Barry Goldwater

Barry Morris Goldwater (January 1, 1909 – May 29, 1998) was a United States politician and a founding figure in the modern conservative movement in the USA. Goldwater personified the shift in balance in American culture from the Northeast to the West. A five-term United States Senator from Arizona (1953-1965, 1969-87), he was the Republican Party candidate for the U.S. President in the 1964 election which he lost to Lyndon B. Johnson.

U.S. presidential election, 1964

Before Goldwater, the Republican Party was not clearly committed to conservatism, as the Northeastern liberalism of Nelson Rockefeller and Margaret Chase Smith remained vital in the party. He alarmed even some of his fellow partisans with his brand of staunch fiscal conservatism and militant anti-Communism. He was viewed by many traditional Republicans as too far to the right to win a national election and moderate Republicans drafted Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton to challenge Goldwater. Scranton won the support of several state delegations but failed to win the nomination. After securing the nomination, Goldwater boldly declared in his acceptance speech (written by Karl Hess) at the 1964 Republican Convention that "?Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." Due to Johnson's popularity, however, Goldwater held back from attacking the president directly: he did not even mention Johnson by name in his convention speech.

Related Topics:
Nelson Rockefeller - Margaret Chase Smith - Fiscal conservatism - Anti-Communism - Right - Pennsylvania Governor - William Scranton - Karl Hess - 1964

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Earlier comments followed Goldwater throughout his campaign. Once he called the Eisenhower administration "a dime store New Deal," and the former president never fully forgave him. In December 1961, he told a news conference that "sometimes I think this country would be better off if we could just saw off the Eastern Seaboard and let it float out to sea." That comment came back to haunt him during the campaign in the form of a Johnson television commercial, as did remarks about making Social Security voluntary and selling the Tennessee Valley Authority.

Related Topics:
Eisenhower - New Deal - Eastern Seaboard - Social Security - Tennessee Valley Authority

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Eisenhower?s strong backing could have been an asset to the Goldwater campaign, but instead its absence was clearly noticed. When questioned about the Presidential capabilities of Milton Eisenhower in July of 1964, Goldwater replied "One Eisenhower in a generation is enough" (qtd. in Rovere cover). Eisenhower would later claim that he voted not specifically for Goldwater, but rather for the Republican Party.

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The Goldwater campaign launched the careers of several important conservative figures. Ronald Reagan, once a Democrat, gave a stirring nationally-televised speech, "A Time for Choosing," in support of Goldwater, which launched his own political career http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/reaganatimeforchoosing.htm. Conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, best known for her fight against the Equal Rights Amendment, first became known for writing a pro-Goldwater book, A Choice, Not an Echo, attacking the liberal Republican establishment.

Related Topics:
Phyllis Schlafly - Equal Rights Amendment

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Goldwater was painted as a dangerous figure by the Johnson campaign, which countered Goldwater's slogan "In your heart, you know he's right" with the line "In your guts, you know he's nuts." Johnson himself did not mention Goldwater in his own acceptance speech at the 1964 Democratic National Convention, nor did he debate against Goldwater.

Related Topics:
1964 Democratic National Convention - Debate

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Goldwater's provocative advocacy of aggressive tactics to prevent the spread of Communism in Asia led to effective counter-attacks from Lyndon Johnson and other liberals who feared that Goldwater would start a nuclear war if elected. The Johnson campaign ran a famous television commercial showing a scene in which a young girl is gathering daisies while a man performing a countdown is heard in the background; her frolicking is interrupted by the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion. Dubbed Daisy, it was meant to imply that Goldwater would start a nuclear war if elected. The commercial, which featured only a few spoken words of narrative and relied on imagery for its emotional impact, was one of the most provocative moments in American campaign history and is credited by many as being the birth of the modern style of negative television advertising. The ad ran only twice, and only in small local markets, but gained national attention through news coverage. (Goldwater's own rhetoric on nuclear war was viewed by many as quite uncompromising, a view buttressed by off-hand comments such as, "Let's lob one into the men's room at the Kremlin.") http://scoop.agonist.org/story/2004/9/5/13652/16915

Related Topics:
Television commercial - Mushroom cloud - Daisy - Nuclear war - Kremlin

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Goldwater did his best to counter the Johnson attacks, criticizing the Johnson administration for its perceived ethical lapses, and stating in a commercial that "...we, as a nation, are not far from the kind of moral decay that has brought on the fall of other nations and people...I say it is time to put conscience back in government. And by good example, put it back in all walks of American life." Goldwater campaign commercials included statements of support by actor Raymond Massey and moderate Republican senator Margaret Chase Smith. In spite of his differences with the candidate, former president Eisenhower also appeared in a Goldwater television advertisement.

Related Topics:
Raymond Massey - Margaret Chase Smith

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In the end, Goldwater received only 38.4% of the popular vote, and carried only five of the U.S. Southern states plus his home state of Arizona. Goldwater, with his customary bluntness, remarked: "We would have lost even if Abraham Lincoln had come back and campaigned with us."

Related Topics:
Popular vote - U.S. Southern states - Abraham Lincoln

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Goldwater maintained later in life that he would have won the election if the country had not been in a state of extended grief, and that it was simply not ready for its third president in fourteen months. In light of the magnitude of Goldwater's defeat, this view may be considered unrealistic; what is certain is that his capture of Southern states previously regarded as strongholds of the Democratic Party foreshadowed a larger shift in electoral trends in the coming decades that would make the South a Republican bastion—first in presidential politics, and eventually at the Congressional and state level as well.

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It is conceivable that had Goldwater been elected, it could have triggered a constitutional crisis, because Arizona was not a state when he was born, and it is conceivable that, since he was not born within the actual United States, he may not have been a natural-born citizen as required by the Constitution of the United States, and thus it is possible he would have been ineligible to be elected president.

Related Topics:
Natural-born citizen - Constitution of the United States

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