Nixon Agonistes by Garry Wills

Author:Garry Wills
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504045407
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2017-04-06T00:00:00+00:00

9. Making It

“First we see him as a small boy, light of foot, fishing for bullheads in the Rat River of Vermont … Then he leaves for the big city to make his fortune. All this is in the honorable tradition of his country and its people, and he has the right to expect certain rewards.”

—Nathanael West, A Cool Million

Thursday night, Nixon came to Convention Hall—its interior seen through dazzles, veils woven by the rows on rows of lights. He was proud of his acceptance speech. It would (carefully) reveal his inner self. He came to make the only moral claim that mattered to this audience. To tell them he had made it. “You can see why I believe so deeply in the American dream.” He had risen, politically, from the dead. And he had done it by the route these men respected—by making money. Nixon had been a candidate before, and a politician always; but only after his 1962 defeat did he become a wealthy man. The Checkers speech was truthful, back in 1952—he was poor; he was young, starting out, working hard to succeed. But then there had been failure, political defeat. And through it all he had not earned the money to be independent. Only when he became a Wall Street lawyer, with $200,000 a year from his practice, and with Bebe Rebozo to help him invest in Florida land, could he look his fellow Republicans straight in the eye at last. A campaign coordinator who worked with Nixon through the years put it this way: “Dick could not have made it to first base in nineteen sixty-eight without a substantial personal income. Republicans, especially those who finance the party, respect only one thing, success, and they have only one way of measuring success, money. Dick never had any money before now. He could not talk to these people as an equal, even when he was Vice-President. The thing that would have killed him with them was any suspicion that he simply needed a job. Now they knew he’d be giving up a damn good job, and good money.”

Nixon had to command great sums of money in 1968; he could afford nothing but the best. After being a loser for years, he needed confidence, an organization, and cash. It was all or nothing for him. He could only run for one office now, for President—and this was his last chance. He was beaten before he began if he aimed at anything less: Americans voted into the White House the proverbial candidate who could not be elected dog-catcher. Old Nixon was a failure, a loser?—then the new one would establish his base as a successful lawyer, partner in a Wall Street firm; plead a case before the Supreme Court; build his campaign organization out from the partners and members and offices of that firm. It was impossible to sell the man who could not sell a used car?—then Wall Street would go to Madison Avenue’s largest advertising firm, to Harry Treleaven of the J.

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