Six Crises

by Richard Nixon

  The tension continued to rise all afternoon. My entire staff obviously felt it just as I did. As we rode to the television studio, conversation was at a minimum as I continued to study my notes up to the last minute.

  The presidents of the four major networks greeted me as I walked into the studio and I was immediately ushered onto the set so that the lighting and sound technicians could make their final tests. About ten minutes later, Kennedy arrived. This was the first time we had met each other since the Senate had adjourned. I had never seen him look more fit. I remarked on his deep tan and he jokingly replied that he had gotten it from riding in open cars while touring sunny California. We posed for pictures for four or five minutes and then each of us went to the rooms assigned us to wait for broadcast time.

  I had vetoed Ted Rogers’ recommendation that I wear makeup and agreed only that Ev Hart of our TV staff might apply some “beard stick” powder to help cover my perpetual “five o’clock shadow”—which the television cameras always pick up, even five minutes after I have shaved. I continued to pore over my notes until Rogers came in the room and told me, with five minutes until broadcast time, that we should move on-stage.

  Howard K. Smith of CBS News, Moderator for the evening, stuck to the classic script, said “the candidates need no introduction”—and then proceeded to introduce us anyway—and history’s first television debate between presidential candidates, and what may have been the most important and most decisive appearance either Kennedy or I was to make during the entire campaign, was on.

  Kennedy had the opening argument. He took roughly the line I had expected and he spoke as effectively as I have ever heard him. He did exactly what I would have done under similar circumstances: he attacked. Depressed and distressed areas, the unemployed, Puerto Rican and Negro victims of discrimination, the downtrodden farmers, the old people who couldn’t afford adequate medical care, the underpaid teachers—all these were the fault of the Eisenhower Administration. We wanted to stand still—he wanted to move ahead. We didn’t care about these problems—he did. For eight lagging years America had been stuck on dead-center—it is time to get her moving again. The Russians are catching up with us and will soon leave us in the dust—unless we get going.

  When he finished, eight minutes later, I realized that I had heard a very shrewd, carefully calculated appeal, with subtle emotional overtones, that would have great impact on a television audience. And particularly it would impress unsophisticated voters who—far from questioning the facts of the matter—would not even ask themselves: How does he propose to do all these things? How much is it going to cost? How is he going to keep all these promises? Whose money is he going to spend anyway—his or ours?

  Against this appeal, and in the mood thus established, it was now my turn. Looking back, I suppose the politically expedient course would have been for me to grant without argument that we had been standing still for the past eight years and then to promise, if I were elected, to do everything he had promised, and more besides. But I rejected this demagogic approach and proceeded to answer him, point-by-point. I said that, far from standing still, the nation had experienced eight years of its greatest progress in history under Eisenhower, largely because of his sound policies. I pointed out that there was no difference between us in “caring” about the problems of less fortunate people. We had the same ultimate goals—sustained growth and prosperity widely shared. Our differences—and all-important ones—arose over how best to solve all these problems. Kennedy would do it by primary emphasis on huge and costly Federal Government programs—which would have to be paid for right out of the pockets of the people he was trying to help, and in cheapened dollars to boot. I proposed to solve them with a necessary minimum of government action but with primary emphasis on and encouragement of individual initiative and private enterprise. The great gulf of difference between us, I strongly implied, was that of a bureaucratic society vs. a free society.

  The issue had been joined. Now came the questions. One of them—of no real substantive importance actually—was to plague me the rest of the campaign. It was put by Sander Vanocur of NBC. He referred to a statement President Eisenhower had made in a press conference on August 24. Someone had asked him, “What major decisions of your Administration has the Vice President participated in?” Eisenhower had replied: “If you give me a week, I might think of one.” Later that same day, Eisenhower had called me on the phone and expressed chagrin at the way this exchange had been handled by the press. He pointed out that he was simply being facetious and yet they played it straight and wrote it seriously. I could only reply to Vanocur’s question in the same vein, but I am sure that to millions of unsophisticated televiewers, this question had been most effective in raising a doubt in their minds with regard to one of my strongest campaign themes and assets—my experience as Vice President.

  With that teaser out of the way, the panel turned to more important issues—Kennedy’s and my farm programs, the probable cost of the “New Frontier,” school aid, the seriousness of the internal threat of Communist subversion, Kennedy’s prediction as to his probable success in getting Congress to pass all the new legislation he was proposing, especially in view of his failure to get any major legislation passed during the post-Convention congressional session. But because of the format of the program, there was no time for answers in depth. And because the members of the panel jumped from subject to subject with no apparent attempt to provide any continuity, the question period took on a decidedly scatter-shot tone. In our closing statements, both Kennedy and I returned to the basic positions we had taken at the outset, I to the need for sound and stable progress with an emphasis on free choice and private initiative, and Kennedy to a demand that we simply “get moving.”

  Finally, the hour came to an end. Kennedy and I shook hands. The press asked us who had won. I replied that we would learn the answer to that question on Election Day. We then left the studio and I returned to the hotel.

  As we rode back, I tried to analyze the debate objectively. I felt that Kennedy had done extremely well. He had been on the offensive throughout, just as I had expected him to be. I thought that as far as the arguments were concerned, point-by-point, I might have had a little the better of it. But also, from a great deal of experience with television, I knew that appearance may at times count more than substance, and I was anxious to make a check as soon as possible on the key question: how did each of us come through on the TV screen?

  When I got to my hotel suite, I asked Don Hughes to get Len Hall, Fred Seaton, Bob Finch, Jack Drown, Jim Shepley, and any others who were available to come by and give me an appraisal. Before they arrived, however, Rose Mary Woods, my personal secretary and also one of my most honest critics, came in with some disturbing information. Her parents had called—from their home in Sebring, Ohio—and asked if I were feeling up to par. They said that on their TV set I had looked pale and tired. I asked Rose what she thought. She said she tended to agree with their reaction, despite the fact that she thought I had had the better of the argument on substance.

  This proved to be the unanimous reaction of my campaign advisers. At the conclusion of our post-mortem, I recognized the basic mistake I had made. I had concentrated too much on substance and not enough on appearance. I should have remembered that “a picture is worth a thousand words.” I would be the first to recognize that I have many weaknesses as a political candidate, but one of my strengths is that I try to be my own severest critic. In this instance, I realized that the lesson was plain: next three times out we must not make the same mistake. If the picture was bad, it could not be blamed on the technicians. If we felt the technicians were not competent, then it was our responsibility to find better ones.

  My growing conviction about how bad I must have looked was further confirmed when my mother called from California, after the program was carried there, to ask Rose if I were “feeling all right.”

  It would be a most convenient excuse for me to blame my
poor physical appearance on the fact that I really wasn’t feeling up to par. But this simply is not the truth. I had never felt better mentally before any important appearance than I did before the first debate. My knee still bothered me a bit, but when I am keyed up, as I was on this occasion, I do not notice physical pain at all. What then was the trouble? Some of it was technical, over which I had no control. But in all honesty, I must admit in retrospect that some of it was avoidable. The TV camera is like a microscope: it shows not how one feels but what his physical condition actually is.

  Dr. Malcolm Todd, who had joined us by this time, talked to me like a Dutch uncle after the program. He asked me how much I weighed because he had noticed that my shirt—collar-size 16, standard with me since college days—fit loosely. I had to admit that I had not been on the scales since leaving the hospital over two weeks before. I stepped on the scales in the bathroom at the Pick-Congress and realized for the first time how much had been taken out of me, physically, by two weeks in a hospital bed followed immediately by two weeks of intensive campaigning. I weighed 160—ten pounds below normal and five pounds less than I could remember having weighed at any time in the last thirty years. Dr. Todd said, “You looked weak and pale and tired tonight on TV because, in fact, you are weak and pale and tired—even though you don’t feel that way at all, in your own mind. We have to lighten up the schedule, get more food into you, and get you up to par before the next debate.” His prescription, incidentally, was a pleasant one. There happens to be nothing I like better than a rich milkshake but because of trying to keep my weight in check, I had not had one for years. The doctor ordered me to have one with each meal—plus another in mid-afternoon—for the next two weeks. The prescription worked. For the second debate, I had put on five pounds.

  During the next few days, as we resumed the campaign, I tried to put the probable effect of the first debate into reasonable perspective. I concluded that it had been a setback—but not a disaster. As far as the television audience was concerned, Claude Robinson and the other pollsters recorded a clear edge for Kennedy. But at the same time, they noted that the debate had in itself had but slight effect on the way people said they were going to vote: rather than changing voters’ intentions, in other words, it intensified previous decisions and preferences.

  The press, almost without exception, called it a “draw.” Typical reactions were: the Philadelphia Inquirer—“inconclusive, won by neither.” William S. White: “It is impossible to say who won. It is not even easy to say who came out ahead on points.” Robert Albright of the Washington Post: “A dead heat.” The St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “We should not say that anybody won.” Richard Starnes in the New York World-Telegram and Sun: “Neither made a mistake or scored a point.” The Denver Post: “A draw.” But while the press was calling it a draw, I knew that they were basing their conclusions primarily on what had been said, not on how the candidates had looked. I knew, too, that how the candidates looked, to many viewers, was going to be a great deal more important than what they said.

  Radio reaction was just the opposite from that on television. All the polls gave me a clear advantage. Ralph McGill of the Atlanta Constitution, a Kennedy supporter, had run an actual test. This is what he concluded: “Kennedy looked better . . . But I had a number of persons listen on the radio . . . They unanimously thought Mr. Nixon had the better of it.” This information was of very little comfort to me, however. The TV audience ran five-to-six times bigger than the radio audience and it was concentrated in the big industrial states which would be decisive in determining the election outcome. It was, then, essential that we make a comeback, and the time and place to start was October 7 in Washington when we were to have the second debate.

  But before then there was campaigning to do. On Tuesday we went from Chicago down to Memphis, Tennessee, and then to West Memphis, Arkansas, and finished out the day in Charleston, West Virginia. Significantly, the crowds were bigger than ever. Regardless of who “won” the first debate, public interest in the election and in the candidates had been tremendously stimulated and this was to hold true for the balance of the campaign.

  For the next ten days—the interval between the first two debates—we continued to crisscross the country, and we continued to draw big and enthusiastic crowds. The list of states included New York, Vermont and New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Maine, then back to New York, Ohio and Indiana, Virginia and North Carolina, New Jersey and New York again, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and—for a second swing—Ohio. At every stop I hit the same basic themes: the accomplishments of eight Eisenhower years, the promise of the future, and the fakery of Kennedy’s pie-in-the-sky all-purpose panaceas. I hit him on immaturity, on lack of judgment, and on lack of candor with the American people.

  One of the most stimulating meetings of this whole swing was my reception at New York’s Fordham University where I addressed a student convocation. Attendance was strictly optional and yet the armory was packed and there was an overflow crowd as well. This was typical of the whole campaign: our ticket received strong support from colleges and universities throughout the nation—as the Young Democrats of Texas discovered to their considerable embarrassment when they polled the student body of the University of Texas at Austin. Straw polls among faculty groups generally favored the Democrats, but the students reversed the situation—from Tuskegee to Texas, and even Harvard. This would seem to indicate that America’s college youth is more interested in opportunity than in handouts.

  • • •

  The second television debate was coming up on Friday, October 7, in Washington, and it had quite naturally been much on my mind. I was fortunate to have a chat with Louis Seltzer of the Cleveland Press, a long-time personal friend and one of the nation’s outstanding independent editors, the evening before. I had always found Seltzer’s advice especially helpful because he never failed to lay it on the line. He told me, first of all, that he thought my speech that evening in Cleveland had been one of the best of the campaign so far. He said he liked the fighting spirit I had shown, and he urged me to continue in the same spirit right down to the wire. “Don’t pay any attention to the critics who talk about a New Nixon and an Old Nixon,” he said. “These men are not your friends anyway. The reason they are criticizing you is that they are trying to blunt your attack because they know you are most effective when you are on the attack. Tomorrow night with Kennedy on TV, take him on. Take the offensive from the first, with the gloves off.”

  We arrived back in Washington at midnight, and early Friday morning I began my intensive boning up for the second debate.

  The tension before the first round had been very great, but now it was greater. I knew that Kennedy had made a better impression first time out. While the immediate press reaction had been to call it a draw or to give a very slight edge to Kennedy, as the days had gone by it was more and more being referred to as a “decisive” Kennedy victory. I was thus increasingly in the position of having to make a decided comeback, or of being placed at an almost hopeless disadvantage for the balance of the campaign.

  I followed my usual practice of reading as widely as possible and of listening to as much advice as I could cram into my crowded schedule. But in the final analysis, I knew that what was most important was that I must be myself. I have seen so-called public relations experts ruin many a candidate by trying to make him over into an “image” of something he can never be. I went into the second debate determined to do my best to convey three basic impressions to the television audience—knowledge in depth of the subjects discussed, sincerity, and confidence. If I succeeded in this, I felt my “image” would take care of itself.

  I arrived at the NBC studios in Washington shortly after six and, following the usual preliminaries, Kennedy and I took our places on the set. A few minutes later, the red light over the camera flashed on and the second great debate was under way. This time, with no opening or closing statements, we went right to the questions put alternately to each of us by the
four-man press, radio and TV panel. It was a hard-hitting, sharp contest from beginning to end. When it was over, I knew I had done better than in the first debate as far as substance was concerned—but the verdict was not yet in on the most important question of all: What kind of a picture had come through on the home screens?

  I did not have long to wait for the answer. Calls and wires were pouring in when I reached my home thirty minutes later. The consensus was—as different from the first debate as night from day. By the next morning, the messages I had received from my friends and supporters were fully corroborated by more objective critics. A New York Times spot-survey in 23 cities showed Nixon over Kennedy, 82 to 65. A poll of the 26 newsmen who had been at the TV studio showed Nixon over Kennedy, 11 to 4, with 11 rating the match even. Lucey and Steele of Scripps-Howard said: “Nixon is back in the ballgame with a sharply improved national impact.” Joe Alsop: “The Nixon candidacy got a real lift.” The New York Herald Tribune editorial: “The Vice President clearly won the second round.” The Washington Star: “The Vice President this time had a clear-cut edge.” James Reston in the New York Times: “Nixon clearly made a comeback, came out ahead.” And Roscoe Drummond had this to say: “Nixon is now back on even terms. An indispensable lift to his campaign.”

  What, then, were the major reasons for the difference in impact between the two debates?

  First, there was a simple but important physical factor—the milkshake prescription had done its work. I was back up to my normal weight and collar-size. Second, this time we gave the technical factors the attention they deserved but had not received first time out. The lighting was better. The set was less bleak. I had yielded to Carroll Newton’s and Ted Rogers’ advice that I use makeup to cover my five o’clock shadow, instead of the powder which had made me appear pale during the first debate.

  But most important, this time I had the advantage on substance. The first debate had been fought pretty much on grounds favorable to Kennedy—domestic issues where he was consistently on the attack and I had to defend. In this debate, the questioners moved into the field of foreign policy where I was particularly strong and he had some glaring weaknesses. I was able to hit him hard on his off-the-cuff and, I thought, very foolish suggestion that Eisenhower should have “apologized” to Khrushchev for the U-2 flights and that if he had done so, the Paris Conference would have taken place on schedule. I said that “when the President of the United States is doing something that’s right, something that is for the purpose of defending the security of this country against surprise attack, he can never express regrets or apologize to anybody, including Mr. Khrushchev.”