A Glorious Disaster: Barry Goldwater's Presidential Campaign and the Origins of the Conservative Movement.

A Glorious Disaster: Barry Goldwater's Presidential Campaign and the Origins of the Conservative Movement, by J. William Middendorf II (Basic, 303 pp., $26.9)

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ABRACING and informative book, taking us through the gestation of the Goldwater-for-president movement and the campaign itself, and giving us chapters on the succession in the leadership of the Republican National Committee. The author, who writes fluently and gives us close-in details of the candidate at his best and at his not-so-good, was named treasurer of the campaign, and notwithstanding the ignominious defeat of 1964, became the treasurer of the GOP. He aspired to be secretary of the Navy, but President Nixon, having agreed, gave it to another coadjutor and Middendorf went forth (happily) as ambassador to the Netherlands. From the beginning of his political life, he was an earnest and influential conservative advocate. He does justice to the signal contributions of Jerry Milbank, Peter O'Donnell, and Bill Rusher, and gives us with a mortician's eye an account of what went wrong in a bollixed campaign--one feature of which was the exclusion of NATIONAL REVIEWers from active roles, casualties of a Goldwater turfmeister (he names the culprit). An eminently readable book about a mythogenic American figure, political godfather of a movement that is with us yet, or so NATIONAL REVIEW contends.

--WFB