Six Crises

by Richard Nixon

  After the welcoming ceremonies, Mrs. Nixon and I sat with the President in the back seat of his limousine and Tricia and Julie sat on the jump seats for a ride to the White House and a visit with Mrs. Eisenhower.

  The ordeal of the trip was over, the trip I did not want to take because I thought it would be dull.

  • • •

  The story of the crisis of Caracas would not be complete without describing at least briefly the impact those events had on the nation, as well as on me personally.

  This is not the place to discuss in detail the effect my trip had on U. S. policy toward Latin America. But while no one in his right mind would have “planned it that way,” the net effect of the violent episodes in Lima and Caracas was probably more beneficial than harmful, as far as long-range U. S. policy was concerned. The people and government of the United States have always had a tendency to take Latin America for granted. Cabot Lodge has often said that if it were not for the strong support we have had from the Latin American countries on key votes in the United Nations, the United States might not be able to stay in the United Nations. Yet, since we could count on the support of Latin American countries, we have tended to direct the emphasis in our exchange, information, and foreign aid programs to so-called “neutral” countries in other parts of the world, whose support we could not count on and whom we were trying to woo.

  Caracas was a much-needed shock treatment which jolted us out of dangerous complacency. For years special missions have returned from Latin America with recommendations that the United States pay more attention to our neighbors to the South. These reports have been given wide publicity in the press—for one day—and then filed away in the archives of the State Department. The Caracas crisis was so sharp and so dramatic that it could not be brushed away so easily. After Caracas, when those charged with responsibility for our Latin American policy in the State Department tried to get proper treatment for their proposals, they could and usually did point to what happened in Caracas and Lima as a warning that we could no longer get by with fancy words and little action in dealing with the problems of our neighbors to the South.

  The recommendations I made on this subject when I returned to Washington were:

  (1.) American government personnel abroad must do a more effective job of reaching the opinion-makers of Latin America. It is no longer enough simply to know and talk to top government officials and the elite among the financial and business communities. Students, teachers, newspaper editors, reporters, labor leaders—these are the people who are exerting massive influence in the Latin American countries, and we must find a way to get our story across to them more adequately. Person-to-person contact is the most effective way to accomplish this. USIA broadcasts and giving publicity to public statements by U.S. officials, are generally ineffective.

  (2.) We must develop an economic program for Latin America which is distinctively its own. Latin Americans do not like to be classed like the undeveloped countries of Asia and Africa. They believe they are in a special position and are therefore entitled to special consideration, because of their geographical proximity to the United States, and their long record of friendship for this nation. There must be a new program for economic progress for the hemisphere.

  (3.) We should not appear to give dictators, of either the right or the left, the same moral approval that we gave to leaders who were trying to build free and democratic institutions. But we must not go overboard the other way. Dictators leave a legacy of revolution. When they are deposed, a vacuum is created. If this vacuum is not filled by strong government which can protect the newly-acquired freedoms of the people, another dictator will inevitably step in and take over.

  (4.) We cannot expect that U.S.-style, democratic institutions will work without modifications in countries where the population has had no tradition or experience in self-government and is completely unprepared for such government in the form we have developed it in this country.

  (5.) Economic progress is vitally important to Latin America. But economic progress alone will not stop Communist infiltration and takeover. Support of adequate military and security forces must continue so that free governments will have the strength to maintain stability and deal with subversive groups which may resort to force to overthrow the government.

  (6.) The people of Latin America want to be on the right side, but they also want to be on the winning side. They respect courage, and they have nothing but contempt for policies which they consider too cautious or cowardly.

  (7.) Above all, there must be a better recognition in the United States at all levels that it isn’t how much aid we provide, but how we provide it that counts. The Latin Americans are a very proud people. We must show proper respect for their traditions, customs and culture.

  Not all of these recommendations were implemented, and some of them found very little support in State Department circles. But I am confident they had a long-range effect which was beneficial.

  • • •

  But this is a story of crisis, primarily as it affects an individual, rather than government policy.

  When a public figure becomes involved in a crisis of some magnitude, those around him rally to his support. If it is political, the diverse elements of his own political party coalesce behind him. When the crisis is of national or international significance, the people of the nation tend to rally behind him. This has been true throughout history of our wartime Presidents. It was demonstrated in the public support of President Truman when he unilaterally committed the United States to the police action in Korea, when President Eisenhower acknowledged responsibility for the U-2 reconnaissance planes over the Soviet Union, and even when President Kennedy assumed responsibility for the abortive invasion of Cuba, admittedly one of the worst U. S. fiascoes in recent history. It is the crisis, itself, more than the merits of the engagement which rallies people to a leader. Moreover when the leader handles the crisis with success, the public support he receives is even greater.

  But the public official who believes this is enduring or “undying” support, will find himself embarrassingly mistaken. Because of the very nature of crisis, the reaction to it is primarily emotional. And emotions of loyalty and support engendered by crisis can cool off as fast as they can heat up, particularly where a political leader is concerned. I can think of no better illustration of this phenomenon than what happened to me in the period following my return from South America.

  Thousands of congratulatory messages poured into my office. They came from a diverse cross section of the United States, from diplomats, from labor leaders, from university presidents, and from people in every walk of life, Democrats and Republicans alike. The newspaper columnists described me as a “hero” who had shown that “Mr. Nixon can dish it out . . . and he can take it too . . . a quality much admired in these United States.” For the first two or three weeks after I returned, Mrs. Nixon and I found ourselves applauded by spectators in hotel lobbies, railroad stations, and other public places where we happened to be seen.

  Walter Annenberg, publisher of the Philadelphia Inquirer, remarked at a dinner he and his wife, Lee, were giving in our honor in Philadelphia one evening, “Dick, you now have the support of many Democrats, as well as Republicans, and I only hope you can find a way to keep it.”

  At this time, in June 1958, just one month after my return from South America, the Gallup Poll showed me leading Adlai Stevenson for the first time, and running neck-and-neck against John F. Kennedy. It was the high point of my political popularity up to that time.

  This political picture was not lost upon the Democrats. The counterattack began late that summer. The Democratic National Chairman depicted what had happened in South America as a “Republican plot” to build me up politically. Then newspaper columnists, sitting at their desks in Washington, wrote their “interpretations” of what the South American trip meant. One wrote that the riots were directed against me as an individual, and that the attempts to stir up trouble ag
ainst the United States could not be blamed on the Communists.4 Another said that I had planned the whole thing for publicity purposes, and implied that I had gone to Caracas in order to have rocks thrown at me. Another said it was undignified and unnecessarily dangerous for me to meet with students, labor leaders, and the like, on my trips abroad. These attacks, of course, had their effect in blurring the image the public had of my Caracas experience immediately after my return from South America.

  But it was my participation in another crisis, this one not national but partisan in character, which was to virtually erase the public memory of my success in Caracas, and put in its place an image of failure with which my name was associated.

  The crisis was the 1958 off-year elections. Personally, I had to decide whether or not to throw my efforts and my prestige into the campaign for the election of Republican candidates for Congress, the Senate, and twenty-one contested governorships. Whichever way I decided, it was generally conceded among political leaders and observers that the Republicans would lose; the only question was, “by how much?” Traditionally, the party in the White House loses seats in the House and Senate in the off-year elections. Beyond that, we were having some special troubles: President Eisenhower in his landslide victory of 1956 had not carried the Congress for the Republican Party; the party was torn from within over the President’s second-term budget; the economic recession was hurting the voters’ pocketbooks; the launching of the first Sputnik had cast doubts upon the Administration’s defense and science programs; and the Adams-Goldfine investigation had shaken the party to its roots.

  Scores of personal and political friends urged me to avoid the campaign, or, at most, to participate only in a limited way. Tom Dewey, for one, put the case against my campaigning most succinctly. Reminding me that my efforts in 1954 had not won the House or Senate for the party, he pointed out I had not been given credit for seats we did win, but was blamed for the ones we lost. “You have done enough for Republican candidates,” he asserted. “Your conduct in South America finally has taken the blinders from the eyes of many Democrats and now you have wide support throughout the country. You are a national asset that should not be wasted. You are not a candidate this year. It will do the Republican Party no particular good for you to get into this campaign and could do you great harm. You owe it to yourself and the long-term interests of the party to keep and build on the support you now have among Democrats as well as Republicans.”

  His eyes, of course, were upon 1960. But those who were up for election and were facing defeat had their eyes on 1958 as well. As the individual campaigns shaped up, scores of candidates and local party leaders told me bluntly: “If you don’t come in, Dick, it won’t be just a defeat, it will be a disaster for the party.” Some candidates who were personal friends of long standing called upon our friendship in asking my support.

  President Eisenhower desperately wanted the Republican Party to win in the elections of 1958. He told me that summer, “I would give a year of my salary if we could win either the House or the Senate.” But by personal and political inclination, he did not want to become enmeshed in political skirmishes which could destroy his ability to work constructively with any Congress, regardless of its political complexion. While almost all cabinets provide “big names” for political campaigning, the Eisenhower Cabinet was composed of men who were excellent administrators, but few of whom had any great interest or adeptness in the field of politics. If anyone was to carry the major load for political cross-country campaigning, I was the one who had to do it.

  So weighing the alternatives and the pressures, I decided to do what I had to do. My responsibility was to the party. I could not stand aside and see fellow Republicans go down to disastrous defeat. I had to risk my political prestige to avoid a disaster, if possible, knowing full well, as in 1954, we would probably lose, and I would be the big-name target for the defeat.

  I was weary after the stress of the South American trip and the long Congressional session, and I tried to limit my political appearances to the key states. That was impossible, of course. I ended up stumping more than 25,000 miles in twenty-five states. It was the most difficult campaign I’ve ever been through, harder even than my own presidential campaign. Because in 1958 there was a general feeling of discouragement which pervaded the Republican Party, and I, myself, could not completely fight off a feeling of futility in some of the states and districts I visited.

  On election night I listened to the returns in my home in Washington, and almost all my fears came to pass. Internecine warfare among Republicans swept the Democrats to victory in my home state of California, in Indiana, and in several other states. The right-to-work issue sent Senator John Bricker, of Ohio, who had been considered unbeatable, down to defeat. Of the twenty-one contests for Governor, we won only eight. We lost a net of twelve seats in the Senate, and forty-eight seats in the House of Representatives. It was the worst defeat in history ever suffered by a party having control of the White House. The only bright spots were Nelson Rockefeller’s landslide victory in New York, the election of Mark Hatfield as Governor of Oregon and Chris del Sesto as Governor of Rhode Island, and the decisive re-election of Senator Barry Goldwater in Arizona.

  One television commentator that night summed up the election results with this statement: “The big winner in this election is Nelson Rockefeller. The big loser—Richard Nixon.” A few days later, on November 9, Governor-elect Rockefeller flew south for a vacation on his estate in Venezuela. When he landed at Maiquetia Airport in Caracas where I had been just six months before, reporters asked him, “What about Nixon?” He replied, according to press reports, “No tengo nada que ver con Nixon,” which means, “I have nothing to do with Nixon.”

  Just six months before, following the San Marcos University episode in Lima, I had received a cable from Nelson Rockefeller which read, “Your courage and determination have inspired democratic forces throughout the hemisphere. We all feel a great sense of pride in your action. Congratulations. Nelson.”

  SECTION FIVE

  Khrushchev

  Communism creates and uses crisis as a weapon. Khrushchev, Communist man at his most dangerous best, has developed this technique to a highly sophisticated science. Plans designed to meet his moves may prove useless because of the unpredictability of his conduct. But intensive planning is absolutely essential, to avoid being knocked off balance by what he does.

  “IN preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”

  There could not have been a more dramatic demonstration of the truth of this maxim—one of President Eisenhower’s favorites—than my meeting with Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow in July 1959.

  I had never been better prepared for a meeting in which I was to participate. During my previous thirteen years in government I had had the opportunity to acquire more than a passing knowledge of Communist strategy and tactics.

  At home, as a member of the House Committee on Un-American Activities I had met the Communist conspiracy face to face in the Alger Hiss case.

  Abroad, I had met and talked at length with Communist leaders in Italy, England, Greece, and other countries, and in South America I had seen Communism in action in all its violence and viciousness.

  While I could not qualify as a so-called “expert” on Communism in the popular sense of that term, I had studied the works of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin, the Old Testament prophets of modern-day Communism, as well as the statements of Khrushchev and the contemporary observers of Communist policies.

  For months before the trip I spent every spare moment studying reports and recommendations from the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the White House staff.

  I talked for hours with every person I could find in Washington who had met and knew Khrushchev. I was briefed on more than a hundred different issues which might arise in my conversations with him.

  I gathered up and tried to absorb
every bit of personal information about him which was available.

  I even had the benefit of a preview of what I might expect from Khrushchev when Mikoyan and Kozlov, who occupy the next to the top rung on the ladder of the Soviet hierarchy, visited Washington in the period just before I left for Moscow. They threw some pretty fair fast balls and a few curves in the long conversations I had with each of them. But meeting Khrushchev, after talking with them, was like going from minor to major league pitching. He throws a bewildering assortment of stuff—blinding speed, a wicked curve, plus knucklers, spitters, sliders, fork balls—all delivered with a deceptive change of pace.

  I had made hundreds of protocol calls on high government officials in nations around the world, but never before had a head of government met me with a tirade of four-letter words which made his interpreter blush as he translated them into English.

  Khrushchev had insulted his visitors before, but this time he did it on TV. And not just ordinary TV but on a new, revolutionary type of color-television tape being shown for the first time in the Soviet Union.

  He had threatened his adversaries with missiles, but never before while standing in front of a model American kitchen.

  It was not unusual for him to have serious discussions at lunch, but it was unprecedented for the wives of the participants to be present as silent but tremendously interested observers through a five-and-a-half-hour debate covering the whole range of American-Soviet relations.

  He sometimes takes his visitors for boat rides on the Moscow River, but this was the first time he arranged for an added attraction—“impromptu political rallies” of hundreds of happy bathers demonstrating their affection for him and for the Communist system.

  It is obvious that no plans could possibly have been devised to cope with such unpredictable conduct. Yet, without the months of planning, I might have been completely dismayed and routed by his unexpected assaults.