The Mystery of Richard Nixon

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The President welcomed the Nixons back from their harrowing South American "good will- tour last May. The Mystery of Richard Nixon

A Post editor's penetrating examination of one of the most disputed figures in America— the man who at the moment probably has the best chance of becoming the next U. S. President.

By STEWART ALSOP Reception committee at Caracas. Even Nixon's enemies admitted that he faced the mobs courageously. 11111 There is at least one point about that much disputed figure, Richard Milhous Nixon, which no sensible person can now dispute. De- spite a surface blandness which sometimes makes him seem quite ordinary, Vice Presi- dent Nixon is a most extraordinary man. Con- sider one measure of just how extraordinary he is. Since 1836, when Martin Van Buren in- herited the crown from crusty old Andrew Jackson, no Vice President has been nomi- nated as his party's Presidential candidate. Yet already, two years in advance, Vice President Nixon has the 1960 Republican Presidential nomination sewed up in a nearly puncture- proof bag. And even allowing for the current low state of Republican fortunes, he unques- tionably has a better chance than any other 2g

After one of the most successful RICHARD years the college has ever witnessed, NIXON we stop to reminisce, and come to the PRESIDENT realization that much of the success A. S. W. C. was due to the efforts of this very gentleman. Always progressive, and with a liberal attitude, he has led us through the year with flying colors.

J The young Nixon (right) with his parents, and brothers Harold (left) and Nixon became student-body president of Whittier College by advocating on-campus dances. Donald. Their father lived to be 77. Harold died of tuberculosis in his youth. He personally disliked dancing but, as a good politician, knew how to pick a winning issue.

man to be the next President of these United about whom no one can pretend to be wholly nesses —Nixon has handled himself brilliantly. States. objective. Until rather recently, I inclined Reporters who have covered him on his trips Yet to the vast majority of Americans, this more to the view of the old lady in Whittier abroad, some of whom started as strong anti- extraordinary man remains a cardboard than to Nixon worship. Nixon seemed a Nixonites, have come back praising him for his figure, oddly inhuman and impersonal. To his shrewd, tough, ambitious politician, and not deft sense of personal diplomacy; and, after enemies—and he has, probably, more ene- very much more. But especially in the second his trip to South America, for plain physical mies than any other American—he is a card- Eisenhower Administration, like many other courage in the face of that most terrifying of board devil, utterly without scruple or con- Washington reporters, I found myself, almost phenomena, a mob gone wild. viction. To his admirers—and they also num- in spite of myself, increasingly impressed by What is more important, Nixon has re- ber in the many millions—he is a cardboard Nixon. peatedly displayed a knack—useful in a poten- saint, whose strength is as the strength of ten In certain almost impossibly difficult situa- tial President —for being right. In the pre- because his heart is pure. tions—notably President Eisenhower's ill- Sputnik era (Continued on Page 54) Sometimes the dislike of Nixon is pure bile, undiluted by rational content, as in the case of the elderly lady in Whittier, Nixon's home town in California, who telephoned this reporter to say: "I know it's against religion to hate anybody, but I just can't help hating that Nixon." The worship of Nixon can be equally irrational, for a case against Nixon—in some respects a strong case—can certainly be made. The purpose of this report is not to please the old lady from Whittier, who will certainly go on hating Nixon to the end of her days. Nor is its purpose to please those to whom any criticism of the Vice President is tainted with treason. What follows is, instead, an attempt—doomed to partial failure, since a part of any man always remains hidden—to see through the cardboard figure to the human being underneath. The maker of such an attempt should give his credentials at the start, since Nixon is one of those men—like Franklin D. Roosevelt— Nixon wept on Senator Knowland's shoulder during the 1952 Nixon remains loyal to Murray Chotiner campaign-fund crisis, after Ike said, "Dick, you're my boy." (right), his controversial ex-manager. THE SATURDAY EVENING POST :)4 The Mystery of Richard Nixon (Continued from Page 29) last summer, Nixon's was almost the which men do not change. The psycholo- only voice in Administration raised gists have proved that a boy's intelligence against the policy of defense cutback and quotient at the age of nine will be about slowdown. He instantly recognized and the same when he is forty-five. A born publicly acknowledged the real meaning fool or a born coward will almost always of the first Soviet satellite, when other so remain. As the Bible warns, a man Administration spokesmen were smugly cannot "by taking thought . . . add one attempting to laugh it off with weak cubit unto his stature." jokes. He was the first to recognize that Yet time and experience do change a the recession was a serious matter, de- man, not in his inner nature, but rather manding a serious Government policy as saline deposits change the outer size to deal with it. And it has been difficult and shape of a barnacle exposed to the for even the most cynical of the anti- sea. It is silly to suppose that a man of Nixonites to detect a political motivation Nixon's intelligence and capacity to learn in some of the positions Nixon has taken, has been in no way affected by the ex- like his strong advocacy of the politically traordinary experiences through which he unpopular foreign-aid program. has passed. The following attempt to I also discovered something else—that understand how Nixon has changed and Nixon is a most interesting man to talk how he has not, takes the form of a to. Unlike so many denizens of the Wash- drama in three acts. ington zoo, he never wraps himself in the American flag or recites his latest In Act One we examine the original speeches verbatim to a restless audience barnacle—the boy who was father of the of one. He talks politics sensibly and man. In Act Two we consider Nixon in well. Indeed, where the subjects of poli- midpassage, in the greatest crisis of his tics and government are concerned, life, when charges in the 1952 campaign Nixon is something of an intellectual, as that he was the beneficiary of a "secret the excerpts from my notebook which ac- millionaires' fund" all but destroyed him. company this article suggest. He has In Act Three we consider Nixon today, read a great deal, and he has thought a with six years of the Vice Presidency be- great deal about what he has read. hind him, standing within a long arm's Nixon also has another quality which reach of the nation's highest office. is hardly characteristic of most poli- Start, then, with the bare bones of ticians—he listens. An interviewer is apt Nixon's early life, before trying to clothe to find himself suddenly transformed them in a little flesh. He was born in 1913 into interviewee, with Nixon taking notes in a hard-working, impecunious Quaker on a large yellow pad. State Department family, and he was brought up in the officials who have briefed him before his pleasant, sunlit Quaker town of Whittier, trips abroad, accustomed as they are to just outside Los Angeles. His school and the glazed eyes and unstifled yawns of college records have a Horatio Alger con- junketing politicians forced briefly to sistency. In Whittier High School, he was listen to the facts, have been amazed by first in his class scholastically, president Nixon's incisive questions, his intense of the student body and a champion de- "Borden's Buttermilk determination to master the essentials. bater. In Whittier College, he was second Nixon, in short, is certainly far more in his class, president of the student than just another tough, shrewd, am- body, a champion debater and a very bad is naturally cooling!" bitious politician. But then, what kind football player. At Duke University Law • of man is he? The best way to try to an- School in North Carolina—he went there swer that question is to consider the kind on a scholarship and was graduated in says Elsie, the Borden Cow of man, and the kind of boy, he has been, 1937—he was third in his class, the and then to try to understand the ways equivalent of president of the student Borden's country-fresh buttermilk is low in calories—cools in which he has changed, and the ways body and on the law review. you off without worrying your waistline! in which he has not changed. Even these bare bones tell something Among Nixon's critics and rivals, it is about the young Nixon. He was intelli- Healthful, too ... this tangy, refreshing drink contains all fashionable to scoff at the notion that gent—his scholastic record proves it. He the vital proteins, B-vitamins, and minerals of milk plus an Nixon has changed at all. And in one was popular—an unpopular boy is not sense they are right. 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THE SATURDAY EVENING POST 58 (Continued from Page 54) elected pres- law-school classmates, recalling charges that Nixon as a politician had used "ques------0111 ident of the student body. He had a 4.. One strong political instinct even then—a boy tionable tactics," wrote this reporter the who is not politically minded does not following revealing sentences: "He was a 4' Colgate Brushing Helps Give run for president of the student body man of such high ambition, and a man The Surest Protection every time he gets a chance. But what kind capable of pursuing his ambition with of boy was Richard Nixon, really? such intensity, that I could the more All Day Long! easily believe that he would and could do ~~_ — In an attempt to answer that question,

.11.■ woo ••• this reporter has corresponded with all whatever was necessary to attain the goal Nixon's college and law-school class- he had set for himself. However, I have mates, and interviewed many of them, as serious doubts whether he himself did well as relations, teachers, friends, ene- those things, because I got the impression mies and casual acquaintances of Nixon's of Richard, in college, that he had very youth. It has been a fascinating pastime, high morals and was motivated largely rather like that old favorite of children's by a very high sense of duty." birthday parties, in which the eager player Those two oddly contradictory sen- follows a string around and about and tences tell a lot about the kind of boy over and under until he comes at last Nixon was, and the kind of man he on the hidden prize. For again and again became. Nothing more infuriates his the digger into Nixon's past comes upon enemies, especially the more cynical and something in the nature of the boy which sophisticated, than what one Democrat leads directly, in a flash of recognition, called "Nixon's damned holier-than-thou to something in the nature of the man. attitude." But call it what you will, a holier-than-thou attitude or a "very high Take, for example, the odd contrast sense of duty," Nixon comes by it provided by a couple of pages of photo- honestly. graphs in the 1931 edition of the annual His Quaker background is very much yearbook of Whittier College. From one part of him. His great-grandmother and page, the self-conscious faces of the mem- his great-great-grandmother on his moth- bers of the Franklin Society peer out. . er's side were well-known itinerant Every Franklin is clad in the obviously Quaker lady preachers. His mother, a unaccustomed splendor of a Tuxedo. strongly religious and personally charm- On the opposite page are the pictures ing old lady—she looks like Whistler's of the members of the Orthogonian mother with a ski-jump nose—hoped Society. Every Orthogonian is dressed in a simple white shirt, sleeves rolled up, collars open over boyish throats. Com- paring the two, one cannot help feeling that the Orthogonians are somehow more Most children lose their fear natural, more likable—in a word, more of the darkness when they be- American—than the aristocratically garbed Franklins. come teen-agers. Among the Orthogonians appears the MILDRED SILVER familiar face—the ski-jump nose is there COLGATE'S WITH GARDOL FIGHTS already, and the jowls are faintly begin- BOTH DECAY AND BAD BREATH ALL DAY ning to appear—of Richard Milhous Nixon, founder and first president of the Richard would become a preacher, too, Orthogonian Society. It was founder- but she soon learned that he had his heart president Nixon's idea, of course, to have set on being a lawyer. She remembers the Orthogonians photographed in sim- when little Richard was sprawled in ple, democratic, open shirts, to underline front of the fire, reading in the papers FIGHT TOOTH DECAY the contrast with the highfalutin Frank- about the Teapot Dome scandal. He lins. turned to her and said: "I know what I Not long ago, this reporter was talking want to be when I grow up—an honest with the Vice President about the most lawyer who doesn't cheat people but famous speech he ever made—the tele- helps them." WITH COLGATE'S WHILE YOU vision address at the height of the fund Again and again, one catches echoes crisis. I said I had been looking over of that early pronouncement, with its some old Whittier yearbooks, and that I note, faintly priggish to some ears, of suspected I might have found the origins high moral principle. When Nixon ar- of his wife Pat's famous "respectable rived at Whittier College, the Franklin STOP BAD BREATH Republican cloth coat." Society was the only men's club on the "You mean the Orthogonians and the campus, with all the special joys which open shirts?" Nixon said, chuckling, with such a social monopoly entails. Nixon, instant recognition. "Sure, the Franklins whose reputation as a coming man had were the haves and we were the have- preceded him from high school, was nots. I was only a freshman then." asked to join. He refused—on principle. ALL DAY! Obviously freshman Nixon shared with The Franklins' social monopoly, he held, Brushing for brushing, it's the surest protection ever offered by any toothpaste! politician Nixon an unerring instinct for was unfair and undemocratic. But it was telling political symbolism. Or take an- Because of all leading toothpastes, only Colgate Dental Cream contains Gardol! also typical of him that, a mere fresh- other example of the sudden sense of man, he immediately organized a success- recognition which rewards the digger ful rival club. FIGHTS BOTH BAD BREATH AND TOOTH DECAY ALL DAY— into Nixon's past—this one more calcu- When he was a young lawyer with WITH JUST ONE BRUSHING! lated to please his critics than his ad- OPA at the beginning of the war, he in- mirers. Nixon tried out for football every sisted on taking the lowest possible Colgate Dental Cream with Gardol is backed by year at Whittier. He was slight and ill salary. "He reasoned," writes his OPA published results of 2-year clinical research on the co-ordinated, and he never made the boss, Prof. Jacob Buescher, "that the reduction of tooth decay. And of all leading tooth- team ; he was useful chiefly as a kind of pastes,* only Colgate's contains Gardol to form an boys who were then being trained to hit tireless, indestructible, animated ninepin the beaches were paid a lot less." But invisible, protective shield around your teeth that NOW— for the better players to knock down. decay with just one again, it was typical that Nixon rapidly fights decay all day . . . helps stop For New "He was a lousy player, but he sure had brushing! One Colgate brushing stops mouth odor all FINGER-TIP climbed up from his self-imposed low guts," recalls a football star of his day. day for most people, too! EASE— rung on the bureaucratic ladder. Once in a long while, Nixon would be America's First In college, Nixon was a very model WORLD'S LARGEST SELLING Aerosol Dentifriee I permitted to play in the last few minutes boy. He neither drank nor smoked—al- TOOTHPASTE Simply remove red of a game. When that happened, a class- though he took an occasional beer in cover, touch the mate who was then football linesman re- top and release the law school—and he went to church four calls: "I always got out the five-yard- / desired amount of times on Sunday. The only youthful es- with GARDOL penalty marker. Dick was so eager I COLGATE DENTAL CREAM capade any of his contemporaries can with GARDOL! knew he'd be offside just about every 1 980 recall involved his crawling over the play." 310 NO 139‘ 113it transom to get into the dean's office, COP,' ma. COLO,L,ALINOVVE con..- His critics will enthusiastically agree law school. But his purpose was not to that Nixon has been offside more than booby-trap the dean's desk or some such WHILE IT CLEANS YOUR TEETH once in his subsequent career. One of his CLEANS YOUR BREATH shenanigans. (Continued on Page 60) THE SATURDAY EVENING POST

(Continued from Page 58) It was to shy." . . . "Definitely not an extro- In 1946, Nixon, still in uniform, ac- discover, from the dean's records, where vert." . . . "Basically aloof, very sure of cepted an invitation from another family he stood scholastically. himself, and very careful to keep people friend, a Whittier banker, to appear be- OFFICE As this episode suggests, those other from getting too close to him." . . . "He fore a local Republican group which was qualities in Nixon, his "ambition" and was not what you would call a real looking for a Republican hopeful to op- "intensity" were also very much a part of friendly guy." . .. "He tended somewhat pose Representative Jerry Voorhis, a the boy, as they are of the man. Nixon to shyness." high-minded, well-entrenched Democrat. -0401 says of his father, Frank Nixon, "I guess Yet his contemporaries liked him. One Nixon was chosen, and beat Voorhis in I got my competitive instinct from him," lady classmate recalls that she "thought what he has called a "fighting, rocking, and he is doubtless right. Frank Nixon, Dick Nixon was too stuck up." But she is rolling campaign." He was elected easily who died in 1956, was not a worldly suc- an exception. Very few of his contempo- again in 1948, and in his second term he cess. His grocery store brought in just raries felt really close to him, but almost won a national reputation when he was enough to support the family, and the all remember him in retrospect with ad- given a large share of the credit—which Milhous family tended to think that miration and respect. Typical is a law- he deserved—for bringing Alger Hiss to Hannah, whose family founded Whittier school classmate, who had the trying justice. In 1950, he beat Helen Gahagan in 1897, had married beneath her. Per- experience of sharing a double bed in an Douglas in a race for the Senate—an- haps this explains why Frank Nixon, unheated shack with the future Vice other "rocking, rolling" campaign. At who suffered from bad ulcers all his adult President (they were both too poor to the 1952 Republican Convention, Dwight life, was so cantankerous and argumen- afford anything better). "Dick Nixon," D. Eisenhower rather casually selected his Paper clips will often slip. tative, and such a disciplinarian. At any he wrote, "is the ablest man I ever met." name from a list of suitable running Bostitch staples really grip! rate, Nixon's mother apparently acted From all this, there emerges at least in mates. And in mid-September, 1952, as the carrot, and his father as the stick, rough outline a picture of the kind of boy when the campaign was just gathering in spurring on the boy to try to be "good, Nixon was. There is the quite genuine steam, the story hit the headlines that not just at one thing, but at everything." Quaker strain, the "very high sense of Nixon was the beneficiary of a "secret HOME He certainly tried hard, as he has been duty." There is, as becomes an instinctive $18,000 fund"; and Nixon was almost trying ever since. And, although he was a conservative, also a certain convention- destroyed. bad football player, he was good at al- ality of outlook; Nixon has never got most everything else. He was a good ac- over his college boy's admiration for So much for the bare bones. But before tor, for example. Dr. Albert Upton, his football heroes, and the club song he going on to examine the great fund crisis, drama coach, remembers a play in which wrote for the Orthogonians is almost a it is necessary to consider two new charac- Nixon, as a sadly bereft old innkeeper, take-off on the conventional college song: ters in the dramatis personae of Nixon's was to appear alone on the stage, weep- "Brothers together we'll travel on and career. One is his wife, Pat. Like Nixon, ing. "I told him, 'Dick, if you just con- on, Worthy the name of an Orthogo- his wife is not easy to know well. But centrate real hard on getting a big lump nian." There is the fierce drive, the great according to those who do know her, she in your throat, I think you can cry real shares many qualities with her husband. tears.' He did too—buckets of tears. I Besides the interest in the drama which couldn't help remembering the play when first brought them together, she shares I saw that picture of Dick crying on Sena- with him a good intelligence, much tor Knowland's shoulder. But mind you, cop is a police officer who energy and a strong ambition. Her chief Dick is never spurious. He really felt it." A influence appears to have been to magnify stops you for speeding. Cancel the call for the horses and men. He was more than good at debating— Nixon, to intensify those qualities, es- Bostitch got Humpty together again! he was brilliant, the champion college H. D. BILLINGS pecially his drive and self-confidence, debater in Southern California. Debating which were present in him from the first. was taken seriously at Whittier, almost She has acted as a sort of extra backbone as seriously as football, and being presi- for a man whose backbone already had SCHOOL dent of the Debate Team automatically ability, the first-rate mental equipment. great tensile strength. made Nixon a very big man on the There is the urge to manage, to influence, The second new character is Murray campus. The Rev. William Hornaday, to lead, and an instinct for the means of Chotiner, who was Nixon's campaign now a well-known California preacher, doing so. There is—especially worth adviser in 1946, and his manager in 1950 then Nixon's debating teammate, recalls noting for future reference—the brilliant and 1952. Chotiner is out of politics how shrewd Nixon was. "He used to pass mastery of debating techniques. There is now; in 1956, still-unproved charges that me little notes, 'Pour it on at this point,' the touch of the ham, which most suc- he had used his political connections in or 'Save your ammunition,' or 'Play to cessful politicians have. And there is his law business destroyed his political the judges, they're the ones who de- also something highly unusual in a usefulness. Nixon, who is still out- cide.'" Mrs. Norman Vincent, his high- politician, a withdrawn quality, a lack of spokenly loyal to Chotiner, considers it school debating coach, remembers, "He easy warmth, a loneliness of spirit. a "tragedy" that Chotiner became in- was so good it kind of disturbed me. He This, then, is the basic Nixon, the volved in "the kind of law business which had this ability to kind of slide round an original barnacle on which the rest is does not mix well with politics." Chotiner argument, instead of meeting it head on, built. Every one of the characteristics is—or was—a remarkable political phe- and he could take any side of a debate." Nixon displayed as a boy is still clearly nomenon in his own right. He managed Mrs. Vincent, it should be noted, is an and visibly present in him. Now let us campaigns for Earl Warren and William Kids at work wi h sticky glue? ardent Democrat. Moreover, the abili- plunge into what would certainly be Knowland as well as Nixon, and he has With Bostitch staples there's no goo! ties that "kind of disturbed" her were Act Two in any competent play about often been described as a political genius. precisely those which made Nixon a Nixon—the great crisis of the $18,000 He is a shrewdly humorous fellow, with champion debater. fund. In two episodes of that crisis— something of a Hollywood touch about both involving Dwight D. Eisenhower, him—he affects such eccentricities as And Nixon was also a brilliant campus and neither fully told before—we shall miniature watches worn as cuff links. He politician. The Whittier yearbook for his see that something new has been added is fascinating when talking about the senior year records how Nixon became to the original barnacle; that the earnest one subject on which he is a genuine ex- student-body president "in a campaign Quaker boy has somewhere acquired an pert, and the one subject which really amazing inner toughness of fiber. '44 in which mudslinging was noticeably interests him—the art of winning elec- absent. . . . On a platform advocating a But first, again, the bare bones of tions. Chotiner was Nixon's chief mentor new deal for those who enjoy the social Nixon's life. The years from 1937 to in that art, in Nixon's early days, and Only stapler in the world niceties, he stormed to his position." 1946 are quickly told. They were pre- there is no doubt that his influence on with staple remover attached The "social niceties" were on-campus cisely like the same years in the lives of Nixon was very great. dances, previously outlawed on that some millions of other young men. After Both Pat and Chotiner were on the The Indispensable Quaker campus. Nixon disliked dancing, law school, Nixon became a junior part- campaign train with Nixon, who was BOSTITCH B8R and still does, but he clearly had a well- ner in an old family friend's law business. whistle-stopping on the West Coast when He was president of the Twenty-Thirty Now in handsome three-tone gray developed instinct for the winning issue, the fund story broke on September and gleaming black-and-chrome. even then. Yet the odd fact is that many Club, and active in Kiwanis and in the eighteenth. Nixon's first reaction to the Whittier Little Theater movement. There of his classmates did not think of Nixon story was simple unconcern. It is impor- 11316 at your stationer's as a natural politician at all. "He was the he met Thelma Ryan—"Pat"—a pretty tant to understand that the unconcern Slightly higher in the West and outside U.S.A. last person in the class I would have high-school teacher and occasional Holly- was quite genuine. Neither Nixon nor Bostitch, Inc., 307 Briggs Drive, East Greenwich, Rhode Island picked to be a political headline," one wood bit player. He married her in 1940. Chotiner, who also knew about the fund law-school classmate wrote; and another: There followed the brief stint in OPA, and who was no political babe in the Fasten it better and faster with "I would put him down as the man least and then a commission as a Navy supply woods, had foreseen that the fund might likely to succeed in politics." officer, with some months in the Pacific. be a political booby trap. The fund was Most Americans think of a politician In the fund speech, Nixon described his never a "secret"—the treasurer, Dana as a backslapper, and Nixon was, and war career as "not particularly unusual." Smith, had publicly solicited contribu- still is, anything but a backslapper. That It was unusual in only one way—Nixon tions up and down the coast—and Nixon BOSTITCH is another note his contemporaries re- became an unusually brilliant poker STAPLERS AND STAPLES and Chotiner regarded it as no different peatedly strike in their letters about player, and came back with a useful nest from any other political-campaign fund. Nixon. "He was personally somewhat egg of poker winnings. Earlier, (Continued on Page 62) THE SATURDAY EVENING POST 62

(Continued from Page 60) when col- flicting pressures. Then on Sunday night, umnist Pete Edson had asked about the while Nixon was in Portland, the call at fund, Nixon had given him Smith's tele- last came through from the general in phone number and suggested that Smith Kansas City. Auto glass lets all could give him all the details. Nixon must have given a lot of thought But Nixon soon realized that he was to what he, a mere junior senator, thirty- the wonder in in desperate trouble, especially when nine years old, would say to the revered the New York Herald Tribune, the paper conqueror of Hitler. An ordinary man of his closest newspaper friend and col- might have adopted a meek and defen- A world of wonder awaits her wherever laborator in the Hiss case, Bert Andrews, sive tone, giving his side of the fund story she goes . . . and the magnificent auto called for his withdrawal. "That was the with much self-justifying detail. But safety glass areas by Pittsburgh Plate worst shock," Nixon has recalled. There Nixon is not an ordinary man, and he Glass Company in the whole 1958 Chrysler were other shocks. Harold Stassen wired hardly mentioned the fund. Corporation line give her a front row seat. him, asking him to withdraw for the good (The Imperial on the opposite page is a of the party. Thomas E. Dewey tele- He started the conversation by saying phoned him to say ("I hate to tell you flatly that he would withdraw if the striking example.) Do you realize that this, Dick") that the consensus among his general—and the Republican National in just 10 years the glass area in a powerful New York friends was that Committee—so wished. The general re- typical Chrysler Corporation car Nixon should step aside. General Eisen- plied that "this is not my decision—it is has increased an average of hower said only that Nixon must be as yours." Nixon answered immediately 76%? And every inch of this "clean as a hound's tooth," and Nixon that he would be glad to take exclusive glass is PPG SAFETY GLASS was well aware that a number of those responsibility for the decision, either way. who had the general's ear were urging But first, he said, the public, and the —glass which measures up him to dump his controversial running general himself, ought to have a chance on every count to the mate. to "hear my side of the story." He warned rigid specifications set Nixon himself thought briefly but the older man against listening to "some by the American seriously of withdrawing. But his wife of those people around you who don't Standard Safety Pat repeatedly said two things. "If you know a damn thing about it." And he Code for strength withdraw under fire," she said, "you will concluded by giving the head of the ticket carry the scar for the rest of your life." a small lecture about practical politics. and optical clarity. And she said: "If you withdraw, Ike will The longer there remained any doubt lose." Chotiner also maintained that about whether or not he was to stay on Nixon's withdrawal under fire would de- the ticket, the more harm it would do, feat Eisenhower, and he insisted from the not only to himself but to the whole first that the crisis could be turned de- ticket. In a situation of this sort, a de- cisively to Nixon's advantage. "I did cision had to be made; it had to be made what I always do," Nixon has said. "I firmly, and it had to be made as quickly as considered all the worst alternatives, as possible. And, according to at least three cold-bloodedly as I could, and reached an people who should know—not including analytical conclusion—that if I withdrew, Nixon—and who recall Nixon's words General Eisenhower would probably with a certain retrospective awe, he con- lose. So I decided to make the effort to cluded with a bluntly worded admoni- stay on, if possible with honor." tion which can be delicately paraphrased Although he has not said so, it is clear as follows: "General, in politics a time from the events which followed that comes when you have to fish or cut bait." Nixon's analysis led him also to the con- It was an extraordinarily bold and clusion that the key to his situation lay aggressive line for a young man in with Dwight D. Eisenhower. If his per- Nixon's position to take. But it worked, sonal reputation and his political career as Nixon knew it must; Nixon could not were not to sustain a mortal wound, the possibly be dropped from the ticket with- general must exonerate him completely out being given a chance to defend him- and on his own initiative. Nothing less self. Before that night ended, the money would do. Moreover, Nixon must at all to put Nixon on a nationwide television costs avoid being summoned to judg- hookup, which had hitherto been lack- ment, like a naughty little boy, to be ing, was quickly found. punished or excused by an indulgent Nixon's famous broadcast the next parent. Tuesday night, September twenty-third, On Friday, September nineteenth, was his most decisive political triumph, while the storm was still gathering force, transforming him from a youthful would- Nixon accordingly issued orders—quickly be Throttlebottom into the really major conveyed to the general's train—that he political figure he has been ever since. would under no circumstances speak to It is also still in some ways a millstone anyone in the general's party except round his political neck; those who dis- Eisenhower himself. Friday, Saturday, like Nixon often explain their dislike by and the daylight hours of Sunday passed pointing to that "tear-jerking soap opera without the expected telephone call from about the fund." Yet it is interesting to the general, who was under heavy con- read the (Continued on Page 66)

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