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The Ad That Was Too Mean For LBJ To Air

Posted on
September 20, 2016
by Agree Staff
When President Lyndon Johnson faced off against Sen. Barry Goldwater, he played hardball, most famously with the Daisy ad, but also with brutal ads like "Confessions of a Republican" and "Eastern Seaboard," both of which used Goldwater's own words against him.

But there was one line which the Johnson campaign wasn't willing to cross, an ad showing Ku Klux Klan members burning crosses.

The Johnson campaign produced, and initially approved, a 20-second ad depicting a KKK cross-burning while a narrator thunders: "We represent the majority of the people in Alabama who hate ni**erism, Catholicism, Judaism and all the 'isms' of the whole world." The narrator's tone shifts as he explains, "So said Robert Creel of the Alabama Klu Klux Klan. He also said, 'I like Barry Goldwater. He needs our help.'" As the KKK marches off, the narrator urges, "Vote for President Johnson on November 3rd."

But the ad was pulled at the last minute. Since Goldwater had twice repudiated the Klan's endorsement, an Johnson aide later recalled, "It strained the available evidence. It was going too far."

The Johnson campaign still raised the KKK endorsement in the 4-minute "Confessions of a Republican" ad, in which an aggrieved Republican laments, "when the head of the Ku Klux Klan, when all these weird groups come out in favor of the candidate of my party — either they're not Republicans or I'm not." But to have run ad showing a cross-burning and using the N-word would have been far more incendiary.

The restraint was a byproduct of a private meeting Johnson and Goldwater held in the summer of 1964, in which the two candidates agreed not to stir racial divisions. While Goldwater opposed the Civil Rights Act on the states' rights grounds, he was uncomfortable stoking bigotry. He summed up their talk a few years later: "I told [Johnson] I wanted to discuss the racial problem, that I thought it would be wise not to be pushing it. Those were hot days, you know. And he agreed with me." Johnson also described the meeting in a conversation with his Attorney General: "[Goldwater] came in, just wanted to tell me that he was a half-Jew, and that he didn’t want to do anything to contribute to any riots or disorders or bring about any violence; because his ancestry, he was aware of the problems that existed in that field, and he didn’t want to say anything that would make them any worse."

In the end, Johnson didn't need such a harsh ad, especially since he was already running such a ferocious campaign on the airwaves. Johnson won 44 states, only striking out in five deep South states and Goldwater's home state of Arizona. Sometimes it pays to hold back.
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