For the first time I was struck by the enormity of the impending crisis. So far I had viewed it as a typical partisan attempt by the Democrats to derail my whistle-stopping attacks on the corruption issue. I had felt secure that I was on firm ground on the merits of the case and that I would therefore have nothing to worry about in the long run.
The demand for my resignation by the Washington Post was neither a surprise nor a particular concern. But the Herald Tribune was something altogether different. It was generally considered to be the most influential Republican paper in the East, if not in the country. Bert Andrews, who had worked so closely with me during the Hiss case, was traveling with Eisenhower as head of the Trib’s Washington bureau; I thought of the publishers and the editor as personal friends, and I knew that they were close to Eisenhower. If the Herald Tribune was calling for my resignation from the ticket, the fat was in the fire.
Chotiner was furious. “If those damned amateurs around Eisenhower just had the sense they were born with, they would recognize that this is a purely political attack and they wouldn’t pop off like this,” he said. He was assuming, as was I, that the Herald Tribune would not have published such an editorial unless people high in the councils of the Eisenhower campaign had indicated that it reflected their point of view.
It was essential that I get some firsthand information about where the people around Eisenhower—and, of course, Eisenhower himself—stood. We agreed that first thing in the morning, Rogers would call Dewey, and Chotiner would call Fred Seaton.
Perhaps the staff had been right in trying to protect my night’s sleep, because by the time our discussion was over it was after 2 A.M. When I returned to our compartment, Pat woke up and I told her what had happened.
I was very tired and very discouraged by this time. “Maybe I am looking at this too much from my own standpoint,” I said. “If the judgment of more objective people around Eisenhower is that my resignation would help him to win, maybe I ought to resign.”
“You can’t think of resigning,” she said emphatically. With a typically incisive analysis she said flatly that if Eisenhower forced me off the ticket he would lose the election. She also argued strongly that unless I fought for my honor in the face of such an attack, I would mar not only my life but the lives of our family and particularly the girls.
The Herald Tribune editorial appeared on Saturday morning and had a predictable effect. Speculation began as to how much longer I could last on the ticket. One bright spot in a bleak day came when I learned that Bob Taft, when asked about the fund in an interview the day before, had replied bluntly: “I see no reason why a senator or representative should not accept gifts from members of his family or his friends or his constituents to help pay even personal expenses which are not paid by the government. The only possible criticism would arise if these donors asked for or received legislative or other favors. I know that no such motives inspired the expense payments in the case of Dick Nixon. Those who contributed to the fund probably agreed one hundred percent with his legislative position anyway.” Karl Mundt had branded the Post story a “left-wing smear” and a “filthy” maneuver by a patently pro-Stevenson paper.
Before the day was over, Senator George Aiken of Vermont and former President Herbert Hoover had also come to my defense.
On Saturday afternoon the train arrived in Portland, Oregon. The crowd outside the hotel there was the ugliest we had met so far. They threw pennies into our car, and Pat was pushed and jostled as she walked alongside me. Our path was obstructed by people from the local Democratic organization with canes and dark glasses shaking tin cups labeled “Nickels for poor Nixon.”
A message was waiting for me at the hotel switchboard: Sherman Adams, Eisenhower’s campaign manager, had called me on an urgent matter. I told Chotiner to pass along the message that I would not talk with anyone except Eisenhower himself. Whatever happened, I was not going to be fobbed off on staff aides.
Jim Bassett, my press secretary, informed me that there had been an unofficial reaction from Eisenhower. During an off-the-record press conference on his train, the reporters traveling with Eisenhower had told him that the results of an informal poll taken among themselves had come out 40 to 2 in favor of dropping me from the ticket. Eisenhower told them, “I don’t care if you fellows are 40 to 2. I am taking my time on this. Nothing’s decided, contrary to your idea that this is a setup for a whitewash of Nixon.” Then he added, “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, ourselves, aren’t clean as a hound’s tooth?” Word of this inevitably leaked out, and the colorful phrase captured the public’s imagination. Nixon would have to be clean as a hound’s tooth.
Pat couldn’t get over how unfair the whole thing was. “Not only isn’t the fund illegal,” she said, “but you know how you bent over backward to keep it public and to make sure that every cent was accounted for.”
My mother was in Washington taking care of the girls when the crisis broke. On Saturday night, after reading the papers and listening to the radio news, she wrote out two telegrams. One I was not to hear about for several days. The other she sent to me:
GIRLS ARE OKAY. THIS IS TO TELL YOU WE ARE THINKING OF YOU AND KNOW EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE. LOVE ALWAYS, MOTHER.
In our family, as I have said, the phrase “we are thinking of you” meant “we are praying for you.” I was deeply touched by this message, but it also reminded me of all the people who were watching me and depending on me.
By Sunday morning there was still no direct word from Eisenhower. The tension had become so great that I could almost feel it in the air. The night before, Chotiner had suggested that since the Republican National Committee had allotted television time to the vice presidential candidate, I should ask for part of it to deliver a defense of the fund.
I spent the afternoon talking with my staff about the different possibilities for a television program. We were deep in this discussion when Tom Dewey called from New York. Dewey was never one to mince words. He said that he had been in touch with the Eisenhower train and confirmed what I already suspected: with only one or two exceptions, the circle around Eisenhower was a hanging jury as far as I was concerned. They wanted me to offer Eisenhower my resignation. Dewey was still one of my supporters, however, and he said that Eisenhower himself had not yet made a decision. “I think you ought to go on television,” he said. “I don’t think Eisenhower should make this decision. Make the American people do it. At the conclusion of the program, ask people to wire their verdict in to you. You will probably get over a million replies, and that will give you three or four days to think it over. At the end of that time, if it is 60 percent for you and 40 percent against you, say you are getting out as that is not enough of a majority. If it is 90 to 10, stay on. If you stay on, it isn’t blamed on Ike, and if you get off, it isn’t blamed on Ike. All the fellows here in New York agree with me.”
I told him that was exactly what we had been discussing when he called. He urged me to start making plans right away, since the situation was too tense to wait much longer for a favorable resolution.
Later that night, I finally heard from Eisenhower. I took his telephone call without asking the others in the room to leave. They were all so intimately involved that I felt they had a right to be present at what might be the end of my vice presidential candidacy.
I could tell from Eisenhower’s voice that although he was trying to buck me up, he was deeply troubled.
“You’ve been taking a lot of heat the last couple of days,” he said. “I imagine it has been pretty rough.”
“It hasn’t been easy,” I replied.
He said that it was very difficult for him to decide what was the best thing to do. “I have come to the conclusion,” he said, “that you are the one who has to decide what to do. After all, you’ve got a big following in this country, and if the impression got around that you got off the ticket because I forced you off, it is
going to be very bad. On the other hand, if I issue a statement now backing you up, in effect people will accuse me of condoning wrongdoing.”
He paused as if waiting for me to fill the gap, but I let the line hang silent. After a moment he said that he had just been out to dinner with some of his friends. None of them knew what to do, but all of them agreed that I should have an opportunity to tell my side of the story to the country. “I don’t want to be in the position of condemning an innocent man,” he said. “I think you ought to go on a nationwide television program and tell them everything there is to tell, everything you can remember since the day you entered public life. Tell them about any money you have ever received.”
“General,” I asked, “do you think after the television program that an announcement could then be made one way or the other?”
He hesitated. “I am hoping that no announcement would be necessary at all,” he replied, “but maybe after the program we could tell what ought to be done.”
“General,” I told him, “I just want you to know that I don’t want you to give any consideration to my personal feelings. I know how difficult this problem is for you.” I told him that if he thought my staying on the ticket would be harmful, I would get off it and take the heat. But I also told him that there comes a time to stop dawdling, and that once I had done the television program he ought to decide. “There comes a time in matters like this when you’ve either got to shit or get off the pot,” I blurted out. “The great trouble here is the indecision,” I added.
The language I used startled the men in the room with me, and I can only assume it had a similar effect on Eisenhower, who was certainly not used to being talked to in that manner. But he obviously remained unconvinced. He said, “We will have to wait three or four days after the television show to see what the effect of the program is.”
There was nothing more to discuss. I would have to stake everything on a successful television speech. The conversation trailed off. His last words were, “Keep your chin up.”
It seemed clear that Eisenhower would not have objected if I had told him that I was going to submit a resignation to him, which he could then choose to accept or not as the circumstances indicated. As I had told him, I was perfectly willing to do this, but the decision must be his. I felt that his indecision or his unwillingness to come out and ask for it relieved me of any obligation in that regard. It is one thing to offer to sign your own death warrant; it is another to be expected to draw it up yourself.
I told Pat about Eisenhower’s call and asked her what she thought I should do. This whole episode had already scarred her deeply. The stress was so great that she had developed a painfully stiff neck and had to stay in bed. She was worried about how the girls would be affected by it, and she was constantly on the phone to my mother in Washington to make sure that things there were all right.
“We both know what you have to do, Dick,” she said. “You have to fight it all the way to the end, no matter what happens.”
That night I sat alone in my room and made my decision: I would stay and I would fight.
The Republican National Committee and the Senatorial and Congressional Campaign Committees agreed to put up $75,000 to buy a half hour of television time for me on Tuesday night, September 23. In those days, nationwide network broadcasts could originate only in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, so on Monday we flew from Portland back to Los Angeles. On the plane, I took some postcards from the pocket of the seat in front of me and began to put down some thoughts about what I might say.
I remembered the Truman scandal concerning a $9,000 mink coat given to a White House secretary, and I made a note that Pat had no mink—just a cloth coat. I thought of DNC Chairman Mitchell’s snide comment that people who cannot afford to hold an office should not run for it, and I made a note to check out a quotation from Lincoln to the effect that God must have loved the common people because he made so many of them. I also thought about the stunning success FDR had in his speech during the 1944 campaign, when he had ridiculed his critics by saying they were even attacking his little dog Fala, and I knew it would infuriate my critics if I could turn this particular table on them. I made a note: “They will be charging that I have taken gifts. I must report that I did receive one gift after the nomination—a cocker spaniel dog, Checkers, and whatever they say, we are going to keep her.”
During the flight Chotiner stopped by my seat for a brief chat and repeated something he had first observed three days earlier. He had shrewdly noted that all the Democrats except Stevenson were attacking me. “I smell a rat. I bet he has something to hide,” Chotiner had said.
That evening, news arrived that proved Chotiner to be a prophet. Kent Chandler, a Chicago manufacturing executive, had sent a telegram to Stevenson charging that as governor of Illinois, Stevenson had promoted a “cash fund contributed by private individuals, which was paid to various of your official appointees to state jobs in order to supplement the salaries paid them by the state.”
Within hours, Stevenson had issued a statement acknowledging the existence of such a fund saying: “The funds used for this purpose were left over from the 1948 campaign for governor, together with subsequent general contributions.” His spokesman declined to elaborate, and Stevenson himself refused to meet with reporters.
Stevenson’s statement did not address the subject of yet another revelation that day. A former Illinois state purchasing agent, William J. McKinney, revealed that he had made up a monthly list of business corporations and state suppliers who were solicited for expenses Stevenson felt could not be charged to the taxpayers. The amounts contributed reportedly ranged from $100 to $5,000. “They figured it would help them get business,” McKinney said. Two men who had engaged in this solicitation admitted their roles while denying any impropriety.
Stevenson refused any further comment. Frustrated reporters signed a petition asking him for a news conference, but he said he doubted that it would be possible to hold one. At the end of the week, Stevenson finally released some information about his fund, showing that $18,744.96 had been turned over to him from his 1948 campaign. To this amount was added $2,900 in contributions from Chicago businessmen, for a total of $21,644.96. In fact, during the campaign the public never learned the real extent or disposition of these Stevenson funds; it was only revealed twenty-four years later, by Stevenson’s official biographer, John Bart-low Martin, in Adlai Stevenson of Illinois, that Stevenson’s disclosure had been less than candid. He had not stated that additional sums totaling almost $65,000 had been added to this fund in 1950, 1951, and 1952, bringing it to a total of $84,026.56. On September 26, 1952, long after the Stevenson-for-Governor Committee had been disbanded, and four days after the existence of the fund had been revealed, Stevenson wrote a personal check for more than $10,500 as reimbursement to the committee.
The final audit of this fund showed that $13,429.37 was expended for some rather broadly defined political purposes, including annual Christmas parties, gifts to newsmen, and an orchestra to play at a dance for Stevenson’s sons. In one instance Stevenson used this political fund to make a small contribution to the Lake County Tuberculosis Association and then claimed the contribution as a personal deduction on his income tax returns.
The press treated Stevenson with kid gloves. His refusals to talk to reporters received only a mild reproach, and the obvious impropriety involved was all but ignored editorially. Johnson Kanady of the Chicago Tribune later wrote, “No newspaper was ever able to get details of the 1950 and 1951 Stevenson funds, and so far as I know no newspaperman with Stevenson, except me, tried very hard.”
For me, one of the most depressing and infuriating aspects of the entire fund controversy was to see the blatant double standard that most of the press applied to reporting the Nixon fund and the Stevenson fund. But that would not become fully apparent until later, and in the meantime I had to concentrate all my efforts on trying to prepare my speech and master its delivery in the twenty-four h
ours before the broadcast.
The first part of the fund speech was the easiest to write. Paul Hoffman, chairman of Citizens for Eisenhower, had commissioned the firm of Price Waterhouse to make a complete audit of the fund and had retained the distinguished Los Angeles law firm of Gibson, Dunn, and Crutcher to prepare an opinion on its legality. I planned to present the summaries of these reports as part of my speech. Because the charges against me had become so bitter and so excessive, however, I knew that something more would be needed. I remembered Eisenhower’s advice on the telephone: “Tell them everything you can remember,” he had said. “Tell them about any money you have ever received.”
I was proud of the way Pat and I had worked hard to earn what little we had. Knowing how closely the left and its sympathizers in the press would scrutinize everything about me after the Hiss case, I had been especially careful in my financial dealings. I knew that I could document and support everything I said. Up to that time, I doubt that any candidate had ever detailed his personal finances so thoroughly during an election campaign. Despite the repugnance I felt for such an invasion of our family’s privacy, I could not help thinking about the dramatic impact such an unprecedented financial disclosure would have.
I told Pat what I was considering doing. It was too much for her. “Why do you have to tell people how little we have and how much we owe?” she asked.
“People in political life have to live in a fish bowl,” I said, but I knew it was a weak explanation for the humiliation I was asking her to endure.
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