Barry Goldwater, former US Senator; born January 1, 1909, died May 29, 1998
Barry Goldwater, the sharp-tongued, uncompromising defender of conservatism whose fierce but futile campaign for the presidency in 1964 began the philosophical reshaping of the Republican Party, has died aged 89.
His name cannot be separated from recent US history, because as a truly individual character he made his mark on the American political scene in a way many have tried to copy but few have equalled.
He died at his home in suburban Paradise Valley of natural causes. President Bill Clinton said shortly after the death was announced that Goldwater was ''truly an American original''. He called Goldwater ''a great patriot and a truly fine
human being''.
He was a tough-talking Westerner, a cowboy who never lost all the rough edges, despite three decades of Washington politics. It was, in fact, the rough edges that were his most endearing and sometimes infuriating qualities. He flew aeroplanes and climbed mountains. He would take a drink and could tell a joke. His language was sometimes coarse, but what he said was seldom misunderstood. Goldwater called former President Richard M Nixon ''the world's biggest liar''. When former President Ronald Reagan claimed he didn't know about the diversion of Iranian arms profits to the Nicaraguan Contras, he was ''either a liar or incompetent''.
Goldwater captured the 1964 presidential nomination after a bruising convention fight with New York Gov Nelson Rockefeller. He lost the presidency in an equally bloody campaign against incumbent Lyndon B Johnson, who had risen to the White House the previous year after the assassination of President
John Kennedy.
At the convention, Goldwater galvanised his supporters with a proclamation: ''Extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice . . . Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.''
Democrats seized that comment, as well as Goldwater's hawkish views on Vietnam, where US military involvement was escalating by the month. He was portrayed as a potential destroyer of the government's social security pension system and a nuclear warmonger.
Goldwater's political career began in 1949 when he helped form a slate of Phoenix City Council candidates who aimed to clean up widespread prostitution and gambling.
He burst upon the national scene in 1952, when he rode with former President Dwight Eisenhower's landslide to an upset 6000-vote victory over Democratic Senator Ernest McFarland, then the Senate majority leader. His victory margin swelled to 30,000 votes six years later.
Goldwater gave up his Senate seat for the 1964 campaign. When it ended in defeat, he called the loss ''expected''.
''We knew from the beginning that we had no chance against the man who replaced Jack Kennedy (John Kennedy) after the assassination,'' Goldwater said. He was re-elected to the Senate in 1968 and kept working hard to forge a new conservative coalition. In 1980, Reagan, the conservative who had worked hard for Goldwater in 1964, was elected President.
Goldwater was born in Phoenix, the grandson of an immigrant Polish peddler. He graduated from Staunton Military Academy in Virginia in 1928 and then attended the University of Arizona, but he dropped out to work in the family department stores.
He became a pilot and, despite poor vision, talked himself into the Army Air Corps in the Second World War, flying cargo planes over the Himalayan ''Hump'' to deliver supplies to Russian allies in Iran.
Typical of his character was a statement in 1984 about nuclear weapons. ''I'm not one of those freeze-the-nukes nuts,'' he said. ''But I think we have enough. I think they have more than enough, and I don't see any sense in going ahead building.'' Thus, it was said at the time, did he become an unlikely recruit to the campaign by the liberals in Congress to cut the defence budget.
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