men who ran for the presidency but lost but changed american history. tonight hubert humphrey. "the contenders," this week on 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span3. every saturday at 8:00 p.m. eastern on american history tv on c-span3, go inside a different college classroom and hear about topics ranging from the american revolution, civil rights and u.s. presidents to 9/11. >> thanks for your patience and for logging into class. >> with most college classes closed due to the coronavirus, watch professors engage with their students. >> gorbachev did most of the work to change the soviet union, but reagan met him halfway, reagan encouraged him, reagan supported him. >> i should just mention madison originally called freedom of the use of the press, and it is,

indeed, freedom to print things and publish things. it is not institutionally freedom of the press. >> every saturday at 8:00 p.m. eastern. lectures in history is also available as a podcast. find it where you listen to podcasts. wherever he goes, he speaks out, clearly and forcefully on the issues, answers questions, explains exactly where he stands on domestic and foreign policy. everywhere he goes, the people are responding with enthusiasm for this new and different kind of person. barry goldwater has been constantly on the go. it's a grueling schedule. and whenever he can, he catches a quick nap with his daughter peggy and his wife peggy. soon it's back to the campaign where barry goldwater is calling for courage and integrity in meeting problems. he's calling for an end to

do-nothing policies, for progress based on the dynamic principles of the republic. he's calling for a rebirth of individual freedom. >> we put our reliance upon freedom, upon the free enterprise system. we reject, therefore, the ideas of the economic planners in washington that a group of people sitting in washington can plan what the country is going to make, where it's to be made, the quality of the product, the price of the product, the wages to be paid, the profit to be made, et cetera, et cetera. we know that this system which, in simpler terms, is called socialism has never worked in the history of this earth and is not working today in countries where it's been tried. >> republican candidate barry goldwater campaigning in 1964. c-span's "the contenders" series coming to you from the goldwater

institute in phoenix, arizona. as we look to goldwater's challenge and the influence during the second half of the 20th century, we welcome you tonight, we welcome our audience here at the goldwater institute and our three guests who will walk us through the life and political career of barry goldwater, beginning with nick pearlstein. he's the author of the book "barry goldwater before the storm." he's also the author of the book "nixonland." thank you for being with us. and darcy who is also the host and ceo of the goldwater institute. she previously served as director of the cato institute in washington, d.c. her editorials have appeared in the "wall street journal," "usa today" and walter mchugh. he has produced more than 90 documentaries including "barry goldwater and american life." let's begin with you.

in your book and his campaign, you called him a very different candidate for a different election year. how so? >> i think the thing that made him very different as a presidential candidate is that he was a reluctant presidential candidate. if we think of all the people running for president in 2012, we can't say any of them were reluctant. it's a full-time job, it's completely consuming. but ever since 1960 when the first kind of people came to barry goldwater and tried to draft him, saying, we want you to be a presidential candidate, he would always say, that's the last thing on my mind. he once told the chicago tribune, i don't think i have the brains to be president. over and over, they said, we don't care, we're going to draft you. that's pretty much what happened. he was drafted by incredibly vociferous, passionate followers who raised money on their own, and he had to do it. >> we're going to talk about this later, but the assassination of john kennedy, how did that influence his

decision to go ahead in 1964? >> actually, he was inching toward possibly doing it in the fall of 1963. one of the reasons was because president kennedy had introduced a civil rights bill that was actually beginning to build a strong backlash. and there were people talking about president kennedy actually being vulnerable in 1964. and goldwater was close to kennedy, he liked kennedy, and when kennedy was assassinated, it's very hard to kind of reconstruct the context in our minds now, but it was so harrowing for the american people. people blamed extremism. people blamed the kind of vociferous idealogical politics that americans didn't want to believe was part of their political system, and barry goldwater immediately lost interest. in fact, it was another month and a half before he finally answered the call of one more group of people coming to him, begging him, and saying it was his duty to support the conservative cause that he finally agreed to do it.

>> in this book that came out, "the conscience of a conservative" was simply a manifest of why he was running and the idealogy that shaped him. in that piece of film we showed at the top of the program, he talked about freedom and free enterprise and a failed socialistic experiment that the democrats were pushing in the 1960s. >> right, barry goldwater stood for one thing and he was very clear about it, and that was freedom. that book today is just as relevant as it was when it was written 50 years ago. barry would say, circumstances change, principles do not. and when he was getting ready to run for office, he said, you know, as i survey the landscape and i look around at all the different questions that might occur to me, the most important concern that i will have, the most important question that i will ask myself is, are we maximizing freedom? and that was the beginning and the end of his political

analysis. >> bill mcewen, take us back to 1964 that led him to two terms. what led to this point on the international stage? >> really, in a sense, the simplicity of his perspective. simplicity as compared to more complicated politics. we have to go back. you have to know about barry goldwater in the context of his time. he grew up, born in 1909 in dusty little phoenix that had eight or nine thousand people at the time. life was simpler here than it was in the east. >> arizona wasn't even a state. >> when he was born, it was not a state for two or three more years. but just lifestyle was very -- this is part of the old west at that time. it wasn't new york city, you

know, and whatever. so you have to look at barry, let's say, from his family history, which meant a lot to him, but from 1909 clear up to world war ii, what was life like here? it was very simple. it was very unsophisticated. it was black and white. it was right and wrong. it was the old west. it wasn't sophisticated east coast. i bring that up because that's what shaped where did he get these views, you know, which i call small libertarian, but very simple views about right, wrong and this and that. it was the context in which he grew up. now, you asked me a question, but i can't remember what the question was. >> what led him to 1964 to shape his idealogy in the 1950s until he ran in '64? >> it was what i just said. it was simple. i don't mean that in a negative

way, but i mean it was sort of simple. there was right and wrong, and there was, you know, good and bad, and this and that and the other. you get into world war ii, which he served in very much. remember world war ii was the major right versus wrong, good versus bad thing, and then you get in the cold war and us versus the soviet union. all of these things, from goldwater's perspective, and from the sign of the times were really black and white, especially compared to today's politics where you don't know quite who is doing what to whom and saying what. so i think that's -- was the pers personification of good versus bad, right versus wrong. he was the personification of that. >> you met barry goldwater. i'm going to come back and ask

about your impressions of him, but let's focus on the 1964 race. you had other names in the race like governor of scranton, pennsylvania. walk us through how these candidates challenged barry goldwater and ultimately how he got the nomination. >> the republican party was a very different institution than it is now. it was controlled by moderates and even by liberals. the whole idealogy of the american party system was different. each party had in it both conservatives and liberals. the democratic party had very conservative members from the south, very liberal members from the north. the republican party had an isolationist conservative wing from the midwest but it also had a liberal wing from the northeast, people like jake jabitz. what the campaign was all about was trying to take over the party from the bottom up, the bottom up being these

conservative idealogical activists. we talk about the bottom up, but often they had their meetings in country clubs and very fancy places. and it was presumed that someone like nelson rockefeller was the heir apparent for the republican nomination. the idea that a conservative could have won the nomination was absolutely seen as impossible by the pundits because the pundits then said that america was esconsed within a liberal central. when dwight eisenhower opened up the deal and even expanded it, like the department of health and welfare, it was just presumed that the conservatism of the 1920s which was something that seemed to have gotten in the depression was nothing like

modern life. >> you point out two key things that were critical in 1964. oregon, which rockefeller won, and california, which barry goldwater won. >> yeah. california was an absolutely fascinating, knock-down, dragout political fight. i talked earlier about how barry goldwater had these impassioned supporters who would do anything he would want even if they were told not to do it. some of them were segregationists, they were full of far right, as they were called at the time, extremists. and they were basically willing to knock on doors until their knuckles were bloody. they were willing to sabotage other campaigns. it was seen as a fight for civilization itself because the other candidates, the liberal candidates, nelson rockefeller, were seen as the sort of harbingers of the socialism that

they believed was destroying civilization itself. it was incredibly impassionate. >> two years after richard nixon lost his governorship, he was still a player in the republican party in 1964, and according to your book, was trying to figure out a way that the party might turn to him if they didn't want either rockefeller or goldwater. >> you mentioned the oregon primary. he actually established a secret boiler room in a basement. yes, richard nixon, in which people were hired to make phone calls to voters saying, hey, wouldn't it be a neat idea if richard nixon was drafted to be president? this is richard nixon we're talking about, right? someone found out about it, and a camera crew showed up. richard nixon was always scheming and he always hoped goldwater and rockefeller would knock themselves out. there was a great cartoon which showed rockefeller and goldwater having a shootout in the middle

of an old western town, and nixon was rubbing his hands, and richa -- in richard nixon's political undertaker parlor. >> we always want to hear from you. if you live in the eastern or central time zones, 202-777-2002. if you live in the mountain and pacific time zones, we'll also get questions from those here in the audience at the goldwater institute. we'll show political ads from 1964. you remember this campaign. how did lyndon johnson run against barry goldwater? what was his tactic? >> rottenness. johnson ran a very smart campaign because he made goldwater the issue as opposed to the issues being the issue, and barry was painted as a, you know, a crazy person, you know. there were things put out by the johnson campaign that some group

of psychiatrists in america came out with a statement that barry was mentally ill. some of you probably remember that, and that he was crazy. and then, of course, the famous 10, 9, 8, 7, you know, the nuclear bomb commercial which only aired one time, but it got a lot of attention. it was designed by bill moyers, actually. it was a totally do the guy in of a campaign. >> it's important to realize the nuclear stuff didn't just come out of nowhere. in the conscience of a conservative, he made a very strong argument that a craven fear of death had crept into the american psyche. and by that he meant people were so afraid of nuclear war that they didn't want to confront the soviet union. there was a good reason that people were afraid to confront the soviet union, because an

all-out war with the soviet union would have meant the end of civilization itself. but barry goldwater never freaked out with the thought that if we're afraid of going to war with the soviet union, even if it means nuclear war, we are on a path to surrender. that was a genuinely frightening notion, especially after the cuban missile crisis where people actually came within hours, so they thought, of armageddon itself. so he did have some very unconventional ideas about the necessity of confronting the soviet union head on militarily. >> we'll talk a little bit later about that iconic daisy ad. we have put together some other 1964 ads to give you a sense of the issues and the personality in that campaign. >> this particular phone only rings in a serious crisis. keep it in the hands of a man who has proven himself

responsible. vote for president johnson on november 3. >> the people asked barry goldwater. >> i have a question for mr. goldwater. we keep talking about old wars and brushfire wars. i have a classmate now serving in the armed forces. i'd like to know what mr. goldwater will do to keep us out of war. >> let me assure you here and now, and i've said this throughout every corner in the land in this campaign and i'll continue to say it, that a goldwater administration will mean once more that a proven policy of peace through strength, that was the hallmark of the eisenhower years. the eisenhower approach to foreign affairs is our approach. it served the cause of freedom and avoided war during the last republican administration. it will do so again. we are the party of preparedness and the party of peace. >> in your heart, you know he's right. vote for barry goldwater.

>> on october 24, 1963, barry goldwater set up a nuclear bomb. merely another weapon. merely another weapon? vote for president johnson. the stakes are too high for you to stay home. graft! swindles! juvenile delinquency! crime! riots! hear what barry goldwater has to say about our lack of moral leadership. >> the leadership of this nation has a clear and immediate challenge to go to work effectively and go to work immediately to restore proper respect for law and order in this land and not just prior to

election day, either. america's greatness is the greatness of our people and let this generation make a new mark for that greatness. let this generation of america set a standard for responsibility that will inspire the world. >> in your heart, you know he's right. vote for barry goldwater. >> darcy olsen is the president of this institute, and you look back at those campaigns from 1964. your reaction? >> well, a lot of different thoughts come to mind when i see that array, including how many of these commercials inspired modern day political commercials. but what i take away from that is the slogan, in your heart you know he's right. i think the american people proved that 15 years later when they elected ronald reagan who campaigned on virtually an identical platform but with a little different packaging and a little bit more gloss. and this messaging, i mean, rick, you were talking about

with the soviet union and how, you know, goldwater had too much bravado and it was scaring people. that is exactly what reagan ran on, won with, and we have history to tell the tale that that was actually the right public policy to pursue. i think that speaks a lot about the timing and what is happening socially when you are campaigning and how important that is and how much that influences ultimately whether or not you get through with your ideas. >> two very different approaches. tony schwartz was behind a lot of the lyndon johnson ads as you wrote about in your book, a different tactic by the goldwater campaign. >> when i look at the goldwater ads, i think about how embarrassingly atrocious they were. the goldwater team was not very impressive for all kinds of reasons, one of them being, goldwater being one of the reluctant candidates, he hired a lot of his friends who were not

necessarily professional. that ad was written by the bbc. i interviewed one of the guys who produced one of the big goldwater ads which was goldwater talking to eisenhower. it was a total bust and they got lots of telegrams saying, i'm not going to give to this campaign again, that was such a bad commercial. the guy's name was chuck lichtenstein who is now passed away. he told me, i didn't have much experience with tv. i said, you mean you didn't produce many commercials? no, i never watched tv. >> we're going to be showing during the course of this evening some of the documentary that you put together, some of the original work, and you worked with barry goldwater for how long to get this put together? >> oh, probably -- specifically on the project, probably six months. >> was there one thing that you didn't know about barry goldwater and his politics that you learned in putting this together? >> his language.

>> elaborate. >> he had a very colorful language. i was going to tell a story, but i would really have to clean it up. i will tell the story, i will clean it up. one of the last times i was with him, it wasn't the very last time but one of the last times, i walked into his living room and he was sitting in a barcalounger watching tv. i said, hey, senator, how you doing? here's the clean-up part. he says, the f-ing raccoons are f-ing in my fireplace. and i said, what? well, people don't know, but we have raccoons in the desert in arizona. i didn't even know it until that day, actually. and a mother raccoon had climbed up on barry's roof and come down the chimney -- what do you call the thing in the fireplace -- yeah, the grate, and gave birth to a litter of baby raccoons. this wasn't in his house, this

was in the ham shack where he had his ham radio thing, a little building next door. and the raccoons were doing their business, so to speak, in the fireplace. and that was his comment. the f-ing raccoons are f-ing in my fireplace. >> leton that note, let's go to martin from fair oaks ranch, texas. if you look at the life of barry goldwater and his 1964 presidential bid. good evening, martin. >> caller: good evening. the reason i'm calling in veterans day, i happen to be a retired navy captain from the civil engineer corps from illinois, and i like to tell my friends not so much the history of how many times i met goldwater accidentally but the fact that i first was influenced, being a democratic young man from illinois where my cousin became the supreme court justice, head of the state of illinois, attorney general. well, i won't go on.

but it was a world war ii texas a&m colonel who influenced me to vote for goldwater. interestingly enough, i would like to say to my texas friends, i'm one of the few guys left on monday hearing fdr when i was seven years old give the day of infamy speech. but i ran into goldwater in a little restaurant he loved called tito's on connecticut avenue. one time i was there, my boss, who happened to be a civilian world war ii pilot named stafford, i introduced goldwater to my boss. and my boss said, why did you introduce me to the senator? i said, well, he knows another robert t. stafford. and he got such a kick out of this, and he said, how long have you known goldwater? i said, oh, i've only met him

here a couple times in the restaurant. but, anyway, the man was a fantastic individual. the only time i ever went to the senate when i was a young naval officer was who was presiding? it was barry goldwater. and this guy was a truly interesting and a beautiful man. one last memory is that i went to wright patterson air force base, happened to be going there on business as a civil engineer, and my wife and young son were there, and i said, why don't you go down to the museum? well, that was the day that barry goldwater and jimmy stewart dedicated the first wing of the museum, and they both came by and shook hands with my wife and son. i wish that i had had that experience to meet the other brigadier general jimmy stewart. anyway, i just wanted to share that on veterans day. what a wonderful man he was. >> martin, thank you for the

call. he was a pilot, he was a hamm radio operator. he had a lot of hobbies, he took lots of pictures. >> it's important for us to recognize on veterans day that a lot of powerful, rich people, which was what bar roadwry gold was, he pulled strings to get into the military. he was born in 1909, so he was a pretty old guy, and he took up duty in a very dangerous air route in the china burma theater. they called it the aluminum trail because so many planes went down. he had this fascination with flying the latest military hardware. one time in 1964, he had this very sensitive meeting with lyndon johnson about how they were going to handle the issue of race riots, and lyndon johnson spent hours and hours preparing, and there was this whole memo that was going to guide his incredibly delicate negotiations. the meeting ended up lasting 15

seconds, but barry goldwater was like, when am i going to try this a-11 that came out? >> he received 38 paris of the vote. it was a landslide for lyndon johnson. was barry goldwater misunderstood in this campaign? >> a lot of reasons. people were terrified of the prospect of nuclear war that he never really backed down from. lyndon johnson was dishonest on issues like vietnam. he said, i'm not going to send american boys 7,000 miles away to do what asian boys should do. there was a bumper sticker that showed up next year. people said if i vote for barry goldwater, there will be a war in vietnam. i voted for barry goldwater and there was. barry goldwater's ideas about the federal government were not popular. when he said we should sell the tba, that was seen as crazy. his idealogical time had not come.

also i mentioned the absolutely atrocious campaign he ran. i found a memo -- they fired the research staff from rnc, and i found a form letter that they sent out to political science professors in every state. it said, dear professor, please send us any books or pamphlets about the political situation in -- and then it said, insert state here. so this was not a very professional operation. >> in addition to your calls, we're welcoming questions from the audience here at the goldwater institute and we'll get one up front. >> i'm dennis, a retired cpa. i've lived in central phoenix for 53 years. as a person who knew barry and worked with him in the community, i knew him to be a man of impeccable integrity and who was dedicated to the proposition of personal responsibility. and when he ran for president, it seemed to me from my perspective that the pundits you mentioned earlier went out of their way to print and broadcast

atrocious dishonest statements about him. there is a national magazine to this day that i don't take because of the things they said about barry goldwater that were outright untrue. my question is, why did the national press -- so many people on the national level go out of their way to be so vindictive against a man who, based upon what has already been said, was going to lose? >> i would say a couple things. first of all, a lot of his followers were very, very frightening. which, you know, you can charge that to barry goldwater, you can say it wasn't his fault. he didn't like to distance himself from people who were devoted to him. you have to understand the context of the times. fascism, naziism was real for

every adult. when barry goldwater gave a very famous speech at the 1960 convention in which he said conservatives, let's grow up, we can take this party back, he said, we need to defeat the democrats who are working for the destruction of this nation. so the passions were very high, and political passions of that intensity, of that magnitude were greatly feared in an exaggerated way. he was kind of caught up in that, i would say, in an unfair way, but it had to do with the context of the belief that if people were allowed to give reign within the american political system, we would not be able to control the consequences. this is a time, don't forget, when there was civil rights terrorism in places like mississippi. people were burning down churches. people were assassinating civil rights workers, and people were

saying, why is it that a place like mississippi when all this stuff is going on and the sheriffs were not arresting these people was voting 87% for barry goldwater? >> and of course the 1964 civil rights debate and bill a key part of that process. we'll talk about that later in the program. we'll go to george joining us from manassas, virginia. welco welcome to "the contenders" program, phoenix, arizona and our look at barry goldwater. >> caller: thank you very much and thank you for doing this show. my parents went to listen to barry goldwater, they firmly believed in what he said. my question is, was he a libertarian or a conservative? and there is a difference. >> you're right in there with that question. i think that barry goldwater -- his book was called "the conscience of the conservative,"

right? he felt like he was a conservative, that he was a true conservative who understood that this nation was founded on the concept of constitutionally limited government. and that was true in all spheres of life, that you couldn't pick and choose where you would have government involvement. if it wasn't in the constitution, then it wasn't constitutional, and, therefore, the government shouldn't be involved. so today, i mean, there are a lot of libertarians who wear that mantle, but there are a lot of modern conservatives who share those beliefs as well, and we see that come up in a lot of different stripes of folks in the tea party movement and different candidates for president. i'm not going to be the one to define him as a libertarian or a conservative. he used the term conservative, and i think that what he stood for was as close to what the founding fathers stood for as any prominent person in our

history. >> rick perlstein, in this book, what did you learn about barry goldwater as a person? >> he was a guy that shot from the hip and he didn't care what people thought of him, much to his detriment often. but people talk about how he was an honorable man, and i think he was an honorable man. by the same token, i think idealogically he could be very naive. i mentioned the civil rights terrorism that was going on in mississippi, the fact that people were being shot in cold blood for doing things like helping people register to vote. he never denounced that. he said that his appeal to the people of the south was, i'm not going to, as an arizonan, tell people in mississippi what they should do. when civil rights are being that egregiously violated, i think there's a kind of which side are you on question.

i think his heart was in the right place and he believed he was doing the right thing. but i think he had a certain myopia when it came to a real moral ordeal that he kind of avoided at that time. >> we have put together -- go ahead. >> i want to talk about the libertarian capital l, small l conservative. you have to look at goldwater in the context of his time. i wouldn't be surprised if during his life, and certainly while he was in the senate, he probably never heard the word libertarian. it wasn't even a word that was even heard of at the time. he was -- i call him a small l libertarian because he basically believed in freedom of choice as it came later in his career, he was outspoken of gay rights, of

women's rights to choose all sorts of things like that, and some of my friends would say, oh, barry got senile and he became a big liberal in the end, he changed. he didn't change. his philosophy was always, it's up to you as an individual to have the right to decide whether it was good about gay rights or abortion rights or labor unions. that's the whole thing from the '50s where he is totally misunderstood, i might note. he was a small l libertarian. today we have all sorts of politicians and presidential hopefuls running around talking about libertarian this, libertarian that. you've got to keep it in the context of the time. >> rick, let me just stop you because we have a perfect time to set up this video to give you a sense of the style of barry goldwater. >> he talked so fast.

hube hubert, sitting here trying to listen to you is like trying to watch playboy with my wife trying to turn the pages. >> i think i'm in a very tough race. i'm spending the money that i legally can. that's the answer. it's a stupid question, if you don't mind my saying so. >> it doesn't even fly. now you say i'll read the record. >> i never said that airplane wouldn't fly. >> you said you wouldn't fly it yourself. ♪ >> people all over the country keep talking about legalizing gambling. and i thought we already had it. it's called election day. i now realize what it takes to become the president. apparently it helps to have a brother who sits at a gas

station drinking beer all day. when i was campaigning in that razor thin election in 1964, i should have told everyone that dean was my brother. >> rick perlstein, as you look back, you wanted to say something to bill's point. >> he later actually pioneered what would be known as conservatism. he went in a different direction personally but he gave a very sharp speech about the decay of the nation at the mormon tabernacle in salt lake city. but he also, toward the end of his life, used some of that salty language that we need to censor when he referred to the christian right.

jerry falwell was a follower of his. jerry falwell said in 1969 that all good christians should be very concerned about sandra day o'conner. if i may, he said all good christians should kick jerry falwell in the ass. we'll >> we'll go to paul in an gol qui -- algonquin, illinois. go ahead, paul. >> caller: thank you. if he had gotten elected in 1964, how would he have handled the war differently than lyndon johnson did? would he have escalated the war as lbj did, or would he have seen the conflict as more of a civil war between the south and the nor the north vietnamese? >> thank you for the question. i was of that generation. the vietnam war under lyndon

johnson was gradualism. oh, we're going to tighten the screw and eventually they're going to give up. yeah, right. i think if barry had been president -- and again, i'm not saying it would have been a good move or a bad move, i'm not sure -- but i think he would have come in with what later became the collin powell doctrine. he even said, if you're going to go to war, you have to go to war with the attitude that you want to win it within the next hour. that was his attitude. then he said, we lost the war in vietnam for one reason. the politicians tried to run the war, in his quote, and politicians don't know their ass from a hot rock about running a war. that was his quote. i think he would have taken a far more aggressive approach to it as compared to johnson's gradualism which dragged out

almost as long as our current wars. >> let me take his point and ask it one step further. what kind of president would he have been, darcy olsen? >> barry would have been something that we don't see too often today. i think he would have been a very honest president. i think he would have been very candid as he was his whole life. that was the way he campaigned, it was the way that he sat in office, it was how he was after office, and i think just -- i think that candor is something that people loved about barry goldwater, and it's -- you know, it's one of the reasons that so many people sought out barry goldwater even after he was in office, and he was so well respected and liked by so many people because, you know, you knew with barry goldwater where you stood. he always put his principles first, he kind of, as rick was saying, had a tin ear sometimes

to messaging and what people might think, and he put his principles before partisanship, before party, before politics. and, you know, it's hard to say whether he would have been able to work with congress that way, but it's an exercise that i, for one, would have liked to have seen. >> we are in week 10 of c-span's "the contenders" searies. we're speaking to you from phoenix, arizona. >> i recall goldwater was interviewed in the '80s just after russia went into afghanistan. i think this underscores the wisdom and how pressing it was on many issues. his quote was he had been in those hills and a right-minded goat would not wander in those hills. he had forecasted that russia would lose. obviously, we're quite bogged down on afghanistan. so my question to the panel is,

maybe some other examples of his wisdom and prescience in his time. >> you're shaking your head. >> that is a great question and goes back to the question of what kind of president would he have been. one of the things we know he would have done differently is he would not have vastly expanded the welfare state in america. he was fighting against that. he said there were all kinds of federal programs that were unconstitutional that needed to be repealed. he was unabashed about that. he certainly did not agree with the levels of taxation that we had then let alone the levels of taxation that we have now. he was very against the type of progressive taxation that was put into place and has become more and more predominant. he felt like taxation should be minimal and it should be fair per person, so if you give 10%, i give 10%, rick gives 10%, not rick is the wealthy so he's going to pay 90% -- well, you're not going to pay anything.

those are some major differences. also since that time, and certainly lyndon johnson worked on this as well, but this vast expanse into -- expansion of government into all these social arenas, including education, for which there is no constitutional authority, all of those things are things that barry goldwater would have fought hard against. >> rick perlstein, let's go back to where your book begins and talk about his influence here in arizona as he tried to build the republican party in the late 1940s and early 1950s. >> it's a fascinating story. it was a democratic state. when he ran for the senate, i believe, in 1952, i think there were 92 members of the lower house. there might have been 96, and two of them were democratic. he came from a republican family. his mom was a midwesterner. she was republican. more and more republicans came after world war ii for the climate and also for the new defense industries that were opening up in arizona.

>> before he entered politics, he did what? >> he was an executive at the family department store. he was actually, interestingly enough, we talk about him being the straight-shooting guy and he wasn't into madison avenue stuff, he was actually the marketing guy for the department store. but he -- eugene polium moved to phoenix and he was a newspaper publisher. he was actually dan quayle's father-in-law, and he really wanted to help fill the republican party and build a government to clean up what was a corrupt town. it was called sin city. barry goldwater was involved in both. in 1950 he was the campaign manager for howard pyle who ran for governor. he flew howard pyle around in his plane, he would ascend these campaigns, and everyone said, wow, who is running?

he would recruit people for every office in the state. one quick point, someone said why are you qualified to run for senate in arizona? and he was such a first citizen of arizona, this was his answer. he said, i can call 10,000 people in this state by their first name. he built the republican party in arizona. >> i'm going to call on you for just a moment because you remember going to the goldwater department store. >> correct. when i first came to arizona in 1970, i worked for the old adams hotel, which was in downtown, and i bought a bathing suit at the goldwater department store on central avenue. at the time, you talk about him being in marketing, they gave you, with every purchase, a little vial of water that had gold flakes in it. and everybody that had flown in from texas to that hotel all ran down to get a bathing suit so they could get a vial of water

with gold flakes in it. so he was good at marketing. >> i just want to comment about the '52 election. barry ran against earnest mcfarland. barry had supported earnest mcfarland, raised money for him and all that. barry didn't like or was upset with harry truman, which is ironic today, because what former president was barry most like? harry truman, actually, give 'em hell harry, actually. barry told me many times, i ran for president, i knew i didn't have a chance in hell of winning. even in the senate, he didn't think he had a chance of winning that 1952 senate race at all. so maybe he was building a republican party, he had been on the city council for two years, and then he sort of decided to

run against harry truman in most senses in '52. but he didn't. he was not some big political organizer who said, let's build a republican party here, which was sort of natural, but it wasn't like he had some big plan to do that, he was just running thinking he didn't have a chance in hell of winning. >> well, we came across some early film of senate-elect barry goldwater in 1952 after he was elected to the senate but before coming to washington, d.c. let's look. >> speaking of washington, of course you are going. there was a great deal of talk on the part of the republicans during the campaign about communism in washington and the mess in washington. do you anticipate finding anything like that when you take your seat in the senate? >> well, i don't know. i can't say. i think that there must be communism in washington, but i would hate to stand up and say there is without knowing more

about it than i know now. >> let me put it this way. is there any fear or concern about communism and about the so-called mess in washington among the people who voted for you out in arizona? >> i think the fear of communism is one of the underlying reasons for the success of the republican party in this election all over the country. >> now that the republican party is in, do you think there will be any letting down of this concern, any complacence placple people who elected you? >> we can go back to our work the same as usual. as always happens in politics, the man who benefits the most in big government goes on without the least interest in it, and that's mr. average citizen. >> are you going to point out the need for action in

washington? >> i'll never be quiet about it. >> from 1952, never be quiet, of course, that became his mantra as senator kennedy mentioned in '54. who helped him win the '52 race? >> steven shaddock. he wasn't the most savory guy. he would do things like they sent out 50,000 postcards, all hand-signed by volunteers, from barry. he would do things like -- he said that, you know, if the situation is propitious, you can get millions of people to vote for someone who has the absolute opposite idea than they do. >> we have a question in the audience. please introduce yourself and go ahead. >> good evening. my name is richard muser.

i was 16 months old when we moved to arizona, so i claim to be a native. it's a pleasure to hear the information about senator goldwater from so many experts. the reason i'm in the second grade, i met a gentleman named bill mccune, and we have been friends since then. in 1964, i was a lowly specialist 4th class in the army at ft. benning, georgia. i wasn't old enough to vote at that time because arizona was 21 and i was only 20. when i listened to the senator discuss using low-yield nuclear weapons in vietnam, it made sense to me, as a military person, and it made sense to a lot of my fellow soldiers at the same time. the point that the johnson

campaign exaggerated the impact of using huge hiroshima/nagasaki bombs was a total exaggeration. he was an air force man. he knew what low yield meant and what it would do. and my question is, what was wrong with the term "low yield," that i believe i only heard it once or twice. >> rick perlstein, you wrote about that in the book. >> yeah, i actually talked to one of the physicists at lawrence livermore laboratory who designed some of those low-yield nuclear weapons and he said it was absolutely insane to believe you could contain the explosions from those weapons, so i'm not so sure that's true. >> can i go? i want to comment, only because dick muser brought this up. he and i grew up in the same

neighborhood over about 25th drive and about -- or north of thomas road. in about 1952, '53, '54, that period, my father would wake me and my brothers up at 4:00 in the morning on a couple of occasions. we would go up onto the roof of our house and sit facing north. my dad had his watch and tell us one minute, 30 seconds, and we would see nuclear atomic bombs explode at the test sites, above-ground nuclear bombs exploding in the test sites in nevada, which was, what, 300 miles away. four or five times i saw it. i'm one of the few people alive today that's seen a nuclear bomb explode. maybe some of you have, too. hopefully nobody else will ever again. this was sort of a ritual, we'd get up and watch the nuclear bombs going off in nevada. well, the point is. i thought, first off, why are we

dropping nuclear bombs on nevada? i thought they were on our side. but realizing that whether it was 250 or 300 miles away to those test sites, thinking my god. it would light up, like summer flash lightning, if you know what that means, except the flash and the light would stay in the air longer than summer lightning, you know, and just -- wow, that's 300 miles away. think about that. that kind of thing is what contributes to the great fear of the soviet union and nuclear war. >> let me put a domestic issue on the table, rick perlstein, organized labor and the legislative record senator goldwater had in the 1950s. >> extremely important in barry goldwater's rise. of course, arizona, after the taft/hartley act of 1947 became the first right to works state. the circle he was in, his

friends, people like denison kitchel, he was the labor lawyer for the big mining company, so the idea that fighting labor power was essential to conservative politics was absolutely part of what barry goldwater was all about. and he became -- he basically rose to national prominence in the late '50s on two kind of wings. the first was, he gave a speech for -- for a big budget, which he called squander bus spending. the siren song of socialism. the other was there was a big labor hearing in the late '50s run by senator mcclellan and it was meant to take on jimmy hoffa's corruption, and barry goldwater kept interrupting saying things like, i'd rather have jimmy hoffa stealing my

money than walter reutter stealing my money. walter ruther was the head of the united autoworkers, who basically pioneered things like the automatic cost of living increase. he was fighting to make the operations of corporations much more transparent. he was the most politically aggressive labor leader in history, and one of the most successful. and by taking on someone like walt ruther, businessmen all over the country flocked to barry goldwater as their savior. these were the guys that ended up organizing the group, that again, under barry goldwater's nose, without him being involved at all, put together conscience of conservatism. first put him forward as presidential candidate. >> marvin is joining us. let's get a quick call. >> can i halfway disagree with what he just said? >> you can all the way disagree with what i just said. >> my experience in with barry and interviewing him and whatever, he wasn't -- i'm convinced he wasn't against unions.

he said, bring back that small "l" libertarian things. he said many times in our shows, i think a man should be able to join a union or not join a union. it's their personal choice. he was most vociferous about corruption in the unions and he really didn't like the -- what do you call it -- the closed shop where you had to join the union in order to have a job. >> he liked weak unions. >> yeah, but that's -- well, that's your view. >> i'll build on what you're saying there. i think that's absolutely correct that -- >> it's 2-1, rick. >> he believed that unions were an expression of human freedom if you joined them voluntarily. he believed wholeheartedly in freedom of association. he thought that was great if you wanted to join. what he didn't believe in is what unionism has become, compulsory, forced membership. that's something he vehemently opposed. you have a situation today where they are trying to take away the right to vote by secret ballot when you're forming a union.

that was something that he opposed. there was the issue of -- what was his other big issue -- >> right to work. >> yeah, right to work, right, right. they were making membership compulsory and it was a condition of employment, which he said that is antithetical everything we believe in as americans. so he fought for right to work laws in the states. but he didn't oppose the idea of associating nonunions. he opposed the idea of what unions have become, forcing people to do something against their will, completely contrary to what goldwater believed. >> marvin's been waiting in los angeles. good evening. >> caller: yes, thank you for your programming. i'm wondering if barry goldwater were alive today with his lifespan of points of view, could he get the nomination of the republican party? that's the first part of my

question. and number two, based on the extreme right-wing state of some leaders in arizona politics, as in the election last tuesday where jerry lewis defeated a leader in the senate, how would barry goldwater have stood in the ideas of the current republican party in the state of arizona? thank you very much. >> thank you. so two points. first, rick perlstein, could barry goldwater get the nomination today? >> no, because he would have been vetoed by the christian right. i'm looking over some of these quotes, they're stunning. here's what he said in 1981. can anyone look at the carnage in iran, bloodshed in northern ireland, or bloodshed in lebanon? he believed very firmly by the end of his political career that people who enter politics from a religious motivation are so impassioned and so impervious to

compromise that it made the give and take necessary for politics impossible, which is kind of ironic, because in 1964, you know, extremism and defensive liberty is no vice, no virtue, that was what he was accused of at the time, but he really did seem to come to an extremely firm and impassioned notion. he didn't want pat robertson to run for president in 1988. he thought that that was a violation of the separation of church and state. >> darcy olsen, let me begin with the first sentence and first chapter of "conscience of a conservative." barry goldwater said, "i had been much concerned that so many people today feel compelled to apologize for them." he goes on to say to allow vice president nixon at the time and president eisenhower. >> this book, "conscience of a conservative," to this day remains the best statement of what it means to be a conservative in this country. it is -- he is so clear, and i think earlier on you had used the word "simple," and i think, for me, i was thinking principled.

that's all it was. >> not simplicity. >> not simpleton or simplistic, but it was clean and clear and those principles are beautifully outlined in that book. it's just as good of a read today as it was back in the day. >> as an author and writer, i have to give credit to the guy who actually wrote the book. which is a fella named brent bosell. barry goldwater might have read it, but he definitely wasn't involved in the production of the book, which is a fascinating story i tell in my book, "before the storm". >> let's go to the 1960 convention because it is an important point. i'll come back to you, i promise. as he spoke to the delegates at the republican convention which nominated vice president richard nixon. >> as an american who loves this republic and as a member of the senate, i am committed to the republican philosophy and to the republican candidates. it is my belief the people of

this land will return a republican administration to office in 1960, and i shall work to that end. >> that, again, is mrs. goldwater. >> but i might suggest, in all seriousness, that you and i will not have discharged our full responsibility unless we also return an effective republican congress. i would not imply that our party is a repository of all virtue, that only republicans can see the truth, that only republicans serve noble motives, but i must insist that those in control of the democrat party, through their platform, have announced their total commitment to what i regard as a lopsided concept of man which puts americans in a shameful condition of everlasting dependence upon the state. [ cheers and applause ]

i have visited the people in the cities and towns and states of our nation, and i can tell you that the men and women of america face the future with courage. they are eager to accept their responsibilities. they are determined to work and sacrifice to defend our freedom. it's our task, as delegates to this 1960 republican convention, to make certain the american voter is provided with an opportunity to make a meaningful choice between the two philosophies competing today for acceptance in our world. the philosophy of the stomach or the philosophy of the whole man. >> bill mccune, you watched barry goldwater in 1960, how did that set the stage for his bid

in '64? >> well, it fed red meat to the conservative movement, basically. he ended his speech saying conservatives, grow up, let's get to work, you know, that's, i think, the last line of his whole speech there. he was, not again, he wasn't -- who's that republican guy who ran campaigns the last few years? >> carl rove? >> yeah, he wasn't a karl rove at all, that kind of thing, but he had feelings, let's get to work, let's take this back, let's do something for a conserve ty movement, as it were. because he had no use for nixon, especially later. you know, and probably no use for rockefeller other than they were probably friendly. but ideologically, he had no use for rockefeller.

so he was saying, get to work, let's do this. >> ed in morristown, new jersey, >> caller: wrote my senior thesis in 1971 on the press treatment of the goldwater presidential campaign and i had to good fortune to spend a full day interviewing the author theodore white at his home in manhattan. he had vivid memories of the weeks he had spent on the weeks he had spent on the campaign trail with goldwater in preparation for the 1964 installment in his famous series "the making of the president." white told me he'd come away from the tour with great admiration for goldwater and with contempt for the liberal media that he was a part of and that he thought was doing so much to demonize goldwater and distort or ignore the case that goldwater was trying to present to the people. white told me goldwater had tried earnestly to lecture the people about the dangers of concentrating more power in washington and what the proper

limits of federal government in race relations should be, especially in the so-called public accommodations. the specific issue that led to his opposition to the civil rights bill that year. white also said that when goldwater eventually came to fear that discussing civil rights issues further on the campaign trail might worsen racial tensions, he met with president johnson and the two agreed to take those issues out of their campaigns. white said the agreement really cost goldwater a lot of votes among working-class whites and was one of the most selfless acts white had seen a politician engage in. one last thing, white told me how displayed he -- dismayed he had been when he got back to new york after his goldwater interval. he said his liberal media friends received him as if he were a jew just escaped from a nazi death camp. he astonished those friends insisting what a good man and worthy candidate goldwater was. thought you'd want to know. >> thank you for the call. sharing your story, darcy olsen? >> you know, it's really interesting on the civil rights issue.

i think that barry did get a bum rap from the media and continues to do so today when you hear people talk about his civil rights record and they'll talk about how he didn't vote for the 1964 act, he didn't speak out enough, so really he must not have had that in his heart. that couldn't have been further from the truth about who barry was. barry, you know, in the goldwater department store, they had integrated that store long before anybody else had done that. he really did have a color-blind heart. anybody you meet will tell you that. anybody who met barry would tell you that. and one of the greatest stories that i love that relates to this, and we don't know if it's true or not, i was talking to his son, barry jr., i don't know if it's apocryphal or true, but the way it goes is that he went to a very fancy golf course in bel air. and wanted to play a round of golf. and they said, barry goldwater, you can't play here because you are jewish.

and he responded by saying, you know, i'm only half jewish, do you think i could play nine holes? >> let me say something about civil rights real quick, because i was there. barry goldwater and harry rosenzweig, as city council members, integrated the airport in phoenix, which had been segregated before. after world war ii, the department of defense asked barry goldwater to organize the arizona air national guard, which hadn't existed before. he said, i'll do it on one condition, that it's racially integrated. and they gave in and said, fine. in the senate, he voted for civil rights legislation consistently through the '50s and into the early '60s. the only one he voted against was that final one. and he'd voted against it for one reason. and that was because of a thing

in there that called the mrs. murphy law, which would have said that if mrs. murphy wants to rent her spare bedroom out, that she couldn't discriminate. he has a long history of pro civil rights activity. >> let me ask you about the relationship between barry goldwater and john kennedy. they both came to the senate together in 1952. >> yes, and they had affection for each other. in fact, when barry goldwater was kind of rising as a national star in the early '60s, he was very much compared to kennedy, also this handsome, charismatic guy. there's a very famous story they talked about campaigning together, riding the same campaign trail -- campaign plane, and debating each other lincoln and douglas style. this is often taken as a testament of this kind of more civil time. i actually suspect that john f. kennedy was thinking kind of cynically and thought if i could get this guy on a platform and force him to kind of mouth his, what were then, very unpopular views, i could wipe the floor with him. so i'm not sure it was this

magnanimous act on kennedy's part. >> history changed in dallas, november 22nd, 1963, following the assassination of president kennedy. senator barry goldwater said this. >> well, he was a very decent fellow. he was a gentleman. he's the kind of antagonist that i've always enjoyed. he would fight like a wildcat for his points and his principles, but there was never anything personal about it. i imagine that i've debated with the president more on the floor of the senate than any other man, and it never affected our friendship. we had some rather violent arguments in sessions of committee and never affected our friendship. that's the kind of a man that you respect. that's the kind of a man you like to work with in politics. >> and so after the

assassination and before he entered the race in '64, how ambivalent was he about running? >> he was ambivalent, but leaning towards running. and one of the reasons he was so ambivalent after the assassination was because he knew that the public would be so longing for stability and that the idea of having three presidents in the space of one year would just be too much for people to bear. >> a question here in the room. >> ray miller from phoenix. i had the good fortune to be involved in the formation of the goldwater institute, and as a result of that, i want to make a comment and a question. one of senator goldwater's unique features was he never sought publicity. that made him unusual for a politician. when we were trying to form the organization, even with the persuasion of senator kyl, congressman shadegg, representative jim scully and others, he was still reluctant, and after we got going, we wanted to have an award in his

name and he was reluctant again to step forward and have the award named after him. he's unusual in so many ways. my question is, is there anybody to compare him with? i mean, we think of ronald reagan, maybe somebody like bob taft. is there anybody else we can compare barry goldwater to? >> who would like to take that one? >> not alive today. >> well, i would say -- i would say there are two people. ron paul and ronald reagan. i think he compares to ron paul in that ron paul is a very straightforward speaker who doesn't really care what the press thinks, but he just speaks from his heart about his ideas. it is his downfall, it was part of barry's downfall, but also reagan-like in that the core of his ideas that barry ran on, reagan later implemented, but he just had -- you know, reagan had a smoother style. he was mr. hollywood. he, not only did he not have a

tin ear, but he had that wonderful smile and people loved him and he made people laugh. but he ran, basically, on the same ideas that goldwater did and brought over, you know, won in a landslide. so sometimes when rick says that people didn't like barry's ideas or weren't ready for them. i don't really think that is a very fair assessment. i think the assassination played the key role at that time. i think the poor messaging that barry did was a factor, but i don't think it was the ideas. i think it was the timing and the way that the ideas were sold. >> can i speak to a favorite politician who i think is in this mold? the think the liberal congresswoman from illinois, jan schakowsky is just as principled and speaks with equal forthrightness as barry goldwater. >> bruce is joining us from murrieta, california, welcome to "the contenders" program here in

phoenix. go ahead with your question. >> caller: thanks for this program. it's great. i'm a liberal who only voted for one republican in my life, and that was barry goldwater. i guess my attitude at the time, kennedy was such a young, new generation, articulate and johnson seemed to be so much the old politics. two things i wanted to mention, haven't heard here. a choice, not an echo, was i thought was one of his big themes. and then the other point i wanted to make. there was a book called "none dare call it treason" that came out about the same time. and this was basically john birch society. we had the birchers then and have the birthers now, but barry never separated himself from that group. and the last point i wanted to make, the night before the election, reagan came on to boost goldwater's candidacy and

a lot of the comment afterward was maybe we got the wrong man. >> well, thanks for the call. we're going to talk about ronald reagan in about 20 minutes and show you just a portion of what he spoke toward the end of the '64 campaign. but to the caller's first point, your thoughts? >> about "none dare call it treason." this was absolutely scabrous stuff. this was a book arguing every setback america had in domestic or foreign policy was because there was secret communists infiltrating every part of the government. 20 million copies of this book was circulated. rich businessmen would buy thousands and thousands of copies and hand them out everywhere. he's right, barry goldwater didn't denounce this stuff. he would rationalize it by saying people know that there's something wrong out there, and this is pushing in the right direction and maybe i disagree with it, but he never denounced the john birch society. he said some of my best friends in phoenix are part of it, and i

think that was one of his achilles heel. he really did -- i think he humored extremists. >> he's been quoted so often, and you used the quote earlier, "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." of course, that came from the 1964 republican convention at the cow palace in san francisco. we want to show you that but put it in context of what he said before and afterwards. so here is barry goldwater accepting the republican nomination. >> anyone who joins us in all sincerity, we welcome. those -- [ applause ] those who do not care for our cause, we don't expect to enter our ranks in any case. [ applause ]

and let our republicanism so focused and so dedicated not be made fuzzy and futile by unthinking and stupid labels. [ applause ] i would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. [ cheers and applause ]

and let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. [ cheers and applause ] by the beauty of the very system we republicans are pledged to restore and revitalize, the beauty of this federal system of ours is in its reconciliation of diversity with unity. we must not see malice in honest differences of opinion and no matter how great, so long as

they are not inconsistent with the pledges we have given each other in and through our constitution. [ applause ] our republican cause -- >> rick perlstein, how did that speech resonate among the republican electorate and the voters at large? >> richard nixon wrote in his memoirs at that moment he heard him say, extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, he literally felt sick to his stomach. the reason for that was, they had an incredibly divisive convention. barry goldwater won the most delegate votes by far because they organized it so well, his grassroots insurgency. but many people in the party felt like they had stolen the party. that the republican party was a moderate party, and a conservative had won by hook and by crook. what you were supposed to do, your role in an acceptance speech is to bind the wounds together of a divisive campaign so people could unite and go forward. instead, he seemed to be pushing in people's faces his acceptance of the notion of extremism,

which in the context of the time meant things like the john birch society, the southern segregationists who are changing their democratic affiliation to republican affiliation. so the public itself, also in the context of this kennedy assassination in which the idea that the bottom had dropped out of america easily civility, and people longing so much for normalcy, it really just seemed like something, once again, that was frightening, that was strange, that was perverse, and his numbers went way down. and by the way, a week after that, there was a terrible riot in harlem, so it increased people's sense of barry goldwater was associated with these frightening forces in american life. our republic cause -- when people were rioting in harlem, people were saying,

they're shooting black people. it shows the paranoia that surrounded barry goldwater in this atmosphere in which people felt the springs were being loosed in america's consensus. >> matthew is joining us from miami, florida. good evening. welcome to the program. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. in 1986 congress passed a scholarship named after barry goldwater, and i don't know if irony ever escaped them based on what i heard from the panel that goldwater's archeology and his federal scholarship would go to students and -- and i don't know if this is too esoteric for the panel, but if they don't know too much about the scholarship, i wish there was a story of

goldwater filibustering his own named scholarship, but if that's the case, just comments on his views of publ education and if there's any known feelings about the congress awarding him the scholarship? >> thank you, matthew. darcy olsen? >> i had not heard that. that's something i would like to learn more about. certainly it would be ironic if it's true and if it is true it is ironic. he looked at the constitution. he didn't see any role in there given to the federal government to be involved in education and he spoke out against federal involvement in education. he said i don't want the federal government to educate my children. i don't want the state government to educate my children. i want to educate my children. and i think if we can bring this up to modern times, what's so interesting and i think is a great tribute to barry goldwater is that arizona is one of the leading states in offering choices to parents, school choice so people aren't forced to go into government schools but can use some of their tax money and take that to private schools or use online tutoring and things like that. i think barry would have absolutely loved that and been crazy about that because this

was something that he believed. look, at bottom he believed in freedom. and nothing is more fundamental than being able to direct how your children are educated. so certainly i would love -- do you know if the scholarship part is true? have you heard that? >> i've heard something or i remember after the senator died there was something about congress passed something in science and technology in his name, i can't remember what it was whether it was a scholarship thing -- it's vague in my mind. >> you cannot talk about barry goldwater and the 1964 campaign without bringing up the ad that you mentioned before. it aired once on september 7, 1964, labor day monday. it aired on nbc, cbs and abc. then used it as subsequent stories and it is infamously known as the daisy ad.

>> one, two, three, four, five, seven, six, six, eight, nine, nine -- >> nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, zero. [ bomb blast ] these are the stakes. to make a world in which all of god's children can live or to go into the dark. we must either love each other or we must die. >> vote for president johnson on november 3rd. the stakes are too high for you to stay home. >> 50 years later they are still talking about this ad. why?

>> well, it was devastating at the time. he never mentioned barry goldwater's name. he didn't need to. keep in mind that the whole campaign up to even up to that point focused, focused on the word extremism, extremist, extremist, over and over again. this was just another little piece of goldwater is an extremist, he's going to get us into a nuclear war. that ad was written and designed by what's his name -- >> tony schwartz. >> no. >> bill moyers. >> that's not true. that's absurd. >> no, no, let me finish. barry goldwater in my show is on camera. he said, yeah, bill moyer was behind that. okay. and he said i tried later, years later, afterwards to talk to

bill moyers about it, because barry thought it was pretty rotten deal. and i tried to talk to bill moyers and bill moyers never returned my phone call. after barry passed away, susan, his second wife told me after, later, she said, you know, bill moyers was in town for something not related to politics and she had occasion to talk to him and bill moyers said to susan, this is susan saying this, she said bill moyers said yeah gee it was a shame i tried to get a hold of barry to talk to him about that a lot of times but we could just never meet up which susan was implying that was baloney. >> i can state categorically having read through every memo of how the advertisements were created in 1964, that bill moyers had nothing to do with creating that ad. >> he was white house press secretary at that time. >> yes.

he was involved in the campaign. he wrote memos about the ad. and he, you know, was involved in the media strategy but the idea that he created the idea is not -- -- is an solecism. >> i'm ron from minnesota and arizona, depending on the season. the sub title for your book is "unmaking of a consensus." i'm interested in what makes something a consensus, what was it that was unmade and did we make a new one? >> excellent question. i think that in a sense the word "consensus" would have to appear in quotation marks. there was a myth after world war ii, certainly since the eisenhower administration accepting the new deal as a basic template, eisenhower saying anyone who fiddled with social security would never live to another political day, him expanding the welfare state in certain ways. this idea that, you know, i might even sort of read just a classic statement of how the

american consensus was a thought of at the time. the dean of rutgers wrote in the magazine "partisan review" in america there's no basic disagreements between intellectuals, bankers, artists, trade unionists, big businessmen, beatniks professional people and politicians to name a few. or between the economic classes. there's no real critics, no new ideas, no fundamental differences of opinion. the idea that the western world not just america had converged on the idea of the welfare state as the way to organize the world was just seen as permanent. and what is so fascinating to me and why i called the book "before the storm" is almost immediately the 1960s gives lie to that notion. americans are at each other's throats. we're debating over the role of the state. in the most fundamental ways. that was the american consensus. in 1964 is where we begin to see

these fissures come apart and barry goldwater is central in that. >> if you could in just a minute, because it's a huge topic, but the issue of civil rights in the 1964 vote, barry goldwater voted against it and it became one of the issues of that campaign. >> now, a couple of very fascinating points about that. we talked about the lyndon johnson television commercials. they had a bunch of commercials in the can boasting about that civil rights bill and excoriating barry goldwater voting against it. they didn't run those because the idea of a backlash against civil right was already present. and in california -- in the book i publish a headline in "the new york times," backlash did not develop. maybe people would vote for barry goldwater because they were terrified of blacks having civil rights. in california on the same day that lyndon johnson won by a million votes there was also a vote for a referendum and that was on open housing. by 1 million votes californians

voted to reject the vote of open house, to reject a law that you said you cannot discriminate on the base of race to whom you rent your home. the idea of a backlash against civil rights was latent at the time and became the most explosive issue in decades to come in american politics. >> if you look at what happened in 1952 when dwight eisenhower won and you look at the south and the impact the civil rights vote had for democrats in 1964, what's the difference? >> of course, no one in the republican party, because that was the party of the carpet baggers, that was the party if you voted for the republicans and they got a toehold they would, you know, monopolize the black vote and there were all these panics and we've all seen "gone with the wind." the shift began in 1964.

five southern states voted for goldwater. 87% of mississippi voted for goldwater. when lyndon johnson signed the civil rights he said i'm signing away the south for the democratic party for a generation. that was one of the most profound hinges in the entire electoral alignment of the united states. the south now is a primarily republican region and that's because conservatives led by barry goldwater decided to retreat from the idea of the federal government advancing civil rights for african-americans. >> two years after ge ended the program, the ge theater that ronald reagan was hosting and two years before he became governor of california he was involved in this campaign and we have just a portion of the speech the heat delivered, titled "a time for choosing," late in the campaign as ronald reagan talked about the virtues

of barry goldwater. >> but i think it's time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended to us by the founding fathers. not too long ago two friends of mine were talking to a cuban refugee, a businessman that escaped from castro. in the midst of his story, one of my friends turned to the other and said you don't know how lucky we are. how lucky you are? i had some place to escape to. in that sentence he told us the entire story. if we lose freedom here, there's no place to escape to. this idea that government is beholden to the people that it has no other source of power except the sovereign people is still the newest and unique idea of all of history in man's relation to man. you and i have a rendezvous with destiny. we'll preserve for our children the last best hope for man on earth or sentence them to take the last step into 1,000 years of darkness. we'll keep in mind and remember

that barry goldwater has faith in us. he has faith that you and i have the ability and the dignity and the right to make our own decisions and determine our own destiny. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> from october 22nd, 1964. what's the history behind that speech? why did he deliver it? >> i don't know -- reagan you mean? >> why did he deliver it? >> here's why. first off i don't know who actually drafted the speech, he probably knows. but that's okay. that's okay. barry himself, i have to give a little background. barry himself was a great extemporaneous speaker. i mean dramatic. he was wonderful. he didn't like prepared written speeches, okay. somebody wrote that speech for

barry. and submitted it to him. my source on this is bob goldwater and john shadegg, and some other historian types. they wrote it and gave it to barry. barry read it and said this is a great speech but i'm not good at giving written speeches. ronnie reagan can do it better and they sent it over to ronald reagan to deliver it on tv or wherever it was and reagan did it and somebody said that was the beginning of reagan ending up as president was that speech which was written for barry. >> which also led a number of california executives to coach him into running for governor in 1966. >> yeah. that was a little different. he had given a similar speech through the early '60s, and the people who had been in charge of basically handling the money for goldwater's television account were so fed up with the terrible tv commercials, they basically said unless you let us spend it the whole way, we'll spend it the way we want to, we're going

to basically sequester this money. they played hardball. that's how they got ronald reagan on the air. and after he gave that speech telegrams poured into the campaign and money poured into the campaign, and people started talking about ronald reagan as a gubernatorial possibility. and david broder said it was the best political debut ever heard of since the cross of gold speech by jennings bryan in 1896. >> one quick sidenote. the relationship in 1964 between barry goldwater and ronald reagan, was it a close relationship or more of an acquaintance? >> well, ronald reagan vacationed in arizona. his father-in-law was a wealthy chicago physician who knew the goldwaters. and there's a whole fascinating soap opera i write about in my book about how the people around barry goldwater who were running his campaign what they called the arizona mafia didn't want ronald reagan to give this speech.

it's a little different, because he had said things about social security that goldwater had gotten in trouble for earlier in the year, and basically ronald reagan said to goldwater, why don't you listen to it and if you object to it we don't have to run it. and goldwater heard it. he said, this is great, i don't see what the fuss is about. and the rest is history. >> we'll go to dan joining us from cambridge city, indiana. good evening. >> caller: good evening. you pretty much answered my question. i wondered what goldwater thought of the way reagan gave the speech that night and also mr. goldwater and mr. reagan and william f. buckley, did they ever have any difference of opinion as far as conservatism or they were pretty much in accord? and with that i thank you for taking my question. >> thank you.

>> william f. buckley was shut out of the goldwater campaign. late in 1963 by a power play by a fellow by the name of bill barude. he was the head of the american enterprise institute. it was power politics. he leaked the story that bill buckley was trying to take over the campaign. william f. buckley on several different occasions said he didn't think barry goldwater would make a good president. that he wasn't ready to be president, that he wasn't smart enough to be president. that -- in our now, ronald reagan's relationship to william f. buckley is fascinating, complicated, they went to logger heads on a lot of major issues. for example, the panama canal, they had famous debate in which william f. buckley argued the panama canal treaty of the late '70s was a good thing. ronald reagan had basically run his 1976 campaign on the idea it

was a bad thing. these are these kind of personality clashes that any movement will have. >> can i just recommend a great book for this questioner? william f. buckley, his last book published after he passed is called "flying high." it's a book about barry goldwater. it's a wonderful book. one of the best books ever written about goldwater. so if that is your interest, i strongly recommend it. >> along with but before the storm," right? we'll get a question here. >> two quick questions for the panel to address. first, i wonder whether by engaging more directly over the issue of vietnam in 1964, barry goldwater could have perhaps forced lyndon johnson to define victory in vietnam and dictate some kind of exit strategy. and perhaps hasten that war's conclusion. the second -- >> let's get that point and follow up on your second one. >> i'm not sure that -- there were forces trying to persuade lyndon johnson to do lots of things about vietnam and none of them prevailed. i'm not sure that he could have had much influence on lyndon.

i don't know. i'm not an expert on that. we have some vietnam veterans in the crowd here. maybe they know. but i don't know. >> your second point? >> my second question we heard a lot about barry's consistency. in the 1996 election he endorsed bill clinton for president. i would love the panel to speak to the motivations behind that endorsement. >> he was a guy who could bear grudges. bob dole had been around a lot. in republican politics. i wouldn't be surprised if bob dole angered him somewhere along the way. i don't know the back story behind it. i would love to know. >> he also endorsed a woman named karen english for a congressional seat in arizona, a democrat.

she won and served one term. >> along those lines, when you ask about his consistency, one of my favorite stories is about that. he endorsed someone who he believed was a fiscal conservative but was a democrat over the republican who he thought was a profligate big spender. and so the republican party chairman in arizona -- this is how the story goes -- called him up, and said, barry, you are speaking out too much and you need to get in line. if you don't, you know, if you don't stop endorsing this democrat, we'll take your name off of the republican party headquarters. and barry said to him, if you republicans don't remember the principles that we stand for i'm going to make you take my name off that building. [ laughter ] >> over the years especially as he was in retirement a number of public figures, democrats and republicans, you talked about bob dole and bill clinton would come out here to meet with barry goldwater.

why? >> they admired him. he was one-of-a-kind, a person of integrity. they may not agree with him on this, that or the other issue. but he was one of a kind. they admired him. keep in mind, when barry died bill clinton, the democratic president had the flag of the united states lowered to half-staff for a day on the day of goldwater's funeral of the opposite party. that never happened before. probably never happen again. >> one quick point about clinton, hillary clinton being a goldwater girl in 1964. >> he had a very fascinating rehabilitation kind of in the '70s. there was an article in the "new york times" magazine in 1974. in 1964, he was bela lugosi, but the liberals love him now. it's about the unfairness we're talking about and the reconsideration centered around the fact that he was so forthright in excoriating richard nixon for his lies.

>> we'll go to judy next in san francisco. welcome to the program. >> caller: thank you so much. i was raised in phoenix and my family worshipped goldwater. we were active in his campaign and later my brother became a libertarian. he said there never needs to be a libertarian party if goldwater had just become president. then i was a '92 delegate to the republican convention and there was going to be a big fight that year, a platform fight over putting abortion in the platform. a week before the convention barry made a statement to the press there was no blank, blank, blank way that should be in the platform. when i got to the convention a week later there was all these paraphernalia tables and a big

blue button that said, "barry's right." i wore it the entire week and to this day it's my most prized position because barry is still right. >> thank you for the call. darcey olson? >> you know, that is -- i think that is a difficult issue and i think a lot of people liked to use that to call -- i'm not saying your caller did this but to position barry as a libertarian. i think that they know 2% of the public considered themselves libertarian and they tried to marginalize him that way. but the truth is that a lot of conservatives believed that the federal government should not have any role in the question of whether or not abortion, for instance is a crime. william f. buckley is a pretty strong conservative. i don't think anybody would quibble with that. he also believed that that was not the role of the federal

government. marketing comes into play. what people took barry said is not the way they took what william f. buckley said. they were saying the same thing. >> we should point out that he left the senate in 1964 because his term expired, he came back in 1968 and he had a very important role in august of 1974 as he met with richard nixon two days before his resignation. what's the story? >> well, he was the guy who led a delegation of republicans. it's very simple, actually. you know, impeachment is a political process. he said that you do not have the votes in the senate to win in a trial and, therefore, you don't want to be the first president to be thrown out on your ear by

the senate, you ought to resign. and nixon took his advice and richard nixon resigned on august 9th, 1974. >> the relationship between the two? >> testy. barry goldwater, as i mentioned in this article about the liberals, you know, lionizing him, consistently throughout watergate would prod richard nixon to tell the truth. he said this is beginning to smell like tea pot dome. there was a very famous showdown between barry goldwater and richard nixon at the 1960 republican convention, one of the most important kind of set pieces in conservative history in which nelson rockefeller basically threatened a floor fight unless he could dictate the terms of the republican platform and forced richard nixon to fly to new york to negotiate the terms of the platform. it was announced in chicago where the convention was as a fait accompli. and barry goldwater was so mad he gave a speech calling it the

munich of the republican party. that was when people started to campaign for barry goldwater to usurp the nomination from richard nixon. so every since that point i don't think he really trusted richard nixon. >> jumping ahead to watergate, which is what brought on the resignation. barry told me and in my show goldwater reiterates there, he said the reason why barry was so angry at nixon leading up to the resignation was because, quote, nixon was a gd liar, lying about watergate. the thing in their family -- bob goldwater talks about this in some length in the documentary that from childhood he said if we did something

wrong and we told the truth we didn't get punished. if we lied, we got punished. and there's just this very strong thing on the part of barry and others about lying and he was so angry at nixon for lying through the watergate period. that's why he was so angry. >> edward is joining us in new orleans. go ahead, please. >> caller: this is ed clancy in new orleans. in 1968, i was covering the republican convention in miami and i was able to meet, of course, barry goldwater who was there and he was extremely nice. he struck me as totally different from his national image, and i also discovered ronald reagan in the back of the news section of the auditorium being interviewed in the booth by nbc. i was the only one to see him there. of course, reagan was making noise about running for

president at that convention. so i stood outside while he was finishing the interview, i believe it was with david brinkley, and then he came out and by that time a whole bunch of other reporters had gathered out there and mr. reagan came out and i asked him a couple of questions and then these other reporters circled him, about 20 or 30 of them and we just went as a circle with mr. reagan in the middle and i was throwing questions over the top of him. he was very nicely yelling his answers back to my microphone. then we went around the corner and where the tables were of all the reporters and their typewriters and the whole gang of people swept into this table at the end of it, knocking over a little man at his typewriter, with his typewriter on the floor, all his books. i let them go. i stopped and helped this little man and i looked into his face and it was theodore s. white. and that stopped me right there. and he was just so -- he

apologized to me, actually, for that. so i got to meet three nice people right there, barry goldwater, ronald reagan and theodore s. white. >> ed clancy, thank you for the phone call from new orleans. of course, conventions were quite different in 1964 and 1968. >> by the way, i do think in "the making of the president" in 1964, teddy white was pretty patronizing to barry goldwater despite what the earlier caller said. the 1964 convention was angry and violent. and he mentioned david brinkley. alan brinkley, who is david brinkley's son, a professor now at columbia, told me that so kind of impassioned and angry, violently angry at the media, you know, the establishment press or the goldwater delegates and supporters, that david brinkley told his son alan brinkley who was a teenager at the time, you are under no circumstances to wear your nbc

insignia around san francisco. so that's why people were afraid of this idea of the goldwater movement as this kind of quasi fascist thing. it was a very dangerous frightening time. >> in 1984, barry goldwater in his final two years in the us senate before retiring, he put forth ronald reagan's nomination to serve a second term and be the republican nominee in '84. >> a month ago i sat in my den and watched the democratic national convention. speaker after speaker promised the moon to every narrow, selfish interest group in the country. but they ignored the hopes and aspirations of the largest special interest group of all, free men and free women. [ applause ]

so, tonight i want to speak about freedom. so tonight i want to speak about freedom. and let me remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. >> darcy olsen, quintessential barry goldwater? >> absolutely. you know, people loved barry goldwater. and, you know, what he was

expressing is, you know, akin to the, give me liberty or give me death. and, you know, in america we believe this, you know. and i think sometimes the loss of the '64 campaign is mistakenly interpreted as an outright rejection of those ideas. and it wasn't anything of the sort. you can hear it from the cheering. you see it from the reagan revolution. you see it from the ideas being alive today. that's what the liberal press at that time wanted people to believe and in fact when he lost that campaign the "new york times," washington bureau chief james reston had said that barry

goldwater not only had lost but he had lost the entire conservative cause and they were always talking about the death of conservatism. you know, that's wishful thinking. it remains wishful thinking on the part of the press. that is classic barry goldwater, and it reflects what many americans believe which is that you cannot be too passionate, too committed, or too extreme if you want to use that word in the defense of our constitutional freedoms. >> jay is joining us from new york city. go ahead, please. >> caller: i just recently became schooled in politics because of the election with barack obama because you never felt you had a stake. i want to see the backlash regarding service. i looked up people like barry goldwater, read the book, ronald reagan, you look at fox news and certain organizations, they praise these conservatives but

then you look at the record, i try to wonder why african-americans do not vote for conservative, why the republican party is monolithic. can conservatives at least understand that when you keep praising people like ronald reagan and barry goldwater all you have to do is pick up a book and their record is right there. at least be honest and say, okay, they were wrong on this. you can't say freedom and equality when the whole segment of society feels they are alienated. i would like to take the comment off the air and thank you for taking my call. >> thank you, jay. bill. >> well, i certainly understand what the caller was saying in his views, but speaking about barry goldwater.

i think more what he's referring to whether he realizes it or not is the image of barry goldwater that was, you know, put out there of being a crazy guy or a racist or whatever. which he really wasn't. you know, barry goldwater -- you can say whatever you want. barry goldwater was fever a -- never a hateful person, was never a vengeful person in his handling of politics. i wish some of these ten or 12 people we have running around for president presently would adopt some of the, the niceness of barry goldwater. >> it's important to note also that by the end of that 1964 campaign, barry goldwater did make a very important and subtle shift on his position on civil rights. he would always say and he showed it that he was an integrationist, he was for integration. that was his goal for society.

but the end of that campaign, as he was trying to win those southern states he did say our goal is neither to have an integrated society for a segregated society but to have a free society. he moved away from the idea of integration as a positive good. >> there were four debates in 1960. no debates in 1964. why? >> that was a dirty trick by lyndon johnson. in order to have a debate, you had to suspend a rule of the federal communications commission so that every candidate, i.e. all 30 candidates including the bee keepers party wouldn't have to be on the stage and lyndon johnson kind of wired that in congress so that was impossible. he didn't want to face barry goldwater. that says something about maybe he thought barry goldwater would have been a worthy adversary. >> a question from somebody here. >> this question is for darcey. do you see the tea party movement as a resurgence of the goldwater movement?

>> i definitely think that there are a lot -- the tea party, i guess -- the best way to answer is it it's not monolithic. all kinds of people constitute the tea party and different ideas in the tea party. but i think if you look at the tea party as a group of people who have fought these gigantic bailouts in washington, they fought the raising of the debt ceiling, they fought the federal takeover of health care, all of those things, i think barry goldwater would have been with them on. so certainly we see a lot of elements of goldwaterism coming out in some of the major pieces of what the tea party folks are working on. >> from watertown, wisconsin, franklin is on phone. we welcome you. go ahead, please. >> caller: yes. i would like to make a comment. i think if we would have elected barry goldwater as president in '64 we would have won the war in vietnam because he didn't

believe in public opinion per se to guide the war. i would also like to say i think barry goldwater told mr. nixon that he could not hold the south for him or make sure the south would stay for him so they asked him to resign instead of being impeached. thank you. >> franklin, thank you. >> the stuff about how barry goldwater could have won the vietnam war -- i mean the united states paved over the entirety of the land mass of north and south vietnam with a quarter inch of steel. somehow if we did half an inch or three quarters of inch, that's a fantasy. a pleasant one. but i think that's a glib position. >> we have just a minute or two left. did barry goldwater's views change as he got older? did they evolve? >> absolutely not.

now views meaning, me meaning his basic core philosophy and the way he looked at life and looked at politics. identify had battles in op-ed pages where people said oh -- he got senile and turned liberal at the end. he did not. he was always a matter of, i call it small l libertarian. freedom of choice. he was consistent his whole life. >> yeah. i agree with that. almost any question at any time period in barry's life if you look at what his position was and you ask the question of was it constitutional or not, that will give the answer to what his position was. people look around today to find politicians who are as honest as barry and stand for principle and they are few and far in between. that's one of the reasons why he gave us his blessings. he knew you couldn't count on politicians to stand for principle approximately but men and women who believed in those

ideas you would have a voice in freedom. >> rick perlstein, i'm going to give you the final word. what was the legacy of the 1964 campaign and what impact did barry goldwater have in american politics? >> the legacy of the 1964 campaign was organizational. it was the formation of organizations that became a permanent conservative movement that lost the battle in 1964. but lived to fight dozens of battles more. his legacy is to have inspired these people to become something, become something greater than themselves, inspire people who felt frustrated the course of the country to take civic action. >> the book is called "before the storm" thank you very much for joining us. to darcy olsen, first of all for hosting us here at the goldwater institute. president and ceo, we appreciate your time. >> our pleasure. >> and bill mccune, a former arizona state legislator and author and producer of a documentary of barry goldwater. >> called "barry goldwater and the american life."

>> thank you for being with us. we want to leave you with some of the words of barry goldwater in an interview we did with him as he was winding down his political career from the c-span archives in 1985. >> another thing i would tell young politicians coming into washington, your re-election is not going to make-or-break the united states. do the best job you can do, that's what you're here for, to defend the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. and be honest. that's all i would tell them. >> how about the republican party leaders today? >> well, i think we have good leadership today. lord knows we spent long enough time out of office that we should have learned some things. politics goes in a circle. you'll find the liberal element running things for a while and now we find the conservative on the way up and the conservative will run the place until he runs out of ideas and runs out of

people and then the other party or even the republican party becomes a liberal party will take over. our politics in america go around in circles and i think that's great. ♪ go with goldwater ♪ go with goldwater ♪ you know where goldwater stands ♪ ♪ clap your hands ♪ go with goldwater ♪ go with goldwater ♪ let's go with goldwater's plan ♪