“Barry Goldwater finally did win his election–in 1980.”
–George Will, syndicated conservative columnist.
In 1964, Senator Barry Goldwater, Rep., Ariz., ran for president
of the United States on the Republican ticket against incumbent
President Lyndon Johnson. He lost by a wider margin than any
candidate before or since. But from his defeat emerged perhaps the
greatest political ideology of the last century, rivaled only by
Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal.” This ideology, known simply today
as “conservatism,” has been the basis and the building block for
every Republican president since Richard Nixon.
And, in the wake of the Republican triumph last week on what was
basically a modified conservative platform, members of the American
left have been left to wonder just where exactly the future of the
party is going to lie. The answer might be found closer than they
think: Howard Dean.
Dean, the former governor of Vermont and anti-Bush Democratic
primary participant, was the front runner for the nomination up
until the night before the Iowa caucuses. His demise was one of the
more amusing stories in recent presidential political history, but
what was lost in his ruin was the fact that he successfully set up
the best grassroots and fund-raising campaigns in the history of
the Democratic party, and, while he may never occupy the Oval
Office, his legacy, much like Goldwater’s, could be the future of
the party.
Goldwater was like nothing the Republican party had ever seen.
Before him the Republican leadership actually identified itself
rather fondly as “liberal” and “progressive.” In fact, a
northeastern Republican Senator named Prescott Bush, the father and
grandfather of later Presidents, took great strides to characterize
himself and his party as anything but the party of isolationism and
laissez-faire, the two things that had epitomized it up until World
War II.
But Goldwater, the man who once famously said in the darkest
moments of the Cold War that America should “lob a nuke into the
men’s room at the Kremlin,” which in today’s world would rightly be
characterized as a politically incorrect way of stumping for a
“foreign policy of pre-emption,” was not a Bush man. He beat the
“anti-big government” drum until the last and rallied to his cause
thousands of previously apolitical young men and women, including a
certain upper-class high school student from the south suburbs of
Chicago named Hillary Clinton and an army brat who at the time was
residing in Texas, named Pam Smedile.
One of them became a radical left winger and the other went on
to be my mother. They both once capriciously called themselves
“Goldwater Girls,” but that is where the similarities end.
Anyway, Goldwater was successful in shifting the center of the
government from the hands of northeastern elitists and moving it
westward. And it wasn’t just the Republican party that experienced
the shift. There is, in fact, a reason why every president since
Kennedy has been from either California, Texas, Georgia or
Arkansas, (i.e. not Massachusetts or even Minnesota). There were,
of course, other outside influences that helped aid the
conservative revolution, including Lyndon Johnson’s historic
signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which effectively forced
almost every southern white male into the waiting arms of the
Republican party, and, of course, the miserable failure that was
the second term of Johnson itself and all of its failed
policies.
In fact, those failures were correctly and humorously epitomized
years later by Ronald Reagan when he said, “Liberals fought
poverty, and poverty won.”
The tenacity of Goldwater, the failures of Johnson, the
politicking of Richard Nixon and the hiccups that were the
presidencies of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter set up the single
greatest triumph, to that point, in American conservativism: Ronald
Reagan. The man who founded “the great city on the hill,” who
successfully slaughtered the best the Democrats had to offer in
successive elections, who cut taxes, increased the military and
defeated the evil empire of the Soviet Union was the embodiment of
everything that Barry Goldwater had wanted out of America.
No more isolationism and appeasement. Reagan didn’t lob a nuke
into the john at the Kremlin, but for all intents and purposes, he
might as well have. Russia crumbled, and the United States came out
of a recession and firmly entrenched itself as a global hegemony:
The world be damned.
It’s no coincidence that all three presidents since Reagan,
including Clinton, have focused their foreign policies on military
and economic might and domestic policies on conservative values and
enabling the ever growing middle class. Ironic how all of those
policies were the foundation of Barry Goldwater’s earth
shatteringly unsuccessful presidential bid, and now, without them,
candidates are not given the time of day.
So, in steps Howard Dean, the “crazy” former governor with his
wild ideas about rebuilding alliances, immediately pulling the
troops out of Iraq, nationalizing health care and supporting gay
marriages. The guy seems out to lunch, but to examine him more
fully, as should have been done with Goldwater, you’ll find a
couple of ideas that are not that far out of the mainstream.
For instance, Dean is pro-death penalty, pro-tax cuts (though he
governed Vermont where they didn’t need the surplus of tax revenue
anyway), anti-unilateralism and is basically pro-life, though he
says he realizes that this country isn’t ready, nor will it ever
be, to get rid of abortion.
He sounds pretty reasonable until you remember that it’s HOWARD
DEAN! The same tagline that Democrats used on Goldwater in ’64 was
used on Dean 40 years later: Can you really see this guy with his
finger on the button? The answer to both is an obvious no, but the
thousands of minions whose lives they affected and the effect that
those people, in turn, had on our country or still might have on
the country is undeniable.
Goldwater set the tone for a party that was in disarray. His
mark on the Republican party, and thus, the country has been
long-lasting and indelible. Dean was the flag bearer of the
Democratic party for one fading summer. His Deaniacs followed him
from New Hampshire to California and all points in between.
It’s premature to say that a believer in Dean’s message will one
day grow up to drastically change this country, like Ronald Reagan
and George W. Bush have, but with the current status of the
fledgling minority party, why not? Howard Dean might just be to the
Democrats what Barry Goldwater was to the Republicans.
Jack Smedile is a senior marketing major.
