Page 35 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

THE PROGRAM

founders was to give young people a sense of personal involvement in the
leadership of America, a vision of greatness for the country, and, most
important, a sense of responsibility for bringing that greatness to reality.

PROGRAM ORIGINS
In mid-July 1964, the Republican National Convention met in San Fran-
cisco to choose a candidate to face Johnson in the November general elec-
tion. Senator Barry Goldwater, a staunch Arizona conservative, emerged
victorious after a bitter fight against moderate rival Nelson Rockefeller of
New York, a battle that left the party scarred and deeply divided. Gold-
water came out of the convention swinging, challenging President Johnson’s
liberal programs. On college campuses across the country, young Ameri-
cans began joining Youth for Goldwater organizations and rallying around
what they saw as Goldwater’s platform of nonconformity.
Exactly one week after the gavel came down to close the Republican
Convention, John W. Gardner, president of the Carnegie Corporation and
a Republican, sent a memo to President Johnson’s special consultant Eric
Goldman, outlining what he called a “National Service Plan” for Johnson’s
consideration.
A year after Gardner was born in California in 1912 his father died,
and his mother remarried several times during his childhood. One of her
husbands was a gold prospector who thrilled his young stepson with excit-
ing tales of the gold rush. “In each, the theme was constant—riches left
untapped,” Gardner recalled. Educated at Stanford and the University of
9
California at Berkeley, Gardner earned a Ph.D. in psychology and taught
at a women’s college in Connecticut. He later worked in the Federal Com-
munications Commission’s Foreign Intelligence Broadcast Service, where
he analyzed enemy propaganda, and served in the Marine Corps during
World War II. In 1945, he was hired by the Carnegie Corporation, where
he helped establish model United Nations programs as well as programs
piloting the use of television in the classroom. He was also instrumental in
setting up a Russian Research Center at Harvard, which was the first cen-
ter of its kind. In 1961, Gardner published his first major book, Excellence,
arguing that the United States must strive for both excellence and equality

9 “Can the Great Society Be Built and Managed?” Time, January 20, 1967, p. 5.

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