4

Nixon in Crisis

There have been three occasions in Nixon’s career when he might have been destroyed. On two of these occasions he might have been destroyed politically—which might have been, to a man of Nixon’s totally political temperament, a personal disaster short only of death itself. On the third occasion it was death itself that Nixon faced. The way he reacted to these moments of great danger tells a lot about the man beneath the carapace.

Nixon first came face to face with political destruction during the 1952 campaign, when he was Eisenhower’s running mate for the first time, and when, in September, charges that he was the beneficiary of a “secret millionaires’ fund” suddenly exploded in his face. The famous fund crisis was one of the most extraordinary episodes in American political history, and Nixon’s course during the crisis gave him a claim to a place among American history’s most extraordinary politicians. A book—and a rather fascinating one—could be devoted to the whole story of the five days of the fund crisis. Here I shall describe those highlights of the story which cast light on the kind of man Nixon was and is. I shall concentrate especially on the way Nixon chose to deal with the head of his ticket, General Eisenhower, an aspect of the story which is remarkably revealing and which has never before been fully told.

But first to set the stage. Nixon was thirty-nine at the time. He had been in politics only six years. He had been chosen as General Eisenhower’s running mate largely through Dewey’s influence. He was chosen for the sort of reasons for which Vice-Presidents are traditionally chosen. He was acceptable to the Taft wing of the party. As a Californian, he came from a key state where the failure of Governor Earl Warren’s candidacy might cost the ticket votes. As a westerner, he might take a bit of the curse off the largely eastern coloration of the Eisenhower movement. And his role in bringing Alger Hiss to justice made him an impeccable anti-Communist, thus giving the ticket some reinsurance against the defection of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s admirers. In short, Nixon was at the beginning of the fund crisis thoroughly in the Throttlebottom tradition. After the crisis was over, he was a major politician, as he has been ever since—much admired, much hated, but no Throttlebottom.

When the storm over the fund broke, on Thursday, September 18, 1952, Nixon was whistle-stopping in northern California. On board his campaign train were two people who have had a profound influence on his career. One was his wife, Pat, whom Nixon met in 1937 at a tryout for a Little Theater play, proposed to that very night in an uncharacteristically impulsive moment, and married in 1940. Like Nixon himself, Pat Nixon is not easy to know well. Like Nixon, she is said to have a rare but furious temper, although her usual manner is coolly competent. She shares other characteristics with Nixon—a good intelligence, much energy, and a strong ambition. At one time—after the 1954 campaign—she almost changed the course of American political history by persuading Nixon to withdraw from politics to go into law practice. Otherwise, she has been a major political asset to Nixon. She has acted as a sort of extra backbone for a man whose backbone already had great tensile strength, magnifying and intensifying those qualities, like his drive and ambition, which he already had in abundance.

The second of these two people who have deeply influenced Nixon’s career was Murray Chotiner. Chotiner was a part-time political adviser for Nixon in his 1946 campaign for Congress against Jerry Voorhis. He was Nixon’s campaign manager in 1950, when he beat Helen Gahagan Douglas for the Senate, and again in 1952. Chotiner is, or was, a remarkable political phenomenon in his own right. He managed victorious campaigns for Warren and Knowland, as well as Nixon, and he has often been described as a political genius. Of all California’s strange tribe of professional campaign managers—brought into existence by California’s peculiar and now defunct cross-filing system and by the state’s penchant for popular referendums—Chotiner was probably the most successful, except perhaps for the redoubtable Whittaker and Baxter.

If Nixon can be said to have had a political mentor, it was Chotiner, and he is therefore worth a brief glance. In 1956, still unproved charges that Chotiner had tried to use his political connections, including his connections with Nixon, to get favors for his law clients transformed him—at least for the time being—from a major political asset in California into something like political poison. Since then, Nixon and Chotiner have had no political relationship. But Nixon, to his credit, is still outspokenly loyal to Chotiner, and he considers it a “tragedy” that Chotiner became involved in “the kind of law business which does not mix well with politics.” As this is written Chotiner is planning to run for Congress, partly in order to prove that he is not political poison now. If he is as shrewd a manager of himself as he was as the manager of California’s Big Three, his opponent is to be pitied.

Chotiner is not only shrewd—he is also a rather agreeable fellow with a somewhat cynical wit. He has a distinctly southern California air about him—when I first met him, I was impressed by his white silk tie, his dove-gray suit, and his enormous cuff links, which turned out on closer inspection to be miniature watches. Like Nixon, he has one true love, and that is politics. But in Chotiner’s case the word has a decidedly limited definition. To him, politics is the art of winning elections. Talking to him, one senses that as far as he is concerned there really is nothing more to politics—the issues, for example, are of interest only in that they may help or hinder a candidate in his single mission of attracting votes on Election Day. As we shall see, an important part of the case against Nixon is that for too long a time he, too, regarded winning elections as a politician’s chief function.

Amazingly, the astute Chotiner, who knew all about the fund, never smelled the terrible political danger in it. Nor did Attorney General-to-be William Rogers nor Nixon’s shrewd press secretary at the time, James Bassett, who were also on the train. Neither these men nor Nixon himself took the fund story very seriously at first. Nixon’s first reaction was to say that he had been “smeared” by Communists. This reaction was in accordance with Chotiner’s basic precept, laid down in a speech to the party faithful—“An attack is always a smear when it is directed to our own candidates.” Thus Nixon and his clever advisers tended at first to dismiss as a mere pinprick what was in fact a knife thrust at the heart.

That none of them were worried by the fund story when it broke may be a reflection on their political sagacity or their sense of values, but it is certainly true. The fund had never been a secret—Dana Smith, a lawyer of remarkable candor and immense political naïveté, who was treasurer of the fund, had beat the more promising Republican bushes for money for the fund up and down the Coast. Everyone involved, on both the giving and receiving ends, had regarded the fund as a special sort of campaign fund—an out-of-season campaign fund, to be sure, but in no way reprehensible. When columnist Pete Edson had earlier asked Nixon about the fund, Nixon had casually given him Smith’s telephone number and suggested that Edson get the details from him.

But by Sunday night, three days after the fund story had broken, Nixon and the men around him were well aware that the seeming pinprick might be a knife in the heart. The Washington Post, the New York Herald Tribune, and other papers had called for Nixon’s resignation. Harold Stassen had sent him a long, pompous wire asking him to withdraw, and Nixon was well aware that some of the men to whom Eisenhower listened were also in favor of dumping him. He had himself thought seriously of withdrawing. But his wife, Pat, repeatedly said two things. “If you withdraw under fire,” she said, “you will carry the scar for the rest of your life.” And she said: “If you withdraw, Ike will lose.”

Chotiner also maintained that Nixon’s withdrawal would be interpreted as an admission of guilt and might defeat Eisenhower. And he insisted from the first that with proper management the crisis could be turned decisively to Nixon’s advantage.

“I did what I always do,” Nixon has said. “I considered all the worst alternatives, as cold-bloodedly as I could, and reached the analytical conclusion—that if I withdrew, Ike would probably lose. So I decided to make the effort to stay on, if possible with honor.”

Although he has never said so, it is obvious in retrospect that Nixon reached another “analytical conclusion” as well—that the key to his whole situation lay with Dwight D. Eisenhower. If he were not to be destroyed politically (and, in a sense, personally, too) the General must exonerate him completely. Nothing less would do. Moreover, Nixon must at all costs avoid being summoned for judgment, like a naughty little boy called into the parlor to be spanked or forgiven by an indulgent parent.

As soon as he realized that the storm was a real storm, and no mere teapot tempest, Nixon issued orders that he would under no circumstances speak to any spokesman for the General, but only to Eisenhower himself. The orders were quickly conveyed to the General’s train. This was itself a bold move for the thirty-nine-year-old junior senator. Bolder moves were to follow.

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday passed without the expected telephone call from the General, who was under heavy conflicting pressures and who had said only that Nixon must be “as clean as a hound’s tooth”—a remark which had, understandably, infuriated Nixon. At last, on Sunday night, while Nixon was in Portland, Oregon, the long-awaited call came through from the General in Missouri.

The way Nixon talked to the General—the revered conqueror of Hitler, who seemed then much more untouchably majestic than he came to seem later, when time and habit had whittled him down to human size—tells a lot about Nixon. One can well imagine another man, explaining in much self-justifying detail how the fund was essentially no different from any other campaign fund; how no contributor was allowed to give more than five hundred dollars; how every penny was regularly accounted for; and so on. But Nixon, amazingly, hardly mentioned the fund.

After some initial small talk, Nixon said that he would withdraw if the General—and the Republican National Committee—so desired. The General replied that “this is not my decision—it is yours.” Nixon replied rather crisply that he would be glad to take responsibility for the decision, either way. But first, he said, the public, and the General himself, ought to have a chance to “hear my side of the story.” He bluntly warned Eisenhower against listening to “some of those people around you who don’t know a damn thing about it.” And he concluded by giving the conqueror of Hitler a brief lecture about practical politics.

The longer there remained any doubt about whether or not he was to stay on the ticket, Nixon said, the more harm it would do, not only to himself but to the whole ticket. In a situation of this sort, a decision had to be made, and it had to be made quickly. And according to at least three people who should know, Nixon concluded with a bluntly worded admonition.¹ Nixon’s words were: “General, a time comes in politics when you have to pee or get off the pot.”

It was a remarkably bold and aggressive line for a young man under bitter attack to take. But it worked, as Nixon knew that it must—neither Eisenhower nor anyone else could possibly drop Nixon from the ticket without giving Nixon a chance to tell “his side of the story.” There had been talk of putting Nixon on a nationwide television hookup before the conversation with Eisenhower, but the money was not to be found. After that conversation, it was found, and before the night ended.

Nixon’s famous broadcast the next Tuesday night, September 23, was his most decisive political triumph—after that, he could never again be written off as a mere Throttlebottom. But it is still even to this day, in some ways, a millstone around Nixon’s political neck. Those who dislike Nixon often explain their dislike by pointing to “that tear-jerking soap opera about the fund.” And some of those who cannot explain their dislike for Nixon except in terms of his jowls probably have the fund speech tucked away somewhere in their subconscious.

To understand why Nixon made the kind of speech he did, it is necessary to go back to Nixon’s youth, to the way he was brought up, to the boy who was father of the man. To do so is a fascinating exercise, for you can find in Nixon’s background the genesis of much of the content of the famous speech. But here, you say to yourself, was how that “respectable Republican cloth coat” was born. And here is the shameless hamminess of the “little cocker spaniel dog, Checkers.” And here is how Nixon learned the debating tricks which he used to score points—some wholly specious—off the Democrats. And here, finally, are the origins of that high moral tone—that “Goddam holier-than-thou attitude”—which infuriated the passionate partisans of Adlai Stevenson more than anything else in the speech. To understand why Nixon made the sort of speech he made, in short, you have to understand how Nixon had come to be the sort of man he was, and that attempt at understanding will be made in another chapter. Here we are concerned with the way Nixon reacts to a crisis, to a danger threatening himself. And for that purpose, the reactions of General Eisenhower, who heard the speech in an auditorium in Cleveland, are well worth recording.

In the manager’s office of the auditorium, Eisenhower was surrounded by his large entourage, including a number of those who had urged that Nixon be dumped from the ticket. In his hand the General had a block of paper and a pencil. Before Nixon was halfway through his highly emotional performance, many of those around the General were weeping, and the tears of those who had urged Nixon’s withdrawal were particularly conspicuous.

“Ike wasn’t crying though,” testifies one astute observer who sat close to him and who was clever enough to watch the General instead of the television screen. “He was tapping the pad with his pencil. Twice he jabbed the pencil right into the pad, the second time so hard the lead broke. Before that, I’d always liked and admired Ike, of course, but I’d often wondered how smart he really was. After that, I knew—Ike got what Dick was getting at right away, while the others were weeping and carrying on.”

The General jabbed his pencil into the pad the first time when Nixon said:

“I would suggest that under the circumstances both Mr. Sparkman and Mr. Stevenson should come before the American people as I have, and make a complete financial statement as to their financial history. And if they don’t, it will be an admission that they have something to hide, and I think you will agree with me.”

There were, after all, four national candidates, not three, and the fourth was General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Had the General “something to hide”? He did not, of course. But it would have been highly embarrassing for him to make a “complete financial statement,” in part because the military rarely get into the habit of making charitable contributions, and in part because such a statement would have drawn unnecessary attention to the “Eisenhower ruling,” under which the General was permitted to pay capital-gains taxes rather than income taxes on his fabulous earnings from his book.

The General jabbed so hard that he broke the lead off his pencil when Nixon said:

“I would do nothing that would harm the possibilities of Dwight Eisenhower to become President of the United States; and for that reason I am submitting to the Republican National Committee tonight, through this television broadcast, the decision it is theirs to make. Let them decide whether my position on the ticket will help or hurt; and I am going to ask you to help them decide. Wire and write the Republican National Committee whether you think I should stay or whether I should get off; and whatever their decision is, I will abide by it.”

“The decision it is theirs to make.” Not, in other words, Eisenhower’s to make. Nixon knew that, with the strong support of party chairman Arthur Summerfield and of Senator Robert A. Taft, he had an easy majority on the national committee. He had that easy majority even before the famous speech and whatever Eisenhower’s inclinations might be. This, then, was a delicate way of saying to Eisenhower, “It is not up to you to decide whether I get off or stay on.”

Nixon’s final words were: “And remember, folks, Eisenhower is a great man, believe me. He is a great man, and a vote for Eisenhower is a vote for what is good for America.” This amounted to a firm promise that, if he remained on the ticket, Nixon would go down the line for the head of the ticket. But the things which caused the General to jab his pad with his pencil also added up to a promise—and a warning.

To understand Nixon’s warning, it is necessary to go back to an episode which occurred before the broadcast. Shortly before Nixon was scheduled to go on the air, Thomas E. Dewey called his headquarters, using a pseudonym, and insisted on speaking to him. With the authority of the man who was chiefly responsible for Nixon’s nomination, Dewey told Nixon that he had to report “regretfully” that most of the party leadership believed that he ought to withdraw as the vice-presidential candidate. Dewey was also, after all, principally responsible for Eisenhower’s nomination, and, although he did not say so explicitly, the clear implication of what he said was that Eisenhower was among the party leaders who wanted Nixon out of the way.

Nixon’s response to this invitation to commit political suicide was contained in the passages quoted above. Those passages were Nixon’s way of saying that, if an attempt were made to force him off the ticket, he would fight back with everything he had—and that he had plenty to fight with. The warning, moreover, was aimed directly at General Eisenhower.

Whatever else one thinks of Nixon, it is difficult for anyone who admires courage not to be impressed by the downright breathtaking boldness he displayed at this moment when he could so easily have been destroyed. More was to follow. After the speech, Eisenhower sent a congratulatory message to Nixon, only part of which reached Nixon over the radio. The gist of the part Nixon heard was a request to Nixon to come immediately to Wheeling, West Virginia, Eisenhower’s next campaign stop, to see the General and to help him “complete the formulation of my personal decision.” “My personal decision,” mind you, not “the decision it is theirs to make.” The General had indeed “got what Dick was getting at.”

From Cleveland, Republican chairman Summerfield and his public relations expert, Robert Humphreys, together called Nixon’s Los Angeles headquarters to make what they thought would be the purely routine arrangements for Nixon’s joining the General in Wheeling. They were in a jubilant and confident mood, for they already knew that the Nixon speech had been a political triumph. They finally got through to Murray Chotiner. The conversation which ensued went about as follows:

“Well, Murray, how are things out there?”

“Not so good.”

“What in hell do you mean, not so good?”

“Dick just wrote out a telegram of resignation for the General.”

“WHAT? My God, Murray, you tore it up, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I tore it up, but I’m not so sure how long it’s going to stay torn.”

A horrified pause.

“Well, Dick’s flying to Wheeling to see the General, isn’t he?”

“No. We’re flying tonight to Missoula.” (Missoula, Montana, was Nixon’s next scheduled speaking engagement.)

“WHAT? My God, Murray, you’ve got to persuade him to come to Wheeling.”

“Arthur, we trust you. If you can give us your personal assurance, direct from the General, that Dick will stay on the ticket with the General’s blessing, I think I can persuade him. I know I can’t otherwise.”

Eisenhower’s request to Nixon to meet him in Wheeling to hear his decision represented precisely the summons to be judged which Nixon was determined at all costs to avoid. So again Nixon took an amazingly bold and aggressive line, and again it worked, as Nixon knew that it must. After the enormous political triumph of his telecast, Nixon was no little boy, to be summoned for a spanking or a reward. He held the whip hand, and he knew it, and the Eisenhower party knew it, too. At dawn the next day, Summerfield, after a frantic night in which he had finally managed to reach the General when his train stopped briefly on its way across Ohio to Wheeling, called Murray Chotiner. He had the General’s absolute promise, Summerfield told Chotiner, that Nixon would be welcomed with all honor in Wheeling, with no ifs, ands, or buts about his remaining on the ticket. For Nixon the victory was complete and unconditional. And so he enplaned for Wheeling, and the rest is history—how the General welcomed him with “Dick, you’re my boy,” how Nixon cried on Knowland’s shoulder, and all the rest of it.

It was, surely, an extraordinary performance. Here was a man of thirty-nine, with only six years in politics, with a sure, instinctive grasp of the political realities and a bold willingness to act on those realities. Nixon knew that, if he demanded that his side of the case be heard, it would be politically impossible to deny him that right. Nixon knew, even before the broadcast, that although Eisenhower and most of the men around him might want to dump him, as Dewey implied, they would think long and hard if Nixon made it clear that he was willing to fight with everything he had. Finally, once he knew that his broadcast had been a political triumph, Nixon also knew that the mere hint that he might resign, even that he might fail to accede to Eisenhower’s public request that he come to Wheeling, would be enough to ensure his own unconditional victory.

A very astute and probably largely instinctive judgment of General Eisenhower, both as a human being and as a newly fledged politician, was certainly a decisive factor in Nixon’s course during the fund crisis. Eisenhower had been in politics only a few months at the time. A few weeks before, the Scripps-Howard papers had charged that he was “running like a dry creek.” He completely lacked the confidence in his political judgment which he later developed, as a result of experience and his two landslide elections. He was almost wholly dependent on the advice of those around him. And Dewey was certainly telling the truth when he reported to Nixon that most of that advice was to dump Nixon. At a meeting of the large Eisenhower entourage only two or three hours before the broadcast, Summerfield was the only one of those present who spoke up strongly for keeping Nixon.

In these circumstances, to be meek, to be defensive, was to commit political suicide. If Nixon had for one moment seemed to offer his head on a platter to Eisenhower, those around Eisenhower would have made certain that the offer was accepted—and not very gratefully. Nixon, in short, as the story of the fund crisis clearly shows, early reached the “analytical conclusion” that the key to victory or to a defeat from which he could never recover lay with Eisenhower; and further, that the way to deal with Eisenhower was to be aggressive, and tough as nails.

With another man, there might have been grave risks involved in this conclusion. It is hard to imagine a Franklin Roosevelt, or a Harry Truman, accepting the lecture on politics, with its final admonition, which Nixon gave Eisenhower in that telephone conversation. It is hard to imagine them reacting as Eisenhower reacted to Nixon’s veiled threat to resign, conveyed through Chotiner, or his refusal to come to Wheeling except on his own terms. At some point, if the ticket had been headed by a self-confident, experienced, professional politician, Nixon would have been slapped down and slapped down hard. But the outcome suggests how remarkably accurate was Nixon’s judgment of Eisenhower, both as a human being and as a totally inexperienced politician.

The second episode in which Nixon faced a major political crisis, and which also involved a judgment on his part of Eisenhower’s character, is more quickly told. It cannot be told so confidently, however, because there is one unanswered—and for the present, at least, unanswerable—question involved. The question is this: Did President Eisenhower seriously wish to replace Nixon as his running mate in 1956?

The bare facts are as follows: In February 1956, Eisenhower asked Nixon to come to the White House for a chat. He adopted a benign and fatherly tone. He had decided, he said, to run again for the presidency and he would so announce shortly. Nixon should consider his own future very seriously. No Vice-President in modern history, the President pointed out, had succeeded a living President. Nixon had held elective office throughout his career. Might it not be better for him to get some administrative experience? He could certainly have a Cabinet post—defense, for example, was a most challenging job. Might that not be better than to run again for the vice-presidency?

Nixon was noncommittal in his response. But privately he was dismayed. If the President did not want to dump him as his running mate, he had certainly sounded as though he did. For a time Nixon seriously considered taking the lucrative partnership in private practice which he had been offered, and this time his wife, Pat, who had extracted from him in 1954 a promise to retire from politics, favored his getting out.

On February 29, as he had told Nixon he would, the President announced that he would run again. Immediately, “Will Nixon run?” replaced “Will Eisenhower run?” as the favorite topic of speculation in the press. On March 7, the President added to the speculation by saying that Nixon should “chart his own course.” On April 26, Nixon took matters into his own hands. He asked to see the President, said that he had thought over carefully what the President had said at their previous meeting, reminded him of his press-conference statement, and said that he had decided to run again for the vice-presidency, if the President and the Republican convention approved. The President replied that he was delighted by Nixon’s decision. Nixon promptly announced it at the White House to the hastily assembled members of the White House press corps, while Jim Hagerty (a consistent Nixon man in the Administration) bore emphatic witness to the President’s “delight.”

Was the President really delighted? Or had that first conversation been his way of suggesting politely to Nixon that he step aside? There are those who know both men who believe that Eisenhower was sincerely advising Nixon in what he regarded as Nixon’s own best interest. That may be. It would suggest a quite remarkable political naïveté in the President, but then in some ways the President has always been remarkably naïve in matters political, where his own political popularity has not been involved. Other credible witnesses are sure that the President had in fact been persuaded by some of those around him that it would be wiser to replace Nixon, especially in view of his own recent heart attack, and that his February talk with Nixon was Eisenhower’s gentle way of beginning the process of replacement.

This latter view is lent some credibility by the bizarre episode of Harold Stassen’s futile attempt to dump Nixon as the President’s running mate and replace him with Christian A. Herter. Whatever one may think of Stassen, he is, after all, an experienced politician. It is hard to believe that even Stassen would launch his dump-Nixon movement without some real reason to believe that the move might succeed—and it could succeed only with at least the tacit backing of the President. Queried on this point, Stassen will say only that “the whole story cannot now be told,” which hints strongly that Stassen did have some reason to believe that the President wished to replace Nixon.

However that may be, after that fatherly talk in February, Nixon himself had good reason to suppose that the President wanted another running mate. But it is obvious that again, as in the 1952 crisis, Nixon “considered all the worst alternatives and reached an analytical conclusion.” He quickly concluded that if he were to accept the President’s offer and step down into a Cabinet post, he would be finished politically. He also concluded—and this took a good deal more thought, no doubt, since he had that big offer from a California law firm and Pat had had her fill of politics—that he wanted to finish what he had begun. And finally he obviously also concluded that in 1956, as in 1952, the best course was an aggressive course. Hence his decision to seize the initiative. For once Nixon had announced his decision to run again from the White House itself, with Hagerty at his side to say with emphasis that the President was “delighted,” there was no way on earth to force Nixon off the ticket, short of a public and unequivocal decision by the President himself to do the forcing.

Again there was a risk involved, as in 1952. Another kind of President (the names of Roosevelt and Truman come again to mind) might have resented Nixon’s course as an attempt to force his hand. That kind of President might have told the Vice-President then and there that he wanted another running mate. But again Nixon correctly judged his man. And again he had plucked the flower of safety from the nettle of danger. In both crises the risk had been very great, and in both Nixon’s triumph was unconditional.

Murray Chotiner, who admires Nixon as a politician much as a great modern art expert might admire Picasso as an artist, has said that Nixon has two qualities which distinguish him from lesser members of the political breed. He is “always willing to go for broke.” And “he always moves fast to shape events.”

Both qualities were displayed by Nixon on the two occasions when his political life was in danger. They were also displayed on the one occasion when his physical life was in danger.

Nixon’s “good-will” tour of South America may have been a diplomatic misfortune but it was unquestionably for Nixon a political triumph. After the South American trip, Nixon’s standing in the polls took a sudden leap, just as they did after his trip to the Soviet Union—and the polls may have a decisive influence on Nixon’s future (and indeed on the future of the United States). If simple guts, plus an ability to think quickly and well in a moment of great physical danger, are admirable qualities, then Nixon’s South American triumph was deserved.

The story of Nixon’s South American tour has been told in detail elsewhere, especially in Earl Mazo’s book, which is a remarkable job of detailed reporting. Here I shall confine myself to the incident which impressed me most when Nixon described the South American trip to me at some length, shortly after his return. The incident occurred in Caracas, Venezuela, which was Nixon’s last stop on his South American tour, and which could quite well have been his last stop on earth.

As soon as he landed at the airport, Nixon knew that he and his party were in bad trouble—worse trouble than in Peru, where rocks had been thrown at him at San Marcos University in Lima. The airport at Caracas was flooded with a screaming mob of teen-agers out of control, led and egged on by Communists. To get to their car, the Nixons had to pass through “a rain of spit,” as Nixon put it, but worse was to come.

Nixon’s first scheduled stop in Caracas was to be a traditional wreath-laying ceremony at Simón Bolívar’s tomb in Pantheon Plaza. All the way into town the Nixon motorcade was harried and chevied by rock-throwing mobs, while the Venezuelan police assigned to protect the Vice-President faded away. Four blocks short of the Plaza the motorcade came to a dead stop, halted by a roadblock of trucks on the divided six-lane highway, and the mob closed in on the lead car, in which Nixon was riding with the Foreign Minister.

Nixon’s description of what followed has a bizarre Walpurgisnacht quality. He was riding in a Cadillac—Pat, just behind him with the wife of the Foreign Minister, was also in a Cadillac. The windows of both cars, which were rolled up as protection against the mob, were covered with spit and vegetable matter, through which the hate-filled faces of the mob, pressed in close against the car on all sides, were strangely distorted. The invention of shatterproof glass probably saved Nixon’s life. He had not realized before, he says, how hard it is to break a good car window. He remembers one man beating at the glass with an iron pipe. Even when the pipe finally broke the glass, most of the window remained intact. A big rock, Nixon remembers, which had been hurled at the car, was embedded in one of the windows and supported by the glass.

A mere handful of American Secret Service men were the only protection for the Nixon party—aside from that invaluable shatterproof glass—and although they did yeoman service, they could not control a mob of thousands. When the mob began to rock the car, Nixon realized fully for the first time that his life, and his wife’s, and the lives of the other people in the party, were in real danger. South American mobs share with those of the Middle East an unpretty propensity for dismembering their victims in the streets—in the uprising against the Pérez Jiménez dictatorship, some months before, a number of unpopular persons had shared this unpleasant fate.

Nixon was not consciously frightened. When a crisis is going on, he says, “I feel cold, matter of fact, analytical,” although afterward he may feel physically ill. But he knew that somehow his car and his wife’s must escape from that place where they were seemingly trapped forever. And he therefore began to consider—coldly, matter of factly, and analytically—the height of the concrete island which ran down the middle of the big boulevard. There was no way to get through the roadblock in the right lane. But the left lane going the other way was quite empty. Could the Cadillacs clear the concrete island and thus escape?

The arrival of a handful of troops brought a small temporary clearing of the space immediately in front of the cars. Nixon says: “I made a command decision.” Word was passed to the cars behind, and on orders from Nixon (the Foreign Minister had by this time been reduced to a state of incoherence) the big car started for the concrete island, bumped over it, and, followed by Mrs. Nixon’s Cadillac, tore up the empty opposite lane the wrong way.

At this point Nixon says, “I made another command decision.” He ordered the chauffeur to go directly to the American Embassy. The Foreign Minister, suddenly reviving, weakly protested that Nixon was expected next at the wreath-laying ceremony, but Nixon briskly overruled him. It was fortunate that he did so, because another, and larger, Communist-led mob was awaiting him at Bolívar’s tomb, and this mob was armed, not only with rocks but also with explosives.

There is a great deal more, of course, to the story of Nixon in South America, but there is nothing that throws more light on Nixon’s reaction to crisis than those two “command decisions.” There is no doubt at all that Nixon’s life was in danger. Reliable American reporters on the spot confirm that the danger was quite real, and so do intelligence estimates of the situation made after the event. Nixon—and perhaps others, including his wife—was saved, in part by the safety glass, in part by the intrepidity of Secret Service agents, but also in part by Nixon’s “cold, matter of fact, analytical” response to crisis.

Nixon, in short, has guts. No sensible person, however hostile to Nixon in other ways, can deny him that quality. He has other qualities, some admirable, some not so admirable. But the quality of guts is the quality which mostly marks him.

“When somebody launches an attack, your instinct is to strike back,” Nixon says. “If you’re always on the defensive, you always lose in the end.” These sentences suggest why the word “guts” is the correct word to describe the quality Nixon displayed in the three most dangerous crises of his career. For the word implies a certain aggressive toughness, a willingness to use means not necessarily laid down in the rule books, which such more elegant words as “courage” and “bravery” do not imply. The possession of guts obviously does not in itself qualify a man for the presidency. But in these times it is, nevertheless, a useful quality for a President to have.

¹ Despite the Vice-President’s rather half-hearted dementi, as recorded in the interview in the appendix, I have confidence in the awed and vivid recollection of these witnesses.