Six Crises (56 page)

After our meeting, Jerry Persons invited me to his office for further discussions. No one knew Eisenhower better than Persons where political matters were concerned, and Persons summed up his attitude this way: “I believe we should give great weight to the Old Man's intuition on his participation in the campaign. If the party people force him to make political speeches before he believes he should, he simply can't put his heart into them. There is no question about his getting into the campaign in good time. After Kennedy, Johnson, Stevenson, and some
of the other Democrats start to get rough, he'll get his dander up and go after them. But until he himself feels that he wants to make political speeches, we should not allow anybody to force him to do so.” I agreed with Persons' evaluation and that is how we left it—Eisenhower in control of his own timing.

Next, the question arose as to my policy on appearing with and endorsing other Republican candidates in the states and districts I visited. In many instances, these candidates would have no possible chance of winning—particularly, for example, in the South. Some of my advisers recommended that I campaign on my own in such cases and, in effect, disassociate myself from the Republican candidates unless they had some chance of helping rather than hurting the ticket. But I saw the candidate for President as the leader of the party, with an obligation to do everything possible to build up his party. Consequently, in all my stops throughout the country, I appeared on the platform with each local Republican candidate who desired it, and I endorsed all the major candidates by name.

We also had to determine whether our campaign should be turned over completely to the Republican Party organizations in the various states, or whether we should encourage the setting up of separate, but co-ordinated, volunteer organizations as well. I endorsed the plan for volunteers for a very practical reason: I knew that if we won all the Republican votes in the country we would lose the election by about five million votes. I also knew, from experience in my own state of California, that Democratic and independent voters generally react unfavorably to going into a Republican headquarters and volunteering to work in a campaign. Our Nixon-Lodge Volunteer Clubs in the various states did prove to be irritants to some of the regular party officials, but in retrospect I am convinced they made a great contribution to our excellent showing among Democratic and independent voters. This was particularly true in states like Ohio and California where the party organization not only welcomed but encouraged the volunteers. Ray Bliss, State Chairman in Ohio and one of the best political craftsmen in the nation, set an example in this respect that I wish all Republican State Chairmen would follow. He always kept in mind Will Hays' simple axiom that it is the responsibility of a party chairman “not to eliminate but to assimilate.”

The most important of all the strategy decisions we made during this period was with regard to the television debates. I should point out, however, that by this time the question we had to decide was not
whether we should have debates—but rather, how should they be conducted.

Before the two conventions, Congress had passed a resolution which made joint appearances by the nominees of the two major parties practically inevitable. The resolution provided that the radio-TV networks could give free time for such appearances without being required to provide equal time to the candidates of the minor parties. Thruston Morton and his Democratic counterpart appeared on a television program shortly after this resolution was adopted. Each was asked whether his party's nominee would agree to participate in joint appearances. Morton, before a nominee had been selected, spoke for the party as a whole and very properly said that the Republican candidate would agree—under the right circumstances. By the time I met with my staff to plan campaign strategy, the pressures for joint appearances in some form or other were irresistible.

Looking at the problem from a purely political standpoint, Kennedy had much more to gain from joint appearances than I did. I was better known than he, and our joint appearances would simply build up an audience for him. Moreover, he had the same advantage over me that I had had back in 1946 when I debated my first political opponent, Congressman Jerry Voorhis: Kennedy was attacking a record and I was defending it. I don't mean to suggest that I was not perfectly willing to defend the record of the Administration of which I had been a part. But I knew from long experience that in debate, the man who can attack has a built-in advantage that is very hard to overcome. Almost automatically, he has the initiative and is the aggressor. Incidentally, in the next presidential election, the shoe will be on the other foot. While Robert Kennedy indicated after the '60 election that his brother would never give his opponent equal exposure, as I had done, my view is that debates between the major party candidates will be a feature of all future presidential campaigns, regardless of the candidates' own desires.

As for my own decision, I felt it was absolutely essential that I not only agree to debate but enthusiastically welcome the opportunity. Had I refused the challenge, I would have opened myself to the charge that I was afraid to defend the Administration's and my own record. Even more important, I would be declining to participate in a program which the majority of the American people, regardless of party, wanted to see.

The decisions that still had to be made, however, at this early-August meeting concerned the subjects of the debates, and the format.

It was agreed that each candidate would keep his schedule open for four possible joint appearances. The first and fourth would be along the lines of a formal debate, with each candidate having an opening and closing statement and with questions from a press panel taking up the balance of the time. The other two appearances were to be, in effect, joint press conferences in which the candidates would alternate in answering questions, with each having an opportunity to comment on the other's answer.

The most critical decision made at this time turned out to be the subject matter of the first and fourth debates. It was readily agreed that one should be devoted exclusively to domestic issues and the other to foreign policy. I believed that I would have a considerable advantage over Kennedy when the subject matter was foreign policy and consequently wanted that subject to be discussed on the program that would have the larger audience.

But our public relations advisers disagreed on the key question: which of the debates would draw the bigger audience? My own view was that the first would be larger and that interest would go down as the novelty of the debates wore off. A majority of our group, however, thought that the audience would build up because of increased interest in the debates and in the campaign generally, and that the fourth debate would outdraw the first. I yielded to the majority and in this case their opinion proved to be wrong. We agreed that foreign policy would be discussed in the fourth debate and domestic policy in the first. When the debates were held, at least 20 million more people listened to and watched the first than any of the others, including the fourth and final appearance. I turned in my best performance before the smallest audience.

•  •  •

Meanwhile, the “rump” congressional session continued to drag along. I was tied down to Washington, except for weekends, when there was no possibility of a sudden vote, while Kennedy could much more safely leave town and get some preliminary campaigning out of the way.

I was, however, able to make two brief swings into the South during this period. The first was a one-day sortie into the state that had been my home for three years while I was attending Duke Law School,
from 1934 to 1937. It was in Greensboro, North Carolina, on August 17, that I tackled head-on the civil rights issue—and the political problem of how to handle this issue in the South. I began by saying that I knew many people in the audience, and throughout the state and region, would disagree with my position, but that I felt an obligation to make that position clear. Then I went on to say:

It is the responsibility of every American to do everything that he can to make this country a proud example of freedom and the recognition of human dignity in the world.

I also recognize that law alone, while necessary, is not the answer to the problems of human rights . . . that law is only as good as the will of the people to obey it. That is why it is the responsibility . . . of those of us in positions of leadership . . . to . . . promote within the people in the States the desire and the will to keep the law and to make progress in the solution of these difficult problems.

In every speech I made in the Southern states I touched on the civil rights issue—not because I wanted to lecture the people of the South on what I knew was a difficult problem for them, but because I had always believed it to be the responsibility of a political leader to tell the people exactly where he stands on issues, even when those stands may be unpopular, and to use his influence, wherever possible, to further causes in which he deeply believes. Many of my Southern Republican friends questioned the wisdom of these tactics, but I would follow the same course of action if I had the decision to make again.

The next week—after a one-day quick trip to Detroit to address a VFW Convention—I made my second brief Southern swing, this time to Birmingham, Alabama, and then to Atlanta, Georgia. Record crowds gave Pat and me tumultuous welcomes. I pounded hard, at both stops, on the theme that Democrats who voted for the Republican ticket would not be deserting their party because their party had already deserted them—when it adopted the radical platform in Los Angeles in July. The party of Schlesinger, Stevenson, and Bowles, I said, was a far cry from the party of Jefferson, Jackson, and Wilson.

The best guarantee of freedom is local government and the diffusion of power. And when you allow all the power to be centered in Washington, you attack the very fundamentals of freedom itself.

I am proud to say that our platform is based on that Jeffersonian principle, while the platform of our opponents completely denies it.

As we flew back to Washington late Friday night, I was so encouraged and stimulated by the reception we had gotten that I scarcely noticed a nagging pain in my right knee—I had bumped the knee the week before in Greensboro while getting into a car and then promptly forgotten about it.

I applied a home remedy of hot compresses but the pain became so intense that, on Saturday, I finally asked Dr. Walter Tkach, the assistant White House physician, to take a look at the knee. He had me go out to Walter Reed Hospital for a fluid-tap to test for possible infection. I then returned to my desk at the Capitol for a solid weekend of work on the speeches I planned for my next two campaign swings, to the Northeast—Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire—and then to Alaska, so that we would have these states covered before the intensive operations began on September 12. All these carefully made plans were wrecked by a call I received on Monday morning, August 29.

The White House phone on my desk rang; it was Dr. Tkach calling. “We want you to come out to the hospital right away,” he said. I protested that I had no time for it because of my heavy schedule. He replied, bluntly: “Look, I know what your schedule is, and I'm just as anxious as you are to keep it, but you had better get out to the hospital or you will be campaigning on one leg.”

That was enough to convince me. I called for my car and was driven out to Walter Reed. A panel of grim-faced doctors gave me the bad news. My knee was infected with hemolytic staphylococcus aureus, which could be just as serious as it sounded if I did not take care of it immediately. They unanimously recommended—indeed, insisted—that I stay at the hospital and receive massive shots of penicillin and other antibiotics until the infection was cleared up.

I asked them how long all this would take. Their prediction: a minimum of two weeks but with no guarantee that I would be out of the hospital even then. The infection was under the kneecap and very difficult to get at. They would be unable to tell how successful their efforts would be until they had tried several different methods and modes of treatment. I could see that I had no choice in the matter but to follow their orders.

The physical pain I suffered those next two weeks was bad enough, particularly when they lanced the knee to shoot antibiotics into the infected area. But the mental suffering was infinitely worse. My hopes for
advance campaigning in the Northeast and Alaska, and possibly in two more Southern states—Mississippi and Louisiana—were out the window. This was also the period that I had reserved for working on my major campaign statements and speeches and for several strategy conferences with key volunteer groups.

I learned during this period to take my misfortune philosophically. I reasoned that, after all, this was the first time in my political career that I had had to cancel engagements because of illness. My luck was bound to run out at some point and it was better to have it happen now than during the critical weeks closer to Election Day. I found, too, that illness has its compensations. Thousands of letters and get-well cards poured into my office and into the hospital. One, from a twelve-year-old girl in Baltimore, provided probably the best lesson of all. “God sometimes makes us lie down,” she wrote, “so that we will look up more.”

President Eisenhower called on me and, when he saw my loud pajamas, remarked that this was a side of my personality the voters had not seen before. Nelson Rockefeller flew down from New York and came into my room wearing a huge Nixon-Lodge button. I also got a chance to spend more time with Tricia and Julie than would otherwise have been possible. They came to the hospital each evening with Pat and proceeded to acquaint me with some of their favorite television programs.

It was while I was in the hospital that a disastrous political development occurred—one, again, over which I had no control. When the nurse brought me the morning papers on Thursday, September 8, I saw that Dr. Norman Vincent Peale was listed prominently among the signers of a statement expressing concern over whether a Catholic President could disassociate himself from the influence of the hierarchy of his Church. I knew we were in for real trouble. Dr. Peale had been a long-time personal friend and supporter. Pat and I had attended his church when I was stationed in New York toward the end of World War II and, in the years since, we had often visited him there. I knew him as a man of infinite good will and one who had made a great contribution to the cause of religious and racial tolerance during his lifetime. The Democratic politicians knew they had an opening, and they attacked savagely and effectively. The outcry was so great that several newspapers canceled his syndicated column. Protestant ministers who were supporting Kennedy charged that Dr. Peale had
“loosed the floodgates of religious bigotry.” Wires and letters poured in, urging me to denounce him personally.