That came later. In the immediate aftermath of the speech he was haunted by the realization that the red camera light had blinked off just as he had been about to begin his most important sentence, giving his audience the address of the Republican National Committee. His faulty timing meant they didn’t have it. Lacking it, he reasoned, they would be unable to respond, and the committee would receive no messages at all. As he approached his car outside, a huge Irish setter bounded up, wagging its tail. He said gloomily to Pat, “Well, we made a hit in the dog world, anyhow.”
At the Ambassador Hotel he discovered that the impact of the broadcast had, in fact, been immense. The lobby cheered as he entered. He took a call there from Darryl Zanuck, who told him it had been “the most tremendous performance I’ve ever seen.” Within the hour word arrived that people were appearing at Western Union offices all over the country. Bit by bit his staff began putting together the story of the nationwide reaction. According to Nielsen figures, half of the TV receivers in the country had been tuned to the broadcast. Counting radio, the audience had been 60,000,000. Of these, roughly 1,000,000 called, wired, or wrote. The mails brought $60,000 in small contributions, almost enough to pay for the broadcast. It was a remarkable personal triumph, and although he was at first unaware of its scale, by the end of the evening he knew that he had received messages of praise from virtually every outstanding member of the Republican party, with one exception. There had been nothing from Dwight Eisenhower.
This imagined slight—Ike had wired his congratulations, but the telegram had been lost in the avalanche of incoming messages—was to leave permanent scars on the relationship between Nixon and the general’s advisers. The first word from Cleveland to reach the Ambassador Hotel was that the half-hour presentation hadn’t been enough for Eisenhower; he wanted a face-to-face confrontation. That was partly true. Eisenhower did feel that the half-hour had been inadequate. For the sake of appearances he felt that the two of them ought to have a private word together the following evening, in Wheeling, before putting the fund behind them. However, he had expected that Nixon would receive the suggestion in the context of his admiration for the television performance. Coming this way, after the days of excruciating tension, it was a cruel disappointment, and Nixon blew up. “What more can he possibly want of me?” he shouted, and calling in Rose Mary Woods, his secretary, he dictated a telegram to Summerfield resigning as vice-presidential candidate pending the selection of a successor. Chotiner destroyed it before it could be sent, and Nixon himself had second thoughts, but both of them decided it was best to ignore the invitation to Wheeling. Instead, Nixon would pick up his own campaign train in Missoula, Montana. An insubordinate wire went to Ike: “Will be in Washington Sunday and will be delighted to confer with you at your convenience any time thereafter.”
While that message was on its way, a call came in from Summerfield. He asked Chotiner, “Well, Murray, how are things out there?”
Chotiner replied, “Not so good.”
“What in hell do you mean, ‘Not so good’?”
“Dick just sent a telegram of resignation to the general.”
“What! My God, Murray, you tore it up, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I tore it up, but I’m not so sure how long it’s going to stay torn.”
“Well, Dick is flying to Wheeling to see the general, isn’t he?”
“No, we’re flying tonight to Missoula.”
“What? My God, Murray, you’ve got to persuade him to come to Wheeling.”
“Arthur, we trust you. If you can give us your personal assurance direct from the general that Dick will stay on the ticket with the general’s blessing, I think I can persuade him. I know I can’t otherwise.”
Before Summerfield could call back the Nixon party was off for Montana, but a phone call from Bert Andrews in Cleveland reached Nixon at the airport. Andrews reminded him that he could hardly expect Eisenhower, a five-star general and the leader of the party, to fly to him. It was time to forget the fund. The press critics had turned around. The Herald Tribune was saying, “The air is cleared.”7 The Republican National Committee had been polled and had voted to keep the ticket intact, 107 to 31. To underscore this, in Montana word at last reached Nixon from Ike: “Your presentation was magnificent…. My personal decision is to be based on personal conclusions. I would most appreciate it if you can fly to see me at once. Tomorrow I will be at Wheeling, W. Va. Whatever personal affection and admiration I had for you—and they are very great—are undiminished.”
After a few token appearances in Missoula and a two-hour nap, Nixon flew to West Virginia. On the field in Wheeling he was still on the plane, helping Pat into her Republican cloth coat, when a solitary figure detached itself from the crowd below and darted up the ramp. It was Eisenhower. Surprised, Nixon blurted out, “What are you doing here, General? You didn’t have to come up here to meet us.” Putting his arm around his running mate’s shoulders, Ike said, “Why not? You’re my boy.” As they posed for pictures in the terminal, Nixon’s eyes began to fill.
He had lots of sympathizers now. Well-wishers had sent Checkers a vast assortment of dog collars, hand-woven dog blankets, a kennel, and a year’s supply of dog food. The little spaniel had become the most famous pet in the country. Even those who had deplored the speech used it as a standard for measuring Nixon’s later performances. “This mawkish ooze ill became a man who might become the President of the United States,” said the Montgomery, Alabama, Advertiser; then, finding something in him to praise, the Advertiser’s editorial writer added a phrase to the language: “We have found ourselves dissolving our previous conception… the New Nixon rejoices us.”
***
The first of Eisenhower’s two most important campaign speeches was delivered on the evening of October 16 at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation dinner in Detroit; its statesmanlike approach to foreign policy won an endorsement of his candidacy from the New York Times, which had been leaning toward Stevenson. In the second speech, on October 24 in Detroit, the general promised that if elected, “I shall go to Korea.” Truman called the pledge a stunt, and Stevenson delighted his followers by saying, “If elected, I shall go to the White House,” but Eisenhower had struck a deep chord. The war continued to be America’s most vexing issue; surely, people felt, progress would follow a visit to the front by the nation’s greatest military hero. “For all practical purposes,” Jack Bell of the Associated Press later wrote, “the contest ended that night.”
But the wild swirls of accusations and countercharges continued right down to the wire. Outrageous stories were circulated over that first November weekend: Stevenson was a homosexual, Mamie was an alcoholic, “Adlai” was a Jewish name, Ike was dead but his aides wouldn’t admit it. The campaign had been the ugliest since the Roosevelt-Landon donny-brook of 1936. That Sunday, November 2, an automobile with a Stevenson bumper sticker was forced off the Pennsylvania Turnpike and its driver beaten senseless. In Joplin, Missouri, one Raymond Nixon, no relation to the senator, received three threatening phone calls, and the New Orleans Police Department reported eleven brawls, all of them over politics. Sherman and Rachel Adams spent election day in New York. That evening Sinclair Weeks asked where they had been. At the Bronx Zoo, they said, watching the wild animals.
“Quite a change from a political campaign,” he said.
“No,” said Rachel, “not much.”
In Libertyville, Illinois, on election day Stevenson visited a school which was also a polling place. “I would like to ask all of you children to indicate, by holding up your hands, how many of you would like to be governor of Illinois, the way I am,” he said. Nearly every hand went up. “Well, that is almost unanimous,” he said. “Now I would like to ask all the governors if they would like to be one of you kids.” He raised his own hand. He was in good spirits, and confident. His staff formed a betting pool, each man contributing five dollars to it and writing his guess of the electoral vote on a slip of paper. His own slip
predicted he would win 381 electoral votes, a landslide. The others were less optimistic, though none thought he would be defeated.
The front-page headline in the New York Times the previous morning had been: ELECTION OUTCOME HIGHLY UNCERTAIN, SURVEY INDICATES. “Neither Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Republican, nor Gov. Adlai E. Stevenson, Democrat, can be regarded as now certain of election,” the story began, summing up the last of seven exhaustive surveys conducted by Times reporters. Those burned four years earlier were making cautious forecasts. The public opinion polls warily noted unusually high numbers of undecided voters and suggested that this floating vote would be divided rather evenly between the two candidates. Nearly all of it went to Eisenhower. What the pollsters had overlooked, or ignored, was that the vast majority of this central group were new registrants. When previously indifferent voters register they usually augur a protest vote, and so it was this time. In the first great swing since 1932, the country went Republican.
Eisenhower won, 33,936,234 to 27,314,992. Republican editorial writers interpreted the victory as an endorsement for free enterprise, predicting that at the stroke of noon on inaugural day an efficient businessman’s administration would turn the Pendergast politicians out. The Chicago Tribune, examining returns from the new suburbs, chortled that fresh air had done wonders for the judgment of those who had moved out from urban wards. It had certainly changed their politics. Coming from neighborhoods which had given lopsided majorities to Roosevelt and Truman, the young couples in the new developments had been converted to Ike’s cause. The winning ticket had carried Levittown, Long Island, by 66 percent and Park Forest, Illinois, by 69.4 percent.
***
Adlai Stevenson could hardly be called discredited. He had polled more votes than any losing presidential candidate in the country’s history—more, indeed, than any winning candidate except FDR in 1936 and Ike this time. Though Eisenhower wound up with 442 of the 531 electoral votes, his triumph was less impressive than those of the last three Republican Presidents. His plurality was below 11 percent. Theirs had been 28 percent (Harding), 30 percent (Coolidge), and 18 percent (Hoover). Moreover, despite his margin of six million votes, he had just barely managed to pull in a Republican Congress. The GOP majority in the new House was ten votes; in the Senate, merely one.
Nevertheless, 1952, like 1932, was a pivotal election. The Democrats remained the larger party, with a 5 to 3 ratio in registered voters, but registration meant less; the number of staunch Democrats—“knee-jerk liberals,” Republicans were calling them—had diminished. It had become fashionable to say that you voted “for the man, not the party,” as though those who had cast their ballots for FDR had done anything else. Independent registrations had now increased to more than 20 percent of the electorate. On Capitol Hill control was securely anchored in the Republican-Southern Democratic coalition first formed to fight Roosevelt’s court reform bill fifteen years earlier. Its skepticism toward legislative innovation suited the country’s new mood, which was conservative, content, and above all wary of nonconformity.
Adlai Stevenson spent election day evening in his basement office in Springfield, working on state business and listening to returns on a small portable radio. He had written out two statements, an acknowledgment of victory and a concession of defeat, and when Blair came in at nine o’clock he asked blandly, “Well, Bill, which is it to be—‘A’ or ‘B’?” Blair replied, “I’m afraid it’s ‘B,’ Governor.” “O.K.,” said Stevenson.
He reached the Leland Hotel lobby at 1:43. Smiling cheerfully at downcast volunteers, he stepped to a battery of microphones and said, “General Eisenhower has been a great leader in war. He has been a vigorous and valiant opponent in the campaign. These qualities will now be dedicated to leading us all through the next four years….” After reading his telegram of concession, he looked out across the crowd. It was the end of an age, and they all felt it. Democrats of the swing generation had grown up under administrations of their own party. Now, with the age of reform over, they could not see the way ahead. Neither could he, but as their leader he wanted to say another word. After a pause he said: “Someone asked me, as I came down the street, how I felt, and I was reminded of a story that a fellow townsman of ours used to tell—Abraham Lincoln. He said he felt like a little boy who had stubbed his toe in the dark. He said that he was too old to cry, but it hurt too much to laugh.”
He left, and millions discovered that tonight, at least, they were not too old for tears. In that broken moment of time they felt the first pangs of the barren loneliness Republicans had known for two decades—the frustrations of men accustomed to power but relegated to impotence.
Democrats slept late in the White House and at the Leland that Wednesday, November 5. Not so General Eisenhower; up early, he flew to Augusta. The day was still crisp and golden when the President-elect teed up for the first hole. The first ball he hit soared nearly 250 yards straight down the fairway. Two well-built young men congratulated him on his powerful drive, and he introduced them to the rest of his party as members of the Secret Service.
TWENTY
What Was Good for General Motors
Late that autumn, while Washington awaited instructions from the first President-elect since FDR, the rest of the country turned, so to speak, from the bomb shelter to the barbecue pit, moving in rhythm to the tempos of the time. In the early 1950s that was easy. Rock ’n’ roll lay in the future. Record stores had not yet been overwhelmed by teen-agers. Their typical customer was in his early twenties. His favorite songs were about love, not lust, and they were rendered tenderly by such mellow vocalists as Mario Lanza, Julie London, and Tony Bennett. Harry Belafonte, a U.S. Navy veteran, was earning $750,000 a year in the early 1950s—his album Calypso became the first LP to sell a million copies—and straight-arrow customers were buying 100,000 Mitch Miller albums every month. Miller was not only a performer; he was also the director of the Columbia Records popular music division, which meant that he profited twice from each sale. Yet it was all so relaxed that the public forgot that it was big business. On his Saturday evening television show Perry Como, one of Miller’s fellow entrepreneurs, said he wouldn’t mind going back to cutting hair for a living, and nobody in the studio audience laughed.
After seventeen years Your Lucky Strike Hit Parade was still going strong Saturday evenings on NBC, advertising a product still thought to be harmless. The number one hit in 1952 was Johnnie Ray’s “Cry.” It would be replaced in 1953 by Percy Faith’s “Where Is Your Heart.” Other melodies oozing from jukeboxes were “April in Portugal,” “On Top of Old Smoky,” Vera Lynn’s “Auf Wiederseh’n, Sweetheart,” Rosemary Clooney’s “Come on-a My House,” and Tex Ritter’s “High Noon.” “High Noon” was the first big movie “theme.” It was from the Gary Cooper picture of the same name. The tune was billed as “an original folk song by Dimitri Tiomkin,” and it was so catchy that General Eisenhower couldn’t get it out of his mind; he went around whistling it for months. In none of the lively arts was there anything startling or jumpy, anything that rocked the boat. This was a seedtime, a breathing spell, a space to stretch and regroup. Sensible Democrats knew it: “I agree that it is a time for catching our breath,” said Adlai Stevenson; “I agree that moderation is the spirit of the times”; and Dean Acheson advised friends to “Do what nature requires, that is to have a fallow period.”
In the hiatus between the Truman and Eisenhower administrations a Pueblo, Colorado, businessman and amateur named Morey Bernstein was preparing to make psychic history by mesmerizing an attractive thirty-three-year-old woman named Virginia Tighe. Until Bernstein fixed her with his eye she had been an ordinary Colorado housewife. Under his spell she spoke with a soft brogue, danced a jig, and identified herself as an Irishwoman named Bridey Murphy. Careful inquiries in Ireland disclosed that there had been such a person; she had been born in Cork in 1758 and was buried there. It then developed that Virginia, while speaking as Bridey, possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of e
arly nineteenth-century Cork—its people, its places, and its customs. After a newspaper series about her appeared in the Denver Post, Virginia became a nationwide sensation. Bernstein’s book about her, The Search for Bridey Murphy, went through eight printings; 30,000 long-playing records of her voice, speaking as Bridey, were sold at $5.95.
Psychiatrists, though stumped, suggested that Virginia could have woven together fragments of memory that lay in her subconscious. Sure enough, the Chicago American found that a Mrs. Anthony Corkell, née Murphy, had lived just across the street during Virginia’s impressionable childhood. Mrs. Corkell had come from Cork. At the child’s urging, she had repeatedly described her early life in Ireland and stories about it she had heard from her mother.
Receipts for motion picture theaters continued to be low. The storm that greeted Brigitte Bardot’s performance in And God Created Woman says much about the 1950s. “There lies Brigitte,” Time gasped, “stretched from end to end of the Cinemascope screen, bottoms up and bare as a censor’s eyeball.” The bowdlerizers did their duty. France’s most famous piece of baggage could be seen only in the art theaters of very large cities, and not always there; Providence, Fort Worth, Memphis, and Philadelphia banned her outright. For a while, in the month of the Eisenhower landslide, movie exhibitors thought they might have something new in the deepies. Deepies were being hailed by their developers as the sequel to talkies. They were in 3-D photography; you put on a pair of glasses with cardboard rims, and you were on a roller coaster run amok, hurtling downward at 150 mph, or watching a spear sail right out of the screen headed for your throat. The first feature-length deepie, Bwana Devil, opened in Los Angeles on November 26, 1952. In one week it earned $95,000, and a Paramount executive, scoffing at the suggestion that the need to wear spectacles would ultimately mean poor box office, said, “They’ll wear toilet seats around their necks if you give them what they want to see!” Then the novelty wore off, and sure enough, the deepies were as dead as Vitaphone.
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