Six Crises

by Richard Nixon

  But still I could not be sure that I had done enough. I thought we were going to win—but if there had been any other thing I could still do or say I would have put it on the schedule. I thought of all the people I had not had time to call, of interviews I had not been able to grant, of meetings I had not been able to attend—simply because there was no time left in a schedule already overloaded with commitments.

  There was, I realized, nothing more I could do. It was in fact now past midnight and Election Day 1960 had begun. I was wrong, however, about the campaign being over: one of the biggest and most inspiring rallies of all was still to come. In our previous visits to California, we had never been able to fit in a trip to the San Bernardino-Ontario-Riverside area, one whose population had doubled since I campaigned the state in the Senate election of 1950. Our supporters there urged us to land at the Ontario Airport instead of the Los Angeles International, and so we had arranged it.

  When our plane finally touched down, it was nearly two in the morning, Pacific Coast Time. More than 15,000 cheering people were there to welcome us home to California. The night air was cold and in my brief talk I said I didn’t much mind catching cold myself—but I wanted to be sure everyone else was well enough to vote before the day was out.

  It was good to be home again after a long journey. Shortly after two we left the platform and made our way slowly to the cars, shaking hands and signing autographs as we went. It was past five in Washington by then, and Tricia and Julie were still sleepy despite their nap on the plane; but they, like their mother, proved themselves good campaigners and signed autographs for scores of teenagers wearing Nixonette costumes.

  The ride to the Ambassador was enlivened by college students in sports cars decorated with Nixon-Lodge streamers and bumper strips, who took turns “buzzing” our car as we moved into the city. It was almost four o’clock when we finally reached the hotel—and for the first time in forty-eight hours, I went to bed.

  Two hours later, we were up again. First order of business was to go out to our voting precinct in Whittier so that pictures of us casting our ballots could appear in the afternoon papers, both East and West. Even this bit of publicity might swing a critical vote! We voted in precinct 33, located in a house belonging to Roger and Mary McNey. Mrs. McNey happened to be a Nixon supporter, and she had prepared coffee for us and the members of our party. I met her children, and even they had voted for Nixon—in a mock election at school. As we were about to leave and Pat and I thanked her for the coffee, she said to us, “This is one of the most exciting days of my life.” I could reply with utter sincerity: “It is for us, too!”

  Finally, there was nothing more we could do. The rest of the day belonged to us—until the returns began to come in.

  Pat and I knew from experience what a long day this would be. In 1946, 1950, 1952, and 1956 we had watched the hours creep by until the polls closed and the returns started to come in. We knew the best thing to do was, if possible, to get our minds off the election during this period. Pat decided to take the girls to get their hair done for the election night festivities. I suggested that we meet again at the hotel that evening but that we hold off listening to returns until six o’clock Pacific Coast Time, when they would begin to mean something. I knew the suspense would be very difficult on the girls, and we both felt we should compress the evening as much as possible.

  When we left the polling place in Whittier, Pat drove back to Los Angeles. With the help of Don Hughes, Jack Sherwood, and John DiBetta of the Los Angeles Police Department, who had always driven me so expertly on my official visits to the Los Angeles area, I was able for the first time in many months to have a few hours to myself—away from the surveillance of the press. I explained my reasoning to Don: “If we win tonight, we will not be able to escape the press or the Secret Service for four years. If we lose—they won’t care what happens to us.” The four of us got into a convertible, slipped down a side street, and parked in an empty garage while the car with the wire service reporters assigned to follow us went by. Then we headed down the Coast Highway toward San Diego.

  Don Hughes had never seen this beautiful drive before and I enjoyed showing off my native state to him. Nobody knew who we were and the only time we were recognized was when we stopped at a service station in Oceanside for gas. We had not expected to drive for longer than an hour or so and then return to the hotel. But as we got closer to San Diego, I learned that Don had never been to Tijuana. I had not been in this border city myself for twenty-five years and so we decided to drive on past San Diego and across the border into Mexico.

  We arrived in Tijuana at one o’clock. John DiBetta had asked the Border Patrol for the name of a good restaurant where we could get some authentic Mexican food. On the trooper’s recommendation we ended up at the Old Heidelberg—which turned out to be owned by a German who was reputed to serve the best Mexican food in Tijuana. On our arrival in town, I asked Don to call headquarters at the Ambassador so that they could let the press know where we were. He got Bob Finch on the line. Don recounted to us with great glee that when he told Bob—who thought he had seen and heard everything in this campaign already—he realized that this incident topped them all: a presidential candidate having lunch in a foreign country on Election Day!

  As we roamed the streets of the city, the word finally began to get around as to who we were. The mayor of Tijuana, Tia Xicotencatl, came into the restaurant during lunch and joined us. This was to be my last “good will visit” to a foreign country as Vice President. The mayor was a gracious host. We discussed some of his problems in governing so unique a city, because of its truly “international” status.

  With lunch over and our good-bys said, we took off at two for the return trip to Los Angeles. This time, so that Don and Jack Sherwood could see one of California’s most famous landmarks, we turned inland at San Juan Capistrano and stopped at the Mission. There were only half-a-dozen other visitors on the grounds as I led a conducted tour among the points of interest. As we walked by the windows of the grade school on the Mission grounds, the Sisters who were teaching recognized me and one, I recall, held up her fingers in the V-for-victory sign. Before we left, I took Don into the exquisite little chapel which had been completely restored and is now used again for services. For a few minutes we sat in the empty pews for an interlude of complete escape from the battles we had long fought together, and those still to come.

  We would have liked to stay longer but it was now past three-thirty, the polls in the East would be closing in thirty minutes, and we were still an hour-and-a-half away from the Ambassador Hotel suite where I was scheduled to listen to the returns. I had been doing the driving from San Diego, but now John DiBetta took over for the last lap into the city.

  As we drove from Capistrano to Los Angeles, we deliberately did not turn on the car radio because I had learned from experience that fragmentary first returns have virtually no meaning at all and that it is best to wait until something more definitive is available. But by this time none of us could keep from thinking of how the voting might be going. I expected the first returns to run against us since they would be primarily from the northeastern states in which Kennedy had such great strength. But I knew that the margins by which he carried states like Massachusetts and Connecticut would be some indication as to whether we would be able to recoup these losses when the returns from our own areas of strength—the Midwest and the Far West—began to come in. The South was an enigma. Reports had been mixed as to the effectiveness of Johnson’s “corn pone special” but I had learned never to underestimate Johnson’s political shrewdness. The major question was whether his last-minute efforts had been effective in his native state of Texas. But this we would not know until hours later. At any rate, we resisted temptation during the drive. The radio stayed off.

  Just before five we arrived at the Ambassador, slipped in the back entrance, and climbed up the stairs to my fourth-floor suite. Pat and the girls were in the suite immediately abo
ve. I had hoped for an hour’s sleep—but just a few minutes after five I called Bob Finch and asked him to bring me an analysis of the first returns.

  This was the moment we had been working toward and waiting for—for so many months. Now we were to learn whether our efforts had been successful. No one who has not been a candidate can understand the tremendous tension one feels at this moment, just before he hears the first returns—nor can a candidate really put it into words.

  Finch arrived in my room only five minutes after my call, but it seemed like an hour. He handed me the first sheet of tabulated returns. This was just after five, Pacific Coast Time. “How do they look?” I asked.

  “About as we had estimated at this time,” he replied. “Surprisingly, we were leading on the first returns and now Kennedy has pulled even on the popular vote. But only two-and-a-half million votes have been tabulated so far, out of a probable total vote of 70 million. Reports from the South are mixed: we lead in South Carolina, and Kennedy is pulling ahead in North Carolina. Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire all seem to be holding to their Republican tradition.”

  “What about Connecticut?” I asked. (Connecticut is always first in with complete and official returns.) Bob said we should have final returns in the next few minutes.

  Five minutes later Herb Klein walked in and handed me the Connecticut returns.

  Kennedy had carried the state by 90,000. We had thought he was ahead here, but the margin was somewhat larger than we had expected. On the plus side, the Republicans had picked up two House seats in Connecticut, breaking up a solid bloc of six Democrats.

  By 5:30, the computing machines on both NBC and CBS television were making their predictions on the basis of early returns. Walter Cronkite of CBS reported: “Kennedy seems to be lengthening his lead.” NBCs RCA computer showed the odds in favor of a Kennedy victory at 7 to 1, but it showed Nixon leading in states-ahead, 16 to 13.

  At six—before the polls had closed in the West—CBS predicted a Kennedy victory with 52 per cent of the popular vote. Howard K. Smith commented: “We have established a trend and we now think we are close to being right.” At this time only 8 per cent of the votes were recorded, with Kennedy leading in popular vote by 3 million to 2.75 million.

  At 6:30, NBC’s computer had lengthened the Kennedy odds to 15 to 1. As we had expected all along, Massachusetts had gone for him overwhelmingly.

  First Ohio returns showed Nixon leading. But John Chancellor of NBC, reporting from the Midwest, said: “I think Ohio will come out for Kennedy.”

  At 6:45—still 15 minutes before poll-closing time in the West—Eric Sevareid of CBS reported: “We are pretty confident now of a Kennedy victory. All of the computing machines are now saying Kennedy.” Len Hall, interviewed in Los Angeles, fired back: “I think we should put all of those electronic computers in the junk pile so far as election returns are concerned. This one is going down to the wire—a squeaker, a real close election.”

  At seven, we heard some good news. Kentucky, Vermont, and Oklahoma now joined Indiana in the Nixon column.

  At 7:30, we began to get substantial returns from the big states with the big electoral votes, the states that would really decide the election. The states we were watching in this respect were New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Texas, and California. Of these seven states, we figured we would win if we carried three, but that Kennedy could not win unless he carried at least five.

  We looked at the trends, state by state. We had very little from New York at that time but, with nearly 50 per cent of the vote in, Kennedy was leading in Pennsylvania by 300,000. In our analyses, we had figured on only a fighting chance in New York, a fair chance in Pennsylvania with the state leaning to Kennedy, a better than even chance in Ohio, a fair chance in Michigan but again leaning to Kennedy, an even chance in Illinois, and both Texas and California close but leaning to Nixon.

  John Chancellor reported from the Midwest that Nixon had moved into the lead in that area generally but, with regard to Illinois, he said flatly: “It’s a runaway; Kennedy’s lead is insurmountable.”

  At 7:30, NBC reported the odds on a Kennedy victory at 250 to 1. Reports from New York were by no means yet conclusive but Kennedy had a substantial lead—in New York City—and we were not gaining as much upstate as we had hoped.

  By eight o’clock (eleven, Eastern Time) we had thought everything would be over but the shouting. But eight came and went, only 20 million of an estimated probable final total of 70 million votes had been recorded—and the fight was far from over.

  By this hour, Arizona, Florida, and Tennessee had fallen into the Nixon column. Kennedy had jumped to an early lead in California, based on scattered returns from primarily metropolitan areas. He had carried Missouri and Rhode Island—as expected. NBC’s computer predicted a Kennedy electoral landslide, with a final count of 401 electoral votes (out of 537).

  At 8:30 we took a close, hard look at the seven big decisive states. Only 40 per cent of New York State was in, but we felt Kennedy’s lead there was more than we could overcome. Bob Finch called Tom Dewey and our feelings were confirmed. Kennedy’s eventual margin in New York was to be 375,000 votes out of 7.3 million cast—a substantially better showing for us than the 800,000-vote Kennedy margin the usually reliable New York Daily News poll had indicated when we were in New York two-and-a-half weeks before election—but not enough.

  There was also bad news from Pennsylvania: Kennedy’s margin was now 115,000. Before giving up completely on that key state, however, we called Hugh Scott to get his appraisal. He had been confident that we would carry Pennsylvania, though by a close margin, because he believed we would come to the Philadelphia line with a lead of 200,000 votes. We had in fact reached that goal—but a Kennedy land-slide in Philadelphia of over 300,000 votes, exceeding even the huge margins that Roosevelt had rolled up in the depths of the depression, had wiped out our outstate lead.

  Ohio by this time was safely in our column. We were rolling toward a margin of 275,000 votes in this state which Kennedy’s private pollster, Lou Harris, had predicted he would carry by at least 200,000. Only 45 minutes earlier, Stuart Novins of CBS had said: “Whereas Cleveland is delivering for Kennedy, Cincinnati is not doing as well as expected for Nixon. Therefore, it looks like Kennedy in Ohio.”

  At 8:30, CBS had given Illinois to Kennedy, although less than 50 per cent of the vote was in. Reports from Michigan were still not decisive, but at eight John Chancellor of NBC had observed: “Ohio and Michigan ought to make the Democrats a little bit anxious. The Nixon lead is holding in Ohio; and in Michigan, Wayne County is not as strong for Kennedy as expected.”

  Then came our most discouraging news. Texas had been a ding-dong battle from the beginning but with most all of the vote in, it appeared that Kennedy would carry the state by about 40,000 out of a 2.3 million vote total. And that is the way it ended up: another plus for the “corn pone special.”

  Less than 10 per cent of the California vote was in, with Kennedy still holding a slight lead. Consequently, no predictions could be made.

  I did some quick computing on the yellow pad on which I was jotting down these results. With Kennedy carrying New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas, we had to win three of the other big four—California, Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio. The prospects were not encouraging but we were a long way from giving up. There were still a lot of votes to be recorded.

  But the TV commentators were going all out in predicting a Kennedy victory—or perhaps the better word is “conceding.” Eric Sevareid, just before eight, had said: “A Kennedy victory is now beyond any reasonable doubt. It would be a very difficult feat for him now to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.” Dave Brinkley, on NBC at 8:15, said: “Kennedy at this moment, on these returns, has well over enough to make it as President.” Grant Holcomb of CBS, reporting from the West, commented: “Senator Kennedy is doing very well in the West. It would appear that Kennedy is going to carry California by a very considerable margin.
” At the time he said this, only 8 per cent of California’s precincts had reported. Newspapers that had been supporting the Republican ticket joined in the stampede. Charles Collingwood of CBS reported that the New York Daily News had declared Kennedy the winner.

  Actually the Kennedy highwater mark had now been reached. At nine o’clock, the western returns began coming in, with substantial leads for Nixon in Idaho, Washington, and Utah. California still showed a slight Kennedy lead with 15 per cent of the vote recorded, and Governor Pat Brown predicted—according to CBS—“Kennedy will carry California by 800,000 votes.” Two hours later, he changed this estimate: he raised it to an even million!

  What was particularly significant was this: while Kennedy led in the popular vote as well as the electoral vote, his popular margin was not increasing. On the contrary, as the total mounted, his lead narrowed. It was 1.7 million at nine. By 9:45, it was down to 1.6 million.

  As the midwestern and western returns piled in, we rolled up victory after victory in the farm belt. Iowa, Kansas, North and South Dakota, and Nebraska joined Indiana and Ohio in our column.

  It was now midnight in the East and nine o’clock in the West. In the next hour and a half, I believed a sufficient number of votes would be counted in the West and Midwest for us to make a final determination whether the Kennedy trend was to continue or whether our hopes were still alive. Between nine and ten, “victory statements” and “concession statements” were being recorded, coming from prominent Democrats and Republicans alike. Adlai Stevenson, at 9:30, said: “I am elated at the prospect of a sweeping victory for Jack Kennedy.” Five minutes later, Walter Cronkite interviewed Barry Goldwater and reported over CBS: “Well, that’s it. Goldwater wrote off Nixon’s chances to win in this presidential race.” At 9:45, the New York Herald Tribune, which had supported the Nixon-Lodge ticket, conceded to Kennedy. At ten, the Chicago Sun-Times, another paper that supported our ticket, declared Kennedy the winner. And at 10:15, the New York Times, which had endorsed Kennedy, declared that he had won. But as the western and midwestern returns continued to come in, Kennedy’s popular vote margin which earlier in the evening had been as high as 2 million, was fading away: by 10:30, it was down to 1.1 million. UPI commented at this point: “This seems mighty close compared with vote counts of previous years.” Between 10 and 10:30 we learned that we were doing far better in the West than we had dared hope. We were able to add Washington, Wyoming, and Colorado to our column.