Ingeniously, Richard Nixon had deployed the Hiss case to make himself the debating partner of the president. He was now an undisputed leader of a leaderless Republican Party. For a man in Congress only three years, it was a stunning accomplishment.
Then two weeks later a senator from Wisconsin, also in Congress only four years, announced to the ladies of the Wheeling, West Virginia, Women"s Republican Club that scores of Communists were "still working and shaping the policy at the State Department." Large tracts of Joseph McCarthy"s speech were borrowed outright from Nixon"s peroration. The pitch Nixon had spent years setting up, McCarthy hit out of the park. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d.
Though Nixon would eventually get his revenge.
In California that summer, people were telling the Republican senatorial candidate to drop the issue of Communism as yesterday"s news. In the injunction, Richard Nixon spotted an opening. It gave him a chance to look brave. "I have been advised not to talk about Communism," he would begin. "But I am going to tell the people anyway."
He had put his finger to the wind: the people were more afraid than ever. China had joined the Red bloc; America was at war with North Korea (and was soon fighting Chinese troops); the Soviet Union had exploded its own nuclear bomb (the nation would soon learn that spies at Los Alamos had helped). So much, also, for Harry Truman"s "red herring": his attorney general, Tom Clark, now warned that Communists "are everywhere-in factories, offices, butcher shops, on street corners, in private businesses-and each carries in himself the germs of death for society."
That kind of language helped explain the reticence of those overpolite souls who were telling Nixon to lay off the issue. To attempt to harness these foul political winds was not a fit pursuit for statesmen. Nixon wasn"t hearing it. A stream of liberal Democrats fell to Red-baiting conservative Democrats in primaries that spring. George Smathers beat Florida senator Claude Pepper by accusing him of being a "s.e.xagenarian," committing "nepotism" with his sister-in-law, openly proud of a sister who Smathers said was a "thespian." He also pointed out that Pepper had been a Harvard cla.s.smate of Alger Hiss"s.
Nixon marked it well: in the fever swamps of the Red Scare, fears of s.e.xual and political irregularity were deeply intertwined. Hints of s.e.xualized threat suffused his Senate campaign. He promised chivalry: "I am confronted with an unusual situation. My opponent is a woman.... There will be no name-calling, no smears, no misrepresentations in this campaign" (which he was apparently admitting were par for the course in campaigns involving men). Then he promptly broke his pledge. Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas"s Franklin credentials, Hollywood chapter, came partly through her husband, the handsome, mustachioed leading man Melvyn Douglas. Though from the sound of Nixon"s campaign you would think she was married to Alger Hiss. "Pink right down to her underwear," he called her, as if she were Elizabeth Bentley. That was hard to forget. So were the five hundred thousand flyers Nixon sent out that tied Douglas to Representative Vito Marcantonio, a backbencher who represented a Bronx district that was one of the poorest in the nation. The mailer, sent out on pink paper, dubbed him "the notorious Communist party-line Congressman from New York" and said Helen Gahagan Douglas "voted the same as Marcantonio 354 times."
Nixon himself had voted "exactly as" Marcantonio had in the triple digits himself. Douglas tried to point this out. It didn"t matter. The explanations were complicated. The smear was simple. The more Douglas tried to wriggle free, the more she sounded like-Alger Hiss. Just as she was supposed to. On the stump, Nixon intimated the stakes: the Russians were on the verge of attacking the West Coast through Alaska, aided and abetted by a domestic fifth column, ordered by Moscow to start "a reign of terror if we ever cross swords with Russia"-power-plant sabotage, food contamination, seizing a.r.s.enals. Maybe, just maybe, he hinted, this graceful and well-spoken Helen Gahagan Douglas had something to do with that fifth column. This was not the time for nuance.
Soon enough, she wounded herself by her own hand. "Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness," ran the headline of her full-page response ad. She thought she was playing good cards. She was actually handing another pot to Nixon. Now he could play his favorite role: the wounded innocent. Helen Gahagan Douglas had had voted 354 times with Vito Marcantonio. And here she was citing Scripture to call voted 354 times with Vito Marcantonio. And here she was citing Scripture to call him him a liar-just like that Dean Acheson. a liar-just like that Dean Acheson.
It was the thinnest of gruel. But deciding to pull one lever in a voting booth instead of another is not necessarily a thick decision. Richard Nixon repeated his calumnies and repeated them and repeated them until they stuck: "Don"t Vote the Red Ticket, Vote the Red, White, and Blue Ticket." "Be an American, Be for Nixon." "If You Want to Work for Uncle Sam Instead of Slave for Uncle Joe, Vote for Richard Nixon." Liberals cried foul. Nixon turned that into a recommendation: "The commies didn"t like it when I smash into Truman for his attempt to cover up the Hiss case...but the more the commies yell, the surer I am that I"m waging an honest American campaign."
He won his honest American campaign seven points ahead of every other Republican on the ticket, in a state where Democrats outnumbered registered Republicans by a million. Richard Nixon, thirty-seven years old, was now California"s senator-elect in an upset.
Though there were unexpected repercussions.
A new senator can expect to get invited to all the best Georgetown parties. At one of them, thrown by Joseph Alsop, brother and fellow columnist to Stewart Alsop, Nixon sank himself deep in a regally plush armchair, after Mrs. Alsop gathered the evidence by which she soon would indict him to the world as "wooden and stiff...terribly difficult to talk to...a terrible dancer to boot." W. Averell Harriman, son of the railroad baron, known to one and all as Amba.s.sador for his service as Roosevelt"s special envoy to Europe, wartime emissary to the Soviet Union, then amba.s.sador to the Court of St. James"s, was announced. He had traveled to California that campaign season to help Helen Gahagan Douglas. He was hard of hearing. At least that was the excuse, after he spotted Nixon, when the words tumbled from his mouth at a volume that hardly befitted a gentleman: "I will not break bread with that man!"
He stalked out. The act was loud enough for tout tout Georgetown to hear. Georgetown to hear.
Next, Richard Nixon clawed his way to his party"s second-highest job. California"s Republican Party in 1952, like Republican organizations elsewhere, was split between followers of the conservative Senate warhorse Robert Taft and the internationalist darling of the Republican Party"s Franklins, General Eisenhower. Early in his House career Richard Nixon had received the remarkable opportunity to join the commission a.s.sembled by veteran Ma.s.sachusetts representative Christian Herter to travel to Europe to a.s.sess its postwar reconstruction needs, and ended up breaking with the Republican conservative wing"s deep and abiding suspicion of entangling alliances with the Old World to support the Marshall Plan. He became an Eisenhower partisan early on in the 1952 nomination maneuverings.
The new senator was already grinding out extra-credit work in the form of an endless round of fund-raising speeches for his party. He appeared as "a Republican meld of Paul Revere and Billy Sunday," wrote conservative journalist Ralph de Toledano, who followed him on the road. (Though the liberal Brooklyn congressman Emanuel Celler saw him as "an inept, naive, Piltdown statesman...a maladjusted purblind Throttlebottom hoax of a statesman.") Toledano was writing a book about the Hiss case that put Nixon at its center, as the story"s hero. Ike read the book and liked the cut of the young man"s jib. The people running the political neophyte Eisenhower"s campaign also began to take notice of Nixon"s efforts and soon held out for him the chance of a lifetime.
California"s convention votes were pledged to a favorite son, Governor Earl Warren-whom Nixon, conveniently, hated. The delegation traveled from California to the Chicago convention in a custom train called the Earl Warren Special. Nixon boarded halfway through, at Denver. It was something a clever Hollywood screenwriter might dream up: move the plot along by introducing a new pa.s.senger who knows something-or is a.s.sumed to know something-that those already cooped up incommunicado on a speeding train do not. All the way to Chicago, Senator Nixon sedulously ambled from car to car, imparting what his interlocutors could only a.s.sume was established fact: that Eisenhower had the convention wrapped up and that loyalty to Warren was a waste. Saying so helped make it so. Eisenhower needed California to win the nomination. Nixon had been tendered a deal by Eisenhower"s top managers, Tom Dewey, Herbert Brownell, and General Lucius Clay: win the Earl Warren Special"s pa.s.sengers away from Earl Warren after the first ballot, and they would try to make him the running mate if Eisenhower pulled out the nomination. At a close and ugly convention, involving a last-minute deal between Warren and the Eisenhower forces, Eisenhower pulled it out. And Richard Nixon got the vice-presidential nod. Eisenhower introduced him to the Republican National Convention as "a man who has a special talent and ability to ferret out any kind of subversive influence wherever it may be found and the strength and persistence to get rid of it."
Then he almost lost the job.
Eisenhower had never paid all that much attention to the man he signed off on as his number two; his sense of the man was casual enough to describe Richard Nixon as someone who "did not persecute or defame." It is hard to say when he changed his mind, or exactly how much, or even to what extent the famous news report of the liberal New York Post New York Post on September 18-"Secret Nixon Fund: Secret Rich Men"s Trust Keeps Nixon in Style Far Beyond His Salary"-precipitated his ambivalence. What is certain is that Eisenhower was willing to cut his boy adrift, like a distant and unloving father, drowning a son. on September 18-"Secret Nixon Fund: Secret Rich Men"s Trust Keeps Nixon in Style Far Beyond His Salary"-precipitated his ambivalence. What is certain is that Eisenhower was willing to cut his boy adrift, like a distant and unloving father, drowning a son.
On the campaign trail, the vice-presidential candidate had learned to marshal special vigor on a favorite Eisenhower theme: the Truman administration"s alleged corruption, "gangsters getting favors from government." If the rot could "only be chopped out with a hatchet," he would say, "then let"s call for a hatchet" (a psychobiographer might recall the hatchet with which young Richard smacked the pollywog boy in 1920). Soon several reporters discovered that some Southern California businessmen, of the sort that had originally boosted him on the Committee of 100, had paid for Senator Nixon"s political travels in 1951 and 1952. The Post Post broke the story. broke the story.
There wasn"t that much to worry about, necessarily. The "secret fund" wasn"t really secret; it wasn"t illegal; it wasn"t even, really, unethical-or anything worse than the fund the Democratic standard-bearer, Adlai Stevenson, kept for himself, as Nixon immediately suspected when Stevenson didn"t join the pile-on despite his reputation for unimpeachable probity. Handled artfully-as, say, Nixon"s dark maestro Murray Chotiner would have handled it-the hatchet could have boomeranged right back into Adlai Stevenson"s skull. The matter certainly wasn"t something to threaten kicking someone off a campaign for-not least because replacing a vice-presidential candidate halfway through might do more damage than standing fast.
The affair turned out to become another opportunity for Richard Nixon to endure a slow, soiling humiliation. The worst, in fact, of his life.
That day, September 18, Nixon was hara.s.sed about the fund by campaign crowds spiked with heckling Democrats; but he had no problem handling that. The next, a Friday, he was hara.s.sed by the New York Herald Tribune. New York Herald Tribune. And that was a crushing blow. The And that was a crushing blow. The Herald Tribune, Herald Tribune, the house organ of the Wall Street wing of the Republican Party, was not an ordinary newspaper to Richard Nixon. In the Hiss case, it had been his Franklin seal of approval (and if there is one thing an Orthogonian secretly craves, it is a Franklin seal of approval). Nixon had fed their ace Washington correspondent Bert Andrews scoops in exchange for shoe-leather work that let Nixon keep control of the inquiry. Now "Tom Dewey"s paper" editorialized that Richard Nixon should offer his resignation. Eisenhower hadn"t even bothered to contact him to discuss the matter. Apparently, this editorial the house organ of the Wall Street wing of the Republican Party, was not an ordinary newspaper to Richard Nixon. In the Hiss case, it had been his Franklin seal of approval (and if there is one thing an Orthogonian secretly craves, it is a Franklin seal of approval). Nixon had fed their ace Washington correspondent Bert Andrews scoops in exchange for shoe-leather work that let Nixon keep control of the inquiry. Now "Tom Dewey"s paper" editorialized that Richard Nixon should offer his resignation. Eisenhower hadn"t even bothered to contact him to discuss the matter. Apparently, this editorial was was Eisenhower"s discussion of the matter-the signal that Nixon was supposed to resign. Nixon kept on campaigning, through the Pacific Northwest, through the heckling and the sound of rattling coins; people dressed like beggars, braying, "Nickels for poor Nixon." Eisenhower"s discussion of the matter-the signal that Nixon was supposed to resign. Nixon kept on campaigning, through the Pacific Northwest, through the heckling and the sound of rattling coins; people dressed like beggars, braying, "Nickels for poor Nixon."
He was not without his Orthogonians. A Nixon-baiter held a sign reading SHHH! ANYONE WHO MENTIONS THE $16,000 IS A COMMUNIST SHHH! ANYONE WHO MENTIONS THE $16,000 IS A COMMUNIST; Nixon"s fans beat him to a pulp, jeering, naturally, "Dirty Communist!" Little consolation for the Herald Tribune Herald Tribune"s death sentence, hanging there over his head. When the day"s appearances were over, Nixon was left to his agony. It was made worse after he learned that Eisenhower had just told reporters, "Of what avail is it for us to carry on this crusade against this business of what has been going on in Washington if we aren"t ourselves as clean as a hound"s tooth?" The statement was on background. But newsmen knew enough to go on the record as quickly as possible-the radio broadcasters, immediately-with their sage predictions of Nixon"s imminent resignation. Publicly, Eisenhower kept his counsel, letting Nixon twist in the wind. That ordeal continued for three full days.
Late Sunday afternoon Nixon sat in a Portland hotel suite, brooding over whether his meteoric political ascent was over. His campaign doctor ma.s.saged his aching back in an attempt to cut its Gordian knots. A wire from his mother came: she was praying for him. Nixon broke into tears. Then he went and gave a rousing after-dinner speech. Usually politicians did not campaign on the Sabbath. But Nixon tended to work harder than most candidates. This speech was to the Temple Beth Israel Men"s Club, and it wasn"t the Sabbath for them.
He conferred with his aides in his suite until it was Monday. At 3 a.m. he spent two hours alone, brooding, methodically reviewing his options. He decided, finally, to hang on for dear life-to figure out his own hand to play. The Eisenhower string-pullers had given him the opportunity to go on TV to explain himself. Eisenhower, for his part, still cruelly refused to indicate what Nixon should say one way or the other. It was cowardly. The tacit demand was that Nixon go on TV and resign.
So Nixon decided to fight dirty.
He was offered an open slot on Monday night, after Lucille Ball"s phenomenally popular situation comedy. Nixon said that wouldn"t give him enough time to prepare. Milton Berle was on Tuesdays. He was phenomenally popular, too. Nixon chose the half hour after that.
The delay proved fortunate: it gave the public time to absorb that day"s report that Adlai had his own secret fund, and that a law firm and an accounting firm had completed reports confirming that Nixon"s fund was aboveboard and legal.
And so, on Tuesday evening at the NBC studio in Los Angeles" El Capitan Theater, on a stage set built to look like a suburban middle-cla.s.s den-Richard Nixon did what he had to do. A camera locked in on his business card, a makeshift t.i.tle screen. The red light went on. The senator went live. Not even General Eisenhower, who was getting telegrams running three to one that Richard Nixon should be dumped, knew what he was going to say. The telegrams were important: Eisenhower had gone on the record that he would make his recommendation based on the number of favorable messages that Richard Nixon"s little show inspired.
To understand what Richard Nixon would now do, think yourself into his shoes.
Choose the part of your past that feels most vulnerable.
Take twenty-four hours to prepare.
Wait for the red light, then look into the camera and convince the largest audience in the medium"s history why your conduct regarding same supports the judgment that you are beyond reproach. In one half hour, exactly.
And do it practically without notes.
"My fellow Americans," Richard Nixon began.
"I come before you tonight as a candidate for the vice presidency and as a man whose honesty and integrity have been questioned."
And off he went: "I am sure that you have read the charges, and you have heard it, that I, Senator Nixon, took eighteen thousand dollars from a group of my supporters."
The technical value of the financial accounting that followed was highly debatable. It would be highly debated. His account of smears the press supposedly piled upon him during the Hiss case and after was even more so. This would be debated, too. The insiders on the campaign trains noticed the nice little defensive jab at Stevenson: "I would suggest that under the circ.u.mstances...Mr. Stevenson should come before the American people as I have." Then they marveled at the haymaker he landed upon, of all people, dear old Ike: "...because, remember, a man who"s to be president...must have the confidence of all the people." It was subtle, but Nixon was reminding his padrone, this spotless man, that he also had a financial impropriety on his hands: a squirrelly tax decision he had won concerning the proceeds from his memoirs. That was the dirty part of the job. Now Eisenhower couldn"t disavow Nixon without being right there on the hook with him.
That was clever. But that wasn"t what delivered the ma.s.ses" telegrams. What delivered the telegrams were the stories. These, too, left plenty of room for dispute. "I worked my way through college," he said-he hadn"t; "I guess I"m ent.i.tled to a couple of battle stars" from the war-he wasn"t; his wife "was born on St. Patrick"s Day"-she was born the day before before St. Patrick"s Day. St. Patrick"s Day.
He wound up for the conclusion with more accountancy: "I own a 1950 Oldsmobile car.... We have our furniture. We have no stocks and bonds of any type.... Now that is what we have. What do we owe? Well, in addition to the mortgages, the twenty-thousand-dollar mortgage on the house in Washington and the ten-thousand-dollar one on the house in Whittier, I owe forty-five hundred dollars to the Riggs bank in Washington, D.C., with interest four and a half percent. I owe thirty-five hundred dollars to my parents."
Admitting on national TV he owed his parents money. That had to sting.
"Well, that"s about it. That"s what we have and that"s what we owe. It isn"t very much but Pat and I have the satisfaction that every dime we"ve got is honestly ours." (Take that, that, Adlai Stevenson, rich man"s son.) Adlai Stevenson, rich man"s son.) "I should say this-that Pat doesn"t have a mink coat."
(From time to time, the camera had cut away to Pat, gazing at him adoringly off to one side in an armchair, tight-lipped.) "But she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat. And I always tell her that she"d look good in anything."
Then he brought up one more a.s.set.
"One other thing I probably should tell you, because if I don"t, they"ll probably be saying this about me, too. We did get something-a gift-after the election.
"A man down in Texas heard Pat on the radio mention the fact that our two youngsters would like to have a dog. And, believe it or not, the day before we left on this campaign trip we got a message from Union Station in Baltimore saying they had a package for us. We went down to get it.
"You know what it was?
"It was a little c.o.c.ker spaniel dog in a crate that he sent all the way from Texas. Black-and-white-spotted. And our little girl-Tricia, the six-year-old-named it Checkers. And you know the kids love that dog, and I just want to say this right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we"re going to keep it."
It became the obsession of his adversaries, that line about the c.o.c.ker spaniel in what went down in history as the "Checkers Speech." They took this part for the whole. The liberal Catholic journal Commonweal Commonweal called it "a cheap attempt to exploit decent human motives." But Richard Nixon"s people could take a part for the whole as well. They interpreted the puppy story just as Nixon intended it: as a jab at a bunch of b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who were piling on, kicking a man when he was down, a regular guy, just because they could do it and he couldn"t fight back. called it "a cheap attempt to exploit decent human motives." But Richard Nixon"s people could take a part for the whole as well. They interpreted the puppy story just as Nixon intended it: as a jab at a bunch of b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who were piling on, kicking a man when he was down, a regular guy, just because they could do it and he couldn"t fight back. What will they dream up to throw at me next? To take away my little girl"s puppy dog? What will they dream up to throw at me next? To take away my little girl"s puppy dog? They, too, had mortgages, just like Richard Nixon. They, too, had cars that were not quite as nice as they might have liked-not nice enough to impress the neighbors, certainly. They, too, had worked hard as he had, their hard work not always noticed, sometimes disparaged. The agony of having to grovel to justify oneself just to keep one"s job: they had been there, too. They, too, had mortgages, just like Richard Nixon. They, too, had cars that were not quite as nice as they might have liked-not nice enough to impress the neighbors, certainly. They, too, had worked hard as he had, their hard work not always noticed, sometimes disparaged. The agony of having to grovel to justify oneself just to keep one"s job: they had been there, too.
And they, too, would dread the prospect, as Richard Nixon had truly, truly dreaded it-he collapsed into tears once more when the ordeal was safely over-of being forced to justify their financial affairs, their financial decisions, their financial vulnerabilities, vulnerabilities, to their fathers, be they surrogate or otherwise, as if they weren"t even really grown-ups at all. to their fathers, be they surrogate or otherwise, as if they weren"t even really grown-ups at all.
"There goes my actor," his high school drama teacher, in whose productions Nixon had excelled, p.r.o.nounced to her TV in disgust. Though this wasn"t just an act. And it wasn"t just sincere. It was a hustle; and it was from the heart. It was all those things, all at the same time.
And it worked.
The telegrams poured in: over 2 million of them, and according to one careful sample, only 0.4 percent of them negative. The 99.6 percent were the ones who had let themselves be drafted as Orthogonians-the ones who felt the speech in their hearts. The ones Nixon had called out to when he misquoted Abraham Lincoln: "G.o.d must have loved the common people; he made so many of them." And those so convinced-that they were common; that Nixon was common; that Nixon was being persecuted and that they, too, were somehow being persecuted because they, too, were common-were the ones who carried the day. General Eisenhower was forced to take back his errant son with open arms. Richard Nixon had won.
The people who knew it was a hustle-Amba.s.sador Harriman"s people-were flummoxed. A nickname was coined right around this time to describe these sorts of folks, affixed specifically to the man who was taken as their greatest tribune, Adlai Stevenson: eggheads. There weren"t all that many televisions in America then, though the number of sets was growing exponentially, as part and parcel of America"s postwar economic boom. These were the types who took pride in themselves, already, for not not owning them. They knew enough to realize that the television commercials that exploited the cuteness of puppies were the most fiendishly effective ones. A Nixon a.s.sociate would later characterize them as an effete corps of impudent sn.o.bs. They did not view themselves thus. They saw themselves as the guardians of American decency. Liberals now hated Richard Nixon. He had hit them where it hurt. "d.i.c.k Nixon," as one especially astute columnist observed of the Checkers Speech in its immediate wake, "has suddenly placed the burden of old-style Republican aloofness on the Democrats." A Stevensonian liberal could be defined as someone who quailed at that very thought-and even more, who panicked to the point of neurosis at the possibility that it was shared by 99.6 percent of Richard Nixon"s audience. The whole business enraged them. It also helped define them: right then and there, hating Richard Nixon became a central part of the liberal creed. owning them. They knew enough to realize that the television commercials that exploited the cuteness of puppies were the most fiendishly effective ones. A Nixon a.s.sociate would later characterize them as an effete corps of impudent sn.o.bs. They did not view themselves thus. They saw themselves as the guardians of American decency. Liberals now hated Richard Nixon. He had hit them where it hurt. "d.i.c.k Nixon," as one especially astute columnist observed of the Checkers Speech in its immediate wake, "has suddenly placed the burden of old-style Republican aloofness on the Democrats." A Stevensonian liberal could be defined as someone who quailed at that very thought-and even more, who panicked to the point of neurosis at the possibility that it was shared by 99.6 percent of Richard Nixon"s audience. The whole business enraged them. It also helped define them: right then and there, hating Richard Nixon became a central part of the liberal creed.
"The man who the people of the sovereign state of California believed was actually representing them," the Sacramento Bee Sacramento Bee editorialized, was actually "the pet and protege of rich Southern Californians...their subsidized front man, if not their lobbyist." This "kept man," chimed in the editorialized, was actually "the pet and protege of rich Southern Californians...their subsidized front man, if not their lobbyist." This "kept man," chimed in the New Republic, New Republic, was bamboozling people who were not rich into believing that he was their tribune. The pundit Walter Lippmann called it "the most demeaning experience my country has ever had to bear.... With all the magnification of modern electronics, simply mob law." The in-house humorist of Stevensonian liberalism, Mort Sahl, suggested a sequel. Nixon could read the Const.i.tution aloud to his two daughters. Pat, his devoted helpmeet, could sit within camera view, gazing lovingly upon him while knitting an American flag. was bamboozling people who were not rich into believing that he was their tribune. The pundit Walter Lippmann called it "the most demeaning experience my country has ever had to bear.... With all the magnification of modern electronics, simply mob law." The in-house humorist of Stevensonian liberalism, Mort Sahl, suggested a sequel. Nixon could read the Const.i.tution aloud to his two daughters. Pat, his devoted helpmeet, could sit within camera view, gazing lovingly upon him while knitting an American flag.
Liberal intellectuals were betraying themselves in a moment of crisis for liberal ideology. They saw themselves themselves as tribunes of the people, Republicans as the people"s traducers. Liberals had written the New Deal social and labor legislation that let ordinary Americans win back a measure of economic security. Then liberals helped lead a war against fascism, a war conservatives opposed, and then worked to create, in the postwar reconversion, the consumer economy that built the middle cla.s.s, a prosperity for ordinary laborers unprecedented in the history of the world. as tribunes of the people, Republicans as the people"s traducers. Liberals had written the New Deal social and labor legislation that let ordinary Americans win back a measure of economic security. Then liberals helped lead a war against fascism, a war conservatives opposed, and then worked to create, in the postwar reconversion, the consumer economy that built the middle cla.s.s, a prosperity for ordinary laborers unprecedented in the history of the world. Liberalism Liberalism had done that. Now history had caught them in a bind: with the boom they had helped build, ordinary laborers were becoming ever less reliably downtrodden, vulnerable to appeal from the Republicans. The pollster Samuel Lubell was the first to recognize it: "The inner dynamics of the Roosevelt coalition have shifted from those of getting to those of keeping." had done that. Now history had caught them in a bind: with the boom they had helped build, ordinary laborers were becoming ever less reliably downtrodden, vulnerable to appeal from the Republicans. The pollster Samuel Lubell was the first to recognize it: "The inner dynamics of the Roosevelt coalition have shifted from those of getting to those of keeping."
Their liberal champions developed a distaste for them. One of the ways it manifested itself was in matters of style. The liberal capitalism that had created this ma.s.s middle cla.s.s created, in its wake, a ma.s.s culture of consumption. And the liberals whose New Deal created this ma.s.s middle cla.s.s were more and more turning their attention to critiquing the degraded ma.s.s culture of cheap sensation and plastic gadgets and politicians who seemed to cater to this lowest common denominator-public-relations-driven politicians who catered to only the basest and most sentimental emotions in men. Who resembled in certain formal respects-didn"t they?-the fascists who"d won power most effectively with, as Adolf Hitler bragged, a radio microphone. Now came the b.o.o.b tube, "a vast wasteland," as Adlai Stevenson"s administrative a.s.sistant Newton Minow would later say, when he became FCC chair. A working cla.s.s that was no longer poor, but seemed so much poorer in spirit. And its tribunes: men like...Richard Nixon.
That a new American common man was emerging who, thanks to men like Nixon, thought he could be a Republican-to liberals this idea that the "comfortable" cla.s.s a.s.sociated with Richard Nixon was a cla.s.s of victims was enraging. "We do not detect any desperate impoverishment in a man who has bought two homes, even if his Oldsmobile is two years old," huffed the New York Post. New York Post.
(Oldsmobile: here was a word to linger on. Not a stylish car. Kind of tacky even if it was expensive-maybe even tackier because it here was a word to linger on. Not a stylish car. Kind of tacky even if it was expensive-maybe even tackier because it was was expensive. Kind of- expensive. Kind of-common. Though not in an Aaron Copland, "Fanfare for the Common Man," sort of way. A Richard Nixon kind of car.) Though not in an Aaron Copland, "Fanfare for the Common Man," sort of way. A Richard Nixon kind of car.) In 1950 Nixon"s campaign took out ads promising "Electric clocks, Silex coffeemakers with heating units-General Electric automatic toasters-silver salt and pepper shakers, sugar and creamer sets, candy and b.u.t.ter dishes, etc., etc.," to everyone who answered "Win with Nixon!" when his or her phone rang. Richard Nixon was now the poster child for this deranged new politics of ma.s.s consumption. It felt divorced from any mature and reasoned and logical a.n.a.lysis of who really really ran things in society, who were the real economic beneficiaries, how power really worked, elite liberals thought. This was a new style of political demagoguery, a kind of ran things in society, who were the real economic beneficiaries, how power really worked, elite liberals thought. This was a new style of political demagoguery, a kind of right-wing right-wing populism, almost. This hucksterism. Hadn"t Richard Nixon worked as a carnival barker as a boy in Prescott, Arizona? Hadn"t the organizer of the Committee of 100, an advertising executive, proclaimed, upon discovering Richard Nixon in 1946, "This is salable merchandise!"? They would laugh at Nixon"s line from the so-called Kitchen Debate with Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow in 1959: "There are some instances where you may be ahead of us, for example, in the development of the thrust of your rockets for the investigation of outer s.p.a.ce; there may be some instances in which we are ahead of you-in color television, for instance." Soft-drink CEO Donald Kendall would later get Nixon his job at a New York law firm in 1963 as quid pro quo for the vice president"s arranging for Khrushchev to be photographed with a bottle of Pepsi. Here was something to worry the liberals: Did the American way of life they had fought for come down to populism, almost. This hucksterism. Hadn"t Richard Nixon worked as a carnival barker as a boy in Prescott, Arizona? Hadn"t the organizer of the Committee of 100, an advertising executive, proclaimed, upon discovering Richard Nixon in 1946, "This is salable merchandise!"? They would laugh at Nixon"s line from the so-called Kitchen Debate with Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow in 1959: "There are some instances where you may be ahead of us, for example, in the development of the thrust of your rockets for the investigation of outer s.p.a.ce; there may be some instances in which we are ahead of you-in color television, for instance." Soft-drink CEO Donald Kendall would later get Nixon his job at a New York law firm in 1963 as quid pro quo for the vice president"s arranging for Khrushchev to be photographed with a bottle of Pepsi. Here was something to worry the liberals: Did the American way of life they had fought for come down to color television color television? Did freedom come down to Pepsi-Cola? They would laugh when he became president and named as his chief of staff a former J. Walter Thompson advertising executive. Could freedom be sold the way Bob Haldeman had sold Disneyland and Black Flag?
Let them laugh. Richard Nixon was back on the ticket. He now turned to a.s.sailing Secretary of State Dean Acheson for his "color blindness, a form of pink eye toward the Communist threat in the United States"; Adlai Stevenson for his "Ph.D. from Dean Acheson"s College of Cowardly Communist Containment"; and Acheson, Stevenson, and President Truman for having become "traitors to the high principles in which many of the nation"s Democrats believe." Dwight D. Eisenhower won the election; Richard Nixon became the nation"s vice president at thirty-nine years old; and Checkers became a watershed for the way Americans were coming to divide themselves.
After Checkers, to the cosmopolitan liberals, hating Richard Nixon, congratulating yourself for seeing through seeing through Richard Nixon and the elaborate political poker bluffs with which he hooked the sentimental rubes, was becoming part and parcel of a political ident.i.ty. Richard Nixon and the elaborate political poker bluffs with which he hooked the sentimental rubes, was becoming part and parcel of a political ident.i.ty.
And to a new suburban ma.s.s middle cla.s.s that was tempting itself into Republicanism, admiring Richard Nixon was becoming part and parcel of a political ident.i.ty based on seeing through the pretensions of the cosmopolitan liberals who claimed to know so much better than you (and Richard Nixon) what was best for your country. This side saw everything that was most genuine in Nixon, everything that was most brave-who saw the Checkers Speech for what it also also actually was, not just a hustle but also an act of existential heroism: a brave refusal to let haughty "betters" have their way with him. They were no less self-congratulatory than the liberals. actually was, not just a hustle but also an act of existential heroism: a brave refusal to let haughty "betters" have their way with him. They were no less self-congratulatory than the liberals.
Call the America they shared-the America over whose direction they struggled for the next fifty years, whose meaning they continue to contest even as this book goes to press, even as you hold it in your hands-by this name: Nixonland. Study well the man at Nixonland"s center, the man from Yorba Linda. Study well those he opposed. The history that follows is their political war.
CHAPTER THREE.
The Stench.
IN 1953, 1953, CERTAIN OF THE MORE ELEVATED INTERPRETERS OF CERTAIN OF THE MORE ELEVATED INTERPRETERS OF A AMERICAN politics began to spy a becoming new dignity in Richard Nixon now that he had been inaugurated vice president. The psychology made sense. Who wanted to admit that America now had a blackguard a heartbeat away from the presidency? politics began to spy a becoming new dignity in Richard Nixon now that he had been inaugurated vice president. The psychology made sense. Who wanted to admit that America now had a blackguard a heartbeat away from the presidency?
President Eisenhower sent Nixon on a diplomatic mission to Asia, a region rendered strategically crucial by the deteriorating position of our allies the French against the Communist insurgency in the colony of Vietnam. Upon his return, the press greeted him as a statesman. It wasn"t the first time Nixon returned from travels to find his stature enhanced; that would have been when a newly mature young man returned to Whittier after helping his mother nurse tubercular patients in Arizona. Then, when the young lawyer came back from the war to practice law in Whittier. Stature-enhancing trips to distant lands would always be a Nixon staple.
This time, however, he quickly tumbled from grace. It came of a dirty job. Joseph McCarthy had once been indulged by the Eisenhower administration as a useful, if distasteful, political a.s.set. When he took on the army, he had to be cut loose for going too far. The task fell to the party"s other other most prominent Red-baiter. Nixon had the credibility to shiv the cur without alienating the Republicans" rank-and-file Red-baiters in the bargain. For the Republican Franklins, there was an added bonus: they could hold themselves further aloof from Richard Nixon, using the stench of the task they had just delegated to him as their excuse. most prominent Red-baiter. Nixon had the credibility to shiv the cur without alienating the Republicans" rank-and-file Red-baiters in the bargain. For the Republican Franklins, there was an added bonus: they could hold themselves further aloof from Richard Nixon, using the stench of the task they had just delegated to him as their excuse.
So Nixon embraced the stench. In his most-watched TV appearance since he"d introduced the world to his c.o.c.ker spaniel, on March 13, 1954, he said that Joseph McCarthy just didn"t play fair.
"I have heard people say, "Well, why all this hullabaloo about being fair when you"re dealing with a gang of traitors?"" he said, in his by then trademark tones of histrionic solemnity. ""After all, they"re a bunch of rats." Well, I agree they"re a bunch of rats, but just remember this. When you go out to shoot rats, you have to shoot straight, because when you shoot wildly, it only means that the rat may get away more easily. You make it easier on the rat."
It was the eve of the 1954 congressional election season. On the campaign trail for his party"s congressional candidates, Nixon did some wild shooting of his own. McCarthy originally claimed dozens of subversives had infiltrated the Truman administration. Nixon claimed the new Republican administration had rousted "thousands." (Eisenhower"s civil service commissioner later admitted they hadn"t found a single one.) Nixon also claimed that the new White House occupants had "found in the files a blueprint for socializing America." Reporters asked him for a copy. Nixon claimed he had been speaking metaphorically. Though he also claimed possession of "a secret memorandum of the Communist Party" proving "it is determined to conduct its program within the Democratic Party."
He made no mistake about whom the Communists" vector would be. Adlai Stevenson was also chasing around the country campaigning for Democratic congressional victories, in pursuit of which Nixon accused him of "attack[ing] with violent fury the economic system of the United States." Nixon hated Stevenson. He was another of his perfect enemies. Nixon"s dad bragged incessantly of once having met a president; Stevenson"s father, the son of a vice president, was dandled on a president"s knee. Young d.i.c.k begged a newspaper for a job; Little Adlai"s family owned a newspaper. Accomplishments seemed to attach themselves to Stevenson without any visible exertion on his part. The contrast couldn"t be more stark.
Nixon traveled almost as many miles as the administration"s political emissary in 1954 as he had as its diplomatic emissary in 1953. No national figure had ever worked so hard in an off-year election. The Washington Post Washington Post"s Herb Block commemorated the accomplishment in a famous political cartoon. It depicted a cl.u.s.ter of Republican fat cats gathering around Nixon with WELCOME WELCOME signs as he emerged, suitcase plastered with stickers from his many stops, from a manhole cover. He was traveling around the country-get it?-by sewer. signs as he emerged, suitcase plastered with stickers from his many stops, from a manhole cover. He was traveling around the country-get it?-by sewer.
The next year the sewer dweller would get another opportunity to recover the mantle of statesman when President Eisenhower was struck by a heart attack. Nixon took on emergency duties. Political allies urged him to press his temporary advantage for long-term gain. Nixon avoided the temptation. His maturity impressed even his enemies. But it didn"t burnish his public image. He couldn"t catch the break. Now when people talked about the vice president, it was in the context of death. The president himself, fearing for his own mortality and perhaps the nation"s, summoned Nixon and tried to get him to take a cabinet post. The next spring, in 1956, Eisenhower was laid up in the hospital again, losing several inches of his small intestine to an unpleasant malady called ileitis. Nixon"s enemies read in the frailties of the old man"s face the specter of a President Nixon. Their proliferating plots against him made "Dump Nixon" the political catchphrase of 1956.
Nixon maneuvered his way past the threat. He once more embraced the stench.
Stevenson ran again as the Democratic candidate. The courtly type, he couldn"t campaign directly against a dying war hero; instead he ran against the man who might replace him. And he did it in a singularly uncourtly fashion. He wrote his friend John Kenneth Galbraith, the (courtly) Harvard economist, "I want you to write the speeches against Nixon. You have no tendency to be fair." Galbraith acknowledged that as a "n.o.ble compliment." A private DNC memo made explicit the Democrats" 1956 strategy: dump on on Nixon. "We are fortunate in the fact that an amazingly large segment of the population, and even of his own party, seems to dislike and mistrust him instinctively." Nixon. "We are fortunate in the fact that an amazingly large segment of the population, and even of his own party, seems to dislike and mistrust him instinctively."
Went one of the Stevenson/Galbraith jeremiads: "As a citizen more than a candidate, I recoil at the prospect of Mr. Nixon as a custodian of this nation"s future, as guardian of the hydrogen bomb." Ran another: "Our nation stands at a fork in the political road. In one direction lies a land of slander and scare; the land of sly innuendo, the poison pen, the anonymous phone call and hustling, pushing, shoving; the land of smash and grab and anything to win. This is Nixonland. America is something different."
Of course, saying a President Nixon would unleash the bomb was also slander and scare, and spared not the innuendo. Adlai Stevenson and his learned speechwriter had coined a useful word, Nixonland. Nixonland. They just did not grasp its full resonance. They described themselves outside its boundaries. Actually, they were citizens in good standing. Stevenson defined himself by his high-mindedness, said things like-from his 1952 acceptance speech-"What does concern me, along with thinking partisans of both parties, is not just winning this election, but They just did not grasp its full resonance. They described themselves outside its boundaries. Actually, they were citizens in good standing. Stevenson defined himself by his high-mindedness, said things like-from his 1952 acceptance speech-"What does concern me, along with thinking partisans of both parties, is not just winning this election, but how how it is won. How well we can take advantage of this great quadrennial opportunity to debate the issues sensibly, and soberly." And yet it only stood to reason that if you believed your opponent was neither sensible nor sober and would do anything to win, and that his victory would destroy civilization, a certain insobriety was permissible to it is won. How well we can take advantage of this great quadrennial opportunity to debate the issues sensibly, and soberly." And yet it only stood to reason that if you believed your opponent was neither sensible nor sober and would do anything to win, and that his victory would destroy civilization, a certain insobriety was permissible to beat beat him. him.
Thus a more inclusive definition of Nixonland: it is the America where two separate and irreconcilable sets of apocalyptic fears coexist in the minds of two separate and irreconcilable groups of Americans. The first group, enemies of Richard Nixon, are the spiritual heirs of Stevenson and Galbraith. They take it as an axiom that if Richard Nixon and the values a.s.sociated with him triumph, America itself might end. end. The second group are the people who wrote those telegrams begging Dwight D. Eisenhower to keep their hero on the 1952 Republican ticket. They believe, as did Nixon, that if the The second group are the people who wrote those telegrams begging Dwight D. Eisenhower to keep their hero on the 1952 Republican ticket. They believe, as did Nixon, that if the enemies enemies of Richard Nixon triumph-the Alger Hisses and Helen Gahagan Douglases, the Herblocks and hippies, the George McGoverns and all the rest-America might end. The DNC was right: an amazingly large segment of the population disliked and mistrusted Richard Nixon instinctively. What they did not acknowledge was that an amazingly large segment of the population also trusted him as their savior. "Nixonland" is what happens when these two groups try to occupy a country together. By the end of the 1960s, Nixonland came to encompa.s.s the entire political culture of the United States. It would define it, in fact, for the next fifty years. of Richard Nixon triumph-the Alger Hisses and Helen Gahagan Douglases, the Herblocks and hippies, the George McGoverns and all the rest-America might end. The DNC was right: an amazingly large segment of the population disliked and mistrusted Richard Nixon instinctively. What they did not acknowledge was that an amazingly large segment of the population also trusted him as their savior. "Nixonland" is what happens when these two groups try to occupy a country together. By the end of the 1960s, Nixonland came to encompa.s.s the entire political culture of the United States. It would define it, in fact, for the next fifty years.
Though we are getting ahead of ourselves.
The 1956 presidential campaign was rough on Richard Nixon. It wasn"t the abuse-that he rather thrived on. It was a new task that Eisenhower thrust upon him. The president, running on a message of tail-finned peace and prosperity, commanded his pit bull just this once to "give "em heaven." Frank Nixon"s son found the advice awkward. Soothing bromides issuing from Nixonian lips tended to backfire; the image adjustment only reinforced the suspicion that Richard Nixon was only, well, image. image.
Reporters had coined a phrase to describe this purported "nice guy" in their midst: the "new Nixon." Adlai Stevenson heard that and unsheathed his dagger: "I don"t wish for a moment to deprecate the vice president"s new personality.... But I do wish that we might hear some word from him repudiating the irresponsible, the vindictive, and the malicious words so often spoken by the impostor who has been using his name all these years." Pat Nixon didn"t help. Asked by a reporter if she she had noticed a new Nixon, she replied, "He"s the same. He"d never change." had noticed a new Nixon, she replied, "He"s the same. He"d never change."
Luckily when Stevenson began to gain, General Eisenhower gave Nixon license once more to breathe fire. (Nixon later recalled he felt "as if a great weight had been lifted from me.") Eisenhower was reelected in a landslide. Stevenson-who"d taken to uttering at the mealtime mention of Nixon"s name, "Please! Not while I"m eating!"-wrote an anguished letter to a friend: "The world is so much more dangerous and wicked even than it was barely four years ago when we talked, that I marvel and tremble at the rapidity of this deterioration."
But Richard Nixon, you might say, did not win. For the first time since 1844, the party that won the White House captured neither house of Congress. Americans voted for the genial old general, the warm and wise national grandfather. They didn"t vote for his party. Nixon, everyone knew, was the partisan on the team. He He was blamed for the congressional losses. was blamed for the congressional losses.
In the spring of 1958 the second-term VP received another travel opportunity. They called them "goodwill tours," these Eisenhower administration junkets to sh.o.r.e up Cold War alliances. As regarded South and Central America, a semi-imperialist American sphere of influence since the imposition of the Monroe Doctrine, the naivete of a hegemon lay behind the conceit. Europe, after World War II, had been rewarded with the Marshall Plan: its free nations would contribute to U.S. economic health as a prosperous market for U.S. goods. South America"s reward was NSC 144/1: instead of direct economic aid, its leaders were to be patronizingly instructed "that their own self-interest requires the creation of a climate which will attract investment." South America was to be a repository of raw materials and cheap labor. NSC 144/1 acknowledged a potential tension: "There is increasing popular demand for immediate improvement in the low living standards of the ma.s.ses, with the result that most Latin American governments are under intense domestic political pressure to increase production and diversify their economies." That was a bureaucrat"s way of describing what Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz Guzman was doing: expropriating fallow lands of the United States Fruit Company and distributing it to landless peasants. He modeled the program on the U.S. Homestead Act. He was rewarded in 1954 with a CIA-led military coup.
Denizens of South America"s more prestigious universities were well versed in this history. As they were with Richard Nixon"s warm and friendly 1955 visit with Arbenz"s dictatorial successor, and Nixon"s a.s.sertion that "this is the first instance in history where a Communist government has been replaced by a free one." And South America"s more prestigious universities were prominent on the itinerary of Richard Nixon in the spring of 1958.
He was hara.s.sed by Marxist demonstrators as soon as he made landfall. It was brave when Nixon emerged from his car at the gates of the hemisphere"s oldest university, in Lima, to address demonstrators bearing signs like NIXON-MERCHANT OF WAR, NIXON PIRATE, NIXON-MERCHANT OF WAR, NIXON PIRATE, and and NIXON DOG. NIXON DOG. A thrown rock grazed his throat. A thrown rock grazed his throat.
Eisenhower dispatched a telegram: "Dear d.i.c.k, Your courage, patience, and calmness in the demonstration directed against you by radical agitators have brought you a new respect and admiration in our country." (The compliment felt backhanded, the implication being that he hadn"t enjoyed respect and admiration heretofore.) In Caracas, agitators subjected his motorcade to a rain of stones. ("That is a frightening sound, incidentally," Nixon later wrote, "the crack of rocks against a closed car.") It looked like a mob attempt on his life. Nixon"s Secret Servicemen reached for their revolvers. Nixon displayed the kind of presence of mind for which battlefield commanders win medals: sensing that the sound of a single shot might start a riot, he ordered the guns put away. Rocks spiderwebbed the limousines" gla.s.s-shatterproof gla.s.s, the occupants could comfort themselves, until one of the shards socked the Venezuelan foreign minister in the eye. The motorcade escaped in a cloud of tear gas. Nixon wrote, "I felt as though I had come as close as anyone could get, and still remain alive." Eisenhower airlifted in two companies of marines and dispatched a navy flotilla just in case. Nixon emerged a hero. His next motorcade bore him past the White House, one hundred thousand cheering bodies thronging the way. For weeks, wherever he went he got standing ovations. It was a new high in his life. For once he wasn"t just a hero to Orthogonians. He was a hero to everyone.
The liberals at the New Republic New Republic suspected a hoax-a setup to build the popularity of the Republicans" presumptive 1960 nominee. "The nomination of Slippery d.i.c.k Nixon," they complained, "is not worth the dumbest doughface in the United States Army." The military maneuvers to protect him in the riots were code-named Operation Poor Richard. This was the embarra.s.sing nickname Nixon had drawn in the wake of the Checkers Speech. Enemies of Richard Nixon, it seemed, lurked everywhere. suspected a hoax-a setup to build the popularity of the Republicans" presumptive 1960 nominee. "The nomination of Slippery d.i.c.k Nixon," they complained, "is not worth the dumbest doughface in the United States Army." The military maneuvers to protect him in the riots were code-named Operation Poor Richard. This was the embarra.s.sing nickname Nixon had drawn in the wake of the Checkers Speech. Enemies of Richard Nixon, it seemed, lurked everywhere.
The high was promptly followed by another of his life"s routine lows.
He hadn"t wanted to go to South America; he had a bigger project on his plate. Everyone knew the Republican presidential nomination was his to lose. To secure his chance he would have to lead his party to a good showing in the off-year elections. But 1958 did not look to be a Republican year. A recession was in effect. Richard Nixon did everything within a vice president"s puny power to loosen its grip. He joined the administration"s liberal labor secretary, James Mitch.e.l.l, to implore Eisenhower to cut taxes to stimulate job growth. Then Nixon had to ship out to the tropics on his goodwill trip. Eisenhower"s right-wing former treasury secretary, George Humphrey, prevailed upon the president to choose fiscal conservatism instead. Nixon"s temporary status as a hero upon his return from South America might prove a mess of pottage unless he could devise a strategy to turn turn 1958 into a Republican year. 1958 into a Republican year.
It seemed like a good idea at the time for Richard Nixon to turn organized labor into a scapegoat for the nation"s problems by urging antiunion right-to-work initiatives to be put on the ballot in seven states. You might not have expected Nixon"s second-best solution to the problem of 1958 would be to sell out his ally for his first (Mitch.e.l.l was staunchly anti-right-to-work). But Richard Nixon"s ideological flexibility could be limitless. It was businessmen, not union workers, who formed the st.u.r.diest portion of the Republican political base. Nineteen fifty-seven had been a year of dramatic televised hearings on mob racketeering in unions like the Teamsters. Nixon presumed popular disgust at unions would help the Republican candidates.
The miscalculation was severe. Right-to-work wasn"t popular with a general public that understood how a strong labor movement had rocketed millions of voters into the middle cla.s.s. It also further divided an already badly divided Republican Party. Traditionally the party in the White House loses a dozen or so House seats in an off-year election. This year they lost forty-seven. In Ohio and California, Democrats replaced Republicans in the statehouse. The cla.s.s of Republican congressmen swept out had been the one swept in in 1946: Richard Nixon"s cla.s.s. And it was Richard Nixon, the New York Times New York Times pointed out, who "formulated the Republican campaign strategy." pointed out, who "formulated the Republican campaign strategy."
Richard Nixon always had a reputation as an ugly campaigner. Now, for the first time, he had a reputation as a losing one, too.
Nineteen sixty. A presidential election lost by 0.1 votes per precinct in the United States provides the loser plenty of opportunities for reflection, a storehouse of memories to roll over in the mind"s eye. Every last errant decision, each missed opportunity, every break that had it tumbled this way instead of that it would have made Richard Nixon the hero instead of the lonely man who spent the first half of 1961 alone in a Los Angeles apartment eating meals from soup cans as his girls finished out the school year back East-this torture of retrospection Richard Nixon would rewind for the rest of his life.
The memories of the Republican convention that was supposed to be his coronation-interrupted by an emergency flight to Manhattan so that the richest and most arrogant man in the world, Nelson Rockefeller, could dictate to him a rewrite of the Republican platform in exchange for his support.