Leadership Quote by Barry Goldwater

The line lands like a dry slap: a conservative icon refusing to vouch for a Republican president even across the shortest imaginable distance. Goldwater’s genius here is scale. “From here to that phone” is petty, domestic geography - not “from here to Washington,” not “a mile,” just the span of a gesture. He shrinks Nixon down to the size of a parlor trick, implying that deceit isn’t an occasional vice but the man’s operating system.

The intent is less policy critique than character impeachment. Goldwater isn’t arguing about Vietnam or détente; he’s telling you Nixon is untrustworthy in the small, mundane ways that actually predict the big betrayals. The phone matters, too: it’s an object of backroom politics, private deals, plausible deniability. In the age of taped conversations and “I am not a crook,” the instrument becomes a symbol of the very medium through which Nixon’s power - and paranoia - traveled.

Subtextually, Goldwater is also defending a particular conservative self-image. Whatever his hardline reputation, he wanted politics to look like blunt daylight, not furtive maneuvering. The jab signals intra-party policing: you can be ruthless about ideology and still demand a baseline of personal credibility. Coming from Goldwater, the remark reads as a warning flare that the rot wasn’t merely Democratic talking point; it was visible to people who shared Nixon’s electoral coalition but not his methods.

It works because it’s conversational, quotable, and socially legible: everyone knows what it means to not trust someone “with” something right in front of you. In one sentence, Nixon becomes the guy you don’t leave alone with your wallet - except the wallet is the presidency.