A Meaningful Opposition

November 28, 1960

Associates of Senator Kennedy contend that in view of his religion and youth, and the fact that he was running at a time of peace and relative prosperity, his triumph was “miraculous.” When we add other handicaps that they do not mention, above all the extreme leftism of the Democratic platform, the Kennedy triumph seems indeed a miracle.

But the chief architect of that miracle was not Kennedy but Nixon himself. He lost the campaign because he lost the debate. Did he lose it because he was not, after all, a first-rate debater? Or because he did not basically understand the chief political and economic issues? Or because he lacked the courage to state his convictions because he was timid and opportunistic? I do not pretend to know the answers.

But for whatever reasons, he never stated the real case against Senator Kennedy. And when a candidate for the Presidency fails to make the case, nobody else can make it for him. The real issues were clear enough. They included the apparent Kennedy softness toward Soviet Russia and Communist aggression (as reflected both in his stand on Quemoy and Matsu and on expressing regrets to Khrushchev for the U-2); Democratic platform extremism on civil rights, and such economic issues as the Kennedy farm program and his big spending and soft-money policies.

BLUNTED ISSUES

Nixon seemed more anxious to blunt these issues than to drive them home. He kept trying to reduce the issue to a purely personal one. Choose between the two men. Which has the “experience”? Perhaps, as many think, the campaign was decided on the first television debate, when Nixon declared that he and Senator Kennedy had the same “goals,” and differed only as to “means.” And Nixon, for the most part, stood by this error. He treated his opponent with deferential politeness. He seemed to be intimidated by his implacable enemies; and afraid of being called “the old Nixon.”

So the campaign he followed remained to the last curiously like the Dewey campaign that had failed so disastrously against Truman. I described this parallel (Newsweek, Oct. 17: “How to Lose an Election”) as it had already been drawn early in October. Its basic formula on all leading economic issues was “Me too—but not as much.” Even when fears of a Kennedy victory led to a discount on the dollar in the London gold market, Nixon appeared to have no realization of its full significance, and made only a few perfunctory references to it. It was Kennedy who set the “issues”—economic growth, military strength, American “prestige.” He succeeded in keeping Nixon on the defensive.

NOT THE SPOKESMAN

It is only natural that many of us should feel sorry for Nixon on personal grounds. He conducted a campaign on a high level of courtesy and absence of personal abuse. He gave himself without stint to an incredible expenditure of physical energy. He fought against the handicaps of the laxness and ineptitude of the Eisenhower Administration in dealing with Khrushchev and Castro, and the gratuitous campaign blunders of Henry Cabot Lodge.

But when all this has been conceded, it is still clear that Nixon cannot be the spokesman of the opposition in the next four years, nor the formulator of Republican doctrine and policy, nor its next prospective candidate for the Presidency. If he could not win as the Vice President, backed by an Administration in power, how could he hope, as a man out of office, to win against a Kennedy Administration in power? More important, if he did not know how, or did not want, to state the case during the campaign against big spending, higher taxes, budget deficits, cheap money, and the total welfare state, how can he be expected to do so in the next four years?

It is the Republicans in office, and specifically the Republicans in Congress, who must now choose their leaders and formulate a positive policy. This policy must be what is now called conservative—that is, it must be a policy of limited government and sound money, or the name Republican will become meaningless. We do not need two parties to enforce inflation and the welfare state.