Part 21 (1/2)
A neck-and-neck campaign, a spoiler to break a tie: things started getting nasty in the Nixon camp. That was the Nixon way. In his last campaign, in 1962, running behind against Pat Brown, a circular was sent out from the ”Committee for the Preservation of the Democratic Party in California,” addressed to ”Dear Fellow Democrats,” alleging that Brown was under the thumb of ”left-wing forces” who had adopted the ”entire platform of the Communist Party.” Another superimposed a picture of a bowing Pat Brown next to one of Nikita Khrushchev. b.u.mper stickers started appearing reading IS BROWN PINK? IS BROWN PINK?
Agnew started in on the dirty work, just as Nixon used to do for Ike. A heckler shouted, ”Humphrey! Humphrey Humphrey!” Agnew retorted, ”You can renounce your citizens.h.i.+p if you don't like it here,” and said when Nixon was inaugurated, people like the heckler were going to ”dry up and disappear.” As for HHH himself, Agnew accused him of conciliating those who ”condone violence and advocate overthrow of the government.”
Then, Nixon joined Agnew, to the puzzlement of those who believed in a ”New Nixon.” He said Humphrey had a ”personal att.i.tude of indulgence and permissiveness toward the lawless” and hated the military: ”I am the one who stands for a stronger United States and Mr. Humphrey who stands for a weaker one.” The campaign monitored crime figures in munic.i.p.alities around the country and cut last-minute radio commercials for the ones that were ticking upward. It fit the new slogan devised for those last few weeks, commanding thousands of billboards across the country: VOTE LIKE YOUR WHOLE LIFE DEPENDED ON IT. VOTE LIKE YOUR WHOLE LIFE DEPENDED ON IT. In 1964, Lyndon Johnson had campaigned telling bedtime stories: that the sixties were scary (because of nuclear weapons), Barry Goldwater was scary, and that a vote for Johnson banished the monster under the bed. The story Nixon told was identical, with the terms reversed: that if the Democrats won-apocalypse. In 1964, Lyndon Johnson had campaigned telling bedtime stories: that the sixties were scary (because of nuclear weapons), Barry Goldwater was scary, and that a vote for Johnson banished the monster under the bed. The story Nixon told was identical, with the terms reversed: that if the Democrats won-apocalypse.
He was convinced of it himself. He was also convinced his plane was bugged. He was convinced the work of a lifetime might go down the drain. He was convinced he had to do anything to win-before the bad guys did it first. So he had John Ehrlichman set up a paid goon squad to rough up demonstrators at his speeches. He was also convinced the Democrats would pull the rabbit of peace out of the hat in Vietnam, timed perfectly to destroy him. After all, his contact in Amba.s.sador-at-Large Averell Harriman's negotiating team in Paris told him so. That would be the killing blow. In an election season where the public didn't perceive many major differences between the candidates on the issues, Nixon had a strong advantage on Vietnam. Those who perceived a difference in the ability of the two parties to avoid an expanded war preferred Nixon to Humphrey two to one. The Republican, the man who'd dropped broad hints in New Hamps.h.i.+re of some secret plan to end the war, was the man the public trusted to make peace. He reinforced it with unsubtle digs: ”Those who have had a chance for another four years and could not produce peace should not be given another chance.”
But Nixon couldn't be elected to produce peace if peace had already been produced.
And in Paris, the chances of peace seemed to be receding every day. Every time the North Vietnamese appeared ready to agree to a condition, the South Vietnamese raised the bar.
The reason was that Nixon had sabotaged the negotiations. His agent was Anna Chennault, known to one and all as the Dragon Lady. She told the South Vietnamese not to agree to anything, because waiting to end the war would deliver her friend Richard Nixon the election, and he would give them a better deal.
The brazenness was breathtaking. The previous May, after the triumphant announcement by the lame-duck president that the United States would be negotiating with the North Vietnamese in Paris, Nixon said that this removed Vietnam from the table as an issue. In Evansville, Indiana, he said, ”Let's not destroy the chances for peace with a mouthful of words from some irresponsible candidate for president of the United States. Put yourself in the position of the enemy. He is negotiating with Lyndon Johnson and Secretary Rusk and then he reads in the paper that, not a senator, not a congressman, not an editor, but a potential president of the United States president of the United States will give him a better deal than President Johnson is offering him. What's he going to do? It will torpedo those deliberations, it will destroy any chance for the negotiations to bring an honorable end to the war. The enemy will wait for the next man.” To the American a.s.sociation of Editorial Cartoonists, when one of that hated tribe asked him sharply, ”How could you stand up and ask us to vote for you when you don't want to be specific?” Nixon responded, in tones of wounded innocence, ”If there is a will give him a better deal than President Johnson is offering him. What's he going to do? It will torpedo those deliberations, it will destroy any chance for the negotiations to bring an honorable end to the war. The enemy will wait for the next man.” To the American a.s.sociation of Editorial Cartoonists, when one of that hated tribe asked him sharply, ”How could you stand up and ask us to vote for you when you don't want to be specific?” Nixon responded, in tones of wounded innocence, ”If there is a chance chance we can get the war over before this election, it is much more important than anything I might wish to say to get you to vote for me.... I will not make any we can get the war over before this election, it is much more important than anything I might wish to say to get you to vote for me.... I will not make any statement statement that might pull the rug out from under him and might destroy the possibility to bring the war to a conclusion.” Which was true. He didn't make a statement. He had the Dragon Lady whisper it instead. that might pull the rug out from under him and might destroy the possibility to bring the war to a conclusion.” Which was true. He didn't make a statement. He had the Dragon Lady whisper it instead.
This head-spinning stuff would be for future generations to find out about. For now, the bottom line was this: there was no chance of getting the war ended before the election. Because Richard Nixon had made it impossible.
Labor poured unprecedented resources into the Democratic campaign going into the home stretch, registering 4.6 million voters, sending out 115 million pamphlets, establis.h.i.+ng 638 phone banks, fielding 72,000 house-to-house canva.s.sers and 94,000 Election Day volunteers. Humphrey nabbed fifteen last-minute points from Wallace among unionists. He also ran a lachrymose print ad: ”Don't let him buy the White House,” over a picture of a smiling Nixon. ”No man has ever paid more trying to be President. Richard Nixon has spent more in the last month alone than Hubert Humphrey will spend in his six-month campaign.... If you don't do something about it, he will spend at least $5 for every $1 Mr. Humphrey spends.... It means we could pick a president, not on what he says, but on how much he spends to say it.”
Nixon, panicking at the last minute, tried one last trick: he asked Humphrey to agree that if neither of them won the required majority in the electoral college, the winner of the popular vote would become president. Nice try, but not so fast: the Const.i.tution's provision was an election in the House of Representatives, which was overwhelmingly Democratic. Humphrey said he would ”stand by the const.i.tutional process.” Election Day.
Leonard Garment, watching Nixon preparing for this moment as far back as Lincoln Day season in 1966, had imagined that this was what a man training for an Olympic decathlon must live like-the staggeringly punis.h.i.+ng schedules, the mastering of ten political disciplines at once, the planning, the pus.h.i.+ng, the endurance, the pain. pain. And that had been a long, long thirty months in the past. It hadn't let up since-hadn't let up, really, since Nixon's political career began in college, organizing his Orthogonians, plotting his ascendance as student body president, the dour, plodding soul who astonished contemporaries later imagined must have practiced his handshake in the mirror, ”the man least likely to succeed in politics.” Maybe it hadn't let up since he was but a boy, the brother surviving the loss of two brothers-”trying,” as his sainted mother told a journalist inquiring into what made Nixon Nixon, ”to be three sons in one, striving even harder than before to make up to his father and me for our loss.” And that had been a long, long thirty months in the past. It hadn't let up since-hadn't let up, really, since Nixon's political career began in college, organizing his Orthogonians, plotting his ascendance as student body president, the dour, plodding soul who astonished contemporaries later imagined must have practiced his handshake in the mirror, ”the man least likely to succeed in politics.” Maybe it hadn't let up since he was but a boy, the brother surviving the loss of two brothers-”trying,” as his sainted mother told a journalist inquiring into what made Nixon Nixon, ”to be three sons in one, striving even harder than before to make up to his father and me for our loss.”
At thirty-four years old, when his law school cla.s.smates were making partner, he was a congressman; at thirty-five, with the Hiss case, he was a household name; at thirty-eight, a senator; by the time he was forty, vice president of the United States, the proverbial heartbeat away from the presidency (and the president, an old man, had a weak heart). By the time he was forty-five, he was standing toe-to-toe with Khrushchev in Moscow, the most fearsome dictator in the world. Then the soul-incinerating loss in 1960, the closest any any man had come to the presidency without winning. (And now, exactly eight years later, the early indications were that it would be no less close.) Then the second soul-incinerating loss but two years later, for governor of California-upon which, man had come to the presidency without winning. (And now, exactly eight years later, the early indications were that it would be no less close.) Then the second soul-incinerating loss but two years later, for governor of California-upon which, Time Time magazine reflected in its political eulogy, ”Perhaps he had risen too far too fast.” magazine reflected in its political eulogy, ”Perhaps he had risen too far too fast.”
Nothing to do after that but to strive ever harder than before. As he had told Pat Buchanan, also in 1966, ”If I had to practice law and nothing else, I would be mentally dead in two years and physically dead in four.” Well, then, what of it? What if he lost?
He climbed into his campaign plane bound for New York City that November Tuesday morning in 1968, decorated by some overzealous campaign worker with an AIR FORCE ONE AIR FORCE ONE sign that Nixon clearly found excruciating; he wasn't so confident. He drew close his family, who were shocked at his candor, and told them not to take his public confidence as anything but a show. ”I want to tell you what's really going to happen,” Teddy White recorded him telling them in sign that Nixon clearly found excruciating; he wasn't so confident. He drew close his family, who were shocked at his candor, and told them not to take his public confidence as anything but a show. ”I want to tell you what's really going to happen,” Teddy White recorded him telling them in Making of the President. Making of the President. ”If people in this country are still really concerned about peace, we could win big. But if they've been rea.s.sured about peace and now they're concerned with their pocketbooks and welfare, we could lose.” ”If people in this country are still really concerned about peace, we could win big. But if they've been rea.s.sured about peace and now they're concerned with their pocketbooks and welfare, we could lose.”
The self-righteousness, the self-pity of the formulation were fulsome: Richard Nixon Richard Nixon was offering the American people peace. If they rejected Richard Nixon, it would be because they were willing to accept...war. Their greed-”their pocketbooks and welfare”-would have gotten the better of them. Thus did he, psychically, prepare himself for a likely eventuality: that, once more, he would lose. That he would be known as a loser for the rest of his life. Something, anything, to redeem the dread: if he lost, he was telling his family, it would be because America had proven herself unworthy of his idealism. was offering the American people peace. If they rejected Richard Nixon, it would be because they were willing to accept...war. Their greed-”their pocketbooks and welfare”-would have gotten the better of them. Thus did he, psychically, prepare himself for a likely eventuality: that, once more, he would lose. That he would be known as a loser for the rest of his life. Something, anything, to redeem the dread: if he lost, he was telling his family, it would be because America had proven herself unworthy of his idealism.
He might lose. The previous night, on a two-hour Nixon telethon broadcast across the West Coast, a last-ditch attempt to guarantee his home state, he had made a gaffe: he swore.
Richard Nixon had been retailing his white-picket-fence piety to the voters since 1946. The only Nixon America's television audiences knew was the one who, in his third debate with Kennedy in 1960, had solemnly chided Harry Truman for a recent comment that the Republican Party could ”go to h.e.l.l.” ”One thing I have noted as I have traveled around the country are the tremendous number of children who come out to see the presidential candidates” is what square old d.i.c.k Nixon had said then. ”It makes you realize that whoever is president is going to be a man that all the children of America will either look up to or will look down to, and I can only say that I am very proud that President Eisenhower restored dignity and decency and-frankly-good language to the conduct of the presidency of the United States.” Americans would have to wait another six years to learn that privately, Nixon cursed like a sailor. ”c.o.c.ksucker!” was a favorite plosive burst. And that was the other Nixon revealed-just a brief glint-during the wearying, waning minutes of that telethon. ”Now we get down to the nut-cutting,” he disarmingly uttered.
How many votes might that s.h.i.+ft? Enough, in the next twenty-four hours, to render him Job once again? Would the same torture of retrospection that had haunted him since November 8, 1960, be renewed for the rest of his life?
The plane pa.s.sed over Indiana, a toss-up state. ”How can you have your mother be from Indiana and not be a fighting Republican?”: his habitual line for Hoosiers. An observer recorded him still and forlorn, peering at the corn-fields from the window, as ”if by looking down and concentrating he could pull in more votes.”
Richard Nixon's evening: that biennial torture. First glimmers from Kansas: eight points ahead of Humphrey in the popular vote, with 19 percent for the spoiler George Wallace.
Eight o'clock: Humphrey picks up a little more steam.
Ohio: too close to call.
Missouri: Humphrey ahead in the vote tally; Nixon ahead in CBS's computer projection.
Ten twenty: a slew of Eastern states have gone for the Democrat.
The stroke of midnight: Hubert Humphrey was ahead by a point in the popular vote, with four of ten returns counted. In Nixon's familiar old suite at the Waldorf, the televisions were turned off by order of the decathlete, scribbling on yellow pads, working the phones, puzzling out the nation's precincts, the labyrinth he knew better than any other man alive, as the nation's will slowly, agonizingly revealed itself.
He knew it by 3:15 a.m.
The networks weren't sure until well into the 9 a.m. hour.
Humphrey didn't concede until eleven thirty. In fact, the victory wouldn't be certified for weeks. But the old gentleman's convention of the concession sealed this strangest American apotheosis: the boy who'd spent his childhood cloistered in a tower reading, who hated to ride the school bus because he thought the other children smelled bad, the feral junior debater, this founder of fraternal societies for the decidedly unfraternal, would, come January 20, be the leader of the free world.
Not only that, he did so with something no other Republican presidential candidate, with minor exceptions, had ever had before: electoral votes from the South. Wallace took Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana. But Nixon got Arkansas, Tennessee, Florida, Virginia, North Carolina-and Strom Thurmond's South Carolina.
George Wallace sent a congratulatory telegram. Nixon never acknowledged it. It spoke to the agony of victory. For it was barely a victory: 301 electoral votes for Nixon and 191 for Humphrey, 46 for George Wallace-and, in the popular vote, 43.42 percent, 42.72 percent, and 13.53 percent. Only five or so points more than Barry Goldwater's humiliating share in 1964. With George Wallace claiming that symbolically the victory belonged as much to him as to Nixon: ”Mr. Nixon said the same thing we said,” he declared. If he hadn't, was Wallace's point, Nixon wouldn't have won. And indeed, a few thousand more votes for Wallace in North Carolina and Tennessee, a s.h.i.+ft of 1 percent of the vote in New Jersey or Ohio from Nixon to Humphrey, and the election would have been thrown into the House of Representatives, because Nixon wouldn't have won an electoral college majority. If Nixon didn't ”carry out his commitments,” Wallace said-lay off desegregation guidelines and appoint ”const.i.tutionalists” to the federal bench-the Alabaman would run for president again in 1972. Nixon hadn't even been inaugurated, and his reelection was already imperiled.
Some victory: look at what happened with Congress. The Republicans gained but four seats in the House. They did a little better, percentage-wise, in the Senate. One heartbreaker: Max Rafferty's loss. At the last minute, the Long Beach Independent Long Beach Independent reported that he had dodged the draft during World War II, digging up the standing joke in the town where he had been teaching: ”Max Rafferty celebrated V-J day by throwing his cane away.” It was symbolic of a Pyrrhic-victory gloom astonished aides began noticing in the boss over the next few days. ”I need Max in the Senate,” Nixon had announced to California's voters. He needed him because he had dreamed not merely of victory, but reported that he had dodged the draft during World War II, digging up the standing joke in the town where he had been teaching: ”Max Rafferty celebrated V-J day by throwing his cane away.” It was symbolic of a Pyrrhic-victory gloom astonished aides began noticing in the boss over the next few days. ”I need Max in the Senate,” Nixon had announced to California's voters. He needed him because he had dreamed not merely of victory, but victory: victory: a mandate to remake the world. As he had told Len Garment in that pool-house slumber party in 1965, ”He felt his life had to be dedicated to great foreign policy purposes. This man, fiercely determined to stay in the political life for which he was in many ways so ill suited, told me he felt driven to do so not by the rivalries or ideological commitments or domestic politics but by his pacifist mother's idealism and the profound importance of foreign affairs.” a mandate to remake the world. As he had told Len Garment in that pool-house slumber party in 1965, ”He felt his life had to be dedicated to great foreign policy purposes. This man, fiercely determined to stay in the political life for which he was in many ways so ill suited, told me he felt driven to do so not by the rivalries or ideological commitments or domestic politics but by his pacifist mother's idealism and the profound importance of foreign affairs.”
At the very least, that would take a lukewarm, friendly Congress. But he would be the first president since Zachary Taylor in 1849 to start his term without a majority in either chamber.
Merely holding the Oval Office? It hardly seemed half enough.
He would just have to strive harder. Someday, he would finally win. win.
BOOK III.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.
The First One Hundred Days.
AFTER ALL R RICHARD N NIXON HAD BEEN THROUGH, HOW COULDN'T IT but rain on the biggest day of his life? but rain on the biggest day of his life?
It was less than two weeks after his fifty-sixth birthday. Kennedy, eight years earlier to the day, at the age of forty-two, had received a pure white blanket of snow for his inauguration, got to stand without an overcoat in the stinging cold and show the nation he was hail, young, stalwart, brave. Nixon, bundled up behind a thick scarf, got one of those muddy, awful January rains, and a bulletproof part.i.tion ahead of his lectern-”a reminder,” the Was.h.i.+ngton Post Was.h.i.+ngton Post observed, ”of the a.s.sa.s.sinations which so suddenly had altered the political fortunes of the leaders present.” Rain was not salubrious for his appearance: it made his dark hair dye run, and risked showing the gray in his short sideburns. observed, ”of the a.s.sa.s.sinations which so suddenly had altered the political fortunes of the leaders present.” Rain was not salubrious for his appearance: it made his dark hair dye run, and risked showing the gray in his short sideburns. Public speaking Public speaking-a president's first task-was also not salubrious for his appearance. ”The disjointedness,” as Garry Wills described it, ”seemed expressed in his face as he scowled (his only expression of thoughtfulness) or grinned (his only expression of pleasure). The features do not quite work together. The famous nose looks detachable.... The parts all seem to be worked by wires, a doomed attempt to contrive 'illusions of grandeur.'”
The audience, too, was not salubrious. He was sworn in by Justice Black with the defeated vice president by his side, before a crowd of but 250,000-and the Post Post just had to inform the world that this was ”far smaller and at times less enthusiastic than the 1.2 million” that came out for Lyndon B. Johnson on January 20, 1965. just had to inform the world that this was ”far smaller and at times less enthusiastic than the 1.2 million” that came out for Lyndon B. Johnson on January 20, 1965.
He was, though, a man used to overcoming hards.h.i.+p. That was what Richard Nixon did. did. He overcame these, and delivered a brilliant inaugural address-one fit, adjudged grateful pundits, to bind up a broken nation's wounds. He overcame these, and delivered a brilliant inaugural address-one fit, adjudged grateful pundits, to bind up a broken nation's wounds.
The speech was solemnly intoned. It was a paean to the glory of quiet: ”To lower our voices would be a simple thing.
”In these difficult years, America has suffered from a fever of words: from inflated rhetoric that promises more than it can deliver; from angry rhetoric that fans discontents into hatreds; from bombastic rhetoric that postures instead of persuading.
”We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another-until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices.
”For its part, government will listen. We will strive to listen in new ways-to the voices of quiet anguish, the voices that speak without words, the voices of the heart-to the injured voices, the anxious voices, the voices that have despaired of being heard.”
The speech included Johnsonesque stanzas on ”rebuilding our cities and improving our rural areas...protecting our environment and enhancing the quality of life,” and a call for racial transcendence-”What remains is to give life to what is in the law”-and Kennedyesque visions of reaching the moon; and Wilsonian ones of global harmony: ”The greatest honor history can bestow is the t.i.tle of peacemaker. peacemaker. This honor now beckons America-the chance to help lead the world at last out of the valley of turmoil and onto that high ground of peace that man has dreamed of since the dawn of civilization.” This honor now beckons America-the chance to help lead the world at last out of the valley of turmoil and onto that high ground of peace that man has dreamed of since the dawn of civilization.”
The thirty-seventh president of the United States concluded, ”To the crisis of the spirit we need an answer of the spirit. And to find that answer, we need only look within ourselves.... We have endured a long night of the American spirit. But as our eyes catch the dimness of the first rays of dawn, let us not curse the remaining dark. Let us gather the light. Let us gather the light.”
Afterward, the Justice Department's Warren Christopher met with new White House counsel John Ehrlichman. Christopher handed over a packet of doc.u.ments and instructed the president to keep them on hand at all times: proclamations to declare martial law, with blanks to fill in the date and the name of the city.