1964
As with so much else in the conservative movement, the seminal moment in the struggle between conservatives and big media can be traced back to the 1964 Goldwater campaign:
Goldwater’s nomination was in part the result of brilliant “grass-roots” organizing among the party’s youth wing. As GOP delegates gathered in San Francisco to choose the party’s nominee in July 1964, it was clear that the party’s Eastern establishment and its candidates could not withstand the energy, enthusiasm, and high spirits of the Goldwater kids and their Arizona standard-bearer.The media didn’t see enthusiasm. They saw Hitler youth. It was routine in news stories from the convention, both broadcast and in print, for the Goldwaterites to be likened to “shock troops.” In his book The Making of the President 1964 (published a year later), Theodore H. White spake the conventional wisdom for the Ages: “This was a new thing in American conventions–not a meeting, not a clash, but a coup d’etat.”
This sort of talk, which was not confined to opinion columns, understandably aggrieved the Goldwaterites. And at one point during the convention, a journalist ended up literally cross-wise of the Goldwater kids. NBC correspondent John Chancellor had stationed himself and his camera crew at a spot on the floor of the Cow Palace, the San Francisco venue that was home to the convention. When a pro-Goldwater demonstration broke out and began moving its way across the floor, Chancellor, asserting a heretofore unknown journalistic privilege, wouldn’t move out of the way.
The Goldwater kids surrounded him, shouting. Someone went to get the security guards, who asked Chancellor to move on the grounds that he was disrupting a private gathering. He refused, and they carried him out bodily. “Here we go down the middle aisle,” he breathlessly told NBC viewers. “I’ve been promised bail, ladies and gentlemen, by my office. This is John Chancellor, somewhere in custody.”
Today, this entire incident seems like a parody out of a Christopher Guest movie–Waiting for Goldwater, perhaps, or Best in Convention. But in the world of the mainstream media, nobody was laughing. It was universally believed that Chancellor had nearly met his end at the hands of an angry mob. The Chancellor spectacle contributed to the general media portrait of Goldwater and his candidacy as a dangerous reactionary explosion that needed to be bested at all costs.
And it was universally believed by Goldwater followers at the conclusion of the 1964 election cycle that conservative ideas and conservative politicians would never receive fair treatment at the hands of the media–that, in fact, the media would do everything in their power to destroy both.
And the hostility showed. One of my favorite books, Rick Perlsteins’ Before the Storm, has this telling vignette:
At the Mark [hotel], the forty-five minute wait for one of the three tiny elevators (the campaigns used a service elevator accessed through the hotel kitchen) was now giving zealots two chances a day to menace Ah-aystarn lab’ral prasss mainstays like Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. “You know, these nighttime news shows sound to me like they’re being broadcast from Moscow,” muttered one to another on the way down, loud enough so the dastardly duo could listen in. “Why can’t we find Americans to do the television news?” mumbled the other. The staff at the Hilton began issuing a bottle of aspirin with every press badge. Brinkley forbade his young son to show his NBC insignia except when absolutely necessary.
Even though Goldwater lost in the biggest landslide ever, those were heady days for conservatives. Presidential campaigns at that time generally received 20,000 to 50,000 donations. The Goldwater campaign received over one million. Goldwaterites worked hard to learn the campaigning techniques that the modern Republican party applies so successfully. And, 16 years later, they put one of their own in the White House.
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