Six Crises (58 page)

I personally made it clear to everyone concerned that under no circumstances
would I repudiate Benson, either personally or in terms of his long-range goal of less dictation to the farmer from Washington. But I knew we would be in grave danger of losing the farm states unless we were able to offer an affirmative program—going beyond what Benson had previously stood for. I insisted to my staff members working on this issue that the program must be one that was honest and sound. On this and every other issue, the admonition I gave to some of those who had a tendency to let their eagerness to appeal to voters overrule their judgment on the substance of issues went something like this: “We must always assume that we are going to win this election. And I do not want to say anything or do anything during the campaign that I will not be able to live with as President.”

The farm program we eventually adopted was set forth in the Republican platform, my speech at Guthrie Center, and a second speech delivered during the second week of the campaign at Sioux Falls, South Dakota. It provided for a massive step-up in the program for taking out of production acreage which was yielding surplus crops, and a new five-point program for increased consumption of these surpluses. A basic feature of the program was that there should be more control of farm programs by farmers and their representatives, and less by Washington bureaucrats.

The reception for this program was generally favorable in the farm belt. But what helped us even more was the very unfavorable reaction to Kennedy's farm program. He had never had too much interest in the farm problem and very little acquaintance with it. Consequently, he took his program from the panacea-peddlers who were anathema to the average, practical-minded farmer. The Kennedy plan provided for a massive increase in Federal Government control of agriculture and, in effect, would have made virtually every farmer in America beholden to bureaucrats in Washington. Polls taken two weeks after his farm speeches and mine indicated a substantial shift of the farm vote, away from Democratic candidates and back to its traditional Republican mooring.

My only criticism of the first week's activities was that we had scheduled too many early morning departures which meant, consequently, too little sleep, not only for me but for members of my staff and our traveling press corps. I did not realize how bone-tired I really was until I opened my eyes about noon on Sunday and found that I could hardly pull myself out of bed to get on with the mass of
preparatory work that had to be done before we started out on our second week's swing.

•  •  •

The second week took us for the first time into some of the big industrial states, which were so important because of the size of their electoral votes. The pace was even heavier than that of the first week. From Monday through Friday we prop-stopped on a split-second schedule through Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Kentucky, South Dakota, Wisconsin, and Kansas. On Saturday we flew south to Lafayette, Louisiana, and Jackson, Mississippi—which, incidentally, was the first time a Republican nominee for President had ever visited that state. We were back in Washington on Saturday at midnight.

For every major stop on the schedule, of course, there were usually half a dozen side-trips and motorcades; there were local press conferences, airport rallies, downtown rallies, auditorium and stadium rallies—and if not a speech, at least a few words at each stop.

During this second week, the size and enthusiasm of our crowds had, if anything, exceeded those of the first. I hammered away, both weeks, at certain basic themes. I pointed with pride to an eight-year record of unparalleled national growth and prosperity in every area of the economy, whether measured by total income or by classrooms and houses and hospitals constructed. But at the same time I warned against smugness or complacency, asserting that this progress must be simply the jumping-off point for still greater future growth, stable and sustained. In any competition with the Soviet Union, I argued, we would win hands down. I also pointed out that, easy as it is to make pie-in-the-sky promises and to offer panaceas for all our remaining problems, the crucial question of how best to move ahead revealed the basic Democratic-Republican split. For every problem, either real or fancied, Kennedy had a ready-made program of Federal action—along with increased Federal outlays, increased bureaucratic control, and increased inflationary pressure. For my part, I contended that the traditional American way has always been to rely on the free choices of millions of individuals and that the role of government must be limited to encouraging and stimulating private initiative and to creating the right climate for the exercise of freedom, with equal opportunity for all. Kennedy had a tremendous advantage here: his approach was simple and easy to understand. It promised something for
everyone. And he never had to bother about such details as costs and bureaucratic controls.

During these first two weeks, Kennedy concentrated on building up what I characterized as a “poor mouth” image of America—just barely limping along in second place behind the dynamic Soviets, with the gap widening day by day. He kept insisting we were “stalled on dead-center” and “frozen in the ice of our own indifference” and were fast becoming “second-raters.” “Last year,” he said, “the Soviet Union exceeded the growth of this country by three times.”
⁵
Kennedy promised, without spelling out the details, to “get America moving again.”

He seized on every possible shortcoming and inequity in American life and promised immediate cure-alls. I consistently maintained that we must solve our remaining problems, but always in the tradition of freedom and responsibility, while still meeting our tremendous world-wide obligations and the overriding demands of our national security. I knew I was right. But his approach was simpler and more dramatic.

After two weeks of this intensive campaigning, covering twenty-five states and 15,000 miles, my staff estimated that I had spoken to and been seen in person by crowds exceeding two million. Several millions more had been reached through local radio and television. But I realized that important as these two weeks had been and no matter how big the crowds or how extensive the local coverage, it was a drop in the bucket: the effect up to September 25 would be infinitesimal compared with the first joint debate scheduled for all-network coverage the next evening, Monday, September 26, in Chicago.

•  •  •

All the previous week I had used every spare minute preparing my opening statement and studying the issues that might be raised by the panel of newsmen. I got up early Sunday morning and worked through the day, without interruption, until it was time to go to the airport for a ten o'clock night flight to Chicago. As I pored over my material I wished that I had arranged to have Saturday free as well as Sunday
for this preparation. But it was too late to do anything about the situation now, except to ask Jim Bassett to lighten the schedule somewhat before each of the next three debates so that I could have more time for studying the issues and also for some needed rest after a hard week of campaigning.

Our flight was scheduled for a 10:30 arrival in Chicago, Central Time, which would make it possible for me to get to bed by midnight for a good night's sleep. But our plans did not work out exactly as we had expected. Despite the late hour, we were met at the airport by a crowd of some 5000. And the Chicago Republican leaders had planned street rallies in each of the five wards we would be passing through on our way from the airport to the Pick-Congress Hotel. Only a brief 15-minute stop was required in each case, but it was past one o'clock Monday morning before we finally arrived downtown.

The next morning I made an eleven o'clock appearance before the annual convention of the Carpenters Union, my second campaign speech to a labor organization. While the Carpenters, like the Machinists, were expected to end up in the Kennedy camp, I thought it important to accept their invitation, particularly in view of the fact that Republican strength among the rank-and-file is probably greater in the Carpenters' membership than in any other union.

For five solid hours that afternoon I read through and digested material which my staff had prepared, on every issue that might conceivably be raised during the course of the debate. By the time I had completed my boning and was ready to take off for the television station, I felt that I was as thoroughly prepared for this appearance as I had ever been in my political life up to that time. I had crammed my head with facts and figures in answer to more than a hundred questions which my staff suggested might be raised in the field of domestic affairs.

The tension continued to rise all afternoon. My entire staff obviously felt it just as I did. As we rode to the television studio, conversation was at a minimum as I continued to study my notes up to the last minute.

The presidents of the four major networks greeted me as I walked into the studio and I was immediately ushered onto the set so that the lighting and sound technicians could make their final tests. About ten minutes later, Kennedy arrived. This was the first time we had met each other since the Senate had adjourned. I had never seen him look more fit. I remarked on his deep tan and he jokingly replied that he
had gotten it from riding in open cars while touring sunny California. We posed for pictures for four or five minutes and then each of us went to the rooms assigned us to wait for broadcast time.

I had vetoed Ted Rogers' recommendation that I wear makeup and agreed only that Ev Hart of our TV staff might apply some “beard stick” powder to help cover my perpetual “five o'clock shadow”—which the television cameras always pick up, even five minutes after I have shaved. I continued to pore over my notes until Rogers came in the room and told me, with five minutes until broadcast time, that we should move on-stage.

Howard K. Smith of CBS News, Moderator for the evening, stuck to the classic script, said “the candidates need no introduction”—and then proceeded to introduce us anyway—and history's first television debate between presidential candidates, and what may have been the most important and most decisive appearance either Kennedy or I was to make during the entire campaign, was on.

Kennedy had the opening argument. He took roughly the line I had expected and he spoke as effectively as I have ever heard him. He did exactly what I would have done under similar circumstances: he attacked. Depressed and distressed areas, the unemployed, Puerto Rican and Negro victims of discrimination, the downtrodden farmers, the old people who couldn't afford adequate medical care, the underpaid teachers—all these were the fault of the Eisenhower Administration. We wanted to stand still—he wanted to move ahead. We didn't care about these problems—he did. For eight lagging years America had been stuck on dead-center—it is time to get her moving again. The Russians are catching up with us and will soon leave us in the dust—unless we get going.

When he finished, eight minutes later, I realized that I had heard a very shrewd, carefully calculated appeal, with subtle emotional overtones, that would have great impact on a television audience. And particularly it would impress unsophisticated voters who—far from questioning the facts of the matter—would not even ask themselves: How does he propose to do all these things? How much is it going to cost? How is he going to keep all these promises? Whose money is he going to spend anyway—his or ours?

Against this appeal, and in the mood thus established, it was now my turn. Looking back, I suppose the politically expedient course would have been for me to grant without argument that we had been
standing still for the past eight years and then to promise, if I were elected, to do everything he had promised, and more besides. But I rejected this demagogic approach and proceeded to answer him, point-by-point. I said that, far from standing still, the nation had experienced eight years of its greatest progress in history under Eisenhower, largely because of his sound policies. I pointed out that there was no difference between us in “caring” about the problems of less fortunate people. We had the same ultimate goals—sustained growth and prosperity widely shared. Our differences—and all-important ones—arose over how best to solve all these problems. Kennedy would do it by primary emphasis on huge and costly Federal Government programs—which would have to be paid for right out of the pockets of the people he was trying to help, and in cheapened dollars to boot. I proposed to solve them with a necessary minimum of government action but with primary emphasis on and encouragement of individual initiative and private enterprise. The great gulf of difference between us, I strongly implied, was that of a bureaucratic society vs. a free society.

The issue had been joined. Now came the questions. One of them—of no real substantive importance actually—was to plague me the rest of the campaign. It was put by Sander Vanocur of NBC. He referred to a statement President Eisenhower had made in a press conference on August 24. Someone had asked him, “What major decisions of your Administration has the Vice President participated in?” Eisenhower had replied: “If you give me a week, I might think of one.” Later that same day, Eisenhower had called me on the phone and expressed chagrin at the way this exchange had been handled by the press. He pointed out that he was simply being facetious and yet they played it straight and wrote it seriously. I could only reply to Vanocur's question in the same vein, but I am sure that to millions of unsophisticated televiewers, this question had been most effective in raising a doubt in their minds with regard to one of my strongest campaign themes and assets—my experience as Vice President.

With that teaser out of the way, the panel turned to more important issues—Kennedy's and my farm programs, the probable cost of the “New Frontier,” school aid, the seriousness of the internal threat of Communist subversion, Kennedy's prediction as to his probable success in getting Congress to pass all the new legislation he was proposing, especially in view of his failure to get any major legislation passed during the post-Convention congressional session. But because
of the format of the program, there was no time for answers in depth. And because the members of the panel jumped from subject to subject with no apparent attempt to provide any continuity, the question period took on a decidedly scatter-shot tone. In our closing statements, both Kennedy and I returned to the basic positions we had taken at the outset, I to the need for sound and stable progress with an emphasis on free choice and private initiative, and Kennedy to a demand that we simply “get moving.”