The Victor Belongs to the Spoils

The Unmaking of a Mayor, by William F. Buckley Jr. Viking, $6.95

On one occasion in early 1964, Teddy White was musing on the difficulties he felt he was going to face in writing the second volume of The Making of the President. “A book on politics,” he said, “to be widely read must have a hero. The villain problem then takes care of itself.” By which he meant that anyone who opposes The Good Guy becomes, by definition, The Bad Guy. A born Democrat and longtime Liberal ideologist, White had found it easy, in The Making of the President 1960, to cast Jack Kennedy as his hero. “But how the hell am I going to make a hero of Johnson?” Mr. White made the necessary accommodation. Along with the majority of his journalistic colleagues, he made Goldwater an outsized villain, and let the hero problem take care of itself.

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Clare Booth Luce

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William F. Buckley Jr.

The Unmaking of a Mayor, by William F. Buckley Jr. Viking, $6.95

On one occasion in early 1964, Teddy White was musing on the difficulties he felt he was going to face in writing the second volume of The Making of the President. “A book on politics,” he said, “to be widely read must have a hero. The villain problem then takes care of itself.” By which he meant that anyone who opposes The Good Guy becomes, by definition, The Bad Guy. A born Democrat and longtime Liberal ideologist, White had found it easy, in The Making of the President 1960, to cast Jack Kennedy as his hero. “But how the hell am I going to make a hero of Johnson?” Mr. White made the necessary accommodation. Along with the majority of his journalistic colleagues, he made Goldwater an outsized villain, and let the hero problem take care of itself.