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Just as they gloss over many of Nixon's early successes as Congressman, Senator and then Vice President, his funeral obituaries also make only passing reference to Nixon's momentous political defeats throughout the early 1960s. 

In this period of his life the carefully constructed image of Nixon as a hard-man of Washington, a political fixer, anti-communist and international statesmen all fell apart in a spectacular fashion. Apart from Bill Clinton's passing comment that "he knew great controversy amid defeat as well as victory", and Bob Dole's quote from Nixon that "you should never be discouraged by failure" there is little more in the official eulogies about what was a momentous time in both Nixon's life and the history of his country.

Nixon was the obvious choice as Republican presidential candidate in 1960, but he came up against John Kennedy, the charismatic young senator from Massachuesetts. What seems most memorable about the contest today, and what many of the journalists' obituaries focus on, are the differences between Kennedy and Nixon. 

Haynes Johnson comments that the two candidates were of "notably differing backgrounds", "Nixon, the poor son of a failed father, was a scion of an old Protestant family that had never distinguished itself" while Kennedy was "the rich son of a powerful father riven with ambition for himself and his Irish Catholic family." Kennedy was "rich, handsome" forcing Nixon to campaign even harder, only to become "overworked, and defensive." Similarly R.W. Apple in the New York Times writes that Kennedy's "coltish, patrician grace stirred profound envy in Mr Nixon."

But these differences are superficial, as Johnson acknowledges: "they were alike, these young World War II naval veterans who went to the Congress in the same year of 1946. They were both driven by ambition, and by determination to win at any cost." Indeed, as Hunter S. Thompson describes with his usual journalistic licence, "When he arrived in the White House as VP at the age of 40, he was a smart young man on the rise - a hubris-crazed monster from the bowels of the American dream... He had won every office he'd run for."

Behind this hyperbole is the acknowledgment that Nixon, despite some notable gaffes on the campaign trail, was equal to Kennedy in the race for president. Nixon lost by only 114,673 votes in an election which recorded the highest voter turnout that century. To Nixon's great credit, "in a statesman-like display" as many of his critics acknowledge, he didn't challenge the result, despite questions of tampering by Kennedy allies. "It was the first time in 14 years that Nixon lost an election."

Although he left the contest gracefully, the defeat had a serious impact on Nixon. In the hours after conceding, Nixon drove around night-time Washington, entering the Capitol for what he thought was the last time. As Nixon later remembered, "As I turned to go inside, I suddenly stopped short, struck by the thought that this was not the end - that someday I would be back here." [1]

Far from a comeback, Nixon's slide from power continued. As Michael Beschloss notes in one of the more telling images of Nixon's obituaries, in 1961 the former Vice President and Presidential candidate found himself "heating TV dinners alone in a furnished bachelor apartment in Los Angeles." In any case, California Republicans were soon approaching Nixon to run for the California Governorship in 1962 as the logical step to a presidential comeback in 1964, and although repeatedly telling himself and his supporters that he thought it was a bad idea, Nixon announced he was running [2]. 

Although Billy Graham can now claim that Nixon's "roots were deep" in California, in 1962 Nixon was widely ridiculed by both the media and voters as an opportunist scouting for another shot at the presidency. Nixon lost in California, although not even his critics now dwell on what was one of the two lowest moments in his life, when he himself announced his political retirement in what Haynes Johnson notes was "probably the most embittered, self-pitying farewell remarks ever made in American politics." 

In one of the more cutting ironies of Nixon's life, that has since been forgotten, Nixon lost key Republican support from the far-right splinter group the John Birch Society, whose paranoid anti-communism he was partially responsible for, as one of the key sponsors of anti-communism in his Capitol years.

Despite such an ignominious defeat, many observers have since noted that at the very point when Nixon declared his retirement from politics, he was already planning his route to the presidency: "In short, immediately after escaping from the bad dream of actually being governor of California, Nixon began at his last press conference the start of his next campaign." [3] According to Haynes Johnson, Nixon rightly viewed Kennedy as unassailable in 1964, and even after his assassination the Republican party was torn apart by factional divisions. However, by 1968 Nixon had "positioned himself perfectly and awaited his chance." 
 
 

[1] Richard Nixon, Memoirs of Richard Nixon, Macmillan, Melbourne, 1978, 228
[2] Ibid., 239
[2] Stephen E. Ambrose, Nixon - Volume Two: The Triumph of a Politician 1962-1972, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1989, 13
 
 

Listen to Nixon's 1962 concession speech

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