Is Trump another Goldwater?
The upcoming gathering of Republicans in Cleveland might yet turn into a wild affair if party officials and others adverse to Donald Trump can find a foothold to deny him the nomination.
A chaotic convention, given the weird dynamics of this election year, might actually benefit the real estate and celebrity tycoon. A convention in disarray just might create the sort of anti-establishment fervor The Donald relishes.
In this sense, the Trump candidacy is somewhat like the Seinfeld episode in which George makes a clean break with the past and every good instinct and thrives.
Doing the opposite of what’s expected of a candidate for president has served Trump well. It’s one measure of voters’ disgust with the strait jacket of American politics and its corruption by money and influence-peddling that a major party is on the threshold of nominating a man so distinctly ill-prepared for the presidency and so plainly out-of-sync with American political tradition.
It’s like tossing the ball to a hockey goaltender to pitch the seventh game of the World Series. The best that can be said of Donald Trump for president is that he’s shaking things up, and for many voters that’s precisely the point.
The bubble is bound to burst, if history is a guide. The Republican convention in San Francisco in 1964 — the convention which nominated conservative icon Barry Goldwater — is maybe the best example there is. Like Trump, Goldwater was a contrarian; a U.S. senator, Goldwater nevertheless was an anti-politician.
As historian Rick Perlstein writes of Goldwater’s acceptance speech: “This wasn’t a political speech. It was a cultural call to arms.”
It was the speech highlighted by Goldwater’s pointed challenge to conventional wisdom; his foot stomp in the name of say-what-you-think, damn the consequences.
“I will remind you,” the Arizonan intoned in his flat, dry western voice, “that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” The senator waited 41 seconds as the delegates roared their approval, before adding, “And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”
In another time and place, the Goldwater formulation would have been entirely appropriate; indeed, it might have gone down as one of the most triumphant utterances in convention history.
But 1964 was not a year to play fast and loose with political extremes — not after JFK’s assassination and the fire hoses that were turned on Birmingham civil rights protesters in 1963.
It was also a year the crazies of the John Birch Society were crawling out of the woodwork to lay claim to the American Dream.
Today, a great many Washington, D.C., Republicans are calling on Trump to “stick to the script.” They are beseiging Donald to stay within the safe confines of conservative doctrine and the dictates of political decorum. They are, in essence, asking Donald not to be Donald.
Republicans back in the day asked the same thing of Goldwater. Advised he should call his defeated Republican foes for the nomination — it was customary — the senator refused on the ground that he didn’t need the “s.o.b.’s.”
According to Perlstein, American politics entered a new and deranged realm in 1964. “The best measure of a politician’s electoral success,” he wrote, “was becoming not how successful he could broker people’s desires, but how well he could tap their fears.”
Donald Trump has done his share of fear-mongering in 2016.
One of the touchstones of the Barry Goldwater campaign was its antipathy toward the press. When former President Eisenhower told the convention “we should scorn the divisive efforts” of the nation’s columnists and editorialists, he loosened a cannon shot of rage that resounded throughout the Cow Palace. To those watching on TV, the display of anger remains fresh in memory six decades on.
Future NBC anchor John Chancellor was escorted by security off the convention floor. He checked out with the memorable, “This is John Chancellor (reporting), somewhere in custody.”
It would be funny if it wasn’t so prescient.
Barry Goldwater was doomed, if not by his own behavior and that of his delegates, then by his Republican opponents. One opponent in particular. Gov. William Scranton of Pennsylvania.
Scranton, an establishment Republican, was appalled at the prospect of Goldwater seizing control of the party of Lincoln. The senator was fresh from having cast a vote in opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
He challenged Goldwater to debate the issues in front of the delegates and in full view of the nation. He used some choice words in summoning the senator to accounts. “Goldwaterism,” he declared, “has come to stand for a whole crazy quilt collection of absurd and dangerous positions that will be soundly repudiated by the American people in November.”
It remains to be seen if an intemperate remark or two at the convention or the convention itself will wound Trump, perhaps fatally. Given the year so far, don’t bet on it. Trumpism, unlike Goldwaterism, seems built to survive the slights and arrows of erstwhile friends. Try as he might to doom his own candidacy, Trump seems impervious to even self-inflicted wounds.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown and is the author of two books: “Grand Salute: Stories of the World War II Generation” and “Our People. He can be reached by email at grandsalutebook@gmail.com.