Six Crises (52 page)

The balance of the period prior to my entrance into the political arena can be quickly covered. I practiced law for five years in my home town of Whittier; then came ten months in Washington, in 1942, writing rationing regulations for the OPA, followed by three-and-a-half
years in the Navy during World War II. Nothing occurred in this period to indicate a possible future political career—except that, as President Eisenhower put it, “Like all successful politicians I married above myself.”

I ran for public office for the first time in 1946. Here again, I did not fit into the pattern usually attributed to successful political practitioners. I have always liked to meet and talk to people, but the back-slapping, baby-kissing, exhibitionist activities expected of the average candidate were missing from this campaign and all the others in which I was to participate. I have always felt that above everything else a man must be himself in a political campaign. He must never try to be or to do something which is not natural for him. Whenever he does, he gets out of character and loses the quality that is essential for political success—sincerity and credibility. My success in the '46 campaign was probably the result of three factors: intensive campaigning; doing my homework; and participating in debates with my better-known opponent, the veteran incumbent Congressman, Jerry Voorhis.

When I went to Congress in 1947, a national newspaper syndicate chose me as the subject for a feature piece entitled, “The Greenest Congressman in Washington.” The consequences of my appointment to the Committee on Un-American Activities are recounted in the first section of this book.

My major committee assignment was Education and Labor and it was here, thirteen years before the election of 1960, that I met for the first time the man who was my opponent in that campaign and is now President of the United States. Jack Kennedy and I shared one distinction on the Education and Labor Committee: we were the low men on the totem pole. I was the most junior member on the Republican side and he on the Democratic side. This was probably a challenge and incentive to both of us. The custom in committee hearings is for the questioning to start with the chairman and then to alternate between Democrats and Republicans until the last man finally has his chance. This meant that before Kennedy or I could ask a question, both the witness and the subject had been pretty well worked over. Each of us had plenty of opportunity to do a lot of thinking as our senior colleagues fired away, and each of us, I believe, usually managed to come up with some pretty good questions at the end of the hearing.

In fact, it was in our capacity as members of that committee that we had our first “debate.” In the spring of 1947, at the request of Congressman Frank Buchanan, we went to McKeesport, Pennsylvania, a
suburb of Pittsburgh, to debate the merits of what was then the “hot” issue under committee consideration, the Taft-Hartley Act. I doubt if either of us, or those who were in the audience of 150 to 200 that night, will recall much of what was said during the course of the evening. I was for the bill. Kennedy was against it. And we both presented our points of view as vigorously as we could. As far as the audience was concerned, I probably had the better of the argument because most of those present, as employers, tended to be on my side in the first place. After the meeting, we rode a sleeper from Pittsburgh back to the capital. I remember that our discussions during the long, rocky ride related primarily to foreign affairs and the handling of the Communist threat at home and abroad, rather than the Taft-Hartley Act. I do not recall the details of our talk but of one thing I am absolutely sure: neither he nor I had even the vaguest notion at that time that either of us would be a candidate for President thirteen years later.

It was not until the spring of 1952 that the thought first seriously occurred to me that I might be a possible candidate for national office. As a result of the Hiss case and my election to the Senate in 1950, speaking invitations came into my office from all over the nation. One of these, the principal speech at a fund-raising dinner of the New York State Republican Committee, May 8, 1952, at the Waldorf-Astoria, turned out to be one of the most important speeches I had made up to that time. I devoted a full week to preparing it. I knew I faced a major test before a highly sophisticated audience and was keyed up for the occasion. It turned out to be one of my more successful efforts. When I concluded, the audience gave me a standing ovation. As I sat down, Governor Dewey grasped my hand and said: “That was a terrific speech. Make me a promise: don't get fat; don't lose your zeal. And you can be President some day.”

I was somewhat embarrassed by the generosity of his remarks. It was not the first time that someone had suggested that I might be presidential timber. Every public figure, at one time or another, and particularly after he has made an effective speech, has had someone say—“you have what it takes to be President,” or words to that effect. It is a way some people have to pay their highest compliment to a speech they may have liked.

I thought at first that this was all Governor Dewey meant to convey. I assumed that he was simply indulging in the usual practice of trying to say something nice to a fellow political practitioner after a major effort. However, as I was to learn when I came to know him better,
he is not addicted to that kind of political puffing. Through the years I served as Vice President, I was to find him one of my most objective critics. If he thought one of my speeches was good he would say so. But he would never hesitate to tell me that another one had not been up to par, or was even “lousy,” if he thought that to be the case. This candor on Dewey's part probably lost him some friends in the political world, but I respected and admired him for it. I thought that his failure to win the presidency in 1948, at a time when I did not know him personally, was a great loss to the nation. As I got to know him well through the years after 1952, I came to believe this even more deeply. At his best, Dewey is one of the most brilliant, tough-minded, resourceful men of this era. He would have been more than a match for Khrushchev or any other world leader. It is America's and the Free World's loss that his great talents were never utilized on the world scene.

Despite the success of my New York speech and Dewey's unexpected reaction to it, I did not consider myself a serious contender for the vice presidential nomination when I attended the Chicago Convention in July 1952. And this is perhaps as good a place as any to lay to rest one of the many myths regarding my selection as General Eisenhower's running mate in 1952. It has been alleged that there was a “deal” beween Dewey and myself under which I was to receive the vice presidential nomination in return for “delivering” the California delegation to Eisenhower. There are two facts which completely demolish this allegation. In the first place, I was for Eisenhower long before I met Dewey at the New York dinner in May. And in the second place, the California delegation was pledged to Governor Earl Warren and stayed with him to the finish. It did not shift to Eisenhower until after he had already been assured the nomination by reason of the switch to him, over Harold Stassen's objection, of the Minnesota delegation.

From the time I became the Republican nominee for Vice President, everything I was to do or say inevitably was appraised in light of the possibility that I might eventually become a candidate for President, but it was not until November of 1958 that the story of my candidacy really begins.

•  •  •

Friday, November 7, was a bleak day at the start of a long, cold Washington winter. It was a particularly cold day in the fortunes of the Republican Party and of Richard Nixon. My political career had
been one of very sharp ups and downs since my nomination and election as Vice President in 1952. My stock soared after the success of my first round-the-world trip in the fall and winter of 1953. It went down just as sharply when, in 1954, my back-breaking campaign for a Republican House and Senate fell short. It went up again in 1955 because of the general approval, even from my most severe critics, of my conduct during the period of the President's heart attack. It went down again in 1956 when Harold Stassen made his abortive attempt to dump me from the ticket. My renomination and re-election in 1956 more than compensated for the losses sustained during the Stassen attack. But in 1957 and 1958 my support drifted downward again as the recession began to be felt throughout the country. Then the crisis of Caracas, in May 1958, carried me to an all-time high. But just six months later, the shattering Republican defeat in the '58 Congressional elections drove my stock down to an all-time low.

It was at this time that I received a telephone call from Len Hall. Len had been a long-time personal and political friend. We had served together in the House. He had been Chairman of the Republican National Committee during the period of the President's heart attack and the successful campaign of 1956. He told me—this Friday in November—that Clifford Folger, who had been National Republican Finance Chairman during Hall's tenure as Party Chairman, was on leave in Washington from his post as U. S. Ambassador to Belgium and that they would like to drop by to discuss the political situation. I invited them to dinner at my home.

After dinner Len quickly got down to essentials. “It is time for you to decide what you are going to do in 1960,” he said. “If you are going to be a candidate, you must start now.”

The thought that I might be a candidate in 1960 had, of course, occurred to me before. But for the first time, I now had to face up to the problems I would be confronted with if I made the decision to run.

First we discussed the odds against us. They were formidable indeed.

At the beginning of the 1952 campaign, by way of contrast, there were 199 Republicans in the House of Representatives (out of a total of 435 members) and 47 Republican Senators against 49 Democrats. There were Republican Governors in twenty-five states and the Republican Party controlled both houses of twenty-six state legislatures. The Republican candidate in 1960 would find that there were only
153 Republicans in the House (out of a total of 437), 35 Republican Senators out of 100, 14 Republican Governors, and that the Republicans controlled both houses of the state legislatures in only seven states. As a further indication of party weakness, a Gallup Poll as to party preferences (in February 1960) showed that 47 per cent of American voters considered themselves Democrats, 30 per cent Republicans, and 23 per cent independents. To win in 1960, the Republican candidate would have to get practically all the Republican votes, more than half of the independents—and, in addition, the votes of between five and six million Democrats.

My personal stock was no higher than that of the party because I had campaigned throughout the country for our Republican candidates in the 1958 elections. As a result of that massive national defeat and Nelson Rockefeller's victory in New York, columnists and commentators were freely predicting that I was on the way down and Rockefeller was on the way up as the potential Republican candidate in 1960.

One major winner in the '58 campaign was Jack Kennedy. He had won an overwhelming re-election victory in Massachusetts and his presidential bandwagon, which had started to roll immediately after his narrow defeat for the vice presidential nomination in 1956, was now moving at high speed. In a trial heat between Kennedy and me which Gallup took at this time, it was Kennedy by 59 to 41 per cent. This would have meant a Kennedy landslide of the same proportions as Eisenhower's decisive victory over Stevenson in 1956.

I asked Len Hall, in light of all these discouraging facts, to give me his honest appraisal of the odds against me on winning the nomination and the election. He replied that he was confident we could win the nomination—even though the odds at the moment were probably in Rockefeller's favor. As far as the election was concerned, he estimated the odds against any Republican winning in 1960 at about five-to-one. But speaking from his wealth of political experience, he refused to concede that the situation might not change drastically before Election Day 1960, particularly if we mounted an effective campaign.

Before our evening's conversation was over, Len Hall agreed to assume the responsibility for directing the campaign to line up delegates to the 1960 National Convention. Cliff Folger said that he would undertake the role of Finance Chairman as soon as he completed his assignment in Belgium.

As we entered the year 1959, some breaks began to come our way. President Eisenhower sent me to London late in November 1958 to represent him at the dedication of the chapel in St. Paul's Cathedral honoring the American dead of World War II. The trip was rated a success by most observers. My speech at the historic London Guildhall received a particularly favorable reaction, both in Britain and in this country.
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The effect of these events in the United States was not massive. But it did tend to erase the memories of the unsuccessful '58 campaign and started me on the way back from the low point I had reached.

Another factor that worked in my favor was one over which I had no control. After a good beginning as New York's Governor, Nelson Rockefeller had fallen on lean days. Because his predecessor, Averell Harriman, had left the state's fiscal affairs in such bad shape, Rockefeller had to ask for new taxes in order to put the state budget on a pay-as-you-go basis. This step was, in my opinion, necessary—and I publicly said so. But raising taxes is never popular, even when it is right, and Rockefeller's standing in the public opinion polls began to fall off.

And as the national economy began to turn upward in the winter and spring of 1959, the Administration's standing rose accordingly—and along with it, the personal stock of all of us associated with it.

Then came a decisive break—my meeting with Khrushchev in July 1959. Until that meeting, polls indicated my support was no greater nationwide than that of the Republican Party. After my return from the Soviet Union, my personal standing rose the critical five to six points above Republican strength in general—a margin I had to maintain if I were to have a chance to win in 1960. The trial heats between Kennedy and myself provided further dramatic evidence of this increase in my public support. Before the trip, a Gallup Poll showed Kennedy's strength at 61 per cent and mine at 39 per cent—a margin even greater than Eisenhower's over Stevenson in 1956. After the trip, the gap closed to 52 per cent for Kennedy, 48 per cent for Nixon. In November 1959, I moved ahead of him in the polls for the first time: Nixon 53 per cent—Kennedy 47 per cent.