Part 3 (1/2)

Memories, from that convention, of the conservative-Republican rank and file that had so long been his champion breaking for an emotional, last-minute attempt to draft the wild-eyed, right-wing cowboy Barry Goldwater.

Memories of Eisenhower, asked if Richard Nixon, running as the candidate of experience, had come up with a single one of the administration's ”major ideas,” saying, ”If you give me a week, I might think of one.” (Eisenhower's problem coming up with one might have reflected that the projects Nixon focused on were top secret: working with the Dulles brothers to overturn regimes in Guatemala and Iran; advocating nuclear weapons to break the resistance at Dien Bien Phu.) Memories of his mother, asked if she she had noticed a ”new Nixon,” answering, ”No, I never knew anyone to change so little.” had noticed a ”new Nixon,” answering, ”No, I never knew anyone to change so little.”

Memories of Walter Cronkite, asking him on the CBS news, ”There are some...who would say, 'I don't know what it is, but I just don't like the man; I can't put my finger on it; I just don't like him.' Would you have any idea what might inspire that kind of feeling on the part of anybody?”

Memories of Henry Luce, the imperious publisher of Life, Life, getting cold feet and pulling at the last minute an article by Billy Graham that was to urge the evangelist's millions of devoted acolytes not to vote for a man just because he was ”more handsome and charming.” getting cold feet and pulling at the last minute an article by Billy Graham that was to urge the evangelist's millions of devoted acolytes not to vote for a man just because he was ”more handsome and charming.”

And, above all, memories of that more handsome and charming man. Another perfect enemy.

John F. Kennedy's good fortune was not built of the kind of honest paternal toil whose signs were worn on a butcher's b.l.o.o.d.y s.h.i.+rt. Joseph Kennedy had been a financial speculator and a bootlegger (Richard Nixon's people didn't even drink). Richard Nixon had tried to win his future wife Pat's favor by driving her on her dates with other other men; Kennedy blithely stole a wife seventeen years younger than Pat from her fiance when he needed a family to display for his political career. Kennedy's 1946 congressional nomination required no supplication of social betters; Joseph Kennedy bought it, in installments, such as his $600,000 donation to the archdiocese of Boston (”Tip,” Joe Kennedy told Thomas P. ”Tip” O'Neill, JFK's successor in the House, ”Never expect any appreciation from my boys. These kids have had so much done for them by other people that they just a.s.sume it's coming to them”). To establish a voting address in the district, Jack moved into a hotel. (d.i.c.k once lived in a hotel-during his first three months in Congress, when he couldn't find a decent family-size apartment on his congressional salary.) Then the Kennedy boys carelessly missed the filing deadline and availed themselves of a little light breaking and entering to get the papers on the pile by the opening of business the next morning. After failing to bribe the front-runner out of the race, Joseph Kennedy called in a chit with William Randolph Hearst to keep the man's name out of the newspaper. Another candidate, a city councilman named Joseph Russo, lost ground when Joe Kennedy hired a custodian with the same name to file. Jack Kennedy's opponents pinned $20 bills to their lapels-”Kennedy b.u.t.tons.” The joke was too cheap by more than half: the real amount of ”walking around” money per Kennedy man was $50. men; Kennedy blithely stole a wife seventeen years younger than Pat from her fiance when he needed a family to display for his political career. Kennedy's 1946 congressional nomination required no supplication of social betters; Joseph Kennedy bought it, in installments, such as his $600,000 donation to the archdiocese of Boston (”Tip,” Joe Kennedy told Thomas P. ”Tip” O'Neill, JFK's successor in the House, ”Never expect any appreciation from my boys. These kids have had so much done for them by other people that they just a.s.sume it's coming to them”). To establish a voting address in the district, Jack moved into a hotel. (d.i.c.k once lived in a hotel-during his first three months in Congress, when he couldn't find a decent family-size apartment on his congressional salary.) Then the Kennedy boys carelessly missed the filing deadline and availed themselves of a little light breaking and entering to get the papers on the pile by the opening of business the next morning. After failing to bribe the front-runner out of the race, Joseph Kennedy called in a chit with William Randolph Hearst to keep the man's name out of the newspaper. Another candidate, a city councilman named Joseph Russo, lost ground when Joe Kennedy hired a custodian with the same name to file. Jack Kennedy's opponents pinned $20 bills to their lapels-”Kennedy b.u.t.tons.” The joke was too cheap by more than half: the real amount of ”walking around” money per Kennedy man was $50.

And they called d.i.c.k Nixon the dirty one.

They weren't unfriendly, these two young Turks of the Eightieth Congress; they weren't unlike each other. Both had lost an older brother (the charming one, the one originally destined for greatness). Both were ideologically flexible except when it came to hunting Reds; both had run as World War II veterans. When Kennedy acceded to the Senate in 1953, he drew an office across the hall from that body's const.i.tutional officer, and they grew friendly. Though soon the corridor between their suites was a snarl of reporters, TV cameras, and swooning young Capitol Hill secretaries desperate to catch a glimpse of the bachelor senator voted the most handsome man in Congress.

In 1960, coming off his triumph outdebating the Soviet premier in Moscow, fresh from settling an epic steel strike, Nixon was the presidential election's odds-on favorite. Still he dwelled often on these matters of physical charisma. It suited his self-pity. When Walter Cronkite asked his embarra.s.sing question about all the people who couldn't put their finger on why they disliked him, Nixon answered by granting the premise, concluding that it might be his appearance. ”Oh, I get letters from women, for example, sometimes-and men-who support me,” he said. ”And they say, 'Why do you wear that heavy beard when you are on television?' Actually, I don't try, but I can shave within thirty seconds before I go on television and I still have a beard, unless we put some powder on, as we have done today.”

A man wearing makeup. That surely was the wrong thing to say.

And everyone knows what happened next.

On Monday, September 26, the first presidential debate in the history of television was broadcast from the studios of WBBM-TV in Chicago. Kennedy was six points behind in the polls. At the studio, the challenger was the first one asked whether he would appreciate the services of a makeup artist. He refused. (He was bronzed from a recent stint campaigning in California, and his aides had already dabbed him with theatrical powder.) The champion, taking the bluff, refused in turn.

That was a problem.

In his convention acceptance speech four weeks earlier, Nixon had promised to ”carry this campaign into every one of the fifty states between now and November eighth.” It was a flourish designed to separate Nixon in voters' minds from enfeebled old Eisenhower. Nixon was knocking off states in the South at a handsome clip when he contracted a staph infection after banging his knee on a car door. His physicians counseled three weeks in the hospital. Newspaper editorialists urged the honorable course on his opponent: to cease campaigning for those three weeks. The Democrat sent a get-well message instead. (And they called d.i.c.k Nixon the dirty one.) Ill-advisedly, Nixon kept on knocking off states: Maryland and Indiana and Texas and California his first day out, Oregon and Idaho with a side trip up to Canada the second. The next day, between Grand Forks and Peoria, Richard Nixon caught a cold. Then as he crossed a tarmac in the rain, flew the red-eye to St. Louis, and struggled to connect with a hostile Democratic crowd of union machinists on three hours' sleep, the cold got worse. Then a scratchy-voiced peroration in New Jersey; then a hop to Roanoke for an open-air address that added another line to his crowded medical chart: a high fever, something to enjoy on the predawn flight back halfway across the continent to Omaha, Nebraska.

As the day of the debate approached, Nixon was swallowing drowsy-making antibiotics, but still losing sleep; fortifying himself against weight loss with several chocolate milk shakes a day, but still losing weight; losing color; adding choler. He looked pale, awful.

His staff offered practice sessions. Nixon barked that he already knew how to debate. He was underwhelmed by the event at any rate. ”Television is not as effective as it was in 1952,” he had told a journalist. ”The novelty has worn off.”

Kennedy prepared like a monk. The afternoon of the showdown, he capped off the last of three intensified practice sessions with a fortifying nap, piles of index cards covering him like a security blanket.

While Kennedy slept, Nixon campaigned in front of another hostile union crowd. His TV advisers became increasingly frenzied as the appointed hour approached; they were kept away from him, and weren't able to brief him on the debate format. Nixon took a single phone call of advice, from his vice-presidential candidate, Henry Cabot Lodge.

The hour arrived. For security, the candidates were driven directly inside the studio building. One wonders what distraction inspired Richard Nixon's awkward egress that ended with his smas.h.i.+ng his bad knee once more on the car door's edge. His facial reaction was recorded for posterity: ”white and pasty.”

Kennedy emerged from his car looking in a producer's recollection like ”a young Adonis.” (That the young Adonis, but for a dangerous schedule of pharmaceuticals, was sick as an old man was for future generations to find out.) He kept his suit fresh by slipping into a robe. He walked out onto a terrace, sunlight dancing on his skin, paced back and forth, all coiled energy, punching his palm with his fist: the challenger.

In the other corner, the reigning heavyweight debating champion, weighing in at- (Eight pounds less than it took to fill the s.h.i.+rt he was wearing.) His people had begged Nixon to let them buy him a new one. He stubbornly refused. An aide had slathered a species of makeup over a portion of his face-a product called Lazy Shave, cadged at the last minute at a corner drugstore, to cover up his day's beard growth. The concession was no doubt ascribable to Herblock's infamous caricatures in the Was.h.i.+ngton Post. Was.h.i.+ngton Post. They'd rendered Nixon's ”five-o'clock shadow” a national laughingstock. They'd rendered Nixon's ”five-o'clock shadow” a national laughingstock.

In lieu of a boxing arena's bell, the sickeningly sweet strains of a jingle for Maybelline mascara. In lieu of a bout card, the smiling mug of Andy Griffith, star of the eponymous sitcom, a stalk of wheat between his lips, and the announcement that the program originally scheduled would not be seen that night.

(One wonders whether Richard Nixon's egghead enemies cringed in antic.i.p.atory dread at the irony. Andy Griffith had starred three years earlier in a film, A Face in the Crowd, A Face in the Crowd, partially inspired by the Checkers Speech, about a right-wing demagogue who harnessed the malign power of TV to cast a gullible nation under his spell with a show of slick and cynical sentimentality.) partially inspired by the Checkers Speech, about a right-wing demagogue who harnessed the malign power of TV to cast a gullible nation under his spell with a show of slick and cynical sentimentality.) Andy Griffith absented the screen. The panel of reporters introduced themselves. And Howard K. Smith of ABC intoned, ”In this discussion, the first of a series of four joint appearances, the subject matter, it has been agreed, will be restricted to internal, or domestic, American matters.” He called the Democrat to begin his opening statement; and the Democrat opened up, staring stalwartly into the camera, with a sucker punch.

And they called d.i.c.k Nixon the dirty one.

”We discuss tonight domestic issues. But I would not want that to be-any implication to be given that this does not involve directly our struggle with Mr. Khrushchev for survival.” Kennedy was bending past the breaking point the spirit of the two campaigns' formal agreement to focus the first debate on domestic issues and talking about what Nixon was not yet primed to discuss: foreign policy. The distraction was brilliant. It left Nixon with two immediate choices-calling the foul and looking as if he were ducking, or letting Kennedy get away with controlling the debate.

One thing he didn't do was counterpunch. It came, one suspected, of that phone call from Henry Cabot Lodge, the Boston Brahmin, the sort of Establishment grandee Richard Nixon had alternately been flailing against and kowtowing to his entire adult life. What Lodge told Nixon on the phone was ”Erase the a.s.sa.s.sin image.” Following this advice cut across every instinct that had made Richard Nixon a successful politician since 1946. But now he was running for president. president. Leader of the free world. Campaigning to join, if there was ever any way he could truly join, the Leader of the free world. Campaigning to join, if there was ever any way he could truly join, the Establishment Establishment-confidant of those mufti-clad dignitaries he met abroad, peer to the likes of Amba.s.sador Averell Harriman. And does not every man who defines himself by his battle against the Franklins secretly wish to be be a Franklin? a Franklin?

He had been campaigning as a statesman, the voice of sage experience. He would recite the number of meetings he had taken with the president(173), the times he had sat with the National Security Council (217), the countries he had visited (54), the presidents and prime ministers with whom he had had ”extended discussion” (44, plus an emperor and a shah)-adding always, ”incidentally, I have talked with Khrushchev.” Friends advised him to smear his opponent's unpopular religion, his mendacity about his health, his loose interpretation of his marriage vows. Nixon forswore. He decided to debate as a gentleman.

Or perhaps not decided. Perhaps the only thing that coursed through Richard Nixon's head was the dull ache of stuffed sinuses, pain from his agonized knee, a heaviness born of too many chocolate milk shakes. Perhaps he wanted to fight; perhaps he just wasn't able.

Kennedy floated into an a.s.sessment of America's progress in that struggle against Communism, in rocking cadence: ”I am not satisfied, as an American, with the progress we are making....

”This is a great country, but I think it could be a greater country. And this is a powerful country, but it could be a more powerful country....

”I'm not satisfied to have fifty percent of our steel mill capacity unused.

”I'm not satisfied when, last year, the United States had the lowest rate of economic growth of any major industrialized society in the world.... any major industrialized society in the world....

”I'm not satisfied when we have over nine billion dollars' worth of food, some of it rotting, even though there is a hungry world”-Kennedy's intensity was mounting-”and even though four million Americans wait every month for a food package from the government which averages five cents a day five cents a day per individual. I saw cases in West Virginia-here in the United States-where children took home part of their school lunch to feed their families.... I don't think we're meeting our obligations towards these Americans. per individual. I saw cases in West Virginia-here in the United States-where children took home part of their school lunch to feed their families.... I don't think we're meeting our obligations towards these Americans.

”I'm not satisfied when the Soviet Union is turning out twice as many scientists and engineers as we are.

”I'm not satisfied when many of our teachers are inadequately paid, or when our children go to school part-time s.h.i.+fts. I think we should have an educational system second to none.

”I'm not satisfied when I see men like Jimmy Hoffa, in charge of the largest union in the United States, still free.”

(Are you you satisfied, d.i.c.k?) satisfied, d.i.c.k?) ”These are all the things in our country that can make our society strong, or it can stand still. I think we can do better....

”That is the obligation upon our generation. In 1933 Franklin Roosevelt said in his inaugural that this generation has a rendezvous with destiny. I think that our generation of Americans has the same rendezvous.

”The question now is, can freedom now be maintained under the most severe attack it has ever known? I think it can be. And I think that in the final a.n.a.lysis it depends on what we-do-here. we-do-here.”

Kennedy stabbed the podium at the words.

”I think it's time America started moving again.”

He strode confidently back to his seat.

There had been a time when Richard Nixon had known just how to handle this sort of gambit. When Adlai Stevenson had made similar points in 1954, Nixon came back with, ”He has attacked with violent fury the economic system of the United States.” He could have put Kennedy on the defensive: ”How dare he impugn all the hardworking teachers across this great land?”-something like that.

Instead, Nixon granted the point.

”The things that Senator Kennedy has said, many of us can agree with,” he began his opening statement. ”There is no question but that this nation cannot stand still.” Though the point he was granting was a criticism of the administration of which he was an officer. ”I subscribe completely to the spirit spirit that Senator Kennedy has expressed tonight-the spirit that the United States that Senator Kennedy has expressed tonight-the spirit that the United States should should move ahead.” His points were lugubrious, technical, as if he were reb.u.t.ting in a high school debate: ”We heard tonight the statement made that our growth in product last year was the lowest in the industrial world; that happened to be a recession year.” move ahead.” His points were lugubrious, technical, as if he were reb.u.t.ting in a high school debate: ”We heard tonight the statement made that our growth in product last year was the lowest in the industrial world; that happened to be a recession year.”

Then a glistening bead of sweat popped forth to illuminate the powder-less little valley between his lower lip and chin.

”We are for programs which will see that our medical care for the aged is-are much better handled than at the present time”-the present time being that of his own administration.

At just that moment the camera cut to the face of John F. Kennedy, filling nearly every inch of the nation's tiny TV screens. It offered little to remark upon: it was without noticeable blemish. When the close-up was on Nixon, you could write a book: the discomfited fluttering of the eyelids (it made him look fey), the deeply etched lines of his jowls (one side was deeper than the other; the dimple in his tie was also off-center), the shadow of beard that bled through when he tilted his chin at the angle he used for emphasis on key points. There had been a time when Richard Nixon had known how to take advantage of his awkwardness-to make a face like Kennedy's stand in for every smooth, slick superior who had ever done an ordinary Joe wrong. That's what he had done with Alger Hiss. Not this time. This time, he kept on subscribing completely completely to the to the spirit spirit that Senator Kennedy had expressed. that Senator Kennedy had expressed.

”I could give better examples,” Nixon said at one point, then didn't; instead he moved to self-pity: ”I know what it means to be poor, I know what it means to see people who are unemployed.”

Perhaps ABC News's Bob Fleming began the question-and-answer portion out of sympathy by presenting Kennedy with a restatement of Richard Nixon's key campaign theme more aggressively than Nixon had been willing to make it: ”The vice president, in his campaign, has said at times that you are naive and immature.” It proved alarmingly easy to dispatch. ”The vice president and I came to the Congress together, in 1946,” Kennedy responded, then quickly bent things back to his will. ”I think the question is, er, what are the programs programs that we advocate? What is the party record that we lead? that we advocate? What is the party record that we lead?

”I come out of the Democratic Party, which in this century has produced Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. And which supported and sustained these programs which I've described tonight. Mr. Nixon comes out of the Republican Party. He was nominated by it. And it is a fact that through most of these last twenty-five years, the Republican leaders.h.i.+p has opposed federal aid for education, medical care for the aged, development of the Tennessee Valley, development of our natural resources.”