Six Crises (19 page)

“I have come down to announce that I am breaking off—” I paused deliberately. There was an audible gasp in the room. Clint Mosher of the San Francisco
Examiner
almost jumped out of his skin. I laughed for perhaps the first time that day and began again. “I have come down to announce that I am breaking off my campaign trip tomorrow for the purpose of going to Los Angeles to make a nationwide television and radio broadcast.” Mosher asked, “Senator, does this mean that you are going to stay on the ticket?” I replied, “This means I intend to continue the campaign tour. I have no further comment.” This was a truthful answer because, whether I was on or off the ticket, I intended to continue to campaign for Eisenhower's election. But the result of this reply, which was not unexpected as far as I was concerned, was to create increasing suspense about what I would do on the TV broadcast.

Flying from Portland to Los Angeles, I hoped to catch up on some much-needed sleep. But I could doze only intermittently. My body needed rest but my brain was churning with ideas.

A new tension was now building up—the tension that precedes battle when all the plans have been drawn and one stands poised for action. This speech was to be the most important of my life. I felt now that it was my battle alone. I had been deserted by so many I had thought were friends but who had panicked in battle when the first shots were fired.

I realized I had to take my case to the people and convince them of my honesty and integrity. The public reaction to my speech would determine whether or not I was a liability to the Republican ticket. If I failed, I decided that I would get off the ticket and take all responsibility for doing so. And I went even further in my own thinking as to what I had to accomplish through the broadcast. I must not only remove any liability I might be to the ticket, I must become a positive asset. I had decided that unless I could attain both these objectives I would resign.

To attain these objectives, I knew I had to go for broke. This broadcast must not be just good. It had to be a smash hit—one that really moved people, one that was designed not simply to explain the complicated and dull facts about the fund to the people, but one that would inspire them to enthusiastic, positive support.

As far as content was concerned, I recognized that the speech had to meet three requirements.

First, I must answer the immediate attack that was being made on me by explaining and defending the fund.

Second, I must ward off future attacks along the same lines so that any further allegations that I had profited financially from my public service would fall on deaf ears.

Finally, I felt I had to launch a political counterattack to rally the millions of voters in my television audience to the support of the Eisenhower ticket. I knew this television audience would probably be the largest of the campaign and I was not going to allow this opportunity to pass without using it to full advantage to get across to millions of people who would never attend a political meeting the reasons why I felt the nation needed Eisenhower's leadership.

My only hope to win rested with millions of people I would never meet, sitting in groups of two or three or four in their living rooms,
watching and listening to me on television. I determined as the plane took me to Los Angeles that I must do nothing which might reduce the size of that audience. And so I made up my mind that until after this broadcast, my only releases to the press would be for the purpose of building up the audience which would be tuning in. Under no circumstances, therefore, could I tell the press in advance what I was going to say or what my decision would be.

Unable to sleep on the plane, I took some of the picture post cards from the pocket of the seat in front of me and began to jot down my first notes for the speech. My remark in Eugene, Oregon, about Pat's cloth coat came to mind, and I marked it down as a good reminder of the mink coat scandals which were plaguing the Truman Administration.

I thought of General Eisenhower's suggestion that I disclose any gifts, financial or otherwise, I had received while I had been in public office. I remembered that right after the nomination, a Republican supporter in Texas had learned that our daughters wanted a puppy and had sent us a four-month-old, black and white pedigreed cocker spaniel—“born in Texas, from a long line of cocker spaniels that were particularly gentle and good with children.” Thinking back to Franklin Roosevelt's devastating remark in the 1944 campaign—“and now they are attacking poor Fala”—I decided to mention my own dog Checkers. Using the same ploy as FDR would irritate my opponents and delight my friends, I thought.

The Democratic attack on my need for a political fund came to mind. “If a fellow can't afford to be a Senator, he shouldn't seek the office,” Stephen Mitchell, the Democratic National Chairman, had said. The implication was that only rich men could afford to run for and serve in government. I thought of a Lincoln quote and jotted it down: “God must have loved the common people, he made so many of them.”

For most of the flight I tried to think of a way I could carry out Eisenhower's suggestion, “Tell them about everything you have ever received from the time you entered public life.” It was on this trip from Portland to Los Angeles that I decided the only way to blunt future attacks on my honesty was to lay out for everyone to see my entire personal financial history from the time I entered public life to the present. This was to prove to be the most difficult part of the broadcast, both to prepare and to deliver. It had to be absolutely accurate, and consequently, it entailed round-the-clock research of all my records,
including income tax returns, bank accounts, and property transfers.

Even more difficult was the decision to discuss such purely private matters before millions of people who were complete strangers to Pat and to me. In the twelve years of our married life we had never acquired much in the way of the world's goods, but this had never concerned us. Our interests were in other directions. The fact that we might not have the latest model car, the most fashionable clothes, or the biggest house in the block, was never a source of embarrassment or envy. But both Pat and I had perhaps what some might describe as an overdeveloped sense of privacy. What we owned and what we owed was our own business and nobody else's. We had worked hard to earn what we had. We had bent over backwards since coming to Washington in 1947, paying our own way, refusing to accept favors we could not reciprocate, not just because we wanted to avoid any possibility of attack politically but because we both had a stubborn streak of independence and deeply disliked being under obligation to anyone. We had received no credit for this simply because we did not want any and had not asked for it.

“Why do you have to tell people how little we have and how much we owe?” Pat asked me as I was making my notes for the broadcast.

“People in political life have to live in a fish bowl,” I replied.

“But aren't we entitled to have at least some privacy?”

I explained that under normal circumstances she would be right. But this situation was far from normal. I had no choice but to use every possible weapon to assure the success of the broadcast.

And so it went—thinking, dozing, scribbling, until the plane arrived at 2:45
P.M.
on Monday at Los Angeles International Airport. As we stepped out on the ramp, we were heartened by a banner-waving, shouting crowd of several hundred Young Republicans who were there to greet us. “Don't Give Up,” “Keep Fighting,” “We're for you all the way,” their placards read. No party bigwigs were there. Since there was no platform, I made an impromptu speech from the hood of a car and promised them, “We will not let you down.”

•  •  •

An hour later we were in our suite at the Ambassador Hotel and I went to work in earnest preparing my notes for the broadcast. I had only twenty-four hours left in which to finish preparations for the most important speech I had ever made up to that time.

Some of my staff were worried for fear that I was working too hard and not getting enough sleep. They urged me to take Monday night off so that I would be fresh when I started to work again on the speech Tuesday morning.

I realize that in such situations, no two individuals react the same. But it has been my experience that once the final period of intense preparation for battle begins, it is not wise to break it. It always takes me a certain period of time to “warm up” to the point where my mind is working clearly and quickly in tackling a tough problem. This is especially true where creative activity like writing a speech is concerned. The natural tendency is to procrastinate, because the body and the mind rebel at being driven at a faster pace than usual over any long period of time. When one is working at this pace, it is always a temptation to take the pressure off—to leave the task for a while because the body needs rest. A man tries to rationalize such a course on the ground that “relaxation and change” will improve his efficiency when he gets back to the task.

This is true, of course, where the period of intense concentration and preparation stretches into months rather than days and, in the case of some individuals, it may be true at all times. But it has been my experience that, more often than not, “taking a break” is actually an escape from the tough, grinding discipline that is absolutely necessary for superior performance. Many times I have found that my best ideas have come when I thought I could not work for another minute and when I literally had to drive myself to finish the task before a deadline. Sleepless nights, to the extent the body can take them, can stimulate creative mental activity. For me, it is often harder to be away from the job than to be working at it.

Sometimes a brief change of pace—a brisk walk, a breath of fresh air—can recharge a mind that has become sluggish from overwork. I think perhaps the best analogy is that it may be necessary and helpful to take the machine out of gear once in a while, but it is never wise to turn the engine off and let the motor get completely cold.

This, incidentally, is one of the reasons I have never become a regular “twice a week” golfer. When I am in the middle of a period of intense study or work, leaving the problem for the five or six hours required for a pleasant day on the golf course simply means that I have to spend most of the next day getting myself charged up again—to the point of efficiency I had reached before leaving the task in the first place.

For most of Monday afternoon and all day Tuesday, I outlined the speech and gathered facts for it. The first section, explaining the fund, presented no difficulty. I already had it pretty well in mind, having covered the subject in my whistle-stops on my way to Portland. The second section, in which I was planning to disclose my financial status, could not be completed until all the facts were gathered together by my office staff in Washington and telephoned to Rose Mary Woods so that she could type up the information and have it available for me the day of the broadcast.

The problem of launching a counterattack solved itself that Monday when the Chicago
Tribune
reported a Stevenson fund which had been solicited from businessmen doing business with the state while he was Governor of Illinois. The national press gave the Stevenson fund relatively little play compared to the Nixon fund. But now we knew why Stevenson had been so reluctant to join in the attack on my fund. As Murray Chotiner put it: “He was hiding something—otherwise he would have been at your throat like the rest of them.”

There were several differences between the two funds. Stevenson's had been secret while mine was not. The money had been paid directly to him and he had disbursed it, while mine had been disbursed by a trustee. There had been no accounting to the contributors to his fund, whereas mine had been fully accounted. The money in his fund had gone for the personal use of members of his Administration in Illinois, while the money in my fund had been used solely for mailing, printing, travel, and other political expenses and not for my personal use.

I decided to resist the temptation to attack Stevenson in my broadcast the way his associates had attacked me. But I thought I had the right to insist that there not be a double standard of conduct—one for a Republican candidate, and another for a Democratic candidate. Stevenson's fund might be absolutely proper and above suspicion. But he had an obligation to give an accounting of the fund and to indicate what favors, if any, had been accorded those who had contributed to it.

But the counterattack, I knew, must not stop there. What time I had left at the end of the broadcast I intended to use to set forth effectively and concisely the major reasons I thought Eisenhower, rather than Stevenson, should be elected President.

Late that night I took a long walk with Rogers up and down the side streets near the hotel to get some fresh air and exercise and to
test out the first outline of my speech on him. He encouraged me to go forward with the plan I had adopted. I came back to the hotel and worked until after midnight and then, after four hours' sleep, got up early in the morning to continue my preparations.

Normally, I would have allotted a week's time for reflection and writing on a speech of far less importance. I was hoping that I would be able to get my thoughts well enough in mind that I would not have to use notes at all. This had been my usual technique over the years. My practice was to make a first general outline and throw it away; then make a second, tighter-reasoned outline without referring to the first one; and finally to make a third even shorter one which I would then read over several times. I then would be able to deliver the speech without any notes at all. Particularly on television, I always tried to avoid reading a speech. I never memorized a speech or practiced it before delivery. Only when I could deliver a speech without memorizing it, and if possible without notes, did it have the spark of spontaneity so essential for a television audience.