The Election: Now I Stand

"You do the best you can and then you stand," said Richard Milhous Nixon, quoting a sermon he had heard in church on Sunday. Added Nixon: "I did the best I can and now I stand." In that spirit of fatalism—or resignation—Nixon flew home to California on election eve to await the people's judgment, bone-tired after a grueling campaign that had taken him 65,000 miles and into all 50 states. After a midnight rally and parade in Los Angeles, Nixon and wife Pat turned in at the Royal Suite of the Ambassador Hotel, rose after only two hours' sleep for an 18-mile drive to home-town Whittier —and the day of reckoning.

Nixon voted early (at 7:35 a.m. in a green stucco ranch house) so that East Coast afternoon papers would have photographs in time, saw to it that he and Pat emerged from the booths at the same time, smiled at each other for photographers as they handed in their ballots. As his motorcade headed back toward Los Angeles, Nixon eluded reporters by switching en route from his Cadillac to a white convertible, sped off on a mystery trip that took him some 150 miles through sunny Southern California. His destination on the most crucial day of his career: Tijuana, Mexico, where he lunched (enchiladas, tacos and German beer) with Tijuana's mayor, Xicotencatl Leyva Aleman. Nixon stopped by the roadside to play touch football briefly with a group of marines from El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, took time off on the way back to show an aide the San Juan Capistrano Mission, gulp down a pineapple milk shake at a roadside stand.

Machines or Ike? Nixon napped in his suite for most of the afternoon, then settled down to await the results, wearing a lounging robe over his shirt and trousers. He got his news mostly from staff reports, left the TV set turned off. To Old Pro Nixon, the trend was soon all too obvious; long before most of his supporters, he realized that he was in trouble. While Nixon lieutenants kept up the spirits of 3,000 workers gathered in the ballroom below for a "Nixon-Lodge victory night," Nixon nibbled on sandwiches, sipped champagne. His personal agony was shared with only a few; he did not speak to his mother and family gathered in another suite, or to Running Mate Henry Cabot Lodge, who himself was getting the bad news at a Republican victory rally in Washington's Sheraton-Park Hotel.

As Kennedy's lead piled up, the crowd downstairs cheered more wildly at every Nixon rally, shook the hall with shouts of "We want Nixon." Campaign Chairman Leonard Hall assured all that "this one would be a squeaker." "Who are you going to believe," asked one worker, "those damned lying machines or good old Ike?" Disk Jockey Johnny Grant went to the microphone and bellowed: "Look, this is not a wake. We are not losing, and we are not going to lose." Hope died hard—but by 10 p.m. Pacific time, the somber recognition that victory was getting beyond reach hit the Nixon crowd. Almost as if by signal, the ballroom quieted, and the crowd began to drift away, leaving a loyal claque to see out the evening. Two women left in tears.