Why the Right Went Wrong: ConservatismFrom Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond (89 page)

There can be no understanding of the Goldwater-Reagan right absent of an awareness that many of its ideas and some of its organizational structures had their origins in anti–New Deal politics in the 1930s, spearheaded by business leaders in the Liberty League and other groups. Kim Phillips-Fein’s
Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan
(Norton, 2009) was a breakthrough reminder of this past. Early on, the historian James T. Patterson provided a rich understanding of the old right in
Congressional Conservatism and the New
Deal
(Praeger, 1981) and in his biography of Robert Taft,
Mr. Republican
(Houghton Mifflin, 1972). Richard Norton Smith’s
Thomas E. Dewey and His Times
(Simon & Schuster, 1982) is a fine portrait of Taft’s major protagonist in those early Republican fights. Leo Ribuffo told the story of
The Old Christian Right
(Temple University Press, 1983), covering the period from the Depression to the Cold War. Kevin M. Kruse’s
One Nation Under God
(Basic Books, 2015) tells the little-known prehistory of the religious right in the 1950s.

Crucial to understanding the rise of conservatism in the New Deal Era is Ira Katznelson’s extraordinary
Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time
(Norton, 2013). Katznelson is especially enlightening on the role of race in the early decay of the New Deal coalition and pointed me toward Joseph E. Lowndes’s essential book,
From the New Deal to the New Right: Race and the Southern Origins of Modern Conservatism
(Yale, 2008). Lowndes is especially important on Charles Wallace Collins’s role in the Dixiecrat revolt. Also important on southern conservatism is Joseph Crespino,
In Search of
Another
Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution
(Princeton, 2007). A fine collection of essays from a left-of-center perspective is
The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order
,
1930–1980
, edited by Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle (Princeton, 1989).

The best general and sympathetic introduction to postwar conservative thought is George H. Nash,
The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America: Since 1945
(Basic, 1979). I have gone back to Nash’s essential book again and again over the years. Also helpful is Patrick Allitt’s
The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities Throughout American History
(Yale, 2009). From a very different point of view, a brilliant, deeply critical examination of American conservatism is Corey Robin’s
The Reactionary Mind
(Oxford, 2011).

William F. Buckley Jr. wrote too many books to cite them all here. I would note that his Blackford Oakes thrillers provide an exceptionally entertaining look at the Cold War conservative mind and his
Flying High: Remembering Barry Goldwater
(New York: Basic Books, 2008) is an affecting and very personal look at Goldwater’s rise. John Judis’s
William F. Buckley Jr.
(Simon & Schuster, 1988) is a superb biography that reflects a feeling for Buckley himself, for the movement he was building, and for the broad currents of American politics. I’d also recommend Judis’s
The Paradox of American Democracy
(Routledge, 2001), an underappreciated work on the movement of business and the Establishment rightward. It can be seen as foreshadowing today’s world of Super PACs. Two other helpful books on Buckley are Carl T. Bogus’s
Buckley
(Bloomsbury, 2011) and Lee Edwards’s brief
William F. Buckley Jr.: The Maker of a Movement
(ISI, 2010). Kevin J. Smant,
Principles and Heresies
(ISI, 2002), is a useful and sympathetic biography of Frank Meyer, the architect of conservative “fusionism.”

Two books from the Goldwater period, both long out of print, illustrate the stakes of the battles of 1964 well. Ralph de Toledano’s
The Winning Side
(Macfadden, 1964) made the case for Goldwater and included electoral analysis that proved very wrong in the short run but rather more accurate for the longer term. George F. Gilder and Bruce K. Chapman offered an eloquent argument for progressive Republicanism and a powerful critique of Goldwaterism in
The Party That Lost Its Head
(Knopf, 1966). Princeton University Press deserves praise for bringing Barry Goldwater’s classic,
The Conscience of a Conservative
, back into print in 2007.

As I make clear in the text, Rick Perlstein is the author of the most definitive and also the liveliest account of the Goldwater campaign,
Before the Storm
(Nation Books, 2009). The cliché words of praise—anyone interested in American conservatism should read this book—are absolutely true of
Before the Storm
. I am indebted to Perlstein’s account in many ways. One of the most important: his book encouraged me to find the controversial and especially revealing 1964 “Choice” ad for Goldwater on YouTube. I also found his
Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan
(Simon & Schuster, 2014) extremely helpful. I truly wish that the conservative writer Craig Shirley had not—wrongly in my view—accused Perlstein of plagiarism; Perlstein, I thought, went out of his way to acknowledge Shirley’s work on the 1976 campaign,
Reagan’s Revolution: The Untold Story of the Campaign That Started It All
(Nelson Current, 2005). That book and Shirley’s volume about the 1980 campaign
, Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign That Changed America
(ISI Books, 2009) are both important and deeply researched, as Shirley used his standing as a conservative activist to gain access to important players. I appreciated the work Shirley did and also an off-the-record lunch he had with me early on in this project. A fine recent account that sees the 1964 contest as seminal for much that came later is Jonathan Darman’s
Landslide: LBJ and Ronald Reagan at the Dawn of a New America
(Random House, 2014).

Geoffrey Kabaservice’s
Rule and Ruin
(Oxford, 2012) is an enormous contribution to the history of American politics and the Republican Party, and it was important to me as I was writing this one. Kabaservice brings back to life the largely forgotten leaders of the Republican center and left—there was a Republican left back then—and he explains in compelling detail how the modern right buried Modern Republicanism. An excellent earlier look at the Republican center-left is Nicol C. Rae,
The Decline and Fall of Liberal Republicans
(Oxford, 1989). Bringing helpful attention to a figure largely lost to us today, David L. Stebenne’s
Modern Republican: Arthur Larson and the Eisenhower Years
(Indiana University Press, 2006) tells the story of the man who tried to codify Eisenhower’s worldview into a useable Republican ideology.

The first full accounting of the neoconservative movement, Peter Steinfels’s
The Neoconservatives
(Simon & Schuster, 1979; new edition 2013), is still one of the best books on the subject. Two other fine treatments are Gary J. Dorrien,
The Neoconservative Mind
(Temple, 1989), and
Neoconservatism
by Justin Vaisse (Harvard, 2010).
The Neoconservative Persuasion
(Basic Books, 2011) is a comprehensive collection of essays by the late Irving Kristol, who is fairly called the Godfather of Neoconservatism. Brian Doherty’s
Radicals for Capitalism
(PublicAffairs, 2007) is lively and stands as the definitive history of the modern libertarian movement.

Too many broad biographical works were helpful to me to list them all here. Sean Wilentz’s
The Age of Reagan
(Harper, 2008) was especially useful as I wrote this account. Other fine biographical works include: Richard Reeves’s
President Kennedy, President Nixon
and
President Reagan
(Simon & Schuster, 1993, 2001, and 2005); Steven Ambrose’s two volumes on
Eisenhower
(Simon & Schuster, 1983 and 1984) and his three volumes on
Nixon
(Simon & Schuster, 1988, 1989, and 1992); Robert Dallek,
Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961–1973
(Oxford, 1988); and Doris Kearns Goodwin,
Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream
(St. Martin’s Griffin paperback, 1991). Matthew Dallek broke important ground in his account of Ronald Reagan’s 1966 election as governor of California,
The Right Moment: Ronald Reagan’s First Victory and the Decisive Turning Point in American Politics
(Free Press, 2000). Chris Matthews wrote two important books involving unlikely juxtapositions,
Kennedy & Nixon
(Simon & Schuster, 1996) and
Tip and the Gipper
(Simon & Schuster, 2013).

The pioneer of books recounting the drama of presidential elections is Theodore H. White, and his
Making of the President
series on the elections of 1960, 1964, 1968, and 1972 is still essential and engrossing reading. A truly remarkable book on the 1968 campaign is
An American Melodrama
(Viking, 1969), by Lewis Chester, Godfrey Hodgson, and Bruce Page. Jules Witcover wrote the essential book on 1976,
Marathon: The Pursuit of the Presidency, 1972–1976
(Viking, 1977). Witcover and Jack Germond wrote very helpful books on the campaigns of 1980, 1984, 1988, and 1992.

Patrick J. Buchanan’s
The Greatest Comeback
(Crown Forum, 2014) is an excellent inside look at the 1968 campaign and a guide to the divided mind of Richard Nixon. It added greatly to my understanding of the forces at work inside the Republican Party, and I thank Buchanan for an exceptionally enlightening interview. From a different point of view, Stephen Hess’s delightful
The Professor and the President
(Brookings, 2014) illustrates Nixon’s complexity by examining his relationship with Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Greg Weiner’s book
American Burke: The Uncommon Liberalism of Daniel Patrick Moynihan
(University Press of Kansas, 2015) helped crystallize some of my intuitions about conservatism and also about Nixon and Moynihan.

Two shrewd ventures in electoral analysis during the Nixon years saw and understood how conservative victories would be won, and shaped popular and activist views of politics for decades: Kevin Phillips,
The Emerging Republican Majority
(originally published in 1969; republished by Princeton, 2014); and Richard M. Scammon and Ben J. Wattenberg,
The Real Majority
(Coward-McCann, 1970). By 1982, Phillips was describing the instability of the Reagan Coalition in
Post-Conservative America
(Random House, 1982). These books clearly inspired John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira to offer
The Emerging Democratic Majority
(Scribner, 2002) at a time when few saw the possibility. Although Judis developed some second thoughts about their thesis in 2015, the book foresaw the Obama Coalition.

In writing about the Clinton years, I kept going back to John F. Harris’s definitive
The Survivor
(Random House, 2005), an extraordinarily complete and lively account; and to Steven M. Gillon’s
The Pact
(Oxford, 2008), which focuses on the Clinton-Gingrich relationship.

A fine early look at George W. Bush’s presidency is the collection of historical essays edited by Julian E. Zelizer,
The Presidency of George W. Bush
(Princeton, 2010). Thomas B. Edsall’s
Building Red America
(Basic Books, 2006) is a shrewd and extremely well-reported examination of the realignment strategy Bush and Karl Rove hoped to execute, written just before the strategy went awry. Also enlightening is Lou Cannon and Carl M. Cannon,
Reagan’s Disciple: George W. Bush’s Troubled Quest for a Presidential Legacy
(PublicAffairs, 2008).

For differing perspectives on compassionate conservatism, see Michael Gerson’s
Heroic Conservatism
(HarperOne, 2007); Marvin Olasky’s
Renewing American Compassion
(Regnery, 1987) and
Compassionate Conservatism
(Free Press, 2000); David Kuo,
Tempting Faith
(Free Press, 2007); and John J. DiIulio,
Godly Republic
(University of California Press, 2008).

I am especially indebted to my friends and colleagues Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson. Their book
The Battle for America 2008
(Viking, 2009) was essential to me here, as was Balz’s excellent volume on Obama’s reelection,
Collision 2012
(Viking, 2013). Both books tell the story of both elections straight and with great insight. I worked closely with Dan in the early 1990s; he is, quite simply, one of the most generous and warmhearted people in journalism. John Heilemann and Mark Halperin’s
Game Change
(Harper, 2010) is a jaunty insider account of 2008 saga that provides particular insight on the rise of Sarah Palin.

Another debt obvious in these pages is to Jonathan Alter’s two indispensable works on the Obama presidency,
The Promise
and
The Center Holds
(Simon & Schuster 2010, 2013). These books will provide guide posts to historians for many years to come. Two good looks at Obama’s economic policies are Michael Grunwald’s
The New New Deal
and Noam Scheiber’s
The Escape Artists
(both Simon & Schuster, 2012). Chuck Todd’s
The Stranger: Barack Obama in the White House
(Little Brown, 2014) is a deeply reported, critical view of Obama’s use of power. The long-term trend toward political polarization and its impact in the Obama years is brilliantly documented in Alan I. Abramowitz,
The Disappearing Center
(Yale, 2010). James T. Kloppenberg’s
Reading Obama
(Princeton, 2010) is a brilliant look at how the president thinks.

Kate Zernike’s
Boiling Mad: Inside Tea Party America
(Times Books, 2010) shows how a good beat reporter can provide timely insight into a new movement even when it baffles so many. Two important early academic studies of the Tea Party are Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson,
The Tea Party and the Remaking of American Conservatism
(Oxford, 2011), and Matt A. Barreto and Christopher S. Parker,
Change They Can’t Believe In
(Princeton, 2014). A sympathetic view of the Tea Party is provided in Scott Rasmussen and Doug Schoen,
Mad as Hell: How the Tea Party Movement Is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System
(HarperCollins, 2010). Robert Draper’s
When the Tea Party Came to Town
(Simon & Schuster, 2013)
is an essential book on the Republican House elected in 2010 and was very helpful to me here. Alec Magillis’s
The Cynic: The Political Education of Mitch McConnell
(Simon & Schuster, 2014) is also invaluable. Thomas F. Schaller’s
The Stronghold
(Yale, 2015) is extremely insightful on how Republicans built their congressional bastion and the problems this creates for them.