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It had been a desperately long road for the grocer's son from Whittier, Calif., and perhaps the most fascinating stretch now lay before him. Nixon has often spoken about the importance of timing an election so as not to peak too soon. For a while, his entire career looked like one that had done just that. In 1946, as a newly discharged Navy lieutenant commander, he won his first race for the House—and discovered the issue that was to carry him to national prominence: he accused Democrat Jerry Voorhis of being soft on Communism. His hard-hitting and effective role in the Alger Hiss case helped propel him to the Senate in 1950, and on Inauguration Day in 1953. at the age of 40, he became the second youngest Vice President in U.S. history (the youngest was John C. Breckinridge, elected in 1856 at age 35).
So swift was his ascent that when he burst on the national scene, he retained all the rough edges, the narrow views and the savage partisanship of his early years. Like Humphrey, he was a small-town boy, never financially well off, always plagued by the sort of personal and financial insecurity that never worried a Rockefeller or a Kennedy. Eight years of service under Ike helped mellow him. But what really completed the job was the taste of two bitter defeats —to Kennedy in the 1960 presidential race and to California's Edmund ("Pat") Brown in the 1962 gubernatorial race— and eight years of travel, contemplation and finally financial success as a six-figure-a-year lawyer in New York. A man of immense perseverance, he stubbornly began dreaming of a comeback as early as 1964, doggedly labored in the 1966 mid-term election for G.O.P. candidates who were, as a result, indebted to him. By the time he announced for the 1968 race on Feb. 1, the candidate, at age 55, was not necessarily a "new Nixon," but he was certainly a shrewder, more mature Nixon. Much of it was, perhaps, cosmetic. Physically he still lacked grace and coordination; psychologically, he still seemed often insecure, as if he did not quite trust the extraordinary combination of events that had set him on his way to the White House. But most of the time he now projected an image of calm control.
Rock-Bottom Election
Long before the contest came down to the wire, it was being written off as dull and irrelevant. Millions of voters saw it as only a choice between evils. New York Post Columnist Murray Kempton said that the decision lay between "whether one would rather live in Sodom or in Gomorrah." The Japanese dubbed it "saitei senkyo"—the rock-bottom election.
In some respects, it was. The candidates never really grasped the issues; they skirted them. Nixon, in particular, may well have stored up future trouble for himself by so assiduously avoiding Negro communities, by making it sound as if he had instant, miracle solutions to the problem of crime, by rejecting nuclear "parity" between the U.S. and Russia and hinting at new arms programs —inevitably expensive.