Six Crises

by Richard Nixon

  More recently, in Cuba he says that our policy of quarantining Castro is too little and too late. He advocates a policy which was universally interpreted as intervention in the affairs of Cuba. Again he was wrong, and the President was right.

  On all of these points, I recognize that Mr. Kennedy has said he has changed his mind. He now supports the President on Quemoy and Matsu. He has agreed that the President conducted himself properly at the Paris Conference. As far as Cuba is concerned, he didn’t really mean what he said.

  I know from experience that when a President speaks, when a President makes a decision, it is for keeps. He doesn’t get a second chance. He can’t call a bullet back after he shoots from the hip. It goes to the target. In these critical times we cannot afford to have as President of the United States a man who does not think first before he speaks or acts.

  • • •

  I could feel the tide running our way. I have often been asked about this by newsmen—how does a candidate “feel” the trend of a campaign? It is hard to describe this emotion, except to say that it is not simply the size of the crowd or the applause that greets a speech but rather the spirit of the mass of people which, some way or other, conveys itself to the candidate.

  When 20,000 people stood in a driving rain to hear me speak at midday in downtown Dayton, I knew that at least in Ohio the reports of our early demise were somewhat exaggerated.

  When I reached Toledo, I made what I consider to be one of the most significant speeches of the campaign. I had long felt that we should resume our underground atomic testing program—the uncontrolled, uninspected moratorium was at this time two years old—but my views had not prevailed within the Administration. Consequently, I hit the issue head on and announced that if elected I would ask President Eisenhower to send Cabot Lodge at once to Geneva to prod the stalled test-ban negotiations—and, agreement or not, I would order the resumption of underground testing no later than February 1, 1961.6

  Our train moved triumphantly through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois during the week. Every stop we made, with each crowd far exceeding expectations, raised our hopes higher. The train trip had been so successful that we were sorry when it came to an end at Carbondale, Illinois, where we transferred again to an airplane for more prop-stopping.

  Saturday, October 29, took us back to Chicago where we motorcaded through heavily Republican suburban territory in order to stimulate the big turnout we needed on Election Day. I finished the day in the Chicago area with a statewide telecast, after which I held a “background briefing” for the press corps traveling with us. They bombarded me with questions about the “Kennedy landslide.” I tried to give an honest appraisal of my strength in each of the major states and said I felt that those who were writing in terms of a decisive Kennedy victory were being taken in by a political gimmick. I released the figures on some of Claude Robinson’s confidential polls in California, Ohio, and other key states. All those who were present accurately reported that, far from being downhearted and pessimistic, I thought our campaign was going well and was confident about the outcome. But from the reports that Herb Klein gave me later, I realized that most of them—perhaps understandably—thought I was just whistling in the dark and therefore continued to write what was their actual belief—that it was going to be Kennedy, and probably by a big margin.

  There was one incident during our week of whistle-stopping which, in retrospect, might have been avoided or at least better handled. Back on October 19—at the time of the Legion speeches in Miami when the Cuba issue fired up—the Reverend Martin Luther King, nationally respected leader and symbol of the anti-segregation forces, had been arrested, along with some fifty others, at an Atlanta restaurant sit-in. The rest were quickly released on bail but King was held and, on October 26, was given a “quick” four-month sentence based on a former charge of driving without a valid license. Robert Kennedy, realizing the tremendous political potential of King’s misfortune, wasted no time in calling the judge in the case.

  Herb Klein, in response to inquiries from the press, asked me what comment I had on Robert Kennedy’s action. I told him: “I think Dr. King is getting a bum rap. But despite my strong feelings in this respect, it would be completely improper for me or any other lawyer to call the judge. And Robert Kennedy should have known better than to do so.”7 Under the circumstances, Klein answered the press query by saying that I had “no comment” on the matter.

  This incident was widely interpreted by Negro leaders both North and South as indicating that I did not care about justice in the King case. As a matter of fact, immediately after Klein brought the case to my attention, I took up the problem with Attorney General Bill Rogers, who by that time had joined our campaign train, and asked if this were not a case in which King’s constitutional rights had been infringed—thus paving the way for Federal action. Rogers, in turn, strongly recommended that a statement be made by Hagerty from the White House to the effect that the Justice Department had been instructed to look into this question. Had this recommendation been adopted, the whole incident might have resulted in a plus rather than a minus as far as I was concerned. But Rogers was unable to get approval from the White House for such a statement.

  The ironic part of the whole incident is that well-informed Washington observers knew that I had been one of the most consistent and effective proponents of civil rights legislation in the Administration. I had made several key rulings in the Senate which were essential in getting such legislation to the floor for debate. As Chairman of the President’s Committee on Government Contracts, I had helped develop an effective program, among companies with government contracts, which resulted in providing job and promotion opportunities for thousands of Negroes in Northern and Southern states alike. As far as Martin Luther King himself was concerned, I had met him in Ghana and respected him for his advocacy of non-violence in working for equal rights for his people. But this one unfortunate incident in the heat of a campaign served to dissipate much of the support I had among Negro voters because of my record.

  Despite this episode, as I flew home to Washington from Illinois late Saturday night, I looked back on the past week with great satisfaction and with my morale and confidence as high as they had been since the start of the campaign. I was convinced that our campaign had received the lift it needed, and at just the right time. The Kennedy victory blitz which had bowled over so many press, radio, and television commentators, and even some of my own people, had been blunted. The Kennedy campaign had peaked in New York two and a half weeks before Election Day, roughly at the time of the fourth debate. Ours was now moving forward toward the high point which we hoped to reach on Election Day. And the big crowds that had just greeted our whistle-stopping were strong evidence that the tide was running our way. Some of the veteran Washington correspondents on our train, many of whom had gone out on a limb predicting a decisive Kennedy victory just a few days before, were beginning to have second thoughts.

  As we started off on our last full week of campaigning, I returned to one of my recurrent themes—the fiscal irresponsibility of Kennedy’s promises.

  If he says he can keep his promises in the Democratic platform—which would add 15 billion a year to the budget—promising everything to everybody, with the people paying the bill—if he says he’s going to do this and balance the budget and not raise taxes, then he is showing such an ignorance of simple economics that he disqualifies himself to be President.

  In Pennsylvania and upstate New York, I continued to carry the attack to Kennedy. I said we could not afford “to use the White House as a training school for a man who wants to learn how to be President, at the expense of the United States of America” and I hit out at the Kennedy formula designed to “produce prosperity with a printing press.”

  During this week, we had not only stepped up the number of rally appearances, but at Tom Dewey’s suggestion, we had added a nationwide telecast each evening at seven in which, for fifteen minutes, I disc
ussed a major issue of the campaign in a “fireside chat” format.

  Wednesday, November 2, was our big day in New York, with President Eisenhower, Cabot Lodge, and myself appearing together in huge rallies in the heart of the city and in the suburbs. The highlight was our meeting which overflowed the New York Coliseum in Columbus Circle, ending with the President and me sharing a half-hour of national television time.

  It was a long day but a highly gratifying one because of the tremendous outpouring of people—nearly three million all told. I did not get back to the hotel until after ten but, tired as I was, I asked Don Hughes to gather our key staff members for a strategy conference. It was after eleven before we finally sat down in the drawing room of my Waldorf suite. The time had come to discuss a subject which I had deliberately refused to bring up in a staff meeting until now, despite considerable pressure to do so.

  What, if anything, should I say on the religious issue during these last few days of the campaign?

  I had insisted from the day of my nomination that religion would be an issue in the campaign only to the extent that the candidates themselves talked about it and thus made it one. Consequently, it had been my policy and the policy followed at my explicit direction by everyone directly or indirectly connected with my campaign not to initiate or even engage in any discussion of the religious issue. When the subject was raised by others, as it had been in the Peale incident, I had categorically disassociated myself from any individuals, however strongly they might be supporting me, who based their support on religious grounds.

  I had taken this position because I did not believe religion had any legitimate bearing on Kennedy’s qualifications for the presidency. I had even gone so far as to exercise a veto over a proposed endorsement that would certainly have given my candidacy a boost. Billy Graham, with whom I had enjoyed a long and close friendship, contacted my campaign staff early in the fall and said that he had been asked to write an article on the election for Life magazine. He had prepared an article in which he endorsed me unqualifiedly and enthusiastically, largely on grounds of my experience in world affairs and foreign policy. He had mentioned the religious issue in the article only in order to deny explicitly that it either was or ought to be an issue at all. But he did not want to give Life the go-ahead on publication unless I gave my approval. I was naturally pleased to have Graham’s support. My staff felt that a Billy Graham public statement might be very helpful in the closing days of the campaign. But I ended up vetoing the proposal because of my fear that, even though he was basing his support on other than religious grounds, our opponents would seize on his endorsement as evidence of religious bigotry, his own forthright denial notwithstanding.

  I understood that Kennedy was in a very different position. He was a Catholic and he had not only a right but a responsibility to answer affirmatively any attacks that were made on him because of his religion. But what concerned my staff at this point was not what Kennedy himself had been saying (ironically, he had made a quip about “racism in reverse” in commenting on Cabot Lodge’s alleged promise to appoint a Negro Cabinet member)—it was what Johnson, Stevenson, Robert Kennedy, Walter Reuther, and other key leaders in the Kennedy campaign were saying and doing on the religious issue. In a speech before the Houston, Texas, Ministerial Association early in the campaign—on September 12, just one day after my own TV statement on “Meet the Press”—Kennedy had made an eloquent and very proper appeal that he not be denied the presidency on the sole basis of his religion. Touching on all facets of the question, he had pointed out that he had fought in the South Pacific, that his brother had died in Europe in World War II, and that no one had then suggested they might have a divided loyalty in serving their country.

  This very effective speech was recorded on video tape, and it was being played and replayed across the country—but, according to our reports, far more often in Northern cities, where it might be expected to appeal to Catholic voters, than in the South and Midwest, where one would expect the heaviest anti-Catholic or simply non-Catholic population. Furthermore, my staff showed me a file of “scare” headlines and news stories from the nation’s press. Some of them were:

  DEMOCRATS HIT BACK ON RELIGION (New York Times). JACK’S BROTHER SAYS RELIGION TOP ISSUE (Columbia, S.C., State). RELIGIOUS ISSUE STRESSED AT KENNEDY CONFERENCE (Nashville Banner). JOHNSON BLASTS ‘HATERS’ ATTACKS ON CATHOLICS (Washington Post). BOB KENNEDY SCORES STRESS ON RELIGION (Cleveland Plain Dealer). CREED ISSUE MUST BE MET, BOB KENNEDY SAYS HERE (Cincinnati Enquirer). BOB KENNEDY SAYS CATHOLIC ISSUE WANES (New York Herald Tribune). MRS. FDR HITS RELIGIOUS BIAS IN TALK TO NEGROES (Baltimore Sun). UAW PAMPHLET LIKENS KENNEDY FOES TO BIGOTS (Washington Star).

  And it was not just headlines. Stevenson, for example, was quoted as “wondering out loud” why nobody was making an issue of Nixon’s Quaker faith, since “many Quakers are pacifists.” Governor Luther Hodges of North Carolina, speaking at Charlottesville, Virginia, warned: “We had to choose between a Catholic and a Quaker in 1928. We elected a Quaker and lived to regret it. And if you vote for a Quaker this time, you will live to regret it horribly.” Lyndon Johnson—as well as the members of Kennedy’s family—almost always referred in their speeches to the fact that the Senator’s brother had died in action in World War II without anyone questioning his loyalty. Senator Jackson, the Democratic National Chairman, accused Nixon of “conniving” with anti-Catholics.

  Congressman Charles Diggs told his Detroit constituents that “Kennedy has felt the sting of hate; he is feeling it today as the propaganda masters of the Republican Party keep up a continuous, well-financed attack against his religion.” Congressman Adam Clayton Powell was saying that “the Klan is riding again and . . . all bigots will vote for Nixon and all right-thinking Christians and Jews will vote for Kennedy rather than be found in the ranks of the Klan-minded.”

  AFL-CIO’s COPE-the Committee on Political Education-distributed nation-wide an unadulterated hate-pamphlet which said the issue in the campaign was not Kennedy vs. Nixon but “liberty vs. bigotry.” The Kennedy-Johnson Labor Committee put out its own leaflet—equating a vote for Nixon with a vote for the Ku-Klux Klan.

  So it went. At every possible juncture and on every possible occasion, Kennedy’s key associates were pushing the religious issue, seeing to it that it stayed squarely in the center of the campaign, and even accusing me of deliberate religious bigotry. They were, in short, contributing all they could to make religion an issue while piously insisting that to do so was evidence of bigotry. And they were using it where it would do them the most good. It was, for Kennedy, a “heads I win, tails you lose” proposition.

  The Catholics on my own staff had taken to kidding me that there were probably more Catholics on my payroll than there were in Jack Kennedy’s office, right across the hall from us. My aide, Don Hughes, my personal secretary, Rose Mary Woods, my receptionist, Betty McVey, three of my top secretaries, Rita and Jane Dannenhauer and Mary Fenton, and my research assistant, Agnes Waldron—all were Catholics. During my fourteen years in Washington, I had gained the friendship, and I believe the respect, of top members of the Catholic hierarchy in the United States. I had spoken and written publicly on many occasions in commendation of the effective work Catholics have done and are doing, everywhere in the world, to combat the spread of Communism.

  It was the Catholics on my own staff and among top officials of the Administration who were now most outraged at the tactics used by some of Kennedy’s supporters, and most insistent that I answer their attacks in at least one major television speech before the campaign was over. Secretary of Labor Jim Mitchell, Chairman Bill Miller of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, and Peter Flanigan, executive director of the Volunteers for Nixon-Lodge, all urged me to make such a speech denouncing what they called “reverse bigotry.” As they well pointed out, I was getting it from both ends: Republican Catholics were being urged to vote for Kennedy because he was of their religion; and Republican Protestants wer
e being urged to vote for him to prove that they were not biased against Catholics!

  Our meeting at the Waldorf went on into the early hours of Thursday morning. Arthur Flemming, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare and a leading lay member of the Protestant Council of Churches, had prepared a draft of a speech on the subject. It was moderate in tone and reasonable in approach, calling on Protestants and Catholics alike to cast their votes on the basis of the real issues and not to be influenced in any way by the religion of the candidates—which had been, of course, my own consistent position.

  Everyone in the room that night thought I should make such a speech. In the end, I voted “no”—and since I was the candidate, this was of course a “majority” vote. Kennedy and his supporters were saying “don’t vote against Kennedy just because he is a Catholic” and I simply could not see myself saying “don’t vote for him just because of this fact either.” This might be as reasonable a position as his, but I felt it would open me to charges of bigotry and of deliberately inflaming the issue. Also, from a personal point of view, I could not dismiss from my mind the persistent thought that, in fact, Kennedy was a member of a minority religion to which the presidency had been denied throughout the history of our nation and that perhaps I, as a Protestant who had never felt the slings of discrimination, could not understand his feelings—that, in short, he had every right to speak out against even possible and potential bigotry. I felt a responsibility to keep the lid on the boiling cauldron of embittered anti-Catholicism. I still believed that this would probably be one of history’s closest elections, and I reasoned that if I made a speech late in the campaign on the religious issue and then won the election, it would inevitably be charged that my victory was the result of my having deliberately injected the issue into the waning days of the campaign. The cause of religious tolerance, which had advanced slowly and painfully for so many years, would be substantially set back.