RN

by Richard Nixon

  I met Churchill and Eden at the airport this morning. As he came down the steps of the airplane, he took each step alone by himself although he was very hesitant in his steps when he arrived at the bottom. He shook hands and said that he was very happy to meet me for the first time. Later in the car he said that although this was the first time that he had met me that he had read of some of my statements and that he had admiration for them.

  I was supposed to make a speech of introduction which I had spent an hour or so last night preparing even though it was only to be a minute and a half long. However, when Churchill saw the microphones he walked immediately over to them and took out a sheet of paper from which he read his own speech to the people who were at the airport.

  We then got into the open car and rode into town. Churchill was rather slow to react to questions or statements but on the other hand after the conversation had gone on for a while his reactions picked up considerably.

  He said that there was a period for four months in Roosevelt’s last months that there was very little communication or understanding between him and the American government. This was in response to my remarks that I had just read the fourth volume of his memoirs. He said that Roosevelt was not himself at that time and that Truman did not know what was going on. In fact, he said that he was sure Truman had not been taken in on the great decisions that were being made. He felt Roosevelt made a great mistake in not developing his second in command when he knew that he himself was ill and could not be around much longer. I said that I often wondered what would have happened had the allies accepted his judgment with regard to the conduct of World War II, particularly in respect to the southern offensive rather than the Channel crossing. His only remark was, well it would have been very “handy to have Vienna.”

  The diary described the dinner the Eisenhowers gave that evening:

  I think this was perhaps the most enjoyable occasion we have ever had at the White House. The crowd was relatively small—approximately 30—and the President, Churchill, et al. were in a relaxed, informal mood.

  The President proposed a toast to General Marshall after he had proposed one to the Queen and Churchill had responded. He pointed out that both Churchill and Marshall had been his immediate superiors during the war and that he knew they would forgive him if he made a protocol exception and proposed a toast to Marshall. I looked at Marshall as the toast was being proposed and it was obvious that he was very deeply moved by this gesture.

  After the guests who were not staying at the White House had gathered in one of the reception rooms downstairs we were all invited to come upstairs.

  Eden was particularly impressed by the reports of our visit to Malaya—the occasion when we went out and met the troops he said made a great impression in Britain.

  After we had finished dinner, we went in for cigars and after the President sat with Churchill for a little while he asked me to come over and sit by him and said, “This is one of the young men I have been telling you about and I want you to get acquainted with him.” I asked Churchill about his writing his memoirs. He pointed out that he had started them in 1946 and that he did it all by dictation. I asked him if he used a machine and he said no; that the Americans had given him one of the best machines but he preferred a pretty girl to talk to rather than a machine.

  We went down to the movie room and saw The Student Prince. The program was not over until about 12:30 A.M. During the program both Churchill and the President exchanged pleasantries which we could all hear and remarks about the movie. The movie significantly enough came out just the opposite to the way Edward VIII came out with Mrs. Simpson.

  Pat sat at Churchill’s right during the dinner and she said it was a very enjoyable evening from all standpoints. Mrs. Eisenhower watched over him as his food was being served and when he tried to cut a piece of the meat in half before putting it on his plate she told him the knives weren’t sharp and that they had all been received as part of the White House set—this was part of the gold set that had been bought in Paris. Pat remarked how Mamie took things over just as if she were handling any youngster who happened to be visiting or any close friend.

  Foster Dulles had his usual highball rather than the wines during dinner. Pat asked Churchill whether or not he would prefer that. He said no, that he usually had his first drink of whiskey at 8:30 in the morning and that in the evening he enjoyed a glass of champagne. I noted that Churchill was much sharper than he had been in the morning and he seemed to thrive on the fact that he was participating in these conferences. As a matter of fact, at the dinner he was just as quick as any person and he had—I learned later—not taken a nap in the afternoon but had played cards after the conference had been completed.

  The last evening of Churchill’s visit there was a stag dinner at the British Embassy. I attended as Eisenhower’s representative and was therefore seated next to him at the table:

  I asked him how the three-day conference had affected him. He said that except for a few blackouts—and I assume he meant by that periods when he took a nap—that he had felt better during this conference than he had for some time. He said, “I always seem to get inspiration and renewed vitality by contact with this great novel land of yours which sticks up out of the Atlantic.”

  During the course of the evening the conversation turned to General Lee and I asked his appraisal of Lee. He said that he thought he was one of the greatest men in American history and one of the greatest generals at any time. He said that somebody ought to “catch up in a tapestry or a painting the memorable scene of Lee riding back across the Potomac after he had turned down the command of the Union Armies in order to stay with the Southern side.” He also said that one of the other great moments in the Civil War was at Appomattox when Lee pointed out to Grant that the officers owned their horses as personal property and asked that they be allowed to retain them. Grant said to have them take all of their horses—the enlisted men and the officers as well. “They will need them to plow their fields.” Churchill said, “In the squalor of life and war, what a magnificent act.”

  He reiterated his press club statement to the effect that we should have a policy of patience and vigilance. He said we could not deal with the Communists on the basis of weakness—that it had to be a policy of strength. He said he didn’t like to call it a go-slow policy because that was not really a fair appraisal of the kind of policy he was advocating. He pointed out his record after World War I and also his Fulton, Missouri speech in properly appraising the communist threat and advocating means to meet it. He said, “I think that I have done as much against the Communists as McCarthy has done for them.” He grinned and said, “Of course, that is a private statement. I never believe in interfering in the domestic politics of another country.” He said that Bevan in England was just as much of a problem to him and to the British as was McCarthy to us. I asked him what it was that the British people didn’t like about McCarthy and he said one thing they couldn’t understand was why the Senate did not investigate all of the charges about his finances and other irregularities in getting elected and while he was Senator. I pointed out that very possibly Senators did not want to set the precedent of investigating a colleague for fear that it might someday react in a case against themselves.

  I saw them off at the airport and Churchill was careful to see that I delivered some farewell remarks. I could tell that his declining health would soon cause him to give up the reins of leadership he had held for so long. While he was obviously not up to his best, he still was better than most leaders half his age. He had enormous experience, intelligence, and understanding of the forces that shape the world. My emotions were mixed as I said good-bye to him. I was honored to have met one of the world’s greatest leaders, but I was saddened by the realization that he would soon be passing from the scene.

  1954 ELECTIONS

  It seemed as if the Eisenhower administration had hardly begun to settle in before it was time to fight the 1954 off-year election campaign
. The Republicans’ razor-thin majority of one in the Senate was the most obvious target for the Democrats, but they also had their sights set on regaining control of the House of Representatives.

  It was clear that Eisenhower planned to remain above the battle. He said he did not want a heavy campaign schedule because he did not think it wise for the President to go on a barnstorming trip, and because at sixty-three he now needed more rest.

  If Eisenhower had no taste for this campaign, I had little for it myself. In the eighteen months of his administration Eisenhower had maintained his personal popularity, but the party was as divided as it had been before he was elected. Indeed, the passing of Bob Taft and the ascent of Joe McCarthy had deepened the divisions within Republican ranks. The Democrats were making the most of our problems. Adlai Stevenson led the charge, telling his listeners that the Republican Party had “as many wings as a boardinghouse chicken” and that “caught between contradiction, apathy, and McCarthy, they act as confused as a blind dog in a meathouse.” I led the counterattack, but my heart wasn’t in the battle. Once again I realized how much the agony of the fund crisis had stripped the fun and excitement from campaigning for me.

  Requests for campaign appearances on behalf of Republican congressmen and senators began flooding my office. They were worried about the effect Eisenhower’s refusal to campaign would have on our chances. I decided that there was no choice for me but to lead the party in the election, so I threw myself into two full months of intensive campaigning. It was not a decision I made lightly, or enthusiastically.

  As I made my first campaign trips into the country I was surprised to find how complacent the Republican organizers were. On September 19 I placed a conference call to Brownell, Summerfield, and Jerry Persons. I told them, “Don’t give the President the idea that things are in good shape. They’re not. If we don’t get moving and get the issues working for us instead of killing us, we’re going to lose fifty seats.”

  After a few weeks of campaigning around the country I decided I had to remove some of the simplistic ideas held by many of the political amateurs in the administration and even by some of the professionals at the Republican National Committee.

  I wrote a memorandum to RNC Chairman Len Hall setting out some of my ideas. As far as the issues were concerned, I felt that we should be concentrating on the ones where we were strong and the Democrats were weak. “These are peace, communism, corruption, taxes,” I wrote. “They are not unemployment and farm prices. If the voters on election day are thinking of unemployment and/or farm prices primarily, we will lose the election without any question. This is not because our position on these issues is not right and not because it is not salable if we had enough time to talk to each individual personally, but because these two issues are defensive from our standpoint while the others are offensive for our side and defensive for the other side.”

  I also addressed the McCarthy issue in terms of its impact on the party and the election:

  1. Our handling of the issue has gained us no new support. Those people who were against us because they thought we tolerated McCarthy were against us anyway and will continue to vote on the other side because they consider the ADA [Americans for Democratic Action] gang as more anti-McCarthy than we are.

  2. We have lost considerable support among Democrats whose reason for voting for us in ’46, ’50, and ’52 was their distrust of the Truman administration on the handling of the domestic communist issue.

  3. The greatest damage has been done in splitting the Republicans and causing apathy in our ranks.

  We can remedy to an extent the situations mentioned in 2 and 3 by emphasizing vigorously the Administration’s anticommunist record and by attacking the other side for its past and present softness on the issue.

  In discussing the communist issue during the campaign I emphasized as I had in 1950 and 1952 that the question as far as our opponents were concerned was not one of loyalty but of judgment. On a number of occasions I categorically dissociated the administration from McCarthy’s reckless charge that the Democratic Party was the party of treason. I said, “There is only one party of treason in the United States—the Communist Party.”

  Eisenhower spent the first month of the campaign at the Denver White House. After a few hours of work in the morning he would golf in the afternoon. He followed my travels and activities closely, and at the end of September he wrote me a very warm letter: “Good reports have been reaching me from all parts of the country as a result of your intensive—and I am sure exhaustive—speaking tour. . . . Please don’t think that I am not unaware that I have done little to lighten your load. On the contrary, I am, in point of fact, constantly suggesting other places for you to visit. You will have to consider these burdens I impose upon you the penalty for being such an excellent and persuasive speaker. One thing that is coming out of this is that you are constantly becoming better and more favorably known to the American public. This is all to the good.”

  As Election Day neared, the polls showed that the Democrats and Republicans were almost evenly matched. The campaign became increasingly bitter. As my campaigning seemed to be particularly effective, Stevenson and other Democrats, led by DNC Chairman Stephen Mitchell, zeroed in on me with a barrage of attacks. In a mocking reference to my successful good will tour in the Far East in 1953, Stevenson called my campaigning an “ill will tour.” Mitchell, less elegant than Stevenson, called me a liar. The Washington Post and half a dozen other Democratic papers charged that I had taken over McCarthy’s tactics—Stevenson characterized my campaigning as “McCarthyism in a white collar.” I counterattacked hard, accusing Stevenson of trying to dismiss serious charges with quips and adding that he had derisively made a “typically snide and snobbish innuendo toward the millions of Americans who work in our shops and factories.”

  I continued to campaign right up to the wire. In the seven weeks between September 15 and November 2, I flew nearly 26,000 miles to visit 95 cities in 30 states, campaigning on behalf of 186 House, Senate, and gubernatorial candidates. During the last three weeks of the campaign I slept no more than five hours a night.

  A few days before the election, Eisenhower made one of the typically gracious gestures that bound people so closely to him. At a time when I was exhausted and more than a little frustrated that very few of the Republican leaders seemed to be working as hard to win this election as I was, a letter arrived from the White House.

  October 27, 1954

  Dear Dick:

  Whenever my burdens tend to feel unduly heavy, I admire all the more the tremendous job you have done since the opening of the present campaign. You have personally carried a back-breaking load of hard, tedious, day by day and state by state campaigning. And in doing so you have been undismayed by problems of time, distance, and physical effort.

  I know we share the urgent hope that there may be returned to the Congress a Republican majority that will work with the Executive Branch in completing the program that we believe is in the best interests of all America. No man could have done more effective work than you to further that hope. Whatever the outcome next Tuesday, I can find no words to express my deep appreciation of the contribution you have made toward that goal.

  Please tell Pat, too, that she has aroused my admiration as an able campaigner; there is no question but that she is the most charming of the lot.

  With warm regard,

  As ever,

  D. E.

  Pat and I stayed home election night, November 2. We sat together in front of the fireplace, and for a while I got up every few minutes to take calls from the campaign headquarters at the Republican National Committee. The news was mixed, and about what I expected. We lost 16 seats in the House and 2 seats in the Senate. This was substantially less than the usual off-year election loss for the party in power: during the previous fifty years, the average loss had been 40 in the House and 4 in the Senate. However, historical comparisons were small comfort. The Democrats regained control o
f the House and Senate; and Eisenhower, despite his enormous personal popularity, had to deal with a Democratic Congress for the last six years of his presidency.

  At the first Cabinet meeting after the election, most members who were new to politics were downcast. I said that the important thing was to learn from this experience so that we would not repeat our mistakes. I pointed out that while we had fielded many outstanding candidates, we had also put forward some notably unexceptional ones. “There were just too many turkeys running on the Republican ticket,” I told the Cabinet.

  Then I took a little wind-up toy drummer from my pocket, released the catch, and put it on the Cabinet table. Everyone watched, puzzled, as the little fellow picked out a zigzag course across the polished surface and the sharp sound of his drum filled the room. “Gentlemen,” I said, “we should take a lesson from this: this is no time to be depressed, and we have got to keep beating the drum about our achievements.” Eisenhower beamed.

  The 1954 election raised some disturbing questions for me. It was clear that Eisenhower was going to maintain his President-of-all-the-people posture and that, as long as we were a team, it would be my job to do the hard partisan campaigning. The prospect of having to go through it all again in another two years was depressing. It was also clear that I was going to continue to be the prime target for the Democrats’ attacks. Eisenhower’s popularity was too great and his above-the-battle strategy too successful to make attacking him worthwhile. But I was out front, a target of opportunity, and the more effective I was as a campaigner, the more determined many of the Democrats and their supporters in the media became to clobber me.

  Although the fund crisis had thickened my skin, I still resented being portrayed as a demagogue or a liar or as the sewer-dwelling denizen of Herblock cartoons in the Washington Post. As the attacks became more personal, I sometimes wondered where party loyalty left off and masochism began. The girls were reaching an impressionable age, and neither Pat nor I wanted their father to become the perennial bad guy of American politics.