By agreement, the focus of this first encounter was domestic policy. Believing the size of the audiences would grow with each debate, the Nixon people had insisted on saving foreign policy until last. In his opening statement, Kennedy showed he was intent on playing the game strictly by his rules, but hardly by Nixon’s plan. “Mr. Smith, Mr. Nixon,” he began, slyly equating the status of a two-term vice president and a television newscaster. “In the election of 1860, Abraham Lincoln said the question is whether this nation could exist half slave and half free. In the election of 1960, and with the world around us, the question is whether the world will exist half slave and half free, whether it will move in the direction of freedom, in the direction of the road that we are taking, or whether it will move in the direction of slavery.”
Kennedy then pushed the detonator. “We discuss tonight domestic issues, but I would not want . . . any implication to be given that this does not involve directly our struggle with Mr. Khrushchev for survival.” What he was doing was introducing precisely the topic Nixon had thought was postponed.
The United States needed to be strong economically, Kennedy declared, not just to maintain the American standard of living but because economic strength buttressed our fight against the Communists. “If we do well here, if we meet our obligations, if we are moving ahead, I think freedom will be secure around the world. If we fail, then freedom fails. Are we doing so much as we can do?” he asked an anxious country. “I do not think we’re doing enough.”
Kennedy’s words struck home for his largest audience ever. In eight minutes he’d shown himself as infinitely more appealing than the fellow who’d been vice president of the United States for eight years. There wasn’t a word of his opening presentation anyone could have argued with, not a sentiment his fellow citizens couldn’t share. No, the country was not meeting its potential. No, we were not the same nation of doers who’d, heroically and with such sacrifice, ended World War II. Yes, we could do better. And, yes, with the right leadership, it was in our power to “get the country moving again.”
After observing this tour de force, Nixon took his turn with the look of a man dragged from a five-dollar-a-night hotel room and thrust before the unforgiving glare of a police lineup, a man charged with a crime of which he knew, if not he himself, his political cohorts were guilty. Afraid to project the “assassin image,” he was stymied. “Mr. Smith, Senator Kennedy, there is no question but that we cannot discuss our internal affairs in the United States without recognizing that they have a tremendous bearing on our international position. There is no question that this nation cannot stand still, because we are in a deadly competition, a competition not only with the men in the Kremlin but the men in Peking.” Then, finally: “I subscribe completely to the spirit that Senator Kennedy has expressed tonight, the spirit that the United States should move ahead.”
Incredibly, Nixon was agreeing with his challenger. Yes, domestic policies affect the country’s foreign situation. Yes, we cannot afford to “stand still.” Yes, Kennedy has the right “spirit” to lead. His only concern was that Kennedy’s statistics made the situation appear bleaker than it was.
He gave a similar response on Kennedy’s call for medical care for the aged: “Here again may I indicate that Senator Kennedy and I are not in disagreement as to the aim. We both want to help old people.” Minutes later: “Let us understand throughout this campaign that his motives and mine are sincere.” And, after a small reminder that he knew “what it means to be poor,” he offered yet another genuflection to Kennedy’s goodwill. “I know Senator Kennedy feels as deeply about these problems as I do, but our disagreement is not about the goals for America but only about the means to reach those goals.”
Only? The race for the presidency is “only” about “means”? With staggering humility, Nixon was telling the largest American political audience ever assembled that his rival was not only a man of unquestioned sincerity but one of unassailable motive. It was merely a matter of method that separated the two applicants for the world’s most towering position. To avoid coming off as his nastier self, Dick Nixon was presenting himself as Jack Kennedy’s admiring, if somewhat more prudent, older brother.
Throughout, he kept his attention fixed exclusively on Kennedy. Just as he had at McKeesport, Pennsylvania, thirteen years earlier, Nixon was ignoring the audience. He seemed to crave his opponent’s approval, even to the point of rebuking his own administration. “Good as the record is,” he averred, “may I emphasize it isn’t enough. A record is never something to stand on. It’s something to build on.”
As the sitting vice president of the United States dealt with each of his opponent’s points, he tried desperately to elevate himself to an Ike-like pedestal, one from which Kennedy was just as determined to knock him. Asked about Nixon’s campaign charges that he was “naïve and sometimes immature,” Kennedy explained how the two men had come to Congress together in 1946 and how both served on the Education and Labor Committee. “I’ve been there now for fourteen years, the same period of time that he has, so our experience in government is comparable.” He went on to quote the unassailably noble and beloved sixteenth president: “Abraham Lincoln came to the presidency in 1860 after a rather little-known session in the House of Representatives and after being defeated for the Senate . . . and was a distinguished president. There is no certain road to the presidency. There are no guarantees that if you take one road or another that you will be a successful president.”
But more than either contestant’s words, it was their images, projected on millions of black-and-white Admiral and General Electric televisions, that affected the American judgment. Each time Kennedy spoke, Nixon’s eyes darted toward him uneasily, the same look that Kennedy’s aide Ted Reardon had spotted more than a decade before at a House committee meeting. When Nixon was on, Kennedy sat, sometimes professorially taking notes, at other moments wearing a sardonic expression as he concentrated on his rival’s answers. Sargent Shriver later noted that it was his brother-in-law’s facial language, more than anything he said, that in the end decided the results. By raising an eyebrow at Nixon, Jack had shown he had the confidence to lead the country.
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.” On the other side of the case, those hearing the debate on radio—a much smaller audience—were more favorable to the Republican. Lyndon Johnson, listening in his car, was one of them. He thought Nixon was the winner.
But it was a debacle for the vice president. After weeks of parity in the polls, one candidate now moved into a clear lead. A Gallup survey taken in the days following the first debate found Nixon with 46 percent approval and 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. Kennedy’s captivating but also commanding performance in the first debate now made him the country’s number one box office attraction.
Nursing his wounds, Nixon sought a weapon with which to make his fighting comeback. He found one in a current Cold War issue, counting on it to be the club with which he might beat his rival. Since the Communist takeover of China in 1949, the two offshore islands of Quemoy and Matsu had been occupied by the forces of Chiang Kai-shek’s government on Formosa. The Chinese Communists had been shelling Quemoy and Matsu, demanding their evacuation. In an interview with NBC’s David Brinkley, Kennedy had questioned the U.S. policy of helping Chiang’s forces defend them, saying they weren’t essential to the defense of Formosa.
If his opponent was willing to back down in the face of Communist aggression, as Nixon saw it, he was going to call him
on it. How could any American leader allow the other side to annex even a small chunk of global territory and not see it as an invitation to further aggression? He was ready to attack.
Nixon’s people, meanwhile, recognized they had other fronts to deal with as well. How their candidate looked mattered as much, obviously, as anything he said. This time Nixon was prepared to wear makeup. There’d be no macho hesitancy as before. He had his own dark suit to wear, and he’d been downing several milk shakes a day to give him the bulk he’d lost in those weeks in the hospital. But none of this would matter, his aides realized, if he showed the same sweaty look he had in that first, disastrous encounter with Kennedy in Chicago.
On the evening of October 7, Bill Wilson arrived with the Kennedy brothers at NBC’s Washington bureau for the second debate. They walked into the studio to realize that someone had set the temperature practically to freezing. It felt like a meat locker. “What the hell is this?” Jack asked. After complaining loudly to no avail, Bobby darted in anger to the control room. Bill Wilson remembers racing down to the basement of the building, looking for the air-conditioning unit. “There was a guy standing there that Ted Rogers had put there, and he said don’t let anybody change this. I said, ‘Get out of my way or I’m going to call the police.’ He immediately left and I changed the air-conditioning back. Ted wanted to keep his job because of the fuck-up in the first debate.”
That night, Nixon showed that he’d been preparing himself not simply to look better than in the first encounter with Kennedy but to fight better as well. There was no more of agreeing in principle. He knew he needed to draw a line. “I should point out here that Senator Kennedy has attacked our foreign policy. He 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 response was tortured. “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.”
Kennedy was now in Nixon’s Cold Warrior target zone. Fighting Communism, Nixon charged, wasn’t about being wishy-washy. “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 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, Nixon had scored a hit. He’d wounded Kennedy where the Democratic candidate himself knew his own party was vulnerable. The point of contention, after all, was one at which Kennedy himself had taken aim back in the “Who lost China?” period. 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 a 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.”
However, what Nixon portrayed as strength, Kennedy saw as brinkmanship. Why would we risk war with the Chinese Communists over such a slight point as this? It made no sense. What it seemed to be about was Nixon wanting to fight the Communists on their own terrain and at significant peril of it going global. “Mr. Nixon is not interested in policies of caution in world affairs,” he told a partisan audience 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 caught 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 Indochina 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.”
There were now two hurdles facing Jack Kennedy as he headed into the third debate, on October 13. One was that he continued to be pegged as the squeamish candidate, ready to pull back from Quemoy and Matsu, while Nixon remained the vigilant champion, loudly prepared to hold the line. Helping to prepare him that day, Arthur Schlesinger observed his jitters. “I had the impression that he was a little nervous about the Q-M issue.”
The other problem was the new debate format, which separated the candidates physically, the Democrat in a studio in New York and his Republican opponent 2,500 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. If that was so, would Kennedy 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 now notorious 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 now, Nixon challenged Kennedy to come up with the name of a Republican president who’d led the country into war. “I would remind Senator Kennedy of the past fifty years. I would ask him to name one Republican president who led this country into war. There were three Democratic presidents who led us into war.”
Boldly, Nixon cited the pre–World War II legacy of Munich, comparing Kennedy’s position on Quemoy and Matsu to the appeasement policy toward Hitler’s Germany that 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 that this is all he wanted.” Before a national television audience of millions, Richard Nixon was calling Jack an appeaser. He was reminding him 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.”
With the third debate over, Kennedy took off for Michigan. He was scheduled to spend the night in Ann Arbor and then begin a whistle-stop train tour of the state the next day. Arriving late at the University of Michigan campus, he found nearly ten thousand students waiting for him. Speaking in front of the Michigan Union building, he suddenly, out of nowhere, made a proposition. “How many of you who are going to be doctors are willing to spend your days in Ghana? Technicians and engineers? How many o
f you are willing to work in the Foreign Service and spend your lives traveling around the world? On your willingness to do that—not merely to serve one year or two years in the service—but on your willingness to contribute part of your life to this country, I think will depend the answer whether our society can compete.”
The speech lasted barely three minutes. He told Dave Powers he’d “hit a winning number” with it. He’d said it all before, pretty much, in that 1951 appearance on Meet the Press after he’d come back from the Far East. He’d talked then about sending off smart and idealistic young Americans to represent their country around the world. This time, however, he was speaking as a candidate for president. This time he was talking about something he would create. He was talking about the Peace Corps.
There on the steps of the Michigan Union, at two in the morning, he’d imagined out loud the genesis of a phenomenon that would change American lives. An idea that had not before existed in the minds of his countrymen now did: that of non-military service on foreign soil. Harris Wofford, a campaign aide and early civil rights activist, along with other Kennedy staffers, felt he’d been so angered by Nixon’s taunt about the Democratic habit of starting wars that he determined to push in a totally different direction. In the closing weeks of the campaign, Jack began to pair the call for nuclear disarmament that he’d been making with his vision of a “peace corps of talented young men and women, willing and able to serve their country.”
As for Quemoy and Matsu, Kennedy wanted it dropped, and to this end, he sought out Secretary of State Christian Herter, a former Massachusetts governor, to help broker a deal. The idea was that he, the Democratic candidate, as a point of national solidarity, felt it unwise to give the impression America was divided on the China issue. Kennedy’s people told Herter their candidate was even prepared to change his position in order not to appear out of step with administration policy.
Chris Matthews Complete Library E-book Box Set: Tip and the Gipper, Jack Kennedy, Hardball, Kennedy & Nixon, Now, Let Me Tell You What I Really Think, and American Page 68
