A 44-year-old message

Here's an excerpt from a Nov. 6, 1964, TIME article detailing the last days of Sen. Barry M. Goldwater's campaign to replace Lyndon B. Johnson in the White House.

Said he to the Madison Square Garden throng: "It is a fact that Lyndon Johnson and his curious crew seem to believe that progress in this country is best served simply and directly through the ever-expanding gift power of the everlastingly growing Federal Government. One thing we all know, and I assure you I do: that's a much easier way to get votes than my way. It always has been. It's political Daddyism, and it's as old as demagogues and despotism."

Johnson was re-elected in a landslide. Democrats gained enough seats to control more than two-thirds of each chamber in the Congress with a 68-32 Senate margin and a 295-140 margin in the House of Representatives. The Federal Government grew at a rate not seen since the era of Franklin D. Roosevelt's "New Deal." The core of LBJ's "Great Society" and "War on Poverty" agendas were passed by Congress in the two years preceding Goldwater's defeat. The Johnson Administration submitted 87 bills to Congress, of which Johnson gladly signed 84.

Now 44 years later, we have an opportunity to elect another political Daddy and a Congress eager to cooperate. How is this change we can believe in when it failed to work 44 years ago?