For most of his years under the lights of Washington, Barry Goldwater of Arizona has sported the guise of a hard-hitting, sure-thinking Republican who speaks his mind without blur or fuzz or fudge. “Much of his popular appeal,” wrote biographers Rob Wood and Dean Smith two years ago, “centers around his willingness to stand firm on his beliefs, and to speak frankly - even bluntly - no matter what the cost.” Even as late as last August, Russell Kirk, the sage of the National Review, could write, “he has a mind calculated to arrive at hard decisions without dangerous vacillation.” Goldwater’s views always have evoked the same journalistic vocabulary: decisiveness, ring of action, no pussyfooting.

In recent weeks, however, this rock image has begun to flake. Newsmen have started the inevitable comparison of recent pronouncements and found them clashing. Goldwater simply is not saying the same things he said so surely one, two or three years ago, or he is saying them with far less sureness in his tone. Walter Lippmann has decided that “the Senator is now engaged in remodeling his ideas, in moving away from the far Right and towards the more moderate Center.” And Alan L. Otten of The Wall Street Journal reports a new concern by quoting an unidentified Republican leader as saying, ‘‘I was once in a long meeting with Senator Goldwater, and he shifted his position three times in three hours. What’s more, I don’t think he even realized he was shifting his stand each time.”

Goldwater himself denies any change in his position. He has told a television interviewer, that the change actually is in Washington newsmen who, gradually finding Goldwaterism and conservatism more and more palatable, are deluded into thinking that Goldwater is shifting his views. But no one in Washington, including Goldwater, really believes this, and most observers are enjoying their view of Goldwater following the required course of a Presidential candidate.

There is no surprise or shock about this. No one expects politicians to be consistent in their views or their votes. The Republicans have a horde of ammunition for next year in the 1960 campaign speeches of John F. Kennedy. The Democrats probably will have a similar horde whether the Republicans nominate Goldwater, Nelson Rockefeller, Richard M. Nixon or John Glenn. “Senator Goldwater who is not a fanatic of the extreme but an ambitious politician, is now in the process of reshaping himself for the political realities of this country,” writes Lippmann. “It is interesting to watch him and comforting to think that the system is working so well.”

But it would surely be a mistake to accept the changing world of Barry Goldwater as just another example of a political flip-flop and just further proof that all serious contenders in America must move to the Center. Goldwater’s appeal up to now has not come alone from his far Right views. It has come much more from his simplicity. “Some people say that I oversimplify complicated issues,’’ he told a Republican rally. “They want complexity. I want understanding.” Tom Wicker of The New York Times has written that Goldwater’s approach “smacks of the panacea and the rule of thumb. . . . It provides the novelty of a sharp alternative to the established order and it satisfies the romantic American passion for solutions to problems - whether there are any or not.” The recent change in Goldwater has been only in part from conservatism to moderation. It has been mostly a change from the realm of the simple to the realm of the complex. He still is a conservative but, as a serious candidate, he has been forced to apply his views to specific issues and specific questions and shade them accordingly. This has made his views harder to separate and harder to pin down.

His twistings on civil rights produce the most obvious example. In The Conscience of a Conservative, published in 1960 and still available on newsstands as a 50c Macfadden paperback, Goldwater presented his precise views on the problem of civil rights. First, he made it clear that he considered States’ rights “the cornerstone of the republic, our chief bulwark against the encroachment of individual freedom by Big Government.” He did not see any conflict between States’ rights and civil rights. On any particular issue, either one or the other counted, never both. Voting, for example, was clearly a civil right, and no state had the right to take this away from an individual.

“It is otherwise, let us note, with education,” Goldwater said. “For the federal Constitution does not require the states to maintain racially mixed up schools. Despite the recent holding of the Supreme Court, I am firmly convinced - not only that integrated schools are not required - but that the Constitution does not permit any interference whatsoever by the federal government in the field of education. . . . I  am therefore not impressed by the claim that the Supreme Court’s decision on school integration is the law of the land. . . . I therefore support all efforts by the states, excluding violence, of course, to preserve their rightful powers over education.’”

Goldwater added a personal note. “It so happens that I am in agreement with the objectives of the Supreme Court,” he said. “ . . . I believe that it is both wise and just for Negro children to attend the same schools as whites, and that to deny them this opportunity carries with it strong implications of inferiority. I am not prepared, however, to impose that judgment of mine on the people of Mississippi or South Carolina. . . . That is their business not mine.”

Goldwater stayed with these views as late as the University of Mississippi crisis last year. He told United Press International then that Governor Ross Barnett “had every right to do what he did in the case of James Meredith, and President Kennedy should not have used troops to force the Negro’s admission to the University of Mississippi.” But, after the dogs of Birmingham, Goldwater began shuffling his views.

The first specific changes came after Kennedy sent his civil-rights bill to Congress last June. Goldwater, in an interview with The New York Times, first said he opposed the public accommodations provisions of the bill and then added some surprising comments on the section dealing with school desegregation. Goldwater said the provisions there were too broad but he favored giving the Attorney General power to start a school desegregation suit whenever there was “proof of grievance.” “A Negro has a right to get his taxes back,’” Goldwater said. “If his children are denied [school] privileges, he has a grievance.”

On September 2, U.S. News & World Report published a long interview with Goldwater, including this exchange :
‍
‍Q. Do you mean that segregation laws or integration laws ought to be a state and local matter?
A. As far as everything goes, except the Supreme Court decision on schools.
. . . I think today, if a tight and limited law were written aimed at correcting specific situations in school districts or schools, even the South might buy this.

At about the same time, Congressional Quarterly interviewed him and, using The Conscience of a Conservative as its guide, asked just how the states should resist the Supreme Court decision. “The idea is not to resist it,” Goldwater replied. “There is nothing in our Constitution that says a person can violate the law. If the states feel that States’ rights have been tampered with, you have the amendment process or the elective process. Either one is open.” If he were President, would he use federal authority to enforce federal court decisions on school integration? “I would first try moral persuasion. . . . And failing that, I think that the Attorney General should have the power to use a very tightly drawn law aimed like a rifle at the precise problem in a school district. . . . Yes, I would use it.” Would he use troops? “There are times when the President can use troops. There are times when he can’t. I think the troops were wrong in Little Rock, but probably there was some justification for their use in Mississippi in preserving law and order and protecting life and property.”

Goldwater has changed his position on the question of the federal income tax. In The Conscience of a Conservative, he wrote that “government has a right to claim an equal percentage of each man’s wealth, and no more.’’ “The idea,” he continued, “that a man who makes $100,000 a year should be forced to contribute ninety per cent of his income to the cost of government, while the man who makes $10,000 is made to pay twenty per cent is repugnant to my notions of justice. I do not believe in punishing success. . . . The graduated tax is a confiscatory tax. Its effect, and to a large extent its aim, is to bring down all men to a common level.” Goldwater went on to conclude that we must “abolish the graduated features of our tax laws; and the sooner we get at the job, the better.”

But, more recently, in his interview with U.S. News & World Report, Goldwater had some different things to say about a graduated income tax :

Q: You’ve been quoted as saying that a graduated income tax is a confiscatory tax. Is that your view?
A: I don’t think I’d put it that way. But I think it has been destructive of initiative - and when you destroy American initiative, you destroy the possibility of more earnings. . . .
Q: Then you don’t believe in any graduation at all in the income tax?
A: I don’t go that far, but I’m opposed to the theory. I’d like to see some other suggestions made in the whole field.
In fact, if I had anything to say about this tax picture, what I would do would be to assemble some knowledgeable business people, some knowledgeable labor people, and say, “Get off in the corner and write us a new tax code that’s going to produce sufficient revenue in a fair way for our Government."

In an August 28 interview with Congressional Quarterly, Goldwater repeated his proposal for a study by knowledgeable people and explained: ‘‘I am against the progressive feature of the income tax, but I would reduce the progressive feature and nothing else, because this wouldn’t work.”

Taxes and civil rights are major issues before Congress this year, and it makes sense for Goldwater - if he feels the need for self-examination - to mull over his views on these issues first. But Goldwater also has shifted his views on subjects that have not been so high in the public eye in 1963.

Take labor, for example. In 1960, he suggested that the antitrust laws should be applied to labor unions - long one of the chief targets for his conservative barbs. But last August 28 he told Congressional Quarterly: “I don’t think it will work, frankly. I can understand the reasoning of those who push it, but I think the laws are far too cumbersome. We are dealing with people, not corporate bodies.”

Take welfare programs. In The Conscience of a Conservative, Goldwater wrote: “The government must begin to withdraw from a whole series of programs that are outside its constitutional mandate - from social welfare programs, education, public power, agriculture, public housing, urban renewal, and all the other activities that can be better performed by lower levels of government or by private institutions or by individuals. I do not suggest that the federal government drop all of these programs overnight. But I do suggest that we establish, by law, a rigid timetable for a staged withdrawal. We might provide, for example, for a 10% spending reduction each year in all of the fields in which federal participation is undesirable.” But last month, when U.S. News & World Report asked him if he would phase out various welfare programs over a period of years, Goldwater replied :

“Oh, I don’t think you can do that. . . . Such programs have become established in people’s minds. I would merely stop the introduction of new programs, because I think we’re in every conceivable field that we can get into. And then I would start trying to convince the Governors of the States that, if they took these things back, they could do them with less money."

And he told a television interviewer during September: “You are not going to stop these programs if local governments will not take care of the needs.”

Take campaign strategy. On Meet the Press on November 19, 1961, Goldwater said :

“If you are going hunting for ducks, you go where the ducks are. We Republicans can look at these large cities where we don’t control the city organizations, and practical politics will tell us that we don’t have much of a chance, regardless of the ethnic and religious groups. I would concentrate, then, the Republican fire where we are strong : in the Southern cities, in the smaller cities all across America, in the suburban areas, in the country areas and at the same time start a serious, well-thought-out campaign to show people in the large ethnic and religious groups in the cities who do not normally vote for us at the national elections that we are their best party.”

This was interpreted, perhaps wrongly, by his followers to mean that Goldwater strategy in 1964 would appeal to the South, West and Midwest, while writing off the industrial East. The Draft Goldwater Committee, in fact, distributed maps with that strategy blocked out. But Goldwater, in a speech to the Republican Men’s Club of Bartlesville, Okla., last September 13, disclaimed this strategy:

“Let me begin by saying that I disagree with people who argue that we should write off the eastern seaboard and the industrial areas of the country. I disagree with people who insist that we must forget all about the Negro vote, and that we might as well concede the labor vote. I do not believe the Republican Party should write of  any section of the country or any group of potential voters. I believe the Republican Party should strive to its utmost in every part of America and among every possible group to win votes.”

Of course, Goldwater has not changed his views on every subject under the sun. He has remained consistent, direct and simple, for example, on Cuba (“a blockade. . . training of Cuban exiles . . . establishment of a single Cuban Government-in-exile”) and foreign aid (“it should be used as a ‘rifle’ aimed at specific areas where we can gain advantage over the Russians”) and farm policy (end price supports and the REAs) and the John Birch Society (“they are anti-Communist and I don’t see how we can be against that”) right-to-work laws and more.

But even these may be shaded as the Republican National Convention comes nearer and nearer. James Reston of The New York Times tells us Goldwater has begun “reading seriously a lot of speeches he had made casually in the past to see whether he really believed, in the context of the Presidency, what he had been saying to political rallies when he was merely Chairman of the Republican Senatorial Committee. More than that, he has organized a brain trust of his own, composed of university and political types to question and sharpen his thinking. He has hired an electronic computer to record everything he has said on such topics as Cuba and taxation so that, when questioned, he will know what he has said in the past. And he has arranged a series of private seminars on major topics of the day as a sort of personal educational exercise.”

But despite self-examination, brain trusts, computer and seminars, Goldwater voted “no” on the limited nuclear test ban treaty - the same way he would have voted without a brain trust, computer and the rest. Goldwater is trapped by his past. He cannot desert the conservatives who put him where he is. The Goldwater boom would have no meaning if he gradually turned into a moderate Republican -  a soft-spoken, Arizona version of Richard Nixon. At the most, Goldwater can blur and fuzz and fudge to convince the mass of non-conservatives in America that he is a thoughtful, intelligent man who can be trusted to sit in the White House and weigh the complexities of government with care. Goldwater, as he tells us again and again, is still the candidate of conservatism - just a lot less direct and simple and clear than before.

Stanley Meisler is a Washington newsman.