Speech

Political campaign speeches can get a little weird. In 2004, POTUS hopeful Howard Dean startled his audience when he let out this super-strange animal scream mid-speech. Barry Goldwater's 1964 nomination acceptance speech doesn't have any primal screams, but it does have another element common to campaign speeches: excitement.

This speech was geared to bring on the cheers.

The most important element for a strong speech delivery is knowing your audience. In a room full of fed-up and/or excited Republicans, Barry appealed to their emotions and echoed a lot of things they'd been discussing with their friends back home. He put a voice to their concerns and a face to their solutions.

Barry starts out getting the pleasantries out of the way, saying whassup to everyone and their grandmother and thanking the GOP for his nomination. Then he issues a blistering critique of the Democratic Party (the crowd went wild) and brings it back home with an inspiring vision of a Republican future.

His presidential campaign may have bombed, but Barry Goldwater turned the Republican Party—and modern conservatism—on its head. The ideas he lays out here were the foundation of a political movement that's still movin' and shakin' today, and this speech was structured to propel that movement forward.

How it Breaks Down

Section 1: The Boring Stuff

Every speech needs an introduction, some sort of build-up. Otherwise, it would be like walking into the middle of a conversation. So that, friends, is the purpose served by the first eight sentences of this speech. We've got some name-dropping, some thank-yous, a little nomination-accepting-with-humility, and a few assurances of victory. That's it, folks; not much else to see here.

Section 2: Democrats Bad, Republicans Good

This is where stuff starts to get meaty. Ever been curious about everything the Democrats did wrong and the Republicans did right, according to Barry Goldwater? Then this section is for you.

Section 3: Visions of the Future

Now that he has his audience nodding along with him about all the evils in the world that had been caused by Democrats and liberals, Barry paints for them a picture, a beautiful picture, of a world guided by Republican conservatism and, of course, freedom. Lots and lots of freedom.

Section 4: The Grand Finale (People Come Together Now)

Barry had said a few things hither and thither throughout this speech that made his critics a little crazy-eyed, but nothing compared to when he dropped the line about extremism in the defense of liberty. That little word-bomb was buried between lines about unity, tolerance, and humane causes, but they didn't do much to soften its blow—or its blowback on the Senator's campaign. Looks like his words didn't inspire folks in quite the way he'd imagined.