Hard to see Miller as a good choice.

It really didn't matter. Goldwater could have had Abe Lincoln on the ticket and he wasn't going to beat Johnson and the ghosts of Dealy Plaza.

Poor Barry Goldwater was basically in a no-win situation, so much so that his campaign slogan was the rather pathetic plea: "In your heart, you know he's right!" A good man, and a solid conservative who had planned out his candidacy as early as after the 1960 Presidential election, Goldwater had to contend with not only a solidly united Democratic Party front, but the painful memories of those four days of the previous November. In effect, running against Johnson and the larger-than-life spectre of the assassinated John F. Kennedy made the usually respected and admired Goldwater essentially into a villain in people's eyes. The truth is that Goldwater could have picked Mickey Mouse, Pope Paul VI, or even much-beloved former President Dwight Eisenhower- and all the Democrats would have had to do to counter is to play a video of the martyred JFK. William E. Miller, as fine a congressman as he was- proved to be ineffective, not because he did not try, but JFK's ghost was too much for those whose hearts were still broken by that defining tragedy. Goldwater was doomed, given any conceivable scenario, in 1964.

Bill Miller was a fairly strange choice  for VP, but Barry Goldwater was probably the most sincere man to run for president in my lifetime. He chose someone who he really thought could replace him as president. At that point in time, when the previous elected president had been shot down, it was a more serious choice, not just a political one. Goldwater vs. Kennedy would have been a great campaign, but because of the recent past, LBJ was a shoo-in and proved to be a mediocre president.