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 A Look At Your Basic Barry By Gregory McNamee NEAR-LEGENDARY ARIZONA politician Barry Goldwater has been the subject of several recent biographies, most concentrating on his influence on national conservative politics and military affairs. In both areas Goldwater was a major force indeed. Yet Peter Iverson, a professor of history at Arizona State University, is more concerned with Goldwater's origins as a native Arizonan and the long shadow he casts on local politics even today.
Whether you agree or disagree with his ideology--which has lately
taken some surprisingly liberal turns--you have to concede that
Goldwater is one of the most interesting politicians this state
has ever produced. Iverson's highly readable study makes it plain
just why that is so.
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Iverson traces Goldwater's several careers as a department-store
operator (the family business being a legacy from Goldwater's
grandfather Morris, a Jewish pioneer who came to Arizona in the
1850s); as an airplane pilot; a soldier; and as a politician,
first as a member of the Phoenix city council and then as a national
figure. In all these endeavors Goldwater labored to see Arizona
develop as an economic power, and he was successful: in tourism
and natural-resources extraction, and as an outpost of the military-industrial
complex, the state leads the Southwest, largely because of Goldwater's
lobbying all those years ago.
As he worked to gain favors for Arizona, Goldwater preached a
message of antifederalism and states' rights, decrying such things
as "the aping of socialism and the appeasing of the Communists
of Russia" and galvanizing the then-disorganized right wing
in the process. Iverson analyzes local aspects of Goldwater's
1964 run for the presidency, and he attributes Goldwater's resounding
loss (he barely carried even Arizona) in part to the ineptitude
of his homegrown campaign team at the national level. Despite
the loss, Iverson writes, Goldwater paved the way for the triumph
of conservatism that would manifest itself with Ronald Reagan's
election 16 years later.
