Barry Morris Goldwater (1909-1998) was an American politician, businessman, and author who was a five-term United States Senator from Arizona (1953-65, 1969-87) and the Republican Party’s nominee for President of the United States in 1964. Despite his loss of the 1964 presidential election in a landslide, Goldwater is the politician most often credited with sparking the resurgence of the American conservative political movement in the 1960s.