Tucker's Last Stand Read Free Page A

the eye of Bill Baroody across the aisle, it was especially appropriate for him to say nothing, on issues or ideas the campaign manager did not want commentary on.
    â€œWhat does Lodge think he’s going to accomplish, leaving Saigon suddenly? I’ve knocked out Rockefeller, he’s gone. All the liberals can come up with is Scranton. The city of Scranton, Pee Aye, is, I suppose, named after the first Scranton? When did that happen, about the time of the Pilgrims?”
    â€œAbout then,” Baroody grinned, drawing lightly on his pipe.
    â€œBut I mean, why Bill Scranton? I’m not sure he’d set even Scranton, Pennsylvania, on fire.”
    â€œHe did pretty well when he ran for governor of Pennsylvania.”
    â€œHe reminds me of Adlai. Freddy? Does he remind you of Adlai? I wish you’d give up that pipe, Bill—smells like a war chief’s teepee in here.”
    â€œI see what you mean, Barry.” Baroody ignored, as always, the repeated protests over his pipe. “Yeah, he reminds me of Adlai.”
    â€œBut”—Goldwater laid down the speech and was asking the question now directly—“that does not tell us why Lodge quit Saigon. It isn’t as though he had settled our problems there. It’s a goddamn mess and it’s going to get worse.”
    Baroody leaned over and faced the candidate diagonally. “Don’t you see, Barry, he’s coming back here to help Scranton. Rockefeller will finance the whole thing. And they have exactly one objective in mind, and that’s what we’ve got to keep our eyes on. They want Ike to come out for Scranton. That’s about the only thing that would keep us from getting the nomination.”
    â€œEisenhower said he was going to stay neutral, didn’t he? Didn’t he say that twice?”
    â€œYes,” Baroody said. “Ike said that twice. But he also said exactly—” He looked at his watch a full second before reminding himself that it was hardly necessary to do so in order to say, “—exactly six days ago he said that as far as he was concerned, the race for the nomination was open until the day the Republican Convention named a candidate. You hardly overlooked that snub, Barry. You hammed it up for the picnic crowd in Phoenix, let them stick an arrow out behind you. Made a fine photo, looked as though it was coming right from your back, not from your armpit. Shot in the back by Ike—the message got through.”
    â€œYes,” Goldwater said. He turned to his right. “Freddy, have we got anything nice in the speech here”—he shuffled vaguely through the pages he hadn’t yet read—“about Ike? Maybe you can work in something about how he won the Second World War single-handed. Or maybe something about how he anticipated the Indochina problem at the Geneva conference in 1954 which is why we have no problem in Vietnam today.”
    â€œQuiet, Barry! Where Ike is concerned, We Are Not Sarcastic Ever.” Baroody turned his head to Anderson, to make certain that the injunction had got home to the blond young speech writer with the horn-rimmed glasses and the slightly cheeky expression on his face, even when working at highest tempo. Goldwater looked up again from the manuscript.
    â€œSay, Bill. Did you see in the last issue of National Review where Buckley proposes I tap Ike as my Vice President? Kinda cute, that.”
    â€œIf you think so, you and Buckley are the only people who think it’s such an interesting idea. For one thing, it’s unconstitutional. The Twenty-third Amendment says no one can be President more than twice, and since a Vice President is directly in line to become a President, then that’s unconstitutional. It’s that simple.”
    â€œBill”—Fred Anderson interrupted, stooping over to reach into his briefcase—“actually, I think you could be wrong about that. By the way, it’s