Next Monday, September 18, HBO will broadcast a new documentary, “Mr. Conservative: Goldwater on Goldwater.” The film was made by Barry Goldwater’s granddaughter, CC Goldwater. The Los Angeles Times calls it “an unabashedly admiring — though not wide-eyed — attempt to reclaim her grandfather’s legacy, and to reconcile the man she adored — the avid gadgeteer, ham-radio operator, aviator, and truly talented photographer of American Indians — with the controversial political figure, often heralded as the father of the American conservative movement.”

There are three kinds of people these days who like to call themselves “Goldwater Republicans”:

* libertarians, who tend to ignore the social conservatism of the senator’s 1964 presidential campaign, focusing on his rugged-individualist opposition to the federal leviathan and his later opposition to the religious right;

* liberals, who would perhaps have been Rockefeller Republicans in 1964, when they denounced Goldwater as literally insane; and

* limited-government conservatives, who still believe in the ideals of Goldwater’s book The Conscience of a Conservative and regret the big-government conservatism that now dominates the Republican party.

My guess is that “Goldwater on Goldwater” is going to appeal more to the first two groups than to the actual Goldwaterites. It interviews people from across the political spectrum, but George Will appears to be the only Goldwaterite interviewed, while it also features Hillary Rodham Clinton, Teddy Kennedy, Ben Bradlee, Walter Cronkite, Al Franken, and James Carville. Interviews with the daughter who had an abortion and the gay grandson also indicate a strong emphasis on the later Goldwater.

Either way, spending 90 minutes with Barry Goldwater has got to be a welcome respite from the world of George W. Bush.