IS THERE REALLY A NEW NIXON?
WITCOVER, JULES
Is There Really a New Nixon? by JULES WITCOVER "To the reports that there's a conA scious change," Richard M. Nixon told an interviewer in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on February 5, "I'm not aware of...
...Many observers contend that the only answer to riots is to rebuild our cities and remove the basic causes of race conflict," Nixon wrote...
...In his first television debate with Kennedy in 1960, he thought he had won the arguments but had lost the audience because of his drawn appearance...
...This could be, of course, the con job of the decade...
...The story, though seemingly contrary to Nixon's overpowering drive to win, is in keeping with a distinct fatalistic streak in the man...
...On the domestic front, Nixon's pen also has been busy setting down the framework for his drive for the Presidency, but at this writing only in the most general terms...
...Newsmen traveling with Nixon get a good look at the pragmatics of his politics—one could even say at the amoral nature of his politics...
...The reason he did not expect the war, he said in Philadelphia a few days later, was that "those parties who seem to want war in the Mid-East lack the power to wage it...
...And even when an answer requires some criticism of the press, he takes care—transparently—to exclude the reporters present...
...These foreign policy and domestic positions carefully drawn by Nixon in advance of this year's campaign can readily be tailored to meet the more flexible demands of the hustings, and it is a talent in which the former Vice President excels...
...involvements after Vietnam...
...Shortly after the appearance of the Reader's Digest article, Nixon addressed the National Association of Manufacturers on the same subject, but this time he struck more balance between repression and social rehabilitation...
...Problems that have taken decades to build "will be decades in their solution," he said...
...While still locked into the cold war rhetoric of the 1950s that remains his personal point of reference, Nixon took note of the rising disposition at home to avoid future Vietnams, and suggested that the Asian nations would have to be sold on the need to form their own counterforce against Red China...
...Richard Nixon, neither neophyte nor fool, can be counted on to say what is required to succeed as he sees it in his last chance in Presidential politics...
...One can all but see the speech outlined on a sheet of paper, one, two, three, as it rolls off his lips...
...Of course, even today, women walk up to me and say, 'Mr...
...He impresses his audiences with his ability to speak for as long as an hour with only a few notes or none at all, yet with a logical progression that gives his narratives a notable sense of unity...
...For example: Back in the 1960 campaign, he found himself in a difficult position when John Kennedy suddenly proposed American aid for "the non-Batista democratic anti-Castro forces in exile, and in Cuba itself, who offer eventual hope of overthrowing Castro...
...Although the article when taken as a whole recognized the need to attack social problems in the Negro slums, the bulk of it was a hard pitch for repressive police measures...
...Others may ridicule the office, but not Nixon, and from the public response he gets as he travels, he is not alone in regarding it as something special...
...I could only counter...
...He is much more interested in projecting himself as the heir of the bland, reasonable Eisenhower style...
...Nixon still sees much of the same quest as world Communism on the march, and he hopes that an enlightened nationalism can move Asian states toward a collective deMauldin in Chicago Sun-Times "And if elected, I will personally go to Korea" fense against it—a kind of Asian NATO, but with the United States putting up money, not men, in Marshall Plan proportions...
...Khrushchev, like all aggressors, all dictators, interpreted indecision as weakness...
...Their questions are always tough, but they're more responsible, more objective since California...
...No two observers are likely to take the same reading on any controversial public figure...
...His confidence surfaces most obviously in a self-deprecating humor about his physical appearance and past defeats, but it can be seen also in a more relaxed approach to his future and to his critics...
...This time, the Republicans will have the ball, and we'll have an eight-year record to shoot at...
...And from all evidence, Nixon is received in the manner this conduct demands— by the public and even by the skeptical press...
...I'm better on television in a panel format...
...Emphasis added...
...as one who has observed him at close range over the years, I find the characteristic that most strongly suggests a change in Nixon to be a greater self-confidence that has affected his personality, his relations with party colleagues and with the press and public, his outlook on politics, indeed the very fiber of his latest effort to attain the Presidency...
...Compare this in style and substance with George Wallace on the same general subject: "It's gettin' nowadays that a policeman gets hit over the head and before they can get him to the hospital, the judge is orderin' that the man who hit him be turned out of the jailhouse and back on the street to hit somebody else...
...This was precisely what Nixon proceeded to do...
...Nixon professed to see an "emergence of Asian regionalism" with Japan at the focal point that in effect offers the United States a chance to get out from under in the area, though retaining considerable influence...
...After this decade of opening doors, we need a decade of reconciliation...
...During the days leading up to the Arab-Israeli confrontation of 1967, it was clear that our involvement in Vietnam had seriously weakened our firm and long-standing commitment to Israel...
...In New Hampshire he emphasized that this new opportunity to go on the offensive is what can make him a winner...
...By nature as well as by necessity, he is a man who is concerned with the present...
...After '62, the press could have said, 'Let's give it to the S.O.B.' But they didn't do it...
...Whether he is, not whether he believes he is, of course, is the important point as far as the electorate is concerned...
...I suppose the man would have sought out the President wherever he was, but the events would have been different and would have had a different impact on Oswald...
...If we can't score, something's awful wrong with us...
...I think that our people generally like to appraise their public servants and to detect, if they feel it is justified, any changes that indicate growth or change that they might approve...
...Party loyalty is commendable, but his total concentration on winning can be a bit chilling when the extent is revealed...
...Yet his logical mind can get him into trouble...
...And this year, circumstances are in his favor...
...I may be remembered," he said, "for dealing with totalitarian threats around the world...
...Politics, the contesting of ideas and forensic skills, clearly has always been Nixon's life, and there is no change in that...
...If anyone takes the time to check my public record fairly—and it's all there, the votes I cast, the speeches I made, the things I wrote—he'd have to conclude that on the great issues of the past twenty years, my record is clear and consistent...
...Large posters showing him thrusting his finger at Khrushchev's chest in the 1959 kitchen debate already are on display in the early primary states...
...In eight years as Vice President, he said, "I have learned a lot, and it is very possible that I certainly do convey a different impression today than I did previously, because if I hadn't learned, I wouldn't amount to too much...
...I may have been in California or Massachusetts...
...In fact, / must go to the other extreme: I must attack the Kennedy proposal to provide such aid as wrong and irresponsible because it would violate our treaty commitments...
...If the United States had dealt with Castro effectively at the Bay of Pigs," he told me, "Khrushchev would not have miscalculated a year later in the missile crisis...
...The stereotype of the bumbling Throttlebottom whom nobody knows or cares about no longer applies, and Nixon has not been tardy to recognize and exploit the change in the public's respect for the office...
...Nevertheless, the question deserves to be asked in 1968, and Nixon himself deserves to have it asked...
...Khrushchev...
...Such journeys into what-might-have-been are comparatively rare with Nixon...
...Yet Nixon's eagerness to discuss foreign affairs—and his dexterity in the act—suggests that he is convinced he is the best-equipped man on the political scene to conduct U.S...
...relations with the rest of the world...
...Nixon does not accept, either, the notion that he was merely a spear-carrier on foreign policy in the Eisenhower years...
...Nixon's reputation as a hawk on Vietnam is well-known, of course...
...Romney, of course, had been insisting all along that he had taken a position on Vietnam, and that it was perfectly clear...
...There are reasons to expect, however, that the Nixon style of the 1940s which made him the most despised of Republicans among liberals will not be seen again...
...it is this sort of indictment that inevitably attaches to Nixon as he seeks to impress the electorate that the new version is more able as well as more likable than the old...
...The newsmen had been told that Nixon's next event was not for another two and a half hours...
...When I asked him once whether it ever had occurred to him when he learned of President Kennedy's assassination, or later, that it could have been Richard M. Nixon in Dallas, he replied without hesitation: "The thought just never came up...
...At one point, the former Vice President lapsed into the simplified rhetoric that is more in keeping with his platform demeanor: "Our judges have gone too far in weakening the peace forces as against the criminal forces...
...That's a standard rule...
...Treating the Vice Presidency as if it really amounts to something is, of course, a transparently self-serving device for Nixon...
...Second, men do change...
...Today, nearly eight years later, it would be difficult for Nixon to dismiss the current "new, new Nixon" talk on grounds that people who did not like either the "old" Nixon or the "new Nixon" of 1960 now like the third version, or that they may not have known the earlier two...
...He proposed instead an economic quarantine that already was under way, and concluded: "For us to do what Senator Kennedy has suggested, would bring results which I know he would not want and certainly which the American people would not want...
...If the speaker was not a "new" Nixon compared to the one who wrote the Reader's Digest article only a short time earlier, he certainly seemed to be more balanced, to have deeper insight...
...when his presence made the difference...
...Nixon dislikes being psychoanalyzed by amateurs...
...It's a hell of a vulnerable record, too...
...While attacking the problems with urgency we must await the results with patience...
...Shortly after the fighting broke out, Nixon from Morocco was quoted by Reuters as saying: "I do not believe that either side has the capability, without massive assistance from a foreign power, of winning a quick victory...
...In a particularly penetrating observation, he wrote: "One of the legacies of Vietnam almost certainly will be a deep reluctance on the part of the United States to become involved once again in a similar intervention on a similar basis...
...As far as I'm concerned I can only be as I am...
...In the Congress, liberals and conservatives alike have firmly stated their conviction that the United States should never again engage in an effort like Vietnam...
...And those parties who have the power to wage war in the Mid-East do not want it...
...Although the office of the Vice Presidency continues to invite all the old derogatory gags, Nixon wears his alumnus button like a Phi Beta Kappa key, and the fact that he was indeed a globe-trotting Vice President in a popular national Administration may be the most logical explanation for his resiliency and political durability...
...His articles have appeared in The Saturday Evening Post, The Reporter, The New Republic, and Columbia Journalism Review...
...There was only one thing I could do...
...Republican pros like Nixon for the same general reason...
...and attempts to get beneath the surface usually result in the impression that the surface is what really matters with him...
...It seems incredible, considering how many times in the past the question has been asked, to be inquiring once again whether there is yet another "new" Richard M. Nixon...
...Why could he not simply have emphasized his own campaign proposal for a strict quarantine...
...I must not even suggest by implication that the United States was rendering aid to rebel forces in and out of Cuba...
...in several interviews in recent months he has reinforced the image by calling for "massive pressure" rather than "gradual escalation" against North Vietnam...
...It was the only political position that was salvageable," Nixon told me...
...The last several years also have given Nixon time and opportunity for reflection and growth, and it is not enough to observe that as a Presidential hopeful he naturally would try to convey the idea he has grown wiser, more understanding, and more compassionate...
...He seems, in spite of his past setbacks, more sure of himself today...
...he provided a concise and again, for the bulk of his following, a well-reasoned preview of his election-year thrust on the issue of racial turmoil and urban unrest...
...Johnson had erred politically, Nixon told me later, because "he attacked me on the wrong basis...
...But we cannot have patience with urban violence...
...Nixon's logical mind is a source of great strength to him as a public speaker and as a practitioner of the press conference...
...but seriously, may I say this: we all change...
...Critics have had no trouble following his hard anti-Communist line through the years, and for all his political overtures to the South, he has been on the record consistently as a moderate on civil rights...
...The implication of the "new, new Nixon" label is not that he really has changed, but that he really has not—that he just tries to make it look that way...
...This observation, certainly a far cry from a breast-beating declaration of American intent to hold the line in Asia, provides a striking parallel to the views of another political pragma-tist, Senator Robert Kennedy, on the same broad subject of what happens to U.S...
...Nixon, I cried all night when you lost the election, but now I'm glad you weren't elected President, because you wouldn't be here now.' I don't believe that...
...Perhaps I've learned something . .. Perhaps in this respect there is a new Nixon...
...In a polished and well-reasoned article in the October issue of Foreign Affairs, Nixon made a strong if somewhat wishful case for development of a Pacific community of nations that would take the leading anti-Communist role in Asia after the Vietnam war is ended, leaving the United States in a position of guidance rather than dominance...
...He could attack...
...Not only would Castro have been crushed, Nixon argued then, but the Russians never would have been able to—nor would have dared try to—practice nuclear blackmail a year later...
...There's an old saying: 'Never strike a king unless you kill him.' In politics, you don't hit your opponent unless you knock him out...
...He alluded to it in his kickoff New Hampshire speech on February 3, and the domestic specifics of his campaign likely will flow from it...
...At a press conference in Milwaukee in November, for example, Nixon was asked what effect Senator Eugene McCarthy's presence in the Wisconsin Democratic primary was likely to have on the Republican primary—the inference of the question being that McCarthy might cut into a Democratic crossover vote against Nixon...
...In September, 1960, CBS news commentator Walter Cronkite, in a television interview with Nixon, asked him whether he resented "talk of there being a 'new Nixon.' " He replied: "No, not particularly...
...The crowd applauded—and reporters snickered...
...His Wall Street partnership, which reportedly yields him about $200,000 a year, and his frequent globe-trotting and ready access to foreign dignitaries have given him a self-confidence he lacked as the rags-to-riches urchin of Republican politics in its post-World War II era...
...I should have remembered that 'a picture is worth a thousand words.' " The 1968 version of Richard Nixon is not likely to forget that lesson, nor to allow himself to be placed on the defensive to such a degree...
...At the conclusion of our postmortem," he wrote, "I recognized the basic mistake I had made...
...In my view, controversy builds up, not tears down...
...Thus, conservatives back Nixon for President today although he was an Eisenhower Republican in the 1950s, an internationalist, and moderate domestically...
...There are things Nixon might have said and done in his early years that he would not dream of doing today...
...I think it would not have happened to me...
...Nixon's acknowledgement to James Kilpatrick that he has to be absolutely candid to dispel the "Tricky Dick" appellation is as likely to feed the "new, new Nixon" talk as reduce it...
...A former Vice President of the United States who tours the world talking to prime ministers and kings does not deal from the bottom of the deck or carry extra aces in his shirt cuffs...
...But if the "old"—the original—Nixon has left the scene for good, that is not to say that the tremendous ambition, cunning, and political zest that drove that early Nixon is gone...
...Romney, who has had great trouble coming through clearly, already has paid a severe price for his failure...
...Kennedy later denied it.] But by stating such a position publicly, he obviously stood to gain the support of all those who wanted a stronger policy against Castro but who, of course, did not know of our covert programs already under way...
...deadlines...
...Nixon described his political dilemma later in Six Crises: "Kennedy was now publicly advocating what was already the policy of the American government—covertly—and Kennedy had been so informed...
...I had to give the reasons it was wrong...
...Nixon specifically cited the 1948 treaty setting up the Organization of American States, "in which we've agreed not to intervene in the internal affairs of any other American country," the preamble and Articles I and II of the U.N...
...Johnson, in a press conference, had called Nixon "a chronic campaigner" who was questioning the Administration's Vietnam policy "in the hope that he can pick up a precinct or two or a ward or two...
...I feel as time goes on in 1968 I'll have a better press," he said on his first Wisconsin swing...
...For all the places he has been, and for all the foreign leaders he has met and conversed with, the former Vice President has yet to demonstrate that he played a truly crucial role in shaping foreign policy in the Eisenhower Administration, or that his private world travels have developed a skill in crisis diplomacy to match the mileage he has piled up...
...Nixon's "Tricky Dick" reputation is not a total political disadvantage...
...I've always believed that what really makes a man a place in history is when something critical would or would not have happened without his presence...
...also, for all his deep partisanship he is well aware that it is poor tactics to flail away indiscriminately in a time when an increasingly polarized electorate yearns for an acceptable middle alternative—on the war and on the racial crisis...
...Nor is it simply a matter of conceding that he, like everybody else, changes as he gets older...
...America needs today to hear the voice of the broad and vital center...
...Though portrayed as a necessary proof of our will and ability to 'keep our commitments,' the war in Vietnam is very likely to have the opposite effect...
...Charter, providing "that there shall be no intervention by one nation in the internal affairs of another...
...he always thanks the reporters for showing up, and lets them know he is aware they need "a lead for your early a.m...
...The press is very helpful to me now," he told me on one occasion, when I had inquired about the California affair...
...I asked him once how he expects history will remember him...
...He is older (fifty-five), wiser, more concerned with propriety...
...In addition, Nixon has warned that a dragged-out war gives the Chinese time to build a deliverable nuclear punch—possibly by 1970...
...Six years after that debate, during an interview discussion about Kennedy and Cuba, I asked the former Vice President why he had to "go to the other extreme," and in fact voice the very same opposition to the Cuban invasion later sounded by its stoutest Democratic critics...
...Some would have us prove in Vietnam that 'wars of national liberation cannot succeed.' But the longer the conflict goes on, the more likely we are to 'prove' that the United States will not oppose them in the future...
...Some friends and aides, noting this same change, attribute it to the fact that for the first time in his life, Nixon has it made financially...
...After that 1960 election, which he lost by only 119,000 votes out of 68,336,000 cast, many friends and advisers pressured him to contest the outcome, to demand a recount or an investigation into reported irregularities, especially in Cook County (Chicago), Illinois...
...Dick Nixon comes down South and talks hard on civil rights, but you know he has to say what he does for the Northern press...
...Since last fall, the Nixon-for-President operation has been gearing up for what could almost be called an incumbent's campaign...
...One course would be simply to state that what Kennedy was advocating as a new policy was already being done, had been adopted as a policy as a result of my direct support, and that Kennedy was endangering the security of the whole operation by his public statement...
...If Nixon critics say they cannot trust him, the pros who know him best say they like him precisely for the reason that they can trust him—to do what smart politics dictates, and to look out for their interests, regardless of ideology...
...There were some foreign policy decisions in which I was involved that may be judged to fall into that category...
...to come into Latin America and to engage us in what would be a civil war and possibly even worse than that...
...There is, of course, a fundamental difference between Kennedy and Nixon over what to do about this growing American unwillingness to play global policeman...
...Nixon, by contrast, is able to overcome occasional lapses by always coming on strong and positively, right or wrong...
...I'm not going to sit here in a Presidential campaign . . . and say that Lyndon Johnson is lying to the American people about [Vietnam] because I don't believe he is," Nixon said in Green Bay...
...Nixon himself, for all his confidence that his press relations are better, remains wary—an egg-walker before the press...
...But Nixon no longer finds it necessary, or prudent, to engage often in his old talent...
...But it is clear already that he embraces the theme of more voluntary initiatives of an enlightened private enterprise—and less government—in all aspects of social welfare...
...What the voters will want from him, they have contended, is discussion of the issues and formulation of solutions to problems everyone knows he long has dealt with...
...He likens himself to Adlai Stevenson as a man concerned with-words and says he would like nothing better than to be a teacher and writer...
...I couldn't say what we were actually doing and what I was advocating within the Government...
...by JULES WITCOVER "To the reports that there's a conA scious change," Richard M. Nixon told an interviewer in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on February 5, "I'm not aware of it...
...In politics, as Barry Goldwater irrefutably established in 1964, absolute candor can be absolute suicide, and as a result, only a neophyte or a fool is likely thus to volunteer to be his own political executioner...
...This conviction that he is the GOP's resident genius on foreign affairs enables Nixon to pursue his 1968 campaign for the Presidential nomination in an atmosphere of Elder Statesmanship—kid-gloves lecturing on big-power relationships, without the naked character assassination of which he was accused in early political ventures, or the severe partisan assaults that won him the adoration of Republican professionals and the eternal enmity of Democrats...
...But he attacked my credentials on Asia, and most people would agree I have a little more background, because of my travels, in that part of the world than he does...
...I can overcome this impression one way only: by absolute candor...
...In the business of politicking, however, projecting a logical, positive image can be just as important as being right...
...Look at my record on civil rights...
...Discussing the outcome of the 1966 Congressional election with me a few days after the GOP sweep he had widely predicted, Nixon contended that President Johnson's sharp personal attack on him just before election day had made the difference...
...For a man who was actively advocating aid to the exiles at that very time, he did a remarkably thorough job of arguing the opposite view...
...I feel much of my work in this field, whether it is in foreign exchange, foreign aid, or supporting a hard line in Asia on Vietnam and Quemoy-Matsu, will be treated with more respect by historians than by contemporaries...
...It would all depend, the former Vice President said, "on the position Governor Romney takes on the Vietnam problem...
...He now brushes aside his past flaps with newsmen as water over the dam...
...But this would be, for me, an utterly irresponsible act...
...I consider that he is a patriotic American, he works hard, and is a very skillful politician, but he has shown a lack of understanding . . ." There still remain, to be sure, the sly Nixonisms for which he has become known: the verbal beheadings accomplished so neatly that the skull never topples...
...Nixon aides have insisted there is no need for their candidate to engage in excessive flesh-pressing because he is a man with a reputation already achieved and respected...
...Our opinion-makers have gone too far in promoting the doctrine that when a law is broken, society, not the criminal, is to blame...
...This attitude serves him well now, when the focus must be on Nixon today, particularly because the Nixon of the past has been branded as a two-time loser...
...It has not been so much what he fights for or against, but the way he does it that has bothered his bitterest foes...
...With this threat hanging over the world, he will tell the voters this spring, the Vietnam war must be shortened by massive use of American air and sea power, short of using nuclear weapons...
...And because he has learned to live with his defeats remarkably well—even to telling audiences he is a "dropout from the Electoral College"—a more philosophical vein has begun to surface in him...
...In his new book, To Seek a Newer World, Kennedy says: "The mounting cost [of the war] is an increasing deterrent to action elsewhere...
...The covert operation had to be protected at all costs...
...Or "the old" Nixon telling a Wisconsin interviewer who asked him why youth would go for him: "I happen to think I bring a certain competence— that, of course, is a self-serving statement that candidates have to make, rather shamelessly . . ." According to Kilpatrick, Nixon makes an intentional effort to fight the image of the "old" Nixon...
...Kennedy was taking a highly popular position and simply to say you were against it would not have been enough politically...
...he sees his 1962 California press conference as a politically hurtful episode but one that has cleared the air and made for improved relations...
...The way to avoid miscalculation is to never give them a moment when they think you're weak...
...Nixon's high self-appraisal surfaces in many things he says...
...But in exploring elements of change in Nixon, the man's reading of himself is central to the examination...
...Fairness dictates that one concede that change is possible, and to explore the evidence...
...I had concentrated too much on substance and not enough on appearance...
...Republican moderate governors, fearing Romney is doomed, say they can go along with Nixon if it comes to that, even though he is "the conservative candidate" in 1968...
...Although one still finds a majority of unreconstructed cynics about Nixon in the political press corps, this observation seems largely correct...
...Before a fund-raising speech, he is likely to provide a capsule rundown "so you won't have to bother covering it 'live' if you don't want to...
...And the beauty of this more balanced approach is that it can be used both North and South, calming fears of excessive repression in the North and of excessive accommodation in the South...
...Judging from what Nixon told me of his plans for an earlier and effective invasion of Cuba, the events certainly would have been different...
...About the inner Nixon, there is today, as in the past, remarkably little to go on...
...Kennedy had the offensive role...
...No two men are in the same place at the same time...
...Emphasis added...
...To fortify this issues-oriented posture, Nixon has carefully selected a few influential forums for the exposition of his latest views on major American problems, and has begun to construct a formal record on which to conduct his Elder Statesmanship campaign...
...We are not only less likely to assume other commitments, but also less likely to fulfill those we have with great support or enthusiasm...
...In his first 1968 New Hampshire appearance, Nixon halted a long reception line to tell voters waiting to shake his hand that he had another event to attend but, knowing they had waited so long, was staying on...
...So, I will concede that I have changed, and I hope for the better...
...It is seen most clearly in his attitude toward the press...
...On most specific issues of domestic policy, Nixon has only begun to present his current position...
...This makes it vitally in their own interest that the nations in the path of China's ambitions move quickly to establish an indigenous Asian framework for their own future security...
...What could I do...
...It is hard to picture the "old" Nixon, for example, telling Stephen Hess and David S. Broder as he did in their excellent new book, The Republican Establishment, about the depth of his appeal to party conservatives whose backing he depends on this year: "They don't like me, but they tolerate me...
...Last summer, it convinced him that there would be no war in the Middle East...
...On the single foremost issue of foreign policy, Vietnam, Nixon's strong image as a man who has been tough with the Communists and understands how they think is the cornerstone of his appeal...
...The decision, he told press conferences in Chicago and Toronto, would come not from Cairo or Tel Aviv, but from Moscow if the Soviet Union chose to tip the power balance by giving the Arabs a sudden arms transfusion...
...He works references to his old job into many speeches and he conducts himself in public as if he still represents the United States at a high level—friendly, but not too friendly, candid but always diplomatic in discussing matters affecting American friends abroad, witty yet dignified as becomes one who once held the second-highest elective office in the world's most powerful republic...
...It is his intent to portray himself, beyond that, as a man who not only is equipped to get the war over with, but also is looking down the road to the great challenges of post-Vietnam abroad and at home...
...But he seems to feel genuinely that the Vice Presidency has bestowed a kind of lifetime political peerage on him...
...Two of the last three Vice Presidents—Nixon and Johnson—have been nominated to run for the Presidency, and the third—Hubert Humphrey—is regarded as a contender four years hence...
...Everything will be reversed...
...And on this score, there clearly is a "new, new Nixon" in terms of the loftier level on which he operates today...
...There could be no doubt that he means to be that voice...
...Logical, but wrong...
...and then look at Lyndon's...
...if that indicates there is something basically new or different about him this time around, then there must be, indeed, a "new, new Nixon...
...Last spring I was in Atlanta listening to Romney lecture the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce on civil rights...
...A plan to help these exiles invade Cuba was at that very time in the works in the Eisenhower Administration, with Nixon himself one of its strongest advocates...
...He can attack my position, that's all right...
...Today, as Nixon ventures into the 1968 primaries that can make or break his candidacy, he is not scrambling, not running scared...
...It's a brutal thing to fight...
...Like Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon has a personal credibility gap that will never be completely closed by "absolute candor...
...Kennedy argues that the quest for political change is endemic in the underdeveloped world and should be encouraged or at least not impeded...
...Bitter dissension has > torn the fabric of American intellectual life, and whatever the outcome of the war the tear may be a long time mending...
...In the same interview, Nixon told me that had he been elected that year, the Cuban invasion he had felt obliged to shoot down so vigorously in debate would have gone ahead—at his specific recommendation—even before he took office...
...They are there as always, though exercised with more subtlety—yes, even better taste—than before, and therefore with more effect...
...His ability to stay in the public consciousness is impressive...
...While supporting the American commitment in Vietnam, Nixon has charged that gradual application of power has only lengthened the war by giving the other side time to adjust to each new blow and by encouraging it to think it can outlast American determination...
...For his part, he puts a much higher evaluation on the Vice Presidency than John Garner's classic bucket of warm spit...
...While adequate police forces are part of the answer to the short-range problems," he said, "the long-range problems will not yield to superior force alone...
...Anyone who has met Nixon in the last eighteen months is quite likely to be struck by a more tractable, less defensive tone...
...The former Vice President's reputation as a political chameleon is reflected in current references to "the new, new Nixon," obviously to differentiate not only from the old Nixon of the 1940s and 1950s, but also from "the new Nixon" of 1960 and later...
...After seven years out of office, he remains undeniably a national political celebrity...
...What will be, will be, and each man has his own destiny...
...If another friendly country should be faced with an externally supported Communist insurrection—whether in Asia, or in Africa or even Latin America—there is serious question whether the American public or the American Congress would now support a unilateral American intervention, even at the request of the host government...
...JULES WITCOVER is a political analyst for the Newhouse newspapers...
...He will apologize if he is the least bit late and for not having a prepared text of his speech...
...But I've been in this game long enough to know that few voters have the time or inclination to study a record...
...Immediate and decisive force must be the first response...
...On the positive side, there is at least one noteworthy exception to the picture of Nixon as a man so compulsively driven to win that to salvage his political position he will aggressively condemn in public a position he has advocated in private...
...Because "time was of the essence," he said, he would have recommended to President Eisenhower that the invasion be launched in December, 1960—scarcely two months after his blast against Kennedy's advocacy of aid to the exiles and at least three months before Kennedy actually allowed it to proceed...
...He has interviewed Richard Nixon three times and has traveled extensively with the former Vice President...
...no one (possibly excepting Nixon himself) had a less favorable image in the liberal political community than Robert F. Kennedy in the late 1950s, yet today many liberals who once were cool to Kennedy believe he has experienced a philosophical metamorphosis and a tempering personal maturity, resulting largely from events of the last four years...
...The trouble is that once there is doubt, there likely is never to be complete confidence again...
...He is not as likely today to resort to what his foes have called his "instinct for the jugular," not necessarily because that instinct does not exist or has vanished, but because it would not fit in with his new role...
...You never build up a major spokesman on the other side...
...The war has imposed severe strains on the United States, not only militarily and economically but socially and politically as well...
...This won't be like 1960," he told James J. Kilpatrick in an interview for National Review in November...
...And then the apostle of Republican partisanship observed: "The old quarrels—between management and labor, between Democrat and Republican, between liberal and conservative— must be put on the back burner, until we decide together if the society itself is going to survive...
...Press conferences that have been his mainstay over the last two years—hundreds, his staff says—usually are marked by mutual deference, with seldom a temper lost or a voice raised on either side...
...In Six Crises, he tells how he learned the importance of being— and looking—forceful and positive...
...I'm a Q-and-A guy, not a set-speech guy...
...And sufficient force would have been used to succeed, Nixon added...
...Because his views flow in an orderly sequence, one from another, he comes through much more clearly than, say, George Romney, and he seldom contradicts himself...
...He arrived politically long ago, and what is more to the point, he feels he has arrived...
...What it amounted to was this: Clamp down on violence, whatever the cause, and only then move to redress grievances and injustices behind it...
...Now, as far as I'm concerned, when people say there is a new Nixon, that must mean that people who did not like the Nixon that they knew before, now like the one that they know now...
...In some other ways, notably his attitude toward intellectualism, he remains the poor alienated kid with his nose pressed enviously against the toy store window...
...Nixon may be, in fact, even closer to the Presidency now than he was in 1960, and it is critical for the electorate to know what changes, if any, have been wrought in him since then, in seven years out of public office...
...And to say subtlety is not to say deviousness, because Nixon if anything has become more candid...
...for Nixon, electing Republicans is the name of the game—liberal Republicans, conservative Republicans, tall Republicans, short Republicans...
...I was in the position, in 1960, of defending a goal line...
...We have listened too long to the extremes of the new left and the old right...
...An aggressive Nixon, a Nixon on the attack, may indeed provide a contrast with the Nixon of 1960, who spent so much time in that first TV debate playing the cordial, reasonable guy that Kennedy all but chased him out of the studio...
...This is a far cry from the Nixon of the 1962 California press conference, but not much different from the wary political warrior of 1960...
...In his early Wisconsin and New Hampshire campaigning he also struck this more balanced note...
...This confuses long-range needs with short-range crises...
...Nixon is said to have steadfastly refused, on grounds that the country could not afford the period of uncertainty about its leadership that such an action would almost assuredly precipitate...
...Nor has he been particularly inconsistent on policy...
...Rather, he adopts the posture and the trappings of the Elder Statesman of the Free World...
...It would be an open invitation for Mr...
...Many of the members clearly resented it, and I overheard one of them remark: "This fellow really means it...
...The outward evidences of change—the fact that he is more relaxed, wittier, more tolerant of criticism, more candid—are not particularly good arguments when the indictment is that the man changes his outward appearance to meet criticism, yet inwardly remains the same...
...Three times in the NAM speech Nixon told his listeners that we must "think anew and act anew...
...it would disclose a secret operation, and completely destroy its effectiveness...
...The carefully cultivated impression is that Nixon is devious...
...In the fourth of the television debates, he called Kennedy's ideas "probably the most dangerously irresponsible recommendations" of the campaign, and he warned that if they were followed, "we would lose all of our friends in Latin America, we would probably be condemned in the United Nations, and we would not accomplish our objective...
...Now, I happen to believe, myself, that perhaps many of those who discover the new Nixon may not have known the old one...
...Since he believed it would take big-power action to trigger the war, it was logical to assume that it would take big power action to end it quickly...
...Nixon immediately labeled the attack "a •shocking display of temper" that had "broken the bipartisan line on Vietnam policy," and he hammered home his indignation in the final days of the Congressional campaign...
...Nixon, appearing before the Richmond, Virginia, Chamber of Commerce in mid-January, repeated the line he had used in New York about the need for a decade of reconciliation after a decade of revolution, and it was well-received...
...First, if the prospect of another go-round on the "real" Nixon stretches credence, it does so no more than the fact that after two major political defeats the man stands today near the threshold of a second Republican Presidential nomination in a year when the GOP nominee may become the next President...
...It projects him as a man who has firm convictions about things, and as he has gained in self-confidence his performances on the stump have improved accordingly...
...Nixon, true to his word about being more open, now frequently lets reporters have a peek into the tent of his political mind, and what they see is impressive but not always flattering to him...
...They still call me 'Tricky Dick,'" Nixon told Kilpatrick in the National Review article...
...It was one of the ironies of the campaign, but I had to do it...
...It is by such miniscule fibs that existing credibility gaps are sustained among those who interpret politicians to the American public...
...I have to present my views as I believe them, and if it takes basically putting on an act in order to be a successful candidate for President, I'm not the man...
...In an article in the October Reader's Digest called "What Has Happened to America...
...But the implication that such travels and such talks constitute first-rate, in-depth foreign policy experience in itself can be a fast deal...
...They feel he can be counted on to do the politically necessary thing, which is what they care about...
...Nixon did not, obviously, count on the Arabs going too far and on the Israelis finally jamming it down their throats as the Soviet Union—and the United States—stood aside...
...But conservatives who recall with pleasure the early Nixon of 1946 who attacked Democratic Representative Jerry Voorhis as (in Kilpatrick's words) "a man soft on Communism," and the Nixon of 1950 who (again according to Kilpatrick) "made great capital" against Helen Gahagan Douglas "by comparing her voting record to Vito Marcantonio's," may view it as retrogression...
...He appears to have accepted himself not only as a successful lawyer, but as a bona fide national and even world leader whose stature is secure...
...First of all, he does not need to scramble to the degree his critics have said he did in those early days...
...it would be naive not to see a strong element of political sleight-of-hand in Nixon's self-constructed reputation as the GOP's reigning expert on foreign policy...
Vol. 32 • March 1968 • No. 3
