Nation: Giving It & Catching It

Opening his campaign for the March 10 New Hampshire primary, Barry Goldwater aimed not at Nelson Rockefeller or any other rival Republican, but squarely at President Johnson.

"You've probably heard that I'm running for President," he said, deadpan, to an Amherst group. "If you've listened to President Johnson's State of the Union address, I think you'll understand why." Johnson, he charged, had "out-Roosevelted Roosevelt, out-Kennedyed Kennedy, and even made Harry Truman look like some kind of a piker." Far from having a conservative bent, he said, Johnson "has outliberaled every liberal since 1932."

All but the Prickly Pear. Goldwater continued at a Portsmouth press conference the next day: "My experience with the President in the Senate does not cause me to be impressed by his frugal tendencies." He predicted that Johnson would be "the highest-spending President" in U.S. history, and quipped that the only promise Johnson had not held out to the U.S. was "to make the prickly pear* the national fruit."

What obviously annoyed Barry most was Johnson's statement that President Kennedy had been "a victim of hate"—the persistent Democratic implication being that the hatred was somehow inspired by conservatives. Cried Goldwater: "Immediately after the trigger was pulled, a hate attack against conservative Americans was started by the Communists, and taken up by the radical columnists and kept going. I never use the word 'hate.' I think it is the most despicable word in the English language."

The Missile Flap. Neither was Goldwater appreciative of Democratic defense policy, particularly in its increasing dependence on intercontinental missiles instead of SAC bombers. "I don't feel safe at all about our missiles," he told a press-conference questioner. "I wish the Defense Department would tell the American people how undependable the missiles in our silos actually are. I can't tell you—it's classified —and I'll probably catch hell for saying this."

Sure enough, he did. In Washington, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, without ever once saying flatly that Goldwater's statement was altogether false, protested that he was "shocked" by Goldwater's remark, which he termed "completely misleading, politically irresponsible, and damaging to the national security." Next day Goldwater, a major general in the Air Force Reserve and a longtime Senate champion of the manned-bomber program, called for a Senate investigation of the reliability of ICBMs. "If I am proven wrong," he said, "I will be very pleased and happy to admit it."