The Post story did not worry me. It was to be expected. The Post was and still is the most partisan Democratic paper in the country. It had done an unusually neat smear job, but I did not expect anything to come of it. After all, I had come into this 1952 campaign well prepared, I thought, for any political smear that could be directed at me. After what my opponents had thrown at me in my campaigns for the House and Senate, and after the almost unbelievably vicious assaults I had survived during the Hiss case, I thought I had been through the worst.
In fact, that Thursday morning I was worried not about the campaign fund story but rather about the split-second timing we needed in order to make ten whistle-stops a day on our tour up the Central Valley of California and into Oregon and the state of Washington.
At our first stop, Bakersfield, I called to the crowd, “Who can clean up the mess in Washington?”
They knew the answer. They yelled back, “Ike can.”
At Tulare, the next stop, the train started to pull out of the station before I finished my speech. I cut short my remarks by calling out, “Come along and join our crusade,” and people ran down the tracks after the train. Like most candidates, I had an exaggerated idea about the importance of what I had planned to say if only a mistake hadn’t been made in starting the train ahead of time.
I proceeded to chew out our staff and particularly Jack Drown, our train manager, for what I thought was a major error. Fortunately for everyone concerned, several members of our small staff combined an excellent intuition for politics with a sense of humor. As I was telling Jack, “never let that happen again,” Bill Rogers walked up and said, “I thought you planned it that way. Just as soon as the train started to move you finished your sentence and then spontaneously said to the crowd, ‘come along and join this crusade,’ motioning for them to follow the train. It gave a sense of participation and excitement which could never be conveyed by ending a speech on time and then waiting for the engineer to get up steam.” I laughed and recognized that I had just experienced another example of the truth of one of Eisenhower’s favorite admonitions, “Always take your job, but never yourself, seriously.”
But these light moments of relief from tension were now to be few and far between. As our “Nixon Special” moved up the Central Valley through Fresno, Madera, Merced, Stockton, and Sacramento, more and more reporters joined our campaign train and demanded that Jim Bassett get a reply from me to the charge that I had a “secret fund.” Getting excerpts ready for the press, walking back through the lounge car to meet the political dignitaries who boarded the train at one stop and who were to get off at another, boning up on the local color and the local issues which I was trying to discuss at each of the stops, trying to use the microphone as much as possible so that I would not do any further damage to my already raw throat—thinking about these and other relatively minor problems left little time to prepare an answer on the fund. Finally, in midafternoon, Chotiner and Rogers prepared a brief statement of about two hundred words stating the facts with regard to the fund, which I approved and issued.
Our opponents had wasted no time in capitalizing on the Post story. By the time I issued my statement on Thursday afternoon, Democratic National Chairman Stephen Mitchell had called on Eisenhower to demand my resignation. Senator Karl Mundt, with whom I had fought so many battles against the Communists when we served together on the House Committee on Un-American Activities, countered for the Republicans. He asserted that the attack on me was a “leftwing smear” and a “filthy” maneuver by a pro-Stevenson newspaper. His statement, however, was lost in the back pages of most newspapers while Mitchell’s demand that I resign made most of the front pages. But this is part of political warfare. An attack always makes more news than defense. When I turned off the light in my stateroom that night I was still convinced that because the attack was entirely partisan, it would not stand on its merits. I thought it would eventually run its course and be forgotten, provided I continued to play it down.
But I had not reckoned with the determination and skillful planning of our opponents. At nine o’clock the next morning I delivered my whistle-stop speech to a good-sized crowd in Marysville, a small mining and lumbering town in northern California. Just as the train started to pull out, a car screeched to a stop at the station and a group of men, who we later discovered were dispatched from Democratic headquarters in Sacramento, ran toward the train. “Tell us about the $16,000!” one of them yelled.
That did it. Despite all of our plans to ignore the attack, I could not see myself running away from a bunch of hecklers. I wheeled around and shouted, “Hold the train!” The train stopped a hundred yards down the track and the crowd pressed forward while I collected my thoughts. Instinctively I knew I had to counterattack. You cannot win a battle in any arena of life merely by defending yourself. I pointed my finger at the man who called out, directing the crowd’s attention to him, and then I let him have it.
“You folks know the work that I did investigating Communists in the United States. Ever since I have done that work the Communists and the left-wingers have been fighting me with every possible smear. When I received the nomination for the vice presidency I was warned that if I continued to attack the Communists in this government they would continue to smear me. And believe me, you can expect that they will continue to do so. They started it yesterday. They have tried to say that I had taken $16,000 for my personal use.
“What they didn’t point out is that rather than charging the American taxpayer with the expenses of my office, which were in excess of the amounts which were allowed under the law, what I did was to have those expenses paid by the people back home who were interested in seeing that information concerning what was going on in Washington was spread among the people of this state.
“I will tell you what some of the others do. They put their wives on the payroll, taking your money and using it for that purpose. Pat Nixon has worked in my office night after night, and I can say this proudly—she has never been on the government payroll since I have been in Washington.
“Do you want me to do what some others are doing? Take fat legal fees on the side? During the time I have been in Washington I have never taken a legal fee, although as a lawyer I could legally have done so, and I am never going to in the future.”
The crowd was cheering thunderously as our train pulled away. I walked back into my private compartment feeling better. That had been my first public defense of the fund and I used it throughout the day, beating the hecklers to the punch at each of the whistle-stops. The crowds were now two and three times as big as they had been on Thursday, the first full day of the tour. And the overwhelming majority were with me.
The irony of campaigning, however, is that when a candidate is on a whistle-stop tour, meeting the people personally, he is usually out of touch with what is going on in the country at large. Such was my case. On our campaign train, we had contact with the outside world only for a few minutes at each stop. Then we would plug in our special train telephones and try to get the latest reports from our campaign headquarters in Washington or in California or from the Eisenhower train. While I was speaking, members of my staff made the telephone calls and then when the train was again under way they reported to me. Consequently, during the day we had little idea of the furor in Washington.
The fund issue was becoming a national sensation. Political panic had struck many Republicans. The National Committee in Washington was besieged with telephone calls, as was the Eisenhower train. Several of my office staff in Washington, I learned later, were in tears. The handwriting on the wall seemed to say: “Dick Nixon is through.”
On our train, we went through northern California handling the fund issue as though it were an ordinary political attack. We decided to answer the attack with the plain, unvarnished truth. We telephoned Dana Smith to make public the list of donors. The list would show that the contributors were professional and business people who by no stretch of the imagination could accura
tely be described as a “millionaire’s club.” Smith was also told to prepare an audit of the money taken in and of how it was spent so that this data could be released publicly.
Toward the end of the day, we held another conference on the train. While by this time I must admit I was irritated, I was not in the least discouraged. Murray Chotiner insisted that in the end the issue would help more than hurt us because it was giving life to a campaign which had been described in the Scripps-Howard papers as “running like a dry creek.”
He said, “Dick, all we’ve got to do is to get you before enough people talking about this fund, and we will win this election in a landslide.” Bill Rogers predicted that the attack would boomerang on our opponents because it had come too early, was being overplayed, and could not stand up on its merits. But Jim Bassett sounded a pessimistic note. The reporters traveling with us, who had now been joined by some from the Eisenhower train, were getting reports from the East, and they considered the story far more serious than we had appraised it. They were demanding that I have a press conference to answer questions on the fund. But Chotiner, Rogers, and I believed that this would only give a bigger play to a story that was already receiving more attention than it deserved.
And so we continued on our way, speaking to the increasing crowds at each station stop, receiving scattered reports of the snowballing Democratic attack, and wondering why we had not heard from General Eisenhower during the almost two days since the New York Post article had been published. We did not realize that his staff had withheld the news of the attack from him all day Thursday because they did not want to interfere with his preparation of the major speeches he had scheduled that day. It was not until Friday that he was informed of the attack. Later that afternoon he issued a statement that “Dick Nixon is an honest man” and that “the facts will show that Nixon would not compromise with what is right.”
It was ten o’clock Friday night when we finished our second full day of whistle-stopping after three stops at small towns in southern Oregon. The train had pulled off onto a siding for the night. It was then that I learned that my own staff was keeping some bad news from me. As I was walking through the corridor of the train, a reporter came up to me and asked, “Senator, do you have any comment on the Washington Post and the New York Herald Tribune editorials?”
“What editorials?” I asked.
“Both the Post and Herald Tribune have editorials tomorrow morning saying that you ought to offer your resignation to General Eisenhower!”
This one really hit me. I said something to the effect that I would not comment until I had an opportunity to read the editorials. Then I hurried back to my own compartment. I asked the porter to go into the next car and see if he could get Rogers and Chotiner to come to my compartment for a conference.
As I waited for them, I knew that if the reports with regard to the Herald Tribune were accurate, I had been hit by a real blockbuster. I had firmly believed up to this time that since the attack was strictly partisan and would not stand up on its merits, our strategy of continuing to play it down would pay off and it would be forgotten within a few days. I still believe this would have been the case had the attack continued to come only from Democrats and from newspapers which were opposed to Eisenhower as well as to me. But when Republicans as well as Democrats began to demand my scalp, the roof caved in. I could shrug off a demand for my resignation by a paper like the Washington Post. The Post had been consistently critical of me since the days of the Hiss case and had taken a dim view of my nomination. But the New York Herald Tribune was something else again. It was the most influential Republican newspaper in the East. Bert Andrews, the chief Washington correspondent for the Tribune, had worked with me on the Hiss case and had become one of my closest personal friends. I knew he was on the Eisenhower train. I also knew that the publishers and other top officials of the Tribune had very close relations with Eisenhower and with some of his most influential supporters. I assumed that the Tribune would not have taken this position editorially unless it also represented the thinking of the people around Eisenhower. And, as I thought more about it, it occurred to me that this might well be the view of Eisenhower himself, for I had not heard from him since the trouble began, two days before.
When Rogers and Chotiner arrived in my compartment, they admitted that they had received word of the Tribune editorial at about 8:30 that night but did not want to disturb me with it until the next morning. They felt I had had a hard day and needed a good night’s sleep. They showed me a copy of the editorial. The last sentence read, “The proper course of Senator Nixon in the circumstances is to make a formal offer of withdrawal from the ticket. How this offer is acted on will be determined by an appraisal of all the facts in the light of General Eisenhower’s unsurpassed fairness of mind.” I knew now that the fat was in the fire. That sounded like the official word from Eisenhower himself.
Even Rogers was shaken this time. And Chotiner was furious. “Why do the Republicans have to play right into the hands of the enemy?” he said. “How stupid can they be? 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.”
I was experiencing some of the same emotional reaction that Chotiner had put into words. But I had learned from my experience in the Hiss case that what determines success or failure in handling a crisis is the ability to keep coldly objective when emotions are running high. That experience stood me in good stead now. I found myself almost automatically thinking and making decisions quickly, rationally, and unemotionally. It was essential that we get firsthand information as to where the people around Eisenhower and he, himself, stood. And we had to get it fast. I asked Rogers to call Dewey. I asked Chotiner to talk with Fred Seaton (later named Secretary of the Interior), who was acting at that time as the unofficial liaison officer between the two trains. I told them that I would not talk to Sherman Adams or anyone else on the Eisenhower train except Eisenhower himself, since this was a matter in which he alone had the authority to make a decision. What none of us could understand was how any of those around Eisenhower could in fairness reach a judgment before they knew the facts. I knew I had done nothing wrong and had nothing to hide.
It was almost two o’clock Saturday morning when our meeting finally broke up. I had put on a reasonably good front with Rogers and Chotiner, but now I felt the full weight of fatigue and depression brought on by the day’s events. I told Pat about the Tribune editorial. She was as shocked as I was and had somewhat the same reaction as Chotiner. But much of the fight had gone out of me by this time, and I was beginning to wonder how much more of this beating I was going to be able to take. I expressed some of my inner doubts to her. “Maybe I am looking at this too much from my own standpoint. If the judgment of more objective people around Eisenhower is that my resignation would help him to win, maybe I ought to resign.”
Pat reacted with fire in her eyes. “You can’t think of resigning. If you do Eisenhower will lose. He can put you off the ticket if he wants to but if you, in the face of attack, do not fight back but simply crawl away, you will destroy yourself. Your life will be marred forever and the same will be true of your family, and particularly, your daughters.” I was never to receive any better advice, and at a time when I needed it most.
The next morning, the “Nixon Special” steamed on through Oregon, but the original thrill and anticipation with which we had started was gone. The train seemed like a prison with its inexorable schedule. The crowds grew even larger. Democrats as well as Republicans came out to get a look at the vice presidential candidate. The hecklers were more aggressive. I fought back harder.
In Eugene, Oregon, our second stop on Saturday, the Democrats picketed with their own campaign signs, one of which said: “No Mink Coats for Nixon, Just Cold Cash.” This was a reference to the Republican campaign slogan of “A scandal a day” in the Truman Administration. We had hit hard at the n
umerous scandals, involving gifts accepted by various officials in the Truman Administration. A $9000 mink coat accepted by a White House secretary had become a symbol of all the corruption of the Truman Administration. My answer that day in Eugene to the pickets’ sign was, “That’s absolutely right. There are no mink coats for the Nixons. I am proud to say my wife, Pat, wears a good Republican cloth coat.” This phrase came to mind simply because I had long been aware that I was unable to afford a fur coat for my wife and, at the same time, it struck back hard at the Democrats’ mink coat scandal.
It was at Eugene, too, that I noted that the violence of the attacks was finally beginning to backfire. Those supporting me in the crowd were resentful of the hecklers. They were not only listening to what I had to say and believing it, but also they were willing to fight back, just as I was. The mink coat signs were torn to shreds before my speech was completed.
But reports reaching us from Washington and from the Eisenhower train indicated the situation was becoming worse and worse. Karl Mundt’s defense was described in the newspapers as the “sole official reaction from Republican National Headquarters” in Washington. Rumors were flying thick and fast about “this friend” and “that friend” of Eisenhower who felt it was imperative that I be dropped from the ticket. Some of those who had supported other vice presidential candidates at the Republican Convention began to build up a dump-Nixon movement. Reports from the Eisenhower train indicated that his advisers were split into two groups—those who thought I should be dropped immediately, and those who wanted to wait and see how public reaction developed.
One report which created a particular stir among the newsmen was that Eisenhower had interrupted a speech to take a telephone call from his old friend, General Lucius Clay, and that Clay had urged him to find another running mate. Clay later denied this report.
Arthur Summerfield, the Republican National Chairman (and who later became Postmaster General), was the only major Republican official on the Eisenhower train who was arguing openly and strongly that I should be kept on the ticket, defended, and supported. Sherman Adams and Herb Brownell had telephoned William Knowland, the senior Senator from California who was then in Hawaii, to fly back immediately to join the Eisenhower campaign train. Knowland, it was reported, was meant to be the substitute candidate for Vice President if needed. Upon reaching the Eisenhower train, however, he immediately joined Summerfield in urging that I be kept on the ticket.
Six Crises Page 12