The Goldwater press aide had been up almost all night celebrating his boss's victory. Now, as the telephone rang in his hotel suite, he struggled from bed, picked his way through a litter of empty champagne bottles, listened briefly and wearily. Before stumbling back to the bedroom, he told waiting reporters: "Okay, we've made it official about Bill Miller."
Who was Bill Miller? And why had he just been named as Barry Goldwater's choice for the Republican vice-presidential nomination? Republicans might be arguing the answers for quite a while.
As chairman of the Republican National Committee since 1961, U.S. Representative William Edward Miller, 50, has proved himself a tireless, effective party organizer. A Roman Catholic and a New Yorker, he gives a semblance of religious and geographic balance to the ticket. A compact 5-ft. 7-in., 140-pounder, he makes a good appearance —particularly when accompanied by his highly photogenic wife Stephanie and their daughters Elizabeth Ann, 20, and Mary Karen, 17. A conservative after Barry's own heart, Miller is an acid-tongued orator with a notable talent for getting under Democratic skins. In fact, Goldwater told a meeting of Republican state chairmen that one reason he picked Miller was because "he drives Lyndon Johnson nuts."
A Loyalist's Name. Miller is the modern, urban equivalent of the candidate who was born in a log cabin—he is the son of a factory janitor in Lockport, N.Y. (pop. 27,300), an industrial suburb of Buffalo. He worked to help pay his way through Notre Dame and the Union University Law School at Albany, entered the service during World War II, was commissioned a first lieutenant in 1945 and assigned to the Judge Advocate General's war-crimes section, where he was an assistant prosecutor at the Nurnberg trials. Returning to New York, Miller was elected district attorney of Niagara County, and in 1950 won election to the first of his seven terms in the U.S. House of Representatives.
There he won little distinction as a lawmaker; he has sponsored no significant legislation. But Miller did win a name as a party loyalist with a penchant for party organization, and as a good man to avoid in any debate. This reputation got him the chairmanship of the National Republican Committee, and he did a diligent job, traveling some 150,000 miles, delivering nearly 600 speeches, appearing on national television more than 100 times, and jabbing at the Democrats every inch of the way. He has called Adlai Stevenson "completely inept," castigated Averell Harriman as the man "who loused up Laos," described Pierre Salinger as "the thinking man's filter."