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Goldwater - Barry Goldwater
Copyright © 1988 by Barry Goldwater with Jack Casserly
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
v3.1To Peggy
Acknowledgments
This is to express my gratitude to all who helped us on these memoirs, including President Ronald Reagan, my brother and sister, Bob and Carolyn, and my four children, Barry Jr., Michael, Joanne, and Peggy.
To Senators Sam Nunn, Paul Laxalt, Ted Kennedy, Pat Moynihan, and Dennis DeConcini, as well as Secretary of the Interior Don Hodel, Representative Morris Udall, and Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Also, to my former colleagues Senator Paul Fannin, Senator John Tower, U.S. Attorney Richard Kleindienst, Presidential Counsel Dean Burch, Presidential Communications Director Pat Buchanan, Presidential Advisers Ed McCabe and Herb Stein, CIA Directors Richard Helms and William Colby, Arizona Governor Howard Pyle, and Phoenix Mayor Margaret Hance.
We especially wish to thank the following, who devoted an extraordinary amount of time to this work: Joy Ruth Casserly, former Ambassador Charles Lichenstein, Agnes Waldron, Carol Dickinson, Benjamin Schemmer, Robert "Rob" Simmons, James W. Smith, Doris Berry, James Locher III, Judy and Earl Eisenhower, and Nick Bakalar, our editor at Doubleday. |
A salute to U.S. Air Force colleagues, now retired, who contributed: Generals Jimmy Doolittle, Chuck Yeager, Curt LeMay, G. P. Disosway, Jack Catton, Lieutenant General William Pitts, and Colonel Leon Gray. Also, Major General Don Owens. Retired U.S. Army colleagues who also assisted were Lieutenant General Harry W. O. Kinnard, Lieutenant General William Quinn and his wife, Betty, Colonel J. H. "Trapper" Drum and his wife, Betty, and Colonel Charlie A. Beckwith, as well as others, both active and retired.
A thank-you to all of my office staff who helped. In Washington: J. Terry Emerson, Ellen Thrasher, Jim Ferguson, Gerry Smith, Dick Clifton, Donni Hassler, Dorothy Bryant, Mary Bouchard, Beth Jones, Melinda Kitchell, Marge Kraning, Luisa Ogles, Pamala Plummer, Annette Maglione, and Dot Roberson.
In Phoenix: Tom Dunlavey, Bonnie Downey, Betty Jo Phillips, Michael Seitts, Bob Greunig, and Debbie Morrell.
In Tucson: Winifred Hershberger, Dolores Johnson, and Tiana Smith.
It's almost impossible to list the hundreds of people we interviewed throughout the country and who otherwise helped us. These are some: Ambassador Edward Rowny, Denny Kitchel, Bill Rusher, F. Clifton White, Harry Rosenzweig, Ed Feulner, Lance Tarrance, Dick Wirthlin, Vic Gold, Paul Wagner, Stephanie Miller, Ben Bradlee, Sally Quinn, Phil Jones, Daniel Schorr, Ron Crawford, Tony Smith, Dean Smith, Paul Weyrich, Morton Blackwell, Kemp Devereaux, Bill Schulz, Jonathan Marshall, Ralph Watkins, Jr., Delbert Lewis, Ollie Carey, Dr. Henry Running, Dorothy Yardley, Jerry Foster, Fred Boynton, Bob Creighton, Bill Wyant, Budge Ruffner, Bert Holloway, Bob and Merilee Thompson, Katherine Dixon, Charlie Coffer, and all my pals in metals and the other workshops of the U.S. Senate. |
Thanks, too, to the many newspapers, magazines, and books whose reporting and reflections jogged my memory.
For those we have missed, we also express our sincere gratitude. God bless every one of you.
BARRY M. GOLDWATER AND JACK CASSERLY
Contents
_Cover_
_Title Page_
_Copyright_
_Dedication_
_Acknowledgments_
PREFACE
1. THE CHANGING CONGRESS
2. COMING HOME
3. A DOUBLE LIFE
4. THE POLITICS OF PLAIN TALK
5. REVOLT ON THE RIGHT
6. THE ROAD TO SAN FRANCISCO
7. THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN
8. VIETNAM: PAST AND FUTURE
9. NIXON AND WATERGATE
10. SPIES, SECRETS, AND NATIONAL SECURITY
11. DUTY – HONOR – COUNTRY
12. THE LAST RACE
13. THE FUTURE
EPILOGUE
Preface
These recollections of my life are straight from the shoulder—a last salute before the flag is lowered and the final notes of taps fade into memory. A man stands up, says his piece, then sits down. Others must judge his deeds.
We return to the American frontier—to my native Arizona when it was still a territory, to the sleepy town of Phoenix, where a boy who liked radios, planes, and all kinds of gadgets grew up. Then we fly with him around the globe in World War II and walk the halls of Congress when this virtually unknown Westerner is elected to the U.S. Senate in 1952. We follow him on an unforgettable—and to him unthinkable—journey. He campaigns for the presidency in 1964 as the Republican nominee. He loses in a landslide but returns to the Senate to fight again. Finally, limping from time on the firing line and gray with the years, he retires after thirty years in the Senate. |
My life parallels that of twentieth-century America—raw energy amid boundless land and unlimited horizons. A man rises from the ancient canyons of the Southwestern desert as his generation grows into the ages of the automobile, airplane, atom, outer space, and supercomputers.
These remembrances are drawn from deep wells. They include my personal notes about people and events written throughout my career. Thousands of pages of official papers, other notes, and hundreds of hours of dictation were also used for reference. Innumerable letters to my wife, Peggy, and our four children helped to recall our sunshine and sorrow. Old memories were refreshed by thousands of letters written over nearly forty years to people all over America and the world—from presidents and prime ministers to pumpkinheads and fellows down on their luck.
I've recorded much of these memoirs on tape, talking for nearly two years with my friend Jack Casserly. He interviewed more than a hundred of my colleagues on Capitol Hill, personal friends, and acquaintances. Jack and I have known each other a long time, and I have great trust in him. |
Our conversations have always been open, direct, and frank. Neither of us would have had it any other way. History is, after all, mostly spontaneous. My life was certainly that—without strategy or timetable.
You will meet some wonderful people—my mother, Uncle Morris, and Sandy Patch—who passed on to me their love of country, commitment to community service, dedication to the military, and interest in politics. Their personal example infused in me the courage to overcome my impulsive, independent youth. But Barry Goldwater always walked his own road, and I accept full responsibility for my life—as I do for these words.
My mother often said that humor should always find a home in our souls. So there are some funny stories about myself, my devoted brother and sister, Bob and Carolyn, and some of our friends and Arizona sidekicks.
Now, nearly a generation later, we'll go behind the scenes of my 1964 presidential race and analyze its place in the history of American politics. It's also time to make a candid appraisal of two tragedies of my time in the Senate—the Vietnam War and President Richard Nixon's involvement in the Watergate scandal. Some reflections about the role of the media are included in these events. |
We'll light a few fires under some of the black hats in and around politics—from presidents and the peacocks who surround them to senators and some of the pretenders on Capitol Hill. Perhaps tomorrow's leaders may learn from their mistakes.
There have been white hats, too. Some of my colleagues truly followed in the footsteps of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln. I'll recall some of the most dedicated of my time, both Republican and Democrat.
We'll roll back time and try to get a perspective on some of the crucial Senate decisions of the past thirty years in which I played a part, from the turbulent days of Senator Joseph McCarthy to U.S. intelligence activities and the reorganization of the Department of Defense and the American military.
The Senate has changed considerably since my first day there on January 3, 1953—for the worse. We'll see how it has been weakened by its own mistakes and new forces it does not control. Finally, we'll look at the future of the Republican Party and the prospects for our nation in the twenty-first century. |
Many people have graciously given of their time and remembrances, and I thank all of them—President Ronald Reagan, fellow senators and members of Congress, my staff, many in the military, other officials, and friends on Capitol Hill, as well as some of the Washington media. Also, longtime friends and acquaintances in Washington, Arizona, and elsewhere.
No words are adequate to describe one loss in my life—the passing of my beloved wife, Peggy, who died on December 11, 1985. We were married for fifty-one years. My life and home have been empty without her.
I still listen for her voice. When I do not hear it, I often look beyond the hills of our valley to where she's patiently waiting for me—as she faithfully did for so many years of our married life. This book is dedicated to her memory and our joyous reunion.
BARRY M. GOLDWATER
1
The Changing Congress
Now, in the twilight of my life, the past and future are struggling for my soul. My recollections of yesterday and hopes for tomorrow are at war. |
This reflects the contrariness and contradiction that come with age and three decades of sweeping change in the U.S. Congress.
Nostalgia for old days and other times rises like the sun most of my mornings. I spend warm hours remembering them. But in the evening, when the cool desert air refreshes my spirit, my blood flows faster and I shake my fist at the present. I am not happy with what I saw in my last years in Congress—nor about today or tomorrow.
Yesterday's giant leaders no longer grace the floors of the Senate. Their eloquence is stilled in its hearing rooms and halls. These men were not merely lights of intelligence, the law, and language. Many acquitted themselves with elegant personal style. Above all, they were masters of a unique craft and tools—Senate rules and procedures.
Such a man was Richard B. Russell. The gentleman from Georgia with the homespun face and courtly manner was a brilliant legal scholar and historian. Russell nevertheless produced practical, down-home Democratic politics. He cared deeply about his native state and the South but also loved the U.S. Senate—so much so that no senator in history knew more about its rules and procedures. |
Russell was as shrewd an individual as I ever met, yet well mannered to the point of allowing some colleagues to take advantage of him. He never demeaned a debate—no matter how much steam and smoke poured from the other side. The wily veteran would wait patiently, rise slowly to his feet, then demolish his opponent with a line-by-line refutation of what the challenger had said—all in a slow, easy Southern drawl.
Russell was almost the equal of another giant, Robert Taft, in his knowledge of bills before the Senate. The Ohio Republican, the GOP minority leader for many years, was a soft-spoken, scholarly man who practiced politics like a retired college professor. Taft simply overwhelmed us with his detailed understanding of the ultimate effects of each measure before us. Mr. Republican, as Taft was called, always had more answers than the questions raised. He was a brilliant legislator who lived in the shadow of defeat most of his political life. Yet perhaps no senator in history enjoyed greater professional respect. |
Lyndon B. Johnson, who became the Senate's Democratic floor leader in 1953, was an old-style wheeler-dealer who used party discipline, political payoffs, and backroom horse trading to march his troops in proper formation down the Democratic road. By God, if Johnson wanted a roll call on a bill, no senator went home at 6 P.M. You stayed until that vote. Today, senators start grumbling about six o'clock and want to go home—or to some fancy shindig.
Russell said the Congress was passing too much legislation and should address only domestic problems. He saw mostly a budgetary role for Congress and deferred to the President on foreign policy decisions. Johnson's idea of congressional achievement was to pass a ton of measures with something for everybody. That was precisely the problem with his "Great Society." Johnson equated progress with how much social legislation he could flood through Congress.
My aim has always been to reduce the size of government. Not to pass laws but to repeal them. Not to institute new programs but to eliminate old ones. Whenever possible and practical, government should be at the local and state level—not in Washington. |
The federal bureaucracy couldn't handle the runaway torrent of Great Society programs and money. Both have been badly mismanaged for the past twenty years, wasting billions of dollars while creating a rolling tide of false expectations. This has given rise to two new American classes—well-paid federal managers of poverty, health, education, and other social problems and masses of people who have accepted dependence on government and virtually turned their lives over to the bureaucracy. The result has been a managerial, financial, and moral monstrosity.
The nation finally discovered the simple truth that throwing money at problems doesn't solve them. Nor were the American people so rich that we could engage in unproductive and unresponsive giveaways—creating and even enforcing welfare addiction through a contradictory system of rules pitting husband against wife and family—while Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara escalated a seemingly endless war in Vietnam.
Today, Johnson's onetime staff and other spending partners have joined those calling for changes and financial cuts in such programs. They are two decades too late. |
Yet Johnson brought an era of discipline and work to the Senate. He makes the present Senate Democratic leadership look like pages rushing up and down the aisles delivering someone else's message.
Senator Everett Dirksen, the GOP minority leader at the time, was the antithesis of LBJ. Dirksen was a man of reason who built his power through intellectual persuasion. The old foghorn was a magnificent speaker. He towered above Johnson in debate, but his forces were smaller and the Illinois Republican detested political payola. Johnson saw it as an art form.
I'll never forget when Dirksen came to my Washington apartment one evening to try to talk me into voting for the 1964 civil rights bill. We had a drink, and he talked about history, Lincoln, and the gathering of all of us on the final day of judgment. It was as if he were singing "Amazing Grace." I was on the verge of tears. Then he said, "We need you, Barry. History awaits—but not for long. The river moves on. Time quickens."
I kept nodding yes, yes. Then I came out of his spell and said, "Hell, no, Ev. Two parts of the bill are unconstitutional. I'm going to vote against them." |
He put on his hat and coat and, I think, quoted sacred scripture. It was one of the few times I couldn't hear his rich bass voice. He left, whispering as he closed the door, "I'm going to say a prayer."
There were other old-time giants. Senator Hubert Humphrey was among the greatest. I don't think I disagreed politically with any man more in my life. But Humphrey was a fair fighter, one of the most honorable men I ever met. The Minnesotan was not a show horse, as some suggested. Hubert did his homework, worked hard in the legislative process, and never gave an inch if he believed he was right. He had a terrific sense of humor and, of course, was an outstanding speaker—for ten to fifteen minutes. Hubert's weakness was the two-hour barn burner.
It's a new Congress today. A senator does not live or die on his legislative effectiveness, as in the old days. Appearances—media attention, staff-generated bills, and professional packaging like some mouthwash—often replace legislative tenacity.
Today's senators are more competitive with one another and assert their individual prerogatives more than ever. The younger members seem to know a little about everything but not enough about anything. Senate procedure is now geared to the individual, not the institution. The Senate floor today is often chaos. It's every man for himself, his personal agenda, not completing the business of the institution. This makes one senator temporarily more powerful but often renders the entire body powerless. |
That is why I mentioned the old-time respect for rules and procedure. The basic reason for such decorum was to allow for adequate planning and scheduling of debate, to avoid the wild endings that have plagued Congress over the past decade. The agenda of Congress was the business of the nation as a whole, not the interests or reelection of the few.
Nevertheless, the Senate reflects the country. I don't believe the makeup of Americans and America is as solid as it was forty years ago. Society has become more selfish and, as a result, less dedicated to the common good. Millions hail a culture that is now more concerned with money and appearances than genuine accomplishment. I'm not saying people are not honest or productive. They are. But we've slipped as a nation.
Democrat Bob Byrd of West Virginia and Republican Bob Dole of Kansas are today's Senate leaders. Neither has mastered Senate rules and procedures or maintains the decorum of the past. The Senate floor is often a babbling marketplace of pet projects and personal promotion instead of measured debate on major issues. Neither man is within a country mile of Russell, Taft, Johnson, Dirksen, Humphrey, or others who served in the Senate over the past thirty to forty years. |
In Dole's case, he doesn't have the leadership qualities that his job as GOP minority leader requires. He tries to make everybody happy. That can't be done. I and other Republicans were unable to harden his hide. The Kansan must become tough if he is ever to become a leader.
I remember a particular incident involving Dole that occurred toward the close of 1986. President Reagan had vetoed a bill the Democrats had pushed and passed—reducing arms sales to Saudi Arabia. I knew we had the votes to approve a larger sale to the Saudis. So did Dole. But it was heading toward 6 P.M., and he was getting fidgety. Also, Byrd was threatening a Democratic filibuster. I wanted Dole to call Byrd's bluff. I was prepared to stay far into the night if necessary. Dole had wasted two or three hours fiddling around, deciding what to do. I got pretty sore, stood up and asked him, "Aren't you the majority leader?"
"Yes," Dole said.
"Well, why don't you use your power?"
He never did, and everyone went home early. |
On the Democratic side, Byrd was speaking one evening I presided as acting president of the Senate. He was running for reelection that year. Byrd got upset and used some frothy language that wasn't particularly fitting for the floor. I can't recall exactly what he was excited about, but his anger poured out as though he had just finished a bad jug of West Virginia moonshine.
God, I said to myself, I've got to get a copy of that speech from the _Congressional Record._ He said some things that will really hurt him. We'll send it along to the Republican Party in West Virginia. The offensive remarks didn't appear in the _Record_ the following morning, so I went back to the Senate reporter's room and asked, "Where's all that stuff Byrd talked about last night?"
"Oh," the reporter said, "he edited it out."
Today some senators operate regularly on this double standard—saying one thing on the floor to capture state or national media attention but deleting it from the official record so their precise remarks can't be held against them. |
Old-timers stood on what they said. I knew of no senator who regularly sanitized the record. That's now common practice for some.
On another occasion Byrd also proved to be no giant. When the Republicans gained control of the Senate in January 1981, I arrived early the morning we took over. I left my car at the parking spot on the street closest to my office to save me many steps on my bad right knee.
Later, Byrd's office phoned. Would I please move my car, since I had taken his parking place? I told Judy Eisenhower, my administrative assistant, to give Byrd's office the new total of GOP and Democratic senators. They could take the hint without us rubbing in the fact that the GOP was now in control.
Finally, Byrd himself got on the horn and in no uncertain terms told me I had taken his spot. I replied, "Bob, the Democrats just lost control of the Senate. You're out!"
In the Eisenhower era, when the Republicans won control of Congress, no question was ever raised about office space and other perks. The Democrats graciously turned over control. It was a simple matter of propriety and tradition. Those customs, sadly, are fading. It's every man for himself. |
There are two major reasons for this—the staggering growth of personal and congressional staffs as well as support agencies, and an alarmingly selfish attitude among new senators.
When I first arrived at the Senate in 1953, I was given three small rooms in the Russell Senate Office Building and a personal staff of four people. When I left at the close of 1986, my Washington office had a staff of sixteen people and was spread across ten large rooms.
In 1953 we had fewer than a thousand employees on the personal staffs of senators and the Senate general staff. There are now about 7,500 persons working for the Senate. In 1953 the entire Congress employed a total of about 5,000 people. About 37,000 persons now work there! Instead of a few dozen committees, the two houses now have more than 250 committees with much larger and new support agencies.
In the early 1950s the entire Congress worked out of six buildings. It's now spread across sixteen buildings, and there are plans to double this in coming years. |
When I first arrived at the Senate, its annual legislative appropriation was about $77 million ($315 million in 1986 dollars). Congress, as an institution, now spends about $2 billion a year.
One reason for the explosion in staff was the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970. This was meant to apportion more power to junior senators and to give each at least one good committee assignment. It eventually resulted in more subcommittees than anybody knew what to do with. Each has its own staff. The same "decentralization" of authority took place in the House. This was only a form of dispersing power. Staffs actually work mostly for their chairman, and their work is geared to his legislative goals, not those of the committee as a whole. Decentralization has become a meaningless waste of manpower and money.
The same waste is reflected in the larger personal staffs of Senate members. Some of these staffers are used for constituency work. This is good in principle but has become a major tool to win reelection. The work of some staff members is geared almost entirely toward their employer's reelection. Most members have at least one and often two public relations aides who spend their time grinding out press releases and getting the boss on radio or television. I issued very few news releases and made no effort to get on radio or TV. If something is news, it's news. In fact, I was often convinced that no news was good news. |
I remember one day coming out of a secret meeting of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. A horde of reporters, cameras, and microphones waited on the Capitol steps. Phil Jones of "CBS News" and others kept firing questions at me about the U.S. mining of Nicaraguan harbors. I kept repeating, "It's classified. Don't you fellows understand English? It's secret!"
They wouldn't take no for an answer, so I finally blew up: "Goddamn it, go find a leaker! I'm not a good leaker!"
Nicaragua was news, and they had every right to come after me. But secret intelligence meetings are not news in my book. Some of my colleagues leaked such information, placing themselves and their party above the national interest.
It's also not news when a congressman introduces five or ten pieces of legislation in one day that everybody knows are going nowhere. Yet he pours out press releases telling the special interests back home that he's taking care of them. That's cheap politics but expensive for taxpayers. |
Congress is now sending out well over a billion pieces of mail each year. That's an average of four pieces for every man, woman, and child in the nation. At one point the cost soared to $96 million a year but has recently slipped slightly below that. This is an outrageous abuse of the franking privilege—to say nothing of taxpayers' money—particularly because many senators and congressmen use it primarily to get themselves reelected. California Senator Alan Cranston is the greatest offender, with about $2 million a year in postal bills. Challengers, of course, must raise their own mailing money. This junk mail is a form of congressional welfare.
I have other objections to today's Capitol Hill but none stronger than the sheer size of congressional staffs and support agencies. This balloon is likely to be filled with more hot air as staffs and agencies increase. Unlike U.S. corporations, which are trimming their fat to meet rising competition, the federal establishment is becoming even more bloated. Massive deficit spending and personal pay raises continue in Congress while millions of Americans, displaced by the current technological revolution, are struggling for economic survival. It's an incredible display of insensitivity to what is going on across the country. |
The colossus we continue to construct in Washington is now being threatened from within. The large staffs created to help Congress are now beginning to control it. I've long asked the question: Who the hell is running Congress, we or the staffs?
Each member obviously needs some personal staff. Committee staffs are necessary to do research, funnel basic information to members, arrange hearings, and provide other backup. In principle, all this is beneficial to congressmen and senators. The actual result is that the Senate, for example, is deluged with more than five thousand pieces of legislation each year. These are being whipped up day after day by personal and committee staffers. Some of us have long described this as a lawmaking assembly line. Instead of easing the load each member carries, these staffs actually make it heavier.
Neither Congress as a whole nor conscientious individual members can keep up with the work they have initiated or that has been created for them. The average congressman introduces three dozen or more bills a year. Members don't even pretend to know what's in them or what's happening on some of the committees they serve. |
Congressmen are delegating more authority to their personal staffs. Chairmen are doing the same to their committee staffs. It has become a game of passing the buck on a grand scale. Some of these staff members now act for chairmen, discussing with many different parties what a bill may contain and even talking for the chairman with reporters. No one is really in charge.
This trend is dangerous because, to an ever increasing degree, Washington and the country are being run by people who have not been elected to office. The power on Capitol Hill, while not as faceless as the vast federal bureaucracy, is nevertheless fading from the duly elected to a nameless but central new political class. None of these people is directly accountable to the public. They often generate special interest bills in the areas in which they eventually hope to land big jobs. In Washington, power is money. These congressional power brokers later join Washington law firms, become corporate lobbyists, and return to buy influence among their old colleagues, or they take on other lucrative positions. |
There can be only one end to all this. The staffs, through interaction among themselves, will ultimately set the agenda for Congress. True, the President proposes the business at hand, and Congress disposes. Nevertheless, the agenda has many ways of shifting. Priorities are often lost in the shuffle as Congress deliberates. They are now set by strong-willed, activist staffers to an extent never imagined by the public, or even some members of Congress.
Senators, most of whom serve on four different committees, accept this weakness in order to polish their own image. Each member of the majority party becomes chairman of at least one committee or subcommittee. Many glory in the old Hill status symbol—the title of "Mister Chairman." In reality, many of these chairmanships are nothing more than a power trip.
One reason is that the work of one committee often overlaps and duplicates that of several others. Chairmen are constantly protecting their turf and fighting jurisdictional battles with other chairmen. There are dozens of ways, for example, that different aspects of the nation's commerce can be divided among committees. All this slows down getting anything done. |
The massive congressional agenda forces important issues to be inadequately addressed. Some of the nation's most important business falls through the cracks.
Senators often don't know what they're voting on. That's a lousy way to run a lemonade stand, much less our national legislative process. My bill to reorganize the Department of Defense ran to 645 pages. I had a helluva time understanding everything in it myself. Multiply that several thousand times, and you begin to have some idea of the confusion in which Congress operates.
Worse yet, members often haven't the foggiest notion of the long-range implications of a law they have just passed. Members of the federal bureaucracy wind up interpreting and finalizing the law. No one elected them. They are responsible to nobody. So off they go into the wild blue yonder!
The final weeks of almost every session of the Congress now look and sound like a bargain basement sale. The trade-offs of one piece of legislation against another are tossed back and forth across the aisles like men's and women's undergarments that don't fit. We stay up half the night—sometimes all night—like sleepless taxi drivers looking for one or two more fares. Big budget decisions involving billions of dollars are rung up like a Dollar Day sale. Bills are passed so wildly that they often contain unprinted amendments. This means Congress is passing legislation it has never read! |
Some argue that the world has become more complex, that we need more experts to help Congress. That is true in a limited number of scientific and other technical areas. But it does not justify multiplying committee staffs by eight and personal staffs by five over the past thirty-five years. We're not selecting experts; we're hiring more workers to keep the legislative ramrod line moving. If we reduced these staffs, we could, for example, help slash the thousands of superfluous bills introduced each year. I favor abolishing all subcommittees and reducing the number of standing and special full committees. Congress is not Disneyland.
Congressional reform can begin only when Congress recognizes that most of the country's problems cannot be solved by the federal government. It has to start believing that achievement lies not in the production of more and more legislation but in quality government.
A new breed of senator, born of a much more independent and self-centered attitude, walks the corridors of power today. These new senators are interested in doing a good job, but their mentality is different than that of most of their predecessors. The first priority of most is reelection. Genuine accomplishment in the Senate is secondary. It's quite a different priority than we had. |
Ours was, first, the good of the nation and, second, the good of our home state. Reelection was a distant third. Today, freshman senators no sooner land in Washington than they're raising money for their next campaign, a full six years away. Their loyalty has been transformed from their party to political action committees and their personal organizations back home. Many are less interested in what good the position can accomplish than that it become their property, their little family firm.
Reelection is the curse of Washington. For too many senators, running for office has become a full-time job. Campaign fund raising begins the very evening after Congress reconvenes following an election. That's no exaggeration. Night after night, fund-raising cocktail parties roll all across town. I am challenging two things: the importance senators attach to reelection and, equally bad, their campaign emphasis on money over real accomplishment.
The sky won't fall on a congressman or the country if he's not reelected. In fact, most of Washington forgets one-term House members in forty-eight hours. Senate one-termers are dismissed in two weeks. It takes about a month to forget that a Senate two-termer ever hit town. A fellow like me, who raised a lot of hell over three decades, Washington forgets in three months—one for every decade served. |
I spent about $45,000 in being elected to the Senate for the first time. For my last campaign in 1980, we planned to spend $750,000. However, my opponent, a multimillionaire real estate developer, was spending three or four times that much. So we had to up the ante to about $1.25 million. In the 1986 campaign, Senator John McCain, who succeeded me, spent nearly $3 million.
The general cost of electioneering has soared out of sight. In 1984, the last presidential election year, spending on national, state, and local campaigns climbed to a record $1.8 billion. That was 50 percent higher than in 1980. Inflation and other factors, especially the price of television spots, have obviously increased campaign costs. But the acceptance of the necessity of spending so much money to be elected is an ominous development.
Just before leaving the Senate, I went to the parliamentarian and asked him how many U.S. senators we have had. He replied, "One thousand seven hundred and eighty-two." He added that only five individuals had been elected to five Senate terms. All of this is put in perspective by Goldwater's wisdom: Most are remembered for only a few months! |
Should a senator think more of his own survival than accomplishing something for his country? The nation, God willing, will endure for thousands of years. The individual senator is a mosquito among our monuments.
Ben Bradlee, executive editor of the Washington _Post,_ one day spoke negatively about the Senate to me, but directed his sharpest criticism at its leaders: "The Senate has changed. It's much less powerful. The leadership has gone to hell. Who are these fellows, Byrd and Dole? C'mon, Barry. Those guys couldn't draw a crowd serving Texas chili. The Senate today doesn't have strong, great men, like in the past. There's nobody over there with stature anymore."
To that, I add a quiet "Amen."
The same is true in the House. Thomas "Tip" O'Neill, in his decade as speaker, was much of the time unable to control a bunch of Democratic Young Turks over there. These ranged from those with a TV celebrity complex like Brooklyn Democrat Stephen Solarz to aging political rockers like California's Ron Dellums, whose behavior reflected the unpredictability of the Democratic Party itself. |
In my thirty years in Congress, the most self-serving group was the black caucus, which thrived on charges of racism. It was unworthy of them in an institution where leadership and foresight were the hallmarks of innovative new solutions. Instead, they saw most black problems as civil rights issues, not questions to be solved in and of themselves. Black leadership in Congress still lives twenty to thirty years in the past. Men like Michigan's John Conyers, Jr., and Dellums peddle the past. Neither has had a new idea since he became a welfare pusher.
Times have changed for blacks and are still improving for them, despite rhetoric to the contrary. But competition is keen, especially from Asian-Americans and other minorities. Black leaders can no longer merely plead economic and cultural deprivation. It won't wash. The nation desperately needs new black leaders with ideas, ingenuity, and modern goals—not yesterday's pols who treat their people with contempt by addressing them with old slogans and tired promises of government salvation. There are about twenty hard-core leftists among the group. Some regularly spout the Marxist line. |
Leadership is not the only reason why the Congress is weaker today. Members are less dependent on their party for money and other support. The majority raise most of their own reelection funds and maintain their own organization at home. Senators, in particular, have become political entrepreneurs—more independent and with bigger egos. I can see it in my own party. Certain Republicans repeatedly voted with the Democrats, men like Jacob Javits, Connecticut's Lowell Weicker, and Charles McC. Mathias of Maryland. Mathias was a person of sharply defined principles, so I understood some of his votes. But I never comprehended why others so consistently abandoned the GOP. Their only loyalty seemed to be to themselves.
Jack Kennedy jokingly used to say, "Washington is a city of Northern charm and Southern efficiency." If Jack were with us today, let me tell you he would be the first to admit that the South is a helluva lot more efficient than the present Congress.
The Senate generally works only three days a week, Tuesday through Thursday. That's to allow members at least three days of campaigning each weekend. They speak of staying in touch with constituents, but mostly that's a euphemism for electioneering. |
I believe the Senate should put in a five-day workweek like the rest of the country. Members offer a horrible example to working men and women who are struggling to make a living. Who are they to bemoan low American competitiveness and productivity? Congressmen are far from paragons of productivity. If they worked a five-day week and limited legislation to our most important national interests, the sessions could be shortened while the electioneers could campaign to their hearts' content. And the nation would save money.
Another reason why Congress is in such disarray today is its media soapbox, particularly television news. Many congressmen view each TV appearance as free fund-raising or commercial time.
Senate policy is being made less and less on the floor and more and more in the radio-TV gallery. Also, since the Cable Satellite Public Affairs Network, or C-Span, began covering Senate floor debates a few years ago, more members are making more speeches. This has restricted Congress's work schedule even more. I could almost set my watch by the time certain senators would show up on the floor. We called it the "evening hour." This meant folks were home from work and the C-Span audience would increase. |
Instead of sitting down, talking with one another, and carving out logical public policy—a long, hard, tough process—we have senators running upstairs to the radio-TV gallery in new three-piece suits, blue shirts with white collars, and blow-dry hairdos. A good number tell the nation what they think before they announce it to their colleagues. It's a damn farce!
One day, I saw Bob Byrd on the Senate floor and didn't recognize him. His face was covered with pancake makeup that ran down his starched collar. His hair was stylishly fluffed and tinged with silver gray. He looked like he was about to step onstage in some nightclub act. I took one look, walked back to my seat, sat down, and waited for him to pull out his fiddle. Byrd was dolled up for the TV cameras. On returning to the office, I casually mentioned the incident to Judy Eisenhower, my top assistant. She related that Byrd had been a customer of the Senate beauty salon for years. I was aghast and asked:
"Do you mean in there with you women?" |
Judy laughed. "Of course, who else? He used to get his hair tinged with bluish gray. Now we call him the Silver Fox. He also gets his hair coiffed."
"Damn!" I said, shaking my head. I couldn't believe it. "I was right in voting against television in the Senate. Now we've got an actors' studio."
About ten members hustle about half of the Senate's television news attention. All one has to do is watch network television news for a few weeks, and the same faces will constantly pop up. Ted Kennedy, Pat Moynihan, Alan Cranston, and others love it. I wished to hell some of them would have given me more of the benefit of their knowledge in committee meetings.
TV news itself still has to grow up. Coverage of Washington and Congress seems to become more childish with time. "CBS News" comes to mind. Soon after President Reagan's 1986 State of the Union Address, the network's congressional correspondent, Phil Jones, asked me for an interview based on a CBS–New York _Times_ national poll covering what the President had said. Jones is a good and fair reporter. He interviewed me for about forty-five minutes. I spent most of that time explaining and supporting the President's policies. Jones posed a question about blacks not having as rosy a place in the economy as Ronald Reagan's address had portrayed. I responded that I could understand such a viewpoint. However, if blacks thought they had problems, they should come out to our Indian reservations in Arizona. I'd show them squalor that would make blacks think they were living in luxury. CBS used about ten or twelve seconds of the long interview, a "bite." The snippet they chose attacked the President and his handling of minority problems. It was a complete distortion of what I had said for forty-five minutes. |
After the program I phoned Jones and chewed him out. Yet Jones had had nothing to do with the final product. My interview had been incorporated into a larger segment handled by another CBS correspondent, Bob Schieffer. And Schieffer was being further sliced up six ways from breakfast by an editor whose job it was to package the reaction to the poll into ninety seconds or so.
I fired off a letter of complaint to the CBS brass saying my remarks had been taken out of context. Schieffer and Jack Smith, the CBS bureau chief in Washington, later came to my office and apologized about the editing. I took no comfort in their words, although I appreciated their courtesy. The fact is that all the TV network news programs use short takes or brief bursts of words in stories that run progressively shorter and shorter. Many complex Washington reports now run no more than sixty seconds on TV network news. This trend, which began about six years ago, is intellectually dishonest and outrageously unfair. Nobody's views can be responsibly summarized in ten seconds. Nor can most news stories on the federal government and other Washington developments be summarized in one minute—unless it's a few bars from our national anthem at the end of a big parade. |
Network news is not supposed to be _Wheel of Fortune._ It's primarily meant to be a serious presentation of significant events. The networks would be much fairer to the individuals interviewed—even if they answered questions for an hour—if they broadcast nothing.
The instant news analysis on TV is no better. One glaring example was the Tower Commission Report on the Iran-Contra arms deal. I watched as copies of the study were handed to White House reporters. Within minutes, network correspondents came on the tube and said, in essence:
Here it is, you 45 million Americans who regularly tune in to network news. It should be obvious, if you've been watching, that we just got this report. We haven't even read it, but the brass want us to wing it. So here goes!
It's clear that more and more control of television news is being taken from the reporters—the people out on the street covering assignments and news beats—and shifted to anonymous production executives and money men in remote New York offices and elsewhere. With so many people getting much of their news from TV, the situation cannot be ignored. |
The media believe their role and influence in Washington have increased over the past generation. I'm convinced they have lessened, as has congressional respect for reporters. When I ran for the presidency in 1964, about 1,650 journalists were accredited to Congress. Today, that number has grown to some ten thousand journalists from around the nation and abroad covering Washington. In the old days good reporters and newspapers had tremendous influence. They were more objective, with much less slanted reporting and writing.
Today, to avoid being attacked or harmed by antagonistic reporters, senators and congressmen use the media. They go over the heads of newsmen by doing their own thing—not even answering the questions put to them. Instead, they drive home their own views and agenda, often monopolizing radio and television time and not allowing newspeople to control it. Senators are now very adept at taking audiences away from reporters.
There are storm warnings on the national horizon concerning the First Amendment. It's not wise for the media to take refuge behind it so often. The average reader or listener really gets sore when newsmen leave the impression—and too many do—that they are answerable to nobody but their editors and producers. Indeed, they have obligations to the law and society in general. The media are not above the daily test of any free institution. Instead of whining about their First Amendment rights, the media must be more specific in answering the charges made against particular reporters and stories. |
I like most reporters and have never considered myself a critic of the press. However, more and more I'm disturbed by what they do and say. So are many other Americans, whose litany of complaints boils down to these: inaccurate reporting, unfairness, bias, sensationalism, invasion of privacy, unethical practices, arrogance, and an overall preoccupation with bad news.
In defending themselves as guardians of the public interest, the media would do well to remember that they represent the public's interest, not their own. The First Amendment is not primarily a media defense. It protects every American. The media must pay a price for their right to know—public accountability.
Though the media issue is a big one in Washington, it's now being challenged for attention by another growing debate—the role of lobbyists. I've never had too much trouble with lobbyists. I scared them. From my first days in Washington, I told them that I was going to vote according to my conscience. I didn't give a hoot if it meant not producing an airplane engine in Arizona or closing a military base back home. If it wasn't good for the country, I didn't vote for it. One of my last acts in the Senate was to vote against my own state's interests. The Learjet is manufactured in Tucson. I voted against buying a dozen of them for the Army Reserve. It didn't need them, and besides, it's a luxury plane. |
Political action committees (PACs) are now a dominant force in Washington. When I arrived on Capitol Hill, there were fewer than two thousand registered lobbyists. Today, there are about ten thousand. That's one hundred for every Senator and about twenty-three for each member of the House. The reasons for the growth of lobbyists are clear—the breakdown of congressional leadership and the seniority system, as well as the proliferation of committees.
Lobbyists have money, too. I always told them the same thing: If they wanted to contribute to one of my campaigns, fine. If they gave me campaign funds so I'd vote their way, they could get the hell out of the office. A lot of them never came back.
I was never put under greater pressure than by the Israeli lobby, nor has the Senate as a whole. It's the most influential crowd in Congress and America by far. The Israelis can come up with fifty votes or more on almost any bill in the Senate that affects their interests. They went to extraordinary lengths to get me to vote for them, even sending some of my dearest and closest Arizona friends, like Harry Rosenzweig, to lobby me in Washington. |
The Israelis never raised the fact of my being half Jewish, but they stressed protecting Israel in the event of war. I told them over and over, "Without a treaty, we've already promised to go to war to protect Israel. And the United States is not getting all that much out of the deal. I think Israel is doing pretty well. I don't worry about Israel when I go to sleep at night. I worry about the U.S. Constitution, which I've sworn to uphold—not Israel's constitution, not that of Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, or anybody else in the Middle East or the world."
That usually shut them up, but they often went away mad because I was not about to support everything they wanted.
Lobbying is under a lot of fire in Washington today. The major reason is Michael Deaver. The former White House deputy chief of staff and longtime friend of the President apparently saw a new California gold strike. Deaver had hardly driven out the northwest gate of the White House than he was handling multimillion-dollar accounts from foreign governments and important American firms. There was only one reason he got those contracts. He knew The Man. |
But Deaver made a mistake. He advertised his success. That's a big no-no among lobbyists. He was embarrassing the clan, so someone blew the whistle on him. Deaver was soon under criminal investigation and in court for alleged violations of conflict-of-interest laws. He was later convicted of some charges. The first rule of Washington lobbying is not to be blatant.
I happen to believe lobbyists perform a worthwhile function, but I don't condone all of their practices. They understand the issues better than most members of Congress because their interest is concentrated in a limited area. Congressmen are all over the map. I also have found most of them truthful. Because their interests compete, lobbyists also balance one another off.
I would like to see the present Ethics in Government Act more closely enforced. We should also be concerned that the country not lose the expertise of career civil service officials and military. Their technical experience cannot be easily duplicated. I've not found more federal regulation to be the answer to most problems, including this one. We need more personal ethics and greater concern about enforcing the present law. |
Several organizations offered me lobbying jobs as I was leaving the Senate. I didn't accept because I'm too cussedly independent. But I don't condemn those who practice it.
To be frank, I'm much more concerned about the "lobbying" done by members of Congress. A disillusioning example came in the waning hours of the Ninety-ninth Congress, my last in the Senate. Senators Pat Moynihan and Alfonse D'Amato launched a last-ditch battle on the floor to have the U.S. Air Force buy a jet trainer aircraft that it clearly didn't want. Why were they trying to save the unneeded plane? Because it was being built on Long Island.
The New Yorkers launched their attack with the help of two of my friends, Senators Ted Stevens of Alaska and Dennis DeConcini of Arizona. The Senate was trying to act on a $576 billion catchall spending bill before adjournment. If the Senate didn't pass the bill, the federal government would have been forced to shut down for the fifth time since October 1 because it didn't have the authority to spend money. |
House and Senate conferees had agreed earlier to fund the T-46A trainer, manufactured by Fairchild Republic Company at a plant in Farmingdale, New York. The bill released $170 million which had been appropriated in 1986 for the planes but withheld by the Air Force because it didn't want them. It also included $124 million for a dozen of the jet trainers in 1987 and $27 million for advance purchase of these trainers in 1988. In refusing the aircraft, the Air Force was trying to save taxpayers a total of $321 million. To top that, all of us were aware of a pertinent report by the Congressional Budget Office. It estimated the Air Force could save as much as another billion dollars by scrapping the T-46A and replacing it with a modified T-37, an earlier aircraft.
I've never approved of bailouts, whether it was New York City, a Long Island firm, or a company in my own state. If a city or a firm isn't hacking it, it should find a way to pay itself or declare bankruptcy, not ask for a U.S. bailout. |
I voted, for example, against the bailouts of New York City and the Chrysler Corporation. Both were simply bad precedents. Where do such subsidies stop? I am against subsidies. Congress is not a bank or loan agency. In general the feds should stay out of state and local government as well as private enterprise. Otherwise, as we have seen, it will largely take over both. Neither state and local government nor business should operate on the notion that Uncle Sugar will pay for their mistakes.
I was shocked at the senators' action because not one knows which end of the plane goes down the runway first. At the age of seventy-seven I went out to California and flew the T-46A while they sat on their butts in Washington. It's not a bad plane, but the Air Force was right. We didn't need it, so why spend the money?
We argued all night—about twenty-four straight hours. Meantime, the government shut down for four hours because of lack of funds. Stevens really had no business in the discussion. I got furious because not only did Stevens not know what he was talking about, it was clear he was involved in some new political deal. A year earlier, he had pushed through a bill involving about $800 million in boats for Alaska. In exasperation with his charade, I finally took a shot at his double dealing: "You little bastard!" |
The Senate TV microphones picked up the words, and so did the Senate Press Gallery. My sister, Carolyn, raised hell with me when she heard it back in Phoenix.
D'Amato used what we call prime time. He spoke in the evening when the folks out in Long Island could see him beating the Air Force over the head. In trying to gain Senate votes, he was really seeking votes for himself. D'Amato sounded like an idiot because all he knew about the plane was what he had read in Fairchild manuals. I got pretty mad at all the gibberish he was spouting and hollered across the aisle, "You're out of your head!"
He deserved worse, but I didn't want my sister calling me anymore.
D'Amato finally asked defiantly, "Aren't the engines for this plane made in your hometown?"
That was the reason, of course, why DeConcini had spoken for several hours in behalf of the trainer. He was lobbying for funds for his 1988 reelection campaign.
We finally worked out a compromise agreement with no additional T-46A appropriation for fiscal 1987. There will be a competitive fly-off for a future contract. |
D'Amato represents what I've been talking about. He put himself and his home state ahead of his country. There wasn't the slightest doubt about it. So did Moynihan, Stevens, and DeConcini to lesser degrees.
My final hours on the Senate floor were a real downer. I was frustrated and angry not only at this taxpayer ripoff, but at the fact that the $576 billion catchall bill was the largest appropriations measure ever passed by Congress.
The Ninety-ninth Congress was, as some members called it, "the ultimate horror movie." A number even wore buttons in their lapels describing it as "The Congress That Would Not Die" while others mocked, "Free the 99th Congress."
When we sent the fiscal 1987 budget back to the House for final approval, it weighed eight and a half pounds. The House passed it in two minutes.
I couldn't believe the headline when I picked up the Washington _Post_ the morning after the record appropriation passed. It said, "Productive Congress Goes Home."
I arrived in the U.S. Senate calling for a reduction in federal spending. In my thirty years there, I don't think I accomplished a damn thing in terms of national fiscal integrity. I'm not at all optimistic about either balancing the budget or bringing the process under control. With all the excuses Congress still manages to come up with in support of big spending, the nation is headed for financial disaster. It's a damn disgrace. |
The Congress has now put Americans about $2.5 trillion in hock. That's more than $10,000 for every man, woman, and child. It took the federal government two centuries—including the Great Depression and four major wars—to accumulate the first trillion dollars of national debt. The Congress raised those IOUs to more than $2 trillion in the first six years of this decade. American spending is out of control. The present One Hundredth Congress is speeding down the same road.
Federal entitlements—monies individuals are given by the government—have swollen beyond recognition. Since 1968, combined Social Security and railroad retirement payments have soared from $22 billion to more than $200 billion a year—an increase of 825 percent. Over the same period, federal medical care programs have skyrocketed some 2,000 percent, from $4.3 billion to nearly $100 billion. Federal employees' retirement benefits have climbed from $6 billion in 1968 to $55 billion today. The beat goes on.
Why don't I target President Reagan and other chief executives for Washington's continuous spending deficits? Because Congress has stripped the President of many of his budget powers. In 1974 Congress approved the Impoundment Control Act, which prevents presidents from refusing to approve unnecessary appropriations. Almost every chief executive from Jefferson to our times has fought spending such unneeded funds. |
Congress now governs by continuing resolutions—catchall appropriations—that mix funding and policy legislation. This produces unpredictable, irresponsible results. The hands of the President are tied. If he vetoes the resolution, the federal apparatus is shut down.
Three quarters of each federal budget are now out of the President's reach. Congress did this by setting up a prodigious network of open-ended benefit programs. In the past twenty years, federal spending on these entitlements has climbed from less than half to three fourths of the annual budget. Only one quarter can be curbed. Congress has been unwilling to adopt amendments that would restrain these entitlements. The main reason is that each of these programs builds up a strong independent constituency. To help in reelection, members embrace them out of expediency or bow to pressure instead of voting according to their consciences.
The defense budget, because it is controllable, is always under widespread pressure to be cut. I have generally supported it but tried to reduce wasteful outlays—not only in the case of the T-46A trainer but in closing unnecessary military bases. In 1987 I publicly supported an amendment to the Defense Department authorization bill by Republican Representative Dick Armey of Texas. The plan attacked parochial politics by forming a bipartisan commission that would identify unneeded bases. About thirty of the 312 major military bases across the country could be shut down at an annual saving to taxpayers of $2.5 billion. I hope Congress closes all thirty of them. |
Uncontrollable categories are not under similar financial pressure. Social Security, civil service pensions, railroad retirement payments, unemployment assistance, farm price supports, Medicare, subsidized housing, food stamps, and other public assistance remain untouched. Also unchanged are fixed costs, such as interest on the national debt, and outlays to pay off contracts already signed.
In the name of compassion, Democrats attack Reagan for cutting social programs. That's unfair and untrue. The President has tried to reduce the _rate of growth_ of these benefits. They have actually risen under this administration. The truth is that today's Americans are living off the backs of their children and grandchildren, who must eventually pay for the present excesses.
These "uncontrollables," including farm price supports, deserve much greater scrutiny. U.S. farm policy is actually a massive public rip-off, not only of the American taxpayer but of the small farmer.
The policy ostensibly aims to preserve the average family farm. In reality, most benefits go to big family or corporate farmers. Less than one dollar of every three that Washington spends on such programs goes to farmers in financial trouble. The program has another glaring contradiction. It props up the prices farmers receive for producing specified commodities such as milk, wheat, corn, rice, and tobacco, which are already in surplus. Instead of discouraging such production, federal policy is actually adding to the surplus. Today, for all practical purposes, some farmers are part of the welfare system. They receive more income from the government than from selling their products. Both are hurt. |
In the past two decades, entitlement spending has skyrocketed from $90 billion a year to about $750 billion a year. That's a 732 percent increase. The cost of one item, financing the federal debt, has jumped from $10 billion to some $145 billion a year, an increase of more than 1,000 percent.
If the nation is not to face financial ruin, Congress must recognize reality. It must reject narrow interests in favor of the nation as a whole. Above all, it must somehow become an example of sacrifice and leadership for the rest of the country. The congressman or senator cannot continue to be _numero uno._
The example of Tip O'Neill illustrates the point. The Democratic Prince of the Poor had special legislation passed before he left the House so that taxpayers would finance an office, staff, and expenses for him in Boston to the tune of more than $115,000 a year. No former House Speaker in history has ever been so well taken care of by his poker-playing pals. Oklahoma Democrat Carl Albert cut a similar deal earlier. The O'Neill giveaway includes his cut-rate rent at the downtown Federal Office Building. He also has lifetime franking privileges, which senators with even longer service do not receive. It was a handsome federal handout—even by the sweetheart standards of north Cambridge and Boston—but a horrible last hurrah for the American people. |
Congress also must restore a proper distribution or balance of functions between itself and the President. It should approve and send to the states, where it would be passed, a constitutional amendment providing the chief executive with line-item veto authority. Under such a veto, the President could reject political pork barrel programs. Congress would be forced to approve only funds that are essential to the national interest. The item veto already exists in more than forty states. It has been advocated by Presidents Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and Reagan.
The budget process is long and complex, and there are almost as many opinions about it as there are members of Congress. I don't claim to be the oracle who can bring order out of the present chaos. But it's certain we cannot let our present massive national debt stand. The world's stock markets are the most volatile indicators of that.
There are many ways to reduce both the annual fiscal budget and overall deficits. These range from subjecting entitlement programs to fixed multiyear spending levels and sunset legislation, which would expire after a limited time, to steps that would improve congressional discipline. |
Congress ignores the time schedule for changing laws and achieving savings. Since the Budget Act of the mid-1970s, the Senate has approved 276 waivers of deadlines or budget-busting limits. Continuing resolutions—letting department and agency outlays stand as they were in the last budget—substitute for appropriations bills. The volume of continuing resolutions has climbed in the past six years from a few pages to about 250 pages.
If Congress is to reduce federal expenditures, it must start with its own budget. One of the worst ways members thumb their noses at the public is the expensive junkets they take to various parts of the world at taxpayer expense. Neither I nor most Americans believe their sanctimonious speeches about international goodwill. Only a limited number of such trips are necessary.
Another way members could exhibit some leadership would be to halt the underhanded way in which members give themselves pay raises. No group in American society has more fringe benefits and allowances than congressmen—with their subsidized shoe shines and haircuts, increased travel funds and staff allowances, and political contributions that may be used for special purposes. Congress also votes itself free medical exams and prescriptions with low room and care costs at three fine hospitals—Walter Reed, Bethesda Naval, and the Air Force's Malcolm Grow. Members have many tax breaks and rich retirement benefits. |
I once paraphrased Mark Twain on the Senate floor—there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress. The conscience of the House once became so pained that members actually passed a resolution saying, "Your Congress is not a crook."
I've never believed in legislating morality or forcing members of Congress to be honorable through codes of official conduct. Such codes are just a salve for worried consciences. Our integrity must shine like a light from ourselves. It's that simple.
Arizona Representative and my longtime friend Morris Udall and I have talked about the problems of Congress many times. He has told me, "I don't know how to change our system except over time. It's self-correcting. But it often takes ten to fifteen years to change something. That's the price of living in a democracy."
In its appetite for more privilege, power, and financial control of the country, Congress is now trying to take over some of the authority of the presidency. I believe this is one of the greatest dangers facing our republic. This is not Democrat versus Republican, although some of that is present. The legislative branch is attempting to usurp the powers of the executive. |
The fight is now focused on the continuing effort by Congress to determine and control U.S. foreign policy. Our founding fathers made foreign policy an executive branch responsibility. The Constitution provides Congress with the power to raise and support the armed forces. The direction of these forces and the daily control of foreign affairs rest with the President. The founding fathers well understood that Congress lacked the capacity for swift and decisive decision making that is essential to protect the nation in times of crisis.
The failure of Congress to grant humanitarian legislation that would have hastened the evacuation of stranded Americans and friendly Vietnamese civilians as Saigon collapsed to the communists in 1975 is one example of its inability to deal with critical foreign policy and defense needs as they arise. Five hundred thirty-five secretaries of state cannot make a fast, critical decision.
Our history clearly demonstrates that presidents have always exercised independent action on crucial foreign policy decisions. As a matter of fact, presidents have used American troops in hostilities more than two hundred times without any congressional declaration of war. That is important historical precedent. The United States has actually declared war only a handful of times. |
In 1973 Congress passed the War Powers Resolution, which limited the President's ability to act in times of foreign crisis or conflict. The resolution was approved after a strongly worded veto by President Nixon, who argued that it was probably unconstitutional. The law stated that any time U.S. forces are engaged in hostilities outside the United States without specific legislative authority, these troops shall be removed if Congress so directs by concurrent resolution. If approved by both houses, the resolution does not need the President's signature.
The act says the President cannot keep troops in a hostile situation—whether in a shooting conflict or not—for more than sixty days unless Congress declares war or approves the action. An additional thirty days are allowed for troop withdrawal.
In my view, a 1983 U.S. Supreme Court decision took away Congress's power to command such a pullout. It can try to cut off money, but there will always be enough funds in the U.S. pipeline for the President to carry on such a conflict. |
If the War Powers Resolution had been on the books in the early 1940s, Congress might well have nullified President Roosevelt's sending American troops to occupy bases in Greenland and Iceland in 1941. It's reasonable to ask whether Congress would have agreed with Roosevelt's action that same year to protect British convoys west of Iceland. Nor would it have authorized our lending long-range amphibian planes and eighty navy airmen to Britain, as Roosevelt did, to help the English sink the German battleship _Bismarck._ It should be remembered that Congress renewed the military draft in 1940 by only a single vote.
Foreign policy cannot be conducted by congressional amendments. That is precisely what has been happening. Members attempt to shape and even dictate what our policies may be through appropriations restrictions and other means. Congress consists mostly of foreign policy and military amateurs. These dilettantes are actually on a much more serious mission—control of the presidency itself. |
This is not to claim the President is always right and the Congress is forever wrong. But I insist on a separation of powers rather than Congress's voting itself the authority to control the President, even in crisis. The Constitution does not give Congress that power.
There are notable cases in which Congress has created its own foreign policy. In 1986 the House voted to impose a one-year moratorium on all but the smallest underground nuclear tests. It also voted a one-year ban on the space tests of antisatellite weapons. To top it all off, the House passed a measure prohibiting funding of the deployment of nuclear systems that exceeded the expired SALT II limits, even though the Soviets had already breached these limitations and the treaty had never been ratified. It did the same thing a second time in 1987.
Ironically, these House actions have been harmful to arms control. In making concessions to the Soviets before and during periods of negotiation between Washington and Moscow, Congress encouraged the Soviets to wait us out and allow our domestic debate to help them obtain goals they would otherwise have to bargain for. |
My criticism of Congress has nothing to do with partisan politics. I would offer the same defense in behalf of a Democratic administration. We have long sent the Soviets the wrong message—that America has an irresolute, divided leadership. As a result, the Russians have adopted a foreign policy of supporting uprisings on the fringes of big-power confrontation. One of their purposes is to keep the President and Congress—and the American people—at one another's throats over war powers. The War Powers Resolution should be repealed. It attempts to deny flexibility to the President in the defense of the nation.
None of this is to suggest that there should be no checks on the President. He must be elected and, if he seeks a second term, face the people again. The Senate must approve defense funds and the appointment of cabinet and other executive officers. Ultimately, the President can be impeached if Congress believes he has grossly abused his constitutional powers. But the President is the commander in chief—not Congress. |
I'm worried that, because of the War Powers Resolution, the nation might be reluctant or unable to act at some future time of grave national need. In fact, I'm personally convinced that the law, as it now stands, is virtually certain to initiate a crisis between some future President and Congress. I believe the U.S. Supreme Court should decide this issue in the near future.
No one is more aware than I that these views will be attacked by the liberal left. That's fine with me. Perhaps some of this will smoke out their real intent—rule by the tyranny of the minority during crisis. That is my concern. In accepting their program of delay and compromise inside the country, we may be severely crippled by a united enemy striking from the outside.
If I could accomplish three things with the rest of my life, repealing the War Powers Resolution would be one of them. It would be on a par with balancing the national budget. If allowed a third wish, I would abolish the U.S. Department of Education.
Current federal education regulations would, if enforced, allow state and local school boards to do little more than police Washington's rules. The department is obsessed with race, sex, and numbers—not education. It has instituted racial quotas and mixed-sex classes and gym periods but ignored the "back-to-basics" wishes of most black and Hispanic families. The department has attacked standardized tests that indicate students' academic ability. It has tried to mandate bilingual instruction, forced universities to finance abortion, and pursued racism in reverse. It says, "Even though an applicant or recipient [of DOE grants] has never used discriminatory policies... [its] services and benefits... may not in fact be equally available to some racial or nationality groups. In such circumstances... [it] may properly give special consideration to race, color, or national origin." |
Our educational system is a national disgrace, and just about everybody knows it. The Department of Education is playing a numbers game with virtually every aspect of learning in a bureaucratic bid to create "equality." Students are not all equal—just as not all mothers, lawyers, acrobats, or baseball players are equal. We cannot continue to drag the entire national system down to pull up the stragglers. The Japanese don't, nor do the Russians. The Vietnamese, who did not speak English and came here with a vast cultural bridge to cross, are doing exceptionally well in school. They haven't complained about race or of being culturally deprived or financially impoverished. None of them is asking for a quota system or other preferences.
It doesn't take a genius to answer our educational problems: Return control of our schools to local jurisdictions. If we elected more conservatives to Congress, we might just abolish the DOE and return education to teachers and parents.
As the last days of my Senate career turned over one by one, I reflected a lot about what I learned and about my stewardship over the years. The most persistent and powerful thought of all was that loyalty is the most important virtue in politics. Not intellect, not ability, not honesty, nor even hard work. If the personal cement of loyalty comes apart in political relationships—be it to staff or other politicians—the entire democratic system breaks down. I placed loyalty above any other quality in my staff members. |
Ben Bradlee always insisted my staff "wasn't worth a shit." However, Ben never understood my method of doing things. Unlike others on the Hill, I never had anyone on my staff act or speak for me—never. I was elected. They were not. I never had a resident speechwriter, nor was my press secretary allowed to speak for me. We worked as a team and promoted from within. I retained staffers for fifteen, twenty, and more years, unlike other congressional offices, whose entrances were revolving doors.
I often sat down with the staff and discussed bills and other matters. When work was not done properly, I never minced words. I always demanded and expected the truth—not a ventriloquist and a dozen Charlie McCarthys in the office. Unlike other senators' staffs, only one member of my personal staff ever accompanied me to the floor to advise me. This was Terry Emerson, a fine constitutional lawyer, who helped me in that area. At times I did ask professional members of the Armed Services Committee to stand by in complex budget matters. No matter how tough a debate got, I never called on my personal staff to feed me information—except for Emerson on constitutional law. If I could put political heat on people, I could take it. I was never any different in public than in private except—and this was my biggest failing—I could be very impatient in private. In fact, I've been known to blow my top like an oil gusher. |
I ran an open shop. My staff knew all my weaknesses: Dixieland jazz, big bands, fancy ties, and being a soft touch. Few things gave me greater pleasure than giving presents to Arizona Indian schools and libraries, to our Senate maintenance men, Capitol police, and the girls in the office. Being a soft touch has been one of the most enjoyable aspects of my life.
I was notorious for two habits—a clean desk top and regularly eating a cheeseburger supreme on that same desk for some fifteen years. The trick was to make them compatible. I came in about seven each morning and cleaned all work off my desk by 9 A.M. These two hours were the most productive of my day. I would be off to various committee hearings and discussion on the Senate floor throughout the day. If I didn't have a luncheon engagement, the cheeseburger—topped with a slice of raw onion—would be waiting for me at my desk. I cleaned up the crumbs immediately and did more work as soon as time allowed. I don't know if a spotless desk is the sign of a clean mind, but I was convinced that the smell of a cheeseburger supreme is not particularly conducive to airing official Senate business. |
The highest reward of my public life was meeting and trying to help youngsters. I've received scores of awards—honorary doctor of law degrees, membership in the Aviation Hall of Fame, and the U.S. Medal of Freedom. None of them equaled—nor did I enjoy any of them more than—the exhilaration of giving graduation addresses at small elementary and high schools in rural Arizona. I never accepted any speaking engagement if it conflicted with the opportunity to address ten or twenty graduates at a small, out-of-the-way school. It was an incomparable thrill to go up north to Indian classrooms in particular. The students were poor, but their eyes seemed as big and appealing as those of young deer. It was the first time—and perhaps the last—that any of them would see a U.S. senator. We all knew that. It was total communion, a few moments none of us would easily forget. Nothing ever moved me as much, not even the cheers of the crowd when I received the Republican presidential nomination.
Warm, generous tributes were given me by my colleagues when I retired from the Senate. They run far too long in the _Congressional Record._ I was deeply moved by all of them. The finest words spoken about me came not on the floor but from Charlie Coffer, a Capitol Park police officer whose hero was Dr. Martin Luther King. He said, "Barry Goldwater always made me feel that it was an honor to be an American." |
There were four relationships in Congress that meant a great deal to me—with the Kennedys, Senator Paul Laxalt, and two Arizona congressmen, Mo Udall and John Rhodes. With the Kennedys, patriotism drew us together. Jack loved this country, and I believe all the Kennedy brothers' lives were affected by losing Joe in World War II. The Kennedys returned the compliment. Ted expressed their view to a friend of mine: "I think my brother, Jack, liked Barry Goldwater so much because Barry was so good at poking fun at himself. I believe just about everybody in Washington likes Barry today because he came out of his 1964 loss with grace and humor. He started over."
Laxalt was the first public official in the West to support me for the 1964 presidential nomination. I never forgot that. Some Republicans were ducking me—not Paul. Laxalt is an open man. Through the years, we've always been able to say anything to one another. I knew, for example, that Ron and Nancy Reagan were upset that I supported Jerry Ford for the GOP presidential nomination in 1976. However, I still believe I never really had a choice. He was a Republican and the incumbent President. Paul, who is very close to the Reagans, went out of his way to explain my position to them: "It was never a question of not liking the Reagans. It was Barry's perception of the presidency. He took the Washington view. If a Republican President has done a good job, you support him." |
My decision cut Ron and Nancy deeply at the time, but the hurt has healed.
Rhodes has been a friend, pure and simple. Udall has been that as well, but we've battled along party lines. Yet Mo agrees with my view of Congress today: "We've allowed ourselves to do what no civilized group would do. Any idiot can get the floor and start talking—to hell with the priorities and business of the nation. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Senate. You've got a hundred egos. Fifty of them are grandstanders who know how to get a headline, but not how to get anything done."
In my final days on Capitol Hill, I gave away most of what I owned in the office to my staff, the U.S. Air Force Academy, the Arizona Air National Guard, and friends. This included dozens of model planes that I had made over the decades. On my final day, all I walked out with was a black felt pen.
I met with each staff member privately to say thanks and see if I could help find them new jobs. A few days before Thanksgiving, some of the young ladies brought in food they had prepared at home—turkey, a sweet potato casserole, vegetables, homemade bread, and various desserts. We sat around in my office and reminisced about old times. |
On December 8 we had an open house in our office with Mexican food. People came from all over the Hill. It was a rip-roaring time with parking lot attendants, Senate shop workers, clerks, typists, and many Capitol police.
On December 11 I took my personal staff and their spouses to a candlelight dinner at Fort McNair in southwest Washington, where we had a roast beef dinner followed by chocolate mousse. We had humorous skits and readings, and a small band played dance music. Later, I took the majority and minority staffs of the Senate Armed Services Committee to a similar dinner at Fort Meyer in Virginia.
My staff gave me a present, a big Western boot filled with things I had left around the office—an old razor, shaving cream, combs, and other odds and ends. The committee staff bought me the chair to my Senate floor desk. The desk is permanent and passed to each succeeding senator. I had number XXV.
My last day was December 18. We had our annual Christmas party in the office. I wore Western boots and a bolo tie. The staff bought me an original 1848 Colt .44 with my name engraved on the strap and handle with two final words: Christmas 1986. |
I rose early the following morning to drive out to Andrews Air Force Base for a flight to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base at Dayton, Ohio. I would later fly to Phoenix. When I got out of an Air Force car near the plane at 7 A.M., the entire staff was lined up on the tarmac. All were wearing T-shirts, hats, and buttons and carried signs from my presidential campaign. They formed an honor guard, and I shook hands with each of them.
As the plane took off, the sun was just coming up. I looked back and saw one large but faded sign above the rest: "Goldwater—A Choice—Not an Echo."
I was now an echo, going home for good.
2
Coming Home
The sun is just rising over Camelback Mountain. Phoenix stands and stretches in the morning light. Looking out from our hill, I see that the old dirt roads and ditches where I played as a boy have disappeared. Arizona was a territory when I was born in this valley in 1909. We were about ten thousand people spread across the arid desert in farms of corn, cotton, and citrus. Small family vegetable patches dotted the city. The Salt and Verde rivers nourished the crops, cattle, and citizens. Because of our searing summer heat, parched dry land, and limited water supply, waves of migration passed us by, seeking richer dreams along the cooler shores of California. We were still a frontier town when, on February 14, 1912, Arizona became the forty-eighth state to enter the union. |
Today, Phoenix is the nation's tenth largest city. It's one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the country. I've been away for thirty years in the U.S. Senate, and my hometown and neighbors are, in many ways, strangers. The faces of many new homes, businesses, and people on the streets are unfamiliar. My companions for long hours these days are the doves, quail, and robins which flit across the ledge outside my study window.
My brother, Bob, and sister, Carolyn, are still here. So is my lifelong pal Harry Rosenzweig and other old friends. But Phoenix, its people, and the times have changed—and so have I.
Some of my Senate colleagues told me: You can't go home again—not after three decades on Capitol Hill, the pinnacle of power. Listen to the advice of Thomas Wolfe and others. It'd be a big mistake. You'll twiddle your thumbs.
Since coming up the hill here, I've asked myself whether I made the right decision. Much of this is a new world. So much of the old is back in Washington.
I search the horizon beyond the Estrella Mountains, asking unfamiliar questions: What will you do with the rest of your life? Where are you going at seventy-nine? |
After weeks of looking out the wide window of my study, the answer has finally come. It was drilled into me as a small boy by my mother: "Barry, all of us have to pay rent for the space we occupy on this earth."
I still have rent to pay to Arizona, my native state and home. Rent to America, my country. Rent to my family. To leave them some thoughts—one man's testament on his life and times. My mother did that for me all her life. So did my Uncle Morris during much of his. I need a quiet place to think about it, the place that has always been my home—Arizona.
The front doorbell is ringing. Lillian, my housekeeper, has gone to the door. I can hear her. She's talking with the hot tub man.
It's quite a change to go from reorganizing the Pentagon's military readiness and multibillion-dollar procurement system to taking care of hot tubs. From Senate debate on the nation's deficit spending to figuring out how to stop the robins from eating most of the seed before the doves and quail get to it. From juggling all the conflicting claims and issues about U.S. intelligence to cutting cactus in my backyard. |
It's not easy to come home. I get an odd feeling going out the door, knowing my destination is the cactus, the bird feeder, or the hot tub. My early morning journey these days is tapping my cane along the walk to the tub. A new artificial right knee now eases the ache there—the pain of twenty years finally became too much to bear—but the ache in my left knee lingers. Both came from football and basketball injuries. The pain seems to reach everywhere—my heels, shoulders, back, neck, both artificial hips, elbows, chest. A fellow comes to be philosophical about it after more than fifteen operations, including a triple coronary bypass in 1982.
Life has now come full circle. Today, people want me to give a lot of speeches. I guess some think old Goldwater has finally reached the age of reason. They give me testimonial dinners and hold public ceremonies. Arizona schools, military installations, roads, and kids are named after me. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Pentagon had a big blowout—a seventeen-gun salute, parade, and Air Force flyover. Frankly, there's been too much of this, and I'm glad it's over. It sure ain't the old days. |
Three people—my mother, an uncle, and a teacher—finally convinced me that contributing something to the community was a lot pleasanter life than getting my britches burned in all kinds of trouble. My brother, sister, and some friends stood by my side when the going got tough.
My mother was a very individualistic woman, patriotic and dedicated to her community. Uncle Morris offered decades of public service to Arizona politics and the Masonic Order. Sandy Patch, one of my instructors at Staunton Military Academy, was one of the finest military officers this country ever produced.
My mother had a greater influence on my life than any other individual. It seems worth recalling some of those early years to see how and why the character of one person can leave such an impression on another. One of the things I remember best about Mun—the three of us always called my mother that—was our annual summer trip from Phoenix to the cool beaches of Southern California.
Mun and her three desert rats drove to California every summer because Phoenix was too hot. The trip across the Arizona and California deserts took about a week. Our car was loaded with gear spread across the seats into every corner of the car—bedrolls, tents, other camping equipment, cooking utensils, a first aid kit, a rifle, and a box of shells. The stuff that wouldn't fit hung from the front and back lights, door handles, even the windshield. This included two spare tires. We had about two dozen flat tires each way. My brother, Bob, and I patched the inner tubes in mostly 120-degree heat. |
Mun wore knickers, leggings, and a beat-up old hat that she'd tilt at odd angles to make us laugh. She was about five feet four inches tall and a hundred pounds of double-barreled action. Mun was a tomboy who loved the outdoors—camping, hunting, fishing, and climbing. She was spunky and spontaneous, and she spoiled us rotten.
Dad was home minding the store. Outdoor exercise was not his game.
Mun had the uncanny ability of having fun and teaching at the same time. She kept her rifle cocked along the meandering route for coyotes, rattlesnakes, or any other critter that might bother her brood. We learned a lot about guns, camping, and protecting one another. Learning from her was never boring. None of us ever forgot those adventurous treks across the desert because she had so much time to pepper us with her wit and wisdom.
My mother taught mostly through example. One of her greatest lessons was patriotism. When Bob, Carolyn, and I were still in grade school, she used to hitch our horse to the family buckboard and drive us out to the Phoenix Indian School in early evening. |
Ash trees and water ditches lined the dusty, unpaved four miles from our house to the school, located in farm country beyond Phoenix. Scattered buildings marked the corner of Central Avenue and Indian School Road, where the students studied, worked, and played on about eighty acres. The school, under the Bureau of Indian Affairs, opened in 1891. The grounds have since been enlarged to more than a hundred acres.
Some two hundred Indian elementary and high school kids from various tribes throughout the Southwest would line up around the flagpole in the late afternoon. One of the teachers would read from a book or offer a history lesson. The students would sing the national anthem. Then the flag would slowly be lowered as one of the boys blew taps on a bugle.
Mun saluted smartly as the flag was lowered. We and the handful of white families that came in those days also saluted. Everyone followed Mun's lead because she had such a distinguished bearing. Then the Indian kids marched off to supper, and we climbed back on the wagon and drove home. |
When we arrived, mother lowered the flag on our front porch. She flew it every day. Mun folded it alone, carefully putting it away until morning.
She stitched the forty-seventh and forty-eighth stars on our flag when New Mexico and Arizona entered the union. I was only three years old at the time. She talked about that day for years.
My mother spoke a lot about our country when we were kids—our heritage of freedom, the history of Arizona, how individual initiative had made the desert bloom. Mun was a conservative Republican and proud of it.
She wanted us to know our state and took us everywhere—not only the cities, mountains, and rivers but the Navajo, Hopi, Apache, and other reservations. She would smile when we asked questions. I loved her smile. It was big, like sunrise over the Grand Canyon.
My mother took us to services at the Episcopal church. Yet she always said that God was not just inside the four walls of a house of worship but everywhere—in the rising sun over Camelback Mountain in Phoenix, a splash of water along the nearby Salt or Verde rivers, or clouds drifting over the Estrella Mountains, south of downtown. I've always thought of God in those terms, not in going to church every Sunday. I rarely, if ever, talk religion and never used it to appeal to people in politics. To me, religion is personal, private. It's an inner conviction and an inspiration to a better life. Mun lectured us a lot on our conduct toward others. She always said, "The other person may have the right to feel the way he or she does. Hear them out. You may learn something. They'll respect you for taking the time and are more likely to listen to your side." |
Her words never left me. I often recalled them in Senate debates and smiled at the reminder. Some of my opponents must have wondered why I was smiling. I never explained.
Mun was a feisty woman. She smoked, drank now and then, and used a hearty "hell" or "damn" when she was at her rope's end. Mun wore flapper dresses at parties—sometimes she and Dad kept going all night—and knickers when hunting squirrel or playing golf. She was a fine golfer, played whenever she could, and won several local tournaments. Mun also liked hunting and was a good shot even in her eighties. My mother raced around town in a car and went camping in the wilderness when most women's biggest adventure was the daily walk to the grocery store.
After arriving in Phoenix on a caboose from Illinois, she became a nurse at St. Joseph's Hospital and later served as a volunteer at various hospitals. She was the first to help a neighbor in trouble, particularly kids.
Mun left our front door open to the entire neighborhood. Men would walk in on the way home from work, greet my mother if she were there, pour themselves a drink from my father's stock, and be on their way. Neighborhood kids would raid our icebox at all hours and complain when Mun ran out of their favorite cold drinks, fruits, or candy. |
Our house exemplified her character—open, direct, honest.
The miracle is that my father—impeccably dressed, conservative, never drove a nail or car in his life, showered twice a day and slept in fresh sheets, never a bedroll under the stars, a man of measured words, tone and bearing—met, married, and loved my mother until the day he died. Yet I've never met two more different people.
The two met in the Goldwater store and bachelor Baron fell—hard. The couple married at St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Prescott, Arizona, on New Year's Day, 1907, during a snowstorm. My uncle Morris and his wife, Sallie, hosted the wedding feast. I was later to meet my own wife, Peggy, at the Goldwater store.
I was born at our home in Phoenix—their first child—on my parents' second wedding anniversary, New Year's Day, 1909.
In my terrible teens, I seemed to go from one scrape to another, like wrecking my father's whiskey barrel. It was the Fourth of July, my favorite holiday.
I tiptoed up to my mother's room, took her pistol from under the bed, sneaked downstairs, and pumped a couple of shots through the ceiling of our sleeping porch. One of them ripped a hole in Dad's barrel of whiskey, which he had put up there to age. |
Don't ask me why I did it. It's too painful to remember.
First, it was only seven o'clock in the morning, a little early to celebrate. Second, good whiskey was oozing out the bullet hole, drop by drop, and blackening the white paint on the ceiling. The whole barrel of the stuff was soon lost.
My mother never strapped and rarely punished us, but this time I knew I'd have to pay—and did.
She marched me into the living room and sat me facing our grandfather clock. Mun told me to sit there until she allowed me to rejoin the family. Those were strong words coming from her, and the tone of her voice wasn't any happier. I sat there all day, fidgeting and watching the hands on the clock, past the evening fireworks. I could hear my friends laughing and playing, but nobody talked to me. Mun brought me some sandwiches and milk, but, very unlike her, she never said a word. I was jailed for about sixteen hours.
That wasn't the first or last time I sat alone before the clock, but it was the longest. I learned then—and from all the hours later spent before those slowly circling hands—something about the value of time. It took on significance during my years in the Senate. |
Perhaps a few words of explanation are needed, because my clock time influenced the rest of my life. I had a bad reputation as a senator—entirely justified—of starting hearings and other meetings on time. That's not the rule on Capitol Hill. Many representatives and senators make hardly any appointment on schedule—except votes. Not Goldwater!
My temperamental insistence on starting meetings promptly reached new dimensions a few years ago. We used to hold Senate intelligence hearings and briefings in S-407, a secluded, secure old room at the top of the U.S. Capitol Building.
A large electric clock hung from the yellowed wall at the back of the room. It was always ten to fifteen minutes slow, an excuse for senators and witnesses who didn't show up on time.
I had pointed out the clock's failing for several years, but nobody had ever done anything about it. Some of my memos to the Capitol's administrative hierarchy on the subject were hot enough to burn.
One day I arrived for an intelligence session about fifteen minutes early. A few staff members and several witnesses were already there. Goldwater was, as usual, the only senator present. |
To the distress of the staff, I stood on a chair and pried open the faceplate of the clock with a screwdriver from my office. It was a considerable pleasure to turn the minute hand fifteen minutes ahead before closing the faceplate. The startled staff and wide-eyed witnesses had never seen a U.S. senator climb a chair to fix a clock.
Little did they know. I still wasn't happy with S-407. The room did not have a single world map. I had quietly complained about the lack of maps for years, because we often discussed different parts of the globe. Goldwater reminded the brethren that our small-town school in frontier Arizona had had maps in the fifth-grade classroom. No one listened.
In a wonderful stroke of coincidence, someone sent me a fine batch of _National Geographic_ maps covering all areas of the world. These were large, precise, modern pull-down maps used at universities and schools.
The old complainer happily arrived at S-407 one morning with some staff members helping him lug this good fortune. I carried a drill, hammer, and large screws. |
As soon as I began drilling, all hell broke loose. No mortal drills into the hallowed walls of the U.S. Capitol without specified documents and other proper permissions. One functionary after another hurried in to tell me in hushed tones to stop in the name of God. God, in the case of the Capitol, is the official architect whose name I've used all my powers to forget.
I hung the maps.
If the architect will one day proceed to Room 350, the large, locked door of my old office in the Russell Senate Office Building, I have left an additional message for him and my successors. In the last months of my tenure, I fired my pellet gun a number of times, notching my remembrance into that door. The notches are Goldwater's mark that he was there—a way of carving my initials for my long love, the U.S. Senate. The marks also speak more eloquently than I ever could of my long frustration with the Washington bureaucracy, in the Senate and elsewhere.
The grapevine tells me that Missouri's Senator John Danforth has taken up residence in my old quarters and decreed that no one will fill or cover those notches. Anytime he wants to use my pellet gun, I'll be glad to lend it to him. |
We were a happy family in a small town where folks had roots. It was easy living—not the stress that young people have today with drugs and other problems.
The biggest hardships and headaches were poverty among Hispanics, especially those coming up from Mexico, drinking among some of the Indians, and the intense summer heat, often rising above 115 degrees—and in those days we had no air conditioning.
When we weren't at the beach in California, Mun would put a mattress on our front porch and sprinkle a sheet with cold water, and we'd slip underneath, hoping a breeze would come up and keep the sheets cool. Much of the time, we'd wake up with the heat long before dawn. It often remained near 100 degrees all night and climbed as the sun rose.
The heat didn't bother me as much as it does most people. I've kept busy all my life—working, flying for thousands of hours, reading every kind of book, building hundreds of model planes and ships, tinkering with different cars, taking thousands of photographs and developing them, talking on my ham radio, camping, hiking, and canoeing across the West, assembling one new gadget after another, writing many letters, collecting and playing hundreds of Dixieland jazz records, swimming, and now soaking in the hot tub. |
Radio is the oldest of those hobbies. When I was eleven years old, my father bought me a crystal radio receiver. There were no radio stations in Phoenix then, so I spent hours picking up music and news from as far away as Los Angeles.
Once I "borrowed" some parts from a mechanic—he later beat the hell out of me and I returned them—to build my own transmitter. In those youthful days, it seemed worth staying up all night to reach other ham radio operators. At the age of twelve, I helped Earl Neilson, a radio shop owner, set up KFAD, the first commercial station in Phoenix. Radios and gadgets have been part of my life ever since.
Leroy Essex, a wonderful black man who helped around our house, built a boxine ring above the garage and a miniature golf course on our property. He lived in a little house near ours and showed me many ways to work with my hands. Leroy introduced my brother and me to John Henry Lewis, a local boxing coach. His son later became light heavyweight champion of the world. |
John put me in the ring at a local gym one day with Kid Parker, a professional fighter. The Kid was giving us a few lessons. I startled John, myself, and the Kid in the first round by walking up and hitting the fighter with a right to the jaw. The Kid was rocked back, but only for a second or so. He beat the daylights out of me. I never tried that again.
There was deep loyalty among family and friends in those days—even among some acquaintances. The devoted attachment among my brother, sister, and me has endured and grown with the years. So has my friendship with Harry Rosenzweig, a lifetime pal.
When Carolyn went out on one of her first dates, Bob and I waited up for her. We saw that this guy wanted to kiss her good-night on the front porch. I opened the door, walked out in my shorts, and pretended I was tossing my cookies, gagging and gasping for air. You should have seen this Douglas Fairbanks beat it down the street. Carolyn said she was going to kill me, but I winked and smiled—and she did, too. She knew her brother loved her deeply. |
Another time, she smooched with some guy on the front porch, but I waited until she came inside. I told her people get TB from kissing. She called me a devil, but I gave her a big silly grin and she came over and hugged me. That was loyalty. Such personal allegiance, common among early Arizonans, was later to have a major effect on my political life. My long and deep affection for Arizona and the changeless, unspoiled nature of the land was deeply rooted in this same loyalty.
My brother and I were always playing pranks. It started when we were about seven years old and has continued throughout my life—at home, on trips with friends, in the military, during political campaigns, in the Senate, and just about everywhere else.
Not too many years ago, Bob bought me an old fire truck as a Christmas present. He drove the monstrosity onto our driveway, and when I woke up in the morning I thought for a moment the house might be on fire.
We pulled many pranks on others. The two of us once showed up for a local tennis tournament on roller skates. It was a hard court, and we played the practice round on skates. The other doubles team, which was heavily favored, was at first unnerved and finally laughed so hard that we beat them. |
In 1929, at the age of twenty, I took up flying. Bob was what you might call my first victim.
I began slipping out the back door of the house about dawn. My mother later told me she had thought it was a sunrise romance with one of the town's fair maidens. Indeed, I'd found true love—the airplane.
Bob mentioned Mother's guess to me. It was time to confess. I said he could come with me some morning. Bob happily agreed. We had to make one stop first, at the small flying field southeast of town (now Sky Harbor International Airport) to look at a plane. When we arrived, I coaxed him into the passenger's seat and climbed into the cockpit. He hollered, "What the hell's going on?"
I took off and flew around Phoenix—and he has never completely trusted me since. My mother, finding out what happened, later said over breakfast, "Barry, why didn't you tell me you were taking flying lessons? I would have gone, too." She meant it.
Bob later got even with me. He gave a luncheon speech at a pro golf tournament near Los Angeles. He told the story of how his brother, Barry, was told he couldn't play a certain course because he was Jewish. Bob said, "So Barry told them it was all right—he'd play just nine holes because he was only half Jewish." |
The story got a big laugh, but the incident never occurred. The truth is, Bob was called on to speak while still jotting down notes on what to say, and he made it all up on the spot. Both of us have taken a ribbing about that one for years.
I've also been kidded about an incident that actually happened. It was a weekend episode after Army Reserve Guard training at Camp Little in southern Arizona.
Two buddies—Paul Morris and A. J. Bayless—and I crossed the border at Nogales into Sonora, Mexico. At the time the United States had Prohibition. We decided to beat the law and wash down a few tequilas and beer on the Mexican side of the border.
The three of us were fooling around, sloshing beer out of coffee cans at one another. Somebody aimed too high. Half a can splashed across the mustache, chin, and shirt of a passing Mexican policeman. My pals dashed headlong for the border—and freedom. I had my leg in a cast from an earlier fall and landed in jail.
The Mexican cops saw I had a few bucks in my pockets, so we shot craps. I lost all my money and most of my clothes. We were getting to be _amigos,_ so I asked them, as one old _amigo_ to another, the price of the bribe to get out. The jailer said twenty-five bucks. With no more money, I asked him if an American check would be all right. They said it was fine among us _amigos._ |
I had a blank check from a Phoenix bank. I knew Bayless had an account there, so I just signed his name to it.
Bayless, who became the owner of one of the state's largest grocery chains, later had the check framed. It hung in his office until he passed away.
A lot of folks did their best to get even with us. One was Paul Fannin, a neighbor, who later became governor and a U.S. senator from Arizona. He once let a pig loose in our kitchen. My brother and I knocked over just about every stick of furniture in the house trying to catch it. The place was a shambles when Mun got home. She didn't just sigh at that one. There was hell to pay.
The Goldwater Arizona saga began in 1860. My grandfather, Michel "Big Mike" Goldwater, was the first of us to set foot in Arizona. Just before the U.S. Civil War, he drove a wagonload of merchandise—pots and pans, knives and other kitchenware, shirts and sweaters, as well as ammunition and tobacco—about 275 miles across the barren California desert from Los Angeles to Gila City, a mining camp nearly twenty miles east of Fort Yuma on the Gila River. |
Michel was one of twenty-two children born to Hirsch and Elizabeth Goldwasser in Konin, Poland. Russia controlled Poland at the time of Mike's birth in 1821. The young apprentice tailor became a dissident in the Jewish underground after seeing some of the Czar's anti-Semitic pogroms—murder, arson, looting. Russian laws also denied higher schooling to Jews, and they were severely limited in their right to own land or prepare for most professions.
The teenager fled the pogroms and Poland, fearing arrest and conscription into the Russian army. He went first to Germany, then to Paris, and finally to London.
I never knew Big Mike, although my father and Uncle Morris described him as tall and good humored. They told me that Mike left Paris during the Revolution of 1848 and went to London, where he took up tailoring again. He married Sarah Nathan, who managed her father's prosperous fur business. Sarah bore two children while continuing to work. Michel set up his own tailor's shop, learned tradesman English, and Anglicized his name to Goldwater. |
Joseph, one of Michel's younger brothers, later arrived in London. He soon began talking of stories in the newspapers about a big gold strike in California. Sarah scoffed at the wild tales, but Michel was intrigued. He dreamed of great wealth and, supported by Sarah's two brothers, embarked for America with Joseph. He'd send for Sarah and the children when he struck it rich.
In 1852 Michel and Joe arrived in San Francisco—a city blackened by fire over the two previous years. This was neither the spires of London nor the wide boulevards of Paris—not even the country charm of their birthplace. They were shocked at the run-down hotels, brawling saloons, loud gambling dens, and dimly lit whorehouses.
The brothers fled the chaos of San Francisco for Sonora, about a hundred miles east in the foothills of the high Sierra. It was another free-for-all—dreamers, drinking, gambling, whores.
They were lucky and found some European Jews who staked them to a couple of hundred dollars. Mike and Joe opened a saloon. Ladies of the evening did business on the second floor. Mike and Joe ran drinks upstairs but stayed clean themselves. It was bad to mix business with pleasure. They expanded their trade to small, general items—needles and thread, soap and combs. |
Sarah and the two children, Morris and a sister, finally came to Sonora. She objected to the bordello, but the saloon was going well. Sarah had two more children but didn't want them to grow up in the wild atmosphere of Sonora. She moved back to San Francisco, which seemed less wicked to her. Mike and Sarah would be separated off and on for much of the next three decades. Mike was forever chasing rainbows, but their love endured. They eventually had eight children, including my father, Baron, the youngest. Mike retired in San Francisco when the last of his little luck ran out and his batteries began running dry.
Mike and Joe eventually went broke in Sonora and later in Los Angeles. That was the West in those days—boom and bust. They moved to La Paz, Arizona, after a gold strike there and then to the nearby town of Ehrenberg on the Colorado River.
I have a fond recollection of an afternoon in Ehrenberg during the Great Depression. Uncle Morris and I drove there in 1934.
My father had died of a heart attack five years earlier, when I was twenty years old. As the eldest son—my brother and sister were too young to assume such responsibility—I went to work in the family department store to learn the business. This meant I had to leave the University of Arizona after my freshman year. |
That was the biggest mistake of my life. It would have been much better to somehow remain in school and graduate from college. I've long had misgivings about my education being cut short. My career would have been more fulfilling if I'd had additional history, economics, and other courses. Each of us, whether we go into private business or the business of government, needs the most education we can get. Both men and women are disadvantaged—I don't care what their other background may be—if they don't fulfill their intellectual potential.
I've tried to do that through lifelong daily reading. However, many economic, historical, and other basics are needed to obtain full value from later personal study and observation.
The recollection of Uncle Morris and me at Ehrenberg is important because Morris had become a second father to me. I needed a wise counselor who would teach and guide me.
Morris was not a formally educated man, but he read and improved himself all his life. He spoke fluent Hebrew and Spanish. His mind was very quick. It was also nimble because he was a founder of Arizona's Democratic Party and mayor of Prescott for twenty years. He also helped write Arizona's state constitution and was involved in other political roles for a half century. |
Morris was not religious, although Big Mike and Sarah were Orthodox Jews. He did have deep, unshakable convictions. Morris became the Grand Master of Arizona Masonry and is still known as the "father of the Eastern Star" after sixty years in the state organization.
I invited Morris to Ehrenberg to talk about the family and our history. To know firsthand where I came from and who I was—from Europe to our house in Phoenix.
It was a hot summer day, and we arrived about noon. We got out of the car, and Morris pointed out the ghostly shell of the old family store. The two of us walked amid the ruins of the onetime clothing and dry goods establishment. It had been built in 1869. Most of the west wall still stood, but part of the north face had collapsed.
The faint outline of a glass of beer was etched on that part of the north section still standing. Scrawled in fading paint was "Beer 5¢." I guess that was a sideline venture.
We took strides to measure the store—about seventy-five feet wide and some 150 feet deep. I studied the storage loft and attic space that eased the searing heat of the summer sun. The windowframes were still firm and the doors strong. A freight loading dock boiled outside in the intense heat. |
Morris walked to where the post office had once stood in the corner of the store and said, "Two of your great-uncles, Henry and Joseph, were postmasters here. But if a fellow didn't come here himself to get his mail, he might not receive it. Joe didn't always deliver the mail. Let's say he was a better businessman than a mail carrier."
We laughed.
I kicked at some boards and other debris. Some old, unopened letters lay scattered in the dust. One was written by Herman Ehrenberg's brother in Germany. Ehrenberg had been a mining engineer and friend of Big Mike. It was Mike who had actually founded the town after floods had washed out La Paz. However, he named it Ehrenberg after Herman was ambushed and killed by mysterious assailants. Morris told me that Mike's loyalty to Herman's memory was common in those days.
Big Mike and Joe had been ambushed by Indians several times, but they managed to escape. Joe was shot once but survived. Indians stole our mules and burned our wagons, but Mike continued for years to haul wares for sale and supplies for the family across the California desert and Colorado River to Arizona. |
The meandering 1,700-mile-long Colorado River divides Ehrenberg from the California desert. The river rolls slowly down to the Gulf of California, where, drop by drop, it dies.
The Colorado is part of my chemistry. No one can understand Arizona without appreciating the river's importance to the state. There are mightier rivers—the Amazon carries more water and has a larger watershed, and the Nile is longer—but the "Red Color," as the Spanish called the Colorado after watching its waters flow between some of the region's red soil and rocks is the most-used river in the world. It has also been the center of the doggonedest water fights in U.S. political history. Arizona threatened to go to war with California over it earlier in this century. It's part of our lifeblood. As Mark Twain said: "Whiskey is for drinkin', but water is for fightin'."
Goldwater is an appropriate name in Arizona because water is gold here. The desert receives only seven and a half inches of rain a year.
I've returned to Ehrenberg many times. Our store is gone now. The two-mile main drag drowses in the sun much of the year. The population of about two thousand is mostly farmers and some retired folk living in trailer parks. |
The local landmarks are a post office, an elementary school, a gas station, two bars, a pizza parlor, and a famous old cemetery that resembles the Boot Hill of Western movies.
All the early Goldwater men were involved in politics. Mike was persuaded—he was a big backslapper and had a lot of friends—to run for a seat in the eighth territorial assembly in 1874 but was roundly defeated. He never campaigned or even put the usual notice of candidacy in the Yuma newspaper—too busy working—but he had a finger in everything. Joe was elected as a school trustee in Yuma County's second district. Henry, one of Mike's sons, made national headlines. He blew the whistle on the "Star Route Scandal," in which several contractors and two U.S. senators were involved in postal fraud. Morris became the first Goldwater to hold public office in Arizona. His long political career was launched at the age of twenty-one in 1873, when he was chosen a part-time deputy clerk in Maricopa County's district court at Phoenix. |
However, several years before that election, Big Mike had sent Morris back to San Francisco to learn the fundamentals of business. He worked in the store of a family friend. Morris returned to introduce San Francisco clothing styles and other fashionable merchandise when the family opened a new outlet in Phoenix.
He and Big Mike constructed two one-story adobe buildings with wooden floors and shingle roofs at Jefferson and First streets in the downtown district. The largest of the two structures was fifty feet by twenty-five feet—now large enough only for a barber shop. The store sold general merchandise—men's suits and shirts, ladies' dresses, and a wide array of other goods.
But business was poor, so Big Mike sold the store and recalled Morris to work with him hauling government grain and other freight.
The family struck gold in Prescott, the capital of the Arizona Territory. President Lincoln had created the territory in 1863. Big Mike opened a successful general store in the mile-high, central valley town in 1876, shortly after the nation's hundredth birthday celebration. |
The store was a landmark for some eight decades. Morris was mayor for two decades, and my father, Baron, got his start in the family business there.
Prescott was called the "The Jewel of the Yavapai." Yavapai is the name of an Indian tribe and now an Arizona county. Prescott is often described as "everybody's hometown" because it has always been known as a friendly place. It sits above the beautiful Verde Valley. The moderate climate is the best in the state—cool in the summer and mild in the winter.
In 1952, while running for the U.S. Senate for the first time, I launched my campaign from the steps of the Yavapai County Courthouse in Prescott's stately square. I did it because the town had brought luck to our family.
It was a nostalgic evening, and after the speech I walked across the square to old Whiskey Row. I made the rounds, shaking hands when my right arm wasn't busy. We talked about the old days when they had brewed beer in back of the Palace Bar and sold it for 12 ½ cents a glass. My campaign advisers later told me I had to quit such gallivanting because it would give me a bad image. Hell, let 'em gossip. That talk never bothered me. As a matter of fact, I'd vote for a candidate who openly walked into a bar and had a drink. It's the other type that I worry about. |
Friends and I often return to Prescott. Whiskey Row has gone straight. Only a few saloons operate there now. Of course, the whorehouses disappeared long ago. The Palace Bar has gone modern with fancy meals and rock music. I once wanted to own the place. In fact, I thought Peggy was going to buy it for me as a present. The Palace, with its weathered walls and fading lights, seemed to be a kind of unpretentious heaven on earth. A fellow could sit there in the cool darkness of a hot summer afternoon, his cowboy boots up on an old wooden table, hoist a cold one, and spin long tales of Arizona history with the old-timers.
For more than fifty years, I've been studying that history, visiting all parts of the state and sometimes other states for more information on our people and places. I've gone to libraries, talked with thousands of natives, studied all types of documents—from city and county to state and federal files as well as personal diaries and other sources—and rummaged through whatever family papers were available. I've taken thousands of photographs of people and places. Maybe I've been looking for myself much of the time. |
In opening my campaign for the presidency in 1964, I spoke from the same courthouse steps. And my political campaigning as a senator ended at Prescott in 1986 with a speech for Republican state and local candidates.
My political affinity for Prescott was simple—loyalty. It had been the Goldwaters' Promised Land.
It didn't seem that way at the beginning. On the very day Morris arrived in Prescott to begin his long career in the new store, tragedy struck. More than two hundred boxes of merchandise, purchased in California for the venture, were destroyed in a shipboard fire.
I've often reflected on the bad luck the family had. However, the more one comes to know the history of the West, the more such problems appear. We've been a region of boom and bust, not the romantic image of pioneers and cowboys conquering a boundless, bountiful land.
Uncle Joe was a typical example. He was involved in one of the state's saddest days, the Bisbee Massacre, and witnessed an old-fashioned frontier feud, the shoot-out at Tombstone's O.K. Corral. |
Five bandits killed four innocent bystanders in a wild shoot-out after robbing Joe's store in Bisbee. And on October 26, 1881, while running a new store, Joe saw the shoot-out between his friends, the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday, and the Clanton-McLowry gang.
Joe later told Morris that the gunfight between Doc Holliday, the Earp brothers—Wyatt, Virgil, Morgan, and James—and Billy Clanton and the McLowrys—Tom and Frank—lasted less than thirty seconds. The McLowrys and Clanton were killed. Morgan and Virgil Earp were seriously wounded.
Joe, who married twice and had three children, had more than his share of bad luck. He finally died in San Francisco near Big Mike, who was living there in retirement with Sarah.
Uncle Morris was a Jeffersonian Democrat. Through the years many people have kidded me about that, especially his role in helping to found the state Democratic Party. Yet Morris was as conservative as I am. He never cared much about what party a man belonged to, as long as he believed in it. |
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Tigerbot pretrain数据的英文部分。
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