----- Original Message ----- From: "Peter K." <peterk at enteract.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Sunday, April 08, 2001 1:03 PM Subject: Goldwater book
> Rick Perlstein's new book _ Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the
> Unmaking of the American Consensus_ is reputed to be a good history of the
> American Right.
> (Doug maybe you can check it out and see if he got the milieu of the Right
> in the '70s correct.)
>
> At the American Prospect website, I found Perlstein's pick for the
> Democratic challenget to Bush in 2004.
> http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2001/01/kaminer-w-01-19.html
>
> Jan. 19, 2001
> Choice: Jesse Jackson, Jr.
>
> I'll leave it to others to proffer the Gores and the Gephardts, the
Daschles
> and the Davises. It is time to sin boldly. Our times have yielded us a
great
> moral issue: the bad theories and naked lies of corporate managed trade.
> This is, of course, debatable; great moral issues -- slavery, civil
rights,
> Vietnam -- always are. But for those of us who believe that there is
little
> in the dominant nostrums of "globalization" that isn't explained in the
> epigram that the law in its majesty forbids both rich and poor to sleep
> under a bridge, the spectrum that stretches from NAFTA to "not this NAFTA"
> is an insult to the imagination. And that leaves out the Gores and the
> Gephardts, the Daschles and the Davises.
>
> I'm struck by something Barry Goldwater said at the 1960 Republican
> convention after a rump group, unbidden, almost sabotaged Richard Nixon's
> centrist nomination-by-acclamation on his behalf. "Turn your group into a
> permanent organization of young conservatives," he advised. "The man is
not
> important. The principles you espouse are." At that particular historical
> juncture, he was right: Daring them to lead their leaders, so that their
> leaders would lead them. I don't know Jesse Jackson Jr.; I haven't picked
> through his record with even a rough-toothed comb. But what Jackson,
barely
> old enough to run for president in 2004, has already done is courageous,
> astringent, and visionary: When the Clinton Administration adopted
> Representative Phil Crane's NAFTA-ish African Growth and Opportunity Act
> thus making it a shoo-in, Jackson bucked his president with a counter-bill
> that is a textbook model of what globalization should really look like. In
a
> model of anti-DLC coalition building, he found 74 fellow Democrats to
> sponsor it; then, presciently for the time, he unleashed 11,000 citizen
> activists registered with his Web site to lobby for it. (Just this is a
> record of actual accomplishment far to surpass what Barry Goldwater had in
> 1964, much of whose outlandish politics would in but 30 years find their
way
> to the Democratic center.)
>
> Will Jr. fail to honor the confidence I thus place in him? Almost
certainly:
> no less than that flawed vessel Barry Goldwater; or, for that matter,
Jesse
> Jackson Sr. Is he radical? If not, let us lead him to it. Will he sell
out?
> If so, let us lead him from it. Or someone else. The man is not important,
> the principles are. Let us dare a political imagination equal to our
hunger
> for victory. The former may well turn out, in decades if not quadrennials,
> to vindicate the latter.
> [end]
>
>