Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 28, 1994 TAG: 9404280190
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ray L. Garland
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Many will seek to place Nixon in historical perspective, but my purpose is to place him in a Virginia context. His association with our state was long and intimate, beginning with his first modest apartment as a new congressman in 1947 at Park Fairfax, where my father's nephew also was living. I remember the wonderful playground at Park Fairfax, which included a replica of a pirate's ship, complete with bridge and wheel!
In 1952 and 1956, the Eisenhower-Nixon ticket took more than 56 percent of the Virginia vote, marking the second and third time the Old Dominion had gone Republican. Against Kennedy in 1960, Nixon dropped to 53 percent of the state's vote. In his 1972 landslide, Nixon beat George McGovern by more than 2-to-1 in Virginia.
But outside of presidential years, he was often in the state helping Republican candidates and solidifying his hold on the affections of party regulars - something he never really lost.
Bill Wampler was a GOP congressional challenger in the 9th District in 1952, not given much of a chance at the tender age of 26, when Nixon touched down at Bristol's airport in the middle of a weekday to address a wildly enthusiastic crowd of more than 3,000 at the municipal stadium. What made it memorable was that Nixon had just left Gen. Eisenhower in Wheeling, W.Va., following Ike's "You're my boy" endorsement after the famous "Checkers" speech that saved Nixon's place on the ticket.
Wampler won election to the House in the Eisenhower tide, becoming part of the last GOP majority in that body (1953-55). He lost his seat two years later and stayed out 12 years. Meanwhile, Nixon lost both the presidency (1960) and the governorship of California (1962), and the Republican Party sustained one of the greatest defeats in its history under Sen. Barry Goldwater in 1964.
But two years after the Goldwater debacle, Democrats had problems of their own with Vietnam and the sweeping nature of President Johnson's legislative program. Rising hopes brought Nixon back to the 9th District to help Wampler again, this time locked in a tough rematch with Rep. Pat Jennings, the man who had beaten him in 1954.
Wampler remembers a rally at the Wise County Airport on a splendid fall day, spoiled only by the fact that Nixon was running almost three hours late. But few in the crowd of more than 2,000 left, and a local orchardist got to present Nixon with a bushel of Wise County apples - "the best in the world," according to the former congressman, who went on to win that election and hold the seat another16 years. The most remarkable thing about Nixon, he recalled, was his encyclopedic knowledge of every congressional district.
In his '68 campaign, Nixon implied he would put a Southern conservative on the Supreme Court for the first time since the Civil War. Wampler recalled a trip on Air Force One with then-Rep. Richard Poff of the adjoining 6th District. Nixon came back from his cabin, put his hand on Poff's shoulder and said, "Here's the kind of person I want to put on the Supreme Court." But Poff withdrew from consideration and a politically weak Nixon had a crisis on his hands filling that seat. After two Southern jurists were rejected by the Senate, Lewis Powell of Richmond sailed through in 1972.
Nixon's greatest role in Virginia politics came in the 1969 election of Linwood Holton as the state's first Republican governor. In the '65 governor's race against Mills Godwin, Holton had impressed a lot of people, winning 44 percent of the two-party vote on a shoestring. Nixon came in to help, of course, and he and Holton became friends.
After Nixon won much credit for GOP gains in the 1966 midterm election, he began to prepare seriously for another try at the presidency, and Holton became one of his principal lieutenants.
The new president returned the favor by pulling out all the stops for Holton in the '69 govenor's race. That support was climaxed by Nixon's appearance in Salem in the closing days of the campaign. The civic center was jammed and hundreds were turned away.
But when Holton insisted in 1970 that Virginia Republicans nominate a candidate to oppose Sen. Harry F. Byrd Jr., who had left the Democratic Party and was running as an independent, Nixon cut the ground from under him in a humiliating snub. Holton was always bitter over this, but you had to see it from Nixon's perspective. The country was in turmoil and Democrats controlled the Senate 58 to 42. Byrd's vote for Nixon's real agenda was certain. But if Byrd and Holton's candidate split the Republican/conservative vote, a liberal Democrat could slip in. That was never in the cards, but Nixon played it safe. When Nixon was forced out, Byrd said he had never really liked him.
People ask why Nixon did some of the things he did, judging from the '72 landslide that his position was unassailable. But examine the published polls in 1971 and early 1972. Nixon looked to be a one-term president. Even after the landslide, Republicans were 50 seats down in the House.
It fell to another Virginian, M. Caldwell Butler, to drive the stake in Nixon's heart on the articles of impeachment. If Nixon lost Butler, the thinking was, he was finished. After Nixon's death, Butler said he felt no remorse about his vote to impeach.
"Nixon did not set out to be evil," Butler said, "it was an incremental process." While never holding a brief for Nixon, I would amend that to say whatever "evil" he did was more the product of the terrible pressures of his time and the abiding weakness of his political base. Ironically, the honors being paid him now are reserved for the very few.
Ray L. Garland is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist. He was the 1970 Republican candidate against independent Sen. Harry F. Byrd Jr.
by CNB