A Prophet with Honor

by William C. Martin

  22

  Nixon Revived

  As fond as he was of Lyndon Johnson, eight years of Democratic occupancy of the White House did little to shake Billy Graham’s conviction that America still needed his old friend Richard Nixon. Pneumonia prevented Graham from going to Vietnam during the Christmas holidays in 1967, but when Nixon invited him to spend a few days in Florida to help him reach a decision about making another try for the presidency, Graham rose from his sickbed and took a private plane to Key Biscayne, declaring bravely that “there are times when some things are more important than health.” The two men spent several days together, talking, watching football games, going for long walks on the beach, studying the Bible and praying, and of course, speculating about whether Nixon would have a chance at the Republican nomination, and if he got it, whether he could defeat Lyndon Johnson, who he assumed would seek reelection.

  Because of his loyalty to Johnson, and perhaps because he did not want Nixon to risk another crushing disappointment, Graham withheld his counsel. Finally, near the end of their visit, Nixon said, “You still haven’t told me what I ought to do.” Billy told him all he needed to hear: “Well, if you don’t, you’ll worry for the rest of your life whether you should have, won’t you?” That was enough for both of them. Nixon would report on several later occasions that Graham had been more responsible than anyone else for his decision to run, and Billy began immediately to resume knitting the fabric of fellowship that would very nearly become a pall on his ministry. When the press learned of his visit and asked if he would like to see Richard Nixon on the Republican ticket in 1968, he conceded that “I would go that far.” Mindful of his ties to the incumbent, he added that “I would not say who I would vote for as President, but I would say he is the most experienced Republican for the type of conflict we have today.” He stressed that he was a registered Democrat but reserved the right to be flexible. “I vote independently,” he said, “and I usually split. I vote for the man and not the party.”

  The following spring was routine for Graham but wrenching for America, with the Tet offensive in Vietnam, Johnson’s decision not to run again, an increase in campus disturbances, and the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. At the time of King’s death, Graham was in an Australian crusade, part of which had to be rescheduled for 1969 because of yet another bout of illness, this time a serious lung problem. Graham interpreted the assassination as further evidence that America was unraveling, calling it “dramatic indication that we have tens of thousands of mentally deranged people in America. In some respects it has become an anarchy.” Unable to return home for the funeral, he sent telegrams and flowers and gave the press a muted tribute to King: “Many people who have not agreed with Dr. King can admire him for his non-violent policies and in the eyes of the world he has become one of the greatest Americans.” King’s death did not lead Graham to believe he needed to take more daring action. A few weeks after the assassination, Howard Jones and Ralph Bell sent him a long letter in which they recalled that riots had erupted in 125 cities after King’s death and that other trouble could be expected during the coming summer. They suggested that he and BGEA had an unparalleled opportunity to step into the gap and provide responsible leadership on the racial issues. Specifically, they urged him to commission a film aimed at both blacks and whites that would enable him to use his enormous influence to address burning questions in a bold and forthright way. Perhaps to avoid a confrontation that might have resulted in long-term strain, Graham chose not to respond directly. Instead, he directed an aide to assure Jones and Bell that he felt his long-standing practice of integrated crusades and his increased use of black musicians, black clergy, and black celebrities were having a more beneficial effect than anything else he could do. A few weeks after that, at Bobby Kennedy’s funeral, he stood beside Ralph Abernathy, who was aggressively defining himself as King’s legitimate successor, and thought to himself, Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could see Dr. King’s dream come true? But he moved no closer to using, or even fully approving, King’s tactics of prophetic confrontation and challenge of the establishment.

  By late spring it seemed increasingly likely that Nixon would capture the Republican nomination. Before President Johnson withdrew from the campaign, Graham insisted he was “studiously trying to avoid political involvement this year.” With Johnson out, however, and with the country “going through its greatest crisis since the Civil War,” he acknowledged that “many people who just don’t know how to cast their vote might accept what I have to say.” Did that mean he might endorse a specific candidate? “I might find I will,” he allowed; “I do believe I could influence a great number of people.” At a Portland crusade in May, he introduced Julie and Tricia Nixon to the assembly, noting that “there is no American I admire more than Richard Nixon.” And from that point until the election in November, he dropped so many favorable statements about Nixon that none but a dunce could have mistaken his intentions. Certainly, Democrats understood. A Johnson aide reported to the President that several senators and other leading Democrats were “disturbed at Billy Graham’s intention to support Richard Nixon.” Recalling that the evangelist had been talked out of an open endorsement in 1960, the aide added, “I know and understand (and approve) the rules you are operating under, but there must be some way or suggestion you can make on how to prevent Billy Graham from doing this.” A handwritten note on the memo indicates the “President has no influence.” Another note, from Johnson himself and partly illegible, reads, “Call him. [I’m just] his friend. I can’t control him.”

  National Council of Churches executive Dan Potter, a staunch Graham admirer since the 1957 New York crusade, observed that even without explicitly endorsing Nixon, Graham could play a significant role in an election. “Billy has tremendous power,” he noted; “almost frightening power. I think he uses this with a degree of discretion. But such power in a single individual . . . I say it’s frightening. Because I think that Billy’s presence, in terms of Nixon’s election, has a real influence. And when he sits by a prospective [candidate], even though he tries to be in every way a friend of all Presidents and Kings, he has to guard this very carefully. Because he does have the power of a person who is a symbol to millions of persons who watch his every move, and even a casual gesture becomes a significant signal. I think he is partially aware of the truth of this and therefore his influence is quite tremendous.”

  At the Republican convention in Miami in August, Graham (at Nixon’s request) led the closing prayer after the nominee made his acceptance speech. As the evangelist offered congratulations and said his good-byes, Nixon caught him by the arm and offered him a delicious perk: a chance to sit in on the selection of his running mate. “You’ll be interested in this,” he said. “It’s part of history.” Back in a hotel suite, Graham stood at the edge of a circle of twenty or so Nixon insiders and prominent Republican leaders, listening with fascination as they discussed possibilities. Deep into the night and without warning, Nixon turned to him and said, “Billy, what do you think?” Graham was taken aback, “afraid I was putting myself in a political thing I didn’t want to get into,” but unable to pass up a chance to offer his opinion. “I would prefer [Oregon] Senator Mark Hatfield,” he said. “First of all, he’s a great Christian leader. He’s almost a clergyman. He’s been an educator and has taken a more liberal stand on most issues than you, and I think the ticket needs that kind of a balance.” Whatever Nixon thought of Graham’s advice, Hatfield’s well-known opposition to American policy in Southeast Asia and his support of Arab interests in the Middle East made him unacceptable to others in the room. Perhaps sensing he had already said too much, Graham decided it was time to head back to his hotel in Key Biscayne. The next morning Nixon called Graham to tell him he had decided on Maryland governor Spiro Agnew. Graham was utterly surprised: “I’m sure Nixon didn’t know him very well. I said, ‘Why did you choose him?’ He gave me his answers, which I don’t want to reveal,
and I said, ‘Well, I hope he loves the Lord and will be a Christian Vice-President.’ And he said, ‘Well, you listen at about twelve o’clock and you’ll hear the announcement.’ Then about ten or eleven his communications director called me and said, ‘Billy, Dick wanted me to call you and tell you it’s still up in the air. It’s between Agnew and Hatfield.’ So I listened at twelve o’clock and, of course, it was Agnew. That night I went to the convention as the guest of Senator Frank Carlson, a very close friend of mine. We sat there and you could just feel a pall over the convention. I said, ‘If my assessment’s right, this is not a popular choice.’ And he said, ‘You’re right. We don’t know him.’ I was called to platform to lead a prayer that night and I met Agnew for the first time. I never saw him after the campaign, I think, except at the inauguration and maybe once at the White House at a religious service. I never knew him at all. The night he resigned, I called him on the phone and told him I’d be praying for him, whatever the future held, because that’s the time I think a minister has some input spiritually. That’s the only contact I ever had with Mr. Agnew.”

  The Democrats’ selection of Hubert Humphrey, another old friend, kept some check on Graham’s expressions of enthusiasm for Nixon, but his preference was transparent. At a September crusade in Pittsburgh, he read a telegram of greeting from Humphrey, but he invited Nixon to take a prominent seat in the VIP section, where the television cameras could easily find him, and he lauded him from the platform, citing his generosity, his “tremendous constraint of temper,” and his “integrity in counting his golf score,” and calling their friendship “one of the most cherished I have had with anyone.” Nixon described the occasion as “one of the most moving religious experiences of my life.” The telecast of that particular service, broadcast just before the election, was added to Graham’s TV schedule at the last minute because of “the urgency of the hour.”

  A few days after his crusade appearance, Nixon made a well-announced and thoroughly photographed call on Morrow Graham in Charlotte, displaying his ease and charm by observing three times that he felt obligated to visit Billy’s mother, since Billy had preached at his own mother’s funeral a few months earlier. Three weeks later, Julie Nixon turned up in Montreat for a visit at the Graham home, furnishing Billy with another opportunity to note that he was contemplating an endorsement but was not quite ready to give one at that point—without explaining what constituted the difference between an official endorsement and a clear and frequent statement of preference. Sometimes Graham’s support came disguised as his own assessment of the political climate, as when he professed to discern a rightward trend among “a big segment of the population,” a segment whose members did not carry placards or demonstrate or take what they wanted by violence, but who were nevertheless out there and ready to act, “a great unheard-from group” who were likely “to be heard from loudly at the polls.” No one sensitive to campaign rhetoric would likely have missed the similarity between this group—presumably people Billy Graham had seen in his own audiences—-and the “Silent Majority” the Republicans were courting so assiduously. At other times Graham presented his nonendorsement as if he were no more than a neutral friend of the court. When Democrats trotted out their old reliable slurs on Nixon’s basic character, Graham declared that his friend “has a great sense of moral integrity. I have never seen any indication of, or agreed with, the label that his enemies have given him of ‘Tricky Dick.’ In the years I’ve known him, he’s never given any indication of being tricky.” He acknowledged that Nixon was “reticent about speaking of his religious life” but declared he knew him to be “a devout person and a man of high principles, with a profound philosophy of government,” and characterized him as having “the qualities to make an American Churchill in time of national crisis.” After offering yet another such defense, he added, “While I do not intend to publicly endorse any political candidate, as some clergymen are doing, I maintain the right to help put the record straight when a friend is smeared.”

  Two decades later, Graham insisted that while Nixon’s aides may have wanted to exploit their friendship, Nixon tried to protect him from possible backlash. “It seems to me, as I look back,” he said, “that he wanted to guard me. I was in Atlanta when he was giving a speech and he said, ‘Don’t come. It’ll be too political.’ But Ruth and I wanted to go, so we went and sat in the back so nobody would see us. His aides did see us and we rode back to the hotel with him. I remember that somebody had asked him what he intended to do about the fire-ant problem if he were elected president. He said, ‘I’ll tell you this: When we get to the White House, we’re going to deal with them. We’re going to handle that.’ We teased him about that in the car. That was the only time I ever went to one of his campaign meetings.” Graham apparently overlooked his much-publicized presence in the studio audience of one of the carefully managed question-and-answer shows Nixon used during the campaign. On a later show the moderator asked the candidate if it was true that evangelist Billy Graham was supporting him; Nixon replied that he felt safe in reporting that it was true. A few days later, Graham himself provided confirmation. In an interview published four days before the election, he revealed that he had already cast his absentee vote for Richard Nixon. Nixon campaign operative Harry Dent freely admitted he had exploited that bit of good news in television ads that ran right down to the wire on the following Tuesday. Less readily acknowledged was that according to some sources, the new ads had been in production for at least three weeks before Graham made his well-timed announcement.

  Nixon invited Graham to watch the election returns with him in New York, but Billy demurred. He did, however, agree to stay at a nearby hotel to be available to pray with him if he lost the election. About nine the next morning, when it appeared certain that Nixon had edged Humphrey by approximately half a million votes, Bebe Rebozo called to say that “Dick wants you to come over and have prayer with the family.” It was hardly the consolation in defeat he had been prepared to offer, but it was close enough, and he and T. W. Wilson hustled over to the president-elect’s hotel suite, where Rebozo ushered him in to see the Nixons and their two daughters. After a few minutes of congratulations and election talk, Nixon said, “Billy, I want you to lead us in prayer. We want to rededicate our lives.” Graham recalled that “we all held hands and I led prayer. And then he went straight off to meet the press. He always had that spiritual side to him. It was always coming out.”

  Graham remained impressed by the irrepressible outcroppings of Nixon’s spirituality, though he did feel it needed some channeling and pointing-up on occasion. As he recalled, Nixon wanted him to be the only clergyman to pray at the inauguration, but “I told him, ‘You cannot leave the Jewish people out. You cannot leave out the Catholics and the Orthodox.’ But he said, ‘No, I want you, and I want you to take ten minutes.’ I told him, “No, Sir, I can’t do that.’ Finally, someone did persuade him that he had to have all the major religious groups, but I think I did take three or four minutes, which Time called ‘Billy Graham’s mini-inaugural address.’” In the process of that extended prayer, which Christian Century characterized as a “raucous harangue” that made Nixon’s inaugural speech seem “simple and winsome” by comparison, Graham thanked God that “thou hast permitted Richard Nixon to lead us at this momentous hour of history” and expressed confidence that America was headed toward “the dawning of a new day.”

  One may doubt that God arranged Nixon’s victory over Hubert Humphrey, especially since the margin of his triumph (less than 1 percent) was not as impressive as, for example, that of the Israelites over the Amalekites, but Richard Nixon’s term in office unquestionably initiated a new era for “civil religion,” that blend of religious and political culture that has potential to both call a nation to acknowledge and honor its transcendent ideals and to delude it into thinking it has already done so. Every president in American history had invoked the name and blessings of God during his inauguration address, and many, includi
ng Billy Graham’s friends Dwight Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson, had made some notable public display of their putative piety, but none ever made such a conscious, calculating use of religion as a political instrument as did Richard Nixon.

  Like other presidents before him, Nixon appeared at prayer breakfasts and made the standard salutes in heaven’s direction, but the keystone of his effort to present himself as a man deeply concerned with religion and religious values was the White House church service, which he initiated on the first Sunday after his inauguration, with Billy Graham as the preacher. Other presidents had held religious services in the White House; indeed, Lyndon Johnson had invited the cabinet, leading staff members, and some of his personal friends to a service in the White House on the Sunday immediately following John Kennedy’s funeral, and Billy Graham was the speaker on that occasion as well. But none before Nixon had ever sponsored a regular schedule of Sunday services. Throughout Nixon’s presidency, an uncommon amount of his staff’s time and attention went into the White House Sunday services. Surely some genuine spiritual benefit was obtained—by the participants, by the guests, perhaps even by the President himself—and Billy Graham still maintained, fifteen years after the last “Amen,” that they were basically beneficial, though he recognized that the negative publicity they drew in some quarters had “backfired” on the President. “I thought it was a good idea at the time,” he said, “and in hindsight, I still think it was a good idea. It was better than not going to church at all, and the President was worried about security and the commotion it would cause if he went to a regular church. Some people thought it was practicing civil religion—Mark Hatfield had that view—but I never thought of it in those terms. I just thought it was a great idea that the President of the United States would have services in the White House. I don’t think there was any political connotation. There might have been, but I think Nixon was being very sincere. He wanted to set an example for the whole country.”