Insurgency in New Hampshire

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"On Tuesday, March 10, New Hampshire enjoyed an old–fashioned New England blizzard: up to 14 inches of snow from the Canadian to the Massachusetts border — snow crusting the kepis of the Union veterans, snow blocking Gov. John King's new state highways, snow slushing the streets of Manchester, snow over mill and factory and ski slope and farm. New Hampshire's polls closed at 7 p.m. ... By 7:18, Walter Cronkite announced over CBS that Henry Cabot Lodge had won New Hampshire."

Theodore H. White
"The Making of the President 1964"

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To say the least, it was an unexpected way to begin the campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

In 1964, the Republican Party was divided between its conservatives and its moderates. Former Vice President Richard Nixon managed to bring the two groups together in 1960, but he wasn't a candidate in 1964. Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona was the favorite of the insurgent conservatives, and Gov. Nelson Rockefeller of New York was the candidate of the establishment moderates.

"By 1964, New Hampshire was not quite so rural, Yankee and insular as popular myth held it," recalls the Manchester (N.H.) Union–Leader. "Yet the 1964 primary provided a result so startling that the belief in the Yankee traits of independence and inscrutability would find new life."

Startling was probably a good way to describe 1964.

The assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963 cast a dark shadow over everything. It was a startling event — to put it mildly — and it changed the political landscape in 1964.

Historian Theodore White wrote that, until the assassination, Goldwater saw Kennedy as "history's perfect opponent." The two men would "debate the issues up and down the country, they would draw the line between the conservative and liberal philosophies," much as they had when they had been colleagues in the Senate. Goldwater expected to lose, but he also expected to do well enough to put the fledgling conservative movement in position for greater things in the future.

Goldwater genuinely liked Kennedy, White wrote. When they were in the Senate together, Goldwater often chided Kennedy with "Your father would have spanked you" for casting certain votes. They disagreed often, but they liked each other.

"And then came the assassination," White wrote. "The assassination shocked Goldwater as it shocked every American by its brutality and senselessness. ... Now, after the assassination, he was faced with running against another man, a Southerner, of an entirely different sort. "

Goldwater was heartsick, White wrote. He had received hundreds of hateful letters "as if he, personally, were responsible for the killing of the man he was so fond of." He thought of abandoning his campaign, then thought better of it.

When the campaign for the nomination began, Rockefeller was seen as the front–runner, but he lost considerable momentum due to a couple of related personal issues. First was the subject of his recent divorce. At the time, no president had ever been divorced, and that was enough of a social taboo by itself (at least until once–divorced Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980).

But then Rockefeller remarried in 1963. His bride, who was 15 years younger, had recently been divorced, too, and she had given up custody of her four children to her ex–husband. That was a double whammy.

"Have we come to the point in our life as a nation," asked Prescott Bush, the father and grandfather of presidents, "where the governor of a great state, one who perhaps aspires to the nomination for president of the United States, can desert a good wife, mother of his grown children, divorce her, then persuade a young mother of four youngsters to abandon her husband and their four children and marry the governor?"

So that was working against Rockefeller, who lost 20 percentage points among Republicans amid rumors that he had been having an affair with his bride while she was still married. The rumors were fueled by the rapid succession of events — her divorce quickly followed by her remarriage to Rockefeller. The appearance of it would cost Rockefeller the nomination, many said, although many also were not comfortable with Goldwater.

The race between Goldwater and Rockefeller was regarded as close when New Hampshire's voters went to the polls 50 years ago today. Both sides thought they would win, but neither one did.

They were undone by ex–Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge, Nixon's 1960 running mate who won the primary as a write–in. Lodge received 36% of the vote to 22% for Goldwater, 21% for Rockefeller and 17% for Nixon.

To say the least, it was a surprising outcome. Some folks probably were shocked, and Lodge likely was one of them. The whole write–in movement had been the work of a small group of political novices; Lodge didn't think it would amount to much and made no effort to encourage the movement. In fact, he had renounced it two months earlier.

But former President Dwight Eisenhower had publicly urged Lodge to run in December, and moderate Republicans were encouraged the day before the primary when it was revealed that Lodge had not had his name removed from the ballot in Oregon, site of the next officially contested primary.

It was a time when delegates were still won in caucuses or state conventions, not primaries, and that was the path to the nomination for presidential hopefuls, but contested primary results were often viewed as evidence of a candidate's vote–getting ability (or lack thereof).

In the aftermath of the New Hampshire primary, all the attention was on Lodge. Without lifting a finger, he had won the first Republican primary. But there would be no more legitimate tests of vote–winning skills for a couple of months.

Illinois actually was next on the political calendar, but the state's party leadership was staunchly behind Goldwater. New Jersey's primary was a week later. No candidates had filed so all votes were write–ins.

Primaries were held in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania the week after that. No candidates appeared on the ballots in those states, either. The day before the primaries, Rockefeller called for air strikes in Laos and Cambodia to help South Vietnam. It was a controversial position. Lodge won Massachusetts, Pennsylvania voted for its governor, and Rockefeller received 9–10% of the vote in both.

Mostly uncontested primaries followed in Indiana, Nebraska, Ohio and West Virginia.

Lodge began to reconsider when the write–in campaign paid off with a victory in New Hampshire. So did the press and GOP elders.

Lodge won primaries in Massachusetts (the state he had represented in the U.S. Senate) and New Jersey, but then he decided that he really didn't want to be president and withdrew his name from consideration.

As the campaign moved West for the Oregon primary, White wrote, "Lodge's picture was on the magazine covers across the country; Lodge led every poll from coast to coast. ...

"In the aftermath of the New Hampshire primary," White wrote, "Oregon's Republicans shifted as the nation's Republicans shifted, and the first Harris (Poll) samplings showed thus: for Lodge, 46%; for Nixon, 17%; for Goldwater, 14%; for Rockefeller, 13%."

"For Rockefeller," wrote White, "the name of the game was now impact. From New Hampshire on, there was no longer any realistic chance of his becoming the Republican nominee. But to veto the choice of Goldwater, he must prove before the convention assembled that Republican voters would not have Goldwater on any terms."

That next round would belong to Rockefeller — but the nomination would go to Goldwater.

The First Unelected Vice President

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On this day 40 years ago, the vice presidency had been vacant for only a couple of days.

The former vice president, Spiro Agnew, had resigned, and there was much speculation about the identity of his replacement.

My family, as I have mentioned here before, was living in Nashville. My father was on a four–month sabbatical, and, on this day in 1973, we were roughly halfway through our time there. My parents decided that the family needed to get away for the weekend, and Oct. 12 in 1973 was on a Friday so, when my brother and I finished school for the day, my family loaded up our car and went somewhere that was about a two–hour drive from Nashville.

I don't remember where we went. It was some sort of rustic lodge–like compound on a body of water, probably a lake, and I seem to remember you could fish there, but, even though my father knew how to fish, I have no memory of him fishing that weekend.

That may have been because it rained most of that weekend. And my memory is that my mother and father and brother and I spent most of the weekend in that cabin watching TV when we weren't at the window watching the rain.

(We probably called that the "Goodloe luck," of which I have written before. It was our version of Murphy's law, I suppose; most of my memories of the "Goodloe luck" do seem to include rain spoiling camping trips and weekend getaways. So it was on that day in 1973.)

My most vivid memory is of that Friday night — 40 years ago tonight — when President Nixon came on TV to announce that he was nominating Gerald Ford to fill the vice presidential vacancy. And I remember the four of us watching him make that announcement.

It was an historic occasion, the first time the 25th Amendment, which clarified presidential succession, was invoked. It was also, as historian Theodore H. White wrote, "a ceremony marked by a tasteless cheerfulness." With so much suspicion and uncertainty swirling around him in October 1973, Nixon seemed oddly detached when he announced Ford's nomination. I honestly think that, on that day, he believed that he would serve the rest of his term, that he would beat the rap.

As I wrote here a couple of years ago, the language of Article II of the Constitution was ambiguous on the subject of presidential succession, saying that, in the event of a vacancy (either temporary or permanent) in the presidency, the vice president should "act as [p]resident ... until the [d]isability be removed, or a president shall be elected."

Presidential succession apparently wasn't a pressing concern for the Founding Fathers. It was first put to the test about half a century after the Constitution was written when President William Henry Harrison died and his vice president, John Tyler, interpreted the Constitution and determined that he should be the actual president, not an acting president, and he took the oath of office, setting a precedent that was followed for more than a century.

But in 1967 the 25th Amendment was ratified, establishing a clear line of succession. And one of its provisions was that, in the event of a vacancy in the vice presidency, the president had to nominate a successor whose name would be sent to Congress for its approval.

Agnew's resignation was the first opportunity for a president to nominate a vice president under the amendment. When Lyndon Johnson became president after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, the vice presidency was vacant for more than a year, but then it was filled by Hubert Humphrey, who was Johnson's running mate in the 1964 election — and, thus, the office was occupied when the 25th Amendment was adopted.

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And, on that night, we watched as all three networks covered Nixon's announcement that he wanted Gerald Ford to be his new vice president.

Only one other time since that day — nearly a year later, when Ford had to choose his own successor following Nixon's resignation — has a president been called upon to nominate someone to fill a vice presidential vacancy.

As unpopular as Nixon was at that time, I really believe that few, if any, people who watched him introduce Ford as Agnew's successor realized they were looking at the man who would be president within a year.

Fewer still probably realized we would witness the nomination of another unelected vice president within a year — and then not see it happen again for at least four decades.

That is how history works sometimes, with similar events lumped together in one short period of time, then nothing like it again for decades. Kind of like horse racing's Triple Crown.

Charles Percy and the Old GOP

Death is unavoidable. What is uncertain is when each of us will die.

Sometimes, given the way an individual lived his or her life, the timing of death may be seen as ironic. So it is, I think, with the death of Charles Percy, a former Republican senator from Illinois.

If you are too young to remember Percy, you may be inclined to think, when I say that he was a Republican, that he was a Tea Party type, like Michele Bachmann and some other prominent Republicans from the Midwest. But, in fact, Percy was a liberal Republican (aka a Rockefeller Republican) in the tradition of Nelson Rockefeller and Teddy Roosevelt.

(Percy was a Rockefeller Republican who actually supported Rockefeller. He backed Rocky's unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 1968.)

It's important to understand that, within the Republican Party, liberal really meant left of center in Rockefeller's and Roosevelt's days — not extreme left. Rockefeller Republicans opposed communism, promoted American business interests in foreign markets, advocated a strong defense, rejected socialism and redistribution of wealth, just like the other members of their party, but they supported regulatory measures that nearly all 21st–century Republicans simply would never tolerate, and they were advocates of things like federal funding for environmental protection, health care and higher education.

Actually, many Republicans in those days — but especially the Rockefeller Republicans — were progressive on social issues like civil rights, even moreso than their Democratic counterparts, many of whom held office in the South (and would be more comfortable in today's Republican Party than the Democrat).

Without a doubt, that was part of the legacy of the party's first nationally elected president, Abraham Lincoln, and the posture it had taken against slavery.

There was a time in fairly recent American history when the Rockefeller Republicans wielded considerable influence within their party. Their preference didn't always win the presidential nomination, but he was usually competitive if he wasn't successful.

Things really began to shift, I suppose, when Dwight Eisenhower was nominated for president and spoke of "modern Republicanism," which meant a movement toward the center. And, although they nominated essentially political moderates like Richard Nixon (who created the Environmental Protection Agency) and Gerald Ford (who actually chose Rockefeller to be his vice president — much to the dismay, I might add, of the Republicans of that time) in the 1960s and 1970s, Republicans continued to move to the right, nominating Ronald Reagan twice, the two Bushes twice each and Bob Dole once.

In 2008, of course, many Republicans complained that their standard bearer, John McCain, was not a true conservative — but he was much more conservative than many of the Republicans who were on the political scene half a century earlier.

Percy came along at the back end of the Rockefeller Republican era, I suppose. He was something of a wunderkind — president of Bell & Howell before the age of 30, elected to the U.S. Senate at the age of 47.

He was encouraged to enter politics by Eisenhower and narrowly lost his first bid for office when he ran against Illinois' incumbent governor in 1964. A political novice, Percy found that he had to make certain compromises if he hoped to be successful and hesitantly endorsed the Republican standard bearer of that year, Barry Goldwater.

The next election year, 1966, was, by historical standards, clearly a Republican year, and, although Percy faced another incumbent when he ran for the Senate, he won. Perhaps the lessons he had learned in '64 paid off; perhaps he just benefited, as many Republicans did, from a backlash against Democrats. But he was re–elected in 1972 and 1978, losing his bid for a fourth term in 1984 even though a Republican president was re–elected in a landslide.

Today, you simply don't hear someone called a liberal Republican. Even those who would have qualified — albeit barely — as liberal Republicans in Percy's day won't admit to it. They prefer to be called moderate Republicans — but, even under that banner, many find themselves on the defensive against the more extreme factions of their party.

They are a vanishing breed although you do still find some in places where they once thrived — primarily in New England, the Northeast, Midwest and West Coast. As the modern Republican Party swung farther to the right, though, most of the Rockefeller Republicans became Democrats or independents.

Which brings me to the ironic aspect of Percy's death.

The fact that he died today at the age of 91 could hardly be considered surprising, but I do find the timing of his death to be, as I say, ironic. No other word seems appropriate to me.

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You see, yesterday was the 35th anniversary of Rockefeller's one–finger salute to hecklers at a campaign stop in Binghamton, N.Y.

(And today, as I observed earlier, is the 15th anniversary of the death of Spiro Agnew, Nixon's first vice president.

(In an unrelated irony, tomorrow will be the 45th anniversary of the still–unsolved murder of one of Percy's daughters.)

In a way, I guess, that gesture foreshadowed the growing antagonism and, ultimately, truly unavoidable split between the conservatives and the Rockefeller Republicans.

Someone had to go. That tent just wasn't big enough for both of them, and, in hindsight, Rockefeller's gesture can be seen as a rather eloquent message to those who had seized the controls.