(8 of 10)
FEDERAL SPENDING : Goldwater has urged that the Government reduce its spending by 10% each year, withdrawing from virtually all welfare fields. He disapproves of social security as an interference in the private lives of U.S. citizens; but rather than repeal the program, he wants it made voluntary instead of compulsory. In the Senate he has voted four times (in 1958, '59, '60 and '61) against depressed-area bills, has strongly opposed medical care for the aged.
LABOR: One of labor's most persistent needlers, Goldwater (whose own store is unorganized) insists that he favors stronger unionsbut freer ones. He is in favor of right-to-work laws, has proposed revisions of the Taft-Hartley Act, e.g., toughening restrictions on secondary boycotts, limitations on organizational picketing. He would like a federal prohibition against union spending for political purposes, but sees nothing wrong with business firms that lobby for laws they like.
PUBLIC POWER : Goldwater voted to free gas producers from federal regulation, opposed federal ownership of Hells Canyon Dam in 1956. But he supported the $1 billion, federally sponsored Upper Colorado River Storage Project, which will mightily benefit his Arizona constituents.
FOREIGN POLICY : Goldwater has seriously suggested that the U.S. withdraw recognition of the Soviet Union. He is against financial help to uncommitted neutrals and wants to cut the overall foreign aid budget. At the same time, he would vote for greater military and technical assistance to the U.S.'s best friends abroad.
As an ardent Air Force rooter. Goldwater has persistently backed presidential requests for military spending.
The Goldwater brand of politics proved surprisingly popular, especially back home. Running for re-election in 1958 against Democrat McFarland, Goldwater breezed in by a comfortable 35,000 votes and, in a generally disastrous Republican year, returned to Washington as the fair-haired boy of U.S. conservatism. Inevitably, a boomlet began for a Goldwater place on the 1960 Republican national ticketand Barry did little to stunt its growth. "If I were offered the vice-presidential spot on the ticket," he told newsmen at a 1959 press conference in Columbus, Ohio, "I'd have to have marijuana in my veins to say I wouldn't accept it."
It was not to be: in Chicago, the Republicans nominated Dick Nixon and
Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., adopted a "progressive Republican" platform of which Goldwater bitterly disapproved. But when Arizona nominated him as its favorite son for President, he walked out on the rostrum to withdrawand to make the convention's most telling speech in pleading for G.O.P. unity, with heavy conservative overtones. "Now you conservatives and all Republicans," he cried, "I'd like you to listen to this. We've had our chance, and I think the conservatives have made a splendid showing at this convention. Let's, if we want to take this party backand I think we can some daylet's get to work." And back to work went loyal Republican Goldwater, speaking for the ticket, mostly throughout the South and Southwest, and proving himself one of the G.O.P.'s most effective campaigners.