My continuing series on Rick Perlstein’s, Before the Storm.  Two big lessons for today.

1.  True Believers are as useful as Trusted Friends-  In 1964, after the draft Goldwater movement led by Cliff White had done all the heavy-lifting, Barry Goldwater decided to put a cadre of friends (the Arizona Mafia) at the helm of his campaign.  One of them, the director of field operations, didn’t know what his position entailed.  These folks had scarcely a day of national campaign experience between them but apparently, Goldwater didn’t “know or trust” the experienced Goldwater Men who’d almost single-handedly put him in contention.  White was relegated to the shadows.  This turned out to be a colossal mistake.  Cliff White, in Perlstein’s description, could match FDR’s famous feat- draw a line through the country, name every county it passed through, and describe each county’s peculiarities.   So, a lesson from Barry Goldwater’s campaign to future candidates: it doesn’t matter if you know the people.  If they’re busting their butts in a thankless job, and with no apparent reward, to get you into the Presidency, you CAN trust them.  And if they know more about national politics than all of your friends combined, you probably should.  Cronyism is a quick ticket to disaster in the bigtime.

2.  Things don’t go well when the grassroots gets too far ahead of the candidate-  This isn’t a lesson just about Goldwater, but about another contender that year, Henry Cabot Lodge.  It’s also a lesson about Fred Thompson and maybe even Sarah Palin.  In the early 60’s, Goldwater was drawing crowds which were, comparatively speaking, Palin size.  And unlike Palin, he was getting good press.  What he wasn’t doing was campaigning, facing any tough questions or scrutiny, or learning the lessons of a rough and tumble political fight.  When he did start campaigning, people discovered that he was pretty raw, awfully disorganized, and just not ready for the prime-time.  By turning Goldwater into a celebrity and a star so early, conservatives made it impossible for him to adjust when he finally made up his mind to campaign.  Similarly, when Goldwater started to falter, the press and moderate Republicans began pumping up Vietnam Ambassador, and former Nixon VP candidate, Henry Cabot Lodge.  Lodge swept to victory as a write-in candidate in NH, one of the most remarkable political occurrences in the last 50 years.  Unfortunately for Lodgies, their candidate’s greatest advantage was his absence- an absence that prevented people from seeing his as the dry, Boston-Brahmin he’d been pegged throughout his career.  When that absence continued, the honeymoon ended and Lodge faded.

Fred Thompson…well, we all know the story of Fred Thompson.  The next Republican savior, who might have been a very good candidate indeed under different circumstances, campaigned with all of Barry Goldwater’s elegance at first.  His boosters raised expectations before he was ready to meet them.  I don’t know that Barry Goldwater would have ever been a good candidate- he was too trusting and too honest- but I do know that the Goldwater Men made it impossible for him to grow into the role.  He had to instantly guide (rather than just promote) the fortunes of a movement two decades in the making.  It would have been too much to ask of any man.  There’s also a problem of timing.  By jumping behind a fickle and unlikely Lodge, moderates made it more difficult to prepare a better challenger for Goldwater.  Similarly, by throwing in with Fred!, there wasn’t much grassroots juice left to promote an alternative to McCain.  The grassroots needs to be careful about who they boost, and they ought to be sure that the candidate can and will wage the long war; keep on them and make sure they’re ready.  Because sometimes these things just don’t translate.

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Matthew E. Miller can be contacted at Obilisk18@yahoo.com