American Experience; 1964; Interview with Hodding Carter III, Newspaper Editor, part 2 of 6

What's he? What are his supporters so radicalized about? They've been trying to draft gold water since 1960. What are they so pissed off about? Why are these people so...? They've been losers since 1933. I think of my uncle, Yale, class of 36. Who as far as he was concerned, the world he knew had been destroyed by Roosevelt, by all of the New Deal, by what had transpired in the growth of the federal government, which was dramatic, and World War II was only part of that. And by the fact that what seemed to be the natural order of things, which were Republicans basically running the country with a few breaks by accident or whatever, that all of a sudden the Democrats were running the country and had been running it since 1933. And we're doing things which are unthinkable. He was almost as bad. No, no, see Eisenhower was acceptable only because he wasn't a Democrat,

but he was not what they were looking for, which was red meat and a repudiation of everything out there. He was certainly, I mean, look, I'm in college, I think he's anathema, but I mean on retrospect, give me a break. I mean, he was a nice conservative guy who was going to preside over a nice conservative period of pretty much quietitude and not much repudiation in reality as opposed to rhetoric of the past. So, of course, he was no great, I mean, the hard asses didn't think anything of Eisenhower except as a vehicle to ride the Democrats out of town on and to bring some chance for change. And even that, which should have been the natural progression, gets broken when Nixon loses to Jack Kennedy. There's this Western quality of gold water, too. There's this kind of insurgent, and it's a worth it. It's a very interesting thing.

I mean, Bob Carroll and our classmates, and we were Neiman classmates for that matter, and he's a brilliant man, but he just got it wrong about the guy that Lyndon beat down in Texas. But the guy, yeah, Koch Stevens, and I mean Koch Stevens and was a racist pig. But he embodied all of that Western stuff, highly individualistic guy speaking well. A lot of the time in the language of that against this corrupt pig. That is, Lyndon, I mean, as Bob was singing, Lyndon at that moment. Barry Goldwater had none of the corrupt baggage, and he was the Western man. He was the Southwestern man. He was, in many ways, the New America, which has been scaring liberals ever since. I mean, the idea of the new oligarchy arising from the wealth mineral and otherwise of that region. And the Sun Belt. Yeah, the whole notion of the Sun Belt,

which is not given, I can't remember when that phrase came up, but he embodied it in any case. Great. The Yaffirs, they're uninteresting. Well, again, as always, journalists believe if they can put a label on something it means it's happened. In that period, you might want to remember, we went from the new left to the new right to the, I mean, I'm backing these things in reverse. The silent generation, whatever. The young Americans for freedom represented something real. I mean, which was more than some slogans and a bunch of guys running around carrying signs. They represented a part of the hard front of a attack on the establishment, on the one hand, and the party. And on the other, upon the entire frame of things that have been created in the New Deal and thereafter. And some of them were quite bright and articulate.

And some of them were exactly the kind of yard dogs you want. I mean, you know, bite you wherever they can bite you, and they were systematic. And their name still made your figures in the Republican Party today, who sort of came up that road in one way or the other. Yeah. And... Talk to some of them. Which ones have you talked to? Yeah. Vigory, of course. Vigory, of course. I don't want to get specific. No, no, I know that. But in any case, though that is an interesting case, he starts out as a silent racist. He finds a way to embody that. I used to see Vigory around the Capitol back in the six. Anyway. Okay, going back to where you are. But you're right. They're this passionate, really smart, organized group. They are. They are force. And by that time, by that time, the essential decay of the Democratic Party as an institutional, major magnetic force for everybody had begun.

Too long in the saddle. Too comfortable in its assumptions. Too used to taking the big ones and winning. And not good at guerrilla and trench warfare. And here come these guys, who's very ideas to go around the lines, do a frontal attack, come up behind you and knife you. I mean, they were terrifically able political people in ways that used to distinguish the old left from the hard left all the way to the center, which you weren't increasing that you were never going to find. When they showed up in Gravel, Mississippi, and I cover the speech by what's his name Stanley. I can't remember anymore. Thank you. But one of the founders, I came out of there and said, holy God, the past is coming back to bite us. Here they are, boy. These are wonderfully able. One thing I'm trying to figure out is, well, the other thing is that by embracing these conservatives, gold waters at the same time getting with that package, the lunatic French.

Absolutely. How does he deal with that? And what's the challenge being? Well, it's very interesting. I mean, because the people most turned off by the lunatic French are never going to vote for Barry Goldwater. So, to a large extent, he did it basically by saying, oh, come on, you know, this is not going to happen. And in any case, Phyllis Shaffley is a wonderful American, you know, or whatever it may be, none dare call it treason. The whole list of them who were out there writing these things, which were essentially, in another country and another government, they would have been in jail, you know, suggesting that there were people who were traders to the country, he didn't say that. And he essentially, he didn't disguise him, you couldn't disguise him, he just didn't incorporate him into the center of his universe. The John Burgers.

Yeah. Oh, my God. But there were more than John Burgers. There were any number, the John Burgers are the most famous, but there were any number of excels of passionate, true believing lunatics, I mean, who actually believed that a Moscow was at the center of virtually everything that had happened for a very long time. And that we were losing our freedoms fast, and 1984 was going to be too late. We will have lost them before we got to 84. And they preached all of that. And when I was working for Lyndon in the campaign, the stuff that came across the desk, I mean, I was working for Lyndon. Anyway, when I was working in the campaign in 64, the stuff that came across our desk was literally unbelievable except people believed it. And that was the part that was scary. Great. I'm not quite sure. Well, we're really struggling to divide Goldwater up into chunks in this story. It's hard to do.

The only thing we can think about to drop down on in the middle of those two things is the California primary when he goes neck to neck. I had to head with Nelson. And I'm not good at that. Yeah. I mean, that's a problem because I was... You weren't there. You weren't there. I wasn't there. Well, I was on the other coast. But even more to the point, I had essentially decided that was somebody else's lucky business and we had enough problems going on up closer and I was not. Now, let me think about that though. Well, how do you... More to the point, maybe, because we get plenty of other things to talk about. Sure. I mean, what is... First Rockefeller and then Johnson in a huge way. How are they trying to paint Goldwater? Extremist. Extremist, that he was outside the normal confines of political discourse, that he was a man who essentially was trying to repudiate the things that most mattered to Americans.

Social security. Still using that today. But... And similar kinds of takes, which would say in effect, however good he may sound to you on some things, at the end of day, he wants to destroy the things that are most meaningful to you, which has been created over this last 30 years. What was he most moment of all? Well, I always... He goes on issues and answers in the counterpoint campaign and advocates the use of low yield atomic weapons to defoliate the jungles of Vietnam. No, no. I mean, he could say some of the damnedest things in the world. I've always been glad that one of the few things we didn't do in Vietnam, why were we defoliating like Casey? We didn't use nuclear weapons. Or we would have done everything he thought we ought to do. I mean, well, we didn't drop a one down the stack, since the courier slumay was there. But... We had never lost a war.

We had never been in a war that we couldn't polish off. And it was still early in the day, but it was humiliating that we were not, you know, in and out. That having decided to cast our lot with regime, the rhetoric of the Kennedys was terrible when it came to Vietnam. And therefore, you understood this was a place where we were going to draw the line. And Barry in effect called that and raised it. I can remember going to a briefing at the State Department for the provincial press, in which that Kennedys sends in front of a big map of Vietnam. And he says, for too long, the lines have gone south eternally. Here is what I tell you, we are going to go north from now on, meaning into North Vietnam, to take them at the source and all that. And was gunboats Carter for some time because of Jack Kennedy, not because of Barry Goldwater. Goldwater just took it further. And Goldwater, why was he so, the extremist level is really important?

Well, among other things, but that was, yeah, of course, which was what, of course, made that insanely effective but never used to have hardly ever used to add. So, meaningful is that it was, of course, capturing one whole sense of people's belief about it. You know, pull off the, but I mean, pull off the pedal, pull off the pedal and nuclear explosion. But where did that believe? Where did that sense? We see, I don't know. And that's part I've never quite understood. And I used to read stuff about him and I quit thinking about him. I'd see him around Washington a lot. A big friend of Ben Bradley's. But in any case, I... There's mostly just these, these comments that you make, you're lobbing up, you want to lob a missile into the men's room of the Kremlin. That's one thing he said. That's extraordinarily, I mean, that's the kind of thing I say, but I'm not running for president. You know what I mean? It was a level of irresponsibility on the rhetoric,

which was sort of stunning for a guy who, after all, had held public office of various kinds for some time. He understood. The thing is though, I mean, Barry, I don't think actually smart or not smart, and there were those who argued both ways. I don't think he understood the world he was in, and I don't think he understood the difference between being a politician from Arizona and being a man who's running for president. And you could get away with saying almost anything if you wanted to run for the Senate. Do you want to be president? Well, you know, there are a lot of people who asked that Al Gore want to be president. What I mean is, I can't answer that one, but he ran. And I don't think that he, he may have thought running was a splendid misery, but he didn't show it. I mean, he was out there having a good time, and accepting a series of campaign positions, which were not funny. I mean...

Oh, well, God. Homophobic for one, because of Walter Jenkins and other of Lyndon's AIDS. I'll know he didn't exploit that, but it was kind of interesting. I'll tell you why. Can I tell you a story? I'm working on the propaganda side, and so that thing happens. And we think, oh, my God, this is, you know, devastating for a while. And then two things happen immediately thereafter. The Chinese set off their bomb within two days, which was devastating, and Khrushchev fell. And my friend, everybody forgot about Walter Jenkins. I mean, you know, it was not an issue to be pushed when you had these huge events taking place right then. They would have pushed it further, but they also got about as much out of it as they could get to begin with. He's against social security. He's against social security.

At the end of day, I don't remember where he was on NATO, but I'm confident that he was one of those who would have not been reluctant to see us, essentially withdraw from the advanced position and be the great, sorry, folks. I'll tell you about that. Are you kidding? I think of Edwin Walker. I can't talk right now. So, yeah, just, I want to take a break in seconds. Well, do that. I just realized the one thing I didn't do was turn this off. Wait a minute. This is 85 years old, obviously. Okay. I'm just kind of curious in a big picture of 10,000 feet up kind of view. What sort of goldwater's general kind of bomb throwing agenda? Just in really broad strokes.

In really big strokes, he was sort of in many ways a real libertarian with an inclination to trust the military, which does not follow for a real libertarian. He was a guy who believed in the old American values as understood by many old Americans. He was a guy who believed that you progressed best when less textured by government or compelled by government. He was a guy who believed that most of the economic policies of the New Deal were socialism with their kind face. He was a fellow who, at root, thought that there was a natural governing class which would rise by achievement, and that that's where you sort of take your lead. Was there something about him that was kind of appealing to you? Yeah. He was, he was, I wouldn't play a politician.

I mean, I found it to be charming that he would say these crazy things. Because it meant at least he wasn't so confined by handlers. Of course, it drove him crazy. But I mean that he, a person didn't emerge and a real person emerged. And that was one of Lyndon's problems, actually. You were never sure who the real person was. In retrospect, you're much better able to know that a lot of that was real for sure and not as my wife thought, just political, whatever it just political supposed to mean. Barry, he figured he believed all that stuff. And then there was something to be said for that. Authenticity then and now is not a vice. Unless, of course, it's not an authenticity that a majority welcomes. And what he was offering was authentic Barry, but it wasn't authentic America at that moment. Great. Let's take five. Let's turn the arrow again. Here we go. Let's talk about Vietnam, percent.

Small little issue, 64. But actually, the more I look at it, the more I think 64 is the year that it's critical things happen. Why is it such a nightmare-ish thing for LBJ? Why is Vietnam? Well, to begin with, of course, LBJ understands some things better than others. And being seen as somebody who cuts and runs is a problem for us. Second, it was, after all, Jack's legacy. And he wasn't sure exactly how they would bite if he did a major withdrawal. Third, he thought, as unfortunately a number of people thought, even then, that it was doable, that it was a... Fourth, we were all children of Munich. We were all children of World War II. It wasn't just Halberstead. I'm going to understand that we were infected with a notional thing. But if you let them do it here, they'll do it there. That there was a whole set. If not of dominoes, then certainly of interconnected events, which would advance the cause of the other side.

And I bought all of it, by the way. I bought it to the last T because I was a child of Munich. My father had gone off to war because of Munich. He had joined before the war started, because he knew it was coming. And I believed it confirmed everything about the need to take a very early stand, wherever it was. All of that was there in front of London. It was in front of the country. And in fact, it stayed there for a lot longer than people are willing to admit, including the New York Times. I mean, there was a long time support for that war. Even David, an old friend, did not in the days he was in Vietnam say, get out. He said, fight it better. Now you read what's amazing about the making of a fragment. How much he wants us to win? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. But we all did. I mean, we were children of Munich, children of World War II. Children of the notion that if we'd only move faster, blah, blah, blah, wherever it was.

And I, for one, am not embarrassed by it. It was just the fact of a history that made you forget about thinking. Was LVJ particularly vulnerable on foreign affairs? Or is that a stereotype? I don't think that he was vulnerable on foreign affairs in the sense that he was more ignorant of foreign affairs. And most people, in fact, he probably knew more. He was President, I think. Yes, he did. He went to a number of places as far as they could get him from Washington for some of those people. But the thing about it was, he was an expert on the defense side. I mean, for any number of reasons, not least being the fact placing defense plants all over the country, or bases, rather, was useful politically. But sure. But most people, I mean, you know, you take full bright, the great expert, and that's fine. But, you know, it takes a long time for most folks to come up to speed on a strange place where the slogans sound very familiar from our past.

And the complexities are more than you really want to wrestle with. Yeah. It's fascinating to listen to and talk about literature, wrestle, that. You mean the tape calls? Yeah. I don't know how I get out of this. I know. It's just all the doubts and all the problems that are going to fall apart. They're all on the table. I so admire that handful of men who actually did leave over it. They were such a small handful. I am so sorry that Lyndon couldn't bring himself to listen to some people who, otherwise, trusted a lot. I mean, but anybody who was close to that, unless they were entirely doctrinaire like McNamara, had to know. Had to know that that wasn't this.

But of course, I wasn't close to it, and I knew we had to stop the bastards. That was the thought of the notional thing. Who were you in 1964? I mean, were gunboats Carter come from just in that thing? Ah, because when I was not yet to be gunboats Carter, I went to the Neiman the next year, and spent a great deal of time debating to a V-Great experts on Vietnam, Frenchman named Shawn Lakotur, and Bernard Fall of this country, both of whom knew more in their little finger about Southeast Asia than I do in my entire body. I was willing to put ignorance to work for a cause, and so was the ritual of Defender of the War. My classmates are the ones who call me that, and my Neiman class, gunboats Carter. And it was a fair enough deal. It was, of course, because my basic... Why did they call you in the country? I was called gunboats Carter, because my basic thesis about what you did when facing the enemy in Vietnam or anywhere else, certainly there, was to go in there shooting.

I mean, you know, and keep shooting so you beat them. That again arises from watching my father go off to war before the war began, even because he believed you had to. It also arose because that's basically what we got taught in university and history, and in high school, about the meaning of World War II. And God knows if you watched us ineffectually flailing around for a while in Korea, you knew that not being ready to fight well meant embarrassment and death before you finally pull yourself together. What, for your views at the time, did most of America agree with gunboats Carter? Sure. Now, you know, it's a funny thing. Most of America and 64 sort of... Even at the end, here's what happened. Most Americans were against it at the end, but you don't want to parse that figure too far, because many of them were against it because we weren't winning. And if we weren't going to win, we ought to get out.

There were others who were against it because they thought it was an absurd war, but an awful lot of those who registered in the polls as being against the war were against the way we were fighting it, and therefore said to hell with it. I mean, if we're not going to fight it to win, is this thing went... ...then out, then out. But you know, as late as 68, you still had... I mean, Kronkite doesn't go. And in New York Times, well, I can remember when my best friend's family, a boy, came home from that war. That was... I began to... I think I began to change everywhere. Yeah. Um... Helga J is on the campaign trail, filling Americans... I'm not going to send America before it's to fight. Mm-hmm. Meanwhile, on the scenes, don't you exactly? That's exactly right. In the finest tradition of American presidencies when it comes to overseas ventures, he kept us out of war. I'm trying to think of an American president actually who lived up to his rhetoric about being involved, certainly not Woodrow Wilson, who got stampeded into the war.

And, uh, certainly not Lyndon. I went to work for Lyndon in the end, because I sure as hell didn't believe in us having troops on the ground in that sense. John Stennis, the Senator of Mississippi, the Defense Expert, an old friend of Lyndon's, used to say correctly that he argued with Jack Kennedy, and he argued with Lyndon, about not making this be a ground war. He wanted to blast him in the Stone Age fine, do not go in there in a land war in Asia that's unwinnable and some thinkable and don't do it. There were a lot of conservatives who were against it. I, again, was a passionate ideologue to one extent, I mean now. It begins to give you complex, about 64, about 65, when we're using high altitude bombing and putting in another bunch of people. Everything I learned in the Marines was being absolutely turned on its head, because what they taught us was you don't fight that kind of war with that kind of method.

I mean, if you can't win it on the ground and up close and personal, then get the hell out. Great to say.