Robert H Donaldson - Liberalisms Last Hurrah: The Presidential Campaign of 1964

The election of 1936 was a landmark in American politics. Franklin D. Roosevelts landslide victory over the Republican Alf Landon made it clear that the American people supported Roosevelts New Deal programs, while at the same time they accepted the Democrats campaign theme that the Republicans deserved the blame for the Great Depression. The 1936 election also solidified, for the first time, what is usually called the New Deal coalition, a loosely knit collection of groups that, for the most part, had little in common except that they had been the beneficiaries of New Deal programs. This coalition included such diverse groups as organized labor and farmers, urban ethnic groups and southern populists, middle-class homeowners and northeastern intellectuals. Through the remainder of Roosevelts terms this coalition became identified as liberal, although certain groups within it, particularly farmers and southern whites, could hardly meet that classification. Nevertheless this powerful coalition held together until after the war (despite some minor defections here and there), and developed into one of the most powerful political coalitions in American history. As the 1948 election approachedthe first election since Roosevelts death and the first since the end of the warHarry Truman tried almost desperately to keep the New Deal coalition alive. Through a series of political maneuvers, promises, statements and programs, Truman brought the often combative coalition together for what seemed to be one brief moment on November 3 and won the election.

The Republican response to five consecutive Democratic victories (including control of Congress for the twenty-year period except for two years between 1946 and 1948) was largely predictable. They turned away from their conservative leadership and nominated a series of moderate (even liberal) candidates in an attempt to follow what was apparently the national liberal trend. Led by the Northeastern Establishment, the Republicans nominated Wendell Willkie and Thomas Dewey in the three elections between 1940 and 1948and lost. Conservative Republicans, led primarily by Ohio senator Robert Taft, complained in the wake of each defeat that the GOP had lost the election because it had lost its conservative message, that it was, in fact, offering no message beyond what they called me-tooism, a weak argument that the Republicans, if elected, would run the New Deal programs more efficiently than the Democrats. And that, conservative Republicans insisted, was no message at all. By the late 1940s, following Deweys second defeat, conservatives adopted a new phrase to make their point. They demanded a choice, not an echo. They argued that the party should nominate a conservative Republican to run against the messages and programs of Democratic party liberalism. Given such a clear choice, GOP conservatives insisted, American voters would chose conservatism.

Between Dwight D. Eisenhowers election in 1952 and the 1964 campaign, the conservatives remained on the GOP sidelines while the party moderates and Northeastern Establishment ran the party and nominated the candidates. Finally, in 1964, with the rise of Barry Goldwater, the conservatives would get their chance. They would offer the nation a choice, and not an echo.

For the Democrats, major factions of the old New Deal coalition again rallied to elect John Kennedy in 1960. The 1964 campaign promised to be the first conservativeliberal political clash in over thirty years. Although it was Lyndon Johnson, and not Kennedy, who would run under the Democratic standard in 1964, Johnson accepted and fostered Kennedys liberal base and New Deal liberalism.

While on the campaign trail in Fresno, California, in March 1964, Goldwater told a crowd that the coming election would be one of major significance in American history: This is no stopgap election, he said. This is not one just for the record books. This is one for the history books. When the votes were counted, however, it hardly looked that way. Despite all the hoopla and promise, Goldwater pulled only a few southern states and, by only a hairs breadth, his own home state of Arizona. The rest of the nation was swept clean by the Lyndon Johnson juggernaut; even the Republican party bastion of the Midwest went for Johnson. It was a Democratic party victory that rivaled Roosevelts trouncing of Landon in 1936the election that confirmed the successes of the New Deal, launched an extension of New Deal political power and programs, and brought together the New Deal coalition that laid the foundations of Democratic party dominance in Washington at least until Eisenhower.

The 1964 election, however, was not as it seemed. Goldwaters campaign ended in ignominious defeat but it became the ideological basis of Ronald Reagans 1980 victory and the foundations of Republican party ideology for much of the remaining century. Goldwater, often touted by conservatives as Reagans John the Baptist, was the first national political figure to represent modern American conservatism. Johnsons victory, as overwhelming as it was, quickly became a mandate lost, a political tragedy of almost epic proportions. Within four years, Johnsons 1964 mandate was gone, swallowed up by the Vietnam War and the general failures of the Great Society programs. The election of 1964 was not the beginnings of some new liberal era in American history, as many pundits and observers predicted. It was instead the last hurrah of New Deal liberalism and the last great electoral success of Franklin Roosevelts New Deal coalitionthe coalition that he built in his 1936 victory over Landon. If the coalition continued in any form beyond 1964 it was considerably weakened; and never again did it wield the political power it did between 1936 and 1964.