Liberalism's Last Hurrah
The Presidential Campaign of 1964
-
-
4.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $10.99
-
- $10.99
Publisher Description
The 1964 campaign was a turning point in the nation’s politics and one of the rare elections in American history marked by sharp ideological divisions. Differences over race relations, the Vietnam War, and federal power divided the parties, and racial issues dominated the campaign as candidates clashed over the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. Racial factions disrupted the Democratic Convention and George Wallace openly courted white supremacists. The election took place amid national turmoil and great historic events such as Freedom Summer, the murder of three civil rights activists in Mississippi, and the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Seldom had the nation faced a starker choice.
The election proved to be a watershed moment in American political history—but not in the way most contemporaries viewed it. Democrat Lyndon Johnson trounced Republican Barry Goldwater in a huge landslide. To most observers at the time, liberalism rode triumphant and conservatism crumbled, with some even talking of the demise of the Republican Party. But it was not to be, as the liberal wave crashed almost immediately and conservatives came to dominate a resurgent Republican Party in the late twentieth century.
Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The day after the 1964 presidential election, James Reston wrote, "Barry Goldwater not only lost the presidential election yesterday, but the conservative cause as well. He has wrecked his party for a long time to come...." But the Johnson landslide, says historian Donaldson (Truman Defeats Dewey), was misleading. As he convincingly argues, the 1964 election marked the apex of liberalism, which would soon fatally overextend itself with the Great Society, and heralded the rise of conservative Republicans, who would commandeer their party and ultimately seize the White House. Donaldson recounts how Goldwater's conservatives pushed aside the long-dominant Wall Street moderates. This had immense ideological implications; suddenly, the Republicans offered a sharp contrast to the Democrats rather than a vapid "me-tooism" that tacitly accepted the New Deal. The 1964 election also marked a dramatic regional change in party constituencies. For the first time, the South prompted largely by Johnson's Civil Rights Act voted Republican. Goldwater (an Arizona senator) and his followers thus shifted the epicenter of the Republican party to the South and West. In essence, with his 1964 defeat, Goldwater was "a martyr to the cause," clearing the way for the far more successful Ronald Reagan. In the view of many conservatives, Donaldson writes, Goldwater was "Reagan's John the Baptist," crying in the wilderness and anticipating the savior to come. Donaldson touches on other elements of the 1964 race civil rights, the role of George Wallace, Johnson's rivalry with Robert Kennedy but Goldwater's conservatives pulse at the heart of this story, which offers a sharp and penetrating analysis of a movement on the cusp of power.
