Friday, Nov. 13, 1964

Sizing It Up

"It was a great victory for conservatism said the Milwaukee Sentinel. "An majority voted to conserve the status quo -to preserve the system of government by subsidy which the Democrats have made the American way of life." Thus last week one of the 359 U.S. dailies that had endorsed Barry Goldwater assessed the meaning of his defeat.

Avalanche's Trigger. Other pro-Goldwater papers took a different tack.

The Chicago Tribune took cheer from the fact that 26.6 million voters "were willing to support the spokesman of a conservative philosophy in a time of general prosperity and against an en trenched political apparatus of enormous power." The Tribune discounted the 42.3 million who voted for John son: "Whether they were voting for any thing is extremely doubtful." In Birmingham, the News, an early and sturdy Goldwater adherent, solaced itself with a post-mortem editorial: "Barry Goldwater was beaten. But that does not mean that what he stood for is wrong or discredited." Bill Know-land's Oakland, Calif., Tribune ex plained what had triggered the land slide: "Unfortunately for the Republican presidential candidate, he received no support from leaders of his own party in several states." Some of Goldwater's press partisans offered a more caustic analysis. "Full blame for the G.O.P.'s abysmal showing cannot yet be fully assigned," said the Los Angeles Times, which had reluctantly declared for Goldwater because it had publicly sworn before San Francisco to support whomever the party nominated. "But much responsibility must be laid to the candidate himself. In his zeal to promulgate the conservative cause, he managed to alienate the vital middle." Said the Richmond, Va., News Leader: "There is nothing to be gained from sugar-coating the pill. We got clobbered." Notes of Composure. For the most part, papers that had backed Johnson managed to avoid an excess of jubilation. Somewhere between its overstated front-page headline (G.O.P. LEFT IN RUINS BY JOHNSON SWEEP) and the editorial page, the New York World-Telegram recovered its composure. "One hopes that the President won't let this one-sided victory go to his head," said the World-Telegram. "His 'mandate' isn't all it may seem at first glance." The same note was struck by the San Francisco Chronicle, which had broken with its own Republican tradition to endorse Johnson: "So great a tide of votes" carries with it "the obligation and responsibility to use his new authority with bold and creative, yet prudent, statesmanship." The New York Herald Tribune, another paper that abandoned its normally Republican posture this year, found a boundary for Johnson's mandate: "the limits of consensus of the great national coalition that gave it." Among major U.S.

papers, the Philadelphia Inquirer was almost alone in its unqualified enthusiasm. The Inquirer called the election "a fine personal victory" for Johnson, "a manifestation of affection and respect for him as an individual and as President." Crossed Fingers. Those papers that had declined to support either candidate sounded a post-election note of neutrality-one that leaned, though, toward the candidate they had favored but had not endorsed. The New York Daily News let a day go by ("We don't like to break in between editions with a hastily written election editorial) before summing up: "In the light of our President's strange and unsavory political past, many Americans will be hoping for the best and keeping their fingers crossed. So will we." It illustrated its position with an editorial cartoon that was even more succinctly stated than its editorial (see cut).

The Wall Street Journal, which never endorses presidential candidates, acted almost as if no election had taken place.

On the morning after, it held its coverage to 21 in. on Page One. Next day the Journal weighed in with an editorial that seemed to lay the blame for defeat on Barry & Co.: "Should conservatism now be eclipsed for a time, it will not be for defeat of its principles but default of its spokesmen. In that circumstance lies such opportunity as exists, in other years, for other voices."

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