Mission: A Winner's Image

Pennsylvania's Governor Bill Scranton, latest entry in the Republican presidential race, last week invaded the Goldwater-minded Midwest. In Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Colorado and Kentucky, Scranton and his wife Mary received warm welcomes, addressed national convention delegates, even managed to win over a few who had previously leaned toward Barry.

But delegate-scrounging was not Scranton's mission-- not yet. Instead, what he had to do was build an image, not just as an energetic, articulate, moderate alternative to Goldwater but, far more important, as a Republican who might give Democrat Lyndon Johnson a terrific fight in November.

Thus Scranton was waging a war on two fronts, one against Goldwater, the other against the incumbent President. He missed no opportunity to contrast his views with Goldwater's, and Barry, with his vote against the civil rights bill, served up Scranton a golden issue on a silver platter. No sooner had Goldwater announced that he would naysay the civil rights measure than Scranton shot off a telegram. "I urge you," he wired, "to repudiate your opposition to the civil rights bill by voting yes on final passage. Your views on the subject to date are opposed to the traditional Republican philosophy of equal opportunity for all, and it is of great importance to our party that you now change your views. Other Republican Senators, especially Senator Dirksen, have worked hard and long with great statesmanship to bring about effective civil rights legislation."

In Des Moines, Scranton roused a crowd of 3,000 to cheers as he declared: "Tonight the heartland of America waits for new answers. Tonight the heartland of America demands vigorous leadership, rugged faith, and a renewal of the march forward. I intend to offer those answers--I intend to provide that leadership. If you will march with me, the American journey can begin again. Where issues are complex, I will not try to fool you into believing that they are simple. Where we are in trouble--and we are in trouble tonight in many parts of this shrinking world--I will not lull you with lofty assurances that all is well. I will not lead you down the easy road. I will call for sacrifice, I will call for courage, I will call for a spirit--a spirit of adventure."

"Stand with Me." In Topeka, Scranton kept hammering at Goldwater's philosophy. Cried he to his fellow Republicans: "Suppose the Democrats can accuse us--and be believed--of an irresponsible defense policy that would turn over the decision to use nuclear weapons to field commanders? Suppose they can accuse us of trying to destroy the social security system? Suppose they can establish that we think foreign policy is a matter of shooting from the hip--and who cares what we hit? Suppose they show that when the chips are down, Republicans won't stand for equal rights for all Americans?" The result, said Scranton, would not only be defeat for the G.O.P. in November but the ruin of conservatism.

At a St. Louis press conference, Scranton's aggressiveness led him into making a charge that he later regretted. Discussing Goldwater's refusal to meet him in a face-to-face television debate, Scranton said: "I think this indicates an apparent lack of courage to face people." Later, in Denver, Scranton apologized, said his remark had been "ill-advised." "I know Goldwater has personal courage," he explained. "No one denies that. But since the New Hampshire primary, he has been guarded and hemmed in by the politicians around him lest he express his personal views."

In Louisville, Scranton went after Goldwater for another of Barry's many lip-shooting remarks. "I believe it most unfortunate," said Scranton, "that the present front-running candidate for our presidential nomination has embarrassed our party by announcing that people who are poor have only their stupidity or their laziness to blame. This is a slander on the thousands of good Americans who through no fault of their own have been caught in the backlash of our urbanized, industrialized, fast-moving society. There is a need for the party of Lincoln to remember that 'there but for the grace of God go I.' But heaven help us if we go before the American people with the naive belief that every poverty-stricken family in America deserves nothing but contempt."

The Real Opponent. This was tough talk, but no tougher than Scranton's attack on the Johnson Administration, which he accused not of having "bad policies," but of having "no policies." The Democrats, he said, "have put together a short-order foreign policy, serving each day's hash from the leavings of yesterday's mistakes." If given the nomination, he pledged, he would "strip away the sham promises, the heavy-handed politics-as-usual, the worn bag of political legerdemain which the Johnson Administration has substituted for a sense of national purpose. For the past six months the propaganda mills of that Administration have ground out a vast array of slogans and crackpot schemes."

Winding up his week before a tumultuous crowd at the Massachusetts G.O.P. convention in Boston, Scranton again lashed out at the Democrats: "There is not a single thing in President Johnson's poverty bill that is going to help anybody who is poverty-stricken or who hasn't enough to eat." Moving into foreign policy, Scranton said that the present Administration "has failed to produce a single good idea or successful strategy during its first year in office."

In his campaign, Scranton was winning strong allies among the forces of moderate Republicanism. Henry Cabot Lodge's campaign backers were now working for Scranton. Nelson Rockefeller withdrew from the race, threw his support (and, perhaps more important, the facilities of his widespread organization) to Scranton. And while Dwight Eisenhower maintained a glum silence, his brother Milton sent Scranton a lengthy letter of endorsement, said pointedly: "I know that you avoid snap judgments and clever remarks devoid of sincerity and common sense. I admire you for your moderate but firm philosophy, and I hope the American people will realize what an opportunity they now have for placing the leadership of our nation in steady hands."

The Sinister East. What was Candi date Goldwater doing while Scranton was hitting the Midwestern hustings against him? For one thing, he was still picking up delegates. Montana, last of all the states to select its delegates, picked a solid, 14-member Goldwater group. Three days earlier in Texas, Goldwater had, as expected, added all 56 of the state's delegates. At the Texas convention, Goldwater extended his past attacks on the sinister "Eastern clique" of powerful Republicans who oppose him to include certain elements of the press. Said he: "All of a sudden all the radical columnists--Childs, Lippmann, Alsop--and all the radical newspapers like the New York Times, the Washington Post, even Izvestia in Russia--they are suddenly expressing a great deal of concern about the Republican Party. Nothing would make these people happier than if the Republican Party were to drown. Do you know what they're afraid of? They're afraid they're going to have a Republican candidate they can't control."

This Eastern-clique business is a fetish with Goldwater and his followers; they constantly compare 1964 to 1952, when, they insist, the Republican kingmakers of the industrial Northeast cheated Robert A. Taft out of the Republican nomination. The comparison, of course, is absurd. Bill Scranton has not achieved the national stature of a Dwight Eisenhower, and Barry Goldwater is far, far from being a Bob Taft. Moreover, the storied kingmakers who launched Ike into politics--and thereby won undying enmity from the G.O.P.'s conservative wing--did not catapult Scranton, or anyone else, into the race, and as yet have attempted nothing of consequence in the 1964 campaign.

With three weeks to go before the convention, Scranton's fight is uphill. Goldwater managers now claim some 700 delegates, more than enough to win nomination.* But of these, only about half are really committed. Of the others, many lean toward Barry mostly because they figure he might just as well be the Republican sacrifice in a Democratic year. If they were convinced that another candidate might actually win the presidency and carry hundreds of other Republicans into office with him, their loyalty to Barry almost certainly would waver and wane. It is up to Bill Scranton to convince these delegates that he is just the fellow to whip Lyndon.

* At a comparable preconvention stage in 1952, Taft claimed some 600 delegates, with 604 needed to nominate.

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