Jack Kennedy - Chris Matthews [128]
Throughout, he kept his attention fixed exclusively on Kennedy. Just as he had at McKeesport, Pennsylvania, thirteen years earlier, Nixon was ignoring the audience. He seemed to crave his opponent’s approval, even to the point of rebuking his own administration. “Good as the record is,” he averred, “may I emphasize it isn’t enough. A record is never something to stand on. It’s something to build on.”
As the sitting vice president of the United States dealt with each of his opponent’s points, he tried desperately to elevate himself to an Ike-like pedestal, one from which Kennedy was just as determined to knock him. Asked about Nixon’s campaign charges that he was “naïve and sometimes immature,” Kennedy explained how the two men had come to Congress together in 1946 and how both served on the Education and Labor Committee. “I’ve been there now for fourteen years, the same period of time that he has, so our experience in government is comparable.” He went on to quote the unassailably noble and beloved sixteenth president: “Abraham Lincoln came to the presidency in 1860 after a rather little-known session in the House of Representatives and after being defeated for the Senate . . . and was a distinguished president. There is no certain road to the presidency. There are no guarantees that if you take one road or another that you will be a successful president.”
But more than either contestant’s words, it was their images, projected on millions of black-and-white Admiral and General Electric televisions, that affected the American judgment. Each time Kennedy spoke, Nixon’s eyes darted toward him uneasily, the same look that Kennedy’s aide Ted Reardon had spotted more than a decade before at a House committee meeting. When Nixon was on, Kennedy sat, sometimes professorially taking notes, at other moments wearing a sardonic expression as he concentrated on his rival’s answers. Sargent Shriver later noted that it was his brother-in-law’s facial language, more than anything he said, that in the end decided the results. By raising an eyebrow at Nixon, Jack had shown he had the confidence to lead the country.
In the hours that followed, the challenger was convinced he had won. “Right after the debate, he called me up at the hotel,” Lou Harris recalled. “ ‘I know I can take ’im. I know I can take ’im!’ “ Kennedy had exulted. He was not alone in the assessment. A despondent Henry Cabot Lodge, who had given Nixon the misguided advice to go easy on his rival, watched the last minutes of the debate with dismay. “That son of a bitch just lost the election.” On the other side of the case, those hearing the debate on radio—a much smaller audience—were more favorable to the Republican. Lyndon Johnson, listening in his car, was one of them. He thought Nixon was the winner.
But it was a debacle for the vice president. After weeks of parity in the polls, one candidate now moved into a clear lead. A Gallup survey taken in the days following the first debate found Nixon with 46 percent approval and Kennedy pulling ahead to 49 percent. Who had “won” the debate? Forty-three percent said Kennedy; 29 percent called it even. Just 23 percent gave it to Nixon. Kennedy’s captivating but also commanding performance in the first debate now made him the country’s number one box office attraction.
Nursing his wounds, Nixon sought a weapon with which to make his fighting comeback. He found one in a current Cold War issue, counting on it to be the club with which he might beat his rival. Since the Communist takeover of China in 1949, the two offshore islands of Quemoy and Matsu had been occupied by the forces of Chiang Kai-shek’s government on Formosa. The Chinese Communists had been shelling Quemoy and Matsu, demanding their evacuation. In an interview with NBC’s David Brinkley, Kennedy had questioned the U.S. policy of helping Chiang’s forces defend them, saying they weren’t essential to the defense of Formosa.
If his opponent was willing to back down in the face of Communist aggression, as Nixon saw it, he was going to call