David Corn - American Psychosis

N elson Rockefeller stared into a sea of hate.

Standing at the podium of the Republican National Convention of 1964, the fifty-six-year-old patrician politician who symbolized dynastic American power and wealth was enveloped by waves of anger emanating from the party faithful. Delegates and activists assembled in the Cow Palace on the outskirts of San Francisco hurled boos and catcalls at the New York governor. He was the enemy. His crime: representing the liberal Republican establishment that, to the horror of many in the audience, had committed two unpardonable sins. First, in the aftermath of Franklin Delano Roosevelts New Deal, these turncoat, weak-kneed Republicans had dared to acknowledge the need for big government programs to address the problems and challenges of an industrialized and urbanized United States. Second, they had accepted the reality that the Cold War of the new nuclear age demanded a nuanced national security policy predicated on a carefully measured combination of confrontation and negotiation.

Worse, Rockefeller had tried to thwart the hero of the moment: Barry Goldwater, the archconservative senator from Arizona, the libertarian decrier of government, the tough-talking scolder of Americas moral rot, and the hawkish proponent of military might who had advocated the limited use of nuclear arms. Rockefeller, a grandson of billionaire robber baron John D. Rockefeller, had competed for the presidential nomination against Goldwater, but his campaign had been subsumed by the right wings takeover of the party. Still, at this late stage, on July 14, the second night of Goldwaters coronation, Rockefeller and other moderate Republican dead-enders were praying for a last-minute political miracle that would rescue their party from the conservative fringethe kooks, as they were widely called. This evening they were taking one final stab at keeping those kooks at bay.

Clenching his square jaw, Rockefeller had hit the stage with an immediate task: to speak in favor of a proposed amendment to the Republican Party platform denouncing extremism, specifically that of the Communist Party, the Ku Klux Klan, and the ultraconservative, Red-baiting John Birch Society. The platform committee, controlled by Goldwater loyalists, had rejected this resolution. Yet the moderates hadnt given up. On the opening night of the convention, Governor Mark Hatfield of Oregon had declared, There are bigots in this nation who spew forth their venom of hate. They parade under hundreds of labels, including the Communist Party, the Ku Klux Klan, and the John Birch Society. They must be overcome.

That was not the predominant sentiment within the Cow Palace. Hatfield was met with a barrage of hisses and boos. He later called the response frightening and reflected, It spoke to me not merely of strong political disagreement, but of a spiteful kind of enmity waiting to be unleashed to destroy anyone seen as the enemydomestic or foreign.

The delegates were strident anticommunistsmany feared evil Reds were subverting the government and the nations most revered institutionsand for them, Goldwater was the leader of a do-or-die crusade against leftism. They would eagerly back a resolution reviling commies. And though the Grand Old Partyfounded a century earlier by antislavery politicianswas now actively moving to court racist Southern voters opposed to desegregation and civil rights, they might disavow the Klan. But including the John Birch Society in this lineup of extremists to be deplored was a not-subtle-at-all dig at Goldwater and his fanatic followers. Everyone in the room knew whatand whothis resolution was aimed at.

Founded in 1958 by Robert Welch, a onetime candy manufacturer, the John Birch Society was the most prominent exponent of right-wing conspiratorial paranoia. It proselytized that the commies were everywhere, in secret control of the US government and subverting many of Americas most cherished organizations: schools, churches, the media, and PTAs. Welch had even fingered Dwight Eisenhower, the World War II hero who served two terms as president, as a Soviet asset. Though many Americans might have looked upon it as a fringe outfitthe kookiest of the kooksthe John Birch Society and its members were mightily assisting the Goldwater effort as volunteers and funders. Though Goldwater, under much pressure, had distanced himself from Welch, he had not disavowed the society and its members. His once-improbable path to the GOP presidential nomination had been fueled by the paranoid passions of the Birchers and other far-right conservatives.

The Goldwater zealots in the Cow Palacea project of FDRs Works Progress Administration originally built as a livestock pavilionwere sure as hell not going to let Rocky and those establishment Republicans vilify and ostracize this crucial component of the Goldwater coalition.

It was late in the evening when Rockefeller hit the rostrum for his allotted five minutes. As he had walked toward the stage, people threw paper at him. Senator Thruston Morton of Kentucky, the convention chair, claiming concern for Rockefellers safety, asked him to postpone his remarks. Believing Morton was shoving him, Rockefeller snapped, You try to push me again, and Ill deck you right in front of this whole audience.

As soon as Rockefeller proposed adding the anti-Bircher amendment to the platform, the crowd shouted, No! No! A rumbling of boos resounded through the hall. Rockefeller pushed on: It is essential that this convention repudiate here and now any doctrine Another cascade of jeers interrupted him. He smiled and waited for it to subside. At least he was now showing the world the true nature of this new Goldwater-bewitched GOP. In Goldwaters command center, top campaign aides dispatched a message to their delegates: