The assassination of John F. Kennedy is often cited as a major turning point of American politics. His death was tragic and left a great scar across the political face of the country, leaving it in a state of shock. Whoever was running on the Republican ticket was certain to have a tough time arguing against the policies of a dead man. Yet, Lyndon Baines Johnson’s resounding victory over Barry Goldwater in the election of 1964 was a turning point in itself, and not necessarily a good one.
“Barry Goldwater? Ain’t he the warmongering racist who opposed the Civil Rights Act?”
Indeed he was, if you believe his detractors. Though Kennedy’s assassination shadowed his candidacy from the start, his opposition to the Civil Rights Act would doom him to the popularity of a fringe candidate. Coupled with his consideration of using nuclear weapons in Vietnam, he was easily painted as an extremist, out of touch with the mood of the day.
Yet, the resulting era of dirty politics and over-reaching federal powers still endures to this day. Barry Goldwater may not have been a great alternative to LBJ, but even had he done what his critics threatened he would, he may still have been a better President than Johnson turned out to be.
Despite the claim, Goldwater didn’t actually oppose the Civil Rights Act because he was a racist. To him, telling people who they could and couldn’t let onto their property wasn’t consistent with the principles of a free society. The policy of segregation, of exclusion and public discrimination toward blacks was quite reprehensible, backward even for the 1950s. Yet, like the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution before them, Federal statutes only forced compliance, but didn’t address the underlying problem of racism, especially in the South. ”You cannot pass a law that will make me like you — or you like me,” Goldwater told one rally. “That is something that can only happen in our hearts.” Goldwater’s downfall was opposing an Act that traded a principle of free speech and association, hateful as it was being employed by some, to treat the symptoms of racism, but not the cure.
People just assumed he was a racist because he opposed the Civil Rights Act.
Barry Goldwater also predicted the current form of the Republican Party. In an interview with the Washington Post in 1994, the then-retired Arizona senator said
When you say “radical right” today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican party and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye.
I think we all know how that turned out.
Though Goldwater had alienated many in his own party with his offhand, often reckless remarks, gone against the Civil Rights Act, which on the surface seemed like a positive step for a divided country, it was LBJ’s “Daisy” campaign which sealed the election and led to the biggest victory by a presidential candidate in the 20th century.
“Daisy” was a commercial that ran briefly, featuring a little girl counting to ten, then having that count reversed by a baritone voice down to zero, at which point a nuclear bomb exploded. Johnson successfully depicted Goldwater as a warmonger who would resort to a nuclear attack on Vietnam.
It was true, Goldwater had openly said that small nuclear bombs could be used to destroy the foliage in the jungles, reducing the Vietcong’s cover, which was the cornerstone of their military strategy. What he had said made a little sense from a military perspective and perhaps even from a human perspective. He didn’t appear to want to direct the bombs at population centers, but rather at forests, which may have reduced human casualties. It’s not a great argument, but I suppose an argument could be made. However, in the context of political debate and without acknowledging the gravity of using nuclear devices as weapons in war it was a careless and costly remark. Goldwater had hereby supplied his opponents with enough fuel for him to be burned as a warmongering psychopath who would love to drop the a-bomb on Vietnam.
Yet, once Johnson was elected, he quickly reversed his rhetoric and hurriedly drew up plans to escalate the Vietnam War, fabricating the Gulf of Tonkin incident to drum up support for full-scale war. Agent Orange, a chemical agent, was used on the jungles of Vietnam to defoliate them, resulting in 400,000 deaths and 500,000 children born with birth defects. The war was undeclared by the Congress, unconstitutionally expanded the power of the Executive branch, took over ten years and resulted in the deaths of over four million Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian men, women and children. Who was the extreme warmongering psychopath again?
At least Goldwater wanted to get in and leave quickly or get out altogether.
An interesting article in Reason discusses the Goldwater movement and how, after the political beating he got in the election, a joke about the election went:
They told me that if I voted for Goldwater, we’d have a war in Southeast Asia, civil and racial unrest, and a ruined economy. I went ahead and voted for him anyway, and it turned out they were absolutely right.
At the time of the campaign, Vice-President Johnson was telling the public, “We are not going to send American boys nine or 10 thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.” Meanwhile, his advisors were drawing up plans to put 200,000 troops in Vietnam within a year. His “Daisy” commercial made Goldwater seem like the warmonger that Johnson himself actually turned out to be.
The use of military force without a declaration, in direct violation of the Constitution; the expansion of Presidential powers beyond their constitutional limits; these were the results of Johnson’s election. “Daisy” ushered in a new age of dirty politics, giving rise to creeps like Richard Nixon and the religious Right’s brand of morality.
Goldwater wasn’t a racist, but he came across as one because he had no idea about how his views could so easily be misconstrued or even just misinterpreted. When you stand against something, you’d better propose a better alternative and market it well or someone else will define your stance for you. Once Goldwater stood against the Civil Rights Act on the grounds that it overstepped the bounds of a constitutional Federal government, he needed to propose a better solution for curing the social ills of racism and segregation. Instead, he became a magnet for the KKK and a whole manner of other segregationists who assumed he just hated the darkies as much as they did.
Such is the destiny of the politician who means well, but is not aware enough of the game to play it effectively.
Showing sympathy for Goldwater and his politically incorrect opinions may not win me any friends. It may even make me some enemies. But I liken his stance to that famous phrase attributed to Voltaire:
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
If freedom is only reserved for the prevailing attitudes of the day, and all other views are punished, then there will surely come a day when the prevailing attitudes are usurped to enforce one group’s notion of freedom at the expense of other groups or individuals. When freedom is supported in principle, it must be supported for all.
Wars of ideology need to be fought with ideas. Freedom is not a state which can be granted by the government. It is the inherent state of human beings. Governments have trampled on more rights through over-reaching regulations and unnecessary wars than have racists who refuse service to blacks.
Goldwater lost because the public could not see the distinction between not supporting the Act and not supporting that particular cure for racism. Currently, as we continue to fight two wars in the Middle East, have our freedoms usurped through wiretapping and dismissal of the right of habeus corpus, as we relinquish more and more of our freedoms, even the freedom whether or not to buy health insurance, it seems that the public today are even less capable of making that distinction as they were in 1964.
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