Goldwater Lives!

With Republicans sweatily gripping all the levers of government, it's worth taking a moment to see how the worm has turned. MoJo blog had a great post showing that Bush's speech wasn't so much penned by Michael Gerson, as lifted from an acceptance address 50 years ago:

On the Republican Party: "This party, with its every action, every word, every breath and every heartbeat has but a single resolve, and that is freedom -- freedom under a government limited by laws of nature and of nature's God."

On other nations in the world: "This nation and its people are freedom's model in a searching world. We can be freedom's missionaries in a doubting world."

Will that road be easy: "I know that our freedom was achieved through centuries, by unremitting efforts by brave and wise men. I know that the road to freedom is a long and challenging road."

What about those who say America is an Empire: "Our Republican cause is not to level out the world. Our Republican cause is to free our people and light the way for liberty throughout the world."

And the larger forces at work: "This Nation was founded upon the acceptance of God as the author of freedom."

Why will the world follow: "We must make it clear that until its goals of conquest are absolutely renounced and its rejections with all nations tempered, terrorism* and the governments it now controls are enemies of every man on earth who is not -- or wants to be -- free."

In case you were wondering, those words didn't come from Michael Gerson's pen nor emerge from Bush's mouth. They were Barry Goldwater's. And Gerson, a speechwriter with an acute sense of history, surely knew that. But does he know what happened to the man who scribbled down the original? This comes from Page 37 of The Right Nation:

Goldwater's defeat turned conservatives into pariahs. Theodore H. White tells a remarkable story about Goldwater's chief speechwriter, Karl Hess. Chief Speechwriters of losing campaigns usually find a safe berth in the party machinery, but not so Hess. First, he applied for positions with conservative senators and congressmen -- the very politicians who had been cheering him on months before. Unwanted, he lowered his sights dramatically. Could he perhaps work the elevators in the Senate or the House? Still no luck. The apostle of the free market was reduced to the ranks of the unemployed. He enrolled in a night-school course in welding and eventually found a job working the night shift in a machine shop.

It wasn't that long ago that Gerson's equivalent was banished from politics forever. 50 years later, his words echoed in the inaugural speech of a two-term Republican president. And while his party crows and talks of a "permanent majority", disheartened Democrats should keep in mind how quickly -- and how totally -- the worm can turn.

* MoJo blog replaced Communism with terrorism to drive home the similarity.