Miami and the Siege of Chicago

  14

  On Wednesday night Alabama ceded to California, and Reagan was first to be in nomination. Ivy Baker Priest made the speech, Ivy Baker Priest Stevens was her name now, a handsome woman who had been Treasurer of the United States in Eisenhower’s cabinet, and then an assistant to Reagan. She had a dual personality. She was a wretched speaker with the parched nasal mean stingy acid driving tones of a typical Republican lady speaker: “A man who will confront the radicals on our campuses and the looters on our streets and say, ‘The laws will be obeyed.’ ” It was a relief when her nasalities began to drive up the hill and one knew the mention of Reagan’s name was near. “A man to match our mountains and our plains, a man steeped in the glorious traditions of the past, a man with a vision of the unlimited possibilities of a new era. Yes, Destiny has found the man.” A minute later she was done, and a fairly large demonstration went to work. It was to prove milder and less impressive than the Rockefeller and Nixon break-outs, but it was at least notable for a sight of the opposite side of the lady’s personality. She now looked confident, enthusiastic, round, sexy, warm, and gloriously vital, the best blond housemother you could ever see, waving the fraternity boys around the bend as they sang “Dixie” and “California, Here I Come,” clapping her hands in absolute delight at signs like “I’m gone on Ron,” as if that were absolutely the most attractive thing she’d ever seen, then jazzed it like a cheerleader beating her palms and smiling, smiling at the sight of each new but familiar crew-cut face who had gotten up to whoop and toot it through the aisles for Ronnie. There were five cages of balloons overhead, and Reagan got one of them, the balloons came down in a fast cascade—each one blessed with a drop of water within so as to tend to plummet rather than tend to float—and they came down almost as fast as foam rubber pillows and were detonated with lighted cigarettes and stomping feet thus immediately that a string of firecrackers could have gone off.

  When that was done, a monumental sense of tedium overtook the night. Hickel of Alaska and Winthrop Rockefeller of Arkansas were put in as favorite sons, the latter with two seconding speeches and an eight-minute demonstration—he was conceivably giving nothing to his brother—Romney used all of forty minutes, Nelson Rockefeller’s band boosting his demonstration as Romney troops were later to boost Rockefeller’s. Senator Carlson of Kansas was named as favorite son, then Hiram Fong of Hawaii. It was after nine before Governor Shafer of Pennsylvania stood up to put Nelson Rockefeller on the lists. More than two and a half hours had elapsed between the end of Reagan’s presentation and the beginning of Rocky’s. Reporters had left the convention hall, and were huddled backstage in places like the Railroad Lounge where free sandwiches and beer were available, and everybody was concerned with the most attractive proposition of the night—that if they were all to go to their hotels, check out, and catch a plane, they could be at their homes before nominations were done and balloting had begun. They could watch it on television, which was the real gloom of the occasion. The convention had demonstrated that no reporter could keep up any longer with the event unless checking in periodically with the tube; the politicians, themselves, rushed forward to TV men, and shouldered note-pads aside. During this lull, therefore, one bitter reporter, a big heavy Southern boy with horn-rimmed glasses, delivered the remark of the evening. Sipping beer and glumly munching his sandwich (which held an inch of paper-dry turkey) he said, “Yessir, the only thing which could liven up this convention is if Ike was to croak tonight.” So the respect journalists had been obliged to pay over the years could be tolerated now only by the flensing knives of the club.

  Shafer put Rockefeller in “... because he is in tune. The people, young and old, rich and poor, Black and white, have responded to him. He has never lost an election.... Ladies and gentlemen, we should nominate Nelson Rockefeller because he is the Republican who can most surely win....” It was an inept speech—Rocky’s name was mentioned seven times before the signal was given to the delegates, and tension was dissipated. It didn’t matter. Everyone knew that Rockefeller would have an enormous demonstration and that it would not matter. The day when demonstrations could turn a convention were gone. The demonstrators knew they would be chided in newspaper editorials the following day, and therefore were sheepish in the very middle of their stomping and their jigging. Soon they would hold conventions in TV studios.

  Then came Spiro Agnew for Nixon. If he had not been selected for Vice President next day, his speech would have gone unnoticed and unremarked—“It is my privilege to place in nomination for the office of President of the United States the one man whom history has so clearly thrust forward, the one whom all America will recognize as a man whose time has come, the man for 1968, the Honorable....”

  Nixon’s demonstration was about equal to Rockefeller’s. Hordes of noise, two cages of balloons, machine-gun drumfire as they went out—no lift in the audience, no real lift. Nothing this night could begin to recall that sense of barbarians about a campfire and the ecstasy of going to war which Barry Goldwater had aroused in ’64.

  Still the demonstrations gave another image of the three candidacies: Reagan’s men had straight hair cropped short, soldiers and state troopers for Ronnie; so far as Republicans were swingers, so swingers marched with Rocky; and for Nixon—the mood on the floor was like the revel in the main office of a corporation when the Christmas Party is high.

  More nominations. Harold Stassen for the seventh time. Senator Case of New Jersey, Governor Rhodes of Ohio, Senator Thurmond who immediately withdrew for Nixon. At 1:07 A.M., eight hours and seven minutes after the convention had opened for nomination, it was closed, and over the floor rested the knowledge that nothing had happened tonight. It had been Nixon on the first ballot from the beginning, and it was Nixon at the end. By the time Alabama, the first state, voted, 14 for Nixon, 12 for Reagan, the next to last doubt was dispelled, for The New York Times on Sunday had estimated only 9 solid for Nixon. When Florida came in with 32 out of 34, and Georgia with 21 where only 14 had seemed likely a few days before, there was no need to worry the issue. Wisconsin with 30 votes for Nixon carried it over—the total was 692. The rest had gone: Rockefeller 277, Reagan 182, Rhodes 55, Romney 50, Case 22, Carlson 20, W. Rockefeller 18, Fong 14, Stassen 2, Lindsay 1.

  Filing out of the hall, there was the opportunity to see Nixon on television. Where in 1960 he had said, “All I am I owe to my mother and father, my family and my church ...” he was considerably more of the professional strategist tonight as he spoke of his efforts to win the nomination while unifying the party. “You see,” he said to the cameras, “the beauty of our contest this year was that we won the nomination in a way designed to win the election. We didn’t make the mistake of breaking up the California delegation or breaking up the Ohio delegation or raiding the Michigan delegation. And in the State of New York also we respected the Rockefeller position, being the candidate for New York. And I think this will pay off in November. We’re going to have a united party. Sure we’ve had a real fight ... but we have won it in a way that we’re going into the final campaign united.” He was lucid, he was convincing, he said he felt perfectly “free” to choose his Vice President. “I won the nomination without having to pay any price, making any deal with any candidate or any individuals representing a candidate.... I [will] meet with delegates from all over the country ... Southern delegates, the Northern delegates, the Midwestern delegates and the Western delegates. But I will make the decision based on my best judgment as to the man that can work best with me, and that will, I think perhaps, if he ever has to do that, serve as President of the United States.”

  In the old days, he had got his name as Tricky Dick because he gave one impression and acted upon another—later when his language was examined, one could not call him a liar. So he had literally not made any deal with any candidate, but he was stretching the subtle rubber of his own credibility when he claimed he would not have to pay any price. The rest of the night at the Miami Hilton would belong to the
South.

  15

  But let us leave the convention with a look at Reagan. He had come forward immediately after the first ballot was in, and made a move that the nomination be unanimous. Reagan was smiling when he came up for his plea, he looked curiously more happy than he had looked at any point in the convention, as if he were remembering Barry Goldwater’s renunciation of the nomination in 1960, and the profitable results which had ensued, or perhaps he was just pleased because the actor in his soul had issued orders that this was the role to play. For years in the movies he had played the good guy and been proud of it. If he didn’t get the girl, it was because he was too good a guy to be overwhelmingly attractive. That was all right. He would grit his teeth and get the girl next time out. Since this was conceivably the inner sex drama of half of respectable America, he was wildly popular with Republicans. For a party which prided itself on its common sense, they were curiously, even outrageously, sentimental.

  Now as Reagan made his plea for unity, he spoke with a mildness, a lack of charisma, even a simplicity, which was reminiscent of a good middle-aged stock actor’s simplicity—well, you know, fellows, the man I’m playing is an intellectual, and of course I have the kind of mind which even gets confused by a finesse in bridge.

  They cheered him wildly, and he looked happy, as if something had gone his way. There was much occasion to recollect him on Thursday when Agnew for Vice President was announced; as the story of this selection developed, the reporter was to think of a view of Reagan he had had on Tuesday afternoon after the reception Nixon had given for the delegates in the American Scene.

  On Tuesday the reporter had found Reagan at the Di Lido in downtown Miami Beach where the Alabama and Louisiana delegations were housed. In with Louisiana in a caucus, the Governor came out later to give a quick press conference, pleading ignorance of his situation. Listening to him, it was hard to believe he was fifty-seven, two years older than Nixon, for he had a boy’s face, no gray in his head—he was reputed to dye his hair—and his make-up (about which one could hear many a whisper) was too excellent, if applied, to be detected.

  Still, unlike Nixon, Reagan was altogether at ease with the Press. They had been good to him, they would be good again—he had the confidence of the elected governor of a big state, precisely what Nixon had always lacked; besides, Reagan had long ago incorporated the confidence of an actor who knows he is popular with interviewers. In fact, he had a public manner which was so natural that his discrepancies appeared only slightly surrealistic: at the age of fifty-seven, he had the presence of a man of thirty, the deferential enthusiasm, the bright but dependably unoriginal mind, of a sales manager promoted for his ability over men older than himself. He also had the neatness, and slim economy of move, of a man not massive enough to be President, in the way one might hesitate, let us say, ever to consider a gentleman like Mr. Johnny Carson of television—whatever his fine intelligence—as Chief Executive of a Heavyweight Empire. It was that way with Reagan. He was somehow too light, a lightweight six feet one inch tall—whatever could he do but stick-and-move? Well, he could try to make Generals happy in order to show how heavy he really might be, which gave no heart to consideration of his politics. Besides, darkening shades of the surreal, he had a second personality which was younger than the first, very young, boyish, maybe thirteen or fourteen, freckles, cowlick, I-tripped-on-my-sneaker-lace aw shucks variety of confusion. For back on Tuesday afternoon they had been firing questions at him on the order of how well he was doing at prying delegates loose from Nixon, and he could only say over and over, “I don’t know. I just don’t know. I’ve been moving around so quickly talking to so many delegations in caucus that I haven’t had time to read a paper.”

  “Well, what do the delegations say, Governor?”

  “Well, I don’t know. They listen to me very pleasantly and politely, and then I leave and they discuss what I’ve said. But I can’t tell you if we’re gaining. I think we are, but I don’t know, I don’t know. I honestly don’t know, gentlemen,” and he broke out into a grin, “I just don’t know,” exactly like a thirteen year old, as if indeed gentlemen he really didn’t know, and the Press and the delegates listening laughed with him as if there were no harm in Ronald Reagan, not unless the lightning struck.

  But in fact the storm was going on all day Tuesday, delegate-stealing flickering back and forth over all the camps, a nomination on the first ballot no longer secure for Richard Nixon, no longer altogether secure, because Reagan’s announcement on Saturday of his switch from being a favorite son of California to an open candidate had meant that a great push was on to pull Southern delegates loose from Nixon in numbers sufficient to stop him on first ballot, then get more delegates loose on second ballot to forestall Nixon’s strength among the favorite sons. It was a strategy which reasoned as follows: if Nixon could be stopped on the first two ballots, there was little which could keep the overwhelming majority of delegate votes in Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia away from support of Reagan and a possible total of close to 500. Potentially it was a powerful argument, doubly powerful because Reagan was the favorite of the South, and the reporter talking to a leader of the Louisiana caucus heard him say in courtly tones to a delegate, “It breaks my heart that we can’t get behind a fine man like Governor Reagan, but Mr. Nixon is deserving of our choice, and he must receive it.” Which was a splendid way to talk of a deal.

  There were forces out in full panoply to hold Reagan down. Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina who ran for President on the Dixiecrat ticket in 1948, now defected from the Democrats and become a Republican was the first committed to Nixon. The wise money would emphasize he had nowhere to go if Nixon did not make it, because he could not return to the Democrats, was too old to go to the third party, and had to be without his new party if Rockefeller won. Thurmond’s point of reasoning with Southern delegates was that Nixon was the best conservative they could get and still win, and he had obtained assurances from Nixon that no Vice-Presidential candidate intolerable to the South would be selected. All that long afternoon while Nixon shook hands with delegates and radiated serenity, the nomination was conceivably in doubt and hung for a few hours on the efforts of Thurmond and Goldwater and Tower and O’Donnell of Texas, and a number of other Southern state chairmen and was probably won on the quiet argument that if the South did not hold firm for Nixon, he might still win with Ohio and Michigan on the second ballot. Then the South would have nothing at all, indeed the South would have driven Nixon to the left.

  That the South did hold for Nixon is why perhaps Reagan may have sounded confused. He must have been receiving the double affection of delegates that day who liked him and yet would not be ready to give him their vote, therefore loved him twice. Yet in tangible return, he could not count the gains. Reports conflicted on his team—as indeed they would—he did not know, he really did not know.

  Nor did the reporter. Tuesday afternoon, watching Nixon with the delegations he had no sense the nomination was in difficulty, or no more sense than the knowledge absorbed from quick conversation with a Louisiana delegate that Lindsay would not be nominated for Vice President since Nixon had promised as much. It came as no pleasure, but no surprise. The Great Unifier would obviously begin by unifying the South. He could move to the Blacks only when they had been chastened by the absence of any remaining relation to power, which is to say, only after his election. It was a strategy which could work, or fail. If it failed, civil war and a police state were near. But finally he had no choice. The iron demand when one would unify a schism is to strengthen the near side first, since one can always offer less to the far side yet hold them—unless they are indeed ready to revolt—with the consolation they are not being entirely forgotten. Nixon could no more desert the South than would Rockefeller, if he had won, have been able to turn his back on Harlem. The reporter wa
s beginning to recognize for the first time that profound theses to the side, there might be cloud-banks of depression in the way of getting up on election day to cast a vote.

  16

  For these reasons, the reporter had decided by Thursday morning that Nixon could only nominate a moderate from the South or a conservative from the North. No other arrangement would mollify the South. So he left for home with the confidence that Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee would be the nominee and was only mildly surprised when it went to Agnew. But that night covering the convention before his television set in his own home, he realized he had missed the most exciting night of the convention, at least on the floor, and was able to console himself only with the sad knowledge that he could cover it better on television than if he had been there. Of course he was to find out later that it was an evening which would end in the blackest depression, for many were convinced that Nixon had made a powerful error in picking a man as unknown as Agnew.

  No one seemed pleased but Nixon. It occurred to the reporter on reflection that Nixon had not made the worst of moves for himself. The Vice-Presidential nominee was on the surface a man without large appeal and had been the first to say, “I am quite aware that Spiro Agnew is not a household name.” Still he was reasonable on television, a big man, soft-spoken and alert. He would not be independent—a necessity to Nixon—he would be loyal, exorbitantly loyal as Nixon had once been exorbitantly loyal to Eisenhower, for there was no choice. So Agnew would give Nixon nourishment, and spare the cankers of considering that the Vice President was more popular than himself. If Nixon was growing, he was not yet so large as Father Christmas himself. Best of all, he would have no ideological balance to maintain, he could work on his own, scrambling broken-field from Right to Left and back again, no ideologue running with him to halt and complain.