As the focus turns to Arizona, a test of Bernie Sanders’ western chops, I thought of Barry Goldwater, whom I, and Hillary Clinton, wanted to win the ‘64 election.
At 15, (two years younger than Hillary), I went door-to-door with Reader’s Digest reprints that I’d paid for myself, asking neighbors who needed no convincing to support the GOP nominee.
The Arizona Senator, author of Conscience of a Conservative, was the first nominee of Jewish heritage of a major party for president. This caused barely a ripple in our neighborhood in upscale Longmeadow, Mass., a reliable Republican stronghold on the Connecticut border.
The Town was a melting pot religiously, and though our parents went to separate country clubs, boomers played across the lines. Racial integration was a different matter, however. In 1964, as Goldwater opposed the Voting Rights Act, I paid little attention, for I knew no black people.
I did hear of one black family moving into town, and the ruckus from the racist neighbors who wanted them out. Turns out it was the family of Chirlane McCray, wife of New York City Mayor Bill Diblasio. She was just 10 when the welcome wagon arrived.
The Vietnam War was blazing, but I didn’t know much about it except the corporate line, attending a high school where most kids were going to college, boys armed with 2-S deferments that would keep them out of the military. It didn’t seem like my problem unless I wanted it to be.
In the election of 1964, Goldwater suggested using nuclear bombs in Vietnam, but I didn’t see why we shouldn’t use weapons that would help us win a war. Besides, I didn’t know any soldiers, or Asians, let alone Vietnamese.
I didn’t know my ass from a hole in the ground politically, and wouldn’t for another couple of years as the ferment from the streets gradually reached me.
I was no natural leader.
But Bernie Sanders was, and is. By 1964, when Hillary and I were talking up Goldwater, he’d already been arrested trying to integrate University of Chicago housing. He was an activist then, a most unusual kind of leader — one willing to stand up for the rights of others.
He wasn’t a man standing up for men, nor a Jew standing up for Jews. He was a white man standing up for African Americans, helping because it was the decent and courageous thing to do. He habitually stands with the most vulnerable among us: seniors, students, poor people, native Americans, African Americans, American workers.
He reliably stands up to the powerful.
I don’t fault HIllary, any more than I fault myself, for backing Goldwater 52 years ago, but it does nothing to burnish her leadership credentials.
Fast forward to this year, and she still trails Bernie Sanders in grasping the seriousness of Global Warming, the dangers in corporate trade agreements, the unfairness of for-profit health insurance, the need for a living wage, the folly of a hawkish military policy, the corruption of political campaigns by Big Money.
Their dies were cast long ago, and no, these candidates are not alike, any more now than in 1964.
One dares to be ahead of his time.
To lead.
