I did take that module and can certainly go off on one about garden cities and suburbia and new babylonia and skyscrapers etc. Mussolini is not going to be shy about rebuilding Europe (especially as a great deal of europe outside of the empire is rubble). Within the empire, the main bits of reconstruction will be Spain, the balkans and the bits of France people actually fought over. And Africa and the Middle East of course, which needed a bunch of modern cities built from scratch...
So yes, so many oppurinties for modernists of many schools to go build their utopias and projects. Or even single buildings.
The world fair is, apparently, a ridiculously ambitious fair even OTL, before adding this empire stuff. We'll probably have a pan-empire celebration of various cities, cultures and topics, all focusing on the new united future.
After all, from the perspective of pretty much everyone in universe, being a roman citizen is probably the best position an individual can be in compared to the rest of the world.
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Garden cities are fascinating. And infuriating. Seldom I think has something been so obviously a great idea but so badly managed in practice. One of those things where the promise is so amazing that it’s almost impossible to get it right. Or get it right and make it generally available, anyway.
My instinct is that the best way to go about it is greening places and communities that already exist rather than going at it top-down… Which is something we can explore here as the 70s roll on.
Skyscrapers on the other hand I don’t think we’ll be seeing much of in the Commonwealth. Hessletine certainly won’t be turning up with his Development Corporations…
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