NIXON THEN!

By Edwin Cooney

Throughout the 1968 campaign, many Republicans wore a button which asserted "Nixon now!”

Since his resignation, the phrases “Tricky Dick” or “Dickey,” red baiter, "Curley" (suggested by Adlai Stevenson), or even “rigid Ricky” suggested by a professor I once knew have been permanently etched into his post Watergate reputation.

No presidential candidate, with the possible exception of New York Governor Samuel J. Tilden in 1876, suffered a more painful and dramatic defeat than Richard Nixon in 1960. 

In the electoral college, Kennedy got 303 votes to Dick Nixon's 219. However, the popular vote which dictates the ultimate electoral college vote was 34,227,096 for Kennedy and 34,108,546 for Nixon. The difference was 118,550. "A proper shift of just 14,000 votes nationwide  would have made you the winner and those other fellows the bumps," asserted GOP National Chairman Len Hall to Nixon. 

Voting irregularities in both Illinois and Texas were documentable. Senator Everett Dirksen had urged the stationing of marshals in Cook County, Illinois just before the voting, a suggestion Nixon didn't endorse.

Election Day in 1960 was Tuesday, November 8th. The following Sunday, November 13th, while at dinner in a Key Biscayne restaurant, Nixon got a phone call from former President Herbert Hoover asserting that Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy wondered if the Vice President would be open to a personal visit by President-elect Kennedy. Nixon then called President Eisenhower to inquire as to his advice. Ike told Nixon that if he didn't agree to such a meeting, he would look like a sorehead. Immediately after his talk with Ike, Nixon got a call from JFK offering to pay a visit to Nixon in Key Biscayne. Nixon offered to visit JFK, but Kennedy said that since he had a helicopter, he could easily save the Vice President an inconvenient trip to Palm Beach. So, the meeting took place on Monday the 14th, just six days after the election.

The meeting was very cordial. Over soft drinks, they discussed the campaign, exchanging what surprised them about the campaign's outcome. Kennedy said he was surprised that he lost Ohio and Nixon told Kennedy he had expected to win in Texas. Kennedy said his hardest policy task during the campaign was fashioning a good farm policy that was economically and politically sound. They both agreed that Red China, due to its continuous hostility to the west, shouldn't have a prominent place in the United Nations. Finally, they agreed that Kennedy should avoid appointing Republican leaders to his cabinet although he eventually appointed Douglas Dillon to the treasury and Henry Cabot Lodge (Nixon's running mate whom JFK had defeated for re-election to the Senate in 1952) to be ambassador to South Vietnam.

After much painful reconsideration of the campaign, Nixon concluded that since the outcome was so close, no one could say exactly what issue or strategy made the difference. Perhaps he shouldn't have debated Senator Kennedy. Perhaps he should have picked a Catholic running mate such as Secretary of Labor under Ike, James Mitchell. Perhaps his fifty state visitation pledge was a mistake. What irritated Nixon the most were the suggestions from the far right wing of the GOP that he hadn't attacked Kennedy enough.

The ultimate post election issue was whether or not to contest the election outcome.

Once he got back to Washington, Nixon spent time looking at the results in Texas and Illinois where charges of fraud were most apparent. "But, substance or not, when I looked into the legal aspects of the situation, I found that it would take a year and a half to get a recount in Cook County and that there was no procedure whatever to get a recount in Texas....

"Many of my close friends and associates nevertheless insisted that I demand a recount. If I were to demand a recount, the organization of the new administration and the orderly transfer of responsibility from the old to the new administration might be delayed for months."

Nixon goes on to acknowledge to his friends and associates that as a  party leader, it might improve GOP victories in 1962 and 1964 to his political credit, however!

If Nixon were to insist on a recount, the bitterness it would engender might well inhibit the advance of democracy at a time in the world when communism was on the march. It was already hard enough to convince potential political losers to participate in democracy.

Hence, in January of 1961, as President of the Senate, Richard Nixon certified the election of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson over himself and Henry Cabot Lodge. Vice President Nixon was the second Vice President to certify a presidential election where he himself had just been defeated for that office. John C. Breckinridge was the presidential nominee of the Southern Democratic party in 1861. Hence, 41-year-old John C. Breckinridge certified the election of Abraham Lincoln.

Sitting next to Nixon was House Speaker Sam Rayburn, no political or personal friend. However, when the counting was official, Nixon addressed Speaker Rayburn and the assembled Congress:

"Mr. Speaker, since this is an unprecedented situation I would like to ask permission to impose upon the time of the members of this Congress to make a statement, which in itself is unprecedented. I promise to be brief. I shall be guided by the one minute time limit rule of the House rather than the unlimited rule that prevails in the Senate. This is the first time in 100 years in which a candidate for the presidency announced the result of an election in which he was defeated and announced the victory of his opponent. I do not think we could have a more striking and eloquent example of the stability of our constitutional system and of the proud tradition of the American people in developing, respecting, and honoring institutions of self government. In our campaigns, no matter how hard fought they may be or how close the election may turn out to be, those who lose accept the verdict and support those who win. And I would like to add that having served now in government for 14 years, as I complete that period, it is indeed a great honor to me to extend to my colleagues in both the House and the Senate on both sides of the aisle who have been elected, to extend to John F. Kennedy and to Lyndon Johnson who have been elected President and Vice President of the United States, my heartfelt best wishes as all of you work in a cause that's bigger than any man's ambition, greater than any party. It is the cause of freedom, justice, and peace for all mankind. It is in that spirit that I now declare that John F. Kennedy has been elected President of the United States and Lyndon B. Johnson Vice President of the United States."

Nixon continued:

"The effect was electrifying and to me unexpected. The ovations from both Democrats and Republicans lasted so long that I had to stand and acknowledge it again. Sam Rayburn at whose side I'd often sat as he presided over joint sessions of the Congress during the last eight years broke personal precedent by joining in the applause himself. He grasped my hand warmly as I left the podium  and said, "That was a fine speech, Dick. I'll miss you here. Good luck!" We'd been political opponents for years, but he was one who'd always had respect for the practitioners of the art of politics even when they were in the other party. Neither one of us knew it, but these were to be our last personal words together.”

Like the rest of us, Richard Nixon was a flawed human being. However he was far from flawed before the Congress and the American people that day.

History is loaded with significant ironies. That day that displayed Richard Nixon's greatest glory was January 6th, 1961!

Any questions?

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY