Campaigning: Nixon

Westerners are different from the rest of us. It has something to do with roots, or the lack of them, the restlessness of the frontier; the big sky, the mountains exploding from flat plains, the space; the animals, the sparse population. Boom or bust, life sometimes solid, sometimes not, depending on the breaks, the chances. Rootlessness can be liberating or imprisoning, depending on the man. Richard Nixon is the most rootless man in American public life, the only major American politician of his generation to switch addresses. Of course, there was Eisenhower, but he had an Army APO number.

The Nixons, Pat and Dick, are Westerners. Pat Nixon is the daughter of a footloose gold prospector who had struggled overland from Connecticut to South Dakota and Nevada. Pat Nixon, now of Fifth Avenue, New York, looked down at the Salmon River mountains of Idaho, pointed out the window of the Electra, and said, this is my country; Dick’s too. Through the clouds the mountains bumped into each other, and the snow looked hard-packed in the gullies that reached like fingers down the slopes of the mountain. Life in those mountains was hard and insecure. But it was great country, she said; people were more open, easier.

New York City, Nixon had observed, was too parochial. “I need to get out, to see the governors, to find out what is on their minds.” He said there seemed to be an absence of trivia and pettiness in the Far West; he thought that the people were more sincere. He did not go further, for he was speaking to representatives of the Eastern press. Anyway, it was good to get out — to talk about agriculture and land use, to learn, as he confided, with some surprise, that the Secretary of the Interior, Stewart Udall, was as unpopular as the Secretary of Agriculture, Orville Freeman. It was the sort of thing that was useful to know.

The time was late April, and for weeks Richard Nixon had hung back, saying little, the occasional provocateur of a line in a column on the editorial pages of the New York Times. He was reassessing his position after Lyndon Johnson’s abrupt announcement on March 31. What to do now? The situation was very cloudy. Nelson Rockefeller had not yet reversed direction. Some political figures were talking of John Lindsay, but not many. Out west there was Ronald Reagan, the direct spiritual descendant of Barry Goldwater. “Ron,” as his aides called him, was an imponderable. “I take him at his word when he says he is not a candidate,” Nixon had said. But Nixon did not believe this, nor did anybody else.

So he planned a tour through the Western states, partly to test sentiment but partly also, as he said, to get back west. At the end of April, aboard a chartered Electra, Nixon flew to Washington to address the American Society of Newspaper Editors. It was a performance of the style which commentators had come to call the New Nixon. With wit and self-deprecating humor, he wowed the editors. It was all the more flavorful when contrasted with the performance of his rival, Rockefeller, who read a dreary speech in a monotone and put the editors to sleep. Late that Saturday, savoring the triumph, Nixon flew to Michigan to meet briefly with George Romney. Then he enplaned on the swing: Minnesota, North Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Idaho, and South Dakota.

Minnesota

Nixon’s problem is as old as Nixon himself. It is quite simply that to the independent-minded voter, he does not have easily definable public views that mesh with the man. In a crisis, how would he react? What were his bases, the fixed stars by which he navigated? If all the charts were lost, could he find his way home?

At noon he arrived in the lobby of the Sheraton-Ritz to face the television cameras, It was an uneventful press conference; except to several of the journalists there Nixon looked tired and drawn. This was surprising because he was being very careful to pace himself, not to allow himself the exhaustion which marked the final weeks of the 1960 campaign, the campaign in which he had foolishly promised to visit all fifty states. But at that first press conference, he began to spell out his themes, the pillboxes from which he would defend the fort. He had disposed of the war three weeks before by declaring a moratorium on criticism of the Administration on grounds that negotiations were under way and no responsible American, not even a member of the opposition party, would want to “undercut” the President at such a difficult time. But there were other matters.

He clarified some of these. At a time of the “greatest financial crisis in our history,” Nixon said, it is a “cruel delusion” to the poor to be told that billions would be spent on the cities. What was wanted was “candor,” not “dishonest” proposals. Candor, in this case, meant that until the nation received what Nixon called “the peace dividend” — that is, a surcease from the awful expenditures of the war in Vietnam —the cities would have to wait. That was the brief message: the economy in terrible trouble, the cities and the Negroes in need of attention but not now; criticism on the war forestalled for the moment. Detailed explanations would follow on all fronts.

The next day, Eugene McCarthy tried to catch him on the “dishonest” quote, claiming that it was a revival of the Old Nixon, the darkness-ofspirit Nixon, the gut fighter impugning the motives of others. Remember what he did to Helen Gahagan Douglas? McCarthy’s charge did not carry very far, and did not receive prominent attention in the press. But Nixon did not use “dishonest” again to describe his political opponents.

North Dakota

Nixon rarely speaks to bipartisan audiences. The typical sponsors of a Nixon rally are Republican clubs, usually the local leadership. The hall is always filled with supporters. Fifty local politicians and their wives were introduced from the head tables at Moorhead, across the river from Fargo. It all has the atmosphere of a rally, with a long sign in the back of the auditorium: NixonNixonNixonNixon. The crowd is enthusiastic, awaiting Nixon’s assault on the Democrats. This particular crowd is laced with young Republicans, well-scrubbed men and women in conservative dress, hair tidily combed. It was at Moorhead that the press corps sensed something askew. Or maybe merely funny.

“Do you know something?” said a reporter, standing on a chair counting the house. “There is not a single black face in this auditorium.”

There were 1700 people in the hall. Two reporters now looked around the vast cavern, searching for Negroes. There were not many Negroes in North Dakota.

“There’s one!” cried a correspondent.

“No, for Chrisakes,” said the other. “He’s a cameraman for NBC.”

Nixon began slowly, warming his audience with jokes now well-worn and honed with careful timing: “It has been a crazy month. First Romney got out. Then Bobby got in. Then Rockefeller got out . . . at least I thought he did.” A burst of laughter. There was a smallish incident here, indicative of how difficult it is to take Nixon lightly. One of the best lines was delivered early, a determined parody of Lyndon Johnson’s renunciation speech: “I want to say to you,” Nixon said grimly, “that I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination for vice president.” He smiled widely, and about half the audience laughed. One of those who didn’t laugh was a local wireservice man, who instantly transmitted it over his wire: “Richard M. Nixon announced tonight that he would not accept his party’s nomination for vice president,” The reporter played it straight.

Then he moved into the speech, the basic campaign document, the big, two-hearted river of the Nixon campaign for the presidency. It is the vehicle for the theme, changing from time to time, evolving as events evolve, but at root an immutable metaphor. All candidates have them. Nixon’s metaphor was not yet rigid, and until it was, he could not bring real velocity to the campaign. It is probably best expressed by one of his campaign slogans: In Times Like These . . . Nixon. It was the equivalent of Kennedy’s We Can Do Belter or Romney’s Morality. There was reminiscence: “Not only did the Eisenhower Administration end one war, but it kept the nation out of other wars for eight years.” And matters as they stood today: “The United States is in trouble to an extent that we have not seen in my lifetime.” But not a time for despair: “If I had to choose from all the times and all the countries to live in, I would choose the United States of America in 1968.” There were references to his journeys abroad, to his conversations with statesmen. He seemed to be saying that he knew what it was all about, what had gone wrong. He had been there, at the center of events for eight years. The others didn’t know, but Nixon knew. He had an appreciation for the two (three? four? 126?) cultures: “The Chinese have a character for the word crisis. One brushstroke goes down, and that means danger. (His voice drops, his left hand plunging to the floor.) The other brushstroke goes up, and that means opportunity.” And menace: “A billion Chinese by the end of the century, armed with Nuclear Weapons . . .”

There were other signals as well. One of these was a reference to “so-called civil rights legislation,” and the other a warning that “some courts in this country have gone too far in weakening the peace forces as against the criminal forces.” Both these lines received loud and long applause. But not from everyone. Doug Head, the young attorney general of Minnesota, who was sitting at the speaker’s table (he had introduced Nixon), demurred. “There are a lot of lawyers in this audience,” Head said, “and they don’t like it.” He meant the remarks directed at the Supreme Court. Head, like many lawyers young and old, Republican and Democrat, believes that crime in America is caused by events other than the Miranda or Escobedo cases.

Wyoming

After the North Dakota performance, it was somewhat easier to define the Nixon position. In the shorthand we use, he was now a law-and-order candidate. But was he? In Wyoming, the staff distributed a thirty-minute radio speech that he would give the next night. It was, by any account, a fine speech: compassionate, wise even, straight. CORE liked it. It spoke sense.

“For too long,” Nixon said, “White America has sought to buy off the Negro — and to buy off its own sense of guilt— with ever more programs of welfare, of public housing, of payments to the poor, but not for anything except for keeping out of sight; payments that perpetuated poverty, and that kept the endless, dismal cycle of dependency spinning from generation to generation.

“Our task—our challenge — is to break this cycle of dependency, and the time to begin is now. The way to do it is not with more of the same, but by helping to bring to the ghetto the light of hope, and pride and self-respect. . . .

“Much of the black militant talk these days is actually in terms far closer to the doctrines of free enterprise than to those of the welfarist of the 30’s . . . what most of the militants are asking is not separation, but to be included in — not as supplicants, but as owners, as entrepreneurs — to have a share of the wealth and a piece of the action . . . it ought to be oriented toward more black ownership, for from this can flow the rest — black pride, black jobs, black opportunity and, yes, black power. . . ,”

That was quite a statement from the, ah, bête noire of liberalism in this country. In fact it went unnoticed for a time because the New York Times inexplicably shortened and relegated to the back pages the dispatch of its reporter covering the speech. In any event, Nixon was asked later what some of his conservative backers thought of it. He smiled, and replied the speech had some good politics in it. He thought that the conservatives could buy it, because of the emphasis on private enterprise. “It is very tough for them to be against private enterprise,” he said. “You know, most of those people don’t like to be called ‘racists.’ They want to escape that tag, if they can.” The speech, he said, gave them a framework to do it.

Montana

Freeways in America are all the same — aluminum guardrails, green signs, white lettering — and so are the motels. From the deck of the Holiday Motel in Helena, you look way west at the rising land, the Big Belt mountains, and the Missouri River navigated in Montana by Lewis and Clark. Away off, the

high country was virtually uninhabited. A dry goods merchant, and member of the State Highway Commission, said that life was simpler where he lived, in a small town sixty miles away. He fished for trout five minutes away from his house. It was no place to make much money, but then there wasn’t need for much money. He thought that Nixon would probably do well in Montana. People there had the feeling that the country was coming apart, that alien groups were taking it over. He and others were baffled by the turmoil in the universities. Didn’t those kids, hooligans, realize that their parents had saved good money to send them to college? Anyway, it was better here than it was there.

“You have a hell of a state here,”

I told the commissioner.

“Don’t tell anybody about it,” he said.

Nixon had held a press conference that morning, and spoke of politics. He said that for Reagan or Rockefeller to be nominated there would have to be an “event.” What kind of event? “Something happening to me,” Nixon said. There was some confusion over exactly what he meant. Did he mean a political blunder? Or did he mean an accident — an assassination or air crash. Nearly everybody thought he meant the former, but one of his aides confided that the murder of Martin Luther King had set him to thinking of his own vulnerability. It should not have been a unique thought, as the shooting of Robert Kennedy was soon tragically to prove. Nixon went on to say that the power brokers of the West were “staying loose.” He said he was not asking for commitments, nor was he receiving them. The Western mission, he went on, was a fact-finding tour. But it was clear that 1964, “when there was some pretty persuasive arm-twisting,” had left its mark. None of the governors or other influential figures intended to be stampeded now. They would move to the convention as favorite sons, in order to deal. The Miami convention, Nixon concluded, “is not locked up.”

“All I am asking of the governors, he said, “is that we be able to make our case at the appropriate time.”

Nevada

There is no more engaging politician in America than George Abbott, the Republican chairman of Nevada. Abbott was full of aphorisms as Nixon met privately with the governor, Paul Laxalt. Abbott likes to think that the West will inherit the balance of political power in America, and is full of statistics to prove it. At the Republican convention, the thirteen Western states — eleven of them with Republican governors—will have 262 votes, about 40 percent of the 667 needed to nominate a candidate for President. Abbott was firm that these votes be withheld as long as it was possible to withhold them. The West could then “deal.” My impression then, as it is now, was that Abbott was not interested in the ideology of the nominee. He wanted a man who could win.

Abbott and the others from the West were being very shrewd about Nixon. Carefully neutral, they watched each squiggle on the poll charts. What would be the issue now that Lyndon Johnson had taken himself out of it? Would it be the economy or Vietnam, the cities or the Negroes (although they amounted to the same thing, in political shorthand)? Abbott didn’t know then, but he was certain that the attitudes of the Western American differed from those of people who lived in the East. I had asked him, at one point, how he got on with his counterparts in the East — Republican chairmen from New England, for example.

“We get along fine,” Abbott said, “although the perspectives tend to be a bit different. Your view of life, what you think is important, is bound to be different if you live at the base of an 11,000-foot mountain

— and your wife was born a Basque

— than if you live, say, in West Hartford.” Not better or worse, Abbott was saying, but definitely different.

The meeting was over, and Nixon and Laxalt emerged from a side room. Both were smiling. “No commitments were asked, and none were given,” Laxalt said.

“Do not count all your votes until the hay is in the barn,” advised Chairman Abbott.

South Dakota

George Romney, when he was still a candidate, used to invite the correspondents to the back of the bus to have a chat. It was not at all unusual to have a drink with Eugene McCarthy late at night. Robert Kennedy was the most accessible of all of them. But Nixon kept his own counsel, and the only time the correspondents saw him informally was when he came to the front of the aircraft to remark on the West and the openness of the character of Westerners.

So we came finally to the civic auditorium in Aberdeen, a building with a high, vaulted ceiling, the aspect of an aircraft hangar. There, at a $25-a-plate dinner of Republican regulars, Richard Nixon gave the final speech of the swing. We sat back at the table and watched the crowd, watched the cigarette smoke drift upward in cumulus clouds; watched the two uniformed deputy sheriffs at a prominent table, .38’s hanging from their belts, blue-andyellow patches saying Brown County Sheriff’s Office. They applauded as the local politicians were introduced. We watched the white faces, the polite applause, the satisfaction in hearing reassurances that what the country was now going through could be halted; that the clock could be turned back. It was to watch a part of America which does not have expression in the news columns of the Washington Post or the New York Times. What did they think of the country? What did they want from their leaders? From themselves? What was their estimate of the situation in America?

The Republican governor, a handsome Scandinavian named Nils Boe, presumably spoke for most of them in his toast to Nixon. “Well, it is a heartwarming sight to see a group such as yourselves gathered here in common cause,” said the governor. “You have kept burning in your hearts principles for which the country once stood and we hope will again stand . .

Applause.

“Americans, not hippies and not demonstrators, but people from Main Street who have been crying and praying for law and order throughout America . .

Applause.

“A restoration of our principles

Applause.

“A recognition of the Johnnie Johnsons and the Tommy Jacksons of America, fiscal responsibility . . . sound fundamental truths for all the American people, and not just for certain racial, social, and economic power groups ...”

Applause.

He introduced the speaker: “He has believed in the party, has given every ounce of energy he has to the party ... he has dedicated his life to the United States of America, and to the principles of the Republican Party . . . the former Vice President of the United States, a candidate for the presidency of the United States, and a truly great American . . .”

Applause.

Then Nixon spoke.

— Hard S. Just