George F. Will, Donald Trump, Barry Goldwater

George F. Will has come back onto the radar of the chattering classes, no longer as one of them, but as a sort of elder sage, a chattering fellow whose chattering has been elevated.

In that capacity he seems to be interested in enunciating a "conservative sensibility" that will be able to survive the coming wreckage of the Republican Party after Trump passes from the scene one way or another.

I liked this bit in a recent interview in his book tour. The interviewer said, "You refer to Barry Goldwater as an important intellectual failure, electorally but then setting the stage for Reagan."

"George Will: It would be a stretch to refer to Barry as an intellectual precursor. But, to me, Barry was an amiable--as someone described, as a 'cheerful malcontent.' But, what he wanted to do was to revive the vocabulary of wide-open spaces, Southwestern individualism; and the Founders. Which he did. He famously did not write but presumably read The Conscience of a Conservative."

It is intriguing to see a self-identified conservative dis Goldwater this way. Yes, Karl Hess ghostwrote that book. I don't know that the fact is "famous" but it is well enough known so that I'll let that pass. Hess also became one of the founders of the Libertarian Party a few years later, after the crash of the Goldwater Presidential campaign had made things ready for the return of Richard Nixon to dominance in the GOP.

I had always thought that, in intra-Republican quarrels, Will was more Nixonian (in a refined and baseball-loving sort of way) than Goldwater/Hess/Libertarian.

Still: The real dis-ing here involves the word "presumably." Will won't concede that Goldwater did as a matter of course read the book that went out with his name attached. He is merely making what seems like a polite "presumption."

Like Art of the Deal, one has to say. The named author may have read that one, too. Or at least leafed through it at some point.

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