Goldwater, Barry

Goldwater, Barry (1909–1998), U.S. Senator, Republican presidential candidate.Born in Phoenix, Arizona, Goldwater attended Staunton Military Academy in Virginia and the University of Arizona before entering the family's lucrative department store business. Of Jewish ancestry, Goldwater himself was an Episcopalian. During World War II, he served in the Pacific as an officer in the U.S. Army Air Corp; he later became a major general in the U.S. Air Force Reserve.

A conservative Republican, Goldwater served on the Phoenix City Council before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 1952. In the Senate, he attacked the welfare state, supported the Red‐hunting crusade of Senator Joseph McCarthy, and denounced as appeasement any effort at diplomatic accommodation with the Soviet Union. His manifesto The Conscience of a Conservative appeared in 1960.

Winning the Republican presidential nomination in 1964, Goldwater gained a reputation for political extremism based partly on his staunch conservatism, which included his Senate vote against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and partly on a shrewd campaign by the national Democratic party, which portrayed Goldwater as a wild‐eyed zealot who could not be trusted with his finger on the nuclear button. President Lyndon B. Johnson defeated Goldwater in one of the great landslides in American electoral history. Nevertheless, in mobilizing a new army of “Goldwater conservatives” from the South and the Southwest, the 1964 campaign offered a portent of things to come.

Returning to the Senate, Goldwater somewhat softened his extremist image. Colorful as always, he described the Vietnam War as “the biggest damn fool mistake we ever made.” In 1974, he helped persuade Richard M. Nixon, a friend and former political ally, to resign the presidency rather than face impeachment in the Watergate scandals. In retirement, he defended the rights of gays and lesbians. By the time of his death in 1998, Barry Goldwater had become a popular public figure, admired for his independence, plain speaking, and integrity.
See also Anticommunism; Conservatism; Republican Party.

Bibliography

Robert Alan Goldberg , Barry Goldwater, 1995.

David Burner