Going with Goldwater
JANOS, LEO
WASHINGTON-U.S.A. Going with Goldwater By Leo Janos IT will be four years next summer since Senator Barry Goldwater could have been nominated for the Presidency by the Republican...
...It's all for Barry...
...Regardless of whom they want—the folks back home want Goldwater...
...But that has been his style all along...
...In other words, the Senator is in trouble with both groups...
...A major policy blunder close to election time, coupled with the unforseen consequences of racial upheaval and chronic unemployment, could mean serious trouble for the President...
...Most polls and many pundits agree with the Time magazine prediction of "a breathlessly close race...
...Tom Wicker of the New York Times has even suggested that if Kennedy fails to pick up a whopping majority of the Negro vote, "he might as well run for mayor of Palm Beach...
...I honestly think he'll wind up making Alf Landen look good...
...Most knowledgeable politicians on both sides are paying little attention to the trial balloon recently launched by Dick Nixon's prominent New York friends, and regard any talk of a stop-Goldwater movement as wishful thinking...
...And, if they do, what does this portend for John F. Kennedy, brother of Robert...
...But there is still a sizeable independent vote up for grabs that is divided, sociologists tell us, between the knowledgeable sophisticates and those who would not know the difference between Kerr-Mills and Grandma Moses...
...Senator Jacob Javits of New York is so alarmed at the trend toward Goldwater that he has begun a series of speaking engagements across the nation trying to block an apparent easy sweep...
...I'm only going to declare when I'm convinced that I can make a respectable showing...
...There is some justification for believing that the President has never been able to attract a determined corps of loyalists who would stick with him through good decisions and bad and bolster his stock in communities across the country...
...It seems unlikely, therefore, that Senator Goldwater can gather together the diverse ideological elements comprising the American public's political thinking and create a majority...
...Anyway, folks aren't working for the Republican party...
...In short, he has not found the magical powers of an Eisenhower, who could run the nation like a suburban bank president and still be elected as often as he chose to run, constitutional limitations notwithstanding...
...Who, for instance, would have thought a year ago that Walter Lippmann would be devoting the sacred precincts of his column to an analysis of the Goldwater ideology...
...Governor Rockefeller is ignored even by this national rally...
...Yet, a few of my friends, the politicallysagacious few, are beginning to get the jitters and kid each other about moving to Canada the day after the election...
...But President Eisenhower reluctantly supported the aspirations of his Vice President and that, as the saying goes, was that...
...Even Rockefeller conceded as much when he denied, on a recent television interview, that Eastern Republicans were planning to block Goldwater's nomination...
...Since the coming of the New Frontier, that attitude has been reinforced in concrete terms...
...Perhaps total respectability is really what the Senator is after...
...Most of the latter probably have not heard of Barry Goldwater, while the former are waiting to judge him on issues...
...Meanwhile, everyone is not only talking seriously about Goldwater, they are also taking him seriously...
...The liberal minority in the party is thinking aloud nowadays about the possibility that Goldwater will bring the party to its ruination...
...Thus, the question now being debated in the capital is whether Goldwater can beat the President...
...The folks at the grassroots have passed the word on up that unless their man runs this time, there might not be a next...
...Others who are less dramatic display only "crossed fingers" pessimism that the nation is on the verge of electing the first Jewish President who is an Episcopalian, as Barry is fond of telling his banquet circuit audiences...
...The President will run scared...
...They have had to suffer Eastern liberal types since 1940 and it has been a long frustrating experience...
...If not, then some will find solace in a statement of his often quoted these days: "The people aren't so damn stupid...
...And the Senator, who would have spared Richard Nixon from a crisis, would now be the titular head of his party...
...He is not pushing his Governor, either...
...They may well consider whether, by successfully blocking his nomination, they would not achieve this dread end in a surer, more final way...
...Going with Goldwater By Leo Janos IT will be four years next summer since Senator Barry Goldwater could have been nominated for the Presidency by the Republican National Convention...
...But they liked Ike...
...If Goldwater means what he says, he will have no trouble making up his mind...
...The Negro revolution, which made its initial impact this past summer, has certainly caused a continuous tremor in the white community...
...In emotional outpourings, only Herbert Hoover's ovation came close to matching Goldwater's...
...he is just out and out negative...
...To win large sections of the Midwest, as well as California, Illinois and other toss-up states, Goldwater would have to remake his image and rephrase his philosophy as spokesman for rural interests...
...He has been running hard for two years now and there is nobody on the Republican horizon who seems able to block his nomination...
...To be very honest, there's few as optimistic around here as I seem to be...
...Should the Senator's words prove to be true, Alf Landon will look good after all...
...There was no doubt, however, that Goldwater won the love and respect of the convention...
...In fact," Rockefeller told Walter Cronkite of CBS, "many prominent party leaders from New York are actively supporting Goldwater's candidacy...
...The delegates will be able to translate their rousing cheers into votes...
...Eisenhower was a respectable third, Nixon a poor last...
...Politicians are wondering aloud whether blueand white-collar whites, both in the North and South, will stage their own kind of revolution at the polls next fall...
...I don't want to get clobbered," he told some newsmen at an informal meeting, "because nothing would hurt the cause of conservatism more in this country than if I really took a licking from the New Frontier...
...People approve or disapprove of J.F.K...
...He will get the anti-Kennedy vote no matter what he says and does, and a large portion of all registered Republicans will come out of hiding and finally vote on election day...
...ON the other hand, nobody is talking about Goldwater's problems—although he has some very serious ones...
...This time, the handsome Arizonan appears beyond reach...
...And," he adds, "don't believe those stories about the New York crowd maneuvering Barry out of the picture, because most of Wall Street is riding with him...
...Goldwater's got it in the bag," a leading Republican policymaker is privately telling his friends...
...Goldwater's political stock, almost everyone agrees, has climbed in direct ratio to the nation's social and economic miseries...
...So there is hope in Republican hearts...
...The Southern and Mountain states are already bubbling with displeasure, the Midwest is uneasy about the dynasty issue, and only the East is safe...
...Even if Governor Rockefeller had endured an unhappy marriage in deference to his political ambitions, he would have had to buck the memory of the 1960 convention...
...But Javits is astute and has undoubtedly received the message...
...So have most Republican leaders...
...In addition, Kennedy is vulnerably exposed to a vast agenda of events that can beset any Administration at the whim of a Governor Wallace or a Soviet troublemaker...
...Some Administration supporters are talking mystically about vague premonitions of disaster and "queasy feelings" that President Kennedy will be banished to Boston...
...The President's carefully moderate position on most issues will probably keep his opponent deep in the shadows of right field...
...he has never been popular with party professionals and his voter appeal languishes the further away he gets from his home state...
...But these very beliefs (especially his radical views on U.S.Soviet relations, the United Nations and income tax) have endeared him to his followers and no matter how much he now fidgets, he is bound to them...
...If certain political realities had coincided with the delegates' sentiments, Peggy Goldwater would have saved Pat Nixon from a three month ordeal and a good cry...
...For his part, the Senator has often said there is only one factor keeping him from announcing his candidacy—he must first be convinced that he can make a decent showing against That Man...
...The prevailing mood among the delegates last time was that, by God, next time it's Barry's turn...
...In short, Washington is anticipating a Goldwater-Kennedy encounter in 1964...
...In fact, there is delight among the GOP rank and file—they will finally have their day at the convention...
...It's a good line, borrowed from the author of Only in America, and helps to resolve a supposedly Semitic handicap...
...Goldwater's candidacy is gaining support at a time when Victor Lasky's scathing denunciation of the President, J.F.K.: The Man and the Myth, a national best-seller...
...Republicans, from precinct workers to state legislators, are organizing for 1964 with an enthusiasm they have not displayed in years...
...Leo Janos is a freelance journalist now living in Washington...
...What worries me," says a liberal Democratic Senator, "is that I don't see how Barry Goldwater can win...
Vol. 46 • November 1963 • No. 23
