Friday 2 August 2024

Will 2024 be a repeat of 1964 in the US election?

I am old enough (unfortunately) to remember the 1964 US presidential election and looking back on it, I can see a lot of similarities between then and now. The Republican candidate, just like today, was terrifying his opponents with what America and the world would look like under his administration. Senator Barry Goldwater came from Maricopa County in Arizona and had represented the state in the Senate since 1952. He was certainly no racist. In his first year in the Senate, he insisted the cafeteria used by Senators be desegregated so that his black female assistant could be served along with every other Senate employee.  Neither was he a friend of Russia.

Goldwater was a pilot and a WW2 veteran (he flew transport aircraft to India and Africa) and was regarded as the "Grand Old Man" of the Republican Party and one of the nation's most respected conservatives. In short, he was as different to Donald Trump as could be.

Yet there were huge fears in Britain and Europe that he might win. I remember them well. Why so?

What struck fear in his opponents was his attitude to foreign policy and in particular his almost casual advocacy of using nuclear weapons to further American goals.

In a speech in May 1964, Goldwater suggested that nuclear weapons should be treated more like conventional weapons and used in Vietnam, specifically that they should have been used at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 (where the French suffered a humiliating defeat) to defoliate trees.

His rhetoric on nuclear war was seen as extremely hard-line and he is quoted as suggesting in a throw-away comment: "Let's lob one into the men's room at the Kremlin."  Goldwater was in favour of allowing commanders in the field to have the authority to use tactical nuclear weapons (which he called "small conventional nuclear weapons") without any presidential oversight. 

He could easily have plunged the world into a nuclear war. The Democrats under Lyndon Johnson released a terrifying ad to scare voters into voting against Goldwater which you can see HERE.

Ultimately, Goldwater received a meagre 38% of the popular vote and carried just six states: Arizona, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina. I mention this to show that when faced with an extremist the American people pulled back from the brink and there is hope they might do so again in November.

There isn't a risk of nuclear war because Trump is likely to roll over, abandon his allies and offer Putin and Xi Jing Ping everything they want but life in the US would become increasingly like the dictatorships that Trump so admires. It's a terrible prospect. This election, the Democrats are using the words of senior Republicans to show what a threat he is. Watch this video of people on his side who are now supporting Trump as a candidate for POTUS! The actual video has been deleted from Twitter once, presumably on the instructions of Elon Musk:

None of them will afterward be able to claim they didn't know what Trump was like. 

Fortunately, the polls are showing signs that Americans are finally coming to their senses. Recent surveys put Kamala Harris in the lead in the swing states:

The world breathed a sigh of relief in 1964 when Goldwater lost, let's hope we will be able to do the same this November. 

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