Comment: Gore Should Heed Counsel to Be Graceful

Gore should have heeded another vice president's demeanor in the election in 1960, which until this year was the closest in history.

On election night Richard Nixon conceded, despite reports of fraud in Illinois and Missouri. The Republican National Committee, led by Fred Scribner, Republican national committeeman from Maine, oversaw an investigation into the blatant vote theft by Mayor Richard Daley in Chicago (where more people voted than were registered) and the Democrat city machine in St. Louis. At a meeting in Washington, Scribner delivered his committee's recommendation to contest the election.

The Republican national chairman, Sen. Thurston Morton of Kentucky, said, "Maybe we should ask Dick first and leave the decision to him." He called the vice president, who told Morton he would "have no part of it."

Contrary to some recent reports, President Eisenhower did not persuade Nixon to make that decision. According to David Eisenhower, the president's grandson, Eisenhower offered to raise money himself to finance the contesting.

President Eisenhower told this writer that next to his first son's death in 1921, the Nixon defeat was "the worst day" in his life. Eisenhower regarded the defeat as a referendum against his eight-year administration.

Nixon, whom my wife and I both served, told us at a Christmas holiday staff celebration at his Washington residence on Forest Lane: "We are the leaders of the Free World. For us to prove fraud would be something the Kremlin would have a field day with."

Mind you, this was fraud, not the possible irregularities in the tabulation of neutral machines. Yet Nixon took the course of a statesman. By the way, Eisenhower was at first furious at Nixon for not fighting, but later he came around to the Nixon position.

At the time, pundits said that the Nixon stance was dictated by political self-interest – that he was trying to position himself for a presidential rerun in 1964. Perhaps so, but to quote Winston Churchill, "To make the decision of a statesman is not necessarily bad politics."

On the Friday before Election Day, Rush Limbaugh was asked by Wolf Blitzer on CNN: "It seems very possible that Vice President Gore will win the electoral vote but not the popular vote. What will Gov. Bush do in that case?"

Limbaugh replied, "The governor will concede and gracefully wish the new president-elect well."

Limbaugh went on to say, "But if it is the reverse, with Bush gaining the Electoral College, I predict Gore will fight it in the courts with no concession speech."

This has gone on long enough. Vice President Gore should heed the counsel given him privately by some leading members of his own party: "You have more to lose than win than by playing the lawyer game of delays and appeals. Play statesman while you still can."

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