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The Making of the President 1964

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In completing "The Making of the President 1964" I have read all of Theodore White's series. I realized after beginning this book that Mr. White was apparently in awe of one of the subjects of his first book in this series; John F. Kennedy. Admittedly, the assasination of President Kennedy was a major event in our history and it certainly had an effect on the election of 1964. However, White portrays JFK as a man far greater than anyone else in the political world of 1963-64. In doing so, he diminishes his credibility. As a youth in those times, I remember the tragedy of Kennedy's assasination. I ALSO remember the awesomeness of President's Johnson's agenda. I won't debate the pros and cons of the "Great Society". I will, however, acknowledge that LBJ got things done that I don't believe JFK could have. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a prime example. It should have been the Civil Rights Act of 1963 but I don't believe that President Kennedy had the influence or power to have accomplished what President Johnson did. Unfortunately, although White makes allowances for the skills of Lyndon Johnson, the recurring theme in this book is that JFK would have been so much better.

Oh, by the way, there was another man who was involved in this race; Senator Barry Goldwater. White's treatment of Goldwater goes somewhat along the line that the Senator was good company in an after hours social gathering but that he was inept politically. White is especially harsh on Goldwater's vote against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I recall, from reading his autobiography some years ago, that Goldwater opposed the legislation on Constitutional grounds. Whether or not one agrees with his opinion that the Act violated the seperation of powers cited in the US Constitution, Theodore White owed Goldwater at least a brief explanation of the Senator's rationale. I did not come across one sentence to that effect leaving the Republican candidate appearing like he had a few sheets in the closet.

Obviously, I found a great deal to criticize about White's perspective of the men involved in this election. I will acknowledge that the author covered a lot of ground and background in putting this book together. His analyses of the issues of the day are somewhat dated but also gives evidence that he still has a pretty good insight on national politics and issues. 1964 was a tough year to be a Republican. Based on White's adoration of JFK, it was also a tough year to be a Democrat who was anybody but John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

For East Coast Americans like myself, 1964 was the Year of the Beatles, New York's World's Fair, and Bob Gibson. It was also a presidential election year, but not so interesting as such, with incumbent Lyndon Baines Johnson running as heir to his martyred predecessor Kennedy against a Sun Belt Republican most saw as a right-wing kook.

"It was over before it began," Theodore H. White acknowledges near the end of his history of the campaign, "The Making Of The President 1964." "The issue had been decided long before - perhaps within minutes of the fatal shot at Dallas."

That shooting in Dallas, almost a year before the election proper, is the setting for the opening of the book, and it offers a vivid account of just what was going on in those chaotic initial minutes and hours after John F. Kennedy's murder. White describes the funeral procession, the carting up of Kennedy's possessions in the Oval Office, and the rent feelings of the nation with sharply-focused prose that reads like poetry.

White seems less engaged in the rest of his narrative. His heart obviously broken by the death of Kennedy, a personal friend, he is at a loss to describe the principal combatants of this campaign. Johnson was an outsider to the Kennedy circle still smarting over the East Coast Establishment types who rejected him. LBJ wouldn't give White so much as a single interview for his book, as White makes clear in a cagey footnote. Barry Goldwater, the Republican challenger, is more welcoming but no less aloof, and inscrutable to White, a moderate liberal who can't fathom how such an extremist got the reins of a major party.

"In Goldwater, one had to take all or nothing," White notes, and though that's true with any presidential candidate, that's more of a problem with Goldwater, who spoke enthusiastically of using nuclear weapons in conventional combat and voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

White seems to have trouble getting a handle on many players in this book, including the civil rights leaders whom White either describes as faultless angels (Martin Luther King) or vicious racists (Adam Clayton Powell) without much gray allowed. Too often he sinks into platitudes, crediting Johnson for his "deft response" to North Vietnamese attacks at the Gulf of Tonkin, when in fact his response was confused and plunged us deeper into war; or explaining to us the higher moral purpose that led Nelson Rockefeller, Republican governor of New York, to take a married mother of four as his mistress.

Better writing on that score comes from White's account of Rockefeller's angry speech to Goldwater supporters at the Republican convention in San Francisco, where he incites the crowd into an extremist fury. One angry woman screams back: "You lousy lover!"

Every once and again, White gets it right, as with the many moods of Lyndon Johnson, "the most extreme swings between tenderness and cruelty, between dedication and cynicism, between comedy and high purpose." White even mentions Johnson's otherwise secret tape recordings, which when examined back up much of the LBJ reporting here.

About Goldwater, White is less certain of his ground, but whether from charity or clarity of vision, his likening of Goldwater to William Jennings Bryan in the pantheon of failed presidential candidates has turned out quite apt.

White was still trying to keep on his Camelot-colored spectacles in this second campaign history, but the painful adjustments he struggles with here, once made, would render far better his third and fourth installments of this series to come "Making '68" and "Making '72."

Mr. White's chronology of the 1964 Presidential race was published in 1965. Our nation was still in shock over the murder of President Kennedy, the Cold War was in full swing, the Civil Rights Movement with multiple race riots was front and center and television news was coming into its own as a powerful, sensationalistic, social medium. The author starts off the book with a riveting account of JFK's assassination which sets the tone for the remainder of the book. It is well-known that Mr. White was enamoured of the Kennedys and it clearly shows in how he portrays them. But beyond his bias and liberal inclinations, the Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist does an outstanding job describing the 1964 run for the White House. Little did Mr. White know that Senator Barry Goldwater's shellacking by President Johnson was the first stirrings of the future Reagan Revolution and that LBJ's presidency would collapse under the storm brewing in Vietnam. The reader will come to understand the power struggle between the Eastern, liberal GOP establishment vs the evergrowing Southern and Western mindset. He does a commendable job of describing both Southern politicians and how their philosophical attitudes about the role of government were very different. The book captures the feel of the times, the behind-the-scenes brawls and shows a vibrant economic country struggling with who we are as a nation? This is a civic lesson with flair. I enjoyed it even more than Mr. White's first volume describing the 1960 race between Kennedy and Nixon. A truly great work of reporting and, yes, art.

In this version of The Making of the President, Theodore White provides his usual in-depth analysis of a Presidential election, along with relevant socio-economic and cultural developments. The 1964 Presidential election was based squarely on ideology, as opposed to managerial competence. As Mr. White discusses, Democratic incumbent Lyndon Johnson stood for the idea that for every problem that existed in the USA, the federal govt. had a solution, while his Republican challenger, Sen. Barry Goldwater, saw the federal govt. as the major obstacle to American progress. This sharp ideological difference has often defined American politics since that time.

In addition, Mr. White sets out a coherent explanation of why President Johnson's election was a virtual certainty (along with a wide margin of victory), as Johnson wore the JFK mantle, and most Americans did not want to reject that mantle, at least not so quickly after JFK was assassinated. At the same time, Mr. White makes a genuine effort to portray Sen. Goldwater as being sincere in his views, and as being a decent though widely misunderstood candidate. He also points out that at many times, Sen. Goldwater was his own worst enemy, coming out with statements that played right into the hands of Democratic campaign strategists (i.e., his comments about letting NATO commanders decide when to use "tactical" nuclear weapons against Soviet forces).

Finally, Mr. White explains how this election was, in an important way, the first modern election that was fought along regional lines. For example, the Republicans focused much of their resources on the South (an ironic shift for the Party of Lincoln), while the Democrats began to solidify their growing dominance in much of the Northeast and Upper Midwest (overturning many traditional bastions of Republican strength). In many ways, this sectional division still exists today, with the existence of "Red" states and "Blue" states. This sectionalization has had mixed results for both parties.

I do wish that Mr. White would have given more attention to the increasing conflict in Vietnam, as it did appear on the political horizon around that time. He doesn't seem to give it that much attention, instead focusing on a number of other major issues. I wonder what his reason was for having done this. Another interesting omission is that of Ronald Reagan. Reagan had made a passionate speech on behalf of Sen. Goldwater, entitled "A Time for Choosing." It was a televised speech that, many political commentators argue, helped launch Mr. Reagan's political career. Perhaps Mr. White had not picked up Mr. Reagan on the radar screen at this time, though he discusses Mr. Reagan in his 1968 installment of The Making of the President (by then Mr. Reagan had been elected Governor of California).

As hard as that must be to imagine today, there once was a reporter named Theodore H. White who wrote novel-like books about presidential elections, and actually made his readers feel good about the democratic process afterward. This chronicle about the election of 1964 covers the major people (Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Robert Kennedy, Barry Goldwater, Nelson Rockefeller, William Scranton, Henry Cabot Lodge) and themes (the civil rights movement, the war in Vietnam, the clash between New Deal liberalism and the nascent neo-conservative movement) with a sense of optimism and joy that is all but missing in contemporary political literature. While White fails to recapture the intimacy from the Pulitzer Prize-winning original book (wherein he was practically a member of the Kennedy campaign staff, and thus capable of giving readers an intimate glance at the man himself), he is nevertheless able to bring us closer to the people, the issues, and the sheer joy of politics in the working than any other author could conceivably dream of doing.

This is the second in a series of four books by Theodore H. White on U.S. presidential campaigns from 1960-1972, and the volume is tougher and less romantic than its best-selling 1960 predecessor. White describes both the political scene and the state of the nation in 1964. To begin, the author looks at President Lyndon Johnson's brief tenure in office following the Kennedy assassination. With the nation at peace and the economy booming, Johnson was practically a shoo-in for re-election. So the author concentrates heavily on the conservative insurgency that got Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona the Republican nomination. White does an equally good job describing the state of the nation that year, particularly the increasingly successful Civil Rights movement and the increasingly tragic violence and dysfunction of the black underclass. White also missed cues like the conservative ascendancy in the GOP, and the turn of the South to the GOP because of racial issues. Additionally, the author's admiration for Johnson seems to have shielded him from the man's enormous ego - a weakness that can drag leaders and nations into trouble.

Author Theodore H. White (1915-1986) was a superb political journalist, and few have ever matched his chronicles of U.S. politics. This book isn't his best effort, but it's clearly a valuable one.