Reflections on My Year (or More) of Nixon

Sometime in 2012, I got in the mail a book that I had ordered off of Amazon for a cheap price: Irwin Gellman’s The Contender, which was primarily about Richard Nixon’s years in Congress (both the House and the Senate).  I had seen the book years earlier at one of Columbia University’s libraries (I had library privileges there as a Jewish Theological Seminary student), and it intrigued me.  The book came across to me as a defense of Richard Nixon against detractors who claimed that Nixon ruthlessly and unfairly exploited anti-Communism to advance himself politically.  One of the book’s arguments was that Nixon was actually a level-headed voice of sanity on the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

When I received Gellman’s book in 2012, I had a thought: I knew that the centennial for Richard Nixon’s birthday was coming up—-for Nixon was born on January 9, 1913, and it would soon be January 9, 2013.  How about if I read Gellman’s book during the month of January?  But then I thought some more.  Richard Nixon had long intrigued me, for he was socially-awkward, introverted, resentful, and yet rather hard working, like me.  He had a kind side, and also there were liberals and conservatives who were claiming that he was politically progressive in areas, and that was of interest to me.  I had long noticed Stephen Ambrose’s trilogy about Nixon in libraries and I had wanted to read it, yet I did not feel that I had the time or the discipline for such a task.  But what if I were to devote an entire year, or even more, to reading about Richard Nixon?  Instead of just blogging about Gellman’s book in January 2013, perhaps I could devote all of 2013 to reading books by and about Nixon!

I had reservations.  For one, I feared that I would become bored with the topic.  Wouldn’t I be reading the same stories over and over, which would get old after a while?  Second, I feared that my blog stats would plummet because my readers would become bored with the topic, and potential readers would not read my blogs because they would see that I write primarily about Nixon.

But I decided to go ahead with the project.  On my fear of boredom, I reminded myself that I would read thirty pages of a Nixon book a day: I could handle that, even if I became bored.  On my fear of my blog stats plummeting, there was a part of me that said “So be it.”  I felt that I had to do this project for me, even if nobody else appreciated what I was doing.  If I could not blog about my own interests, then what was the point of me blogging?  But another part of me hoped that my posts on other topics would allow my stats to remain as high as they were, or to increase.

I went into the project with a list of books that I wanted to read.  Many of them, I read.  Some of them, I did not.  And there were books that I read that were not on that initial list.  My plan was to read Gellman’s book, the Ambrose trilogy, Monica Crowley’s books about her time working for Nixon, Richard Reeves’ book about Nixon, a psychological profile of Nixon that I saw at a Harvard library years before, all of the books that Nixon wrote, Theodore White’s books about the Presidential races in which Nixon ran, and others.  I read most of these.  I never got to Theodore White’s books, however, but I’ll probably read them during the next Presidential election (in 2016).  As I read Gellman’s response to Roger Morris’ book, and I noticed that I could get Morris’ book off Amazon for a cheap price, I decided to read Morris for My Year (or More) of Nixon.  I also added other books to the list in the course of the year.

I am proud of myself for sticking with this project.  I also think that most of my blog posts for it were good.  The project did not result in a drop in my blog stats.  On my blogger blog, my Nixon posts got the same amount of views that my other posts usually got.  (My hunch is, though, that the 200-plus views for one of my posts on Gary Allen’s Richard Nixon: The Man Behind the Mask was largely due to spam or robotics!)  On my WordPress blog, my stats actually increased in 2013, but that was not due to my Nixon posts: I had a lot of views of posts that I had written in the previous years, or of non-Nixon posts that I had written.  But at least My Year (or More) of Nixon did not hurt my WordPress stats!

I think that I wrote a lot of good posts about life and social skills as a result of My Year (or More) of Nixon, but many might not read them because they don’t have a catchy title.  I titled my Nixon posts in reference to whatever book I was reading (i.e., “Six Crises 3), and that does not exactly catch readers!  I thought that a number of my posts were rather antiquarian, in that they discussed historical situations that many may think are not particularly relevant today.  I can understand why those posts would not attract people, but my hunch is that some of them eventually will.  I won’t be surprised if someone who is interested in learning the nuances of the Alger Hiss case will find my blog after doing a Google search!

Interestingly, I can’t say that I became thoroughly bored in doing this project, for I did it for a year, and there was enough material in the books that engaged me enough for me to write blog posts.  There were stories that crept up in most of the books that I read, but each book had a story or a take that was unique.  Still, I have to admit that I am itching to move on to another project!  I decided to end My Year (or More) of Nixon today because there are books that I want to read for Black History Month, which is in February 2014.

What was my favorite book about Nixon?  To be honest, I think that it would be Conrad Black’s Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full.    It was far from being the best book about Nixon that I read, for there were other books that I found far more informative.  I was initially hesitant to read Black’s book because it seemed to me to rely largely on secondary sources, a number of which I had already read.  But I have pleasant memories of Black’s book, for a couple of reasons.  First of all, I loved the scene where Richard Nixon’s father was driving Richard and some of his schoolmates, and Black was talking about the improvements around them on this road-trip that were due to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.  Second, I liked Black’s analysis of issues and his suggestions of what Nixon and others should have done.  Granted, Black did come across to me as somewhat of a know-it-all in these discussions, but I still liked them.

Irwin Gellman's The Contender has a warm place in my heart because it inspired this project and was the book that introduced me to prominent aspects of Richard Nixon's life----the controversy surrounding Nixon's activity at the 1952 Republican National Convention, for example. But, as I read books after Gellman, my conclusion was that he did not say much that was particularly new, that others (I think of Jonathan Aitken) had defended Nixon better than he did, that some of his arguments were not that good, that his representations of the other side sometimes amounted to being strawmen (for example, the biographers Gellman criticizes acknowledge that Helen Gahagan Douglas lost the 1950 Senate race not only on account of Nixon’s attacks of her), and that the authors Gellman criticized themselves presented a fairly decent case.

There were books that I liked, but my liking them had little to do with what they said about Nixon.  For example, Fawn Brodie had some interesting things to say about Nixon’s lying or embellishments of the truth early on in her book, but what she had to say about Nixon got pretty boring as the book proceeded.  But I was fascinated as she told the story about the Kennedys and how Joseph Kennedy had to struggle to become accepted in the United States on account of his Irish and Catholic heritage.  Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland told many of the same stories about Nixon that I had read elsewhere, but it had a number of interesting stories about other political figures, and it, more than any other book I had read, effectively told the story of the political developments and turmoil of the 1960′s-1970′s.

Did I learn more about Nixon as a result of this project?  Well, I learned a number of facts that I did not know before, but I can’t say that my conceptualization of the man is all that different from how it was before the project.  I will say that I am more familiar now with the arguments of those who do not feel that Nixon was overly progressive, with the view that Nixon was a calculating politician rather than a principled leader.

All of that said, I am glad that I did this project, and I hope that some of you got something out of it, or will get something out of it if you stumble upon my posts in the future.

Jonathan Aitken's Nixon: A Life 4

In my latest reading of Jonathan Aitken's Nixon: A Life, Aitken's narration of Richard Nixon's controversial 1950 Senate campaign was, well, interesting.  I have read things that try to defend Nixon's activity during that time, or at least to portray Nixon as not-so-horrible.  Irwin Gellman's The Contender is one example.  So is Richard Nixon's narration of the event in his memoirs.  And Julie Nixon Eisenhower states that both Nixon and his Democratic opponent, Helen Douglas, were harsh to one another, probably against the narrative that focuses largely on her father's attacks on Douglas.

But Aitken took this sort of pro-Nixon or Nixon sympathizing narrative to a whole new level.  He says that Douglas was worse than Nixon in terms of attacks.  Aitken also seems to imply that the infamous Pink Sheet----in which Nixon compared Douglas' voting record with that of far left Congressman Vito Marcantonio----came after Douglas' Yellow Sheet attacking Nixon and comparing his voting record with that of Marcantonio.  Aitken also departs from the typical narrative that Nixon's controversial take-no-prisoners campaign aide, Murray Chotiner, was encouraging Nixon to run a brutal Red-baiting campaign against Douglas.  According to Aitken, Chotiner was encouraging Nixon to focus on domestic issues, rather than his role in the Alger Hiss case.  But Nixon did not take Chotiner's advice, Aitken narrates.  And, against the charge that Nixon exploited anti-Semitism in his campaign (since Douglas' husband was Jewish), Aitken points out that Nixon repudiated anti-Semitism in a manner that drew praise from the Anti-Defamation League, and also that Murray Chotiner himself was Jewish.  Aitken is not completely defensive of Nixon, however, for he argues (like many biographers) that the Pink Sheet was rather misleading.

I think that Aitken raised some valid points in his discussion of the 1950 campaign, or at least points that are worthy of discussion.  Most narrations that I have read about the event appear to presume that Nixon brought up Marcantonio first, and that Douglas only compared Nixon with Marcantonio after Nixon's Pink Sheet.  But many of the narrations that I have read----even those that depict Nixon as the bad guy and Douglas as a victim----point out examples of Douglas' name-calling and attacks on her political opponents.  I doubt that she was above reproach.  Aitken does well to highlight that, and he does so in more detail than anything else I have read up to this point.  I do believe that Aitken's narrative was incomplete, however, or failed to take into account certain considerations.  Aitken, for example, notes examples of Nixon criticizing and repudiating Joseph McCarthy, but some of the other books I have read suggest that Nixon praised McCarthy in pro-McCarthy areas of California, while criticizing him in the more moderate areas of the state.

Other interesting items in my latest reading include stories about Nixon's kindnesses to others (such as his secretaries and constituents who visited him in Washington, D.C.); the account of Nixon's long-time secretary, Rose Mary Woods, that Nixon in interviewing her did not probe into her religious or political affiliations, and Woods' narration of her Catholic family's victimization at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan when she was growing up (the Klan burned crosses on her lawn); and Nixon's reliance on his religious faith in getting through the 1952 Fund controversy.  These are things that I have not found in other books by and about Nixon.  Nixon himself probably recognized the need to appear modest, so he does not harp on his kind deeds in his writings.  Nixon also expressed aversion towards wearing religion on one's sleeve, and that may explain why he does not talk much about his faith in Six Crises and his memoirs.   Regarding Rose Mary Woods' accounts, Aitken's discussion of that shows how his book is a reservoir of interviews with key people whom many did not get to interview.

Also noteworthy is Aitken's narration of Nixon's work for Dwight Eisenhower at the 1952 Republican Convention.  Like many biographers, except for Gellman, Aitken depicts Nixon as supporting Eisenhower at the convention and seeking to undermine Earl Warren's hold on the California delegates, and Aitken does so with more clarity than other narrations I have read.  In his clarity, however, Aitken does leave some things out, such as Roger Morris' claim that Nixon at the convention was pretending to support arch-conservative candidate Robert Taft to the Taftites.

Jonathan Aitken's Nixon: A Life 2

I was thinking about Fawn Brodie's biography of Richard Nixon while I was reading Jonathan Aitken's more positive portrayal.  Brodie speculated that Richard Nixon was unloved by his parents, and that this contributed to his political hunger.  But Aitken referred to examples of Nixon being loved by his father, and also by his extended family.  On page 84, Aitken talks about how Nixon's father, Frank, worked at Nixon's orange juice company (or, actually, Nixon was one of the owners of it), Citrifrost, for free.  Aitken also tells about how Richard was a favorite of his grandmother, Almira Milhous, and how many in Nixon's family envisioned him accomplishing great things, perhaps even being President.

Brodie chooses to focus on other things, however.  If I recall correctly, she made the point that Frank Nixon required his son Richard to pay him back for the time that Frank contributed to Nixon's expenses at law school.  Sounds cold?  Sure, but Frank also worked at Nixon's orange juice company for free.  Doesn't that count?  Both are part of a larger picture.

I was thinking about Brodie's discussion of Nixon's war record when reading Aitken's narration of that.  Brodie essentially argues that Nixon exaggerated his own war record, and she bases that (among other things) on contradictory stories that Nixon himself told about it.  Aitken, however, appears to accept Nixon's story that he was in foxholes due to bombing.  Incidentally, it interested me when reading Julie Nixon Eisenhower's biography of Pat that Julie did not mention foxholes or bombing when discussing Nixon's war record.

Roger Morris' biography also came to my mind as I was reading Aitken.  Morris argued that Nixon was heavily financed by wealthy special interests in his 1946 congressional campaign.  Aitken, however, depicts a time when Nixon was actually outspent and out-staffed by the Democrats in 1946, and he notes that Nixon used a lot of his poker winnings for his campaign.  Aitken quotes an eyewitness who related that Pat was complaining to him about the lack of money.  Aitken, however, goes on to say that Republican money started to come in.  That makes me wonder: perhaps Morris and Aitken are both correct.  Maybe there was a time when Nixon's campaign was financially struggling, but that problem was soon corrected.  One would have to set up a timeline and plot when authors say events happened in order to get a fairly accurate view of the situation, perhaps.

I'd like to make one more point, which is not particularly relevant to my discussion in this post thus far.  James Stewart----not the actor----served with Nixon in World War II, and Stewart said that Nixon at that time did not particularly care for General Douglas MacArthur.  Stewart stated that Nixon felt MacArthur "was prolonging the hostilities through personal vanity" (Stewart's words, quoted on page 104).  That's pretty intriguing, considering Nixon's support for MacArthur during the Korean War, and Nixon's rather positive portrayal of MacArthur in his book, Leaders (though Nixon does criticize MacArthur's insensitivity at least one time in that book).  That makes me wonder about the stages of evolution of Richard Nixon's belief system, and I have been curious about this topic before.  Irwin Gellman in The Contender narrates that Richard Nixon was not anti-Soviet during World War II, since he deemed Hitler to be the greater threat, and that Nixon's awareness of the threat of internal Communism really took off when he began serving on the House Committee on Un-American Activities.  But, if that is correct, I wondered, why did Nixon run a Red-baiting campaign in 1946, before he even became a Congressman?  From what I have read in many books about Nixon, Nixon during his youth was a Republican; and yet that wasn't an absolute, for Nixon admired Woodrow Wilson, and Nixon could manifest certain liberal ideas in an essay that he wrote as a Whittier College student.  One can probably put Nixon into a box as effectively as one can put his father in a box: both had convictions, on some level (Frank probably more so than Richard), but their beliefs could fluctuate.

Anyway, that's my rambling Nixon post for the day!

Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full 5

I have two items for my post today about Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full.  We're in the time of the Truman Administration, and Richard Nixon is a United States Senator representing the state of California.  These two items, in my opinion, exemplify Conrad Black's treatment of Nixon and the events surrounding him.

1.  On pages 170-173, Black talks about General Douglas MacArthur's desired strategy for the Korean War, which would lead MacArthur into conflict with President Harry S Truman.  On page 170, Black summarizes MacArthur's stance: "He considered Korea an opportunity to suck into the peninsula and destroy the Chinese Communist army, to bomb China's industrial areas to rubble, and so to weaken the People's Republic that Chiang Kaishek's Nationalists, who had just been chased off the mainland to Taiwan, could return."  Black says that MacArthur has been accused of advocating that the U.S. threaten to use nuclear weapons, but Black believes that this is false (though Black notes on page 171 that President Dwight Eisenhower "would discretely threaten this, to his and America's profit").  Black's opinion is that MacArthur using Chiang's soldiers and providing them with air support "would certainly have broken the stalemate in Korea, with interesting results" (page 171).  Yet, Black doubts that Chiang would have been able to resurrect his own rule in mainland China, for Chiang was corrupt, inept, and unpopular with many in that country.

As Senator, Richard Nixon introduced a bill that would reverse President Truman's recall of General MacArthur.  Nixon in his book, Leaders, says that his speech to the Senate at the time actually distributed the blame between Truman and MacArthur.  Nixon on pages 98-99 of that book quotes himself as saying in that speech: "Let me say that I am not among those who believe that General MacArthur is infallible...I am not among those who think that he has not made decisions which are subject to criticism.  But I do say that in this particular instance he offers an alternative policy which the American people can and will support.  He offers a change from the policies which have led us almost to the brink of disaster in Asia----and that means in the world."  Black not only considers Nixon's proposal in the Senate to be "an unconstitutional usurpation of the prerogatives of the commander in chief", but he also dismisses what Nixon would say in Leaders as "a reinterpretive reading of his remarks" (page 172).  Black goes on to say that MacArthur was insubordinate, but Black is also critical of how Truman handled the situation.  According to Black, Truman could have warned MacArthur privately, or Truman could have left MacArthur as governor of Japan, where MacArthur's contribution was widely acclaimed.  Black states that this "would have blunted the impact of MacArthur's removal", and that the "general was seventy-one and retirement, if decorously executed, would not have been premature" (page 173).

Overall, I found Black's discussion of Truman and MacArthur to be fair and balanced, in that Black talked about what he considered to be the positives and negatives of both men.  On how Black covered Nixon in terms of this situation, I wish that Black had gone into more detail about how Nixon's treatment of his Senate speech in Leaders was "a reinterpetive reading of his remarks", for Nixon in Leaders actually quoted from his own Senate speech.  How exactly would Black interpret Nixon's remarks, if he doesn't buy into how Nixon is interpreting them?  They sound pretty straightforward to me: Nixon did not see MacArthur as infallible!   At the same time, perhaps one could argue that, even if Senator Nixon tried to convey that he was being balanced and fair-minded, the big picture was that Nixon was backing MacArthur.

Incidentally, I read an Amazon review that critiqued Black's treatment of the Korean War.  It's by History Addict, who says:

"The Nixon biography is not quite as good as the FDR study. There are, for example, a few glaring geopolitical mistakes. On several occasions Black writes that the United States should have brought Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist army from Taiwan into the wars against Chinese proxies--North Korea and then North Vietnam--and, given that Chinese troops were advising those proxies, let them fight Chinese soldiers themselves. That would in fact have been an enormous error, for Chiang's primary goal in the 1950s and 1960s was to provoke a war between the United States and China both to prevent a Sino-American rapprochement and to increase the odds that the PRC would collapse and he could return in glory to the mainland. Given that goal--and Chiang's cynical and manipulative history--it would have been disastrous to make the United States dependent on his behavior and that of his military."

I'm not sure on what History Addict bases his claims, but my hunch is that they're based on something, since History Addict has read history.  What I'm getting from History Addict's remarks is that Chiang could have decided to sit back and let the U.S. and the Red Chinese duke it out, without involving his own soldiers.  That way, the Communists in China would be weakened and Chiang could return to power, without losing his own men.  History Addict's point is that Chiang would not have wanted for his own soldiers to be involved in the Korean War, so he'd be reluctant to participate in MacArthur's plan.

2.  On page 178, Black addresses the charge that Nixon in one case sought to craft policy to benefit contributors:

"Some critics and historians have made something of the fact that [Nixon] sent in a bill to enable two contributors to his fund to drill for oil on federal land in California.  Nixon did not push hard for the bill, which died.  Nixon didn't lift a finger for the people who had given him a few thousand dollars, which were uncontroversially spent."

I've seen this sort of thing more than once in Black's book: Black attempts to defend Nixon from charges that Nixon was unethical or corrupt.  I don't believe that Black reflexively defends Nixon, mind you, for there are plenty of times when Black is quite critical of Nixon.  Whereas Irwin Gellman in The Contender, for example, disputes that Nixon at the 1952 Republican National Convention was trying to undermine support for Earl Warren and was playing different sides (Robert Taft and Dwight Eisenhower), Black essentially says that Nixon was doing precisely that: that Nixon was claiming to be for Taft to undermine support for Warren, while also supporting Eisenhower (pages 189-190).  On one of the big accusations against Nixon, Black maintains that Nixon was rather shady.  And yet, here and there, Black dismisses some of the other charges that historians have made against Nixon.

The charge that Nixon favored special interests looms large in Roger Morris' Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician.  I'd say that it's a major theme of the entire tome, for, even when talking about California prior to Richard Nixon's birth, Morris refers to the special interests that sought to consolidate their wealth and power in the state.  Jerry Voorhis would go against these special interests, Morris argues, whereas Nixon as a politician would favor them.  Black appears to have a different perspective, however.  While Black acknowledges that Nixon in his campaigns for the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate received a considerable amount of money (something that historians who are more favorable to Nixon tend to downplay, or even deny), Black also disputes that the contributors to Nixon's fund were millionaires (not that Morris says that they were, but Morris does regard them as well-off special interests).  He also seems to deny that their contributions got them any favors from Richard Nixon.  For example, regarding Nixon's political fund, which would be controversial in the 1952 Presidential election, Black notes that Nixon did not know who the donors are (something that Morris disputes).  The implication here may be: How can Nixon benefit contributors, when he does not even know their identity?  At the same time, like Morris, Black acknowledges that Nixon's political fund from the contributions of California businessmen was designed to make Nixon into a high-profiled spokesperson for conservatism (or Morris would say special interests).

These are my impressions so far, and I have not yet finished Black's tome.

Roger Morris' Richard Milhous Nixon 18

I have two items for my blog post today about Roger Morris' Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician.  The context is the 1952 race for the Republican nomination for President.  It has been alleged that Richard Nixon, even though as a Californian he was pledged to vote for Governor Earl Warren, was actually promoting Dwight Eisenhower, seeking to weaken Warren's hold on the California delegates.  According to this narrative, Nixon was angling to get the Vice-Presidential slot.  You can read about Nixon's response to this charge, as well as Irwin Gellman's defense of Nixon, in my post here.

1.  On page 685 of Morris' book, we read the following:

"Before the end of May, Senator Nixon had become not simply one more name for the Vice Presidency whispered about Washington or the hustings, the campaign's time-honored bait to attract disparate ambitions and support.  He was, from the Roosevelt and Mayflower, a part of secret and strategic deliberations at which his would-be rivals could only guess.  With unfailing instinct for improving his position still further, even for the intramural politics of the eventual regime that was taking shape in the Eisenhower candidacy, he boldly wrote John Foster Dulles in mid-May, enclosing highlights of his Waldorf-Astoria speech.  Dulles remained an influential force in the GOP eastern establishment, albeit not a member of the Dewey-Clay inner group.  They May letter made sure Dulles understood the Senator's rising stock with the other powers in the campaign.  It came, too, as part of a continuing Nixon correspondence that periodically and none too subtly reminded the shadow secretary of state of their mutual history in the Hiss case, and of the potential political embarrassment to Dulles in the early Carnegie Endowment ties to Hiss.  Nixon would vouch for Dulles with the right if the occasion arose, his letters suggested, and Dulles was well advised to support the senator's ambitions in turn."

This passage essentially presents Richard Nixon as ambitiously pursuing the Vice-Presidential slot, which contrasts with the aw-shucks attitude that Nixon implies that he had.  According to Morris, even Nixon's speech to the Waldorf-Astoria, which impressed Thomas Dewey, was Nixon's way of promoting himself for the VP slot.  Nixon was energetically proclaiming in that speech that the Republicans needed to conduct a fighting campaign that would be principled yet also draw Democrats and independents.  Incidentally, that was the kind of campaign that Nixon conducted in his 1950 Senate race.  At a Bible study group one time, we were reading Genesis, and we were at the part where Joseph was suggesting that the Pharaoh set a wise person over Egypt who would supervise the collection of grain in preparation for the coming famine (Genesis 41:33-36).  Someone in the group said that Joseph wasn't pointing to himself when he recommended that Pharaoh do that.  Well, Morris is implying that Nixon in his Waldorf-Astoria was implicitly pointing to himself as one who would be an effective VP candidate.  Nixon was angling for power, in short.

2.  On pages 708-709, we read the following:

"'Warren had very little if any chance of getting the nomination,' John Dinkelspiel remembered Nixon telling them.  'The California delegation would effectively insure [sic] Eisenhower's victory...[and] if they could be counted on by the Eisenhower people, would have a very strong effect on the convention.'  Otherwise, Nixon warned, California would be 'left at the post' as Eisenhower moved on to the nomination in any case.  He also spoke movingly, as listeners later recounted, about the 'Taft fraud in Texas and Georgia,' and told them they would have a chance to vote early on the fair-play amendment, 'moral issues regarding Texas and Georgia where Taft stole the votes.'  They must join the Eisenhower bandwagon with no more delay.  When some delegates asked about breaking their oath to Warren, Hillings reportedly told them 'that that would be all right because the law provided no penalty for that.'  In any case, Dinkelspiel and others remembered Nixon urging 'that it should be made publicly known that the delegation would throw its strength to Eisenhower as soon as it could.'  As Dinkelspiel recalled, he argued 'either that the delegation should note vote for Warren on the first ballot, if Warren were willing, or if he insisted that the delegation keep its pledge, that it be made known in advance that the delegation at least on the second ballot would vote for Eisenhower rather than Taft, not just sit back and not state its position.'  And while the senator himself did not immodestly mention the subject of those meetings, his men soon spread word of California's expected reward for the defection.  'If they acted quickly and did not waste their votes,' one writer reported, 'the delegation could suggest Nixon as Vice President.'"

Morris goes on to say that Earl Warren would write years later that "During the night, the Nixon delegates----but not the senator as far as I know----held caucuses and urged other delegates to vote for General Eisenhower on the first ballot."  But Morris refers to Dinkelspiel and "others" who claimed that Nixon himself was directly involved in urging the California delegates to vote for Eisenhower.
What I wonder is why the California delegates were required to vote for Warren in the first place.

Roger Morris' Richard Milhous Nixon 16

I have two items for my blog post today on Roger Morris' Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of the American Politician.  The context is Richard Nixon's acrimonious campaign for the U.S. Senate against Democrat Helen Gahagan Douglas.

1.  On page 603, we read the following:

"In late October, along with the ads and circulars, came a stream of letters to the editor in various regions of the state, often so thoroughly prearranged that the text was accompanied by photos and capsule biographies of the writers.  Thus Mrs. Ruth Peters, secretary of the local Chamber of Commerce, typically wrote The Hemet News: 'As for Helen Douglas I consider her a traitor for defending communists in the government, communists who have been ruthlessly murdering our helpless boys...[and] her campaign for the U.S. Senate [is] a personal threat to my security.'  Hearing a similar commentary on a Los Angeles radio station, the Douglases' twelve-year-old daughter was in near hysteria as she greeted her mother one night: 'Mummy, Mummy...they are saying terrible things about you!'  Soon after the letters began to appear, Douglas's car was pelted with stones and her dress splattered with red ink at one appearance.  Now frightened, her aides insisted she travel with bodyguards through the closing days of the race.  In Visalia, in the heart of the Central Valley, she gave an impassioned speech, and a migrant worker came up to her afterward with tears in his eyes.  'They haven't made you afraid, they haven't made you afraid,' he repeated, and she was mute with emotion.  Elsewhere in the Valley, vigilantes coerced farmers known to be Democratic supporters.  And, as in the small towns of the twelfth district for years earlier, local businessmen----including one prominent vintner----were threatened by the loss of vital bank loans if they backed Douglas.  'You wondered, is this a democratic election,' Helen Douglas said to an interviewer years afterward, 'or are we in a war, an undeclared war?'"

Morris presents the 1950 race as one between a progressive, Helen Gahagan Douglas, and a Republican candidate, Richard Nixon, who was receiving substantial support from wealthy special interests, and thus had more means and opportunities to get out his message.  Nixon, however, presented himself as the underdog who was standing up to certain special interests.  He liked to refer to the union support that Douglas received and the hecklers at his campaign rallies.  While many would portray Douglas as a victim of a whispering campaign that was saying that she was either a Communist or was soft on Communism, Nixon would claim that he himself was a victim of a whispering campaign, which was calling him a racist and an anti-Semite.  And Morris refers to Douglas campaign people turning over a Republican campaign car.

What I thought about as I read page 603 of Morris' book was how much courage it would take to challenge the powers that be.  There are people who have thought that I had that sort of courage, but, believe me, I don't.  When I spoke up, there were often people around me who would back me up.  And, even when there weren't, I wasn't in any danger for speaking my mind.  It would be so easy to go with the flow, to appease the powers that be and to advance their interests.  I scratch your back, you scratch mine!  But there are politicians who courageously stood up for what they believed was the good of the people, against those who could hurt them.

Nixon himself probably believed that he was this sort of politician, one who courageously stood up for what he believed was right, at risk to himself.  I doubt that he saw himself as one who was pandering to the highest bidder.  In his eyes (or so he tells us), he laid his career on the line on the notion that Alger Hiss was a Communist spy and needed to be exposed.  Irwin Gellman in The Contender talks about how Nixon as Congressman surprised people by opposing a dam that he thought would waste money, even though there were prominent interests that wanted that dam.  (Morris narrates that Nixon in his 1946 campaign talked out of both sides of his mouth when it came to the dam, basing his stance on his audience at the moment.)  Nixon himself says that a leader should not simply follow public opinion but should seek to shape public opinion.  Nixon may have had his share of courage, but my impression is that Douglas was swimming upstream a lot more than he was, since he had wealthy special interests in his corner.

I've been reading I Chronicles lately.  In I Chronicles 11, we read of David's mighty men.  These were brave men, some of whom single-handedly killed vast numbers of Israel's enemies.  I Chronicles 11 can easily encourage some of us to be courageous because the courage of these mighty men worked out well for them: they courageously stepped forward, they fought, and they won.  But that's not a guarantee in life.  What if you courageously step forward, and you lose?  I think of Helen Douglas, or that lady who saved children during the Holocaust, and she would be in a wheelchair because of what Nazis did to her.  This lady probably still thought that her act of courage was worth it, whatever the cost to herself, for she did good.  But, unfortunately and yet understandably, many choose to go with the flow, to travel the path of least resistance.

2.  On page 620, we read the following:

"Beyond the candidates and their fate, history in a larger sense would mock the great causes of 1950.  It was not the greedy Republican landowners who undid Helen Douglas's cherished 160-acre limitation in the Central Valley but rather a Democratic Bureau of Reclamation that soon found a way around the controversy to protect and preserve its own bureaucratic position.  If a corporation had ten or even a hundred shareholders, it would be entitled to federal irrigation for 160 acres per shareholder, the bureau soon ruled.  And an owner could legally deed out 320-acre parcels to various married relatives and children.  It might not be 'spiritual compliance,' the bureau chief would tell Congress, 'but technical compliance was good enough.'  Neither Sheridan Downey not Helen Douglas, it turned out, had quite understood what or who really ruled the Valley."

I can't say that I understand everything that this paragraph is saying, but let me say what I do understand.  The issue with the 160-acre limitation was that Douglas supported a law limiting state-funded irrigation to farms that only had 160 acres or less, and the rationale for her position was that she wanted the small farmers to have a shot in a state where big agribusiness dominated.  Sheridan Downey was the Democratic Senator of California prior to Richard Nixon, and Douglas did not care for him because she thought that he was entrenched with wealthy special interests.  Downey opposed the 160-acre limitation, and he wrote a book (or actually it was ghostwritten for him, according to Morris), They Would Rule the Valley, which said that the Bureau of Reclamation was trying to institute totalitarian rule over the Valley, thereby destroying the free economy.  Nixon would commend Downey on account of this book.

It is hard to tell from the paragraph who exactly won in this dispute.  It looks like neither did.  But the dispute was resolved, Morris appears to narrate, not through some grand appeal to reform, nor through opposition to federal intervention, but rather through some bureaucrats stepping in and devising a technical solution.  That's actually pretty profound, in my opinion.  I can admire those who courageously step forward and make waves, challenging the special interests, knowing that they may face peril on account of this.  It's good to have idealists because, otherwise, we have business as usual, which tends to privilege those with power, to the disadvantage of those whose wealth, power, and influence are not as large.  But, sometimes, it's not the grand idealist who solves the problems, but someone operating behind the scenes in a low-key manner.  There are people who are reformers, but they're not out there on the street-corners, offending the rich and powerful.

Roger Morris' Richard Milhous Nixon 10

For my blog post today about Roger Morris' Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician, I'd like to highlight something that Morris says on page 335.  The topic is Richard Nixon's defeat of Democratic incumbent Jerry Voorhis in his 1946 race for Congress, and how narratives would come to portray that race.

"'Nixon 'turned a California grass-roots campaign (dubbed 'hopeless' by wheelhorse Republicans) into a triumph over high-powered, high-minded Democratic incumbent Jerry Voorhis,' reported Time magazine after the election, adding in utter seriousness that the young winner had 'politely avoided personal attacks.'  The legends multiplied, source fed on source.  In myriad newspapers, magazines, and books the Committee of 100 became typical small businessmen and civic leaders chafing at the New Deal, even in some accounts Independents and Democrats, rather than the people, and interests, they were.  The Nixon campaign came down in those postwar months in the soft tint of a citizen crusade, a candidacy from the 'grass-roots' as Time put the half-truth, evoking images of the small contributions and volunteers, which were there, but missing altogether the other reality----the University Club, Elk Hills, the corporate levies, the vastly larger forces arrayed against Voorhis.  So, too, the controversial Murray Chotiner was now in, now out of the picture, his genuine and decisive role obscured along with the events and trends he determined, reinforcing the fiction that it had been indeed a campaign of gifted amateurs."

The reason that this passage stood out to me is that the narrative that Morris is criticizing reminded me so much of what Irwin Gellman would later argue in his book, The Contender: Richard Nixon, the Congress Years, 1946-1952.  Morris' narrative is that Nixon's campaign in 1946 received lots of money from wealthy special interests, that the newspapers were largely on Nixon's side, and that Murray Chotiner, even though he was primarily working on Bill Knowland's Senate campaign in 1946, still played a significant role within Nixon's campaign, influencing Nixon to use a Red-baiting strategy against Voorhis.  Gellman disputes salient elements of Morris' narrative, arguing that there is no evidence that Nixon's campaign had tons of money from wealthy special interests, and also contending that Murray Chotiner played a marginal role in Nixon's 1946 campaign.

What's interesting is that both sides believe that they are challenging prominent narratives about the 1946 race.  Morris believes that many narrators of those events downplayed the wealth and influence of Nixon's powerful backers, as well as the role of Murray Chotiner in Nixon's campaign.  Gellman, by contrast, argues that many narrators exaggerated the wealth and influence of Nixon's backers (Gellman says that a local bank branch manager was made out to be a financier), along with Chotiner's role in Nixon's campaign.  I get the sense from Morris and Gellman that both believe that they are underdogs, challenging popular myths about Nixon.  What is probably going on is that each is responding to popular narratives about Nixon that were out there: Morris was responding to the storytelling of people who were sympathetic to Nixon, whereas Gellman was addressing the narratives told by anti-Nixon people.

Both Gellman and Morris appeal to the testimonies of eyewitnesses, newspapers, and documents from the time in question.  In terms of which narrative I accept about the 1946 race, I tend to side with Morris.  Even if Gellman is right that the wealth and prominence of certain Nixon supporters got exaggerated, I think that Morris did well to talk about the well-off special interests in California, and why they would prefer Nixon to Voorhis.  Moreover, while Gellman argued that Nixon's campaign did not have as much money as critics allege, Morris on page 337 states:

"Official reports filed at the time with Congress recorded only $370 in contributions to Nixon.  In the more detailed affidavits and statements filed in Sacramento, the Nixon campaign listed $17,774 for both the primary and general elections, against $1,928 for Voorhis.  Three decades later, Nixon backers would finally admit that the actual tallied contributions had been between $24,000 and $32,000.  But the records were long ago burned, they confessed, and even the listed money was only a small fraction of what actually went into the campaign." 

Morris has his exact references in the notes section.  Overall, I think that this paragraph is a far cry from an unsubstantiated rumor about the Nixon campaign, for it gets into documentation and eyewitness testimony.

I should note, however, that Morris' narration of the 1946 campaign was not entirely what I suspected.  First, a charge that Gellman and even Nixon sought to refute was that Nixon responded to an ad in the paper to run for Congress.  As far as I can remember, Morris did not make that claim.  Rather, the way Morris tells the story, a Republican was looking for someone who could run against Voorhis, and he thought that Nixon would make a good candidate, so he sent Nixon a letter when Nixon was in Maryland.  That, as far as I can recall, is essentially the story that Gellman tells.  Second, Gellman is rather skeptical about how Voorhis would remember the 1946 race.  The thing is, Morris too expresses skepticism, in some areas.  For example, Voorhis would later say that he was not endorsed by NC-PAC, even though he was, according to Morris, since Chotiner knew of the endorsement before Voorhis even received "the fateful letter from the National Citizens group in May 1946" (page 336).  Voorhis also recollected that Nixon was the one who proposed having the debates, when it was actually Voorhis' idea.  That makes me wonder how much we should trust eyewitness testimony from years after the event.  I think that it should be consulted, yet one should remember that it's not fool-proof, for it is filtered through the biases and limitations of memory of those who are "remembering" the events.  Perhaps a proper course is to compare and contrast what the different eyewitnesses are saying, to compare their statements with what newspapers at the time were presenting (although they, too, were probably biased), to try to identify the bias or agenda that would lead an eyewitness to tell a story in a particular manner, etc.

Roger Morris' Richard Milhous Nixon 9

For my blog post today about Roger Morris' Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician, I'll use as my starting-point something that Morris says on page 309.  The context is Richard Nixon's run for Congress in 1946 against Democratic incumbent Jerry Voorhis.

"From the outset, Richard Nixon was plainly conscious of a line between propriety and taint in such political contributions, even in an era of virtually no legal accountability.  Roy Day told the story of a railroad industry lobbyist who had come up to him during the primary and pressed five hundred-dollar bills into the manager's hand.  'When I gave the money to Dick, he looked me straight in the eye for about twenty seconds----as if he were thinking hard about something,' Day recalled.  Then Nixon had said, 'Roy, I want you to give the money back....If they want to give to my campaign, they know where my treasurer is.  I won't take it this way.'  Yet the campaign treasurer's reports to Sacramento were notoriously incomplete.  And the candidate knew of these discrepancies, just as he knew, in careful, commanding detail, about other minutiae of the race.  If he did not keep the bills Day handed him, he could reason, if the stream of cash did not appear in the books, it was all somehow not a political contribution.  Most of the lavish 1946 financing was never acknowledged.  Richard Nixon's furtive, mincing attitude toward public money, the gradual atrophy of ethics that ended so plainly thirty years later, began in the first campaign."

I have three items.

1.  Overall, Morris portrays that particular 1946 Congressional race as an effort by well-off special interests to unseat Jerry Voorhis, a progressive Congressman who was not afraid to go against them.  Morris actually opens his first chapter on the 1946 race by discussing an incident in 1943 in which Jerry Voorhis went to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives and denounced a government contract that would give Standard Oil free and exclusive access to the coveted and "vast U.S. Navy petroleum reserve at Elks Hills in central California" (page 257).  The deal got cancelled, and Voorhis received acclaim, both from The Washington Post and also a conservative colleague, Carl Vinson of Georgia.  It's not surprising to me that a conservative would applaud what Voorhis did, since libertarians are quite critical of the government giving certain companies special favors, thereby hindering competition.  I should also note (and I've noted this before in posts, but I just love noting this) that John Bircher Gary Allen, in Richard Nixon: The Man Behind the Mask, actually praised Voorhis, even though I'm sure that Allen disagreed with many of Voorhis' ideas.  I wouldn't be shocked if Voorhis' stand against Standard Oil was one reason that some of the John Birchers would like him, since Rockefeller was one of the John Birch Society's main boogeymen.

Morris narrates that this incident with Standard Oil would soon be forgotten due to World War II, and yet Morris talks about the other progressive ideas that Voorhis had: Voorhis fought to subject insurance companies to antitrust laws, he helped engineer a reform that would save billions of dollars for the taxpayers by mandating that the Federal Reserve hand over most of what it earned to the government, he planned public housing programs that scared real-estate industrialists, he supported motion picture artists and workers against Hollywood studios, and he alienated the liquor industry by proposing to temporarily divert grain from alcohol production to "humanitarian relief in the famines following World War II" (page 261).  The list goes on.  While Morris admits that Voorhis was often a lone idealist, it does seem that Voorhis had enough influence that he could upset the ambitions of certain special interests.  Or, at the very least, special interests wished that they had a represenative from Voorhis' district who would represent their concerns in the U.S. Congress, not Voorhis.  Signal Oil would donate to Nixon's campaign, and, according to Morris, this was because Voorhis was the main one pleading against giving offshore oil to petroleum companies, an idea that (to the companies' dismay) President Harry S. Truman would veto.

According to Morris, Republicans were looking for a candidate to defeat Voorhis for years, but the people they usually found were ineffective.  And this was in a district that had been gerrymandered to favor Republicans (at least somewhat).  One of them, Roy McLaughlin, an oilman, appealed to labor in front of the "more affluent audiences" of the district, and Roy Day (who would work for Nixon) said that McLaughlin "did everything he could to discourage anybody that had over fifteen cents in the bank" (Roy Day, quoted on page 272).  I remember reading in Irwin Gellman's The Contender that Voorhis actually had to introduce his opponent to his audience one time because his opponent was so shy!  In Nixon, however, Republicans found one who was a good speaker, who had enough political savvy to play to the audience, and who was a recent Navy man.  Moreover, while Nixon was rather conservative, Morris acknowledges that Nixon even in 1946 would do what he did in subsequent races that he would run: Nixon appealed to moderates, not just conservatives.

2.  That passage on page 309 that I quoted at the beginning of this post was about Nixon's ethics.  According to Morris, Nixon would often play around on the "gray margin of propriety, and sometimes beyond" (page 275).  On page 275, Morris gives an example: Nixon needed to get back to California from Baltimore so that he could meet with the committee that was asking him to run for Congress, and he used the air-travel card of a company "whose contract terminations he had negotiated" (page 275).  Nixon paid the company back, and what he did was technically legal.  But Morris believes that Nixon was on the "gray margin of propriety".

What's interesting about the passage on page 309 is that Nixon there appears to express moral qualms about accepting money informally.  That's the Nixon whom I see in the books that Nixon wrote: one who was committed to moral propriety.  While many would laugh this Nixon off as a far cry from the "real Nixon" (I mean, of course Nixon portrays himself as a good guy!), I wonder what one should say about Nixon's expression of his moral qualms to Roy Day.  Was Roy Day making that story up to make Nixon look good?  Did Day remember an event that did not happen?  Or did Nixon express certain moral principles, only to fail to follow through on them consistently, out of a desire to win?

3.  Morris makes the point that Nixon knew the minutiae of his campaign, in a number of areas.  A question that comes up often in my reading of books about Nixon is this: How much did Nixon know about the shady activities of his underlings?  This question is applicable to 1946, to his 1950 Senate race, and even to later races.  For example, in 1968, was Nixon aware that someone claiming to speak on his behalf was promising General Thieu of South Vietnam that he could get a better deal under Nixon, and so Thieu had might as well postpone his participation in the Paris Peace Talks until Nixon got elected?  Nixon said that he had nothing to do with that.

Nixon does strike me as one who was concerned about details of his campaign.  In reading books by and about him, he strikes me as quite methodical in his discussion of issues.  And yet, I do have to admit that there were times when he had a rather hands-off style of governing.  He was surprised by the Watergate burglary, and he also tended to let his Cabinet do what it wanted in terms of domestic policy, since he wasn't particularly interested in that.  Consequently, I don't know if Nixon was aware of every shady thing that went on in his campaigns.  Maybe he was aware of some things, but not others.

Ambrose's Nixon: Ruin and Recovery 11

On pages 310-311 of Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, 1973-1990, Stephen Ambrose discusses President Richard Nixon's 1974 plan for campaign finance reform:

"In a radio address, he recommended more detailed financial disclosures, sharp limits on what individual contributors could give (no more than $3,000 for a congressional campaign, $15,000 for a presidential candidate), a severe curb on the flow of cash (any contribution of more than $50 would have to be by check, and disclosed), reform of campaign practices (no more dirty tricks), and shortened presidential campaigns (primaries in the summer, nominating conventions in September).  Nixon's proposals were, for the most part, welcome to the Democrats, while the Republican leaders indicated that they disagreed with every one of them, except Nixon's rejection of public financing of campaigns.  That was the one the Democrats wanted.  Nixon said it was 'taxation without representation,' because it 'would take your money----no matter what your political preference----and distribute it to candidates for whom your voluntary support might be withheld.'  Finally, Nixon proposed to reduce the number of campaigns by passing a constitutional amendment that would change House of Representatives terms from two to four years, and presidential terms from four to six, with a one-term limit."

As Ambrose says, "Nixon presented himself rather improbably as the leader of campaign finance reform."  Campaign finance, after all, was an area in which Nixon was long controversial.  Nixon's detractors claim that Nixon had loads of money from wealthy donors in his 1946 campaign for the U.S. House, and in his 1950 campaign for U.S. Senate.  Irwin Gellman in The Contender attempts to defend Nixon from the charge that he had loads of money in 1946, but, when talking about 1950, Gellman essentially says that we don't know how much Nixon's campaign had (though Gellman doesn't think it's as much as certain detractors say), since campaign finance laws back then had loopholes, and candidates did not report the full amount that they spent.  Regarding critiques of Nixon's approach as President to campaign finance, see my post here, where I summarized Democrat Jerry Voorhis' criticisms of Nixon on this issue.

Nixon may have been touting campaign finance reform in 1974 to divert public attention from Watergate.  Or perhaps the message that he wanted to communicate was that the focus should be on reforming the system rather than hypocritically attacking him for things that a number of other politicians did as well.  In any case, my impression from Ambrose is that Nixon's proposal for campaign finance proposal went over like a lead balloon.  Nixon got some support for it, but Ambrose narrates that Nixon did not prepare the public for his proposal: his idea came out of the blue, like so many other Nixon ideas.  As a result, his idea "was buried on the back pages and quickly forgotten" (page 311).

Nixon's proposals look pretty good, but I wouldn't treat them as a large-scale panacea.  I think it's good for donations above a certain amount to be disclosed to the public, so that the public can know what special interests are supporting which candidates.  At the same time, nowadays, it seems that we can easily find out what special interests give money to which candidates, and the system is still beholden to special interests.  Nixon's idea to lengthen the term for a U.S. Representative makes sense, for U.S. Representatives become dependent on special interests when they have to campaign to keep their office every two years, and thus need donations for their campaign.  See this article.  Yet, U.S. Senators have six-year terms, and the U.S. Senate is not insulated from a desire to appease special interests.

An idea that could conceivably bring about significant reform is the very one that Nixon rejected: public financing of campaigns.  Just take private donations out of campaigns altogether, so politicians aren't dependent on special interests for their campaign cash.  Nixon makes a good point that this would be taxation without representation----that people would be giving money to candidates they may not support.  It's not ideal, in my opinion, but it's better than politicians being beholden to what the special interests want, especially when what the special interests want benefit the special interests rather than most Americans.

I'm not sure how to evaluate Nixon's proposal for a short presidential primary season.  It could reduce the need for candidates to raise large sums of money, which is a good thing.  On the other hand, I can envision it privileging well-established candidates and taking away whatever shot underdogs might have.  If underdogs don't have the time to build their own reputation and get the word out about their campaigns, as a long primary season would give them, then they are at a disadvantage, and those who are better known and part of the establishment would be more likely to win.

Jerry Voorhis: The Strange Case of Richard Milhous Nixon 1

I started Jerry Voorhis' 1972-1973 book, The Strange Case of Richard Milhous Nixon.  Jerry Voorhis was the Democratic incumbent whom Richard Nixon beat in his 1946 race for U.S. Congress.

I got this book because I wanted to read Voorhis' account of the 1946 campaign.  I wondered if Voorhis provided evidence for some of the charges that Irwin Gellman attempts to refute in The Contender, such as the contention that Nixon was financed by wealthy financiers.  Moreover, I was interested in learning more about Voorhis, for he made a good impression on me when I was reading about him in Gellman's The Contender.  Voorhis struck me as a statesman who wasn't afraid to take on the special interests, and who had a genuine heart for the poor.

When I received the book, I was initially disappointed, but then the book attracted me.  The book actually does not talk much about the 1946 campaign.  Rather, by and large, the book is a sustained critique of President Richard Nixon's policies from a leftist perspective (though, like a number of liberals, Voorhis prefers the term "moderate").  I think that it's important for me to read this book for my Year (or More) of Nixon because my impression is that you don't see too many critiques of Nixon's domestic policies from a progressive standpoint.  There are leftists who praise Nixon's domestic policies as rather progressive, especially when they are compared with the ideology of today's tea party and other right-wingers.  And I have a John Bircher book that criticizes Nixon's domestic policies from the right.  But, other than Voorhis' book, I don't think that I have too many books that offer a leftist critique of Nixon's domestic policies.  But, come to think of it, I have not read all of my books on Nixon (such as Rick Perlstein's Nixonland).   

As I started my reading of Voorhis, I realized that I would have to shift gears a bit, especially after reading the two volumes of Richard Nixon's memoirs.  In Nixon's memoirs, Nixon portrays himself as a President who was trying to do the right and reasonable thing against an obstructionist and hypocritical Democratic Congress, which did not pass a number of his bright (and necessary) ideas, overrode his justifiable vetoes, and criticized him for doing things that Democratic Presidents had done, such as impounding funds.  Voorhis, not surprisingly, offers a different perspective.  Voorhis presents Nixon as the obstructionist one, who vetoed, watered down, and probably unconstitutionally (in Voorhis' eyes) impounded necessary help for the poor and the vulnerable.  Voorhis, as Gellman essentially depicted him in The Contender, is somewhat of a policy wonk, who really gets into the nitty-gritty of public policy.  And yet, I'm impressed that Voorhis is still able to explain clearly how policies concretely impact people, especially the poor and the struggling.

Voorhis emphasizes that he is not writing this book out of bitterness against Nixon.  Actually, Voorhis says that Nixon did him a favor, for, after leaving Congress, Voorhis did work that he loved: he became the Executive Director of the Cooperative League of the U.S.A., which worked at "building 'grass roots' economic and social organizations and enterprises" (page 9).  One can tell just by reading Voorhis' critiques of President Nixon's domestic policies that Voorhis believes that coops and grass roots programs are important.  Voorhis argues that co-ops of small farmers are institutions that can help small farmers to survive against the huge farming corporations, which are able to purchase more capital and to release cheaper crops onto the market.  Voorhis also speaks highly of programs that are administered with input or direction by the poor themselves.  This sounds similar to the conservative view that problems are best solved by people who are closest to them, such as state and local governments and private charities.

And yet, Voorhis is not particularly a fan of President Nixon's revenue-sharing proposals.  Voorhis also mentions a Democrat's proposal to centralize welfare, such that the federal government would run it and establish a standard set of guidelines, rather than having states come up with their own guidelines.  (I'm not sure if Voorhis supported that proposal, but he did not criticize it.)  For Voorhis, the federal government should be doing certain things, and yet there should be input by the people directly affected by the federal programs.

Regarding Voorhis' account of the 1946 Congressional election, Voorhis essentially narrates that he was the victim of the Nixon-Chotiner (Murray Chotiner consulted Nixon's political campaigns) smear campaign, which unfairly tried to attach him to disloyalty and Communist subversion, even though he had a sterling record of supporting and even authoring anti-Communist policies.  While Voorhis acknowledges that he was briefly a Socialist during the 1920's, he denies that this was subversive, for the Communists actually opposed the Socialists at that time.  Voorhis says that Nixon-Chotiner used the same strategy against others (i.e., Helen Gahagan Douglas, Adlai Stevenson) that they used against him, and yet, when Nixon later became more open to outreach towards Communist countries, Nixon grabbed onto another issue than Communism to attack his political opponents: Nixon accused his opponents of not being sufficiently in favor of law and order, amidst the crime and political unrest of the late 1960's-1970's.  Not only does Voorhis find Nixon's charge to be absurd----for every politician wants law and order----but Voorhis also contends that Nixon cynically exploited unrest for his own political purposes.  According to Voorhis, Nixon welcomed hecklers and anti-war activists, for their disruption of his events gave him the opportunity to look like a champion of law-and-order, as well as a victim of a real problem.

I have two more items, before I end this post.  First, on page 21, Voorhis talks about Communist China, within the context of Nixon's exploitation of the Red Scare in the 1950's.  Voorhis speculates that, had the United States given the Communists in China a hearing way back when they were fighting the corrupt Chiang Kaishek, perhaps it could have developed a fruitful relationship with Red China, which would have widened the "rift in the Communist world", specifically (I presume) that between the Soviet Union and Red China.  Instead, those who supported such a policy were deemed to be subversives, as Nixon exploited the Red Scare.  And yet, was not reaching out to Communist China to take advantage of the rift within the Communist world the strategy that President Richard Nixon employed a couple of decades later?

Second, on page 20, Voorhis paints Nixon as shady and sinister during the 1952 Republican National Convention.  According to Voorhis, "Mr. Nixon had conducted a private poll of California voters at taxpayers' expense using his convenient franking privilege, and had 'reluctantly' let it be known that the poll results favored General Eisenhower over Governor [Earl] Warren."  This, according to Voorhis, influenced a number of California delegates to ditch Warren in favor of Eisenhower, and thus made Nixon the logical choice for Eisenhower's running-mate.  You can read about Nixon and Gellman's response to this sort of narrative here, but what stood out to me was Voorhis' statement that Nixon conducted the poll at taxpayers' expense.  One of Nixon's prominent claims in his 1952 Checkers Speech was that he had a political fund because he did not want to charge political expenses to the taxpayers.  Yet, there are people who seem to have alleged that Nixon did precisely that, at times.  Voorhis states that Nixon used taxpayer money for a private poll, and Greg Mitchell states (according to my vague recollection) in Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady that Nixon sent information about the Alger Hiss trial to California to make himself look good, at taxpayer expense. 

In Search of Nixon 3

I finished Bruce Mazlish's In Search of Nixon: A Psychohistorical Inquiry.

On pages 144-145, Mazlish quotes Richard Nixon expressing his fantasy of being an academic: "If I had my druthers, I'd like to write two or three books a year, go to one of the fine schools----Oxford, for instance----just teach, read, and write...In order to make a decision, an individual should sit on his rear end and dig into the books.  Very few executives do it.  They listen to this side and that, but they don't go to the sources.  In this respect, I'm like Stevenson...He was an intellectual and he needed time to contemplate."

I liked this passage for a couple of reasons.  First, I myself think that it would be an ideal life to teach, read, and write, and to get paid for doing so.  Second, I appreciated Nixon's admiration for Adlai Stevenson----the Democrat who ran against Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956, and who attacked Nixon with his witty barbs.  In Six Crises, on page 96, Nixon criticizes Stevenson as one who was indecisive.  But, in Mazlish's quotation of Nixon, Nixon recognizes a possible reason for Stevenson's indecisiveness: Stevenson needed time to think.  For me at least, it's heart-warming when people can see good even in their foes.

Would Nixon be as sensitive to nuance, as an academic should be?  My impression from reading details in Mazlish's book is that Nixon became more sensitive to nuance, especially when it came to the issue of Communism.  When Nixon visited Latin America and encountered mobs, Nixon tended to reduce Communism in Latin America to those mobs.  According to Mazlish, Nixon most likely did not talk with Marxist intellectuals to hear what they had to say, and Nixon was wrong to assume that the mobs represented the sum total of Communism, as it would be erroneous to think that lynchings in the South represent the sum total of the Southern political system.  Yet, Nixon came to recognize different shades of Communism, and he concluded as President that China was not as intent on aggression against other countries as it used to be.  I doubt that Nixon would say that he grew.  When Nixon was asked if his visit to China as President demonstrated that there were two Nixons----the old Nixon who opposed Communist China, and the new Nixon who visited it----Nixon retorted that there were actually two Chinas!  (I base this, not on Mazlish, but rather my seeing Nixon on television.) Nixon apparently thought that his position in the past was correct, within that historical context, but his view changed as the context changed.

Overall, one thing that I have respected about Nixon in my reading so far has been his openness to knowledge.  In reading Irwin Gellman's The Contender, I noticed that Nixon visited Europe when he was a Congressman and talked with a variety of people, even Communists.  Nixon was eager to learn why Europeans would be susceptible to Communism, and he learned that Communists provided services (i.e., a place to get a sandwich) in a time when Europe was impoverished in the aftermath of World War II.  Nixon still could be pretty dogmatic: sometimes he put words into people's mouths (as Stephen Ambrose says), or heard what he wanted to hear rather than what people were saying.  But, at times, he was a good listener when he sought to learn.

Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady 9

I finished Greg Mitchell's Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady: Richard Nixon vs. Helen Gahagan Douglas----Sexual Politics and the Red Scare, 1950.  This book is about Richard Nixon's 1950 race for the U.S. Senate against Democrat Helen Gahagan Douglas.  I have four items for today.

1.  One reason that I have long admired and identified with Nixon is that I've seen him as an underdog.  My impression from my reading and the movies and documentaries that I watched about him was that he thought that not many people liked him, there were many in the Establishment who (quite frankly) didn't like him, and Nixon continually felt a need to prove his worth.  But that's not really the picture that I got in reading Mitchell's book.  Rather, Nixon struck me as similar to a popular mean girl in high school, who singles out someone to bully and turns the campus and the faculty against her victim.  The way that Mitchell tells the story, Nixon had much of the press on his side, so he could get his message out, whereas Douglas really could not.  Nixon's campaign and his supporters appeared to have had more money than Douglas' campaign----and, even if one argues that Nixon did not have as much money as Nixon's detractors claim, one has to account for how there were so many pro-Nixon billboards in California (which Mitchell says that Douglas inquired about in a speech in 1950), for how Nixon could appear on television more than once, for how Nixon's campaign could widely circulate the Pink Sheet attacking Douglas, and for how a plane could drops gobs of anti-Douglas leaflets.  There were elites that were supporting Nixon, within business, within Hollywood, and within politics.  There were even Nixon supporters who resorted to violence, and, in an atmosphere that was already afraid of Communism, Nixon (like some of Douglas' Democratic opponents in the Democratic primary) portrayed Douglas as soft on the Communist threat.  Even after Douglas lost the campaign, there were Nixon supporters and even Democrats who tried to persuade President Harry Truman not to appoint her to any position, and Truman did not do so, as if she were radioactive.

If I were Douglas, I'd be bitter.  I'd wish ill upon Richard Nixon.  Actually, according to Mitchell, one reason that Douglas' friend Lyndon Johnson decided to become John F. Kennedy's running-mate in the 1960 Presidential election was so that he could be part of a ticket that would defeat Richard Nixon, who had ended his friend's career.  But Douglas tried not to give into bitterness.  After her defeat, she decided to work on her marriage, plus she did some performing.

It's not that Douglas was flawless.  Stephen Ambrose talks about times when Douglas attacked her opponents.  And even Mitchell goes into strategies that Douglas pursued that were not particularly effective.  But, from Mitchell's narrative, Nixon was not exactly the underdog in the 1950 Senate race.  Douglas was.

2.  I learned some things about the Korean War.  The message that I get from right-wing literature is that President Truman was essentially handcuffing Douglas MacArthur, inhibiting him from doing what was necessary to win the war.  And I agree that Truman was setting limits on MacArthur, for Truman did not want for the Korean War to be expanded into China.  But, on page 236, Mitchell says that Truman allowed MacArthur to "bomb the bridges across the Yalu", across which the Communist Chinese were transmitting supplies.  On page 249, we read that Truman told reporters that he was actively considering using the atomic bomb in the Korean War.  On a side-note, on page 253, Mitchell says that Democratic Congressman Albert Gore, Sr. suggested that Truman use the atomic bomb in Korea to create "a deadly neutral zone" (Mitchell's words), in which Communist soldiers would either die or face "slow deformity" (Gore's words).  Truman may have had different ideas and policies at different times during the Korean War.  But then I think of what Gregory Peck's Douglas MacArthur said in the movie MacArthur: MacArthur mocked Truman for allowing him to bomb half of a bridge!  Perhaps Truman did allow MacArthur to bomb bridges on the Yalu, but in a limited sense.

3.  Mitchell's book was largely about the Red Scare as it existed in 1950.  While I was reading Mitchell's book, I thought some about Ann Coulter's Treason, a book in which Coulter defends Senator Joseph McCarthy.  Coulter says that McCarthy was hesitant to name names, whereas Mitchell quotes McCarthy from the floor of the U.S. Senate calling journalist Drew Pearson a "Moscow-directed character assassin" and the "sugar-coated voice of Russia" (Mitchell's quotation of McCarthy, though Mitchell in his notes did not cite a primary source for these remarks).  Coulter lauds McCarthy as one who had a diverse staff that included homosexuals, whereas Mitchell on page 8 quotes McCarthy as saying that his goal was to drive the "Communists and queers" out of the U.S. State Department.  (For this, Mitchell cites David Oshinsky's A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy.)

On page 59 of Treason, Ann Coulter mocks Michael Ybarra's statement in The New Republic that "Truman and many liberal anti-Communists believed the best answer [to Communist subversives] was to let the FBI monitor the party and prosecute its members if they broke laws against subversion or espionage; conservatives, however, believed that the party needed to be crippled and exposed before Moscow's minions launched a revolution."  Mitchell's picture overlaps with what Ybarra was saying, while also differing somewhat.  Mitchell, like Ybarra, presents Truman as relying (at least in part) on FBI surveillance of Communists in the U.S., for one reason that Truman opposed the McCarran bill that would require Communists to register with the Attorney General was that he feared that it would push Communists in the U.S. underground and hamper FBI investigations of and infiltration into the Communist movement.  On whether conservatives believed that the Communists in America wanted to overthrow the U.S. Government, perhaps Ybarra is right in that there were conservatives who believed that, but my impression from Mitchell is that there's more nuance.  J. Edgar Hoover, for example, said that there were more Communists in the U.S. than there were in Russia during the Russian Revolution; and yet, Hoover's fear was that the Communists in the U.S. would join the Russians were a war to break out between Russia and the U.S.

Coulter says that things like the House Committee on Un-American Activities, the Smith Act, and the experience of the Hollywood Ten should not be blamed on Joe McCarthy, who had nothing to do with them.  I agree with her on that, and Mitchell himself, while he at one point uses the term McCarthyism for the Red Scare, does not blame the entire Red Scare on McCarthy.  The Red Scare was perpetuated by a variety of people: the House Commitee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), Senator Pat McCarran, Cecil B. Demille in the Screen Director's Guild, the University of California, President Harry Truman, and the mayor of San Francisco, who advised people to tell the police about people they merely suspected of being "politically tainted" (Mitchell on page 4).  McCarthy primarily expressed concerns that there were subversives within the State Department.  But I do recall----and this was either from my reading of Irwin Gellman or Stephen Ambrose (unfortunately, I can't remember right now, nor can I find the exact reference)----that McCarthy expressed support for HUAC's work.

In saying all this, I've not provided you with the full essence of Ann Coulter's book.  I think that she raises points that deserve serious consideration.  Were there Communists in the State Department?  What about those Venona cables?  Were McCarthy's accusations right or wrong, or were some (or even many) of them right?  At the same time, Mitchell does well to present details that may indicate that the Red Scare could be unfair and abusive.

4.  I enjoyed reading this book, but I didn't particularly like blogging through it.  I found blogging through it to be tedious.  For one, Mitchell had a lot of interesting stories, and so I wanted to mention as many of them as I could in my blog posts.  Second, I felt as if I had to continuously update my posts when Mitchell offered more information about a topic in his book that I had blogged about, just to be fair to Mitchell.  My posts on the next book about Nixon that I will read will probably be a little more informal.  I won't feel compelled to blog about everything that interests me, or that I feel might be interesting to blog about.

Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady 8

In 1950, Richard Nixon ran against Democrat Helen Gahagan Douglas for the U.S. Senate.  In this post, I'll compare and contrast two authors' portrayals of two public appearances that Nixon and Douglas made together.  The first author is Irwin Gellman, who wrote The Contender: Richard Nixon, The Congress Years, 1946-1952.   The second is Greg Mitchell, who wrote Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady: Richard Nixon vs. Helen Gahagan Douglas----Sexual Politics and the Red Scare, 1950.

1.  Nixon and Douglas appeared together at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco.  According to Gellman, Nixon showed the audience a one-hundred dollar check that he said he had received from Eleanor Roosevelt, along with a note from Mrs. Roosevelt that stated: "I wish it could be ten times more.  Best wishes for your success & kindness regards to you & your lovely wife."  The audience gasped, then, according to Gellman, Nixon told his listeners that he, too, was surprised, until he learned that the Mrs. Roosevelt who wrote him the check was Eleanor B. Roosevelt, the wife of Theodore Roosevelt II.  Gellman narrates that "The audience roared with laughter while Douglas fumed."

According to Mitchell, however, there are actually two versions of that story, based on different descriptions of what happened.  Mitchell says that this appearance by Nixon and Douglas was before the Press Club in San Francisco in May (presumably in 1950).  In the first version of the story, Nixon told his audience that the check was from the Eleanor Roosevelt who was closely related to Theodore Roosevelt, not from the wife of the late Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  In the second version, however, Nixon did not clarify to his audience which Eleanor Roosevelt sent him the check, "leaving his opponent and the audience to figure it out afterwards" (page 37).  Douglas was confused and thus did not deliver her speech effectively when it was her turn to speak.

Both Gellman and Mitchell cite many of the same sources, such as Helen Douglas' autobiography.  Gellman even cites Mitchell!

2.  Nixon and Douglas appeared together in Beverly Hills.  Gellman based his story of this event on the testimony of Bill Arnold, who advised Nixon's campaign.  Gellman cites Arnold's book, Back When It All Began.  According to Arnold, Nixon came to the event on time and spoke first.  Douglas was late, and when she went onto the stage, Nixon mocked her by "gesturing to his watch" (Gellman's words on page 305).  The audience laughed, and Douglas did not know why.  When she spoke, Nixon was sitting behind her, and Nixon fidgeted and crossed his knees over and over to show that he was impatient.  When she finished, Nixon got up to address the audience again.  But Douglas left early rather than staying to listen to Nixon.  Gellman states on page 305 that "Arnold realized that if this had been a debate, and if points had been awarded for speechmaking, his candidate would have won."

Mitchell tells the story differently.  According to Mitchell, the League of Women Voters invited Nixon and Douglas to a debate at the Beverly Hills High School one week before Election Day.  Douglas accepted only after Nixon said that he could not attend due to another commitment he had made.  But a Nixonite related that, actually, Nixon and his advisers on the night that the event would take place "left an out-of-town campaign appearance early and rushed back to Los Angeles" (Mitchell's words on page 234).  Roy Day and Nixon hid out at the Beverly Hills Hotel, while their car waited outside, and Nixon's campaign manager Murray Chotiner went to the high school to listen to Douglas.  When they heard from Chotiner, Nixon and Day rushed to their car and went to the event.  At Nixon's arrival, Republicans in the audience clapped and stomped their feet, disrupting Douglas' speech.  Nixon went backstage and sat behind Douglas while she was speaking, continually crossing his legs and looking at his watch.  The audience laughed, and Douglas slumped her shoulders, answered just one question, then left, telling the audience that he had another meeting to get to.  Nixon then "tore her to shreds", according to Roy Day.  Another witness said that Nixon called Helen Douglas "Mrs. Hesselberg", which referred to the name of her husband (a Jew) before he changed it to "Douglas".  Some of the Democrats, some of whom were Jews, booed when Nixon said this, then, "according to Douglas backer Jean Sieroty, Republicans and Democrats nearly came to blows" (Mitchell on page 234).

Whom do I believe, when it comes to these accounts?  Regarding the first appearance, I can see Nixon telling his audience that the Eleanor Roosevelt who wrote him the check was Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt II.  Perhaps those who testified otherwise did not hear Nixon say that, either because their hearing or the acoustics was poor, or they were not paying attention.  On the other hand, maybe Nixon did not tell them the identity of the Eleanor Roosevelt who wrote him the check, they learned which Eleanor Roosevelt she was soon thereafter, and, when they remembered the event at a later point, they conflated the event with learning about which Eleanor Roosevelt it was.  Their memory mixed things up, perhaps.

Regarding the second appearance, both accounts look plausible.  I tend to believe Roy Day, though.  Bill Arnold may have remembered the event through rose-colored glasses, or perhaps he did not want to make Nixon look like an immature prankster, but rather as someone who was punctual.  Roy Day, however, was just reminiscing about the good old days (in his eyes).  On the other hand, could Roy Day have been exaggerating, the way that (say) some fraternity people exaggerate their feats?  I don't know.

Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady 4

I have three items for my write-up today on Greg Mitchell's Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady: Richard Nixon vs. Helen Gahagan Douglas----Sexual Politics and the Red Scare, 1950.

1.  When I was blogging through Irwin Gellman's The Contender, I quoted something that Gellman said on page 289 about the 1950 U.S. Senate race between Richard Nixon and Democrat Helen Gahagan Douglas (see here):

"The U.S. Senate contest in California during 1950 has been the stuff where legend has replaced fact.  ‘Tricky Dicky’ smeared Helen Gahagan Douglas, the ‘Pink Lady,’ thus relying on the anti-Communist hysteria to propel the dirty trickster into the upper House.  The record, however, paints quite a different scene.  Helen Gahagan Douglas was far to the left of many Democrats, let alone Republicans.  Besides her close attachment to New and Fair Deal policies that the majority of her party was abandoning, she ran the campaign without the benefit of an effective statewide staff, clearly defined strategy, or an adequate fund-raising scheme.  Along with these Herculean disadvantages, a large segment of the Democratic Party had rejected her unswerving advocacy of liberalism.  By the time of the general election, she had been thoroughly smeared, not by Nixon but by her own party.  Faced with widespread Democratic desertion that she was unable to prevent, Douglas never united the warring factions of the Democratic Party to battle against the Republican enemy.  Her painfully inept stewardship—-not Nixon—-guaranteed her demise."

While Greg Mitchell (in contrast to Gellman) portrays Richard Nixon as someone who ruthlessly exploited widespread anti-Communist sentiment to defeat Helen Gahagan Douglas in 1950, Mitchell, like Gellman, believes that there were other factors that contributed to Douglas' loss, some of which were Douglas' fault.  Like Gellman, Mitchell acknowledges that Douglas endured a rough primary, as she was attacked by her Democratic opponents for allegedly being soft on Communism.  Like Gellman, Mitchell states that Douglas had difficulty getting support from a number of Democrats, since she was deemed to be too far to the Left; Mitchell also discusses the factor of sexism, something that (as far as I remember) Gellman did not really address.  Gellman and Mitchell both argue that Douglas pursued a poor strategy when she tried to exploit the anti-Communist issue herself, as she contended that some of Nixon's votes in the U.S. House overlapped with those of Vito Marcantonio, a far left Congressman who was believed to have pro-Soviet sympathies, for anti-Communism was Nixon's territory: who would believe that Nixon was pro-Communist, when he was the one who brought down Alger Hiss?

And Mitchell tells about another decision that Douglas made that did not particularly help her campaign.  Douglas, after she won the Democratic nomination, was in a capacity in which she could recommend nominees to President Truman for federal offices in California.  She recommended a number of liberals for a federal judgeship there, to no avail.  She then learned that Truman had nominated William Byrne for the benefit of her campaign, for Byrne was a Roman Catholic and a "friend of the powerful (and politically conservative) archbishop of Los Angeles, J. Francis McIntyre" (page 92).  If Douglas could call McIntyre and take credit for recommending Byrne to Truman, she could get more Catholic support in California.  But Douglas had reservations about Byrne, for "She suspected that Byrne was the candidate of Ed Pauley, the Los Angeles oilman close to Truman (and, lately, to Nixon)" (page 92).  She apparently did not call McIntyre, "and McIntyre would work miracles for Nixon" (page 92).  Douglas appears to have held fast to her principles, but that did not help her politically.

2.  Nixon's strategy was to argue that there was a significant overlap between the votes of Helen Gahagan Douglas and the far-left Vito Marcantonio in the U.S. House.  I talked in my post here about Stephen Ambrose's discussion of the claim by reporter Earl Mazo that Marcantonio did not like Douglas and actually encouraged Nixon to beat Douglas by appealing to the similarity of her votes with those of Marcantonio.  Mitchell appears to accept the narrative that Marcantonio did not like Douglas, and Mitchell speculates that this could have been because "he resented that she had become a national hero of the left without spending years in the trenches as he had" (page 106).  Moreover, according to Mitchell, Marcantonio and Nixon were actually friendly with each other.  On page 105, Mitchell states, in what I consider to be a beautiful passage: "Nixon and Marcantonio were friendly foes on the Hill.  Each knew where the other stood on practically every issue, and each granted the other grudging respect for sticking to his principles.  Marcantonio was wrong about nearly everything, Nixon believed, but sincere and not a political opportunist."

3.  On pages 107-108, Mitchell has a profound passage about the struggles of political reporter Mary Ellen Leary to succeed in what at the time was a man's world:

"From the start, her male peers warned that she could not expect to have the 'same relationship' they enjoyed with politicians, a cozy one built on drinking or playing cards.  It took her two years to discover that she was routinely excluded from dinner parties where politicians, lobbyists, and reporters mingled, and she was furious when Governor [Earl] Warren kept her off invitation lists.  On balance, however, she felt she benefited from a more 'healthy' relationship with her subjects and believed that as a woman she 'listened better' and got more out of them in interviews."

I like how Leary was able to capitalize on her strengths in spite of the barriers that were in her path.  This is not to suggest that discrimination is not a problem and that women should be able to circumvent it by their talent.  That's not what I'm saying.  Rather, I'm expressing admiration for someone who was able to capitalize on her assets.  I am not discriminated against, but I have barriers to my success on account of my Asperger's Syndrome.  But the question that I need to ask myself is: What are my strengths, and how can I capitalize on those?  How can I use who I am to succeed, the way that Mary Ellen Leary used who she was----a journalist who listened----to be a good political reporter?

Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady 2

I have four items for my write-up today on Greg Mitchell's Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady: Richard Nixon vs. Helen Gahagan Douglas----Sexual Politics and the Red Scare, 1950.  It's about Richard Nixon's 1950 U.S. Senate campaign against liberal Democrat Helen Gahagan Douglas.

1.  My first item concerns how Douglas absorbed and communicated information.  A friend of Douglas described Douglas' absorption of knowledge as follows: "She doesn't bother much with logical processes, she just wraps herself around an idea more or less in the way an amoeba wraps itself around a bit of food, a good nourishing way of absorbing information" (page 22).  Douglas described her way of learning this way: "When you dig into a problem you will learn what you need to know, you will learn how to solve it, you'll stumble upon authenticity and the people with the answers."

For some reason, I'd expect for a person who absorbed information and made it a part of her to be able to communicate it in a clear, articulate, compelling, and seemingly authentic manner.  Perhaps this is because I have read of people, such as Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, who were able to absorb information and then go on to communicate that information effectively.  But that wasn't entirely the case with Helen Gahagan Douglas.  She was probably a good speaker on account of her experience in drama, but she tended to drone on and on about policy details.  On page 34, we read about Douglas speaking by the hour in the hot sun about the 160-acre water limit----which referred to a liberal law that "limited state-financed irrigation to farms of no more than 160 acres" and was "meant to give the small farmer a chance to survive in a state dominated by agribusiness" (page 29).  Nixon, too, had a tendency to drone on, but he learned how to be more concise in his public speaking.  Moreover, my impression is that Nixon communicated his views on policy in a clear and compelling manner.  Some people have that talent.  Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have it.  Paul Ryan sometimes has it, and sometimes does not.  Newt Gingrich just overwhelms people with facts in his forums, but I don't think that he breaks them down as well for public consumption as Clinton and Obama do.

2.  My second item can be entitled "Mother issues".  Mitchell talks about Nixon's relationship with his mother, Hannah Nixon.  Richard was closer to his mother than the other brothers were, and Hannah speculated that this was because Richard, who was quiet, needed her more than his brothers did.  When Hannah spent a lot of time away from Richard because she was in Arizona caring for Richard's brother, Harold, who had tuberculosis, Richard resented her absence (or so Mitchell says).  Mitchell refers to views that this tended to alienate Richard from women, made him more distrustful of people, and drove his ambition.  (I should note that Nixon's ambition was what attracted Pat Nixon, who initially was not attracted to Richard, but who later concluded that he was going places.)

Mitchell also briefly mentions Lyndon Johnson's Mother issues.  Unlike Nixon, Johnson was quite easy-going with women.  He poured out his soul to them, and he flirted with them.  Johnson's friend George Reedy said that Johnson was vulnerable to women and poured his soul out to them because "They all reminded him of his mother."  Johnson was friends with Helen Gahagan Douglas, even though they differed on civil rights and labor, with Douglas being more liberal than Johnson.  While Johnson flirted with Douglas, she was committed to her husband and her children.  (UPDATE: I've not read Robert Caro's book on LBJ, but, according to here and here, Caro argues that Douglas and LBJ had a romantic relationship.)  Mitchell says on page 71: "Yet Lyndon Johnson, little known in California, could not help Douglas much in her Senate race."  Apparently, Johnson in 1950 was not the nationally-known figure that he would become in later years!

3. On page 53, Mitchell discusses Nixon's finances in the 1950 Senate campaign.  Mitchell says that "the Nixon campaign coffers were flush, but driving for more Democratic votes cost a lot of money."  Irwin Gellman, in The Contender, criticizes Mitchell's claim that Nixon's campaign had vast amounts of money, stating that Mitchell provides no evidence that Nixon had $4.2 million in his campaign coffers (Gellman 340).

I don't know enough about Mitchell's claim, for I haven't yet gotten to that part of the book.  I should note, however, that, on page 56, Mitchell refers to an article by Paul Jacobs in the June 17, 1950 New Leader that predicted that Nixon would have "ample funds, 'a smear machine' at his disposal, and a generally supportive press" (Mitchell on page 56).  This, in my opinion, is significant because it's a source from the time of the 1950 election that posits that Nixon would have lots of funds.  Gellman, on page 458 of The Contender, says that (presumably in 1950) there were no newspaper accounts of a state-wide blitz of pro-Nixon billboards.  That's a valid point, but there was at least one voice in 1950 who envisioned Nixon as having lots of campaign funds.

On page 53, Mitchell says that Nixon tried to get a $5,000 donation from Owen Brewster, the head of the Republican Senate Campaign Committee, but the committee could not give money to a Republican primary candidate.  Nixon kept asking, and so Brewster gave the money to lobbyist, gambler, and influence peddler Henry Grunewald, who relayed the money to Nixon.  I checked the notes to see if Mitchell provided primary-source evidence for this story, and all I could see was his reference to Roger Morris and Fawn Brodie.  I wonder if they have primary-source evidence.  I'll be reading Roger Morris' book sometime down the road, so maybe I'll see there.

4.  The role of Murray Chotiner in Nixon's campaigns has been controversial, since Chotiner's campaign strategies were often quite aggressive and ruthless.  Both Irwin Gellman and Stephen Ambrose contend that Chotiner's role in Nixon's 1946 U.S. House campaign was marginal.  Mitchell acknowledges that Chotiner only worked for Nixon part-time in 1946, since Chotiner was also working on Bill Knowland's U.S. Senate re-election campaign.  But, according to Mitchell, Chotiner was the one who came up with the idea that "turned [Nixon's] campaign around", namely, to attack Jerry "Voorhis as a tool of left-wing labor PACs" (page 47).  I could not find Mitchell's documentation for that specific claim, though.  Mitchell has notes, but they're not always attached to specific things that Mitchell says.

Mitchell told a story about Chotiner's relationship with California Governor Earl Warren, whose election Chotiner assisted in 1942.  I was curious about this because I had a hard time envisioning Chotiner helping a liberal Republican like Warren, since my impression was that Chotiner liked candidates who could attack from the right.  Essentially, after helping Warren, Chotiner went to Warren's office to ask for a favor, and Warren threw him out!

Chotiner may have been for attacking from the right, but he was smart about it.  On page 48, Mitchell says that Chotiner preferred using "state socialism" rather than "socialist-labor government" in attacking the Truman Administration because the latter would alienate labor unions unnecessarily.  Chotiner also did not care for denunciations of the "welfare state" because the term "welfare" referred to human well-being, which is a good thing.