Truman Library - Robert G. Nixon Oral History Interview, November 6, 1970

News correspondent with the International News Service, 1930-58; served as editor of the service for a time. He first came to Washington, D.C., in 1938 where he served as their State Department and foreign relations correspondent. He was a war correspondent, attached to the British army in France and Belgium, 1940, during invasion of the low countries; evacuated from Dunkirk but later returned to France; evacuated with remnants of the British army from Brest, June 20, 1940; covered London Blitz, 1940-41; war correspondent, attached to United States forces in European theater of operations, 1942-1943; correspondent in Northern Ireland, United Kingdom, and Mediterranean theater, participating in North African invasion and campaign. Covered Casablanca conference, 1943; Quebec conference, 1944; and Potsdam, 1945. Washington correspondent covering the White House beginning in 1944.

Bethesda, Maryland
November 6, 1970
By Jerry N. Hess

NOTICE
This is a transcript of a tape-recorded interview conducted for the Harry S. Truman Library. A draft of this transcript was edited by the interviewee but only minor emendations were made; therefore, the reader should remember that this is essentially a transcript of the spoken, rather than the written word.

As an electronic publication of the Truman Library, users should note that features of the original, hardcopy version of the oral history interview, such as pagination and indexing, could not be replicated for the online version of the Robert G. Nixon transcript.

RESTRICTIONS
This oral history transcript may be read, quoted from, cited, and reproduced for purposes of research. It may not be published in full except by permission of the Harry S. Truman Library.

HESS: Mr. Nixon, we concluded yesterday's interview discussing the dismissal of General MacArthur in April of 1951. My next subject deals with Mr. Truman's announcement that he did not intend to run for re-election. That takes us all the way to March of '52. Are there any major points between those two times that we should discuss?

NIXON: Those were just months in which everything was getting worse for the Truman administration. Communist China had come into the war in Korea. The fighting was more desperate and prolonged. The battle lines went back and forth. The Korean war lasted two years more, and technically, it still is going on because there has never been any peace settlement. That conflict overshadowed about everything else.

Truman's administration was constantly battered by the Republican leadership in Congress. This was instanced by the McCarthy type hearings and the vile methods that he used. So vile that finally the Congress had to censor him. This was a most unusual proceeding which has happened to very few members of the Senate in our entire history.

The Korean conflict was highly unpopular. The casualty toll was enormous. Wartime controls had been put on again, and these were making business people back here very unhappy. It was becoming more obvious that this constant drumfire of attacks on Truman by the Republican leadership was making Truman and his administration look very bad to the American people. His administration was going downhill. The great probability was that in 1952 the opposition nominee, even a Tom Dewey, would be elected President because it was getting to the point where people were going to vote against rather than for. They would vote against another Democratic administration, and for a new Republican administration.

HESS: If Mr. Truman had run for office in 1952, do you think he would have been defeated regardless of who was the Republican candidate?

NIXON: I don't think there is any question about it. I'm sure that he realized this. Things were totally different by this time. In 1948 everyone had been saying that Truman couldn't possibly win, but he won with an almost overwhelming plurality. But by this time he had been chopped to pieces.

HESS: When did you first become aware that Mr. Truman did not intend to run for re-election in 1952?

NIXON: I can answer that only by telling what went on that I knew about. To be fair about this thing and make no claims of prescience, it wasn't until he made this surprise announcement at the Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner at the National Guard Auditorium in Washington, March 29 of 1952.

His decision was a carefully cloaked secret. For the reasons that I have just been talking about, it became obvious that events were such that if he did run again, it was very likely that he would be defeated. He could see this. No President likes to run and be defeated. That becomes a blemish on their record and tends to wipe out any record of achievement that they may have made before. Whether justified or not, it is a repudiation of the majority of American voters. No man wants a blemish on his record, regardless of what may have been the circumstances that brought it out.

As the months went by in '51 and into the early part of '52, the probability that he would not run, became increasingly obvious, but here again it was one man's decision. He was the only man who would say, "I will," or "I won't." That was the situation. There was page after page of speculation being written, but no one was talking with authority or with factual knowledge.

This atmosphere was surrounded by the fact that, despite his having served virtually eight years in office, he could have run for another terms because he had had only one elective term. The law, by that time, had been amended, and a President was permitted to have just two terms in office. This was a factor that kept the matter open.

At Key West, on November 19, the President confided, in the small staff that he had there with him on this naval base, that he did not intend to run again. He swore each staff member to secrecy. He didn't have to tell them, but this was a thoughtful thing on his part in order to give his staff members a chance to look around for their future. When Truman went out of office, they were going out of office too. This was a courtesy (and a very thoughtful one on his part), because the moment a President says positively that he is not going to run, he loses virtually all of the authority and power of the remainder of his term in office. He becomes what is known as a "lame duck." Congress ignores him. The country says, "This man's going out, he's a has-been." He loses the great power and authority that is vested in the Presidency. He continues to have the authority legally, of course, but nobody pays any attention to him. So, this was a courtesy on his part to members of his staff who were able people. When he left office, they were going to leave, and they would have to find themselves other jobs.

As I say, they were sworn to secrecy, and this was a very carefully kept secret. But by odd chance, I learned that he was not going to run. I learned it in a manner in which I could not use it with a feeling that my information was completely authentic and positive.

At the naval base in Key West they had a PX. These PXs are run as sort of a fringe benefit, at cost, not to make any money. There's no overhead, or relatively none. About the only overhead were the few civilian personnel employed as clerks.

Being in the presidential party, I and others, were privileged to go over to the PX while we were there and buy whatever we wanted at these relatively low rates. They sold cosmetics, tobacco, cigarettes, cigars, kitchen utensils--the type of things that you get in almost any supermarket today and at very discount prices. So, I would go over there and make little purchases. I became acquainted with the clerks in the store. I had been there on numerous trips and had always gone over to the PX in leisure moments.

One day on this November trip, I was over at the PX. One of the women clerks who had been very pleasant and knew me as being a member of the President's party, was waiting on me. We got talking about the President and the future, and she said, "You know he isn't going to run again."

I laughed and said, "Well, what makes you think so? Are you just guessing, like I'm having to guess?"

She said, "Well, I won't mention any names, but I think I know what I'm talking about."

I had to let it go at that because she was getting a little snappish at that point.

Now what had happened, this PX also was used by the members of the President's staff. They came over there and made their purchases too. They were all well-known to the clerical help as being members of the President's party. If they made a statement of that sort to some clerk in the store, I'm sure that they would not have considered that a violation of a secret, because here's just somebody's opinion being thrown out. Opinions can be thrown out on that basis without it meaning that the President had already told them that he was not going to run. That obviously was what had happened. As I say, this clerk that I talked with conversationally, was a quite friendly, out giving person with a pleasant smile and a nice way about her.

NIXON: Conversationally, without it being put in the light of a matter of confidence.

As it turned out that is what had happened. But there was information coming to me, entirely third hand. It was recognizable as having authenticity only if I decided to give it authenticity myself. There was no direct source attached to the President. It could have been somebody's wild guess based on nothing at all but what they had been reading in the newspapers.

I had the story, but I couldn't use it. I had to just let it lay. This was the single, around the corner, leak that I heard coming out of this November session.

HESS: I'd like to read the names of the men who were in that session. William Rigdon in his book White House Sailor on page 267, lists the following people as being present: Rear Admiral Sidney W. Souers, the President's adviser on security matters; Admiral Leahy; Admiral Dennison; General Vaughan; General Landry; Bill Hassett; Joe Short; Roger Tubby; Charles Murphy; Donald Dawson; Dave Bell; the Legislative Assistant, Joe Feeney, and Commander Rigdon. Just as an opinion, are there any of the people on that list who might have told the clerk in the store?

NIXON: To answer it you have to know the personalities of the people involved. There were only two who were really of the outgiving, blabbermouth type of personality. The other were uniformly very careful and tightlipped. The two that I am trying to describe as being sort of outgiving and sometimes having loose tongues were Brigadier General Harry Vaughan, the President's Military Aide, and Joe Feeney, the Legislative Aide. They were frequenters of the PX. Harry Vaughan, particularly, was of the conversational type. He had frequently, over the years of the Truman administration, gotten himself into hot water by blurting out things. You just have to guess on the basis of personalities. I could be entirely wrong.

HESS: Was this the only semblance of a leak of this particular information that you heard in those early months before the President's announcement at the National Guard Armory?

NIXON: Not only was it the only semblance of a leak, that I heard of, but there were no other leaks that appeared in print.

Because of the speculation that was rampant, I was under the compulsion of writing very carefully worded dispatches in which I departed from the usual reportorial reporting for discursive articles protecting my own opinion as to whether the President would or would not run again. In these instances you were much safer to discuss the pros and cons. You had to do it on the basis of pointing out the circumstances. You had to say that this, after all, was one man's decision. He had to make it, and no one would know precisely what that decision was until he made it known.

HESS: Moving on to that announcement on March the 29th, did that seem to come as quite a surprise to the audience?

NIXON: Oh, very much so! We had been given an advance text of the speech that he was to make to the Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner. (It's one of the largest of the Democratic Party's fundraising dinners.) We were given advance texts in order to write advance stories based on the text, so they could be put on our wires on a release at delivery time basis. The contents of this speech contained a discussion of the coming campaign with things of critical importance as issues to the Democrats and a recitation of the achievements of the Truman administration. It had absolutely nothing in it about the President's future course of action. There was no reference, whatsoever, to whether he would, or would not, run again.

The President always had a loose-leaf leather folder, a book type of thing, in which his speeches were clipped, page after page, having been typed with a special typewriter that had quite large type. This made it easier for him to make his speech. He knew the contents because he had gone over it ahead of time, but he needed this to prompt him as he spoke.

In the latter part of this rather lengthy speech, he had been slipped two or three brief sentences which said:

That of course, fell like a thunder clap on this audience of Democratic supporters. When he uttered these words, the entire hall shouted, "No! No! No! Not" There was a crescendo of sound. This was a shocking and unexpected thing to them. Some women there wept, and there was pandemonium.

Just a few moments later, after the President ended this surprise announcement, he shook hands with those on the platform around him. He and Mrs. Truman walked off the stage to the rear. (That's where the entrance and exit had been arranged.) He went out to the front of the National Guard auditorium and then was driven back to the White House.

Here's another odd and strange thing. While the President was speaking, I got word that he was going to say something in his speech which was not contained in the prepared text.

There is always danger of a speech running over the allotted TV and radio time. Speeches are supposed to be timed to a set air time, twenty-five minutes for a half hour speech or thereabouts. Ordinarily, if the speech is not contained in the set time, he's cut off the air.

These speeches are prepared in length carefully. There may be interruptions, and there are always interruptions for applause. The cadence of the speech may vary. While every effort is made to contain them, these factors are variable, and the speech may run over air time.

I was told that Joe Short went to the newsreel cameramen and to the representatives of the TV and radio stations to guard against this. You see this announcement by Truman was in the very last few sentences of his speech. They wanted to guard against the newsreel men shutting off their cameras, figuring that they had gotten all they needed. They wanted to keep the President from being shut off the air. Short had simply, without revealing in any way the nature of this, told them that it had been decided that there would be a little addition, by the President, to his speech.

One of the newsreel men, who was a very good friend of mine, told me this. I went to Joe Short somewhat outraged. "Who the hell is being favored now?" And I asked him if there were any additions to the speech, what would it be.

Of course, I got no satisfactory answer. He was polite enough about it, he just said, "Bob, I can't tell you at this moment, but it will only be a few minutes until there will be a slight addition to the speech. If you will just wait a few minutes, why, you'll know what it is."

That wasn't much help. I found out what it was in a very few minutes as he had said. This, of course, meant a flash (which is the news term for news of a primary and overriding importance). It meant entirely rewriting all of the stories that we had written.

Come to think of it, you asked me if I did go back to the White House with Truman. No, I did not. Now that I think of it, I had gone behind the stage and walked out with he and Mrs. Truman and a large number of other top people in Government, but then I had to whip back around to my typewriter and get to work on this entirely new thing. I had already flashed the story and sent out a new lead. As a matter of fact, I was using a direct telephone to my Washington office rather than a typewriter, in order to speed this. I had a typist on the other end, so I was able to dictate this flash over the phone and the sub-flash and running story. Instead of going to the White House, I had to come back and clean it up.

When this was done (it didn't take more than a half hour), I did then go over to the White House. I went to the press room and what ensued there I've forgotten. Truman was not in evidence. He was over in the House. I just wanted to be sure that there was nothing else that had to be done.

HESS: After Mr. Truman had removed himself as a possibility for the candidacy that year, who did you think would be the leading contenders for the Democratic nomination?

NIXON: Truman's action left a real vacuum. The long years of Roosevelt's administration and then the years of the Truman administration had not really brought into view any logical and outstanding Democrats for the Presidency. Roosevelt had dominated his scene, though under him there were many outstanding men who might have run. Jim Farley was one, but he broke with Roosevelt over the third term decision. There were many who thought that one of the overriding reasons that Farley broke with Roosevelt over the third term decision was that he had expected to be the Democratic candidate for the Presidency in 1940. There were many others. Circumstances in many ways meant that in the Truman years to try to get a dominating personality to run against the Democrats. They were the only ones who had people to fill the vacuum. They had Eisenhower. They had Taft, and, as we've seen, they had MacArthur. There was no standout by this time in the Democratic Party, unless you settled on Adlai Stevenson. He was Governor of Illinois and had a good record. He had served in Washington earlier in the State Department. He had a wartime assignment, I believe, with our political setup in Italy and had lived in Washington for a number of years before the war. He had a Washington background.

NIXON: Just what I just said, that he was Governor of Illinois. Mutual acquaintances here in Washington had known him. I had never met him. They had known him and used to play bridge with he and his wife in the evenings at their home out in Georgetown. They later told me about Stevenson's personality and his connection with the State Department, and so forth. That's all I knew about him. I never met him except to just see him and talk with him informally on a very few occasions when he was over at the White House. I never met him really to know him until he was nominated on the Democratic ticket at Chicago in 1956. I was assigned to cover his campaign. I joined him and his staff and went out to Lake Forest, which was quite near the house he had at Libertyville.

They say Libertyville, but his home was out in the country where he had very large acreage and raised sheep and that sort of thing. It was not in a town at all. It was not in Libertyville, which was really a hamlet. Lake Forest was the closest town of a little larger size near there. It was a resort of the well-to-do there on Lake Michigan.

That's where we stayed for a time immediately after the convention was over and before his campaign began.

HESS: Mr. Stevenson came to Washington to confer with the President a few times in the spring and early summer of 1952. Did you see him at that time?

To go on with this business of obvious Democratic candidates to fill the vacuum created by Truman's withdrawal. One of the people that Truman wanted, or thought well of, was Fred M. Vinson, whom he had made Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and whom I've spoken about earlier in reference to the Potsdam conference and the requested resignation of Henry Morgenthau as Secretary of Treasury. If there were others they sure don't stand out in my mind, because...

NIXON: Well, they should be mentioned. Alben Barkley was Vice President and a man with a fine personality. He had good press, but Alben had the drawback of age. As a matter of fact, late in Roosevelt's administration he had thought of Barkley and mentioned Barkley when he was trying to sort people out for the '44 vice-presidential nomination. When Roosevelt ticked off various people and enumerated the strikes, if any, he said some kind words about Barkley, but dismissed him on the basis of being too old. So, here he was eight years later. Barkley, seemed to be in fine health; he was just too old for the job.

Despite the fact that Estes Kefauver had achieved fleeting fame through television...

NIXON: The crime commission hearings were being held on Capitol Hill. He was the chairman of this investigating commission, which drew a great deal of attention. As a matter of fact, it was going on at the time that we were down at Key West on the President's last trip there in the winter of 1952 before he returned to Washington to make his announcement at the Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner that he wouldn't run again. Because of this notoriety, he was later placed on the '56 ticket as a vice presidential candidate. In circles that mattered, Kefauver wasn't being taken really very seriously. Another strike on him was that he was from Tennessee. The saying was still prevalent, in those years, that no Southerner could win the Democratic nomination and be elected President. This was later upset briefly by Johnson through the fluke of his getting in the White House on Jack Kennedy's assassination.

HESS: There was another Southerner we might mention for just a moment, Richard Russell.

NIXON: Russell, of course, was a longtime and very eminent member of the Senate and...

HESS: Do you think that the fact that he was a Southerner was one of the main things that kept him from obtaining the nomination through these years?

NIXON: Really it could have been, but I don't have an opinion on that. The way it settled down on Stevenson was that, in the final analysis, he became Truman's choice. Truman, as President, was head of the Democratic Party, and he had great influence in deciding who his successor would be.

HESS: Why do you think he was Mr. Truman's choice? Do you think that their personalities were at all compatible?

You see Truman had hoped to get Eisenhower. But Eisenhower finally decided that he was going to be a Republican. So, who did Truman have to turn to, Stevenson.

Candidates for the Presidency, traditionally, come from the Governorships of the larger states, of which Illinois is one. We may in not too long a time see one come from California, which has now become our largest state, or from Ohio, New York, or Massachusetts. Those are the origin points of presidential candidates. Roosevelt was Governor of New York. Tom Dewey was Governor of New York. So it goes back through our history. The reason for this was that as Governor of one of the larger, more important states, they presumably had become familiar with Government administration.

That was what Stevenson had as a political asset. His reputation was that of being an able Governor in a state that had long been notorious for corruption. In any event, Truman finally settled on him and called him into Washington to tell him that he wanted him to be the Democratic candidate and that he would back him and that the party would back him.

To Truman's consternation, Stevenson got his back up and started arguing against this. He didn't want to accept the candidacy. Presumably, he realized that there wasn't going to be another Democratic administration elected in 1952, or at least it was highly improbable. He didn't give Truman a yes or no. He would, reluctantly, think it over. Truman had some considerable difficulties in even getting an answer from Stevenson. He became quite impatient with these stalling tactics that were going on. Irritability on Truman's part, continued through the 1956 convention, when he again had considerably trouble with Stevenson being a reluctant dragon, and in fact, he virtually refused to accept the nomination.

But in the end, Truman prevailed upon him, and he accepted the nomination, which in '52 came at the convention as I recall, by virtual draft. There wasn't anything like the battle that prevailed between the forces backing Eisenhower in the Republican convention.

HESS: What else do you recall about the convention in Chicago that year? Now, you probably did not go out until later when the President went, is that right?

NIXON: That's right. You see Truman was no longer a candidate. He had pulled his own rug out. He had disassociated himself from running again. So, he was a lame duck President, serving out the remaining months of his term in office. At the same time, he was titular head of the Democratic Party. He was still the Party's President, but other than that, he had no direct connection with the convention that was going on in Chicago.

While the convention was going on, he remained back in Washington at the White House taking care of his duties there. I was with him there at the White House so the only thing I knew about the convention in Chicago was what I read in the morning newspaper, just as everyone else did. In other words, I had no personal connection with the convention while it was going on. At the end of the convention, July 26, Truman did go to Chicago, as President and head of the Party, to address the convention, which he did, I might add again, at 1:43 in the morning. This was reminiscent of the lateness of the time when they finally let him get on the platform and talk in 1948 when he accepted the nomination. After his speech to the convention, he made a brief introduction of the new nominee, Adlai Stevenson, to the convention. This was a proper thing for him to do to introduce to the Democratic Party convention the man who was the nominee to run as his successor in the White House. And then we left.

In this instance, our appearance at the national convention was a very limited and brief one.

HESS: Following the convention, about two weeks later, in August, Mr. Stevenson and a few members of his staff came to the White House to confer with President Truman and some members of his staff. Do you recall that meeting? Do you recall them coming to town?

NIXON: Frankly, I don't have the glimmer of a remembrance of it. I know this was an expectable thing. Truman was going out to campaign very extensively in support of Stevenson. He was the man who presumably had the answers for conducting a campaign and could be quite helpful in an advisory capacity. Stevenson had had to campaign to be Governor of Illinois, but campaigning to be Governor and campaigning to be President of the United States, are two different horses. One's a mini and the other is...what do they call these long things they wear now?

HESS: Not too long after this, Mr. Truman began a rather energetic campaign for the election of Adlai Stevenson. What do you recall of Mr. Truman's efforts in the 1952 campaign?

NIXON: If it's at all possible, he campaigned even more fiery than he did in 1948 on his own behalf.

NIXON: He had another give 'em hell campaign. Incidentally, I perhaps forgot to tell about the origin of that phrase.

When we were down at Union Station in Washington to set out on these long transcontinental journeys to begin Truman's victorious campaign in 1948, this was an evening. The presidential train was on a siding on the lower level, guarded by police and Secret Service agents. Quite a few well-wishers in Government, the top people, came down to the train to bid him farewell and give him their best wishes. Among them was Vice President Alben Barkley. The President and Barkley were standing on the lighted rear platform of the train, obviously informally discussing the campaign on which the President was about to embark.

I was standing on the platform close to the steps of the train. Barkley had told the President that he wished him the best and knew he would do a good job and hoped everything would go well. Truman replied to Barkley, "I'm going to give ‘em hell!" (And that was in quotes.) As it happened, as we've seen, this short, direct sentence from the President became the keynote of Truman's entire campaign which put him back in the White House.

HESS: The campaign in 1952 also started on Labor Day. This was September the 1st of 1952 in Milwaukee. Do you recall anything about the first major speech in Milwaukee? He had started the 1948 campaign on Labor Day in Detroit, as you will recall. This is a traditional day for starting campaigns.

NIXON: That's correct. I was saying that, in retrospect, Truman, on behalf of Stevenson, conducted a very vigorous campaign. He worked at it as hard as he did in his own behalf in 1948. Things, however, were different by this time. The campaign itself, in its detail, does not stand out too well in my mind, for some very simple reasons. In a sense this was playing over an old record that, by familiarity, had become just taken for granted. Memory serves you best when certain things happen; certain incidents stand out. In almost a real sense, the '52 campaign that Truman was conducting is a blur. It was a repetition of familiar scenes, familiar places, familiar speeches. Truman was not campaigning in his behalf. He was a lame duck simply carrying a torch for another candidate. While he was still President, with presidential authority, there was still a difference between him campaigning for someone else and having a hard uphill fight, with all of its uncertainties, to win himself. Again we were in a great sense simply spinning our wheels. He wasn't going anywhere. He had had it, and he was through.

There was an added factor. It seemed obvious to me, that Stevenson wasn't going to make it. That there was going to be a Republican President in the White House after the '52 election. The outcome of this election was pretty much preset, as far as I was concerned. The Republicans finally had a candidate, in Eisenhower, who could win. This was just like their running George Washington if he were alive and in the flesh.

So, nothing of real importance hinged on this campaign, to my mind. It was pretty well all over but the shouting, although the normal processes of a campaign had to be gone through with.

HESS: Did you sense any differences in the attitude of the crowds that would turn out for Mr. Truman's trains between '52 and '48?

NIXON: Truman was President so he got pretty fair crowds, but they were nothing like the tremendous throngs of the 1948 campaign. There were other factors about this campaign too. The Korean conflict was unpopular. Criticism had been heaped on Truman, on Acheson, and on many others in his administration. There were charges of communism in Government that had been so blatantly and continuously put on the air in the McCarthy investigations. Truman was no longer a popular man. While we must have traveled as many miles on this campaign in behalf of Stevenson as we did in 1948, it became increasingly evident that Truman had lost his popularity in his last several years in office.

I said earlier, in all these circumstances, it's only when something unusual occurs that such an incident stands out from the blur of familiar scenes and familiar places. People in the crowds began throwing eggs and tomatoes at the President when he would speak. He was never struck, but those near him on the platform, or near the platform, were.

In Jersey City, where he made a campaign speech in an open part in front of one of the municipal buildings, eggs were thrown at him. I remember standing on the side and below the raised platform on which he was speaking. There was a newsman standing on a wall (I guess it was, because he was higher than I was), in front of me, and he got one of those eggs on the back of his head, and it splattered all over him.

In New York State, when Truman was whistle stopping in the various towns leading from Schnectady down to New York City, tomatoes were thrown at him. I believe once or twice he was splattered. It's a shocking thing to see a President subjected to the old time way of expressing disapproval like an audience expressing disapproval to some traveling Shakespearean show on a stage, as I understand they did many years ago. This was an expression of disapproval, there was no question about that.

In view of the recent stoning of President Nixon in this bi-election campaign, which just ended just a few days ago, it might be well for him to take heed of the meaning of such incidents should he run for re-election.

HESS: During the campaign of '52 and the stops, did you interview any of the members of the crowds such as you did the farmer at Dexter, Iowa, to test the temper of the crowd more or less?

NIXON: Didn't even have to talk to them. You could tell by their attitude. I'm sure I talked to many, but nothing stands out. They were telling me what I knew. The farmer at Dexter, Iowa was telling me something I wasn't sure of, by any manner of means, at that point. He was telling me that Truman had the farm vote, and this was a key to what happened later. Along the route in this campaign, I didn't need anybody else's answers. It was everything that happened, and everything that had happened, made it perfectly obvious, that my own estimate was correct. However, you do sample people, and they weren't happy.

HESS: From your vantage point, did it seem that the cooperation and liaison between the Truman campaign effort and the Stevenson campaign effort were adequate?

NIXON: You must remember that I was with Truman during this entire campaign. I was never, at any moment, with Stevenson. It was not until 1956 that I followed Stevenson around the country for three months or more in his second campaign. I can only judge from what happened in 1956.

The liaison was lousy, and it was all due to Stevenson. After his nomination, his attitude was not to have a thing to do with the Democratic Party in Washington, where it had its national headquarters. He set up his own headquarters there in Chicago and conducted his campaign from Libertyville and Lake Forest and Chicago (both being suburbs of Chicago), virtually ignoring the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, which was supposed to largely run the campaign. I understand, that after his nomination in 1952, he set up headquarters in Springfield, the capital of Illinois. Leopards don't change their spots. If a man functions one way at one time, he's very likely to function the same way at the other.

HESS: Were the facilities at his convention headquarters in 1956 in Chicago adequate or not?

HESS: Yes, Stevenson's. You mentioned Mr. Stevenson's headquarters were in Chicago in 1956, and his headquarters were in Springfield in '52.

NIXON: Well, it depends upon what the word adequate is. I thought he conducted a very bumbling campaign, a very inept campaign. Some of the principal figures around him, who were in the positions of advisers, were inadequate and inept…

NIXON: ...and unable. That, of course, is a matter of personal opinion based upon my own experience in these things and what I observed. I hesitate to cite individuals in any critical way, but I feel I can recall two who were in key positions who didn't function very well at all. Of course, this again, is a comparison. All people in those positions, doing that sort of work, are under continual stress. The only way you judge them is, "Are they functioning as well as your experience has shown you others do?"

Stevenson had a man who acted as his press secretary, named Clayton Fritchey. Fritchey's relations with the press were almost uniformly inadequate, he just wasn't tending to his knitting. He too often visualized himself, apparently, as being a close and top adviser to Stevenson. Instead of handling Stevenson's press relations with any serious attention, he spent most of his time at Stevenson's elbow in what he conceived as his advisory capacity. This was a case of trying to do two jobs at once and probably not doing either one too well. I didn't feel that he had any real understanding of press needs. His idea of handling them was handing out the advance text of a speech, if and when it was ready. The job really went a great deal beyond that.

Another one that I remember rather surprised me, because he has such a fine reputation. Later he was on Jack Kennedy's staff. I believe he wrote a book about Kennedy. He is supposed to be a pretty able writer, but he was writing speeches for Stevenson during this campaign (or helping to write them), and instead of…

NIXON: Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Instead of speeches that vibrated, these speeches seemed to have very little in them. There were no surprises. There were no proposals to capture the imagination of the Nation. They were pretty stultified. After trying to write news stories out of a number of them, I sat down with Schlesinger one night in Portland, Oregon. I said to him, somewhat to his shock, "You know what's the matter with your speeches?"

And he said something to the effect of, "What do you mean, what's wrong with my speeches?"

I said, "They never have any news in them." I said, "If you expect to get your candidate in the newspapers of the Nation, you are facing these odds: Stevenson is trying to win over Eisenhower, a man who has already been four years in office. He has made a record..."

NIXON: Yes, defeated him once. "A man that whatever his record in office has been, is viewed very favorably by the American people. You are having to fight the fact that the press of the Nation is almost wholly and uniformly behind Eisenhower and Republican minded, and they want him to remain in office. They want very little thought of another Democrat. They'll print every word that is written about Eisenhower and cry for more, where they will give your candidate a few paragraphs at the most." I said, "The only way that you possibly are going to combat this, is to put something in each of his speeches which makes news. Something that can be condensed into an eight column wide headline." And I said, "That means condensed into a very few words. Something that will not only make news, but will make news by being of an action nature, rather than an academic discussion."

Schlesinger listened, but nothing ever came of it. There were exceptions here and there. They finally got some news in a speech or two when they discussed the draft and the hydrogen bomb (the actual results of the fallout from hydrogen bomb explosions had just recently been learned about). Unfortunately Stevenson's speeches just didn't ring during the campaign.

I don't contend that anybody is necessarily going to win an election just on the basis of his speeches alone and on his campaign promises, but that is an important part of it. That is one of the ways that you can capture the public imagination. If you don't do it well, you certainly are not going to capture the public information.

I don't wish to do disservice to Schlesinger, who has a very fine reputation and unquestioned ability, but that's the way it seemed to me he performed under certain circumstances which may have been due largely to Stevenson's own wishes and wishes of other members of the Stevenson staff. These are well-written, literate speeches, but they just rarely ever said anything.

HESS: I heard that Mr. Stevenson liked to work on the wording of a speech right up until the last minute. Did that cause you any problems as a newsman?

NIXON: Of course, it always did. If we were going to get a news story in print based on these speeches, we had to have it somewhat in advance because the stories had to be written and filed. You always had to do this, combating the time element and movement of the candidate.

Stevenson liked writing. As a matter of fact, his family had owned a newspaper in Illinois. In his earlier days, Stevenson had worked on this newspaper. Instead of going over the speeches earlier and settling their contents, he liked to fiddle with them right up to the last minute before delivery, scribbling in additions, rephrasing, scratching out sentences, and putting new sentences in.

By way of illustration, he made a nationwide broadcast from a TV studio in Cincinnati, Ohio one evening after we had been in a swing through the West Virginia hills in a drenching all day rain. This was the only time that he used a train during the campaign.

Truman had proved that you can get down to people, talk to them face to face, and get your personality over in that whistle stopping technique. But because of the nature of this one-day dreary journey through the coal fields and hills of West Virginia, when we wound up in the late afternoon, that was the end of the train trip. To get to Cincinnati, we had to get in busses and then drive just hours over these narrow West Virginia mountain roads to Cincinnati. Stevenson meanwhile had gotten in his airplane and flown to Cincinnati.

By good chance, we arrived at the TV studio before he was to make the speech. I stood in the studio behind the TV cameras. Stevenson was seated at a desk with the flood lights on him. Up to the very last moment, when the red light on the front of the TV camera signaled that the camera was on, Stevenson sat there and scribbled and scribbled on the text of the speech he was to deliver.

That's the way it often went. If he did make additions or deletions, that were important, the newsmen would have to change their stories again. Sometimes they would have to tear up the old story and write an entirely different one. This was a mannerism of his, for whatever it was worth.

HESS: I've heard that one of the common criticisms of the times was that Mr. Stevenson's speeches were worded in such a manner to be above the understanding, or just over the heads of the average person. Did you think that that was correct?

NIXON: Yes, I think that's fair. That is implicit in the description that I was trying to give. The familiar expression in those days was that he was an "egghead." He never could get down to earth. I suppose, half the time, his audiences didn't know what he was talking about. He used none of the uncomplicated, direct, and sometimes earthy statements, that Truman did. It's fine to sit down and read Shakespeare at your leisure. When you don't quite understand what you've just read, you can read it over and get the meaning out of it. But to get over with people in a hot, crowded, stuffy hall, you've got to talk to them in language they understand and in their language. Otherwise, you're going to send them away shaking their heads, or put them to sleep.

Unfortunately, this was a Stevenson drawback. He never seemed to be able to get away from being an intellectual. He couldn't get down to the common masses. Times have changed. I remember, in 1952, him being called by some "another Woodrow Wilson," who was also an intellectual. But times were greatly different then. This was a time when communications were nothing like they had become. There was no radio, no TV, no highways (or virtually none). Many people lived all their lives in one spot and never got out of the county. The newspaper was the only media of communication. This greatly changed. Now they say that the only way you can get to be President is to be an ex-movie star because of the television screen's impact. You have to be a pretty boy to win. It's completely different.

One of Truman's great abilities (which was so much in contrast with Stevenson's personality) was his earthiness, his clinging to his upbringing and the environmental influences of the small Midwestern town, his colloquialisms, his manner of expression which never changed, and his brief direct sentences. All this got over to people and was understandable.

This was an unfortunate drawback for Stevenson. However, his main drawback was Eisenhower. If he had been running against some other candidate, other than Eisenhower, he might well have been elected President.

HESS: How would you rate Mr. Stevenson's political abilities, his abilities as a politician? Somewhat lower than his standing as an intellectual?

NIXON: That is a very difficult question to answer. I really never observed anything about him that indicated that he knew too much about politics. He was a sort of a State Department, stripped pants type. As you know, he had been connected with the State Department in Washington for some time in earlier years. He was the cookie pusher type. He was not the down-to-earth politician. He just wasn't a politician, to specifically answer your question. He was the intellectual statesman type, and I'm sure that he was quite able in that connection.

His being elected Governor of Illinois, surely, was one of those political happenings. He ran at the right time, under the right circumstances. By way of illustration, if you're a Democrat and run for Governor of a state which is preponderantly Democratic in vote, in a year in which the Democratic presidential candidate is a person like President Roosevelt, you can't lose. All you have to do, under those circumstances, is get the nomination, win the primary, then sit back, make no mistakes, and ride in on the coattails.

HESS: Do you think Governor Stevenson thought he was going to win, or could win in '56?

NIXON: No, I don't. He later said that running against Eisenhower was like running against George Washington. It was evidenced from the very fact that he had run against Eisenhower in 1952 and was badly defeated, and by the fact that he had tried, again, not to be the Democratic candidate in 1956. It seemed obvious that he didn't feel that he could win. If a candidate was going to do well, that was something he had to overlook and forget. As Truman once said to me, "Bob, you can't win unless you are convinced you will win."

Oral History Interview with Robert G. Nixon

Oral History Interview with
Robert G. Nixon