RateItAll: The Opinion Network

Today is November 3, and on this date in history, in 1964, Lyndon Johnson, Democrat, the "peace candidate, defeated, in the presidential election, Barry Goldwater, the Republican.

This was the first presidential election in which I voted. I have posted this before. I am the cause of the Viet Nam War. The Democrats stated that if I voted for Barry Goldwater, we would have war. I voted for Barry and sure enough, we had war. The odious LBJ won in a landslide. Irishgit's review is very good on this election.

The first presidential election that I have much memory of. Goldwater didn't have a chance, running not so much against Johnson but the murdered Kennedy. Johnson's campaign was viciously masterful, successfully portraying Goldwater as a near-madman who seemed likely to reduce the world to nuclear slag. This was by no means the first campaign to use negative campaigning techniques but it was one of the most effective at them. Buttons like "Goldwater in 1864" were gentle compared to some of the nastiness out of the Johnson camp.

I was warned that if I voted for Goldwater there would be a massive escalation of the war in Vietnam, that we would ruthlessly bomb civilians, send hundreds of thousands of troops into a jungle quagmire, suffer tens of thousands of casualities, ignite inflation and tear the oountry apart economically and morally. I voted for Goldwater and they were right. I certainly learned my lesson.

This was a pathetic race. The country was not ready for a 3rd president in a few months' time. Besides, we had endured the recent tragic assassination of JFK. No Republican stood a chance now, with the grandfatherly and seemingly trustworthy LBJ recently installed. I was just a kid in those days and knew nothing at all about politics. But I lived in a strong northern Union city, and was exposed to anti-Goldwater literature. Assuming anything professionally printed had to be true, I thought of Johnson as a wonderful and honest man, and considered Goldwater to be a bigot. It wasn't until years later that I came to realize that what I'd been reading was party propoganda, and that Goldwater in '64 was quite a fine man, especially compared to the devious and earthy Johnson that we came to know more fully in the years following the election. Unfortunately, by the time I was old enough and smart enough to learn the truth about Goldwater, Barry himself started drifting to the left in many of his opinions. So once again, I was not much of an admirer of him. If we could bring back to life the Goldwater that I misjudged the first time, I'd consider voting for him. (one last note: that little girl & the nuclear blast ad that Johnson's people ran on TV was vicious and practically libelous...in the real world, it was Johnson himself who was responsible for so many of our young men being blown apart).