Barry Goldwater
Barry Morris Goldwater (born January 2, 1909 in Phoenix , Arizona Territory , † May 29, 1998 in Paradise Valley , Arizona ) was an American politician . He was a co-founder of the modern conservative movement in the United States. Goldwater was over five legislative terms US Senator for his home state of Arizona (1953-1965 and 1969-1987) and a presidential candidate for the Republican Party , but failed in the election in 1964 against the then Democratic incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson .
Life
Goldwater was born in Phoenix , in what was then the Arizona Territory , to Baron M. Goldwater and Josephine ("JoJo") Williams. His Jewish father's family founded Goldwater’s , the largest department store in Phoenix.
Goldwater entered politics in 1949, became a senator for the first time in 1953, and was a friend of Joseph McCarthy , an extremely anti-communist colleague. He sharpened the conservative profile of the Republican Party, especially in the 1960s, and thus became the model for the later US President Ronald Reagan .
Goldwater is credited with a crucial role in the Republican shift to the right that began soon after 1960, when the Democratic Party for its part shifted to the left and opened up to the civil rights movement, and which still shapes the image of the party today. In 1960 he applied for the Republican presidential candidacy, but he was defeated by the more moderate Vice President Richard Nixon , who then narrowly lost the election to John F. Kennedy .
In the 1964 presidential election , Goldwater led a very polarizing election campaign and was able to prevail in the primaries against the will of the party leadership. The decisive factor here was his narrow victory in California over New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller , who was the leader of the liberal party wing. He owed his popularity in parts of the party base to his criticism of the Civil Rights Act of that year , a civil rights law that also imposed duties on private individuals (he was one of the few Republican senators who voted against the law). Goldwater spoke out against the then constitutionally controversial action of the federal government against the racial segregation practiced in the southern states . He relied on the fact that the federal government, with its measures in favor of equal rights for citizens , had violated the rights of the individual states ( State's Rights ), a position that is still popular in the southern states today. Many Southern Democrats who opposed the civil rights policy of their own president (see Dixiecrats ) then turned to the Republicans, who had previously been an advocate of the cause of African Americans since Abraham Lincoln and had supported the civil rights movement themselves as early as 1960. Their spokesman, the then Democratic Senator Strom Thurmond , openly confessed to Goldwater, even made joint campaign appearances with him and finally joined the Republicans in September 1964.
Much like many Republicans today, Goldwater advocated withdrawal of the state from many sectors, seeing public interference in pensions, health care and education as contradicting the idea of individual freedom. In particular, he criticized the public pension system ( Social Security ) and instead advocated more private provision. With regard to access to public schools, he said: “In most cases, the children can do just fine without it.” At this point in time, however, these positions in the USA were not yet able to win a majority, even among many conservatives. A number of moderate Republicans such as the Governor of New York and later Vice President Nelson Rockefeller and George W. Romney opposed Goldwater and refused to support him. In addition, President Johnson was able to successfully portray him in the election campaign, partly through negative campaigning , as a dangerous candidate who, as President , would involve the USA in a nuclear war, because Goldwater had said that "the atom bomb ... is a great way to defoliate the Vietnamese jungle" . Political magazine Fact published an unrepresentative poll in its September / October issue, according to which 1189 psychiatrists declared Goldwater "psychologically unfit" for president. Remote diagnosis confirmed that he had paranoia , narcissism and a serious personality disorder, among other things . In 1969 a court fined the editor of the magazine for defamation . The American Psychiatric Association issued what is known as the Goldwater Rule , which made it unethical to publish psychiatric and psychological reports without prior investigation.
Goldwater, who had William E. Miller as a candidate for the vice presidency, lost the election on November 3, 1964 with only 38.4% of all votes. Only in five southern states and his home state had he won a majority of votes and thus 52 of the 538 electors, while President Johnson received 486 electors (61.1% of the votes cast). However, Goldwater was the first Republican to win a majority of the vote (55%) of white voters in the southern states.
Despite this clear defeat, his views initiated the shift to the right of the predominantly liberal Republicans and, connected with this, the change of the southern states , where the white majority saw themselves threatened by the government's civil rights policy, from a democratic to a republican stronghold (see Solid South ). Goldwater was able to win in Louisiana , Alabama , Mississippi , Georgia , South Carolina and in his home state Arizona. During the election campaign he was advised by the well-known economist Milton Friedman and financially supported by industrialists like Fred C. Koch , who also wanted tax cuts and a “ lean ” state limited to regulatory policy. Richard Nixon later picked up many of Goldwater's approaches as part of his Southern Strategy , with which he successfully recruited white southerners.
Even after 1964, Goldwater remained an important figure in his party. That year he had not run for re-election in the Senate due to his presidential campaign and so left Congress in 1965. But in 1968 he was re-elected to the Senate for Arizona. He was confirmed in both 1974 and 1980. In terms of foreign policy, he was considered a critic of the détente policy pursued by Republican presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford . During the Watergate affair , he turned against President Nixon and publicly denied his credibility. In August 1974, Goldwater informed Nixon that he would not assist him in the impeachment vote . With Senator Goldwater being influential among Conservatives in Congress and with his personal integrity generally recognized, this was seen as a defining moment. Nixon saw that he lacked any political basis in his own party and that he could no longer remain in office. A few days later he resigned as president. The nomination of his old rival Nelson Rockefeller as Vice President by the new President Ford in 1974 was rejected by Goldwater in the Senate. But the opposition from him and a few other conservatives was not enough to prevent Rockefeller's confirmation.
In his spare time, Goldwater was passionate about his amateur radio hobby . The antenna system he installed on his private property was long considered the largest amateur radio system in the state of Arizona.
Last years
Goldwater's image as a conservative hardliner was cracked by his consent to the maintenance of legalized abortion during his last tenure as a senator in the mid-1980s. A few years before his death, Goldwater publicly criticized the increasing influence of Christian fundamentalists within the Republican Party and interpreted the views of the religious right as an invasion of privacy and the curtailment of individual freedom. He also spoke out against the banishment of homosexuals from military service . All of this corresponded to his libertarian conviction that the state had to stay out of the private life of its citizens, but collided with the now increasingly fundamentalist reactionary currents within the party. Although the conservative change of the Republican Party, which he had initiated, overtook him at the end of his life, he always saw himself as a conservative Republican. Goldwater died on May 29, 1998 of complications from Alzheimer's disease .
On the occasion of Goldwater's death in 1998, the conservative Washington Post columnist George Will , who had voted for Goldwater in 1964 , summarized the connection between the influence of the radical right wing on the Republican party and the election victory of the (unlike Nixon and Ford) from Goldwater's right course Ronald Reagan emerged from the party in 1980 in such a way that it took Goldwater's failed presidential candidacy in 1964 "16 years" to "count the votes" and with Reagan's election victory, Goldwater ultimately "won".
Honors
In 1986, US President Ronald Reagan presented Goldwater with the Presidential Medal of Freedom , the highest civilian honor in the United States.
See also
Fonts in German translation
- Why not victory? New outlook on American politics ( Why not Victory? ), Leoni: Druffel 1964
- Conscience of a Conservative ( The Conscience of a Conservative ), Göttingen: Protective 1964
literature
- Fred J. Cook : The Right Wing Powers in the US and Goldwater. Reinbek: Rowohlt 1965.
- Rick Perlstein: Before the Storm. Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus. New York: Hill & Wang 2001.
- Elizabeth Tandy Shermer: Barry Goldwater and the Remaking of the American Political Landscape . Tucson: University of Arizona Press 2013, ISBN 978-0-8165-9979-0
Web links
- Barry Goldwater in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
- Goldwater Institute ( Memento from October 23, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
- K7UGA, Barry Goldwater in an interview on amateur radio
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Sebastian Fischer: Candidate Santorum: Republicans fear the "Jesus candidate" ; Spiegel-Online from February 22, 2012
- ↑ Benedict Carey: Is it fair to analyze Donald Trump from a distance? In: Die Zeit from August 25, 2016, p. 29.
- ↑ Frauke Steffens: Is Donald Trump crazy? In: FAZ.net . October 23, 2017. Retrieved October 23, 2017 .
- ↑ Der Spiegel 46/1973: Nixon's Escape to the Front
- ↑ Washington Post: Barry Goldwater Is Dead at 89; Conservatives' standard bearer
- ^ Will, George S. (1998). The Cheerful Malcontent , The Washington Post, May 31, 1998
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Goldwater, Barry |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Goldwater, Barry Morris (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American politician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 2, 1909 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Phoenix , Arizona |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 29, 1998 |
| Place of death | Paradise Valley , Arizona |