(See Cover) Reminiscing last week about the job that took him to the White House. Harry Truman told a piece of personal history in homely barnyard simile: "I tried to argue with those fellows at Chicago [in 1944] that I didn't want to be Vice Pres ident. I told them, 'Look at all the Vice Presidents in history. Where are they? They were about as useful as a cow's fifth teat.'" When he first said it, Harry Truman was roughly right; but today, any generalization about the uselessness of Vice Presi dents falls over the example of Richard Nixon, 36th Vice President of the U.S., who is one of the busiest, most useful and most influential men in Washington.
Nixon has made himself into a projection of President Eisenhower. He builds bridges from the White House to Congress, to Government departments, to the officials and people of other lands, to the press and to the U.S. public.
Much of his work is outside the spotlight's edge. But his unique achievement in making a real job out of the vice presidency is signalized by a sharp fact: he is the first Vice President in history to preside over meetings of the Cabinet and of the relatively new (1947) National Security Council.
When press of other business calls Ike away in mid-meeting, Ike turns to Nixon and says, "Dick, you take over." One day last August, during the President's Denver vacation, Vice President Nixon was scheduled to be chairman of a full NSC meeting for the first time.
Staffers sitting around the room whispered among themselves about "how Junior will do." Recalls one of them: "After two minutes we had forgotten we called him Junior. Everything seemed natural." It seemed natural because Nixon (unlike Harry Truman, who was not even told about the atomic bomb until he became President) has become, with Eisenhower's enthusiastic encouragement, steeped in knowledge of the U.S. strategic position and policy. His advice also carries as much weight as that of any of the men around Ike on such questions as internal security (including the McCarthy problem), labor policy, and general political tactics and timing.
To Be & Not to Do. The amazing redefinition of the Vice President's job can be appreciated by a glance at the records of some of the first 35. They included a generous proportion of nonentities, some able men, and four towering figures: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John C. Calhoun and Theodore Roosevelt. Not one—not even the four greats—made anything of the job of Vice President.