The political climate of 1963 was fairly unique. President Kennedy been assassinated in Dallas
only months earlier, and the nation was still in mourning. Before the late President’s assassination, he
was already planning his reelection campaign, already sizing up possible opponents—namely Rockefeller
or Goldwater, and already aware that television advertising would play a larger role this go-around.
However, a,er the assassination, Johnson took over where Kennedy le, o., encouraging congress to
push through the late president’s agenda and enjoying fairly high approval ratings (Walsh). Moreover,
because of the Cuban Missile Crisis which had taken place only two years earlier, the United States was
still in fear of a nuclear attack. This, compounded by the Civil Rights movement—Johnson had
championed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Goldwater had voted against it—made for many key issues in
the Presidential Election of 1964.
Johnson secured the Democratic nomination rather easily, despite his own anxiety and
reservations about the legitimacy of his presidency (PBS). Goldwater, on the other hand, found a
formidable opponent in Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York. However, Rockefeller’s liberalism
coupled with a scandalous divorce and remarriage negatively impacted his candidacy to the point that it
was unsalvageable (Mann, 27). In the end, the ultra-conservative Goldwater took the nomination despite
his extremism which was reAected in the acceptance speech he gave at the convention, during which he
said “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also
that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue” (Mann 27).
Before Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, he had seen the advertisements for Volkswagon done
by the Erm Doyle Dane Bernbach, and was so impressed that he asked his brother–in-law turned
