Cases in American Political Leadership: Nixon: Mister Nixon Goes to Washington. So Does Mister Kennedy

FOR THURSDAY, READ MATTHEWS THROUGH CH. 7

The GI Generation (born 1901-24)-- as a percentage of House members, senators, governors

1945 16%
1947 26%
1951 40%
1953 48%
1961 69%
1969 72%

Every president from JFK through Bush 41 was in uniform during WWII:

JFK - Navy, South Pacific
LBJ - Navy, South Pacific (briefly)
Nixon - Navy, South Pacific
Ford - Navy, South Pacific
Carter -- naval cadet
Reagan - Army (made training films)
Bush - Navy, South Pacific

JFK's first book (senior thesis at Harvard):

Nixon in the Navy

JFK's wartime experience got the Hollywood treatment:

Nixon and Churchill. In 1970, RN recounted a discussion with antiwar protesters:

About the peace thing, he said, "I told them that I know it is awfully hard to keep this in perspective. I told them that"--he seemed to grope for a date--"in 1939 I thought Neville Chamberlain was the greatest man living and Winston Churchill was a madman. It was not until years later that I realized that Neville Chamberlain was a good man, but Winston Churchill was right." Then he sort of shrugged his shoulders and said, "I doubt if that got over."

Communism and the Cold War.

Nixon's victory was NOT an unusual event in 1946.

Oil money in 1946

The Hiss Case

Evan Thomas writes:

At a later session, as Nixon and Hiss were sparring over some point of law, Hiss huffily declared, “I am familiar with the law. I attended Harvard Law School. I believe yours was Whittier?” Robert Stripling, the committee's chief investigator, observed that “Nixon turned red and blue and red again. You could see the hackles on his back practically pushing his coat up."

Hiss was indeed a spy.

Whittaker Chambers, Witness:

Those were the forces - Thomas Murphy, Richard Nixon, the men of the F.B.I. - who, together with the two grand juries and Tom Donegan and the two trial juries, finally won the Hiss Case for the nation. It is important to look hard at them for a moment. . . . For the contrast between them and the glittering Hiss forces is about the same as between them and the glittering French chivalry and the somewhat tattered English bowmen who won at Agincourt. The inclusive fact about them is that, in contrast to the pro-Hiss rally, most of them, regardless of what they had made of themselves, came from the wrong side of the railroad tracks. . . .

No feature of the Hiss Case is more obvious, or more troubling as history, than the jagged fissure, which it did not so much open as reveal, between the plain men and women of the nation, and those who affected to act, think and speak for them.

Nixon did not play a prominent role in the HUAC investigation of Hollywood, but his presence on the committee left bad memories among people in the industry.

A friendly witness, the president of SAG:

McCarthy and the Kennedys:

A friend of the family

"It was hard to find a more committed Cold Warrior in either party than the thirty-four-year-old from Massachusetts"(Matthews, p. 75).