Maggie's Farm

Bill Moyers, director of Johnson's efforts to attack Mr. Goldwater's position through television advertising, approved two controversial TV spots aimed at linking a Goldwater victory with nuclear war.

One showed a little girl in a field, counting as she plucked the petals from a daisy. As she counted, a male voice, deep and ominous, counted backward from 10, getting progressively louder. The male voice reached zero as the girl reached 10, and the scene was rent by a nuclear explosion. As a mushroom cloud rose, a tape of Johnson's voice said: "These are the stakes, to make a world in which all of God's children can live or go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die."

The other television spot was of a girl licking an ice cream cone while a woman's voice talked off-screen about how radioactive fallout from atomic bombs exploding in the air made children die. There was a treaty prohibiting testing of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, the voice said, but a man who wants to be president of the United States voted against it.

"His name is Barry Goldwater," the voice said against a crescendo of Geiger counter clicks, "so if he is elected they might start testing all over again." Then there came a male announcer's tag line: "Vote for President Johnson on November 3. The stakes are too high for you to stay home."

Only the first of the two spots was used on commercial television during the campaign, and it was broadcast only once. Political tacticians decided not to use the second one at all.