1964

Party

Democratic

Republican

Candidate

Lyndon B. Johnson

Barry M. Goldwater

Electoral Count

486

52

Popular Vote

61.1%

38.5%

Key Terms: 1964 Election

  1. The "quotemanship" campaign

  2. "In you heart, you know he's right"
  3. "In your guts, you know he's nuts"
  4. "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice"
  5. "Get out of the U.N."
  6. "Low-yield nuclear bombs"
  7. Indochina/Viet Nam
  8. The Reagan speeches

     

Key Terms: Johnson Administration

  1. Landslide Lyndon

  2. NASA/JFK
  3. race riots/Black Panthers
  4. feminism/NOW
  5. Great Society
  6. HUD/VISTA
  7. Civil Rights Acts ‘64/'65
  8. housing integration
  9. Medicare/Medicare
  10. Vietnam/escalation
  11. guns and butter
  12. Tet Offensive/quagmire
  13. ant-war protests

Goldwater was famous for "shooting from the lip"; he never bothered to tailor his remarks to his audiences and rarely pondered the implications of what he was saying. The result was that he landed himself in a maze of contradictions and gave the impression of being reckless and irresponsible. In Charleston, West Virginia, a depressed area, he assailed the Employment Opportunity Act; in Knoxville, Tennessee, center of a region transformed by the Tennessee Valley Authority, he attacked public power; in St. Petersburg, home of retired people, he suggested that Social Security be made voluntary ("RIGHT CITY," announced the St. Petersburg Times, "WRONG SPEECH"); in Memphis, cotton capital of the world, he said cotton subsidies had been "forced on the farmers by Washington," and in North Dakota he told farmers a decline in price supports for farm goods would be good for them.

"i don't think too much of President Johnson," said a Vermont Republican, "but I guess I'm really afraid of Senator Goldwater."

Presidential Campaigns, Paul F. Boller, Jr., Oxford University Press, New York, 1984.