15 October—“Illegitimati non carborundum” (“Don’t let the bastards wear you”), you may recall from yesterday’s disquisition, is the phrase Senator Barry Goldwater is known to have muttered and uttered with some regularity during his monumentally unsuccessful presidential campaign against incumbent-by-assassination Lyndon Johnson in 1964. But of course it wasn’t his campaign slogan.

Rather, Goldwater had two official slogans: the embarrassingly obtuse “YAF [Young Americans for Freedom] Backs Barry” and the pretty clever double entendre “In Your Heart You Know He’s Right.” Who knew what YAF was? Who cared? Conservative YAFs certainly backed Barry; but, first, nobody really gave a damn, and, second, there were very, very few YAFs around, most of them attending (but not necessarily studying at) smaller private colleges in the hinterlands in order to dodge the draft. And the YA-non-Fs, also furthering their education to dodge the draft, if they took an interest in anything at all besides sex and drugs, were politically liberal to excess.

“In Your Heart You Know He’s Right,” on the other hand, alluded to both Goldwater’s right-wing extremism and his stance on the Vietnam war—end the war by whatever means it takes, saving the world from communism (of course), and get our boys home.

Goldwater’s grandparents and father were Jewish, but Barry himself, even though his middle name was Morris, was an Episcopalian, having been raised in his mother’s faith. But his campaign hoped to use his Jewish ancestry to entice (but by no means hoodwink, of course) usually liberal Jewish voters, assuming they’d vote for him simply because he was half-Jewish and relished the novelty of finally having a Jew in the White House. Had Goldwater been black, gay, or transgender, it’s what today would be called diversity. But Jewish doesn’t qualify for diversity.

Suffice to say, Goldwater’s Jewish roots didn’t attract enough votes to compensate for the ones he lost from antisemitic right-wingers who would otherwise have supported him—even though he was a card-carrying Episcopalian who made it a point to attend church when absolutely necessary.

Nor was Goldwater’s campaign helped by cutesy buttons that read “AuH2O,” some with his picture and “OUR NEXT PRESIDENT 1964.” Too smart-ass by far, albeit obvious to everyone but GOP Neanderthals, AuH2O is how a chemist would write “gold” (Au) “water” (H2O). Would you vote for anybody called AuH2O? Of course, that was before R2-D2 appeared in Star Wars and Pope John Paul II was nicknamed J2-P2.

The best part of Barry Goldwater’s campaign was what Lyndon Johnson’s campaign did to “In Your Heart You Know He’s Right.” It simply added “In Your Guts You Know He’s Nuts.” Campaign hyperbole, to be sure. Or was it? In all events, it helped Johnson win the election by a landslide: 43 million to 27 million popular votes, 486 to 52 electoral votes, 44 to six states plus DC. Goldwater carried only Arizona and five southeastern states—not including Florida with all the Jewish retirees’ votes he was counting on . . .