Goldwater doc feels fresh as a daisy

BY VERNE GAY | Newsday Staff Writer

September 18, 2006

For people of a certain age, 1964's "Daisy" commercial can still evoke nightmares: The camera pans into a little girl's pupil as she's counting daisy petals, and then - kaboom! - she and everything else is sucked into a nuclear mushroom cloud. In some of our overcrowded memory banks, that may be the only recollection of the late Barry Goldwater, the four-term senator from Arizona and GOP presidential candidate who was among the most influential conservative figures of the 20th century. ("Daisy," by the way, aired only once and helped nuke Goldwater's White House run.)

That is why tonight's 90-minute profile, "Mr. Conservative," is such a welcome and remarkable program. It is deeply admiring, even reverent, and what a shock if it wasn't: Goldwater's granddaughter, C.C., is the producer and narrator. But she acquits herself so well and so eloquently that she establishes - at least for the purposes of "Mr. Conservative" - that sometimes family members are the best witnesses to extraordinary lives.

One major quibble: William F. Buckley Jr. is quoted nowhere in this program, which is such a ridiculous omission that viewers, particularly conservatives, will be agape at the oversight. What's the answer? Who knows, although a legion of Democratic admirers - Al Franken, Hillary Rodham Clinton (who campaigned as a "Goldwater Girl" in '64), Sen. Edward Kennedy (his brother John F. Kennedy and Goldwater were close friends, as well as potential presidential rivals) - are quoted. At least George F. Will is his usual eloquent self.

"Mr. Conservative" does have a purpose in mind and that is to reveal just how far the conservative wing of the Republican party has drifted from the ideals of Goldwater, who espoused states' rights, self-sufficiency and small government (one reason why he refused to vote for the Civil Rights Act - a stain he could never scrub away). He also said some incendiary stuff that frightened a lot of people who didn't bother to listen carefully or maybe too carefully (most famously, "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice") and was tarred - either fairly or unfairly though we'll never really know - as a nuclear cowboy by LBJ.

What's best about "Mr. Conservative," however, are the pictures - old home movies, shots of Goldwater among his beloved Navajo - and the beautiful, clear-eyed recollections of his family. Really, if you watch anything tonight, watch this.

MR. CONSERVATIVE:

GOLDWATER ON

GOLDWATER. A superb and moving biography of one of the most important political figures of the 20th century, Barry Goldwater. A must-see. Tonight at 9 on HBO.