Barry Goldwater
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Barry Goldwater |
Barry Morris Goldwater (
January 1,
1909 –
May 29,
1998) was an
American politician credited as the leader who sparked the resurgence of the
American conservative movement with his 1964 campaign for President. Goldwater also personified a shift in balance in American politics to the South and Southwest. A five-term
United States Senator from
Arizona (1953-1965, 1969-87), he was the
Republican Party's candidate for the President in the
1964 election, which he lost by a landslide to incumbent
Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson. His weak showing dragged to defeat many long-term Republican officeholders from Congress to the local level.
William E. Miller of
New York was his running mate on the 1964 ticket.
Goldwater rejected the key programs and viewpoints of the
New Deal and fought inside the
Conservative Coalition to defeat the
New Deal coalition. He was criticized in 1964 as a radical reactionary, yet he energized a conservative grass roots movement which sixteen years later helped to nominate and elect
Ronald Reagan. After 1981, however, he took
libertarian positions and harshly criticized the influence of the
Christian Right on the
Republican Party.
Goldwater was born in Phoenix in 1909, when Arizona was known as the
Arizona Territory. His grandfather was a Polish immigrant who founded a department store in
Phoenix,
Goldwater's Department Store. His father, Baron Goldwater, converted to the
Episcopal Church from Judaism when he married his fiancée, Josephine Williams. The family name had been changed from
Goldwasser to
Goldwater at least as early as the 1860 Census in
Los Angeles, California. The family department store made the Goldwaters comfortably rich. 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 death of his father in 1930. He had progressive business ideas yet was also anti-union, but the strain of running the business become too much. Goldwater had nervous breakdowns in 1937 and 1939. He began to drink heavily, a problem he never completely overcame.
With the onset of World War II, Goldwater was commissioned in the
Air Force. He became a pilot assigned to the Ferry Command, a newly formed unit that delivered aircraft and supplies to war zones all over the world; he spent most of the war flying between the United States 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 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 Vistor Center at the Academy is named in his honor.
Goldwater's son,
Barry Goldwater, Jr., another life-long pilot, served as a
U.S. House member from
California from 1969 to 1983.
Goldwater entered Phoenix politics in 1949. He first won a
US Senate seat in
1952, when he upset veteran Democratic Senate majority leader
Ernest McFarland. He defeated McFarland again in 1958, but in 1964 ran for president and not for reelection.
The two issues Goldwater became most associated with were reform of the corruption in labor unions, and anti-Communism. He was an active supporter of the
Conservative coalition in Congress. His work on labor issues led to major reforms passed by Congress in 1957, and an all-out campaign by the
AFL-CIO to defeat his reelection bid in 1958. He voted against the censure of McCarthy in 1954, but he was much more careful than McCarthy, and never charged anyone with secretly being a Communist agent. Goldwater emphasized his strong opposition to the spread of worldwide communism in his 1960 book
The Conscience of a Conservative, which became a bible in conservative circles.
Goldwater had a controversial record on
civil rights. Locally he was a supporter of the Arizona
NAACP and was involved in desegregating the Arizona
National Guard. As a senator, he was a supporter of the
Civil Rights Act of 1957 and
1960. However, he opposed the much more comprehensive
Civil Rights Act of 1964 on the grounds that it was an unconstitutional extension of the federal commerce power to private citizens in order 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, his opposition to the Act strongly boosted Goldwater's standing among white southerners.
In 1964, he fought and won a bitterly contested multi-candidate race for the GOP presidential nomination. His main challenger was New York Governor
Nelson A. Rockefeller, whom he defeated in the California primary. His nomination was challenged by more moderate Republicans who thought his hardline foreign policy stances would come back to haunt him. He lost to
Lyndon Johnson in a landslide, and the Republican party suffered a significant setback nationally, losing many seats in both houses of Congress. Goldwater carried only his home state and five "Deep South" states.
He remained popular in Arizona and in the
1968 Senate election he was elected to an open seat and was subsequently re-elected to three more terms. 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, and one of its most respected members of either party. However, 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 ceded U.S. control of the canal to the government of
Panama. His most important legislative achievement was the
Goldwater-Nichols Act which reorganized the senior command structure of the military.
Goldwater was a supporter of Wisconsin Senator
Joseph McCarthy to the bitter end (one of only 22 Senators who voted against McCarthy's censure). He was friends with John F. Kennedy and disliked Lyndon B. Johnson, who he said "used every dirty trick in the bag", and Richard Nixon, whom he later called "the most dishonest individual I have ever met in my life". Goldwater showed a caustic wit that cost him popularity in the Republican Party.
At the time of Goldwater's presidential candidacy, the Republican Party was split between conservatives (strongest in the 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 too far to the
right to win a national election, and moderate Republicans drafted a series of opponents to stop him, including
Nelson Rockefeller,
Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. and
William Scranton to challenge Goldwater. Goldwater defeated Rockefeller in the winner-take-all California primary, thus securing the nomination, Goldwater boldly declared in his acceptance speech 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." (This paraphrase of remarks by
Cicero was included at the suggestion of
Harry V. Jaffa, though the speech was primarily written by
Karl Hess.) 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.
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. Eisenhower did, however, film a TV commercial with Goldwater. When Eisenhower voted for Goldwater in November, he remarked that he had voted not specifically for Goldwater, but rather 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 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 statements in Tennessee about selling the
Tennessee Valley Authority.
The Goldwater campaign spotlighted
Ronald Reagan, who gave a stirring nationally-televised speech, "A Time for Choosing," in support of Goldwater. [
1]. 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. U.S. Senator
Prescott S. Bush (1895-1972), a Republican from Connecticut, father of President
George H.W. Bush and grandfather of current president
George W. Bush, was a close friend of Goldwater's and supported him very enthusiastically both in the race for the Republican presidential nomination and in the general election campaign. His son George Bush, who then was running for the Senate from Texas as a Republican against Democrat
Ralph Yarborough, was also a strong Goldwater supporter.
[Chaitkin, Anton, and Tarpley, Webster G. George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography Chapter IX and Chapter XIII.]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 "Yes--extreme right". Johnson himself did not mention Goldwater in his own acceptance speech at the
1964 Democratic National Convention, nor did he
debate against Goldwater.
Goldwater's provocative advocacy of aggressive tactics to prevent the spread of Communism in Asia led to effective counter-attacks from
Lyndon Johnson and his supporters, who feared that Goldwater's militancy would have dire consequences, possibly even including nuclear war. His plan to defoliate the Vietnamese forests by nuclear bombs preceded
Agent Orange .The Johnson campaign ran a famous television commercial showing a young girl pulling petals off a daisy while a countdown is heard in the background; "Three—Two—One...." Her frolicking is interrupted by the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion. Dubbed
Daisy, it warned that Goldwater might 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.")
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, a muckraking magazine,
Fact, published by Ralph Ginzburg, polled psychiatrists on whether Goldwater was psychologically fit to be President. Most of the psychiatrists said no. (Goldwater had had a nervous breakdown in his youth.) 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."
[Ginzburg v. Goldwater, 396 U.S. 1049 (1970)] According to Warren Boroson, then-managing-editor of
Fact, the main biography of Goldwater in the magazine was written by
David Bar-Illan, the Israeli pianist.
In the end, Goldwater received only 38.4% of the
popular vote, and carried only five of the
Southern states (
Alabama,
Georgia,
Louisiana,
Mississippi and
South Carolina) plus (barely) his home state of
Arizona. Johnson won 486 electoral votes to Goldwater's 52 and almost carried Goldwater's Arizona, which gave Goldwater 242,536 votes (50.4%) to Johnson's 237,765 (49.5%). Goldwater, with his customary bluntness, remarked: "We would have lost even if
Abraham Lincoln had come back and campaigned with us."
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. Some critics have cited this as evidence that Goldwater was divorced from reality. 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— first in presidential politics, and eventually at the congressional and state level as well.
Current Arizona Senator
John McCain summed up Goldwater's impact in this way: "[he] transformed the Republican Party from an Eastern elitist organization to the breeding ground for the election of Ronald Reagan." Historian
Rick Perlstein, in his book
Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, explained Goldwater's impact on the American political scene by way of analogy:
"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."
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, although he played little part in the election of
Richard Nixon. Throughout the 1970s, as the conservative wing gained influence in the party, Goldwater remained one of its standard-bearers. 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", demonstrating the extent to which Goldwater was seen as leading the wing.
However, by the 1980s, with
Ronald Reagan as president and the growing involvement of the
religious right in conservative politics, Goldwater increasingly showed a
libertarian streak that put him at odds with the
Reagan Administration and religious conservatives. 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 re-election campaign, Goldwater won support from religious conservatives but in his final term voted consistently to uphold legalized abortion. Even in matters of foreign policy, Goldwater disagreed with Reagan and his supporters; 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 served.
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 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." He said about
Jerry Falwell, founder of the
Moral Majority, "I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass." [
2]
In the 1990s he became more controversial because of statements that 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." He also said, "You don't have to be straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight." In 1996 he told
Bob Dole, who mounted his presidential campaign with luke-warm support from hard-line conservatives, "We're the new liberals of the Republican Party. Can you imagine that?"
Goldwater was an accomplished amateur
photographer and at his death left some 15,000 of his images to three Arizona institutions. He was very keen on candid photography.
For decades, he contributed photographs of his home state to
Arizona Highways and was best known for his Western landscapes and pictures of
native Americans in the United States. Three books with his photographs are
People and Places, from 1967;
Barry Goldwater and the Southwest, from 1976; and
Delightful Journey, first published in 1940 and reprinted in 1970.
Ansel Adams wrote a foreword to the 1976 book.
[Arizona Republic, May 31, 1998]Goldwater was an avid
amateur radio operator, with the call signs K7UGA and K3UIG
[FCC K7UGA record]. During the
Vietnam War, he spent many hours giving servicemen overseas the ability to talk to their families at home over the radio.
Barry Goldwater was also a prolific spokesman for amateur radio and those in it. Beginning in 1969 and almost to the time of his death he appeared in numerous educational and promotional films (and later videos) about the hobby that were produced for the American Radio Relay League (the United States national society representing the interests of radio amateurs) by such producers as Dave Bell (W6AQ), Alan Kaul (W6RCL), Forrest Oden (N6ENV), Bill Pasternak (WA6ITF) and the late Roy Neal (K6DUE). His first appearance was in Dave Bell's "The World of Amateur Radio" where Goldwater discussed the history of the hobby and demonstrated a live contact with Antarctica. His last on-screen appearance dealing with ham radio was in 1994 explaining a then upcoming new ham radio Earth orbiting relay satellite.
One of the less politically charged Goldwater campaign slogans, used mainly on bumper stickers, read simply "Au H
2O 64" (combining the
chemical symbols for
gold and
water).
He became known for the occasional, humorous off-color remark; he once told talk-show host
Jay Leno and guest
Roseanne Barr that he planned to get a
tattoo of a lipstick pucker "right on my ass."
Goldwater and UFOs
Goldwater was one of the more prominent American politicans to openly show an interest in
UFOs.
On
March 28,
1975, Goldwater wrote to Shlomo Arnon: "The subject of UFOs has interested me for some long time. About ten or twelve years ago I made an effort to find out what was in the building at
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base where the information has been stored that has been collected by the Air Force, and I was understandably denied this request. It is still classified above
Top Secret." Goldwater further wrote that there were rumors the evidence would be released, and that he was "just as anxious to see this material as you are, and I hope we will not have to wait much longer."
[FOIA documents](Also Good, 405)
The
April 25,
1988 issue of
The New Yorker carried an interview where Goldwater said he repeatedly asked his friend, Gen.
Curtis LeMay, if there was any truth to the rumors that UFO evidence was stored in a secret room at
Wright Patterson Air Force Base, and if he (Goldwater) might have access to the room. According to Goldwater, an angry LeMay gave him "holy hell" and said, "Not only can't you get into it but don't you ever mention it to me again."
In a 1988 interview on
Larry King's radio show, Goldwater was asked if he thought the U.S. Government was withholding UFO evidence; he replied "Yes I do." He added:
I certainly believe in aliens in space. They may not look like us, but I have very strong feelings that they have advanced beyond our mental capabilities....I think some highly secret government UFO investigations are going on that we don't know about-and probably never will unless the Air Force discloses them."[UFO Quotations - The United States Congress]
Goldwater's public appearances stopped in late 1996 after he suffered a stroke; family members said he was in the early stages of
Alzheimer's disease.
Goldwater died on
May 29,
1998, at the age of 89 in
Paradise Valley, Arizona, of complications from the stroke.
The Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program was established by Congress in 1986. Its goal is to provide a continuing source of highly qualified scientists, mathematicians, and engineers by awarding scholarships to college students who intend to pursue careers in these fields.
The Scholarship is widely considered the most prestigious award in the U.S. conferred upon undergraduates studying the sciences and is awarded to about 300 students (college sophomores and juniors) nationwide in the amount of $7500 per academic year (for their senior year, or junior and senior years).
*
Goldwater v. Carter, 444 U.S. 996 (1979).
*
Barry Goldwater, Jr., his son
*
Don Goldwater, a nephew
* Edwards, Lee.
Goldwater (1995).
* Goldberg, Robert Alan.
Barry Goldwater (1995)
* Perlstein, Rick.
Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (2001) New York: Hill and Wang. ISBN 080902859X. On the 1964 campaign.
* White, Theodore,
The Making of the President: 1964 (1965)
The New Yorker,
April 25,
1988, p 70
*
The Conscience of a Conservative (1963) speeches. ISBN 1568491409 (orignal is ASIN B000B9WB16)
Why Not Victory? (1963) ASIN B0007H8W42
Conscience of a Majority (1971) ISBN 0671780964
Arizona (1977) ISBN 0938379046
*
With No Apologies: The Outspoken Political Memoirs of America's Conservative Conscience (1979) ISBN 042504663X
*
Goldwater (1988) ISBN 0385239475
*
The Goldwater Institute advances the principles of free enterprise, individual responsiblity, and constitutionally-limited government, espoused by Senator Goldwater.*
Goldwater's 1964 acceptance speech at the Republican Convention - the 'extremism in the defense of liberty' speech.
*
Extended "in memoriam" reporting from the Arizona Republic*
Goldwater Scholarship Homepage
