A Star Is Born<br > Adam Clymer<br >raid Reagan set foot on the national political stage on October<br >1964， when he made a half-hour televised speech for the Re-<br >liean presidential candidate， Barry Goldwater. It did not draw<br >;h critical attention. That was long before newspapers seri-<br >ky covered the role of television in politics， and neither The<br >v York Times nor The Los Angeles Times mentioned the<br >~eh. Neither did Theodore H. White in his The Making of the<br >sident 1964. That collective inattention may hardly be surpris-<br >， for in the politics of that year the speech was ineffective. It did<br >hing to avert electoral disaster for Goldwater， a disaster that<br >his ideological allies on the defensive lbr many years.<br >But 27，178，188 Americans voted for Barry Goldwater in 1964，<br >1 a sizable fraction of them heard and watched Reagan. His<br >~~h articulated and renewed the hopes that Goldwater s im-<br >lding defeat had dulled. So， instead of despairing one week<br >~r on Election Day， they stayed in the politics that many had<br >;ered only to help Goldwater. Twelve and sixteen years later，<br >