I have two items for my write-up today on Irwin Gellman's The Contender: Richard Nixon, The Congress Years, 1946-1952.
1.
One narrative that Gellman seeks to refute says that, in 1952, Nixon
was waffling in whom he was supporting to be the Republican nominee for
President because he was trying to position himself to be selected as
the running mate. Did Nixon support California Governor Earl Warren, only to stab him in the back and support Dwight Eisenhower? Gellman
contends that Nixon continued to support Warren in the face of
conservatives who felt that
Warren was as much of a spendthrift as the Democrats! Gellman
also disputes Stephen Ambrose's claim that Nixon "worked for Eisenhower
within the California delegation by weakening Warren's hold on its
members" (Gellman's words on page 457), for Gellman states that "Warren
had absolute control over how the delegation would vote; Nixon had no
ability to change that" (page 457). (Overall, though, Gellman believes
that Ambrose's biography of Nixon is one of the fairer treatments of the
man.) Gellman also states that Nixon was not angling himself
to get the VP slot but rather was selected on account of his youth, his
effectiveness as a speaker for the Republican cause, and his record
(i.e., his role in exposing Alger Hiss).
The
thing is, on page 433, Gellman says that Warren himself felt that Nixon
was betraying him and was working for Eisenhower, something that
Eisenhower denied. This seems to be a pattern in Gellman's book: Although
Gellman says that there is no proof that Nixon did many of the shady
things that Nixon has been accused of doing during his Congress years, and Gellman is probably
correct on that, some of the players at the time felt that Nixon
actually was doing shady things! Helen Gahagan Douglas
anticipated that Nixon would run a dirty campaign against her for
Senate, based on his campaign against Voorhis in 1946, and now Warren
thought that Nixon was helping Eisenhower after committing to support
him (meaning Warren). I wonder how, if Nixon was so innocent,
there were people who apparently thought otherwise. I wish that Gellman
addressed that more in his book.
2. Gellman acknowledges that
there were a couple of times when Nixon did not act prudently. One
time was during the Republican primary for the U.S. House seat in the
22nd congressional district, when Nixon supported Joe Holt against Jack
Tenney. Tenney was a state senator who promoted Nixon when Nixon ran
for the U.S. Senate, but Holt "was a twenty-eight-year-old marine, who
had recently returned from Korea with a Purple Heart and had been
Nixon's field organizer in 1950" (Gellman's words on pages 407-408).
Murray Chotiner, who served on Nixon's campaigns in the past and was
Holt's campaign manager, requested from Nixon Jack Tenney's HUAC file,
for Tenney once was a Communist sympathizer but later repudiated his
Communist sympathies. Nixon realized that HUAC files were only to be
for congressional use (even though leaks often occurred), and Nixon's
aide Bill Arnold told Chotiner not to say where he got the file and
warned Chotiner that using the material might backfire, since Tenney had
reformed. Gellman states that Nixon felt he owed Holt and Chotiner on
account of the help that they provided to him in the past, yet his
action "smacked of a violation of ethics and wrongdoing" (page 408).
Fortunately, Holt won the nomination without using the file.
According to wikipedia, Holt went on to win the congressional seat, as well. Regarding Tenney, Tenney had a solid anti-Communist record in the California State Senate (see here),
so I can see Bill Arnold's point that using Tenney's HUAC file would
have backfired. The wikipedia article also mentions other things about
Tenney, such as Tenney's association with anti-Semites and
anti-Semitism. Whether or not that played a role in Nixon's support for
Holt rather than Tenney, I don't know (even from Gellman's book and the
wikipedia articles). We know from the Watergate tapes that Nixon
himself made anti-Semitic comments. Yet, Gellman states on page 454
that Nixon was quite critical of HUAC members who lambasted Jews,
Italians, and African-Americans, for Nixon wondered "whether
those who professed to patriotism realized how effectively they were
furthering the Communist cause when they excited bitterness among
Americans by aggravating natural differences between people like those
of race and religion" (Nixon's words).