Mr. Conservative: Goldwater on Goldwater (2006)

Documentary on landmark political figure Barry Goldwater, produced and narrated by his granddaughter C.C. Goldwater. In addition to covering the man’s storied political career, and his central role in the birth of the modern conservative movement, the film also explores Barrys many hobbies and interests, such as photography, flying, and the Hopi Indians. The sections covering Barry and his family relationships, including interviews with three of his four children, and his then 95 year old brother, were to me the most interesting parts of the film, as they revel a man very much devoted and caring for his family, but who had a difficult time expressing that love verbally and physically, and whose lone wolf streak resulted in a well maintained aura of distance from them.

Other things that caught me about Goldwater from this documentary was his very charming personality, and how despite his downright unfair demonization in the 1964 presidential campaign (1), was almost universally loved and respected on both sides of the isle in the Senate. Also quite interesting is what is sometimes referred to as Goldwater’s 'political evolution'. Pro-choice and gay friendly Barry would seem out of place among those politicians we call conservative today. But Goldwater would no doubt consider that a category error, and rightly so, his conservatism was about limited government interference in all aspects of peoples sovereign lives, not the imposition of religious or political orthodoxy upon them. In the arc of his strongly held convictions played out against a changing national political conversation, he is reminiscent to me of William Jennings Bryan, who started out as the great progressive championing bimetallism and women’s suffrage, but at the end of his life time seemed regressive do to his outspoken biblical literalism and involvement in Tennessee’s famous Scopes Monkey Trial. Goldwater, as he says of himself in archival footage, started out his career in the Senate opposing the exercise of undo influence on the government by unions, and ended it opposing the same from the Churches. Here is a figure just awaiting a proper contextual re-discovery, one who while in life dubbed Mr. Conservative, might today stand for the vast center of American political thought. 4 out of 5

1. Though Johnson had practically no chance of losing that race to Goldwater, the sitting President authorized a series of hateful and scorching political adds that would insight widespread furor if used today.