History of the ‘S’ Bomb
McCain isn't the first Arizonan to use 'socialist' epithet.
John McCain recently accused Barack Obama of advocating socialist policies. It turns out he was channeling one of his illustrious home-state predecessors—Barry Goldwater.
In newly unearthed correspondence, Goldwater, the famed GOP senator from Arizona and a conservative icon, wrote a stinging letter to Lyndon Johnson just after he heard the news that the then Senate majority leader had agreed to be John F. Kennedy's running mate in the 1960 election.
Goldwater's complaint: that Johnson would be running on a "socialist" Democratic Party platform.
"Dear Lyndon," Goldwater wrote to LBJ on July 15, 1960. "It is the morning after, so to speak and as I sit here in my study, I still have a numb feeling of despair over your actions of yesterday in accepting the candidacy for Vice President. It is difficult to imagine a person like you running in a second spot to a weaker man, but it is even more incredible to try to understand how you are going to try to embrace the socialist platform of your party. I think many people, Lyndon, share my feeling of disappointment."
Goldwater—who was known for his candor, not to mention his occasional grouchiness—then added: "You were intended for great things, but I don't think you are going to achieve them now. It is not easy to write this letter for I have always had respect for you. Sincerely, Barry Goldwater."
Johnson took a somewhat more measured tone in his response nearly a month later.
"Dear Barry," he replied on Aug. 11, 1960. "I think all of us have to decide for ourselves what represents a "socialist" platform, and what represents the reasonable consensus upon which a political party can honorably go to the country. I made my decision not on the basis of seeking [to be Kennedy's running mate] which would lead to 'great things,' but upon my inner belief as to what represented a clear call to duty. Sincerely, Lyndon B. Johnson."
The correspondence was discovered last weekend in the LBJ Library by Ben Barnes, a veteran Washington lobbyist from Texas and former Johnson protégé. Barnes was prompted to look for the letters after reading McCain approvingly quote his campaign's newfound workingman's hero, Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher (a.k.a. Joe the Plumber) saying that Obama's economic views "sounded a lot like socialism."
"At least in Europe, the socialist leaders who so admire my opponent are up front about their objectives," McCain said in a speech last Saturday in New Hampshire.
The parallels were not lost on Barnes. In an e-mail to NEWSWEEK attached to the correspondence, he wrote: "Ironically, this is not the first time a Senator from Arizona has attacked the Democratic nominee charging socialism."
Robert Dallek, a historian and Johnson biographer, says he's never seen the 1960 exchange between Johnson and Goldwater that Barnes discovered. But Dallek says that "in terms of where Goldwater was at the time, it doesn't surprise me." The charge of "socialism" against Democrats like Kennedy and Johnson "is the kind of rhetoric the country had been hearing [from conservative Republicans] for a while."
It wasn't always politically effective. Kennedy and Johnson narrowly edged their Republican opponents, Richard Nixon and Henry Cabot Lodge, in the 1960 election. Four years later, Johnson trounced Goldwater in a landslide.
McCain is fond of citing Goldwater on the stump. But Democrats don't talk much about Johnson anymore, Dallek notes. Last Aug. 27 was the 100th anniversary of Johnson's birth. But despite the urging of some old admirers, no mention of that was made at the Democratic convention at which Obama was nominated. The reason, Dallek says, is almost certainly the legacy of Vietnam and its uncomfortable parallels with the war in Iraq. But LBJ's star might yet rise again, Dallek suggests—especially if the country's economic woes continue. Then the new Obama Democrats might start to focus more on Johnson's economic and domestic policies—not to mention his effective deflection of the "socialist" label.
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Michael Isikoff has been an award-winning investigative correspondent for Newsweek since 2004. He has written extensively on the U.S. government's war on terrorism, the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, presidential politics and other national issues. His book, "Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War," co-written with David Corn, was an instant New York Times best-seller when it was published in September, 2006. The book was hailed by the New York Times Book Review as "fascinating reading" and "the most comprehensive account of the White House's political machinations" in the run up to the war in Iraq. Since January 2009, Isikoff has been an MSNBC contributor, making regular appearances on the Rachel Maddow Show and Hardball w/ Chris Matthews.
Ever since the events of September 11, Isikoff has broken repeated stories about the U.S. government's war on terror and won numerous journalism awards. His blog "DeClassified: Investigative Reporting in Real Time," which appears regularly on Newsweek's Web site and is written with MarkHosenball, has become a must-read for senior U.S. intelligence officials. Isikoff and Hosenball won the 2005 award from the Society of Professional Journalists for best investigative reporting online.
Isikoff's June 2002 Newsweek cover story on U.S. intelligence failures that preceded the 9-11 terror attacks, along with a series of related articles, was honored with the Investigative Reporters and Editors top prize for investigative reporting in magazine journalism. He was honored, along with a team of Newsweek reporters, by the Society of Professional Journalists for coverage of the Abu Ghraib scandal. For that coverage, Isikoff obtained exclusive internal White House, Justice Department and State Department memos showing how decisions made at the highest levels of the Bush administration led to abuses in the interrogation of terror suspects. Isikoff was also part of a reporting team that earned Newsweek the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 2002, the highest award in magazine journalism, for their coverage of the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks.
Isikoff's exclusive reporting on the Monica Lewinsky scandal gained him national attention in 1998, including profiles in The New York Times and The Washington Post and a guest appearance on "Late Show with David Letterman." His coverage of the events that lead to President Bill Clinton's impeachment earned Newsweek the prestigious National Magazine Award in the Reporting category in 1999. Isikoff's reporting also won the National Headliner Award, the Edgar A. Poe Award presented by the White House Correspondents Association and the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize for Reporting on the Presidency. In 2001, Isikoff was named on a list of "most influential journalists" in the nation's capital by Washingtonian magazine.
Isikoff is the author of "Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter's Story," a book that chronicled his own reporting of the Lewinsky story and was hailed by a critic for The Washington Post-Los Angeles Times news service as "the absolutely essential narrative of the scandal with revelations that no one would have thought possible." The book, also a New York Times bestseller, was named Best Non-Fiction Book of 1999 by the Book of the Month Club.
Isikoff came to Newsweek from The Washington Post, where he had been a reporter since September 1981. There he covered the Justice Department and the Persian Gulf War, reported on international drug operations in Latin America and worked on the Post's financial news desk. Isikoff graduated from Washington University with a B.A. in 1974 and received a Masters in Journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in 1976.
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