The Chris Moeller Archives

Mr. Conservative

HBO's latest documentary, "Mr. Conservative: Goldwater on Goldwater," is a thought-provoking delight. Produced and narrated by the late Senator Barry Goldwater's granddaughter, CC, the profile of the long-time Arizona Senator and 1964 Republican presidential nominee is deeply affectionate, but also surprisingly wide-eyed.

Barry Goldwater is thought by most political observers today to be the grandfather of the dominant conservative political philosophy in America. (In the film, James Carville remarks that if Ronald Reagan was the Messiah of the movement, then Goldwater was John the Baptist.) His legacy in the Senate and on the presidential stump is one of severe tarnish from a liberal or even moderate perspective. All of the Cold War hawks, like Goldwater, have blood on their hands for the slaughters in Southeast Asia, and the senator's opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 still gnaws away diligently at his legacy; but in his later years in the Senate in the 1980s and then in retirement, Goldwater became a rather heroic public figure, demonstrating that even his faulty political ideas had assuredly been born and nourished of strong personal conviction.

In '64, Goldwater, the candidate, was the conservatives' alternative to the northeastern liberal Nelson Rockefeller at his party's summer convention. He was a staunch anti-communist, and his contempt for the East Coast center-left media would also have everlasting resonance within his party. But by the early 1980s, Goldwater had become a voice of moderation in the Republican party, one of a decreasing number of tentpoles for its floundering libertarian wing.

He publicly chided the social conservatives in the camp, such as the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who held disdain for the Separation of Church and State. Goldwater believed that their moral piety and social overreach would wreak as much damage to the Republican party as he believed corrupt labor bosses had wrought for Democrats a generation previous. Though it had not yet become a hot button issue during the height of his power, Goldwater always supported a woman's right to choose and supported his own daughter's decision to abort a child. He championed the Supreme Court nomination of fellow Arizonan Sandra Day O'Connor against a tide of anti-abortion opposition, and he later publicly recanted his opposition to gays serving in the military.

Today, Goldwater's legacy seems more instructive for the tepid liberals than for conservatives. With massive public debt under Republican leadership, an increasingly faith-based government, and a business culture that speaks more to corporate Socialism than free enterprise, Republicans are evidently no longer taking the political lessons of Barry Goldwater (even "Goldwater conservatives," such as John McCain, are anti-choice,) but liberals can still learn from his independence and political courage.

I may have pointed out on this blog before the political lessons I feel can be taken from the '64 and '72 Presidential elections. In '64, Goldwater took defiant, unpopular positions on the stump and was trounced by a greater margin than any other presidential runner-up in the 20th Century before or after. His opponent, Lyndon Johnson, netted an overwhelming 63 percent of the popular vote. But Goldwater's philosophy of government became a sort of manual to be studied that would pay remarkable future dividends at the ballot box after his devotees picked up the gauntlet and carried it to the grassroots level.

By '72, that electoral tide had already reversed and it was the anti-war Democrat George McGovern that took the whipping at the polls, but Democrats, instead of rallying behind McGovern's message, scattered like rats. They should have adopted an emboldened "I told you so" position in the wake of Richard Nixon's proceeding moral and public destruction, but instead, they turned the courageous McGovern into the party's boogeyman, allowing his principles to be mocked and legacy to be destroyed, and then they trudged off without compass into the political wilderness.

When will Democrats take back the power from the corporate consultants and "spin doctors" and tune to the fact that American voters still thirst for the courage and straightforwardness they received from Presidents Roosevelt and Truman? Voters abhor word-parsing dilettantes and triangulating bullshit-artists, and the true believers within the party nucleus will scratch and crawl for you if you only give them first a cause for which to fight. That's the greatest political legacy of Barry Goldwater.

And perhaps also that-- like the proverbial ugly buildings and whores-- even a conservative can grow respectable with age.

posted by CM @ 1:15 PM