The fight was becoming personal. With the broadcast ended, Nixon tried to repeat the feint he had used so successfully with Khrushchev. Pulling Kennedy aside for what seemed a private conversation, he kept poking his right index finger into his hall mate as if he were lecturing him on something. The photographers clicked away. Having just spent an hour on national television treating Nixon like a lower form of life, Kennedy was getting the other end of the stick, however belatedly.
But in the hours that followed, the challenger was convinced he had won. “Right after the debate, he called me up at the hotel,” Lou Harris recalled. “I know I can take ’im. I know I can take ’im!” Kennedy had exulted. He was not alone in the assessment. A despondent Henry Cabot Lodge, who had given Nixon the misguided advice to go easy on his rival, watched the last minutes of the debate with dismay. “That son of a bitch just lost the election.”
Lodge’s running mate headed back to his hotel unsure of how the night had gone. As he arrived, an apparent Nixon booster ran up, loudly consoling him for all the microphones and reporters to hear: “That’s all right. You’ll do better the next time!” The woman had been put up to the prank by Dick Tuck, the dirty trickster who had humiliated Nixon with the empty university hall in his Senate race a decade earlier.
This night, too, was a debacle. After weeks of parity in the polls, one candidate now moved into a clear lead. A Gallup survey taken in the days following the Great Debate found Nixon with 46 percent, Kennedy pulling ahead to 49 percent. Who had “won” the debate? Forty-three percent said Kennedy; 29 percent called it even. Just 23 percent gave it to Nixon.
Nixon partisans were furious. What could this man have been thinking of, with all that unctuous nonsense of his about Kennedy’s motives being sincere, about the two men having similar goals? Why the soft soap? The “old Nixon,” the hard charger of the Voorhis and Douglas races, the Hiss case and all the other street fights since, would have drubbed the young swell standing across from him. For the rest of his life Nixon would refuse even to look at the tapes.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
Bearing Any Burden
KENNEDY’S triumph in the first debate made him the country’s number-one box office attraction. Traveling through Ohio the next day, he was confronted by a new phenomenon in the political world—the “jumper”—the teenager or young woman who literally jumped up in the crowds to get a better look at the most exciting male sex symbol since the debut of Elvis Presley. On Thursday, Jack and Jackie Kennedy were given genuine star treatment on CBS’s Person to Person. Taped at the Kennedy home in Georgetown, the program was basically a television advertisement for the glamorous young couple. “How does he keep fit?” host Charles Collingwood asked Mrs. Kennedy.
She answered: “He doesn’t sleep; he doesn’t eat; he doesn’t do anything to keep fit, but he thrives on it. It’s something that amazes me. He looks wonderful, I think.”
The interview showed the Democratic candidate’s new level of confidence: John Kennedy had begun to speak like a president. Asked by Collingwood to offer up his thoughts on the “political qualities of leadership,” the candidate’s response was impromptu and impressive. “I think the principal quality is to have some vision into the future about what you want this country to do and then have an opportunity to communicate that vision. I think that Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt did that particularly well. They set the public interest before the people, the unfinished business. Actually only the president can do that. He is at the center of our constitutional system, the leader of the majority party. The leader of the country, he is able to make a judgment as to what the country must do, what the public interest requires and then, I think, ask the people to do it, and I don’t think the people have ever failed to respond to that kind of leadership.”
Nixon had no time for such grand appraisals of the presidential office. Having survived the political equivalent of a train wreck, he was engaged in damage control, devouring four milk shakes a day in an attempt to fill out his shirt collar and trying vainly to minimize the event’s significance. Like any other team behind in points, what he now needed most was for the other team to fumble.
On October 1, Nixon got his break. During an interview at Hyannis Port, Kennedy offered a foreign policy judgment that would throw him on the defensive. It concerned the offshore Chinese islands of Quemoy and Matsu, which, since the 1949 Communist takeover, had been occupied by the forces of Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the holdout Nationalist government on Formosa. The Communists had been shelling the tiny islands, demanding the evacuation of Chiang’s forces. Kennedy told NBC’s David Brinkley that helping the Nationalists defend the islands made no strategic sense to him. “It seems to me that we should draw the line very exactly and precisely so that any aggressor knows that if he moves into this area it would mean war. Under the Eisenhower doctrine and the interpretation it has been given, we have stated that we would defend Quemoy and Matsu if it was part of an attack on the island of Formosa. How are we going to make that judgment? On what basis? Quemoy and Matsu are not essential to the defense of Formosa.”
These words gave Nixon ammunition for the second debate on October 7. Arriving at the NBC studio in Washington wearing a better-fitting dark suit, the milk shakes having done their work, Nixon clearly had learned from his mistakes. He had even engaged an expert to apply his makeup before he left home. Most important, he was poised to attack. This time, when Kennedy spoke of the need to “bear any burdens” in defending freedom around the world, he would be ready.
Nixon’s men were also prepared on the environmental front. Newsman John Harter, then a young NBC page, recalls Bobby Kennedy entering the studio and complaining about the cold temperature, the goal of which was to keep Nixon from sweating as heavily as he had in Chicago. The younger Kennedy quickly headed to the control room, demanding to know what was going on.
When debate number two was under way, Nixon showed that he had been preparing himself not simply to look better than in the first encounter with Kennedy but to fight better as well. “I should point out here,” Nixon said, after being asked a general question, “that Senator Kennedy has attacked our foreign policy. He’s said that it’s a policy that has led to defeat and retreat, and I’d like to know where have we been defeated and where have we retreated? In the Truman administration, six hundred million people went behind the Iron Curtain, including the satellite countries of Eastern Europe and Communist China. In this administration we’ve stopped them at Quemoy and Matsu. We’ve stopped them in Indochina. We’ve stopped them in Lebanon. We’ve stopped them in other parts of the world.” Nixon’s reference to Quemoy and Matsu was impossible to ignore.
Kennedy’s tortured response to a question on the Chinese islands made him even more vulnerable on the subject. “We have never said flatly that we will defend Quemoy and Matsu if it’s attacked. We say we will defend it if it’s a part of a general attack on Formosa, but it’s extremely difficult to make that judgment.” Then he started to backpedal. “I would not suggest the withdrawal at the point of the Communist gun; it is a decision finally that the Nationalists should make, and I believe that we should consult with them and attempt to work out a plan by which the line is drawn at the island of Formosa.”
A happy Nixon pounced. “The question is not these two little pieces of real estate—they are unimportant. It isn’t the few people who live on them—they are not too important. It’s the principle involved. These two islands are in the area of freedom. We should not force our Nationalist allies to get off of them and give them to the Communists. If we do that, we start a chain reaction. In my opinion, this is the same kind of woolly thinking that led to disaster for America in Korea. I am against it. I would not tolerate it as president of the United States, and I will hope that Senator Kennedy will change his mind if he should be elected.”
For the first time in the debates, Nixon had scored a hit. He had wounded Kennedy where the Democratic candidate himself knew his party w
as vulnerable. It was, after all, a target Kennedy himself had shelled back in the “Who lost China?” days. He knew firsthand the potential firepower of the issue: if the Democrats found themselves positioned again as the party of “appeasement” in Asia, they were finished.
In the days ahead, Nixon continued to hit Kennedy for his craven willingness to cede territory to the enemy. “I think it is shocking for a candidate for the presidency of the United States,” he said in speech after speech, “to say that he is willing to hand over a part of the Free World to the Communist world. The woolliness of the foreign policy thinking of the opposition party has already cost America tragically in the loss of China to the Communists and in the Korean War. Let me say this to you: If you elect me president, I assure you that I will not hand over one square foot of the Free World to the Communists.” Finally, Nixon had a way to attack Kennedy for sharing the same party with the Achesons and Stevensons and all the “woolly thinking” State Department types.
Republican polls now showed that Nixon’s new aggressiveness was having an effect, that the Kennedy advantage from the first debate could, in fact, be chipped away at. Unfortunately, Nixon’s comeback had been staged before an audience 20 million viewers smaller than the earlier Great Debate.
Kennedy, meanwhile, was trying desperately to stay on the offensive, hoping to make Nixon’s emphasis on Quemoy and Matsu appear jingoistic. “Mr. Nixon is not interested in policies of caution in world affairs,” he told a supportive crowd at the Waldorf-Astoria. “He boasts that he is a ‘risk taker’ abroad and a conservative at home. But I am neither. And the American people had a sufficient glimpse of the kind of risks he would take when he said in 1954, ‘We must take the risk now of putting our boys in Indo-China on the side of the French if needed to avoid further Communist expansion there.’ That is a foolhardy and reckless decision. How much wiser it would be to follow the president’s original recommendation—to persuade the Chinese Nationalists to evacuate all military personnel and any civilians who wish to go—now, when we would not be seeming to yield under Communist pressure, before real pressure is put on again.”
Jack Kennedy faced two hurdles as he headed into the third debate on October 13. One was that his statements continued to peg him as the squeamish candidate, ready to pull back in Asia, while Nixon remained the vigilant contender, prepared to hold the line. Another problem, perhaps more serious, was the new debate format, which placed the Democrat in a studio in New York and his Republican opponent three thousand miles away in Los Angeles. With an entire country between them, Kennedy’s ability to intimidate his rival, so crucial a factor in their first encounter, would be gone.
NBC’s Frank McGee posed the first question, asking Kennedy about his charge that Nixon was being “trigger-happy” in regard to Quemoy and Matsu. He wondered if Kennedy would be willing to take military action to defend Berlin. Ignoring the Asia reference, Kennedy limited his answer only to a commitment regarding Berlin. But when Nixon took his turn, he swiftly moved the issue back to the offshore Chinese islands. “As a matter of fact, the statement that Senator Kennedy made was . . . to the effect that there were trigger-happy Republicans, that my stand on Quemoy and Matsu was an indication of trigger-happy Republicans. I resent that comment.” On the attack, he challenged Kennedy to come up with the name of a Republican president who had led the country into war. Boldly, Nixon cited the pre-World War II legacy of Munich, comparing Kennedy’s position to the appeasement policy toward Hitler’s Germany his father had supported as ambassador to Britain. “This is the story of dealing with dictators. This is something that Senator Kennedy and all Americans must know. We tried this with Hitler. It didn’t work. He wanted, first, we know, Austria, and then he went on to the Sudetenland, and then Danzig, and each time it was thought this is all he wanted.” Before a national television audience, Richard Nixon was reminding Jack Kennedy of his father’s disgrace. “Now what do the Chinese Communists want?” he asked, building dramatically to his climax. “They don’t want just Quemoy and Matsu. They don’t just want Formosa. They want the world.”
Kennedy’s response was to cite a letter from President Eisenhower to the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee promising that the United States would not act militarily “merely in the defense of Quemoy and Matsu.” His opponent, he said, was promising to defend the islands under any circumstances. This, Kennedy said, was brinkmanship.
However, when it came his turn, Nixon kept at it. “The president has always indicated that we must not make the mistake of dealing with the dictator or indicating that we are going to make a concession at the point of a gun. Whenever you do that, inevitably the dictator is encouraged to try it again. So, first it will be Quemoy and Matsu. Next, it may be Formosa. What do we do then? My point is this: that once you do this, follow this course of action, of indicating that you are not going to defend a particular area, the inevitable result is that it encourages a man who is determined to conquer the world to press you to the point of no return—and that means war.” Nixon called the islands “a symbol of freedom.”
NBC’s John Chancellor asked the vice president if he intended to keep talking about Quemoy and Matsu. Nixon said the Chinese islands would remain a campaign issue as long as Kennedy persisted in “a fundamental error. He can say now that he no longer believes that a line should be drawn leaving these islands out of the perimeter of defense. If he says that, this issue will not be discussed in the campaign.”
Nixon was setting terms. Kennedy’s only escape would be to fashion a mea culpa, of the sort required from the soft-liners a decade earlier. But the well-prepared Democrat found another route. He accused Eisenhower himself of sending envoys to Chiang asking that he quit the offshore islands. “I challenge you tonight to deny that the administration has sent at least several missions to persuade Chiang Kai-shek to withdraw from these islands.”
Time ran out. It had been, nonetheless, the Republican candidate’s strongest performance. If the first debate turned the election, the second and third, with their focus on holding the line against Asian communism, would one day drive American foreign policy.
Quemoy and Matsu remained hot. On the October 16 edition of Meet the Press, moderator Lawrence Spivak hit Kennedy with question after question on the subject. Trying to deflect the issue, Kennedy cited the Eisenhower policy of fighting for the islands only if the Chinese tried taking them in an all-out grab for Formosa. The dispute, he charged, was actually between Nixon and Ike. But Kennedy’s own discomfort with the Quemoy and Matsu issue was manifest. He wanted it dropped.
Strangely, Nixon complied. Kennedy’s people approached Secretary of State Herter with a plea that the Democratic candidate didn’t want to give any Communists the impression that America was divided on the China front. They told him that Kennedy was even prepared to change his position in order not to appear out of step with administration policy. Nixon agreed to a moratorium on discussions of Quemoy and Matsu.
Kennedy covered his retreat with a shot at his advancing rival. He said he was happy “the politics of a presidential campaign will not risk war by recklessly committing us in advance to the defense of every inch of another nation’s territory!” But this is precisely what the presidential debate over Quemoy and Matsu did: commit whoever won to the defense of “every inch” of non-Communist Asia.
* * *
THE focus of the Cold War debate was now moving closer to home—Cuba. That March, CIA deputy director Richard Bissell had briefed Vice President Nixon on “dirty tricks” being perpetrated against the Cuban leader. One scheme involved spraying Castro with a drug similar to LSD just prior to one of his planned radio broadcasts, thereby causing the dictator to become disoriented in the midst of his harangue. Another far-fetched plan involved contaminating Castro’s cigars with a chemical that would cause his beard to fall out.
Nixon recognized that the weirdness of such pranks belied the very real political danger of having a Communist regime ninety miles off
the American coast. He placed far greater reliance on the CIA’s creation of a paramilitary force to unleash against the Castro regime. As one of the few people outside of Eisenhower’s staff and the CIA itself to know about the covert project, he counted on an invasion, initially set for September, as his political trump card, an election-eve coup that would loudly trumpet the Eisenhower-Nixon supremacy in matters of foreign policy. The vice president’s confidence was short-lived; to his exasperation, the CIA plan began to unravel. In April, Nixon sent a memo to his national security adviser, Maj. Robert Cushman, that the agency brass “ought to get off their tails and do something” about Castro. All summer and into the fall campaign, he pushed Ike to act on Cuba, only to be told that the CIA-backed operation was not ready to be put into place. Moreover, Eisenhower was insisting that in advance of the invasion a Cuban government-in-exile first be established. The responsibility for this task was assigned to CIA agent E. Howard Hunt, operating as “Eduardo.”
In late summer, the CIA escalated its covert operations against Castro from attempts to embarrass the Cuban leader to plots to assassinate him. In August, Bissell used middleman Robert Maheu to open contact with Chicago crime leader Sam Giancana and other mob figures still angry at the loss of their lucrative gambling and prostitution operations in Havana. That same month, Bissell struck up a relationship with Jack Kennedy, whom he met at a Georgetown dinner party given by columnist Joseph Alsop. Bissell, who had asked Alsop to arrange the meeting, flirted with the notion of quitting the CIA and joining JFK’s campaign.
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