Page Four THE MICHIGAN DAILY Friday, August 9, 1974 Nixon: The road to D.C. By SAM FOGG UPI Writer When Richard Milhous Nixon wrote Six Crises, he coild not have forseen that his greatest crisis lay ahead, a scandal of histari proporticna that drag- ged him from the pinnacle of power and personal popularity and finally de- stroyed him politically Stretching over three decades, Nixon'; political career was an amazing pattern of crests and troughs, of triumphs and defeats. Watergate was his nadir - the nttst precipitis fall fron power of "Anybody who thinks I could be a candidate for anything in any year is off his rocker." Richard Nixon 1963 any modern American politician. NIXON emerged on the political scene in 1946 as a scarcely noticed H o u s e member from California's 12th district after an election in which Repitalicans won control of Congress for the first time since the days of Herbert Hoover. He had had no previous public serv- ice except for a brief stint as an acting city attorney. He was a World War 11 veteran but his Navy service as a supply officer i the Pacific was unglamorous. His selection by a group of local GOP leaders to run for Congress was most haphazard. He was recommended by a former Whittier College professor who had been offered first chance at the nomination. BUT THE yottmg lawyer campaigned energetically, capitalized on voter dis- content with wartime controls and short- ages, and unseated his five-term Demo- cratic opponent, Jerry Voorhis, by 15,- 192 votes. In Washington, he was given two rela- tively unimportant commitee assign- ments. On the House Labor and Educa- tion Committee he served with a much- better known freshman - Rep. J o h n Kennedy (D-Mass.). It was his post on the House Commit- tee on Un-American Activities that pro- vided Nixon with his chance t) move in- to the limelight. The committee attracted heavy press attention and liberal criticism for it s handling of its anti-Communist hear- ings. In August, 1948, the Alger Hiss - Whittaker Chambers case surfaced and Nixon faced the first of his crises. AT ISSUE was which of 'wo men were telling the truth: Chambers, a niM magazine editor, who swore that he had known Iiss, a former State Departmvent official, as o Communist trt meober of an espionage opleration in the early New DIealDays; or lliss ohs indig- nantly denied the charge under oath. At the outset, most committee mem- bers believed hiss, head of thz prestig- ions Carnegie Endowment. B-it Nixon, helped by a top Washington nev swan, the late Bert Andrews; dug into the hackground of the two men and became convinced Hiss was lying. He staked his fledging reputation on that belief and a jury ultimately convict- td Hiss of perjury. Nixon acknowledged in Six Crises that the case brought him the national at- tention that led to his later career. But lie also wrote that- "it left a residue of hatred and hostility toward me . . . among substantial segments of the press and the intellectual community." HIS NEXT step up the political lad- der was a successful 1950 race for the Senate seat in California against Helen Gahagan Douglas, a staunch Nyew Deal Democrat. Nixon won by 680,947 votes but incur- red the bitterness of leading Demo- crats who claimed he had conducted a smear campaign against Douglas. Nix- on insisted that his lieutenants had only asserted that she was "soft" on the anti-Communist issues of the day. His Senate servige was brief and Nix- on's star was still ascending when Dwight Eisenhower picked him as his. vice presidential running mate in 1952. At that point, the "Checkers" crisis occurred and almost finished off Nix- on. In the midst of the campaign, news stories broke that a group of wealthy Californians had raised $18,235 for a special fund to help underwrite Nixon's expenses as senator. Eisenhower de- clared his young running-mate would have to come "as clean os a hound's tooth." Some influential Reublicans ad- vocated that he get off the ticket. NIXON responded with a counter-of- fensive - a technique to become his political hallmark. He quickly arranged a national television appearance and from a Los Angeles appearance and from a Los Angeles studio delivered this defense: He never had been influenced to do special favors for his fund contributors. He listed his assets and bank holdings down to the penny. He emphasized that his wife, Pat, wore only "a respectable Republican cloth coat." He told of re- ceiving a personal gift from an admirer - a black-and-white cocker spaniel pup- ON NOVEMBER 7, 1962, Richard Nixon met with the press after he conceded defeat in the California gubernatorial election. He accused the press of treating him unfairly and told reporters: "This is my last press conference." py which his daughter named Checkers - and which was prominently displayed for television cameras. It was corny but effective. Eisenhower accepted Nixon's explanation and at Wheeling, W.Va., embraced his vice presidential candidate with the public assertion: "That's my boy.," The Eisenhower-Nixon ticket was elec- ted by landslide proportions in 1952 and again in 1956. AT 47, Nixon captured the 1960 Repub- lican presidential nomination without dif- ficulty and entered the campaign as fav- arite over his Democratic rival, John Kennedy. For the first time his political fortunes faltered. On Nov. 8, 1960, Nixon lost an election for the first time. Kennedy won by an electoral college margin of 303 to 219 but by only 118,550 votes in the actual polling. In 1962, Nixon's fortunes took a dras- tic downward turn when he was defeat- ed for the California governorship by incumbent Pat Brown. At a past-election news conference, he told reporters: "You won't have Nixon to kick around any- more, because, gentlemen, this is toy last press conference . A disheartened Nixon moved to New York City in 1963 to practice law. He confided to a friend: "Anybody who thinks I could be a candidate for any- thing in any year is off his rocker." SEEMINGLY, Nixon had gone down the political drain but events were in store that would thrust him upward again. Kennedy was assassinated and his successor, Lyndon Johnson, scored a landslide triumph over conservative GOP Sen. Barry Goldwater in 1964 that left the Republican Party shattered and leaderless. By 1965, a less confident but more ma- ture Nixon tentatively returned to the public scene. In the mid-term electtons of 1966, he was in full swing, campaign- ing on behalf of congressional candidates in 82 districts. The Republicans picked up 47 House seats and Nixon won the gratitude of GOP leaders in almost every area of the country. With no active opposition, Nixon shed his loser's image in the 1968 presidential primaries, particularly in Oregon against California Gov. Ronald Reagan. At the Miami Beach convention, he thwarted a Rockefeller - Reagan bid to stop hi and won the nomination on the first bal- lot. He campaigned against third party candidate George Wallace and Demo- cratic nominee Hubert Humphrey ' in cool, unflappable fashion - sounding the themes of "law and order" at home and "peace with honor" in Vietram. 'On Nov. 5, 1968, Richard M. Nixon was elected President of the United States by a heavy electoral college majority but with only 43.4 per cent of the popular vote. He was given a Democratic-con- trolled Congress to work with. HE PLEDGED in his inaugural ad- dress to "bring us together" but his first term was - marked by four years of Domestic political strife. Nixon sustained major setbacks when the Senate rejected his nominations of See NIXON, Page 5 AP Photo RICHARD NIXON FONDLED his family's black and white cocker spaniel "Checkers" at his home in Washington in Sep- tember, 1952. Nixon, who was then the Republican vice presidential nominee, had mentioned "Checkers" in a TV-radio - report on his finances while his status as a candidate was in doubt.