ON JANUARY 21, 1961, Nixon gave up his office, his title, his staff, his Secret Service protection, his chauffeur and car, and his salary. When he had started his political career, fifteen years earlier, he had assets of about $10,000; when he finished, in 1961, he had a $48,000 equity in his house in Washington. He had not made money in politics, in fact had never been interested in money, but with college expenses for the girls just a few years away, and with his fiftieth birthday coming in two years, he felt the need to build an estate.
He had many rich and powerful friends, and as the man who had received virtually half the votes cast in the 1960 election, he had an obvious political future, which meant that his job prospects were excellent. Robert Abplanalp, developer of the aerosol spray can, told him that if he joined a law firm, the Precision Valve Corporation would like to hire him as a consultant, paying him a retainer fee.1 Walter Annenberg, publisher of the Philadelphia Inquirer, made a similar offer, as did many others.2 This was not giveaway money—the men who offered to retain Nixon expected in return the benefit of his advice and wisdom on their governmental and foreign operations, areas where he had much to contribute. Nixon was also offered memberships on various boards of directors, such as American Export Lines, but these he turned down on principle (“my public responsibilities,” as he put it).3
A law firm was the obvious place for him to go; he had been trained as a lawyer, the only non-public-service job he had ever held was as a lawyer, and as a lawyer in a major firm he could pick and choose his cases, set his own schedule, stay active in politics at a national level, maintain and profit from his contacts, and make a lot of money. The question was where to settle. Tom Dewey offered him a position with his firm in New York City, where the fees were the highest in the world, and the young lawyer who in 1937 could not find a job in New York now could pick and choose from among the top firms. In Washington too he was eagerly sought after.
Instead, he chose California. Pat wanted to return there—she had always wanted to go home—and it had attractions for Nixon beyond familiarity and the climate. California was his base. He was registered there. Only in California could he run for office before 1964. And as he repeatedly said in the years that followed, no Republican could ever win the Presidency without carrying California. He was not necessarily thinking of running against Kennedy again in ’64, but neither was he ready to abandon the national political scene. While it was true that California was isolated and that the press tended to ignore anyone not living in Washington or New York, it was also true that California was the heart of the Republican West, which in turn was rapidly becoming the heart of the Republican Party.
Way back in 1946, when Nixon first ran for office, Earl Adams of the Committee of 100 had told him that if he lost to Voorhis he could count on a job with Adams’ law firm. Fifteen years later, having finally lost an election, Nixon took Adams up on the offer. He joined the Los Angeles firm of Adams, Duque, and Hazeltine, not as a partner but as a consultant. He brought lucrative accounts with him; in return, he got the free time he needed to stay active in politics.4
It was a month after Kennedy’s inaugural before he got out of Washington. He had a huge stack of mail to go through, campaign contributors and workers to thank, political chores to do. In December and the first part of January he had worked his staff twelve hours a day at these tasks, but still failed to get everything done. No wonder, as it was a task of monstrous proportions.
In April 1961, Eisenhower wrote Nixon. The former President said he did not want to meddle, and that he was embarrassed to bring up the subject, but “a number of substantial contributors to your campaign have told me that they have received no word of thanks from you.” Eisenhower admitted that such contributions should be regarded as support for a cause rather than as a gift to an individual, but pointedly added, “Frankly, I have written hundreds of such letters myself even though in principle I realize that this should not be necessary.”5 Over the next few months, Nixon got out dozens of such letters, but it was a full year after the election before he completed the job.6
Then there were farewells to write, to every Republican congressman, to the members of the Administration, to prominent Republicans out of Washington, and to personal friends and advisers. One went to Douglas MacArthur (“Of all the speeches I made in the House and the Senate, there is none of which I am more proud or which I believe will better stand the test of time than the one I made castigating Mr. Truman for his action in recalling you from Korea.”).7 Another went to Tom Dewey, thanking him for his “wise counsel and loyal friendship.”8 After thanking William Randolph Hearst, Jr., for the support of his newspaper chain through the years, Nixon expressed the hope that “we will be fighting together in some more good causes in the future.”9
To Eisenhower himself, Nixon said he was confident that “the verdict of history will be that the country has never had an administration which set a higher standard for honesty, efficiency and dedication. . . . The American people, because of your leadership, have enjoyed the best eight years in their history.” For himself, Nixon said, “never in this nation’s history has one man in public owed so much to another as I owe to you.”10
It was not just the big shots who got warm, personal letters. Nixon wrote one to Ann Whitman, Eisenhower’s personal secretary. Whitman had agreed to stay with General Eisenhower in his retirement, just as that other paragon of loyalty and efficiency, Rose Mary Woods, had agreed to stay with Nixon. In his letter to Whitman, Nixon praised her virtues as a secretary, quite rightly, and said he knew what he was talking about, because he too had an outstanding secretary (as Whitman knew; she and Woods were close friends). Best of all, Nixon said, “I can never recall an instance, no matter how grim the problem or the crisis, that the day didn’t become brighter after I had the opportunity to talk to you.”11
In return, Nixon received hundreds of letters of thanks and appreciation for all that he had done. The one that pleased him most came from Eisenhower. The high spots of a long and friendly letter were: “I have always felt a complete confidence in your ability and capacity for taking on the Presidency at any instant,” and “The future can still bring to you a real culmination in your service to the country.”12
NIXON CERTAINLY HOPED THAT the last was true, but meanwhile he had to establish a new home and make a living. In early February, he and Pat flew to Los Angeles to find a house. They wanted one close to the airport, close to Nixon’s office in the Pacific Mutual Building in downtown Los Angeles, and with a view of the ocean. Pat thought she could find a suitable home in a week, but for the next three months she was a cross-continent commuter as she searched and searched (the girls stayed in Washington to finish the school year). Eventually, the Nixons threw up their hands and decided they would have to build. They purchased 410 Martin Lane, in a new development, the Trousdale Estates, near the exclusive Bel Air section of Los Angeles, overlooking Beverly Hills. The house they planned was long, low, ranch-style, with seven baths and four bedrooms, three fireplaces, a huge living room, and a swimming pool. It would cost about $100,000. Nixon sold his Wesley Heights home in Washington for $101,000.
Nixon could not even buy a lot without stirring up controversy. In this case, the Los Angeles Times reported that he had been given a “celebrity discount,” paying $35,000 for a lot worth $42,000, and that the generous seller was none other than Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa. It was also rumored that subcontractors were asked to “donate” some of their work.
An angry Nixon called editor Frank McCulloch of the Times. “What’s wrong with what I did?” he demanded.
“You’re not entirely a private citizen, Dick,” McCulloch replied. “You’ve been Vice-President . . . and you may well have a political future.”
“I don’t see what’s wrong,” Nixon responded. He merely paid the asking price. Later, when the question came up at a press conference, Nixon pointed out that “builders all over the state and county offered me lots free, which I did not take because I did not think that was appropriate.” Nixon’s Vice-Presidential Papers in the Federal Archives confirm this claim, and Nixon might well have let it go at that, but he was so angry that he could not, and made a threat of his own. He called the charges a “smear,” and said, “I intend no longer to take it lying down. . . . I so serve warning, here and now . . . that anybody that makes charges of this type will have to answer for them, and they will be in for the fight of their lives on the charges.”13
Despite his lack of any substantial savings, Nixon had no money problems. Adams’ firm paid him a $60,000 salary, plus one-quarter of the fees from the business he brought with him, which gave Nixon an additional $40,000 per year. In May, he began writing a syndicated newspaper column, for another $40,000. Later, Nixon said that he had earned more money in his first fourteen months in Los Angeles than he had in his fourteen years in Washington.14
FROM FEBRUARY TO JUNE, Nixon lived alone in a bachelor apartment on Wilshire Boulevard. “It was not an easy time,” he confessed in his memoirs. “I preferred to be alone.” He ate TV dinners. He found it difficult to settle down to work in the law firm. Everything he did seemed “unexciting and unimportant.” Fortunately, Pat and the girls flew out for Easter vacation, which the family spent on the beach in Santa Monica. Tricia and Julie “loved the beach and the warm weather,” Nixon recorded, “and their enthusiasm about California began to rub off on me.”15
His spirits also revived as the “honeymoon” period passed. For the first three months of the Kennedy Administration, Nixon kept quiet, but by mid-April he felt free to take up his responsibilities as leader of the opposition. The role, however, was ill-defined and not easy to fill. In the American system, unlike a parliamentary system, no formal place exists for the losing party leader in a national election. Half the American people had voted for Nixon as head of government, but as a loser he had no spot in government at all. In the United Kingdom, he would have been in Commons, leading the opposition, with both the opportunity and the responsibility to question and challenge the government on a daily basis and on every issue. But in America he was only the “titular” leader of his party, with no enforcement powers, no chance to establish a Republican position on issues (he could only assert his own positions), no chance to demand that the Kennedy Administration answer this or that barbed question.
Nixon had friends in the legislative branch who could ask questions for him, but in the case he most cared about they let him down. Back in January 1953, Eisenhower had made Charlie Wilson sell his stock in General Motors, at a considerable financial sacrifice, before appointing him the Secretary of Defense. In January 1961, two Kennedy Cabinet appointees also divested themselves of their holdings, Labor Secretary Arthur Goldberg and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. As Charlie McWhorter pointed out to Nixon, their actions gave the Republicans a golden opportunity to embarrass Kennedy. McWhorter suggested that Nixon prod Senator Everett Dirksen to use the Senate Judiciary hearings on the confirmation of Bobby Kennedy for Attorney General as an opportunity to put on the record the entire Kennedy financial empire. If McNamara and Goldberg had to divest themselves of their holdings, McWhorter said, “then Bobby should be required to make a complete disclosure of the various interests and arrangements of the Kennedy fortune.”16 Nixon thought it a good idea, and talked to Dirksen, who was vague but hopeful. In the confirmation hearings, however, not one Republican asked one embarrassing question. Nixon expressed “amazement” at the “lousy job [the Republicans] did questioning Bobby Kennedy.” 17
As he could not ask questions himself, and his friends would not do it for him, Nixon had to make his critique in public speeches. He wrote Arthur Flemming in April, “I believe the country needs to hear some responsible, constructive criticisms of the new Administration,” but said he was also “keenly aware that almost anything I say will be examined with a microscope by the press with the purpose of trying to point to a phrase which would enable them to charge me with being a poor loser and a carping critic.”18
But there was another side to Nixon’s “Poor Richard” situation. If he had to watch helplessly while questions went unasked, and if he felt constrained in what he himself could say, he did have the advantage that he could pick the time and choose the place for his battleground. Not since the 1952 campaign had he enjoyed that advantage—in the last eight years he had been on the defensive, forced to react no matter where the Democrats attacked.
IN MID-APRIL, Nixon began to seize his opportunity. For help, he turned to the Republican leadership. Not being in Washington, he consulted through a form letter that went out to a couple of dozen men, including Tom Dewey, Arthur Flemming, and Robert Anderson. Nixon announced that he was going on a speaking tour, beginning May 2, and asked for suggestions “as to what I might say that would be constructive from the standpoint of the country as well as the party.”19
The answers were almost unanimous—hit Kennedy on foreign policy. The immediate issue was Laos, where Kennedy had accepted a neutral government that Republicans warned was pro-Communist. Kennedy’s foreign policy was Nixon’s natural target anyway, but events as well as advice made Nixon’s topic inevitable.
On April 17, a week after Nixon sent off his request and even as the first responses were coming in, Cuban exiles landed at the Bay of Pigs. For Nixon this should have been a happy moment. He had been the strongest and earliest supporter of the CIA plan to overthrow Castro, and six months earlier had done all he could to persuade Eisenhower to put the plan into action. Despite his devastating critique of an American-sponsored invasion of Cuba in the 1960 campaign, Nixon believed in the plan.
Because he had already decided to make foreign policy the subject of his speeches on his tour, Nixon had requested and been granted a briefing by Allen Dulles. On April 19, the two men met in Nixon’s Washington home. Press reports on the progress of the invasion were pessimistic but inconclusive. Nixon was eager to get the inside story. When he asked Dulles if he wanted a drink, Dulles replied, “I certainly would—I really need one. This is the worst day of my life!” He explained that the invasion had failed, and said the reason was Kennedy’s last-minute cancellation of the air strikes that the CIA had counted on to knock out Castro’s air forces. “I should have told him that we must not fail,” Dulles said, staring at the floor. “And I came very close to doing so, but I didn’t. It was the greatest mistake of my life.”20
The next morning, Nixon conferred with Republican leaders on Capitol Hill. They agreed to withhold their criticism of the President until the crisis was over. When Nixon got home, he found a triumphant note from Tricia: “JFK called. I knew it! It wouldn’t be long before he would get into trouble and have to call on you for help.”
Nixon returned the President’s call; Kennedy was angry and frustrated, cursing all his advisers. “I was assured by every son of a bitch I checked with—all the military experts and the CIA—that the plan would succeed.” Nixon thought that Kennedy felt himself to be “the innocent victim.”
Kennedy stopped pacing, turned to Nixon, and asked directly, “What would you do now in Cuba?”
With no hesitation, Nixon replied, “I would find a proper legal cover and I would go in.” He continued, “There are several justifications that could be used, like protecting American citizens living in Cuba and defending our base at Guantánamo. I believe that the most important thing at this point is that we do whatever is necessary to get Castro and communism out of Cuba.”
Kennedy protested that if he did “go in,” Khrushchev would move on Berlin. Nixon dismissed the risk. Khrushchev, Nixon said, would “probe and prod” to find weak spots, but if resisted he would back down. Therefore, “we should take some action in both Cuba and Laos, including if necessary a commitment of American air power.” But Kennedy had lost his desire for adventure. He said America could not go into Laos; we would find our troops fighting “millions of Chinese.”21
Both men were reversing their previous positions. Six months earlier, Kennedy had called for full American support of the Cuban exiles, while Nixon had insisted, albeit insincerely, that for the United States to be involved in an invasion of Cuba would damage relations with the Organization of American States, violate international law and treaty commitments, and invite the Soviet Union into Cuba on a large scale. A month earlier, Kennedy had made a bellicose speech on Laos. That very afternoon, he had told the American Society of Newspaper Editors that American restraint toward Cuba was “not inexhaustible” and that he had no intention of “abandoning the country to communism.”22
In the 1960 campaign, Kennedy had tried, with considerable success, to project the image of a leader who would be tougher on the Communists. A centerpiece of his campaign had been criticism of the Republicans for not spending more on defense and not engaging in a more active foreign policy. Nixon had agreed with him on both points.
Now, as President, Kennedy had reacted to his first crisis by adopting a policy of restraint. True, he had sharply increased the defense budget, but Nixon was unimpressed. Nixon explained to Professor Don Pearlberg of Purdue University that Kennedy’s failure was “due not to a lack of military power, but to a lack of will to use that power if it involves great risks. A few billion dollar increase in our ability to wage conventional warfare is not going to frighten Mr. Khrushchev very much.”23 Nixon felt, as he told another correspondent, that “once begun, it was near-criminal to have permitted the Cuban operation to fail—least of all for want of courage and determination on our part.”24
But in April 1961, Kennedy was governing, not campaigning, an experience Nixon had never had. Giving tough advice was different from having to carry it out. Kennedy took care not to say this directly to Nixon, but Nixon had long experience in giving Oval Office advice to “go in” and getting rebuffed. In North Korea, in Vietnam, in the Formosa Straits, in Hungary, in Cuba, and at other places, Nixon had urged Eisenhower to go for victory, only to experience the frustration of seeing Eisenhower adopt a policy of restraint.
Nixon believed deeply in the policy he was recommending, so much so that he made Kennedy a promise: “I will publicly support you to the hilt if you make such a decision [to go in] in regard to either Laos or Cuba.” Actually, it was more a convoluted threat than a promise. Nixon was saying that if Kennedy adopted his policies, he would not criticize Kennedy for doing so. Still, Nixon repeated his pledge: if Kennedy found it necessary to send American troops into Laos and Cuba, “I am one who will never make that a political issue. . . . ”25
IN EARLY MAY, Nixon began his speaking tour. His most important talk was on May 5 to the Executives Club of Chicago. He began with a standard Nixon ploy—to claim that the “more popular course” would be for him to refrain from speaking at all on Cuba and Kennedy, that such would be the “easy choice.” But no matter what the cost to himself, he said he was determined to speak out, because “our existence is threatened and in recent weeks the threat has manifestly increased.” With such stakes, who could remain silent?
Nixon went on to warn that “the worst thing that can flow from our failure in Cuba is . . . that this failure may discourage American policymakers from taking decisive steps in the future because there is a risk of failure.” He pledged that “I will support him [Kennedy] to the hilt in backing whatever positive action he may decide is necessary to resist Communist aggression,” and got sustained applause when he asserted “whenever American prestige is to be committed . . . we must be willing to commit enough power to obtain our objective. . . . Putting it bluntly, we should not start things in the world unless we are prepared to finish them.”26
In Detroit, on May 9, he declared that the United States had to convince Khrushchev that “it is prepared to risk the possibility of war on a small scale if it is to avoid the eventual certainty of war on a large scale.” In discussing Cuba, Nixon said that “some Americans” were urging an open intervention or a naval blockade (for “some Americans,” read Nixon, who had just given precisely that advice to Kennedy in the Oval Office). But in Detroit, Nixon was emphatic in his opposition to such intervention without specific provocation.27 He did say, in response to a question, that the United States “might well” stop Soviet shipments of arms to Cuba after a due warning that they were a threat to the United States.
Although Nixon said that he was making his tour as a private citizen, inevitably there were strong political overtones to it. Everywhere he went the local Republican leaders and contributors flocked to him, at lunches, breakfasts, coffees, afternoon meetings, and following his public speeches. Although he insisted that he was not a candidate for the 1964 Republican nomination, no one believed him. His private actions indicated otherwise.
In mid-May, for example, he told Bill Sprague, a Republican leader from Chevy Chase, Maryland, that he wanted to organize a letter-writing campaign to Look magazine. In its May 9 issue, Look had carried an article by James Michener on the 1960 election. Nixon protested that the article was “designed to continue to build up the myth that our campaign in ’60 was ineffective, to knock me down as a potential candidate for ’64 and to build Rockefeller up as the man to nominate.” He feared that there was some “Rockefeller influence” behind Michener’s article, and wanted Sprague and his friends to write letters of protest. He realized that Sprague, like others supporting him, were working on a “volunteer basis,” which he said made him even more appreciative of efforts in his behalf.28
There were other volunteers. Bob Haldeman gave Nixon help when and where he could, and offered to do more. John Ehrlichman, back in Seattle practicing law, and who was by now on a “Dick” and “John” basis, wrote a long, chatty letter that concluded: “If occasions arise during the next months when I can be of help to you . . . please call upon me.”29
IN JUNE, Nixon flew back to Washington to help Pat with the packing for the move. “Now I’ve got something in common with President Kennedy,” Nixon told reporters, “a sore back.” As the family walked out the door together for the last time, the press reported that Nixon looked “wistful,” while Pat and the girls wept. Tricia had lived almost all of her life in Washington, and Julie had been born there. Much as the girls looked forward to California, they hated leaving their friends. Pat too was leaving friends behind; as Nixon said, “We don’t like to leave this house.” Checkers and the cats came along in air-freight carrying cases.30
The new home in the Trousdale Estates was not yet finished; while the construction went on, the Nixons lived in movie director Walter Lang’s old house in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles. A fine English Tudor home on North Bundy Avenue, it included a swimming pool, a fruit grove, and an avocado ranch. Nixon soon discovered that his girls, now fifteen and thirteen years of age, were growing up fast. He was astonished when they beat him in a swimming race. Tricia was showing an interest in boys, and they in her. “Isn’t she too young?” Nixon asked Pat.
“Oh, Dick,” she replied, “you’ve got a lot to learn.”
After they settled in, Nixon was off again, this time for the Bohemian Grove encampment above San Francisco. He reportedly stole the show on stunt night when he did a comic re-enactment of his “kitchen debate” with Khrushchev.31
There were other pleasant moments. Eisenhower spent the winter in Palm Desert, California, and had Nixon join him for a golf game. In September, playing at Bel Air with Randolph Scott and Bebe Rebozo, Nixon shot a hole in one. “The greatest thrill of my life,” he told reporters.32 Eisenhower wrote to congratulate him and say that he, Eisenhower, was taking all the credit. Nixon confessed in his reply that despite the hole in one, he had shot a 91 and ended up losing three dollars.33
The Nixons had lots of guests, especially young ones, as many of the girls’ Washington friends flew out for a visit. “I’ve really been running a small hotel,” Pat said when schools finally reopened and the last visiting child had departed.34 The Nixons had their own friends in Southern California, of course; when they arrived, the Greater Los Angeles Press Club held a welcome-home party with sixteen hundred guests. The University of Southern California awarded Pat an honorary doctor’s degree.35
Nixon himself was offered such a degree from Duke University. President Deryl Hart of Duke informed him that he had always regretted the 1954 “episode,” when Duke offered an honorary degree only to have the faculty veto it. Hart said that this time he had the prior approval of both the faculty and the trustees, and one of those trustees wrote Nixon that “I know you are much too big a man to let that 1954 incident influence your judgment now.”36 Nixon nevertheless declined, on the grounds that to accept would “reopen a controversy over an incident which the great majority of people, except for those directly connected with it, have now forgotten.”37
PAST TRIUMPHS AND DEFEATS were very much on Nixon’s mind in the summer and fall of 1961, because he was hard at work on a sort of autobiography. Although he said later that writing a book was “the last thing I ever intended or expected to do after the 1960 election,”38 it was such a natural thing to do that it was almost inevitable. As with any memoir, it would give him an opportunity to put forward his own point of view on his political career and, in some measure, achieve vindication. It promised to be profitable—although one never knows with a book—and despite his six-figure-plus income, Nixon needed money. Speaking tours were costly, and he had to pay his own way—the Republican Party could not pay his expenses, and contributors were reluctant to give money to a man who was not a candidate for any office. Most of all, writing a book about his career would let him relive great moments at a time in his life when he found everything dull and unexciting.
Adela Rogers St. Johns had been after him for some time to do a book. In January 1961, she called Rose Mary Woods to leave a message for the boss. “Don’t let him lose sight of the book,” St. Johns said. “I know how he feels because I have to nag a little bit. But if he is to have a best seller on the 1962 list he has to get at it right now.” She reminded Nixon of how much good Kennedy had done himself with Profiles in Courage.39
Nixon, busy with a million other things, put it off. In April, St. Johns took action. She told Nixon that Ken McCormick of Doubleday and Company was flying to California to talk to him about a memoir. McCormick had strong Republican connections—he had been one of Eisenhower’s editors for Crusade in Europe, and had persuaded Eisenhower to sign a contract with Doubleday for his White House memoirs (once again serving as one of the editors).
The night before McCormick arrived, Nixon jotted down some ideas. Mamie Eisenhower had earlier suggested to him that he write about his trips, especially the South American and Russian ones. He put those down. Then his mind turned to the crises he had been through. Always crisis-oriented, often depressed when there was not a crisis going on, he had been through enough of them to make a book. There was the Hiss case, the fund crisis of 1952, Eisenhower’s 1955 heart attack, and the 1960 election. Altogether, six crises. It had a nice ring to it, reminiscent of Walter B. Smith’s tremendously popular work, Eisenhower’s Six Great Decisions. McCormick was enthusiastic. He told Nixon that writing was “easy and enjoyable” and a deal was struck.40
Shortly thereafter, Nixon met with Kennedy in the White House for their Bay of Pigs discussion. Nixon mentioned that he was thinking of doing a book. Kennedy urged him on, saying that “every public man should write a book at some time in his life, both for the mental discipline and because it tends to elevate him in popular esteem to the respected status of an ‘intellectual.’ ”41 That was certainly gratuitous advice from Kennedy, who, as his biographer Herbert Parmet has shown, accepted the Pulitzer Prize for Profiles in Courage after his ghostwriter, Ted Sorensen, did the work, and after his father, Joe, intervened with the Pulitzer Committee.42
“WRITING EASILY AND FLUENTLY is something I have never been able to do,” Nixon had told a cousin, novelist Jessamyn West, back in 1955.43 He had begun a syndicated newspaper column in the spring of 1961, but the writing was done by Stephen Hess, a young, prolific intellectual who had his own writing and research firm in Washington.44 Alvin Moscow also helped on the columns, and both Moscow and Hess helped on Six Crises. But it was such an intensely personal book that Nixon necessarily had to do most of the writing himself. He told Eisenhower he found it “the hardest work I have ever done from the standpoint of concentration and discipline required,”45 and informed St. Johns that writing the book was “crisis number seven.”46
Besides Moscow and Hess, Earl Mazo came out to California to help out. But Nixon did much of the research himself. He wrote David Sarnoff of RCA, for example, asking for the transcripts of NBC’s election-night coverage in 1960.47 He asked Bill Rogers, Herb Brownell, Sherman Adams, and other members of the Eisenhower Administration for their recollections of various events.48 He asked Billy Graham for his account “of what happened on the story which you prepared for Life Magazine during the campaign,” an article that endorsed Nixon but was not printed.49 In his reply, Graham said that after due consideration and considerable prayer, he had decided to pull the article, but in Six Crises Nixon wrote that he personally vetoed the article for fear of stirring up religious bigotry. The discrepancy was not reconciled, but the friendship continued.50
Mazo described Nixon’s method of writing: “He never goes near a typewriter, but with the facts and data gathered for him by his researchers, he scribbles notes and phrases on a large, yellow lawyer’s pad, then dictates the finished product into a machine.” Woods did the typing. Often he went off alone, to Apple Valley, near Palm Springs, or to Trancus Beach, to spend a week or so dictating. Like many writers, he would take long walks to collect his thoughts, becoming oblivious to everything around him. He would forget his front-door key and have to climb over a fence to get back in. He took Checkers along for company, and once when walking along Trancus Beach he almost lost her. She was chasing gulls and dashing into the surf; he was deep in thought; suddenly he realized she was nowhere to be seen. He ran down the beach for almost a full mile and finally found her still happily chasing the gulls. “I don’t remember ever being happier to see that dog,” he said.51
He needed to get away from everything to write, because his regular daily routine was hectic, sometimes even more hectic than when he had been in office. He wrote Father Cronin in August, “My schedule is about the heaviest I have ever experienced. When you add writing a book and a column to a law practice, family responsibilities, and an obligation to give leadership to the Party here in the State, you end up, as you might imagine, with some pretty full days.”52
“As usual,” Nixon admitted in his memoirs, “the ones who suffered most, and most silently, were my family.” Although he had said, when moving to California, that one of his reasons was to have more time with his girls and Pat, “I saw them even less that year [1961] than I had when we were in Washington.”53
From early October to Christmas, he had to sacrifice not only his family life but his business and political life as well, as he worked full time on the final draft. Doubleday repaid him for his diligence by having bound copies of the book available in ten weeks, and in the book stores by April 1, 1962, a remarkable accomplishment.
IN HIS INTRODUCTION to Six Crises, Nixon wrote that “this book is an account not of great men but rather of great events—and how one man responded to them.”54 That was only partly true. Certainly the Hiss case fit the description, as did the long and painfully detailed account of the 1960 election, but he stretched things a bit in calling the Checkers speech a great event. Eisenhower’s heart attack had the potential of being a great event, but his rapid recovery meant that it was not. So too for Caracas—had Nixon or his wife been killed or even harmed, it would have qualified, but as things turned out it was a personal challenge only. The “kitchen debate” was little more than a publicity stunt by both principals. In part then, Six Crises was a book written by a great man about small events.
The book was as complex as the author himself. On one level, it was a campaign document, aimed at a possible bid for the 1962 California governorship or a 1964 bid for the Presidency. Nixon sent out hundreds of autographed advance copies to prominent Republicans in California and throughout the country.55 As such, it was highly effective. Nixon had carefully selected the six incidents in his career that showed him at his best—exposing Hiss, beating off attackers in the ’52 campaign, conducting himself superbly after Eisenhower’s heart attack, standing tall for the United States at the airport in Caracas and in the kitchen in Moscow, and running far ahead of the Republican Party in 1960. Overall, it reminded voters that he had been Vice-President for eight years, that he had vast experience in government, and that he could be a good loser.
On another level, the book was a political memoir, no more or less self-serving than most works of the genre. Throughout, he made the best case for himself as he could, the worst for his opponents. He told some fibs, was guilty of some exaggerations, but overall wrote an accurate, if partisan and one-sided, record of the events he described. It was a valuable addition to the political literature of the fifties.
At a third level, writing the book was therapy for Nixon, as autobiographies written in middle age often are, and in that sense it was self-revealing. Nixon wrote long passages on his feelings and emotions and thinking as he went through his crises. Far too often he generalized, claiming that his reactions were universal. But few men regard a crisis as “exquisite agony,” and few leaders felt as much anxiety, elation, and depression in their crises as Nixon did in his.
Nixon was as highly selective in the events he chose to write about as he was in his descriptions of his emotions. There is scarcely a word, for example, on his feelings toward Eisenhower, and not one word on how he felt at the Caracas airport when the spittle dripped down his wife’s face. Readers learned what he resented and hated, but not what he loved and cherished. Throughout his career, one of the most persistent complaints about him had been that no one knew the “real Nixon.” Tom Wicker, in his New York Times review, wrote: “The book’s great lack . . . is any significant disclosers about Nixon the man—what he really felt, thought, believed, what he really was.”56
Insofar as Nixon had long passages on how he had to force himself to get up for a crisis, and watch for a letdown afterward, and how and why and where he lost his temper or made a misjudgment, Wicker’s complaint was surprising, and few reviewers agreed with him. Fawn Brodie found the book “astonishing as revealing a veritable passion for self-analysis. Six Crises showed an introspective, troubled man, the epitome of moral virtue, but also a man subject to mortal fears of indecision and failure.” She detected a “kind of terror” in his “fear of loss of control.”57 Templeton Peck in the San Francisco Chronicle thought that “a sincere effort has been made to be fair, precise and relentlessly self-analytical.”58 Roscoe Drummond, in the New York Herald Tribune, called the book “vivid, candid and self-revealing.” Like other reviewers, Drummond expressed surprise that Nixon, always before so protective of his privacy, quoted so extensively from his wife and daughters in intimate family conversations.59 C. R. Foster thought the book showed Nixon to be “sensitive and intelligent rather than cynical.”60 William Costello, writing in the New Republic (which had serialized his critical biography of Nixon), disagreed. He said Six Crises revealed a man who “is never unaware of nameless, faceless enemies waiting to pounce,” and that the book was “devoid of eloquence or elegance, surcharged with banalities, intellectual clichés, and tasteless bravado, until at last the reader averts his mind’s eye in embarrassment.”61
THE BOOK DID MAKE THE BEST-SELLER LIST, and stayed there for half a year. It sold more than a quarter of a million copies, earning royalties in excess of $200,000. Nixon was proud of his first book. Decades later, he was still proud of it. Six Crises took on a life of its own, until Nixon began referring to it almost in the third person, as if he had nothing to do with its creation. During Watergate, he would constantly urge his aides to read Six Crises for inspiration and insight. “Read that book again,” he would tell Bob Haldeman, “really, a hell of a book, great stuff in there, everything you need to know is in it.”62 Charles Colson claimed to have read the book fourteen times.63
The publication of Six Crises produced a minor political flap. Nixon asserted that Kennedy had been briefed by Allen Dulles on the CIA’s plans and preparations for what became the Bay of Pigs invasion, but had nevertheless called for American support for Cuban exiles, thereby endangering “the security of a United States foreign policy operation.”64 The White House immediately issued a statement denying that the Dulles briefing had included any information on the CIA and the Cubans.65
Nixon called Eisenhower, who referred him to Robert Donovan, a reporter with an inside track in Washington. Eisenhower suggested that Donovan interview Dulles and get at the truth. Donovan tried, but as Nixon reported to Eisenhower on the telephone, Dulles would not cooperate. “Dulles insists that it was not his job to brief the candidates on ‘plans and policies’ of your Administration, but simply to report intelligence in the countries that were trouble spots.” Nixon then called John McCone, head of the AEC under Eisenhower, now Dulles’ replacement as head of the CIA. Nixon reported to Eisenhower: “John McCone told me . . . that Kennedy had been briefed that we were supporting underground and guerrilla activities in Cuba including the training of exiles.” Nixon also quoted Henry Luce, who told him that Dulles had told Life that he had told Kennedy everything.
Dulles issued his own statement: “My briefings were intelligence briefings on the world situation; they did not cover our own government’s plans or programs for action overt or covert.” Nixon called Eisenhower again. “McCone says categorically that Dulles told him that he had told Kennedy about the covert operation,” and suggested that somehow Kennedy must have gotten to Dulles.66
The truth is elusive. No record of the Dulles briefing of Kennedy has emerged. Motivation for dissembling was high on all sides. That Kennedy was as totally ignorant of the CIA’s Cuban program as he claimed is difficult to believe. It is impossible to believe the defense of his supporters—that the key press release (“We must attempt to strengthen the non-Batista Democratic anti-Castro forces. . . . Thus far these fighters for freedom have had virtually no support from our Government.”) was the single press release in the entire campaign not personally approved by Kennedy. He had been making the point regularly, especially when in Miami.67
Nixon’s implication, that he had protected state secrets even at the cost of the Presidency itself, was as brazen as his charge in the 1946 campaign that Jerry Voorhis had a CIO endorsement. In the last days of the 1960 campaign, Nixon had all but announced that the CIA was planning to do to Castro in Cuba what it had done to Arbenz in Guatemala. He was no more a defender of the national security at his own expense than Kennedy was. What really bothered him was not jeopardizing national security. It was that Kennedy got the better of the dispute, both in 1960 and again when Six Crises was published and Allen Dulles dismissed the whole thing as an “honest misunderstanding” between two honest men. The truth, sad to say, was the opposite in both cases.
NIXON DEDICATED Six Crises “To Pat/she also ran.” Friends and admirers winced at this unhappy phrase. Many wished that he had made more reference to her absolutely critical support in his crises. In 1946, a large portion of the $10,000 he gambled on his first campaign had been hers. In 1948, in the Hiss case, she had provided him with encouragement when he most needed it. In 1952, at the time of the fund crisis, it had been Pat who was tough at the crucial moments, telling Dick that he just had to go on—most dramatically two minutes before the Checkers speech began, when he would have walked out of the studio and out of history had Pat not insisted that he fight back. In 1954 and again in ’56 and ’58, she had campaigned at his side, listened attentively to every speech, always telling him how good he had been, thereby providing an indispensable boost at the precise moment every speaker wants to be told by someone he trusts that he has done well. He always looked to Pat first for approval of his efforts.
There was much more to her central role in his various crises. In 1958, in Caracas, her courage, her dignity, her poise, her composure, and her beauty impressed almost all observers. At that awful moment at the airport, she stood straight and at her husband’s side. In 1959, when her husband had shown signs of flagging in his running debate with Khrushchev, she had helped him along with some biting remarks of her own to Khrushchev. In 1960, she had worked for him as never before, throwing all of herself into the effort and thereby adding greatly to it. But all this, and more, was lightly passed over—at best—in Six Crises.
Still, the truth was that Dick could never get through a crisis without Pat. She was his partner, from the first campaign to the last. The popular image of Pat, which might be roughly described as weak, subservient, with no mind of her own—“Plastic Pat,” infinitely malleable to whatever mold her husband wanted to put her into—was reinforced by Nixon’s unfortunate “she also ran” dedication. But in fact, she was a woman of great depth, high intelligence, strong willpower, and a hot temper. The reason she never succeeded in holding Dick to his promises that he was quitting politics was not that she was weak, but rather that his willpower was stronger than hers. But of course it was also stronger than that of almost every politician and person in the country.
SIX CRISES WAS NOT A FAREWELL TO POLITICS. “The best and most productive years of my life are still ahead,” Nixon told friends who wanted to commiserate with him when he returned to California.68 Eisenhower had told him so, and in February, Whittaker Chambers had written to express similar sentiments. Chambers, who was in the last stages of his final illness (he died July 9, 1961), had drifted away from Nixon since the Hiss case. Their last meeting had been in March 1960. “I came away with a most unhappy feeling,” Chambers wrote columnist William F. Buckley. “I suppose the sum of it was: we have really nothing to say to each other.”69 But lost friendship or not, Chambers remained a staunch Nixon supporter. In his February 1961 letter, he said that he had sensed in Nixon “some quality, deep-going, difficult to identify in the world’s glib way, but good, and meaningful for you and multitudes of others. . . . You have years in which to serve. Service is your life. You must serve. You must, therefore, have a base from which to serve.” Chambers then recommended that Nixon run for governor of California.70
He was hardly alone. Republicans in California and around the country were urging him to run almost from the moment he arrived in Los Angeles. The press speculated on it incessantly. His own instinct was that “it would be a case of running for the wrong office at the wrong time,” but still the pressure mounted.71
His instinct was sound. Although he had carried California against Kennedy by thirty-five thousand votes, and although polls indicated he could beat incumbent Pat Brown 5 to 3, he knew it would be a tough race. Brown was affable, generally popular, had made no major mistakes, was untouched by scandal. California was prosperous and booming. Nixon knew little about California’s problems—water, roads, schools—and had no particular desire to be governor of the state. The Republican Party was badly split between ultraconservatives, who had joined the John Birch Society, and moderates, who denounced the society. The big wheels in the party, Bill Knowland and Goodwin Knight, had each lost his last election—Knowland for the governorship and Knight for the Senate—and each blamed Nixon in some measure for his defeat. Democratic registration was a full one million ahead of Republican registration. Further, Nixon would inevitably be stuck with the charge that he was using the state’s highest office merely as a stepping-stone to the Republican nomination for the Presidency in 1964. By no means could Nixon consider himself the shoo-in that his supporters insisted he would be in a race against Brown.
Actually, with regard to the “stepping-stone” charge, which Brown was already using in the spring of 1961, long before Nixon had announced his decision, the truth was the other way around. Nixon viewed the governorship as a way to avoid the 1964 Republican nomination. His own judgment was that “Kennedy would be almost unbeatable in 1964.” If he were in Sacramento at that time, it “would leave someone else to square off in 1964 against Kennedy, his money, and his tactics.”72 This did not mean that he had set his sights on 1968, when he would be fifty-five years old—he was far too realistic a politician for that. There would be too many accidents and unexpected events in those seven years to believe that he could chart a course in 1961 that would carry him through to 1968. But the governorship of the most populous state in the nation would give him a solid base from which to take advantage of whatever popped up.
Pat and the girls had to be taken into consideration. Adela Rogers St. Johns, while consulting with Nixon on Six Crises in the Lang home on Bundy Avenue, overheard Dick and Pat quarreling. “If you ever run for office again,” Pat told her husband, “I’ll kill myself.”73 Tricia, however, was eager to get back into the arena and seek vindication. She gave her Christmas money gifts—more than $50—to a “recount committee” that was seeking to recheck the vote in Chicago. So did Julie, but she was torn between her mother’s desire to get out altogether and forever, and her father’s and sister’s desires to launch yet another campaign. “All I want,” Julie said, “is for everyone to love everyone and be happy. I can’t study or do anything when one of us is not happy.”74
The Republican Party split was as deep as that in the Nixon family. The John Birch Society had made considerable inroads into Republican organizations. Two Republican congressmen were Birchers. Joe Shell, the Republican leader in the state assembly and already campaigning for the nomination for governor, was also on the far right. The Birchers were as aggressive as their leader was irresponsible. Robert Welch had called Eisenhower “a dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy,” and charged that John Foster Dulles was “a Communist agent.” Nixon obviously could not join or support such an organization. His stand on the issues was also hurting him with the right wing of the party. In his speeches, and in his replies to reporters’ questions, he was advocating a more liberal trade program than the Kennedy Administration. He remained an enthusiastic supporter of foreign aid, and a reluctant one of the United Nations. As James Reston noted, “The big money in California is most easily available to candidates who will come out against foreign aid, the United Nations, and a liberal trade policy.”
Reston, who was in Seattle to hear both Kennedy and Nixon speak, contrasted their arrivals in that city. Kennedy came in “right on the minute in his gleaming jet, surrounded by all the excitement and trappings of power.” Nixon “arrived late and tired after sitting around the airport in Chicago for three hours because his flight was cancelled and nobody bothered to let him know.” The juxtaposition inspired Reston to comment: “To find Nixon out of office picking up his own baggage and missing planes, condemning the very people who helped start him on his political career [the California Birchers], and pleading with Republican audiences not to take extreme positions against Kennedy’s foreign policy—all this just a year after his narrow defeat—is merely another of the odd political ironies of the time.”75
A DIVIDED FAMILY, a divided party, access to the big money apparently closed off, a popular incumbent to run against, a million-vote Democratic advantage in registration, the lack of any desire to hold the job, the impossibility of dealing effectively with the stepping-stone charge—all these were powerful arguments against Nixon’s entering the race for governor in 1962.
But that was the only campaign available to him until 1964, and Nixon was hooked on campaigning. (He did consider running for Congress, but decided against it because, as he told a friend, his district was “Jimmy Roosevelt’s and one which is overwhelmingly Democratic as far as registration is concerned.”76) Either he ran for governor or he sat on the sidelines.
Further, he was under very great pressure from the moderates in the Republican Party, from Eisenhower on down, to make the race. They feared that if he did not, the California Republican Party would become a branch of the John Birch Society. State chairman John Krehbiel had recently suggested Ronald Reagan as a gubernatorial possibility, which caused moderates to wince, as they considered Reagan to be “an unelectable two degrees to the right of Barry Goldwater.”77
By the summer of 1961, Nixon had become obsessed with the decision he had to make. It was virtually the only subject of his conversation or correspondence. He made up interminable lists of the pros and cons, and sent form letters to every one of his friends around the country, asking advice. He was forthright in stating his preference: “I still lean strongly against the idea primarily because my entire experience is national and international affairs and the idea of concentrating almost exclusively on state issues for four years simply has no appeal to me.”78
On July 25, he sent his pro-and-con list to Eisenhower, asking his advice. Arguments for running included: he could win, according to the polls; any other Republican candidate would lose, and Nixon would be blamed; as governor, he would have an office and a staff; he could develop a reputation for handling administrative problems (Eisenhower smiled as he read that one, thinking back to 1956 and his suggestion that Nixon become Secretary of Defense).
Arguments against running included: there was always the risk of defeat, and “if I were to lose, I would be virtually finished as far as public influence is concerned”; if he won, he would have to deal with a Democratic legislature; as governor, “I would not be able to speak at all constructively on national and international issues.” Finally, “I think the problems which governors have to handle are immensely important but my interests simply are in other fields.”
Overall, Nixon said his intuition was “to continue to write and speak on national and international issues” and stay out of the gubernatorial race.79 In his form letter to friends in the Republican Party, Nixon said he was going to devote his energies to finding a suitable Republican candidate, so that the argument that he had to run for the good of the party would be invalid. But the adding up of all the points, almost as if he were a debating judge, obscured rather than illuminated his intentions. There is not one scintilla of evidence that he did anything at all in the summer of 1961 to find a suitable Republican candidate to run against Pat Brown. All his hundreds of letters asking for advice were really letters asking for sympathy for his tough situation, and support for his candidacy once he made the agonizing decision. He was pretending to consult when he had already made up his mind, a Nixon trait that Jerry Ford had noted in the discussions over the 1960 Republican vice-presidential nominee.
The advice that came back was predictably mixed. Herb Klein said he had checked with newspaper editors and publishers around the country and they were virtually unanimous in saying that he should not run.80 Arthur Burns thought he should, as did Ralph de Toledano—although both added the caveat “if you can win.” Tom Dewey and J. Edgar Hoover thought he should run; Herbert Hoover and Douglas MacArthur wished he would run for Congress instead.81
Eisenhower initially refused to commit himself. “I shall not venture any opinion of my own,” he wrote on August 8, although he did promise that “I am behind you one hundred percent, no matter what you decide to do.”82 But in early September, after Nixon had been to Gettysburg for a talk with Eisenhower, the former President changed his mind. He said there was “no alternative to an affirmative decision.” It was Nixon’s “duty.” He owed it to the party. Besides, “I can see no reason why, if you are elected Governor, you cannot make the 1964 Presidential race—and in a far more powerful position as Governor than otherwise.”83
“I DREADED BRINGING UP THE SUBJECT with Pat and Tricia and Julie,” Nixon confessed in his memoirs, “so I left it until the last possible moment.” He had scheduled a press conference for September 27 to announce his decision. Two days before, sitting around the family table after dinner, he presented his list of pros and cons, recounted the conflicting advice he had been getting, and said that he was thinking of running but wanted to know Pat’s and the girls’ feelings before making up his mind. According to widespread rumors in California Republican circles, there was an uproar. Pat was described as “visibly shaken.”84 Nixon merely recorded that Pat “took a strong stand” against running. He did mention a threat Pat made: “If you run this time, I’m not going to be out campaigning with you as I have in the past.” Julie said she would support her father whatever he decided, while Tricia was ready to go. “I am not sure whether you should run,” she said, “but I kind of have the feeling that you should just to show them you aren’t finished because of the election that was stolen from us in 1960!”
Nixon went up to his study. There, he claimed, he began making notes for an announcement that he would not run. After half an hour, Pat came in. “I have thought about it some more,” she said, “and I am more convinced than ever that if you run it will be a terrible mistake. But if you weigh everything and still decide to run, I will support your decision. I’ll be there campaigning with you just as I always have.”
Nixon told her he was making notes to announce that he would not be running. “No,” Pat replied, “you must do whatever you think is right. If you think this is right for you, then you must do it.” She kissed him and left. He tore the top sheet off his legal pad and threw it in the wastebasket, then began making notes for his announcement of his candidacy.85
IN HIS ANNOUNCEMENT, Nixon tried to undercut Brown’s best issue. He renounced any intention of being the Republican candidate for the Presidency in 1964, and insisted that he wanted to be governor of California for four years. Hearkening back to the proved formula from the 1952 campaign, he said he would “clean up the mess in Sacramento. We find today that our government expenditures in this state are the highest in the nation and the efficiency of state government is among the lowest.” Law enforcement was below the national average, and education had been shortchanged by the Democrats. He accused Brown of running for President from the Governor’s Mansion in Sacramento. As for himself, he was running out of a sense of public duty. “I often hear it said that it is a sacrifice for men and women to serve in public life,” he declared, without citing a specific source, but admitted that for him it was different. “On my return to private life I have found that from a salary standpoint the income has been beyond anything I could ever have dreamed . . . but I find that my heart is in public service.”86
After making the announcement, Nixon went to Apple Valley to work on Six Crises. He would do no active campaigning until January 1962. His potential opponents, however, went after him immediately. Brown said that whatever Nixon might pledge, everyone knew that “he sees the governorship of this state only as a stepping-stone for his own presidential ambitions.” That was predicted and expected; what hurt was the way Goodwin Knight joined in the chorus. Knight had already announced that he would again seek the governorship, as a liberal Republican candidate, and he tore into Nixon with gusto. Nixon knew nothing about California, Knight charged, despite a series of crash briefings from Caspar Weinberger, currently the vice-chairman of the Republican Party in California. Knight said that in his previous primary campaigns, Nixon had “pressured or beat or clubbed the other guy out of the race,” but insisted that he would stay in to fight the “Republican machine.” Nixon ignored Knight, although he did privately spread a rumor that there was Rockefeller money behind Knight (knowing full well that Knight was immensely wealthy himself). Shortly thereafter, Knight withdrew from the race, citing health reasons. Nixon’s remaining opponent was to his right, Joe Shell and the Birchers.87
In November, Nixon took some time off from Six Crises to get organized. For all his disadvantages, he had the great assets of instant name recognition and a statewide organization. On November 16, in a form letter, he wrote to all those who had worked for him in 1960. “I am looking forward to getting started in what I intend to make the most intensive campaign in California’s history,” he said, and asked for advice, financial contributions, and volunteer help.88 On November 13, he held a fund-raising lunch at the Bohemian Club. The guest list made quite a contrast to the Committee of 100 from the 1946 campaign—instead of insurance salesmen and car dealers, the list was dotted with names of the presidents or chairmen of the boards of the Bechtel Corporation, the Bank of America, the Crocker-Anglo National Bank, Wells Fargo, Pacific Gas & Electric, Levi Strauss & Company, Standard Oil of California, Kaiser Industries, and so forth. It was a good start.89
BY THE END OF THE YEAR, when Nixon had finished Six Crises, he was eager for another campaign. He had shaken off the depression that had followed his loss to Kennedy. Although he described himself as “more tired than I had been at the end of the 1960 campaign,” ten pounds underweight, and short-tempered, observers thought he never looked better.90
Forty-eight years old, trim and fit, he had gotten through a year that most defeated presidential candidates find a difficult one. In the process, he had made lots of money, learned to smile a bit more, even make a joke or two at his own expense. He had provided constructive and responsible criticism of the Kennedy Administration and generally conducted himself with dignity and poise. He had written what was going to be a best-selling book. Altogether, 1961 had not been such a bad year after all. If the polls were right, 1962 promised to be an even better one. In any case, there was another campaign coming up, which always made Nixon happy.