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In 1960, Nixon had learned the dangers of running with a more glamorous partner. Henry Cabot Lodge, though a popular hero of daytime television from his days as a debater at the United Nations, irritated Nixon with his rather indolent campaigning style. He insisted on a full night's sleep and an afternoon nap. He made only one major speech a day and avoided exhausting handshaking tours. Local politicians never forgave him. Perhaps worse, from the point of view of Southern Republicans, Lodge told a New York audience near the climax of the campaign that Nixon, if elected, would appoint a Negro to his Cabinet. The impact of the statement was debatable but, to some, Lodge became the scapegoat when the G.O.P. subsequently lost North and South Carolina by relatively narrow margins.
Spiro the Tyro. This year, said a Nixon aide, "we wanted a guy with some brains and enough strength of character that he wouldn't fold up on you." Nixon also wanted a running mate who would not upstage him, as would, for example, New York's Mayor John Lindsay. As one Nixon agent cracked, with unwitting black humor: "You don't want Guys and Dolls coming on before Death of a Salesman."
After Agnew's selection there were those who thought that Nixon was coming on more like King Lear, forfeiting his kingdom in the first act. Humphrey could scarcely contain his glee over Nixon's choice. Columnists suggested that Nixon, having avoided a serious blunder right up to the nomination, had finally tripped up. Yet in the following weeks, and particularly during the chaotic Democratic Convention, the decision seemed shrewder than many had at first realized. Despite his comparative obscurity, Agnew will have wide appeal in the crucial Border States and possibly even in the Deep South.
During a week of strategic planning at Mission Bay, Calif., after the convention, Nixon advisers put Agnew through a crash course in political campaigning. By the standards of a politician like Nixon, who went to the U.S. Congress more than two decades ago, Spiro is a tyro. Nine years ago he was president of the P.T.A. in Baltimore's Loch Raven Village, and he was elected Governor of his small state only in 1966. Nixon's staff of instructors staged mock press conferences, firing questions at Agnew—first obvious, then more difficult. "That answer was too long," they would chide him. He learned to pare five-minute responses to 90 seconds, and to answer with poise and care.
To some extent, the tutoring paid off. The press corps at the capitol in Annapolis is astonished at the difference in manner that Agnew has developed. Where his dealings with reporters back home had frequently been chilly and curt, he now smiles through press conferences, answering fluently and fully, and sometimes almost bantering, a gift that does not come naturally to him.