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{{Infobox_Senator| name=Barry Morris Goldwater| image name=BarryGoldwater.jpg| jr/sr=United States Senator| state=Arizona[1953 – January 31965
January 31969 –
January 31987
[Carl Hayden
[John McCain, [Arizona Territory,
United States| date of death=| place of death=
Paradise Valley, Arizona,
United States| spouse=Margaret Johnson (1934–1985)
Susan Shaffer Wechsler (1992–1998)| profession=
businessman,
soldier| party=[Republican Party (United States)|-->
Barry Morris Goldwater (
January 2, 1909 – May 29, 1998) was a five-term
United States Senate from
Arizona (1953–1965, 1969–87) and the History of the United States Republican Party's nominee for President of the United States in the
U.S. presidential election, 1964. He was also a Major General in the
Air Force Reserve Command. He was also referred as Mr. Conservative.
Goldwater is the politician most often credited for sparking the resurgence of the Conservatism in the United States 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 History of the United States Democratic Party
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 Factions in the Republican Party (United States) 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, Arizona, 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.Roots Web,
World Connect Project Goldwater's father,
Baron Goldwater, converted to the
Episcopal Church in the United States of America 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."" The Taboo."
Time Magazine. 22 November 1963.
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 Goldwater, Jr. (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 United States Senate seat in U.S. Senate election, 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
United States Senate elections, 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-communism; 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
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
United States 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 (United States)'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
United States presidential election, 1964 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
U.S. Senate election, 1968 he was elected again (this time to the seat of Carl Hayden, who was retiring). He was subsequently reelected in 1974 and 1980. The
United States Senate elections, 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 U.S. Senate election, 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(politics) 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.Robert Alan Goldberg, "Barry Goldwater." Yale University Press. 1995. chapter 12. 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
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 John F. Kennedy assassination 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
cover featuring Goldwater accepting 1964 nominationAt 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 Conservatism#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 Dwight D. Eisenhower administration "a dime-store
New Deal," and the former president never fully forgave him. Eisenhower did, however, film a TV commercial with Goldwater. 1964 Campaign ads 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 (United States) 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.Ronald Reagan,
A Time for Choosing, Televised Address on Behalf of Barry Goldwater, Delivered October 27, 1964, Los Angeles, CA. The speech prompted Reagan to seek the
Governor of California 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 theory). 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." Matthews 2002 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 Moscow 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, 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. "Fact, Fiction, Doubt & Barry",
Time. May 17, 1968. Online at 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 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 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.)"
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 (television commercial) 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.
Results
In the end, Goldwater received 38.4% of the popular vote, and carried six states: Alabama,
Georgia (U.S. state), 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.
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 United States presidential election, 1980 that “it took 16 years to count the votes the 1964 election, and Goldwater won.”
-->
The Republican Party recovered from the 1964 election debacle, picking up 47 seats in the United States House of Representatives in the U.S. House election, 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. "The Unmaking of the President,
Time Aug. 19, 1974 online at 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."Jonathan Martin Kolkey,
The New Right, 1960–1968: With Epilogue, 1969–1980. University Press of America. 1983. quote p. 254; Mary C. Brennan,
Turning Right in the Sixties: The Conservative Capture of the GOP. U. of North Carolina Press. 1995. ch. 6; 1976 details in David W. Reinhard,
The Republican Right since 1945. U. Press of Kentucky. 1983, p. 230.
In 1979, When President Jimmy Carter normalized relations with
Communist China, Goldwater and some other senators sued him in the
Supreme Court of the United States, arguing the president cannot break its relation with Taiwan without the approval of
Congress of the United States. 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
By the 1980s, with Ronald Reagan as president and the growing involvement of the
religious right in conservative politics, Goldwater's libertarianism 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". Goldwater on personal religious views He is also quoted on p. 39 of The God Delusion 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,
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.”Ed Magnuson,
Time Magazine,
The Brethren's First Sister, July 20, 1981. Retrieved 1/1/07. 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!'" "Archive of American Television Interview with Robert MacNeil Part 5 of 14" (video), Also, in 1988 during that year's
1988 Presidential Election, he pointedly told vice-presidential nominee
Dan Quayle at a campaign event in Arizona "I want you to go back and tell
George Herbert Walker Bush to start talking about the issues."
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 Bill Clinton over the Whitewater scandal, and criticized the military's ban on
homosexuality: “Everyone knows that gays have served honorably in the military since at least the time of
Julius Caesar.”"Ban On Gays Is Senseless Attempt To Stall The Inevitable",
Los Angeles Times,
Washington Post. Online at 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."The Betrayal of America by
Vincent Bugliosi,
2001In 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. Prescription: Drugs Reason Magazine
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 photography after receiving a camera as a gift from his wife on their first Christmas together. He was known to use a
Large format Graflex, Rolleiflex camera, and
Nikon 135 film.
For decades, he contributed photographs of his home state to
Arizona Highways (magazine) 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
Son Michael Prescott Goldwater formed the Goldwater Family Foundation with the goal of making his father's photography available via the internet. (
Barry Goldwater Photographs) was launched in September 2006 to coincide with the HBO documentary
"Mr. Conservative", produced by granddaughter CC Goldwater.
Amateur radio
Goldwater was an avid amateur radio operator, with the
call signs K3UIG and K7UGA. FCC K7UGA record The latter is now used by an Arizona club honoring him as a commemorative call. During the
Vietnam War, he spent many hours giving servicemen overseas the ability to talk to their families at home over the
Military Affiliate Radio System (MARS).
Barry Goldwater was also a prominent spokesman for amateur radio and its enthusiasts. Beginning in 1969 up to 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), ARRL Southwest Director John R. Griggs (W6KW), 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, Earth-orbiting ham radio relay satellite.
Interest in UFOs
Goldwater was one of the more prominent American politicians 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
Death
Goldwater's public appearances stopped in late 1996 after he suffered a stroke; family members then disclosed he was in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease. He died on
May 29,
1998, at the age of 89 in
Paradise Valley, Arizona, of complications from the stroke.Biographical Directory of the United States Congress,
GOLDWATER, Barry Morris, (1909–1998). Retrieved 1/1/07.
Goldwater Scholarship
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).
Documentary
Goldwater's granddaughter, C.C. Goldwater, has co-produced with long time friend and indie-film producer,
Tani L. Cohen, a documentary on Goldwater's life, "Mr. Conservative: Goldwater on Goldwater", first shown on
HBO on
September 18,
2006.Deborah Solomon, New York Times,
Goldwater Girl (interview with CC Goldwater), Published August 27, 2006. Retrieved January 1, 2007. and rebroadcast various times as well as being available on demand.
Electoral history
1964 United States Presidential Election{||Lyndon Johnson (D) (inc.) 61.1%] (D) 48.4%|-|Fred R. Easer (Libertarian) 1.4%] (D) 41.7%|}
1968 Arizona United States Senatorial Election{||
Barry Goldwater (R) 57.2%|-|
Roy Elson (D) 42.8%] (D) 46.1%|}
1952 Arizona United States Senatorial Election{||
Barry Goldwater (R) 51.3%|-|Ernest McFarland (D) (inc.) 48.7%|}
Footnotes
Primary sources
- Goldwater, Barry. Conscience of a Conservative (1963) speeches. ISBN 0-89526-540-0
- Goldwater, Barry. Why Not Victory? A fresh look at American policy (1963)
- Conscience of a Majority (1971) ISBN 0-671-78096-4
- Goldwater, Barry. Arizona (1977) ISBN 0-938379-04-6
- Goldwater, Barry. With No Apologies: The Outspoken Political Memoirs of America's Conservative Conscience (1979) ISBN 0-425-04663-X
- Goldwater, Barry. Goldwater (1988) ISBN 0-385-23947-5, autobiography
- George H. Gallup, ed., The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1935–1971, vol. 3. (1972)
- Karl Hess, In A Cause That Will Triumph: The Goldwater Campaign and the Future of Conservatism (1967), memoir by BG's speechwriter
Secondary sources
- Mary C. Brennan, Turning Right in the Sixties: The Conservative Capture of the G.O.P. (University of North Carolina Press, 1995)
- Edwards, Lee. Goldwater (1995). biography
- Goldberg, Robert Alan. Barry Goldwater (1995), the standard scholarly biography
- Godfrey Hodgson, The World Turned Right Side Up: A History of the Conservative Ascendancy in America (1996).
- Jeffrey J. Matthews. "To Defeat a Maverick: The Goldwater Candidacy Revisited, 1963–1964." Presidential Studies Quarterly. 27#1 1997. pp 662+.
- Perlstein, Rick. Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (2001) New York: Hill and Wang. ISBN 0-8090-2859-X. On the 1964 campaign.
- White, Theodore, The Making of the President: 1964 (1965)
- The New Yorker, April 25, 1988, p 70
See also
- Goldwater v. Carter, 444 U.S. 996 (1979).
- Barry Goldwater, Jr., his son
- Don Goldwater, a nephew
- Goldwater Institute
External links
- The Goldwater Institute advances the principles of free enterprise, individual responsibility, and constitutionally-limited government, espoused by Senator Goldwater.
- Goldwater's 1964 Republican National Convention Acceptance Address in Audio and Text
- 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
{{Infobox_Senator| name=Barry Morris Goldwater| image name=BarryGoldwater.jpg| jr/sr=United States Senator| state=
Arizona[1953 – January 3
1965January 31969 – January 3
1987
[Carl Hayden
[John McCain, [Arizona Territory,
United States| date of death=| place of death=Paradise Valley, Arizona,
United States| spouse=Margaret Johnson (1934–1985)
Susan Shaffer Wechsler (1992–1998)| profession=
businessman, soldier| party=[Republican Party (United States)|-->
Barry Morris Goldwater (January 2, 1909 –
May 29, 1998) was a five-term United States Senate from
Arizona (1953–1965, 1969–87) and the
History of the United States Republican Party's nominee for
President of the United States in the
U.S. presidential election, 1964. He was also a Major General in the
Air Force Reserve Command. He was also referred as Mr. Conservative.
Goldwater is the
politician most often credited for sparking the resurgence of the Conservatism in the United States 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
History of the United States Democratic Party 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 Factions in the Republican Party (United States) 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, Arizona, 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.Roots Web,
World Connect Project Goldwater's father,
Baron Goldwater, converted to the
Episcopal Church in the United States of America 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."" The Taboo."
Time Magazine. 22 November 1963.
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 Goldwater, Jr. (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 United States Senate seat in U.S. Senate election, 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 United States Senate elections, 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-communism; 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
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 United States 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 (United States)'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 United States presidential election, 1964 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 U.S. Senate election, 1968 he was elected again (this time to the seat of Carl Hayden, who was retiring). He was subsequently reelected in 1974 and 1980. The United States Senate elections, 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
U.S. Senate election, 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(politics) 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.Robert Alan Goldberg, "Barry Goldwater." Yale University Press. 1995. chapter 12. 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 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
John F. Kennedy assassination 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
cover featuring Goldwater accepting 1964 nominationAt 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 Conservatism#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 Dwight D. Eisenhower administration "a dime-store New Deal," and the former president never fully forgave him. Eisenhower did, however, film a TV commercial with Goldwater. 1964 Campaign ads 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 (United States) 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.Ronald Reagan,
A Time for Choosing, Televised Address on Behalf of Barry Goldwater, Delivered October 27, 1964, Los Angeles, CA. The speech prompted Reagan to seek the Governor of California 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 theory). 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." Matthews 2002 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 Moscow 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, 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. "Fact, Fiction, Doubt & Barry",
Time. May 17, 1968. Online at 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 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 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.)"
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 (television commercial) 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.
Results
In the end, Goldwater received 38.4% of the popular vote, and carried six states:
Alabama, Georgia (U.S. state),
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.
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 United States presidential election, 1980 that “it took 16 years to count the votes the 1964 election, and Goldwater won.”
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The Republican Party recovered from the 1964 election debacle, picking up 47 seats in the United States House of Representatives in the U.S. House election, 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. "The Unmaking of the President,
Time Aug. 19, 1974 online at 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."Jonathan Martin Kolkey,
The New Right, 1960–1968: With Epilogue, 1969–1980. University Press of America. 1983. quote p. 254; Mary C. Brennan,
Turning Right in the Sixties: The Conservative Capture of the GOP. U. of North Carolina Press. 1995. ch. 6; 1976 details in David W. Reinhard,
The Republican Right since 1945. U. Press of Kentucky. 1983, p. 230.
In
1979, When President Jimmy Carter normalized relations with
Communist China, Goldwater and some other senators sued him in the Supreme Court of the United States, arguing the president cannot break its relation with Taiwan without the approval of Congress of the United States. 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
By the 1980s, with
Ronald Reagan as president and the growing involvement of the religious right in conservative politics, Goldwater's libertarianism 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". Goldwater on personal religious views He is also quoted on p. 39 of The God Delusion 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,
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.”Ed Magnuson,
Time Magazine,
The Brethren's First Sister, July 20, 1981. Retrieved 1/1/07. 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!'" "Archive of American Television Interview with Robert MacNeil Part 5 of 14" (video), Also, in 1988 during that year's
1988 Presidential Election, he pointedly told vice-presidential nominee Dan Quayle at a campaign event in Arizona "I want you to go back and tell George Herbert Walker Bush to start talking about the issues."
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 Bill Clinton over the
Whitewater scandal, and criticized the military's ban on
homosexuality: “Everyone knows that gays have served honorably in the military since at least the time of Julius Caesar.”"Ban On Gays Is Senseless Attempt To Stall The Inevitable",
Los Angeles Times,
Washington Post. Online at 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."
The Betrayal of America by
Vincent Bugliosi, 2001
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. Prescription: Drugs Reason Magazine
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 photography after receiving a camera as a gift from his wife on their first Christmas together. He was known to use a Large format Graflex,
Rolleiflex camera, and Nikon 135 film.
For decades, he contributed photographs of his home state to
Arizona Highways (magazine) 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,
1998Son Michael Prescott Goldwater formed the Goldwater Family Foundation with the goal of making his father's photography available via the internet. (
Barry Goldwater Photographs) was launched in September 2006 to coincide with the HBO documentary
"Mr. Conservative", produced by granddaughter CC Goldwater.
Amateur radio
Goldwater was an avid amateur radio operator, with the
call signs K3UIG and K7UGA. FCC K7UGA record The latter is now used by an Arizona club honoring him as a commemorative call. During the
Vietnam War, he spent many hours giving servicemen overseas the ability to talk to their families at home over the
Military Affiliate Radio System (MARS).
Barry Goldwater was also a prominent spokesman for amateur radio and its enthusiasts. Beginning in 1969 up to 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), ARRL Southwest Director John R. Griggs (W6KW), 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, Earth-orbiting ham radio relay satellite.
Interest in UFOs
Goldwater was one of the more prominent American politicians 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
Death
Goldwater's public appearances stopped in late 1996 after he suffered a stroke; family members then disclosed he was in the early stages of
Alzheimer's disease. He died on May 29,
1998, at the age of 89 in
Paradise Valley, Arizona, of complications from the stroke.Biographical Directory of the United States Congress,
GOLDWATER, Barry Morris, (1909–1998). Retrieved 1/1/07.
Goldwater Scholarship
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).
Documentary
Goldwater's granddaughter, C.C. Goldwater, has co-produced with long time friend and indie-film producer,
Tani L. Cohen, a documentary on Goldwater's life, "Mr. Conservative: Goldwater on Goldwater", first shown on HBO on September 18,
2006.Deborah Solomon, New York Times,
Goldwater Girl (interview with CC Goldwater), Published August 27, 2006. Retrieved January 1, 2007. and rebroadcast various times as well as being available on demand.
Electoral history
1964 United States Presidential Election{||Lyndon Johnson (D) (inc.) 61.1%] (D) 48.4%|-|Fred R. Easer (Libertarian) 1.4%] (D) 41.7%|}
1968 Arizona United States Senatorial Election{||
Barry Goldwater (R) 57.2%|-|
Roy Elson (D) 42.8%] (D) 46.1%|}
1952 Arizona United States Senatorial Election{||
Barry Goldwater (R) 51.3%|-|Ernest McFarland (D) (inc.) 48.7%|}
Footnotes
Primary sources
- Goldwater, Barry. Conscience of a Conservative (1963) speeches. ISBN 0-89526-540-0
- Goldwater, Barry. Why Not Victory? A fresh look at American policy (1963)
- Conscience of a Majority (1971) ISBN 0-671-78096-4
- Goldwater, Barry. Arizona (1977) ISBN 0-938379-04-6
- Goldwater, Barry. With No Apologies: The Outspoken Political Memoirs of America's Conservative Conscience (1979) ISBN 0-425-04663-X
- Goldwater, Barry. Goldwater (1988) ISBN 0-385-23947-5, autobiography
- George H. Gallup, ed., The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1935–1971, vol. 3. (1972)
- Karl Hess, In A Cause That Will Triumph: The Goldwater Campaign and the Future of Conservatism (1967), memoir by BG's speechwriter
Secondary sources
- Mary C. Brennan, Turning Right in the Sixties: The Conservative Capture of the G.O.P. (University of North Carolina Press, 1995)
- Edwards, Lee. Goldwater (1995). biography
- Goldberg, Robert Alan. Barry Goldwater (1995), the standard scholarly biography
- Godfrey Hodgson, The World Turned Right Side Up: A History of the Conservative Ascendancy in America (1996).
- Jeffrey J. Matthews. "To Defeat a Maverick: The Goldwater Candidacy Revisited, 1963–1964." Presidential Studies Quarterly. 27#1 1997. pp 662+.
- Perlstein, Rick. Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (2001) New York: Hill and Wang. ISBN 0-8090-2859-X. On the 1964 campaign.
- White, Theodore, The Making of the President: 1964 (1965)
- The New Yorker, April 25, 1988, p 70
See also
External links
- The Goldwater Institute advances the principles of free enterprise, individual responsibility, and constitutionally-limited government, espoused by Senator Goldwater.
- Goldwater's 1964 Republican National Convention Acceptance Address in Audio and Text
- 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
Barry Goldwater
Spartacus, USA History, British History, Second World War, First World War, Germany,
Barry Goldwater - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Barry Morris Goldwater (January 1, 1909 – May 29, 1998) was a five-term United States Senator from Arizona (1953–1965, 1969–1987) and the Republican Party 's nominee for ...
Barry Goldwater
Barry Goldwater
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My faith in the future rests squarely on the belief that man, if he doesn't first destroy himself, will find new answers in the universe, new technologies, new disciplines, which ...
Washingtonpost.com: Barry Goldwater Dead at 89
Sen. Barry Goldwater, right, poses with running mate William Miller at the 1964 Republican National Convention in San Francisco. (Reuters)
Barry Goldwater
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Online NewsHour: Barry Goldwater-- May 29, 1998
Barry Goldwater, former senator and Republican presidential nominee, died today at his Arizona home. He was 89 years old. Following this look at his life, Jim Lehrer is ...
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Find out more about Barry Goldwater from The History Channel's free online encyclopedia. ... Goldwater, Barry (Morris) (1909–1998) US Republican politician; presidential ...
Barry Goldwater, Jr. - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Barry Morris Goldwater, Jr. (born July 15, 1938), is a former Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from California, 1969-1983.
GOLDWATER, Barry Morris - Biographical Information
GOLDWATER, Barry Morris, (father of Barry Morris Goldwater, Jr.), a Senator from Arizona; born in Phoenix, Maricopa County, Ariz., January 1, 1909; attended the Phoenix public ...