I HAVE BEEN WRITING ABOUT AMERICAN CONSERVATISM SINCE 1961 WHEN I was the first editor of The New Guard, the magazine of Young Americans for Freedom. For this history, I have drawn freely on my books, articles, and columns, especially my biographies of Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater, but have extensively revised the material.
The conservative literature about the politics of the conservative movement is surprisingly limited (conservatives are all too American in their lack of interest in political history), but what is there is “cherce”—as Spencer Tracy once remarked about Katharine Hepburn. Leading the list are George H. Nash’s seminal work The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 194, William A. Rusher’s autobiographical history The Rise of the Right, F. Clifton White’s comprehensive Suite 3505, Martin Anderson’s revealing Revolution, paleoconservative Paul Gottfried’s The Conservative Movement, James C. Roberts’s excellent The Conservative Decade, Richard A. Viguerie’s feisty The New Right: We’re Ready to Lead, Russell Kirk’s and James McClellan’s insightful The Political Thought of Robert Taft, and M. Stanton Evans’s early books, especially Revolt on the Campus.
The liberal literature on conservative politics is wildly uneven. Washington Post reporter Lou Cannon’s two biographies of Ronald Reagan are must reading, as is John B. Judis’s biography of William F. Buckley, Jr. (remarkably, the only biography so far of this major conservative figure). Useful histories include William Manchester’s The Glory and the Dream and James T. Patterson’s Grand Expectations (Patterson’s biography of Robert A. Taft—Mr. Republican—is by far the best), and Paul Johnson’s magisterial A History of the American People, although Johnson is too laudatory about Richard Nixon. Godfrey Hodgson’s The World Turned Upside Down: A History of the Conservative Ascendancy in America is good about earlier conservatives but flawed in its analysis of the Reagan presidency.
One person alone cannot research or write a political history of modern American conservatism. As always, I have depended on my wife, Anne, for major research and editorial assistance. Her trips took her to the John M. Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs at Ashland University in Ohio (where David Roepke was especially helpful); the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library in West Branch, Iowa; the Sterling Library at Yale (where Bill Buckley’s papers are located); and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., repository of the William Rusher and Robert A. Taft papers. Together we examined the John Tower Papers at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, and Reagan material at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. I spent several days at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University going through the Peter Hannaford and Michael Deaver papers and Martin Anderson’s personal files.
Over seventy prominent conservatives responded to my questionnaire about the past, present, and future of conservatism. I particularly enjoyed the note at the bottom of President George Bush’s response: “Lee, I am rather pleased that you have written to me as ‘one of the … leading conservatives.’ Better not tell Howie Phillips or Ron Paul.”
The personal reflections of the following were especially helpful: Leonard Liggio, David R. Jones, William A. Rusher, William F. Buckley, Jr., Neal B. Freeman, and George Nash.
I am indebted to Seth Becker, Jason Boffetti, Daniel Barnes, and John Nixon for their research help and to William S. Connery for his organizational skills and unfailing serenity.
Patricia Bozell and William T. Poole carefully read an often raw manuscript and patiently pointed out my many violations of the Chicago style book.
Grants from the Earhart Foundation, the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, the Historical Research Foundation, the Fund for American Studies, the Roe Foundation, and the Wilbur Foundation enabled Anne and me to make our many library visits and conduct our research. And all the while, I had a spacious office, PC, telephone, fax, access to NEXIS-LEXIS, and all the other modern research accoutrements, courtesy of the Heritage Foundation and its generous president, Dr. Edwin J. Feulner, Jr.
Because Leona Schecter is my literary agent, because the Free Press is my publisher, and because Paul Golob is my editor, this history is far better than it would have been if I had my own way.
I pay special tribute to my father, the late Willard Edwards, a Washington reporter and columnist for the Chicago Tribune, who covered American politics from 1935 until 1972. I miss him very much.
In writing this book, I have been struck once again by the reality that writing history is a constant process of selection—of deciding what to include and what to exclude, whom to highlight and whom to leave in the shadows. Because it is impossible to include everything (even in the Age of the CD-ROM), a historian is forever being forced to make choices between what is important and what is only interesting, what is significant and what is merely arresting. My choices have been influenced by the undeniable fact that I am a conservative. Indeed I have been a conservative activist, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as a conservative writer over the past forty years.
Those seeking absolute objectivity will not find it here. But then they will not find it in Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.’s history of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency or William Manchester’s biography of John F. Kennedy either. Indeed, objectivity is impossible; we all have our biases, prejudices, and beliefs, and we carry them with us wherever we go or whatever we do. This history is a work of scholarship, selection, and yes, praise for a movement that has made a profound difference in the life of every American for half a century.