Republicans: Toward the Day of Reckoning

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The cream-colored draperies parted, the glass door slid open, and there, on crutches, stood Barry Goldwater. Hobbling out to the flagstone patio of his home near Phoenix in the shadow of Camelback Mountain, Goldwater faced scores of Arizona G.O.P. leaders, reporters and television crewmen. Said he: "I want to tell you that I will seek the Republican presidential nomination."

That night, in snow-covered Portsmouth, N.H., Nelson Rockefeller, a presidential candidate since November, stood before an audience of 1,200 cheering people in a high school auditorium and cried: "The campaign has begun!"

Election Year 1964 was indeed under way, and quite a year it promised to be. The shadow maneuvers of 1963 were over. Barry and Rocky were in the race, while other Republican possibilities jostled for position, all looking toward that day of convention reckoning just six months away.

"A Real Rough Go." Despite some idle talk to the effect that Goldwater did not really want to run and that President Kennedy's death would give him a graceful way to stay out, his announcement was no surprise. As his family watched near by, Barry leaned against a lectern to favor his right heel, which had recently been operated on for a calcium deposit. He read his formal statement more slowly and clearly than usual. He had, he said, decided to run "because I have not heard from any announced Republican candidate a declaration of conscience or of political position that could possibly offer to the American people a clear choice in the next presidential election.

"I will not change my beliefs to win votes. I will offer a choice, not an echo. This will not be an engagement of personalities. It will be an engagement of principles."

Answering questions, Goldwater displayed the candor and earthy humor that make him an engaging political personality. He would, he said, enter primaries in at least Illinois, California, New Hampshire and Oregon. But, he said, "it's gonna be a real rough go. It's difficult for a Westerner from a small state, population-wise, to get the nomination. And I'm willing to take that chance." He said that he saw "no incompatibility" in filing for re-election to the Senate while running for President. Reporters reminded him that he had been sharply critical of Lyndon Johnson for running for Vice President and the Senate at the same time in 1960. Well, grinned Goldwater, Lyndon was a good teacher, and "I would like to be a good student."

Did he feel that Kennedy's death hurt his chances for carrying the South in November? "Oh, I think you'd have to be honest and say that it would. You have now a President who is a Southerner—at least he calls himself a Southerner." But wouldn't the South be essential to a Goldwater win next November? "I don't buy that, and I don't buy that the South will necessarily go with a Southerner." Would he concede Texas to President Johnson? "I don't concede anybody anything. I'm a Republican who's won in a Democratic state, and mister, Democrats don't know what a dogfight is till they do something like that." Did he consider Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. a rival for the G.O.P. nomination? "I consider anybody who has visited with General Eisenhower in the last few weeks a potential candidate."