This was not my idea, but on the “window into history” aspect, it tells what needs to be told, warts and all.
My parents were not really organized, partisan Republicans. We were middle-middle class. My Dad was a WW II vet. I was born in 1952. By the time I was eight years old, at the time of the 1960 election, I was vaguely aware President Eisenhower was being termed-out and a new President would be elected. It was going to be Nixon or Kennedy. My parents were for Nixon.
I am a Native Texan. My parents did not like Lyndon Johnson or John Connally. My Dad had been part of a delegation to meet Governor Price Daniel Sr. (conservative Democrat) in 1956 to have him sign a proclamation honoring our home town (Gonzales) for its role in the Texas Revolution of 1835-6. Dad was not impressed by Daniel or any of the stuffed shirts who ran things. He was not a go-along, get-along guy. In the wonderful phrase used by the author Alex Abramovich in his book Bullies: A Friendship to describe an Oakland motorcycle club, he was “not conflict-averse.” He had fought entrenched city burghers to begin the annual celebration, parade, and festival for the Battle of Gonzales (October 2).
As for why we were for Nixon, it was part of that “shopkeeper” thing where we respected Nixon for his hardscrabble roots as opposed to Kennedy who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Back then, the policy differences between Nixon and Kennedy were minimal compared to today’s partisan divide and in many ways Kennedy was the more conservative candidate. My Grandpa and Uncle were for Kennedy and I heard lots of partisan arguing at family gatherings. My Great-Aunts and Great-Grandmother were old New Dealers.
By 1964 my childhood politics continued to align with my parents and I was enthusiastic for Barry Goldwater. I liked his willingness to take a stand, and as I said, we didn’t like LBJ or his political machine. In those days in Texas the way to dance to a different drummer was to vote Republicans. Texas Republicans were a sorry lot of malcontents but few and far between compared to today.
The Vietnam War had a strong effect on me. I knew people including a brother-in-law who fought there. We had a math teacher at my high school who was killed there — I have a tracing of his name on the Memorial Wall. Goldwater continued to be a hawk, but before he did, I saw the folly of the whole thing. I was attracted to Eugene McCarthy’s campaign in 1968 primarily over the war. I did not like it that Hubert Humphrey had secured the Democratic nomination that year with the support of the big bosses like Mayor Richard Daley Sr. of Chicago and George Meany of the AFL-CIO. But despite this, I came to enthusiastically support “The Happy Warrior” who famously said “No sane person likes the Vietnam War, and neither does President Johnson.” After all, despite his flaws, Humphrey far outshone Nixon on policy issues (are you listening, #NeverBernie and #NeverHillary people?). To do otherwise was unthinkable. Too much was at stake.
Why, you may ask? Humphrey was not known for his antiwar stance. As for the economic issues, my parents were for Nixon again. What changed me? Perhaps the major thing was involvement with the United Methodist Church’s youth group. The UMC was at the time liberal on the economic and social issues of day. I was able, through church work to see a direct correlation between the Gospels and the New Deal and Great Society. As Tom Hayden said, the Vietnam War made us question everything. Our Sunday School teacher was the late City Councilman and attorney Peter “Pete” Torres, who was the first advocate for the poor farmworkers I ever met. (Torres late ran for Mayor and got trounced, but he came back against the ruling establishment in 1972 when we took the caucuses for George McGovern and he chaired the meeting.)
My parents took it in stride. They were unchanged but very accepting of my individualism. We had a few scrapes but it was all cool. Plus, as a then-11th grader, I saw that all the dickheads at school were for Nixon, so...well, you get the drift. My high school history teacher was a rock-ribbed right-wing Republican originally from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, with the improbable name of Charles Erasmus Neff, no relation to the Texas Governor Pat M. Neff. He was a retired Army Chaplin and Presbyterian Minister — he later retired with four retirements from his various careers. He began a project of having campaign representatives speak to his classes. As a Humphrey partisan he tasked me with obtaining a speaker. As a naive sixteen-year-old I didn’t know what to do, but I somehow wound up at Humphrey Headquarters in downtown San Antonio, which was in the same building where I’d later take my physical to join the Navy. I was directed to my own State Senator, Joe J. Bernal, who was right there sitting in a corner, and agreed to get me a young man named Mario, a student at St. Mary’s University, who was on fire for the campaign and who he said was a great speaker. He was. He also had a female co-representative, Yolanda, who was just as knowledgeable as he was. And they were both Hispanic, which at that time was an ethnic group considered as low or lower than African-Americans in those days by most of my white suburban schoolmates. The speakers for Nixon and George Wallace had been old, white males. Nixon still won our mock election but the classes and Mr. Neff all agreed Mario and Yolanda were the best speakers.
By then I was all-out Yellow Dog Democrat. I continued to cross paths with Senator Bernal throughout his service. He later became a school principal. I don’t know what happened to Mario and Yolanda.
I’ve only voted for a Republican for a major office once, and that was enough. In 1974, I voted for Republican Jim Granberry for Governor over conservadem Dolph Briscoe. Later when Texas finally elected a Republican Governor, Bill Clements, in 1978, Clements appointed Granberry as head of The Bureau of Pardons and Paroles. By then I was President of my local of the Texas State Employees Union. Granberry eventually went to prison himself for selling pardons. That’s to me a perfect microcosm of what the Republican Party became.
I still admire Goldwater from a distance. He was a great statesman in his later years. Occasionally I’ll read something he said or wrote in 1964 or before and cringe. He was pro-choice, pro-gays in the military, and anti-censorship and he’d be kicked out by the clowns running the Republican Party today. He negotiated Nixon’s resignation, which basically saved the country as a free nation, and that’s certainly something.
For further reading I’d recommend all of the following:
Before the Storm, by Rick Perlstein (about the rise of Goldwater)
Nixonland, also by Perlstein (about Nixon’s career and the middle class resentment that fueled it)
The Cause is Mankind, by Hubert H. Humphrey
The Making of the President series of books by Theodore H. White for 1960, 1964, and 1968
The Gay Place, (fiction) by Billy Lee Brammler, a former aide of President Johnson who created a character modeled after LBJ named Arthur “Goddamn” Fenstermaker (Brammler’s use of the term “Gay” in the title refers to the joy of politics)
Anything by Molly Ivins
The Secular City, by Harvey Cox (about the alignment of the Gospels with human progress)
And much, much more. We must educate ourselves for the coming conflict, as Bakunin or somebody said, and we have a gully-whomper of one coming this Fall.