Barry Morris Goldwater (January 2, 1909 –
May 29, 1998) was a five-term United States Senator from Arizona (1953–1965, 1969–87) and the
Republican Party's nominee for President in the 1964
election. He was also a Major General in the U.S. Air Force Reserves. He was also referred as Mr. Conservative.
Goldwater is the politician most often credited for sparking the resurgence of the
American conservative political movement in the 1960s.
Goldwater rejected the legacy of the New Deal and fought inside the Conservative coalition to defeat the New Deal
coalition. He lost the 1964 presidential election by a large margin to incumbent Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson. The
Johnson campaign and other critics painted him as a reactionary, while supporters praised
his crusades against the federal government, labor unions, and the welfare state. His defeat allowed American liberals to pass their Great
Society programs, but the defeat of so many older Republicans in 1964 also cleared the way for a younger generation of
American conservatives to mobilize. Goldwater was much less active as a national leader of conservatives after 1964; his
followers mostly rallied behind Ronald Reagan, who became Governor of California in 1966 and President of the United States in 1981.
By the 1980s, the increasing influence of the Christian
Right on the Republican Party so conflicted with
Goldwater's libertarian views that he became a vocal opponent of the religious right on
issues such as abortion and gay rights.
Goldwater concentrated on his Senate duties, especially passage of the Goldwater-Nichols
Act of 1986.
Personal life
Goldwater was born in 1909 in Phoenix, in what was
then the Arizona Territory. His grandfather, Michel Goldwasser, was a Jewish immigrant
from Konin, Poland who founded a department store in
Phoenix, Goldwater's Department Store. His paternal grandmother, Sarah Nathan, was from
London, England, and married Goldwasser in the
Great Synagogue of London.[1] Goldwater's father, Baron Goldwater, converted to the
Episcopal Church from Judaism when he married Hattie Josephine Williams in Phoenix. The family name
had been changed from Goldwasser to Goldwater at least as early as the 1860 census in
Los Angeles, California. These details led the Jewish essayist Harry Golden to famously remark of Goldwater, "I have always thought that if a Jew ever became President,
he would turn out to be an Episcopalian."[2]
The family department store made the Goldwaters comfortably wealthy. Goldwater graduated from Staunton Military Academy and attended the University
of Arizona for one year, where he joined the Sigma Chi fraternity.
Goldwater took over the family business after his father's death in 1930. In this capacity he was both a supporter of
"progressive" business practices and anti-union. The strain of running the family business led to nervous breakdowns in 1937 and 1939.
With the onset of World War II, Goldwater received a reserve commission in the
United States Army Air Forces. He became a pilot assigned to the
Ferry Command, a newly formed unit that delivered aircraft and supplies to war zones worldwide;
he spent most of the war flying between the USA and India, via the Azores and North Africa or South America, Nigeria, and Central
Africa. He also flew "the hump" over the Himalayas to deliver supplies to the Republic of China. Remaining in the reserves after the war, he retired with a rank of Major General. By that time, he had flown 165 different types of aircraft. Following World War II,
Goldwater was a major proponent of building the United States Air Force
Academy, and later served on the Academy's Board of Visitors. The Visitor Center at the Academy is named in his honor.
Goldwater was married to his first wife, Margaret "Peggy" Johnson, from September 22,
1934 until her death on December 11, 1985. The couple had four children: Joanne (born January 1, 1936), Barry (born July 15,
1938), Michael (born March 15, 1940), and Peggy (born July 27, 1944). On
February 9, 1992, at age 83, Goldwater married nurse Susan
Shaffer Wechsler, 32 years his junior; they were married until his death.
One of his favorite hobbies was amateur radio and he held the call K7UGA. From his home station in Arizona he handled many
"phone patches" that permitted U.S. Service personnel to be able to talk to their families back home from Military Affiliate Radio System (MARS) stations located in Vietnam.
Goldwater's son, Barry Goldwater, Jr., served as a United States House of Representatives member from California from 1969 to 1983.
Political career
Goldwater entered Phoenix politics in 1949 when he was elected as a city councilman. He first won a US Senate seat in 1952, when he upset
veteran Democrat and Senate majority leader Ernest McFarland. He defeated McFarland
again in 1958, but would step down from the Senate in 1964 for his presidential campaign. Goldwater had a strong showing in his
first reelection in 1958, a year in which the Democrats picked up
thirteen seats in the Senate.
Goldwater soon became most associated with labor-union reform and anti-Communism; he was an active supporter of the
Conservative coalition in Congress. However, he rejected the wilder fringes of
the anti-communist movement; in 1956 he sponsored the
passage through the Senate of the final version of the Alaska Mental Health
Enabling Act, despite vociferous opposition from opponents who claimed that the Act was a communist plot to establish
concentration camps in Alaska. His work on labor issues led to Congress passing major
anti-corruption reforms in 1957, and an all-out campaign by the AFL-CIO to defeat his 1958
reelection bid. He voted against the censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1954, but
himself was much more prudent than McCarthy and never actually charged any individual with being a Communist/Soviet agent.
Goldwater emphasized his strong opposition to the worldwide spread of Communism in his 1960 book The Conscience of a Conservative. The book became an important reference text in
conservative political circles.
Goldwater supported the Arizona NAACP and
was involved in desegregating the Arizona National Guard. Nationally, he
supported the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960 and the constitutional amendment
banning the poll tax. However, he opposed the much more comprehensive Civil Rights Act
of 1964; he argued that, among other things, it unconstitutionally extended the federal government's commerce power to
private citizens in its drive to "legislate morality" and restrict the rights of employers. Since conservative Southern Democrats
were the main opponents to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and previous civil rights legislation, Goldwater's opposition to the 1964
Act, in which he was joined by only four other non-Southern Republican senators, strongly boosted Goldwater's standing among
white Southerners who opposed such federal legislation.
In 1964, he fought and won a bitterly contested, multi-candidate race for the Republican Party's presidential nomination. His main rival was New York Governor
Nelson A. Rockefeller, whom he defeated in the California primary. His nomination was
opposed by liberal Republicans who thought Goldwater's hardline foreign policy stances would bring about a deadly confrontation
with the Soviet Union. He would eventually lose to President Lyndon Johnson by one of the largest margins in the history
of U.S. Presidential elections. Consequently, the Republican Party suffered a significant setback nationally, losing many seats
in both houses of Congress. Goldwater carried only his home state and five (formerly Democratic) Southern states. Many
Republicans at the time angrily turned against Goldwater, claiming that his defeat had significantly set back the party's chances
of future national success. (There was a minor controversy over Goldwater's having been born in Arizona when it was not yet a
state.)
He remained popular in Arizona, though, and in the 1968 Senate
election he was elected again (this time to the seat of Carl Hayden, who was retiring). He was subsequently reelected in
1974 and 1980. The 1974 election saw Goldwater easily reelected.
This occurred in a year in which Republicans lost three Senate seats because of the party's unpopularity over the
Watergate scandal.
Goldwater seriously considered retirement in 1980 before
deciding to run for reelection. Peggy Goldwater had hoped that her husband's Senate term that was due to end in January 1981
would be his last, as she was looking forward to spending more time with her husband in retirement. However, Goldwater decided to
run, planning on making the term his last in the Senate. Goldwater faced a surprisingly tough battle for reelection. First, he
was viewed as out of touch for several reasons. One was the fact that because he had planned to retire in 1981, Goldwater had not
visited many areas of Arizona outside of Phoenix and Tucson. Second, he was challenged by a particularly tough opponent.
Bill Schulz was a former Republican turned Democrat who was a wealthy real estate developer. Schulz was able to infuse massive amounts of money into the campaign from his own
fortune. And finally, Arizona's changing population hurt Goldwater. The state's population had exploded, with a huge portion of
the electorate having not lived in the state when Goldwater was last elected in 1974, and were not familiar with the Senator.
Goldwater was on the defensive for much of the campaign. Early returns on election night seemed to indicate that Schulz would
win. The counting of votes continued through the night and into the next morning. Around daybreak Goldwater learned that he had
been reelected. Goldwater's margin could be traced to his winning a high percentage of absentee votes, which were among the last to be counted.[3] Goldwater's surprisingly close victory in 1980 is interesting given that Ronald Reagan won the
Presidency in a large victory over Jimmy Carter, and that the Republicans regained control
of the Senate, electing twelve new Senators who rode Reagan's coattails.
Goldwater retired in 1987, serving as chair of the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services Committees in his final term.
Despite his reputation as a firebrand in the 1960s, by the end of his career he was considered a stabilizing influence in the
Senate, one of the most respected members of either major party. Yet Goldwater remained staunchly anti-Communist and "hawkish" on
military issues. He led the unsuccessful fight against ratification of the Panama
Canal Treaty in the 1970s, which returned control of the canal zone to the Republic of Panama. His most important legislative achievement may have been the Goldwater-Nichols Act, which reorganized the U.S. military's senior-command structure.
Goldwater was an unwavering supporter of Wisconsin's Republican Senator Joseph
McCarthy to the end (one of only 22 Senators who voted against McCarthy's censure). He was also friends with Senator
John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts; in fact, Goldwater anticipated that a contest for the
presidency between John F. Kennedy and Goldwater himself would have been an enjoyable experience, with lively debates between
them, one of which was to be held on board a plane in flight. Goldwater was grief-stricken by the assassination of Kennedy and was greatly disappointed that his opponent in the race would
not be JFK, but instead Kennedy's Vice President, the former Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B.
Johnson of Texas. Goldwater disliked Johnson (who he said "used every dirty trick in the bag"), and Richard M. Nixon of California, whom he later called "the most dishonest individual I have ever met in my
life." It is believed Goldwater, then a Senator, forced Nixon to resign at the height of Watergate by threatening to vote in
favor of removing him from office if he did not. The term "Goldwater moment" has been used to describe a moment when members of
Congress from the President's party disagree and go against the wishes of the President.
His 1984 Cable Franchise Policy and Communications
Act allowed local governments to require the transmission of public access
television, also called PEG (Public, Education, and Government) access channels, barred cable operators from exercising
editorial control over content of programs carried on PEG channels, and absolved them from liability for their content.
In 2006, his political ideals were revived in the "Jackson Stephens Campaign" in which Republican groups in law schools
(namely, the University of Florida) sought to republish widely Goldwater's basic conservative political tenets in graduate school
environments.
U.S. presidential election, 1964
Time Magazine cover featuring Goldwater accepting 1964 nomination
At the time of Goldwater's presidential candidacy, the Republican Party was split between its conservatives (with their base
in the West and Midwest) and liberals (strongest in the Northeast). 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 being too far on the right wing of the Republican spectrum to appeal to the mainstream majority necessary to win a
national election. As a result, more liberal Republicans recruited a series of opponents, including New York Governor
Nelson Rockefeller, Henry Cabot Lodge,
Jr. and Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton, to challenge Goldwater.
Goldwater would defeat Rockefeller in the winner-take-all California primary and secure the nomination. Goldwater boldly (and
famously) declared in his acceptance speech at the 1964 Republican Convention: "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." This paraphrase of Cicero was included at the suggestion of Harry V. Jaffa, though the
speech was primarily written by Karl Hess. Due to President Johnson's popularity, however,
Goldwater held back from attacking the president directly; he did not even mention Johnson by name in his convention speech.
Past comments came back to haunt Goldwater throughout his campaign. Once he called the Eisenhower administration "a dime-store New Deal," and the former
president never fully forgave him. Eisenhower did, however, film a TV commercial with Goldwater.[4] Eisenhower qualified his voting for Goldwater in November by remarking that he
had voted not specifically for Goldwater, but for the Republican Party. In December 1961, Goldwater 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 boomeranged on him during the campaign in the form of a Johnson television commercial, as did remarks about making
Social Security voluntary, and statements in Tennessee about selling the
Tennessee Valley Authority (a large local New Deal employer.)
The Goldwater campaign spotlighted Ronald Reagan, who gave a stirring, nationally
televised speech, "A Time for Choosing," in support of Goldwater.[5] The speech prompted Reagan to seek the California Governorship in 1966 and jump-started his political career. Conservative activist
Phyllis Schlafly, later well-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. Senator Prescott S. Bush
(1895–1972), a liberal Republican from Connecticut, was a friend of Goldwater's and supported him in the general election
campaign. Bush's son, George H.W. Bush (then running for the Senate from Texas against
Democrat Ralph Yarborough), was also a strong Goldwater supporter in both the
nomination and general election campaigns. 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 lines "In your guts, you know he's nuts," and "In your heart,
you know he might" (that is, might actually use nuclear weapons, as opposed to merely subscribing to deterrence). Johnson himself did not mention Goldwater in his own acceptance speech at the
1964 Democratic National Convention.
Goldwater's provocative advocacy of aggressive tactics to prevent the spread of Communism in Asia led to effective
counterattacks from Lyndon Johnson and his supporters, who feared that Goldwater's
militancy would have dire consequences, possibly even nuclear war. Regarding Vietnam, Goldwater charged that Johnson's policy was
devoid of "goal, course, or purpose," leaving "only sudden death in the jungles and the slow strangulation of freedom."[6] 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."[7]
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.
Before the 1964 election, the muckraking magazine Fact, published by Ralph
Ginzburg, ran a special issue entitled ‘The Unconscious of a Conservative: A Special Issue on the Mind of Barry
Goldwater.’ The two main articles contended that Goldwater was mentally unfit to be president. The magazine attempted to support
this claim with the results of an unscientific poll of psychiatrists it had conducted. Fact had mailed questionnaires to
12,356 psychiatrists, and published a ‘sampling’ of the comments made by the 2,417 psychiatrists who responded, of which 1,189
said Goldwater was unfit to be president.[8] After the
election, Goldwater sued the publisher, the editor and the magazine for libel. "Although the jury awarded Goldwater only $1.00 in
compensatory damages against all three defendants, it went on to [396 U.S. 1049, 1050] award him punitive damages of $25,000
against Ginzburg and $50,000 against Fact magazine, Inc."[9] According to Warren Boroson, then-managing editor of Fact and now a financial columnist, the
main biography of Goldwater in the magazine was written by David Bar-Illan, the Israeli
pianist. He went on to say "Goldwater sued me for $2 million. (He collected 33 cents.)"[10]
Influence of television
- The Republican National Convention had a vibrant mix of candidates, reporters, delegates, relatives, and others, crowding
together in a somewhat aggressive atmosphere.
- A campaign advertisement known as Daisy showed a young girl
counting daisy petals, from one to ten. Immediately following this scene, a voiceover counted down: ten, nine, eight,…three, two,
one. The child's face was shown as a still photograph followed by images of nuclear explosions and mushroom clouds. The campaign
advertisement ended with a plea to vote for Johnson, implying that Goldwater would provoke a nuclear war if elected. The
advertisement, 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 political campaign history, and many analysts credit it as being the birth of the modern
style of "negative political ads" on television. The ad only aired once, and was immediately pulled, but then was shown numerous
times by television stations. [citation needed]
Results
In the end, Goldwater received 38.4% of the popular vote, and carried six states: Alabama,
Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and his home state of Arizona. In all, Johnson won an overwhelming 486 electoral votes, to Goldwater's 52. Goldwater, with his
customary bluntness, remarked: "We would have lost even if Abraham Lincoln had come back and campaigned with us."
Goldwater's poor showing, plus the tendency at the time for most people to vote a "straight ticket" (that is, loyally voting
for every candidate from the same party as their Presidential choice), was associated with the defeat of many other long-time
Republican officeholders from Congress through local races.
Goldwater maintained later in life that he would have won the election if the country had not been in a state of extended
grief (referring to the assassination of John F. Kennedy), and that it was simply not
ready for a third President in just fourteen months. It has frequently been argued that Goldwater's strong performance in
Southern states previously regarded as Democratic strongholds foreshadowed a larger shift in electoral trends in the coming
decades that would make the South a Republican bastion (an end to the "Solid South") — first
in presidential politics and eventually at the congressional and state levels, as well. [citation needed]
Goldwater and the revival of American conservatism
Although Goldwater was not as important in the American
conservative movement as Ronald Reagan after 1965, from the late 1950s to 1964 he
redefined and shaped the movement. Arizona Senator John McCain summed up Goldwater's legacy
thus: he transformed the Republican Party from an Eastern elitist organization to the breeding ground for the election of Ronald
Reagan.” The columnist George Will remarked after the 1980 Presidential election that “it took 16 years to count the votes [of the
1964 election], and Goldwater won.”
| “ |
Think of a senator winning the Democratic nomination
in the year 2000 whose positions included halving the military budget, socializing the medical system, reregulating the
communications and electrical industries, establishing a guaranteed minimum income for all Americans, and equalizing funding for
all schools regardless of property valuations — and who promised to fire Alan Greenspan,
counseled withdrawal from the World Trade Organization, and, for good measure,
spoke warmly of adolescent sexual experimentation. He would lose in a landslide. He would be relegated to the ash heap of history. But if the precedent of 1964 were repeated, two years later the country would
begin electing dozens of men and women just like him. And not many decades later, Republicans would have to proclaim softer
versions of those positions to get taken seriously for their party's nomination. |
” |
|
—Historian Rick Perlstein in his book Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American
Consensus[11]
|
The Republican Party recovered from the 1964 election debacle, picking up 47 seats in the House of Representatives in the mid-term election of 1966. Further Republican successes ensued, including
Goldwater's return to the Senate in 1968. Throughout the 1970s, as the conservative wing under
Reagan gained control of the party, Goldwater concentrated on his Senate duties, especially in military affairs. He played little
part in the election or administration of Richard Nixon, but he helped force Nixon's
resignation in 1974.[12] In 1976 he helped block
Rockefeller's renomination as Vice President. When Reagan challenged Ford for the presidential nomination in 1976, Goldwater
endorsed Ford, looking for consensus rather than conservative idealism. As one historian notes, "The Arizonan had lost much of
his zest for battle."[13]
In 1979, When President Jimmy Carter normalized relations
with Communist China, Goldwater and some other senators sued him in the
Supreme Court, arguing the president cannot break its relation with
Taiwan without the approval of Congress. The case
was known as Goldwater v. Carter, which was dismissed by the court, as the court
asserted it was a political question.
Libertarian views
Signing autographs at the Fiesta Bowl parade in 1983.
By the 1980s, with Ronald Reagan as president and the
growing involvement of the religious right in conservative politics, Goldwater's
libertarian views on personal issues were revealed, which he believed were an integral
part of true conservativism. Goldwater viewed abortion as a matter of personal choice, not
intended for government intervention.
As a passionate defender of personal liberty, he saw the religious right's views as an encroachment on personal privacy and
individual liberties. In his 1980 Senate reelection campaign, Goldwater won support from religious conservatives but in his final
term voted consistently to uphold legalized abortion and, in 1981, gave a speech on how he was angry about the bullying of
American politicians by religious organizations, and would "fight them every step of the way".[14] Goldwater also disagreed with the Reagan administration on certain aspects of
foreign policy (e.g. he opposed the decision to mine Nicaraguan harbors). Notwithstanding his prior differences with
Dwight Eisenhower, Goldwater in a 1986 interview rated him the best of the seven
Presidents with whom he had worked.
After his retirement in 1987, Goldwater described the conservative Arizona Governor Evan
Mecham as “hardheaded” and called on him to resign, and two years later stated that the Republican Party had been taken
over by a “bunch of kooks.” In a 1994 interview with the Washington Post the
retired senator said,
| “ |
When you say “radical right” today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows
like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican Party and make a
religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye. |
” |
In response to Moral Majority founder Jerry
Falwell's opposition to the nomination of Sandra Day O'Connor to the Supreme
Court, of which Falwell had said, “Every good Christian should be concerned,” Goldwater retorted: “I think every good Christian
ought to kick Falwell right in the ass.”[15] Goldwater
also had harsh words for his onetime political protege, President Reagan, particularly after the Iran-Contra Affair became public in 1986. Journalist Robert MacNeil, a friend of Goldwater's from the 1964 Presidential campaign, recalled interviewing him in
his office shortly afterward. "He was sitting in his office with his hands on his cane...and he said to me, 'Well, aren't you
going to ask me about the Iran arms sales?' It had just been announced that the Reagan
administration had sold arms to Iran. And I said, 'Well, if I asked you, what would you say?' He said, 'I'd say it's the goddamn
stupidest foreign policy blunder this country's ever made!'"[16] Also, in 1988 during that year's presidential campaign, he pointedly told vice-presidential nominee
Dan Quayle at a campaign event in Arizona "I want you to go back and tell George Bush to start talking about the issues." [4]
Some of Goldwater's statements in the 1990s aggravated many social conservatives. He endorsed
Democrat Karan English in an Arizona congressional race, urged Republicans to lay off
Clinton over the Whitewater scandal, and
criticized the military's ban on homosexuals: “Everyone knows that gays have served
honorably in the military since at least the time of Julius Caesar.”[17] He also said, “You don't have to be straight to be in the
military; you just have to be able to shoot straight.” A few years before his death he went so far as to address the right
wing, "Do not associate my name with anything you do. You are extremists, and you've hurt the Republican Party much more than the
Democrats have."[18]
In 1996 he told Bob Dole, whose own presidential campaign received lukewarm support from
conservative Republicans: “We're the new liberals of the Republican Party. Can you imagine that?” In that same year, with Senator
Dennis DeConcini, Goldwater endorsed an Arizona
initiative to legalize medical marijuana against the will of social
conservatives.[19]
Hobbies and interests
Photography
Goldwater was an accomplished amateur photographer and in his estate left some 15,000 of
his images to three Arizona institutions. He was very keen on candid photography. He
got started in p
