Let’s Remember the 1964 Republican Convention by Ross Jones

The upcoming Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, July 15-18, recalls another GOP gathering 60 years ago at the huge Cow Palace arena near San Francisco, July 13-16, 1964. 

It was a chaotic affair.  Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, the darling of right-wing Republicans, was the party’s leading nominee for President.  But on June 12, a month before the convention, party liberals and moderates, including Milton Eisenhower, then president of Johns Hopkins University, youngest brother of former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, pushed hard for the nomination of the popular governor of Pennsylvania, William Scranton. (As assistant to Milton Eisenhower I witnessed much of the maneuvering prior to the convention.)

Goldwater and Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York had waged a bitter battle in the primaries but, when it became clear that Goldwater was likely to win, a “Draft Scranton” movement took shape. Scranton tossed his hat into the ring on June 12, just a month before the convention. Milton Eisenhower nominated him for President. Delegates from 10 states, including Maryland, gave Scranton their votes on the first ballot. It was too late. Goldwater was nominated with 833 votes to Scranton’s 214. Nelson Rockefeller, also on the ballot, came in at 114.

Following his victory, Goldwater, on July 17, paid a visit to Dwight Eisenhower at his St. Francis Hotel suite in San Francisco. Milton Eisenhower prepared a memorandum of the conversation. 

The former President expressed his concern about two critical sentences in Goldwater’s acceptance speech: “Extremism in the defense of liberty is not a vice,” and “Moderation in support of justice is not a virtue.” Milton wrote: “The two critical sentences were construed as support for the right-wing elements of the Party and a repudiation of more moderate Republicans.”

Goldwater denied any intention of conveying such meanings but Dwight Eisenhower said the Senator needed to make clarifying statements to calm moderate Republicans who were calling him in great dismay and deep concern. Goldwater said he would try to do that but added that his differences with Rockefeller and some other party moderates were irreconcilable. 

A few days after the convention ended the former President and Mrs. Eisenhower arrived from California by train, late at night, in Harrisburg, PA. near their farm in Gettysburg. Their two handsomely outfitted, old fashioned rail cars, were dropped off on a siding in the rail yards. Milton said his brother had invited him to have breakfast with him and Mrs. Eisenhower, on the train, before they departed for the farm.  He asked me to go with him.

Conversation among the Eisenhowers at the small, round breakfast table in the corner of one of the ornate cars, was a  post-convention analysis with many expressions of concern about what Goldwater’s nomination meant for the country and the party. (In November, President Lyndon Johnson trounced Goldwater, winning 61 percent of all votes.)

Breakfast was served by John Moaney, the former Army master sergeant who had been Eisenhower’s valet throughout World War II and was his companion until Eisenhower died in March, 1969. Moaney and his wife, Dolores, were born in Talbot County. Following their deaths in February, 1978 and September, 2014, respectively, they were buried in DeShields Church Cemetery near Easton.  

Ross Jones is a former vice president and secretary emeritus of The Johns Hopkins University. He joined the University in 1961 as assistant to President Milton S. Eisenhower. A 1953 Johns Hopkins graduate, he later earned a Master’s Degree at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.