Six Crises

by Richard Nixon

  After a two-hour delay at the airport because of mechanical difficulties, we boarded our chartered Pan American 707 for the flight to Washington. I had had less than four hours sleep in the last two-and-a-half days but, while I am usually able to cat-nap in airplanes or in automobiles, I found that now I was too tired to sleep. I wandered up and down the aisle talking to members of my staff, many of whom had flown from Washington to Los Angeles to be with me on Election Night. I could not find words to thank them adequately for their devoted service through the years and all during the campaign. Only a candidate for office truly knows how a campaign brings forth almost superhuman efforts from members of a campaign staff, and especially from those who type the letters, run the mimeograph machines, do the research, expect (and get) no coffee-breaks or long lunch hours or overtime pay, and receive no public credit or recognition. Their only reward is victory for their candidate. I could well understand the tears in the eyes of many of my loyal staff members that night.

  Finally I returned to my own seat and, for perhaps the first time since the campaign began, looked down at the lights of the cities below. Always before I had had to use every available minute on my flights preparing speeches or statements for the next appearance.

  As I saw the lights, I tried to guess the cities over which we were passing. It seemed now almost like a dream that only a few days and weeks before, Pat and I had motorcaded through the streets of these same cities with thousands of our supporters cheering us on. As we went over Chicago my thoughts turned not to the charges of vote fraud which had begun to reach Los Angeles before we had left—they turned, rather, to my acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention just four months before, probably the highwater mark of my whole political career.

  As the plane approached Andrews Air Force Base, across the Anacostia River from the District of Columbia, where we had been specially cleared for landing, Herb Klein brought me a message which some of the reporters who were returning with us had composed. It read:

  Dear Friends:

  You shook us on the Tijuana trail. (But it wouldn’t have happened if you had had a Washington newsman and not a Young Republican at the wheel of our car.)

  You made us stand for an hour and a half in the grim fog in Lima, Ohio, while your train rumbled back onto the main line.

  You told us in Chicago you never delivered the same speech twice, but some sense we’ve heard the same phrases once or twice in the course of the campaign.

  You took us from St. Louis to Atlantic City to Roanoke to Omaha in one nightmarish day and confined us to Convairs for the last two legs of the journey. And if that weren’t enough, you sent Fred Seaton down at 3 A.M. to explain your farm program to us.

  Your entourage in all these travels was a mixed breed. But as this plane wings eastward it was the majority opinion of the regulars in the press corps that we have toured the land with a champ. And we double it in spades for Pat.

  [signed] YOUR CAMP FOLLOWERS

  As I read this I was especially glad that while I had undoubtedly made my share of mistakes during the campaign, I had never complained to a reporter or to his superior about his stories.

  We landed in one of those dreary, drizzling rains which plague the Washington area during the late fall. Because of the weather and because our plane was late, we were surprised to see a crowd at the airport. Thruston Morton was first to greet us as he said, “We let you down.” I could reply with all sincerity: “No one could have done more than you did.” John Eisenhower was there representing the President. Chris Herter led a delegation of Cabinet members and their wives-all of those who were in Washington at that time. And, in addition, several hundred friends who had heard of our arrival were standing there, soaked to the skin but cheering and calling out “Speech. Speech.”

  The mark of a true politician is that he is never at a loss for words because he is always half-expecting to be asked to make a speech. This was one of those few instances when I was caught so completely by surprise that I spoke without any preparation whatever. I was so tired, in fact, that I literally could not remember ten minutes later what I had said, but the papers next morning reported it this way:

  This is just about the nicest thing that’s happened to us in the whole campaign. Because it is in defeat rather than victory that real friendship and loyal support is put to the test—and may I simply say that, in Pat’s and my book, you have passed this test with banners flying. And so all we can say, from deep in our hearts, is thank you.

  We got into the waiting limousine finally and started for home. The air had been bumpy on our flight’s descent and Tricia, who has the same tendency toward air sickness that I had at her age (in my generation, to be sure, it was car sickness), had become quite ill. Several times on the trip from the airport we stopped the car so that she could walk around and get some fresh air. We finally pulled up in front of our house just before midnight. Our long journey—which had, in reality, begun so many years before—was now ended.

  Pat put Tricia and Julie to bed at once but, after saying good night, I found I was still unable to sleep. I went down to the library, built a fire, and sat before it to let the tension and fatigue drain away. In the quiet of my own home, I tried to think not of the past but of the future. I knew that the next few days and weeks would probably present me with the greatest test of my life.

  In each of the crises of my political career, one lesson stood out: the period of greatest danger is not in preparing to meet a crisis or in fighting the battle itself but rather in that time immediately afterward, when the body, mind, and spirit are totally exhausted and there are still problems to deal with. It had been difficult enough in those past instances, each of which in its way had ended in victory, to avoid making serious errors of judgment once the battle was over. Now, in defeat, I knew the problem would be even greater.

  As I sat before the fire, I determined that I would try to conduct myself in such a way that even those who had been most bitterly opposed to me would find nothing to criticize. I knew this would not be easy. We had been through a long, hard-fought campaign. Kennedy’s margin of victory was razor-thin. Charges of fraud and demands for recounts had already begun. I realized that what I said and did in the next few days would be observed closely, and not in the United States alone but all over the world.

  Apart from considerations involving the nation and my party, it was important now with so many eyes so sharply focused on me that, from a purely personal standpoint, I try to set a proper example of conduct in defeat. Because defeat is a much more common experience than victory. For everyone who reaches the top—in politics, business, the professions, or any other field—there are many more who seek that goal and fall short. I had had more than my share of victories in my lifetime. But I had known, too, the sting of defeat. I knew that defeat was a greater test of character than victory.

  It was not that I believed I should accept defeat with resignation. I have never had much sympathy for the point of view, “it isn’t whether you win or lose that counts, but how you play the game.”

  How you play the game does count. But one must put top consideration on the will, the desire, and the determination to win. Chief Newman, my football coach in college and a man who was a fine coach but an even more talented molder of character, used to say: “You must never be satisfied with losing. You must get angry, terribly angry, about losing. But the mark of the good loser is that he takes his anger out on himself and not on his victorious opponents or on his teammates.”

  Bob Reynolds, who had been chairman of my Sports Committee, and who is now one of the owners of the Los Angeles Angels, put much the same thought this way, in a handwritten letter he sent me the day after election:

  Sometimes one loses a battle to win a war . . . I leave you this thought which came to me as the best advice I ever had from one of my college professors, after Stanford’s stunning defeat by Howell-Hutson of Alabama—“Bob,” he said, “defeats are poison to some men. Great men h
ave become mediocre because of inability to accept and abide by a defeat. Many men have become great because they were able to rise above a defeat. If you should achieve any kind of success and develop superior qualities as a man, chances are it will be because of the manner in which you meet the defeats that will come to you just as they come to all men.”

  These were the thoughts running through my mind as, sitting before the library fire, I began to relax in the small hours of the morning. I had arrived at no momentous decisions about what I would do or say when finally I pulled the screen in front of the fire, turned off the light, and went up to bed. But I was at peace with myself. I was confident that, knowing the dangers to watch for, I would be able to handle the problems I would be confronted with, without making serious mistakes.

  I did not wake up on Thursday until after noon. John Wardlaw, my chauffeur for the eight years I had served as Vice President, drove me down to my office at the Capitol. He is not only an excellent driver but one of the finest men I have known. This was one of those exceedingly rare occasions when he spoke to me as he drove. With an emotion I had never before seen him show, he said: “Mr. Vice President, I can’t tell you how sick I am about the way my people voted in the election. You know I had been talking to all of my friends. They were all for you. But when Mr. Robert Kennedy called the judge to get Dr. King out of jail—well, they just all turned to him”

  I assured him, as I was to assure scores of others who expressed their regrets as to why this or that group of which they were a member had not given me more support, “When an election is this close, John, no one can say for certain what caused us to lose. If there was any fault involved it was not with your people: it was mine, in failing to get my point of view across to them.”

  At the office, I found my staff buried in the mass of wires and letters that had poured in from all over the country. Except for the period after my fund telecast in 1952, I was to receive more messages during the next week than in any previous period of my public life—and this was only the beginning. When I saw how much work there was to do, I realized Pat and I would have to put off the vacation that we had planned for right after the campaign. But I felt we should try to get away for a few days at least and—since we had been seeing very little of Tricia and Julie over the past several months—that even a brief holiday with them now would mean more than a longer one later on. So, the next day we flew to Florida for what we hoped would be a complete escape and relief from the tension under which we had been living for so long.

  • • •

  But we were to discover that it was far too early to find even partial escape from what we had been through. The letters and wires and messages followed us and, although Don Hughes and Rose Woods did their best to keep phone calls at a minimum, there had to be exceptions. One round of calls added up to a notable exception.

  Two days after our arrival, Pat and I were having dinner at the Jamaica Inn on Key Biscayne. The party included Bob Finch, Herb Klein, Don Hughes, each of them accompanied by his wife, Bebe Rebozo, and Rose Woods. Just as the waitress was taking our order, I received word from the hotel, which was nearby, that former President Hoover was trying to reach me by phone from New York. I knew that he would not be calling unless it was a matter of vital importance; consequently, I asked Don to return the call on the pay phone in the restaurant lobby. Within a couple of minutes he came back to the table with the word that he had Mr. Hoover’s Waldorf Towers apartment on the line. I went to the phone, chatted briefly with his secretary, Bunny Miller, and then Mr. Hoover came on the line.

  He is like Sherman Adams in one respect—he never wastes a word in a telephone conversation: no introduction, no amenities, just the substance of whatever is at hand. I said, “Hello, Chief.” He replied: “The Ambassador11 has just called me and suggested that it would be a good idea for you and the President-elect to get together for a visit. If you approve of the idea, the President-elect, who is now in Palm Beach, would like to phone you to make the necessary arrangements.”

  I asked him what he thought I should do. He said: “I think we are in enough trouble in the world today; some indications of national unity are not only desirable but essential.” I answered that under the circumstances, I would of course be willing to have a talk with the President-elect and that he could so inform the Ambassador.

  After this conversation with Mr. Hoover, I called the White House operator in Washington and asked her if she could get me through to Augusta, Georgia, where President Eisenhower was vacationing. He knew that it was my practice never to call him outside office hours unless the matter was of great importance; and so, within a few seconds, the phone rang in the pay booth and Eisenhower was on the line. I told him of my conversation with Mr. Hoover and said I felt I should report it to him, especially because there had already been newspaper reports to the effect that, because of the closeness of the election, some of Kennedy’s advisers were urging him to bring Republicans into the new Administration. There had even been suggestions that he should offer me some kind of a post. Eisenhower, who had made a similar gesture toward a defeated opponent—to Senator Robert A. Taft, at the 1952 Republican Convention in Chicago—agreed that it was only appropriate for me to meet with Kennedy. “You would look like a sorehead if you didn’t,” he said. He suggested, however, that in any such conversations I should reserve judgment on the advisability of top Republicans going into the Kennedy Administration. “A true coalition government is possible only in a period of national emergency,” he said. “And a coalition, to be truly effective, must give members of the minority party who take positions in the Administration independent authority and responsibility. I do not think it would be in the best interests of the two-party system for Republicans to go into the new Administration in purely secondary or ceremonial positions which might give the color of coalition and the appearance of shared responsibility, when that was actually not the case at all.”

  I talked to Eisenhower for only a couple of minutes and then returned to the table. I was just about to tell the others of these two conversations when Don Hughes came up hurriedly and said, “Kennedy is calling.”

  When I picked up the phone, Kennedy was already on the line. He made no mention of the call I had received from Hoover or of his father’s previous call. He began the conversation pleasantly and informally by asking how the weather was and if we were finally getting some rest from the campaign. I replied in the same vein and then quite casually he said, “I would like to fly down from Palm Beach to have a chat with you—if it won’t interfere with your vacation.” I replied that I would welcome the opportunity to talk with him, but added: “I would be glad to come up to Palm Beach to call on you. After all, that’s the proper thing to do in view of last Tuesday’s results.” He laughed and said, “No, I have a helicopter at my disposal and it would be easier for me to come to you.” I asked him what day would be most convenient and we agreed to meet at the Key Biscayne Hotel on Monday, November 14. As I hung up and walked slowly back to our table, it dawned on me that I had just participated in a probably unprecedented series of conversations. In the space of less than ten minutes, I had talked to a former President of the United States, the present President, and the President-elect!

  But I found very little appreciation of the historic significance of the occasion when I reported it to Tricia and Julie the next day. They both berated me roundly: “How can you possibly talk to him after what he said about you in the campaign?” I replied, “After all, he won the election and this is the only proper thing for me to do under the circumstances.” But Julie still protested: “He didn’t win. Haven’t you heard about all the cheating in Illinois and Texas?” I could see that I was not going to win this argument and so, quickly as possible, I changed the subject.

  But for weeks and even months afterward, I was to see repeated evidence of a lesson I had learned years before in my political career: women basically find it much harder to lose than do men. This is probably a credit to
them. Once they or those they admire and love are committed to battle, they enter into the contest with all their hearts and souls. They work harder and fight harder than men. Their commitment is generally more total and their loyalties more lasting.

  Tricia, Julie, Pat, and my mother, typically, were to find it terribly difficult to reconcile themselves to the fact of defeat—and the same was true among the secretaries on my staff. Not a day was to pass until after Kennedy’s inauguration on January 20 but that Julie would ask me: “Can’t we still win? Why can’t we have a recount in Chicago?”12 When some of our friends sent the girls small checks with which to buy presents for themselves at Christmas, they insisted that I forward the proceeds to the Chicago Recount Committee.

  Their attitude was far from an isolated instance. In my travels around the country over the next several months, I was to meet scores of couples who had supported me in the campaign where the husband had adjusted to the fact of defeat but where the wives insisted that “they would never give up.” And they meant it, too. The best advice I can give to those planning to run for public office is simply this: get a corps of dedicated women committed to you and working for you—and you have it made!

  Florida’s weather was at its fabled best on Monday the fourteenth, when Kennedy came to see me at the Key Biscayne Hotel. It was a warm day, but a light breeze kept the heat from being oppressive. I stood at the hotel entrance with Bob Neale, the manager, surrounded by scores of reporters and photographers, waiting for Kennedy to arrive. Finally the Dade County police escort came up the drive. Behind them was the Secret Service escort car, traditionally used to protect Presidents and Presidents-elect. Kennedy was in the next car—riding in the back of a convertible and, despite the officials surrounding him, looking almost lonely.