Liberalism's Last Hurrah: the Presidential Campaign of 1964.

Liberalism's Last Hurrah: The Presidential Campaign of 1964. By Gary Donaldson. (Armonk, N.Y., and London: M. E. Sharpe, c. 2003. Pp. x, 376. $34.95, ISBN 0-7656-1119-8.)

The presidential election of 1964 occupies an ironic place in recent United States history. Sandwiched between the exciting 1960 and 1968 contests, the 1964 election appears mundane. The outcome was never in doubt, and what chance the Republicans had to defeat incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson evaporated with the nomination of Barry M. Goldwater. A right-wing conservative who was ahead of his time, Goldwater displayed a penchant for shooting from the lip and scaring away most Americans rooted in the political center. Yet the campaign contained a number of exciting if not pivotal moments--the Gulf of Tonkin incident in Vietnam, the compromise over seating the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, the inaugural appearance of Alabama's George C. Wallace on the national hustings, and the backstage conflict between President Johnson and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. Moreover, despite Johnson's lopsided victory, Republicans would capture the presidency six out of nine times during the rest of the century and would do so largely on the strength of Goldwater's seemingly reactionary message of 1964.

Goldwater did not invent Republican Party conservatism. Goldwater inherited and built upon Ohio senator Robert Taft's constituency in the Midwest by adding to it from the South and the West. Unlike Taft, however, Goldwater opposed federal civil rights legislation. Forsaking racist rhetoric for free enterprise and private-property concerns, Goldwater voiced states' rights arguments that nonetheless appealed to hardcore civil rights opponents in the South. The Arizonan's success in wresting the Republican presidential nomination away from moderates such as Nelson Rockefeller and William Scranton came about from superior grassroots organizing at a time when the party conducted only nine presidential primaries. The strength of conservatives at outmaneuvering their rivals among the Republican rank and file, however, proved a liability in the general election against Democrat Johnson, the born-again liberal, who deliberately shaped a much-broader consensus.

Gary Donaldson has written a balanced account of this election. Based on journalistic reporting from the period, archival and secondary sources, and memoirs, this book provides new details but offers few surprises for those who read Theodore H. White's The Making of the President, 1964 (New York, 1965) some forty years ago. Despite its title, this volume focuses more on conservatism than on liberalism. Donaldson proves more adept at describing the intricate political maneuverings of Goldwater's promoters than at conveying the nearly religious fervor of the candidate's grassroots supporters. Furthermore, while his discussion of the Mississippi challenge at the Democratic convention is generally accurate, Donaldson misunderstands the role of Bob Moses with respect to black power and leadership of the insurgent delegation. As a political survey of the 1964 election, this book largely succeeds while underscoring the need for a deeper exploration of the social and cultural terrain upon which liberalism faltered and conservatism flourished.

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

STEVEN F. LAWSON