Opinion: Those Outside Our Family

(2 of 3)

"Racism & Jingoism." Walter Lippmann, who has complained about Goldwater's inconsistency, wrote last year: "A good argument can be made, I think, that it would be healthy if at least once, after 40 years of frustration, the 'true' Republicans had their own candidate. It might clear the air." But by last month he had changed his mind, writing: "In the light of history, tradition and principle, the nomination of Barry Goldwater as the Republican candidate for President is as absurd as would be the nomination of Governor Wallace as the Democratic candidate for President." Lippmann last week claimed that Goldwater's election would lead to "a global, nuclear, anti-Communist crusade," and that he "appears to be gambling recklessly on racism and jingoism."

To the New York Times, Goldwater's nomination was "a disaster for the Republican Party, and a blow to the prestige and to the domestic and international interests of the United States." To the liberal New York Post, the adoption of a Goldwater-oriented platform and Ike's "retreat" meant that "the Birchers and racists have never before enjoyed so big a night under such respectable auspices."

"Black Brush." The Louisville Courier-Journal warned: "The nation may prepare itself for one of the ugliest campaigns in our history. The strategy of the Goldwater high command . . . must be to inflame every minority grievance, to stir up the dregs of our national spirit, to make respectable the emotions and prejudices of which we are secretly ashamed. This will be a campaign to sicken decent and thoughtful people, and the bitterness it will distill will linger long in our national life." The Chicago Daily News found that "for the zealots," Goldwater "has the invaluable ability to give a latent, fear-born prejudice a patina of respectability and plausibility." To the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, "The Goldwater coalition is a coalition of Southern racists, county-seat conservatives, desert rightist radicals and suburban backlashers."

A few days before the convention, there was a real smear. In a report from Germany, CBS's Daniel Schorr clearly implied that Goldwater would, on his planned (and now canceled) post-convention trip to Berchtesgaden, seek a liaison between U.S. conservatives and German "right-wing elements"—which, in the U.S., smacks of Naziism. Barry hit the ceiling, sputtered that the report was "nothing but—and I won't swear, but you know what I'm thinking—a dad-burned dirty lie." For a while he barred CBS cameras from his convention headquarters.

After his nomination, Barry had a few more choice words about the nation's news media. "I don't use the black brush on newspapers or the radio or TV," he told Phoenix TV Reporter Ralph Painter in a filmed interview. "Newspapers like the New York Times have to stoop to utter dishonesty in reflecting my views. Some of the newspapers here in San Francisco, like the Chronicle, are nothing but out-and-out lies."