The country was not so easily diverted. The CIO was charging that Nixon had been bought by capital-gains Republicans who “knew a good investment when they saw one.” California’s franchise tax board had announced that it would investigate the fund. The Democratic National Committee was mailing a reminder to newspaper editors of criminal law provisions on “bribery and graft… by members of Congress,” and Chairman Mitchell was wondering when Eisenhower would “cast away” his running mate. Mitchell’s speculations were of no consequence to Nixon; Stevenson refused to make a judgment until all the facts were in. Eisenhower’s opinion was another matter, though. If the standard-bearer thought a case could be made against his vice-presidential candidate, the result would be havoc. The general hadn’t said he believed that, but he hadn’t called it absurd, either, and as the long hours passed the silence aboard Ike’s train, the Look Ahead, Neighbor Special, grew deafening.
Ike was getting conflicting advice. Taft approved of the fund. Hoover was issuing a statement to the effect that “If everyone in the city of Washington possessed the high level of courage, probity, and patriotism of Senator Nixon, this would be a far better nation.” Chairman Arthur Summerfield made a few calculations on what the party’s printing bill would be if Ike switched running mates and said it was out of the question.
The general himself was undecided. He had Brownell summon Senator Knowland from Hawaii as a possible replacement for Nixon, and Paul Hoffman was instructed to supervise a thorough investigation of the fund. On Hoffman’s orders, fifty lawyers and accountants began a round-the-clock audit of it. They found it aboveboard in every respect. By now the reporters on Ike’s train were begging him for a comment. For the record he said he had faith in Nixon’s honesty and felt sure that the senator would vindicate him by putting “all the facts before the people, fairly and squarely.” That wasn’t quite what the vice-presidential candidate had been expecting. It sounded as though he would have to prove his innocence. The general had just that in mind. When he joined the reporters covering his tour for a glass of beer and was asked, “Do you consider the Nixon thing a closed incident?” he frowned and replied, “By no means.” He really didn’t know Nixon very well, he said—he had only met him a couple of times—and he wanted evidence of the senator’s probity—facts, figures, names, dates. “What was the use,” he asked rhetorically, “of campaigning against this business of what has been going on in Washington if we ourselves aren’t as clean as a hound’s tooth?”
The general’s comment reached Nixon in Portland, Oregon. According to Earl Mazo of the Herald Tribune, if the ballot had been cast there that night “Eisenhower would not have gotten a single vote from the Nixon staff.” With the embattled vice-presidential candidate were Chotiner and William P. Rogers.4 “We had calls from everybody, all offering advice,” Rogers said later. “There were only a few of us that day who were reasonably sure it would work out all right.”
At about this time pressure began to build for a radio-television report to the people. Dewey suggested to Nixon that he make it as soon as possible. Nixon agreed, but he thought he was entitled to a word with Eisenhower first. The call went through to the Look Ahead, Neighbor Special. After pleasantries, the senator described Dewey’s proposal. “I’m at your disposal,” he said. Then he said, “I want you to know that if you reach a conclusion either now or any time later that I should get off the ticket, you can be sure that I will immediately respect your judgment and do so.” Ike said he didn’t think that decision ought to be up to him, and Nixon bridled. He was being pilloried for nothing; he was offering to sacrifice himself for the cause; certainly the standard-bearer could do something. In earthy language he told the five-star general either to make a decision or get off the seat of power.
Two hours later Nixon received word that the Republican National Committee and Senatorial Congressional Campaign Committee had pledged $75,000 for a half-hour nationwide explanation of the fund. Batten, Barton, Durstine, and Osborn, the party’s advertising agency, had put together a hookup of 64 NBC television stations, 194 CBS radio stations, and the 560-station Mutual Radio Network. They asked how soon the senator could be ready—there was a choice spot open the following night, right after I Love Lucy. Impossible, said Nixon; he had to return to California and marshal his thoughts. He could make it the night after that, however, and so it was decided that he would go on the air then, immediately after Milton Berle. Reserving a seat on the next United Airlines flight to Los Angeles, the senator made arrangements to go into seclusion there at the Ambassador Hotel.
En route, he pulled a sheaf of United’s souvenir postcards from the seat in front of him and made sketchy notes:
Checkers…
Pat’s cloth coat—
Lincoln ref. to common people (?)
He later explained that he had thought of Checkers, the Nixon family dog, because FDR had used Fala so cleverly in the 1944 campaign. In Eugene, Oregon, a placard had read “No mink coats for Nixon,” and sure enough, he thought, his wife didn’t have one. The Lincoln reference was more complex. Mitchell had said, “If a fellow can’t afford to be a senator, he shouldn’t seek the office.” It was a stupid remark. If it meant anything, it was that only wealthy men should go to Washington. Hadn’t Lincoln said something about God loving the common people because he made so many of them?5 At the Ambassador Hotel, after acknowledging the airport crowd—it was disappointingly small—Nixon put through a call to Paul Smith, his old Whittier history professor, asking him to pin down the quotation.
Meanwhile, something extraordinary had happened to the campaign. It was stalled. The public had forgotten about the presidential candidates. All eyes were on the GOP candidate for Vice President. TV programs were being interrupted for rumors that he had suffered a nervous breakdown and interrupted again to reveal that he was in good health, and speculation over what he was going to say was building. Even Eisenhower was becoming curious about it. At his direction Adams called Chotiner and asked what it would be. Chotiner said he didn’t have the foggiest idea.
“Oh, come now, Murray, you must know,” Adams said. “He has a script, doesn’t he?” Chotiner said he didn’t, and Adams asked, “What about the press?”
“We’ve set up television sets in the hotel for them,” Chotiner replied, “and we have shorthand reporters to take it down, page by page.”
“Look,” said Adams, “we have to know what is going to be said.”
“Sherm,” Chotiner said, “if you want to know what’s going to be said, you do what I’m going to do. You sit in front of the television and listen.”
It was true. Nixon had a general idea of his theme, but there was no text, and he hadn’t decided how to end it. Dewey had suggested that he ask voters to write to the Republican National Committee. It seemed to be a good idea, but what should they write? He didn’t know. The pressure, he knew, was growing hourly, and press comment continued to be hostile to him. The Los Angeles Daily News was reporting that “Anything short of an enthusiastic burst of public support… will be interpreted in favor of what Eisenhower and his staff have already decided—that corruption cannot remain a campaign issue as long as one of their candidates is tainted with the slightest suspicion. Thus, Nixon will probably be asked to resign.” Eisenhower and his staff had decided no such thing, though the general was certainly preoccupied with the issue. It seemed crucial. “There is one thing I believe,” the general said to Adams; “if Nixon has to go, we cannot win.” That evening Ike was interested only in a seat in front of a television set. The manager of the Cleveland Public Auditorium, where he was scheduled to speak afterward, led him up three flights of stairs to one. Mamie and William Robinson, publisher of the anti-fund Herald Tribune, sat with him; Summerfield and Jim Hagerty stood against the wall.
Nixon, meantime, was preparing to leave the Ambassador Hotel for NBC’s El Capitan Theater in Hollywood. The cameramen, the electricians, and the men in the control room had been rehearsing there all day; everyone
was ready except the star, who still hadn’t decided how to wind up his talk. He was talking to Chotiner and Rogers, debating the best way for the audience to express its opinion of him—by writing to him, to Eisenhower, or to the National Committee—when the phone rang. The operator said it was long distance; a Mr. Chapman was calling. “Mr. Chapman” was Dewey’s code name. Chotiner was told that the senator was unavailable, but the governor was adamant. Nixon reluctantly picked up the receiver.
Dewey said to him, “There has just been a meeting of all of Eisenhower’s top advisers. They’ve asked me to tell you that in their opinion at the conclusion of the broadcast you should submit your resignation to Eisenhower. As you know, I haven’t shared this point of view, but it’s my responsibility to pass this recommendation to you.”
Nixon was too shocked to speak. Dewey jiggled the receiver. He said, “Hello? Can you hear me?”
Nixon asked, “What does Eisenhower want me to do?” Dewey didn’t know; he hadn’t spoken directly to the general. Nixon said, “It’s kind of late to pass on this kind of recommendation to me now.”
“What shall I tell them you’re going to do?” Dewey persisted.
Nixon exploded, “Just tell them that I haven’t the slightest idea what I’m going to do, and if they want to find out they’d better listen to the broadcast! And tell them I know something about politics, too!”
It was 6 P.M. in Los Angeles, 9 P.M. in the East—a half-hour till broadcast time. After shaving, showering, and dressing, Nixon found he was too wrought up from Dewey’s call to memorize his notes; he would have to go on holding them. At the theater the program director led him and Pat in and asked him what movements he would be making. Nixon said, “I don’t have the slightest idea. Just keep the camera on me.” With three minutes to go, he thought wildly of backing out. To Pat he said, “I just don’t think I can go through with this one.” She said of course he could, and it was too late to do anything else; already the camera was showing his calling card. It switched to him. He said: “My fellow Americans, I come before you tonight as a candidate for the Vice-Presidency and as a man whose honesty and integrity has been questioned.”
He described the purpose of the fund and how it worked. The money had been used solely for campaign expenses, he said. Since he had never even seen it, none of it had been taxable or even reportable under federal law. He continued: “There are some that will say, ‘Well, maybe you were able, Senator, to fake this thing. How can we believe what you say—after all, is there a possibility that maybe you got some sums in cash? Is there a possibility that you might have feathered your own nest?’ And so now what I am going to do—and incidentally, this is unprecedented in the history of American politics—I am going at this time to give to this television and radio audience a complete financial history, everything I have earned, everything I have spent, everything I own.”
Going back to his youth, he led up to the present and said he now owned:
A 1950 Oldsmobile.
A 3,000 equity in his California house, where his parents were living.
A $20,000 equity in his Washington house.
$4,000 in life insurance, plus a GI term policy.
No stocks, no bonds, nothing else.
He owed:
$10,000 on the California house.
$20,000 on the Washington house.
$ 4,500 to the Riggs National Bank in Washington.
$ 3,500 to his parents.
$ 500 on his life insurance.
“Well, that’s about it,” he said. “That’s what we have and that’s what we owe. It isn’t very much, but Pat and I have the satisfaction that every dime that we have got is honestly ours.”
By then he had doubtless won his audience. After running against FDR’s forgotten man in five straight presidential elections, the Republicans had finally nominated a man with whom millions could identify. Nixon was carefully presenting himself as an ordinary man. Although he had been around “when the bombs were falling” during the war and was probably entitled to a star or two, he claimed no heroics. The key to the speech, however, was the detailed discussion of finances. This was, after all, a talk about money, and in laying every penny he had, or had had, on the line, he was telling a tale familiar to his listeners—the two-year-old car, the mortgages, the inadequate life insurance. Here, clearly, was a man who knew what it was to worry about getting the kids’ teeth straightened, or replacing the furnace, or making the next payment on the very set now tuned to him. Of course, he said adroitly, it was fine that a man like Governor Stevenson, “who inherited a fortune from his father,” could run for President. But it was equally fine that “a man of modest means” could also make the race, because they would all remember what Lincoln had said about the common man….
Overeager Democrats had slandered him, panicky Republicans had talked of jettisoning him, and now he had exonerated himself. But Nixon, with his immense drive, was unwilling to settle for that. This was an opportunity to leave an indelible impression on the national memory—to do what Bryan had done with the cross of gold and Coolidge with the Boston police strike—and he meant to exploit it every way he could.
He told the audience: “I should say this—that Pat doesn’t have a mink coat. But she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat. And I always tell her that she would look good in anything.
“One other thing I should probably tell you, because if I don’t they’ll be saying this about me, too. We did get something, a gift, after the nomination. A man down in Texas heard Pat on the radio mention the fact that our two youngsters would like to have a dog and, believe it or not, the day before we left on this campaign trip we got a message from Union Station in Baltimore, saying they had a package for us. We went down to get it. You know what it was?
“It was a little cocker spaniel dog in a crate that he had sent all the way from Texas—black and white, spotted, and our little girl Tricia, the six-year-old, named it Checkers. And you know, the kids, like all kids, love that dog, and I just want to say this, right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we’re going to keep it.”
It wasn’t easy to appear on a nationwide hookup and “bare your life, as I have done,” he said; he was doing it because his country was in danger, and the only man who could save it was Dwight Eisenhower. (“You say, why do I think it is in danger? And I say, look at the record. Seven years of the Truman-Acheson administration, and what’s happened? Six hundred million people lost to the Communists.”) He was approaching the peak. The clock told him that he was also running slow.
“I know that you wonder whether or not I am going to stay on the Republican ticket or resign. Let me say this: I don’t believe that I ought to quit, because I am not a quitter. And, incidentally, Pat is not a quitter. After all, her name was Patricia Ryan and she was born on Saint Patrick’s Day—and you know the Irish never quit.”6
But the decision, he went on, was not his to make. He had decided—at this moment, while talking—to turn the whole thing over to the Republican National Committee “through this television broadcast.” And he was going to ask his listeners to help the Committee decide: “Write and wire the Republican National Committee whether you think I should stay on or whether I should get off. And whatever their decision is, I will abide by it.”
A director slipped into the studio and signaled vigorously that his time was almost up. Nixon didn’t appear to see him. His eyes glassy, he kept talking to the camera: “…just let me say this last word. Regardless of what happens, I am going to continue this fight. I am going to campaign up and down America until we drive the crooks and those that defend them out of Washington. And remember, folks, Eisenhower is a great man. Folks, he is a great man, and a vote for Eisenhower is a vote for what is good for America—”
It was over. In Cleveland Eisenhower turned to Summerfield. He said, “Well, Arthur, you certainly got your seventy-five thousand dollars’ worth.”
***
In the El Capitan Theater
Nixon was saying to the director, “I’m terribly sorry I ran over. I loused it up, and I’m sorry.” Thanking the technicians, he gathered up his notes, stacked them neatly—and then, in a spasm of rage, flung them to the floor. Chotiner came in beaming and tried to congratulate him, but Nixon was inconsolable. “No, it was a flop,” he said. “I couldn’t get off in time.” In the dressing room he wheeled away from his friends and burst into tears.
Later he was to have another memory of this moment. In his book, Six Crises, he would recall that the tears had been in the eyes of cameramen who had been moved by his eloquence. The makeup man, in his recollection, growled, “That ought to fix them. There has never been a broadcast like it before,” while well-wishers jammed the studio switchboard and “everyone at the station agreed that the broadcast had been successful beyond expectations.”
The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932-1972 Page 95
