Barry Morris Goldwater (1909-1998) was an American politician who served five terms as a United States Senator from Arizona (1953-1965, 1969-1987) and was the Republican Party's presidential nominee in the 1964 election. He is widely regarded as a foundational figure in the post-World War II American conservative movement, though the precise character of his political philosophy - and its relationship to later conservatism and libertarianism - remains a matter of ongoing debate among historians and political theorists.
Goldwater was born in Phoenix, Arizona Territory, on 1 January 1909, the son of a prominent merchant family. He attended the University of Arizona briefly before leaving to join the family business following his father's death. He served as a military pilot during World War II and entered Phoenix city politics before winning a Senate seat in 1952.
His 1960 book The Conscience of a Conservative, ghostwritten by L. Brent Bozell Jr., articulated a program of limited federal government, opposition to labor union power, skepticism of foreign aid, and aggressive anti-communism. The book sold widely and established Goldwater as a leading voice for the emerging conservative coalition. For the history of Goldwater's political development and career, see barry-goldwater-history.
Goldwater secured the Republican presidential nomination in 1964 after defeating moderate-establishment candidates, including Nelson Rockefeller. His nomination represented a significant factional shift within the Republican Party away from the Eastern establishment wing. He lost the general election to Lyndon B. Johnson by a large margin - 38.5 percent of the popular vote to Johnson's 61.1 percent - carrying only his home state of Arizona and five states in the Deep South.
Despite the electoral defeat, the campaign is widely analyzed as a pivotal event in American political history. It activated a grassroots conservative organizational infrastructure, elevated Ronald Reagan to national prominence through his televised speech “A Time for Choosing,” and initiated what analysts have described as a long-term partisan realignment in the South. The interpretation of that realignment - its causes, mechanisms, and moral significance - remains actively contested. See barry-goldwater-1964-campaign-debate.
Goldwater voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. His stated reasoning, the constitutional arguments advanced in its defense, and the political and moral debates surrounding the vote are addressed in Civil Rights Act of 1964 - Libertarian Viewpoint, barry-goldwater-civil-rights-controversy, and barry-goldwater-constitutionalist-viewpoint.
Goldwater returned to the Senate in 1969 and continued serving until 1987. In later years he broke with the increasingly influential religious right within the Republican Party, criticizing the political influence of Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority. He expressed support for abortion rights, for allowing openly gay men and women to serve in the military, and for medical marijuana. These positions led some analysts to classify his later views as libertarian-leaning rather than traditionally conservative, and generated competing retrospective claims about his legacy from both conservative and libertarian commentators.
Conservative foundationalist view: Goldwater's 1964 campaign and The Conscience of a Conservative established the ideological and organizational foundation on which the modern American conservative movement was built. On this view, his defeat was a necessary precondition for the Reagan revolution. See barry-goldwater-conservative-foundationalist-viewpoint.
Libertarian interpretation: Goldwater is read by some libertarian analysts as primarily a classical liberal whose commitments to individual liberty, constitutional limits on government, and skepticism of state power align more closely with libertarianism than with social conservatism. His later positions on gay military service, abortion, and religious-right influence are cited as evidence. See barry-goldwater-libertarian-viewpoint.
Civil rights liberal critique: From this viewpoint, Goldwater's vote against the Civil Rights Act, whatever its stated constitutional rationale, provided political cover for racial segregationists, enabled a racially motivated Southern realignment of the GOP, and constitutes a significant moral failure that cannot be disentangled from his legacy. See barry-goldwater-civil-rights-critique-viewpoint.
Constitutionalist defense: A distinct position holds that Goldwater's opposition to specific titles of the Civil Rights Act was a defensible application of limits on federal commerce and property powers, regardless of the racial politics surrounding it, and that conflating constitutional argument with racial motivation is analytically sloppy. See barry-goldwater-constitutionalist-viewpoint.
Paleoconservative and traditionalist view: Some traditionalist conservatives view Goldwater's later positions - particularly on gay service members and the religious right - as evidence that his liberalism on social questions was always in tension with conservatism properly understood, and that his legacy has been selectively appropriated. See barry-goldwater-traditionalist-viewpoint.
Civil Rights Act vote: Goldwater's 1964 vote against the Civil Rights Act, and the competing interpretations of its motivations and consequences, constitute one of the most documented controversies in mid-20th-century American political history. See barry-goldwater-civil-rights-controversy.
Southern strategy and racial realignment: Historians disagree over the degree to which Goldwater's 1964 Southern gains were driven by racial resentment versus ideological anti-statism, and what causal role his campaign played in subsequent Republican Southern strategy. See barry-goldwater-southern-realignment-controversy.
Religious right break: Goldwater's public criticism of the Moral Majority and Jerry Falwell in the 1980s generated sharp intra-conservative dispute over who represented authentic conservatism. See barry-goldwater-religious-right-controversy.
1. Barry M. Goldwater, The Conscience of a Conservative (Shepherdsville, KY: Victor Publishing, 1960). Ghostwritten by L. Brent Bozell Jr. 2. Federal Election Commission historical data, 1964 presidential election returns. 3. Rick Perlstein, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001). 4. Robert Alan Goldberg, Barry Goldwater (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995). 5. Congressional Record, 88th Congress, 2nd Session, 18 June 1964 (Goldwater floor statement on Civil Rights Act vote). 6. John W. Dean and Barry M. Goldwater Jr., Pure Goldwater (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). 7. Lee Edwards, Goldwater: The Man Who Made a Revolution (Washington, DC: Regnery, 1995). 8. Mary C. Brennan, Turning Right in the Sixties: The Conservative Capture of the GOP (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995).