My latest reading of Stephen Ambrose's Nixon: The Education of a Politician
covered Vice-President Richard Nixon's visit to the Soviet Union, as
well as advice that Nixon received from prominent figures about strategy
for his 1960 run for President.
Ambrose quotes Nixon's
correspondence with Ronald Reagan, who at the time was on General
Electric's speaking circuit. Reagan by that time had become a
conservative, and Reagan praised Nixon for his speech to the Soviet
Union, which was one of the rare times that someone was allowed to go on
Russian television and "accuse Pravda, the Communist
journalistic bible, of distorting the truth" (James Reston's words, page
531). Regarding the coming 1960 Presidential election, Reagan
encouraged Nixon to run as a conservative, since Reagan felt that the
United States was conservative economically. Reagan also recommended
that Nixon tag Kennedy's "bold new imaginative program with its
proper age", for Reagan said that "Under the tousled boyish hair cut it
is still old Karl Marx----first launched a century ago" (Reagan's
words, page 546).
John F. Kennedy picked Lyndon Johnson as his
running mate, and that outraged liberals because Johnson in the U.S.
Senate helped to weaken the 1957 Civil Rights Act. But, according to
Ambrose, the liberals would not vote for Nixon, and Kennedy by selecting
Johnson took a stronger hold on the Southern vote, so there was a
political method to Kennedy's move. Some thought that Nixon should pick
a Catholic as his running mate, but Billy Graham advised Nixon against
that, saying that this would split the Protestant vote, which was larger
than the Catholic vote. Graham suggested that Nixon select Congressman
Walter Judd,
who at one time was a Protestant missionary. According to Graham, Judd
was highly regarded by fundamentalist Protestants and would "put much
of the South and border states in the Republican column and bring about a
dedicated Protestant vote to counteract the Catholic vote" (Graham's
words, page 547). Graham also recommended that Nixon destroy Graham's
letter after reading it!
(UPDATE: Nixon asked Judd if he wanted to be Nixon's running mate, and
Judd responded that he'd rather stay in Congress. Judd delivered the
keynote address at the 1960 Republican convention. Regarding
Catholicism, Ambrose appears to argue that Nixon did not want to play on
anti-Catholicism to get votes. Ambrose also notes that Nixon's loyal
secretary, Rose Mary Woods, was a Catholic.)
Nixon wanted to select as his running
mate liberal Republican Nelson Rockefeller, who was planning to
challenge Nixon for the 1960 Republican nomination for President. Nixon
asked Dwight Eisenhower for advice on this, and, while Eisenhower
acknowledged that Rockefeller had popular appeal, he thought that
Rockefeller had too much personal ambition. If Nixon asked Rockefeller
to be his running mate, Rockefeller would run out and tell the world,
Eisenhower thought! Eisenhower said that, if Nixon wanted to persuade
Rockefeller to be his running mate, Nixon would probably have to promise
only to serve one term as President (perhaps to pave the way for
Rockefeller). Nixon didn't care for that idea!
(UPDATE: Nixon selected UN ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge to be his
running mate, but Nixon cut a deal with Rockefeller in seeking to put
together a Republican platform that Rockefeller would support. A number
of right-wingers have criticized this. I think of Phyllis Schlafly's
1964 book, A Choice Not an Echo, and Barry Goldwater likening Nixon's meeting with Rockefeller to Munich.
As I read Ambrose, however, I didn't see what the big deal was, at
least from a right-wing perspective. According to Ambrose, Nixon
rejected Rockefeller's proposals for using Social Security to pay for
health insurance for the elderly, and for giving the federal government
"compulsory arbitration power in labor disputes", to draw from Ambrose's
phraseology on page 551. But Nixon and Rockefeller agreed on
increasing the defense budget, in departure from Eisenhower's policy,
and increasing the defense budget is something that the right-wing
usually supports. This article
implies, however, that Goldwater's problem was with two planks: one
calling for aggressive federal action on civil rights for
African-Americans, and one concerning health insurance policy, in which
private insurance would be one option.)