As a student in 1964, I recall being appalled as I was exposed to an open-air Lyndon Johnson re-election rally. A short time later I recall cheering myself hoarse at an indoor Barry Goldwater election rally. Johnson absolutely obliterated Goldwater in that election.
By November 1964, Johnson had been in office about a year as the successor to a martyred president; all the while he had brilliantly performed that role. There was no question in any voters mind who the President of the United States was. In every television appearance he acted as a president striding across the television screens with assurance. A large man, on television Lyndon Johnson was a man in charge. He had launched many programs so the populace had the sense that Johnson was a man who had vision and the competence and energy to carry it out. The economy was strong. By God no one doubted, he was a President!
Barry Goldwater had stolen my heart yet I was in a distinct minority who had not been brought to believe that he was dangerous, an extremist, demonstrably racist (without any evidence of course) and a man likely to get us into war at a countdown from 10 seconds as infamously illustrated by a little girl picking a daisy, and a nuclear war at that.
The description of Lyndon Johnson pretty well fits the recent images of Donald Trump: proceeding on the cynical but likely accurate assumption that the electorate responds not to the minutia of policy but to superficial visual characteristics, i.e. whether the candidate actually seems like a president, and presuming the electorate responds negatively to any candidate successfully defined to be an extremist. In other words, Trump, also a large man, is presenting visual images of a president fully in charge.
Democrats have been trying to label him an extremist, as they attempt to do with all Republicans, certainly not excluding Barry Goldwater, but that attempt perhaps will not be sticking to a man who has just stepped away from military action in Iran, who is renewing negotiations with China, whose personal overtures have revivified negotiations with Korea, all demonstrated vividly on television.
Barry Goldwater sadly obliged Democrats at his convention by declaiming, "moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue" and then slamming the door on himself by doubling down, "extremism in defense of liberty is no vice." I contend that Trump no longer looks like Barry Goldwater. For Democrats to contend as they still do that Trump is an extremist (shorthand for racist, bigot homophobe misogynist and, of course, warmonger) is to ask the television viewing voter to ignore the truth of his own eyes and believe fake news.
What is the truth of our own eyes? The Democrats are disrobing in public and revealing that they are extremist in all things except things anatomical. The internal dynamics of this new socialist party compel its wannabes to attach themselves to one extremist position after another from open borders to free healthcare for invaders, increased taxes, and environmentalism without end. Behold! Party positions seem to be undergoing a polar reversal.
Worse for the Democrats, there is not one of the candidates who has a chance of copping the nomination who cannot be labeled an extremist -just watch the video of each of them raising his/her hand.
There are many caveats to this analogy from 1964, of course. In 1964 Lyndon Johnson carried the whole of the media in his back pocket. In 2020 Donald Trump, like Barry Goldwater, will have the whole of the media on his back. That's why I was careful so far to talk about video images rather than media reports. The question is whether Trump can continue to present video images of himself executing perfectly his commission as President of the United States, video images that are worth more than a thousand articles or a thousand talking heads on MSNBC?
In 1964, Goldwater was presented as an individual defending racism against a civil rights movement on the side of the angels. Lyndon Johnson lied to the country, saying that he would not send boys the Vietnam but it was Goldwater who was tagged as a warmonger. Today, the Democrat party might very well be labeled the party of racists and tribalists dividing the nation. Video images of Antifa garbed like a SWAT team, braining people with pipes makes the Democrat party look the Democrats of 1968 at their convention in Chicago. In this atmosphere, Trump might well succeed in presenting himself as a Nobel Prize-worthy peacemaker.
All of this, of course, depends on the turn of events and whether those events and the images which accompany them can overwhelm the media.
