Like an old bomber pilot still chalking up the missions, Barry Goldwater just keeps going.
He`ll be 80 next year. He`s had 15 operations (he counts his circumcision), including triple-bypass heart surgery in 1982. He has two artificial hips, an artificial knee, another bad knee and serious back trouble.
He was born when his native Arizona was still a U.S. territory in the still Wild West. He kept the family merchandising business thriving during the Depression. He flew everything from transports to fighters in World War II and retired from the Air Force Reserve as a major general in 1967.
A man who voices strong opinions in the manner that George Brett hits baseballs, Goldwater has put in 34 years of public service: four on the Phoenix City Council and 30 in the U.S. Senate. He won the Republican presidential nomination in 1964 and, in the process, transformed Republican and American politics for a generation.
His wife of 51 years, Peggy, died in 1985, and Goldwater retired from the Senate in January of last year. Since then, between world travels, he`s produced another book, having already had a dozen published. This one is the book-a pithy amalgamation of memoir and opinion summed up with the one-word title: ”Goldwater” (Doubleday, $21.95).
The memoir passages are unlike anything to be found in today`s pablum pot of political biography: ”I tiptoed up to my mother`s room, took her pistol from under the bed, sneaked downstairs, and pumped a couple of shots through the ceiling of our sleeping porch. One of them ripped a hole in Dad`s barrel of whiskey, which he had put up there to age.”
The opinion is as raw and undiluted as the whiskey in that barrel must have been:
”Richard Nixon was the most dishonest individual I have ever met in my life. . . . (Sen. Bob) Dole doesn`t have the leadership qualities that his job as minority leader requires. He tries to make everybody happy. . . One day I saw Bob Byrd on the Senate floor and didn`t recognize him. His face was covered with pancake makeup that ran down his starched collar. His hair was stylishly fluffed. He looked like he was about to step on stage in some nightclub act. . . The White House explanation makes (Ronald Reagan) out to be either a liar or incompetent. . . (Sen. Jacob) Javits was a provincial New Yorker, mesmerized by Israel, who tried to pass as a great internationalist. . . Black leaders can no longer merely plead economic and cultural
deprivation. It won`t wash. . . The New Right stresses the politics of absolute moral right and wrong. And, of course, they are convinced of their absolute rightness. The Moral Majority has no more right to dictate its moral and political beliefs to the country than any other group, political or religious.”
Book done-with the help of former journalist Jack Casserly-Goldwater is now traveling around the country talking about it. An ever-present cane helps keep his legs moving. A succession of lozenges keeps his throat and voice working. His hearing is sometimes a bit off.
Otherwise, he seems the same jut-jawed, high-domed, leathery-faced fellow he was when he ran for the presidency 24 years ago, complete to the bristly white hair and trademark horn-rimmed glasses.
Dressed for an interview last week in a conservative dark-blue pin-striped suit, and seated as erect as a Prussian in an elegant chair in a luxury suite in a Park Avenue hotel, Goldwater was having to perform as a celebrity author. But as he talked, he could just as well have been campaigning, or arguing in a Senate committee room or shooting the bull over a glass of bourbon in a Tempe, Ariz., saloon. No matter what he`s doing, Goldwater is always the same.
”Should we start anyway?” said the interviewer, upon discovering he had arrived much too early.
”Hell, yes!” said Goldwater.
You wonder how to think of this man. As an elder statesman, an old Senate warhorse, a historical figure? As a western eccentric who became an acclaimed photographer and remains a fanatical ham radio operator and sports car enthusiast? As a crusty curmudgeon, the ”conscience of conservatism”?
You`d best think of him as what he`s been longest, as what he is, perhaps, more than anything else.
A pilot. Not one of those corporate-voiced jetliner drivers speaking over the intercom from some inaccessible place forward of First Class. But a genuine 50-mission-cap, beaten-up-leather-jacket, thousand-dicey-landings kind of old-dog pilot. The kind of pilot you`d want with you in the left seat when you`re trying to beat weather flying over desert mountains at nightfall with lightning flashes dead ahead, and when you have a whole lot of big decisions to make real soon.
Goldwater first soloed an airplane in 1929. One of his first passengers was a pal`s girlfriend. Showing off with a tight 360-degree turn 2,000 feet over her house, he accidentally went into a deadly spin. Somehow, he got the plane back under control, and she afterward took him home for a couple of nerve-calming shots of bourbon. The next day he was back flying-solo.
In the war, he flew everything from P-51, P-38 and P-47 fighters to C-54 transports and B-24 bombers. He flew out of England, China and Iran and every place in between.
”Today, I borrow a Cessna 420,” he said. ”A friend of mine has it out at Scottsdale, and I don`t think anybody else flies it except for me. I fly helicopters quite a bit, too.”
In his book, Goldwater wrote:
”It`s fascinating flying at night, looking down at odd configurations of lights. Often I pick out a solitary light in the darkness and imagine it`s a home with a family sitting down to dinner. One time it will be a farmer and his wife with a houseful of kids, on another occasion a retired couple in the open countryside. I try to guess what they may be talking about, their cares and hopes. Finally, I close my eyes to better feel a kinship with these people. It`s a search for the real America, far from the closed walls and some of the closed minds in Washington.”
How does the world today look to Capt. (his favorite rank) Goldwater from up there after all those missions?
”It`s an entirely different world than it was 10 years ago,” he said.
”Or 5 years ago. It`s constantly changing, while the United States, I don`t think, has been constantly changing with it. We still think of ourselves as the world`s No. 1 power-economically, politically-but we no longer are.”
Where is the world heading?
”I don`t think we have many leaders in this country who recognize the fact that these Third World countries are coming up. I think you`ll see someday South Africa as the leading economic power in the world.
I think you`ll see South America assume a great leadership in economics. And if Red China ever gets rid of its communist government, I think within 20 years it can become the economic power of the world. They`re the smartest people, I think, in the world.”
It bothers Goldwater that America`s decline has become a finger-pointing subject of charge and counter-charge in the current presidential campaign, one that Goldwater sees as among the worst in memory.
”I don`t believe we should play politics with the fact that we`re no longer where we used to be. Because you can`t blame either party. You have to blame the American people and the general lack of decent management we`ve had, the lack of courage to invest new money. I think we`ve built one steel plant in this country since World War II. For either party to say, elect me and I will protect your jobs, that`s the last thing in the world we should do. This legislation to protect the textile industry-that`s an industry I know something about (Arizona`s principal agricultural crop is cotton)-it`s downright stupid. If the President ever signs that bill, I`ll give the textile industry in this country maybe a maximum of 10 years and they`ll no longer be in the business.”
A lifelong champion of the military-and the coauthor of congressionally mandated management reforms that had to be shoved down the tradition-bound Pentagon`s throat-Goldwater said he sees small chance of the U.S. becoming involved in war, and that, if one does come, it will likely be fought with conventional arms. This worries him, because he feels the federal deficit is going to force the Pentagon and the next president to make some hard choices on defense spending. He doesn`t want it to come out of operations and maintenance: troops, aircrews and ammunition.
”That`s the wrong place to take it,” he said. ”But it`s the easiest place to take it because you can cut it out of the budget. If you start saying, let`s cut back on the number of F-16 fighters in the Air Force, that gets a little hard because it gets political.” As he noted, the B-1 bomber project (which he favored) had a subcontractor in every state.
Goldwater is also a supporter of the ”Star Wars” Strategic Defense Initiative, but not if it means cutting back on conventional strength.
”I happen to feel that any war we might face-and I don`t happen to feel that we`re close to war-is going to be fought with conventional weapons,” he said. ”I would rather spend (defense money) on conventional forces because we`re still a long way from SDI.”
He hasn`t been very keen on the way we`ve used our conventional forces, either.
As he observed in his book on the Grenada invasion: ”It took three days and 7,000 American troops to defeat 50 Cubans and a few hundred lightly armed construction workers. The `corporate character` of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and its service politics demonstrated beyond any doubt some terrible weaknesses in our ability to carry out a unified military action.”
The campaigns of both presidential candidates this year seem to drive Goldwater crazy.
”I`d like to see both sides stand up and recognize that both men are patriotic, loyal Americans. Forget about the Pledge of Allegiance. Forget about everything else. They`re gentlemen. They`ve devoted long years to the betterment of their country and state. Then, with that, start talking about the issues. How do you cut the deficit? How do you maintain a defense that, regardless of cuts, in five years will still be able to engage in any activity needed to defend our freedom?”
Though Goldwater seems otherwise to think well enough of Vice President George Bush and Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, they are not in his pantheon of heroes. Those who are may seem surprising.
”I think history will make Harry Truman the outstanding president of this hundred years,” he said. ”I disagree completely with his politics-not completely, but mostly-but what I liked about him-he could tell you one thing at five o`clock this afternoon. Ask him the same question tomorrow morning, you get the same answer. Today, the President says something at five o`clock, then he has to have a meeting. `What did I say today that I shouldn`t have?`
”I think Eisenhower is coming up, too. Very strongly. During his tenure, people looked upon him more as a grandfather, a nice grandfatherly type. But he did one hell of a lot of good for this country. I think time is going to be very beneficial to him.”
Naturally enough, Goldwater is an admirer of Teddy Roosevelt (an Arizona county sheriff was the first of TR`s Rough Riders to die in the charge up San Juan Hill), to the point of having had Roosevelt Dam renamed ”Theodore Roosevelt Dam,” so it wouldn`t be confused with Franklin Roosevelt. But he had some nice things to say about FDR, too.
”You`re going to have to give a lot of credit to Franklin Roosevelt for some of the very obvious things that the free (enterprise) part of our society was not providing,” Goldwater said. ”I think Roosevelt`s (1932) platform was the most conservative I`ve seen in my life. After he got in, he became obsessed by the idea that the federal government could do anything-and everything.”
Goldwater`s other heroes include Charles Lindbergh, who flew combat missions in the Pacific as a civilian technical representative during World War II, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. Of contemporary men, he admires most his former Democratic Senate colleague, Sam Nunn of Georgia; Vietnam War hero John McCain, who now holds Goldwater`s Senate seat; and Sen. Malcolm Wallop of Wyoming.
He didn`t much like Lyndon Johnson (”the epitome of the unprincipled politician”), but he was a good friend of John F. Kennedy. Assuming they would run against each other in 1964, he and JFK had agreed to fly around the country on the same plane together and hold genuine debates.
Asked if he had any regrets about not beating LBJ in 1964, Goldwater sounded almost sentimental. ”I think I was in every state and a great majority of counties. I shook over 50 million hands. I really enjoyed it. We knew we couldn`t win. But the one thing we wanted to do, we did. We wanted to take control of the Republican Party away from New York, Pennsylvania, New England, and move it out west of the Rocky Mountains, which we`ve done. And the Republican Party`s been better off ever since. I think if Bush is elected (Goldwater`s betting heavily on it), it`ll be because of the West.”
What would be different now if Goldwater had been elected president in 1964?
”You`ve got to remember I would have had a Democratic Congress. If you don`t have Congress with you, you can`t do a damn thing. Let`s assume I had a Republican Congress. The war in Vietnam would have been ended-I think I could have ended it in two weeks. . . And I think I would have had enough knowledge of economics then to promote the type of thing that we needed-which is a better tax break for business.”
Goldwater counts no specific individuals as personal villains, but continues to rail against what he calls ”the Liberal Movement”-”which has given birth to many of our anti-Constitution and anti-American ideas. I think they caused a lot of trouble, and a lot of economic problems.” But he`s fascinated with the changes in his old nemesis, the Soviet Union.
”The big trouble with Russia is not us or the rest of the world, it`s their economy,” Goldwater said. ”And if they don`t change it, they`re going to have a revolution. The young people over there aren`t happy with having to work two or three weeks to buy a pair of shoes. I think Gorbachev is really making an honest effort to change things. He`s got a lot of opposition from older Politburo members, but I think it`s going to happen.
”I`ve never been to Russia. I taught Russian kids how to fly during World War II down in Abadan, Iran. They always told me when I wanted to get a visa that they didn`t recommend my coming to Russia because I`ve been so violently anti-Communist. But I`d just like to go there long enough to shake Gorbachev`s hand, sit down and spend a little time with him to come away convinced-or not convinced-that what I`ve been thinking was the right thought. I`ll even borrow an airplane and fly it over there; make it easier.”
Men Goldwater`s age-especially crusty old curmudgeons-often get intolerant about young people. Not so Goldwater.
”I lecture at Arizona State University every day when I`m home,” he said. ”Not academically, just a sort of bull session. And I`ll tell you, I`m more and more impressed with the quality, not just of our college students but grade schools and high schools all down the line.
”If you want to improve America, you`re going to have to look at the young people. This country is filled with young people, filled with ambition and new ideas, who understand its situation. I have a great deal of faith in the future of this country because of the young people. You come away feeling so damn confident that the answer is right over there in those schools.”
He paused, then added: ”Not (with) old bastards like me. I`ve had it.”
Not hardly. Not yet.
