On one hand, we can say of Goldwater, that not many fringe politicians can get the Presidential nomination of a major American political party. And attract so many passions in the process. Yet AuH20 certainly did that in what amounts to an epic fail.
After all, Barry was a product of the US Senate in which body he played no leading role in. And found himself somewhat accidentally pitted against LBJ, who had four short years ago, been the consensus choice as Senate majority leader.
But somewhat sadly, once elevated to the Presidency by an assassin, LBJ found himself able to walk on water, as any legislation he advocated passed. And a almost government by the turn of a crank followed. If LBJ were merely evaluated by passing civil rights reforms, he might be one of our greatest Presidents, but soon too many ill thought out social programs resulted also. But of course LBJ's greatest failure was, IMHO, Vietnam.
And suddenly GOP zaniness was back in Vogue. And suddenly and in somewhat succession, we got a Nixon and then a Reagan. And neither of them remotely resembled the politics of Barry Goldwater. Still later we got perhaps the mots damaging to our nation Prez in GWB, and I can only imagine how many RPM's Barry would be turning in his grave if he knew.
Well, all we can say now is that Barry was, because he lost and worse yet got blamed by generations of GOP politicians. So why is Barry relevant today?
We might better ask, what is Anarchist 420 now, because he still is, but quite frankly who cares to discuss or waste forum space on the posting habits of a total nut.
And we can also maybe look at it from the all in the family theme song, because mister we don't need a Hubert Hoover again. They all knew who they were then, grls were grls and men were men, and we all knew their world sucked then.
And now fast forward, partly because of Barry Goldwater, our world sucks too.
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