Nixon's Future

"If Dick Nixon had to make a hard-and-fast decision right now about running for any public office," said a top Nixon aide last week, "his answer would be 'never again.'" Then the aide added dryly: "But that will probably change."

In fact, it seemed already to be changing. Nixon's main order of business last week was that of puzzling out the future --and the way he was leaning showed that another try was much in his mind. From what job and what base could he best operate? Sifting through a pile of gilt-edged offers from all over the U.S., Nixon politely rejected several bids to head foundations, universities and corporations. He has all but decided to take a senior partnership in a Los Angeles corporate-law firm, probably Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, which counts among its clients such blue chips as Swift & Co., Safeway Stores Inc.--and the Republican Party of California. The pay would probably come to a tidy sum of more than $100,000 a year before taxes.

Friends and allies were already at work. In Los Angeles, supporters began to set up an office to answer Nixon's mail, plan lecture tours, help with speechwriting and strategy. In Washington, G.O.P. Congressmen invited Nixon to sit in on all meetings of the House-and-Senate Republican policy committees. In Illinois, Missouri and Texas, Republicans were pressing for official recounts of the 1960 votes, less in hopes of upsetting Jack Kennedy than of taking the shine off Kennedy's victory. Nixon himself held no illusions about re versing the 1960 decision,* planned to remain above the rumblings about crooked counts.

Nixon's most perplexing political problem in California is whether or not to run for Governor in 1962 against Democratic Incumbent Pat Brown. Brown at the moment appears vulnerable, and if Nixon were to contest and beat him, it would certainly increase Nixon's 1964 presidential chances. But a loss to Brown would surely be the end of the Nixon road: Is the gain worth the big risk? Some Nixon advisers work on another thesis: come 1964, Kennedy may be riding a high crest of popularity. Nixon is still young. If 1964 looks unpromising for a Republican candidate, let Nelson Rockefeller or Arizona's Senator Barry Goldwater run and lose. Then 1968 would be Nixon's.

All very heady theorizing about the long, long future. But in 1962 Nixon is going to be under strong pressure to test himself at the polls, and may find it impossible to duck California's gubernatorial race.

*In Illinois, which Kennedy carried by 8,849 out of 4,750,000 votes, recounters last week had waded through only 56 of Cook County's 906 paper-ballot precincts, and Republicans claimed a net gain of 451 votes for Nixon. In New Jersey, Republicans called off the fight after early recounts came up with small Kennedy gains. In Missouri, recounts cannot get under way unless and until they are authorized by the Democrat-controlled state legislature, which does not meet again until January, just several days before the inauguration of President-elect Kennedy.

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