the following discussion focuses on politics including the former president's weak partnership with vice president spiro agnew, his relationship with the press, the dynamics of the 1960 presidential election. this program is an hour. >> my name is scott spitzer, and this is our panel on politics. and, of course, considering that president nixon -- considering president nixon's long career as a politician and his reputation as a fierce political competitor, this is obviously an essential project. as a political scientist at cal state fullerton, teaching courses on the presidency and media politics and american government, i have the honor of introducing a panel of three historians to talk about politics. and after i give a short introduction to all of our panelists, each panelist will

follow speaking for about ten minutes, and then we'll open it up to you, our -- to ask questions and to get a good conversation going about politics during the nixon presidency and before. so, these are three projects that tackles disparate and essential aspects of the nixon-era politics, electoral politics, particularly the 1960 election, nixon's relationship with the media, and the vice president agnew, vice president spiro agnew, so we'll begin, going in alphabetical order. justin coffey is an associate professor of history at quincy university in quincy, illinois, and he earned his ph.d. at the university of illinois at chicago. and his specialty is recent american political history. recent american history with a

concentration on the ideological battles of the 1960s. he's currently working on a biography of former vice president spiro agnew. after justin will be -- tim kisco will go. and he's an associate professor of communications at the university of michigan, dearborn, where he teaches journalism and journalism history. he joined the faculty there after working for more than three decades as a journalist first as the "detroit free press" from 1970 to '87 and then later at the detro"detroit news" he's the author in 2009 "a newscast for the masses, a history of detroit television journalism." kisco also worked as a producer

and a reporter for a cbs owned all-news radio station wwj-am where he specializes in exit polls and election annalysinaly. finally, professor william rohrabach is a professor of history at the university of washington in seattle. professor rohrabach is an expert on the 1960s. he's the author most recently of the "real making of the president, kennedy, nixon in the 1960 election." published just in 2009. he's also written another book about kennedy, "kennedy and the promise of the 1960s" 2002. and he's also written a very interesting study of "berkeley at war, the 1960s." so, we'll begin with professor coffey. >> thank you. thank you, scott.

i'm going to begin by using a word that we heard frequently in the last session. the topic for my chapter in the companion to richard nixon was on the relationship between richard nixon and spiro agnew. the word that i used in the first sentence was complicated. i wrote very simply that richard nixon and spiro agnew had a complicated relationship. went on to write that nixon had a complicated relationship with virtually everyone in his life, so it was no surprise with agnew. now, i teach history, and my students had never heard of spiro agnew. when i talk to people today above 50, i always get two

responses. a smile, and then i hear something about negativism. the story of zestee spiro agnew richard nixon is a rather strange tale. we heard in the last talk about nixon and eisenhower. and nixon having been vice president and having gone through the rigors of presidential campaigns. did not, strangely, in 1968 give much or really any thought to who his vice president might be. which was rather odd because nixon had spent the past six years, since losing in 1962, trying to figure out how he could get elected president. in 1968 he eventually settled on

spiro agnew who was then the governor of maryland. agnew had a reputation in his early political career of being a fairly liberal republican. he was not really that ideologic ideologically liberal, what he was not, however, was conservative. what changed with agnew, or seemingly change, although i argue there really wasn't much of a change, mostly in perception, was that when he was elected governor in 1966, he ran against an opportunist, george mahoney who ran on a segregation ist ticket. in 1967 and 1968, there were race riots in cambridge and then later in baltimore in april following the assassination of

martin luther king and came down very hard on the protesters and caught the attention of some of nixon's men, particularly john mitchell and pat buchanan. nixon famously apparently said, although some nixon scholars question whether or not he ever actually said that a vice president -- vice presidential running mate cannot help you, can only hurt you. in 1968, he just did not place all that much attention to it. and by the late spring of 1968 and into the early summer before the convention in miami, nixon began to say, well, i have to choose someone. he met with agnew several times. came away apparently impressed, who i have found actually in my research something that i found very interesting.

in march of 1968, milton eisenhower wrote agnew a letter saying although dick nixon is one of my best friends, we need to do everything we can to make sure that nixon doesn't get the republican nomination. agnew wrote back saying, i'm very interested in talking to you about this. if nixon had ever learned that agnew had done this, we can be sure that agnew never would have been the running mate. but nixon never performed any sort of background check on spiro agnew. i think this is absolutely fascinating. today vice presidential running mates are subjected before they are picked to background checks by the fbi. nixon never did anything, never asked agnew any questions. never asked anyone in maryland about agnew.

perhaps he should have thought about that, before he chose anybody, he didn't. he eventually chose agnew. the choice was to put it mildly controversial. and agnew would become one of the most controversial vice presidents in the country's history. after they were elected, nixon and agnew never developed any sort of working relationship whatsoever. agnew was never part of the inner circle. although he was the first vice president briefly to have an office in the west wing. he very rarely saw nixon. nixon never consulted him on any substantive issue, from the war in vietnam to any domestic issues, particularly in foreign policy, agnew was out of the loop. he had no idea about the

initiative to china. he was not asked his opinions about the s.a.l.t. negotiations, all which incidentally he opposed. but nixon simply would not accept that agnew had anything to say. in fact, in later years, agnew's name came up in an interview that nixon granted to michael kramer who was a journalist. and kramer attempted to say something nice about agnew, and nixon just waved him away and said agnew was a clown. what they did, however, share during their years in the presidency was a sense -- and i think this is very relevant to contemporary politics today -- was that the liberal -- what they considered to be the liberal establishment was hostile to them because they were republicans.

this idea is still -- still permeates the republican party today. the belief particularly that there is a liberal media is antagonistic to conservatives and republicans. agnew's famous speeches that he gave beginning in the fall of 1969 about the networks speaking to the american public but not speaking for the american public resonated very strongly within the republican party. because there was this belief -- and there still is this belief, there was plenty of evidence for it, and there still is today -- that members of the national media, particularly those who write for "the new york times,"

"the washington post," or "time" or "newsweek" or the network anchors by and large are to the left of center. nixon and agnew believed that those beliefs shaped coverage of how nixon and agnew and other republicans were covered in the media. this is the one element that nixon and agnew were able to work together during the presidency. there was a thought at the time when agnew gave these speeches that nixon disapproved of them. my research has shown actually, no. i've gone to the archives and looked and seen that nixon actually gave it more than tacit approval, was almost egging a knew on. then, of course, there were the scandals.

interestingly enough agnew benefitted originally when the watergate scandal broke out from not being part of the inner circle, because he was never in the oval office or the eob when nixon was talking with haldeman and ehrlichman and dean about all these things. agnew was completely out of the loop. when haldeman and ehrlichman resigned, nixon had some conversations with people like ray price and ron ziiegler and said, you know, i'm thinking of reminding, price and ziegler said you cannot do this. you really want agnew as president? unfortunately this was the feeling that reverberated through this administration. it's a very odd thing. that people are telling nixon in early 1973, you cannot resign

because of spiro agnew. and nixon believed as long as agnew remained his vice president, they're never going to force me out. according to ehrlichman -- according to ehrlichman, nixon said, no one will ever assassinate me to make agnew president, okay? this is a jonathan aiken book. he talks about how king charles ii said this to his brother james, they'll never kill me, james, and make you president or king. then along came agnew's own problems. the state of maryland is nicknamed the easy state. politicians like to call it the free and easy state because of the rampant corruption in that state. in the late 1970s there was a football game at the university of virginia, and they announced a special guest, the governor of

maryland, who came out running in an orange prison suit, all right? because so many of them went to prison. agnew got caught up in this. he got caught up taking kickbacks. it was the way it was done in maryland. he believed that nixon should come to his defense, but nixon -- this was nothing nixon could or should have done. agnew would resign in october of 1973. they had a last meeting in the oval office. agnew said that nixon was very warm to him, but at the same time he believed that nixon couldn't wait to get him out of the office. they never spoke again. they did stay at a hotel once in new york, but they didn't speak. agnew would write his memoirs in which he would blame nixon for much of his fall. not a lot has been written about the nixon/agnew relationship i believe mostly because agnew just was not a substantive

player in the administration. there was a book written called "nixon and agnew, very strange bedfellows." it's based, however, on a lot of old research i think. but the relationship between the two men was complicated, never substantive. agnew did attend nixon's fune l funeral, but he was never a major player in the administration. and before you think about what might have been agnew as president, we'll never know. thank you. >> okay. following up on kind of what we're talking about, nixon's relationship with the press, coming up as an undergrad, i remember watching this all unfold. i will sound like an old fart

for a second, i was standing over the wire machine that it came out over the a.p. that said, okay, spiro agnew just resigned. i still have that piece of paper someplace. that relationship between nixon and the media was not always antagonistic in any way, shape, or form. and it's curious -- we keep on hearing the word complex. it was very complicated, and even more complicated because if you think about his -- the years of his public life, 1946 through 1974, when he started in 1946, radio news had just recently become a factor in american life. radio news did not become a factor in american life until well into the 1930s. tv had just begun in 1946, and as for newspapers, he caught the very tail end of newspapers using their news pages as a blunt force political

instrument. and notably "the l.a. times" and "the chicago tribune" worked that side of the street. and beginning in 1946 he first runs for congress. the fellow that he had a blessing for was kyle fulmer who was the political director of "the l.a. times" and the joke about the "l.a. times" during this period of time was "the l.a. times" was not the mouthpiece for the republican party. the republican party was the mouthpiece for "the l.a. times." and he had a lot of -- from kyle fulmer. and he had a relationship with richard nixon. the alhambra newspaper describes fulmer's help as a symphony conductor. he certainly did a lot of behind-the-scenes kind of work on nixon's behalf, helped him get elected in 1946. when it came to 1950 when he ran

against helen douglas, "the l.a. times" was very squarely in richard nixon's corner and worked very hard to get him elected. when he gets to the -- during the alger hiss case, and by the way, at this point, nixon, it looked like, was enjoying some fairly decent press coverage and, in fact, as he begins the hiss -- alger hiss investigation, the fellow that he chose to work with him on this was a fellow from the press, a guy by the name of bert andrews who was the washington bureau chief for the old "new york herald tribune." he'd just won the pulitzer prize for doing an investigation how the investigation of communism had ruined the life of ten people in the state department. and nixon chose andrews to work with him on the hiss investigation specifically because he wanted somebody who would kind of cast a jaundiced eye on what he was thinking at that time. so, this at that time. so this is hardly -- and also,

by the way, you might look if you have bert andrews in your corner and you have the new york herald tribune for cover as you move forward. this does not sound like a guy who was basically antagonistic to the news media in any way, shape or form. by 1952, obviously, things changed. the new york post does a major investigation, almost costs him the vice presidential nomination and once again, in a great moment and this is the curious thing about nixon waffling, going between being the zen master of the news media and having a total tin ear about going on. he uses the checkered speech to go above and beyond the republican party leadership and it was, by the way, an absolute master stroke, tv a very early medium. nobody knew how this meant and how this was going to work, and i know that this guy's work has

become -- some people have called into question, but roger morris had an interesting anecdote about the checkered speech in that dwight eisenhower, the last u.s. president, ironically in the 19th century was in a hotel room with his aides watching nixon on the checkered speech and the aides were laughing and joking and thinking this was funny and looking at eisenhower who by this time the carotids are starting to stock out? he cracks a pencil and everyone looks at dwight eisenhower and they said what's going on? you don't understand what just happened. we can't go against him right now. it was a masterful use of the med media. by 1960 he is starting to have a rougher time. "the washington post" is doing

some funny cartoons which is not at all comfortable for reach art nixon. at this point, there's an open question of how the news media covered richard nexton. in his autobiography and the one in the 1970s that mr. gannon wrote about, nixon was pretty solidly said that everybody was against me in the 1960 race. once again, he also, by the way points back to the elder, his case when he looked at six crises which he wrote in 1962, he didn't seem at that point to be so hard edged. he quotes a letter from the chicago tribune correspondent, willis edwards saying, look, mr. vice president, i'm very embarrassed to be a reporter at this point because they're trying to nail you. nixon doesn't quite sign on to this, but the big turning point for him was the 1962 gubernatorial race here in california and this is whera i

couple of things happened, the nature of "the l.a. times" which helped create him in the 1940s and 1950s had gone through a total transformation. he takes over in 1960. chandler thought at this point we are not going to be a nowing piece for the republican party. we are not automatically going to nail democrats. we're going to cover things fairly and apparently otis nixon didn't get the otis chandler memo and was somewhat surprised when "the l.a. times staat staat carted covering him in a somewhat critical fashion. if you looked at the 1970s memoir and every part of the campaign trail which was, number one, are you with john bircher which, by the way, must have annoyed the hell out of him.

they thought dwight eisenhower was a stooge at the communist party. i can't imagine why anybody would think nixon would sign on to that. the other thing is they kept on asking questions alone that his brother had gotten from the tool company, and the fact that they had asked and answered time and time again and annoyed the hell out of this guy and there was the famous night when he loses and the famous press conference when he says you won't have dick nixon to come around anymore, to keck around anymore. john writes this was under the influence of a whole lot of scotch. when he made that speech. nixon later also wrote that he never regretted saying that at all because he thought that was partially responsible for him getting more positive press coverage as he moved back up into political life in the

mid-1960s. by 1968 he starts wearing the hat of the zen master. he has figured out probably before anybody else that network tv news had changed entirely in the 1960s. i think it started. 1963 was a huge year. cbs and nbc went from 30 minute newscasts. the nature of what those organizations was about changed as well. also, the coverage of the 1963 kennedy assassination totally changed the way people looked at network news and it was being taken very seriously and he falls in with the fellow of roger ales, now president of fox news who designed a brilliant campaign on nixon's behalf and basically did an end run around the news media. once again, the news media didn't get that memo because they were covering this thing as they always covered every campaign which is, okay, we look

at the press releases and we talked to the press spokesmen. they didn't realize they'd become irrelevant at that point. as for watergate, it's one of these things where he time and time again, i think misread the press. he felt from the very day, and there's a great anecdote about nixon meeting with all of the aides in a hotel and basically saying the press is out to get you. it's out to get me, it's out to get all of us and he treated the press with basically cool contempt and after a while, as we know, the stakes got raised over and over again. nixon, among other thing, for instance, deciding to go after telling people to go after "the washington post" tv licenses. the minute that happened the post stopped and dropped right through the floor, cost the post something like a million bucks to challenge those licenses. that's not the action of a guy

that is particularly interested in discourse with the press. i think at this point it becomes a blood feud. i think at the end of the day, i don't think anybody came out of this very well. as a lifelong reporter, you read from a lot of people leak leslie stahl, daniel short who were involved in all of this, this became a great party. daniel shore talks about being so elated. leslie stahl writes about the watergate parties they were having every night, and it becomes, i think, the news media. i've been in this for many, many decades and almost breaks their arm patting themselves on the back for bringing this guy down. whether he had it coming or not is of course, another question entirely, but i don't think anybody got out of this unscathed. you mentioned the naybobs of

negativism, that is still part of the national discourse. i don't think fox news and rush limbaugh can get through ten minutes without coming up with something like this. it's part of the national discourse and this ushered in an era where reporters and politicians, now they've always had somewhat of an ader have sarial relationship, i think it got uglier and uglier and uglier and i think it's remained to this day, personally, i'm not sure this is a very healthy thing for the politic. i think a lot of the things that got set in motion during the nixon administration we're still living with and exponentially, as a matter of fact, i think it's even gotten worse as time goes on. [ applause ] >> i want to thank the nixon

library and the miller center for putting on this conference and especially mel small for arranging this volume that really opens up, i think, a whole lot of interesting, possible projects for scholarship for the future. i'm going to talk about the 1960 election. we still live within the framework that teddy white laid down in 1961 in his making of the president volume. teddy white's book sold millions of copies and invented a whole form of journalism reporting the presidential campaign in a packaged volume as a book and dwight himself went on to do more volumes although none as popular as that first one and only in recent years have a number of people come forward including myself, too, to offer correctives to white's cheerleading account for jfk's