But the over-all impression from all the reports was that the people around Eisenhower were worried and angry that the fund controversy might cost the Republicans the election and that it was all my fault. Jim Hagerty told newsmen that the mail and telegrams reaching the campaign train was divided fifty-fifty. The press reported that an aura of gloom had settled over the Eisenhower train.
If that was so, it was nothing compared to the despair on the “Nixon Special” as we received reports from the East. What kept our morale up during the day was the overwhelmingly favorable reaction of the whistle-stop crowds to my speeches whenever I discussed the fund. And finally, early in the afternoon, I received the first bit of good news from the East since Karl Mundt’s statement the day the story broke. Bill Rogers came back into my compartment as the train was pulling away from one of our whistle-stops to report, “I think the tide has finally begun to turn. Bob Taft has just made a strong statement in your behalf.”
Taft, who was Mr. Integrity himself, had, with his typical fairness and objectivity, tried to put the whole affair in perspective: “I see no reason why a Senator or Representative should not accept gifts from members of his family or his friends or his constituents to help pay even personal expenses which are not paid by the government. The only possible criticism would arise if these donors asked for or received legislative or other favors. I know that no such motives inspired the expense payments in the case of Dick Nixon. Those who contributed to the fund probably agreed 100 per cent with his legislative position anyway.”
It was ironical, but not surprising, that Taft, whose nomination I had opposed at the Convention, was one of the first major Republican leaders to speak up in my defense. First, he was a Senator himself. He knew that scores of Senators and Congressmen from the more populous states and districts had to have funds available for year-round campaigning. In addition, Taft was an experienced politician and party man. He knew exactly what the Democrats were up to. He knew they were aiming not at me but at Eisenhower and the big prize—the presidency. He was not so naïve as to think that I could be dropped from the ticket without creating a break in our ranks big enough for the Democratic campaign to drive through to victory. House Minority Leader Joe Martin, who was in California at the time, and Herbert Hoover also came to my defense before the day was over.
And while the attacks continued to increase in violence and volume, we all noted that one voice on the Democratic side was strangely muted. Adlai Stevenson had not joined enthusiastically in the chorus of attack. As Bill Rogers once put it, he was following his usual pattern of “considering the problem very carefully before making the wrong decision.” I took at face value his statement that he wanted to be fair and wait until all the facts were in. But Chotiner was not so charitable. He smelled a rat. He said, “I will lay money against odds that Stevenson is afraid of something here. He does not want these attacks to continue.” Chotiner was right, but neither he nor I dreamed that what Stevenson was afraid of was a disclosure of his own political fund which was, indeed, secret and which would never have been revealed had it not been for the attacks his supporters had made on me.
Meanwhile, Dana Smith made public the names of all seventy-six contributors to the fund, which totaled $18,235 (an average contribution of $240 a person) for a two-year period. His accounting showed that disbursements had been made for Christmas cards which had been sent to former campaign workers, for travel vouchers, for recordings of speeches, for postage, and for a few other smaller items—leaving a balance of $66.13.
Following Smith’s report, I issued a formal explanation on Saturday afternoon of “The Basic Facts About This Fund”:
(1) It was set up to pay for strictly political activities in which all public servants must take part, in which those who are not independently wealthy are financially unable to participate without assistance.
(2) It enabled me to keep my speaking and mailing schedule without recourse to padding my Federal office payroll, free government transportation, misuse of the Senatorial franking privilege, or any subterfuge.
(3) I had never received one penny of this fund for my personal use.
(4) This fund has been a matter of public knowledge from its inception; no attempt has ever been made to conceal its existence or purpose. All its disbursements were made by Mr. Smith by check as Trustee.
(5) Contributors of this fund are longtime supporters of mine who sincerely wish to enable me to continue my active battle against Communism and corruption.
(6) None of them ever asked for or received any special consideration from me.
(7) This fund represents a normal, legitimate, open matter of permitting constituents actively to support the political activity of a candidate of their choice. Any other interpretation is a grave injustice to a fine group of public-spirited community leaders.
• • •
This statement on the “basic facts” was reported in the papers the next day. But somehow, along with the Taft, Martin, and Hoover statements, it got lost in the welter of news and speculation over whether General Eisenhower would or would not choose to find a new running mate. There were several reasons for this which our small group on the “Nixon Special” tried to analyze. The primary factor was that the answer to a charge is never considered as newsworthy as the original attack. Second, the big-name, influential Washington reporters cover the presidential candidates while the less well-known reporters are assigned to the vice presidential candidates. This meant that the stories from the Eisenhower train automatically tended to receive a bigger play than the stories from the Nixon train. Third, there was the physical factor that news traditionally travels from east to west because of the three-hour difference in time zones. And fourth, while most newspaper publishers are Republicans, the majority of working reporters are Democrats. As Bert Andrews once said to me, “Their natural bias has an effect, conscious or subconscious, on how they choose their words to tell their stories.”
As our train pulled into Salem, Oregon, for the major stop of the day, we all wondered what Governor Douglas McKay would do. The political heat in Oregon was particularly strong for me to get off the ticket, and the Governor had been urged by some of his friends to avoid riding with me in the motorcade to the Capitol steps, where I was scheduled to speak. It was common knowledge that McKay was high on the list for an appointment to the Eisenhower Cabinet, and his advisers did not want him to appear on the wrong side of the fence.
I shall always be grateful for his reaction. He not only greeted me warmly but rode with me through crowds which included scores of sign-carrying hecklers. He introduced me at the Capitol in the warmest and friendliest possible terms. Years later, when he was Secretary of the Interior, I asked him why he had done this in view of the risks involved. He replied, “I didn’t know whether Eisenhower was going to keep you on the ticket or not and, frankly, I hadn’t had enough opportunity to study the facts to decide whether or not you should stay on the ticket. But I don’t like to see anybody being kicked around when he is down and, particularly, before he has had a chance to state his side of the case. If you had the guts to fight it out, I certainly should have enough guts to introduce you.”
My reception in Portland was altogether different. There the crowds were thin because of discouragement and lack of planning among local Republican leaders. But the pickets and hecklers were out in full force. They threw pennies into the car as we motorcaded to our hotel. Some of them were thrown so hard we were forced to duck. When we reached the Benson Hotel we were met by a jeering crowd blocking the entrance. Pat and I were shoved and jostled as we got out of the car, and only with the help of Bob Hamilton, who had taken leave from his job with the FBI in San Francisco to serve as my aide, were we able to force our way into the lobby.
When we reached our suite, I called Chotiner, Rogers, Hillings, and Bassett for a conference so that we could catch up on the latest news reports and determine our strategy for the next day. There still had not been any word fro
m Eisenhower. Sherman Adams had left a call for me at the hotel switchboard, but I told Chotiner to call him back and inform him that I would not talk to anyone but the General. And there was a message from my mother, who was staying with the children in Washington. It was a simple one: “I will be thinking of you.” This had been her Quaker way through the years of saying that she would be praying for me.
It was at this meeting that Jim Bassett informed me of the now-famous “hound’s tooth” remark. The General had called reporters to his car for an informal, off-the-record talk. There he had repeated his personal conviction that although he did not know me well, he believed I was honest and that I would not do anything crooked or unethical. But he had said that I would have to prove it and convince “fair-minded” people. Then he had gone on to say, “Of what avail is it for us to carry on this crusade against this business of what has been going on in Washington if we, ourselves, aren’t clean as a hound’s tooth?” Bassett reported that the press was reading into Eisenhower’s statement the implication that Nixon would have to prove himself “clean as a hound’s tooth” if he hoped to stay on the ticket with Eisenhower. Our little group was somewhat dismayed by reports of Eisenhower’s attitude. I must admit that it made me feel like the little boy caught with jam on his face.
But by this time I was no longer interested in hearsay reports on what Eisenhower thought. I knew that now that we were off the train and were scheduled to be in a hotel for the next twenty-four hours, I would have an opportunity to talk to him directly.
In the meantime, some fundamental decisions could not wait. The first order of business was to get all the evidence in front of me. I asked Chotiner and Rogers to continue their efforts to get firsthand reports from Dewey, Seaton, Adams, Summerfield, and any others they could reach on the Eisenhower train. I asked Jim Bassett to check sentiment not only in our own press group but also among correspondents on the Eisenhower train. Hillings was to give me an appraisal of the wires and letters which were now arriving by the hundreds at the hotel, and was also to check sentiment among Congressmen and Senators.
I left for my evening speaking engagement in the Grant High School auditorium in a pessimistic mood. But there I was bucked up by the most wildly enthusiastic reception of the campaign to date. It was an overflow crowd which rose to its feet when Pat and I entered, and they cheered and applauded virtually everything I said. Our departure from the auditorium was delayed for over an hour while hundreds swarmed to the stage of the auditorium to shake my hands and say, “Don’t quit.”
When we arrived back at the hotel, I asked Chotiner, Rogers, Bassett, and Hillings to come to my room to give me their reports.
At times like this it is vitally important to look at the facts at their worst rather than at their best, and so I opened the conference by saying, “I don’t want to hear any sugar-coated reports. I want to know who is for me and who is against me and then we can decide what to do.”
The reports, to put it mildly, were not encouraging, and these men, each of whom was a colleague and a friend, gave it to me straight. Bassett reported that more than 90 per cent of the press on the Eisenhower train believed I was a liability to the ticket. They were predicting that if I did not resign of my own accord, I would be forced off the ticket. However, he added, some of our own press contingent were beginning to shift. At first they had thought I was through because of the scandal. But now some were beginning to blame Eisenhower for not making a decision one way or the other, thereby putting a stop to the mushrooming story. They had also been impressed by the enthusiastic reaction of the crowds when I had told my side of the fund story. But most of the television and radio commentators, as well as the newspaper columnists, were predicting that in the end I would be off the ticket.
Chotiner and Rogers reported that the sentiment among Eisenhower’s staff, friends, and advisers was just as bad. Some of the staff members were withholding comment until Eisenhower himself made a decision, but privately they were saying that I should resign. And one of them had gone so far as to call some of the key members of the National Committee, urging them to demand my resignation.
The only relatively bright spot was Hillings’ report to the effect that most of the Senators and Congressmen he had reached were advising me to stay on the ticket and fight it out.
After each had made his report, I put the key question to them. “All of us tend to see this story from my point of view. But we can’t fly in the face of such overwhelming opinion against us unless we have some strong reasons to question the judgment of those who have reached the opposite conclusion. I want each of you to try to put yourself in the place of Eisenhower. Forget about me. If my staying on the ticket would lead to Eisenhower’s defeat, I would never forgive myself. If my getting off the ticket is necessary to assure his victory, it would be worth it as far as any personal embarrassment to me is concerned. Looking at it this way—should I take the initiative and resign from the ticket at this time?”
Bassett replied that it would depend on whether I was able to get my story across more adequately to the press and to the country at large.
Rogers said that if Eisenhower asked for my resignation, “you would have no other course than to submit it. But unless and until he does, you should fight it out.”
Hillings, who at twenty-nine was still young enough to have “fire in his belly,” insisted vehemently that I should stay on the ticket regardless of what Eisenhower wanted me to do. “You simply can’t let down the millions of people who have supported you through the years,” he said. When I asked him how we were going to deal with the press and other opinion-makers who seemed to be so overwhelmingly against us, he replied, “You don’t have to win them. The best way to answer them is to beat ’em.”
Chotiner applied his keen political mind to the problem and came up with the same conclusion. “This is politics,” he said. “The prize is the White House. The Democrats have attacked you and will continue to attack you because they are afraid to take on Eisenhower. You are the lightning rod. If they weren’t taking you on this way, they would be taking you on on something else because they don’t know how to get at Eisenhower and they are afraid he is too popular for a frontal assault. If you get off this ticket because Eisenhower forces you off, or if you do so on your own volition, Eisenhower won’t have the chance of a snowball in hell to win in November. Your friends and those who supported Taft will never forgive him, and the Democrats will beat him over the head for his lack of judgment in selecting you in the first place. This whole story has been blown up out of all proportion because of the delay and indecision of the amateurs around Eisenhower. Every time you get before an audience, you win them. What we have to do is to get you before the biggest possible audience so that you can talk over the heads of the press to the people. The people, I am convinced, are for you but the press is killing you.”
Chotiner, who had great respect for the working press, did not intend these remarks to be critical of the reporters covering us, but he pointed up hard realities as far as press coverage in general is concerned. Reporters temperamentally and traditionally are skeptical, and perhaps justifiably so, whenever the personal honesty of a public official is questioned.
Everyone present agreed that somehow I had to get an opportunity to tell my story to millions rather than to the thousands who were coming out to hear me at the whistle-stops. There was only one way to do this—through a national television broadcast. As our conference broke up after three in the morning, we agreed that the following day we would check out the possibilities for putting me on a nationwide TV hookup. The major question remaining unresolved was the type of program and the timing of the broadcast. Several commercially sponsored programs, including “Meet the Press,” had offered me time for Sunday night. Chotiner thought that “Meet the Press” would be a bad format because he believed the program should give me an opportunity to state my case alone, without interruption by possibly unfriendly press questioners. Rogers objected on the
ground that he thought Sunday was too early. “Let them shoot their wad first and then give it to them,” he said.
After the four of them had left the room, I sat alone for another two hours and reviewed the entire situation. I realized that although others could help direct my thinking, the final decision in a crisis of this magnitude must not represent the lowest common denominator of a collective judgment; it must be made alone by the individual primarily involved.
The range and scope of this crisis began to fall into a pattern. It was, of course, an acute personal crisis. I realized that my decision affected not only me and my future but also that of my wife, my daughters, my parents, and other members of my family. They, as well as I, would have to live with the consequences of my action.
What I did would also affect Eisenhower and his personal future in the same way.
But more important, I knew that what I decided would affect the Republican Party and the millions of its members who had put their faith in me by nominating me as candidate for Vice President.
And most important of all, I believed that what I did would affect the future of my country and the cause of peace and freedom for the world.
Stripped of all personal and collateral considerations, the real issue was: who would win the election, Eisenhower or Stevenson?
To me, this was not a choice between two equally able men who happened to be members of different parties. I will admit that I was not an objective observer; but to me Eisenhower was a great leader who could provide the inspiration needed by the United States and the Free World in so critical a time. Stevenson, on the other hand, impressed me as being all veneer and no substance—a man plagued with indecision who could speak beautifully but could not act decisively. If my crisis over an $18,000 political fund was to affect who would lead the United States in the next four or eight years, it was a crisis of unbelievably massive proportions.
Six Crises Page 13
