It easy to continue to follow the 2016 election wherever you are. Its free to download from the Apple App Store or google play. Get audio coverage and uptotheminute Schedule Information for cspan radio and cspan television, plus podcast times for our popular public affairs, book, and history programs. Stay up to date on all the election coverage. Cspans radio app means you always have cspan on the go. Now the contenders, our series on key political figures who ran for president and lost, but who nevertheless changed political history. Over the next two hours, the life of former arizona senator Barry Goldwater, who was the republican candidate for president in 1964. This program was recorded at the Goldwater Institute in phoenix, arizona. Wherever he goes, he speaks out, clearly and forcefully on the issues, answers questions, explains exactly where he stands on domestic and Foreign Policy. Everywhere he goes, the people are responding with enthusiasm for this new and different kind of statesman. Barry goldwater has been constantly on the go. Its a grueling schedule. And whenever he can, he catches a quick nap here with his daughter peggy and with his wife peggy. But soon its back to the campaign where Barry Goldwater is calling for courage and integrity in meeting problems. He is calling for an end to do nothing policies, for progress based on the dynamic principles of the republic. He is calling for a rebirth of individual freedom. The Free Enterprise system. We reject, therefore, the ideas of the economic planners in washington that a group of people sitting in washington can plan what the country is going to make, where its to be made, the quality of the product, the price of the product, the wages to be paid, the profit to be made, et cetera, et cetera. We know this program in simpler terms called socialism has never worked in the history of the earth, and is not working today in countries where its been tried. Republican president ial candidate Barry Goldwater campaigning in 1964. Cspans the contenders series coming to you tonight from the Goldwater Institute in phoenix, arizona. As we look at goldwaters challenge to president Lyndon Johnson and his political influence during the second half of the 20th century, we welcome you tonight. We welcome our audience here at the Goldwater Institute. And our three guests who will walk us through the life and political career of Barry Goldwater, beginning with rick perlstein, hes the author of the bestselling book Barry Goldwater before the storm. Hes written for the nation magazine, new republic, new yorker and london review of books and author of the book nixon land. Thank you for being with us. And darcy olsen who is also our host as the president and ceo of the Goldwater Institute. She previously served as the director of education policy at the Cato Institute in washington, d. C. Her editorials appeared in the wall street journal, usa today and the national review. Bill mccune who grew up here in arizona, served two terms in the state legislature, including one term in the arizona senate, hes produced more than 90 documentaries including Barry Goldwater and american life. Thank you all for being with us. Rick perlstein, lets begin with you. In your book and in his campaign, he called himself a different kind of a candidate for a different kind of election year. How so . I think that the thing that made him most different as a president ial candidate was that he was a reluctant president ial candidate. I mean, if we think of all the people running for president in 2012, we cant say that any of them are reluctant. It is a full time job. It is completely consuming. But ever since 1960, when the first kind of group of people came to Barry Goldwater and tried to draft him, and said we want you to be a president ial candidate, he would always say one thing, thats the last thing on my mind. I dont want to run for president. Once he even told the Chicago Tribune i dont think i have the brains to be president. And over and over again they said, we dont care, were going to draft you. Thats actually what happened. He pretty much was drafted by incredibly vociferous, passionate followers who kind of raised money and built an organization on their own and he had to do it. Well talk more about this later. The assassination of john kennedy, how did that influence his decision to go ahead in 1964 . Actually he was inching towards possibly doing it in the fall of 1963. And one of the reasons was because president kennedy had introduced the civil rights bill that was actually beginning to build a strong backlash. And there were people talking about president kennedy actually being vulnerable in 1964. And goldwater was close to kennedy, he liked kennedy, and kennedy was assassinated, it is very hard to kind of reconstruct this context in our minds now, but it was so harrowing for the American People. People blamed extremism. People blamed the kind of vociferous ideological politics that americans didnt want to believe was part of their political system. And Barry Goldwater immediately lost interest. In fact it was another month and a half before he finally answered the call of one more group of people coming to him, begging him and saying it was his duty to support the conservative cause that he had finally agreed to do it. Darcy olsen, in this book that came out, well talk more later, the conscience of a conservative, it was essentially the manifest of why he was running and the ideology that shaped him. In that piece of film that we showed at the top of the program, he talked about freedom and Free Enterprise and the failed socialist experiment that the democrats were pushing in the 1960s. Right, well, i mean, Barry Goldwater stood for one thing and he was very clear about it, and that was freedom. And that book today is it is just as relevant as it was when it was written 50 years ago. And barry would say, circumstances change, principles do not. And when he was getting ready to run for office, he said, you know, as i survey the landscape and i look around at all the different questions that might occur to me, the most important concern that i will have, the most important question that i will ask myself is are we maximizing freedom . And that was the beginning and the end of his political analysis. Bill mccune, take us back to 1964 and walk us through Barry Goldwater in the in the u. S. Senate for two terms, what led him to this point on the National Stage . Really in a sense the simplicity of his perspective. I mean, simplicity as compared to more complicated politics. We have to go back. You got to look at Barry Goldwater in the context of his times. Family came here in the 1850s, okay . He grew up, born in 1909 in dusty little phoenix, that had 8,000 or 9,000 people at the time, life was simple, life was simpler here than it was in the east. Arizona was not even a state. When he was born, it was not a state for two or three more years. But just lifestyle was very this was part of the old west at that time. It wasnt new york city, you know, and whatever. So you have to look at barry, lets say, from his family history, which meant a lot to him, but from 1909 clear up through up to world war ii, what was life like here. It was very simple. It was very unsophisticated. It was black and white. It was right and wrong. It was the old west. It wasnt sophisticated east coast. I bring that up because thats what shaped where did he get these views, you know, which i call small l libertarian. But the very simple views of right and wrong, and this and that. And it was it was the context in which he which he grew up. You asked me a question, but i cant remember what the question was. What led him to 1964 and what shaped his ideology in the 1950s until he ran in 64. Well, truthfully, it was what i just said. It was simple. And i dont mean that in a negative way, but i mean it was it was sort of simple. There was right and wrong and there was, you know, good and bad and this and that and the other. You get into world war ii, which he served in very much. Remember world war ii was the major right versus wrong, good versus bad thing. And then you get into the cold war and us versus the soviet union. All of these things from goldwaters perspective and from the context of the times were pretty black and white, especially as compared to todays politics where you dont know quite whos doing what to whom and saying what. So i think thats what he was the personification of good versus bad, right versus wrong, whether you agree with him or not. That was he was sort of the personification of that. And i think that had a lot of appeal by the time the 50s and certainly 64 came about. You met Barry Goldwater. I want to ask you your impressions of him later. Lets focus on the 1964 race. We had other names in the race like governor scranton of pennsylvania, who was in and out and then back in again. Nelson rockefeller, who spent a lot of money to try to secure the nomination. Walk us through how these candidates challenged Barry Goldwater and ultimately how he got the nomination. The Republican Party was a very Different Institution than it is now. It was controlled by moderates and even by liberals. And the whole ideology of the American Party system was different. Each party had within it both conservatives and liberals. The Democratic Party had very conservative members from the south. It had very liberal members from the north. The Republican Party had an isolationist conservative wing from the midwest and also a liberal wing in the northeast. People like jake javitz, ken keating, and what the Barry Goldwater president ial campaign was all about was trying to take over the party from the bottom up, the bottom up being these conservative ideological activists. We talk about the bottomup, but often they had their meetings in country clubs and, you know, very fancy places. And it was presumed that someone like Nelson Rockefeller was the heir apparent for the republican nomination. The idea that a conservative could have won the nomination was absolutely seen as impossible by the pundits because the pundits then said that america was ensconced within a liberal center left consensus that when Dwight Eisenhower not only embraced the new deal, but even expanded it, opening up Something Like the department of health, education and welfare, you know, instituting the interstate which is a huge federal outlay it was just presumed that the conservatism of the 1920s, which was seen as something that had gotten us into the depression, was no longer relevant to modern life. In your book, you point out two key primaries that were critical in 1964. Oregon in which Nelson Rockefeller won in california and in which Barry Goldwater won. Yes. California was an absolutely fascinating knockdown dragout political fight. And i talked earlier about how Barry Goldwater had these impassioned supporters who would do whatever they want, even if Barry Goldwater told them not to do it. These are people who were from groups like the john birch society, some were segregationists, they were full of far right, as they were called at the time, extremists. And they were basically willing to knock on doors until their knuckles were bloody. They were willing to sabotage other campaigns. It was seen as a fight for civilization itself because the other candidates, the liberal candidates, Nelson Rockefeller, were seen as the sort of harbingers of the socialism that they believed was destroying civilization itself. It was incredibly impassioned. And two years after Richard Nixon lost his governorship, he was still a player in the Republican Party in 1964 and according to your book was trying to figure out a way that the party might turn to him if they didnt want either rockefeller or goldwater. You mentioned the oregon primary. He actually established a secret boiler room in a basement. Richard nixon . Yes, Richard Nixon. People were hired to make phone calls to voters saying, hey, wouldnt it be a neat idea if Richard Nixon was drafted to be president. And this was Richard Nixon were talking about, right . Someone found out about it and a camera crew showed up and that became a cropper. But Richard Nixon was always scheming and scamming and hoping that goldwater and rock fell worry knock themselves out. There was this great herb block cartoon in which it showed rockefeller and goldwater having a shootout, you know, in the middle of an old western town. And nixon was rubbing his hands and Richard Nixons political undertaker parlor. We, as always, want to hear from you. Our phone lines are open. 2027370001 if you live in the eastern or central time zones. 2027370002 if you live in the mountain or pacific time zones. Well also be getting questions from those here in the audience here at the Goldwater Institute. In just a moment, well show you some of political ads from 1964. You remember this campaign, how you did Lyndon Johnson run against Barry Goldwater . What was his tactic . Rottenness. No, they johnson ran a very Smart Campaign because he made goldwater the issue as opposed to the issues being the issue. And barry was painted as a, you know, a crazy person. There were things put out by the Johnson Campaign that some group of psychiatrists in america came out with some statement that barry was mentally ill, some of you probably remember that, you know, and that he was crazy. And then, of course, the famous 10, 9, 8, 7, the nuclear bomb commercial, which only aired one time, but it got a lot of attention that was designed by bill moyers, actually. You know it was a it was a totally do the guy in kind of a campaign. Yeah. I mean, it is important to realize the nuclear stuff didnt just come out of nowhere. In the conscious of a conservative, he made a very strong argument that of a craven fear of death had crept into the american psyche. By that, he meant people were so afraid of nuclear war that they didnt want to confront the soviet union. Well, there was a good reason that people were afraid to confront the soviet union, because allout war with the soviet union would have meant the end of civilization itself. But Barry Goldwater never flinched and this freaked people the heck out from the idea that if were afraid of going to war with the soviet union, even if it means nuclear war we are on a path to surrender. That was very frightening to people, especially after the cuban missile crisis where people came within hours people thought of armageddon itself. He did have some very unconventional ideas about the necessity of confronting the soviet union headon militarily. Well talk a little later about that iconic daisy ad. We have put together some other 1964 ads to give you an idea of the issues and the personality in that campaign. This particular phone only rings in a serious crisis. Put it in the hands of a man who has proven himself responsible. Vote for president johnson on november 3rd. The people asked Barry Goldwater. I have a question for mr. Goldwater. Im cynthia ford. We keep hearing about hot wars, cold wars and brushfire wars. I have an older brother and many of my former classmates who are now serving in the armed forces. I would like to know what mr. Goldwater will do to keep us out of a war. Well, let me assure you here and now and i have said this in every corner of the land throughout this campaign and ill continue to say it, that a Goldwater Miller administration will mean once more the proven policy of peace through strength that was the hallmark of the eisenhower years. The eisenhower approach to Foreign Affairs is our approach. It served the cause of freedom and avoided war during the last Republican Administration. It will do so again. We are the party of preparedness and the party of peace. In your heart, you know hes right. Vote for Barry Goldwater. On october 24th, 1963, Barry Goldwater said of the nuclear bomb, merely another weapon. Merely another weapon . Vote for president johnson. The stakes are too high for you to stay home. Graft. Swindles. Juvenile delinquency. Crime. Riots. Hear what Barry Goldwater has to say about our lack of moral leadership. The leadership of this nation has a clear and immediate challenge to go to work effectively and go to work immediately to restore proper respect for law and order in this land, and not just prior to election day either. Ameri