The Bold Stroke

The stars were fading and streaks of rose were brightening the eastern horizon as a chartered Learstar, just in from New York, taxied onto an apron at Washington's National Airport. Rumpled and heavy-lidded, Vice President Richard Milhous Nixon stepped forth uncertainly, clinging to the doorframe with one hand as he felt for the step with a wavering foot. He had put in a long night's work.

For nearly eight hours, from 7:30 p.m. to 3:20 a.m., Nixon had huddled with New York's Governor Nelson Rockefeller at the Rockefeller apartment on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue. From that meeting emerged a history-making document: a Rockefeller-Nixon policy agreement, soon dubbed the Treaty of Fifth Avenue, that changed the course of the Republican Party for the 1960s, and perhaps beyond.

Anchor Aweigh. On Nixon's suggestion, Rockefeller issued the statement setting forth their agreement on basic policies, and Rocky was jubilant. Arriving in the convention city of Chicago, he triumphantly waved a copy of the statement.

"If you don't think that represents my views," he crowed, "you're crazy." Though he expressed it with private smiles rather than public grins, Dick Nixon had reason to be jubilant, too. By his secret, dramatically sudden trip to New York, he warded off a threatening Rockefeller mutiny that could have badly damaged Republican prospects in November.

The smile of victory on Rockefeller's face guaranteed that Rocky would endorse the party's platform and campaign for the party's ticket, helping Nixon's chances of carrying New York, with its hefty 45 electoral votes. And by working out a truce with Rockefeller, Nixon had tugged loose his restraining anchor in the Eisenhower Administration; barred by his position as Vice President from speaking out freely on issues, he had let Nelson Rockefeller speak out for him.

Question-Mark Emblem. The New York meeting brought about a pregnant truce in as strange a war as the Republican Party had ever seen. It started in October 1958, when Rocky was running for Governor in his first try for elective office. He was so ambitiously bent on projecting his own rather than a party image that a top Rockefeller backer urged Nixon to cancel a scheduled TV speech in New York City lest he spoil that image. Nixon came to New York and had a well-publicized breakfast with Rocky.

Catapulted into the political big time by the spectacular feat of unseating an incumbent Democratic Governor in a year when most Republican candidates got roundly trounced, Rockefeller began showing the unmistakable flush of presidential fever. And since Richard Nixon already towered up as the almost certain Republican presidential nominee in 1960, Rockefeller's presidential hopes inevitably made Nixon a competitor, apart from any disagreements on national issues.

Without ever openly declaring himself a candidate for the G.O.P. presidential nomination. Rockefeller set out last autumn to try to stir up support west of the Hudson River, encountered neither public nor Republican enthusiasm, and found that the party's leaders thought Nixon would be the better candidate by far. With a sourish complaint that the Republicans who would control the convention were "opposed to any contest for the nomination," Rocky declared himself out of the running. Then and later he refused to endorse Nixon for President.

Last month, long after any realistic hope of winning the nomination in 1960 had faded away, Rockefeller leaped onstage again with a 2,700-word statement accusing Nixon of failing to speak out on national issues. The nation and the party, said Rockefeller, cannot march "to meet the future with a banner aloft whose only emblem is a question mark." Many a cynic inferred that Rockefeller, eying the 1964 presidential nomination, wanted Nixon to lose in 1960. and was deliberately trying to undercut him. But Nixon took a soft-answer tone, defended Rockefeller's right to voice his disagreements with the Ad ministration, issued a soothing call for party unity. He also publicly promised that Rockefeller's "oft-expressed desire that he not be drafted as a candidate for Vice President will be respected -- certainly by me."

Jolted Strategy. Dick Nixon likes to say that what a political candidate needs most, and is least likely to find in the heat of campaigning, is time to think. To get time to think in 1960, he set aside the fortnight preceding the opening of the Republican Convention in Chicago. With his staff protecting him from intrusions, he spent most of the time at his fieldstone house in the Wesley Heights section of Washington -- and he found plenty to think about, more than he had expected. Jack Kennedy's choice of Lyndon Johnson as his Democratic running mate jolted Nixon's campaign strategy by upsetting his hopes of hauling in a lot of Southern electoral votes.

With Johnson's appeal in the South added to Kennedy's footing in Catholic New England, winning New York suddenly became an urgent necessity for Nixon, and among Nixon men, Nelson Rockefeller took on a new allure. "There's no longer any question about it," groaned a staunchly pro-Nixon member of the Republican National Committee staff. "If we're to have any chance at all against Kennedy-Johnson in November, Rockefeller's got to be on the ticket." Again and again during his erratic flir tation with the Republican presidential nomination, Nelson Rockefeller insisted that he did not want to be a candidate for Vice President. On the first of his two trips to Chicago last week, he repeated that he would "positively, absolutely" not consider the vice-presidential nomination.

Rocky still seemed to be cherishing a faint hope of a presidential-nomination draft. He solemnly declared that he would accept a "genuine draft," though he added that the possibility was "very remote."

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.

As he started to draft a platform acceptable to Nelson Rockefeller, Percy had to hold off insistent pressures from the Old Guard led by Arizona's outspoken Senator Barry Goldwater, who inherited the late Robert Taft's role as the golden boy of Republican conservatism. Where the hearts of the Platform Committee's members lay was vividly evident in the contrasting receptions they gave Rockefeller and Goldwater last week. They listened to Rockefeller with polite attention, never once interrupted him with applause. When Goldwater appeared later the same day to urge the committee to shun the "destructive idea that you can get something for nothing," the members greeted him with a cheering, shouting, whistling outburst, later interrupted his speech again and again with ardent clapping. "If we weren't concerned with winning," a high convention official said, "our sympathies would be almost unanimously with Goldwater."

All the Way. The Nixon camp's ho-?es that the platform carpentered by Chuck Percy would satisfy Nelson Rockefeller got a bruising jolt toward wask's end. ''The Governor," announced Rockefeller Press Secretary Robert L. McManus, "is deeply concerned that the drafts on a number of matters--including national defense, foreign policy and some critical domestic issues--are still seriously lacking in strength and specifics." Clearly implied was a floor fight that might scar the G.O.P. and furnish invaluable ammunition for the Democrats.

The implied threat of a showdown decided Nixon on a course of action that he had been turning over in his mind ever since the Democratic Convention nominated the Kennedy-Johnson ticket: a face-to-face conference with Rockefeller. Without ever discussing his plan with his staff, Nixon got New York Lawyer Herbert Brownell, Tom Dewey's (1944 and 1948) campaign manager and Attorney General in the original Eisenhower Cabinet, to call Rockefeller to arrange a meeting. Brownell suggested that the meeting take place at his home in Manhattan, but, on the telephoned advice of his staff ers in Chicago, Rockefeller insisted on holding the meeting at his own home. "Tell Dick to call me," said Rocky to Brownell. Minutes later, Nixon was on the phone. "Nelson," he said, "I want to go all the way with you on defense and foreign policy. You've got me off the hook" -- meaning that Rockefeller had provided him with an opportunity to ex press his policy differences with the Ad ministration without seeming disloyal to the President.

Three-Way Hookup. That evening, accompanied by his Air Force aide and one Secret Service agent, Nixon flew to New York on Eastern Air Lines' Flight 510.* After dinner (lamb chops) at the Fifth Avenue apartment, Nixon plied Rockefeller with reasons why he ought to run for Vice President on the Nixon ticket. He described his plans for making the vice-presidency an even more important office than it came to be during the Eisenhower Administration.

Rockefeller kept insisting that he would not consider the vice-presidency in any circumstances, and after two hours Nixon gave up, promised to refrain from urging him any more. (Said Rocky later: "I restated my position that I was not available in any circumstances, and he restated his position that he would respect my feelings in the matter.") Then the discussion moved on to agreement and disagreement on issues. While the two men were working out the substance of the agreement, Rocky's Press Secretary McManus, who had hurriedly flown in from Chicago, kept up a hum of telephone consultation with Rockefeller staffers in Chicago.

During the last few hours of the conference, Nixon and Rockefeller spent a lot of the time talking with Chuck Percy in Chicago on a three-way conference hookup, filling him in on what changes in the platform would be called for by the Nixon-Rockefeller statements. Then, in the last half-hour, Nixon went over the Rockefeller statement, suggested some changes, finally approved it.

Posture for the '60s. The statement was a Rockefeller document, couched in the language of Rockefeller writers, quoting many phrases, sentences, even whole sections, from the one-man platform that Rockefeller had submitted to Chuck Percy two weeks before (TIME, July 18). Main provisions: FOREIGN POLICY. Nixon accepted Rockefeller's pet proposal for regional "confederations." DEFENSE. Shaking off his burden of defending Administration defense policies without reservation, Nixon agreed that the "military posture" of the 1950s would not do for the 1960s, joined in a call for more and better bombers, an airborne SAC alert, more missiles, dispersed bases, greater limited-war capability and "an intensified program for civil defense." Unmentioned but implied was Rocky's old demand that the defense bill should be bigger by billions.

GOVERNMENT REORGANIZATION.

Nixon went along with Rockefeller's proposals for two new high-level Government posts to "assist the President," something that Ike himself had suggested in one form or another.

ECONOMIC GROWTH. Nixon agreed that U.S. economic growth "must be accelerated by policies and programs stimulating our free enterprise system," a declaration that did no violence to his conviction that Government should not try to force-draft any specified rate of growth. Included in the statement at Nixon's own suggestion was a sentence that mentioned Rockefeller's goal of a 5% growth rate without committing Nixon to it as a goal: "As the Vice President pointed out in a speech in 1958, the achievement of a 5% rate of growth would produce an additional $10 billion of tax revenue in 1962."

FARM POLICY. Nixon okayed Rockefeller's proposal for a doubling of the Department of Agriculture's conservation reserve, for using price supports "at a level best fitted to specific commodities," and for an "expanded food-for-peace program."

MEDICAL CARE FOR THE AGED. Rockefeller compromised, agreed to a vague call for a program "on a sound fiscal basis," with no mention of folding the program into the social security system, as Rocky had been urging.

CIVIL RIGHTS. The agreement called for "aggressive action to remove the remaining vestiges of segregation or discrimination in all areas of national life" -a promise almost as sweeping as the Democratic civil rights plank. Rocky won an explicit endorsement of the South's Negro sit-in demonstrators, although in Chicago only a few days earlier the chairman of the platform subcommittee on civil rights had said that the party's platform approval of the sit-in movement would be "demagoguery."

"Damned Sellout." Republican reactions to the statement ranged from jubilation to fury. Kentucky's Senator John Sherman Cooper, chairman of the platform subcommittee on foreign relations, hailed it as "the best thing that could have happened to the Republican Party." In Newport, R.I., the President was decidedly cool; he had not been consulted in advance. The Texas convention delegation's Chairman Thad Hutcheson called it a "damned sellout," met with chairmen of the other Southern delegations to map a fight against any civil rights plank modeled on its broad promises. The angriest Republican of all was Conservative Barry Goldwater. Nixon had "surrendered" to Rockefeller, he cried, and the result was a "Munich" for the Republican Party. (Echoed the Chicago Tribune: GRANT

SURRENDERS TO LEE.)

Nixon had not surrendered to Rockefeller. The language of the statement was Rockefeller's, but the substance violated none of Nixon's basic principles or policies. Where he sharply disagreed with Rockefeller proposals, such as putting medical care for the aged into the social security system or setting an arbitrary national growth rate, Nixon insisted on his own views. He was confident that despite the conservatives' anger he had improved his prospects of winning in November. Onetime G.O.P. National Chairman Leonard Hall, now Nixon's unofficial campaign manager, assured him that the meeting and the statement helped his chances of carrying Pennsylvania and California as well as New York.

There were some who thought that the meeting with Nixon had got Rocky off a dangerous limb. Benefits to Rockefeller, reported the New York Times's political reporter Leo Egan, "included his extrication from an impossible political situation that was threatening a major rupture in the Republican Party in New York State and endangering his prestige and relationships with Republican leaders in other states." By the same token, some experts saw the pressures growing on Rocky to accept the vice-presidency despite all his disclaimers.

Many New York Governors in modern times have been candidates or serious contenders for the presidency, but the only two who ever made it were those who had come to the aid of the party on request and run for Vice President--Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt.

Political logic would seem to favor Nelson Rockefeller's following in the footsteps of the two Roosevelts, both of whom he admires. But politicians and their advisers are not necessarily logical at convention time.

Should there be a Nixon-Rockefeller ticket and should it lose the election, Rockefeller will have lost nothing; he would remain Governor of New York and would have gained enough party good will to be the almost certain odds-on choice for the G.O.P. presidential nomination in 1964--provided, of course, that he did not get into political trouble between times. Should a Nixon-Rockefeller ticket win, Rockefeller, of course, would not be the G.O.P. nominee in 1964. He would have lost the governorship of New York--which has not seemed to attract his talents lately anyway--but he would be the No. 2 Republican and possibly the No. 2 U.S. statesman on the national scene, and, as the politicians' phrase has it be "one heartbeat away" from the presidency. But the secret creed of ardent Rockefeller partisans on convention eve seemed to be that Nixon without Rockefeller will lose in November, that Rockefeller will suffer no party penalties, will capture the G.O.P. for himself in 1961 and ride on triumphantly to nomination and victory over President Jack Kennedy in 1964.

Burst of Drama. Whatever effect the Nixon-Rockefeller meeting might have on the political future of Nelson Rockefeller, it had a powerful impact on the Republican Convention and on the position of Richard Nixon in the coming campaign. Nixon's bold stroke brought a burst of drama into a convention that had seemed doomed to dullness, and it lent drama to the appearance before the convention this week of that exclusive Republican asset, the President of the U.S., whose total record during his two terms in office will, despite Nixon's pilgrimage to New York, constitute the core of the case that the Republican Party will put before the voters between now and Nov. 8.

With brilliant timing and tactics, Richard Nixon had used the meeting with Rockefeller to position himself on the side of new departures for the 19605, broadening his potential appeal to independent voters, without losing the political value of identification with the Eisenhower Administration record--a record that got a considerable boost last week from the announcement of a billion-dollar budget surplus and the successful shot of the new Polaris missile from a submerged submarine (see Defense). Yet by easing the G.O.P. platform in the directions that Nelson Rockefeller had urged, Nixon largely canceled out the political appeal of the Democratic platform, and made the G.O.P. platform what he wanted to make it--an elective basis for his campaign and a point of departure for the challenging decade ahead.

* Said a Democratic cynic: "Nobody paid any attention to him; he disguised himself as Eisenhower."

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