the new cities to put together a winning combina- tion
of discontented farmers and city workers. The East was always leery of him, of his raw- ness and his phrases without meaning.
Goldwater, of course, has many of Bryan's characteristics, and his advantages and disadvan- tages in strategy and geography. Yet if he were more like Bryan in one other way, he might have made a closer race of it with President Johnson. Bryan preached neutrality for America. His most famous lecture was called 'The Prince of Peace.' He was the darling of the Mid-West and of the Bible Belt. He preached God without a sword.
It was the peace issue which laid Goldwater in the dust. Except under the direct threat of attack or in the interests of continental expansion, a majority in America has always favoured peace. Both Woodrow Wilson in 1916 and Franklin Roosevelt in 1940 won re-election, as Lyndon Johnson did, on the issue of peace. Both Wilson and Roosevelt promised to keep America out of ,war and ran on a record of doing just that; both took America into war after the election and their parties later suffered the consequences of their action. In time of danger, the gospel
of peace preached by a sitting President is a winning issue.
The candles of the past do not light again with the same flame. But they can illuminate some of the dark corners of the present. On the basis of the results of 1896 and 1920, the prob- ability bad long been a landslide victory for Johnson. The East still distrusts the West, and still outnumbers it, although California is re- dressing the balance. The Mid-West still distrusts the South-West, and prefers New York to Phoenix. There is a normal majority for peace —the test-ban treaty was widely approved. Sitting Presidents have always won in time of pros- perity, and the Democrats are now the majority party. Charges of corruption and immorality have never unseated a President or his party; Coolidge won easily in 1924, although the Teapot Dome was Harding's headstone.
If politics is the art of the possible, history is the art of the probable. And Lyndon Johnson, as he watched the results come in, could well have echoed the post-mortem words of Joe Tumulty, the White House secretary, in 1920: 'It wasn't a landslide; it was an earthquake.'
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