Victory with Vitamins

By the time Candidate Richard Nixon went back aboard his DC-6 after enduring the 92DEG heat in Phoenix, Ariz, last week, his face was flushed, his voice hoarse and his temperature up to nearly 100DEG. His friend and trip physician, Dr. Malcom Todd, made the diagnosis: weakened by a solid month's worry, strain and work, with only a day and a half of rest, Dick Nixon had a severe case of flu. Todd began dosing Nixon with Achromycin and Mysteclin, spraying his raw throat with cortisone and Pontocaine, urged him to slow down his 15,000-mile swing through the length and breadth of the U.S. More specifically, the doctor begged Nixon to cancel his speech that night in Salt Lake City--but Nixon refused.

In Salt Lake City's Rainbow Randevu dance hall (serving as a political auditorium for the occasion), Nixon gripped the sides of his lectern to keep himself erect. Photographers edged forward, setting their cameras to picture the Vice President at his moment of collapse. Behind Nixon, Dr. Todd crouched anxiously a few feet away. But somehow Nixon made it. finishing the speech that he later described as "the toughest of my life."

Over the Hump. Next day Nixon was not only sick, but woozy from the flood of antibiotics. Dr. Todd began shooting him full of vitamins, but Nixon was still able to deliver only 16 minutes of his Oklahoma City speech. Filling in briefly for him after that was his wife and campaign companion, Pat Nixon, who made up in charm what her talk lacked in high-flown political oratory. Said Pat: "We're very willing to work night and day and to join with you in trying--in our attempt--to elect our great President and in working for the great cause that all of us have. Thank you."

That was by no means the only time that Pat Nixon helped her husband last week: she has developed into a first-rate campaigner. When Nixon halts his political caravan to jump out and shake hands with street-standers, Pat is right behind (or, a couple of times, a little ahead). Sometimes, as along College Street in Springfield, Mo., she handshakes her way down the opposite side of the street from Dick; sometimes she chats with ladies' groups. She also sits in on the late-at-night sessions in which Nixon and his staff review the previous day's activities and plan for tomorrow. She says little, but what she does say is sound; e.g., she insisted that Nixon's advance men say nothing about the unscheduled handshaking stops for fear the local arrangers might try to set something up that would spoil the spontaneity.

Under the Skin. Even as his temperature and his voice returned to normal without the prescribed rest, Nixon continued to show the weeks of hard work. At Springfield, Ill., he had to turn around to ask Pat what state they had left that morning. In Nashville at 10 a.m., he asked his audience to "consider with me tonight for just a few days" and said he would like to "talk just a bittle." Only once did he really get under the Democratic skin: in Wheeling, W. Va., remarking that Ike's health was no longer really an issue, he asked "how Mr. Stevenson's other kidney is doing today."

Nixon's speeches were increasingly filled with sharp thrusts at the opposition ("The American people aren't going to settle for any warmed-over Truman hash when they can have Eisenhower beef and potatoes") but in nearly all appearances he drew his greatest applause with his intense portrayal of Dwight Eisenhower as a national leader who has applied his personal standards of decency to the business of government.

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