August 19, 1976: Regrets at the Republican Convention

Ford welcomes Reagan to the rostrum,

as Nancy Reagan (left) and Nelson Rockefeller (right) look on

August 19, 1976, 50 years ago: The Republican National Convention wraps up, at the Kemper Arena in Kansas City, Missouri. Hearing the speakers talk of upcoming victory, in the Presidential election and in the Congressional elections, you'd never know they were 2 years out from a President of their Party having to resign in disgrace, a year and a half out from badly losing in the Congressional races, and looking at a country still in a recession. They were not only confident, they were arrogant.

The Kemper Arena, now the Hy-Vee Arena

Gerald Ford, who became President when Richard Nixon resigned, had been President for a shade over 2 years, with a hell of a mess dumped into his lap. The results had been mixed: Certainly, the country was better off than when he took office, but it was hardly in great shape. The month before, he had ridden the celebrations of the country's Bicentennial, which had helped him. But little else had gone his way.

His pardon of Nixon, just 1 month into his Presidency, had angered millions of Americans. His refusal to support a federal bailout of a bankrupt New York City had infuriated millions, and his reversal on that issue had angered millions of others, without winning many of the first group back.

Conservatives in the Republican Party hated that he had chosen former Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York as his Vice President, and refused to support him for a term of his own if he ran with Rockefeller on the ticket. He could have reminded him that he was now the leader of the Party, and that he wouldn't be bullied. Instead, he was, telling Rockefeller that he would be dropped. He chose Senator Bob Dole of Kansas.

None of it was enough. Ronald Reagan, who had recently wrapped up 2 terms as Governor of California, was the darling of the conservative movement. He challenged Ford in the Primaries, and the final Delegate total was very close. This remains the last major-party convention at which the nominee was not absolutely certain. Ford got 1,187 Delegates, Reagan 1,070.

Ford's acceptance speech was too dull to quote here. And he kept making the mistake of pointing out the differences in the last 2 years, reminding everyone that he had succeeded Richard Nixon, a fellow Republican. He could have compared the current situation to 1968, the last full year under a Democratic Administration, with war abroad and riots at home, but he didn't.

And then, as the balloons were falling, and everybody was reacting with tepid applause, he made a gracious gesture. Reagan had not had the chance to make a speech on his own behalf. So Ford asked Reagan to come down and make a speech.

Standing behind the podium, with the Presidential seal still affixed, Reagan looked more like a President than Ford ever had. He sounded more like one, too: Whatever else could be said about either man, Reagan, who had been an actor, was a better public speaker than Ford, who had been a lawyer, but not a trial lawyer, used to addressing crowds. Ford had become a good politician, but until he actually got the office, he had never intended to run for President, and he was not made for moments like these.

Reagan was. He spoke of being asked to write a letter for a time capsule, to be opened in Los Angeles in 2076, America's Tricentennial. He spoke of the world in 1976 being a battle between freedom and tyranny, with nuclear missiles as the potential deciding factor:

Those who would read this letter a hundred years from now will know whether those missiles were fired. They will know whether we met our challenge. Whether they will have the freedom that we have known up until now will depend on what we do here. Will they look back with appreciation and say, "Thank God for those people in 1976 who headed off that loss of freedom? Who kept us now a hundred years later free? Who kept our world from nuclear destruction?"

And if we fail, they probably wont get to read the letter at all, because it spoke of individual freedom, and they wont be allowed to talk of that or read of it.

This is our challenge, and this is why were here in this hall tonight. Better than we've ever done before, we've got to quit talking to each other and about each other, and go out and communicate to the world that we may be fewer in numbers than we've ever been, but we carry the message they're waiting for. We must go forth from here united, determined and what a great general said a few years ago is true: There is no substitute for victory. Mr. President.

Reagan's speech got a standing ovation. But a lot of people left the Arena thinking, "We've nominated the wrong guy."

Ford began the Convention far behind the Democratic nominee, former Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia. The Convention helped. He eventually closed the gap to a virtual dead heat on Election Day. Carter won a very close race.

Would Reagan have won? This time, the Republicans were still tainted with scandal and recession. Reagan's message of tax cuts and Cold War aggressiveness would not have flown in 1976.

Four years later, it was a different world. And while Reagan looked finished after 1976, in 1980, America was ready for him. All 3 men had their moment where they were the man of the moment. For Ford, it was 1974, but not 1976. For Carter, it was 1976, but not 1980. For Reagan, it was 1980, but not 1976.

The Kemper Arena still stands, right on the State Line with Kansas City, Kansas. Originally named for local banker and philanthropist Rufus Kemper, it is now named the Hy-Vee Arena, after a supermarket chain. 

July 16, 1964: Extremism In the Defense of Liberty

July 16, 1964, 60 years ago: Senator Barry M. Goldwater of Arizona accepts the Republican Party's nomination for President, at their National Convention, at the Grand National Livestock Pavilion, a.k.a. the Cow Palace, just outside San Francisco in Daly City, California.

The site of the 1964 Republican National Convention may surprise people who know San Francisco as the most liberal city in America, which might not even be accurate. But, like all cities, San Francisco has its "old money" conservative elite. And this was the 2nd time the Grand Old Party had held its convention at the Cow Palace, built in 1940 for rodeo shows but later adapted for professional sports and concerts. They had previously nominated Dwight D. Eisenhower for a 2nd term there in 1956.

Then 55 years old, Goldwater was a Presbyterian, but had a Jewish grandfather, as the family name was originally Goldwasser. This makes the 1964 Republican Convention the closest either major party has ever come to nominating a Jewish person for President.

He was also very Western, living on a ranch outside Phoenix, with a solar-powered flagpole: Every morning, when the Sun came up, it raised the Stars & Stripes; every evening, when the Sun went down, the mechanism lowered the flag into a box.

A bomber pilot in World War II, Goldwater had been elected to the Phoenix City Council, and in 1952 defeated an incumbent Democrat for the U.S. Senate. Re-elected in 1958, he thought he could be the conservative alternative in 1960 to Vice President Richard Nixon, once considered the anti-Communist hard right's man, but now widely seen as more moderate -- the very thing that gave him a legitimate chance of election.

No true conservative had been elected President since 1928, and that was Herbert Hoover, on whose watch the Great Depression began, and whose policies were seen as having made it worse, leading to his landslide loss to Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. Every Republican nominee since had basically said, "We accept the New Deal, but we can do it better, and more efficiently, and with fewer Communists."

But there was another alternative to Nixon in 1960: Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York, who had replaced a previous holder of his office, 1944 and 1948 Presidential nominee Thomas Dewey, as the leader of the moderate-to-liberal Eastern wing of the GOP. He wanted to be President, too. But he also wanted to win. So he invited Nixon to his apartment, and made a deal where he would endorse Nixon to hold off any conservative challenge. It became known as "The Compact of Fifth Avenue."

So, at the 1960 Republican Convention in Chicago, Goldwater told his supporters that they could take their party back, if they were properly organized: "Let's grow up, conservatives!"

Whether the conservative movement, as it came to be known, "grew up" is debatable: Conservatism has often listed from side to side, from old and stuffy to very childish. But they were very well organized, and, on the morning of November 22, 1963, with Nixon branded as a "loser," Goldwater and Rockefeller were the 2 leaders for the Party's nomination in 1964.

That day, John F. Kennedy, who had beaten Nixon in 1960, was assassinated. In his memoir, Goldwater admitted that his chance of winning had died with Kennedy. The 2 men had been friendly rivals, and Goldwater had really looked forward to a clash of ideas with JFK.

But with Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson now President, and sure to be the Democratic nominee in 1964, any chance for a real clash of ideas was doomed: LBJ would do anything to win, including "making Kennedy's ghost his running mate." His actual Vice Presidential nominee turned out to be Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, but he essentially "ran with JFK" every bit as much as Harry Truman ran with Franklin Roosevelt in 1948.

Goldwater told his advisers that he didn't want to run against Johnson. They told him that he had to do it, anyway, as the best way to continue the building of the conservative takeover of the Republican Party. To use a sports analogy, they were asking him to sacrifice himself, to "take one for the team."

And so he ran. He ran his campaign as a moral crusade, to bring down government spending, to end welfare programs that encouraged "immoral behavior," and to stand up to the Communist world better than the Democrats had.

His supporters took the "morality" thing even further, citing the fact that Rockefeller had divorced his first wife and quickly remarried -- as if that had anything to do with his qualifications for the job. When Goldwater refused to campaign in the Oregon Primary, and Rockefeller went, accompanied by signs saying, "He cared enough to come," Goldwater knew that the California Primary was it: Win it, or you're out.

And when Margaretta "Happy" Rockefeller gave birth to Nelson Rockefeller Jr. just 3 days before the Primary, it bolstered the "morality" argument by reminding voters of Rocky's divorce and remarriage. Goldwater won California, and clinched the nomination.

But right after that came the Senate's vote on the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Most of those voting against it were Southern Democrats. But Goldwater voted against it -- on constitutional grounds, he said. But the vote tarred him as a racist, even though he wasn't one. The fact that Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina switched from Democratic to Republican after LBJ signed the bill, and then endorsed Goldwater, didn't help Goldwater at all.

Then came the Convention, and it set the standard for future ugly GOP Conventions to come in 1992, 2004 and 2016. Goldwater chose Representative William E. Miller of New York, then also the Chairman of the Republican National Committee, as his Vice Presidential nominee, "Because he drives Lyndon Johnson nuts."

There was a proposed plank for the Party platform denouncing "extremist groups," specifically mentioning, on the left, the Communist Party; and, on the right, the Ku Klux Klan and the John Birch Society. They did not specifically mention liberal groups like Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), or the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The Black Panther Party had not yet been founded.

The problem was, many of Goldwater's supporters were in the Birch Society. When Rockefeller came on to speak in favor of the plank, Goldwater supporters in the seats tried to boo him off the stage. It was a disgraceful spectacle, but Rocky stood up to them, and finished his speech. The plank was easily voted down, making the GOP look like extremists.

So, to use another sports analogy, Goldwater knew he needed a home run for his speech. He started off well: "This Party, with its every action, every word, every breath, and every heartbeat, has but a single resolve, and that is freedom. Freedom made orderly for this nation by our constitutional government. Freedom under a government limited by laws of nature and of nature's God. Freedom, balanced, so that order, lacking liberty, will not become the slavery of the prison cell; balanced, so that liberty, lacking order, will not become the license of the mob and of the jungle."

He knew that if he attacked the late President Kennedy and his policies, he had no chance. So he attacked the Democratic way in general: "During four futile years, the administration which we shall replace has distorted and lost that faith. It has talked and talked and talked and talked the words of freedom. Now, failures cement the wall of shame in Berlin. Failures blot the sands of shame at the Bay of Pigs. Failures mark the slow death of freedom in Laos. Failures infest the jungles of Vietnam."

This was a few days before what became known as the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. At the time, Berlin and Cuba were more familiar to Americans than Vietnam. At the time JFK took office, even Laos was more familiar.

Goldwater gave a few more platitudes about freedom, and fired a few more potshots at the Democrats. And then he addressed the need for unity within the Party's own ranks:

Anyone who joins us in all sincerity, we welcome. Those who do not care for our cause, we don't expect to enter our ranks in any case.

And let our Republicanism, so focused and so dedicated, not be made fuzzy and futile by unthinking and stupid labels.

I would remind you, my fellow Republicans, that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

Johnson would not go on to say it, but I can imagine a still-living Kennedy responding to this by saying, "I would remind you, my fellow Americans, that extremism in the defense of liberty is no defense of liberty."

What Johnson did go on to say was, "Extremism in the defense of liberty is an unpardonable vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is the highest virtue."

The Goldwater campaign produced buttons saying, "In your heart, you know he's right." The Johnson campaign produced buttons countering this, saying, "In your guts, you know he's nuts." And it produced other suggestions that he was too extreme to be President, including an ad known as the Daisy Spot.

Goldwater ended up winning only 6 States: His home State of Arizona, barely, and 5 Southern States who liked his apparent stance on civil rights.