REPUBLICANS: Candidate in Crisis

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Dogged Pursuit. Well-known is the story of his being invited by Whittier friends, shortly after V-J day, to run for Congress against New Deal Democrat Jerry Voorhis. His big victory over Voorhis (won partly because he induced Voorhis to engage in a series of public debates and thus elevate Nixon to prominence) landed him in Congress with another freshman, one John Fitzgerald Kennedy of Massachusetts. Kennedy loped along in anonymity; Congressman Nixon hit the nation's front pages during his very first term. As a member of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, he was present when ex-Communist Whittaker Chambers testified that Alger Hiss, sometime high State Department official, had been a Communist spy during the 1930s. Hiss's denials convinced the other committee members—but his legalistic evasions caught the alert ear of law-trained Richard Nixon. Nixon doggedly pursued the investigation as virtually a one-man committee. Many an ardent Nixon admirer firmly believes that the Democratic liberals' real hatred of Nixon stems not from his insinuating style of debate but from the fact that the Hiss case shattered so many of their postwar illusions about the Communist "wave of the future."

Sprung to fame as the nemesis of Alger Hiss, Nixon ran for the Senate in 1950 against liberal-wing Democratic Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas (wife of Cinemactor Melvyn Douglas), defeated her in what he called a "rocking, socking campaign." It featured Nixon's documented allegation that her voting record resembled that of New York's Commu nist-lining Congressman Vito Marcantonio—a charge originally hurled at Candidate Douglas not by Nixon but by an opponent in the Democratic primary.

Conservative Radical. Tied to Richard Nixon in the 1950 battle was an epithet that he has not quite managed to shake loose: "Tricky Dick." The Nixon that his friends know is not the stab-fingered persecutor with the five o'clock shadow that the cartoonists draw. To counter this impression, Nixon, who is essentially a reserved and private man, has made a "Dick and Pat" campaign that is quite unlike his unextroverted personal life. The Tricky Dick legend obscures Nixon's private scrupulousness, which leads him to turn over to charitable organizations every cent of the thousands of dollars he has earned for paid speaking engagements during his years as Vice President. The Tricky Dick haze has also obscured Nixon's public philosophy. A persistent liberal accusation against him is that he is "innocent of doctrine," that he has "no ideas, only methods." But over the years Nixon has built up a consistent record on public issues.