Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. "Was Goldwater a Mistake?"

Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 14, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on April 7, 2011.

Guest: Mark Hatfield

Summary:

Senator Hatfield, from the liberal side of the Republican Party, positions himself perfectly in his opening answer: Goldwater wasn’t a mistake in a parliamentary sense, because “the Republican Party deliberately nominated [him] in open convention,” after primaries and state conventions made it clear he was grass-roots Republicans’ choice. However, “I don’t think Senator Goldwater as a person was rejected so much as was Senator Goldwater’s basic approach to problems. He tended to evoke fear.” Much is discussed–from the leadership qualities a President needs, to the different factions within the Republican Party–but Senator Hatfield, who attributes much of Goldwater’s fear-evoking to his “off-the-cuff types of responses,” never says anything that could disqualify him as the Republican vice-presidential candidate in 1968.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNRMaqXXSL0

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William F. Buckley, Jr.

Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Was Goldwater a Mistake?”