How to Handle Crises?

The ability to be cool, confident, and decisive in crisis is not an inherited characteristic but is the direct result of how well the individual has prepared himself for the battle.

Going through the necessary soul-searching of deciding whether to fight a battle, or to run away from it, is jar more difficult than the battle itself.

The classic crisis is one involving physical danger. What is essential in such situations is not so much "bravery" in the face of danger as the ability to think "selflessly."

These are some of the lessons that Rich ard M. Nixon has drawn from his crisis-ridden career -- and which he passes along to readers of his Six Crises, published in part by LIFE and now out in a book (Doubleday; 460 pp.; $5.95). It is a curious document. It displays at times a genuine humility -- and at times a need less, naive immodesty. It provides some absorbing footnotes to recent history. It gives insight into the strange political relationship between Nixon and Eisenhower. And it tells more about Nixon than he may have intended.

The crises of Nixon's life were 1) the Hiss case, which "left a residue of hatred and hostility toward me" 2) the Nixon fund, which almost got him tossed off the Republican national ticket in 1952; 3) the Eisenhower heart attack of 1955, when Nixon faced the delicate task of assuming responsibility without appearing to usurp power; 4) the riotous Nixon visit to South America in 1958, which almost ended in his death at the hands of a Caracas mob; Sy the "kitchen debate" with Khrushchev during Nixon's 1959 mission to Moscow, and " 6) the 1960 campaign itself.

Ike & Dick. President Eisenhower assigned to Nixon more responsibility than had been given any previous Vice President. Yet Ike's real feelings about Nixon were often baffling--most of all to Nixon. During the fund crisis, Eisenhower telephoned Nixon only once, three days after the furor broke in the press. "I have come to the conclusion," said Candidate Eisenhower to his running mate, "that you are the one who has to decide what to do ... If the impression got around that you got off the ticket because I forced you to get off. it is going to be very bad. On the other hand, if I issue a statement now backing you up. in effect people will accuse me of condoning wrongdoing." At the height of the fund crisis, Nixon wrote out a letter of withdrawal from the ticket--which his campaign manager, Murray Chotiner. tore up. Even when the telegrams of support for Nixon were.; flooding in after the "Checkers" speech, there was still no message from Eisenhower--owing to garbled communications, as it turned out. Nixon moodily concluded that Ike was still undecided about keeping him on the ticket. At that point, he admits, Nixon got sore at Ike.

Again, before the abortive "Dump Nixon" movement in 1956, Ike appeared to agree that Nixon should not stand for re-election as Vice President. Writes Nixon: "It was 'most disappointing' to him, he said, to see that my popularity had not risen as high as he had hoped it would. For that reason, he said, it might be better for me in a new Administration not to be Vice President but to be a Cabinet officer." Yet, when Nixon finally said he wanted to be Vice President again, Eisenhower seemed to welcome the decision.

For all his frustrations at Ike's hands, Nixon remains genuinely admiring of his old chief. His summation of President Eisenhower: "He was a far more complex and devious man than most people realized, and in the best sense of those words. Not shackled to a one-track mind, he always applied two. three, or four lines of reasoning to a single problem and he usually preferred the indirect approach where it would serve him better than the direct attack on a problem. His mind was quick and facile. His thoughts far outraced his speech and this gave rise to his frequent 'scrambled syntax."

Just Plain Dick. Most of his opponents paint Nixon as a ruthless, calculating politician without an ounce of humanity in his soul. Yet there are numberless incidents in the book that show him as a lonely man who treasures tiny tributes as though they were sapphires. He recalls that in the midst of the Lima riots, just before Caracas, "Tad Szulc. Latin American correspondent for the New York Times, ran alongside the car saying, 'Good going, Mr. Vice President, good going. " In Moscow, immediately after his harangue with Khrushchev, "Ernie Barcella the correspondent for United Press International, came alongside and whispered in my ear, 'Good going, Mr. Vice President.'" After a speech in New York: "The audience gave me a standing ovation. As I sat down, Governor Dewey grasped my hand and said: 'That was a terrific speech.'"

Nixon survived five of his six crises--and each, in one way or another, led to the sixth. Some may wonder why he calls his campaign for the presidency a crisis--except, of course, that he lost. Despite some cries of foul play against Kennedy. * Nixon attributes defeat to three major factors : 1) "The campaign was too long, from all standpoints," 2) "A candidate must save himself for the major events--and his staff must never forget this," and 3) "I spent too much time on substance, and too little time on appearance.'' These may indeed have been contributing reasons for Nixon's defeat. But the basic cause was that, in conducting an incredibly bad campaign, he was so concerned about how he would appear under pressure and about creating the image of a "new Nixon" that he forgot about the tough, aggressive abilities that had enabled him to forge ahead through previous crises. It is interesting to speculate whether, by just remaining the "old Nixon." he would be President of the U.S. today.

* The loudest cry got the biggest headlines last week. In the book, Nixon accuses Kennedy of "jeopardizing the security of a United States foreign policy operation" in mid-campaign. Kennedy, he says, had been briefed on the CIA's program of secretly arming and training anti-Castro exiles for an invasion of Cuba, and there after deliberately advocated a similar program --''in effect, direct intervention," writes Xixon -- in a campaign statement. This, says Nixon, compelled him to denounce the Kennedy program as "dangerously irresponsible," even though he had known about the invasion plan and supported it. He says he did this to preserve the CIA secret --and that the statement cost him votes. "The covert operation," he writes, "had to be protected at all costs." The Nixon charge brought an instant denial from the White House. Then the whole incident turned into a historical phantasmagoria when former CIA Director Allen Dulles agreed that Kennedy had not been told of the Cuban invasion plans until after his election.

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