Report of the County Chairman

by James A. Michener

  From our vantage point in one of the typical counties we had an opportunity to assess the work of various politicians and various stratagems. For example, we found that clergymen preaching politics from the pulpit were very effective insofar as their own flocks were concerned, but that they aroused bitter antagonisms among those who were not directly committed to them. Thus religion had a terribly divisive power when abused and the end result of any one action could not easily be anticipated. As I said earlier, in Bucks County it cost us about 9,000 votes, but no permanent social damage seems to have been done.

  The effect of doctors’ being prevailed upon by their medical association to campaign among their patients for one party as opposed to the other was a different matter. A good many of my workers spoke with contempt of this procedure, and there was one sardonic cartoon circulated to good effect. It showed a group of white-masked doctors about to operate on a skinny nude man, and the caption read, “You still determined to vote for Kennedy?” I would suppose that whatever effectiveness the doctors had was in confirming the convictions of people already disposed to vote against what the doctors labeled socialized medicine, just as years before they had so labeled Blue Cross, Blue Shield and social security. Actually, I suspect that few doctors bothered with proselytizing. I would imagine, furthermore, that the effectiveness of the medical anti-Democrat lobby will be somewhat diminished in the next four years, a loss which I can view with perfect equanimity.

  The most perplexing problem as to effectiveness on the Democratic side concerned Adlai Stevenson. I have told how I personally encouraged about one hundred dissidents with whom I accomplished nothing into going into Philadelphia to hear the former standard-bearer advise his adherents to support Kennedy whole-heartedly. Other county chairmen, faced by the same problem, must have done the same, for we turned out one of the most excited crowds to hit Philadelphia for a long time. I sat near Mr. Stevenson and was deeply moved by the passionate loyalty he still evoked among his followers, and I could see my wife at one of the front tables rededicating herself to his cause.

  But when he spoke I listened in vain for that strong, clear command to unity. His speech was witty, a tribute to a great mind, and thoroughly enjoyable, but I doubt if it convinced one of my wavering hundred. There come times, I think, in any campaign or in any life when one ought to speak out clearly and unequivocally. I am often reminded of long trips that I have taken across country where in the vast empty spaces of our land the radio signals from the big cities fade into a kind of static-filled jargon. One remembers that these are the good stations with the respectable news commentaries and the fine music, but the signal is so weak that one turns with gratitude to the nearest hillbilly station that is emitting a static-free signal. At least one can hear the music, second-rate though it is.

  What I have just said is a terrible confession, and as it stands it is probably a self-indictment. But it is how the human mind reacts, and for better or worse, there it is.

  The loss of Ohio stunned me. I still cannot understand how it was accomplished. The only reasonable explanation I have heard was that in a fiercely competitive election any party that goes in with disorganized forces stands a good chance of losing, no matter what happens elsewhere in the country. Mike DeSalle and Frank Lausche did not unite, and Ohio was lost. In New York, on the other hand, in the midst of a bitter factional fight between Carmine DeSapio and Herbert Lehman, union to fight the national election was manipulated and victory was the result. But in California, as in Ohio, the Democratic forces did not coalesce and a totally unwarranted loss had to be endured.

  The big surprise to many of us in a county like Bucks, but not to me for reasons I have already cited, was the contribution of Lyndon Johnson to the Democratic victory. When the results were in, a good many of my northern liberal friends were surprised by Johnson’s performance in helping to hold so much of the South and particularly Texas, but they were also disturbed over the fact that Johnson probably emerged from the campaign as the single most powerful political force in the party. In mid-September few could have foreseen this outcome. His strength, I think, derived from his being first of all a fine politician. I think we tend to forget how important it is in a democracy to have strong, clever, and able politicians; for the holding together of any federal union or any state with sharply divergent components requires marked skill, and those who have it deserve well of their nation.

  I rather think that of all I have written in the last five years, one of the very best things was a series I did for a Honolulu newspaper following the divisive first state election in 1959. It was a series praising politicians and drawing to the attention of the people of Hawaii the remarkable contributions made by a group of men and women not normally hailed as cultural heroes. I selected a millionaire who took time off to whip his Republican party into an effective machine that defeated my side at the polls; a Japanese housewife who took a job so that her husband could carry on an effective campaign for the legislature; a brilliant young governor who started out like the most venal of all spoils politicians, but who got his party organized on a solid base of legitimate patronage; and a young mother who set up an unbeatable headquarters which elected her father to the Senate against what seemed at first insuperable odds.

  There are people who merit praise in a democracy, and I am very happy that in Lyndon Johnson I early recognized such an operator. If a complex body like a senate of a hundred prima donnas requires organizing, I want a man who can do it effectively and creatively. Such a man is more valuable to his nation than a scientist, a successful novelist, or a business leader. I have always had the feeling that had I been in the last Senate I might have joined with Senator Proxmire of Wisconsin in fighting Lyndon Johnson as a party leader who was a little too arrogant and dictatorial for my taste. But I am certainly glad he was able to control those attributes and to contribute them to the victory of my party. And I suppose that the Senate, with someone else at the head of the majority party, will be a less efficient instrument than it was when Lyndon Johnson controlled it.

  In Bucks County we were still of the opinion that the Republicans should have won the national election. To us it seemed as if they had every initial advantage. The country was at peace; there was reasonable prosperity; there was no great unemployment; their party already held the Presidency; there was a general aura of satisfaction with the manner in which Mr. Eisenhower had operated; an overwhelming percentage of the press favored the Republicans; in a long campaign they could afford more radio and television time; the unanticipated twists and turns of foreign affairs seemed likely to aid them and damage the Democrats; Senator Kennedy was relatively unknown; and he was a Catholic.

  For Mr. Nixon, starting with these advantages, to lose would require, we felt, gross mismanagement. To our surprise that mismanagement was forthcoming and what should have been a Republican victory was transformed into defeat. I am not diminishing the extraordinary work of Senator Kennedy and his entire team when I say that good as they were they could not have won had the Republicans mounted a first-rate campaign. It is obvious that under even the most adverse conditions Senator Kennedy would have made a gallant effort, but if the Republicans had been on their toes, his effort would have remained no more than a commendable try. I do not believe that Senator Kennedy won; I believe that Vice President Nixon lost. From what we saw in Bucks County, these were the contributing factors to the Republican defeat.

  The enormous prestige of President Eisenhower’s position and personality was not utilized constructively. Frequently throughout this report I have indicated points at which we were afraid the President would throw his great weight against some position taken by Senator Kennedy, and I have told how each time we breathed easily when the crisis passed without any Presidential interference. It was also apparent to us that President Eisenhower could certainly have held Pennsylvania and probably New Jersey in the Republican column if only he had campaigned diligently in those states. Finally, if he had gone on telev
ision four or five times during the campaign to deny categorically one Kennedy position after another, he would surely have swayed many of the voters with whom I was arguing. In fact, if he had only stated early and unequivocally that he wanted Mr. Nixon to win, he could well have achieved that effect.

  In the post-election period numerous news stories have been circulated to the effect that President Eisenhower was deeply distressed at the Democratic victory, and he has belatedly said that he had wanted Mr. Nixon to win in 1960 and that he hoped the Vice President would run again in 1964. I can only say as a common workman in the political vineyard and as a man who followed every twist and turn of the campaign, that during the campaign Mr. Eisenhower failed to convey that impression to the general public. I believe that my strongest argument with Republicans was my constantly repeated statement, “Of course we all know that Mr. Eisenhower is not really happy with Mr. Nixon as the Republican standard-bearer.” A single word from the President could have killed that claim. As things stood, however, every time I made the comment, Republicans all over the audience ruefully agreed. When, late in the campaign, Mr. Eisenhower did make strong statements in favor of his candidate, Democrats and Republicans alike interpreted his remarks as those of a man who had been grudgingly maneuvered into the inevitable. It is a curious fact that the man who could have swung the election in October actually damaged his candidate when he spoke out for him too late in November. It seemed to all of us who followed these matters closely that Mr. Nixon was badly treated by his President; but we also felt that Mr. Nixon behaved impeccably in this trying situation. If I and my friends misread the relationship between Eisenhower and Nixon it was not through malice; it was because Mr. Eisenhower permitted this ambiguity to develop and to exist. Republicans remarked upon it more than did we Democrats.

  It was symbolic, therefore, that the single event which came closest to being the one vital accident of the campaign concerned Mr. Eisenhower. When the Negro minister Martin Luther King was thrown into a Georgia jail in the afternoon of October 25, on a grossly trumped-up charge, it was obvious to me that a critical moment had been reached in the election. At first glance this was a situation that must work to the Democrats’ disadvantage, for if Senator Kennedy did nothing he would lose Negro support in the vital northern cities, and if he did something he would alienate the South, where he had to pick up electoral votes. On the other hand, the Republicans would surely gain if they made some strong statement pointing out that this was the sort of racial discrimination against which they had fought for eight years. It looked to me as if Murphy’s Law had finally swung into operation, and the inevitable evil had overtaken my party.

  What happened is history. Intelligent Republican strategists, seeing a chance to torpedo the Democratic position, drafted an impeccable statement for President Eisenhower to deliver on television. It read: “It seems to me fundamentally unjust that a man who has peacefully attempted to establish his right to equal treatment, free from racial discrimination, should be imprisoned on an unrelated charge, in itself insignificant. Accordingly, I have asked the Attorney General to take all proper steps to join with Dr. Martin Luther King in an appropriate application for his release.” For some reason that is not yet known, this striking statement which could have won the Negroes of the North to Nixon was never issued. The fundamental vacillation that characterized the party’s use of their President continued, and the great strong voice that should have spoken out and won the election, remained silent.

  On the other hand, John Kennedy took the risk and did the gallant thing. He decried the blatant abuse of a Negro’s civil liberties and had the courage to phone Reverend King and say so. In doing this he did not lose Georgia or South Carolina or Texas. Instead he won the Negro vote in New York and Chicago and Philadelphia, and thus the Presidency.

  The case of Nelson Rockefeller and his relationship to the Nixon campaign is difficult indeed to analyze. That Mr. Rockefeller could have won the election for himself relatively easily is a truism. My guess is that he would have won not less than 53 per cent of the popular vote and probably around 390 electoral votes. He and his advisers knew this and they probably suspected that Mr. Nixon could not win. The fight that Mr. Rockefeller had waged for the nomination had been an honorable one up until December of 1959, when he ostensibly withdrew from the competition as it became obvious that the professional Republican politicians would not tolerate an open convention struggle between him and Nixon. I was less impressed with his backing and filling through the spring of 1960, for I felt that he should have enlisted whole-heartedly in support of the man to whom he had surrendered. And his last-minute attempts to influence the party platform, while philosophically proper, were politically maladroit.

  It was apparent that a victory for Nixon in 1960 would imply a reëlection in 1964, so that the earliest date at which Governor Rockefeller could hope for the Republican nomination and the Presidency would be in 1968, when either his star might have faded or his age have become a deterrent. It was tempting therefore to adopt the Machiavellian theory that Mr. Rockefeller was conspiring to engineer a Nixon defeat in 1960 in order to make himself the logical nominee in 1964. And if a Democratic speaker believed that this was Rockefeller’s gambit, discussion of it certainly sowed dissension in Republican ranks.

  I never believed that Rockefeller did undercut the Nixon candidacy, and I avoided the issue. I contented myself with the often reiterated statement, “You know that Governor Rockefeller was not happy with Mr. Nixon as the Republican candidate, and that most of what Mr. Nixon says is in direct conflict with the reports of the Rockefeller brothers.” Many of my hearers volunteered the information that the governor was not electioneering whole-heartedly for the Vice President and that was the major reason why Nixon would lose New York. When the campaign was over it was found that Governor Rockefeller had campaigned in 50 of New York’s 62 counties and had spoken the astonishing number of 237 times. This surely constitutes “supporting the ticket,” but the psychological damage had been done and could not be repaired.

  It seemed strange to me both during the campaign and after that the pre-convention attacks on Kennedy by Johnson, Truman and Mrs. Roosevelt really counted for very little once the campaign got under way. They were discounted as the typical Democratic brawling that Americans expect of this vital party, and each of these initial opponents later did yeomen service during the campaign. Mrs. Roosevelt was especially hard-working in our area, and her forthright admission that she had initially preferred another candidate but now supported the convention winner gained many votes for Kennedy. But on the Republican side the philosophical antagonism expressed by Governor Rockefeller before the convention was apparently neither forgotten nor forgiven. He hurt the Republicans enormously and no amount of later hard work could erase that initial impresssion. Frequently I thought, “That’s one of the advantages of being a rough-and-ready Democrat. A man like Truman can blast hell out of Jack Kennedy, then turn around and support him vigorously, and the public brushes it off with, ‘That’s those crazy Democrats.’ But when a proper Republican, in a nice black suit, castigates Richard Nixon, everyone takes it seriously.”

  As of now, I suspect that Governor Rockefeller may be the Republican candidate in 1964, but then it will be too late. He could have won relatively easily in 1960, but by 1964 President Kennedy and his team will have compiled such a powerful record and consolidated the Democratic position so securely that I doubt any Republican will be able to win. Furthermore, the closeness of the 1960 vote constitutes no precedent for 1964, because by then many who were afraid to elect a Catholic President will have seen how foolish their fears were. They will vote next time where they wanted to this: for Kennedy.

  There is a sense of sadness, I think, in reflecting that Harold Stassen was entirely correct in 1956 when he warned the Republican party that Richard Nixon would ultimately prove to be a liability. The 1960 election demonstrated the correctness of Stassen’s position, and again the closeness
of the vote must not obscure the fact that actually the Republicans should have won rather easily. Of all who tried to predict the outcome of the 1960 election, Harold Stassen proved to be the most accurate. Nixon’s candidacy cost the Republicans almost exactly the margin of votes that Stassen had forewarned. And he offered his prediction four years before the event. I suspect that I will endear myself to few Republicans when I praise Stassen’s political acumen, but I think it is due him.

  But the most perplexing enigma of the Republican defeat was neither President Eisenhower nor Governor Rockefeller. The real mystery centered on the candidate himself, Richard Nixon. At least a hundred times during the campaign I admitted, during question periods, “Mr. Nixon is obviously a much better man than he is allowing himself to appear in this campaign.” Up until his sickening homily on swearing, I willingly told my audiences that I was quite satisfied that Nixon, if elected, would turn out to be one of our better Presidents, and I still believe he had the capacity to become such. But in the campaign he insisted upon parading all the less attractive aspects of his personality and his interpretation of the Presidency. Instead of being strong he tried to be reassuring. Instead of showing an incisive mind he paraded his determination to side-step all major questions. Instead of uncovering the dedicated public servant, he appeared before us a man desperately groping for a prize. In him there was no evidence of fire, no touch of burning inner conviction and no sense of the historical destiny of the moment. He issued no ringing cry to which his followers could vigorously rally, and his campaign was very dull.

  Richard Nixon is a much better man than he appeared in the autumn of 1960. How he was trapped into parading before us the shadowy image that he projected onto the TV screens I do not know. His enemies insist, “What you saw was the real Richard Nixon, the man of sawdust.” This I cannot believe. I suppose he was tricked by his advertising advisers into believing that what the American people wanted was a bland new father image, a man who never discussed unpleasant truths, a man who looked like a President. If it was upon this basis that he constructed his campaign, I can only say that he was very badly advised. The real Richard Nixon, leading a fighting party and supported by a fighting general already in the White House, could have swept the country. We Democrats can be thankful that he was dissuaded by someone, either his Madison Avenue advisers or his own inner insecurity, from following the hard, clean, clear path that would have led to the Presidency.