Republicans: This President Thing

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Landing at Phoenix, Barry hopped into his wife's new blue Lincoln Continental, toyed happily with a new gadget that adjusts the outside rear-view mirror from inside, and purred off to his house. (He keeps a Corvette Sting Ray in Washington, is fitting it out with enough gauges and gadgets to make it look like Faith 7). In the evening, he was off again to address R.O.T.C. students at nearby Arizona State University, gave them a talk about freedom and the necessity of manned aircraft in the space age, went home again to sip bourbon and water and fiddle with his ham rig. Soon he was talking up his pet Senate bills to two hams in the Pacific's Marshall Islands. When a house guest went off to bed at 2 a.m., Barry and his son Mike, 23, were fiddling with a new kind of stereo tape cartridge. Barry's dinner was still untouched.

Tom & Harry. He spoke at lunch next day to patrons of the Phoenix Neurological Institute, rapped the Kennedy Administration, adding "The more I think about it the more I think Harry Truman will go down in history as one of the greater Presidents."Off to the airport soon afterward, Barry flew his Bonanza to a commencement address at the New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell. This time the subject was again patriotism and conservatism, with a generous portion of praise for an old Democrat named Thomas Jefferson.

Afterward, the crowds of parents and graduates swarmed to him for a handshake. Said one suntanned rancher to his wife: "You know, he even looks like Thomas Jefferson!"

Minutes later, the Senator was at the controls of a trim twin-jet Air Force T-39 cabin job, climbed to 45,000 ft., and headed for Washington. Reluctantly, he gave the stick to his copilot and took a seat in the cabin to chat with a newsman about "this President thing."

Watch the Ball. "I'm just watching the ball bounce," he said. "I'm just going to sit around and see what happens. It's far too early for anyone in his right political mind to decide to really go for it. This sense of frustration which makes people talk about me is something that's constantly on my mind. But there are a lot of things I have to consider. I don't want my political life cut short-I'm too old to go back to business now. But then I have to face the question of whether I'm letting down conservatives, particularly the young people.

"You have to consider the effect it could have on the conservative cause. Now nobody from a state as small as Arizona is ever going to get the nomination. I just don't think it's in the political cards. So what if I try and can't get it? What kind of slap in the face is that-not to me, but to conservatism? Or suppose I get in and then get the living hell beaten out of me by Kennedy? What would that do to conservatism? It would hurt it-it might even kill it. But if after looking it over I figured that I could make it a real horse race, then that's something else again. If I could come within 5% of a majority, that would be really a victory for conservatism even if we lost. It would enhance conservatism, and make the Kennedys take in their sails."