Authors: Jim Newton
Securing the nomination was the hard part of Eisenhower’s work. His crossover appeal to Democrats was already well known. However bereft Taft’s supporters were, it was unlikely that they would abandon their party in the general election. And whatever risk there might have been to the Republican base ended a few weeks later when Democrats, also meeting in Chicago, chose a ticket topped by the elegant and eloquent Adlai Stevenson.
Stevenson’s acceptance was delivered with the rhetorical gifts that endeared him to American liberals. The presidency, he declared, was vast in its burdens, inspiring in its possibility. “Its potential for good or evil, now and in the years of our lives, smothers exultation and converts vanity to prayer.” His speech continued, rich and vivid, winding through scripture and policy toward a graceful conclusion. “Help me to do the job in these years of darkness,” Stevenson told his audience. “And we will justify our glorious past and the loyalty of silent millions who look to us for compassion, for understanding, and for honest purpose.”
Listening from Denver, Ike was among those “impressed by his speaking style and polish.” Ike’s friend George Allen was not so moved. “He’s too accomplished an orator,” Allen argued. “He will be easy to beat.” What Allen sensed—and what the Eisenhower campaign then proceeded to exploit—was Stevenson’s inexperience in the area of foreign affairs and his intellectual distance from America’s working people. He was stirring, yes, but also aloof and cerebral. For Stevenson, the campaign was an opportunity to educate; for Eisenhower, it was a battle to win. So while Stevenson formed arguments and theses, Ike turned to short advertisements and jingles. It struck some as trite, but by Election Day no adult American had not heard “I like Ike.” The 1952 campaign not only created a winner; it changed the character of American politics.
Stevenson, meanwhile, immediately compromised his appeal by choosing the Alabama senator John Sparkman as his vice president. Sparkman was a segregationist intended to shore up southern support (Ike’s roots in Texas and Kansas made him a serious threat to Democratic dominance of the South), but his presence on the ticket undermined Stevenson’s lofty liberalism and emphasized the profound Democratic split between its labor, intellectual, and segregationist bases.
Ike allowed himself the luxury of avoiding most public campaigning for the month of August, deciding that he could only hold up for eight or nine weeks. He spent August laying plans, venturing out on a light speaking schedule, and experimenting with television. The early efforts were unimpressive: Ike looked old on camera, and he struggled with the teleprompter. Aides advised more makeup and a sunlamp; the teleprompter was scrapped. Eisenhower took most of it in stride, marveling at the machinery of getting votes. Looking over one memo outlining arrangements for an upcoming trip, he arched an eyebrow: “Thirty-five pages to get me into Philadelphia. The invasion of Normandy was on five pages.”
Truman’s ascension to the presidency had been historically abrupt. He barely knew FDR, then had to step into Roosevelt’s gigantic shoes with World War II still on. Wishing that on no man, Truman made what he considered a good-faith effort that summer to ease the transition for his successor. He cabled Eisenhower on August 12 in Denver, inviting Ike to join him at the White House for a briefing by the CIA and then lunch with the cabinet, a courtesy Truman was extending to both candidates so that they would be “entirely briefed.” Truman’s motives were sound, but he must have recognized that it would be difficult for Eisenhower to accept. Ike was running to end Democratic control of Washington, and his candidacy was predicated on his grasp of international affairs. To be briefed suggested that he needed briefing, and by those whose judgment he disparaged. Moreover, Ike had his own access to foreign policy information: the head of Central Intelligence, General Bedell Smith, was Ike’s colleague during World War II.
So, to Truman’s astonishment, Eisenhower turned him down. “It is my duty to remain free to analyze publicly the policies and acts of the present administration whenever it appears to me to be proper and in the country’s interests,” he wrote to Truman, releasing the letter to the press and public. Ike did, however, accept Truman’s offer of regular CIA reports, stressing that he wanted it “understood that the possession of these reports will in no other way limit my freedom to discuss or analyze foreign programs as my judgment dictates.”
Truman was furious. He responded by hand: “I am extremely sorry that you have allowed a bunch of screwballs to come between us. You have made a bad mistake and I’m hoping it won’t injure this great Republic.” A calmer exchange of notes soothed feelings somewhat, but the rupture was now there.
Ike moved quickly to make sure he would have the material that Truman offered without the strings that Truman’s offer implied. He chastised Smith for briefing Stevenson: “To the political mind it looked like the outgoing Administration was canvassing all its resources in order to support Stevenson’s election.” Smith responded by making sure Ike received weekly briefings, some by Smith himself.
Once the campaign began, Eisenhower discovered what all generals, and most politicians, learn—that planning is essential but that plans rarely play out as intended. Two weeks after Labor Day, the Eisenhower-Nixon ticket confronted its first crisis. Rumors that Nixon’s supporters had supplemented his government salary with a fund for political expenses murmured around the edges of the race, and Nixon addressed them quietly, discussing the matter with a friendly reporter, Peter Edson. Edson’s report blandly described the money as an “extra expense account” and made clear that donors did not receive favorable treatment in return for their contributions. The
New York Post
took a far different approach. The headline on its September 18 story read: “Secret Rich Men’s Trust Fund Keeps Nixon in Style Far Beyond His Salary.” Traveling through California by train that day, Nixon tried to ignore the story and then to suggest that the allegations were the work of Communists. None of that succeeded. The bottom line—that he supervised $18,000 raised from donors for his benefit—was true. And it was particularly damning given that it undercut a principal theme of the Republican campaign: that lassitude in Washington had given rise to Democratic corruption.
Eisenhower was supportive but reserved. Carefully preserving his own options, he drafted a note to Nixon. “In the certainty that the whole affair comprises no violation of the highest standards of conduct, a critical question becomes the speed and completeness of your presentation of fact to the public,” Ike wrote, dictating to an aide in the parlor car of their campaign train. As Nixon surely recognized, any hint that he had violated “the highest standards of conduct” would supply Ike with the excuse to dump him. Moreover, Eisenhower explained that he would be unable to speak to Nixon that day—their train schedules made it impossible. That, too, preserved Ike’s distance.
Within twenty-four hours, many leading Republicans were insisting that Eisenhower drop Nixon from the ticket. Tom Dewey warned Nixon that his supporters were abandoning him; some suggested that he be replaced by Bill Knowland or Earl Warren. Warren, never a Nixon fan, declined to comment. Ike summoned Brownell from New York to meet his train in St. Louis; Brownell joined Adams, who counseled patience and urged Ike to wait until Nixon could explain himself.
Eisenhower, meanwhile, maintained his silence. When reporters probed for his reaction, he responded that while he generally had confidence in Nixon, he had not been able to reach him to discuss the revelations—a statement also well short of an endorsement. For two days, Eisenhower allowed Nixon to dangle. On September 20, the two finally spoke by phone. Eisenhower still refused to commit, insisting, “This is an awful hard thing for me to decide.”
That was more than Nixon could take. Days of building anxiety exploded. “Well, General, I know how it is,” Nixon said. “But there comes a time in matters like this when you’ve either got to shit or get off the pot.”
Eisenhower absorbed that impertinence but still refused to give Nixon what he wanted. Instead, Ike proclaimed that Nixon would have to fight for himself. Eisenhower would not damage his candidacy even if it meant destroying Nixon’s. Coolly, he said, “If the impression got around that you got off the ticket because I forced you to get off, it’s going to be very bad. On the other hand, if I issue a statement in effect backing you up, people will accuse me of wrongdoing.”
So Nixon booked television time for September 23, determined to make his best case for himself and to save his place on the ticket. The speech, which he delivered from the El Capitan Theatre in the heart of Hollywood, was maudlin yet masterful. “My fellow Americans,” he began, faltering slightly at first, gaining confidence as he spoke. “I want to tell you my side of the case.”
The fund was not a secret. It was not used to pay him directly, but rather for “political expenses that I did not think should be charged to the taxpayers of the United States.” Its donors neither asked for nor received any special treatment. By modern standards, Nixon’s fund was picayune; even by the laws of the day, it was commonplace and legal. Indeed, Stevenson himself helped pay for his political activities with a similar account. But Nixon did not wish to rest on mere legalities.
Instead, he explained that he’d declined to supplement his income by putting his wife, Pat, on the payroll, notwithstanding that Sparkman employed his wife—“That is his business, and I am not critical of him for doing that,” Nixon hastened to add—and even though Pat was eminently qualified. “She is,” he boasted, “a wonderful stenographer.” He had submitted the records of his funds to an independent audit, which had come back clean. He was a poor kid, served his country, ran for Congress, and saved a little money. He laid out his mortgage debt and his insurance policies. Pat, he noted, did not have a mink coat, but she did have “a respectable Republican cloth coat.”
He finished with the passage that would secure Nixon’s speech in history:
A man down in Texas heard Pat on the radio mention the fact that our two youngsters would like to have a dog, and, believe it or not, the day before we left on this campaign trip we got a message from Union Station in Baltimore, saying they had a package for us. We went down to get it. You know what it was?
It was a little cocker spaniel dog, in a crate that he had sent all the way from Texas, black and white, spotted, and our little girl Tricia, the six year old, named it Checkers.
And you know, the kids, like all kids, loved the dog, and I just want to say this, right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we are going to keep it.
Nixon and his family were under assault by critics who would take their dog. He had volunteered his whole financial history, and he urged the other candidates to do the same. Eisenhower, whose tax treatment of his book income was sufficiently exotic to raise questions, jabbed his pencil into his pad when Nixon laid down that challenge.
Nixon’s great strategic stroke was urging listeners to register their views with the Republican National Committee, effectively taking the matter out of Eisenhower’s hands. And in overwhelming numbers, they did. Among those who urged Eisenhower to welcome Nixon back into his graces was Edgar, never shy about telling his little brother what to do. “If you don’t unqualifiedly endorse Nixon after that talk last night,” Edgar cabled, “you might as well fold your tent and fade away.” Nixon had peered over the edge of the abyss. Exhausted and relieved, he crawled back.
Eisenhower asked Nixon to join him in Wheeling, West Virginia, and when Nixon’s plane arrived, he was surprised to discover Ike waiting for him. “Why not?” Eisenhower asked. “You’re my boy.” If that was demeaning by design or merely by reflex, it was, at least, affirmation that Nixon’s career survived. Speaking with reporters, Eisenhower expressed his confidence in the vice presidential nominee. A memorandum summarizing the campaign records the significance of Ike’s comments: “This apparently settles the Nixon fund affair.”
Ike’s campaign strategy called for a sweep of the country. Over the objections of many advisers, he had vowed to campaign from coast to coast—reaching into areas such as the South, where Lucius Clay advised him to make an effort and where he felt an affinity with residents despite the region’s wariness of Republicans that dated to Lincoln. He traveled 51,376 miles in total, 20,871 of that by rail. By the Republican National Committee’s count, Eisenhower visited 232 towns in forty-five states. One day he was celebrating the dedication of an FM radio station; the next he was reassuring Westerners of his commitment to federal dam projects. He offered praise for postal workers, pledged to support Republican rejection of compulsory health care, and delivered strongly worded, if somewhat unfocused, criticism of the incumbent administration, which, he charged, had “bungled us perilously close to World War III.”
During September, though, his speeches took on flourishes of elegance. He began quoting from Ecclesiastes. “There is a time to keep and a time to cast away,” he said, first in Indianapolis on September 9, then more often and more prominently as he warmed to that remark. He spoke moderately to organized labor in New York City on September 17, refusing to overturn the Taft-Hartley Act, which set the terms of labor-management relations strongly in favor of management, but promising that he would consider amending it. He incisively addressed southern Democrats in Columbia, South Carolina, on the thirtieth: “My only appeal to you, my only appeal to America, is that of Governor Byrnes, to place loyalty to the country above loyalty to a political party.”
Just as Eisenhower was becoming more nuanced in handling political affairs, he also began to master political debate. When Truman suggested that Eisenhower had been naive about the threat of Soviet Communism during the Potsdam Conference, Ike sharply retorted that Truman’s mismanagement of foreign affairs was to blame for the Korean War, already by then responsible for 120,000 dead, wounded, or missing Americans. From early pledges of fidelity to a Republican platform he had done little to shape, he sketched a broader, more moderate template. He saw a limited role for the federal government in education and supported unemployment benefits, aid to widows, and help for children living in poverty. He belittled federal assistance that infantilized Americans—one favorite line of attack was to quote a federal manual that advised readers how to wash their dishes—but did not reject federal help for the needy or even some of the New Deal’s hallmark programs. Speaking in Memphis on October 15, Eisenhower allowed that the Tennessee Valley Authority had done much good for that part of the country. He even gingerly waded into the topic of civil rights, noting that Democratic lip service to racial equality was undermined by the party’s political factionalism; the hollowness of the Democrats’ commitment to that idea, he emphasized, was illustrated by the persistence of segregation in the District of Columbia after twenty years of Democratic rule of Washington.