Barry Goldwater

Barry Goldwater

Barry Morris Goldwater (1909-1998) was a United States Senator and the Republican nominee for President in 1964.

Biography

Born in a Jewish family. Father of Barry Morris Goldwater, Jr., a U.S. Senator from Arizona; born in Phoenix, Maricopa County, Ariz., January 1, 1909; attended the Phoenix public schools, Staunton Military Academy, and one year at the University of Arizona at Tucson in 1928; began business career in 1929 in family mercantile business; during the Second World War entered active service in August 1941 in the United States Army Air Corps, serving in the Asiatic Theater in India, and was discharged in November 1945 as a lieutenant colonel with rating as pilot; organized the Arizona National Guard 1945-1952; brigadier general in the Air Force Reserve in 1959 and promoted to major general in 1962; retired in 1967 after thirty-seven years service; member of advisory committee, Indian Affairs, Department of the Interior 1948-1950; member of the city council of Phoenix 1949-1952; elected as a Republican to the United States Senate in 1952; reelected in 1958, and served from January 3, 1953, to January 3, 1965; did not seek reelection to the Senate in 1964; unsuccessful Republican nominee for President in 1964; elected to the United States Senate in 1968; reelected in 1974 and again in 1980, and served from January 3, 1969, to January 3, 1987; did not seek reelection in 1986; chairman, Select Committee on Intelligence (Ninety-seventh and Ninety-eighth Congresses), Committee on Armed Services (Ninety-ninth Congress); awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on March 12, 1986; died May 29, 1998, at Paradise Valley, Ariz.

1964 Presidential campaign

Barry Goldwater entered the United States Senate in 1953. During the 1960 Presidential election there was a campaign among conservatives to draft Goldwater for President, a race in which Richard Nixon ultimately won the Republican nomination and John F. Kennedy narrowly defeated him for President. The campaign to draft Goldwater to run for President continued in the next election cycle. In 1964 Goldwater seriously sought the nomination, not running for re-election to the Senate that year, and was successful. He was defeated in the general election by incumbent Lyndon Johnson. After the election he ran successfully again for the Senate in 1968.

Lyndon Johnson was successful in part because of continued public sympathy over the John F. Kennedy assassination, the use of negative advertising such as the notorious "daisy" TV ad which raised fears of nuclear war if Goldwater were elected, and negative media coverage of some of the conservative groups supporting Goldwater, such as the John Birch Society. Johnson ironically ran as a "peace candidate" but shortly after the election drastically escalated U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

The 1964 Goldwater campaign helped usher in the modern conservative movement in the United States. The political careers of both Phyllis Schlafly and Ronald Reagan got a big boost during the campaign. Schlafly wrote a book, A Choice, Not An Echo during the campaign which was widely distributed and launched her career as a conservative political activist. A Choice, Not An Echo detailed the machinations of the moderate to liberal East Coast wing of the Republican Party to hand-pick Presidential candidates (Nixon, Wendell Willkie, Dwight Eisenhower, etc.) and called for conservatives in the party to organize to counter this wing of the party and their "kingmaker" approach to nominating candidates. The book was a rallying call for conservatives in the party and helped Goldwater win the nomination. Reagan gave a speech as part of a "TV for Goldwater-Miller" television ad campaign which made him an up and coming star among conservatives, eventually leading to his own series of Presidential campaigns in 1968, 1976. and 1980, the last of which successfully landed him in the White House. The 1964 Goldwater campaign was also followed by the rise of a growing conservative campus movement during the 1960s led by Young Americans for Freedom, the rise of a small libertarian movement which also supported Goldwater but would later split with conservatism over the draft and drug policy, and modern conservative movement approaches such as direct mail organizing.

The 1964 Goldwater campaign also marked the first time since before the Civil War that the states of the Deep South, angered by the liberal Johnson's support for civil rights, broke from the Democratic Party and gave their electoral votes to the Republican nominee. The South has had a long tradition of conservative Democrats and nearly always voted for the Democratic nominee in Presidential elections before 1964. Goldwater opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Libertarian Social Views

Disconcerted by the increased influence of the Religious Right upon the Republican Party during the Reagan administration, Goldwater became increasingly vocal advocate of libertarian social policy. 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: "Every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass."

Goldwater also had harsh words for his one-time 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 god-damned stupidest foreign policy blunder this country's ever made!'", though aside from the Iran-Contra scandal, Goldwater thought nonetheless that Reagan was a good president.

Furthermore, Goldwater angered many social conservatives, criticizing 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." 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."

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.

See also

• Conservative links