The Finger of Fate?

Gales had driven Indian summer from New England, and the temperature was a blustery 34DEG as Barry Goldwater arrived in New Hampshire last week. Goldwater's Concord welcome was warmer by far. Nearly 500 stomping, shouting Goldwaterites were on hand, while only a handful of 50 had greeted Nelson Rockefeller on his trip into the state on a balmy afternoon two weeks earlier.

Goldwater went to New Hampshire, where he presumably will meet Rocky in next March's presidential primary, to speak at a memorial dinner for the state's late Republican Senator Styles Bridges. There 1,100 diners paid $10 apiece to help endow the Styles Bridges chair in Government at New England College. Bridges's widow Doloris and Republican Senator Norris Cotton, who is Goldwater's New Hampshire manager, both drew pointed parallels between the philosophies of Goldwater and Conservative Bridges. Proclaimed Cotton: "The finger of fate is upon the forehead of Barry Goldwater." Goldwater contented himself with a denunciation of overcentralized government.

In Rockefeller's home territory next day, Goldwater spoke at a business awards dinner at the New York Hilton. He charged that Kennedy's term thus far "adds up to nearly a thousand days of wasted spending, wishful thinking, unwarranted interventions, wistful theories and waning confidence." While Goldwater's lines read well, his formal delivery was flat, and it was only while answering questions at a news conference that he really caught his listeners' interest. If he were to run for President, he said, he would seek delegate votes "everywhere," including New York State. As for Rocky's challenges to debate, Goldwater snapped: "I don't want to become allied with my enemies. These days the Governor is talking like Eleanor Roosevelt--God rest her soul--and Herbert Lehman."

During his week, Goldwater unnecessarily got himself into some steamy political water. Often in the past, he had advocated that the Tennessee Valley Authority be turned over to private enterprise. Now he answered a needling letter from Tennessee's Democratic Representative Richard Fulton, who asked the Senator if published reports that he still favored that proposition were true. To Fulton's astonishment, Goldwater wrote back, affirming that he was "quite serious in my opinion that TVA should be sold." Tennessee Republicans, who have high hopes of carrying their state for Goldwater next year, blanched in dismay. Wailed one: "TVA ranks right behind God, mother and country down here, and Barry knows that damned well; yet he still goes around shooting from the hip."

But Barry stuck to his guns. Appearing before the Women's National Press Club in Washington, he said: "It's better for a candidate to be honest rather than dishonest. I wouldn't want to offer myself as a candidate anywhere with a lie under my hat. This TVA is a socialistic venture which has been perpetrated on the American public without their knowing what they're getting into. I'm not going to keep my mouth shut about it." Would he like to debate Jack Kennedy? "I would enjoy that very much. We spent nine years arguing with each other, and I have sort of missed it." But he did think that Kennedy would be hard to beat because "peace and prosperity are like free beer and wide roads--sort of hard to talk against."

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