American Experience; 1964; Interview with Jon Margolis, Author, The Last Innocent Year: America in 1964, part 2 of 5

So, Johnson has been thrust into this position, what's his greatest challenge, what's he craving most? Well, I think what LBJ always craved most and what was his biggest challenge was that his insecurity. He was a fundamentally extraordinarily talented and outgoing and vigorous man, but he was really, as not the only one, we have Richard Nixon to kick around again more if we want to, also dreadfully be set by insecurities. And his insecurity, and this was really was very visible in 1964, was vis-a-vis what we might call the Eastern establishment. He made fun of them, he didn't care about them, he said, he didn't think they were better than he was, but he did. He really wanted their approval of the Harvard guys. People went to Ivy League, LBJ went to not even the University of Texas, but what was that?

Right, it now has a different name, but he never quite got over the fact, he was of course as smart as any of them, but he was not as learned or as sophisticated, he did know a lot, but he did not have the sophistication of knowledge of the arts, the sciences, philosophy, history, et cetera, et cetera. His knowledge of American history was not bad at all, and he was by no means a fool, but that did bother him. The way they dressed, the way they thought they're being so at ease with one another, people like Dean Atchison and the Kennedys. And the other Henry Cabot Lodge, whom he looked down on in some ways, but he also kind of was in awe of all of them. McNamara Bundy. McNamara Bundy, yes, absolutely. He didn't feel legitimate either, did he?

Well, of course, and he wasn't in that, even though obviously it's the way the Constitution says when there is a vacancy, the Vice President takes over, but he didn't feel legitimate and he wasn't entirely legitimate until November of 64 when he was overwhelmingly elected. There is that it's not just political, it's sort of psychological. I'm here, I'm the most powerful person in the world, but I didn't really, the public didn't choose me, I didn't get elected me. I got elected on the ticket, but I was not the main man on the ticket, and so that was a problem at the beginning. Why was he called, what, it goes back to 1948? Goes back to 1948 when he was called Landslide Lyndon for winning the Democratic primary, which in those days, okay, take me back. In 1948, Lyndon Johnson was a congressman from Texas who ran for the Senate in the Democratic primary, which in those days, victory in the Democratic primary was tantamount to election.

I am part of a generation which learned the word tantamount for that reason. Now of course, if anything, the opposite is the case. He won that primary by 87 votes over a guy named Koch Stevenson, and of course there has always been questions about whether those 87 votes were legit, although I think an objective look would show that both candidates were stealing votes as quickly as they could, and the idealization of Koch Stevenson, who was clearly the more segregationist, more conservative of the two candidates, has been a little overblown, I think. But he did get the nickname Landslide Lyndon, and that was part of his insecurity forever after. I think it might have been the Senate, not the House, but I could be one. No, that was a Senate, Ray.

I said he was in the House, but he ran for the Senate in 48. Okay. That was clear. So if you could just sort of clarify that one a little bit. Okay. In 48, LBJ was a member of Congress from West Texas, but he ran for the Senate for the U.S. Senate seat in the Democratic primary, which is all you needed to win in those days in Texas. So what was the, the effect of the nickname, because it's Landslide Lyndon. He won by 87 votes, and with some question as to whether he really got 87 or any more votes than Koch Stevenson, but that was the nickname Landslide Lyndon, and it haunted him. Great. I was just going to say, so the kind of haunted was the word I was going to come up with. Describe the speech that Johnson makes five days after the assassination. Well, he asked right after the assassination, and with the suggestion in part of Hubert Humphrey, decided to go right to Congress and speak to a joint session of Congress.

He opened it with this very evocative and powerful statement, and everything I have, I would give not to be here today. And it was very somber, and that is when he pledged to, to try to continue. Kennedy had said, let us begin in his inaugural, but we can't do everything in four years, but let us begin. LBJ said, let us continue. And it was, it set the stage for the, the pattern that his presidency, or this year of his presidency, before he could be elected in his own right, would be devoted to fulfilling the, the Kennedy program. Why was that such a smart surprise? Because people really wanted to continue. Even people, the assassination was so traumatic that even the many people, especially down south, who were anti-candidial, although we had quite a high approval rating going into that November of of 63, he'd had a good summer and fall.

But still, but the, as I said, the assassination was so traumatic that even people who were, had not been pro-candid, became pro-candidial in some psychological, if not political way. And so to get up there and say, this man was elected, I am here sort of by the accident of his death, and the horror of his death, but I'm going to try to complete what he started as much as possible politically, that was exactly the right thing to say. Yeah, carrying on the martyr. Well, yeah, and, you know, it was a little hoked up in retrospect, and even at that time, but it was also the right thing to do. He meets with civil rights leaders a week later. What was their impression of Johnson and, you know, I'm trying to, it was, it was pretty soon, shortly after he became president, he met with the civil rights leader. They were, some of them were still wary of him because he wasn't, okay, so I think you

set up 48 for me perfectly, but I just, you're good at it so I want you to do it again. Shortly after the, he took office, he met with the civil rights leaders, some of whom were a little wary of him, and there's a history there. He, not only was he a southerner, but in the late fifties, he had soften some civil rights bills that were proposed by Eisenhower, and Eisenhower administration proposed some, well, we would now consider rather weak, but they got even weaker in order to get through. Now, Johnson claimed with some justification that had he not weakened them, the southern filibuster would have blocked them altogether. Nonetheless, the civil rights community did not, much of the civil rights community did not feel secure about Lyndon Johnson. Some people like Walter Ruther, white, of course, but the head of the, uh, uh, auto workers

union, which basically financed most of the civil rights movement. Uh, Ruther kept saying, no, he's, he really, he has been, uh, not the man we want him to be because he's been from Texas. Now that his, his constituency is, is the entire country, he's going to be with us. He, he's hardest with us. And people like Joe Rao, the liberal lawyer who also did a lot of work for the UAW, agreed with that. And they were trying to convince people like, uh, uh, Roy Wilkins of the NAACP, and even Dr. King, you know, this guy's okay, this guy is on our side. And he was, they were right about that. And what did he say about me? He said, I'm on your side. He said, I'm going to get this through. This is important to me. And I think he mostly convinced them, and I think he mostly convinced them because it was true. I mean, whatever you could say, all sorts of things about Lyndon Johnson, he was sincere in his conviction that the country had to do something about civil rights and he made

compromises and he had made them in the past and he'd make them in the future. And he was a shrewd politician who believed in making deals. But this was important and it was central to his value system. Hmm. Great. Great. Uh, there's a kind of famous, uh, I think it's actually recorded phone call with Richard Russell. What happened? Well, what was that call on that? There were a few, uh, I think this is just a moment, Johnson's saying, uh, I'm going to run over you. Oh. Right. What happened? Well, first of all, yeah. Well, first of all, yeah. Understand that the relationship between it, it's complicated and complicated. Lyndon Johnson always had father figures. Uh, his father, who was very important, uh, who had been a state legislator and was also kind of a liberal for West Texas, populist anti-Clan, um, New Deal, uh, New Dealers, I was, as LBJ always was, um, and then Sam Rayburn, when he came to, uh, the, the Congress

in the 40s, went up right to Rayburn and said, my daddy knows you and you, I mean, he, he, and he kind of adopted him and then when he went to the Senate, Richard Russell, a bachelor from the South, uh, the Johnson's would have him over for Sunday, breakfast very frequently, he became almost part of the family. Richard Russell was an extraordinary man, a leader of the Senate, the leader of the Southern Block in many ways, a real New Dealer and an economic populist, but a, also a real racist. He was not as LBJ and some of the other southerners were and had been reluctantly, I say, segregationist, segregation was deep in his heart as much as it was against LBJ's heart, but he loved Russell. I personally, uh, Johnson, you know, he owed him a lot and he, uh, he was very fond of him, but he called him up, uh, one day, and he, he sought his advice.

He put him on the Warren commission over Russell's objections, but he also told him on the Civil Rights Bill, I'm going to run over you, he's very candid about it. I love you, you're important to me, but I'm going to run over you and, of course, he did and Russell knew he was going to, but it was a, it was an unusual relationship. How does Johnson perform over the next couple of months? Well Johnson performs brilliantly and inclusively. His goal is to bring everyone, or almost everyone, into the Democratic Party establishment coalition. He already had labor. He had much of the minority community. He had, um, most of the northern industrial states except for the corporate community. And one of his big goals was to bring them in to have Henry Ford and, uh, the, uh, other

corporate CEOs be as rabid Democrats as Walter Ruther of the UAW and, uh, and the AFL CIO and all those guys. And he did it in two ways, part of it was policy. He didn't want to push, and I trust policy, for instance. He, one of the things he got angry about Robert Kennedy was that the Justice Department was pursuing anti-trust policy. Johnson at one point told you, Bert Hummer said, you tell that boy to stop doing that or something to that effect. He called him that boy, um, or refer to him. But he also, he, you know, he invited the big corporate, there was one day when so many corporate jets landed at a national airport that there were, you know, the cause, caused airplane delays. And he had them all to dinner at the White House and he told them, I'm the only president you've got. He, that was one of his favorite phrases in general. And, uh, you know, he wanted, he, they were all in this together.

If, if you prosper, we all prosper. And I don't want to see a situation in which we're, we're labor and, and management are always fighting. He understood there was going to be some tension. But he was trying to, he was trying to build a huge coalition. Yeah. And he uses these phrases to quote Isaiah, uh, come let us reason together. That was from Isaiah, that's what he liked to, he liked to, you throw that in at all his speeches. Um, they ended up calling him, uh, prophet Linda. Uh, yes, there was, that was a little bit dismissive. There, you know, he had his, um, not only his critics, there were always those in, in, in the Democratic Party, but especially in the Republican Party and in the press who didn't like, there was a real, first place, they were real ideological Republicans who just didn't like Democrats in the press corps. People think of the liberal press and to some extent that's true, but the liberal press has always included quite a few conservatives at, at columnists, especially who, and they

didn't like them and they thought he was uncouth and they thought he was, I furthermore, he was a, he was kind of a liberal Democrat and some of them didn't like liberal Democrats. Right. Um, um, what's his vision though, he's, he's a man of enormous ambition. What's Johnson hoping to do? Johnson, Johnson was hoping to do no less than, uh, dumb, dominate the country, reform the Democratic Party so that it would dominate the country, uh, create as much consensus and as, as possible and, uh, and create a great society. That was the other thing he was serious about. In addition to civil rights, he really did have this vision of an America which would not only be rich but go beyond rich to build on being prosperous and become, although he was not particularly a sophisticated, uh, deeply educated fellow, but, but become a place

where people would be, would engage in the arts and in the sciences and, and what some people used to call the finer things of life, you know, that, that it would be not just that we would get rich but that we would create beauty and wisdom. That was the theme of his great society speech later in the year and that was also really important to him and it was always part of his vision. And he was trying to finish F.D. on his way. Well, he was trying to finish F.J.F.K.s, he was trying to complete the new deal, although he didn't do the one thing that we, that was not done to complete the new deal until quite recently which is, or maybe not yet, which is a national healthcare plan. That was the great unfinished work of the New Deal and of Truman proposed it, failed, LBJ never really proposed it, but he would have eventually, if he'd stayed president, you know, had, at Johnson 1, run in 1, in 68, and by the way, had he run, I think he might

have won, um, that, that, and had he gotten over the Vietnam thing, he would have done something like that. But yes, he saw himself not only to complete the Kennedy program, but as, as the guy who was going to fulfill most of the dreams of his first political hero, FDR, um, that that was also part of it. Great. Um, January 3rd, someone else steps on to the stage, uh, from the other side of the political aspect. I don't know. Why not? On January 3rd, Barry Goldwater at his home in, uh, in Arizona announced that he was running for president, and it was not a big surprise, although he had been rather ambivalent about it, including with the guy who put together his, uh, really created the goldwater movement, a guy named Cliff White, um, who by then, although nobody knew it, had almost locked up the

nomination, or had set in motion and laid the foundation for the structure that, wrapped up, that, that locked up the nomination, uh, Goldwater was of course far to the right of, um, of Nelson Rockefeller, his major, uh, likely competitor, and of most of the other, uh, possible Republicans, he openly did not accept the New Deal, Social Security, uh, the, uh, the rights of labor unions, um, and other, the other basic, uh, components of the New Deal, uh, which Eisenhower, of course, had accepted in his eight years as president and, and the other Republicans understood that this is the way the world is now, uh, Goldwater was not in that consensus, uh, he was to some extent, and outside of the foreign policy consensus, and yet he was ahead in the polls, uh, not very far ahead, but ahead in the polls, and, um, and he announced his candidacy that day.

Set, set the scene for me, he's just had an operation. He's, he's, how does he look, where is he, and, and, and first of all, he didn't do it in Washington, indeed, no, no, he did it out, he did it in his home in Arizona, and his home had a name as many, uh, Arizona, and I guess others give names to their little estate and it, it was an Indian name. I can't remember exactly what it was, but it was an Indian name. He was on a hill in Navajo, right. He was very, uh, Goldwater, uh, a very interesting man. He also came for, he had no college education, he was a business, business man, but he was very interested in a few things photography. He was actually rather a good photographer, and he was, he was interested in the natural world of Arizona. He had no truck with these in, they were called environmentalists then. They were called conservationists. He disagreed with them on most policy, and he was, of course, was, he did, he was opposed to government doing anything, except building the central Arizona project, a huge irrigation

public power, uh, thing, yeah, um, but he also was very interested in, he was a, he flew, he was a pilot. He'd been, he'd been in the Air National Guard, uh, and he was, he'd been in the Air Force, I believe, and then in the Air National Guard, and he was a pilot, and he was a photographer, and he liked to fiddle around with, and he was a, he liked to fiddle with machinery, and he, uh, and he was interested in, in the Arizona Indians, um, and their, their folklore and their art. And he was a radio, uh, oh right, he was, he was a, he was a ham radio operator, so he, uh, and so it's very cool, what's he did when he walks out? He walks out looking kind, he makes the press come out to Arizona, which I don't think they might, I did, they probably enjoyed the trip, it was January, he wanted to go to Arizona, the publisher's paying for it, I've done that, I, I know that, I know how that

works. Uh, you, um, so, and he looked a little frail, because he'd had this operation, you've still on at least one crotch if not two, um, and he made his standard, uh, uh, political talk, uh, he was offering a big choice, and not just, I don't know that he used the term a choice, not an echo that Phyllis Schlafly either, he does, okay, perhaps he used that term a choice, not an echo, and, um, just, just because we haven't maybe heard in the film. We made this maybe the first time we've hear it. So explain that. Yeah, so what did he, he steps out, he steps out to look, he looks the part, well, he looks the part, right, he's, he's, he's a rugged looking guy, he looks like a, he could be an Arizona cowboy, even though he looks a little frail, because he's had this operation and his, and his knee is still bothering him. But he, he makes his campaign speech, and he, it, it, his usual speech, but he, and he makes it clear, I'm going to be used as this term a choice, not an echo, which was the

title of a book by the conservative, it's not actually, she hasn't written it yet. Oh, yeah. Okay. Right. So this is, okay. I'm not sure when I'm going to bring Phyllis. Okay. Maybe I think you're right, he uses the term a choice, not an echo, which had been popularized by the conservative pamphleteer, I think would be the best way to put it, Phyllis Schlafly. But I'm not sure, not to believe it. Okay. I think she gets that entirely from him. I think that she picks up on that right. Oh, maybe you're right. Okay. I don't, um, maybe you're right. That's my read-on. Okay. So maybe we'll leave Phyllis out of this. Yeah. Okay. Okay. He makes his speech, he makes it clear that he's going to be a choice, not an echo, a phrase he'd used before to distinguish him from Rockefeller and other, even Nixon that people thought might get into the race. George Romney, the governor of Michigan, who was, who eventually did get into the race

and all the others of the Republican establishment, he was making it clear that he was not in the Republican establishment, he was to their right, and he was proud of it. And what makes him, um, what makes him such a sort of break, uh, today we think of his policies and ideas, and they don't seem out of the mainstream at all. But back then, this was new. That's very interesting, Barry Goldwater in 1964 was clearly to the right of the, of that consensus that we've talked about, the established consensus which had dominated the country since the end of World War II, if not even earlier. Um, but he spoke for a portion of the country which quite agreed with him and which was more numerous than people wanted to think, uh, than the, than the establishment wanted

to think in the, in the early 1960s, but which had somehow had no voice and he became their voice. And these were primarily out west, which was a fast, a fast growing part of the country. These were the Western entrepreneurs, you might say some, the traditional, the ranchers, the miners, the logging community, the whole forest products industry, but also the less traditional, the, um, the nuclear engineers and the people building nuclear power plants which were just coming into being or fairly new, uh, people building all sorts of, the, the dams and the, and, and the burgeoning suburbs in Southern California and in Phoenix, all of which of course, totally depended on the federal government for water, for transportation and for their prosperity, state universities, et cetera, et cetera, which were partly federally

funded, but that, if anything, made them more, they didn't want to admit that and it made them more anti-government than, than had they not been so dependent on government. But this was a growing constituency, which, which made itself heard in the Goldwater campaign. Great. Goldwater was extremely conservative, but he's surprising on racial issues and other things. How can I understand, um, him a little bit there? Well, bar Goldwater was not a bigot, but neither was he a boat rocker on this area. For instance, he had, he lived, he grew up in a segregated city, a community area, the Phoenix area. And he had a department store, his family owned a department store and he ended up running it. And they gave out an award to high school students every year and they gave out two awards, one to the white kids, you know, the, the highest score, the leading, uh, senior of some class in the white school and other in the black school or the Negro school as they were

then. And he never saw anything wrong with that. So he certainly was not a bigot. First place, by background, he was Jewish. His grandfather, uh, who had come over to this country, was Jewish. His father had changed the name from Goldwater to Goldwater and had converted more out of, more out of, uh, social and economic ambition than out of conviction, I think. But Barry was raised as an Episcopalian, but he knew what his background was and he knew that his parents and grandparents had suffered had been the objects of bigotry. So he had, he had that in his background and he himself was not personally a bigot. But neither was he particularly interested in the problem, I would say that. And, you know, you could see that throughout the year as he reacted to the Civil Rights Bill and ended up voting against culture and against the bill. And, uh, he's not, uh, I want to follow up on some of you just said, uh, because I think

that is interesting that Goldwater has, oh, uh, he may not be a bigot, but his position and his campaign certainly attracted bigots, right? Oh, and not only did it attract bigots, it relied on, it was totally dependent on them in order to have any chance at all. Now Goldwater himself is a little ambivalent about all this stuff, um, and, well, I'm talking about, about one thing I'm specifically talking about is a movie that was made, we'll get to that later. Okay. Well, they're okay. Oh, all right. Let's go back a little history here about the conservative movement. It, um, the John Birch Society was an important part of it, although, and Goldwater would never

disavow the Birchers, William Buckley, the sort of leading intellectual guru of the movement did. And he got, and he, the Birchers and the others, there was an anti-Semitic, uh, faction within that very, very far right movement, and Buckley took that on in his, um, magazine, the National Review. But the far right people who took over the young Republicans, um, and the other, and the young Americans for Freedom, who met, uh, at a lawn at Buckley's estate in Sharon Connecticut a couple of years earlier, rather a similar, a mirror image to the formation of the students for a democratic society, also outdoors, uh, elsewhere in the country, but at roughly the same time.

And with, by the way, some similar outlooks and some different ones, um, but there was always a segregationist and even a racist element, um, not so much in the YAF, uh, but, but among those very hardline conservatives who were a major, an indispensable part of the conservative movement that nominated Goldwater Cliff White, who was also not personally a bigot, knew it, and accepted it. I mean, he got Goldwater the nomination by quietly winning all the delegations in all the Southern states, and he knew what he was doing. And that's why Goldwater really couldn't vote for the Civil Rights Bill, because he had made that bed, and he had to lie in it. By the way, I should say, I don't know if this is totally wrong, that Buckley, while he did take on the anti-Semitic fringe, also was pro-segregationist for quite a long

while, up through, the National Review opposed the Civil Rights Bill of 64. Yeah. I also have forgotten that, uh, good old Bill Rehnquist was against Brown v. Board of Education. Good old Bill Rehnquist started his public life as a thug, scaring black or trying to intimidate black and Hispanic voters away from the polls in Arizona. My former neighbor, well, he had a summer place, uh, Orleans County. How did Goldwater choose to staff and run this campaign? Well, Barry Goldwater had kind of, uh, an ambivalent relationship with the guy who won him the nomination, Cliff White.

We're not there. Okay. Goldwater wanted his own people, uh, to be, uh, to be his campaign staff. Not, not unusual. Most people like their own people, but it, but the Goldwater movement, there was a, was separate from the Goldwater campaign, because the Goldwater movement started off as separate from Goldwater. And that's why Goldwater was always a little ambivalent about am I really running? These people are helping me get the nomination, but I haven't decided to run yet. Then after he does decide to run, there's still this sort of uneasy relationship with the movement. So when he decides to become a candidate to run his campaign, he chooses his own, you know, oh, friends and buddies from Arizona. And that's great, um, uh, should I not do that? Um, um, um, uh, it's great to pick your friends, whatever they call them, the Arizona market, right?

Right. But there's one little problem with Dennis Kichel and, and these other people tell me what they're talking about. They didn't know, they'd never done this before. They hadn't the foggiest idea what they were doing. They were, you know, they were kind of connected in, in, in Republican circles. They knew some people, some phone numbers, but they didn't know how this game was played. Whereas the, the movement, Cliff White and his people, they knew how the, the nomination game was played and they were playing it and they were playing it rather well. And how was the game played in contrast to the way we think of, uh, presidential elections today? Well, very, very, very different because this was pre reform, whether the reform has been an improvement or not, we can do is another discussion. The, in both parties, delegate, the first place, the conventions really made decisions or at least had the potential. In fact, this, this Republican convention did not, you know, could have, uh, chosen another candidate.

By the time it got there was unlikely, but the conventions really made decisions and delegates were not chosen in an open transparent manner with people either voting or going to caucuses, openly choosing delegates who would go to the next level of caucus and the next and finally picked delegates. In many states, the governor just met with a few friends and big contributors in a room when, which may or may not have been filled with smoke and picked a delegation. And in where, that's where the, uh, of the governor's party of the other party, the, the state party leadership would do it. The other party in the south, and remember in those days, the south, while segregation ists, those segregationists were Democrats. So the Republican party had almost no governors in the south, hardly any members of the legislatures. They were very weak, but they had an organization. The trick was to go to those organizations and get them to choose pro-gold water delegates, which you could kind of do while nobody was paying any attention.

Because they didn't hold public gatherings. They didn't hold caucuses or primaries. They just got together and said, Charlie, Joe, and Edgar are going to be our delegates. And they're going to vote. And they're going to be, and they were all for gold water. And it was, it was largely the, the racial issue or the, they were also, there was some other aspects of conservatism that these people, uh, believed in. But, yeah. And it was the genius that, the polls on these people, you know, a guy named Cliff White, an academic from upstate New York, uh, also not a bigot personally, but a very, a real believer in gold water conservatism in a very, very weak central government and then, uh, pro-business, uh, pro-establishment, uh, kind of, I actually, it's hard to tell to my knowledge white never wrote anything, uh, expanding on his ideology. You kind of have to, have to read it into, through his actions.

Right. Um, so who does gold water pick instead of Cliff White to run the campaign? A guy named Dennis and Kitchell, uh, a friend from Arizona who was a active Republican and an active Republican, a lead, a contributor and a, believe also a corporate executive, a lawyer, a lawyer, a lawyer, a lawyer and also represented some, uh, some major businesses out in Arizona, including I think some of the mining, uh, interests. And Dean Birch. And Dean Birch, also an Arizona who he made him the head of the Republican National Committee eventually. And that's what Cliff White knew that he, yeah, we'll get there. Okay. Uh, and Richard Clindy. Uh, the late Richard Clindy's now, my new, who was, ended up being attorney general for a while and, ended up in prison for a while, I believe, too, um, but also an old friend from Arizona.

Right. Um, and what did they see as their mission, these, this kind of Arizona mafia? Uh, well, they had a few missions. Of course, they wanted to, well, if they could have elected gold water, that would have been their mission. I think they knew they weren't likely to elect him. Uh, I think they also understood that they didn't really have to nominate him because that part of it had been done. So their mission in part was to protect him in a funny way to protect Barry Goldwater from the Barry Goldwater movement and to maintain a little separation between White and his, well, zealous might be a little strong, but let's say intense conservative activists. And Goldwater, who was not, was out of the consensus, but was not out of the establishment. First place, personally, he was very much a warm, likeable guy among the people he'd liked were John F. Kennedy. In fact, the two of them had talked about possibly when they thought they would run against each other in 64, getting a train together, a joint whistle stop and having a civilized

conversation and debate on the issues. So Goldwater was not a, you know, he was, he was almost part of the Senate club. He was a guy who got along with people, including the, the people he didn't agree with, and the other Republicans, he was a good loyal Republican. He believed in electing Republicans, even Republicans, you know, he, if there was a liberal Republican Senator who was in trouble, Barry Goldwater would go help him. He was a party guy. And these guys were party guys, right, right. But they were running a different kind of campaign, an ideological, a much more ideological campaign. Yes. And they looked down on the whole idea, what kind of candidate was Barry Goldwater? Well, Barry Goldwater in retrospect was a terrible candidate. After all, he, he lost by 20 percentage points. So you can't say he was, it was not a successful candidacy.

Although I, you know, the fact that a guy who was this far out of the, out of the consensus got 40% of the vote, and he wasn't a good candidate, should have sent more warnings to the establishment than it did at the time. And he, you know, he, he said outrageous things, and he did not really build the bridges. And of course, famously at his, let's not get to your head, I'm just talking about, like, he doesn't even really want to run. Well, he's kind of a reluctant candidate at the beginning. And he's, Barry Goldwater was kind, oh, he wasn't that old. He was only in his late 50s, but he was a little bit of a grouch in a good way, in a kind of a charming way. But, you know, don't tell me what to do. I don't want to go. He didn't want to go to New Hampshire and press, press the flesh. Unlike Lyndon Johnson, who loved pressing the flesh, Barry Goldwater didn't really want to go up there and be cold after was from Arizona.

I didn't want to, you know, New Hampshire is where the first primary is. You have to go up there and, and it, it used to be, well, it used to be a little later than it is now, but it was in March. And late February, early March, it's cold in New Hampshire. And he didn't particularly want to do all that stuff. He didn't, he liked his routines. And he didn't want to say necessarily the sound bite that the people told him to say. Right. He was resistant to the, he didn't really, he wasn't part of the TVA. He'd like all the politicians of that area. He'd grown up earlier when you didn't have to encapsulate anything into, well, it wasn't quite a hundred and forty clicks of the keyboard then, like it is now. But it was, it was a brief and pithy phrase and he didn't think that way. Who were the young Americans for free? The young Americans freedom were a very, very conservative organization that started a few years, I can't remember exactly what year, but a few years before 1964, they were really inspired by, by William Buckley.

And they were, they were that faction of the conservative movement and that said, even the Republican Party has bought into the new deal, has bought into the regulated welfare state and we're again it. And we're going to create a, a vocal and articulate faction that says why we're against it and, and tries to mobilize those who are opposed to social security, the Wagner Labor Act. I don't think they ever went so far as being against federal deposit insurance corporation. But down deep, they probably didn't like that either. But all the other new deal programs that, that either regulated or, or, or reduced the risk of poor people and low income people, they were, they were, they believed in less a fair individualism, or they said they did. Nobody is entirely consistent in that kind of thing, rather like Barry Goldwater for less

a fair individualism, but please build this multi-million dollar dam system in Arizona. And I don't, I don't know that the YA, I've ever opposed that either. But that's, that's, that's, and they, you know, they, they were the seeds of an important movement. Um, um, what was he tapping into when he said a choice not an echo, uh, Philist Schlafly and her, I don't want to get into her necessary, but her, Western, there was a group of people who felt ignored and distanced, right, right, well, who are these people that were going to become this army of the faithful behind the line? Well, part of this, uh, conservative movement, uh, was, was kind of tribalism, which all politics is, and equal on the other side, it, we don't like that issue because we don't like those

people who do like that issue, that, that issue position. So some of it was just resentment and a feeling, and you see that still happening today on many issues, those people look down on me in mind. And therefore I become resentful and even sometimes a little petulant, usually you don't admit the petulant part, uh, maybe you don't even admit the resentful part, but so you had a, a rising business community in the west of, uh, entrepreneurs who were, and, and the burgeoning, uh, new suburbia, all of it created by government, but people, as I said, didn't want to admit that, and they became very proud of their, what they had accomplished on their own, they thought. And to some extent, of course, they had accomplished it on their own. They, they were, they were capable, hardworking people, and they didn't like the idea that their taxes were being used to, to help people who they thought were less capable and

less hardworking, and they didn't like the idea that, uh, somebody was telling them that they couldn't, uh, although that, it hadn't quite happened yet, but they could see it coming that they couldn't, uh, undertake certain projects, because it might mess up the natural world. There was, there was a little bit of that already. And go to what I had a great line, which is something to be affected by. The only reason people are poor is because they're, they don't work hard enough. They don't work hard. Right, right. Well, that's that, that, that, go what is you, go what, go what is you of poverty was a, the poor you shall have always with, with you or whatever the exact line is. And it was basically the fault of the poor, that if people, there were, there was enough work around, if people really wanted to work, there were jobs for them. And if they didn't take them, it's because they, they didn't want to take them or they couldn't qualify for them, and it was their fault if they couldn't qualify for them.

And again, this touched a chord with a lot of people, because of course it's not entirely wrong. I mean, people, there are jobs. Some people don't try very hard, and some people don't qualify for them now. Could they, if they'd had better luck in where they grew up and where they went to school or whatever, but you, it's hard to absolutely say with absolute certainty, no, that's totally false. It's probably, it's probably easy to say it's, it's not quite as true as, it's oversimplified. But at least to the average person who did take advantage of the opportunity to go to school and to, and to learn skills, and then to apply those skills on the job, it, it didn't seem all that wrong. Quick, let's, let's break for a couple of minutes, I just take a minute. Oh, yeah. Quiet, please. Is there a scene early in, in Johnson's administration January about Vietnam that you could imagine becoming a kind of a moment in January 29th when they, they come back from, is it coming

back from Vietnam, or is it just that there's a coup? Well, I think some, some of the people had been there, and there was a big, magnetic era comes back. Magnar comes back. He had been. Okay. And he produces national security member of 288, which feels prophetic to me. What happens in March, with Robert McNamara? Well, McNamara went to Vietnam with one of the generals, with General Taylor. And they came back and said, things are terrible, but we're going to win, which actually people had been saying for a while, and would continue to say until, until, I don't know when, until we lost. But it was, you know, we couldn't lose because we had to win, and so you couldn't say, in a way McNamara was very candid and honest by saying things were not going that well.

But he also had to, we all, we, all the leaders in the country, found it sort of constitutionally, psychologically, personally impossible to say that this was not going to succeed, except in a way, Lyndon Johnson, who privately was very, very worried that it would fail and said so in a couple of, on a couple of occasions, fairly early, in one of his conversations with Senator Russell. But he couldn't figure out how to get out of it. And in retrospect, you know, the politics of it were not, remember 1964, or 1963, when he really started, this is not that long after 1948, when Mao Zedong and his communists took over China and the cry of who lost China began.

Whether China was ever ours to lose was sort of forgotten in that question, but Johnson was really worried and legitimately worried that if we lost, if we went, if we got out of Vietnam and communists took over, that it would give very conservative Republicans a tremendous weapon to beat him and the entire Democratic Party over the head with the whole lost Vietnam, and where else are we going to lose, and we're going to have to fight them in San Francisco, another Korea, and another core, exactly, and of course, but LBJ kind of believed that himself in a way. He accepted the domino theory, perhaps because he was a domino player. He and his father used to play dominoes a lot. It is interesting, though, what an incredible fixation we had on that idea, and of course, the wise men are telling him. The wise men?

The candidate, the wise, and the people he looked up to, the people before whom he felt somewhat insecure, you know, the Ivy League educated, the guys had gone to Yale Law School, the Dean Atchisons, the Henry Cabot Lodge, the other members of the diplomatic and national security establishment, were saying, not only can we prevail, but we must that if we lose this war, it will be a terrible blow to national security. They didn't quite spell out just what would happen always, but they said, you know, we could not afford to lose. What comes out of this trip, this return, and this sort of debate? A commitment to do more, to send more... Oh, yeah, the memorandum with a number, number 288, what's the outcome of this? The outcome of it is a memo given the number 288, which outlined how we were going to win

in Vietnam, and outlined, I believe, even, that we had to send more troops at that point. So escalation? What, escalation was, it was not... Yeah, and actually, I guess this was really the first escalation of the Johnson, of the Johnson Youth. National security level 28. National security level 288, which is the beginning of escalation, of putting more American troops, and now we're crossing that line from just American combat individuals, troops, to American combat units, and that's a very, very big line to cross. What's the consequences of McNamara's memo becoming U.S. government policy? Well, it's all...

Now we're all in. You know, you can't... Once you... This went on through the Nixon years. Once you commit like that, then it makes it almost impossible to pull out, because then you've lost. There was a point there where we could have tried to engineer something, Russell, in one of his conversations with LBJ, says, why don't we engineer another coup? We already sort of engineered one. And why don't we engineer another coup and have the new guy say, we're okay, you guys can leave. Then we can leave with honor. And Johnson said, yeah, that's a good idea. But he didn't do it. And he didn't do it for all those reasons of worrying about a who lost Vietnam thing. But once you really commit, as much as we committed under that memo, it makes it not quite impossible, but pretty close to impossible, because then you've lost a war. And Lyndon Johnson didn't want to be the first president to lose a war. He wouldn't have been, of course, James Madison lost the war of 1812 pretty well.

But then we had that post-war big victory in New Orleans, so we could say we didn't really lose that war. But that was a pivotal point there. In 1964, Betty Pradein publishes a couple of really. Yes, yes, I did.