Goldwater, Barry Morris (1909-1998), an American statesman, was the Republican presidential candidate in 1964. He and his running mate, Representative William E. Miller of New York, lost to their Democratic opponents, President Lyndon B. Johnson and Senator Hubert H. Humphrey.
When Goldwater ran for president, he was completing his second term as a United States senator from Arizona. During the 1964 campaign, Goldwater called for fewer powers for the federal government and a stronger stand against Communism. He declared that the government had no powers except those clearly set forth in the Constitution of the United States. He said other powers belonged to the states.
Early life.
Barry Goldwater was born on New Year’s Day, 1909, in Phoenix. By that time, the Goldwaters were prosperous department store owners. Barry’s father died in 1929, and the boy left the University of Arizona after his freshman year to work in the family store. He became company president in 1937.
In 1934, Goldwater married Margaret “Peggy” Johnson of Muncie, Indiana. They had two sons and two daughters. In World War II (1939-1945), Goldwater was an Army Air Forces pilot overseas. After the war, he helped organize the Arizona Air National Guard. He stayed active in the Air Force Reserve and became a major general in 1962.
Political career.
In 1949, Goldwater was elected to the Phoenix city council. He resigned in 1952 to run for the U.S. Senate. Goldwater defeated Senate Majority Leader Ernest W. McFarland by a narrow margin and was reelected in 1958.
Goldwater became the leader of the Republican conservatives after a 1957 Senate speech in which he attacked President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1958 budget as too high. He outlined his political ideas in The Conscience of a Conservative (1960).
In 1964, the Republicans nominated Goldwater as their presidential candidate. He won only 38 percent of the popular vote in the election. However, he helped to draw attention to such conservative issues as limited government, low taxes, anti-Communism, and a strong national defense. Goldwater held no political office from the time of the election until 1968, when Arizonans elected him to the Senate again. He was reelected in 1974 and 1980. Goldwater served as chairman of the Senate’s Intelligence Committee from 1981 until 1987, when he retired from politics. He died on May 29, 1998. In 2015, Arizona placed a statue of Goldwater in National Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.
