Richard Nixon in Presidential and politican history from 1940-1949
On Civil Rights:
1947: Joined HUAC to catch real Communists
During the early weeks of 1947 a staffer could peek into any hearing on Capitol Hill and watch the hunt for "Reds" in progress. Richard Nixon won a dubious posting on the anti-Communist front: the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Speaker
Joe Martin of MA wanted the 33-year-old Californian on HUAC for what he was, a lawyer, but also for what he was not, a crackpot. Such credentials were in short supply on a committee notorious for ignoring civil liberties and tilting at windmills.
Nixon brought another talent to the committee table: an insatiable appetite for opposition research. That appetite had been whetted, not sated, by the digging done on Jerry Voorhis, which produced the lethal NC PAC memo.
The Honorable Richard
M. Nixon, member of Congress, was now hunting bigger game than Jerry Voorhis. He was out to catch real Communists. The committee's junior Republican was not content: Dick Nixon smelled blood. 2 weeks later, he gave his maiden House address on the matter.
Source: Kennedy & Nixon, by Chris Matthews, p. 46-47 (1940s History)
Jun 3, 1996
On Foreign Policy:
Anti-communist since 1946's Iron Curtain
During World War II, I became strongly pro-Russian as the Soviet Union fought alongside us in the war against Hitler. My attitude began to change in 1946, in part because of Winston Churchill "Iron Curtain" speech. At first I thought that Churchill might
have gone too far, but these doubts were soon removed by Stalin's actions. When Pres. Truman asked for aid to Greece and Turkey and initiated the Marshall Plan, I strongly supported both in Congress.In my travels as VP, in 1959
I visited the Soviet Union. In the heart of Siberia in Novosibirsk, away from the tight control of the central government of Moscow thousands of Russians swarmed around us shouting "mir y druzhabe"--"Peace and friendship."
The people wanted friendship; the leaders, however, made no bones about the fact that they wanted something different. As Khrushchev put it coldly, "Your grandchildren will live under communism."
Source: The Real War, by Richard Nixon, p. 52-53 (1940s History)
Jan 1, 1981
On Homeland Security:
1947: Served in HUAC, House Un-American Activities Committee
Dick Nixon, as a freshman congressman on the House Un-American Activities committee, stood out by managing actually to expose someone--namely
Alger Hiss, who was accused of passing classified documents to Russians.
The case was revelatory as well as puzzling because Hiss, then the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was a model of new deal achievement--a Harvard Law school graduate, the secretary general of
The United Nations Charter Conference, in 1945.In the end it was Nixon who let Hiss trap himself with his increasingly convoluted testimony and lawyerly avoidances.
Source: Ike and Dick, by Jeffrey Frank, p. 11-12 (1940s History)
Nov 5, 2013
On Homeland Security:
1948: Require Communists to register with government
By March 1948, Nixon's hard work earned him his 1st national publicity. When HUAC took up a bill to outlaw the Communist party,
Nixon was ready with a substitute. Instead of banning Communists, the Nixon bill required party members to register with the government. It was the Nixon version that passed the House. The vote was 319-58.
The Nixon bill became the focus of a heated, misinformed, national radio debate between Minnesota's Harold Stassen and NY governor Thomas E. Dewey, the top candidates for the 1948 Republican presidential nomination.
At 35, Nixon was about to become America's most celebrated Communist-catcher.
Source: Kennedy & Nixon, by Chris Matthews, p. 59-60 (1940s History)
Jun 3, 1996
On Principles & Values:
1946: Permanent campaign & anti-Communism won 1st House seat
Nixon campaigned all over the district and lured the incumbent, Jerry Voorhis, into a series of debates for which Nixon, the strategic litigator, had prepared himself, as if for a chess match. People who had known him as a polite and deferential young
man, a lawyer embarrassed by the intimacies of marital lawsuits, were surprised by his ferocity, in particular the Red Scare rhetoric that he added to the mix: a claim that Voorhis had been endorsed by a political action committee that was infiltrated by
communists.Nixon was tutored by Murray Chotiner, a chubby, cigar smoking, Jewish and a veteran of California politics. Chotiner had helped to elect Earl Warren as governor in 1942 and would one day get credit for the idea that a successful politician
needed to run a " permanent campaign" and for some nasty modern campaign practices, including the dictum that to be successful you need to deflate the opposition candidate before your own campaign gets started." Nixon won 56% of the vote.
Source: Ike and Dick, by Jeffrey Frank, p. 9 (1940s History)
Nov 5, 2013
On Principles & Values:
1945: Answered "want ad" to run for Congress
A story that sometimes got exaggerated [was that] "Somebody related a second hand story about Dick Nixon answering a want ad for a Congressional candidate."The "want ad" was actually a hand-out mailed in the late summer of 1945 to newspapers in
California's 12th Congressional district; it invited prospective candidates to apply to a Republican fact-finding committee ,whose goal was to defeat the five term Democratic incumbent.
Source: Ike and Dick, by Jeffrey Frank, p. 8 (1940s History)
Nov 5, 2013
On War & Peace:
WWIII has been waged between US and USSR since 1945
World War III began before WWII ended: Stalin had his eye clearly fixed on his postwar objectives for a divided postwar world. WWIII has proceeded from the Soviet seizure of Eastern Europe, through the communist conquest of China, the wars in Korea and
Indochina, and the establishment of a western hemisphere outpost of the Soviet power in Cuba, to the present thrusts by the Soviet Union and its allies into Africa, the Islamic crescent, and Central America. The expansionism has been accompanied by a
prodigious military buildup that has brought the Soviet Union on the verge of the decisive supremacy over the West.WWIII is the first truly global war. No corner of the earth is beyond its reach. The US & the Soviet Union have both become global
powers, and whatever affects the balance between us anywhere affects that balance everywhere. Military power, economic power, willpower, and the clarity of a nation's sense of purpose--each of these is vital to the outcome.
Source: The Real War, by Richard Nixon, p. 19-22 (1940s History)
Jan 1, 1981
Page last updated: Jun 28, 2023