The Myth of Reagoldwater

Ross Douthat mostly says everything that needs to be said, but let me just state it very clearly -- the idea that Ronald Reagan's charisma and sunny disposition won landslide victories for Barry Goldwater's substantive views on the size and scope of government is false. Very false.

Reagan was, famously, the political beneficiary of a backlash against the liberalism of the 1960s and 1970s. The important thing to remember about this is that unless you think people were lashing back against the Peace Corps, this was a backlash entirely against programs that didn't exist during Barry Goldwater's 1964 campaign. It was only after Goldwater lost that "welfare as we knew it," Medicare, Medicaid, major federal involvement in education, federal environmental policy, federal consumer safety regulations, affirmative action, etc. came into exist. Reagan's political mobilization was aimed at a subset of this post-Goldwater flowering of big government. He didn't tilt against Medicare, by far the biggest Great Society program. And he certainly didn't campaign for the repeal of the New Deal (indeed, he repeatedly explicitly disavowed any intention of doing so).

The Goldwater-Reagan similarity is that they both led "conservative" factions of the GOP against "accommodationist" factions. But between 1964 and 1976 the country experienced a massive policy revolution that shifted the status quo way, way, way to the left of where it had been. Reagan then simultaneously shifted the GOP to the right of where Gerald Ford had initially positioned it while shifting the conservative movemenet to the left -- to acceptance of a federal responsibility for retirement security and quality education, to acceptance of the Civil Rights Act (opposition to which was, of course, Goldwater's only reliable vote-getter in '64), and to acceptance of popular middle class entitlement programs.

Comments

As individuals- Goldwater and Reagan were night and day. No one other than Nancy really knew Reagan- his "sunniness" was just for public consumption, and he was an FBI informant rat, a fantasist, and a cold, uncaring father. Whereas, Goldwater was (apart from his near-Bircher politics) by all acounts a good guy, a stand-up guy even. Goldwater was well-liked even by his opponents (JFK, LBJ). In contrast, Reagan's veep (G.H.W. Bush) thought he was bizarre, even odious. He may not have ever had a single real friend.

Posted by Trevor | March 4, 2007 5:00 PM

The important thing to remember about this is that unless you think people were lashing back against the Peace Corps, this was a backlash entirely against programs that didn't exist during Barry Goldwater's 1964 campaign.

Grasshopper - in the early 60s there was still considerable unhappiness and backlash against the New Deal and state "socialism" (i.e., social security and other federal meddling in the economy). The first chance to finally repeal all that disappeared when Ike decided to govern from the Center but plenty of Conservatives were quite preterbed that that stuff still hadn't been done away with and a lot of that energized the Goldwater movement. In retrospect it was the deaththroes of opposition to New Dealism as a primary political force in this country - the New Deal and opposition to it defined the main political conflict for a generation -but Johnson's triumph took what was begun in the New Deal to an entirely new level, and demographics and the cultural issues of the 60s changed the political landscape But I think you're missing a whole lot of what the country and politics were about in 1964 by ignoring or missing that whole dynamic. As improbable as it sounds now, in 1964 it was still considered very much in the realm of political possibility that Social Security could be repealed.

Posted by Ethel-to-Tilly | March 4, 2007 5:19 PM

Duh... - completely misread your post - in the words of that great American Emily Letilla - "Never mind"

Posted by Ethel-to-Tilly | March 4, 2007 5:21 PM

Of course this assumes that people voting for Reagan were doing so on the basis of his policy beliefs. But if I remember the data in The Paradox of Mass Politics accurately, that was not really the case in 1980. When polled on the policy positions advocated by the candidates, I believe the public preferred Carter's policies to Reagan's (in 5 of 6 issue areas, I think). Reagan might have been preferred to Carter, but that didn't mean his policy positions were (at least in 1980).

Posted by scott | March 4, 2007 5:25 PM

Right. Goldwater pointed out in 1964 that the Civil Rights Act would lead to racial quotas, but nobody believed him. Hubert Humphrey famously promised to eat the bill if it brought quotas.

Posted by Steve Sailer | March 4, 2007 5:49 PM

It's worth remembering, though, that Mr. California Sunshine did make an assault on Social Security, which was beaten back by Tip O'Neil's Dems, resulting in a compromise settlement that increased the payroll tax. The Reagan administration was faced with a Democratic Congress, which limited its freedom of action. One should also remember that the common thread holding all the right-wing factions together from that day to this has been authoritarianism. "Small government" and doing away with popular middle class entitlements were never ends in themselves, but components of an effort to impose greater social discipline on the population. The conservative movement, it seems to me, didn't shift to the left so much as learn the lesson that it could not achieve its goals simply by capturing the presidency--they needed to shift public attitudes, break the Democratic hold on Congress, develop a legal and constitutional theory of expanded executive authority, and so on. The failure of the Reagan administration to advance significant features of the rightist agenda is partly what's behind the hyper-aggressive Kulturpolitik that the right has pursued for the last 20 years. The GW Bush administration was supposed to be the culmination of this long-term strategy.

Posted by Jacob | March 4, 2007 5:50 PM

There was no "backlash against the liberal programs of the 1960's and 1970's" except that in the South, white Democrats deserted the party in order to join the Repubicans, who signalled through code language and actions that they were the party of the racists. Reagan opened his 1980 campaign in Philadephia, Mississippi, the town infamous for the murder of Goodman, Cheney, and Schwerner, and never mentioned their names. Every southern racist understood the meaning of what Reagan had done.

Reagan won the 1980 election with 50.7% of the popular vote. He defeated a weakened president who had barely beaten back a powerful primary challenge within his own party, who was facing an economic inflationary crisis not of his making (in fact it was resolved by the firm action of Carter's appointment to head the Fed, Paul Volcker, but not soon enough to help Carter in the 1980 election). The Iran hostage crisis and the associated gasoline shortage, also not Carter's fault, added to sense of crisis. Carter was widely perceived as ineffectual by liberals and moderates (resulting in the traction obtained by the independent candidate, the liberal Republican John Anderson, who polled over 6%). Even so, if Ted Kennedy had campaigned for Carter, he probably would have won, but Kennedy's selfish pique plunged the Democratic party into disunity.

Reagan did little or nothing to end "big government." He dismantled no agencies, did not significantly cut welfare (Clinton did that), and he presided over a restructuring of social security that saved it (at the cost of making it less progressive).

Posted by Boix | March 4, 2007 5:53 PM

It's worth noting that Reagan did not emerge fully grown from the head of Gerald Ford in 1980. He was elected Governor of California in 1966 as the candidate of Goldwaterian conservatives, and he immediately took the mantle of Goldwater's political heir in the 60s. At the 1968 convention, conservative Goldwater types thought about trying to nominate him against Nixon (there was also talk of an alliance between the Republican left and right to create a Rockefeller/Reagan ticket to dethrone Nixon, but nothing came of it), and he was, generally throughout the 60s and 70s, seen as the political heir of Goldwater. This, of course, doesn't necessarily say very much about his substantive positions, but there's more to the Goldwater/Reagan connection than that Goldwater led conservatives in the 60s, and Reagan did the same thing in the 80s. Reagan emerged almost immediately as Goldwater's heir, and as, potentially at least, the conservative who could be elected president where Goldwater could not.

Posted by John | March 4, 2007 6:03 PM

1. James Earl Carter lost the 1980 election because he was correctly perceived to be an ineffective dolt who screwed up everything he touched. The notion that he was not responsible for the situation in Iran is total crap. His dislike of the Shah because of the latters heavy handed rule led to the current Islamic fascist government that makes the Shah look like an angel.

2. Goldwater, if he were alive today would, would be appalled at the f****** born-again hijacking of the Republican party. He would have had no truck with a**holes like Falwell and Dobson. One should recall that his position on gays in the military was that the generals should worry more about whether recruits could shoot straight and less about their private life.

Posted by SLC | March 4, 2007 6:05 PM

boix made the point i was going to make, so let me instead turn to a small point of john's: actually, there was a serious draft reagan movement at the '68 gop convention. in the end, what held the convention firmly for nixon was the southern strategy, or, more specifically, strom thurmond's embrace of nixon as a result of nixon's embrace of a southern strategy.

Posted by howard | March 4, 2007 6:09 PM

It might be worth reading the speech Reagan gave in 1964 when he endorsed Goldwater in California. No shortage of government programs for him to denounce while at the same time accepting the existence of social security (which he nevertheless harshly criticizes, as you'd expect).

Posted by eb | March 4, 2007 6:20 PM

There was a backlash against liberal policies/liberalism in the 60's but it wasn't "mainstream". Look at the policies Nixon enacted. Republicans don't run against liberal policies they run against liberals and the perception that somehow liberals have made America weaker. Carter was done in by the oil crunch and the Iranian revolution but Reagan was running against the 'liberals who lost Vietnam' as much as Carter.

Posted by Mondale | March 4, 2007 6:21 PM

It should be noted that although Reagan was to be a sure a darling of the OC right in California that loved Goldwater and had developed a bit of a track record of saying quite radically conservative things before 1966, his actual two terms in office were quite moderate. His time in office saw taxes raised and legalized abortion, after all

Really, the major conservative things he did had to do with higher education, where he fired Clark Kerr, revamped the Board of Regents and made in-state students start paying, as well providiing the appearance of a crack down on campus radicals by things like sending in the National Guard to end the "People's Park" in Berkeley. Also, he quite strongly backed agribusiness against Cesar Chavez's United Farmworkers.

The breaks on California's welfare state came after Reagan had left office. Indeed, one could argue that - although symbollically and personally much more liberal than Reagan - Jerry Brown actually did a lot more to reduce the size of California government (Brown was a strange and ineffective governor in many ways, as an aside). But the real key/killer was Prop 13 in 1978, which has basically defined Cali politics subsequently.

BTW, I totally agree with those who understand authoritarianism as being key to the conservative movement and to Reagan's appeal. Put it to you this way: Reagan two big victories - in California in '66 and nationally in '80 came after people after a period of perceived crisis. People know a lot about the national climate in '80, but Reagan would never have become governor in 1966 without the Berkeley Free Speech Movement in '64 and the Watts Riots in '65. Reagan's appeal was always an appeal to his ability to project his belief the traditional - say pre 1960s American - order's fundamental goodness and his ability to protect it from the challenge of ungrateful minoriites - be they intellectual, racial, cultural, sexual.

To this day, this is the fundamental basis of post 1960s conservatism's appeal - the particular targets may change, but the basic principles that drove Reagan's campaign in 1966 are fundamentally still operative.

Posted by Ben P | March 4, 2007 6:54 PM

In contrast, Goldwater's appeal was different. To be sure, he was a much inferior media politician than Reagan, but this isn't really the important contrast.

Goldwater tried to win people over to particular positions in which he believed; Reagan tried to win people over to a particular vision of American in which he believed.

Posted by Ben P | March 4, 2007 6:59 PM

Re: ). The Iran hostage crisis and the associated gasoline shortage, also not Carter's fault,

Whose fault were they then? Congress? The Courts? The tooth fairy? You are largely right that Carter inherited (from Johnson and Nixon) the economic woes of the late 70s. But the buck for a foreign policy debacle really does and should stop in the Oval Office. God forbid twenty years from now someone should be writing, "The Iraq War, which was not really George Bush's fault."

Posted by JonF | March 4, 2007 7:22 PM

I think you've got a major factual error here. AFDC, which was the centerpiece of "welfare as we knew it" and one of the, if not the major cause of the backlash you describe, was a New Deal program, not a Great Society program. It started out as a relatively small program in the 30's and very gradually ballooned into a big one, but LBJ had very little to do with that.

Posted by T | March 4, 2007 9:13 PM

The elephant in the room that MY and Douhat are forgetting is the Cold War, not that the other stuff is unimportant. Both were anti squishes, 'we win and they lose' guys on that, while Reps like Mr. Detente Nixon, forget about any Dems by the 70's, were 'liberals' in this regard.

I also find that Goldwaters 'Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice', line not all that different form 'We will bear any burden ... in the defense of liberty' line of Kennedy's to mean exactly the same thing. Am I missing anything, or is that Kennedy was a Dem and Goldwater a Rep all one needs to know?

Posted by j mct | March 4, 2007 9:29 PM

"Am I missing anything, or is that Kennedy was a Dem and Goldwater a Rep all one needs to know?"

Well, I think people remember Kennedy as being more liberal than he actually was, primarily for rhetorical/stylistic reasons. He was first and foremost a foreign policy guy/Cold Warrior. He had little interest in domestic issues. But even so, the perception of Kennedy vs. someone like Goldwater was large at the time, and in some ways rested on significant substantive differences.

In the context of the 1964 election, Goldwater was saying things like he wanted to abolish social security, he opposed the civil rights act of '64 (granted, and this is rare when people say things like this, but in this case, true, because he had a principled commitment to states rights), and that he wouldn't rule out using nuclear weapons in Vietnam. Also, it was the kind of people who supported him - particularly, his links to the John Birch Society, which really was an extremist organization in many ways.

S\

Posted by Ben P | March 4, 2007 10:00 PM

"The elephant in the room that MY and Douhat are forgetting is the Cold War, not that the other stuff is unimportant. Both were anti squishes, 'we win and they lose' guys on that, while Reps like Mr. Detente Nixon, forget about any Dems by the 70's, were 'liberals' in this regard."

Nixon had a reputation as a hardline Cold Warrior. You're just taking into account his detente with China and to a lesser extent with the Soviet Union. He also prosecuted the Vietnam War quite vigorously when he was in office.

Something to keep in mind, too, is that foreign policy issues were not that significant in creating the decline of liberalism in the late 60s. I think from the vantage point of the early 21st century, people have a tendency to overrate how important issues these were. Things like the counter culture, black power, busing, the new left, etc. were the big issues at the time.

As to the '80 election, you'd be more correct - but again this ultimately had more to do with Iran than the Soviet Union. was in 1964

Posted by Ben P | March 4, 2007 10:05 PM

"foreign policy issues were not that significant in creating the decline of liberalism in the late 60s."
I'm pretty much in agreement. "Law and order" was the political catch-phrase of the day. Although anti-Communism in foreign policy was of primary importance to elites and to certain conservative factions, domestic issues were probably decisive for most ordinary voters. Concern about rising crime was, taken by itself, perfectly legitimate, for there was in fact a massive increase in the crime rate during the 1960s. Conservative propaganda, however, linked runaway crime to such phenomena as campus unrest, the counterculture, and "permissiveness" in general. With a strong assist from right-wing demagoguery, the phrase "law and order" came to signify much more than just a concern about crime in the popular imagination. In any case, I think that the "law and order" issue, much more than Vietnam, was the wedge that the right used to break up the New Deal coalition. This is often forgotten today.

As for Kennedy, a cold warrior through and through until chastened by the Cuban missile crisis, he was by no means a liberal poster boy. That bellicose inaugural address was widely derided by the left at the time.

Posted by Jacob | March 4, 2007 10:53 PM

This is a superb thread. It's true: Goldwater was really running against the New Deal more than Kennedy and Johnson, and his attacks were mostly aimed at Republicans who "ratified" it, like Ike, Nixon and Rockefeller.

One could argue that his election ushered in the period of heightened liberalism, because his landslide loss encouraged LBJ to believe the country wanted him to complete what his mentor and hero FDR had started.

But you also have to credit the gravitational pull of Goldwater's hawkishness for JFK and LBJ's Vietnam escalations. They didn't want to look "weak."

The key point is that Reagan won as a conservative by overseeing a strategic shift away from Goldwater's agenda, not by enacting it. In 1980, the Barry Goldwater of '64 would have lost to Jimmy Carter in a big way.

The history question for Democrats is: Is Barack Obama this era's Goldwater, or its Reagan?

Posted by John S. | March 4, 2007 11:37 PM

The history question for Democrats is: Is Barack Obama this era's Goldwater, or its Reagan?

I think Obama is more like this era's Jerry Brown. I haven't seem much to Obama beyond the speeches.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | March 5, 2007 1:06 PM

His dislike of the Shah because of the latters heavy handed rule led to the current Islamic fascist government that makes the Shah look like an angel.

Oh, bullshit. The Shah's regime was pretty damned close to an actual fascist one, complete with some fucking serious secret police and a complete lack of civil liberties or representative institutions. The Islamic Republic sucks, but at least since it started settling down in the late 80s, on its worst day it's still been less oppressive than the Shah.

Which isn't to say that we didn't mishandle things, but this kind of bullshit of pretending that evil dictators who are friendly to us are actually substantively less evil than evil dictators who don't like us is entirely unconvincing.

Posted by John | March 5, 2007 11:17 PM