Nixon, who until then had been leading in the polls against Humphrey, thought about it for a very few moments, then told me, “Get President Johnson on the phone.” He and Johnson had known each other for a long time, and this was a phone call he felt he needed to make. It was a phone call that may have changed history.
The White House operator who answered paused, then asked me to hold on. Seconds later she returned. “Can you please put Vice President Nixon on the phone so we can identify him?” she asked.
I gave Nixon the phone. “They would like to identify you, sir.” I heard his end of the conversation.
“Hello.”
Then: “Milly, how are you? How are Sally and Betsy? Give them my best, please.”
He knew the switchboard staff well because every Christmas, as vice president, he and Mrs. Nixon would go to the switchboard to share holiday wishes with the women who worked there in shifts around the clock. Few, if any, other White House staffers, much less at the vice presidential level, took the time to visit the operators in person, and as a result these people were especially appreciative and attentive to Nixon’s needs. I would come to learn an important lesson from this.
The White House operators are legendary for their ability to find and bring on the line in short order anyone anywhere in the world. To have them in your corner is a brilliant strategic move that served Nixon well all the way to the end of his life when, as a former president, he would occasionally use the White House switchboard to connect him with someone who was otherwise impossible to find. Nixon chatted with the operator pleasantly. Several seconds later LBJ was on the line.
“Hello, Mr. President. Dick Nixon.”
While their political philosophies were quite different, both Johnson and Nixon shared an understanding of the political realities of this country, as well as a competitive regard and, let’s call it, a cautious respect for each other. The call to LBJ was ostensibly so that Nixon, as the Republican nominee for president, made sure he didn’t say anything as a candidate to complicate the government’s policies during a delicate time in the war. I didn’t know it yet, but that wasn’t Nixon’s true motivation.
“Hubert’s announcement,” Nixon said, “will be interpreted, as I’m sure you know, as a dramatic move away from the position of your administration.” Nixon continued: “It’s my intention not to move in that direction.”
Nixon was suggesting to Johnson, essentially, that Humphrey had betrayed him and that he, Nixon, was the candidate still supporting Johnson’s Vietnam policy. I’ve always felt Nixon’s primary objective was to try to keep Johnson from pulling some type of “October surprise” to assist Humphrey’s candidacy just before the election. No one will ever know if that call swayed Johnson at all, but he certainly was not as active in his vice president’s campaign as he could have been. Humphrey’s running mate, Maine Sen. Ed Muskie, also expressed the view that LBJ was not as active as he should have been.
Days before the election in 1968, the public polls as well as our own internal polls were telling us the same thing: The election was going to be very close. Humphrey’s last-minute decision to turn on LBJ’s policy had worked. The antiwar vote was moving Humphrey’s way, reluctantly. The race was so close that if the campaign had lasted a few more days, the result might have been a win by Humphrey.
We woke up on Election Day at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles. Nixon had closed his campaign the evening before with a nationally televised telethon, answering questions from around the nation. We gathered in a large suite to wait for the returns. Mrs. Nixon, Tricia, and Julie had their own suite just down the hall. People moved in and out throughout the night, but Nixon’s acting chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, campaign manager John Mitchell, tour director John Ehrlichman and Haldeman’s assistant Larry Higby were in the suite with us the entire evening. There was an attached bedroom in which Nixon spent most of the evening, meeting with senior campaign staff or trying to catch a quick nap. A couple of times when I went in, he had propped himself up in bed, his robe on over his slacks and undershirt with, as usual, his briefcase and yellow pads. He spent much of the evening on the phone. He spoke with Billy Graham several times. He called various governors to get reports. Mitchell and Haldeman were busy calling state coordinators and totaling figures on yellow pads, trying to get some sense of what was going on. Food came in, dirty dishes went out.
The election results rolled in through the early morning on Wednesday. Nixon was in the bedroom, the TV in that room still off, when ABC finally announced, maybe around 8:30, that Richard Milhous Nixon had just been elected the 37th President of the United States. I practically ran into the bedroom. How often does someone have the opportunity to tell a person he has been elected president of the United States? “Sir,” I said, “ABC just announced that you’ve won.”
Nixon, still wearing a bathrobe over his slacks and undershirt, literally jumped out of bed. Mitchell, Haldeman and Ehrlichman were all in the bedroom with him by that point. Everyone piled into the living room and was cheering. Nixon’s eyes were fixated on the television screen, an incredible look on his face: a mixture of satisfaction, pride, relief, joy, determination and gratitude. (I was the only person present with a camera, and I was able to document the moment.)
Then Nixon turned and went down the hall to tell his family. Several minutes later he returned, carrying a crewel embroidery of the presidential seal that his daughter Julie had been secretly making for him throughout the campaign. He shook hands with everyone; then looked at Mitchell. “John, we’re going to Florida this afternoon and we’re going to start putting the government together.”
I saw Mitchell’s eyes start to tear up. “Mr. President-Elect,” he said — the first time I had heard anyone use that title — “I’m going to have to meet you there.” We all became very quiet, looking at Mitchell and wondering what was going on. “I’ve got to go up to Connecticut first to see Martha.” For many years, the outwardly gruff and unemotional Mitchell had been struggling to cope with his wife’s emotional and mental problems, which were seriously exacerbated by alcohol. Rather than being with us on that momentous night, she was at Silver Hill in New Canaan, Connecticut. At that time, Silver Hill was known as a “nervous tension” treatment center. Martha was there, trying unsuccessfully to deal with the problem that was to plague not only the Mitchells but also the Nixon administration for the next several years.
It was a very sad few moments as the new president-elect told Mitchell to take his time in seeing Martha and that he should come to Florida when the time was right. With the election having been declared for Nixon, the phone began ringing off the hook. We’d had our few minutes of private celebration. It had been a tension-filled all-nighter for everyone. Rumors of who would be the likely winner, Nixon or Humphrey, had been swinging back and forth throughout the night. After ABC’s midmorning call for Nixon, it wasn’t until around 11 a.m. that Hubert Humphrey called to concede. Now it was time to get to work. Nixon shaved and showered in order to go downstairs to thank our campaign volunteers — and to address the nation around noon.
Even as I got physically closer to Nixon over my years of working for him, he remained a distant and elusive figure. He was practiced at revealing very little of himself. He believed completely in the magic of mystique. All great leaders have an aura that seems to set them apart. General Charles de Gaulle, in the 1930s before becoming a general, had written a small book, The Edge of the Sword. Nixon read the book, and in his copy he marked many sections throughout with a yellow highlighter, including several different sections on leadership that explain how a leader has to keep himself reserved and, despite the occasionally necessary “crowd baths” among them, to keep a distance from the people. This was not Nixon learning to isolate. He was creating his personal leadership style. In today’s political world, leaders believe they must be celebrities, always in front of the crowd. Nixon had a “precious resource” view of leadership. It was not to be wasted. He created and nurtured the Richard Nixon he showed to the world, conducting himself in a way that he believed added to that mystique.
But every once in a while, he would reveal a little piece of himself.
In 1968, after he defeated Humphrey in a very tight election, Nixon and Humphrey arranged to meet. This was a parallel to Nixon’s own experience, eight years earlier, after losing the presidency to Kennedy. Back then, Nixon offered to visit Kennedy. But Kennedy insisted on traveling to see Nixon at the Key Biscayne hotel where Nixon was resting and unwinding after the close and bitter campaign. Their intention was to demonstrate national unity after having experienced an excruciating campaign.
Now Humphrey was making that painful trip to see Nixon. About four days after the election, Humphrey and Nixon met at the secure Opa-locka Airport, near Miami. Because Johnson wouldn’t give him a jet, Humphrey arrived in a prop plane. Humphrey’s wife, Muriel, and vice presidential candidate Ed Muskie and his wife were also on the plane. Nixon arrived at the base minutes before Humphrey’s plane landed. They were meeting on the second floor of a barracks-like building, certainly nothing fancy. In the room where they were to meet, there were two easy chairs facing each other, separated by a coffee table, on which there were glasses and a pitcher of water.
When Humphrey and his group arrived, Nixon greeted all of them. The two former candidates posed in front of the cameras for the requisite photographs. The others went to a reception room for coffee while I led the vice president and president-elect upstairs to their meeting room. The two of them met privately, while Secret Service remained outside. Before the meeting I had been told by Nixon, “Give us 10 minutes and then you come in. Ten minutes, do you understand me?” He was a little anxious, it seemed to me. Knowing that Humphrey could be highly emotional, I believe he wanted to keep what was going to be an uncomfortable meeting as short and as painless as possible for Humphrey. However, the second they were together, it all changed, as Nixon sensed the feelings and fatigue of Humphrey.
I kept my eyes on my watch. After 10 minutes I opened the door. The two men were sitting opposite each other in discussion. Nixon waved me off with a nice “Give Hubert and me a few more minutes.”
Ten minutes later I again opened the door, and again he asked for more time. When I opened the door once again, after roughly 30 minutes, they were standing together. Nixon had his arm around Humphrey’s shoulders, embracing him. Humphrey was sobbing. Tears were streaming down his face and Nixon was consoling him. “Dick,” Humphrey said, “I want to do whatever I can to help you.” Nixon continued patting him on the shoulders. “Hubert, I’ll be in touch. You and Muriel go have a good vacation.”
Humphrey took out a handkerchief to wipe his face, and the two men walked out of the room. Nixon was a man who was instinctively uncomfortable with public displays of emotion. Seeing a tearful Humphrey, as Nixon comforted him with words and touch, was an image I’ve never forgotten. There was something magnificent about it. These were two warriors, the contest over, loyal Americans both, basically embracing one another. We all walked out to the gate and they shook hands one last time. I stood next to Nixon as we watched Humphrey board his plane. We didn’t move. I remember being moved and impressed by Nixon’s display of compassion and empathy.
Then, as the plane started to taxi, Nixon took a deep breath and said, “Dwight, believe me, that is so, so hard. I remember.” A few seconds later he looked at me again and added, “But I didn’t cry.”
From the forthcoming book The President’s Man: The Memoirs of Nixon’s Trusted Aide by Dwight Chapin. Copyright © 2022 by Dwight Chapin. To be published on February 15, 2022 by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Excerpted by permission.