The Wrong Approach

Wearing a locomotive engineer's cap, Barry Goldwater took over the controls of his Whistle Stop Special in Logansport, Ind., guided the train on a brisk two-mile run down the line. That was about the only time Goldwater's campaign for the presidency seemed to be moving forward.

There has been hardly any Goldwater pronouncement the last month that seemed to be calculated to win to his cause any sizable new segment of voters. Everybody remembers how he went out of his way to alienate audiences, attacking TVA in Tennessee, medicare in front of Florida pensioners, and the President's anti-poverty campaign in the depressed, eleven-state Appalachian region. Now, as his prospects of election became dimmer and dim mer, he sounded wilder and wilder in his charges against the Johnson Administration.

Letting Out the Stops. Last week in Indianapolis he let out all the stops. Excerpts from his speech: "This nation has gone to war three times in this century," he cried, "but not under a Republican President! Republicans always have understood how to preserve freedom while keeping the peace. And despite the most strident and lie-filled campaign that the opposition can launch, the next Republican President -- this Republican President -- will keep the peace just as surely.

"A major concern of ours has been the preparedness of this nation, the ability of this nation to defend itself to deter war -- the ability of its soldiers, sail ors and airmen to protect themselves without being straitjacketed or stripped of weapons.

"This Administration is trying to dis tort that concern so that you will be frightened into thinking that we want a war. This is nothing but the Big Lie.

This is nothing but the Administration's version of the old tactic of spend and spend and spend, elect, elect and elect.

This time it's lie, lie and lie.

"Why does the leader of this Administration hide behind his White House fence, or behind his curious crew of camp followers? Why doesn't he face you? I charge that he shrinks from discussion, that he shrinks from the view of the public--except when in the middle of a mob scene--for the same reasons he has shirked leadership. He has no principles upon which to base his programs. The programs are solely political. He has no principles upon which to base his foreign policy. His policy is one of sidestepping--of drift, deceit and defeat. He cannot face the glare of discussion because he cannot face the glaring questions of his fellow citizens. He talks of peace, but he has no stomach to face up to the main threat to peace --Communism."

Poor Politics. Entirely aside from the tastelessness of such a diatribe, there can be little question that it was poor politics--if only because a huge majority of the U.S. voting public clearly does not agree with Barry's estimate of the Johnson Administration.

But then Goldwater went even farther. He revived an old and ugly phrase --"soft on Communism." Said he in Cincinnati: "I charge that this Administration is soft on Communism." He underlined the phrase in his text, repeated it in his barnstorming in Illinois and Indiana. "The cause of peace," he said, "will not be served by men who are soft on Communism."

As Goldwater must have known, the phrase revives memories of the McCarthy era, smacks not only of weak foreign policy but of treason within the highest circles of American Government. Why did Goldwater use it? "Actually," he explained to newsmen, "that attack was suggested by Nixon and Herbert Hoover Sr." A spokesman for former President Hoover, 90 years old and ailing in his Manhattan apartment, later said that the old man had believed for 30 years that the Democrats are "soft on Communism" and might well have suggested the phrase to Goldwater. But Nixon flatly denied that he had had anything to do with it. "I made no such suggestion," he said. "There is no question of President Johnson's loyalty or anti-Communism." At a press conference, Lyndon scorned the charge as "the product of some third-string speechwriter," said caustically of Barry: "The new and frightening voice of the Republican Party is merely trying out this charge to see if it works. My own advice would be to drop it."

"I Believe This." Such Goldwater talk presumably has great appeal to his diehard, ultraconservative admirers. But it is hard to see how it could be winning votes from among the moderate Republicans and the independents he so desperately needs. It almost seems that Goldwater, whether consciously or unconsciously, has given up all hope of election and has decided to go down fighting, along with his hard-core following. He denies this: he says he is convinced that there are more conservatives of his own stamp in the U.S. than anyone realizes. He thinks his campaign should be keyed to these voters, not to moderate Republicans or independents. "I believe this," he has told his staff, "and if I'm wrong in this judgment, then I'm wrong in my whole approach to politics."

At this point in the campaign, it seems all too obvious that Goldwater's approach is wrong indeed. Of course, he has a right to his convictions, and if he and his future alone were involved, there might not be too much cause for concern. But the way things are going, he seems quite likely to drag down the Republican Party with him.

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