The Wars of Watergate (9 page)

Whatever the historical judgment on the Hiss affair, it firmly established Richard Nixon’s reputation and prominence. Few forgot his role; he certainly never did. As the Watergate crisis deepened a quarter-century later, Nixon repeatedly advised his aides to read the Hiss chapter in
Six Crises
, his first memoir. Presidential assistant Charles Colson later testified that he may have read it fourteen times; it was, he said, “a benchmark” for ongoing matters of current interest.
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Ostensibly, Nixon sought to impart lessons on fighting and persistence in his book; could he have forgotten that his version of the tale exposed lying and corruption in high places?

First, Voorhis. Then Hiss. And all in such short order. In two congressional terms, Richard Nixon had spectacularly captured headlines and national attention. And there was more to come.

California Democratic Senator Sheridan Downey signaled that he would not run for re-election in 1950. Downey represented what had been the party’s dominant conservative wing, but it had steadily diminished in numbers and influence. His withdrawal opened the Democratic primary to a bitter ideological confrontation between Manchester Boddy, editor of the Los Angeles
Daily News
, and Representative Helen Gahagan Douglas. Boddy equally condemned Governor Earl Warren’s liberal Republicanism, Democratic New Dealers, and Douglas, his party’s apparent favorite. Douglas regularly identified with liberal causes in the Democratic Party and left-wing
concerns outside of it. The primary, which was bitter and ugly, set the tone for the general election.

Boddy bluntly charged that Douglas associated with a subversive “clique of red hots,” and that her voting record followed that of Vito Marcantonio, a New York Representative openly sympathetic to the Soviet Union and Communist causes. Douglas’s votes against aid to Greece and Turkey seemed to give some credibility to the charges. Even so, however, she captured nearly 50 percent of the primary vote, holding Boddy to only 30 percent. The remainder went to Nixon, as California law permitted crossover filings. (Douglas received 13 percent of the Republican primary vote.)

The red-baiting and ugly accusations that tarnished the primary merely sounded an overture. The Nixon-Douglas campaign included Nixon’s first references to Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s alleged appeasement of Communism, and it marked his public endorsement of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s tactics of smearing Democrats allegedly “soft on Communism.” Nixon’s campaign literature depicted Douglas as “the Pink Lady,” and his staff circulated pink sheets comparing her voting record to Marcantonio’s. Nixon had support from the notorious anti-Semite Gerald L. K. Smith and from the China Lobby supporters of the deposed Chiang Kaishek. In November, the young Republican Congressman scored a smashing victory, besting Douglas by more than 600,000 votes. And with that, the nation first heard of “Tricky Dick.”

Even pro-Nixon accounts of the campaign concede that the campaign was “the most hateful” California had experienced in years. The notable difference in the two camps, according to a Nixon admirer, “was in the adroitness and calmness with which Nixon and his people executed
their
hyperbole and innuendo.”
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Adroitness and calmness; hyperbole and innuendo. By whatever description, the Nixon-Douglas campaign became a new standard for measuring negative campaigning—and for the winner’s partisans and foes alike to use in measuring their man.

Nixon’s accomplishments as Senator stand in almost inverse proportion to the immense expenditure of energy in the 1950 campaign. His tenure was notable only for the further visibility it gave him, a visibility that led to his nomination for the vice presidency in 1952. The notoriety of his campaign victory, along with his growing reputation, made him much in demand as a speaker at party gatherings. A friendly biographer identified Nixon as a “Republican meld of Paul Revere and Billy Sunday,” preaching the party’s gospel and warning of the dangers of the Democratic hordes.
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The Senator had some identification with his party’s internationalist wing, largely through his role on the Herter Committee, but that seemed uncharacteristic. His work on the House Labor Committee, his prominent role on the Un-American Activities Committee, and his campaign rhetoric seemed to align Nixon comfortably with the party’s conservatives. When he announced
for the Senate in November 1949, he denounced the Democratic Party for its “phony doctrines and ideologies,” and for offering “the same old Socialist baloney.”

But Senator Robert A. Taft—“Mr. Republican,” as he was known, a man universally acknowledged as head of the party’s conservative wing—had little regard for his California colleague. At one point, he described Nixon as “a little man in a big hurry,” with “a mean and vindictive streak.”
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Taft’s candor and bluntness were characteristic of the man, but his failure to cultivate Nixon cost him dearly. Senator Nixon resolutely supported the delegate claims of Taft’s rival, General Dwight Eisenhower, at the 1952 Republican Convention, a procedural move that eventually cost Taft the nomination.

Nixon’s selection as Eisenhower’s running mate is cloaked in ambiguity and obscurity. Clearly, Eisenhower’s advisers, led by Thomas E. Dewey, saw Nixon as a vigorous young man, ideally fit to carry the burden of a partisan campaign while leaving the General above the main battle lines, thereby preserving his statesman-like image. Nothing came to Richard Nixon without controversy, however. Pledged to support the candidacy of Earl Warren as California’s favorite son, Nixon seemed all too eager throughout the convention to abandon Warren and provide the necessary support to give Eisenhower his margin of victory. Warren and his friends thereafter bore a grudge against their fellow Californian.

The 1952 campaign decisively pushed Nixon into national prominence. Partly because of their reluctance to attack Eisenhower, a popular national hero, the Democrats concentrated much of their fire on Nixon. For perhaps the first time in American history, the question of the suitability of a vice-presidential candidate as a potential president became a major issue.

Nixon slashed away at the Democrats, promising that a Republican Administration would expose corruption and clean up “the mess in Washington,” rid the nation of domestic subversives, and reverse the Truman-Acheson policy of containment of Communism, which, he charged, was tantamount to appeasement. In late October, he attacked President Truman and presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson as “traitors to the high principles” of the Democratic Party. “Traitors” was the operative word; “party” was unimportant, for in his next statement, Nixon claimed that Democrats had tolerated and defended Communists in government. Nixon’s supporters knew the value of what he
seemed
to be saying. He did not call Secretary of State Dean Acheson a “pink,” but he referred to “Acheson’s color blindness—a form of pink eye toward the Communist threat in the United States.”

Nixon attacked Adlai Stevenson for testifying as a character witness for Alger Hiss. He conceded that doing so was Stevenson’s right, maybe even his duty, but he then expressed outrage that Stevenson had never condemned Hiss’s treachery. The fact was, however, that Stevenson had done so, and
he responded with contempt for Nixon—“the brash young man who aspires to the Vice-Presidency.” Stevenson loathed Nixon and his “flexible convictions.” The Democratic nominee had hoped for a campaign of “elevating national discussion.” But, blaming Nixon, he complained that the nation heard a systematic presentation of “innuendo and accusations aimed at sowing the seeds of doubt and mistrust.” More tellingly and more cuttingly, Stevenson derided Nixon as a comic figure, describing him as the “kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump for a speech on conservation.”
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Nothing in the campaign generated more controversy than the revelation that Nixon had a secret fund maintained by supporters for his personal use. The fund itself soon became unimportant, as many other politicians (including Stevenson) had similar arrangements. More important, and ever more memorable, was Nixon’s defense of the fund, highlighted by his quintessential performance in his “Checkers” speech. However commonplace such funds, Nixon’s gave the Republicans special problems. Pledged to clean up that mess in Washington, the Republicans now found themselves in a dilemma. Eisenhower talked about the necessity for being as “clean as a hound’s tooth,” and the party’s high command gave serious consideration to dropping Nixon from the ticket. Eventually, Eisenhower’s campaign strategists decided to give the vice-presidential candidate an opportunity to explain his situation to the public.

The Republicans bought a half-hour of television time from NBC. The speech was unforgettable. Nixon defended his fund, but then quickly switched to a homily about his wife’s “Republican cloth coat,” drawing a contrast to the mink-coat scandals that had beleaguered the Democrats. He counterattacked with an assault on Stevenson’s fund; he praised Eisenhower; and finally, he urged his audience to let the Republican National Committee know whether he should remain on the ticket. But the most remarkable moment in Nixon’s speech came when he acknowledged that he had received one gift after his nomination—“a cocker spaniel dog, Checkers,” for his daughters. And “whatever they say,” the candidate declared in his most serious tones, “we are going to keep her.” How could the Democrats take that dog from those little girls? For many, Nixon had reached a new low; but Middle America—and the Republican leadership—loved the speech. Eisenhower said, “You’re my boy,” and publicly read an effusive telegram from Hannah Nixon guaranteeing her son’s integrity and honesty. Nixon remained on the ticket—and Checkers remained with the family.
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The Nixon Fund crisis, however, put a damper on the Eisenhower-Nixon relationship from the start. Eisenhower, openly antipathetic toward professional politicians, never seemed comfortable with his Vice President. For his part, Nixon glimpsed Eisenhower’s instinctive dislike for hard, quick, firm decisions. He had told Eisenhower during the fund crisis that the General
had to “shit or get off the pot,” and determine whether Nixon should continue on the ticket. “The great trouble here is the indecision,” he added.
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The General’s indecisiveness aroused Nixon’s contempt, a feeling that he openly expressed in other moments of frustration and disappointment with Eisenhower. He brusquely dismissed Eisenhower’s penchant for avoiding and minimizing conflict. Nixon did not subscribe to the myth that a man had to be noncontroversial and liked by all; he simply did not believe in that “ ‘togetherness’ bullshit.” Nixon’s position as Vice President inherently compounded the ambiguities surrounding the relationship with Eisenhower. At one point, Nixon complained to some journalists that Eisenhower saw him only as a political animal and would not, for example, care to listen to him on defense matters. “You’ve got to realize,” Nixon observed, “that a Vice President is in a very special position, a difficult position.”
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For the next eight years, Nixon functioned as Eisenhower’s partisan campaigner and political lightning rod, roles hardly calculated to win him awards for popularity or amiability. In apparently unintended irony, Eisenhower and his key aides had Nixon do much of the negotiating on Capitol Hill that led to the Republicans’ cooperation in the Senate censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy. In 1954, whether on his own or by direction, Nixon hinted at American intervention in the critical battle then raging in Vietnam, at Dienbienphu. That same year, Nixon carried the party’s water in a desperate but unsuccessful attempt to maintain the Republican majorities in Congress. Meanwhile, as Eisenhower remained above criticism, the Democrats concentrated their attacks on Nixon. The Vice President always managed to touch the rawest of nerves. Mentioning Secretary of State John Foster Dulles by name, he remarked: “[I]sn’t it wonderful, finally, to have a Secretary of State who isn’t taken in by the Communists, who stands up to them?”

Either from despair or in self-pity, after the 1954 elections Nixon talked about leaving politics at the end of the presidential term. Perhaps he sensed that Eisenhower and his immediate entourage wanted to drop him. The President scattered hints that Nixon might want to consider a Cabinet office, allegedly because it would give him better experience and visibility for a run at the presidency. Harold Stassen, then regarded as close to the President, publicly led a “dump Nixon” campaign in 1956, contending that Nixon endangered Eisenhower’s chances of re-election. Given, however, the great unlikelihood of anything at all endangering Eisenhower’s chances, there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that more than Harold Stassen figured in this episode.

Nixon would never be president, Eisenhower believed; he told Republican National Chairman Leonard Hall that “people didn’t like him.” Hall promised to “get Nixon out of the picture willingly.” Eisenhower—who was taping the conversation—told Hall to proceed, and when Hall failed, he (Hall) reported that he “never saw a scowl come so fast over a man’s face.”
Many years later, the President’s younger brother, Milton, left no doubt about Ike’s feelings. Had Nixon been “a more sensitive man,” he would have taken the hint and resigned from the ticket. “But he wanted to be there,” Milton Eisenhower recalled. “He thought this was his chance to be President.”
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In any event, the effort to drop Nixon failed to get off the ground—if only because Eisenhower refused to act decisively. Vice President Nixon kept his spot on the ticket and again bore the brunt of Democratic assaults in the 1956 campaign. But this time there was a new twist. Eisenhower had suffered a massive heart attack the year before. The Democrats were blunt: the vice presidency, Adlai Stevenson warned, was insurance; if the Republicans were re-elected, the nation would go “uninsured” for four years. On election eve, Stevenson went even further: “every piece of scientific evidence that we have, every lesson of history and experience,” he said, “indicates that a Republican victory … would mean that Richard M. Nixon would probably be president of this country within the next four years.” The election was for the living, however, and no such warning could overcome Eisenhower’s enormous reservoir of popularity. The President’s health, however, remained problematic; he suffered two more serious illnesses in his next term, including a stroke. Eisenhower generously gave Nixon the power to determine if the President were disabled. Perhaps that act measured some of Eisenhower’s faith in Nixon’s ability, particularly because the nation really had no effective constitutional or legislative standards for determining presidential disability.
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