Miami and the Siege of Chicago (11 page)

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.

The liberal press was quick to declare that Nixon had lost the election with that one move, and indeed he could not hide the fact that Thurmond and other Southerners had eliminated Lindsay, Percy and Hatfield. Yet Nixon had fulfilled his Southern debts with a minimum of—from his point of view—damage to himself, and Nixon would never have to sleep with the particular terror that some conceivable Left-wing maniac, finding the Vice President more tolerable than himself would hunt for a silver bullet ... Nixon, on television, seemed cheerful with his choice. Of course, others were not.

Seen from the Americana on television, Rockefeller looked like he had had a few life-giving drinks in the middle of the afternoon. Sounding more than ever congruent to Spencer Tracy in the middle of new-found wounds, Rockefeller said huskily, “I have no comment on Mr. Agnew. I'm going for a swim. I need some sun, and I'm going for a swim.”

“They say,” said the interviewer, “that Mr. Nixon saw a hundred leading Republicans before making his choice.”

“I guess,” said Rocky, “that makes me, fella, the hundred and first.”

But Nixon would seek to ride it out. As he came to Convention Hall for his acceptance speech, he was high with success and happy, cautious with reporters about Agnew, but benign about the attempt of the rebel moderates to run Romney in protest. Romney had gone down 186 votes to 1,128, the bitterness of being passed over for a man so inconsequential as Agnew all visible in the red of his face, the gray-green glow of his eyes, but Nixon had made a point of calling up Romney on his entrance so that he approached the podium with the Governor of Michigan on his arm. “It was good to have a floor fight,” he told the reporters, “a healthy thing for the party, it helped to clear the air. We'll be more united afterward.” Nixon was obviously tense with waiting to begin his speech, he was obviously going to make every effort to deliver the greatest speech of his life.

His ovation on introduction was large but in no way frantic, it was the formal massing of a large sound which the convention would give to its nominee, but for him up on the podium, it had to sound very good because it lasted for minutes, time for him to call up his wife and children, and Spiro Agnew and his wife and two of his girls (the third girl was a child, and his son was in Vietnam) there was time for Nixon to stand there alone and wave his hands on high and grin like a winner, time for him to canter over to the side of the speaker's platform and receive a kiss from the starchy old lady who had read the roll call of the states in the balloting last night and tonight, time for him to grin and grin again, time for him to reveal the austere moves of his decorum and the little mincing gestures distantly reminiscent of a certain dictator long gone. The enigma of the night in Joe the Bartender's returned—was Nixon a man who would prove strong enough, or was one to fear his weaknesses would make him prove too strong?

He began at last by waving the audience to silence, begging them for silence with smiles and laughter. Then he began the speech he had worked on for weeks, his major effort, written in large part it could be assumed by himself, for the flavor of the man, old and new, old tricks and new dreams, stale sentiment and hints of bright new thought were all in it, he was to touch every base and he played a game which had twenty bases. He began by talking of sixteen years ago when he stood “before this convention to accept your nomination as the running mate of one of the greatest Americans of our time or anytime—Dwight D. Eisenhower....” Tonight, Ike was critically ill in Walter Reed Hospital. “There is nothing that would lift him more than for us to win in November. And I say, let us win this one for Ike.”

He had probably expected a roar which would shiver the Secret Service men on the catwalks high above the hall, but the cheer was empty. Ike had been used and re-used and used again, Ike was the retread on the bandwagon, and echoes sour as the smell of a broken mood came in at the thought of Pat O'Brien saying, “Let's win this one for the Gipper,” yes, Old Nixon had popped up first, copping his plea. Unhappy as old Scratch was New Nixon with Old Nixon, for the line surprisingly had not been delivered well. Where Old Nixon would have dropped the fly right on the yawping hollering mouths of a cheering multitude of Republicans conditioned like fish, New Nixon blew the cast, some unconscious embarrassment jerking the line. He had gotten smarter than his habits.

The speech went on. He talked of sending the power of government back from Washington to the states and the cities, he congratulated Rockefeller and Reagan and Romney for their hard fight, and knew they would fight even harder for the win in November. “A party that can unite itself will unite America,” he said, and it was possible the remark was not without its truth, but he was still squeezed into the hard sell; one could all but hear the mother of that remark, “A family which prays together, stays together.”

If he had been wooing old Republicans up to now with sure-fire vulcanized one-line zingers, he could hardly be unaware that millions of Independents, some of them young, were also watching. Therefore, he shifted over to the electorate at large. “As we look at America we see cities enveloped in smoke and flame. We hear sirens in the night. We see Americans dying on distant battlefields abroad. We see Americans hating each other, fighting each other, killing each other at home.... Did we come all this way for this? ... die in Normandy and Korea and Valley Forge for this? Listen to the answers....” And his voice had converted to the high dramatic-operatic of a radio actor's voice circa 1939 in a Norman Corwin play; we hear: “... the quiet voice in the tumult and the shouting ... voice of the great majority of Americans, the forgotten Americans—the non-shouters; the non-demonstrators. They are not racists or sick; they're not guilty of the crime that plagues the land; they are Black, they are white”—and he pushed on with the forgotten Americans who worked in factories, ran businesses, served in government, were soldiers who died. “They give drive to the spirit of America ... life to the American dream ... steel to the backbone of America ... good people ... decent people ... work and save ...” (and watch their television sets) “pay their taxes and they care ... they know this country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless it's a good place for all of us to live in.”

He proceeded to attack the leaders who had wasted the substance and the pride of America, mismanaged the wars, and the economy and the city “... the time has come for ... complete reappraisal of America's policies in every section of the world.” That was incontestable. “I pledge to you tonight ... to bring an honorable end to the war in Vietnam.”

Now, whether he would underline it so, or not, Nixon was calling for an end to Henry Luce's American Century. “There are 200 million Americans and there are two billion people that live in the free world, and I say the time has come for other nations ... to bear their fair share.” Cheers. The old parched throats of Republican isolationism gave an atrophied cheer. “To the leaders of the Communist world, we say ... the time has come for an era of negotiations”—now protecting his flank—''we shall always negotiate from strength and never from weakness.” More cheers. Perfunctory cheers. But later: “We extend the hand of friendship to all people. To the Russian people. To the Chinese people ... the goal of an open world, open sky, open cities, open hearts, open minds.” Yes, he would move to the Right on civil rights and he would move to the Left of the Democrats on foreign affairs, but he was careful to invoke the heats of the patriotic heart: “My friends, we live in an age of revolution in America and in the world ... let us turn to a revolution ... that will never grow old, the world's greatest continuing revolution, the American Revolution.” And he went on to call for progress, and reminded everyone that progress depended on order. He was of course in these matters shameless, he had no final passion for the incorruptible integrity of an idea; no, ideas were rather like keys to him on which he might play a teletype to program the American mind. And yet the American mind was scandalously bad—the best educational system in the world had produced the most pervasive conditioning of mind in the history of culture just as the greatest medical civilization in history might yet produce the worst plagues. It opened the thought that if the Lord Himself wished to save America, who else could he possibly use for instrument by now but Richard Nixon? Of course if the Devil wished to push America over the edge—well, for that, Humphrey would serve as well.

Another key on the teletype: “The first civil right of every American is to be free from domestic violence.” A feint to the Right, a feint to the Left. “To those who say law and order is the code word for racism, here is a reply: Our goal is justice—justice for every American.... America is a great nation today not because of what government did for people, but because of what people did for themselves over 190 years in this country ... what we need are not more millions on welfare rolls but more millions on payrolls.... The greatest engine of progress ever developed in the history of man—American private enterprise.” Or did he mean American corporate enterprise. It had been locked in common-law marriage with government for thirty-five years.

But Nixon was off on the power of positive thinking, “Black Americans [want to have] an equal chance to own their own homes, to own their own businesses, to be managers and executives as well as workers, to have a piece”—and he looked like a YMCA secretary: here came the little quotes—“a piece of the ‘action' in the exciting ventures of private enterprise.” But of course he was not necessarily all wrong. Private enterprise,
small
private enterprise, was an entrance to existential life for the mediocre and the courageous.

He went into the peroration. The year 2000 was coming. A great period of celebration and joy at being alive in America was ahead. “I see a day” he began to say, as Martin Luther King had once said “I have a dream.” Every orator's art which had lately worked would become Nixon's craft. So he said “I see a day” nine times. He saw a day when the President would be respected and “a day when every child in this land, regardless of his background has a chance for the best education ... chance to go just as high as his talents will take him.” Nixon, the Socialist! “I see a day when life in rural America attracts people to the country rather than driving them away ...” Then came a day he could see of breakthrough on problems of slums and pollution and traffic, he could see a day when the value of the dollar would be preserved, a day of freedom from fear in America and in the world ... this was the cause he asked them all to vote for. His speech was almost done, but he took it around the track again. “Tonight I see the face of a child ... Mexican, Italian, Polish ... none of that matters ... he's an American child.” But stripped of opportunity. What pain in that face when the child awakes to poverty, neglect and despair. The ghost of J.M. Barrie stirred in Nixon's voice, stirred in the wings and on the catwalks and in the television sets. “Let's all save Peter Pan,” whispered the ghost. Then Nixon saw another child tonight, “He hears a train go by. At night he dreams of faraway places where he'd like to go ... he is helped on his journey through life ... a father who had to go to work before he finished the sixth grade ... a gentle Quaker mother with a passionate concern for peace ... a great teacher ... a remarkable football coach ... courageous wife ... loyal children ... in his chosen profession of politics, first there were scores, then hundreds, then thousands, and finally millions who worked for his success. And tonight he stands before you, nominated for President of the United States. You can see why I believe so deeply in the American dream ... help me make that dream come true for millions to whom it's an impossible dream today.”

Yes, Nixon was still the spirit of television. Mass communication was still his disease—he thought he could use it to communicate with masses. “Today I leave you. I go to assume a greater task than devolved on General Washington. The Great God which helped him must help me. Without that great assistance I will surely fail. With it, I cannot fail.” Somberly Nixon said, “Abraham Lincoln lost his life, but he did not fail. The next President of the United States will face challenges which in some ways will be greater than those of Washington or Lincoln ... not only the problem of restoring peace abroad, but of restoring peace at home ... with God's help and your help, we shall surely succeed.... My fellow Americans, the dark long night for America is about to end.... The time has come for us to leave the valley of despair and climb the mountain....” (And now one could hear Martin Luther King crying out in his last passionate church utterance, “I have gone to the top of the mountain—I have seen the top.”) Nixon was certainly without shame and certainly without fear; what demons to invoke!—“To the top of the mountain so that we may see the glory of the dawn of a new day for America, a new dawn for peace and freedom to the world.” And he was done, and who would measure the good and bad, the strength and weakness, sincerity and hypocrisy of what he had said, and the cage of balloons emptied—a union had charged 33 cents to blow up each single balloon—and the cheers and applause came, and the band, and Nixon and his family looked happy, and Agnew and his family looked bewildered and happy, and the cheers came down, not large, not small, cheers for Richard Nixon's greatest effort in oratory, and a better speech could not have been written by any computer in existence, not even Hal the super-computer in
2001
, and out in Miami, six miles from Convention Hall, in the area from 54th to 79th Streets, and Seventh Avenue to Twenty-Seventh Avenue, the Negroes were rioting, and three had been killed and five in critical condition as Miami policemen exchanged gunfire with snipers: “firefights like in Vietnam,” said a police lieutenant and five hundred armed National Guard were occupying one hundred square blocks, and one hundred and fifty Blacks had been arrested since Wednesday night when it had all begun, Governor Kirk had gone with the Reverend Abernathy who said, “I will lead you by the hand,” to plead with the rioters. Tonight the Governor said, “Whatever force is needed,” in answer to how the uprising would be quelled. It was the first major riot in the history of Miami.