Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus

Before the Storm describes the beginnings of the modern Republican/Democratic split. For example in 1960, Vermont went Republican which seems laughably impossible these days. In 1964 it went Democrat for the first time and has not looked back since. Other states similarly lined up to how we recognize them today. What happened? Barry Goldwater, an ultra-conservative, re-arranged politics along the southern strategy which was primarily concerned with civil rights and the ideology of communism versus capitalism ("freedom"). At the same time, as blue collar jobs were replaced with white collar and increased prosperity, politics shifted from what can be done to make life better, to fear of things getting worse, keeping what you have. Thus show more civil rights and communism were the perfect bogymen to strike fear in the hearts of voters to create a new political force to challenge the existing order. It would take 20 years, and four books by Perlstein to describe the ultimate triumph of Regan and the insanity we have lived with since, culminating most recently with the storming of the US Capitol in 2021. So long as people buy into the fantasies of self-sufficiency and fear mongering, there will be a misinformed, paranoid and angry base of Americans to contend with. show less

“We are proud of and shall continue our far-reaching and sound advances in matters of basic human needs—expansion of social security—broadened coverage in unemployment insurance —improved housing—and better health protection for all our people. We are determined that our government remain warmly responsive to the urgent social and economic problems of our people … That men are created equal needs no affirmation, but they must have equality of opportunity and protection of their civil rights under the law …”

Can you guess which American political party once championed these ideals? The Democrats? [Cue loud game show buzzer!] Wrong! Those are in fact excerpts from the Republican Party platform that saw Dwight David show more Eisenhower coast to reelection in 1956, the year before this Sputnik baby was born. Moreover, such was the prevailing consensus of the day that those identical planks could seamlessly have been dropped verbatim into the platform of Ike’s Democratic opponent, Adlai Stevenson. But that was then and this is now: today’s MAGA Republicans would denounce it all with a pejorative flair as Marxist, socialist, woke. How did we get here? In Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus [2001], published more than two decades ago, acclaimed historian Rick Perlstein [Nixonland] identifies with an eerie prescience the origin of many of the ingredients that manifest today’s alt-right MAGA while looking back to locate the first fractures in a bipartisan accord that now strikes as almost unimaginable.
Once upon a time, a handsome square-jawed tanned figure with chiseled features stepped out of the panorama of Frederick Jackson Turner’s mythical western frontier—in this case Arizona—to demonstrate to America how it should be done. He could sometimes be seen on horseback, sporting a Stetson, gripping the stock of a rifle. Or more often—to recast the romance in a modern era—flying his own plane, a passion borne of his service as a pilot in World War II. Part of his legend was that he had pulled himself up by his own cowboy bootstraps, but that was hardly accurate; in truth, he inherited and once managed his family-owned department store. He later entered Republican politics and eventually went to the Senate as an anti-New Deal crusader.
At one time identified as the nation’s leading conservative, he clung to a complicated, deeply nuanced ideology that blurred the lines between states’ rights, libertarianism, federalism, and social justice. A lifetime member of the NAACP, he denounced racism, desegregated his own business, and acted as prominent advocate for integration in professional, educational, and civic circles, yet became nationally identified as a fierce opponent of civil rights because he objected to federal enforcement. That, as well as his hawkish anti-communism and uncompromising fiscal conservatism placed him on the extreme right of the political spectrum. Yet, despite his distance from the mainstream he became the Republican nominee for president in 1964. A warm personality offstage that frequently wore the face of a curmudgeon in public life, he polarized twin audiences that viewed him alternately as a genuine American patriot or a dangerous demagogue. And he happily played to those strengths and weaknesses in his acceptance speech at the convention, proclaiming—against the counsel of virtually every advisor—that “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And … moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!”—words that went on to launch the campaign that led to a landslide loss for Barry Goldwater.
But Goldwater is not actually the star of Before the Storm. That role goes to Clif White, the otherwise anonymous character who was the genius in grassroots organization that brought conservatives both out of the woodwork and out of the wilderness, eventually driving the three year effort behind the Draft Goldwater Committee that won his man the nomination, only to be overlooked and cast out of the inner circle once the campaign was underway. And here it is that Perlstein truly shines, articulately revealing the behind-the-scenes slow dance that quietly yet oh-so-elegantly drew unlikely, even dissimilar, partners from various corners to the main floor, where steps, at first disjointed, were neatly choreographed to move in unison. The result was a spectacular production unlike anything ever seen before in American politics. When the credits ran, Clif White’s name was conspicuously absent, but it was indeed his show.
It would be a disservice to the reader to overlook the fact that some parts of the tale Perlstein tells of this back-of-the-room maneuvering runs to tedium. I recall the minutiae contained in one particular chapter of small print that became almost too much for me: more than once, I closed the cover to mindlessly scroll my phone. But this is a rarity in what is after all a very thick volume, and Perlstein writes so well that I read hundreds of other pages with rapt attention. And it was much later that I grudgingly acknowledged that despite the temptation I was grateful that I actually read rather than skimmed that very chapter; as with the plot of a fine, intricately crafted novel, it turns out that everything Perlstein shares is critical info eminently essential to the larger narrative.
How challenging the landscape was for Goldwater and how accomplished was Clif White in boosting his candidate to the lead is made abundantly clear by the early front-runner he replaced, liberal Republican and New York governor Nelson Rockefeller, his political opposite, although part of that was achieved with the unforced error that begat Rockefeller’s self-destruction when he divorced his wife to then wed a much younger woman, a misstep unforgivable in the eyes of the early 1960s electorate. Still, it was a long journey from Rockefeller’s politics to Goldwater’s, and White deserves extraordinary credit for coalition building out of the fragmented disaffected who comprised the edges of what truly became the conservative movement that flocked to Goldwater’s standard.
One significant element was a kind of rabid hyperbolic anticommunism that was the legacy of McCarthyism, but amplified by both the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis, that manifested itself in a variety of conspiracy theories that tickled the tips of mainstream America’s very real paranoia in the grips of the existential threat of nuclear annihilation, while simultaneously fueling quite a number of lunatic fringes. What they all had in common was the unshakeable belief in the Machiavellian genius of Soviet leaders like Khruschev to clandestinely impose communism upon the United States so brilliantly and completely that the public would be unaware of the menace until it was already too late. (There are echoes of this in the 1956 sci-fi horror movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which has friends and family duplicated by pod people.) The most visible on the fringes was the John Birch Society, which held that US sovereignty was secretly being usurped and replaced by a shadowy world government installed by an international communist intrigue enabled by the Council on Foreign Relations. Their own fellow traveler was Major General Edwin Walker, who attempted to indoctrinate American active duty troops along these lines. A satirical fictional persona of this stripe takes the form of the clearly unhinged General Jack D. Ripper in Stanley Kubrick’s film Dr. Strangelove, who also warned of the dire threat to our “precious bodily fluids” posed by fluoridated water—a stark reminder today that voices like those of now cabinet Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. were once widely ridiculed by mass audiences.
This well pre-dated the presidency of John F. Kennedy—indeed conspiracy theorists insisted that not only key members of the Eisenhower Administration, but Ike himself, were covert communists. But JFK was to become the flashpoint as he became associated with the other burning issue igniting right-wing outrage: civil rights. A cautious moderate with finely honed political instincts, Kennedy had hoped to postpone taking a public stand on desegregation until after his re-election, which depended upon the support of the solid Democratic south, but he was dragged reluctantly into the moral crusade when he could no longer avert his eyes from the brutality southern cops inflicted upon peaceful protesters. His nationally televised call for the Civil Rights Act of 1963 was simply too much for segregationists and others on the right who already judged Kennedy soft on communism. Shoring up a now shaky base was part of what brought JFK to Dallas that November, where he was greeted by "Wanted for Treason" flyers created by an associate of General Walker. “We're heading into nut country today,” he confided to Jackie on the last morning of his life.
In spite of Kennedy’s assassination, extremism remained an unwelcome fringe in American life. For his part, Goldwater mourned Kennedy, a good friend despite their policy differences, whom he’d looked forward to taking on in ‘64. And it was not like the Republican Party Clif White was retooling was openly welcoming the Birchers and die-hard segregationists into its ranks, but … but neither was it loudly denouncing them when they came calling either. More importantly, these angrier (if loonier) voices had tapped into a widespread twin populist discomfiture among an increasingly disenchanted portion of the electorate: perhaps, many wondered, Soviet communists were getting the better of us, after all; and, equally important, a deeply racist United States, south and north, was no more ready to embrace equal opportunity for black Americans in the 1960s than it had been in the 1860s. Then there were the old-school anti-New Deal conservatives, sent off to the back of the bleachers when a cleverly contrived rules change over seating delegates in the 1952 Republican National Convention marginalized their leader, Robert A. Taft, and brought Eisenhower the nomination and the White House. Finally, moderate Richard M. Nixon had lost the 1960 election only very narrowly; his disappointed supporters simply needed to be reminded of brand loyalty to keep them within the fold. Clif White had a keen eye for all these potential voters, and likewise recognized that many of them resided in states where the Republican Party had such little presence that it had never been in play as a political force. Then White went to work, assiduously cultivating a grassroots movement that neatly stitched all these elements together.
Of course, in the end it was all for naught, or at least it seemed at that moment. In a time when the threat of a nuclear Armageddon was a part of everyday kitchen table discourse, Goldwater’s own words at the convention and on the stump branded him as an extremist. “In Your Heart You Know He’s Right,” a rallying cry by Republicans, was wickedly mocked by opponents with the snarky riposte, "In Your Guts, You Know He's Nuts." Goldwater was hardly laughing when he was crushed at the polls. Prognosticators—prematurely of course—declared the Republican Party dead, at least as far as obtaining the presidency was concerned. After the long reign of FDR and Truman, perhaps the Eisenhower years were just an aberration. In any event, the lessons seemed clear: the fringe right managed to claw its way to the top and—predictably—went down in flames. The future for Republicans, if a future was even conceivable, was a return to the center. But while those fringes were roundly chastised by the button-down forces of reason seeking to reclaim the party, somehow—either by negligence or design—they were never effectively ostracized. Instead, neither welcomed nor exiled, they remained, lurking, quieter perhaps, but no less committed to their respective causes. They would, as we would find out, make alliance with others even more extreme and gravitate to the top once more.
Rick Perlstein is a progressive author and historian whose life’s work has been given to chronicling the rise of the right in modern American politics. Before the Storm is the first of a sequential chronology that to date includes Nixonland, The Invisible Bridge, and Reaganland. But I started in the middle and have been mostly reading Perlstein backwards. When I mentioned that as an aside in my review of Nixonland, the author sent me a sarcastic email offering to send me an essay he wrote in middle school!
Perlstein’s a funny guy, but there’s nothing humorous about the account that unfolds in his several books describing the way the tentacles on the outer fringes of the right gradually crept towards the center of the Republican Party and began strangling the creatures within that once represented a rather broad diversity of thought, stripping them of legitimacy until the only rightful heir remaining was attached to a rigidly ideological brand of conservatism. It did not happen right away, there were reverses and retreats, but each of these steps back yet left an indelible mark, and the bits of debris that collected from carving those marks coalesced into building blocks, and those in turn became structural forms that took on so much weight that they cracked the foundation of the party of Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt and, yes, Dwight Eisenhower, finally demolishing the central pillars that had defined the GOP for decades upon decades and supplanting it with a brand new edifice constructed upon tenets of self-righteousness that was increasingly intolerant of dissent, disdainful of compromise, and driven by the pursuit of power for power’s sake. All of that is clear now, in retrospect, with the strangulation complete, as the forces of the alt-right have entirely subsumed the Republican Party, now transmogrified into today’s grievance-driven, anti-democratic, MAGA cult of personality for Donald Trump.
Pundits yet still scratching their collective heads in an attempt to analyze how the GOP got here should first be admonished that, given its history, the dystopia of Trumpworld is perhaps not the aberration all too many assume—and then they should be referred to Before the Storm. Perlstein had already lived through Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich when that book went to print at the turn of the millennium, so although well aware of the trends he could not have known for certain what really lay ahead. But, man, he sure was on to something.

I’ve reviewed other Rick Perlstein books here:

https://regarp.com/2018/08/28/review-of-nixonland-the-rise-of-a-president-and-th...

https://regarp.com/2015/10/11/review-of-the-invisible-bridge-the-fall-of-nixon-a...

https://regarp.com/2020/10/31/review-of-reaganland-americas-right-turn-1976-1980...

Review of: Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, by Rick Perlstein https://regarp.com/2025/06/25/review-of-before-the-storm-barry-goldwater-and-the... show less

2016 is not the first year Republican presidential politics seemed batsh*t crazy. Once before we had a nominee whom pundits and analysts considered an unqualified lunatic; who caused foreign observers to question the sanity of the American electorate and worry about the global future; who resolutely flew in the face of accepted wisdom about how to run a campaign. How such a candidate emerged not (as now) in a climate of polarization but in one of placid liberal consensus is the subject of this book. Along the way you'll meet players such as Nelson Rockefeller, Richard Nixon, Phyllis Schlafly and William Rehnquist, and learn how at one time both Democratic and Republican parties included both reactionary and progressive elements, so that show more neither organization could be simply labeled "conservative" or "liberal." The Democrats partnered Northern labor-movement activists with Southern racists. The Republicans paired Western might-makes-right libertarians with Eastern elitist intellectuals. How Goldwater's candidacy was made inevitable by a mostly unknown cadre of true believers flying under the radar is the central drama.

The book reads like an ironic thriller, its twists and turns always surprising despite the overall tone of amused disbelief, punctuated by earnest excitement. Perlstein loves his subject and every page includes a great story. The day after I finished Before the Storm, I went out and purchased his next book, Nixonland. I have a feeling I'm going to be crediting these books for keeping me sane and giving me perspective during interesting times. show less

A thoroughly detailed and fascinating account of the Goldwater movement and the 1964 presidential campaign. If you're a political junkie like me, this is practically catnip; the text runs to more than five hundred pages, but it fairly flew by. Perlstein goes far beyond straight-up political history, though, bringing in all kinds of social/media/cultural elements to contextualize the politics. And no matter how much you think you know about the '64 campaign, you'll learn something new, I can almost guarantee it.

And the best part is, Perlstein's written two more books so far, so there's plenty more catnip to be had.

In the first of a series of books on modern conservatism, Rick Perlstein explores the origins of the movement in the 1950s and its throughline to today's Republican Party. According to Perlstein, the Roosevelt and Truman administrations created a consensus around governing with New Deal style programs. This consensus was strong enough that it was unaffected by the election of Republican President Eisenhower. But during Ike's presidency conservatives who did not agree with the consensus grew vocal and organized.

Perlstein finds the core of this movement in the types of families that own a manufacturing business that employs everyone in a town that feel that increased taxes, regulations, and labor representation don't benefit them at all. show more They rail against the liberals who have sold out the country to "socialism" while also opposing the big city corporate types who control the Republican party and chose Eisenhower over their favored candidate Robert Taft in the first place (ironically, the movement they create would allow big conglomerates to gobble up family-owned businesses in future decades). There's also a youth movement in the 1960s, but not the counterculture, which creates the Young Americans for Freedom organization who also push for conservative values. Considering how many significant right-wing leaders of the past 60 years were born in the late 30s/early 40s, this cohort had great staying power.

This movement coalesces behind department store owner Barry Goldwater who single-handedly flipped Arizona from Democrat to Republican when elected to the Senate in 1952. Goldwater's organizing skills and confrontational speech style helped him gain support throughout the country. This included the South where white voters had been solidly Democratic since the Civil War but now saw the national Democratic Party taking stronger Civil Rights stances. Goldwater's insistence that Civil Rights legislation and New Deal programs were a threat to freedom, that Soviet-influenced communism was creeping in everywhere, and that the U.S. needed to be more aggressive militarily including using nuclear weapons won him followers while also terrifying a greater number of people.

The second half of the book focuses on Goldwater's 1964 campaign for President. It is sprawling in detail and challenging to keep track of all the figures involved in the Republican primary campaign as well as Lyndon Johnson's administration. It's refreshing that Democrats in 1964 had no compunction about calling out Goldwater's extremism and danger, instead of calls for bipartisanship and a "strong Republican Party" that we hear today. The news media was similarly unequivocal about the danger of Goldwater instead of playing "both sides" debates. That dangerous and insurrectionist right wing ideologues have essentially been normalized today is part of Goldwater's legacy.

Goldwater lost the 1964 election in a landslide with Johnson still holding the record for percentage of popular votes received. But Perlstein notes that in many ways Goldwater won by losing. A speech late in in the campaign by a Goldwater surrogate electrified the conservative movement. The man who gave that speech, Ronald Reagan, will be a key figure of the rest of Perlstein's series of books. show less

It is, unfortunately, a good time to read about the origins of the southern strategy, conservative backlash to the new deal, white backlash to civil rights, and the resulting political realignment. I knew about this stuff, vaguely, but reading about Barry Goldwater and his movement in context really crystalized how consequential it all was. From the end of Reconstruction through the 1950s, the two political parties had considerable ideological overlap. This is no longer the case, and Barry and his friends deserve a lot of the credit. With missionary fervor and military discipline, conservatives executed a hostile takeover of national Republican party machinery, wresting it away from liberal softies like Nelson Rockefeller and William show more Scranton. Though they lost the '64 election spectacularly due to awful campaigning, cold war fears (the Daisy ad goes so hard), Kennedy nostalgia, and LBJ's political genius, history would reward the conservatives and their frothing-at-the-mouth, racist, paranoiac anti-communist supporters immediately and decisively. But I didn't have to tell you that.

I'm too lazy to write all that much more so I'm going to move to bullet points:

What I liked most:

Perlstein demonstrates that the conservative movement was a 60s movement through and through just like civil rights and free speech. It was cool, filled with young people, and scared political insiders. The likes of SDS and CORE had their equals in YAF, the National Review (lol), and Goldwater organizations.

The media got everything wrong. Reading their constant predictions of Goldwater's demise and the fatal damage his loss would inflict on the Republican party is a great reminder that pundits are always full of shit, and love nothing more than rubber-stamping powerful interests while being incorrect all of the time. It's even funnier now because as reporters at prestigious legacy outlets have less power to shape narratives, their pomposity increases.

It's tempting to draw parallels between the conservative takeover of the GOP and Bernie's outsider shot at the Democratic nom in 2016 and 2020. There are enough similarities to make the comparison worthwhile: ideologically committed and disciplined outsiders representing people who feel shunned by both parties coalescing around the presidential campaign of a Senator far afield of the political mainstream. These were movement candidates, powered in unprecedented fashion by small donors, animated by righteous anger at the system and targeted at political parties seen as sluggish and out of touch. It's interesting too that both Sanders and Goldwater were reluctant candidates, because of the perceived impossibility of their goal and its likelihood to ruin their comfortable Senate careers. There are two things, in my view, that ultimately made Goldwater successful and Sanders fall short. First, '64 was one of the last of the "smoke-filled room" primaries. Far fewer delegates were bound to reflect a popular vote than nowadays. The conservative political takeover of the GOP happened procedurally, through a thorough knowledge and steady application of party rules at county, state, and eventually national conventions. Sure, Goldwater encountered the same structural barrier that Sanders did: complete opposition from mainstream media in coordination with powerful capitalists and party donors. But he was able to take over the party machinery *before* popular sentiment was in his corner in a way that Bernie, or any other left challenger to the Democrats, could never do.

The second factor in Goldwater's success and Bernie's failure is that conservatism had backers among the capitalist class, whereas even mild social democracy faces unified opposition from wealth. Some capitalists may have held old-school views about civic virtue among businessmen, and others may have sneezed at such rabid racism and bellicosity, but Goldwater had enough buy-in among the wealthy to significantly bolster his movement. To be super reductive: this is also why Trump's outsider candidacy succeeded and Bernie's didn't.

What I liked least about this book:

I learned that Barry Goldwater is Jewish, a fact that fills me with unutterable shame. show less

I bought Before the Storm after reading Perlstein's Nixonland expecting it to be not a prequel, but the first of what will most likely be multi-volume history of the rise of the conservative movement in the United States. Before the Storm not only fulfilled, but exceeded those expectations as one learns the roots of conservative ideas and how slowly they were put into words to that could be consumed by the average American one day. Before the Storm is also about how the conservative movement found their standard-bearer in Barry Goldwater, who was reluctant to take up the call and when he did surrounded himself with those unequal to the task of a national political campaign. But as Perlstein shows while Goldwater's official campaign show more failed, the political operatives that has set-up his nomination before being discarded had established themselves in "unofficial" citizen groups planting the beginnings of an army to be reaped later by Ronald Reagan.

If one could find faults it would be that Perlstein didn't give an in-depth description of the 1952 GOP Convention that conservatives always pointed out as being stolen from them, it was referenced many times but never delved into.

To those wanting to understand our present political landscape, I recommend this book to know how it developed in the past. show less