TIME: Almanac 1995

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<text id=93HT1323> <title> Nixon: Epochal Journey </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--Nixon Portrait </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> May 26, 1958 Epochal Journey </hdr> <body> They began arriving at 10 a.m. by the dozens, then by the hundreds. By noon there were nearly 15,000--ordinary citizens, students with placards of welcome, brass bands, civil servants, diplomats, Congressmen, Cabinet members and the President of the U.S.--crushing around the DC-6B just landed at Washington's National Airport. In the plane's doorway appeared Vice President and Mrs. Richard Nixon, back from their tumultuous 18-day tour of Latin America. This was their homecoming, rare in its deep-felt warmth. The receiving line broke up, swirled around the Nixons. "You did a great job, damn your soul," beamed South Carolina's Democratic Representative Mendel Rivers to Republican Nixon. And then, to President Eisenhower: "Didn't he do a wonderful job?" Pennsylvania's Republican Representative James Fulton shouted to Mrs. Nixon: "How about a kiss for the President, Pat?" The President ducked away, grinning, lifting a shielding arm: "Dick is here, and Dick still carries a wallop." On a temporary speaker's stand President Eisenhower nudged Pat Nixon, pointed to one of the dozens of placards bobbing above the crowd. Its legend: "Viva la Blond!" Finally, the President waved for quiet, spoke into a battery of microphones. "All America welcomes them home," said Dwight Eisenhower. "We stand together in condemning any kind of Communist leadership of any such incidents as endangered our beloved Vice President and his wife." Replied Nixon: "I don't think that either of us has ever been so moved...returning as we do." Minutes later the homecoming caravan rolled away from the airport, along streets lined with 100,000 people, under a triumphant arch of fire-engine ladders, to the White House, where Nixon spent the next hour and a half reporting on his trip to the President and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. Nip & Tuck. Both the President and Dulles had been living anxiously on the edge of Nixon's trip since Tuesday, when Ike got first word at a White House luncheon of the Venezuelan mob attack on the Nixons. The President's first move was to order Dulles to find out from the Venezuelan embassy if its government was able to protect the Nixons. He added: "We had better find out what we have militarily in the area." The President called Defense Secretary Neil McElroy and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Nathan Twining. Under Secretary of State Christian Herter, who had, through aides, been in touch with the Nixon party in Venezuela, called McElroy, reported the situation as "nip and tuck." When Herter's report came, McElroy was in conference with the Joint Chiefs. The Army's Maxwell Taylor arose, asked McElroy crisply: "May I use your phone?" Permission granted, Taylor snapped out orders for the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky. to alert two companies. Equipment: "Packet A"--i.e., anti-riot weapons, such as billy clubs and tear gas. That afternoon President Eisenhower made his decision: he ordered Army paratroopers and Marines flown to U.S. bases in Cuba and Puerto Rico, there to stand ready to protect the Vice President. A fundamental condition: the troops would be sent into Venezuela only at the request of the Venezuelan government. The Joint Chiefs drew up a provisional plan: if Nixon should be actually besieged, two companies of the 101st Airborne would parachute into Caracas to secure the airfield, followed by two Marine companies, about 500 men, making a sea landing from the missile cruiser Boston. The carrier Tarawa would be steaming toward Caracas with another 250 Marines. Helicopters would be sent from the airport to the embassy for the Nixons, then the troops would pull out fast. But such action did not prove necessary; next morning President Eisenhower talked to Nixon by telephone, learned that Caracas was calmer. That day, needled by questions about Yanqui diplomacy at his press conference, the President replied calmly: "Well, it is the most, the simplest precautionary type of measure in the world." Cheers & Jeers. The press conference questions signaled the U.S. uproar to come. The last welcoming cheer for Richard Nixon's homecoming had barely died away when the political outcry began. Oregon's Nixon-hating Democrat Wayne Morse announced that his Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Latin America would investigate the whole Nixon tour, calling in State Department, Central Intelligence Agency and other witnesses "to learn what they knew of the potential for the outbreaks of violence and anti-Americanism before the Vice President scheduled his trip." The full Senate Foreign Relations Committee promptly took over the investigation, scheduled its own hearings and widened the scope. Democratic National Chairman Paul Butler got into the act, declared Nixon's good-will trips abroad were mere propaganda designed to get him on Page One. Replied White House Press Secretary James Hagerty: "How silly can you get?" The nation's press leaped freely into the growing national fray. New York Times Pundit Arthur Krock found one Democratic leader who blamed Nixon for "trying to argue U.S. democracy through an interpreter at a loss to this country's dignity and his own." The Washington Post & Times Herald's Robert C. Albright quoted "several Democrats" who wondered "how much of the hostility exhibited at Lima and Caracas was directed against Nixon himself as a controversial individual." One or two even wondered whether Adlai Stevenson or some other prominent Democrat might not have had better treatment on a similar South American tour. For the Republicans, Army Secretary Wilber Brucker added heat, but no light, to the debate by saying that Nixon's "sole offense as a cause of the rioting is that he is anti-Communist and anti-Alger Hiss." Connecticut's G.O.P. Representative Albert Morano and Pennsylvania's Republican James Fulton invited all their colleagues to sign up for "Nixon in '60." Six did. "We Should Be Proud." Beyond the simple political name- calling were two substantive questions: Had the U.S. received adequate advance warning of the riots that might greet Nixon in South America? If so, should Nixon have gone? In fact, U.S. intelligence had considered it probable that there would be Communist-led demonstrations, even while underestimating their intensity and overestimating the ability of the Latin American governments to handle them. As to whether Nixon should have gone under such circumstances, the best-informed answer lay in the fact that his having gone brought important long-range benefits far out-weighing temporary embarrassments. Richard Nixon returned from South America convinced that it has undergone considerable social and economic revolution in the last decade--and that U.S. diplomacy has not caught up with the change. As he had on his trip to Africa, he found some U.S. diplomats mingling only with the thin upper-crust of society, totally unaware of the aspirations of the restless students and intellectuals. He arrived in Washington determined to throw all his influence into revamping U.S. policy toward Latin America. "The people there," said he, "are concerned, as they should be, about poverty, misery and disease. They are determined to do something about it. And the U.S. is, and should be, proud to work with them as partners in moving toward democracy, toward freedom, toward economic progress." If achievement of that partnership is the outcome, then Nixon's troubled trip to Latin America may at the final summing have been a historic success. NIXON: TARGET ON THE HOME FRONT NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE: All Americans, of whatever party, will wish to honor the unflinching courage both the Nixons displayed in very grave danger. We urge Congress to strike a special medal in their honor. Americans always put politics aside when the nation's honor is involved. The flag that was dragged in the dirt at Caracas was the flag of all of us. The spittle that struck Nixon and his wife was meant for all of us. And the perils which the Nixons braved were braved for all of us. NEW YORK POST: Vice President Nixon's Latin American journey has ended in a total debacle for the U.S. No one can question the concern for Nixon's safety voiced by President Eisenhower. But the flamboyant flight of American troops to the scene will surely be recorded as one of the most monstrous blunders of our ill-fated Latin American diplomacy. The President, whose capacity for indecision has become historic, chose exactly the wrong moment and the wrong method to prove that he is a man of action. The President acted like the Communist caricature of the Yankee imperialist. As for Nixon, he has greatly diminished sympathy for his behavior by a vulgar attempt to convert this dismal tour into a presidential campaign trip. He had established his valor in Peru; his insistence on a repeat performance in Venezuela indicated that he was utterly seduced by his press notices, and incapable of recognizing his own limitations. Columnist ELEANOR ROOSEVELT: Everyone in this country must have been concerned at the demonstration in Peru against the U.S. and Vice President Nixon, who is our goodwill ambassador. But it certainly was not wise for the Vice President to go against the advice of the people who knew the area and begged him not to try and keep his appointment at the university. Like all young men, however, he wanted to prove his courage. This is understandable but sometimes leads to unfortunate results. Our policy of giving military aid to foreign nations instead of actually raising the living standards in those countries has been a mistake. Columnist WALTER LIPPMANN: After all the official regrets and apologies have been received and accepted, the immediate question before us is how it happened that the Nixons were exposed to these outrages. It is manifest that the whole South American tour was misconceived, that it was planned by men who did not know what was the state of mind in the cities the Vice President was to visit. For what has happened should never have been allowed to happen and those who are responsible for the management of our relations with South America must answer to the charge of gross incompetence. We must fix and we must correct the causes that led our officials into this fiasco--into what it would not be exaggeration to call a diplomatic Pearl Harbor. Columnist DAVID LAWRENCE: What a cowardly thing it would be for the United States Government to refuse to go ahead with a trip previously announced and to give as the reason that it couldn't expect--from friendly governments--protection or security for a visiting delegation! Not only would the governments of Latin America have been offended, but they would have winced under the charge that they couldn't protect the distinguished visitors they themselves had invited. The Kremlin has declared "war" against the U.S. in Latin America. It is called a "cold war," and it takes the form of demonstrations, but underneath there is an apparatus designed to aid the strategic purpose of the communist regime. Formenting of hostile demonstrations against the Vice President of the U.S. on his visit to various South American countries could only be achieved by direct orders of the Moscow government. CHICAGO TRIBUNE: To give the impression of an intention to take over the internal policing of a neighbor country with whose government the U.S. is on technically friendly terms, no matter what excesses may be charged to its citizens, is not only unfortunate but a blunder. It recalls the era in which the Marines were policing banana republics and represents gratuitous support of the Communist propaganda line that the U.S. follows a policy of imperialism. NEW YORK TIMES: The public dispatch of 1,000 Marines and paratroopers to Caribbean bases in reply to the outrageous attack in Venezuela on Vice President and Mrs. Nixon could not do anyone any good and seems certain to do the United States harm. The Venezuelan Government was extremely remiss in failing to provide adequate protection for the Nixons, who were its guests; but the United States did not add to its prestige by making this publicly threatening and futile gesture. NEW YORK DAILY NEWS: USA: EAGLE OR PIGEON? SAN FRANCISCO NEWS: The mood of our Government should not be punitive, but we think, in all decency, that in the light of these events there should be more public acknowledgment in South America of the tremendous amounts we spend for their products; a friendlier attitude toward our Point Four and other aid programs, and some show of disapproval at all the anti-Yanqui propaganda. WASHINGTON STAR: With all deference, we venture to suggest that those Democrats who are trying to capitalize on the President's dispatch of troops to the Caribbean after the Caracas incident have embarked on what will prove to be the most unrewarding political venture of this generation. Perhaps the President should have waited to see whether the mob was going to storm the American Embassy and drag Mr. and Mrs. Nixon into the street. But we don't think so. And we don't believe the American people will think so, either. JOURNAL OF COMMERCE: We cannot entirely suppress a wish that Mr. Nixon could have been accompanied on his present tour by those twelve Western Senators who are working so hard to clamp new restrictions on lead and zinc imports. They would, we are sure, have found the trip instructive. THE CHRISTIAN CENTURY: Anybody who has any conception at all of the interdependence of all nations must have known all the time that South American countries are understandably jittery about what the fluctuations in our economy and in our neighborly concern will mean for them. Anyone who has traveled at all in South America must have felt the uneasiness in recent years. Anyone with any sense at all must have known that radical agitators would have been making as much illicit hay as possible among honestly worried peoples. But apparently all of us had to see Vice President Nixon despised and rejected by university students and less raucously snooted by plenty of plain citizens before we could get the idea that South Americans aren't taking us for granted the way we've been taking them for granted. </body> </article> </text>