Nixon's Secret (27 page)

About midway in the UPI debate, Tom Braden, later a national columnist and but then a California publisher and a Brown appointee as chairman of the California Board of Education, stood up and asked a question about the Hughes loan. The moderator, Theron Little, publisher of the Salt Lake City
Desert News
, declared the question out of order because of the rules on personal questions.

Nixon looked properly pained but jumped up and said he would like to overrule the moderator and answer the question once and for all. The tactic and the answer won the debate and won the applause of the California publishers and editors. “Nixon said Brown ‘retreated like a whipped dog.’” The joint appearance, however, would not affect Brown’s impending victory.

Nixon’s quest for the governorship would end November 6, 1962. The next day Nixon would engage in an act of self-immolation in his “last press conference.”

It is imperative to review Nixon’s actions on that depressing election eve. Nixon knew the odds against his winning were tremendous. He needed a miracle to beat Pat Brown. Nixon himself kept notes on his thoughts that day. On a ruled yellow pad, he kept a careful diary of some of his thoughts.

Nixon’s notes stated:

“No prediction—however we won’t wait as long as in ‘60, absentee already being counted.”

In his election night notes on his yellow pad in 1962, Nixon also observed:

“Maybe won’t know result until tomorrow if it stays in this neighborhood.”

“Will not make statement until results are known.”

“Only God and people know who is winning.”

“This race will be 50 ½–49 ½ somebody will win by a noze [he spelled it that way presumably to amuse himself]—only hope my noze is longer.”

“Was going to house but called and found family had already eaten,” and further noted that he had sent out for dinner: “pineapple milkshake and coffee.”

“Last results showed we are 10,000 votes ahead,” he wrote. “No trend as yet however.”

Then, finally, reality set in as the returns mounted.

“Never,” he wrote.

Press Secretary Herb Klein, Bob Finch, and the ever-present Murray Chotiner canvassed party leaders by phone periodically and reported the results to Nixon, who sat alone in his suite. Klein described him as quiet, alone in his thoughts, and “virtually immobile.”

Downstairs the press was out of control as press assistants Ron Ziegler and Sandy Quinn tried to mollify them. The newsmen tasted blood. Klein said, “It was almost as if the press sensed a kill and was anxious to get at it. Defeat was a bigger story than victory in this case.”

Klein made periodic appearances at the podium at the hotel ballroom but admitted to finding it difficult to show any optimism. Veteran entertainer Johnny Grant attempted to keep the enthusiasm of the crowd of Nixon supporters up, but the handwriting was on the wall, as reporters demanded an audience with the candidate or at least a statement of concession in time to make various national deadlines. The reporters were howling for a concession by Nixon. At midnight Nixon decided to concede. He was exhausted and stunned, and began drinking bourbon out of a coffee cup supplied in his suite. Nixon dictated a telegram to Governor Pat Brown.

Because some of the Republican areas in Orange and San Diego counties had still not reported and all the press deadlines had passed, Nixon decided that he would release Klein to read the telegram in the morning. Nixon shuffled off to bed depressed and exhausted, and Klein announced to the gaggle of reporters waiting that there would be a press conference at 10 a.m.

The Nixon men would huddle over the returns the following morning. With turnout exceeding 81 percent and with more than 5.5 million votes cast, Brown had been reelected by about 300,000 votes. It was decided that Klein would face the press and read the telegrams of concession to Brown and of appreciation to the campaign workers.

The staff heard that Nixon was stirring around and looking for coffee. Finch, Haldeman, and Klein went into his suite to brief him. He knew by then that he had lost. Campaign scheduler John Ehrlichman recalled the sequence of events. “[A]s soon as he had arrived at the hotel on Election Day Nixon had begun greeting defeat with lubrication but without grace. Haldeman and the others had decided that in view of deteriorating conditions, there would be no Nixon interviews to the big TV cameras that were waiting at the far end of the hall on Nixon’s floor. As the evening wore on I gathered that our candidate was good and drunk; Finch, Haldeman, and Klein were apparently having some trouble keeping him away from the telephones in his suite and buttoned up inside his room.”
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Nixon’s first words were, “Herb, don’t try to talk me into going down and facing the press. Damn it, I am not going to do it. Screw ‘em.” Klein agreed with him. The plan was for Nixon to go home to his family while Klein faced the howling press scrum in the ballroom.

The plan was to have Nixon leave during the press conference. Advance man Pete Wilson, later governor and US senator of California, found a back entrance from the hotel where Nixon could be met with a car and then driven home.

Klein went to the ballroom, where he opened the 10 a.m. news conference. He announced that Nixon was exhausted and would not make an appearance that day. Klein read the telegrams to the impatient reporters.

At that point Nixon wandered out of his suite to thank members of the staff individually. It was an emotional scene, with many of the campaign volunteers and staff crying. Nixon was then embraced by an emotional Italian staff television producer, who also broke into sobs.

At that point, Ray Arbuthnot and Jack Drown, two of Nixon’s oldest friends, arrived and learned of Nixon’s plan for departure. They were indignant. One led off by telling the now emotionally upset Nixon, “You can’t let the press chase you out the back door. You ought to face them or at least go out in your own style!”

The shouting reporters in the ballroom could be heard on a television set just off the hallway where Nixon stood with his friends Arbuthnot and Drown. Something in Nixon snapped. As Nixon headed for the elevator and announced he was going down to make a statement to the press.

Haldeman somehow ran down the hotel stairs and got ahead of Nixon and his entourage. He rushed to the side of the platform where Klein was addressing the press. Haldeman waved at Klein frantically, and Klein took that to mean that all was clear, that Nixon had departed for home.
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Klein announced that Nixon had left the hotel, but within seconds, scattered applause was heard from the adjacent lobby of the hotel.

Gladwin Hill of the
New York Times
described the scene, “[As] Klein was pursuing a rambling colloquy with the reporters, there was a sudden buffeting of the velvet drapes behind him. Klein turned and his jaw dropped. Nixon, neatly dressed in a blue suit, blue shirt, and blue tie that emphasized his blue-jowled haggardness, stepped out and made his way to the cluster of microphones.”
22

“Now that Mr. Klein has made a statement, now that all the members of the press I know are so delighted that I lost, I would just like to make one myself,” Nixon started.

Nixon would unload:

I appreciate the press coverage in this campaign. I think each of you covered it the way you saw it. You had to write it in the way according to your belief on how it would go. I don’t believe publishers should tell reporters to write one way or another. I want them all to be free. I don’t believe the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] or anybody else should silence [word lost in transmission].

I have no complaints about the press coverage. I think each of you was writing it as you believed it.

I congratulate Governor Brown, as Herb Klein has already indicated, for his victory. He has, I think, the greatest honor and the greatest responsibility of, uh, any governor in the United States.

And if he has this honor and this responsibility, I think that he will now have certainly a position of tremendous interest for America and as well as for the people of California.

I wish him well. I wish him well not only from the personal standpoint, because there were never on my part any personal considerations.

I believe Governor Brown has a heart, even though he believes I do not.

I believe he is a good American, even though he feels I am not.

And therefore, I wish him well because he is the governor of the first state. He won and I want this state to be led with courage. I want it to be led decisively and I want it to be led, certainly, with the assurance that the man who lost the campaign never during the course of the campaign raised a personal consideration against his opponent—never allowed any words indicating that his opponent was motivated by lack of heart or lack of patriotism to pass his lips.

I am proud of the fact that I defended my opponent’s patriotism.

You gentlemen didn’t report it, but I am proud that I did that. I am proud also that I defended the fact that he was a man of good motives, a man that I disagreed with very strongly, but a man of good motives.

I want that—for once, gentlemen, I would appreciate if you would write what I say, in that respect. I think it’s very important that you write it—in the lead—in the lead.

Now, I don’t mean by that, incidentally, all of you.

One last thing: What are my plans? Well, my plans are to go home. I’m going to get acquainted with my family again. And my plans, incidentally, are, from a political standpoint, of course, to take a holiday. It will be a long holiday. I don’t say this with any sadness. I couldn’t feel, frankly, more—well, frankly, more proud of my staff for the campaign. We campaigned against great odds. We fought a good fight. And I take the responsibility for any mistakes.

One last thing: People say, what about the past? What about losing in ‘60 and losing in ‘64? I remember somebody on my last television program said, “Mr. Nixon, isn’t it a comedown, having run for president, and almost made it, to run for governor?” And the answer is I’m proud to have run for governor. Now, I would have like to have won. But, not having won, the main thing was that I battled—battled for the things I believed in.

One last thing. At the outset, I said a couple of things with regards to the press that I noticed some of you looked a little irritated about. And my philosophy with respect to the press has really never gotten through. And I want to get it through.

This cannot be said for any other American political figure today, I guess. Never in my sixteen years of campaigning have I complained to a publisher, to an editor, about the coverage of a reporter. I believe a reporter has got a right to write it as he feels it. I believe if a reporter believes that one man ought to win rather than the other, rather it’s on television or radio or the like, he ought to say so. I will say to the reporter sometimes that I think well, look, I wish you’d give my opponent the same going over that you give me.

The last play. I leave you gentlemen now and you now write it. You will interpret it. That’s your right. But as I leave you I want you to know—just think how much you’re going to be missing.

You won’t have Nixon to kick around any more, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference and it will be one in which I have welcomed the opportunity to test wits with you. I have always respected you. I have sometimes disagreed with you.

But, unlike some people, I’ve never canceled a subscription to a paper and also I never will.

I believe in reading what my opponents say and I hope that what I have said today will at least make television, radio, the press, first recognize the great responsibility they have to report all the news and, second, recognize that they have a right and a responsibility, if they’re against a candidate, give him the shaft, but also recognize if they give him the shaft, put one lonely reporter on the campaign who will report what the candidate says now and then.

Nixon would conclude by saying, “Thank you, gentlemen, and good day,” and he would depart for the hotel’s front entrance where his car had been moved. Nixon turned to Klein and said, “Damn it, I know you didn’t want me to do that. But I had to say it. I had to say it.”

The press reaction came in many forms—none of it good. Mary McGrory of the
Washington Star
described it as “exit snarling.”
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Nixon’s campaign aide John Ehrlichman described Nixon as “hungover, trembling, and red-eyed,” but alert and in strong voice. A number of veteran newsmen who had covered Nixon had the same impression, although interestingly, none wrote it that way. Nixon would be described as peevish and irritable, but no one reported that he had been drinking heavily the night before.
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Nixon himself wrote he was angry.

The
Los Angeles Times
was angry about Nixon’s rant because the paper had supported Nixon in every race he had entered. Nixon singled out reporter Carl Greenberg for praise in his caustic remarks, and it was a dig at his colleague Richard Bergholz. Bergholz, also of the
Los Angeles Times,
was the reporter who bothered Nixon most, and his reporting, more than anyone else, explains the press conference references to Greenberg and the
Times
. Bergholz was relentless in his dislike of Nixon, even insisting that California reporters never speak “off the record” or “on background” when Nixon attempted to have a background discussion with the press. “Out here we say it on the record, Nixon, or we don’t say it at all.” Many of Bergholz’s own colleagues found him grating. Reagan Press Secretary Jim Lake told me, “Bergholz was a real prick.”
25

A Nixon staff member overheard a motel switchboard operator placing a call from Bergholz to Brown’s press secretary. The report would reverberate through the campaign, eventually making it to Nixon himself. Nixon was convinced that Bergholz was spying on him and reporting to Brown. Considering Bergholz’s later antagonism for Governor Ronald Reagan as well as Nixon, I think it is entirely possible. The report infuriated Nixon.