Kennedy & Nixon by Chris Matthews

Author:Chris Matthews
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Free Press

CHAPTER

FIFTEEN

Coup de Grâce

HAVING made the leap into the gubernatorial race, Nixon realized the depths of his misjudgment. For one thing, he saw from crowd reactions just how popular his recent rival, Jack Kennedy, had become in his inaugural presidential year. Nor was JFK’s popularity based on any one achievement. After the Bay of Pigs, he was more beloved than ever. People who had voted for Nixon were now telling pollsters they had voted for his opponent. Realizing he could not compete with such star quality, the former vice president tried co-opting it. “I was in the navy in the South Pacific but wasn’t in a PT boat,” he told his California audiences. “That’s why I’m here and not in Washington.” He paid more subtle tributes. When the Nixons’ new house was completed, he arranged for his wife to give a televised tour like the one Jacqueline Kennedy had just given of the White House.

Yet his bitterness was thinly disguised. “My little daughter, Tricia, says she doesn’t blame the people who voted for Kennedy,” he said. “She blames the ones who counted the votes in Chicago.” When his memoirs/ which he entitled Six Crises, were published in the spring of 1962, he quoted his younger daughter Julie on the 1960 election count. “Can’t we still win? Why can’t we have a recount in Chicago?” he recalls her asking him every day from the election until Kennedy’s inauguration. Kennedy got the message. When Ben Bradlee asked Kennedy if he had read the book, he got a testy answer. “Just the 1960 campaign stuff, and that’s all I’m going to read. I can’t stand the way he puts everything in Tricia’s mouth. It makes me sick. He’s a cheap bastard; that’s all there is to it.”

Six Crises also reopened the controversy over the CIA’s 1960 briefing of Kennedy. The White House released a statement denying Nixon’s charge that candidate Kennedy had gotten a heads up on the planned Cuba invasion. When Allen Dulles denied giving Kennedy actual CIA “plans,” the author was furious. Once again, Kennedy was being shielded. When the president and his attorney general, Bobby, paid simultaneous visits to California, Nixon let loose. “We welcome them. In November we’re going to show these carpetbaggers a thing or two.”

Asking Kennedy about Nixon’s rocky race for governor became a favorite sport at televised presidential press conferences. “Mr. President, you once told us you had an opinion as to whether Mr. Nixon should enter the race for the California governorship, but you never did tell us what that was. Could you tell us about it?” a reporter asked Kennedy in March.

“Well, I think I said at the time I’d be glad to confide it to him, and he has not yet spoken to me about it.”

Riding the laughter, a reporter brought up the 1960 debates. “Mr. Nixon in his book has indicated that he feels he won three of the four debates. In view of this, do you think that future debates are advisable?”

For Kennedy it was an easy setup.

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