Barry Goldwater: life, ideas and books

Life

Barry Goldwater was born in 1909 in the Arizona Territory and took over his family's department store in Phoenix. He served in the Army Air Forces in the Second World War, flying supply routes to India, and founded the Arizona Air National Guard in 1946. After serving on the Phoenix City Council from 1949 to 1952, he won a seat in the U.S. Senate in 1952 and was re-elected in 1958.

In 1964 he won the Republican presidential nomination but lost to Lyndon B. Johnson in a landslide, carrying Arizona and five Deep South states. He returned to the Senate from 1969 to 1987, chairing the Intelligence Committee and the Armed Services Committee. In 1974 he helped persuade Richard Nixon to resign. He retired in 1987 and died in 1998 at Paradise Valley, Arizona.

Ideas

Goldwater argued for limited government, fiscal restraint, states' rights and a firm stand against the Soviet Union, and he opposed the legacy of the New Deal. He supported the goals of civil rights but opposed federal compulsion in desegregation on constitutional grounds, a position that remains controversial and that is linked to the later Republican gains in the South. In later life his views grew more libertarian, including positions on social questions that differed from many in his party.

Major works

• The Conscience of a Conservative (1960).
• The Goldwater-Nichols Act (1986), which reorganised the Defense Department.
• With No Apologies (1979), his memoir of political life.

Why conservatives read him

The Conscience of a Conservative was an early statement of postwar conservative principle written for a broad audience, and Goldwater's campaign trained a generation of activists, including Ronald Reagan, whose 1964 speech for him launched a career. Historians frequently credit him with laying the groundwork for the modern conservative movement. His career is a case study in conviction, electoral defeat and eventual influence.