The Mourning After

Clearly shaping up in the G.O.P.'s grey mourning after was a three-cornered battle for party power. The combatants: Vice President Richard Nixon, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater.

Goldwater' Prospects. Far-out Conservative Barry Goldwater, who had campaigned faithfully for Nixon through the South, was the first to throw down the gauntlet. Said he hours after Nixon's defeat: "I want to figure in 1964--not necessarily as the top candidate. But I don't want Rockefeller in that spot." He tended to write off Nixon as an unemployed politician, figured that Nixon's defeat only strengthened Goldwater: "It's just what I've been saying. We cannot win as a dime-store copy of the opposition's platform. We offered voters insufficient choice with a me-too candidate. We must be different. My guess is that 80% of the state chairmen, the precinct committeemen, the workers think it is true. Everyone recognizes it except the party leadership."

Goldwater can count many allies, including G.O.P. state and county chairmen across the conservative South, the Southwest, and the Midwest from the Mississippi to the Rockies. Though he is weaker in the big-vote industrial states, his supporters make up in zeal for whatever they lack in numbers. During the campaign Goldwater became one of the G.O.P.'s most sought-after speakers, and many congressional candidates billed themselves as Goldwater Republicans. Most of the 23 new G.O.P. Congressmen are conservatives--a fact that will help Goldwater. "If the Southern Democrats stay in coalition with us," he says, "we'll be even more conservative in action than we were in the last two Congresses."

Rockefeller Problems. If many key Republicans were piqued at Goldwater for blasting Nixon, even more were angered at Rockefeller for failing to turn the tide in make-or-break New York, where a 1956 Eisenhower plurality of 1,600,000 votes ebbed to a 1960 Nixon deficit of 400,000. "There is a feeling that the best effort was not put out here," said a top New York Republican who is no friend of Rockefeller's. "Nelson will have one helluva time getting re-elected Governor in 1962." The Rockefeller rebuttal: he had given 400 enthusiastic speeches for Nixon, campaigned so hard that he turned ashen with fatigue. Nixon himself held no grudges, believed that Rocky had gone all the way for him--at least after the famous Treaty of Fifth Avenue and the nominating convention.

Still the impression grew that Rockefeller, with an eye to 1964, had been campaigning as much for himself as for Nixon. His job was to woo independents, and he produced precious few. In September he rejected the Eisenhower-Nixon old-age medical-care plan and plumped for Kennedy's social security-based system. When asked in Geneva, N.Y. if he agreed with Nixon that U.S. prestige was at an alltime high--a key point in the debate with Kennedy--Rockefeller said: "I wouldn't make such a flat statement." When asked in New York City why he was not the candidate, Rocky said: "I figured that those who were in control of the convention had their minds made up already."

But Nixon's defeat has emboldened Rockefeller partisans, particularly in the industrial and Western states. Says San Francisco's William Brinton, a dogged Rockefeller-for-President leader in Nixon's home state: "Rockefeller can win in just those areas that Nixon lost--the big cities." Rockefeller's own problem now is to rebuild and reunite the New York organization, win over its Old Guardists (who had blocked much of his liberal program in the legislature). If he were to win big in 1962 Rockefeller might look very good indeed.

Nixon Choices. For the here and now, Dick Nixon is still very much the titular head of the G.O.P. With Dwight Eisenhower disqualified by age and inclination, middle-reading Nixon is the natural bridge between the left and right banks of his party. He intends to play the part forcefully. Said a top Nixon aide: "Dick will not permit a vacuum of leadership to develop for someone else to fill."

Nixon's problem is finding a political base from which to operate. He occupies neither a Senate seat nor a statehouse. Last week, after accepting his biggest disappointment manfully, Nixon flew off to Florida to soak up several weeks of sun and to make one of the toughest decisions of his career: what to do next. He was besieged by many private job offers. Which one he accepted would probably indicate his future political ambition.

A university presidency would pay relatively little but give him prestige (as it did for General Eisenhower at Columbia), and a platform for Olympian comment on public affairs. Most frequently mentioned possibility: the University of Chicago, which is now casting around for a permanent chancellor.

Nixon might also run for Governor of California in 1962, hoping to add to his luster as a vote getter by winning the nation's second most important statehouse (after New York). But advisers warn him against trying. A loss to incumbent Democrat Edmund G. ("Pat") Brown, who won by 1,000,000 votes in 1958, would kill Nixon politically. And California Republicans are short on bright candidates for other offices--men of the type who could help Nixon.

Nixon himself needs money. He has never held a big-money job, thinks it is high time to build a bank account for his family. He can almost take his choice among top law firms, but working for a major Wall Street law firm involves corporate and foreign connections that can cripple a political career. (One persistent rumor has Nixon forming his own law partnership with a close friend, Attorney General William Rogers.) Furthermore, he has several corporate offers at "two to three times the salary of the President"--$200,000 to $300,000. But to accept would be to identify himself with "big business," probably remove him from future political candidacy.

Better Chance. Whichever course he chooses, say some Republican leaders, Nixon will probably never again get as good a shot at the presidency as in 1960. He ran as a sitting Vice President, more experienced than any of his predecessors in the job, was heralded as a well-publicized debater against Khrushchev and sponsored by an immensely popular President. In 1964 the argument of experience and continuity of office will be on the side of Jack Kennedy. Only twice in the 20th century have Presidents lost their second-term bids--Taft lost to Wilson, Hoover to Roosevelt.

But a case can be made that Richard Nixon will have to be reckoned with as a candidate in 1964. In 1960 Nixon came within a handful of votes of carrying California, Illinois, New Jersey, Minnesota, and, with them, the election. He went down to defeat as the second best Republican vote getter in history, winning 33.3 million votes v. Ike's 35.6 million in 1956. He ran well ahead of the other G.O.P. candidates, pulled several lesser Republicans into Congress on his shirttails. Said New York Congressman William Miller, chairman of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee: "Any man who, at 47, comes within 300,000 votes of winning the presidency --for a party that is greatly outnumbered--has to be reckoned with. It's far too early to bury Dick Nixon."

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