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“Dick Tuck” is a legend based on the antics of a man named
Dick Tuck who worked for Democratic Party on election campaigns in the
United States. The other Tricky Dick, Richard Nixon, was up to his own
mischief, but more noteworthy here are the stunts that Dick Tuck pulled to
derail Nixon’s campaigns for senator, governor and president.
I say that “Dick Tuck” is a
legend
because the stories of many of Dick Tuck’s tricks have been exaggerated
and embellished over the years (often with Tuck’s help), and some that
never happened or that were perpetrated by others have been attributed to
him.
Among the “Dick Tuck” performances:
- During one of Nixon’s “whistle-stop” train tours, at
a stop in San Luis Obispo, California, Tuck dressed up in a
brakeman’s uniform and signalled the engineer to start moving the
train in the middle of Nixon’s speech.
- After the Nixon/Kennedy television debate, Tuck coached an grandmotherly
woman to go up to Nixon in front of the press with a Nixon campaign
button on, and give him a hug, saying “That’s all right,
Mr. Nixon. Kennedy beat you last night, but don’t worry,
you’ll get him next time!”
- At an appearance Nixon made in the Chinatown of Los Angeles, Tuck had a
banner made that read “Welcome Nixon” in English, but in
Chinese “What about the Hughes loan?” (referring to a
potential scandal involving a loan that Howard Hughes had made to
Nixon’s brother). None of the Nixon representatives could read
Chinese, so the banner stayed as a backdrop to the photo-op. (Fortune
cookies in the meal that followed also included the Chinese question).
- Before he became well-known to Nixon’s campaign team, Tuck once
took charge of organizing a rally for Nixon at a large venue, but he
carefully failed to publicize it. Nixon ended up speaking to a
mostly-empty auditorium. Introducing the candidate, Tuck said,
“Richard Nixon will now tell us about the World Monetary
Fund,” which of course, was not the subject Nixon was planning to
address.
- Tuck hired a number of very pregnant women to carry signs at Nixon
rallies that bore the Nixon campaign slogan “Nixon’s the
One.”
- Tuck would masquerade as a fire marshall, tallying up the number of
people in the audience at Nixon’s indoor rallies. When members
of the press asked for his numbers, he gave the lowest plausible
figure.
Some folks
suspect that the Watergate scandal arose because the Republicans were
feeling out-gunned by the Dick Tuck tactics of the opposition. Nixon
created his own “dirty tricks” squad for his campaigns, which
was more mean-spirited but less successful than Tuck.
“Shows what a master Dick Tuck is,”
said the prez.
“We’re up against an enemy, a conspiracy,” Nixon said.
“They’re using any means. We are going to use any means. Is
that clear?”
Among the means Nixon’s dirty tricks crew used:
- Pat Buchanan, who was then working for Nixon, arranged for a gay
liberation group to donate money to the competing campaign of Republican
Pete McCloskey (this in 1972, when gay lib was much less politically
acceptable than today), then leaked news of the donation to the
Manchester Union-Leader just before the New Hampshire
primary.
- The Nixon campaign sent out letters on stationery stolen from the
Democratic campaign of Edmund Muskie that accused Muskie’s
Democratic rivals Hubert Humphrey and Henry Jackson of sexual
improprieties.
- Those tricky dicksters sent out formal invitations to various
Ambassadors from African governments to dinners that Muskie was
supposedly holding. Muskie of course knew nothing of it.
- Outdoing perhaps the “Nixon’s the One” prank of
Tuck’s, Nixon’s crew hired a woman to run along a hotel
corridor where Muskie was staying, butt naked, yelling
“I love Muskie!”
- Still desperate to get Muskie, they forged another letter from him that
used the misspelled slur “Cannocks” to refer to French
Canadians. Don’t know if all of this amounted to much, but
Muskie did go from front-runner to also-ran after New
Hampshire…
- In another campaign, postcards from a non-existant “Communist
League of Negro Women” were sent to conservative white voters in
California urging them to vote for Nixon’s opponent. “We
are with her 100%,” the cards read.
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