Within a few days of his crushing victory at San Francisco, Barry Goldwater realized that he had committed a major mistake in campaign strategy. Letters of protest from other Republicans poured into the G.O.P. National Committee, and Goldwater could see that his cold, unconciliatory acceptance speech and his explosive line about extremism had refueled, rather than dampened, the fiery convention tempers. He knew that something had to be done about it and something was.
Goldwater wrote to Richard Nixon, explained that perhaps what he should have said about extremism was...