Books in Brief: The Lessons of Victory

The Lessons of Victory, by The Ripon Society (Dial, Cloth, $6.95; Paperback, $2.65). The Ripon Society may be the only political organization in America that intensifies its efforts between campaigns. A political contest, even a post-convention Presidential contest, may fail to excite its partisan commitment. Once the election is past, however, Riponese are perfervid in their construction of Monday-morning analyses. This year they have outdone themselves, following up the usual quickie post-mortem with a full-length book, perhaps the only volume around that asks the question: Where did the GOP go wrong in 1968? Or, as they put it at the outset of this grim essay, the GOP “must carefully study the reasons . . . why it almost lost.” (Emphasis and incredulity mine.) Why the GOP almost lost, it develops, was that it failed to attract 100 per cent of the votes. To do so next time it “must learn to excite intellectuals, minority groups, laborers and urban dwellers.” And how do you do that? They’re glad you asked that question—and devote four hundred pages to a strategy guaranteed to lose the working majority the GOP started with. For close observers of politics, some of the analysis will be useful. And the celerity with which Ripon has dumped the Republican Governors Association for the Bright New Republican Senate is noteworthy.

About the Author

Neal B. Freeman

Neal B. Freeman, businessman and journalist, was a director of National Review Inc. for 38 years.

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The Lessons of Victory, by The Ripon Society (Dial, Cloth, $6.95; Paperback, $2.65). The Ripon Society may be the only political organization in America that intensifies its efforts between campaigns. A political contest, even a post-convention Presidential contest, may fail to excite its partisan commitment. Once the election is past, however, Riponese are perfervid in their construction of Monday-morning analyses. This year they have outdone themselves, following up the usual quickie post-mortem with a full-length book, perhaps the only volume around that asks the question: Where did the GOP go wrong in 1968? Or, as they put it at the outset of this grim essay, the GOP “must carefully study the reasons . . . why it almost lost.” (Emphasis and incredulity mine.) Why the GOP almost lost, it develops, was that it failed to attract 100 per cent of the votes. To do so next time it “must learn to excite intellectuals, minority groups, laborers and urban dwellers.” And how do you do that? They’re glad you asked that question—and devote four hundred pages to a strategy guaranteed to lose the working majority the GOP started with. For close observers of politics, some of the analysis will be useful. And the celerity with which Ripon has dumped the Republican Governors Association for the Bright New Republican Senate is noteworthy.