The Cuban missile crisis completely dominated the news for the last days of the 1962 campaign. Now I knew how Stevenson must have felt when Suez and the Hungarian rebellion flared up in the last days before the election in 1956. I knew that any chance I might have had of narrowing Brown’s lead in the polls was now gone.
We had to play the dreary drama through to its conclusion on election night. I left for the hotel early in the afternoon, telling my family that I would call as soon as I had an idea how it was going.
It was all over before midnight even though the numerical vote was still close. I knew the state well enough to know that votes in districts not yet reported would not be enough to carry me over. I went to bed around three o’clock, and when I got up four hours later, the worst was confirmed. I had lost to Brown by 297,000 out of nearly 6 million votes cast.
Herb Klein went downstairs to read my concession statement. I watched on the television in my room as the reporters harassed him, demanding that I come down and make a personal appearance. They were so persistent that Klein finally came up to my room and asked if I would consider meeting them. The anger and frustration, the disappointment and fatigue struggling inside me burst out. I said, “Screw them. I’m not going to do it. I don’t have to, and I’m not going to. You read them my concession message to Brown, Herb, and if they want to know where I am you can tell them that I’ve gone home to be with my family.”
Klein went back downstairs. Just as I was leaving, I looked at the television for a moment and heard the insulting tone of the reporters still asking, “Where’s Nixon?”—as if I had some obligation to appear before them.
I said, “I’m going down there,” and started toward the elevator. I walked into the press room and went up to the platform where Herb was talking at the microphone. I had not had time to shave. I felt terrible, and I looked worse.
I began, “Good morning, gentlemen. Now that Mr. Klein has made his statement, and now that all the members of the press are so delighted that I have lost, I’d like to make a statement of my own.”
I could see many of the reporters exchanging glances. This didn’t sound like the abject performance they had been hoping for.
I thanked my staff and the many volunteer workers in my campaign, and I assessed the Republican victories in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan. I congratulated Brown on his victory.
Then I returned to my main theme: “At the outset I said a couple of things with regard to the press that I noticed some of you looked a little irritated about. And my philosophy with regard to the press has never really gotten through. And I want it to get through.
“This cannot be said for any other American political figure today, I guess. Never in my sixteen years of campaigning have I complained to a publisher, to an editor, about the coverage of a reporter. I believe a reporter has got a right to write it as he feels it. I believe if a reporter believes that one man ought to win rather than the other, whether it’s on television or radio or the like, he ought to say so. I will say to the reporters sometimes that I think, well, look, I wish you’d give my opponent the same going over that you give me.
“And as I leave the press, all I can say is this: for sixteen years, ever since the Hiss case, you’ve had a lot of—a lot of fun—that you’ve had an opportunity to attack me, and I think I’ve given as good as I’ve taken.”
I continued, “I leave you gentlemen now and you will now write it. You will interpret it. That’s your right. But as I leave you I want you to know—just think how much you’re going to be missing.
“You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference, and it will be one in which I have welcomed the opportunity to test wits with you. I have always respected you. I have sometimes disagreed with you. But unlike some people, I’ve never canceled a subscription to a paper, and also I never will.
“I believe in reading what my opponents say, and I hope that what I have said today will at least make television, radio, and the press first recognize the great responsibility they have to report all the news and, second, recognize that they have a right and a responsibility, if they’re against a candidate, to give him the shaft, but also recognize if they give him the shaft, put one lonely reporter on the campaign who will report what the candidate says now and then.
“Thank you, gentlemen, and good day.”
The people in the room were stunned into silence. I know that Herb was shocked and disappointed. I turned to him and said, “Herb, I did that for you. These guys deserved it, and I’m glad I did it.”
To the great majority of my supporters and virtually all of the press, my so-called last press conference was a personal and political disaster. Maury Stans told me that he thought it would cost me $100,000 a year in new legal clients. My critics and opponents exulted in what they interpreted as the ultimate, self-inflicted blow. Columnist Mary McGrory called it “Richard Nixon’s Last Hurrah” and reported: “Nixon carried on for fifteen minutes in a finale of intemperance and incoherence perhaps unmatched in American political annals. He pulled the havoc down around his ears, while his staff looked on aghast.”
The reaction was not all negative. I received thousands of letters and wires from friends and supporters across the country who said they were glad that someone finally had the guts to tell the press off.
I have never regretted what I said at the “last press conference.” I believe that it gave the media a warning that I would not sit back and take whatever biased coverage was dished out to me. In that respect, I think that the episode was partially responsible for the much fairer treatment I received from the press during the next few years. From that point of view alone, it was worth it.
On the Sunday night following the election, Howard K. Smith appeared on ABC television with a half-hour special program called “The Political Obituary of Richard Nixon.” His four guests were intended to represent a cross section of my friends and foes over the years: Murray Chotiner and Jerry Ford spoke as longtime friends, lamenting that my defeat and my press conference seemed to mark the end of my political career. Jerry Voorhis talked bitterly about the 1946 campaign. The fourth participant was Alger Hiss. Smith matter-of-factly asked him how he felt about my conduct during the Hiss-Chambers case. In an arrogantly tolerant tone of voice, Hiss said, “He was less interested in developing the facts objectively than in seeking ways of making a preconceived plan appear plausible. I regard his actions as motivated by ambition, by personal self-serving.”
The immediate uproar that followed this remark helped to turn me from the sore loser of the “last press conference” into something of an injured party. The ABC switchboard lit up with hundreds of calls even before the program was finished. Eighty thousand letters and telegrams protesting Hiss’s appearance poured in over the next several days. President Eisenhower called Jim Hagerty, then an executive at ABC, to tell him that he was astonished at the incredibly bad taste of putting Hiss on the air to comment on my defeat.
If ABC was prepared to write my political obituary, those within the Kennedy administration were not inclined to leave anything to chance. They did everything possible to drive a final nail into the coffin. Three months after I lost the governor’s race, my income tax returns were subjected to an exhaustive audit. Years later, in 1973, the IRS supervisor in charge wrote to Rose Woods to explain that although he had informed his Washington superiors of “no change” in the original audit, they sent the case back to him three separate times—persistently citing articles in newspapers and magazines as reasons for assessing me further taxes. Each time, this auditor courageously resisted, acidly noting: “We don’t work cases by what the news media and magazines say; we base our findings on facts.”
It was hard for me to believe that such tactics would persist even after I had been defeated for a second time and marked by political observers everywhere as a man without a political future.
Department of Justice files leaked to the New York T
imes in 1972 showed that within months of his brother’s inauguration, Attorney General Robert Kennedy used the Justice Department to try to develop evidence that would justify bringing criminal charges against my mother and brother over the matter of the Hughes loan. The probe, according to this report, cleared members of my family of any wrongdoing. The political motivation behind this use of a federal agency was manifest. I especially resented the attempt to get at me through my family. These instances of abuse of the Internal Revenue Service and the Justice Department for political purposes were typical of the partisan vindictiveness that pervaded the Kennedy administration.
NEW YORK LAWYER: 1963
Shortly after the election I took a vacation in Florida with Bebe Rebozo, whom I had first met there in 1951. We had become close friends over the years. After a few days in Miami, we flew to Nassau, and as soon as school let out Pat and the girls joined us there for the Thanksgiving holidays.
During this trip I had a long talk with my old friend Elmer Bobst, chairman of the board of the Warner-Lambert Pharmaceutical Company. He strongly urged me to leave California and move to New York. He pointed out that now that I had lost the election nothing tied me to California; that business opportunities would be much greater in New York; and that I would find life there much more interesting and stimulating.
The more I thought about the move, the more evenly balanced the arguments seemed. I was reluctant to uproot Pat and the girls again, but since the election California held much less charm for them, and I found they were quite excited by the prospect of living in New York.
A move to New York would of course have a major impact on my political status. Despite my defeat by Brown, I could still play an important, if not uncontested, leadership role in the Republican Party in California. But leaving my political base and moving to a state in which all political power was firmly held by Nelson Rockefeller, my principal rival, would be an announcement that I was ruling myself out as an active political figure for the foreseeable future.
A move to New York would mean giving up any thought of becoming a candidate for President in 1964, and running for any office in New York was out of the question. I think this factor influenced Pat as much as any other. She felt strongly that now was the time for me to get out of the political arena once and for all. Having in effect overruled the family when I ran for governor in 1962, I thought that now it was their turn. We would move to New York as soon as I could find the right job and make the necessary arrangements.
A few months later I joined the Wall Street law firm of Mudge, Stern, Baldwin, and Todd, which became Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie, and Alexander. We bought a ten-room cooperative apartment that was, coincidentally, in the same building in which Nelson Rockefeller lived.
Before beginning my new job, I was determined to keep a longstanding promise to Pat and the girls. On June 12 we set out on a six-week vacation in Europe and the Middle East with our friends Jack and Helene Drown and their daughter, Maureen.
From our welcome abroad, no one would have guessed that I had lost two elections in the past three years and that my prospects for any political comeback seemed extremely remote. Everywhere we went we were received as if I were still Vice President.
Our schedule was full: in addition to the rigorous sightseeing involved in traveling with three teenaged girls, I had a number of meetings and talks with foreign leaders. Generalissimo Francisco Franco received me at his summer residence in Barcelona. I had never met him before, and I expected to find the rigid and unpleasant dictator pictured in the press. Instead, I found a subtle, pragmatic leader whose primary interest was maintaining the internal stability necessary to Spain’s progress.
President de Gaulle invited Pat and me to have lunch with him in Paris. The luncheon—a simple meal, elegantly prepared and served—was held outdoors on a patio behind the Elysée Palace. After lunch de Gaulle rose and proposed a warm and typically eloquent toast. He said that he knew I had suffered some difficult defeats, but he predicted that at some time in the future I would be serving my nation in a very high capacity.
Perhaps the most indelible memory I have of this trip is my first sight of the Berlin Wall. We were taken on a tour of the drab city of East Berlin, but the oppressive number of Communist police who unsubtly accompanied us meant we had hardly any chance to talk to the people. That night I decided to go back. We walked through Checkpoint Charlie and stood waiting for a taxi. A man dressed in work clothes came up and whispered in my ear, “We are glad you came to East Berlin. Don’t let us down. The Americans are our only hope.” Then he quickly walked away.
We found a taxi and went to a restaurant where an excellent Hungarian orchestra played gypsy music. I was recognized, and after dinner I went up to the bandstand and banged out the “Missouri Waltz” on the piano.
While we were in Cairo, President Nasser arranged a special trip for us to the site of the Aswan dam. When we arrived around midnight, the temperature was still over 100 degrees. Huge Soviet cranes and bulldozers were working around the clock. When our Egyptian hosts showed us the plans for the dam, they proudly proclaimed that there were very few Russians working on the project. I could tell from the appearance of the drivers, however, that a substantial number of them were Russian.
Nasser invited Pat and me to his surprisingly modest house in Cairo. He was a man of superior intelligence and great charisma. Despite the bombast of his public utterances, I was impressed by his dignity and quiet manner in private. He was eager to have my assessment of the current attitudes and intentions of the Soviet leaders. He ventured some criticisms of President Kennedy’s policy toward Israel, but I gave him no encouragement, and he quickly caught the hint and changed the subject. Several times he expressed his warm feeling for Eisenhower.
I emphasized as politely as I could that I thought his first priority should be the welfare and progress of his own people. This was a course that Nasser could not bring himself to follow. Like Sukarno and Nkrumah, Nasser had devoted the best of his energies to revolution. Now he was more interested in a grandiose crusade for Arab unity than he was in the vital but less glamorous tasks of managing and improving Egypt’s economic, political, and social structure. His attitude toward Israel served his political purpose, beyond his blind intolerance of the Jews; if Israel had not existed, Nasser would have had to invent something to take its place. Arab unity needed a common cause, and the destruction of Israel filled the bill.
We were awed by the Pyramids and by the Valley of the Kings at Luxor, but equally impressive to me was what I learned about modern Egypt and its ruler. I could see that, despite its terrible poverty, the country was moving ahead and would eventually exert enormous influence throughout the Middle East. I could also see that, despite Israel’s superior technology and training, the Egyptians and the Arabs would in the end submerge the Israelis and defeat them by sheer weight of numbers unless some accommodation were reached. Closer relations between the United States and Israel’s Middle Eastern enemies were going to be of the utmost importance, not only to Israel itself but also to the prevention of a confrontation between the great powers in the Middle East.
President Kennedy was in Rome on a state visit while we were there. One afternoon the phone rang in our hotel room and the operator informed me that the President was calling. Sounding happy and relaxed, he said that he had heard we were in Rome and just wanted to say hello. We exchanged brief pleasantries. This was to be the last time I talked to him; five months later he was dead.
For Pat, Tricia, Julie, and me, this trip was one of the happiest times of our lives. What made it so special was that it gave us a chance to be together as a family. We walked through castles and cathedrals in Spain; we explored the ruins of the Parthenon in Athens and of the Forum in Rome; we rode in gondolas in Venice and went to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris; we sailed down the Rhine and listened to Big Ben chime the hours at London’s Houses of Parliament.
Nevertheless, it was a thrill to see the Sta
tue of Liberty below us as our plane came in to New York. Vacation time was over, and I immediately devoted my full energies to my new responsibilities as a Wall Street lawyer.
From the first day at my new job I was sure that I had made the right decision in moving to New York. New business came to Nixon, Mudge, and the firm expanded as we had hoped it would.
The chance to see old friends in the New York area and to make new ones gave our family the stimulation and the revitalized outlook on life that we needed after the California campaign. One night less than two weeks after we had moved into our new apartment, Pat looked across the dinner table and said to me, “I hope we never move again.”
By the summer of 1963, although I was barely settled into my New York law practice, I was already getting calls and letters from friends and party leaders across the country urging me to run again for the presidency in 1964. Goldwater, they said, would drive off almost everyone except the party’s most conservative fringe; and Rockefeller would split the party down the middle. I could sympathize with their concerns, but my instinct was to stay completely out of it.
I strongly felt that I should not seek the nomination in 1964. Despite Kennedy’s recent slippage in the polls, his lackluster domestic record, and his crisis-prone foreign policy, I felt that he was almost certainly going to be re-elected. With party unity and a favorable press added to the advantages of being an incumbent, Kennedy would be virtually unbeatable. I could not idly consider the thought of subjecting Pat, the girls, or myself to the tension and disappointment of another losing campaign against Kennedy. I was also well aware that after my defeats in 1960 and 1962, another defeat in 1964 might so brand me with a loser image that I could never recover.
I also had to consider the motives of those who were urging me to run. Many of them were opposed to Goldwater’s candidacy for reasons I did not share. I liked Goldwater personally. He was direct and sincere and deeply patriotic. He had a tendency to be impulsive and to shoot from the hip, but I knew that he was also well intentioned and open to advice. Even though Goldwater was farther to the right of my centrist position than Rockefeller was to the left of it, I felt that Goldwater’s deviation from midstream at least put him deeper into Republican territory, while Rockefeller’s made him practically a liberal Democrat on many issues.
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