A Matter of Sides

If politics makes strange bedfellows, it also makes some fickle lovers. That, at least, is the suggestion conveyed in a new book on the President's political comeback by Jules Witcover, veteran Washington reporter for the Los Angeles Times. In The Resurrection of Richard Nixon (G.P. Putnam's Sons), Witcover maintains that former Texas Governor John Connally, a power in the state and Lyndon Johnson's closest political ally, actually worked secretly through most of the campaign to raise money for Nixon while publicly ignoring Hubert Humphrey.

Then, according to Witcover, with less than a week to go before Election Day, Connally apparently came to believe that Humphrey would carry the state. So Connally leaped on the bandwagon and finally bestowed public blessings on his own party's candidate at a huge Houston rally. Johnson too, after immobilizing himself and his entire Cabinet during most of the campaign, appeared at the rally. He also loosened some Texas money that had been withheld from Humphrey. The support and money may have swung the state.

Nixon's quid pro quo for Connally's help, the story goes, was a strong, implied promise that he would become Secretary of Defense--Nixon wanted a Democrat for the job--if the Republicans carried Texas and won. Although Texas had been regarded as leaning toward Nixon shortly before the vote, Humphrey took its 25 electoral votes, but by only 39,000 out of 3.1 million votes cast. Witcover quotes a Nixon insider as saying after the campaign that Connally could have gotten the Defense job if "he had had a few more guts," meaning if he had not switched.

Is the story true? Connally calls it "worse than inaccurate; it's a lie." Among those ready to believe it are many of Humphrey's staff who have long felt that Johnson secretly wanted a Nixon victory so that history would record the Democrats' unpopularity rather than Johnson's. They reason that Connally would not have made the deal without Johnson's knowledge.

Believers could also find support for the story in some things not in Witcover's book. It is known that Connally was outraged at the Democratic Convention when Humphrey agreed to drop the unit rule for delegate voting, a source of power for Connally, and would not even consider the Texan for a running mate. Connally and Allan Shivers, also a former Texas Governor and like Connally a conservative, were planning to go on television shortly before the election to announce their support of Nixon. They changed their minds at about the same time that Connally, according to Witcover, was changing candidates.

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