National Affairs: Rocky’s Road

Another Republican was looking ahead to 1964, and already had his track suit on. New York’s Governor Nelson Rockefeller told his first post-election press conference last week that he will run for re election in 1962, planning to remain, at least until 1964, top officeholder in the nation’s most populous state. And what did he think about Dick Nixon’s fortunes these days? Nixon, answered Rocky, is “one of the vital forces in the Republican Party—but I don’t think, frankly, between elections when a party loses the presidency, that the party has an actual head.”

Next evening Rockefeller got an argument from none other than President Dwight Eisenhower. Arising to toast Nixon at a White House dinner, Ike said: “The Vice President will be the head of the Republican Party for the next four years, and he will have my support and the support of all those who are present tonight.” Unfazed, Rockefeller the following day paid a scheduled call upon the President, shrugged off Ike’s tribute to Nixon (“I would not want to debate with the President on that subject”), and issued a call for “collective leadership” of the G.O.P. Then he had a 90-minute breakfast with Nixon, and after the usual grinning, handshaking pose, said that he had been “having a wonderful meeting with the Vice President.” Nixon, he said in answer to a question, was of course “the titular head of the party,” which seemed to leave things back at the beginning, or almost.