The Liberal compulsion to explain wha’ hoppen at the 1964 Republican convention, and how it can be prevented from ever, ever happening again, continues to generate books at an undiminished rate. The latest offering is a product of that pseudo-Republican subspecies of Liberalism that demurely labels itself “moderate.”
George Gilder and Bruce Chapman were respectively the editor and publisher of Advance, a passionately Liberal Republican journal that flourished at Harvard and elsewhere from 1960 to 1964, when David Rockefeller and various other angels unexpectedly ran out of petty cash. In addition Chapman, revealing an unsuspected aptitude for practical politics, rose through the ranks to the dizzy pinnacle of Vice President of the Harvard Young Republican Club. In 1964, having graduated from Harvard, and apparently feeling heavy with years and honors, the pair retired—at 25 and 24 respectively—to spend the rest of their lives giving free advice to Republican leaders, from Dwight Eisenhower and Ray Bliss to Barry Goldwater and Clif White. Gilder ran through a junior fellowship of the Council on Foreign Relations, then caromed into an associate editorship at the congenial New Leader. Chapman, on the other hand, ascended into the editorial offices of the New York Herald Tribune, where he is seated at the right hand of Walter Thayer.
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