Barry Goldwater & His Philosophy

I was watching a program on C-Span about Barry Goldwater. For those of you who don't know that name, Barry Goldwater was a long time Republican senator from Arizona, and the Republican nominee for president in 1964. He lost that election to Lyndon Johnson in a landslide. Goldwater was a conservative, but he was kind of a libertarian on some issues. Just for the record, I liked Barry Goldwater, and I'll tell you why. When people asked him a question, he didn't have to stop and think about what his political adviser told him to say, nor did he have to recall what the latest polls showed on the subject at hand. He gave an answer. That answer might not have been politically correct, but he gave an answer from his own beliefs. He was not a phony. His language was a bit "crusty," especially for those times, when the list of "no-no words" was much longer than it is today. And, it should be noted, he didn't always save his criticisms for Democrats, but some Republicans also were the recipients of his sharp barbs. It was Goldwater who led a Republican group to the White House in August of 1974 to tell President Richard Nixon that he had to resign for the good of the country. At some later point, if I remember correctly, Goldwater referred to Nixon as a "lying s-- of a .....!"

Now, if you noticed, I said that I liked Barry Goldwater. I didn't say I agreed with him on many things, but I liked him in the sense that I respected him. I recall reading many years ago, that Goldwater and Hubert Humphrey were great friends. Humphrey was a Democratic senator from Minnesota, who also served as vice president under Lyndon Johnson. He was a liberal, to keep the terms simple. You would have thought that these two men would have been like oil and water with their different political views, but they were friends, and they respected one another. They did battle on the field of politics, but then at day's end, they went to dinner together.

Many years ago, when C-Span had just recently started, there was a political cartoonist on the air one day. I can't recall his name, but he was well known in those times, and I believe he had just retired. He was famous for his satirical cartoons, and for skewering politicians from both political parties. The interviewer commented about such, and then asked him if, in all his years as a political cartoonist, he'd ever known a truthful politician. He answered that he could name
two, Edmund Muskie and Barry Goldwater. If I remember right, he said that while he didn't particularly agree with Goldwater on many things, he had respect for him.

To me, Goldwater was trying to hold onto a world that no longer existed in the aggregate, as it had prior to the Great Depression. He was a bold critic of New Deal programs and of government programs in general. As is sometimes said, everything has a purpose, and we need the Barry Goldwaters of the world, too. Without them, the opposite point of view would run amok. It's all about some kind of balance. So, we have this clash of ideas and philosophies. Neither side ever completely wins in America (or at least hasn't), and even highly popular FDR had his problems when the public felt that he was going too far. The congressional elections of 1938 saw the Republicans come roaring back from the pit of political exile. Part of the reason why was that Roosevelt had made an effort to purge critics from his own party, and even more, he attempted to pack the Supreme Court so that his programs would go unchallenged. Americans saw all of this, and they didn't like it. They liked FDR, but they let him know that enough was enough.

Goldwater was kind of the "John Wayne" of American politics of the 1960s and 1970s, and in fact, Wayne strongly supported Goldwater's presidential bid in 1964. He wanted us to stand on our own, and if we fell down, to get up, dust ourselves off and keep going. That's an admirable philosophy, but people need help at times, and in my opinion, that help can sometimes only come from government at some level, and on that point I have to distance myself from Goldwater. Call me a liberal, or what ever you want to call me; I can take it, I have broad shoulders. In an ideal world, Goldwater would have been right, but we don't live in an ideal world. Reality can be harsh, and often is. Government has a role in trying to help people to get back on their feet and to get them back into the game of life.

So Barry, I salute you for your blunt honesty and integrity, things we sorely miss in our current era. I appreciate your philosophy, even while I don't totally agree with it.