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The Unopened Paper. All the while, Scranton stayed silent, telling nobody of his telephone talk with Ike. From the breakfast, he went to Cleveland's KYW-TV studios for his Face the Nation date. During his appearance, he kept his announcement of active candidacy, written on a twice-folded sheet of white paper, unopened on the table in front of him. For half an hour—and later in a press conference—he hemmed, hawed and hedged, adding little to the position he had taken for weeks. "If the majority of the delegates at the convention want me," he repeated over and over, "I would serve."
Reaction to Scranton's performance was immediate, and explosive. Reporters promptly dubbed him "the Harrisburg Hamlet." Watching Face the Nation, George Romney asked bitterly: "Where are his principles?" Asked what he thought of Scranton as a party leader, Rockefeller replied with scalding sarcasm: "Did you see him on television?"
Next day, Barry Goldwater, a guest of the host committee, arrived at the conference. Anti-Goldwaterites among the Republican Governors had invited him to sit down with them and explain his "principles." Barry scornfully refused, sent each of the Governors an old pamphlet stating his views. To the pros and to the public, Goldwater seemed like the leader who had faced and won his last challenge and could now coast to victory.
Early Tuesday Dick Nixon arrived in Cleveland. He checked into the Sheraton-Cleveland at 12:30 a.m., held a series of closed-door conferences until 3 a.m. The longest was with Michigan's Romney, whom he urged to become a stop-Goldwater candidate. Romney, for a few hours, considered it. Emboldened, Nixon mentioned Ohio's Republican State Chairman Ray Bliss as a man who might well throw decisive support to Romney. Trouble was, Nixon had neglected to talk to Bliss—and when he did, he got a flat refusal to endorse Romney or anyone else but Ohio's favorite son, Governor James Rhodes.
Until his Cleveland performance, Nixon had been high on Barry Goldwater's friendship list. But now he was obviously trying to promote Romney's candidacy in an effort to cause a convention stalemate that would wind up with a compromise nominee. Guess who. Said Goldwater, in about as scathing a comment as one Republican can make about another: "Nixon is sounding more like Harold Stassen every day."
The Last Five Words. On the way back to Harrisburg, Bill Scranton sat seething in the rear seat of a Pennsylvania National Guard Super Constellation. As much as anyone, Scranton realized that the fiasco in Cleveland had damaged his political standing and that, regardless of how he felt about the party and its 1964 nominee, he had to take some action that would redeem his own political image. Just before the plane landed, he instructed his aides to arrange a meeting for the next night at the governor's mansion at Indiantown Gap, some 20 miles from Harrisburg.