Posted on 04/19/2008 9:04:55 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
E Pluribus Nixon
Seven years ago, Rick Perlstein, a young and decidedly left-wing historian, accomplished a daring feat: he imagined his way into the hearts and minds of the right-wing idealists who made Goldwaterite conservatism one of the most successful mass movements of the 1960s. The result was Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, a richly detailed narrative of the 1964 election, and a dense and dizzying account of a moment when America was teetering on the verge of a nervous breakdown but didn’t know it yet.
Now Perlstein has produced a sequel. If Before the Storm was a near-masterpiece, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America, which covers the turbulent years from Goldwater’s defeat to Nixon’s 1972 landslide victory, is merely a great success. It labors under handicaps his first book didn’t have: whereas Before the Storm dealt with a circumscribed and neglected moment (who remembers Dr. Fred Schwarz’s Christian Anti-Communism Crusade, or the presidential boomlet for William Warren Scranton?), Nixonland tackles the most obsessed-over era in recent American history. Any book that rolls Woodstock and Watergate, the death of RFK and the Tet Offensive, Jane Fonda and George Wallace, and a cast of thousands more into a mere 800 pages or so is bound to sprawl and sag a bit, to rush too quickly through some topics and linger too long with others.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
That's a bit unfair. I have not advocated killing any left wing kooks in weeks..../s
“And he knows how to conjure the characters you’ve never heard of as well as the ones you expect. ...... John Lindsay, the media darling whose disastrous mayoralty helped run New York City into a ditch—Perlstein quotes a New York Times op-ed describing Central Park under Lindsay as “a combination of decadence and barbarism; a cut-rate FelliniSatyricon”
bwahahahaha!
I haven't either---Rush seems to be aiding them in killing each other off--LOL!
I have to wonder at folks who would actually read all of this stuff--
This guy is so wrong. We only call for a swift, speedy demise of liberalism. We know the left wing kooks need not die if they can only be enlightened before they they kill the country.
If that doesn’t work........LOL!
I bought and tried to read “Before the Storm”. It’s not a bad book, but that smarmy, smirking leftism starts creeping in about page 50 and never lets go. I’m sure that Mr. Perlstein agrees with the central notion of Obamaism, that bitter conservatives are clinging to god and guns. I feel bad about not finishing it.
You're better than am, It's been five days for me and, already, I'm beginning to suffer withdrawal symptoms. /s
Shortened to "law'n order" by those contempt-spewing nut ball puke liberals who never could get it. WE REALLY DID WANT THE LAW ENFORCED. PERIOD. We were tired of the fires, the smoke, night-time curfews, and people being dragged out of cars and beaten while traveling home from work. That's all there was to it.
But why two Americas? Well one critical reason perhaps omitted by Mr. Perlstein's book (I bet, I have not read the book) is the "Fairness Doctrine." We weren't the Silent Majority we were the Silenced Majority.
I have only to remember those days searching for limited circulation periodicals to find the rest of the story. Certainly many cities had multiple newspapers back then which included conservative ones but newspapers were for current news. What of "old" news such as LBJ's pre-JFK-assassination problems: Bobby Baker, Billie Sol Estes, the "suicide" of Henry Marshall.
Some great radio entertainers around Cincinnati in those days (Jerry Thomas, Richard King for examples) but nothing where you could really discuss virtually anything. Too dangerous for the license owner.
I will always remember the early years of modern talk radio (late '80s early 90's). The comment most often made by callers was "I didn't know other people believe as I do. I thought I was the only one."
Buckley's Firing Line one hour each week on PBS was no longer enough balance for conservative opinion, thank you.
Liberals don't like it but we are a better Republic with a truly free press (again). Never, never, never give it up.
LBJ bugged Goldwater -- I recall that E. Howard Hunt testified that he, at the time a CIA man, did some of the bugging. Hoover is alleged to have said his people also bugged Goldwater because, you do what the President of the United States tells you to do. I do remember that LBJ and Hoover were neighbors (when LBJ was in the Senate) and friends.
Well, by golly, LBJ never tried no criminal cover ups. No sir. HE DIDN'T HAVE TO. The press did it for him. They never said a damn thing about it. And what of RFK's bugging shenanigans?
He sums up three decades’ worth of Hollywood political activism in one tone-deaf Warren Beatty remark from 1972: “A great deal of the leadership of this generation comes from music and film people, whether people like that fact or not.”
Nixon only appeared Conservative when compared with the alternative.
In my life time I rate Nixon as bad as Carter as far as Presidents go.
Nixon’s people were caught. All the difference in the world and all the difference there needs to be for someone like perlstein to keep fixating on it.
That’s a bit unfair. I have not advocated killing any left wing kooks in weeks..../s
Hell...No one tells me anything causing me to miss all the “Evil Right-Wing Conspiracy” meetings.
It's by Ross Douthat (don't forget to give the writer credit). His blog is definitely worth a look (usually, though maybe not right now). There are some responses from liberals who might not mind beating Ross up, if not killing him.
The country was falling apart in the late 60s. A lot of what Nixon did was mistaken and reprehensible, but it's hard to see that another President would have done appreciably better.
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