REPUBLICANS: Candidate in Crisis

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During his first term in Congress, Nixon showed himself to be, in the positions he took, a sort of pre-Eisenhower Eisenhower Republican: conservative on the central domestic question of the role of Government in national life, liberal on civil rights, internationalist in foreign relations. As a Congressman, he took several stands that the Eisenhower Administration later adopted and translated into law: civil rights legislation, statehood for Alaska and Hawaii, construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway, relinquishment of federal claims to control of the tidelands. As a freshman Congressman, Nixon supported Harry Truman's program of aid to Communist-menaced Greece and Turkey, and he has remained a steadfast backer of foreign aid.

On domestic questions, Nixon held as a Congressman basically the same Republican view he holds today: that the role of the Federal Government "should be a supporting role, supplementing and stimulating rather than supplanting private enterprise." Nixon sometimes speaks of himself as a "radical" in the goals he wants the U.S. to reach in standards of living, in health, in education, in opportunity for the young and security for the old. Where he parts company with the Democratic Party is in insisting that achievement of these goals is not the primary task of the Federal Government.

"Hunk of Iron." It was largely Nixon's unmistakable Republicanness that led Republican chieftains at the Chicago convention in 1952 to pick him from Dwight Eisenhower's short list of acceptable vice-presidential prospects. The new President was reared in the military gospel that a second in command should always be trained to take over in case of accident, accordingly decided at the start that his Vice President would sit in the councils of the Administration, learn its secrets, share in its decisions, and so be prepared to take over if the President died in office. Ike laid down a rule that when he was absent Nixon would preside at meetings of both the Cabinet and the National Security Council. Over the years, Nixon has made nine official trips abroad, covering a total of 159,232 miles, as Ike's representative. The late Secretary Dulles once said that "Dick is the best person we have, outside of the President himself, for overseas good-will missions."

Vice President Nixon has never had any authority to make policy decisions: the Constitution vests the entire executive power in the President. But Nixon nevertheless helped to shape policies by influence and argument, and many times Ike has had to call on Nixon to get Republican support for Administration bills in Congress. The Administration's devotion to foreign aid over the years is partly traceable to Nixon's influence. In October 1957, Nixon was the first member of the Administration to say publicly that the Soviet Sputnik, which the admiral in charge of U.S. Navy satellite research had dismissed as a "hunk of iron," represented a serious challenge to the U.S.