THE ACCEPTED WISDOM IS ALWAYS WRONG :

Conventional wisdom down the tubes (Paul Greenberg, June 3, 2002, Jewish World Review )

[R]ick Perlstein's new and delicious book about Barry Goldwater...begins with some of the now hilarious post-mortems after Senator Goldwater's landslide defeat in the 1964 presidential election. For anyone who savors political irony, they make a delicious smorgasbord of opinionation:

"He has wrecked his party for a long time to come," opined The New York Times' resident sage, Scotty Reston. Four years later, Richard Nixon would recapture the White House for the GOP. Mr. Reston was only continuing The Times' long-standing tradition of tin-eared political analysis, which persists to this day.

Then there was Richard Rovere in The New Yorker: "The election has finished the Goldwater school of political reaction." The New Yorker's talent for political prognosis hasn't changed much, either.

We heartily second Mr. Greenberg's endorsement of this terrific book : see our review here Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (2001) (Rick Perlstein  1969-) (Grade: A) Posted by Orrin Judd at June 3, 2002 1:51 PM