papers survey when he said: “Isn’t it too bad we can’t elect Nixon? But we can’t, and so I think we’ll go with Romney.”
Fisher, although pleased with his candidate’s progress, felt that the experts were still underestimating Nixon.
“The party was in rough shape after Goldwater,” Fisher says, “and in 1966 Dick did a great job of trying to heal it. He went around the country, speaking about Vietnam, about the Soviet Union, and doing favors for [local Republican machinery], campaigning for can- didates. We talked about it. He built up a lot of chits in 1966. None of the other potential presidential candidates realized that Nixon still had a lot of juice. Nobody really knew the power of his connections, all of the county organizations who supported him, all of the favors he was owed. And he had raised plenty of money. In 1966, Nixon’s power was his best-kept secret. Romney was still on the rise, and, of course, in Rockefeller’s case, the Republican Party didn’t quite trust his liberalism.”
While campaigning, Nixon predicted that 1966 would be a banner year for Republicans, erasing their humiliating defeats in 1964. His prediction was, as he observed in his memoirs, “vindicated with a ven- geance.” In 1966, Republicans won a net of 47 House seats, 3 Senate seats, 8 governorships and 700 state legislature seats.
This impressive Republican victory was, Nixon later conceded, “a prerequisite for my own comeback.” And he and Fisher did far more than talk about it. Says Nixon: “Max contributed financially [to my travels]. He footed the bill —and I don’t mean just in Michigan. This was nationally.”
One of the reasons Fisher did not reveal his hopes to Patricia Smith was that he was unsure who would win the Republican nomination and he did not want to be tied to a single hopeful. (“He avoids offense,” Romney had said.) Fisher understood that the price of admission into the political arena was loyalty. Yet it was clear to him that loyalty would not help if a Republican did not win. Furthermore, his objective was to represent the American Jewish community. He was loyal to his party; that was enough. His support did not have to be for a specific candidate. But that candidate did have to be a Republican, and that Re-
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publican had to be president. At bottom, he reasoned, the best person for the job would be the one who could unseat Johnson.
Two decades after the 1968 election, Fisher says: “Even though Romney was winning, I maintained relationships with Nixon and Rockefeller. Both of them lived on Fifth Avenue, and when I was in NewYork I’d go from one apartment to the other. Whatever was going to happen in 1968, I wanted to play a part.”
It was an attitude that rankled Romney. In 1980, when asked about the social vision Fisher had been pursuing for the previous twenty years, Romney laughed and said: “I never saw much of what you’d call a vision. He tends to move where the power is.”
In response, Fisher said, “History alone will have to decide.” Then, dropping the guise of historical speculation, he gave an answer that was more consistent with his bedrock pragmatism: “Look,” he said. “You can’t please everybody.” Fisher, as Romney noted, indisputably gravitated toward power. But that explanation is only half correct, and thus an incomplete accounting. For what Fisher was surprised to dis- cover, as the 1968 election drew closer, was that power was also grav- itating toward him.
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Chapter 7
IN THE HEAT OFTHE SUMMER
IN JANUARY1967, Richard Nixon met with seven men at the Wal- dorf Towers in New York. The purpose of the meeting, Nixon said, was to start preparing “to win the nomination [for president].” When Nixon’s coterie encouraged him to sprint out front, Nixon replied that Romney should take the lead. Speculation arose that Nixon and his supporters welcomed Romney’s candidacy because they doubted he could hit big-league pitching —the national press would cut him down to size, and at the nominating convention in Miami, Nixon’s come- from-behind victory over Romney would appear more dramatic. Not every member of the campaign team shared Nixon’s confidence. One of his law partners, John Mitchell, who would become Nixon’s person- al chief of staff, was wary.
“We felt Romney would stumble,” Mitchell says, “but we were worried about him to this extent: he had Max Fisher and all that meant. It made Romney formidable early on. Rockefeller wanted [Fisher’s backing], and reportedly tried to buy it. We wanted it, too. And we went after: it. Max Fisher’s support meant a hell of a lot in ’68.” Franklin Roosevelt’s man, Jim Farley, identified the importance of money in political campaigns in the days before television. Since then, TV had become an expensive and critical coast-to-coast stump. Nixon says that although he “knew [television] was going to cost a great dea1 of money, I didn’t dream it was going to cost as much as it did.”
So Nixon concurred with Mitchell that they should talk to Fisher. And they both did, asking him to sign on. Fisher told them, “Just be- cause I’m for George doesn’t mean I’m against you.”
He was not making any enemies. He was, however, committed to
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Romney and he would have to wait until the governor had run his race before supporting another candidate.
It was a hectic spring for Fisher. What time he could spare from the emergency fund-raising campaign for Israel, he allotted to Romney. Then, in July, as the storm in the Middle East subsided, Fisher turned on his television one Sunday at his house in Franklin and saw that war of a different kind was raging closer to home, only sixteen miles down the John C. Lodge Freeway, in Detroit, where police rushed to barri- cade the streets, while fire-engine sirens screamed and pillars of smoke corkscrewed into the sky.
***
Throughout the 1960s, “civil unrest” became a synonym for long hot summers of rioting in the predominately black inner cities. Watts, Tam- pa, Cincinnati, Atlanta and Newark had suffered through it. Now, at 3:30 a.m., on Sunday, July 23, it was Detroit’s turn. At Twelfth Street and Clairmount, a warren of bars and tenements and locked stores, four vice-squad policemen raided a “blind pig” —an after-hours drinking and gambling joint. When the police herded the eighty-two arrestees out, the sidewalks were still teeming with mini-skirted hookers, junk- ies, winos, good folks praying for a breeze and rows of young men leaning against cars. It took over an hour and four paddy wagons to fer- ry the suspects to jail. Two-hundred spectators were kidding the cops and the folks getting busted. Inevitably, as suspects were herded into the wagons, bystanders were jostled by police. A college student kept shouting at the officers to “leave my people alone!” Word was that the cops had beat up a woman. As the last patrol car left at 5 a.m., a bottle was hurled against its rear window. Suddenly, rocks were thrown. The police returned. Alieutenant was struck by a brick. Around 6:30 a.m., burglar alarms, set off by broken store windows, were ringing down Twelfth Street. Shops were being looted and burned. By mid-after- noon, Mayor Jerome P. Cavanagh was requesting the assistance of the State Police.
When Fisher heard the news of the riot he phoned his assistant,
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Richard Van Tiem, and asked him to come to his house. Van Tiem ar- rived and Fisher said, “Let’s go.”
“Go where?” Van Tiem asked.
“Down Twelfth Street,” Fisher replied. “I want to see what’s going on.”
Van Tiem’s reaction was that his boss was being a bit rash. Van Tiem said, “Max, there’s a riot going on. We can’t go for a ride down there.” Fisher evidently thought that they could, because he said, “Drive, Dick,” and strode out the door. Van Tiem followed. Twenty-two years later, Van Tiem recalls, “Max was in a rush to find out what was hap - pening to his city. I, on the other hand, went under duress.”
Traffic was light on the Lodge. The radio reported the spreading ar - son, shooting, rock throwing and looting. Van Tiem was not comforted by the news. He exited and drove along Twelfth. Smoke was rising from the blackened shells of buildings, and looters, wading through the shattered glass, were wheeling televisions and stereos and frozen hams in shopping carts. Fisher was quiet. It was possible that the radio was wrong, that the havoc had not spread. He wanted to see for him- self and told Van Tiem to drive to the office. The rioting had not yet filtered over to West Grand Boulevard. The streets around the Fisher Building were deserted. Fisher wondered aloud if that was a positive sign. Van Tiem wanted to go home. The two men rode the elevator to the twenty-second floor. Fisher opened his office, hurrying to the sweep of windows, with their panoramic view of downtown. He saw a patchwork quilt of flame blanketing the city and burning toward the Canadian border. Neighborhoods were dotted with fires as though the cityscape were a campground during a Boy Scout jamboree, the sky now so black with plumes of smoke it was as if night were falling. Fisher stood silently at the windows, looking down.
The writer Tom Shachtman has named the years from 1963 to 1974, from the assassination of JFK to Nixon’s resignation over Watergate, “the decade of shocks.” And indeed, it was as though a malignant genie were loose in the land: students dynamiting university buildings; chil- dren going to the comer store for milk and being shot by snipers from rooftops; political leaders from the neo-Nazi George Lincoln Rock-
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well to the pacifist Martin Luther King dying as violently as American soldiers in a jungle firefight.
Meanwhile, Vietnam played on the nightly news, the prime-time show America was not ready for, a grisly miniseries without end.
For Fisher, though, the riots in Detroit touched a chord of sadness in him, stirring him in a way he cannot describe. Ask him about it and he shakes his head. Press him for an answer, he shrugs. Some two weeks before the riot began Fisher celebrated his fifty-ninth birthday, but nothing in his past had prepared him to watch people, in the city he had so willfully claimed as his home, burning their houses.
As Fisher stood at his office windows, the surge of helplessness he felt with the city in flames was overpowering, and helplessness is an uncomfortable and confusing sensation for a pragmatist, particularly one who has spent much of his life accumulating influence of one kind or another. His response to any problem was to solve it. He liked to fix things — radios, cars, oil equipment, the problems of his family and friends and the riot, for the moment, was something he could neither fix nor fathom, and it left him without a card to play.
“I didn’t know what to do,” Fisher says. “I stood at the windows. Then I called the governor.”
The governor did not know what to do either. By the evening of July 23, Romney had been badly shaken by a helicopter tour over the city. It gave him a view similar to the one Fisher had from his office. He saw “entire blocks in flames” and had the impression that Detroit “had been bombed.” At 3 a.m., on Monday, July 24, Romney phoned Washington, requesting that 5,000 federal troops be dispatched. President Lyndon Johnson was reluctant to grant Romney’s re- quest. Johnson, who often consulted a hand-drawn graph that com- pared his latest Gallup Poll strength against Romney, had no inten- tion of aiding a contender for the presidency. What defined Johnson’s reluctance as political was that he had not displayed the same hesi- tancy with Democratic governors. Governor Pat Brown of California had been offered “all the assistance in the world” during the Watts riot, as was Governor Richard Hughes of New Jersey when rioting erupted in Newark.
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And so it was not until 2:30 a.m. on Tuesday, July 25, nearly eigh- teen hours after Romney had made his request, that paratroopers from the 101st and 82nd Airborne waded into the riot.
Gus Cardinali, a Detroit police sergeant who later went to work as a personal assistant to Fisher, was patrolling the streets during the riot. Cardinali recalls that the police and firemen were furious with the politicians. “We needed all the help we could get,” says Cardinali, “be- cause the fire fighters required escorts. Snipers were shooting at them and kids were throwing rocks and bottles and the firemen couldn’t get the trucks in. That’s why the fires spread. [The politicians] let the whole thing get out of hand. The rioting should have been suppressed immediately. Or at least contained. But Detroit was a victim of the times. The politicians quibbled while the city burned.”
This political theater of the absurd paled beside the cost, in human and financial terms, of the rioting. There were 7,200 arrests, 43 deaths and a minimum of 1,000 injuries. Conservative estimates of the dam- age put the figure at $42.5 million, with 2,500 stores either looted or burned. In the sobering wake of the destruction, the first urban coa - lition in the United States was founded. Christened the New Detroit Committee, its goal was to channel private resources into rebuilding the city. Committee membership embraced a cross-section of block- club bosses, militant blacks, industrialists such as Henry Ford and Max Fisher, and numerous corporate heads. Joseph L. Hudson Jr., the thirty- six-year-old president of Hudson’s, which would become the world’s largest privately owned department store, was elected chairman. Hudson explains the beginnings of New Detroit: “I was invited [to head the committee] because I was young and fresh. I phoned Max and he immediately agreed to serve even though the structure of the coalition hadn’t been invented yet. Max saw the whole community and system as unresponsive [to the inner city] — the public sector even more than the private. We obviously had to get some money and people together. I couldn’t do both. Max had been the big fund-raiser in town. So he poured himself in, and he did another very significant thing: he called to my attention that I was running around trying to put out fires instead of saying and doing things that attracted people to join
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in. Max became my adviser and in the process he got more involved. And when a year had gone by and I had pretty much burned myself out, he became the next chairman. He was highly respected by Detroi- ters as a businessman, as a person who was independent, committed and concerned about his community. Max was able to command im- mediate attention, in person or on the telephone. He brokered ideas and people and groups. When a lot of people were vegetating, Max had this fervent vision of something better.”
Fisher had been enraged by Johnson’s stalling, but, not having ac- cess to the circle of power within the Democratic administration, his choices were limited. (Choices he promised himself to broaden after the 1968 election.) If he had not known what to do when he first saw the city ablaze, when Hudson called him he had a clearer idea. New Detroit got off to a fast start, and Fisher threw himself behind it. With- in two years he was addressing groups of prominent business peo- ple around the nation, trumpeting the inroads the coalition had made against poverty: the jobs found for 35,000 previously hard-core un- employed; the Michigan Consolidated Gas Company sponsoring the construction of low- and moderate income housing; General Motors providing an interest-free loan of $1.1 million to a nonprofit housing corporation of blacks and Hispanics; New Detroit’s anteing up $4.5 million to investigate alternative low-cost housing; and an offshoot of New Detroit, the Economic Development Corporation, ear-marking $2 million to help blacks establish businesses.
“There is no force more powerful,” Fisher said at the time, “no force which has shown itself more creative, more talented and responsive to change, no force which can provide greater leverage for meeting urban social problems than business and businessmen. In the final analysis, as business helps in meeting social problems it truly helps itself.” Fish- er’s devotion to this doctrine matched the devotion he brought to the cause of Israel. Arthur Hertzberg, in his 1989 The Jews in America, as- cribes Fisher’s dedication to the residents of urban ghettos to the social conscience taught by Judaism. In 1968, Hertzberg says, Fisher, despite his status as “the leading Jewish Republican,” was telling the orga- nized Jewish community, “If Jews truly believe that advancing social
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justice is a Jewish obligation, there can be no ... doubts that helping people in the inner city ... represents a genuine Jewish commitment.” Hertzberg’s assessment was partially correct. Fisher’s commitment
to the poor was fashioned at the feet of William and Mollie, who, when they lived in Salem, donated what meager sums they could spare to the Jewish National Fund or fed and housed the traveling representatives of Jewish charities who passed through town. But Fisher was also a product of Salem’s belief in the benevolence of the good Christian. The father of his boyhood friend, Henry Yaggi, was the town doctor, a prosperous man who set up charge accounts at the grocery store for the less fortunate and paid their bills. One of Fisher’s enduring memories of Salem is of the Salvation Army soliciting donations, and one of the honors he took special pride in as an adult was the Salvation Army’s William Booth Award, which he won in 1977.
The legacy of the riots to Max Fisher was a longing to see Detroit restored into the model of orderly industriousness he remembered from the 1930s, when he would gaze up at the imposing granite and marble of the Fisher Building and dream his great American dreams. Fisher’s work with New Detroit evolved into his work with the Detroit Renaissance Corporation and, in the end, cost him (and Al Taubman) in excess of $30 million. Maybe, by the late 1960s, Fisher was chasing an America that had been vanquished by the cun- ning of time. In 1969, when he spoke before the American Chamber of Commerce executives, he wistfully recalled: “With all their ter- rible shortcomings, the city ghettos of other years served as a sort of natural Americanization machine: the immigrant came in at one end —a stranger to American ways and American mobility. After a passage of years, he and his children emerged at the other end — a part of American society and capable of taking care of themselves. That in a crude way is how our inner cities once worked. It isn’t the way they are working today.”
Trying to answer that question became a consuming passion for Fisher. It occupied him in the face of Detroit’s bleak islands of aban- doned buildings, the needle tracks along the heroin mainline and the anguish of disintegrating families. It continued to occupy him, a de-
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cade later, through a new pestilence of gang gun battles and burning crack pipes, and it occupies him still, twenty-three years after the day of the “blind pig.”
***
At the beginning of August 1967, with the rioting under control, talk of a Romney candidacy picked up again, and Fisher was increasingly wearing two hats —as a fund-raiser and adviser. Among the most criti- cal areas in which he advised Romney was on how to approach the me- dia. Ever cautious and methodical, Fisher, the ex-stage manager, was leery of the limelight —too much is revealed, too many mistakes are possible. An abundance of exposure, whatever its personal satisfac- tions, tended to form legions poised for counterattack. Fisher had been discussing the finer points of media relations with Romney for some time. In 1964, when Nixon had come to Detroit to persuade Romney to challenge Goldwater for the nomination, Fisher not only told Romney that allowing himself to be used as a figurehead to split the Republican Party would have dire consequences for his political career, but that it was too soon to take that step, that exposure to a presidential elec- tion-year circus of reporters would hurt him.
“George,” says Fisher, “was a great believer in input from other people, and I respected him for it. I used to try to explain to him how to handle the press. They’re human beings, too; sometimes they rec- ognize people for what they are and sometimes they’ve got their own hang-ups.’ George was a very above-board, decent politician. But his trouble was that he said too much. So [the press] started in on him. I remember there was a woman who wrote for one of the Washington papers, and she told me the press was going to goad him they were out to get him. And I told George: ‘They are gunning for you. Be careful.’” Fisher had his own distinctive association with the press, and it is instructive to examine it since the examination not only highlights the role of the media in the political process, but also shows why Fisher’s assistance would one day be sought by leaders in the United States and Israel. Fisher, as to be expected of any reasonably informed person,
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was well aware of the power the press had to undercut a program or a candidate, and he was skeptical of its motives. Yet he rarely refused any persistent requests for interviews and, even more paradoxically, often appeared to grant his interviewers free access to information. Steven Flax, a journalist who grew up in Detroit and who would favorably profile Fisher in the September 14, 1981, issue of Forbes, explains Fisher’s style. “[During the interview], Max comes on like your grandfather,” says Flax. “He’s very kind, very solicitous, as if he not only wants to give you all the information you need, but wants you to impress everyone [at your magazine or newspaper] with all of the inside details you were able to incorporate into the profile. But don’t be fooled: Max is tough, he’s smart and nothing gets by him. He’s no media innocent. He tells you what he wants you to know.”
Al Taubman has watched Fisher deal with the press for over thirty years. Taubman is a shopping mall developer and operator, real estate investor, majority shareholder of Sotheby’s, owner of A&W Restau- rants and of the department stores Woodward & Lothrop and Wana- maker’s — with an estimated wealth of $3.7 billion. A focus of me- dia curiosity, Taubman does not share his friend’s affable relationship with the press or his interest in dealing with them. (In print, Taubman has been accused of everything from banning carry-around food at his malls because he slipped on an ice-cream cone, to dousing Mike Wal- lace of “60 Minutes” with a drink when Wallace peeked inside Taub- man’s Lear Jet while doing a story on corporate executives who had flown to New Orleans for Super Bowl XII.) Taubman considers many reporters “on a par with inside traders.” He feels they are only after the story they want, regardless of facts. It is not surprising then that in March 1981, when The Detroit News ran a two-part, two-day feature on Taubman, he declined to talk to them, agreeing to respond to writ- ten questions. Predictably enough, when the reporter, Steve Konicki, interviewed Fisher on Taubman, “Fisher lamented that he had tried but couldn’t convince Taubman to talk for himself.”
Taubman, according to Fisher, had nothing to fear from the media; if he made himself more accessible, he might find the press less harsh. But Taubman disagrees and says that Fisher has his own special rela-
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tionship with reporters, that he handles them with an adroitness based on a subtle combination of his personality, skill and reputation. “Max,” says Taubman, “is basically a listener. I have been at dinner parties with him and afterward spoken to the people he was seated with. They go on about what a charming man Max is to sit next to. People will tell him things they wouldn’t tell their husbands or wives. And I’ve watched the whole time [they were eating]. Max hardly said a word. He let them talk and listened and they came away feeling that they had participated in a brilliant conversation. They may have but it was definitely one-sided. In a way, the same principle applies [when Max talks to reporters]. Max is a patrician, in the best sense of the word. He is so courtly that reporters are charmed by his taking the time to talk and seeming —when he does say something —to talk frankly with them. Yet I wonder if they ever analyze what he tells them, how little he reveals. You won’t get any secrets from Max. He’s too guard- ed. Also, as far as the Detroit media is concerned, Max is a sacred cow. He’s good for Detroit, he’s a symbol of all that is progressive about the city and the media responds to this. He is above reproach.”
Romney’s evaluation of Fisher’s ability to deal with the press is more succinct. “Max,” Romney says, “has good judgment.” Whatever judgment Fisher possessed did not alter the outcome of Romney’s bid for the presidential nomination. The hammer blow that permanently knocked Romney’s campaign off course came at the end of August 1967. (Romney disagrees; he says it was in February 1968.) August began promisingly enough.AGallup Poll claimed that Romney was leading Johnson 49 percent to 41 percent with 10 percent unde- cided. Fisher, meantime, was busy with the fund-raising. His offhand estimate, according to what he told Will Muller of The Detroit News, was that it would take $2 million to pay for the Romney foray until the GOP convened to choose a candidate in Miami next summer. He revealed to Muller that he was in the process of drawing up a budget and that “ten top people [have] volunteered for the finance committee and we expect to build that to fifty.”
What Fisher did not mention was that he already had commitments for contributions in excess of $2 million. Nelson Rockefeller, whose
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urge to be president had momentarily slackened, threw his support be- hind Romney with a pledge of $250,000. Five others promised Fisher an equal amount, bringing the opening bankroll to $1.5 million. Fisher then raised another $1 million from friends who were each willing to give $25,000 and up, like Ford Motor Company executive John Bugas and General Motors executive Bunkie Knudsen. The money that Rockefeller mailed Fisher came in the form of fifty checks from $4,000 to $6,000, each made out to a different committee. Under 1968 election laws, there was a limit to the maximum gift allowed to a com- mittee, but no limit on committees. So committees were created as fast as Rockefeller and the others could sign checks: Romney Boosters Committee, Friends of George Romney, Romney for Good Govern- ment, Romney ‘68, Citizens for Urban Progress, Citizens for Progress. The list was long, not overly poetic, but effective.
On Thursday, August 31, Romney taped a television show with Lou Gordon, a Detroit broadcaster with dreams of becoming a sort of Eliott Ness-Walter Cronkite combo. Fisher says that Gordon was a friend of his and of Romney, and the commentator had been favorably disposed toward the governor since 1963. Fisher occasionally mailed transcripts of Gordon’s WXYZ radio program to Romney in Lansing. Even when Gordon disagreed with a Romney initiative, he more often than not gave the governor “an ‘E’ for effort.”
“Lou liked George,” says Fisher, “but I was worried about George going on with him. I never spoke to George about it. I wish I had. To this day, I wish I had been there with him.”
Romney got ready on the set; there were no aides off-camera; he had not been briefed, unaware of what his competitor, Richard Nix- on, had grasped long ago: “No television performance takes as much preparation as an off-the-cuff talk.”
Romney’s stance on Vietnam, like the stance of many politicians of that era, had vacillated. Once a hawk, he was reincarnated as a dove. So, had he been briefed prior to the show, he may have anticipated Gordon’s question, which was, “Isn’t your position [on Vietnam] in- consistent with what it was, and what do you propose we do now?” Romney replied: “Well, you know when I came back from [my trip
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to] Vietnam, I just had the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get when you go over to Vietnam. Not only by the generals, but also by the diplomatic corps over there, and they do a very thorough job. And since returning from Vietnam, I’ve gone into the history of Vietnam, all the way back into World War II and before. And, as a result ... I no longer believe that it was necessary for us to be involved in South Vietnam to stop Communist aggression.”
The show aired on Labor Day, September 4. The following morning, The New York Times announced: “Romney asserts he underwent ‘brain- washing’ on Vietnam trip.” That evening, a thirty-second clip of Rom- ney’s quote —edited until it was stripped of its context —played on the national news programs. The Democrats accused Romney of impugning the integrity of General William Westmoreland and Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge. By Sunday, a Detroit News editorial was stating that Rom- ney should drop out of the race because of his incompetence.
“It was poor choice of words,” Fisher says. “Except George was correct. In the beginning, everybody got brainwashed on Vietnam. But his statement blew us out of the water.”
Romney officially declared his candidacy for the nomination on November 21, saying he would enter the New Hampshire primary in March. Although Romney was spiraling downward, Fisher pumped close to $4 million into his campaign coffers. In January 1968, Rom- ney was stumping through New Hampshire, where he made a slight recovery. Fisher went to New Orleans to speak at a banquet of the Jewish Welfare Fund. A reporter from the Times-Picayune asked him about Romney. Fisher assured the reporter that Romney would get the GOP nod, citing his gains in New Hampshire.
Nelson Rockefeller, at Fisher’s request, agreed to speak at a Rom- ney fund-raiser on Saturday, February 24. (Romney was campaign- ing in Oregon.) The luncheon was slated for the Versailles Room of Detroit’s Pontchartrain Hotel. As Fisher wrote the governor of New York, the event was for “prominent business people who need a little persuasion.” Over 200 guests were invited. The list read like a Who’s Who of Michigan: Senator Robert Griffin, Al Taubman, Harold Mc - Clure, Joseph Nederlander, John Bugas, Harold Berry, Jason Honig-
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man, Bunkie Knudsen —enough wealth and clout to ease a man down the road to Washington.
Rockefeller, accompanied by his wife, Happy, arrived on his private jet Friday night, landing at Metropolitan Airport. The Fishers hosted a small black-tie dinner for them at their home. The luncheon began at noon and ran until approximately 2 p.m. Then, riding the elevator up- stairs to Suite 1912, Rockefeller, with Fisher beside him, went to meet the press. It was here that Romney believes Rockefeller submarined any possibility he had to win the nomination.
Everyone in the suite knew that Romney’s candidacy was dying, and so it was no surprise when one reporter asked Rockefeller if he would enter the race if Romney lost in New Hampshire.
Rockefeller said: “I’m not a candidate. I’m not going to be a candi- date. I’m supporting Governor Romney and I think he’s the best man.” Then someone asked him if he would accept a draft. He answered: “Although I don’t believe there is such a thing as a draft, I said if there were a draft even though I don’t believe it, if it came, I would face it at the time.”
When another questioner asked if facing it meant accepting it, Rocke- feller said: “I don’t see how you can face it without accepting it.”
A reporter persisted, but before he could finish repeating the question, Rockefeller cut him off, saying “Apparently, he didn’t hear my answer.”
The reporters would not let it go. At the conclusion of the press con- ference, a TVnewsman asked the governor. “Did I understand you to say you would accept a draft from the Republican National Convention?” An exasperated Rockefeller responded: “I said exactly that, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
Standing off to the side with Happy Rockefeller, Marjorie Fisher was enjoying the circus-tent atmosphere of her first live press con - ference. She thought the faceless chorus of reporters was rude with their cross-examination of Nelson, pushing him to admit that he was a candidate. But she dismissed this insight, writing it off to her inex- perience. Later, she would hear a different explanation from Nixon’s campaign manager, John Mitchell.
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Across the country, on Sunday morning, newspapers ran photos of a beaming Rockefeller shaking hands with Fisher. The headlines were variations on the same theme: Rocky will run if drafted. By then, Rockefeller was in New York, and Max and Marjorie were en route to Acapulco, Mexico, for a brief vacation at the villa of their friends, Lisa and John Anderson. Max was only staying until the following week. He had another Romney fund-raising affair scheduled in Michigan, this one featuring Governor John H. Chaffee of Rhode Island.
For the next several days the Fishers relaxed —swimming, touring the countryside and cruising the calm blue waters in the Andersons’ boat. On Wednesday, February 28, Max and John went deep-sea fish - ing. By lunchtime, Max had radioed shore, proudly informing Marjo- rie that the fish were biting. Late that afternoon, the telephone in the villa rang. Marjorie answered it.
“Is Mr. Fisher there?” someone asked. “May I ask who’s calling?” Marjorie said. “The New York Times.”
“My husband,” said Marjorie, “is not here. He’s fishing.”
The reporter told Marjorie that he wanted a quote from Max on the Romney announcement. When Marjorie asked what announcement, the reporter said that Romney had announced that he was dropping out of the race before the New Hampshire primary because his candidacy had not won wide enough acceptance among Republicans.
“I’ll tell my husband,” Marjorie said. Marjorie contacted the boat and filled Max in. There was a short silence, a flash of loss, disappoint - ment. He was surprised that Romney had not waited until after the New Hampshire primary and equally surprised that he had not phoned him.
“Well, Max,” Marjorie said. “At least today hasn’t been a total di- saster. You did catch two fish.”
Max and Marjorie finished out the week in Acapulco. During that time, Romney never called.
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Twenty years after the fact, George Romney is convinced that Nelson Rockefeller gave his time and money to his campaign for two reasons: to use Romney as a stalking horse for his own moderate Republican candidacy and to woo Fisher into his camp. It was not his plunge in the polls, Romney says, that persuaded him to get out, but Rockefeller’s press conference on February 24.
“I saw Max [when he came home from Mexico],” says Romney. “And he expressed disappointment that he hadn’t had a chance to per- suade me not to get out of the race. As long as I was active politically, Max was loyal. But I knew I couldn’t win the nomination if Rocke- feller was also in, because we would split the vote that wasn’t going to Nixon. So the one thing I made certain of before I declared my candidacy was that Rockefeller was committed [to me]. As a result of a lack of understanding of my Vietnam position, I began to slip in the polls; [Rockefeller] began to rise. Then Rockefeller came for that fund-raising luncheon —ostensibly for me. I say ‘ostensibly,’ because previously [when reporters asked him if he would consider the nomi- nation] he always said no; at that press conference [on February 24] he said he would accept a draft. That made him a candidate. The minute he did that I knew the jig was up. That was the reason I withdrew. In 1968, I was caught between two men who were determined to become president regardless of what it took. One was Nixon and the other was Rockefeller. Their methods were different, but both of them were tak- ing care of me.”
Fisher saw it differently. “George,” he says, “always felt that Rocke- feller was using him as a stalking horse. He started saying that, but it wasn’t true. I had spent hours talking with Nelson. George knew it. Nelson just couldn’t make up his mind. As for Nixon, everyone was underestimating him.”
The particulars are now relegated to the fine-tunings of history. For the moment, in the late winter of 1968, Fisher was in demand. Rocke- feller and Nixon called on him again, and so it was that the last chess moves of the ’68 campaign were played.
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Chapter 8
THE FINAL CURTAIN
UPON RETURNING FROM Mexico, Fisher did something that is highly unusual in American presidential politics: he went back over the Romney campaign books and refunded the surplus money. On March 4, 1968, he sent the following letter to Romney contributors: “We were all greatly surprised by the sudden withdrawal of our friend, Governor Romney, from the presidential race. This leaves me with a problem concerning the contribution you made to the governor’s cam- paign, which today would be very useful as far as paying off some of the campaign debts. However, since this money was requested for the primaries in New Hampshire and Wisconsin, it is my feeling that in all conscience, this money should be returned.”
The motives for the refund were manifold. Fisher had always been meticulous about money, a habit from business that carried over into fund-raising. Every penny he raised had to be accounted for. During Romney’s second race for governor, Fisher went so far as to write a twelve-year-old a thank-you note for the fourteen cents he had contrib- uted. Fisher felt that “the responsibility for money doesn’t end when it’s raised. Whoever raises the money must retain some supervision over it.”
While the overt sentiment in this approach appears to be fiscal ac - countability, it is also true that Fisher preferred keeping his hands on the financial reins and utilized his grip to enter the decision-making process of Romney’s inner circle. In addition, since Fisher intended to stand in the wings of power as long as possible, he knew that to be welcomed backstage by a president his reputation for honesty must be unblemished. Fisher even had one of his folksy sayings for the occa-
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sion: “It takes a man’s whole life to build up a reputation for integrity. And only one day to lose it.” The cruel truth of his observation was discovered by those indicted during Watergate. Fisher, from his begin- nings in politics, had no intention of trusting his reputation to others and risking such a loss.
Finally, there was a practical impetus for Fisher’s refunding the bal- ance of Romney’s war chest. Quite simply, Fisher wanted to be an adviser to a president and recognized that this would come through his ability to raise funds. With Romney out of the race, Fisher had to align himself with a contender and he would need the money again. From his years as a fundraiser and ample giver, he was aware that contributors, even wealthy ones, have a specific sum they earmark for contributions. If they exceed their budget, they are disinclined to hand over additional money.
Many of the contributors were surprised by the refunds. John B. Martin of the Republican National Committee wrote Fisher that he appreciated the return of his check, though he “had not really ex- pected to see this again.” But the shrewder contributors expected the letter or phone call that came months later: Fisher was now raising money for another presidential candidate and would they be so kind as to donate again.
Now, though, in mid-March, Fisher was being romanced by oth- er Republican hopefuls. Governor Nelson Rockefeller was the first to call. He phoned Fisher in Palm Beach, saying he was probably going to run and would announce next Thursday.
Rockefeller said, “Come to New York and we’ll have a lot of fun with this thing.”
Fisher replied that he would consider it, but right now he was stay- ing uncommitted.
Rockefeller went to Washington to confer with Republican leaders. They were not as optimistic as he had hoped. On Thursday, March 21, Fisher was in Findlay, Ohio, attending a board meeting at Marathon Oil Company. In the middle of the meeting, Fisher told everyone that he would have to stop and find a television set. Everyone hurried out and crowded into an office with a TV. Rockefeller was on-screen, tell -
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ing reporters: “I have decided today to reiterate unequivocally that I am not a candidate campaigning directly or indirectly for the presiden- cy of the United States.”
Fisher was astounded. “That was Rockefeller,” he recalls. “He was indecisive. He was running, then he wasn’t running and then he ran. God, but he spent a lot of money.”
The 1968 campaign was full of surprises, as if those vying for po- litical leadership could do no better than mirror the psychic disarray of their society. On March 31, President Johnson told the nation that he would not seek or accept the nomination for another term as president. The Democratic candidacy was now up for grabs. Vice President Hu- bert H. Humphrey was a prospect. So was Senator Eugene J. McCarthy of Minnesota, who was pledging to end the war. McCarthy’s compet- itor along the Democratic left wing was Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York, who proved promising in the polls. Then there was the segregationist, former Governor George C. Wallace of Alabama, who by the summer of 1968 was showing a poll strength of 30 percent, enough to threaten that no candidate would receive a decisive majority in the Electoral College and the selection of a president would fall on the House of Representatives, which itself was acrimoniously divided on Vietnam and civil rights.
On April 4, Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, Ten- nessee. Arson, vandalism and shooting broke out in New York, Wash- ington, Boston, Detroit, Chicago and other cities across the country. Nixon canceled all political activity for two weeks after King’s death. On April 24, at 6 pm., he landed at Pontiac Airport in Michigan to attend a private dinner with Romney and Fisher at Romney’s house in Bloomfield Hills. Michigan delegates to the Republican National Convention in Miami were scheduled to be slated that weekend. Nix- on wanted Romney’s support and he wanted Fisher to raise money for him. Nixon was also in the market for a running mate. During the three- hour dinner, Romney discussed what was happening in the inner cities and told Nixon that he thought the answer to many of the prob- lems could be found in volunteerism, involving local big business in the ghettos. When the three men finished discussing the urban crisis,
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Romney briefly spoke about his view of a vice president’s responsi - bilities. Fisher later characterized Romney’s perception of the job as “a super-vice president.” Nixon, although appearing to listen intently, was most likely not impressed. Romney must have seemed even less impressive when he told Nixon that he would not come out publicly for him before the nominating convention. He said that he was going to stay neutral and would encourage the Michigan delegation to do likewise. This position disappointed Nixon on two fronts: he would not have the Michigan votes locked up prior to the Miami convention and Fisher would not go to work for him.
“I wanted to keep our options open,” Romney says today. “It was not clear who was going to get the nomination and I thought by re- maining uncommitted we would have some influence in Miami.” “Out of a sense of loyalty to George,” Fisher says, “I [also] had to remain neutral. I had to keep our [Michigan] delegates pledged to him and he was pledged to remain neutral until after someone was nomi- nated in Miami. It was Romney’s idea. I’m not sure it was the best one he ever had, but he was a friend and we had been together through a lot and I just felt I owed it to him to remain neutral.”
At a patio press conference, Nixon and Romney denied that their talk had been political. Nixon said that he had come to swap ideas on the Republican platform and that he and Romney had “agreed on many things.” The reporters were not buying it. They asked about Fisher’s presence. Romney answered that Fisher was invited because “he’s a close mutual friend of both of us,” adding that Fisher had participated in the discussion of issues. The reporters nodded politely at the for- mula responses, then focused on what everyone was wondering: Was Romney a candidate for vice president?
Nixon hedged, saying: “[Governor Romney will] play a vital role in future politics. [He] ran a vigorous race and his decision to withdraw didn’t take him out of politics. He’s going to play a great role at the convention and he’s going to play a role in any future administration that he may want to play.”
Although Romney is convinced that “I was never on Nixon’s short list to be vice president,” his desire to remain neutral might have cost
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him the second spot on Nixon’s ticket. In order to sign Fisher up, it seems that the Nixon team may well have been willing to cut that deal. According to John Mitchell, “Once Romney nose-dived, Dick and I talked a great deal with Max about the possibility of George Romney as a running mate. We wanted Max Fisher on board. He had great contacts in the Jewish communities and in the business world. I vis- ited Max at his home [in Franklin] and discussed it very seriously. Max brought with him a whole network of contacts around the country, practically his own committee-to-elect. It meant a lot getting him. We discussed Romney’s vice presidency very seriously as a result. But, well, Romney being Romney, it just wasn’t in the cards.”
Primarily, it was not in the cards because Romney formed a pact with Governor James Rhodes of Ohio and Governor Spiro T. Agnew of Maryland, all three pledging to withhold their support from any candidate until after Miami. Mitchell and Nixon got wind of Romney’s pact, from which Agnew ultimately distanced himself to put Nixon’s name in nomination at the convention. Romney’s move was seen as disloyalty. And in politics, where memories are long — and Nixon’s memory among the longest —Romney lost any chance he may have had to be on the Republican ticket.
Fisher continued to campaign with the Nixon people on behalf of Romney, particularly with John Mitchell, who, along with his wife, Mar- tha, visited the Fishers in Detroit. “I did try to get George the vice pres- idency,” says Fisher. “But he had gotten himself into a messy situation. And his conception of a ‘super-vice president’ —that just didn’t fly.” One benefit of the Mitchells’ visit to Detroit accrued to Marjo - rie, who had been perplexed at the behavior of the journalists during Rockefeller’s February 24 press conference at the Pontchartrain Hotel. She had not understood the reporters cornering Rockefeller until he said he would accept a draft. Now, John Mitchell was about to solve the mystery.
Marjorie Fisher explains: “The four of us were going out to a fund-raising dinner and I had a hairdresser come to the house for Mar- tha. She was off having her hair styled and Max was upstairs getting dressed. I had a drink with John downstairs. We talked about the cam-
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paign and I told him that I had never been to a political press confer- ence before, and that I found it interesting when the reporters kept asking Nelson the same question. John said that he had never been worried about Romney [as a candidate].”
“I was worried about Rockefeller,” Mitchell said. Then he told Mar- jorie that before Rockefeller went to talk to the press he had fed some reporters the question about whether or not he would accept a draft, with instructions to repeat it until Rockefeller answered it. He had been pleased with the resulting confusion. Marjorie, admittedly a stranger to the grittier tactics of campaigns, asked Mitchell how he could do such a thing.
“Weren’t you the attorney representing both of them?” she said. “Yes,” Mitchell replied. “But we’re all in politics. And I wanted
Nixon.”
***
If Marjorie Fisher was distressed by her husband’s perpetual motion, she did manage to find a foolproof way of slowing him down: she kidnapped him. It was, she explained later, “the only way to get him to relax.” What she did not mention was that it was also the only way, particularly in the heat of the 1968 campaign, to redirect his attention toward their family.
On Thursday afternoon, July 11, as Max was drumming up finan - cial support for Nixon, he got a call at his office from Sol Eisenberg. Eisenberg, owner of Ken-Wal Products, a highly successful steel firm, was eight years younger than Max and had met him at a UJAof Detroit meeting in 1945. They rapidly established a rapport. From that time on, whenever Max was in town, Eisenberg spoke to him at least once a day, often twice. Eisenberg was a natural to be in on Marjorie’s kidnap- ping plot because he also felt that Max needed to slow down. He knew the toll his interests took on him: the insomnia and exhaustion. And like Nathan Appleman, Eisenberg was one of the few men to whom Max would reveal his fears and frustrations, the growing criticism of him in the Jewish community as “Nixon’s man,” which would, after
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November, be transformed into “Nixon’s court Jew.” Whenever Eisen- berg phoned Fisher’s office he jokingly said to Fisher’s assistant: “Tell the boss his psychiatrist wants to talk to him.”
Now, on July 11, Eisenberg said to his friend: “Max, I’m going to make this deal. Aman has a product playing and he’s out at [Metropol- itan] airport. He wants to have lunch on his plane. Will you come out and help me?”
Fisher agreed and drove to the airport with Eisenberg. They went to a private jet on the tarmac. Eisenberg boarded first, then Fisher. Mar - jorie and the forty family members and friends who were waiting for him cried out in unison, “Happy birthday!”
“Where are we going?” Max said, a little stunned. His birthday was not until the following Monday. “What are you doing with me? How long are we going to stay?”
“Good afternoon, Mr. Fisher,” a stewardess said. “Welcome aboard. We’re on our way to Las Vegas.”
Max yelled: “I hate Las Vegas? And I don’t have any clothes.” Marjorie replied: “You’re all packed: your golf clubs, your swim- suits, everything.”
“I have to see [Detroit] Mayor [Roman S.] Gribbs tomorrow,” he said. Marjorie said: “Everything’s been canceled for the next four days.” In Las Vegas, the party checked into the Riviera Hotel. During the day they sat by the pool; at night they enjoyed dinner and a show, then went to gamble in the casino. Max pursued his political fund-raising by phone, but Marjorie made sure he spent most of his time by the pool. She felt that she was rewarded for her efforts. On the last morning of the trip, Marjorie, a self-described “five-dollar bettor,” went to a dice table; though she knew nothing about the game, she won several thou- sand dollars.
***
In early August, Fisher went off to the Republican National Conven- tion in Miami as a delegate-at-large from Michigan. Fisher was good to his word. He stood next to Romney on the convention floor and
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waited until Nixon defeated Rockefeller and Governor Ronald Reagan of California before declaring his support. When Nixon announced that Agnew would be his running mate, Republican liberals revolted. Mayor John V. Lindsay of New York entered Romney’s name for the nomination, but Romney lost by a vote of 1,128 to 186.
When Fisher arrived back in Detroit, he wrote to Nixon, congratu- lating him on winning the nomination and complimenting him and his organization on their superb planning.
“I enjoyed meeting with your associate, John Mitchell,” he said, “and as I have told you and John, I will try to be helpful in any way I possibly can. It is very important we have a discussion on the phone or in person at some time in the near future, and work out some personal problems I see developing with key persons. Today, it seems to me we should be rebuilding relationships so that we are united in a single purpose.” Nixon phoned him. “Max,” he said, “I really want you on board [my campaign]. Help me out and there’ll be a prominent position in it for you.”
“Thank you,” Fisher answered, “But I want a prominent position for George.”
Nixon said that was a possibility and again asked Fisher what he wanted —for himself. Fisher’s response was immediate; he had been thinking about it for three years, ever since that October afternoon in Gettysburg with Eisenhower. “All I want,” he told Nixon, “is to be able to talk to you about issues that are of interest to me: the Middle East, energy, the economy.”
Nixon replied that he would honor Fisher’s request.
***
Fisher started his work for Nixon by making a contribution to his cam- paign of $150,000. Then he scoured the country by phone, tapping familiar sources: Benjamin Fixman in Missouri gave $25,000; Joseph Meyerhoff in Baltimore, $3,000; Bernard H. Barnett in Louisville, $25,000; Nathan Lipson in Atlanta, $5,000; Nathan Appleman in New York, $10,000. The list was culled from Fisher’s phone book and ran
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for over 100 pages. Fisher saw his responsibilities as twofold, each one reinforcing the other: to raise money and to reach Jewish voters.
In Before the Fall, his memoir of his years working for Nixon, Wil- liam Safire identifies the importance of the Jewish community in pres - idential elections: “The ‘Jewish vote’ should be insignificant. This 4 percent of the population could hardly affect the popular-vote totals. But this complicated American electoral system ... has a way of pre- venting a tyranny of the majority. Jews make a difference in New York, Illinois, California, Florida, Ohio, and New Jersey ... the ‘battleground states.’ Moreover, as Nixon pointed out to several of us in 1968, Jews are in the habit of voting, increasing their significance in the critical states by nearly half again. On top of that, every new Jewish vote Nix- on could get was really two votes, since it usually meant the reduction of a vote against him. Traditionally, the Jewish vote for the presidency ran about four-to-one Democratic, but candidates for state races like Rockefeller and Javits would get as high as 35 percent, indicating that there was room for a 10 percent turnaround, enough to swing a key state in a tight election.”
Fisher knew that Nixon’s image in the Jewish community was poor. In 1960, gossip of Nixon’s alleged anti Semitism was so rampant in Jewish communities that the Anti-Defamation League felt compelled to release an official communique, stating that Nixon had always been a friend of the Jews. However, Fisher felt that Nixon’s problem was that he had dismissed the Jewish community as a political liability and had not endeavored to win them over. When, in conversation with Fisher, Nixon disagreed with that analysis, Fisher said, “Dick, they don’t dislike you, but you haven’t made yourself known to them. Talk to them. They’ll listen.”
To facilitate his outreach program, Fisher convinced John Mitchell to establish a “Jewish Desk” within the campaign committee, a first in the history of either party. Martin R. Pollner, a senior associate at Nixon’s law firm, was given the job. His qualifications, Pollner says, “were that I was Jewish and I was cute. Max underwrote the whole thing. I worked with the speechwriters, called around the country and set up meetings.”
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It was an expensive proposition. “Ahundred thousand dollars didn’t go very far, even back in ‘68,” one Nixon campaign worker recalls. “There were ads to buy in the Jewish press, and the telephone bill alone to keep up with the amazing national structure Fisher was build- ing was staggering.”
Fisher kept encouraging Nixon to take his message straight to the Jewish community, and on the evening of September 8, Nixon did, speaking at B’nai B’rith’s triennial convention at the Shoreham Hotel in Washington. Fisher volunteered to introduce him, one of the nu- merous signs of approval he was sending to the community. In addi- tion, he discussed the content of Nixon’s speech with him. Fisher said that because the Johnson administration had reneged on its shipment of Phantom jets to Israel, Nixon should focus on his belief that Isra- el should have military superiority over its Arab neighbors. He also warned the candidate against sounding unduly evenhanded, a message that the Jewish community believed was politicians’ code for favoring the Arabs.
The Shoreham Hotel ballroom was packed when Fisher introduced Nixon. His speech, “The Cradle of Civilization Must Not Be its Grave,” ranged over an assortment of topics. But within the opening two min- utes, Nixon swung into the section that the B’nai B’rith audience would find sweeter than the lilting musical cantata that was performed to mark the organization’s triennial. He said: “Israel must possess suf- ficient military power to deter an attack.... Sufficient power means the balance must be tipped in Israel’s favor.... If maintaining that margin of superiority should require that the United States should supply Israel with supersonic Phantom F-4 jets, we should supply those jets.” Nixon was given a standing ovation by B’nai B’rith and the text
of his address was published in its monthly newsletter. Fisher had the speech printed as a brochure and instructed Martin Pollner to send it to Jewish leaders around the country. Fisher mailed Pollner the names of thousands of suggested recipients; Pollner sent them off as fast as Fisher supplied them.
Following his address, Nixon flew to New York with Fisher. The candidate was pleased with his warm reception and grateful to Fisher
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for handling the introduction. Fisher thought they were sending the proper signs to the Jewish community. And Nixon had another one for them. On September 26, he appointed Fisher his special adviser on ur- ban and community affairs. On the surface, the appointment appeared to be apolitical; Nixon was a fan of Fisher’s philanthropic bent and enamored of his latest work with New Detroit, which he characterized as “a remarkable effort that is setting the pace for the country in solv- ing some of our most urgent inner-city problems.” But to the Jewish community, with rare exception excluded from the cherished clique of America’s power, it was a signal that Nixon, if elected, was going to alter that precedent, and Fisher, among the best known of Jewish lead- ers, was going to be his man. The story of Fisher’s appointment was deemed newsworthy enough to Jews that in Israel The Jerusalem Post ran a feature story on it.
“As a longtime friend and admirer of Richard Nixon,” Fisher was quoted as saying, “I have joined the effort to elect him president be- cause I firmly believe that he offers this country the qualities of leader - ship needed to meet the great problems that face us. Richard Nixon has a long and distinguished record in civil rights, a deep understanding of the problems of our cities and a profound knowledge of the situation in the Middle East and other critical areas.”
After Israel’s frustrating dealings with Johnson over delivery of the promised Phantoms, one can only guess at the joy with which this news was greeted in Jerusalem.
***
With Bobby Kennedy dead and Eugene McCarthy slipping, Vice Pres- ident Hubert Humphrey won the Democratic nomination in Chicago, choosing Senator Edmund S. Muskie of Maine as his running mate. The Democratic Party was marred by dissension, a status that was not improved by television coverage of young protesters rioting during the convention nor the tear gas and free-swinging billy-club response of Mayor Daley’s police. By September 30, Humphrey was trailing Nixon by fifteen points in the Gallup Poll. But in a nationally televised
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address from Salt Lake City, Humphrey altered his stance on Vietnam and stepped out from President Johnson’s unpopular shadow. Previ- ously, the Democrats asserted that any bombing halt would have to be accompanied by a reciprocal sign of peace from North Vietnam. Now, Humphrey said, “As president, I would stop the bombing of the North as an acceptable risk for peace because ... it could lead to success in the negotiations and thereby shorten the war.”
Within forty-eight hours, 5,000 letters of support flooded the Dem - ocratic National Committee. More important, for the DNC was dras- tically short of funds, the letters contained checks that totaled over $200,000. The favorable reaction to his speech and the money was a shot in the arm for Humphrey, and three weeks later, Nixon’s lead dipped to five points. Humphrey, by then, with the bottom of his cam - paign chest showing, was as concerned with collecting six-figure con - tributions as he was with getting votes. Eager to cash in on his surge in the polls, he brought his campaign to New York City, the tried-and- true trough for presidential hopefuls. But, as one journalist observed: “When Hubert got there, the cupboard was bare.”
Humphrey immediately ran into trouble at a private conference in the Waldorf-Astoria. Arthur J. Goldberg, former justice of the Supreme Court and United Nations ambassador, told the candidate that little money was available. His opinion was seconded by Humphrey’s New York finance chairman, industrialist Marvin Rosenberg.
Reporter Robert Hoving of Michigan’s Grand Rapids Press related what lay behind the scarcity of funds: “Max Fisher put a funnel under that source long before Humphrey [arrived]. Fisher now is collecting his political debts in cash from the wealthy Jewish community after having been a workhorse in raising money for [the UJA]. Fisher has been hav- ing success here in pointing out that Nixon supports increased military aid to Israel and believes that the Middle East military balance must be weighed in [Israel’s] favor. This has been Humphrey’s pitch, too. But here in New York, it seems to be a case of too late and too little.”
As with his refund of the Romney contributions, Fisher was op- erating on his experience as a fund-raiser and benefactor, knowing that in a presidential election year, patrons would swiftly exceed their
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contribution limit. So, soon after Miami, Fisher harvested New York’s bumper crop. Humphrey, however, should not have been surprised that Fisher beat him to it. The vice president had, six weeks before, asked Fisher to raise money for him. Just after Labor Day, Fisher was sitting in his Detroit office when the phone rang and his secretary told him that Humphrey was on the line. Fisher picked up and had a friendly chat with the vice president, discussing the trials and tribulations of a campaign, the disturbances in Chicago, the latest on Vietnam and the Middle East. Because, Fisher says, the true purpose of any business or political conversation is not disclosed until the final moments, he was not taken aback when, as the talk concluded, Humphrey said, “Max, you ought to raise money for me. I’ve been a good friend to Israel.” “You have been a good friend,” Fisher replied. “But Hubert, I’m a Republican.”
“Yes, Max,” the vice president said, “you are.” The two men laughed and said goodbye.
Now, in October, Humphrey contacted Fisher again. He sent a note, saying, in effect, “Max, you are drying up funds that have been ours for years.”
John Mitchell later remarked, “I think that Hubert probably thought that somewhere along the line Max would at least split the money with him fifty-fifty.”
Humphrey, one suspects, thought that he was providing Fisher with the chance to don both jerseys, and regardless of who became presi- dent, he would have won the favor of the administration. Fisher was a pragmatist, but that cynical sort of pragmatism was distasteful to him. And since he felt that loyalty was the primary component of lasting political careers, he rejected Humphrey’s offer and the vice president did not get his split.
Long after the election was over, Humphrey was haunted by his lack of funds. “We could have won, and we should have won,” he was to say, and pointed to his poor financing. “It’s not the amount of money you get,” he said, “it’s when you get it,” for without a steady stream of financing there can be no coherent plan for producing radio and TV spots and buying airtime.
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At least one member of the Nixon campaign team agrees with this assessment. He says: “At the end Dick was running out of gas and Humphrey was absolutely on top of his game. The last few weeks the only thing we could do was outbuy them on airtime. We spent and spent heavy. Some of us thought the campaign war chest was the mar- gin of difference. [If] Humphrey could have matched the kind of mon- ey Max and [Maurice H. Stans] brought in, well, then it might have been a different story.”
***
Fisher’s capacity for finding money for Nixon in 1968 was based not only on his singular standing in the organized Jewish community, but also in the community itself. Maurice Stans, who directed Nix- on’s fund-raising efforts, is convinced that “the Jewish people are much more relaxed as contributors to any good cause because they are public-spirited. Those that have the means expect to contribute. Max knew best how to tap that particular faculty. His effectiveness was due to the force of his personality, his reputation, his ability to talk to important people one-to-one and his credibility. He knows his prospects going in and he doesn’t waste any effort. They know him and his own reputation for giving. We’d send him out to some- one who usually only gave $1,000 and Max would come back with $50,000 or $100,000. He was magnificent.”
Rabbi Herschel Schacter, who has had a protracted and distin- guished career in Jewish communal life, feels that Fisher “was able to corral enormous support in the upper echelons of Jews around Ameri- ca because all of them felt flattered to have Max Fisher call personally on them. Therefore, they contributed heavily. Fisher raised a lot of money from American Jews who respected his role in the leadership of the Jewish community.”
Nixon saw Fisher’s skill as a mixture of ingredients, not the least of which was his aptitude for identifying with the cause he was backing. Nixon says: “If I had something I wanted to raise money for — for cancer, a candidate —I would pick Max. There’s no baloney with him.
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He’ll put up his own money, make a big commitment himself. Then he’ll get on the telephone with that network of his. But that’s not all. Max becomes an alter ego to the candidate.”
Fisher did bring a multitude of talents to this task. But it would be misleading to grant him full credit, for he was aided immeasurably by the tenor of the hour. A sudden shift in the political winds within the American Jewish community blew open a window of opportunity for him; he was perceptive enough to spot it and agile enough to climb through it. As with his accomplishments in business, his achievements during the campaign were founded on his uncanny timing, what Fisher would later describe as “luck.”
In 1968, the American Jewish community, identified with the liberal wing of the Democratic Party since the 1920s, appeared to be drifting to the right of political center. Although dozens of highly visible Jew- ish leaders and celebrities were outspoken critics of U.S. involvement in Vietnam- —qualifying them for their left-wing colors —their fears for Israel’s survival impelled them to reconsider any candidate who was a hard-liner in the face of indirect Soviet aggression, namely the supplying of weapons and advisers to the Arabs. On this score, Nixon was definitely the one. As syndicated columnists Evans and Novak pointed out: “Nixon took an unequivocal pro-Israel position, advocat- ing, early and often, U.S. jets for Israel. Humphrey’s tardy echo of the proposal was weakened further by President Johnson’s move in the opposite direction.”
Another cause of the apparent Jewish drift was the vocal an- ti-Semitism of black militants, which alienated and bewildered Jews, since the community was a champion of the civil rights movement. There is some indication, though, that anti Semitism had been rife —if concealed —among blacks for decades. In 1948, James Bald- win wrote: “I remember no Negro in the years of my growing up who did not ... exhibit for [Jews] the blackest contempt.... When the Negro hates the Jew as a Jew he does so partly because the nation does and in much the same painful fashion that he hates himself. It is an aspect of humiliation whittled down to a manageable size and then transferred.”
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But by the late 1960s, these feelings were overtly expressed. Folk- singer and activist Theodore Bikel and Rabbi Arthur J. Lelyveld, president of the American Jewish Congress, resigned from the Stu- dent Non-Violent Coordinating Committee when SNCC started vo- ciferously condemning Israel, a motif that ran through the philosophy of other groups, such as the Nation of Islam and the Black Panthers. Even more distressing was that black anti-Semitism was also express- ing itself in displays of violence. Rabbis, whose synagogues had not relocated from inner cities to suburbs, discovered swastikas painted on their buildings and had their stained-glass windows pelted with stones. Furthermore, the majority of white merchants burned out during the last few summers of urban rioting were Jewish.
Civil unrest was responsible for the introduction of the law-and-or- der theme into the campaign and it was stressed so ardently that Mayor Joseph Alioto of San Francisco quipped: “None of the candidates is running for president. They’re all running for sheriff.” Nixon appeared particularly tough on law and order, which now appealed to Jews, a majority of whom, like blacks, resided in cities. This disquieting new element in the relationship between the two minorities was character- ized by Evans and Novak as “an unexpected dividend to Nixon.”
The perceived shift in attitudes of the Jewish community received wide play in the press. Joseph Cummins, the influential publisher of California’s B’nai B’rith Messenger, which had the largest circulation of any Jewish newspaper on the West Coast, told The National Observ- er: “When Dick Nixon ran for governor against Pat Brown in 1962, there was one nearsighted Jew in Boyle Heights who voted for Nixon because he didn’t have his glasses on. That’s the only one I know of.” Cummins, of course, was exaggerating, but he added that while he had been voting Democratic for a half-century, in 1968 he was voting for Nixon, and he believed a large bloc of Jewish Democrats would do the same.
A Gallup Poll predicted that in 1968 droves of Jewish Democrats would take a leave of absence from their traditional voting pattern. Gal- lup suggested that Humphrey could expect only a 20-percent plurality among Jewish voters, giving him, roughly, a 60-40 split, with George
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Wallace getting a minuscule vote. That would mean a dramatic shift from the 80 to 90 percent that Jewish voters had consistently given Democratic presidential candidates since the days of Calvin Coolidge. The reasons mentioned in The Observer article for the switch were Israel, the urban crisis and that the Nixon organization had estab- lished a committee of prominent Jewish leaders, chief among them, “Max M. Fisher of Detroit, who is also special assistant to Mr. Nixon for urban and community affairs and national chairman of the [Unit- ed] Jewish Appeal.”
At Fisher’s urging, Nixon capitalized on his freshly minted repu- tation in the Jewish community. He not only reached out on Israel, Soviet Jewry and interracial animosity, he paid attention to a matter of lesser urgency, a matter that, in the minds of many Jews, counted as a clear signal of how sensitive the candidate was to their community. Back on June 21, Chief Justice Earl Warren submitted his resig- nation to President Johnson. Warren and Nixon disliked each other. The conventional wisdom was that Warren had resigned because he thought Nixon might win the election and have a chance to appoint a new chief justice and Warren wanted Johnson to make the appoint- ment. Five days later, Johnson did just that, nominating his old crony, Associate Justice Abe Fortas, who happened to be Jewish. Senate Re- publicans were outraged and vowed to fight, threatening a filibuster to prevent Johnson from influencing the Supreme Court in the waning hours of his presidency.
In June, Nixon appeared to side with the Republican senators. He said: “I felt that it would have been wise for the president to have de- layed his appointment until the new president had been elected.” Privately, Fisher told Nixon that his acquiescence in a Senate fil - ibuster to block Fortas’s confirmation would be held against him by Jews. The Jewish community had a special feeling for the Supreme Court, a conviction that they should be represented there since his- torically they had been excluded from the more visible posts in the White House and Cabinet. Then in September, according to Fortas’s biographer, Bruce A. Murphy, Fisher “called a meeting between Nixon and twelve Jewish Republicans.... Once again Nixon tried his waffling
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