In the Heat of the Summer. Michael W. Flamm

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      FIGURE 1. Senator Barry Goldwater addresses the Republican Convention on July 16 and accepts the presidential nomination. © Bettmann/CORBIS.

      A reporter in the auditorium was stunned: “My God, he’s going to run as Barry Goldwater.”⁴¹

      But while journalists and historians subsequently focused on that phrase and moment, the part of the speech that ignited and united the delegates was the nominee’s invocation of law and order. Demanding in loaded language with racial overtones that public security “not become the license of the mob and of the jungle,” Goldwater blamed the Democrats for allowing crime to flourish as the more than thirteen hundred delegates, only fifteen of whom were black (none of them from the South), roared their approval.⁴²

      “The growing menace in our country tonight, to personal safety, to life, to limb and property, in homes, in churches, on the playgrounds and places of business, particularly in our great cities, is the mounting concern—or should be—of every thoughtful citizen in the United States,” he growled as the crowd hooted and hollered. “History shows us, demonstrates that nothing, nothing prepares the way for tyranny more than the failure of public officials to keep the streets from bullies and marauders.”⁴³

      In the final draft of his nomination speech, Goldwater had scrawled in the margins even stronger and more personal language, which he opted not to deliver. “Our wives dare not leave their homes after dark,” he wrote. “Lawlessness grows. Contempt for law and order is more the order than the exception.”⁴⁴ Later he would use these lines when he gave his first postconvention speech in Prescott, Arizona, in September.

      But for now Goldwater retired to his headquarters at the Mark Hopkins Hotel, where he answered questions from reporters and stressed his determination to make law and order a centerpiece of his fall campaign. “I think law, and the abuse of law and order in this country, the total disregard for it, the mounting crime rate is going to be another issue” he said, “at least I’m going to make it one because I think the responsibility for this has to start someplace and it should start at the Federal level with the Federal courts enforcing the laws.”⁴⁵

      Goldwater then cited a New York case in which a woman who had defended herself with a knife against a rapist was facing possible criminal charges while her assailant would probably go free. “That kind of business has to stop in this country,” he said, “and as the President, I’m going to do all I can to see that women can go out in the streets of this country without being scared stiff.” In fact, the rates of murder and rape in Phoenix were substantially higher than in New York, as Democrats would hasten to note in coming days.⁴⁶

      For the moment, however, the top Democrat was silent, almost certainly by design. During a light day of staged domesticity, Johnson in the morning visited the Tidal Basin, where he and Lady Bird viewed the Darlington Oak Tree, which she hoped to plant on the South Lawn of the White House. In the afternoon, the two took a carefully orchestrated stroll from the White House to Decatur House and then through Lafayette Park. In the evening, the First Lady appeared while the president was reading a newspaper. “What time are you going to eat dinner?” he asked. “The minute you are ready,” she replied. “What are your plans for later?” Johnson said he had some mail to sign and would join her in thirty to forty minutes.⁴⁷

      But first the president had one more call to make—to former Senator Ernest “Mac” McFarland, chairman of the Arizona delegation to the Democratic Convention. His surprising loss to Goldwater in 1952 had lifted the conservative Republican to national prominence—but had also opened the door for Johnson, who at forty-six became the youngest Majority Leader in American history when the Democrats regained control of the Senate after the 1954 elections. Now the two old colleagues shared reminiscences as they prepared to watch Goldwater accept the GOP nomination in a few hours.

      “Gosh, this fellow you sent up here has caused us a lot of problems,” said the president. “Well, I know what you’re talking about,” chuckled McFarland, who had failed to unseat Goldwater in 1958 despite winning races for governor in 1954 and 1956. “He caused me some.” Then the two men got down to business: Would the president like him to make a statement to the press about Goldwater, given their history? McFarland thought it was a bad idea, but said “if you want me to make one I will and I’ll say whatever you want me to say.” Johnson demurred since he had already informed reporters that he would make no comment at this time: “I just told ’em I was going on sawing my wood and doing my work.”⁴⁸

      But the president was clearly annoyed by Goldwater’s charges. “He’ll call me a faker and he called me a phony and a lot of ugly names, but I didn’t have anything to say about him,” Johnson maintained. “And so I noticed he backed up this morning and said he didn’t want to engage in any personalities.” McFarland was sympathetic—and skeptical. “Well, last night he said there might be a few brickbats,” he noted. Johnson, however, remained adamant: “I’m just going to let him go and we’re going to give him lots of rope.”⁴⁹

      After dinner with the First Lady the president retired for the evening. Presumably, he watched Goldwater’s speech, which began at 11:20 EST on Thursday night, but no aides were present to record his immediate reaction. On Friday morning, as organized protests began in New York, Johnson traveled to his ranch outside Austin for the weekend. From there he phoned special assistant Bill Moyers, who at his request read back to him Goldwater’s already-notorious claim that extremism in the defense of liberty was no vice. “Well, extremism to destroy liberty is,” responded the president. Offering a window into how he viewed the speech, he informed Moyers that he wanted to issue “a balanced statement, not a vicious, violent Goldwater one.”⁵⁰

      Back in the White House, Goldwater’s address and comments to the press about crime and race set off alarm bells. In private, aides worried about an anti–civil rights reaction by whites. “I am disturbed about the continued demonstrations and what I see on radio and TV,” wrote an official. “I am convinced that a great deal of the Negro leadership simply does not understand the political facts of life, and think that they are advancing their cause by uttering threats in the newspapers and on TV. They are not sophisticated enough to understand the theory of the backlash unless they are told about it by someone whom they believe.” Another staffer urged Johnson to initiate a dialogue with Wilkins, CORE leader James Farmer, and other civil rights leaders as soon as possible, which the president would do the week after Harlem exploded.⁵¹

      But for now Johnson expressed optimism in public. On July 18, the Saturday after the Republican Convention, the president stated at a news conference on his Texas ranch that the United States did not possess, need, or want a national police force, which would contradict Goldwater’s belief СКАЧАТЬ