TONY LEON: The dangerous delusions on planet Zuma
'You would be forced to conclude that our own president suffers from delusions on a grand scale'
For students of US politics, there are at least three reasons to remember the late senator from Arizona, Barry Goldwater. First, as the Republican presidential nominee back in 1964 he posted one of the most catastrophic losses in modern US politics. Incumbent President Lyndon Johnson demolished him by the extraordinary margin of 22.58% of the popular vote and Goldwater only managed to win six states, five of them in the segregationist deep South. Second, within just 16 years of that loss, in 1980 a far smoother and more avuncular Republican candidate than the rough-hewn, straight-shooting Goldwater, in the form of Ronald Reagan, would also sweep the presidency by a landslide. And he, essentially, ran on the same libertarian, anti-communist platform as Goldwater.
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