A “Return” to Politics in America?

At first the 1964 election seemed to promise a new politicized atmosphere, but these expectations were hardly fulfilled. The results were less a mandate for a program than an overwhelming rejection of Goldwater madness. Democratic campaign propaganda either appealed to fears of the opponent or asserted folksy generalities, of which Johnson’s speeches were the worst specimens. Yet in its ramifications the campaign signified a return to some genuine political controversy. There may now be a revival of the political public to which radicals have directed their messages in the past thirty years—the New Deal-type liberals.

Few of them ever accepted radical answers. Still, they represented a fairly large group to whom one could ...