Elegy on a California Melodrama

The sufferings of Richard M. Nixon become more evident and more pathetic with each new dawn. His campaign to become governor of California is not going to be the easy slide he thought it would be. He is not finding the considerable bulk of Pat Brown as movable as was first predicted. He has a first-class headache in his own party in the person of Joseph Shell, young, rich, pugnacious and appealing. His various ploys and stratagems have mostly failed in the test. His old habit of using the slightly-too-bitter word is plaguing him. He has no idea how strong the Warren-Knight faction is, or how deeply-felt is their desire to cut his throat. And—he hardly seems to want the job!

This is the basic problem. Nixon wants to stay politically ‘alive’; the governorship would provide longevity, but not necessarily of the right sort. For it is entirely out of his hands to elicit any real advantage from such a reprieve. Being governor may prove no earthly good to him. Kennedy may be unbeatable in ‘64. Or Nixon may be shouldered aside by another candidate. This is the dilemma: he can have the nomination provided it’s not worth having; conceivably he could lose it if it has any value, and this is a strong possibility, for he has no real friends in national Republican councils, and has no pre-emptive hold on delegates for next time. If he should win the governorship, and then lose the nomination for the Presidency in ‘64, he would be horribly thrashed in trying for another term in ‘66.

DS

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D. J. Stewart

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The sufferings of Richard M. Nixon become more evident and more pathetic with each new dawn. His campaign to become governor of California is not going to be the easy slide he thought it would be. He is not finding the considerable bulk of Pat Brown as movable as was first predicted. He has a first-class headache in his own party in the person of Joseph Shell, young, rich, pugnacious and appealing. His various ploys and stratagems have mostly failed in the test. His old habit of using the slightly-too-bitter word is plaguing him. He has no idea how strong the Warren-Knight faction is, or how deeply-felt is their desire to cut his throat. And—he hardly seems to want the job!

This is the basic problem. Nixon wants to stay politically ‘alive’; the governorship would provide longevity, but not necessarily of the right sort. For it is entirely out of his hands to elicit any real advantage from such a reprieve. Being governor may prove no earthly good to him. Kennedy may be unbeatable in ‘64. Or Nixon may be shouldered aside by another candidate. This is the dilemma: he can have the nomination provided it’s not worth having; conceivably he could lose it if it has any value, and this is a strong possibility, for he has no real friends in national Republican councils, and has no pre-emptive hold on delegates for next time. If he should win the governorship, and then lose the nomination for the Presidency in ‘64, he would be horribly thrashed in trying for another term in ‘66.