Back with the Old Barry

Now the Goldwater bandwagon came rolling into the convention city. And behind the wheel, breezy and relaxed as a one-arm driver who is supremely confident of conquest in his courtship, sat Barry Goldwater.

During many of the months of his campaign for the G.O.P. nomination, Goldwater had seemed irritable, withdrawn, genuinely reluctant to fare forth to meet we-the-people, a reckless pop-off in his informal pronouncements, and a wooden soldier while reading his formal speeches.

All this dismayed friends and followers who had come to know him as a charming companion, a bluff, gruff-spoken man whose candor was a virtue rather than a vice, a candidate with deep convictions, if not the learnedness or the lingo of a political scientist, about a particular philosophy of government.

"Win We Will!" For a while, something had happened to that old Barry. But last week, in the full expectation of victory, he was back. He started out in his own Arizona, riding a palomino in a Prescott parade and looking as though he had been born to the saddle, bellying up to an Elks club bar and buying drinks for the house, hosing the vegetation (which consists in considerable part of cactus) on his Phoenix spread. Then, after a brief trip to Washington, it was on to San Francisco in that same relaxed mood.

Arriving at International Airport, Barry threw off the cloak of professional pessimism about his prospects. "The chances are excellent," he cried, "that we will win on the first ballot!" His audience shouted its approval as Barry continued: "But first ballot or not--win we will!"

Just in case there was any remaining doubt about Goldwater's nomination, it was dispelled a scant five hours after his arrival when word came that Ohio's Governor James Rhodes had given up his favorite-son candidacy, thereby freeing about two-thirds of his state's 58-member delegation to vote for Goldwater on the first ballot.

That Interview. By then, about the only cloud--and it was little more than a speck--left on Goldwater's horizon was the publication of a June 30 interview with a reporter from Der Spiegel, a West German weekly newsmagazine. In that interview, Goldwater was asked if he thought that he could defeat Lyndon Johnson. He replied: "If you asked that question as of now--and I always like to answer political questions as of now--no. I don't think any Republican can, as of now ... I don't think I'd be rash enough to say I could beat Johnson in the South as of now. But come Election Day, there's going to be another horse race, I believe."

Defending his vote against the civil rights bill, Barry stuck by his guns, insisting: "If they could have locked the doors to the Senate and turned the lights off, you wouldn't have gotten 25 votes." And on the question of what he would do about Southeast Asia, Goldwater said: "I would make it abundantly clear --and I think President Johnson is tending in that direction--that we aren't going to pull out of Southeast Asia, but that we are going to win, in fact. Now the next decision becomes based on military decisions. I don't think that's up to a presidential candidate, or even the President. I would turn to my Joint Chiefs of Staff and say, 'Fellows, we made the decision to win, now it's your problem.' "

As Goldwater himself later pointed out, there was nothing in his Spiegel interview that he had not said before. But as he did not point out, such statements had landed him in political hot water before, and the timing of his latest remarks seemed singularly unpropitious. At any rate, Bill Scranton and other anti-Goldwater Republican leaders grasped at the interview as though at a life belt tossed into a raging sea. "Barry Goldwater has now decided to defoliate the Republican Party," cried Scranton. "How could the delegates nominate someone who says he can't win?" Of Goldwater's civil rights views and his Senate vote against the civil rights bill, Scranton said: "We must ask ourselves what events the Senator is looking forward to before November to improve his chances in the South. Tragically, there can be but one explanation. He or those close to him hope to gain by racial unrest in this nation." As for Goldwater's proposed Southeast Asia policy, Scranton snapped: "This is another example of his failure to comprehend that being President of the United States is not the same as being a benevolent chairman of the board--letting others decide when nuclear destruction should be unleashed."

The Needles. Even though Goldwater may again have been indiscreet in his Spiegel statements, Scranton's assault did not add up to the Pennsylvanian's finest hour, and Barry largely negated its effect during his appearance before the Platform Committee next day.

After his strong, sometimes stirring plea for party unity, Goldwater stood before the committee to answer questions--which came mostly in the form of needling from Scrantonites.

What was Goldwater's thinking as to whether control of the use of nuclear weapons should be in hands other than the President's? Patiently, Barry said that he had been misquoted, that U.S. law allows no one but the President to authorize the use of nuclear weapons, and "I can't change that law." Anyhow, he continued, he would favor giving only the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe--presently General Lyman Lemnitzer--a degree of authority about nuclear weapons. He carefully explained that he was not talking about long-range, strategic missiles, but rather about the low-yield, tactical weapons around which Western Europe's defense is now built--"ones small enough to be carried on the shoulder, small enough to be launched from aircraft. I'm fearful of the day if it ever comes --and I hope it doesn't--when Russia might attack our bases with these tactical nuclear weapons and we would have to reply with conventional weapons. I would hope that something could be worked out in the case of NATO, and NATO alone."

Barry's vote against the civil rights bill--and his argument that some of its provisions were unconstitutional--also came under attack. Would he, as President, work to have the law repealed? "No. That's not in my opinion the duty of a President," said Goldwater. "I think the legislative branch has now spoken for the majority of the party--the majority of the American people--and while I didn't agree and I represented the minority, I stand with the majority, and just as Harry Truman did when he vetoed the Taft-Hartley Act: he later used it six times even though he didn't like it."

The only Negro member of the Platform Committee, George A. Parker from the District of Columbia, was not satisfied. He doubted that Gold water could "consistently, conscientiously and in good faith use the powers and prestige" of the presidency to carry out the civil rights law. Goldwater flushed, but held his temper. "When you use that argument," he said, "you are questioning my honesty, and I should resent it but I won't." Parker insisted that he was doing no such thing. Said Goldwater: "Well, you are, sir. I will uphold that law because it is the voice of the majority. And if I'm your President, I will do something about this in more ways than the law." Thus, during his Platform Committee appearance, and indeed throughout his entire performance in San Francisco last week, Goldwater was the old Barry, the one who behaves best when he is relaxed and confident. No one can say how he would act if he were to lose the Republican nomination. But he was surely showing himself to be a good winner.

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