Nixon Had To Get Rid Of ‘Loser’ Label

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31831, 8 November 1968, Page 11

Nixon Had To Get Rid Of ‘Loser’ Label

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

NEW YORK, November 7.

Sitting in his New York apartment a few months ago, relaxed and waiting. Richard M. Nixon seemed slightly bemused to find himself once again in the race for the Presidency, the Associated Press reported.

He put his feet on a coffee table and said to a visitor: “You know, nobody would have dreamed a year ago that you and I would be sitting here on March 12 with the situation as it is today. Who would have predicted that in 1964? Who would have predicted it, as a matter of fact, in 1960?”

March 12 was the date of the New Hampshire Presidential primary. By nightfal, Mr Nixon knew he had won an impressive victory. And although a long and dangerous road lay ahead, he also knew he had taken his first step in his second try for the Presidency. If his political expertise gave him certain advantages, he was carrying serious political liabilities as well. There was the “loser” label, pinned on him after his defeats in 1960 and 1962. There was the period of comparative obscurity. And finally, having moved from his native California to New York he was without a power base, without a strong and well-heeled State organisation to support him. Without Precedent In a word, Mr Nixon was attempting a feat without precedent in American political history. When he started his drive, Mr Nixon had just passed his fifty-fifth birthday. He was practising law in New York, earning substantial sums of money, enjoying life with his family—his wife, Pat, and their daughters, Julie and Tricia.

Mr Nixon has been in politics, or on the fringes, since 1946-

As the off-year elections approached at that time, Republican leaders in the twelfth Congressional district of California began looking for a candidate for Congress. They approached Dr Walter Dexter, erstwhile president of Whittier College. He advised them to consider one of his former students, Richard Milhous Nixon, honours student, lawyer, civic leader, now a lieutenant-commander in the Navy. The Republican chiefs

quietly looked into Mr Nixon's record. This is what they found: — He was born on February 9, 1913, in Yorba Linda, a tiny community not far from Whittier. His father was a small businessman. As a schoolboy, Mr Nixon worked as a ranch hand, picking beans. He held jobs as a janitor in a school, a sweeper in a packing house, and attendant in a petrol station. ‘Never Stopped Trying’ He liked sports and he tried, persistently but without success, for a place in the Whittier College football team. “Dick had two left feet,” a classmate recalled, “but he never stopped trying.”

When he graduated from college, the Harvard Club of California awarded him its prize as the outstanding student of his class.

He then applied for a scholarship at the Duke University law school. Dr Dexter supporting the application, wrote that he expected Nixon to become “one of America's important leaders.” During the three years at Duke, Mr Nixon was elected president of the university’s bar association and was taken into a national scholastic fraternity for honours students at law-

He then returned to Whittier and entered a law firm.

Along with his practice, Mr Nixon engaged in numerous civic activities. It was one of these interests that led him to attend tryouts for a little theatre play one night. There he met a pretty blonde named Thelma Ryan. She told him her father, a miner, had nicknamed her “Pat,” that she came from Ely, Nevada, and had been a schoolteacher in Whittier for several months. A little more than a year later, June 21, 1940, they were married.

JOINED NAVY When the Pacific war broke out, Mr Nixon joined the Navy as a lieutenant. He served in the South Pacific Air Transport Command and was a lieutenant-commander when he was discharged. The California Republicans offered him the nomination for Congress in 1946. Mr Nixon’s first political

fight looked none too hopeful in the beginning.

The twelfth district was mainly Republican. But for years it had been sending to Congress a Democrat, Mr Jerry Voorhis. Obviously, he was popular with both Republicans and Democrats. Political Debate One of the ironies of Mr Nixon’s career is that political debate helped him win in 1949, whereas in 1960 it was a major factor in his defeat He debated against Mr Voorhis five times and he said later: “Once the first debate was over, I was on my way to eventual victory.” He won by a vote of 65,586 to 49,994. Mr Voorhis later decribed him as “quite a ruthless opponent.” Mr Nixon retorted, “our campaign was a very honest debate on the issues.” He was nominated by both parties for a second term In 1948. At the end of it, he decided to run for the Senate. He defeated the former actress, Helen Gahagan Douglas, by 680,000 votes, 59.2 per cent of the total. Again, he was accused of unfair campaign tactics. Mr Nixon quickly became a controversial figure in Washington. He played a leading part in the investigation of Alger Hiss, a former State Department officer by the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1948. Hiss was convicted of perjury and served a term in prison. Mr Nixon plunged Into the controversy that erupted when Truman stripped General Douglas MacArthur of his Far Eastern comands in 1951 Mr Nixon sponsored a resolution of confidence in General MacArthur.

He had been in Washington only six years when he was suddenly catapulted into national politics. General Dwight D. Eisenhower became the Republican nominee for President in 1952. He asked the delegates to the national convention to nominate Mr Nixon for Vice-President by acclamation. They did. Mr Nixon, at 39, became the second youngest Vice-Presi-dent in history. John Breckenridge was 35 when he was elected as James Buchanan's Vice-President. General Eisenhower made greater use of his Vice-Presi-

dent than any other previous chief executive. He sent Mr Nixon to 56 countries. In Caracas, Venezula, a mob smashed the windows of his car, endangering his life. In Moscow, he took on the Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev in the famous “kitchen debate,” arguing ideology in a model of an American kitchen at the American exhibit there in 1959.

But nothing so enhanced Mr Nixon’s prestige as the day the way he handled himself after General Eisenhower was stricken by a heart attack on September 25, 1955. Mr Nixon said later:

“What I thought of . . . was not the awesome problems I would have if I should become president, but how I could best handle my immePresident" diate responsibility as ViceTelevision Debates Then came 1960. Few Americans will ever forget that campaign, Mr Nixon’s television debates with Mr John Kennedy, the neck-and-neck race down to the last hour, and the final result—-Kennedy winning by one tenth of one per cent, the closest national election in 76 years. Mr Nixon returned to California and in 1962 he ran for Governor. The incumbent, Mr Edmund Pat Brown, defeated him by 297,758 votes. Exhausted by the hard campaign and shocked by the defeat, Mr Nixon appeared before about 100 reporters and the television cameras after the election and said, bitterly, “You won't have Nixon to kick round any longer because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.” Numerous commentators wrote his political obituary. But five years later, Nixon was very much in the Presidential picture again. Two Associated Press surveys in 1967 showed he was a runaway choice of Republican leaders to be the nominee in 1968. There was no mystery as to how he reached that position. He had earned a tremendous amount of gratitude between 1964 and 1966 by campaigning relentlessly for Republican candidates for the House, the Senate and for governorships. (Mr Nixon’s campaigning i is described on P”ge 10).