American Experience; 1964; Interview with Rick Perlstein, Writer, part 3 of 3

One of Barry Goldwater's biographers, one of Barry Goldwater's biographers called the conservative Woodstock. It's the gathering of the tribes, right? Everyone who feels so dispossessed by American politics suddenly is together in one place in San Francisco, which also has the first topless dancers and all these marvelous nightclubs where they all go to hear Dick Gregory make fun of Barry Goldwater and make fun of William Warren's Grand. It's a big party. But also, it's something different going on, like the people in that conventions enter a different form of previous conventions. Yeah. The conventions themselves are about to change. 1964 is kind of a cusp movement in the history of political conventions. The idea that conventions are TV shows that are scripted for television is not quite understood by the people who are running the conventions. And it's not quite understood by the Barry Goldwater folks who see their job as putting as much pressure

on the establishment of the Republican Party, not to steal this nomination from Barry Goldwater. I mean, remember, they fill a Schlafly argument that these people are these kind of dark backroom manipulators. Well, they have to be stopped and any means necessary to stop them are allowed. This does not look very good on television. What happens to Nelson Rockefeller? So there are a series of floor fights about platform planks. And one of them is whether the Republican Party should denounce extremism, which in the context of the times means the extremism of the Ku Klux Klan, the folks who are burning down the churches, and the extremism of the John Burke Society, the folks who believed that Dwight David Eisenhower was a communist. This seems like a completely safe, moderate course who could disagree. But if you believe that the Republican establishment is this cabal of usurpers, and they'll basically use any wedge

to try and undo your hero and kind of undo your crusade to save civilization, the guy up there speaking for the bill, the guy up there speaking for the platform plank has to be stopped by any means necessary. By the way, to use a quote from another figure from 1964, Malcolm X. Well, Nelson Rockefeller goes up there. He's the ultimate symbol, right? He's the ultimate symbol of everything they hate. And by the way, he goes up there and he patronizes to them and he condescends to them and he simpers and he wants them to shriek. He's trying to stage a confrontation. And as soon as he goes up there, they start booing him, they start shrieking. And this is kind of why people like Jackie Robinson are saying that this Republican rally reminds him of a Nuremberg rally. And Nelson Rockefeller, there's this movement in which he hears them screaming. He hears them shouting him down and he smiles. Cut.

So that's it. That's what I want you to do. What's he, and what is he really trying to, what's he hope to achieve? What he hopes to achieve is to show the television audience just how extreme these berry goldwater acolytes are. And he hopes to make it impossible for berry goldwater to get nominated. And a acceptance speech is usually an option to one way and what does goldwater do? Yeah, so imagine there's been this incredibly intense confrontation over this issue of extremism, right? The first thing you would think berry goldwater would want to do is kind of usher the water under the bridge to kind of heal all the factions, to kind of declare a truth so everyone can kind of work together and put their shoulders to the wheel to support the party in November. He does the exact opposite. He makes the very centerpiece of his speech

this famous line. Extremism and defensive liberty is no vice. And at that very moment, Richard Nixon writes that he felt nausea in the pit of his stomach. And his wife did what you're supposed to do when everyone's standing up at a convention. She started standing up, but he reached over and kept her sitting down. What's, how does Cliff White respond? Where is he? Now Cliff White, who had didn't done more than anyway, right? Cliff White, who had done more than anything to bring berry goldwater to this moment and wanted berry goldwater to win, is absolutely apopleptic. He's in this trailer, state of the art trailer, by the way. He wired this convention with telephone lines and all the best technology and staff gap walkie talkies and jamming devices and all the rest.

And he can't believe what he's hearing. He can't believe that basically berry goldwater is punting away his chance to save civilization. Doesn't matter how his goldwater speech received and doesn't really have an effect on the nomination. And I think his speech really does have an effect not on the nomination, because Cliff White is completely wired that and his delegates aren't going to abandon him come hell and cry water. But it has a very big effect on the general election, because this is his introduction to the national television audience and what they're seeing is someone who seems to be the furor marching at the head of a fascist army. There's another moment when Eisenhower speaks and calls the media. And John Wetter was an intern in the Huntley Brinkley booth. Oh fabulous. Which was crazy. Really remember all of them.

Remember that moment. What happened? You should get Alan Brinkley actually down. Yeah, I know Alan pretty well. We'll see you there. Yes, I'll tell the story in case you can't get him. So David Brinkley, the NBC anchorman. Tells his young teenage son, Alan Brinkley, the distinguished Columbia University historian. Now, not to wear his NBC insignia, because he's afraid that he'll be harassed or maybe even kind of... He's terrified that his son's going to be... He's terrified that his son's going to be... He's terrified that his son's going to be... Don't identify Alan. His son. Yeah, that's great. So David Brinkley, the NBC anchorman, brings his teenage son to the convention. But he won't let him wear his NBC badge because he's afraid he'll be harassed or maybe even roughed up, because there's so much anger at the Eastern establishment press.

And what does Eisenhower do? And that anger comes out in a way that's completely shocking to most Americans when our beloved national grandfather, Dwight David Eisenhower, like a good Republican, stands before the convention and gives his speech. And he refers to sensation-seeking columnists who have no interest in supporting the party and any... And he's absolutely shocked. I think today we understand that conservative Republicans have this contempt for the media, but it was a new idea then. And after he delivers that line, there is such a roar of solidarity, of anger at these media people. And people literally turn around and shake their fists at the media and their sky boxes. They shake the struts that support the sky boxes.

And again, it's this sort of terrifying image of the mass out of control. And people have seen this before. They've seen it before in the images of Nazi Germany. Great. How are we doing everybody? Okay. The general. You said, you know, the day after the nomination he goes to the White House and surrenders. I said the day after? Is it the day after? Yeah. Right. Because he pledges Oh, that he's not going to make civil rights an issue. Or Vietnam. Yeah, yeah. I'm not sure we need that. Not the Vietnam thing. It's, yeah. But the... You know, it's... It's really striking. You know, it's not the other. It's not the other. How is the...

During the course of the General Campaign, how is the political kind of landscape of America? Shifting. Interns of the South. Right. And it's the most... Right. Tectonic shift. Right. And the quickest shift in this must be in the history of the American. Yeah. One harbinger of things to come is one of the most powerful southern senators, Strom Thurman, decides he's going to switch parties. He announces that he's going to be a Republican. And the reason that's so galvanizing is, again, the Republican Party in the South are seen as to kind of invading... The political wing of the invading army that burned down Atlanta. And Strom Thurman becomes instrumental, almost like Barry Goldwater's secret weapon, to winning those five southern states. And winning five southern states for a Republican is absolutely unprecedented. I mean, the South is basically... These states are basically one party states.

I mean, like in a third world country. If you vote for a Republican, they'll find you out and they'll harass you. But because of this vote against the Civil Rights Act, because of Barry Goldwater's support for what's known as state's rights, because he speaks of the South as a class of people who are victimized by the North, of this long slow process of the solid Democratic South becoming a vehicle for the Republican Party begins. And that really is the most important realignment in the way the party system is structured since the American Civil War. Great. And Barry goes on a tour of the South. So does Lady Bird Johnson. Right. Lady Bird Johnson showed a striking moral and even physical courage that year. Lynn and Johnson cannot tour the South.

He is too hated. The assassination threat is too great. And no one wants another assassinated president on their hands. But the people who are running the Johnson campaign know the South. And they know the notion of southern chivalry. And they know that a southerner would never shout down or harass a lady. And that's what's so shocking about Lady Bird Johnson's tour of the South. They do shout down and harass this lady, which shows the absolute rage at the Civil Rights Revolution that all normal modes and morays of behavior are being overturned in Dixie. How does each candidate try and use the idea? I've never seen images of that. I would love to see something. Yeah. I mean, Barry Goldwater's TV commercials look like something, you know, look like something out of like something a 15-year-old would make in his basement.

Lynn and Johnson retains the most sophisticated, elegant, tasteful advertising agency. It's called DDB. And they're famous for their Volkswagen ads. Think small, lemon. The first example of this kind of anti-advertising that understands that people don't trust advertising. So you're going to try and seduce them with irony and cleverness. They're very, very hot stuff. And, you know, they follow this kids with two heads theme that George Reedy has introduced. They realize that their most powerful weapon is this terror. That the very consensus that America is being built upon will be threatened by Barry Goldwater. And the most powerful way to frighten people about Barry Goldwater is to remind people of his laxness when it comes to nuclear weapons.

The striking thing about the Daisy commercials it never mentions Barry Goldwater's name. It leverages presumptions that people already have about Barry Goldwater. And, of course, the famous stories that they only show at once. But they accomplish what they want to accomplish because it's such a sensation that is shown over and over again in the TV newscast. There's a memo from Bill Moyers to Lyndon Johnson who says, don't worry. Don't worry that we can only show it once. We achieved exactly what we want to achieve. What about the film that Cliff White produced? Oh, right. So much later on, we would become familiar with the Republican strategy of associating liberalism with moral turpitude, you know, with loose morals. We call them now the social issues.

There was pretty much a consensus in both parties. And, in fact, it really wasn't even a political issue because it was just so much more morally conservative of time. That would soon change. But the very fact that Nelson Rockefeller stops being a viable presidential candidate because of his second marriage just shows that everyone agrees that, you know, kind of lacks morality is a problem. And no one really thinks of it as a political issue. But Cliff White is kind of on the cutting edge of a new conception in which you can kind of associate the laxness of liberalism as a political ideology with the laxness of morals that you're beginning to see among young people, you're beginning to see in this escalating crime rate. So he makes this absolutely over-the-top film, half-an-hour film, called Choice, referring back to the Choice Not Neko theme of the Goldwater Campaign, in which the choice is between solid-stayed bourgeois morality and the absolute moral chaos that they link to Lyndon Johnson.

And what kind of film, I mean, what's in the film? You know, there's go-go dancers, there's riots, there's a Cadillac, corining the highway with a beer can thrown out the window, which refers to stories that, you know, kind of Lyndon Johnson would tool around his ranch, you know, like in this Cadillac driving 70 miles an hour and throwing beer cans out the window. And why does Goldwater do when he sees the film? The Goldwater is horrified. You know, he, that's right, right? Yeah, Goldwater is horrified. He says there's absolutely no way we're going to show this film. But it kind of circulates kind of underground. I think that they, they, they showed it, they projected it out the wall of a Republican office in San Francisco, in which, which is a city, by the way, that it's hard to remember now, but it was kind of seen as this kind of tough, white, working class city. But it's beginning to just get this reputation as a haven for homosexuals.

But Goldwater sees mostly, and it's sort of a tribute to him, too. There's lots of scenes of blacks. He's there. I'm not quite sure. Is it? That's interesting. Yeah. Goldwater says it's racist because of the images of black people rioting. He's pledged that he's not going to exploit the riots in order to get elected. He sees that as a bridge too far. What do they call the riots? Now, the riots were frequently called Goldwater rallies. What that referred to was every time a black person burns down a building, which happened in four or five cities across the summer, they're advertising the Barry Gold or Goldwater presidential campaign, that the kind of, the kind of, you know. That's fun. That's all I need. Let's sort of put an apple on this a little bit. Are you good? Are you going to energize me? Can't energize by the fairies.

What happens in the election? What's the, what's the sort of conventional wisdom about? Yes. I guess you can show the headlines, but I would be great if I could quote some of these pundits if I can, can I, can I? Yeah, okay, great. The election results from the perspective of the worms I view the people participating seem as simple as can be.

I mean, election day seems as simple as can be, you know, to the people who are present at the time, landslide, Lyndon finally wins his landslide. He gets 61% of the popular vote. He wins every state except for a few in the south and Arizona, which Barry Goldwater barely wins. And the mandate for liberalism in the great society and civil rights has been achieved. How can you disagree? Now, turns out with the hindsight of perspective, it's not that simple. What are all the pundits saying at the time? The pundits are basically saying that this proves that America is a liberal nation, that probably it's always been a liberal nation and probably it always will be a liberal nation.

And they say something very, very stern and very, very adamant that if the Republican party does not purge all the conservatives from its ranks, there may no longer be a Republican party. And in fact, the two party system itself in America may be under threat. It's that definitive. What did they miss? What they missed was the fact the Republican party, what they missed was the south becoming a... What they miss is the shift of the south toward the Republican party. And what they miss is most evident in the election returns of America's biggest state, California, which only by the way just became the biggest state that year, which is indicative of the shift from the northeast to the west and towards conservatism. Lyndon Johnson wins by a million votes in California, and that's a big part of why people insist that this is a mandate for liberalism.

What they miss is that on the ballot that year in California was a referendum on the state's open housing law, a law that made it illegal to discriminate when you sold or rented your home. That measure lost by a million votes. It showed there was an enormous constituency willing to vote against civil rights that felt anger and resentment for the civil rights movement, and that the leading edge of American political development was not this mandate for liberalism, but this backlash against liberalism that would be inherited by Ronald Reagan. And Barry Goldwater wins 40 percent, and he's a terrible candidate, right? There's a message today. Barry Goldwater wins 40 percent, but then again he's a terrible candidate, maybe a better candidate with the same ideas would have done better.

And lo and behold, that candidate is revealed unto the nation on October 27, 1964. Ronald Wilson Reagan, star of bedtime for banzo, who has been barnstorm in the country for the general electric corporation, giving speeches about the wickedness of the federal government. He's fired from his job in general electric because he's too right wing. He continues giving speeches. He's a hero. He's a hero of the right. There's a rally in his honor in Long Island in 1963 in which 10,000 people show up to cheer him on, sponsored by young Americans for freedom. He becomes one of the most important and effective spokesman in California during that, during that primary election in 1964. And he goes on TV. Yeah, right. And do you want me to tell the story about how Barry Goldwater's handlers didn't want to...

I don't think their rivalry is as important. Basically the campaign has an unused block of 30 minutes of television time at NBC. And it turns out that they have this speech in the can by this guy, Ronald Reagan. And it's broadcast nationally on October 27th, the week before the election. And David Broder, the pundit, calls it the most striking and powerful political debut since William Jenning Bryan's Cross of Gold speech in 1896. The campaign is flooded with telegram saying, you know, I wish I could vote for Ronald Reagan instead of Barry Goldwater. He's the candidate who is able to deliver the message that Barry Goldwater is so ineffectual in getting across to the American people. Yeah. He's the real package, right?

He's the real deal. And what's going to happen to... Immediately after that speech, Ronald Reagan's rich friends, California industrialists, begin scheming to get him the gubernatorial nomination in California in 1966. So what happens to conservatism after 1964? Does it weather in the dawn? Is it with the pundits, right? The pundits claim that conservatism is dead. Well, it just so happens that the John Birch Society, that far right organization, their membership roles go through the roof immediately following that election. Ronald Reagan is preparing his gubernatorial bid. 47 congressmen get swept in on Lyndon Johnson's co-tails. Those 47 congressmen, the people who pass the voting rights act, the people who pass Medicare, are all swept out in 1966 in this striking backlash vote. These predictions all come a cropper.

It's been a long ride from January 1st. What's changed in this short but striking 12 months? What's happened to the country when Johnson went to that Christmas tree? Think about the America we were imagining. That America we were all imagining, united in a piece with itself, is framed in a way that couldn't have been imagined on January 3rd, 1964. We're beginning to see the country shatter along ideological lines. That nation that was so united in a piece with itself, at least in America's perceptions. I knew you're a Zeeve. Really now seems on the verge of shattering over Vietnam, over civil rights, over the insurgent energies of youth.

And really what we're looking at is not a 1950s America but a 1960s America. Why do we keep coming across, I keep encountering the word choice, choice of America, a time for choosing, film called choice. What is it about the choices that Americans confronted in this year that's so striking? The striking thing is, as the year dawns, it doesn't seem like there are any choices. It's this world of Kennedy and Nixon doesn't make a difference. Suddenly, there are very polarized choices. Are you for the Vietnam War or are you against the Vietnam War? Are you for the civil rights revolution or are you against the civil rights revolution? These are all issues that don't admit to a middle ground. And these are the kinds of issues that weren't supposed to be driving American politics. And there's a cultural shift, too. I mean the Beatles have a rock.

All these kinds of issues that have to do with kind of, suddenly culture itself is a ground of contestation, whether you're kind of hip or you're square, whether you're for the kids or you're against the kids. Yeah, this is where Mario Savio or somebody Weinberg says don't trust anyone on the third. Yeah, Mario Savio in the free speech movement says don't trust anyone over 30. Now, in the context of Berkeley, he was talking about those square old communists. But this becomes a national slogan precisely because he seems to be speaking to this emerging issue in which again, there is no middle ground. Why do you think, what do you think, 64? Why didn't happen then? What are the forces that create so much Earthquake happening?

Why does this all happen then? Because I think the story America had been telling itself that it was united in a piece for itself was an unsustainable story. And it kind of cracks of its own internal contradictions. In 1964, when those contradictions come to a four, the fact that there is no middle ground and an issue like civil rights, that there is no middle ground and an issue like Vietnam, that there's no middle ground and an issue like, you know, the Beatles forgot sick. Why is it important to remember 1964? I think it's important to remember 1964, this year and pretty much any year in American history, to understand that Americans always bear with, yeah. I think it's important to understand 1964 because we need to appreciate that America has been and always will be a country with deep divisions.

And the moment we believe that we've transcended those divisions, we're probably in for a root comeuppance. That's Pearlsteenism right there. And that there are no permanent coalitions and politics. Is there an individualistic revolution going on too? Is that what's driving so much of the youth transformation in the year? Yeah, yeah. So kids are raised by parents who have been to the Depression and raised on an ideology of deferred gratification. These kids don't see the point, right? I mean, they're individualists. They want pleasure now. They live in an affluent society. And that contradiction between instant gratification and deferred gratification is really at the heart of the generation gap.

And is it, is it the baby boomers finally, finally cresting that tool that's gone on? I mean, if you were born immediately after your father came back from Europe in 1964, you're 18 years old, you're 19 years old, you're entering college, you're coming into your own. And you're coming into your own in a way that probably makes no sense to someone who sacrificed everything to survive the Depression and defeat Hitler. Right. What is it that the left and the right are so angry about or are objecting to so much? Right. When Teddy White wrote, making the President in 1964, he has a great footnote in which he marvels at the fact that both left and right are ready to kill each other, fighting over the meaning of the same word, freedom. There's no consensus over what that key concept, that key American concept, freedom even means.

For the right, the greatest producer freedom is the federal government. For the left, it's a Southern segregationist, you know, it's the military industrial complex. These are completely different conceptions of who the enemy is. But there's something very profound in the idea that they share a sense of an enemy. And they both agree that the society they're inheriting is one of conformity, one in which bureaucracy is out of control. One in which the world has become bland and predictable in a way that is sapping the nation of its vitality. I mean, that's why the rhetoric of a Barry Goldwater and a Mario Savio are so parallel in many ways, throwing yourself on the gears of the machine. That's exactly what Barry Goldwater was saying in conscience of a conservative.

In that they literally feel like the time has come for the ultimate sacrifice. Actually, I do have this one. This won't take but a second, actually. Thank you, this up, I think. In conscience of a conservatism, you know, Barry Goldwater says the reason you shouldn't be a liberal is that liberalism is a materialist philosophy, you know, that it's a conformist philosophy. You know, all these themes you'd hear on the new left, the idea that the enemy is bigness, the enemy is bureaucracy, that these kind of existentialist themes of vitality, autonomy, expression, everyone agrees that this kind of 1950s world that they inherit is boring. The 1960s will not be boring.

By the end of 1964, has the Rubicon been crossed? Is there no going back, by the end? Certainly in Vietnam. I mean, the Genies. Yeah, I mean, it's out of the box. It's very hard to see how you put the Genie back in the bottle on an issue like civil rights on Vietnam and rack and roll in the generation gap. I mean, there's a certain kind of entropy, you know. The ice flow has been broken up. Why do we, why do we sort of always get our to decade speak off? Well, I'm not a big fan of decades, right? I know, but this is a kind of an example of like setting, setting, setting it straight. Did the 60s begin in 1964? Yeah, I'm not going to go there. Do you think I have someone else to that? But the 60s is a concept. Yeah.

Because I'd be screaming at me on the TV if I were the person saying the 60s began it. The 70s began it. One of the legacies of that year today, if you look around. Let me look at the red state blue state world we live in. What are the threads that have come forward? Yeah, I don't really have a good answer for that one. Women, it's not something we spent a lot of time talking about because I'm about to talk Stephanie. There's even an amendment to the civil rights bill connected to gender. Right? There's a very curious movement in the civil rights debate. The very summoners who are trying to sink the thing. One of them is a guy named Judge Howard Smith, who is one of these super old, crotchety old Southern Democrats. He almost does a joke or kind of like a poison pill introduces a amendment saying that the civil rights bill will outlaw sex discrimination. And it becomes a movement of much jacularity on the floor of the House of the Representatives.

But lo and behold. No, it's a house. There's much jacularity on the floor of the House of Representatives. Well, lo and behold, since the whole time thing passes because Lyndon Johnson's so good at his job, suddenly 1964, sex discrimination is outlawed too. And it becomes one more agenda item to be put on the plate of American political culture. One more issue in which there's no middle ground. And, you know, it's important to remember that a lot of the leading activists like Phyllis Lathley who are devoting their lives to getting Barry Gold or elected or women or board housewives. I mean, they also were part of the comfortable concentration camp. You begin to see this generation of female conservative activists who adamantly insist that they're only housewives who don't seem to spend a lot of time cleaning their houses, but do spend a lot of time pushing conservative politics. But in the exact same way, they're kind of chafing against the limits of 1950s conformity.

What is this huge to feed the frustration and breaking point in a way? Just last question. What's the MFPP and the experience in a Atlantic city meme for the left? Stokely Carmichael, who later becomes famous as the theorist of black power. This kind of militant kind of anti-consensus term in the civil rights movement said that after the Mississippi Freedom Democrat experience that shows that the Democrats are a bunch of sellouts too, that you can't trust any politician. It's a radicalizing movement in the civil rights movement that we begin to see two years later when the black power folks and the Martin Luther King faction break down the middle. One more issue on which there's no middle ground. And what is it about that the trail, if you will?

What's the legacy of that for the Democratic Party? I don't think it has a huge effect on the Democratic. No more segregated delegates. After that movement, yes, there's no more segregated delegations. But you begin to see the kind of divisions that are exacerbated by the Vietnam War. In 1968, the convention literally divides down the middle over whether to endorse the Vietnam War or not. It becomes a lot easier after 1964 for Democrats to break from the regular machines that it kind of run the Democratic Party. And strike themselves on a path of moral absolutism, moral purity. Let's get room to 30 seconds of silence for Rick Frosting starting now. And Rick, we're at next minute.