Marching Through Dixie

Barry Goldwater marched through Dixie last week, hitting 14 cities during a four-day, eight-state tour of the Old Confederacy. In Memphis, he drew 30,000 people to the grassy slopes of River Bluff, not far from the Mississippi. In Montgomery, a near-capacity crowd of 24,000 turned out at Cramton Bowl, including 700 white-gowned local belles who lined the field from goalpost to goalpost waving American flags. In New Orleans, the 82,000-seat Sugar Bowl was only one-third filled, but Barry still outdrew the Beatles, who had lured only 12,000 the night before.

"Orville Wrong." In his speeches Barry did not make a single specific reference to civil rights, even though his vote against this year's Civil Rights bill is responsible for much of his widespread Southern support. Rather, he concentrated on attacks against Lyndon Johnson and his Cabinet. He labeled Lyndon "the wildest spender of them all," despite claims of frugality. He called Johnson a "scheming wirepuller" who ought to rename the White House the "White wash House." Lyndon, he cracked, "has asked for so much power that the Democrats don't know whether to vote for him or plug him in." Turning to the Cabinet, he promised that his "first job as President" would be to fire Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, then got in a dig at Agriculture Secretary Orville Freeman by telling a North Carolina audience, "We've gone from Orville Wright to Orville Wrong."

Despite his generally warm reception, Goldwater persisted in his penchant for saying the right thing in the wrong place. Items:

>In St. Petersburg, Fla., Barry banged away at "the failure of public officials to keep the streets safe from bullies and marauders." This was hardly a matter of burning concern in peaceful St. Pete. At the same time, Goldwater failed to mention his attitudes about Social Security, even though his audience consisted mostly of elderly pensioners.

>In Knoxville, Tenn., where folks display bumper stickers reading KEEP TVA --I'D RATHER SELL ARIZONA, Barry said he would "stand by" his recent statement that TVA's steam-generating plants should be sold to private interests. Anyhow, he said, his views make little difference, since even if he were President, he undoubtedly would be overruled by Congress.

>In Atlanta, Barry issued a scathing denunciation of the Supreme Court's one-man-one-vote reapportionment ruling. Of all the cities in the South, Atlanta, which has long chafed under state malapportionment's giving rural districts top-heavy power in the state legislature, is the one place where the Supreme Court ruling is reasonably popular.

> In Charleston, W.Va., Barry blasted Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty as a "phony, vote-getting gimmick" and "a raid on your pocketbooks." West Virginia, of course, is practically a casebook study of the depressed area.

As Barry traveled through the South, two breaks went his way. South Carolina's Senator J. Strom Thurmond, the Dixiecrat candidate for President in 1948, formally severed his ties to the Democratic Party, announced that he was joining the Republican Party and would campaign for Goldwater. When Barry arrived at Greenville, S.C., in his chartered jet, Strom was waiting at the ramp to embrace him, a gold elephant in one lapel and a Goldwater button in the other. Barry was delighted. "If a man like Thurmond can do it," he said, "I see no reason why Democrats by the tens of thousands in the South can't do the same."

Barry's other break--and it might well prove a short-term gain--came in the form of a decision by three federal judges in Birmingham striking down Title II of the Civil Rights Act, the crucial Public Accommodations section, as it applied to a local restaurant called Ollie's Barbecue. The judges ruled that Title II violated the "due process" clause of the Fifth Amendment. Said the judges: "If Congress has the naked power to do what it has attempted in Title II of this act, there is no facet of human behavior which it may not control."

The decision was 180DEG counter to last July's ruling by a three-judge panel in Atlanta whose effect was to uphold the Public Accommodations section. The Supreme Court has already agreed to hear an appeal from the Atlanta decision. For the time being, however, the Birmingham ruling is a plus for Barry, since it tends to confirm his doubts about the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act.

Fertile Ground. At week's end Barry strayed far from Dixie to attend the 22nd annual National Plowing Contest on a farm 32 miles from Fargo, N.Dak. With 50,000 farmers and their families on hand, the contest was fertile ground for a presidential contender, and Barry promptly sought to plow it. "You know," he told his huge audience, "the nation would be a lot better off if our interim President would quit trying to run your farms and instead clean out his own stables."

Johnson was not on hand to answer Barry, having sent Hubert Humphrey to handle the chore for him. In fact, Lyndon was the first presidential candidate to pass up the event since 1948. That was the year that Tom Dewey decided to send his regrets.

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