Unanimous Choice

Only a flat, last-minute, wildly improbable turndown by the top man could have beaten him, but Richard Nixon was taking nothing for granted last week in his campaign for vice-presidential renomination. Chigger-bitten by Harold Stassen, stung by California Governor Goodwin Knight's bumblebee efforts against him (TIME, Aug. 27), Nixon spread political balm in San Francisco with a soothing hand. Like a busy doctor, he moved from room to room of his Mark Hopkins Hotel suite to talk to delegations--and before long, the traffic was so heavy that the only way the delegates could leave was by the interior fire stairs.

On his first full day in the convention city, Nixon received a silver candlestick and an endorsement from the Young Republicans, saw delegations from Michigan, Wisconsin, New York (where Tom Dewey had given him an unqualified, effective endorsement), Pennsylvania and Missouri (where Delegation Chairman Elroy Bromwich remained a feeble flicker of anti-Nixon sentiment). Next day came eight more delegations, and the day after that, nine. Also on the program: a trip to the International Airport to greet Dwight Eisenhower.

"Cussed & Discussed." Nixon used much the same polished, effective script in his approaches to all the state delegations. The Republicans, said he have "something better to offer than smear and vilification. We have the record of the Eisenhower Administration." (Cheers.) The Democratic nominees are "dedicated men--they are probably the best their convention could select." (Somber silence.) The "greatest danger is one of complacency." (Uncomplacent looks.) As for his own candidacy, the convention was "going to have a little voting tomorrow, and regardless of how the voting comes out, I'm going to be pitching for you." (Loud cheers.) In any event, Nixon concluded, "I have been cussed and discussed--but everybody pretty well agrees that Pat's all right." (Pat Nixon blushed prettily, delegates rose cheering, headed happily for the fire-escape exit.)

Between delegations on Monday, Nixon managed to find time for a luncheon trip to Fisherman's Wharf with newsmen and Dan Gainey, Minnesota jewelry manufacturer who backed Harold Stassen in 1948 and 1952 but has grown increasingly cool toward Childe Harold. No sooner had Nixon left his car for the block-long walk to the Exposition Grotto than a crowd began to gather. Nixon showed all the pump-handle efficiency of an Estes Kefauver in shaking hands with cab drivers, tourists, shopkeepers, cops, and everyone else he could reach.

Bad News. On roll-call day--Wednesday--Nixon had planned to see nine more delegations--but news from his home in La Habra, Calif, forced a cancellation. To Nixon's suite came a call from his brother Don: their father, Frank Nixon, 77, had suffered a partially ruptured abdominal artery, and seemed near death. The light went out of Dick Nixon's triumphal march to nomination: before 8 a.m., he and Pat were on the way home.

At almost that same time, Harold Stassen was throwing in the towel on his dump-Nixon fight. Throughout the week, the haggardly smiling Stassen had endured small indignities: he was booed in the Fairmont Hotel; delegates flaunted insulting buttons saying. "stASSen" and "Stassen Stop Harassin'." Stassen could have taken all that if he had been making headway. But even he perceived that he had underestimated Dick Nixon's strength in the Republican Party. At the eleventh hour on Wednesday he went to Eisenhower, said he was giving up, asked permission to second Nixon's nomination that afternoon. Ike did not give Stassen the satisfaction of making the capitulation announcement; instead, the President called his remarkable press conference to make the announcement himself.

"A Good Loser." To the two-story stucco house in a neglected La Habra orange grove came the news bulletin of Stassen's surrender. There Frank Nixon labored for life under a green oxygen mask. At the foot of his bed was a television set; on top of it rested the family Bible. Dick Nixon told his father about Stassen's surrender. The old man smiled, said painfully: "He's a good loser." Asked the son: "You heard that President Eisenhower opened his press conference by saying everyone is praying for you?" Replied his father: "Thank you."

There, in his family's home, the Vice President watched his renomination on television. Massachusetts' Governor Christian A. Herter, proposed by Stassen as the man to stop Nixon, himself made the nominating speech. Stassen was one of the seconders. An ex-Democrat from Nebraska, one Terry Carpenter, backed down after nominating a fictitious "symbol of an open convention" named Joe Smith (thereby setting off a spate of "Yes, Virginia, There Is a Joe Smith" editorials in the U.S. press). Governor "Goodie" Knight choked down his gorge and made the California announcement of 70 votes for Nixon. The nomination, like Ike's, was unanimous--and old Frank Nixon took new heart, began gaining strength to the extent that Richard Nixon returned to San Francisco to deliver his acceptance speech.

"We Believe ..." The Richard Nixon who appeared on television screens to accept his nomination was a long way from the scowling, black-bearded mudslinger that the Fair Dealing cartoonists had led their readers to expect. Simply and eloquently, he set forth his party's beliefs. "We believe," he said, "that government should be a partner with business and with labor and not a partisan to encourage one to fight with the other . . . We believe in human welfare but not the welfare state. We seek social gains, but we reject completely the well-intentioned but mistaken theories of those who would socialize, federalize or nationalize basic American institutions."

Only at the end did Nixon permit himself a reference to that which weighed heaviest on him. "The skill of the fine doctors who are attending my father," he said, "could not possibly have equaled the lift which he has received from the events for which you were responsible yesterday. For that we thank you. Goodbye and good luck."

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