Report of the County Chairman (31 page)

It was symbolic, therefore, that the single event which came closest to being the one vital accident of the campaign concerned Mr. Eisenhower. When the Negro minister Martin Luther King was thrown into a Georgia jail in the afternoon of October 25, on a grossly trumped-up charge, it was obvious to me that a critical moment had been reached in the election. At first glance this was a situation that must work to the Democrats’ disadvantage, for if Senator Kennedy did nothing he would lose Negro support in the vital northern cities, and if he did something he would alienate the South, where he had to pick up electoral votes. On the other hand, the Republicans would surely gain if they made some strong statement pointing out that this was the sort of racial discrimination against which they had fought for eight years. It looked to me as if Murphy’s Law had finally swung into operation, and the inevitable evil had overtaken my party.

What happened is history. Intelligent Republican strategists, seeing a chance to torpedo the Democratic position, drafted an impeccable statement for President
Eisenhower to deliver on television. It read: “It seems to me fundamentally unjust that a man who has peacefully attempted to establish his right to equal treatment, free from racial discrimination, should be imprisoned on an unrelated charge, in itself insignificant. Accordingly, I have asked the Attorney General to take all proper steps to join with Dr. Martin Luther King in an appropriate application for his release.” For some reason that is not yet known, this striking statement which could have won the Negroes of the North to Nixon was never issued. The fundamental vacillation that characterized the party’s use of their President continued, and the great strong voice that should have spoken out and won the election, remained silent.

On the other hand, John Kennedy took the risk and did the gallant thing. He decried the blatant abuse of a Negro’s civil liberties and had the courage to phone Reverend King and say so. In doing this he did not lose Georgia or South Carolina or Texas. Instead he won the Negro vote in New York and Chicago and Philadelphia, and thus the Presidency.

The case of Nelson Rockefeller and his relationship to the Nixon campaign is difficult indeed to analyze. That Mr. Rockefeller could have won the election for himself relatively easily is a truism. My guess is that he would have won not less than 53 per cent of the popular vote and probably around 390 electoral votes. He and his advisers knew this and they probably suspected that Mr. Nixon could not win. The fight that Mr. Rockefeller had waged for the nomination had been an honorable one up until December of 1959, when he ostensibly withdrew
from the competition as it became obvious that the professional Republican politicians would not tolerate an open convention struggle between him and Nixon. I was less impressed with his backing and filling through the spring of 1960, for I felt that he should have enlisted whole-heartedly in support of the man to whom he had surrendered. And his last-minute attempts to influence the party platform, while philosophically proper, were politically maladroit.

It was apparent that a victory for Nixon in 1960 would imply a reëlection in 1964, so that the earliest date at which Governor Rockefeller could hope for the Republican nomination and the Presidency would be in 1968, when either his star might have faded or his age have become a deterrent. It was tempting therefore to adopt the Machiavellian theory that Mr. Rockefeller was conspiring to engineer a Nixon defeat in 1960 in order to make himself the logical nominee in 1964. And if a Democratic speaker believed that this was Rockefeller’s gambit, discussion of it certainly sowed dissension in Republican ranks.

I never believed that Rockefeller did undercut the Nixon candidacy, and I avoided the issue. I contented myself with the often reiterated statement, “You know that Governor Rockefeller was not happy with Mr. Nixon as the Republican candidate, and that most of what Mr. Nixon says is in direct conflict with the reports of the Rockefeller brothers.” Many of my hearers volunteered the information that the governor was not electioneering whole-heartedly for the Vice President and that was the major reason why Nixon would lose New York. When the campaign was over it was found that Governor Rockefeller
had campaigned in 50 of New York’s 62 counties and had spoken the astonishing number of 237 times. This surely constitutes “supporting the ticket,” but the psychological damage had been done and could not be repaired.

It seemed strange to me both during the campaign and after that the pre-convention attacks on Kennedy by Johnson, Truman and Mrs. Roosevelt really counted for very little once the campaign got under way. They were discounted as the typical Democratic brawling that Americans expect of this vital party, and each of these initial opponents later did yeomen service during the campaign. Mrs. Roosevelt was especially hard-working in our area, and her forthright admission that she had initially preferred another candidate but now supported the convention winner gained many votes for Kennedy. But on the Republican side the philosophical antagonism expressed by Governor Rockefeller before the convention was apparently neither forgotten nor forgiven. He hurt the Republicans enormously and no amount of later hard work could erase that initial impresssion. Frequently I thought, “That’s one of the advantages of being a rough-and-ready Democrat. A man like Truman can blast hell out of Jack Kennedy, then turn around and support him vigorously, and the public brushes it off with, ‘That’s those crazy Democrats.’ But when a proper Republican, in a nice black suit, castigates Richard Nixon, everyone takes it seriously.”

As of now, I suspect that Governor Rockefeller may be the Republican candidate in 1964, but then it will be too late. He could have won relatively easily in 1960, but by 1964 President Kennedy and his team will have compiled
such a powerful record and consolidated the Democratic position so securely that I doubt any Republican will be able to win. Furthermore, the closeness of the 1960 vote constitutes no precedent for 1964, because by then many who were afraid to elect a Catholic President will have seen how foolish their fears were. They will vote next time where they wanted to this: for Kennedy.

There is a sense of sadness, I think, in reflecting that Harold Stassen was entirely correct in 1956 when he warned the Republican party that Richard Nixon would ultimately prove to be a liability. The 1960 election demonstrated the correctness of Stassen’s position, and again the closeness of the vote must not obscure the fact that actually the Republicans should have won rather easily. Of all who tried to predict the outcome of the 1960 election, Harold Stassen proved to be the most accurate. Nixon’s candidacy cost the Republicans almost exactly the margin of votes that Stassen had forewarned. And he offered his prediction four years before the event. I suspect that I will endear myself to few Republicans when I praise Stassen’s political acumen, but I think it is due him.

But the most perplexing enigma of the Republican defeat was neither President Eisenhower nor Governor Rockefeller. The real mystery centered on the candidate himself, Richard Nixon. At least a hundred times during the campaign I admitted, during question periods, “Mr. Nixon is obviously a much better man than he is allowing himself to appear in this campaign.” Up until his sickening homily on swearing, I willingly told my audiences that I was quite satisfied that Nixon, if elected, would turn out to be one of our better Presidents, and I
still believe he had the capacity to become such. But in the campaign he insisted upon parading all the less attractive aspects of his personality and his interpretation of the Presidency. Instead of being strong he tried to be reassuring. Instead of showing an incisive mind he paraded his determination to side-step all major questions. Instead of uncovering the dedicated public servant, he appeared before us a man desperately groping for a prize. In him there was no evidence of fire, no touch of burning inner conviction and no sense of the historical destiny of the moment. He issued no ringing cry to which his followers could vigorously rally, and his campaign was very dull.

Richard Nixon is a much better man than he appeared in the autumn of 1960. How he was trapped into parading before us the shadowy image that he projected onto the TV screens I do not know. His enemies insist, “What you saw was the real Richard Nixon, the man of sawdust.” This I cannot believe. I suppose he was tricked by his advertising advisers into believing that what the American people wanted was a bland new father image, a man who never discussed unpleasant truths, a man who looked like a President. If it was upon this basis that he constructed his campaign, I can only say that he was very badly advised. The real Richard Nixon, leading a fighting party and supported by a fighting general already in the White House, could have swept the country. We Democrats can be thankful that he was dissuaded by someone, either his Madison Avenue advisers or his own inner insecurity, from following the hard, clean, clear path that would have led to the Presidency.

There remains the fact that the Republican party as such also failed to wage a very effective campaign. In Bucks County, where the Republicans defeated us, we were never impressed by either the vigor or the intelligence of their effort to gain votes for Nixon. With all the advantages the party enjoyed, it should have given him a majority of 20,000. Throughout eastern Pennsylvania the story was the same. In New York and Connecticut the Republicans also failed to mount that aggressive, committed campaign that might have won. I know there is difference of opinion on this, and one Democratic visitor from California told me, “For God’s sake, don’t challenge the Republicans to work any harder. In California they ran one of the greatest campaigns I’ve ever seen and they clawed the victory away from us. They deserve all the credit you can give them.”

In the other parts of the nation that I visited this was not so. Their campaign was sometimes effective and occasionally inspired; but the fire that characterized their nation-wide efforts in 1952 and 1956 was missing, and the principal ingredient that was lacking was dedication. A great many Republicans simply could not get excited about their candidate, and this indifference was exhibited constantly throughout the autumn.

Many critics, while admitting Republican lassitude, argue, “The Democrats were just as bad. This was one of the dullest campaigns in history and most of the population was plain bored.” This is somewhat disproved by the record turnout of voters, nearly 69,000,000 and far in excess of pre-election estimates. At the same time, out of every 303 Americans who did vote, one, while willing to
vote for the other offices, refused to cast a ballot for either Kennedy or Nixon. Across the nation a surprising total of 224,931 so refrained, enough to have swung the victory to Nixon had they supported him. In Bucks County about 300 voters rejected both candidates. These may have been disgruntled Stevensonians; more likely they were Democrats who found it morally distasteful to support either a Republican or a Catholic.

In our county we did see some of the general apathy that was supposed to mark the campaign. From the floor people frequently asked, “Neither man is very good, is he?” Others said, “Except for that first debate, there’s been no real argument between the candidates.” Certainly the fourth debate was about as inept a performance as one could witness, with neither man saying anything new or even repeating the old effectively. But I was never willing to admit, nor am I now, that John Kennedy was inadequate. In everything he did, there was a promise of strong administration and powerful legislative leadership. However, I was quite content to have him say nothing new in the fourth debate. As one leading Democrat exulted with me the next morning, “Wasn’t it glorious that this time Jack didn’t dig any graves for himself?”

So far as I was concerned, the election could not have been more exciting, and I think that if it had by some fiat been extended for an additional week, I would have had to go into the hospital. For if it lacked the dazzling verbal fireworks that characterized former elections, if there was no commanding figure, if the drama of great events was missing, there was nevertheless, for me at least, a quiet drama of even greater significance. A new dimension was
being given to American politics in the election of a man born in this vital century. A new meaning was being added to our democracy in the removal of one more disqualification for the Presidency. Religious bigotry was dealt a crushing blow. But more important than any of these accomplishments, so far as I was concerned, was the conscious choice that America made between a candidate who talked sense and one who took refuge in bland generalities. In political significance, I found this election to be one of the most exciting of my lifetime.

On the other hand, when it was over I was not able to think of it as particularly close, and I believe that the editorialists have been misguided in reiterating that it was. If one considers the religious handicap that John Kennedy carried into the battle, and if one remembers that Nixon should have won easily, one must conclude that Kennedy gained a rather handsome vote of approval for his political and economic policies. I do not understand those critics who preach that because of the narrowness of his plurality he is obligated to proceed cautiously. To me it would seem more proper to advise: “President Kennedy, if your policies won against such formidable odds, the people of the United States must obviously prefer them. Get on with the job.”

Furthermore, I cannot accept current estimates of Republican strength, for the party is much weaker than it appears to be. If the Democrats won this time, think what they will achieve in 1962 and 1964 when the religious question is no longer so vital, when inexperience cannot be an issue, and when years of good administration can be pointed to with pride. If the Republicans lost this time,
with all the advantages they had on their side, think of the problem they will face in 1964 when they will not be the incumbents and when they will not have the great prestige of President Eisenhower to draw upon. The 1960 election was a tremendous moral victory for the Democrats, and to denigrate it makes no sense.