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On November 2, 1945, Richard Nixon's political career began. Returning from his service in the Navy as a desk-bound operations officer, Nixon was recruited by the Committee of 100, an association of California Republicans searching for a candidate for Congress in 1946 against an entrenced New Deal Democrat named Jerry Voorhis.

Richard Nixon enthusiastically accepted the offer, but was disappointed to find he was only one of many possible candidates canvassed by the committee. The group was narrowed down to six, and Nixon was required to give the last speech at a selection meeting. In "the first speech of my political career", Nixon attacked Roosevelt's New Deal, claiming that "I believe the returning veterans, and I have talked with many of them in the foxholes, will not be satisfied with a dole or a government handout." [1] As Haynes Johnson points out in his eulogy for Nixon, the future president was already twisting the truth, giving the false impression that he was a combat veteran "in the foxholes" when his real position for most of the war was preparing airplane manifests and flight plans on the island of New Caledonia, and later managing supplies and operating a hamburger stand on the island of Bougainville.

Nixon won the preselection, and became the Republican congressional candidate for California's twelfth district. According to Johnson, Nixon's campaign literature described him as a "clean, forthright young American who fought in defense of his country in the stinking mud and jungles of the Solomons." James Perry, writing in the Wall Street Journal, remembers that "all of Mr Nixon's campaigns were, in one way or another memorable. His first, in 1946 against Jerry Voorhis, a veteran Democrat and the popular incumbent, set the pattern."

Despite Perry's claim, many of the other eulogies for Nixon conveniently gloss over this key moment in his life. Bill Clinton argues that "today is a day for his family, his friends, and his nation to remember President Nixon's life in totality. To them, let us say: may the day of judging President Nixon on anything less than his entire life and career come to a close." But Clinton makes no mention of Nixon's early political career. Neither do any of the other speakers at his funeral.

Yet it was in these early political contests that Nixon first fashioned himself into a virulent anti-communist, a populist image that would carry him all the way to the Vice Presidency. As Perry reminds us, Nixon quickly gained a lead over his opponent for congress with a well timed red scare, declaring that "a vote for Nixon is a vote against the Communist-dominated PAC with its gigantic slush fund" that supposedly supported Voorhis. Nixon won easily, but even he would later admit that he had run "an especially vigorous campaign", and in what amounts to almost an apology, acknowledges that "if some of my rhetoric seems overstated now, it was nonetheless in keeping with the approach that seasoned Republican politicians were using that year." [2]

Having taken his seat in the Capitol as a freshman congressman, Nixon continued to develop his anti-communist persona. He used his maiden speech to accuse a man named Gerhart Eisler of being the top Communist agent in America and of being in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which Nixon was now a member of. Nixon rose to national prominence in 1948, again on the back of a tide of anti-communist paranoia. This time Nixon was instrumental in uncovering a plot to "infiltrate the government" by Communist agents, one by the name of Alger Hiss. Nixon's aggressive pursuit of Hiss added to his image as an ambitious and popular Republican politician, and situated him perfectly for selection as Vice President in 1952.

[1] Richard Nixon, Memoirs of Richard Nixon, Macmillian, Melbourne, 1978, 35
[2] Ibid., 42
 

Visit an extensive website on the Alger Hiss trial at NYU

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