Within a few days after the election I was already thinking about what we would do next after my fourteen years in public life came to an end on January 20, 1961.
Pat and I went directly from the inaugural ceremony to the F Street Club, where Admiral and Mrs. Lewis Strauss were the hosts at a farewell luncheon for President and Mrs. Eisenhower.
When I said goodbye to Eisenhower, he held my hand for a long time as he shook it. For a moment I thought he was going to become emotional, but he said simply, “I want you and Pat to come up and visit us in Gettysburg very soon.” I said that we would.
That night Pat and I had a quiet dinner at home with Tricia and Julie. They were very subdued. Both said that if I had not been cheated in Chicago and a couple of other places, we would be having this dinner at the White House. Despite the way I felt I told them that this was no time for bitterness and that one benefit of losing the election was that I would be home for dinner more often. When school was out we could do some traveling together.
My Secret Service protection had ended at noon, but I had my official car and chauffeur until midnight. John Wardlaw had been my driver for almost eight years, and I asked him if he would mind coming back after dinner for one last ride through the city.
The streets were snarled with traffic, made worse by the snow and ice. Hundreds of cars and rented limousines were lined up outside the hotels, waiting to pick up men in tails and women in long gowns on their way to the inaugural balls. No one noticed us as we drove past the White House and headed through the streets toward Capitol Hill.
I asked John to park in the space reserved for the Vice President’s car, and I got out and walked up the broad stone stairs. A surprised guard let me in, and I walked past the entrance to the Senate Chamber and down the long corridor to the Rotunda, the dome of the Capitol rising above it. The only sound was the echo of my heels on the bare stone floor.
I opened a door and went onto the balcony that looks out across the west grounds of the Capitol. I had stood there many times before. It is one of the most magnificent vistas in the world, and it never seemed more beautiful than at this moment. The mall was covered with fresh snow. The Washington Monument stood out stark and clear against the luminous gray sky, and in the distance I could see the Lincoln Memorial. I stood looking at the scene for at least five minutes. I thought about the great experiences of the past fourteen years. Now all that was over, and I would be leaving Washington, which had been my home since I arrived as a young congressman in 1947.
As I turned to go inside, I suddenly stopped short, struck by the thought that this was not the end—that someday I would be back here. I walked as fast as I could back to the car.
PRIVATE CITIZEN
1961–1967
The day after Kennedy’s inauguration, Pat and I flew to Eleuthera in the Bahamas to spend a few days with friends, trying to relax while we discussed our plans for the immediate future.
During my fourteen years of public service, we had lived a comfortable but simple life. After we paid the costs of moving from Washington to Los Angeles, our sole asset other than personal effects was a $48,000 equity in our house in Washington. I felt that I owed it to Pat to take a job that would pay well enough to support a reasonably comfortable life and send our daughters to good colleges, and also give me time with them to make up for the long hours and days I had had to spend away from home during the vice presidency. I also wanted a job that would allow me to stay at least a little involved in politics.
Pat and I wanted to move back to California, so I decided to accept an offer from the Los Angeles law firm of Adams, Duque, and Hazeltine. In 1946, when I was running against Voorhis, Earl Adams had offered me a job with the firm in the event I lost the election. As I told him jokingly, it had taken me only fourteen years to get the right qualification. We did not want to take Tricia and Julie out of school in the middle of the year, so we decided that Pat would stay with them in Washington and I would live in Los Angeles until June.
It was not an easy time. Relatives and friends wanted me to stay with them, but I preferred to be alone, so I rented a small bachelor apartment on Wilshire Boulevard not far from the office. I learned to fix my own meals. Fortunately, I have never been fussy about food and I actually learned to enjoy heating a TV dinner and eating it alone while reading a book or magazine.
I had thought that I could move right into the work of the law firm, just as I had done with every other challenging new job. For several weeks, however, I found it difficult to concentrate and almost impossible to work up much enthusiasm. I realized I was experiencing the letdown of defeat.
In 1968 I had a different and completely unexpected experience: the fatigue and letdown of victory. But then there was the challenge of setting up a new administration. In 1961 I found that virtually everything I did seemed unexciting and unimportant by comparison with national office. When you win, you are driven by the challenges you have to meet; when you lose, you must drive yourself to do whatever is required.
The last thing I wanted to do was talk to people about the election. But many of those who called or wrote had supported me so loyally over the years that I felt an obligation to see them or at least to talk to them by phone. Requests for public appearances and speeches continued to pour in. But aside from the fact that I was simply “talked out” from the campaign, I believed that the new administration should have the traditional honeymoon of freedom from partisan criticism.
As time went on I began to adjust to my new life and even to enjoy it. In the spring Pat and the girls came out, and we spent Easter vacation by the ocean in Santa Monica. The girls loved the beach and the warm weather, and their enthusiasm about California began to rub off on me.
THE BAY OF PIGS
I became increasingly interested in taking up my role as titular leader of the Republican Party. I was disturbed by some of Kennedy’s early foreign policy actions. During his first weeks in office he was confronted with a crisis involving Communist aggression in Laos. After an initial show of strength in one of his first press conferences, he pulled back and ended up accepting a supposedly neutral government that everyone knew would be heavily influenced by the Communists. I decided that it was time for the administration’s honeymoon to end, and I agreed to give a speech before the Executives Club of Chicago on May 5, 1961.
Because my speech was to deal with foreign policy, I asked the White House to allow Allen Dulles to give me a CIA briefing. My request was approved, and we arranged to meet at my house in Washington at six o’clock on April 19.
Two days earlier, while I was still in California, I heard the news that anti-Castro rebel forces had landed in Cuba at a spot unhappily known as the Bay of Pigs. During the next few days the news reports were frustratingly sketchy and incomplete, but it was clear that the invaders had met with considerable resistance and had not been able to achieve much initial success.
While I was waiting for Dulles on April 19, I picked up the afternoon Washington Star, and read more pessimistic—but still inconclusive—reports about the invasion. Dulles sent word that he would be late, and when he finally arrived shortly after 7:30, he looked nervous and shaken.
I asked him if he would like a drink, and Dulles replied, “I certainly would—I really need one. This is the worst day of my life!”
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Everything is lost,” he said dejectedly. “The Cuban invasion is a total failure.”
Dulles explained that after his election Kennedy had given his go-ahead to the invasion plans formulated under Eisenhower, and the CIA had continued to train the Cuban exiles. However, some of Kennedy’s advisers urged him to call off the action on the ground that if our support became known, America’s prestige in the world would be badly damaged. They held out the specter of World War III if the Soviet Union decided to intervene, and they painted grim pictures of the repercussions if the invasion failed.
The invasion had been planned
for February, but Kennedy postponed it while internal debate raged within the administration. Finally on April 15 Kennedy decided to go ahead. There was sad admiration in Dulles’s voice when he said, “It took great courage for the President to overrule some of his advisers and order the invasion to proceed.” But the nervous aides made a final attempt to dissuade Kennedy, and he tried to keep both sides happy by making last-minute compromises. He canceled two of the three air strikes that were intended to knock out Castro’s air force and to provide air cover for the invasion forces. The Free Cuban forces landing in the Bay of Pigs found themselves sitting ducks for Castro’s Soviet-made bombers. By holding back the air support, Kennedy had doomed the operation.
At first the White House and Adlai Stevenson, our ambassador to the United Nations, completely denied any American involvement in the invasion. Then Kennedy had to deny the denials. Our international prestige suffered a double blow—first for having mounted an unsuccessful invasion and then for trying to deny it.
Dulles stared at the floor. “I should have told him that we must not fail,” he said. “And I came very close to doing so, but I didn’t. It was the greatest mistake of my life.”
I spent the morning of April 20 on Capitol Hill conferring with the Republican leaders. We agreed that the situation was too serious for partisanship. We all had to stand behind the President until the crisis was over. When I got home early that afternoon, I found a note from Tricia next to the telephone in the hall: “JFK called. I knew it! It wouldn’t be long before he would get into trouble and have to call on you for help.” I dialed the familiar White House number. The operator immediately put my call through to the President. Sounding tense and tired, he wasted no time on small talk. He said, “Dick, could you drop by to see me?”
Kennedy was standing at his desk in the Oval Office talking to Lyndon Johnson. We greeted each other with solemn handshakes. The atmosphere was tense.
After Johnson left the room, Kennedy motioned me to one of the small sofas near the fireplace; he sat in his rocking chair. “I had a meeting with the members of the Cuban Revolutionary Council,” he said. “Several of those who were there had lost their sons, brothers, or other close relatives or friends in this action. Talking to them and seeing the tragic expressions on their faces was the worst experience of my life.”
I asked about the Cubans’ morale. He said, “Last night they were really mad at us. But today they have calmed down a lot and, believe it or not, they are ready to go out and fight again if we will give them the word and the support.”
With that he jumped up from his chair and began pacing back and forth in front of his desk. His anger and frustration poured out in a profane barrage. Over and over he cursed everyone who had advised him: the CIA, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, members of his White House staff. “I was assured by every son of a bitch I checked with—all the military experts and the CIA—that the plan would succeed,” he said.
Everything had been going so well for him; a few days earlier he stood high in the polls, and his press was overwhelmingly favorable. Now he was in deep trouble, and he felt that he was the innocent victim of bad advice from men whom he had trusted. He paced up and down with his fists clenched tightly.
After he had blown off some steam, he returned to his rocking chair. For a moment the room was silent. It suddenly struck me how alone he must feel—how wronged yet how responsible.
He looked over at me and said, “What would you do now in Cuba?” Without any hesitation I replied, “I would find a proper legal cover and I would go in. There are several justifications that could be used, like protecting American citizens living in Cuba and defending our base at Guantánamo. I believe that the most important thing at this point is that we do whatever is necessary to get Castro and communism out of Cuba.”
He seemed to think about what I said, and then he shook his head. “Both Walter Lippmann and Chip Bohlen have reported that Khrushchev is in a very cocky mood at this time. This means that there is a good chance that, if we move on Cuba, Khrushchev will move on Berlin. I just don’t think we can take the risk, in the event their appraisal is correct.”
I explained that I looked at Cuba in the larger context of Communist ambitions around the world. Khrushchev would probe and prod in several places at the same time, and as soon as we showed any weakness, he would create a crisis to take advantage of us. I said that we should take some action in both Cuba and Laos, including if necessary a commitment of American air power.
“I just don’t think we ought to get involved in Laos,” Kennedy said, “particularly where we might find ourselves fighting millions of Chinese troops in the jungles.” This was a complete reversal of what he had said on television in March about the vital importance of defending Laos. “In any event,” he continued, “I don’t see how we can make any move in Laos, which is thousands of miles away, if we don’t make a move in Cuba, which is only ninety miles away.”
I was surprised and disappointed that he did not make the logical connection between his own statements: that the Communist threat was indivisible, and unless it was resisted everywhere there was really no point in resisting it anywhere. But I knew that this was no time to try to convince him of that; this was a crisis—he wanted and needed my support.
I said, “I will publicly support you to the hilt if you make such a decision in regard to either Laos or Cuba, and I will urge all other Republicans to do likewise. I realize that some political observers say you might risk political defeat in 1964 if either the Cuban or Far East crisis involves an American armed forces commitment. I want you to know that I am one who will never make that a political issue if such action becomes necessary.”
For a moment he seemed lost in thought, weighing what I had said. Then he gave a slight shrug of his shoulders and said, “The way things are going and with all the problems we have, if I do the right kind of job, I don’t know whether I am going to be here four years from now.”
We had been talking for almost an hour, and I felt that I had at least lightened his burden by listening to him and by assuring him that I would not turn this crisis into a partisan exercise.
“It really is true that foreign affairs is the only important issue for a President to handle, isn’t it?” he said. “I mean, who gives a shit if the minimum wage is $1.15 or $1.25, in comparison to something like this?”
We walked out to the covered porch alongside the Oval Office. The spring flowers in the Rose Garden were in full bloom. A White House car was waiting for me in the driveway.
As he walked to the car with me, he said that Pat Brown was concerned because a poll showed him running behind me for governor of California. Although supporters had suggested I run, I didn’t have the slightest intention of doing so, and I was very surprised that Kennedy and Brown were discussing that possibility.
We shook hands, and he turned and walked back up the path to his office. His hands were thrust in his jacket pockets, but his head was bowed and his usually jaunty walk seemed slow. At that moment I felt empathy for a man who had to face up to a bitter tragedy that was not entirely his fault but was nonetheless his inescapable responsibility.
I flew to Chicago on May 5 to make the Executives Club address.
I began by stressing that as far as I was concerned, criticism of the new administration should be responsible and constructive, and focus only on issues of substance. Still, I was concerned about the way Kennedy had handled the Bay of Pigs, and I wanted to make my concerns known. I said, “Those who talk constantly of our prestige would seem to believe that we are in a popularity contest with other countries to see who was most liked and admired. What we must remember is that we are in a fight for our lives.”
My greatest concern was that Kennedy, having been burned in Cuba, would be reluctant to stand up to the Communists in the other places like Laos, Vietnam, or Berlin. I said that “the worst thing that could flow from our failure in Cuba is not the temporary drop in prestige which seems to ob
sess too many observers but that this failure may discourage American policymakers from taking decisive steps in the future because there is a risk of failure.”
There was a long round of applause when I said that we should learn at least one lesson from the Cuban invasion: “Whenever American prestige is to be committed on a major scale we must be willing to commit enough power to obtain our objective even if all of our intelligence estimates prove wrong. Putting it bluntly, we should not start things in the world unless we are prepared to finish them.”
After this speech I found that I was back in the national limelight as leader of the “loyal opposition.” Any concerns I might have had that time would hang heavy in private life were soon dispelled. With the demands of the law firm, my personal and political correspondence, unavoidable travel, routine office work, preparation of the columns I was writing for the Times-Mirror syndicate, and planning for a book I had agreed to write, this was one of the busiest periods of my life. As usual, the ones who suffered most, and most silently, were my family. One of my reasons for moving to California was to have more time with Pat and the girls, but I think I saw them even less that year than I had when we were in Washington.
By December 1961, I was more tired than I had been at the end of the 1960 campaign. I was almost ten pounds underweight from strain and fatigue, and I became short-tempered at home and at the office.
It was ironic that while I was writing a book about handling crises, I had let myself get so run-down that I was not in good shape for making a decision which created a major new crisis for me and my family.
RUNNING FOR GOVERNOR: 1962
The pressures to run for governor began almost from the day I arrived back in California.
RN Page 32