DBWI: The Diary of President Barry Goldwater

Just finished reading the diary that the late Barry Goldwater kept during his term as President of the US.

Reading the diary was an opportunity to get into Goldwater's mind in his attempts to dismantle the New Deal, Social Security and launch an aggressive anti-Communist foreign policy. Although I saw a different side to the man, I still believe he was the worst President in American history.

Makes you wonder if there was any way to prevent Goldwater from winning the White House.
 
At least we dodged the 2nd bullet when Gov. Reagan tried to follow up as Goldwater 2.0. Thanks Udall!

Sidenote - is it me or was it weird that Arizona would get two POTUS back-to-back?

And Goldwater wasn't all bad. Imagine a US without a Dept of Enviromental Protection.
 
At least we dodged the 2nd bullet when Gov. Reagan tried to follow up as Goldwater 2.0. Thanks Udall!

Sidenote - is it me or was it weird that Arizona would get two POTUS back-to-back?

And Goldwater wasn't all bad. Imagine a US without a Dept of Enviromental Protection.

And we managed to keep Southeast Asia from going Communist. Of course, while we were focused there, we lost Iran and Iraq, and our parents still talk about the oil embargo the Soviet Union "encouraged" the other Gulf nations to lay on us during Goldwater's second term, so now we have SEATO vs. the Dubai Pact to go along with NATO vs. the Warsaw Pact.

At least the DEP managed to find the balance between domestic oil exploration and the environment. I remember when the Democrats were talking about forcing Detroit to adopt PACE, but Goldwater went with incentives to convince the Big Three to adopt changes without too much government arm twisting.

And yeah, Mo Udall...everyone had Scoop Jackson as the President in 1972. Even Mo Udall. Jackson did a pretty good job as VP, however.
 
I wouldn't say he was the worst; he didn't sit back and let the Civil War happen, like Buchanan.

Reading that diary really helps you realize his mindset. The parts about the decision to commit to Indochina, and the follow-ups to that, were the most interesting to me. He has this popular image of a mindless warmonger (which I fully agree with), but at least he knew the costs of what he was doing, and seemed genuinely torn up about it from reading the diary.
 
I disagree with his policies on the war, but on the other hand, we did not have an out-of-control CIA like we did under Udall. Goldwater was able to keep elements of his administration under control, regardless of his policies. Keep in mind, under Udall, CIA Director Turner had perpetrated the assassination of alleged leaker Frank Snepp, not to mention the bugging of the Dole and Ford campaign offices. Udall himself was unaware of this, which did not help him look any more competent in the midst of the recession we were in.
 
You know, Goldwater first ran for Senate in, I think, 1948; it was a close election, and his loss actually allowed him to run for Governor a few years later and, from there, the Presidency in 1968.

What if he had won his initial race? All that Goldwater-mania might have hit the Republicans a few years earlier, and it might have been him, and not Rockafeller, who got soudly beat by Kennedy in 1964? Running against a popular and charasmatic opponent would have been much more difficult than running as a political outsider with innovative ideas in 1968 after the chaos of the previous 4-5 years.

I could see a SENATOR Goldwater getting soundly beat in '64, and never being able to muster up the strength to get the nomination ever again.
 
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