Barry Morris Goldwater (January 1, 1909 - May 29, 1998) was a United States politician who was a founding figure in the modern American conservative movement in the USA. Goldwater personified the shift in balance in American politics from the Northeast to the West and South. A five-term United States Senator from Arizona (1953-1965, 1969-87), he was the Republican Party's candidate for the President in the 1964 election, which he lost by a landslide to incumbent Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson. His weak showing dragged to defeat many long-term Republican officeholders from Congress to the local level. William E. Miller of New York was his running mate on the 1964 ticket.
Goldwater rejected many of the key programs and viewpoints of the New Deal and fought inside the Conservative Coalition to defeat the New Deal coalition. He was criticized in 1964 as a radical reactionary, yet he energized a conservative grass roots movement which sixteen years later helped to nominate and elect Ronald Reagan. After 1981, however, he took libertarian positions and harshly criticized the influence of the Christian Right on the Republican Party.
Goldwater was born in 1909, when Arizona was known as the Arizona Territory. His grandfather was an immigrant Jew from Poland who founded a department store in Phoenix, Goldwater's Department Store. His father was Jewish but later converted to the Episcopal Church to marry his fiancĂ©e. The family name had been changed from Goldwasser to Goldwater at least as early as the 1860 Census in Los Angeles, California. The family department store made the Goldwaters comfortably rich. Goldwater graduated from Staunton Military Academy and attended the University of Arizona for one year, where he joined the Sigma Chi fraternity.
His father died in 1929 and Goldwater took over the family business. He had progressive business ideas yet was also anti-union, but the strain of running the business become too much. Goldwater had nervous breakdowns in 1937 and 1939. He began to drink heavily, a problem he never completely overcame.
With the onset of World War II, Goldwater was commissioned in the Air Force. He became a pilot assigned to the Ferry Command, a newly formed unit that delivered aircraft and supplies to war zones all over the world; he spent most of the war flying between the United States and India, via the Azores and North Africa or South America, Nigeria and Central Africa. He also flew "the hump" over the Himalayas to deliver supplies to China. Remaining in the reserves after the war, he retired with a rank of Major General. By that time, he had flown 165 different types of aircraft.
Goldwater's son, Barry Goldwater, Jr., another life-long pilot, served as a U.S. House member from California from 1969 to 1983.