WASHINGTON, D. C.â??The congregation never came. The television men were at their stations; the professionals on Goldwaterâ??s staff had no duties of hospitality except to explain to the visiting journalists how inconsequential New Hampshire is, the way Eddie Fisher explains how inconsequential Elizabeth Taylor is. There were the girls in their Western hats and their Goldwater sashes, dressed for photographers who would not need their pictures. We think of the Goldwater people as the most radically innocent in all our politics. But the computer has destroyed the innocence of us all. The illusion of Barry Goldwaterâ??s special destiny had survived in these people against any interior doubts of reason and all the exterior preachments of established common sense, to be blown away in 15 minutes by a magical, mechanical instrument.
The ordinary believers may in fact have commenced to give up before the polls opened. One of those journalists who has the good sense to know that if you are reduced to canvassing the mind of a voter you might at least pick the most appetizing one possible, asked one of the girls in the Goldwater sashes how she felt knowing that all her hopes for a better America were being rendered into ashes this night. He reported that she replied, untroubled, that her involvement with the remains was minimal. She had been sent there by the Young Republicans of Washington because the Goldwater headquarters had called the day before to say that the committed were so laggard in indicating their intention to show up that it would be a fraternal act if a few of the neutral girls would come around just to provide a backdrop. She supposed she was for Nelson Rockefeller.
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