cam.org for more bowl to doat how numeral come to the kansas city public library. at -- thank you for participating in my ongoing campaign to provide speaking opportunities for all of my buds from graduate school. tonight's entrant into that category is brian alan drake.

thetudied under incomparable donald. about i tell you any more brian, let me introduce the topic of his talk by adapting an opening line of another one of our fellow graduate students used every fall on the first day of the undergraduate history classes the he taught. now, he would say, all of you will be dead. if how is that for a wake up at 8:00 in the morning? unless you have published something utterly extraordinary or perpetuated a harmless evil, the odds are nobody will remember you. he would go on to say that even if you do get into that rarefied

zone where your name lives on, odds are it will be as a caricature. you will be remembered but possibly for the wrong thing. that brings us to barry goldwater. , the then senator from arizona accepted the republican nomination for president in san francisco. only two things about that moment are remembered. first is a phrase from his speech which goes like this. extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. second, the fact that he went on to suffer an electoral defeat of landslide proportions at the hands of lyndon johnson. remember barry goldwater for the wrong things?

what if there is a different barry goldwater, someone who wrestled with apparent contradictions between his intellectual believes in limited government and his attachment to the great outdoors? that in a nutshell is the question that ryan drake is going to explore in a night presentation. originaln little -- lecture. this draws on his recently published book. is published by the diversity of washington press and is for sale after this talk. he will be signing copies.

when we started to write papers which were peer reviewed other class members, i was struck by his talent for writing. he produced scholarly work that was accessible. the firsted the code, one in both classes to do so. figured itver quite out. i have no doubt that he will demonstrate that talent for all of you. ladies and omen, brian drake. [applause]

thank you. .et me begin it is one of the most erudite people that i know. he is a treasure. you are lucky to have him here. thank you very much for those comments. it is a thrill to be here in kansas city. this is a great town and i love this region. i am a big fan of the great plains. thank you for that. it is time to cut to the chase. i wondered if we might begin hearing those famous words of very goldwater from 50 years ago. if we could queue that video to begin. or not. [laughter] extremism in the defense of

liberty is no vice. [applause] also thatind you moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. [applause] in somewhat of an edited form. the meat tell you a little bit about myself. i am an environmental historian. i studied the influence of nature on human history. what do people think about nature and how do they treat nature? how does nature respond in turn? it is a back and forth. when i was in graduate school i get interested in environmental movements. who became an environmentalist? what happens when other parts of

their lives intersect with their i gotnmentalism, fascinated by people who became environmentalists that you would never expect. you can kind of see where this is going. one of the things i love about historical study is when historical actors go off script. it when they do things that you would never expect. i like the fact that people are complicated. it is a tourism for a reason. people are complicated. i wanted to explore that. my two interests came together in my book and they come together in this talk today. he accepted the republican nomination for president 50 years ago today. the complicated world of barry goldwater, if you know much about him, complicated is not a

word associated with the senator from arizona. it might even elicit a laugh. goldwater, image of this is one of his campaign posters, looks like this. he was extremely conservative. extremelydictably conservative. he was the efforts of political conservative. an opponent of the new deal and the great society. he was opposed to welfare and regulation and assess of taxes. he was a defender of traditional morality and an opponent of unions. he was a supporter of the military. he emerges as almost a cardboard cutout. an ideology attached to a warm

body. you can see that in just a few film clips that i would like to show you. run the communism video? this is from a great website. campaign 1964 commercial. >> hand over your heart. flagdge allegiance to the of the united states of america nation under god indivisible for all.rty i want american kids to grow

up as americans. they will if i have the guts to make our intentions clear. in your heart, you know he is right. vote for barry goldwater. there is his famous campaign motto. common is a made critics nervous. they took full advantage of that. this was a lyndon johnson campaign commercial from that same year. >> on october 24, barry goldwater said the nuclear bomb was merely another weapon. vote for president johnson.

the stakes are too high for you to stay home. the next one is more famous. you may remember this. this is the infamous daisy commercial from 1964. it is a little bit longer. >> one. it to. three. four. five. seven. it six. six. nine. >> six. five. four. three. two. one. zero. >> these are the stakes. to make a world in which all of god's children can live.

we must either love each other or we must die. johnson on president november 3. the stakes are too high for you to stay home. >> that may be the most famous political campaign commercial of all time. barry goldwater scared many democrats and republicans as well. i would like to show one more commercial. there is an environmental argument here. this is called ice cream. explode atomic bombs in the air. lots of vitamin a and calcium. these things come from atomic bombs. they are radioactive.

they can make you die. do you know what people finally did? the signed the treaty and poison started to go away. now, there is a man who wants to be president of the united states and he doesn't like this treaty. he fought against it. he voted against it. he wants to go on testing more bombs. his name is barry goldwater. if he is elected, they might start testing all over again. for president johnson on november 3. the stakes are too high for you to stay home. wouldn't expect nuance in our political ads. wererom both sides misleading. lyndon johnson was not a socialist dictator.

not a dr.ater was strangelove type character. his wholek at political life and his life in general, he often when often very interesting and unexpected. he was a more supple thinker than he was given credit for. at the end of his life, he broke republican party over the fan of the religious right. he was not a fan of pat robertson and jerry falwell. he championed the right of gay people to serve in the democrat. in 1992.ted a democrat he was a supporter of planned parenthood for his entire life. he was a member of the naacp.

i even had a warm reputation forgot this picture ash this is from the 1968 senate campaign. there he is in his backyard in this photograph. was good friends with his big clinical rive roll, john f. kennedy. they talked about going on the campaign trail and debating one another but still remaining friends. back to the commercial, the last one that i showed. the idea that his election would be an environmental disaster is relevant to him being complicated. streak extended to

environmental issues. a me tell you about barry goldwater. he was born in phoenix, arizona in 1909. he was the son of well-to-do department store owners. kid, aan adventurous little wild. he ended up in a military school in virginia because of his wildness. he loved to do the things the boys did. he played pranks and ran around with his buddies. he loved to ride and hunt. -- i don'tave been know if you been to phoenix, you may know camelback mountain. the is a picture of it in early 1900s as barry goldwater would've seen it. here is another shot. these wide-open spaces had a significant influence on

dash wholeor the in of his life. let me tell you a little bit about his mother. she was crucial to this. goldwater was from nebraska. she moved to arizona because she had tuberculosis. wouldear air of arizona cure you or make it less intense. she did not expect to live long. she lived in several decades. it may be at work. she married and had three children. she loves nature. she loved her deeply. one of the things that she loved to do was to go on camping trips. this is in the 1920's. camping, me first had this used to be something that the wealthy did.

now you get in your model t and head out to the desert. she took her kids with them. i believe that is very goldwater at the wheel. care they are in their crossing the colorado river. they're on their way to southern california. goldwater lectured her children on natural history and pointed out the beauties of nature. she was not religious, but she leaves god was present in creation. she was very key to point that it -- out. some wonderful experiences. as he got older, he continued this tradition. he picked up a camera. this is barry goldwater with a rifle in hand.

and his is younger brother sister. his mother is on the left next to him. the other two people are unidentified. this is one of their many camping trips. he continued this. he got into photography. wifehe got married, his gave him an eastman chemical. -- camera. he learned to take aerial pictures. he became a remarkable artist. this is something we did not always appreciate. he published the first of several books of photography in 1940. he was elected to the royal society of photographers. we have a couple of shots. he was a big fan of the four corners area, as you can tell.

this is from a 1940. take a look at some of these pictures. these next three shots, one more here. this is wearing the same levi's. this is one of the shots. i love this one. he is not cancel adams, but he was not bad. he was friends with ansell adams. i think this is just a wonderful shot. my favorite of all is this one of monument valley. but those clean lines. this was a man who had a dive for light and shadow and a knife look.t pristine

i love this photograph. this is one of my favorites. foras also famous photographing native people. this is a nominal man. -- thisone of his most is a novel whole man. about nature.g he goes to military school in virginia and comes back home to go to the university of arizona. it is not finished because his father dies and he takes over the store. he gets married and has three children. he was deeply up franklinwo fran -- roosevelt. he was opposed to the new deal.

this will be appropriate. around 1940, he'd had the chance to go on a trip to the grand canyon. the colorado river was a different place in 1940. the only river was the hoover dam. not many people had gone down. the 13thbe a member of expedition to go down the colorado river. he joined one of those expeditions in 1940. he made it all the way through the grand canyon. it was an incredible experience for him. he kept a journal. he took a lot of photographs. a second.get you in i want to read an entry from his journal on that trip.

" the tall spires look as though god had white golden paint across them. heights, the canyon is filled with a blue haze, not unlike smoke. though river winds through all this duty and grandeur. " this is not some in that we associate with semi-like very goldwater. he had love for the canyon. that and ite for comes out strongly in this. he took his camera with him. he's a good motion picture camera and a still camera. he took hundreds of photographs and 3000 feet of moving picture. he went in the speaking tour

after he emerged from the canyon. there were times and he was showing the films five times a day. over 10,000 people sought in the year after he went to the grand canyon. i would argue this had something to do with his political success. he decided to run for city council in 1948. people were going to vote for them on the issues. he was concerned about corruption and excesses of government and a pro-business atmosphere. for thoseed for him reasons. i think they voted him because he was the man who ran the canyon. that day him a kind of cachet. romantic image of the outdoorsman. i think it was crucial. he had the canyon as a backdrop. has a talent for politics and he decides in 1952 to run for the senate. he wins.

ais was something of bellwether. this was pretending shifts that have brought us to current local maps. he'd knocked off ernest mcfarland. as a young senator, he gets a lot of the dirty jobs that no one wants to do. he has to do the real action tour and go give speeches. his agenda was typically conservative. railed against labor unions and was very anti-commonest. he was not an environmentalist as would recommend it today. we will get there. i am going to switch years. i want to tell you about environmentalism. that is important. it need to know a little bit

i often tell my students that environmentalism is a product of the 1960 of -- the 60's, the 1860's. you have people in new england protesting the effect of textile mills and asking governments to regulate. this is a very old movement. you see more environmental damage. what we have at the turn-of-the-century was the progressive era. conservation is the first organized environmental movement in america. theya conservationist was were a reformer and middle-class. there are a few principles. one is that the industrial was destroying

natural resources. they were not opposed to growth. the idea was to that growth was done in an unsustainable way. have scientific experts working for the to manage resources in a way that they did not disappear. if you wonder where the forest service comes from or the bureau of land management or any federal bureaucracy, it emerges from this. it is very pro-government. it believes the government has a duty to do it can to manage resource development. this is one of the big ironies. conservation had a political

home in the republican party. this idea was strongest in the gop and teddy roosevelt. it is a republican movement. i will touch on that later. they also said we should preserve land just because it is beautiful and spiritual. we should have national parks. they were called preservationists. sometimes they would fight. there were pro-growth people and then there were wilderness preservation people. it was a civil war in a very angry at one another. by the time very goldwater is on the scene, this is the dominant ethic in the country. goldwater starts out and he is a

conservationist. he believes in a, growth. he was an avid champion of economic growth. he was an advocate of reclamation. conservation believed that rivers that were not dammed up were wasted. they should be tamed. it they should be made to work for the good of the country. we put a. the government got involved in dam building. the new deal. the new dealers and roosevelt loved their dams.

who already believed in an aggressive government. they gravitated to this naturally. goldwater gravitated to it as well. as an arizona in who wanted economic prosperity in a place without water, he recognize that federal reclamation had to happen. this put him in an interesting situation because it is only the government they can build these really massive dams. you have goldwater in an awkward position of demanding the federal government built dams in the west. at the same time, as he was lambasting the tennessee valley authority, he calls it galloping socialism. because there is creeping collectivism and galloping socialism. he did some ideological gymnastics to pull that off, i think. he would temporarily transform into a loose constructionist of

the constitution to deal with that. you look at some of the major dams. he supported what was called the echo park dam in the 1950's. problem with the dam is it was right in the middle of dinosaur national park. it was defeated in 1956 after an intense fight, a bunch of environmental groups fought it. he was a big champion of the dam. he said it is not going to destroy the aesthetics and we need the water. he was a big supporter of the central arizona project in bridge canyon. it brings water from lake havasu to phoenix. it's cold generating plant that powers water.

he was going to be a dam built inside grand canyon national park. as you can imagine, even then, the uproar was intense. goldwater, a man who loved the grand canyon, was a supporter. he said, don't worry. it's going to be fine. as i was saying before, he is not an environmentalist yet. he goes against the wilderness act of 1964. it created the official government wilderness designation which you see today. he was a big opponent of that, but not for the reasons you might expect. this is where you start to see the very flicker of barry goldwater the environmentalist. he said i am opposed to the wilderness act because i love wilderness so much. what an act will do, it will be like a four-star rating. if you make an area a wilderness

area, everyone will want to go there. they will destroyed it through overuse. better to leave it alone. it is a very interesting argument. has a lot of merit, because in places like the grand canyon, that is what has happened. it's been loved to death. he warned that would happen. so, moving on, in 1964, he decides to run for president. got a couple of shots here. there he is giving a speech. classic goldwater look here. like this one as well. there -- he had a bluegrass brand touring with him called the goldwaters. folk music and 9064 was not usually associated with conservatives. this was a conservative version of that.

this was a goldwater girl. does not appear to be hillary clinton, who was one. but the results -- getting ahead of myself. the results were not good for barry goldwater. he was beaten severely. here is the map. just a couple of things. he funded his campaign partially through the sale of a book of photography called "the face of arizona." it is beautiful. a white leather bound book with all kinds of photographs, captioned by the senator himself. fabulous. pictures. a book that any environmentalist would be proud to own today. i like that. that is really interesting that he is funding his campaign with this. $2500 and you got one of the first 100 autographed copies. but, second of all, after goldwater goes down to

significant defeat, the only place he wins is his home state and the deep self. why did a jewish republican member of the naacp win the south? because were in the middle of a very important political shift. that's for another lecture. this is camelback mountain today, surrounded by suburban sprawl. you will notice there is no development on the mountain. one of the reasons is because of barry goldwater. he was associated with in one of the main organizers of a group called save the camelback mountain foundation. they went around collecting money, working with landowners to buy the rights to preserve this mountain untouched. they were successful. one of the ironies is they had to rely on land and water conservation fund to help them. but goldwater, for four years, worked very hard to keep

development off camelback mountain. you can go hiking there today. it is a fabulous hike. a wonderful view. he said, "this old mountain is worth the fight." he was preserving landscape in phoenix. so, let's go back, though, to, there we go -- to history again. now, after world war ii is when conservation starts to become what we would call today environmentalism. couple things are going on. in the 1950's, we have massive, in the 1960's, we have massive economic growth. creates a big middle class. what do middle-class people want to do? they have got money and they want to spend it. they want to buy tvs and automobiles and take their automobile and go on a road trip to the national parks. they want environmental of the amenities -- they want natural experiences as part of their lifestyle. they began organizing, asking,

insisting that their government do things to protect those environments they like. and so, you start to get in the suburbs, i have a friend who wrote a book about this -- what you get in the suburbs is the birth of environmentalism. environmentalism -- i would not call it a radical movement, but it emerges out of the least radical population, the middle class. and it becomes very strong. and people get interested in sprawl and green space and clean air and water and so on and so forth. and liberals pick up on this. lyndon johnson, if you read "the great society" speech he talks about preserving the natural world. liberals begin to associate -- they begin to see themselves as defenders not just of the working class and unions but of the middle-class and the amenities of the middle-class lifestyle. the affluent lifestyle. lyndon johnson picks up on this.

they begin to adopt environmentalism. this is the origin of liberal environmentalism, that the government has the ute to protect nature -- has a duty to protect nature. then comes the protests of the late 1960's, anti-vietnam protests and the civil right movement. so things infuse the environmental movement and give it new vigor and so on. by 1970, you have things like earth day. april 22. you have a slew of legislation, like the clean air act and a little bit later the clean water act. the endangered species act. the development of the epa in 1970. on and on. all the major pieces of environmental legislation emerge from this period and signed by richard nixon, ardently the second-most most important

environmental president after teddy roosevelt. also, a republican. did not like environmentalists. things have changed. it is very different in 1970 the 1964. barry goldwater is influenced by this. he is deeply influenced by all this. he's influenced by some of his personal experiences as well. in 1969, he was flying into an air force base and he cannot see because of the smog. he had to land on estimates. he was freaked out by this. he wrote a letter to his friend. he said, i could not believe what i had to do. our air pollution problem is getting out of hand. he also noted while he was flying that there is everywhere, everywhere, he called it gouging and cutting from suburban growth. this makes me nervous. we should do something about it. just like every other american. he is getting concerned. he is very mainstream when it comes to his response to

environmental problems. listen to this. when i first read this quote, i had one of those moments that historians have for you think smoking gun. bing! it does not happen very often. you have to create the smoking gun with the evidence. but listen to this. he wrote a book called "conscience of the majority." he wrote, it was the usual goldwater stuff until you got to the next-to-last chapter. the chapter was called "saving the earth." listen to this paragraph. "i happen to be one who has spent much of his public life defending the business community, the free enterprise system, and local governments from harassment and encroachment from an outside federal bureaucracy. thus, it is that my attitude on the question of pollution seems to have caused more interest. i am frank about how i feel. i have discussed it with newspapers and in speeches and on nationally televised talk shows. i feel very definitely that the

nixon administration is absolutely correct in cracking down on companies and municipalities to continue to pollute the nation's air and water. while i am a great believer in the free competitive enterprise system, i am an even stronger believer in the right of our people to live in a clean and pollution-free and climate. to this end, it is my belief that when pollution is found, it should be halted at its source, even if it requires stringent government action against important segments of our national economy." that sounds -- his supporters are going, what? wow. that was a really phenomenal example of the changes that are going on. he is reacting to responding to the currents of his time. he is not frozen in time. i will refer you to my book because there are too many examples. but he goes on to support all of nixon's environmental initiatives.

he urges crack downs on copper mines in arizona. he pushes for federal wilderness areas, even though he voted against the legislation that made those possible. he worked to expand the grand canyon national park, to double in size. he worked with a liberal democrat on that. he tried to limit boating in the grand canyon and on and on and on. at earth day itself, as you can see here, he is at a delphi university in new york where he gives a rip roaring speech castigating us for public smoking in the air. he said, "clean air is more important than a healthy economy." then he urged people to join planned parenthood to prevent overpopulation, which at the time was a big environmental concern. so, basically what we have is one of the most conservative members of the senate speaking and voting around 1970 in ways that it is impossible to imagine today.

final thing. the glen canyon dam. anybody ever been to paige, arizona? you might be familiar with lake powell. shrinking right now because of lack of water. goldwater had voted to approve that dam, even though it flooded one of the most scenic stretches of the colorado. by the mid-1970's, he had changed his tune because glen canyon dam -- it stops all the silt from going downstream. it ruined the beaches of the grand canyon. it reduced the temperature of the water to something like 47 degrees. you cannot swim in the colorado. as i once discovered when i was 17. didn't make it out nearly. he said, this was in fact the biggest political mistake of his life. voting for the glen canyon dam. even bigger than his vote against the civil rights act. the vote against the wilderness

act. i think that is really astounded. now, as i said, goldwater was a man who responded to change. he responded to the tenor of the time. what you'll find as well, his environmentalism comes and goes. by the late 1970's, he started to retreat. he had a little bit of buyer's remorse -- by the late 1970's. he supported the epa but he was shocked that when it actually began to regulate or regulate in a way he thought was excessive. he began to have doubts. by the 1970's, he was grumbling that maybe it should be eliminated. the sierra club thought his grand canyon proposal was not aggressive enough. they got into a big fight. he quit the sierra club. my files, my favorite, i have is very indignant letter of resignation.

he didn't like it when environmentalists opposed the supersonic transport, the american version of the concord. environmentalists were very opposed to it. it would cause climate change. it was overblown. at the time, there was concern. goldwater liked everything that flew. their opposition made him mad. then along came the reagan revolution and james watt. and goldwater respond to that as well. he began to question perhaps whether he had gone too far in his environmentalism. he liked james watt. james watt was notorious environmentalists, disliked him intensely because he was a very vocal anti-environmentalist. he was very good at that job. so, they were bumper stickers in the 1980's "outdam de watt." goldwater liked him. he's responding to the rise of the reagan right.

but he never entirely abandons his environmentalism. if you look at his late career in the 1980's, you see a couple of interesting things. first of all, you see that in 1984, he sponsored the arizona wilderness bill. the bill provided for 28 federal wilderness areas in the state of arizona. now, again, remember, he voted against the legislation that made that possible. the wilderness act of 1964. in 1984. the ashes of the famous sage brush rebellion are still smoldering. the rebellion was a movement of state legislatures in the west are doing that land that was in control of federal government should be given back to the states. and that environmental regulations of federal land were too stringent. even as the embers were still smoking, here is goldwater authorizing the wilderness act or proposing the wilderness act.

joins an organization called republicans for environmental protection, which is now called conservator. -- now called conserve america. their argument was republicans have a strong environmental tradition, and that we have gotten away from that, they said. we need to get that back. goldwater's joining of that group in a way we said in message he did not like the direction the current, the republican party was going. as you know, we have seen this all over and other aspects of his life. he disagreed very much with the religious right. he was a champion of the rights of gays to serve in the military. he is a maverick is the phrase we hear. that maverick streak has a green tint to it. it is still there in the 1980's.

let me finish by noting a couple things. he retires in 1986. he dies in 1988. his ashes, some of them, are spread over the again can it which i think is an appropriate place for them to be. i think there are a couple of lessons we can pull from this. as henry will attest, m my graduate advisor said that the most important question is so what? my take on so what. we have learned that environmentalism was a very partial movement. that it could appeal to lots of people. it could sometimes show up in the most unusual places. it was a sea change in the way people felt about the natural world. it affected all kinds of folks. it is not a movement that belongs to one side of the

political spectrum or the other. related to that is that there is a strong republican environmental tradition. when we look back at 2014, that is an interesting question. today, you do not often associated environmentalism and not federal regulation with the republican party. that's a fairly recent phenomena. i think it has a lot to do with, it's a candid answer, but the republican party has swung to the right over the last 20 or 30 years. you may remember reagan's famous line. he said, government is not the solution. government is the problem. when you say that, you make it difficult for goldwater's environmentalism to exist anymore. it has a lot to do with why it sort of disappeared. i think there are lessons for both sides. i think conservatives can look at environmentalism and not think of it as an alien ideology. that it's a legacy, kind of like civil rights, as the conservative movement. liberals can look at it and

realize it is not just them. it is everyone. we are all in this together. especially in this era of environmental problems. we are going to beat everybody. i think we can look back to history and draw lessons. with that, i will yield the balance of my time, as they say in the senate, and wait for your questions. thank you very much. [applause] go ahead, sir. >> thank you. in your estimation, what current presidential candidate or potential presidential candidate or national politician most resembles barry goldwater and his nuanced conservatism? >> well, you're asking essentially are there any -- environmentally minded republicans? honestly, not many that are springing to mind. the last one i think, people

like olympia snowe. there is a regional thing. the republicans that come from new england or from california, oregon, washington, they tend to be more environmental than other regions. democrats, if they are from the west, can be less environmental. no, that is an interesting observation. you don't see it a lot. i think that is an interesting historical puzzle. that's another book. in my own introduction, i do not dig deep into it because i was not sure of the answers. it will take more time. >> i was fascinated to learn that the republicans really did originate environmentalism. i learned something tonight. then i'm equally astounded that they have moved so far away from something that was such a background for them. i especially think now about the state of oklahoma. extremely conservative.

they have three times the number of earthquakes than california due to the fracking. but it seems that consequences be damned is their policy now. it kind of ties back in to the other fella's question, what is it going to take for the republicans to return to their conservation roots? >> historians are really bad at predicting the future. my chinese history professor told us three weeks before tiananmen square that it would never happen. so avoid particular future. i will say this is where useful example, you can look to the past. if barry goldwater can do it, anybody can. that sends a lesson that it does not make you a traitor to your ideology. i do not know. again, i lay in bed and i think about questions like that and i not have a good answer for you. but i think we have some resembles of the past i can maybe help us. yes, sir?

>> given the fact of what you said that he was apparently quite a bit ahead in terms of being an environmentalist, calling himself that. do you think or did he ever indicate that he resented when the left kind of took that over? and became the standard bearers of it, and he had been interested in trying to do things long before they ever -- >> he did. one of the things that, he didn't like was what he considered the extremism of some environmentalists. he thought the opposition to the air pollution caused by the sst was absolutely just ridiculous. it was motivated more by ideology and anti-modernist feelings.

he was never that, he was never as direct, but you can infer in his comments in the late 1980's that he did resent. he believed -- moderation in the pursuit of justice is no vice. he was very moderate in some ways. so -- >> he died in -- >> he died in 1988. he retired in 1986. >> it sounds like he might've actually been interested in the whole environmental change that's happening -- given what he knew. >> yes. >> it happened in his own state. >> i think that is a great observation. thought about this a lot. i think climate change, for instance, he would be concerned. i do not have any doubt. when you think about somebody for long enough, you feel like you can get into that head. i do not doubt he would be concerned, especially as a national security aspect, he was very concerned about resource scarcity. back in the oil crisis days in 1973 he was really panicked.

the resource side of climate change would make him very nervous. he would also warn against being too nervous. he would go for that middle ground. you would not like -- he would not want you to go to out there. i have no doubt he would be concerned. >> we do seem to have a tendency to go from one extreme to the other in this country. we can live with it easily. >> a question and a parallel. goldwater was characterized as such a warmonger. ironically, johnson took us into vietnam being characterized as the peacemaker.

you have a feel for what might have come of a goldwater presidency in relation to vietnam? >> i'm going to dodge that question if at all possible. one of the things they warn you in graduate school about counterfactual. it is very difficult to say. you know, the warmonger thing is overblown. i do not team is going to nuke vietnam. in all seriousness, i do not mean to dodge. i think experts who are better versed in foreign policy and that sort of thing are better suited to answer that question. i don't know. i don't know. great question. >> [inaudible] agent orange, if he was a true environmentalist. >> his national defense going up against his concern. he did express concern about ddt. land issues and preservation was more his interest. but did a couple times wonder about ddt.

agent orange. it's maddening what you do not know sometimes. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> you're watching american history tv. it to can follow us on twitter for information on our schedule and upcoming programs and keeping up with the latest history news. each week american history tv's real america brings you archival films of help tell the story of the 20th century. one of washington's most -- they pay homage

to the first public up parents of mona lisa. the da vinci painting has captured the fancy of generations for 400 years. the president expresses the gratification of the nation. states aree united grateful for this, from the leading artistic power of the world. , iview of the recent meeting must note further that this painting has been cap under french control and that france has even sent along its own commander-in-chief. weant to make it clear that will continue to press ahead

with the ever to develop an and dependent artistic power of our own. >> cameramen record the event as the presidential party leads. the smile act like a magnet to art lovers and the curious. the next day the gallery is jammed as the crowd passes by the painting. each viewer has three to five seconds in front of the painting. some stand in line repeatedly for one more glimpse. the painting is exhibited under stringent security measures and it is protected from damage in a humidity controlled case.

10,000 people have filed by mona lisa the first day and she is the most popular hostess in washington. everybody meet the new girl in town. >> on sunday at 8:00 p.m. eastern on american history tv, a discussion about ronald reagan's legacy hosted by the reagan presidential foundation and library. 2014 marks 10 years since ronald reagan's death. >> each week, american history tv's american artifacts visits museums and historic places. 200 years ago on symptom or 11th, 1814, british and american naval forces clash for two half hours in cumberland bay near plattsburgh, new york. up next, we travel to plattsburgh where