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tombstone, arizona, deputy sheriff Wyatt Earp allegedly observed, “Fast is Wne, but accuracy is everything.”1 For a long time, historians took their cue from Earp and prided themselves on their accuracy and hesitancy to quick-draw conclusions. More recently, however, historians have questioned not only their ability to be accurate about the past but even their own objectivity. To their research, historians bring race, class, and gender identities and political leanings that act as screens Wltering and sifting historical information. As physicist Werner Heisenberg has argued, the observer cannot be separated from the observed. To get the past, or to get past biases, professional historians must oVer interpretations tested by logic and the weight of evidence. Further complicating our understanding of history is the matter of memory. If trained historians observe and measure, men and women store and remember with memories tinged with emotion and changing over time. Thus, we create our own histories, giving salience to the moments when we were personally raised to a national and international consciousness. Scholars take such memories, even imagination, seriously, studying them as they are reXected in public rituals and monuments . They also record them in oral histories of the rich, famous, Afterword Barry Goldwater in History and Memory robert alan goldberg 259 ordinary, and invisible. For historians best to represent the past—its events, decisions, rhythms, and nuances—they must be able to merge the written with the spoken, the recorded with the remembered. With this as context, let us consider the intersection of scholarship and memory with regard to Barry Goldwater and the 1964 election. This combination promises to reveal a complex picture of the past. Still, scholars must be alert, for memories are fragile and self-serving, and often deny dissonance. Authors meanwhile must self-consciously protect their subjects from the assumptions that they bring to their research. They, too, cannot escape the magic of memory. An alert must also be sounded, when memory and scholarship are reinforcing. The conventional wisdom may disguise critical patterns and deXect understanding . Historians, political scientists, and biographers are obligated to listen closely to the players, hear their words, and tease from the past the critical choices that sounded then, and echo now. Professional scholarship and public memory converge in regard to 1964. This was a signiWcant year, a critical election, both personally and historically. There are few events that compare in the conservative imagination to this moment. Listen to those who were there at the creation. Conservative pundit Pat Buchanan wrote: “Like a Wrst love, the Goldwater campaign was, for thousands of men and women now into middle age, an experience that will never recede from memory , one on which we look back with pride and fond remembrance. We were there on St. Crispin’s Day.”2 New Right activist Paul Weyrich spoke similarly for a younger generation: “Even if we did nothing but wear a Goldwater button, or attend a rally—and some of the New Right are so young [that] is all they did—it made a mark, and had an impact.”3 For Senator John Tower, “The ’64 campaign was the Alamo before San Jacinto, to put it in Texas terms.”4 Those who fought the odds that year, Wrst in the primaries and state conventions and then against the Democrats, wear special badges of identity and honor. Check the résumés of conservative leaders, and you will Wnd that many proudly recall that they were Wrst roused to politics in 1964 for Barry Goldwater. Consider attorney Theodore Olson, who successfully argued Bush v. Gore (2000) before the US Supreme Court and who has Wled a federal lawsuit in favor of the legalization of same-sex marriage. In 1964, while attending the University of California Berkeley Law School, he worked in the Goldwater 260 robert alan goldberg eVort. Campaign worker Richard Viguerie, shortly after the election, gathered lists of Goldwater contributors and developed a national direct-mail network to provide information and raise funds for conservative causes. The 1964 campaign was an incubator that accelerated the maturation of a generation of conservatives. Michael Deaver, Jake Garn, Jesse Helms, Phyllis SchlaXy, David Stockton, and George Will began their political lives in the Goldwater campaign or honed critical skills there. Not the least among them was Ronald Reagan.5 Even liberals have Goldwater credentials. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton remembers her experience as a Goldwater Girl decked out in straw hat and short skirt. “When I was Wfteen years old, I...

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