Six Crises (57 page)

I had my staff look into the circumstances of the meeting—which had taken place in Washington on September 7—and discovered that Dr. Peale had attended it immediately upon his return from a European trip, that he had in fact presided only at one brief session rather than the entire meeting, and that he had not personally participated in the drafting of the controversial statement of opinion. He had signed it as a member of the group, doubtless sharing the general opinion expressed but not realizing the full political implications. Under all these circumstances, I decided it would be unfair for me to attack him personally for the statement and that the proper course of action was for me to use my next public appearance—I was scheduled to be on “Meet the Press” that coming Sunday, September 11—to disassociate myself from the position Dr. Peale and his colleagues had taken in the statement. I knew that he was heartbroken over the incident and I felt that while his judgment had been bad, his motives were above question. He had been punished enough and I refused to add to his embarrassment for what would have been purely political purposes on my part.

My hospital siege finally drew to a close on Friday the ninth of September and I went home that evening to begin packing for my first intensive campaign swing and to prepare for Sunday's “Meet the Press” program. My most significant statement on that occasion was on the religious issue. In direct response to a question by Herb Kaplow of NBC News, I defined the issue and my own position in this way. I quote at some length because this sums up my convictions as I was to hold to them through the balance of the campaign:

I have no doubt whatever about Senator Kennedy's loyalty to his country and about the fact that if he were elected President he would put the Constitution of the United States above any other consideration . . . I don't believe . . . there is a religious issue as far as Senator Kennedy is concerned.

In the second place, I believe that it would be tragic . . . for this election to be determined primarily, or even substantially, on religious grounds . . .

The question is not whether Senator Kennedy or I believe that religion is an issue—we don't believe it is . . . The question is, how do you keep it out of a campaign?

 . . . The best way . . . is by not talking about it . . .

As far as I am concerned, I have issued orders to all of the people in my campaign not to discuss religion, not to raise it, not to allow anybody to participate in the campaign who does so on that ground, and as far as I am concerned, I will decline to discuss religion . . .

 . . . All I can say is that I have made my position clear, and I feel that we ought to have a cut-off date on its discussion. I would hope that Senator Kennedy would reach the same conclusion, because if the two candidates refrain from raising the issue, refrain from discussing it, that means that at least to that extent it won't be in the news.

Before taking off on the first week's swing, I met with Jim Bassett for a run-down of our schedule problems between September 12 and Election Day, November 8. Jim, who was in charge of all my scheduling in this campaign, pointed out that because of my illness there were seven states we had thought we would have covered by this time that would now, somehow or other, have to be crammed into the eight remaining weeks of campaigning. He said he had made up tentative schedules by which I could fulfill my commitment to visit every one of the fifty states—but that it would be a back-breaking assignment. His judgment was that my stay in the hospital gave me all the excuse I needed for leaving out some states which we considered either hopelessly lost or relatively safe. But I felt that I should follow through with my commitment and asked him to set up the schedule accordingly. In retrospect, this decision is open to serious question. Had I followed his advice, I would not have had to put myself through such a brutal schedule before the first radio-televison debate and, in addition, would have had more time to spend in some of the critical states than eventually was possible. But the decision was made and, once the schedules were published, we had to live with them.

At this same time, we took another look at the polls. Claude Robinson, who was doing our private polling, showed the race 50–50. Gallup came up with approximately the same finding. On August 31, he had rated the race all-even, and his release of September 14 showed Kennedy in a hairline 51–49 per cent lead.

What was discouraging and even alarming to us was the continued weakness of the Republican Party in general, as reflected in the polls. On September 1, for example, in answer to the question “Which party would you like to see win the congressional elections in your state?” Gallup reported the break at 58 per cent Democratic, 42 per cent
Republican. This meant that in order for the national ticket to win, we would have to accomplish two objectives during the course of the next eight weeks. Republican Party strength for Congress and state offices would have to be pulled up substantially—by four or five per cent if possible. And even then we would have to run five or six per cent ahead of the congressional and local candidates.
⁴

The first week of any campaign is one of the hardest. In this period, the candidate must learn how to pace himself, decide how best to assign functions within his staff, and get the feel of audiences and of the campaign itself. The trips I had taken between the Convention and the end of August had prepared me to a certain extent for this first period of intensive campaigning. But the hospital stay had left me much weaker than I had realized—and, worse still, I found a huge backlog of paperwork on my desk in the plane, all of which had to be handled during the same period that I was preparing and delivering current campaign speeches.

Much of this backlog, incidentally, consisted of issue-by-issue questionnaires submitted by the Scripps-Howard papers, United Press, and other news syndicates. My staff had done an excellent job of sifting down the material into suggested “positions.” But I felt it was my clear responsibility to review each answer in detail because they had asked for my views, not those of my staff. The result was that during the first week to ten days of an already heavy schedule, I had to work literally night and day to catch up on this backlog and still keep current on the very important speeches that had to be made daily.

I had told Jim Bassett that we wanted to get off to a fast start—and he had taken me at my word. Cabot Lodge and I were taking off simultaneously on our first tours from Baltimore's Friendship Airport the morning of Monday, September 12. President Eisenhower drove up from the capital to wish us well as we began the big push for victory. A driving rain forced us to cram the big crowd indoors but failed to dampen its enthusiasm. We flew from Baltimore to Indianapolis for a giant rally at Monument Circle where I had spoken in both 1952 and 1956. Our next stop was Dallas, where we motorcaded through cheering thousands in the downtown area, followed by a speech at the Memorial Auditorium. We then went on to San Francisco
for an airport rally and another one downtown in Union Square. It was 11 o'clock Pacific Coast Time (two in the morning Eastern Time, in terms of our take-off) before we finally got to bed.

The following morning I had to be up at 6:30 for a televised press conference at 7:30. We drove to Hunter's Point Navy Yard for a non-political speech dedicating the SS
Hope
—a specially fitted demonstration hospital ship which was about to make its maiden voyage to Southeast Asia. Our next stop was Portland, Oregon, and from there—after a motorcade that took us to Vancouver, Washington—we flew on to Boise, Idaho, for a night rally. The next morning—Wednesday—we again had to be up at 6:30 for a 7:30 take-off and a day that included a noontime stop at Grand Forks, North Dakota, and an evening rally at the Bradley University Field House in Peoria, Illinois. From there, we flew to St. Louis and, while it was past eleven when we arrived, we were greeted by an enthusiastic airport crowd of over 5000. After the long drive into the city from the airport, I still had an hour's work to do at the hotel on a major speech I was making Thursday morning to the National Convention of the International Association of Machinists—my first campaign appearance before a labor organization.

I knew that the Machinists were going to endorse Kennedy and that the audience would not be a friendly one. I had accepted the invitation because I wanted every opportunity to talk over the heads of union leaders to the rank-and-file workers.

As I finished my notes for the Machinists speech and got ready for bed, I looked back over the first three days of the week with considerable satisfaction. The crowds had consistently exceeded our expectations and the campaign was rolling along with good momentum. I felt more tired than usual, but I attributed this to the fact that I had so recently been in the hospital and to the unusually heavy schedule with its early morning departures cutting into my sleep. But when I awoke at about three-thirty in the morning, I knew that there were other causes for my fatigue. I had a raging fever and was shaking with a chill. I woke Don Hughes and asked him to get Dr. John C. Lungren, who was traveling with us and was a veteran of three previous campaigns. When he came to my room, he found that I was running a temperature of over 103, caused probably by a flu virus. I told him that if there was one meeting in the entire campaign at which I had to show up, it was at the Machinists' convention, scheduled for 8:15 that morning. He shook his head and said, “I don't see how you can possibly do it, but let's try to get this fever under control.” He gave me an extra-large
dose of aspirin, antibiotics, and other assorted pills. Whatever they were, the fever broke, and while I got very little sleep for the balance of the night, I was able to get up at seven and proceed to the Kiel Auditorium for the scheduled meeting.

I don't know when I have ever felt so weak before walking out onto a public platform but I was determined to let no one know my condition. I then proceeded to make what some of the reporters have called my best speech of the campaign.

I had already decided that this was the right time and place to make another frontal assault on the “tell 'em what they want to hear” school of campaigning—as I had done, for example, in Greensboro with respect to the civil rights issue. Kennedy, in fact, had given me a perfect opening in his own kick-off speech in Detroit on Labor Day, and I carried on from there:

I have here a report of a speech made by my opponent in Detroit before a labor group, and this is what it says:

“ . . . what the American labor movement wants for America is what I want for America, and what the American labor movement opposes I oppose.”

If I were solely concerned about votes, I would tell you that today. I would say that I was 100 per cent for everything that the officers . . . [and] delegates to this convention are for, representing a great number of voters in this country. I would say that I was against, 100 per cent, everything that you are against . . . It might win votes, but . . . it would not be good for the labor movement and for labor union members and it would not be good for America for a President of the United States to make that kind of a statement . . .

Then, after spelling out the overriding goals of peace and a widely shared prosperity about which all Americans are agreed, and after specifically rejecting the idea of a blanket endorsement of the particular goals of business or labor or farmers or any special group, I summed it up this way:

It is the obligation of the President of the United States to be President of all the people and not to set one group against another.

From St. Louis, we flew to Atlantic City, New Jersey, then on to Roanoke, Virginia, and then back crosscountry to Omaha, Nebraska. We motorcaded through the Iowa countryside to Des Moines and on
to Sioux City. One of the most memorable stops for me was before the smallest audience of the whole campaign. It was an unscheduled stop on a roadside, on the way to Guthrie Center, where I had noticed a small group of students standing at the roadside with a sign: W
ELCOME
P
AT AND
D
ICK
N
IXON
—I
OWA
S
CHOOL FOR THE
D
EAF
. I spoke to the students, standing on the hood of my car, as a teacher interpreted my remarks in sign language. I won no votes, for my listeners were under voting age, but no audience reception moved me more than the looks of delight on their faces when they realized I was going to take the time to speak to them.

The next day—Saturday—included a morning rally in Sioux City, Iowa, an airport rally in Minneapolis, and then a press conference and evening rally in the field house at Macalester College in St. Paul. We left Minneapolis that night at ten but, because of the time difference, arrived in Washington at 4:30 Sunday morning. The milk trucks were moving through the streets as we drove home from the airport.

In that first week of campaigning, we covered fourteen states and more than 9000 air-miles. It had been a successful week from several viewpoints. We had drawn overflow crowds everywhere we went. Most encouraging was our reception throughout the farm belt. The columnists and commentators, as well as many Republican leaders, were predicting that the farm situation would be the most difficult domestic issue confronting us during the campaign. Before the National Convention, every farm state Congressman, Senator, and State Chairman (with only two exceptions) had stated on his own initiative or in response to inquiries made by those working on the farm platform that it was absolutely imperative for me to come up with a new farm program. The Democrats for eight years had done a vicious hatchet-job on Ezra Taft Benson. They had created the impression, not only among Democratic farmers but among many Republicans as well, that Benson had no sympathy for the farmers and their problems and that his attitude was simply that the farmer should “grin and bear it.” The Republican farm bloc leaders respected him as a man of high principle. Scarcely a one of them had any alternative to offer. But almost to a man they told me—“the farmer has not been getting his fair share of America's increasing prosperity. He is hurting. He will not vote for a presidential candidate who says, in effect, ‘we are doing all we can and things will work out in time.'”