The Highest Calling, page 29
One such book, Being Nixon: A Man Divided, was written by Evan Thomas, former editor of Newsweek and author of other bestselling biographies of Robert Kennedy, Edward Bennett Williams, John Paul Jones, and Sandra Day O’Connor, among other works relating to American history. I had a chance to interview Evan at a Congressional Dialogues session at the Library of Congress on April 26, 2016.
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DAVID M. RUBENSTEIN (DR): When people write biographies, they tend to admire their subjects more than before. Do you admire Richard Nixon more now?
EVAN THOMAS (ET): Yes, but I thought he was pretty terrible at first. I worked for the Washington Post Company for 24 years, so I thought he was the devil. One reason I wrote the book was to see what it would be like to be on his side.
DR: Richard Nixon was, as you describe in your book, one of the most introverted persons you ever could imagine. How did he get into politics?
ET: It’s one of the great mysteries. Richard Nixon was one of the most successful political figures in the twentieth century. He was on five national tickets. He won four times in a huge landslide. How did he do it? He was painfully shy. In some ways, he did it because he liked power. He was good at politics. Even though he was shy, he made a point of remembering people’s names. He really worked at it. And he loved politics. He just loved the power game. He studied it. He mastered it. He understood what it was like to be on the outside looking in. Even when he was in the establishment, he was always on the outside, on the side of the outsiders.
DR: Some of that came from his background. He grew up relatively poor in Whittier, California. Tell us about his mother and father.
ET: His mother was a saintly Quaker but not actually the most lovable person in the world. His father was a bully. He was uncomfortable with his parents and did not have a happy childhood. But he had incredible drive. His insecurity drove him. It destroyed him too, but it drove him.
DR: He went to Whittier College. Did he do well there?
ET: Yes. He was an unpopular kid who became the president of his class this way. Whittier College was a little Quaker school, and very uptight. Richard Nixon’s platform when he was running for student body president was to bring dancing to Whittier, which the authorities did not like.
Now, Nixon himself could not dance, and he hated dancing. But he understood that at Whittier the rich kids could dance any time they wanted, at the country club or at a hotel. It was the poor kids who couldn’t dance. At Whittier in 1931 there were a lot of poor kids. He won in an overwhelming landslide.
DR: He was student body president, and he wanted to go to law school. Did he apply to Harvard Law School or schools like that?
ET: He went to Duke, which was a brand-new law school with a lot of money. It exposed him some fancy professors and very smart kids, mostly Phi Beta Kappa kids. Nixon did well there, mostly by being a grind.
DR: He finished third in his class or something like that. He wanted a job on Wall Street. Did he get one?
ET: He tried big Wall Street law firms. His enduring memory was sitting outside at Sullivan and Cromwell or Cravath, I forget which one, looking at the fancy oriental rug when they did not offer him a job.
DR: He got no job offers and he went back to California, practiced in Whittier as a lawyer, and then the war broke out. Did he volunteer to go into the service?
ET: He did. He was a Quaker, but as soon as Pearl Harbor happened, he went into the Navy. He wanted to be in combat, and he was sent to an airfield in the middle of Nebraska. He ended up in the South Pacific as a supply officer. He was a good officer. His men compared him to Mr. Roberts. He was loyal to his men. He was a good leader.
DR: He comes back and all of a sudden somebody asked him if he wants to run for Congress. How did that come about?
ET: They were looking for cannon fodder, basically, some guy to lose to a guy named Jerry Voorhis, who was the incumbent congressman. Voorhis ran a really stupid campaign against him. Nixon was nimble, challenged him to a debate. Voorhis should not have taken the challenge. And Nixon, partly by being slightly underhanded, got to him. Voorhis panicked and Nixon won.
DR: He gets to Congress. Who else was in that class in 1946?
ET: Jack Kennedy. Weirdly, one of Nixon’s good friends was John F. Kennedy. Although they were in different parties, they were both internationalists. They were Navy veterans who believed that America had to do something about the world. They were both shy, and that bonded them. They stayed good friends until 1960, when they ran against each other and hated each other.
DR: When they were members of Congress, Nixon got a chance to go to Europe to see Dwight D. Eisenhower. Did Kennedy help him with the trip?
ET: Jack Kennedy gave Nixon a list of three girls to call in Paris. Nixon deliberately forgot the list.
DR: In the House of Representatives, Nixon was put on the House Un-American Affairs Committee, which was then a very controversial committee. What did he do there that made him famous?
ET: He unmasked Alger Hiss. Hiss was a popular, East Coast establishment, Harvard Law School guy, the head of the Carnegie Foundation. He was also a Soviet spy. But he thought he could get away with it, and conned a lot of people into thinking that he was innocent. And Nixon, who was persistent, just stayed after Hiss and exposed him as the spy he was. This was a great thing for Republicans because it made the Truman administration look bad, rightfully so. Nixon, although an obscure congressman, became an instant national hero.
DR: He decides to run for the Senate in 1950. Who did he run against?
ET: Helen Gahagan Douglas, who was a congresswoman from California. A very attractive woman, she was having an affair with LBJ at the time. She ran a bad campaign. When addressing a Black audience, she would say, “Oh, I just love the Negro people.” She was kind of a limousine liberal. She was condescending and off-putting. Nixon ran a smart campaign against her and won.
DR: During that campaign he also accused her of being “pink.” What does that mean?
ET: He insinuated that she was to the left. In those days, in 1950, being red was the worst thing you could be. Being pink was almost as bad. And so he called her “the pink lady,” a name that stuck. She also came up with a name for him, “Tricky Dick.”
DR: I guess that stuck too. So he gets elected in 1950. John Kennedy is still in the House. In 1952 Dwight D. Eisenhower is looking for a vice president. How did he pick Nixon, a person who’d only been in the Senate two years?
ET: Nixon was close to the right wing, young, and attractive. Eisenhower barely met Nixon, but he went down a political checklist with his advisors. Nixon brought him a lot and so he put him on the ticket.
DR: The recommendation was made by Tom Dewey, who was advising Eisenhower?
ET: Tom Dewey was Mr. Republican, and saw that a young anticommunist Californian could help deflect the right with Joe McCarthy, who was a kind of terrifying figure on the right for the Republican party.
DR: Nixon at the time was only 39. Eisenhower was 62 or so. Nixon’s on the ticket, and things go forward. Then, all of a sudden, a scandal broke. What happened?
ET: Nixon supposedly had a slush fund of about $20,000 for his nonpolitical expenses. It was a phony scandal. It was nothing. In fact, Adlai Stevenson, who was running for president as a Democrat, had a much bigger slush fund. But it took off in the press, and it became this hot-button issue. And Eisenhower, instead of standing by Nixon, tried to dump him from the ticket. Nixon was alone.
DR: You say “tried” to dump him. Eisenhower is the Supreme Allied Commander. He was in charge of D-Day. If he wants to dump somebody, why doesn’t he say, “You’re dumped”?
ET: He said to Nixon, “You should fall on your sword. You should resign.” Nixon instead said, “Give me a chance,” and gave a famous televised speech called the “Checkers Speech.” It seemed, to many East Coast types, a sentimental speech. He talked about his dog, Checkers, given to him by a contributor, and about his wife’s Republican cloth coat.
But the telling thing was that when Eisenhower was watching with his buddies, commenting, “This is kind of a maudlin speech,” Eisenhower’s wife, Mamie, was weeping. Nixon reached a lot of people with that speech. They sympathized with him. They sensed that he was being unfairly dealt with. It turned things around. He stayed on the ticket and was a good vice president.
DR: Eisenhower said later in the campaign, “You’re always my boy, and I never really wanted to dump you”?
ET: Right. Which was not true.
DR: They get elected in a big victory over Stevenson and Sparkman in’52. What job did Eisenhower give Nixon as vice president?
ET: Vice presidents often did nothing in those days, but in this case, Eisenhower sent Nixon abroad to deal with foreign leaders, and Nixon was good at it. He did his homework, studied up, cared about the world, and was good with the leaders. He was very loyal. Eisenhower had a big heart attack. It was a difficult situation. Nixon held himself really well. He was a good vice president.
DR: As they were getting ready to run for a second term, did Eisenhower consider dumping Nixon?
ET: I wrote a book about Eisenhower, and I asked John Eisenhower, Eisenhower’s son, “What did your father think of Nixon?” And he said, “My father gave himself an order to like Dick Nixon.”
Nixon was not that likable. And Eisenhower thought that Nixon had a drinking problem. He had a little drinking problem, not a big one. But Eisenhower just didn’t like him, and he thought that he wasn’t an attractive figure.
DR: So he suggested Nixon be secretary of defense in the second term, or get some experience?
ET: Yes. Which was not a bad idea. To Eisenhower, thinking like a military guy, season yourself, become secretary of defense. It’s a good job, you’ll learn how to manage things. All Nixon could see was that Ike was trying to dump him, that the headline was going to be “Ike Dumps Nixon.” So Nixon refused to quit, and it worked. He became the nominee.
DR: At one point as vice president he’s asked by Eisenhower to go down to Latin America, to Venezuela, where he almost got killed?
ET: Left-wing mobs stoned and mobbed his car—the car of the vice president of the United States. They started rocking it, they smashed the windows, and the Secret Service guy sitting next to Nixon pulled out his pistol and said, “I’m going to shoot one of those bastards.” Nixon said, “Put the gun away. Don’t do anything unless they actually come through and pull me out.” Nixon was physically brave.
DR: And when he comes back, Eisenhower goes out to the airport to greet him.
ET: He was a hero.
DR: So Nixon decides he wants to run for president. Who were his competitors in 1960?
ET: There really were none on the Republican side. He was the heir apparent. He had the machine. Nixon was very good about campaigning for congressmen. He did it in 1954,’56,’58. In those days, there were primaries, but party machinery ran the show, and if you had a lot of congressmen on your side you were in. And he did.
DR: At one point, in a press conference, Eisenhower is asked, “What did Richard Nixon do as vice president?” What did Eisenhower say?
ET: “If you give me a week, I’ll think of something.” How cruel was that? It was really wounding.
Someone truthfully said Eisenhower was irritated at the reporters who were bugging him, and he was peevish. Eisenhower was old, playing a lot of golf, sick of it, and he just had an outburst. But it looked terrible for Nixon, and in the first debate in’60, the very first question from the NBC reporter was, “President Eisenhower was asked about this and said, ‘If you give me a week, I’ll think of something.’ ”
DR: Let’s talk about the debates. Kennedy gets the Democratic nomination. Nixon watches Kennedy and says, “This guy’s not such a great speaker. Maybe I should debate him.” Was it Nixon’s idea to do a debate?
ET: Yes. Totally stupid.
DR: Had there ever been a presidential debate before?
ET: No. He didn’t have to debate him. Nixon had more credibility. He was older. It was a mistake.
DR: There are four debates. The first one is in Chicago?
ET: In Chicago, in the early days of TV. The producer comes up to Kennedy and says, “Would you like some makeup?” Kennedy says no. Then he goes back to his dressing room and is professionally made up. The producer says to Nixon, “Do you want makeup?” And Nixon says no, because Kennedy hadn’t. Then Nixon sends his guy down to Michigan Avenue to buy some shave stick, this horrible gray grease you put on five o’clock shadow, and Nixon smears it on. If you look at the video, Nixon is sweating through this gray grease and his eyes are darting around, and Kennedy looks tan and handsome, cool. It’s just sort of an unfair fight.
DR: Nixon had also been ill during the campaign, and he made a promise that seemed silly—to go to every state?
ET: To go to 50 states. Bad idea. Nixon made the mistake of being his own campaign manager.
DR: It’s widely thought, in political history and political lore, that because Nixon looked so bad, Kennedy won the first debate. But people who listened on radio weren’t so sure.
ET: Yes, because Nixon was pretty good on foreign policies, quite substantive, and Kennedy was a little thin. On radio, the polls show that Nixon won.
DR: The three other debates were a draw?
ET: Pretty much. The damage was done in the first.
DR: The day of the election, it turns out that it’s very close. Mayor Daley calls John Kennedy and says, “With the help of a few friends, I think you’re going to win Illinois.” What did he mean?
ET: He meant that he stole the election. At least a lot of scholars think that in Illinois there was voter fraud. In one precinct more people voted for Kennedy than lived there.
DR: If that was the case, why did Nixon not contest the election?
ET: Because Nixon was a good guy about this. It was the Cold War. We were locked in this terrible fight with the Soviet Union. Nixon knew that it would be disruptive to put the country through a protracted challenge. And so, even though he was the presiding officer in the Senate, he had to certify his own defeat, and he was graceful about it.
DR: He’s out as vice president. He decides to move back to California?
ET: To make money as a lawyer. But he can’t resist getting back into politics.
DR: He’s asked to run for governor in 1962, and he decides to do it even though he doesn’t care about state issues?
ET: Correct. It’s a mistake. He wants to get back on the stage. He misses politics.
DR: He was beaten by Pat Brown?
ET: He was. Pretty badly.
DR: And then he has a press conference. What does he say?
ET: “You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore.” People thought that was it, that he was finished. In fact, Time magazine wrote his political obituary. ABC News said, “You’re right. You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore.”
DR: He decides to move out of L.A. and to go to—?
ET: To New York to be a lawyer, and he made a bunch of money. He was a good rainmaker. But he missed politics.
DR: In New York, they put his name on the law firm. He argues a case in front of the Supreme Court. Did he win?
ET: No, he lost. He blamed it on a liberal bias of the Supreme Court. But apparently he argued the case pretty well.
DR: In 1962 he’s out of politics. How does he manage to make himself, in 1968, the nominee of the party?
ET: He helps a lot in the’66 off-year elections. The Republicans do well. LBJ’s Great Society is losing out, and Nixon campaigns for 43 congressmen. Forty-one of them win. So he has a lot of IOUs. It’s 1968. It is a hot, angry time. Cities and campuses are burning. And Nixon decides to get low key and moderate and be the grown-up in the room, setting himself apart from the Democrats who are being too hot. George Wallace is off to his right, getting the “angry vote.” And Nixon positions himself as moderate, low-key, and experienced.
DR: During that year, Martin Luther King Jr. was killed and also Robert Kennedy was killed, so the Democratic nominee is Hubert Humphrey, and George Wallace also runs.
ET: It looked like it was Nixon’s to win, but Humphrey was closing on him toward the end.
DR: How did Nixon pick Spiro Agnew as his vice president?
ET: It was purely expedient. In those days there was such a thing as an Atlantic Coast moderate Republican, which was pretty much Agnew. He was personable and had a good presence. Despite being young and inexperienced, he had given a speech standing up to some Black militants in Baltimore. Nixon liked that, even though he barely knew Agnew.
Then when Agnew became vice president, Nixon ignored him. He kicked him out of his office and gave him a worse one, refused to take any substantive advice from him, and basically ignored him until he wanted a hit man to go after the press. Then Nixon gave his best speechwriters, Pat Buchanan and Bill Safire, to Agnew and sent him out.
DR: Nixon is elected. He’s got Agnew as his vice president, who later has to make appointments a couple of months ahead just to meet with Nixon. How did Henry Kissinger, who was advisor to Rockefeller and John Kennedy, wind up as a national security advisor to Nixon?
ET: To Nixon’s credit, he liked talent. He loved to confound his enemies. He loved the idea of stealing away Rockefeller’s advisor, making him his guy. But he also understood that Kissinger was brilliant and that he understood Nixon’s realpolitik view of foreign policy, and that they would work together well.
