August 8, 1968—In Miami Beach, Fla., six years to the day that he would announce his resignation because his “political base” had collapsed in the wake of Watergate, Richard M. Nixon kicked off his successful campaign for the Oval Office with his speech accepting the Republican Party nomination for President.
One reason why I like researching this blog is what I find in going back to original sources—in this case, Nixon’s acceptance speech. No, “Tricky Dick” didn’t deliver an electrifying address a la Barack Obama four years ago at the Democratic Convention. But speeches like his not only plunge you back into the mood of the times, but also contain hints of the future and manifold ironies not apparent then to either the public or the cynical press.
Let’s focus on that last phrase first: “cynical press.” They were bored silly by the entire GOP spectacle—and really, who could blame them?
It was bad enough that they were waiting for The Main Event in Chicago a few weeks hence—the Democratic Convention. Sure, they didn’t know just how bad it was going to get, but with Eugene McCarthy’s forces feeling aggrieved, with Bobby Kennedy’s delegates not completely nailed down yet for Hubert Humphrey, and with so much roiling unrest that year, reporters sensed that something, anything could happen there.
No, the press was also bored because the Republicans had spoiled them rotten with their “Cow Palace” dustup in San Francisco four years before—the way Barry Goldwater’s shock troops had dissed Nelson Rockefeller (and he’d dissed them in turn), the way the press itself became a story (roundly derided by the same conservatives), the way, in short, that major splits had opened up between conservatives and liberals and conservatives and the press—all preceding an electoral train wreck that November.
You think the GOP top brass—especially Richard Nixon’s crew, including former ad man H.R. Haldeman, who would become the future President’s Chief of State—wanted a repeat of that? No way. And so you had one of the most stage-managed conventions in history up to that point.
It was only 20 years after the raucous conventions that produced Harry S. Truman’s clarion call to fight back against the Republicans, as well as two splinter parties (Strom Thurmond’s Dixiecrats and Henry A. Wallace’s Progressives), but it was much closer to the kind of event that David Frum blasted recently in The Wall Street Journal for creating “a cult of personality around the ultimate nominee that would be almost sinister if it did not so often absurdly backfire.”
The 1,500 reporters at the convention were dying for a gaudy, blood-on-the-floor convention the way an alcoholic is dying for a drink. When they didn’t get it, they couldn’t help but express their annoyance.
According to The New York Times’ Russell Baker, the Republican National Convention had been "planned weeks in advance by six bores and a sadist." The predictable result: things such as the "presentation of the orangewood gavel to the chairman of the Republican National Committee by O. D. Huff Jr., chairman of the Florida Citrus Commission," or Tony Martin singing a "few hit tunes of the Alf Landon era."
Meanwhile, the control-freak candidate at the heart of all this strategically induced boredom was sweating it out. You could tell from the subtext of what he said. For instance, virtually the first thing he told the convention, after relating how he’d been their candidate back in 1960, was: “This time we are going to win.”
The candidate had, implicitly, acknowledged his heartbreaking squeaker to John F. Kennedy. Left unsaid, though, was his 1962 loss to Edmund (Pat) Brown for governor of California, which had so angered the ex-Vice President that his outburst to the press—“You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore”—had been widely viewed as his political obituary.
Now, here he was, reviewing for the delegates the chaos the Democrats had produced the last eight years—divisions not only at home and abroad, but within the party. For Nixon, it was a virtual godsend, like General McClellan being given Robert E. Lee’s “lost orders” on the eve of the Battle of Antietam. You can practically hear the candidate singing a tune from Cabaret to himself: “Maybe this time, I’ll be lucky…” He was reassuring himself as well as his listeners that it would all be different, that for once, victory would be theirs.
Why else did he think he’d win? Now, here is where it really gets funny: “because you have nominated as my running mate a statesman of the first rank who will be a great campaigner and one who is fully qualified to undertake the new responsibilities that I shall give to the next Vice President of the United States.”
Ah, Spiro Agnew, future attack dog spitting alliteration written by someone else (“hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history"), abuser of minorities, great rightwing hope, income tax cheat, first Vice President forced to resign on corruption charges. Outside of Frank Sinatra and Saddam Hussein (to whom he sold military uniforms), did anyone have a nice word about this “statesman of the first rank” after he was unceremoniously drummed out of office? (Even his old boss called him, in his last days, “my insurance policy” in the face of impeachment charges.)
Much of the rest of the speech was given over to predictable partisan shots or the kinds of populist pablum that no national politician can do without, such as this gem: “America is great because her people are great.” According to Jim Sage, one of Nixon's filmmakers, quoted in young journalist Joe McGinniss’s The Selling of the President 1968: "Nixon has not only developed the use of the platitude, he's raised it to an art form. It's mashed potatoes. It appeals to the lowest common denominator of American taste."
The ironies don’t end there. There’s this one: “I say the time has come for other nations in the Free World to bear their fair share of the burden of defending peace and freedom around this world.” A guaranteed applause-winner, appealing to those who wanted limited government, fewer strains on the federal treasury, a withdrawal from being the world’s policeman, and more responsibility from those governments rolling their eyes at America but running for us as soon as the Russian Bear started bellowing.
So what happened with that? Certainly nothing in Vietnam. As for the current war on terror, let’s hear what German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she would tell Barack Obama about his idea of committing more German troops in Afghanistan: “I will make it clear that Germany is not shirking deeper involvement but also make very clear our limits in the same way as I do with the current president."
In other words: Don’t call us, we’ll call you. Got it.
One reason why I like researching this blog is what I find in going back to original sources—in this case, Nixon’s acceptance speech. No, “Tricky Dick” didn’t deliver an electrifying address a la Barack Obama four years ago at the Democratic Convention. But speeches like his not only plunge you back into the mood of the times, but also contain hints of the future and manifold ironies not apparent then to either the public or the cynical press.
Let’s focus on that last phrase first: “cynical press.” They were bored silly by the entire GOP spectacle—and really, who could blame them?
It was bad enough that they were waiting for The Main Event in Chicago a few weeks hence—the Democratic Convention. Sure, they didn’t know just how bad it was going to get, but with Eugene McCarthy’s forces feeling aggrieved, with Bobby Kennedy’s delegates not completely nailed down yet for Hubert Humphrey, and with so much roiling unrest that year, reporters sensed that something, anything could happen there.
No, the press was also bored because the Republicans had spoiled them rotten with their “Cow Palace” dustup in San Francisco four years before—the way Barry Goldwater’s shock troops had dissed Nelson Rockefeller (and he’d dissed them in turn), the way the press itself became a story (roundly derided by the same conservatives), the way, in short, that major splits had opened up between conservatives and liberals and conservatives and the press—all preceding an electoral train wreck that November.
You think the GOP top brass—especially Richard Nixon’s crew, including former ad man H.R. Haldeman, who would become the future President’s Chief of State—wanted a repeat of that? No way. And so you had one of the most stage-managed conventions in history up to that point.
It was only 20 years after the raucous conventions that produced Harry S. Truman’s clarion call to fight back against the Republicans, as well as two splinter parties (Strom Thurmond’s Dixiecrats and Henry A. Wallace’s Progressives), but it was much closer to the kind of event that David Frum blasted recently in The Wall Street Journal for creating “a cult of personality around the ultimate nominee that would be almost sinister if it did not so often absurdly backfire.”
The 1,500 reporters at the convention were dying for a gaudy, blood-on-the-floor convention the way an alcoholic is dying for a drink. When they didn’t get it, they couldn’t help but express their annoyance.
According to The New York Times’ Russell Baker, the Republican National Convention had been "planned weeks in advance by six bores and a sadist." The predictable result: things such as the "presentation of the orangewood gavel to the chairman of the Republican National Committee by O. D. Huff Jr., chairman of the Florida Citrus Commission," or Tony Martin singing a "few hit tunes of the Alf Landon era."
Meanwhile, the control-freak candidate at the heart of all this strategically induced boredom was sweating it out. You could tell from the subtext of what he said. For instance, virtually the first thing he told the convention, after relating how he’d been their candidate back in 1960, was: “This time we are going to win.”
The candidate had, implicitly, acknowledged his heartbreaking squeaker to John F. Kennedy. Left unsaid, though, was his 1962 loss to Edmund (Pat) Brown for governor of California, which had so angered the ex-Vice President that his outburst to the press—“You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore”—had been widely viewed as his political obituary.
Now, here he was, reviewing for the delegates the chaos the Democrats had produced the last eight years—divisions not only at home and abroad, but within the party. For Nixon, it was a virtual godsend, like General McClellan being given Robert E. Lee’s “lost orders” on the eve of the Battle of Antietam. You can practically hear the candidate singing a tune from Cabaret to himself: “Maybe this time, I’ll be lucky…” He was reassuring himself as well as his listeners that it would all be different, that for once, victory would be theirs.
Why else did he think he’d win? Now, here is where it really gets funny: “because you have nominated as my running mate a statesman of the first rank who will be a great campaigner and one who is fully qualified to undertake the new responsibilities that I shall give to the next Vice President of the United States.”
Ah, Spiro Agnew, future attack dog spitting alliteration written by someone else (“hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history"), abuser of minorities, great rightwing hope, income tax cheat, first Vice President forced to resign on corruption charges. Outside of Frank Sinatra and Saddam Hussein (to whom he sold military uniforms), did anyone have a nice word about this “statesman of the first rank” after he was unceremoniously drummed out of office? (Even his old boss called him, in his last days, “my insurance policy” in the face of impeachment charges.)
Much of the rest of the speech was given over to predictable partisan shots or the kinds of populist pablum that no national politician can do without, such as this gem: “America is great because her people are great.” According to Jim Sage, one of Nixon's filmmakers, quoted in young journalist Joe McGinniss’s The Selling of the President 1968: "Nixon has not only developed the use of the platitude, he's raised it to an art form. It's mashed potatoes. It appeals to the lowest common denominator of American taste."
The ironies don’t end there. There’s this one: “I say the time has come for other nations in the Free World to bear their fair share of the burden of defending peace and freedom around this world.” A guaranteed applause-winner, appealing to those who wanted limited government, fewer strains on the federal treasury, a withdrawal from being the world’s policeman, and more responsibility from those governments rolling their eyes at America but running for us as soon as the Russian Bear started bellowing.
So what happened with that? Certainly nothing in Vietnam. As for the current war on terror, let’s hear what German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she would tell Barack Obama about his idea of committing more German troops in Afghanistan: “I will make it clear that Germany is not shirking deeper involvement but also make very clear our limits in the same way as I do with the current president."
In other words: Don’t call us, we’ll call you. Got it.
And yet, there’s an idea in Nixon's mass of verbiage, struggling for a context. An adept poker player while on naval assignment in WWII, he was revealing he wanted to deal internationally from a fresh deck of cards: “And now to the leaders of the Communist world, we say: After an era of confrontation, the time has come for an era of negotiation.”
If you were a reporter listening at the time, you probably couldn’t keep yourself from yawning when you heard this—especially when you heard this follow-up: “Because this will be a period of negotiation, we shall restore the strength of America so that we shall always negotiate from strength and never from weakness.”
What they—what we—were missing, in embryonic form, was Nixon’s new approach to China and the U.S.S.R.—one that, he hoped, would not only lead to nuclear arms treaties, but, just as important, to the two Communist superpowers leaning on North Vietnam to come to the negotiating table. But, to his way of thinking, Mao, Brezhnev and the North Vietnamese wouldn’t talk if they thought he was like the Stevensonian figure of President Merkin Muffley figure in Dr. Strangelove; rather, they needed to be persuaded he would try anything—Nixon’s “mad bomber” theory.
Nixon almost lost the election he thought was finally his. In the end, however, he lost something far more agonizing because of Watergate: not just his office, but also his reputation.
Nixon was obsessed with history's judgment just as Pete Rose (another liar and gambler, not so coincidentally) was and is obsessed with Cooperstown. In the final hours leading up to his resignation speech on August 8, 1974, I think the President's mind must have flashed back to his hour of triumph exactly six years before in Miami Beach. The recognition must have pained and angered him to no end.
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