Part 17 (1/2)

At the Hilton, the Nixon team was gobsmacked by the Reagan boom. At the convention center, the South Carolina delegation's phone rang: John Mitch.e.l.l for Harry Dent. They had a meeting scheduled between their bosses for the next day. Mitch.e.l.l wanted it moved up to now. now.

Dent and Thurmond arrived at the Nixon suite after ten o'clock. They were led through elaborate security mazes, not the Secret Service's, but the ones set up by the two foreboding men who had steadily risen to the top of the campaign hierarchy, Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman (the old Wall Street crew found themselves refused access to the suite by this new Praetorian guard and were reduced to spittle-flecked rage).

Thurmond and Dent were led into the suite (one bedroom for d.i.c.k, another for Pat).

Thurmond and Dent had been making the rounds of wobbly Southern delegations to put out fires. Dent would speak to them first, saying all the things a senator could not afford to say. Thurmond would tell old war stories and stress Nixon's commitment to pa.s.sing a Thurmond pet project, the antiballistic missile system, and promise, ”Nixon will not ram anything down our throats.” Tricky d.i.c.k, Tricky d.i.c.k, Tricky d.i.c.k, Tricky d.i.c.k, Tricky d.i.c.k, Tricky d.i.c.k, was what they heard back. was what they heard back.

Each understood the other's dilemma implicitly: Thurmond was far out on a limb, vouching for a candidate his const.i.tuency did not trust; Nixon was far out on a limb vouching for the prodigal South's place in the Republican Party of the future. Not many words were exchanged at their meeting; they looked into each other's eyes. That was why there had to be a meeting.

Thurmond extracted a promise, then pressed a slip of paper into Nixon's hand.

Tuesday morning's newspapers: ”Columbia Administration Drafts a Plan for Disciplinary Reforms”; ”A Vietnam mine today blew up one of the two trains that had still been operating in South Vietnam”; ”Kill Arsonists in Waukegan, Mayor Orders.” Reagan and Thurmond had a meeting. It lasted an hour. A new rumor circulated that if true would kill the Reagan charge: that Reagan would be Nixon's vice-presidential candidate. Reagan killed the rumor with a quip-”Even if they tied and gagged me, I would find a way to signal no by wiggling my ears”-and Dent died a little inside: he felt the slippage from Nixon minute by minute.

But Nixon was about to fulfill a promise to Thurmond that would reverse his slippage. Nixon had agreed to face every Southern delegate, answer every question they asked-groveling like the callow navy vet in 1946 who wanted to run for Congress, begging South Californian petty plutocrats, navy hat in hand; begging Southern Republicans, again, again, for what he thought he had already won: their sufferance for him as their nominee. for what he thought he had already won: their sufferance for him as their nominee.

First he spoke to delegates from six states; then he spoke to a meeting of the other six. Only those present know what he said at the first one. At the second, the Miami Herald Miami Herald slipped in a tape recorder and published the transcript in that evening's early edition of the next day's paper. slipped in a tape recorder and published the transcript in that evening's early edition of the next day's paper.

Dent spoke first: ”We have no choice, if we want to win, except to vote for Nixon. We must quit using our hearts and start using our heads. Believe me, I love Reagan, but Nixon's the one.”

(The most grudging sort of compliment, like the one he'd received from Ike in 1958: ”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.”) Nixon opened with the concern uppermost in their minds-the vice presidency: ”I am not going to take, I can a.s.sure you, anybody that is going to divide this party.”

The delegates applauded furiously. This was the fruit of the little slip of paper Strom Thurmond had slipped into Richard Nixon's hand the night before. It contained three columns of names: ”unacceptable” (Lindsay, Rockefeller, the antiwar Oregonian Mark Hatfield); ”acceptable” (George H. W. Bush, Howard Baker); ”no objections” (a late addition of two Eastern governors, Spiro Agnew and John Volpe, favorite sons who had been put on the schedule to nominate and second Nixon for Wednesday night).

A North Carolina delegate asked if Nixon accepted ”forced busing of schoolchildren for the sole purpose of racial integration.” First Nixon said: ”There is a problem in the North, too.... I don't believe you should use the South as the whipping boy, or the North as the whipping boy.”

That showed how well he grasped the delicate psychological sensitivities of the region that still smarted from the humiliation of losing what he had learned, during his law school days at Duke, to call when occasion demanded the ”War Between the States.” The idea that cultural bigotry lay behind the North's calling to account of the South on civil rights was central to Southern ident.i.ty.

Then, Nixon said, ”I think that busing the child-a child that is two or three grades behind another child and into a strange community-I think that you destroy that child. The purpose of a school is to educate.”

That showed how well he grasped Southern bad-faith rhetoric on racial questions: he played into the myth that the only only reason students were bused was to force racial integration-though the Supreme Court's decision in reason students were bused was to force racial integration-though the Supreme Court's decision in New Kent County New Kent County showed that, as often, busing was used as a tool to force showed that, as often, busing was used as a tool to force segregation. segregation.

He rang through the rest of the usual Dixiecrat changes, with Nixonian grace notes: ”I don't think there is any court in this country, any judge in this country, either local or on the Supreme Court...that is as qualified to...make the decision as your local school board.” Open housing, ”just like gun control, ought to be handled at the state level, rather than the federal level.” A Nixon administration, he wound up, wouldn't bend to ”satisfy some professional civil rights group.” He left with Strom Thurmond on his arm.

Another boring session in the convention hall. An interminable train of Republican congressmen each got two minutes at the podium, after having been put through their paces by coaches with stopwatches in a trailer equipped with teleprompters and simulated lighting angles. The official proceedings record audience response for every speech. Thomas Dewey got ”cheers and applause.” Only a backbencher named Buz Lukens got a ”standing ovation”-Buz Lukens having been one of the architects of the Draft Goldwater movement in 1963.

Wednesday was balloting day (”Israeli Forces, in Pursuit, Cross into Jordan Again”; ”Top Cubans Linked to Guevara Band”; ”5 Policemen Shot in Chicago Suburb”; ”Youth Hit by Sniper While Watching Fire”; ma.s.sacres in the breakaway Nigerian province of Biafra; Soviets warily eyeing Czechoslovakian reformer Alexander Dubek).

Rockefeller's manager, Leonard Hall, and Reagan's, Clif White, both friends, shared anti-Nixon intelligence on how to intercept Nixon's first-ballot victory-each believing he would come up with the ball once it was tipped in the air. On delegates, Rockefeller was not even close-even, White discovered when he called his regional directors to the trailer at five for one last count, if Reagan and Rockefeller delegates were added together.

”We only have one option left,” White said. ”We can fold the tent now. Or we can keep working and hope for a break.”

The old trouper came to the rescue, Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland putting on a show in the old barn: ”Well, that's what we're here for, isn't it? Let's get to work.”

Then suddenly, a miracle. The Herald Herald evening edition hit the beach with a story by Don Oberdorfer: ”Hatfield Veep Pick.” evening edition hit the beach with a story by Don Oberdorfer: ”Hatfield Veep Pick.”

Tricky d.i.c.k, finally caught red-handed. Clif White commandeered two thousand copies of the Herald Herald and had his army of Young Americans for Freedom volunteers personally press a copy into every delegate and alternate delegate's hand: Nixon was selling them out, choosing a dove for vice president. and had his army of Young Americans for Freedom volunteers personally press a copy into every delegate and alternate delegate's hand: Nixon was selling them out, choosing a dove for vice president.

Opening gavel. A song by Up with People (”Freedom is a word often heard today / But if you want to keep it there's a price to pay”), a standing ovation. Interminable nominating speeches, ”demonstrations,” multiple seconding speeches for each nomination, most ceremonial and immediately withdrawn by the honoree.

The Herald Herald's Don Oberdorfer was wandering the convention floor hours before the roll call vote. Dent, who knew his people, had an idea for an anti-Reagan counterstrike. He cornered Oberdorfer at the intersection of the Georgia and Louisiana delegations and said something about betting him $300, though on what Oberdorfer couldn't hear over the din. Presuming it a joke, he wandered off. Dent grabbed a megaphone and said Oberdorfer had just refused to put money on the line that Hatfield would be the VP.

Word got around: Oberdorfer was just another yellow Eastern Establishment journalist whose word could not be trusted. The final anti-Nixon fire had been extinguished.

The roll call began at 1:19 a.m. Nixon sat far from anyone else in the crowded suite, keeping score to the TV on a yellow legal pad. Mrs. Nixon sat alone on the other side of the room.

Nixon got 692 votes, and the nomination for Republican candidate for president of the United States, on the first ballot, only 26 more than 50 percent and 203 less than Barry Goldwater received in 1964. Nixon was being sent into the general-election war with barely the endors.e.m.e.nt of his party. Everyone had it in for d.i.c.k Nixon.

Rockefeller got 277 delegates. His campaign had spent $28,881 for each.

In the Reagan trailer, Clif White's fifteen-year-old daughter was disconsolate. Her father could not comfort her. Ronald Reagan, however, could. He put his arms around the tearful adolescent and said softly, ”Carole, the good Lord knows what He is doing. This wasn't our turn.”

Reagan traveled to the podium to move to make the count unanimous. Rockefeller still got ninety-three votes and Reagan got two: some still couldn't stomach Tricky d.i.c.k. In New York, an aged liberal rose at his breakfast table to boom out a toast: ”To Richard Milhous Nixon, may the son of-”

Whereupon, as if unable to survive the thought, he had a fatal stroke.

To choose a running mate, Nixon tried something new: he poll-tested hypothetical tickets. No satisfactory name emerged. So Nixon was left to his own judgment. He already had the person in mind, but it wouldn't do to simply announce it.

The first ”consultative” meeting he called, early Thursday morning, was with his inside team, people such as Haldeman and Frank Shakespeare and Maury Stans and Pat Buchanan. They tossed out their favorite names. Nixon's favorite was not among them. So he brought it up himself.

”How about Agnew?”

No one thought much of this one way or another. No one knew much about him. Agnew hadn't been on a list of eight first-tier Nixon VP possibilities published in Time; Time; he hadn't been on he hadn't been on Time Time's twelve-name second-tier list, either. Nixon mentioned Agnew's fine nominating speech; no one remembered it as particularly fine. Nixon called in the next group, made up of politicians from key states and distinguished by the presence of the Reverend Billy Graham and the absence of any liberals. He had them them throw out names. Nixon's favorite was not among them. So: throw out names. Nixon's favorite was not among them. So: ”How about Agnew?”

Nixon went down to the Hilton ballroom at 1 p.m. to meet the reporters who'd been smoking, waiting, smoking, playing the vice-presidential guessing game for two hours. One name no one mentioned. When Richard Nixon announced it from the platform, he was met with puzzled looks. ”The face of one longtime aide, Charlie McWhorter,” a reporter later wrote, ”was white.” Nixon strode out without taking questions. The famous political question of 1968 was born: ”Sparrow who?”

Nixon had a habit of impetuously falling in love. He had not known Spiro Theodore Agnew long, but he felt a kins.h.i.+p with him. They came of common roots: both the sons of grocers who were strict disciplinarians, both had worked their way through college, both junior officers in World War II-strivers, grinders, resentful outsiders. Agnew (originally ”Anagnostopoulos”) was the son of Greek immigrants and went to law school at night. ”Spiro was always neat,” his half brother recalled. ”He was never a noisy individual...he loved to read.” Just like Richard Nixon, the only kid at school to wear a necktie, stealing away alone in the bell tower of the former church his father had converted into a grocery store.

When they were finally met, it came through a common wound: humiliation at the hands of Nelson Rockefeller. As a new governor in 1967, Agnew styled himself in the Rockefeller mold: fighting water pollution, eliminating the death penalty, ridding the nation of its last state board of motion-picture censors, pa.s.sing open-housing legislation and ambitious programs in the fields of mental health, alcoholism, and highways. Positioning himself in front of Rocky's presidential parade seemed natural.

And then came March 21, when he called the entire Annapolis capitol press corps to watch Nelson Rockefeller's candidacy announcement on TV with him and suffered the deflating shame of Rockefeller's announcement ”unequivocally that I am not a candidate.”

John Mitch.e.l.l took advantage of the opportunity, inviting Agnew to meet Nixon in New York. They hit it off. They shared the same resentments. They shared the same enemy. A new Orthogonian was inducted.

There was something culturally culturally conservative about Agnew. His greatest crusade had been against pinball machines. His open-housing advocacy was of the most limited and risk-free sort. His explicit reason for backing that and no more was that anything else would generate ”controversy and conflict.” ”Negroes,” he explained in a message endearing to his 97 percent white const.i.tuency, ”have historically been charged with running down neighborhoods.” The Cambridge riot in July of '67 was a watershed; as he toured the damage brought on after H. Rap Brown incited Negroes to burn down a school, he announced, ”It shall be the policy of this state to immediately arrest any person inciting a riot and not allow that person to finish his vicious speech.” He started snapping randomly at black leaders, any black leader: ”The violent cannot be allowed to sneak unnoticed from the war dance to the problem-solving meeting.” It was as if, having once led a fight for some civil rights, he experienced demands for more as a direct affront. When black ministers complained, he would break out a tape of Rap Brown's Cambridge speech and start gesticulating: ”Listen to that. Isn't that incitement?” conservative about Agnew. His greatest crusade had been against pinball machines. His open-housing advocacy was of the most limited and risk-free sort. His explicit reason for backing that and no more was that anything else would generate ”controversy and conflict.” ”Negroes,” he explained in a message endearing to his 97 percent white const.i.tuency, ”have historically been charged with running down neighborhoods.” The Cambridge riot in July of '67 was a watershed; as he toured the damage brought on after H. Rap Brown incited Negroes to burn down a school, he announced, ”It shall be the policy of this state to immediately arrest any person inciting a riot and not allow that person to finish his vicious speech.” He started snapping randomly at black leaders, any black leader: ”The violent cannot be allowed to sneak unnoticed from the war dance to the problem-solving meeting.” It was as if, having once led a fight for some civil rights, he experienced demands for more as a direct affront. When black ministers complained, he would break out a tape of Rap Brown's Cambridge speech and start gesticulating: ”Listen to that. Isn't that incitement?”

Spiro Agnew came to believe that whenever he gave dissenters an inch, they took a mile, and anarchy was loosed upon the land. So he would no longer give even an inch. In his first experience handling student unrest, at Towson State University, he had been measured and calm. In his second, when students at a black university, Bowie State, sat in to protest the decrepit campus, he announced a three-hour deadline by which students would ”be removed from the buildings by whatever means are necessary.” And so a week after his first lunch with Nixon, three weeks before the Battle of Morningside Heights, and the afternoon before the a.s.sa.s.sination of Martin Luther King, Agnew made headlines as a law-and-order vanguardist by having 227 college students arrested.

You could sum up his beliefs in a word, the ”liberal” positions, the ”conservative” positions, all of it: order. order. A veritable mania for order-against anyone ”going too far.” He boasted unblemished s.h.i.+rts, crisply creased pants, wrinkle-free suit jackets (his secret: ”Never let your back touch the back of the chair”). One of his county employees told a journalist how, after a two-week camping trip, he was so eager to get back to work he returned straight to the office. The boss sent him home with orders not to come back until he shaved. A veritable mania for order-against anyone ”going too far.” He boasted unblemished s.h.i.+rts, crisply creased pants, wrinkle-free suit jackets (his secret: ”Never let your back touch the back of the chair”). One of his county employees told a journalist how, after a two-week camping trip, he was so eager to get back to work he returned straight to the office. The boss sent him home with orders not to come back until he shaved.

Agnew hated hated beards. At that, a lot of people hated beards. It explained his ”liberal” gubernatorial campaign: he played to a suburban, middle-cla.s.s longing for respectability. Maryland had some of the most disorderly and violent racists in the nation, and Agnew was running against them: ”They are here, in Maryland,” his commercials intoned. ”The extremists, the robed figures. The faceless men...the fanatics.” He asked voters to imagine their embarra.s.sment if Mahoney won, ”as you watch this man make a complete idiot of himself before the country.” Spiro who? He was the tribune for those who felt visceral disgust at a society gone too far-a sound road to political stardom in gone-too-far 1968. beards. At that, a lot of people hated beards. It explained his ”liberal” gubernatorial campaign: he played to a suburban, middle-cla.s.s longing for respectability. Maryland had some of the most disorderly and violent racists in the nation, and Agnew was running against them: ”They are here, in Maryland,” his commercials intoned. ”The extremists, the robed figures. The faceless men...the fanatics.” He asked voters to imagine their embarra.s.sment if Mahoney won, ”as you watch this man make a complete idiot of himself before the country.” Spiro who? He was the tribune for those who felt visceral disgust at a society gone too far-a sound road to political stardom in gone-too-far 1968.

And now Spiro Agnew was at the podium in Miami Beach, accepting the vice-presidential nomination: ”I stand here with a deep sense of the improbability of this moment....”

Pat Buchanan would later write a planning memo for the 1972 convention in which he suggested all the speeches be like Nixon's 1968 acceptance speech: ”orchestrated and advanced, with an audience cheering at the right times.” Not many people had been watching the Republican convention every night on TV; ABC showed a mere ninety-minute wrap-up after summer reruns and killed CBS's and NBC's wall-to-wall coverage in the ratings. But Nixon's acceptance speech was the crucially important moment when people would would be tuning in. This was when he was going to rea.s.sure them: under Nixon, everything was going to be all right. Under Nixon, America would be be tuning in. This was when he was going to rea.s.sure them: under Nixon, everything was going to be all right. Under Nixon, America would be quiet quiet again. again.

”A party that can unite itself will unite America,” he began. Strom Thurmond sat close beside him on the platform.

”As we look at America, we see cities enveloped in smoke and flame.

”We hear sirens in the night.