Six Crises

by Richard Nixon

  The President walked out of Fitzsimmons Army Hospital on Veterans Day, November 11, delivered a genial thank you and good-by to the people of Denver, and flew home to Washington, where he received a tumultuous welcome. The nation watched on television. He could have left the hospital a month earlier, his doctors said, but he preferred to walk out of the hospital rather than be carried out a month sooner.

  The official family’s welcome-home was given at a meeting of the National Security Council on November 21 and at a Cabinet meeting the next day at the presidential retreat at Camp David, high in the Maryland mountains some twenty-five miles from the President’s Gettysburg farm, where he was continuing his recuperation. Fourteen of us were flown there from Washington in three separate helicopters after the Secret Service vetoed the idea of so many government officials flying in one craft.

  The two days with the President at Camp David, so close to Thanksgiving 1955, passed quickly and pleasantly in an aura of warmth and good feelings among the “team” with the boss back at work again. At the Cabinet meeting he thanked us all for our “perfect” performance during his absence. But to my knowledge, he did not thank anyone personally. He felt that all of us, no matter how hard we worked, were merely doing our duty, what was expected of us under the circumstances.

  This was characteristic of Eisenhower. Only when he believed someone had gone beyond what the job called for did he express personal appreciation to that individual. I remember him thanking me personally for representing him in defending the Administration’s labor policy before a cold and hostile A.F.L. Convention in St. Louis in 1953, later after I campaigned cross-country in the congressional elections of 1954, and again after Secretary James Mitchell and I were successful in settling the steel strike in 1959. He had also spoken or written to me personally of his appreciation after each of my trips abroad. But after this most difficult assignment of all—treading the tightrope during his convalescence from the heart attack—there was no personal thank you. Nor was one needed or expected. After all, we both recognized that I had only done what a Vice President should do when the President is ill.

  • • •

  The personal crisis for Dwight D. Eisenhower was not the heart attack per se, because he had no control over that, but the decision of whether or not, after such a brush with death, to run for re-election in 1956. The basic considerations which went into this decision were the same before and after September 1955—with the exception of the heart attack—and I believe it was the heart attack itself which, more than anything else, helped convince him to become a candidate for re-election.

  Eisenhower frequently had told his associates that he wanted to be a one-term President. He thought that in four years he could substitute his concept of a moderate federal government, a free economy, and a balanced budget for what he considered the Democratic Party’s drift toward a welfare state. He wanted to build up the Republican Party into a moderate, responsible majority party, and then turn over the reins to a younger man. He intended to put this concept of a one-term President into his first inaugural address, but at the last minute he was talked out of that. However, this did not stop him from discussing the idea from time to time.

  Despite his remarkable ability to present a public image of unfailing good cheer and optimism, Eisenhower in private can be a man of rapidly changing moods. He would go into a momentary tailspin of frustration, for instance, when a Republican he admired voted against one of his projects in Congress. The Eisenhower legislative record was as good as, if not better than, that of any President. But that made little difference to him. His temperament was so volatile that those who knew him well often checked with Tom Stephens, his Appointments Secretary, on how the boss was feeling before they went in to see him. Tom, who knew him better than most, might say, “You’d better not see him on that today; he’s wearing his brown suit,” for Tom always insisted the President had a certain brown suit and one particular sports jacket he would wear when in a “Monday mood.”

  He was not in office much more than a year when he began to tell associates from time to time of his intention to retire at the end of his first term. Usually these outbursts were recognized as temporary sentiments of the moment, reflecting a recent setback of one kind or another. But as 1956 approached, they were regarded more and more seriously.

  When he moved his office to Denver, August 14, 1955, the political pressures on the President to run again in 1956 had reached a crescendo. The Republican National Convention was just a year off. The respite from urgent government business at Denver was seen as a time when the President could reach the all-important political decision on a second term. At Denver, before the heart attack, Eisenhower seemed particularly testy, easily irritated, and on edge. He kept putting off those who wanted to talk politics with the exclamation that he was in Denver to fish and play golf.

  Two weeks before the heart attack, following a meeting of Republican State Chairmen, Len Hall visited Eisenhower in Denver to press upon him the party’s and the nation’s need for him to run for re-election. The President listened and paced the floor, and told the party Chairman what he had told others: “What more do they want from me? . . . I’ve given all of my adult life to the country. . . . What more must I do? . . .” He then went on to list five or six names, mine included, of men he said were younger than he and just as able to carry on the Eisenhower mode of government.

  Hall left that meeting discouraged, but not convinced that the chances of Eisenhower’s running were hopeless. Hagerty, Adams, myself, and others in the Administration had heard the President speak of retirement, but we knew that the nature of the office always leaves important unfinished business at the end of a President’s term of office, and that few real leaders can turn their backs on such a challenge. We knew that Eisenhower was not a quitter—that he liked to finish a job which he had started. Our arguments to him stressed that he was the best if not the only man who could accomplish the undone work which lay ahead.

  If I had bet at that time, I would have wagered that he would seek a second term. Incidentally, my judgment of what Eisenhower would do was not based on any theory that a man in power loves power for its own sake. The office of President of the United States carries an aura of responsibility which transcends the personal power the office holds. It demands a dedication and devotion which is greater than any personal consideration of the man who occupies the office. No leader of men who has occupied that office and devoted his being to it can turn away when his work is still incomplete. To a lesser extent this holds true for leaders in other walks of life, who carry on despite great financial and physical problems.

  After the heart attack, of course, there was a decided change in the odds on the question of the second term. The medical opinion was given by Dr. Paul Dudley White: “Many things are possible that may not seem advisable. It is up to him to make the decision. He may or may not have complete recovery. . . . If I were in his shoes, I wouldn’t want to run again, having seen the strain.” Later, he added: “If the President has a good recovery as he seems to be establishing, and if he desires to continue his career, which would of course be to the benefit of this country and the world at large, I would have no objections whatever to his running again. But that remains for the future to decide.”

  The Washington press corps was polled and 88 per cent said Eisenhower would not run. This fairly reflected the thinking in Washington at the time, and it set off the expected wave of political activity, despite all my efforts to avoid a scramble for the Republican nomination. On the very same day that the President’s heart attack was reported, this typical story appeared on the front page of the New York Times: “Vice President Richard M. Nixon today fell heir to one of the greatest responsibilities and political opportunities ever presented to so young a man in the history of the Republic. The general feeling here (Washington) was that the 42-year-old Californian was in a better position than anyone else to get the Republican nomination, if, as seems almost certain, th
e stricken President retires at the end of his first term.”

  To the many suggestions that I step forward as the deputy or acting President or as the heir apparent, I always answered: “We still have a President of the United States.” Although aware of the future potentiality of my position, I knew that so long as the President lay ill or convalescing, my responsibility was to carry on with my own duties and responsibilities. Throughout the period of his illness and convalescence, I dedicated my thoughts, words, and actions to the crisis at hand: to help carry on the operations of government in the absence or partial absence of the Chief Executive. For any Vice President to politicize his activities during his President’s term of office, particularly his first term of office, would be personally reprehensible, I believe, unless that Vice President disagreed fundamentally with the President’s policies or truly believed that he could serve the country better. Neither of these conditions applied to me.

  The first time that the Republican National Chairman saw President Eisenhower after the heart attack was at his Gettysburg farm on November 28. One of the known common aftereffects of a heart attack is frequent periods of depression, and it was in one of these moods that Len Hall found the President. Before he went in to see the President, he talked with Jim Hagerty and Sherman Adams. They, too, were despondent. “This man isn’t going to go,” they told Hall.

  Hall, an astute politician, wisely did not ask the President the key question. He again expressed the hopes of the party and the nation for four more years of Eisenhower leadership. He informed the President that the latest polls showed he could be re-elected without a strenuous campaign. The President did not give any hint of an answer to the key question, but he described himself as “an old dodo,” a man for whom the years had caught up. It was a gloomy discussion. But for Hall it brightened at the very end. “Okay,” said Hall, “let’s talk about what I’m going to say to the press when I walk out of here. Everyone else who visits you can say that they did not talk politics, but if I said that they’d call me a liar.”

  “Go out and say what you think you should say,” replied the President. “I don’t want to know what you are going to say.”

  Hall went out and said he believed Eisenhower would run again and that I would be his running mate.

  For me, as well as the President, this period continued to be one which drained my emotional as well as physical energies, for it was, above all, a period of indecision. As Vice President, my role was to absorb some of the more routine duties of the President, relieving the burden on him, and yet not to appear to be stepping into his shoes.

  To understand the President’s inner turmoil during this period, it is necessary, I think, to understand the nature of convalescence from a heart attack. In the aftermath, for anyone, there is first the shock of having been stricken, followed by periods of deep depression when the patient doesn’t want to do anything ever anymore—except take care of himself. Next, there comes a period of worrying about one’s own condition and chances of another attack—so much so, I believe, that it inhibits a man from making completely rational decisions. Then, finally, when the disease has been fully arrested, there comes the natural human reaction for any active man to continue the battle and not, as he first contemplated, to retire from the arena.

  On one of my visits to the White House, the Saturday before Christmas, I found the President in his apartment on the second floor, sitting alone on a bench against a wall, somewhat depressed. I came in with Jim Hagerty, Jerry Persons, and Ann Whitman to present the Cabinet’s Christmas gift to him. He told us the doctor had just taken his blood pressure after exercise and found it quite high. Discussing generally the various symptoms of his recovery, he commented that quite possibly the doctors really did not know too much about the aspects of recovery. The uncertainty of it all was what troubled him, he said, for he did not have a high cholesterol count or any of the other usual explicable symptoms of the disease. As a result, he said, his fate was much more uncertain than that of other heart patients who knew what caused their attack and could rearrange their lives to avoid another.

  He also told of having what he called “a little spell” after the Christmas party for the White House staff earlier that week. He had moved about the party shaking hands and exchanging greetings, he said, and had not realized how much strength it had taken out of him until he suddenly felt very, very tired. It was that same afternoon, I remembered, that Colonel A. J. Goodpaster, the President’s Staff Secretary, had passed me a note that the President might have to leave the Security Council meeting early because he was very tired. But the President had called a recess of five minutes and had come back to finish the meeting.

  The President, of course, was not always worried or depressed during this period. At that same White House visit, his expressive face glowed with pleasure when I presented him with a pair of gold candlesticks as his Christmas gift from the Cabinet and gold place settings for eight from the White House staff. And he roared with laughter when I commented that these gifts symbolized his Administration’s attachment to the principle of the gold standard. David, the President’s oldest and favorite grandchild, provided a pleasant interlude when he came into the room. Hagerty introduced me as “the Vice President of the United States.” David took a second look and said, “The Vice President, wow!” Then he turned to his grandfather and said, “Ike, I didn’t know there were two Presidents.” The President explained that the Vice President had to be ready to step in whenever the President was too sick to perform his job. When David left the room, the President told us that the family tried to keep the children from being conscious of his rank. Only David, the eldest, was aware that he was President and that was one of the reasons they had insisted from the beginning that David continue to call his grandfather Ike, just as he always had.

  The day after Christmas, Jerry Persons phoned me and asked if I would mind coming down to the White House to urge the President to take a needed vacation in Florida. His doctors had wanted him to convalesce in the warm climate of Florida when he left the hospital, but then the President had insisted on remaining close to Washington. That morning I found him in a talkative mood. When I explained that he certainly should go to Florida without any feeling that he had to be in Washington when Congress opened or for the State of the Union message, he indicated that he thought so too. But, he said, “my family is kind of sentimental about New Year’s and other holidays” and they thought he should be at home for New Year’s Eve.

  However, one of the reasons he wanted to go to Florida, he said, was to have a chance to talk at length with his brother Milton and others about his plans for the future. He remarked that he wanted me to understand that it would be necessary for him in the next few days and weeks to have conferences from time to time on the political situation without my being present. This was necessary, he pointed out, because I would, of course, be one of those who would have to be talked about.

  The President emphasized that the doctors could not say what caused his heart attack and so they probably would not be able to give him any assurance as to what the future would hold. That led up to the inevitable conclusion that, as he put it, he could not see how he could run in good conscience with that “sword of Damocles” hanging over his head.

  I tried to convince him, as I had before, that the job need not be nearly so burdensome as it had been before and that many of the duties which were being taken away from him now should have been assumed by others in the Administration long before the heart attack. “As far as meetings are concerned,” I told him, “no meeting should be over two hours.” He laughed at this point and said that one thing he would never agree to was to get up and leave a meeting before it was over. It would be an affront to treat his “colleagues” in that way, he said.

  I brought up this same point with Sherman Adams some time afterwards, arguing that despite the President’s much heralded staff system, he sometimes listened to the same paper being read two or three times: once by me
mbers of his personal staff, later before the Security Council, and then sometimes again at a full Cabinet meeting. Surely he could excuse himself during the readings or rereadings of papers he had previously heard. But, Adams answered, if the President did not attend, the Cabinet members would not think it an important meeting and some of them might choose not to attend either. Then Cabinet meetings would lose their significance. The same problem arose over having the President’s signature on some of the more politically important messages of greetings and proclamations. Every convention and conclave wants a message from the President of the United States, and only his signature will satisfy them.

  At that December 26 meeting with the President, he seemed to be seeking some way of avoiding another campaign. He referred to the fact that when he had agreed to run in 1952 he had been told that he could serve for only four years and that by that time the Republican Party would be strong enough to elect another candidate. It was “most disappointing” to him, he said, to see that my popularity had not risen as high as he had hoped it would.

  For that reason, he said, it might be better for me in a new Administration not to be Vice President but to be a Cabinet officer. He pointed out that I could hold any position in the Cabinet I wanted, with the possible exception of Attorney General, which he ruled out due to my lack of legal experience, and Secretary of State, which he thought I could handle but to which he thought Herbert Hoover, Jr., then Under Secretary of State, had an inside track. Secretary of Defense seemed to be the position he particularly favored for me in case I did not run again for Vice President.

  The conversation was casual, the emphasis was on the possibility of his not running again, and, knowing how the President’s mind worked, I did not take the suggestion seriously, just as I knew he was himself “trial-ballooning” the idea of his not running again. With people he knew well and trusted, Eisenhower liked to think out loud. He would sometimes make what would seem to be completely outlandish and politically naïve remarks, just to test them, perhaps even believing in some of them momentarily. He was very bold, imaginative, and uninhibited in suggesting and discussing new and completely unconventional approaches to problems. Yet he probably was one of the most deliberate and careful Presidents the country has ever had where action was concerned. Because of his military experience, he was always thinking in terms of alternatives, action and counteraction, attack and counterattack. This was true of every problem he handled. I cannot, for instance, imagine him countenancing the plan for the 1961 rebel attack on Cuba without air cover before asking: “What is our position if the landings fail?” He could be very enthusiastic about half-baked ideas in the discussion stage, but when it came to making a final decision, he was the coldest, most unemotional and analytical man in the world.