Barry Goldwater

Senator

• Born: January 1, 1909
• Birthplace: Phoenix, Arizona
• Died: May 29, 1998
• Place of death: Phoenix, Arizona

Senator, military leader, and business executive

Goldwater rose to prominence in Republican politics representing Arizona in the U.S. Senate and becoming the Republican presidential nominee in 1964. He was the patriarch of the conservative movement.

Areas of achievement: Government and politics; business; military

Early Life

Barry Goldwater was born at his family home on Center Street (now Central Avenue) in Phoenix, when it was still the Arizona Territory. He was the first of three children born to Baron and Josephine Goldwater. His grandfather, Michel, had emigrated from Konin, a Jewish ghetto in Poland, and he changed the family name from Goldwasser to Goldwater.

Michel founded a retail business that became the Goldwater Department Stores. While Michel and his wife Sarah were observant Jews, and Michel was a founder of the Congregation B’nai B’rith in Los Angeles (prior to settling in Arizona), his sons, including Baron, were less so. When Baron married Illinois-born Josephine Williams, an Episcopalian, he agreed that Barry, his brother Robert, and his sister Carolyn would be baptized and raised Protestant. Goldwater grew up knowing little about his Jewish heritage, a fact he later regretted.

When Goldwater was born, the family was prosperous and lived in comfort. He did not distinguish himself in school and was sent to Staunton Military Academy in Virginia, where his parents thought the discipline would be good for him. From there, he attended the University of Arizona, but he dropped out before earning a degree when his father died in 1929. Goldwater felt obligated to learn the family business from the ground up and worked various jobs throughout the company before becoming manager. He discovered he had a natural flair for the retail business and an uncanny ability to buy successfully for the stores those items the clientele would embrace. In 1937, he became the company president.

In 1934, Goldwater married Margaret (Peggy) Johnson, an Episcopalian from Muncie, Indiana, though her family was initially lukewarm to the idea, in part because of his Jewish ancestry. The couple had a successful marriage and four children, two daughters and two sons. By then the Goldwaters were the leading mercantile family in Arizona. Goldwater successfully presided over the retail empire until he ran for and was elected to the U.S. Senate.

Life’s Work

Though politics defined him, Goldwater had many other interests. He was a serious photographer whose work was published and exhibited nationally and internationally; a pilot who logged twelve thousand hours of flying time in nearly three hundred types of aircraft; and a soldier with a long military career that included World War II service in the U.S. Air Corps, attaining the rank of brigadier general in the U.S. Air Force Reserve.

Politics was Goldwater’s passion. He began his political career as Phoenix city councilman in 1948, four years before being elected to his first Senate term. He disapproved of many of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Depression-era measures and ran for the Senate to give those with differing views a voice in Congress and to help change the direction in which the country was heading. At the center of his political beliefs were fiscal responsibility, limited government, and military strength.

He left the Senate after only two terms to become the Republican candidate for the presidency in 1964. The Vietnam War was raging, and the Cold War made many people afraid Goldwater would lead the country into confrontation with Russia. He was overwhelmingly defeated by incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson. It appeared his career was over, and that his conservative views were doomed for extinction. (That would change in 1980, when Ronald Reagan swept into the Oval Office for two terms with a large majority.)

In 1968, Goldwater ran for the Senate again and Arizonans reelected him. He went on to serve three more terms before retiring in 1987, after a total of thirty years. He handpicked his successor, John McCain. During Goldwater’s second Senate career, he concentrated on working for economic stability, intelligence gathering, and military restructuring, among other issues about which he felt strongly. He was especially enthusiastic about the Goldwater-Nichols Act (1968), which reorganized the military. His longevity in the Senate entitled him to key committee appointments.

Though his outspokenness sometimes made him unpopular, it defined the way he lived. He was unable to hide his opinions in the guise of being agreeable. He joked that the hip problems he developed in his later years were a result of decades of having Peggy kick him under the table as she said, “Barry, that’s enough.” Even his detractors believed him to be a man of integrity. Known as a conservative, Goldwater held some opinions that were far from conservative. For example, he favored legal abortion and gay rights.

Goldwater’s son, Barry, Jr., followed him into politics and served as a California congressional representative from 1969 through 1984. When Peggy died in 1985, the couple had been married more than fifty years. He married his second wife, Susan Shaffer Wechsler, in 1992. Among Goldwater’s many honors, President Reagan awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Goldwater died at his home near Phoenix on May 29, 1998, of complications of a stroke.

Significance

Goldwater was recognized as the patriarch of the conservative movement. His influence and mentorship helped shape the career of President Ronald Reagan and presidential candidate John McCain. He sponsored Senate bills that flew in the face of business-as-usual Washington politics, and his impact in the areas of military structure, energy, and adherence to the Constitution is still felt and will continue to affect the way the United States conducts its business. More important, his philosophies still form the basic planks in the Republican Party platform, though in some ways the conservatives of the party have moved further to the right. Goldwater was more a pragmatist than an idealist, and he did not equate compromise with selling out.

Bibliography

Dean, John W., and Barry Goldwater, Jr. Pure Goldwater. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. This book provides insights into the man who is considered the father of today’s conservative movement, as it draws on Barry Goldwater’s journal entries, along with the memories of those closest to the Grand Old Man of the Grand Old Party.

Goldberg, Robert Alan. Barry Goldwater. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995. The author’s extensive research made this book what many political scholars consider definitive on the senator from Arizona and 1964 presidential candidate.

Goldwater, Barry M. The Conscience of a Conservative. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Press, 1994. This has been reissued over the years since first published in the 1960’s, and is still considered the seminal treatise of the conservative movement as Goldwater lays out his philosophies in his own words. A thorough look at his ideas and the movement he spearheaded.

Perlstein, Rick. Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus. New York: Avalon, 2009. The author focuses on the 1960’s and the conservative right taking on the liberals to bring about smaller government and the return of personal responsibility.

Story, Ronald, and Bruce Laurie. Rise of Conservativism in America, 1945-2000. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007. A study of the conservative movement that swept America during the last half of the twentieth century and the role played by Goldwater.