Goldwater had a habit of speaking from the hip, an impulsiveness that caused many voters to fear he was a trigger-happy adventurer who might start a nuclear war.
"They were afraid of me," Goldwater wrote years later in explaining his overwhelming loss in 1964 to President Lyndon B. Johnson.
Connecting With the Electorate
Despite his defeat, Goldwater exposed a deep vein of discontent in the electorate that subsequent conservative campaigners, particularly Reagan, exploited to woo vast numbers of voters away from the Democratic Party. Indeed, in his memoirs, "With No Apologies," published in 1979, Goldwater maintained that even Democrat Jimmy Carter used Goldwater campaign issues to good effect.
"In 1976, Jimmy Carter picked up many of my complaints," Goldwater wrote. "I truly believe he won that election because the people are sick and tired of federal control, federal taxes, inflation and the lessening of individual freedom. It is tragic that once he was elected, Jimmy Carter promptly forgot his campaign promises."
It was an anomaly that Goldwater, the grandson of a Polish Jewish immigrant, a resident of a Western state and a man with scant political experience before entering the Senate, should have had such a profound impact on American politics.
When Goldwater arrived in the Senate in 1953, after riding to a narrow victory on the presidential coattails of Dwight D. Eisenhower, there were several nationally known conservatives already on the scene: Republicans Robert A. Taft (Ohio), William F. Knowland (California), Styles Bridges (New Hampshire), Eugene D. Millikin (Colorado), Bourke B. Hickenlooper (Iowa), Homer E. Capehart (Indiana), John W. Bricker (Ohio), William E. Jenner (Indiana) and Joseph R. McCarthy (Wisconsin).
Taft, the conservative hero of the day, died a few months after Goldwater arrived, and by the end of his first term, Goldwater was beginning to inherit Taft's mantle.
However, except for a similarity in viewpoints, there was a world of difference between the two men. Taft, a Harvard University-trained lawyer, was an intellectual. Goldwater, who left college after one year to work in his family's Phoenix clothing store, made no pretense of erudition.
And Goldwater had a quality that Taft lacked--charisma. Taft, balding and bookish, had a rigid personal dignity that made him appear aloof. Goldwater, with his silver hair and rugged features, presented the image of a confident frontiersman of the Old West.
