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1,000 for 666. With Rockefeller staffers renting a dozen suites at the Sheraton-Towers Hotel, at a total of $1,000 a day, Rockefeller's preparations for possible combat were massive enough to stir talk that he was contemplating a "blitz" of the type that Wendell Willkie brought off at the Republican Convention in 1940. Rockefeller encouraged the rumors by inviting all 2,662 convention delegates and alternates to a dance this week at the Sheraton-Towers. And he did nothing to suppress the busy draft-Rockefeller movement organized by San Francisco Lawyer William M. Brinton—not even when Brinton put out a Nixon-can't-win-in-November poll showing Nixon lagging far behind Kennedy in New York, Pennsylvania, California, Illinois and Texas.
Despite Rocky's ambiguous stance and the boisterous clusters of draft-Rockefeller demonstrators outside hotel entrances, Nixon men were serenely confident that their man had the nomination already won: he needed 666 delegate votes, and was sure of at least 1,000. Rockefeller, in contrast, if he decided to let his name be put in nomination, could not even count on all of the 96 votes of his own "uncommitted" state delegation.
Placating & Pointing. Ever since Rockefeller withdrew from the presidential race last December, Nixon had assumed that getting the nomination was a cinch. His problem with Rockefeller at Chicago was not to beat him out for the presidential nomination but to win his support for the campaign beyond. The starting point was clearly to get a platform that Rockefeller would endorse.
For the task of drafting a unifying platform, Nixon tapped as chairman of the ic>3-member Platform Committee a bright young nonpolitician: Charles H. Percy, 40, sometime boy wonder who became president of Chicago's Bell & Howell Co. (cameras) at 29, increased its sales eightfold and its profits elevenfold in a decade. Loyal to Nixon but leaning toward Rockefeller's liberal brand of Republicanism, "Chuck" Percy had to placate Rockefeller without angering the Old Guard, point forward into the 19605 without repudiating the Eisenhower Administration record of the 19505. Percy and Nixon hoped to accomplish all that with a brief platform that would state its aims in broad, general terms and leave the dangerous, controversial details of how and how much to be settled during the campaign. "We will not try to outpromise the Democrats," said Percy. G.O.P. National Chairman Thruston B. Morton openly voiced the hope that Rockefeller would find the platform so much to his liking that he would change his mind about running for Vice President.