BARRY GOLDWATER: RADICAL OF THE RIGHT
Meyer, Karl E.
Barry Goldwater: Radical of the Right by KARL E. MEYER The leading radical in Washington today is a fifty-two-year-old businessman and licensed jet pilot who looks more like a handsome television...
...What I am saying is that we who disagree with Senator Goldwater may soon be glad that he is around...
...But the Junior Senator from this state has somehow struck a responsive chord with thousands of conservative Republicans who live in small towns and medium-sized cities across the country—and who perhaps find in Goldwater the embodiment of their romantic political fantasies...
...He is a personable link with the Old Frontier which, in the minds of many Republicans, is still as real as Abilene was to President Eisenhower...
...Like a college seminarian, he is fully prepared to set forth his views in the most explicit and clearly-formulated way...
...He grew up with a passion for the strenuous life, and threw himself into every activity—family business, sports, exploring, photography, cookery, Indian studies, and aviation—with the same peppery enthusiasm...
...In reality, it would be impossible to operate a government like ours on the principles that Senator Goldwater espouses...
...Grandfather Michael Gold-water came to California in 1852 on the traces of the gold rush...
...what is needed is the will to win once and for all...
...When a new gold strike developed on the Gila River in what was later Arizona, Michael drove a wagon across the desert to do business in the mining camps...
...Whether we who regard ourselves as liberals like it or not, an appreciable sector of the population feels frustrated and cheated by liberal political success since 1932...
...During the war he served with distinction in the Air Force and he has kept in trim as a Reserve pilot...
...He enjoys telling the story of a visit to a snooty country club that barred Jewish members...
...In the area of basic rights, the Senator, however, has it both ways...
...Two of Mike's sons, Morris and Barron (father of the Senator), helped to extend the business from Prescott to Phoenix, Tombstone, and Bisbee...
...There is a streak of wild dogmatism in Barry Goldwater which seems to propel him to the end of every available limb...
...Although he believes that it is "both wise and just" for Negro children to attend the same schools as whites, he finds that "no powers regarding education were given the Federal government...
...Flamingly irrelevant as his ideas may seem, Senator Goldwater exhibits more dash and zeal in behalf of his convictions than do most of his counterparts on the liberal side of the aisle...
...This view is more prevalent than a liberal might suppose...
...He is really nothing of the sort...
...Negotiations with the Communists, he asserts, are useless...
...No one could seriously maintain that Goldwater is a seditionist or a malevolent demagogue...
...Senators more often reserve such courtesies solely for each other...
...As to Barry Goldwater's convictions, the usual phrase is that they are either pre-Silurian or somewhere to the right of Charlemagne...
...his family album suggests an episode from Gun-smoke...
...public agreement, in varying degrees, with what Goldwater says...
...The obstacles he faced were considerable...
...Lastly, the Senator has a sense of humor...
...He really believes all that stuff...
...He sailed into state politics with the same breezy determination...
...These groups have a legitimate right to their views in a democratic society...
...There was no doubt of the fact that the scepter once held by Robert A. Taft had passed to Goldwater—he was now the enthroned leader of the Regular Republicans, the party stalwarts who look back to Herbert Hoover with nostalgia and speak of Dwight D. Eisenhower as if he were a Fabian Socialist...
...But even when he is talking through his sombrero, Barry Gold-water brings some welcome gusts from the old frontier...
...They may not have agreed with Barry," he said, "but they darn well knew where he stood...
...This seems unlikely...
...But there is another aspect to the problem...
...It is difficult, I say, to dislike the man...
...Before he attacked the journalist on the floor of the Senate, his office called up the offender to advise him that he was about to be upbraided by Goldwater and would he care to be present and to comment...
...Even Senator Taft favored Federal housing and aid to education legislation, though neither program is specifically authorized by the Constitution...
...The Senator went on to cite Harvard as an example of a university where, in the absence of fraternities, Communist and Socialist philosophies are allowed to flourish...
...And all this on a balanced budget...
...Questions which most Americans thought were settled a generation or more ago remain Burning Issues to the Senator...
...it extends from suburban dowagers and small businessmen to uprooted poor whites in city slums...
...On the contrary, he is a decent, upright, and thoroughly attractive politician...
...The square jaw, the muscular frame, the pugnacious oratory came over well on television and established firmly and clearly the Goldwater image...
...There are some who can argue plausibly that it is basically unhealthy for the Republican Party to fall into "irresponsible" opposition by flirting with the Goldwater line...
...Barry Goldwater: Radical of the Right by KARL E. MEYER The leading radical in Washington today is a fifty-two-year-old businessman and licensed jet pilot who looks more like a handsome television commentator than a United States Senator...
...But when the Senator turns to the question of the rights of union members, he sees no philosophical or constitutional objection to using the full force of Federal power to help assure the liberty of workers within unions...
...The groups he speaks for deserve a spokesman, and a good one...
...Soon, Michael and his brother Joseph started a chain of stores in the territory, beginning with an adobe store in Ehrenberg in 1862 which served as city hall, post office, and jail as well as the supplier of gunpowder and gingham...
...he writes in Conscience of a Conservative: "No power over agriculture was given to any branch of the national government...
...He is the most sought-after speaker in his Party, and on the college campus he is in close competition with bed-pushing as the fad of the moment...
...The late Senator Robert A. Taft might have been called a conservative, but measured by Goldwater's standards, the Ohio Republican was tilted way over to port...
...The Senator seems half-serious about the idea...
...Essentially, he concurs with the four doughty Justices of the Supreme Court who, in the 1930's, felt that nearly every New Deal measure was unconstitutional...
...To Goldwater, they are repugnant to the Constitution...
...Or there are many members like Virginia's Howard W. Smith, the clever and courtly chairman of the House Rules Committee...
...Instead, he wears his conservatism like a frock coat, and if you don't like it, he will smilingly invite you to look the other way...
...The remark was made by a veteran Capitol reporter who has frequently written about the Senator...
...Secondly, Senator Goldwater fights cleanly and has usually shown a scrupulous regard for the rules of the game...
...This is Goldwater's view of foreign economic assistance programs: ". . . except as it can be shown to promote America's national interest, the foreign aid program is unconstitutional...
...With Barry Goldwater it is different...
...Typical of Goldwater's personal consideration was an incident in 1954, when he was angered by an article that a Washington newspaperman had written about the FBI...
...But characteristically, Goldwater has made known his regrets for these extravagances...
...Barry Morris Goldwater, the Republican Senator from Arizona, mis-leadingly calls himself a conservative...
...He grew up in Arizona, where the cowboy days are still a living memory...
...Let me try to make clear that I am not succumbing to sentimentalism in giving Barry Goldwater the credit to which I think he is due...
...Last November, he showed up as a speaker at the National Interfraternity Council...
...Goldwater's family traditions and his love for Arizona explain a good deal of his political style...
...But between his indefatigable campaigning and a ride on the Eisenhower coattails, Goldwater won by a narrow one per cent margin...
...what does not come through as clearly is the stoutness and general decency of liis character...
...To some extent, Gold-water has backed away from the logical abyss of his analysis and is offering what he asserts are constitutional programs for meeting national needs...
...In some respects, it is not strange that Goldwater has caught the public fancy...
...Udall has remarked that many Arizonans who voted for him also voted for Goldwater in 1958...
...This is not quite fair...
...He has come up with a new slogan, "The Forgotten American," and news stories reflect a new concern with his image—a sure symptom of the Presidential virus...
...As many as 500 letters pour into his office every day, and when he debated an errant liberal (Senator Eugene McCarthy) on television, some 1,500 persons took the trouble to write him a note...
...even the cranks have their place in the political spectrum...
...His proposals, especially his complex plan for indirect Federal help to schools, are ingenious, interesting, and wholly unrealistic...
...Since the convention, Goldwater has considerably broadened the base of his influence...
...The Senator asked if he could play nine holes of golf, since he was only half Jewish...
...The graduated Federal income tax raises a special problem because a constitutional amendment specifically permits this diabolic innovation...
...In addition to guarding our frontiers we must try to puncture his...
...He can laugh when Hubert Humphrey twits him about signing a Hollywood contract—with 18th Century Fox...
...To enter the world of Barry Gold-water in the year 1961 is to move into a realm as strange and as exotical-ly colored as the landscapes of his beloved Arizona which hang on his office walls...
...In economics he is, if he will excuse the term, a liberal of the classic variety: he simply does not believe that the government should tinker in any way with the market economy...
...Although his aides prudently discount it, there is also talk about a Goldwater Presidential boom...
...Thirdly, the Senator is known' for his personal courtesy...
...He is so wedded to the logic of his position that he paints himself into quixotic corners in the name of consistency...
...According to the New York Times, his will be a "popular conservative image...
...Judge Smith is a conservative all right, but he does not like to submit his convictions to the test of reasoned debate...
...The great danger is that demagogues can exploit this emotional electorate for malignant ends—to turn, as the late Senator Joseph McCarthy did, a legitimate impulse to illegitimate purposes...
...There is no shortage of politicians who express a glib KARL E. MEYER, editorial writer for the Washington Post, is now writing a book on contemporary politics...
...Concerning foreign affairs, the Senator is no less marvelously dogmatic...
...There is a restive distrust of Washington, and a feeling that centralization can mean the loss of certain vital local functions...
...In addition to parrying Russian blows, "We must strike our own...
...Dare I suggest in the pages of The Progressive that possibly this is a good thing...
...In addition to this cranky element, there is a larger group which simply feels—and the view is not wholly irrational—that what the government can do for you it can do to you...
...And unquestionably Senator Goldwater's intransigence in foreign policy does not recommend itself as a model in the days ahead...
...As a pragmatic political matter, it would be more sensible for the Republicans to imitate their Tory brethren in Great Britain by unreservedly accepting the welfare state...
...Like his brethren on the far left, Gold-water is finding that extreme principles are better suited to sonorous speechmaking than to legislation...
...His language comes close to advocacy of preventive war...
...Unlike Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, for whom Goldwater expressed qualified praise, the Arizonan does not enjoy spattering mud through the Congressional Record, and he does not employ the calculated lie to ruin a reputation...
...His book, Conscience of a Conservative, was a surprise best-seller (150,000 copies in hard-cover...
...And that settles that...
...Paradoxically, although Gold-water wants to curb the powers of the Federal government, he also wants to adopt a "tough" line towards the Soviet Union...
...In an almost paranoid way, some ultra-rightists feel that a conspiracy of union leaders, big city bosses, Eastern financiers, Harvard professors, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has captured the country...
...But if the Senator continues his search for constructive counterproposals, he may wind up by being as sensible, moderate, and dull as everybody else...
...Take Federal programs to assist agriculture...
...Or consider Federal aid to education: ". . . any Federal aid program, however desirable it might appear, must be regarded as illegal until such time as the Constitution is amended...
...They could do far worse than Barry Morris Goldwater...
...So the Senator shifts his ground—it is contrary to natural right and therefore "immoral...
...I say usually, because he transgressed in the case of his bete noire, Walter Reuther, whom he has variously called a "liar," and "more dangerous than the Sputniks or anything Russia can do to us...
...The danger is especially acute during a period of liberal ascendancy in the White House when, on the surface at least, the left seems to have a corner on power and publicity...
...Part of his appeal has been explained by Secretary of Interior Stewart Udall, who served two terms as a Democratic Representative from Arizona...
...Gold-water's previous experience consisted of two terms on the Phoenix city council and his service as campaign manager in 1950 for the successful Republican gubernatorial candidate...
...Thus the Senator sees the Constitution as a series of inhibitions against government rather than as an instrument of national power...
...Behind this distrust is a slight touch of anarchism, of suspicion of the state per se—again, an attitude that has some basis in reality...
...He was overwhelmingly re-elected in 1958, when he was virtually the only leading right-wing Republican Senator to survive the Democratic tide...
...In a housebroken and relatively tame Congress, the earnest Arizonan stands out as a relentless rebel—yes, as a radical...
...The Senator shows no sign of being disheartened by the spoofing stickers on some Washington cars—"Goldwater in 1864...
...its traditions are as special and as locally-flavored as the Grand Canyon and the Painted Desert...
...The rest of the country, if it was in any doubt, also found out where Barry stood at the Republican convention in 1960...
...When you ask people on Capitol Hill what they think of Barry Goldwater, the first words invariably are, "He's a nice fellow," followed by expressions of wonderment at his ideas...
...While liberalism is the mood of the hour in the White House, the most arresting personality on Capitol Hill is this unreconstructed Old Frontiersman...
...There were more than the usual risks for an entrepreneur—at one point, in Skull Valley, the brothers were seriously wounded in a skirmish with Apaches...
...500,000 in paperback...
...As a loyal Sigma Chi, he hailed fraternities as a "bastion of American strength," and added that "where fraternities are not allowed, Communism flourishes...
...Arizona is a small state, with not many more than a million residents...
...Arizona is normally a Democratic state, and his opponent in 1952 was Ernest McFarland, then Democratic Majority Leader of the Senate...
...But, it might be objected, if the Federal government has no power over agriculture, where does the power come to regulate trade unions...
...Goldwater's beliefs date back only to the Nineteenth Century...
...It is an odd phenomenon...
...The store in Bisbee was the scene of a celebrated massacre in which five passers-by were shot, five bandits subsequently hung, and one culprit strung up by citizens who were dissatisfied with the courtroom verdict...
...But the typical Congressional conservative is more like Charles A. Halleck of Indiana, the Republican Minority Leader of the House, a careerist cynic whose image is coated with oil...
...Outside of Washington, the Senator's intellectual limitations are painfully evident...
...He cares about principles, and if his principles seem silly to such sophisticated folk as you and I, at least there is something to wrestle with besides the usual basket of eels that passes for conservative (and—too often—liberal) discourse...
...It is this quality of sincerity that sets the Senator apart from other conservatives in Congress...
...With the bounce and bravado of a Hotspur in battle, he is urging the drastic revision of practically every liberal measure enacted since 1932, and possibly since 1896...
Vol. 25 • April 1961 • No. 4
