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perceptive, but he had no real positive program to sell.
    Like many conservative candidates and intellectuals since, Senator Goldwater and his inner circle seemed to believe that all they had to do was expose Americans to conservative ideas and the election would be won.
    They subscribed to what Morton Blackwell, president and founder of the Leadership Institute and Virginia’s long-serving Republican national committeeman, calls the “Sir Galahad Theory of Politics”: “I will win because my heart is pure.”
    Goldwater’s supporters seemed to believe that being right, in the sense of being correct, would be sufficient to win, and that if we conservatives could logically demonstrate that our candidate was of higher character and that his policies would be better for our country, somehow victory would fall into our deserving hands like a ripe fruit from a tree.
    Goldwater ended up vaporized in a 486 to 52 Electoral College wipeout that saw President Lyndon Baines Johnson and the Democrats garner over fifteen million more votes than did Goldwater and the Republicans.
    Senator Goldwater undertook his campaign knowing he would not be president. Goldwater thought it was unlikely that the American people would accept three presidents in the space of fourteen months, but he felt his campaign could help launch the conservative movement. 13
    And in that sense he was right—the Goldwater campaign did turn out around twenty-seven million conservative voters, and it trained thousands of grassroots volunteers in the techniques of political organizing. It proved that there was a vast market for conservative ideas and conservative candidates—if they were presented correctly.
    Goldwater may have looked like he was defeated in 1964, but as George F. Will observed, those whom his ideas brought into politicsbelieved he won; “it just took 16 years to count the votes.” 14
    Goldwater’s belated “victory” ultimately benefited a new actor in national politics—Ronald Reagan.
    Reagan was not new to conservative or Republican politics. A staunch anti-Communist (although he was a Democrat at that time), he supported Richard Nixon over John F. Kennedy in the 1960 presidential race, and in 1961 he joined the board of advisors of Young Americans for Freedom (YAF). 15
    As executive secretary of YAF, I wrote a letter to Ronald Reagan in the spring of 1962, asking him to sign a fund-raising letter for us. After a month or so went by and I had received no response, I put the matter out of mind.
    Then several months later I opened an envelope that had inside a letter with a child’s crayon scribbling on it. Since it was not unusual for us to receive our fund-raising letters back telling us to go jump in a lake (or worse), I threw it away, but something made me pull it out of the trash.
    I quickly realized that it was my letter to Ronald Reagan with a handwritten note in the bottom left-hand corner, saying words to the effect of, “Dear Mr. Viguerie, I’m sorry, but I just found your letter in Ronnie’s toy chest. If you think my name will be of help, please feel free to use it.”
    Reagan traveled the country on behalf of General Electric and as a dinner speaker. He had delivered a speech titled “A Time for Choosing” to business and political groups a number of times over the course of almost two years—it was a message he believed and knew well.
    On October 27, just a week before the election, Reagan delivered a version of “A Time for Choosing” to a national TV audience on behalf of Senator Barry Goldwater’s faltering presidential campaign. You can find the full text of “A Time for Choosing” in appendix 2 of this book. 16
    Goldwater’s inner circle initially opposed the idea of a national broadcast of “A Time for Choosing,” but Houston, Texas, banker Jimmy Lyons threatened to pay for it himself, as was legal in those days.
    Eventually the controversy made its way up the food chain to Senator Goldwater, who watched the