Theodore White on The Campaign Trail: Nelson Rockefeller in 1960

 

 

In America In Search of Itself Theodore White does what so many people do at the end of their careers: he starts picking his favorites. In this case after  covering seven campaign trails from 1956-1980 in which by his own accounting he met 'a score of would be Presidents' he choses those who in his words 'seemed most qualified for the leadership denied him."

He names four men who are among the most significant political forces of that period of time: Nelson Rockefeller, Hubert Humphrey, Adlai Stevenson and Estes Kefauver.

In one of my earliest series on politicians I covered Humphrey's long career in politics in detail and quote White's Making of the President series at great length as to advocate for it. Kefauver only appears in America in Search of Itself and while I may very well cover his career in a later series there isn't enough material on White to deal with it. That leaves Rockefeller and Stevenson.

Because Rockefeller was present in the first four books in White's series and was critical to Presidential campaigns in the first three it would seem beneficial to begin with him. I have long considered writing a series on him for multiple reasons, not the least of which I'm a resident of New York and Rockefeller is one of the longest and most successful governors of that sate of either party. For the purposes of this article Rockefeller's significance is that he was a controversial figure of the party when it was about to reach arguably the most critical point in its century long history.  He represented what had been the main center of power for more than two decades: the so-called Eastern Establishment, one that had given the party respectability if not the power it wanted after FDR landslided Alf Landon in 1936 and many believed the Republican Party would go extinct. This was the more moderate-centrist wing of the party, one that was anathema to the increasingly conservative wing in much of it.

To understand Rockefeller's failure to achieve the Republican nomination for President in three consecutive Presidential cycles explains what the party was like during that period and why the conservative movement began and would eventually take over the party so thoroughly that by the time Ronald Reagan was nominated for President in 1980 Rockefeller, who had passed away the following year, was not even mentioned at the convention.

So let's start where White did in the Making of the President 1960. This is how Rockefeller describes the party as he knew it 1960 – and in the first paragraph he refers to 'the spectacular Republican schizophrenia which has baffled all observers:

Within the Republican Party are combined a stream of loftiest American idealism and a stream of the coarsest American greed. These two political streams have mixed their waters from the days of the Party's birth when the undeniably pure New England abolitionists let their conscience be joined with the skills of some of the most practical veterans of the old Whigs to form a party that would end slavery.

He discusses its long proud structure, how the party irrevocably split during the Roosevelt-Taft civil war of 1912 which left the liberal wing in exile save for occasional victories – with the exception of New York state. He talks about Eisenhower's take over because of that Eastern establishment that gave them the Presidency in 1952 after twenty years in exile. And he makes it clear that by the 1958 midterms the Party has sunk to its lowest ebbs since the 1936 FDR landslide.  It is not just that Congress that is under a Democratic near supermajority in both houses; it is nationwide. The Republicans now have just 14 governorships and control only 7 of 48 state legislatures. (Alaska and Hawaii wouldn't officially join the Union until 1959.)

Richard Nixon, Eisenhower's Vice President, is considering his campaign for the nomination which will almost certainly be his given the state of just how few viable challengers there are in the Party. He knows there are only two Republicans who have come out on the 1958 midterms with the power to challenge him. Barry Goldwater, who has just won a massive reelection to the Senate in Arizona and is already the favorite of the more conservative branch of the party. The other is Nelson Rockefeller, who managed to win the governorship of New York by more than 573,000 votes over the Democratic incumbent Averill Harriman.

This is how White first describes Rockefeller personally, particularly compared to the solitary Nixon:

"(Rockefeller's attitude) is one of total security, total confidence, total cheeriness. Born into what is America's closest counterpart to a royal family, raised within the walls of the greatest private fortune known to man, Rockefeller has escaped the weight of wealth that makes all but one of his four brothers and sister such shy, withdrawn, reticent people, instead the assurance of wealth has made him radiant. Rockefeller is, in image and in actual person, one of the sunniest, most expansive and outgoing personalities of American politics….His constant smile is genuine, his great bear hug an authentic expression of delight in meeting people.

Rockefeller had already served in some form of politics under FDR, Truman and Eisenhower, but by early 1956 he had quit the administration out of his belief that it was drifting from crisis to crisis. He had served in appointive office for years but realized 'only the people, voting at the polls, give a man true power in American government. For that reason in 1958 he ran for governor because it was 'an executive post to be won from the people directly. Not lost on him was the fact that as White puts it 'in 21 national elections from the end of the Civil War and 1948 no less then thirteen times did one or the other (and sometimes both) parties choose its Presidential candidate a governor or former governor of New York. These included both Roosevelts, Grover Cleveland and Tom Dewey, Eisenhower's predecessor as Republican nominee for President.

Rockefeller knew that the pressure was on the moment he was elected governor. He was going to be 52 in 1960 and if a Republican won, then served two terms, he would be 60 in 1968. More than that 'he disliked Richard Nixon and considered him incapable in the role of President'. (Boy was he on point.)

In December of 1959 Rockefeller began to explore his options and his fortune as White says, "made it a far more efficient headquarters then the Republican national headquarters.' And if was efficient: Rockefeller was doing an exploratory campaign not trying to launch one.

It makes clear what Rockefeller was exploring: concern for the welfare of the United States which even then White acknowledge was more important to the liberal progressive wing of the party. The second was the mechanics and acquisition of delegates (more important then primaries in 1960) and third financial exploration.

In it White is very much on point to how Republican politics worked even in 1960:

The regular wing of the Republican party depends for support on the executive class of great corporations… in fact, they control it.

Rockefeller knew that his personal fortune was more then enough to finance a Presidential campaign; it was, if anything, large enough to dwarf the Kennedy fortune that was about to be launched to gain the Democratic nomination.  But he also knew even if he was successful, it would be politically worthless – and unlike so many wealthy Republican presidential candidates to come Rockefeller had the morality that he wasn't willing to buy it.  In any case he knew if business got behind Nixon he couldn't stand against him. So this part was important.

Rockefeller's business team then went to almost every major corporation, assuming that because they were the first family in business and because they had spent much of their fortune on funding the GOP, the favors would be returned. They were met with courtesy but the doors were closed.

As one of Rockefeller's in-group said in words of portent:

I'd always read these things Democrats say about us and thought they were naïve. But here was the club, not only against Nelson because he was a liberal but also committed to Nixon.

Business like Eisenhower and they believed Nixon would be good for business. More to the point Nelson's money hurt him – because he didn't need them.

Rockefeller made two scouting trips between October and December and the reaction was generally the same: the people liked him but the regulars who controlled the machinery ignored him.

So by mid-December the Rockefeller clan was ready for its report. Nixon had the regulars sewn up, the delegate brokers likewise and nothing from business.

Given the support he'd gotten on the trail Rockefeller might well have made contest of it had he taken the route of the primaries. But by this point he didn't want a primary fight, he actually wanted to be a good governor. So Rockefeller chose to take an approach that was almost impossible to think of today.

So on Christmas Eve Rockefeller read a statement:

"I believe…that the great majority of those will control the Republican nomination stand opposed to any contest for the nomination…Therefore any quest on my part for the nomination would entail a massive struggle in primary elections throughout the nation demanding so greatly of my time and energy would make impossible the fulfillment of my obligations as Governor of New York…My conclusion, therefore, is that I am not, and shall not be, a candidate for the nomination for the Presidency."

Everyone in Rockefeller's inner circle knew that this wasn't entirely true. Rockefeller didn't want to give Nixon a fight and knew if he did so the party would go more to the right. Besides there were seven months to the convention.

And the Nixon campaign was anything but thrilled by this. They'd planned for a primary battle against Rockefeller in which Nixon would be the active campaigner and Rockefeller the punching bag. They saw it as a way to enliven the spring, get the party invigorated for the fall campaign, take media time away from the Democrats "and above all, tune up the personnel and human machinery they would need for the fall election. All this was now denied them."

Rockefeller was a good governor for the next five months.  Then on May 1^st 1960 events began to intervene. Francis Gary Powers, while flying his U-2 plane over Russia, was shot down and captured the first acknowledged American spy seized by the Soviets. A summit that was scheduled between Eisenhower and Khrushchev collapsed before it began, ending the possibility of a disarmament summit. Relationship with the new leader of Cuba Fidel Castro collapsed as he welcome the support of the Soviets. All this and much more led to a decided shadow over the Eisenhower administration and its Vice President.

White would write about this affected every candidate for President still in the race. And Rockefeller began to speak out. Most notably he was eligible for a draft and his lieutenants then chose to freeze the state which at that point commanded the biggest delegate prize from Nixon to an uncommitted posture.

This movement, unknown to contemporaries but far more common then, had been used by the Democrats just eight years earlier to pick Adlai Stevenson, who hadn't sought the nomination, as their nominee on the third ballot and Wendell Willkie in 1940. White mentions this had to be part of Rockefeller's thinking but has no clear idea of anyone other than Rockefeller himself actually believed it a possibility however remote. Yet even then he refused to say if he was running for President.

Then on June 8^th he issued a statement in which he challenged the Republican party as being unable to meet the needs, issued a nine-point program which for all intents and purposes repudiated the Eisenhower administration. He gave a series of speeches over the next five weeks in the leadup to the convention which was for all intents and purposes "open warfare with the leadership of his own party and implicit denunciation of its conduct over the last eight years."

And while it was too late to realistically do anything there was clearly a public demand for it. A movement to Draft Rockefeller was formed and the RNC would be overwhelmed by telegrams and mail from the people demanding the delegates nominate Rockefeller.

Compared to the Democratic convention in LA there was no real suspense over who would become the nominee. The excitement as White makes clear, was over the platform.  It was being designed by a man named Charles Percy then a Republican businessman who in six years would be elected to the Senate in Illinois. Percy had worked on the platform for the past several months.

However when he flew to New York he was completely unprepared for the force that was Rockefeller:

Mr. Rockefeller had a wide range of national concerns, care for the aged, rights for the Negroes (sic) stimulation of capital investment for growth of the economy and national defense…most notably the Missile gap."

There was a problem:

In essence, Mr. Rockefeller insisted that the platform on defense cry: EMERGENCY!

But in essence the Republican administration of the country denied emergency.

White acknowledges something no politician would

In the hard life of politics it is well known that no platform nor any program advanced by either major American party has any purpose beyond expressing emotion…All platforms are meaningless: the program of either party is what lies in the vision and conscience of the candidate the party chooses to lead it…The platform committees are harmless exercises in both parties and flatter all the people appointed to platform committees, in the belief they are important.

(Perhaps certain people should have read this when they were so outraged that the 2020 and 2024 Republican conventions had no platforms. It was the inevitable end point.)

Percy spent the next early part of the convention trying to hammer out a compromise between the Nixon forces and Rockefeller's. Many of his own delegation -mostly from the more conservative upstate regions – were already annoyed by Rockefeller as governor and they knew that Nixon's nomination was a foregone conclusion. The question was how long could Rockefeller hold them before they broke to Nixon openly, thus humiliating the governor publicly.

On Thursday evening the Rockefeller delegation reviewed the draft of the platform and found it unsatisfactory. They demanded a floor fight and the possible of 'open civil war on the convention floor'. The following day Nixon called Herbert Brownell, one of the key strategist of Eisenhower's victory and a colleague of former governor Dewey. Brownell then called Rockefeller on behalf of Nixon to organize a meeting to discuss the platform, saying he agreed with all of Rockefeller's terms.

This meeting that took place in New York occurred in ignorance of the delegates in Chicago. What emerged was what White referred to as 'the 14 points compact of Fifth Avenue." The exact details are relevant more to historians: what matters for these purposes is what Rockefeller did afterwards.

He issued a statement in which he made it clear that he and Nixon had worked together to discuss the platform and where the two men agreed.

Two explosions took place simultaneously.  The most significant was in Chicago where the delegates on the committee were infuriated.  Back then there was already a belief that 'the Eastern Establishment' – then a code word for liberal as much for Republicans as Democrats – had conspired to force their values down the throats of so many Republicans. Barry Goldwater, already becoming their loudest voice, referred to it as 'the Munich of the Republican Party'.

Eisenhower was quieter but no less infuriated. For him this was a personal betrayal by a man who he had once considered a personal ally.

By Sunday the Republican convention was in chaos and Nixon was caught between the two extremes of the party as White said:

Unless the Nixon men demonstrated to Rockefeller that they could deliver a platform in the spirit of the Compact on Fifth avenue, Rockefeller could cry treachery and still take his fight to the floor. Yet if they rode roughshod over the platform committee, they would be expose to the outriders of Goldwater crying 'Treason' or 'Tyranny' from the right.

Eventually he came to take two critical positions that accommodated Rockefeller. What may have been the most costly, from an electoral standpoint,  was Rockefeller's position on civil rights. This was, it should be noted, a more advanced one then the Democrats because it advocated support for sit-ins and promised federal intervention to promote job equality.

White I should mention was very clear on how things were going to play out when it came to civil rights and the south:

If they adopt a civil rights program only moderately more restrained then the Democrats, the South can be there for the asking and with the South, if it comes permanent to Republican loyalties could come such solid addition of electoral strength that would make the Republicans again, as they were for half a century, the majority party of the nation and semipermanent stewards of the national executive power. Furthermore since the Northern Negro now votes habitually for the Democrats by overwhelming margins, why seek to outbid the Democrats where they cannot be outbid?

As we shall see, just four years later, that is exactly what Goldwater would do and it played out exactly as White said it would for the Republicans for the next sixty years. White is essentially saying what every single left-wing columnist has about what the GOP did after the 1964 election. But whereas they see it as purely a moral consideration and therefore evil, White sees it as 'one of trade: let us give the Northern Negro vote to the Democrats and we shall take the South to ourselves.'

White himself believes that by agreeing with Rockefeller on this it cost him the election, though he acknowledges Nixon couldn't decide whether to campaign for Northern Negro or Southern white and instead tried to get both. Say what you will about Nixon but he clearly learned that he had to choose one or the other and he chose one that he thought would win him the Presidency – and it did.

None of this concerned Rockefeller; he accepted the compromise and by Tuesday announced he was withdrawing from the race for President. What he didn't know was something White would tell us in the next volume.

Before the convention, they came to Goldwater, saying that they wanted to nominate him for President and that they could provide 300 delegates to do so on the first ballot. Barry Goldwater was many things but he was not idiot; he demanded those same conservatives give him the names of the delegates. They could only come up with 35, and he told them to back off. His address to the convention, with the famous words: “Let’s grow up, conservatives!” was less a declaration of interest for the Presidency and more of a warning to them about how they should do things going forward.

Nixon of course narrowly lost the election to Kennedy, seemingly ended his Presidential prospects for good. Rockefeller now believed he had a better chance for it – seemingly unaware of just how many enemies he'd made the first time around.

In the next article in this series I will deal with Rockefeller's plans for the 1964 nomination – and how his personal life would do as much damage as the upcoming civil war in the GOP would.