I remember Barry Goldwater and the race against LBJ very well. There is no truth to the rumor I remember Taft, though. It was the classic race of ideals. A small government, low tax, strong military, fiscal conservative, no social welfare Goldwater against a cunning politician. Johnson ran the first manipulative, negative TV ad in US history. The ad had a young girl holding a flower (a daisy, I think) and picking the petals off. It changed to a launch countdown followed by the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion. The voice over made Goldwater out to be a war monger, when it was LBJ who turned out to be the war monger. Ironically, whispers and innuendo that Goldwater was tied to the KKK (unsubstantiated, of course) magically appeared in the press. Goldwater never stood a chance after that. He made some campaign blunders, but LBJ trounced him in the media and in the election.
One of his biggest fans was Ronald Reagan, and it was Goldwater that helped Reagan shift from acting to politics.
