I find more and more parents talking about why they do not want to have Donald Trump having an influence on our culture through the Oval Office. They do not wish to have their kids in anyway find the antics of Trump appealing or repeated.
Which brings me to the article I read today from Verdict which showed how Barry Goldwater, a real conservative, was also more in line with modern-day sensibilities and owned some humility when he was the GOP nominee in 1964.
While always self-confident and self-assured, Goldwater was also self-effacing and candid to a fault. Take his interview with seasoned political reporter Stewart Alsop for The Saturday Evening Post (August 31, 1963) entitled “Can Goldwater Win in 64?” Here the senator was being very much himself, as he piloted the reporter around Arizona in his small two-engine airplane. A small sample of Goldwater’s statements from Alsop’s article provide a pretty good sense of the man and the nature of his outspokenness:
On the possibility that he might actually wake up to be president one day: “Frankly, it scares the hell out of me.”
On his own intelligence quotient: “You know, I haven’t got a really first-class brain.”
On his leaving college in freshman year to become a salesman in the family store: “Worse mistake I ever made. But then I guess a peddler doesn’t need a higher education.”
On the possibility that he might emulate Lyndon Johnson, and safeguard his Senate seat by running both for the Senate and the presidency in 1964: “No, I can’t do that after what I said about Lyndon in 1960 – they ran me out of the country. But if I hadn’t opened my big mouth so loud, I might do it.”
On how he achieves his vast literary output‑he’s produced three best-selling books and innumerable magazine articles, and he signs a thrice-a-week column that goes to about 175 papers: “Oh, hell, I’ve got ghosts all over the place. I pick up a lot of Fletcher Canal Knebel’s stuff too. I sent him an item about Bobby Kennedy’s pool, and he sent me two bucks. I sent it right back – I wrote him that if we began paying each other off, I’d owe him $2000 right off the bat.”
On a draft he had written for a humorous speech: “I took it back to the apartment and read it to my wife Peggy and a couple of her girlfriends. I thought they’d be rolling on the floor, but they never cracked a smile. So I said, what the hell’s the matter and Peggy said, look, this is a sophisticated audience, though not a lot of lame brains like you, they don’t spend their time looking at TV Westerns. You can’t give them that corn.”
CAFFEINATED POLITICS 