1964 election

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I'm asking because this is the most recent election where I would vote for the Republican, which ironically was also a Democratic landslide. Goldwater wasn't really all that bad compared to Republicans of today, and despite the Civil Rights Act and Great Society I could NEVER vote for LBJ.

[Dave from Michigan]

Goldwater would have made a lot better of a president

[Nation]

gimme a "g!"

At the time though, without retrospect, I wouldn have voted LBJ most likely.

[opebo]

I don't see much difference between Goldwater and Republicans of today - he was the father of the modern right-wing party.  

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

He was pro-choice, pro-gay rights and pro-gun control (once made some comment about how anyone who's aim is so bad they need an AK-47 to hunt shouldn't be hunting)

[minionofmidas]

And pro-White suprematist and pro-Militias...That comment bout "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice" that somebody here uses as his quote is about militias. Gimme a break, guys!

[opebo]

He was pro-choice, pro-gay rights and pro-gun control (once made some comment about how anyone who's aim is so bad they need an AK-47 to hunt shouldn't be hunting)

Good god, I didn't know that about the gun control.  That's awful.

[Beet]

Vietnam would have been WORSE under Goldwater.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Vietnam would have been WORSE under Goldwater.

He wanted to abolish the draft.

[opebo]

Vietnam would have been WORSE under Goldwater.

Nah, he would've won it using all available means.

[Platypus]

In hindsight, I would have stayed home.

At the time, LBJ-he was Kennedy's sucessor, after all.

[minionofmidas]

Vietnam would have been WORSE under Goldwater.

Nah, he would've won it using all available means.

Including nuking American campuses and Black ghettos, I guess.

[Michael Z]

I don't get this sudden widespread admiration for Goldwater at all, though I guess it's another symptom of neocon revisionism... a bit like people now claiming that Reagan singlehandedly won the cold war...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Vietnam would have been WORSE under Goldwater.

True.
He wanted to uses Nukes...

[© tweed]

At the time: LBJ or Eric Hass (Socialist Labor)
In hindsight: Goldwater

[dazzleman]

In retrospect, the 1964 election presented two very poor choices.

Maybe it was just a time in history when there were no good choices.  Certainly, that was the case with Vietnam.

But it's hard to imagine a worse choice than Johnson made -- to fight in Vietnam, but not to try to finish the war.  His policy was simply for the US and South Vietnamese to tread water forever, until we dropped of exhaustion (which we did).

I would have favored either other extreme over Johnson's choice -- to pull out altogether, or to make an all-out effort to win.  Of course, it was impossible for voters to really make an honest choice in 1964 because Johnson lied about his intentions in Vietnam.

On the domestic front, Goldwater's failure to support the civil rights laws is distressing, but so are the results of Johnson's Great Society programs, and his administration's reaction to the general lawlessness of the late 1960s.

In my opinion, Great Society programs that fostered dependency and weakened the black (and poor white) family structure undid a lot of the potential good that could have been realized through the civil rights laws.  The results of these programs ensured that when the legal restrictions were lifted against full black participation in society were finally lifted, many would be unable to benefit from this due to the breakdown of their family structure, which has destroyed the education system in largely black areas, led to an explosion of crime, etc.

So 1964 is about the toughest election to make a choice, because even with the benefit of knowing the future, the right choice is still not obvious.

[Dave from Michigan]

Goldwater

[John]

well if Kenned was not shot he would have benn in the White House for Eight Years

[PBrunsel]

Barry Goldwater was a great man. He was a true Conservative. I especially like him because he did not like religion in politics.

[zachman]

Was Goldwater secretly Jewish? That's a really Jewish name.

[Michael Z]

Was Goldwater secretly Jewish? That's a really Jewish name.

"The grandfather of the presidential nominee was a Jewish peddler named Michael Goldwasser, who emigrated to the United States in 1849 when Konin was under Russian rule. (The name was subsequently changed to Goldwater, and the family established what would become a successful department store chain in Arizona.)"
- http://www.jewishaz.com/jewishnews/980605/goldwatr.shtml

Quite an interesting article, generally.

(EDIT: just discovered an editorial on the same site, http://www.jewishaz.com/jewishnews/980605/edit.shtml, which has further detail on Goldwater's background.)

[dunn]

Was Goldwater secretly Jewish? That's a really Jewish name.

"The grandfather of the presidential nominee was a Jewish peddler named Michael Goldwasser, who emigrated to the United States in 1849 when Konin was under Russian rule. (The name was subsequently changed to Goldwater, and the family established what would become a successful department store chain in Arizona.)"
- http://www.jewishaz.com/jewishnews/980605/goldwatr.shtml

Quite an interesting article, generally.

(EDIT: just discovered an editorial on the same site, http://www.jewishaz.com/jewishnews/980605/edit.shtml, which has further detail on Goldwater's background.)

true

just like Kerry's grandfather is

[PBrunsel]

Goldwater had a Jewish background. At a country club in Pheonix he was told he could not golf there because of his Jewish heritage. Goldwater asked the man if he could golf 9 holes because he was only Jewish from his father's side.

[Dave from Michigan]

LBJ only won Idaho with 50.92% of the vote to 49.02% of Goldwater and 1964 was considered a landslide

[Bleeding heart conservative, HTMLdon]

AuH20