Senator Goldwater made it pretty clear in his acceptance speech what his hopes and dreams for America were all about. But what about the other major party? You know, the one that in fact ended up winning the general election? What did they have to say?

The answers are all here, in LBJ's "Remarks Before the National Convention Upon Accepting the Nomination" speech from 1964.

It's wild, it's wacky, it's… actually neither of those things.

But it's very helpful if we want to get a good picture of the presidential choice that voters had to make in 1964. These two dudes clearly—clearly—agreed on pretty much nothing, other than the fact that America is awesome and Americans are too. Johnson laid out all the Great Society ideas that Goldwater thought were undermining the initiative and prosperity of the country: Medicare, Medicaid, farm supports, government help for the poor, increased federal education funding—stuff like that.

It was a stirring speech with an expansive vision and a different interpretation of "freedom" than Goldwater put out there.

This is the true cause of freedom. The man who is hungry, who cannot find work or educate his children, who is bowed by want—that man is not fully free.

And whose job was it to make sure that man could eat and could afford to educate his children? The government, of course.

The speech made subtle digs at Goldwater's extremism and toughness, which LBJ saw as fear-mongering and divisiveness. He unapologetically gave nods to FDR, Truman, and JFK, who also had faith in the federal government to solve social and economic problems.

Voters seemed to buy Johnson's argument. He won in a landslide of epic proportions.