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WILLIAM TAYLOR
the responsibility for the use of atomic weapons, just as it was character–
istic of Kennedy that he should have insisted upon making all im–
portant governmental decisions himself.
The most puzzling thing about QQldwater is, in fact, the very
absence of the qualities of leadership that might be expected to
accompany the neo-Burkean brand of conservatism he sometimes
mouths. It seems unlikely, for example, that he would be more apt,
say, than Lyndon Johnson to push the red button, as Democrats have
taken to claiming. The more Goldwater talks about American foreign
policy the clearer it becomes that his appeal is not so much to im–
perialism in the form of naked national self-assertion as to simplicity
and economy: to the reiterated fact that the regulation of our relations,
both diplomatic and military, must be clarified and reduced to a
minimum. In this respect he is a crypto-isolationist with immense
appeal among those who have never "bought" our new foreign com–
mitments. The one facet of executive power that G.oldwater appears
to endorse without qualification (sometimes
to
the dismay of his
states' rights supporters ) is the police power. For him the national
government is essentially a policeman. Neither Goldwater nor those who
support him, one may be sure, want war any more than the rest of us.
They differ from other Americans in their incapacity to imagine any
political resolution of existing world tensions and in their restlessness
before political stalemate. It is parochialism and literal-rnindedness, not
aggressiveness, that underlies their present, seemingly dangerous think–
ing. The key to understanding the apparent militancy of much that
Goldwater says lies in an appreciation of how profoundly apolitical
he is, a facet of his thinking that should be clear from the persistence
with which he has placed his controversial concept of extremism in a
military or police context. Because of his distrust for the diplomatic bar–
gaining table, he has taken to proposing a restoration of world order
through placing a bigger cop with a bigger nightstick on America's
global beat. It would all be so easy, he seems to be saying, if we simply
labeled Communist powers the enemy and set to work policing the
world with what he has taken
to
calling "conventional nuclear weapons."
One supporter at the convention said a good deal about Gold–
water when he observed that he was "the most reassuring Republican
since Calvin Coolidge." Surely, his passivity, his dislike of publicity,
his obvious discomfort at the thought of employing the great power of
the presidency and his general vagueness and indecisiveness are far
more important features of his appeal than the secret intellectual am–
munition that
~s
being fed to him by the intellectual right, as I. F.