Nation: Back with the Old Barry

Now the Goldwater bandwagon came rolling into the convention city. And behind the wheel, breezy and relaxed as a one-arm driver who is supremely confident of conquest in his courtship, sat Barry Goldwater.

During many of the months of his campaign for the G.O.P. nomination, Goldwater had seemed irritable, withdrawn, genuinely reluctant to fare forth to meet we-the-people, a reckless pop-off in his informal pronouncements, and a wooden soldier while reading his formal speeches.

All this dismayed friends and followers who had come to know him as a charming companion, a bluff, gruff-spoken man whose candor was a virtue rather than a vice, a candidate with deep convictions, if not the learnedness or the lingo of a political scientist, about a particular philosophy of government.

"Win We Will!" For a while, something had happened to that old Barry. But last week, in the full expectation of victory, he was back. He started out in his own Arizona, riding a palomino in a Prescott parade and looking as though he had been born to the saddle, bellying up to an Elks club bar and buying drinks for the house, hosing the vegetation (which consists in considerable part of cactus) on his Phoenix spread. Then, after a brief trip to Washington, it was on to San Francisco in that same relaxed mood.

Arriving at International Airport, Barry threw off the cloak of professional pessimism about his prospects. "The chances are excellent," he cried, "that we will win on the first ballot!" His audience shouted its approval as Barry continued: "But first ballot or not—win we will!"

Just in case there was any remaining doubt about Goldwater's nomination, it was dispelled a scant five hours after his arrival when word came that Ohio's Governor James Rhodes had given up his favorite-son candidacy, thereby freeing about two-thirds of his state's 58-member delegation to vote for Goldwater on the first ballot.

That Interview. By then, about the only cloud—and it was little more than a speck—left on Goldwater's horizon was the publication of a June 30 interview with a reporter from Der Spiegel, a West German weekly newsmagazine. In that interview, Goldwater was asked if he thought that he could defeat Lyndon Johnson. He replied: "If you asked that question as of now—and I always like to answer political questions as of now—no. I don't think any Republican can, as of now ... I don't think I'd be rash enough to say I could beat Johnson in the South as of now. But come Election Day, there's going to be another horse race, I believe."