With an informal beginning in 1963, looking ahead, the Campaign of 1964 was shaping up as a likely contest between the charismatic, young incumbent president, John F. Kennedy, whose presidency seemed to be just hitting its stride after a series of setbacks in the early months of his term; and an ascending leader within the resurgent conservative wing of the Republican Party, the redoubtable and inimitable Senator Barry Goldwater from Arizona. Goldwater had emerged as a captivating alternative, riding a wave of conservative discontent within the GOP over what they viewed as the betrayal of their core principles by moderate and liberal Republicans who had either accepted or even embraced the tenets of the New Deal, tenets that they viewed as contrary to the American way of life.
Supporting states’ rights, low taxes, a much smaller federal government, and restrictions on the power of the Supreme Court as well as opposing a nuclear test ban treaty, and stridently anticommunist while advocating direct confrontation with the Soviet bloc and China rather than negotiation, which was likened to appeasement, the new brand of Republican conservatism was energized and emboldened, and the party was thus more sharply divided than it had been since the Campaign of 1912. The old GOP that had, in the eyes of the Goldwater conservatives, capitulated to New Deal statism had to be rehabilitated from the pernicious influence of the New Deal. So strong was this belief among the party’s right that even a figure as respected as former president Eisenhower, who was among the more popular Republican presidents in history, was viewed as allowing his moderate attitudes and policies to drift toward what they deemed leftward ideology. For Senator Goldwater, Eisenhower’s presidency had been simply “New Deal light” and thus a radical break from the purer Republican principles of small, localized government and individual self-reliance. This movement had already been in evidence during President Eisenhower’s two terms, as he often felt more closely aligned to the moderate Democrats on key domestic issues, thus in a way validating the conservative complaint about interparty cross-pollination. Goldwater thus represented a voice in the GOP that had been, in their estimation, pushed aside by the wake of FDR’s New Deal, a wake that had reshaped both parties (or perhaps upset, in the case of the GOP, at least from the viewpoint of the conservatives), and the Goldwater Republicans wanted to set their party aright.
President Kennedy, by and large a moderate Democrat, whose defining vision, the New Frontier, was tempered by a consistent political pragmatism that in many ways was closer to the bipartisanship of his Republican predecessor, nonetheless was viewed as a stark contrast to Goldwater, particularly in the realm of civil rights. Kennedy was hardly soft on communism—he cut his political teeth as a Cold Warrior and had proven his mettle against the Soviets during the precipitous Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, and in this sense he was not far from many Republicans—in spite of the protestations of the Goldwater faction. But his views on civil rights were liberal, particularly for the times, even though they had been somewhat soft-peddled earlier in his administration out of concern over alienating the South, a Democratic stronghold that at that time was considered a critical asset that needed to be held to mount any successful Democratic bid for the White House.
While many of President Kennedy’s critics, then and now, feel that he moved too slowly in addressing the political and social disadvantages of African Americans, the record shows that he did exhibit ongoing concern for civil rights during his 1960 campaign, and, more to the point, his administration had recently proposed the most far-reaching civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. Now that the recent and menacing international crisis was behind him, Kennedy had begun, at political risk, to accelerate his efforts in the promotion of his civil rights agenda, describing in a nationally broadcast civil rights address his administration’s renewed push for a more equitable society for all races as a moral imperative. “We are confronted primarily with a moral issue,” Kennedy explained in his civil rights address. “It is as old as the Scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution.” It was, along with his inaugural address and his campaign speech to the Baptist ministers in Houston, one of his greatest speeches, applauded by none other than the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as the “most sweeping and forthright ever presented by an American president.”
These increased efforts by the Kennedy administration in addressing civil rights for minorities, and the speech that defined those efforts, threatened to split the party along the same lines that divided it in 1948. Indeed, Kennedy’s fateful trip to Texas was an attempt to mend broken relations within his important Southern base, which was the consequence of the president’s now more candidly shared progressive attitudes toward equality between the races. Many in the South were angered over Kennedy’s speech, the recently proposed civil rights bill, and the future policies that it implied, and the trip to Dallas and other Texas cities was largely an effort by Kennedy to win back Texas Democrats, who were a crucial cohort in the upcoming election against what was likely to be a conservative Republican, and who were in danger of being lost over the issue.
In this regard and in comparison to Kennedy, and even in comparison to the liberal wing and moderate center of his own party, Goldwater’s conservatism leaned toward a libertarian position that preferred nonpolitical solutions to social problems, denying that racial prejudice was the federal government’s responsibility to correct. Goldwater himself was not personally invested in maintaining segregation; rather, he was deeply committed to preventing the continued growth of federal power and its expanding intervention in policy areas that he considered the province of the states and their localities. Given his perception of a serious divide between his principles and those of the current administration, Goldwater looked forward to debating Kennedy in 1964; the two candidates even planned a national tour in which they would together travel cross-country to various locations where they would stop to debate the issues and problems of the times. Both men respected each other and enjoyed a friendly relationship in spite of their disparate political visions, agreeing to a civil campaign based on issues and values. But what promised to be an engaging contest of ideas and styles was obliterated in a split second by the death of the president at the hand of a delusional assassin, a most loathsome act against the ideals that are so palpably expressed through the democratic process of free and open elections. A shocked and saddened Senator Goldwater joined all Americans in grieving for the slain president, and he dreaded the thought of facing the new president and now the new Democratic candidate for the upcoming campaign of 1964, Lyndon Baines Johnson.
If charisma, urbanity, and sophistication aptly describe President Kennedy, President Johnson can, with equal aptness, be referred to as larger than life, even overpowering. More domineering than charismatic, and unimpressed by the graceful charm of the Kennedys, LBJ was a genuine master at shaping political brokering and insider negotiations. His forceful, dogged personality could overwhelm most of his colleagues, and his ability to buttonhole and persuade his way to legislative victory as Senate majority leader is legendary. He has often been described as an “arm twister” and a master manipulator, but those are more epithet than accurate characterization. Johnson’s strength stemmed from a lifetime study of the political craft; an ability to know the intimate details of any issue and, more importantly, the principal actors involved; and to track this knowledge, compile it, thoroughly understand it, and use it to his advantage. He could intimidate, but mostly when he worked on a person, it was more a combination of an intuitive knowledge of human nature, insight into character, and sheer persistence that made Johnson one of the very best in influencing the course of events. Beneath what appeared to some to be a rough, even uncultured exterior, a keen intelligence surveyed the political landscape and, with intuition sharpened by years of careful observation, knew just exactly how to traverse the often obscured and entangled pathways of political negotiation.
In contrast to President Kennedy, who never enjoyed the gamesmanship of politics and preferred a more personable style—which, as many believed, made him at times less effective in dealing with Congress (although to be completely fair, JFK could, in those times when necessity pressed in, play very hardball politics)—Johnson relished the art of honing the political deal and bringing pressure to bear on friend and foe alike. Kennedy exuded charm; even his political opponents admitted that it was difficult not to like him. Johnson was more a force of nature; even his worst enemies discovered that it was difficult to resist him. He was one of the more effective politicians in the history of the Senate, in many ways surpassing Kennedy, who was no slouch, in the mechanics of politicking. This is not to say that Kennedy lacked political skill; he certainly possessed a different set of qualities that made him an effective president. But whereas Kennedy drew upon his inexhaustible personal magnetism to assure his friends and to win his opponents to his side, Johnson applied the sheer force of his outsized personality to impose his will. Where Kennedy was charmingly persuasive, Johnson was formidable, and few if any could match his sheer determination and capacity to achieve his goals. On a personal level, Goldwater disliked Johnson; there would be no debate between these two men should they both receive, as was expected, their respective party nominations in the following summer.
With the loss of President Kennedy, the liberal wing of the Democratic Party feared that Johnson might reject Kennedy’s progressive reform agenda. Instead, Johnson seized the moment, embraced Kennedy’s vision, and even expanded it. Without a moment’s hesitation, he took the lead in pushing through Congress, as only Lyndon Johnson could, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, an act that began with President Kennedy and, through President Johnson’s leadership, became the most extensive civil rights legislation in a century—which, among other things, prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, religion, sex, and national origin on many levels throughout society: in the workplace, in public accommodations, in education, in the political arena. Johnson further reinforced his support with the liberal wing of the Democratic Party by announcing his plans for a series of new “Great Society” social programs and a “war on poverty” aimed at nothing less than the elimination of poverty in the United States. Johnson’s vision was now seen as exceeding Kennedy’s and more progressive than even FDR’s; it captivated the imagination of moderate and liberal Democrats as well as liberal Republicans, and it was received favorably by large segments of the American electorate.
Hence, just as Senator Goldwater was steering his party to the right, LBJ was driving his party further left, setting the stage for the most ideologically charged election since 1932, and perhaps more so. By comparison, the candidates in the previous general election, Kennedy and then vice president Richard Nixon, were centrists, in reality fairly close on the issues, and well accustomed to the bipartisanship that had defined the Eisenhower years. Differences in policy and vision have always been important in American political history, and 1960 is no exception. But in the 1964 candidacies of Johnson and Goldwater, the election was clearly polarized: Lyndon Johnson’s activist state and the promise of a Great Society beyond poverty and prejudice, directly challenged by Barry Goldwater’s clarion call for a restoration of the principles of self-reliance, small government, and individual initiative that he and his supporters considered under threat by New Deal/Fair Deal/Great Society ambitions and the seemingly limitless growth of federal power.
But before the fated Johnson-Goldwater campaign could begin, both candidates still needed to win their respective party nominations. Even though Goldwater had emerged as the GOP front-runner in the latter half of 1963, to the point of drawing the principal focus from the Kennedy campaign camp, it was New York governor Nelson Rockefeller, from the party’s liberal wing, who was the front-runner as late as the spring of 1963. But the idea of a Rockefeller candidacy was intolerable to the conservative wing, and his sudden marriage to a recently divorced woman fifteen years his younger, a choice that raised eyebrows in the mid-1960s, had caused many in the party to question his personal judgment. As a result, his numbers in the poll dropped precipitously, helping to propel Goldwater into the front-runner position. Surprisingly, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., Nixon’s running mate in 1960, beat both Goldwater and Rockefeller in the increasingly important New Hampshire primary; but it was Lodge’s only promising moment in the campaign.
With Richard Nixon, the party standard-bearer four years earlier, temporarily out of politics and embittered by his treatment in the press after his failed 1962 gubernatorial campaign in California, and with Rockefeller compromised, Goldwater did not face a serious challenge after June 1963, and he was already preparing for a run at Kennedy in 1964. During the primaries Rockefeller managed some support, but Goldwater led in the popular voting, 38 percent to 22 percent, with a handful of also-rans claiming the rest, and he took eight states to Rockefeller’s two. By the time of the convention, Goldwater’s nomination seemed inevitable, the senator winning easily on the first ballot, with Rockefeller actually showing third behind Pennsylvania governor William Scranton, who placed a distant second to the nominee. Of historical interest, Maine senator Margaret Chase Smith became the first woman to receive support for the presidency at a major party’s nominating convention, after having won 227 votes in the primaries. (Victoria Woodhull, nominated in 1872 by the Equal Rights Party, is technically the first woman to receive an official endorsement for president from any political party; but Smith, at the 1964 GOP convention, was the first woman to have been mentioned as a potential presidential candidate from a major party, and she was the first woman to receive votes of any kind for the White House, having received the support of those 227 delegates mentioned above.) Following Goldwater’s nomination for the top of the ticket, Representative William E. Miller of New York, a former prosecutor at the Nuremburg Trials, was tapped to serve as Goldwater’s running mate, the first Roman Catholic to be nominated for the vice presidency (by a major party), and to this date the only Roman Catholic to be nominated by the Republican Party for either the presidency or the vice presidency.
With control of the majority of delegates, Goldwater pushed through the convention an exceptionally conservative platform. Much of the platform focused on the alleged failures of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations in their approach to the threat of communist expansion. To counter this threat abroad, the platform demanded that the United States acquire military superiority over possible enemies and refuse to settle for mere parity. “We will maintain a superior, not merely equal, military capability as long as the Communist drive for world domination continues. It will be a capability of balanced force, superior in all its arms, maintaining flexibility for effective performance in the rapidly changing science of war,” stressed a key platform plank. Of equal importance, the platform called for a significantly smaller federal government and a return of power to the several states. “Within our Republic the Federal Government should act only in areas where it has Constitutional authority to act, and then only in respect to proven needs where individuals and local or state governments will not or cannot adequately perform. Great power, whether governmental or private, political or economic, must be so checked, balanced and restrained and, where necessary, so dispersed as to prevent it from becoming a threat to freedom any place in the land,” the platform announced. To the dismay of those civil rights advocates in the liberal and moderate factions of the party, the GOP platform also included a plank that implied less commitment to the enforcement of civil rights laws. “We recognize that the elimination of any such discrimination is a matter of heart, conscience, and education, as well as of equal rights under law,” stated the platform. Goldwater and his supporters saw the future of the Republican Party as drawing its strength from the more fiscally and socially conservative West and South and not in the liberal Northeast, which was the center of the Republican Party’s civil rights support.
The convention was acrimonious; Governor Rockefeller was booed by conservatives, and tension was high between the various factions in the party. Two speeches were delivered at the convention that are of particular importance: a deftly delivered nominating speech by Ronald Reagan, a Hollywood actor and former Democrat, who, after Goldwater, was rapidly becoming the favorite of the conservative wing; and Goldwater’s own acceptance speech. Reagan’s speech, now commonly referred to as “A Time for Choosing,” became an instant classic in American political rhetoric and a touchstone of the postwar conservative movement, as well as a launching point toward his own eventual election as governor of California. Reagan encapsulated the conservative ethos and conviction that the United States was the “last stand” in the world for the principles of individual liberty, affirming as an article of faith that the Founders opposed the “full power of centralized government.” Refusing to accept the treatment of the American people as the “masses” to whom government must supply comfort at the expense of independence, Reagan skillfully presented the renewed conservative creed. Linking the rejection of the welfare state to the ideological struggle between the superpowers abroad, Reagan intoned,
Those who would trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state have told us they have a utopian solution of peace without victory. They call their policy “accommodation.” And they say if we’ll only avoid any direct confrontation with the enemy, he’ll forget his evil ways and learn to love us. All who oppose them are indicted as warmongers. They say we offer simple answers to complex problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer—not an easy answer—but simple: If you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we want our national policy based on what we know in our hearts is morally right.
We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion human beings now enslaved behind the Iron Curtain, “Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skins, we’re willing to make a deal with your slave masters.” Alexander Hamilton said, “A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one.” Now let’s set the record straight. There’s no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there’s only one guaranteed way you can have peace—and you can have it in the next second—surrender. . . . You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin—just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard ‘round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn’t die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace?
In his peroration, Reagan effectively quoted President Franklin Roosevelt, whom he had always admired in spite of their ideological differences (differences that developed only later in Reagan’s life), by proclaiming that this generation also faced its own “rendezvous with destiny.” Roosevelt’s familiar phrase was also famously quoted by John Kennedy during his first debate against Richard Nixon in the 1960 campaign just four years earlier; but in a sense, Reagan’s reiteration of FDR’s famous line has become more familiar within our political culture, almost to the point of the phrase being commonly identified as much with Reagan as with Roosevelt. Goldwater’s acceptance speech was equally provocative, if not as memorable, save for one phrase inspired by a similar line from the Roman philosopher-statesman Cicero at the suggestion of scholar Harry Jaffa. “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” Goldwater declaimed. “And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” (Cicero actually said, “I must remind you, Lords, Senators, that extreme patriotism in the defense of freedom is no crime, and let me respectfully remind you that pusillanimity in the pursuit of justice is no virtue in a Roman.”) After Goldwater delivered this now-famous line, many were led to conclude, rightly or wrongly, that the candidate was endorsing extremism as the default policy. Hence for Goldwater’s followers, it served as an inspiring maxim that embodied the brave-hearted virtues of more rugged conservatives; but to many voters, it came off as at best a cavalier defense of provocation abroad, and at worst, a dangerous, even deadly impulse simmering just below the surface of the Goldwater campaign. It did fuel the efforts on the part of Democrats to depict Goldwater as a hothead who could not be trusted, an extremist who could precipitate total war.
President Johnson was clearly the only choice for the Democrats in 1964; thus, long before the convention, he was considered a lock. In the presidential preference primaries, Johnson actually finished well behind California governor Edmund “Pat” Brown; but in 1964, these primaries were nonbinding, expressing preference rather than commitment, and the power to nominate was still firmly in the party leadership, where Johnson held sway. There were two problems that LBJ had to face: renewed discontent in the Southern wing that could possibly lead to a Dixiecrat defection similar to what had happened in 1948; and Johnson’s prickly relationship with his attorney general, Robert F. Kennedy, brother and close adviser of the slain president. LBJ and RFK harbored mutual animosity that stemmed from Bobby Kennedy’s attempts to block Johnson’s inclusion on the bottom of the Kennedy ticket at the 1960 convention. Since that time, the two men’s disdain for each other festered: Bobby regarded Johnson as coarse, domineering, and insincere (RFK seethed at what he viewed to be LBJ’s sudden conversion on civil rights and his self-serving appropriation of what should have been his brother’s finest legacy); Johnson, although he personally liked Bobby’s brother, President Kennedy, was uncomfortable with what he regarded as the elitist Kennedy clan, and he found Bobby in particular to be an arrogant and pretentious child of privilege. Both men had more in common than they would likely admit—they were equally confident, resolute, committed, impossible to intimidate, fearless, and blunt, and whether fairly or unfairly, they shared a reputation for ruthlessness. Many believed that Bobby should be offered the vice presidential nomination, but LBJ bristled at the suggestion, tapping instead another liberal Democrat, Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota. So intent was Johnson on blocking any possible movement to draft Bobby for the vice presidency that he had Bobby’s appearance before the convention scheduled for the final day of the convention, long after the vice presidential nomination would have been settled. As it turned out, Bobby Kennedy’s appearance proved to be the most powerful moment in the entire convention, a tribute to his fallen brother and a visual reminder that the Kennedy legacy remained a strong force within the party.
Not surprisingly, the Democratic platform sought to define the Democratic Party as the party of peace. The Johnson campaign knew full well that it could easily depict Barry Goldwater as temperamentally and ideologically too reckless to serve as president. “At the start of the third decade of the nuclear age, the preservation of peace requires the strength to wage war and the wisdom to avoid it. The search for peace requires the utmost intelligence, the clearest vision, and a strong sense of reality,” the platform proclaimed. With respect to an expanded domestic agenda, the platform called for further expansion of the Social Security program to provide “medical care benefits for the aged” and new “federal programs to aid urban communities to clear their slums, dispose of their sewage, educate their children, transport suburban commuters to and from their jobs, and combat juvenile delinquency,” all promoted as part of Johnson’s Great Society initiative.
In spite of Johnson’s evident strength in the polls, his campaign took the Goldwater challenge seriously. Instead of trying to sell the American people on the need for new Great Society programs and a “war on poverty,” the campaign opted for a strategy of convincing the American people that the election of Barry Goldwater was so risky that it could even lead to a nuclear war. Goldwater’s own tendencies to issue controversial pronouncements proved to be the Democrats’ best weapon. On domestic policy, for example, Goldwater openly mused that Social Security, which had become politically inviolate to both parties, would be better were it voluntary. More critically, in the arena of foreign policy, Goldwater could not help but issue provocative, even frightening statements; at one point, he even openly speculated that nuclear weapons might help to end the Vietnam War. The Democrats’ slogan “Vote for President Johnson on November 3: The Stakes Are Too High to Stay Home” was meant to convey without equivocation the alarming message that Goldwater was dangerous. To further this effort, the Johnson campaign hired the Madison Avenue ad agency Doyle Dane Bernbach to produce its television ad campaign. The ads developed by the agency ushered in a new era of political campaign “attack ads.” Goldwater was effectively depicted as bellicose, trigger-happy, and politically immature, a crackpot loose cannon who had no business controlling the nation’s nuclear arsenal.
Although only broadcast one time, the now famous “Daisy Girl” campaign ad depicting a carefree young girl happily playing in a bed of flowers is the best example of Johnson’s negative strategy. In the ad, the little girl, in her idyllic reverie, innocently pulls the petals from a freshly plucked daisy. As her sweet voice playfully counts the petals away, another voice, this one mechanically ominous, begins a countdown of its own; suddenly the girl’s attention is drawn to something in the sky, and the picture immediately dissolves to be terrifyingly replaced by the fiery mushroom cloud of a massive nuclear explosion—all childhood, all hope, all that is living forever obliterated in a single moment. This astonishing image was followed by President Johnson’s somber voice-over punctuating the gravity and high stakes of the upcoming election. “These are the stakes,” Johnson warns. “To make a world in which all of God’s children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die.” The advertisement was met with immediate criticism, accused of being an exercise in blatant fearmongering; but its lone broadcast on September 7, 1964, even though it was quickly withdrawn, produced the intended effect. The message to the voters was clear: The election of 1964 was a matter of life and death, and the wrong choice (viz., Senator Goldwater) could lead to the end of everything.
In addition to the nuclear war issue, Johnson campaign ads pounded Goldwater for his controversial approach to domestic programs. One ad made no bones about Goldwater’s appeal to the Ku Klux Klan, even quoting, against the backdrop of burning crosses and hooded degenerates, one of the Klan’s poobahs who, after denouncing African Americans, Catholics, and Jews, encourages his followers to vote for Goldwater, saying, “He needs our help.” To Senator Goldwater and the Republicans, it was an embarrassing example of the old saying, “With friends like that, who needs enemies?” Other, less hysterical ads attacked Goldwater for voting against a measure before Congress that would expand the Social Security program to include health care coverage for the elderly. In the same ads, Johnson pledged to push the Medicare program through Congress. The president himself remained in the White House, quietly keeping his distance from the brutal ad campaign mounted by his managers.
While the Johnson campaign was aggressive, Goldwater did not help his own cause. He was inclined to speak his mind without reserve and with little concern for the consequences of his statements. Even loyal supporters would wince, knowing that reporters were recording verbatim some of his more controversial comments, usually made off the cuff. Hence, instead of enjoying the freedom to craft an effective campaign that delivered its candidate’s vision and personality to the voters, the Goldwater campaign found itself forced to squander scarce media dollars to explain, clarify, and defend Goldwater’s pronouncements. Goldwater was forced to clarify a statement indicating that he believed NATO commanders should have the option of using nuclear weapons to counter a Soviet threat without first receiving approval from the president. Goldwater also did not rule out the use of low-yield nuclear weapons in Vietnam to remove forests that provided the enemy cover. Goldwater’s ham-handed attempt at humor suggesting that it might be a good idea to lob a nuclear weapon into the men’s room at the Kremlin fell flat and did little to help Goldwater shake the image of recklessness.
The Goldwater campaign believed that its primary slogans, “In Your Heart You Know He’s Right” and “Extremism in the Defense of Liberty Is No Vice,” aptly defined its candidate as a courageous leader of strong principle who unflinchingly and unapologetically stood by his beliefs. Johnson supporters cleverly reworked these slogans to humorously but effectively raise doubts about Goldwater’s mental fitness to serve as president. Slogans such as “In Your Heart You Know He’s Nuts,” “In Your Heart You Know He Might,” and “In Your Guts You Know He’s Nuts” parodied Goldwater’s real slogan as an indictment of the Republican candidate’s risky proclivities and ideas. Joining the mudslinging, the Goldwater campaign tried hard to tie Johnson to influence-peddling scandals, but voters were either not convinced or not interested. Perhaps most significantly, strong economic growth and relatively low inflation made it difficult for Goldwater, as it does for any candidate who challenges an incumbent in times of prosperity, to convince voters that the country needed lower taxes and less government spending.
Come Election Day, President Lyndon Johnson enjoyed one of the largest landslides in American history, winning just over 43,000,000 votes (a shade over 61%) to Goldwater’s total of around 27,000,000 (approximately 38%). Johnson’s 61.1 percent of the total popular vote nationwide still stands as the highest percentage of the popular vote ever received by a candidate for the American presidency (slightly exceeding even Franklin Roosevelt’s 60.8% in 1936). Significantly, and as a further sign of future trouble for the Democrats, LBJ did lose the formerly reliable Democratic bastion, the Southern bloc, largely due to his positions and achievements regarding civil rights; Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, and South Carolina—that is, the Deep South—all went with Goldwater. Other southern states such as Virginia, Florida, and North Carolina did stick with the Democrats, but it was clear that the effects of the Dixiecrat revolt of 1948 had come back to bite the party hard, and it was equally clear now that in two of the last five elections, the Deep South had rejected the Democratic candidate. Thus the election of 1964 (prefigured by 1948) marked a shift in the South away from its former role as a Democratic bastion and the beginning of its movement toward the GOP. The only other state that Goldwater was able to win was his home state of Arizona (and there he barely won by just a 1% margin). As a historical note, due to the ratification of the Twenty-Third Amendment, the District of Columbia was for the first time allotted electors, all of whom voted for Johnson. All told, Johnson’s popular-vote landslide converted to an Electoral College victory of 486 (90%) to Goldwater’s 52 (10%), an electoral-vote figure that, not counting the elections of Washington and Monroe that had occurred well before the maturity of the modern party system, is exceeded only by FDR in 1936 (98.5%) and by Abraham Lincoln in 1864 (91%), the latter in an election that did not involve the entire Union. (Washington and Monroe, of course, enjoyed a still higher percentage of electoral votes under different circumstances, the former unanimously selected and the latter falling one electoral vote shy of unanimity within a different political landscape.) Eventually both Richard Nixon (1972) and Ronald Reagan (1984) would surpass LBJ’s Electoral College figure.
Johnson’s landslide victory provided him with the mandate to push through his Great Society programs. Yet, within a relatively short period of time, the war in Vietnam began to transform the Johnson presidency, a transformation that had been neither anticipated nor desired, and that painfully reflected one of the more turbulent eras in American history. Lyndon Johnson would, for a time, be regarded as one of the United States’ more successful presidents, owing to his accomplishments in civil rights and the promotion of social programs aimed at addressing poverty and other forms of social and political disadvantage. But before his departure from the White House, he would experience a rapid and merciless fall from grace that would make a mockery of his astonishing election victory in 1964 and drive him fully out of the presidency; and like Shakespeare’s Cardinal Wolsey in Henry VIII, having once put forth “the tender leaves of hopes” as tomorrow’s promises, like a field of bright daisies, blossomed before him, he would soon feel the “killing frost” that nips the root of ripening greatness, to which he would be left to bid a long farewell.
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