The Campaign and Election of 1964

Lyndon Johnson's nomination for the top spot on the Democratic ticket in 1964 was a foregone conclusion, with his glittering legislative success and stellar approval ratings. At his party's convention, he introduced his running mate, Hubert H. Humphrey, a liberal senator from Minnesota who gave the ticket geographic balance.

In sharp contrast, the Republicans were intensely divided between its old-guard, eastern, moderate base and the upstart, conservative insurgents from the South and West. Barry Goldwater, a deeply conservative senator from Arizona, took the nomination after a hotly contested fight. Senator Goldwater promised to reorient the party rightward, offering "a choice, not an echo" for conservatives.

In his nomination speech, he appealed to conservative "purists" and threw down the gauntlet to Republican moderates with the famous words "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." By rejecting any unity gestures toward Republican moderates, Goldwater alienated much of the party; many Republicans were uncomfortable with his nomination. Goldwater's slogan, "In your heart, you know he's right," seemed to imply that liking him was something to be ashamed of: Democrats countered, "In your guts, you know he's nuts."

Key differences between the candidates resonated through their television advertising. Johnson portrayed himself as a moderate and a peacemaker while depicting Goldwater as an unhinged radical. Goldwater's television advertising was outdated and inept while Johnson's, on the other hand, was state of the art.

The most important Johnson campaign spot has also proven to be one of the most memorable political ads ever. Aired just once as a commercial, but discussed widely in the news, it featured a little girl in a meadow, playfully pulling the petals off a black-eyed Susan flower, counting to ten, when a voice-over countdown begins, and she is blotted out by a nuclear explosion. At the end of the ad, Johnson’s voice warned: “These are the stakes—to make a world in which all of God’s children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die.”

When all the votes were tallied, most Democratic voters remained with their party, and large numbers of Republicans joined independent voters in the Democratic column. Johnson reveled in this "frontlash" appeal to Democrats and to independents and disaffected Republicans that counteracted the white "backlash" against the Civil Rights Act that passed earlier in the year. Only in the Deep South did Goldwater win over large numbers of Democrats, and that was by virtue of his opposition to Johnson's integrationist agenda.

Johnson won by the widest margin of popular votes in American history, 61.1 percent. Additionally, he won 486 to 52 in the Electoral College. Goldwater won six states, his home state of Arizona and five in the South (South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana). For Republicans, it was an electoral disaster of monumental proportions. Democrats were just as successful in Congress, netting 38 additional House seats for a 295-140 split between the parties and two more Senate seats for a 68-32 division in the upper chamber.

For Johnson and the Democrats, the election gave them an opportunity that they had not enjoyed since the early days of the New Deal: the opportunity to pass a comprehensive liberal agenda. Said one Republican: “That damn Lyndon Johnson hasn’t just grabbed the middle of the road. He’s a bit to the right of center, as well as a bit to the left of center. And with Johnson hogging the whole road, right, left and center, where the devil can we go except the ditch?”