The Goldwater camp, however, was less than enthusiastic about this.   Key members of the campaign team were very much opposed. 

As Reagan recalled:

“A few days before the speech, Senator Goldwater himself called me and mentioned canceling the address. His people told him that I talked about social security, and he'd been getting kicked all over the place on the issue. I explained to him that I'd been making the speech all over the state and nobody had ever said anything.

His people apparently wanted to repeat some show of former president Eisenhower and him strolling around fields at Ike's farm outside Gettysburg. I said, ‘Barry, I can't just turn the time over to you, because it's not mine to give. A private group bought this time.’

Well, he said, ‘I haven't seen the speech or heard it, let me call you back.’ So he got a copy of the sound track and listened to it. I'm told that when he heard it, he said, ‘Well, what the hell's wrong with that?’”

In the speech (called at the time “A Rendezvous With Destiny” – now known as “A Time for Choosing, “ or simply – “The Speech”), Mr. Reagan talked about the hot-button issues of the time, from Vietnam, to the welfare state, to taxes and the federal budget.  

He said things like:

“No nation has ever survived a tax burden that reached a third of its national income.”

“Do they mean peace, or do they mean we just want to be left in peace?”

And my favorite:

“Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn’t so!”

The speech did not change the outcome of the election, of course.  But it did make an impact – short term and long term.  First, it led to a last minute frenetic flow of donations to the nearly bankrupt Goldwater campaign.   It also “electrified” the nation – though not all at once. 

Nielson ratings showed that nearly 4.3 million viewers watched the speech on October 27, 1964 – about an 8.1 percent share.  But, in a day and age long before YouTube, it went viral – at least in a ‘60s sense.  Though completely ignored as a news item by the mainstream media of the day, and with the initial audience not being all that large, it would find its way into more homes over the next week. 

The Republican National Committee – though initially reluctant about the project – paid to have it broadcast nationally two more times during the final week of the campaign.  And, beyond that, Goldwater groups paid for hundreds of rebroadcasts in local markets.  Somewhere in this process it reached my little home in the suburbs of Detroit.

On election night, Barry Goldwater was trounced by Lyndon Johnson, who won by promising not to expand the war in Vietnam like that scary Goldwater would.  There are, however, indications that Ronald Reagan’s speech may have helped to close the gap by five or more percentage points.  Not a big deal in a blowout – but this would be significant in a closer race.

For years, people talked about how “The Speech” impacted them.   Some still do.  But no one was influenced by its success more than the speaker himself: 

“The night that the tape of the speech was to air on NBC, Nancy and I went over to another couple's home to watch it. Everyone thought I'd done well, but still you don't always know about these things. The phone rang about midnight. It was a call from Washington, D.C., where it was three a.m. One of Barry's staff called to tell me that the switchboard was still lit up from the calls pledging money to his campaign. I then slept peacefully. The speech raised $8 million and soon changed my entire life.”