The Vice President and I agreed that we should try to get a broadly based committee to analyze Republican difficulties and failures and to work out the finest possible plan we could develop for their correction.1 We further agreed that time is of the essence because we have to do a lot of rebuilding.
I shall attempt, below, to lay out an outline of the steps we thought should be tried and some of the problems that we think must be met and solved.
1. The committee should be organized as soon as possible. On it there should be the Vice President, Alcorn, Justin Dart, and a number of others who could possibly include Summerfield, Chuck Percy, and at the very least one of the individuals who was in the original committee in 1951-52 to support my original nomination and election. Such a person could be Lodge, Clay, Paul Hoffman or Dewey.2 (We discussed briefly the desirability of getting at least one Senator and one member of the House to serve on the Committee, but I believe we left the matter open).
Two men that I would like to see brought in and very closely questioned--possibly one or both could be members of the committee--are Congressman-elect Lindsay from New York City and Governor-elect Hatfield of Oregon. Both of them ran beautiful races almost on their own and both were successful.3
There ought also possibly be at least one well known businessman and another individual from the university world.
In the shake down I believe there should not be over nine members and possibly this might be too many.
A necessary recording staff could be provided by Meade Alcorn.
(With respect to favoring such a committee, a later talk with Alcorn developed that he was thinking along these same lines and indeed he has already talked with the Vice President about doing something of the kind suggested above).4
2. We should make a survey of exactly what happened on November fourth in the various areas and why. We believe that the pollsters as well as reports from county and state chairmen and others should be examined. The analysis of this report should be undertaken by someone selected by the committee, who is experienced in research of this kind.
3. The next step for the committee would be to work out procedures by which:
a. An organization can be built up from the grass roots. This organization’s effort should emphasize youth, vigor and progress so that as it develops upward there will be elected as county and state chairmen the finest young leaders that we can find. The same effect will finally be noted in the type of our national committeemen, but in this case elections can be held once only every four years.
b. We can develop a sturdy, broadly based and hardworking finance group which would bring in necessary revenue on a continuing monthly basis.
4. We should decide upon the form of the top organization. Here we mean not only the possible reorganization of the National Committee as such, but a careful examination of the need or lack of need for the so-called Congressional and Senatorial Committees as now organized and supported. It is reported to me that the Congressional Committee is particularly costly, its maintenance expense being something over $64,000 a month. This not only raises the question of getting our money’s worth out of these two Committees, but it raises a far more serious question of a single versus a tri-headed political effort.
The National Chairman is of course the alter ego on Party matters of the President. This means that the proclamations and policies and plans of the National Committee must, under the President’s leadership, provide the guide lines for Party effort, always, of course, within the limits laid down by the National Platform. If the heads of the Congressional or Senatorial Committees take a different political line and urge a different doctrine, then not only is our effort weakened, but we have the curious spectacle of the National Committee of supporting with very large sums of money a Committee which is preaching something that the President, the Administration and the National Chairman disapprove. This sort of thing happened in some instances in the last campaign.
Incidentally, to point up the importance of this problem we should note that the amount of donations made to the Congressional Committee by the National Committee in the years ’56 and ’58 were respectively $1,600,000 and $400,000.5 I have no idea how the money was used, but I was importuned to help raise money, and did so.5
Relating further to the question of top organization, there could be a voluntary advisory committee to the National Chairman to be made up of businessmen, and, if the Congressional and Senatorial Committees were either eliminated or drastically reduced, another could be made up of a combined group of Senators and Congressmen--possibly six in number.
5. Throughout the organization from top to bottom there must be useful and dedicated voluntary workers; in addition we must have, according to the need, the necessary paid workers.
6. With this kind of an organization developed we must have, in addition to a clear understanding of our problems and policies and programs, the finest possible candidates. Again these people--men and women--should be young and vigorous and intelligent. If the preliminary organizational steps are properly accomplished, the result in terms of good candidates will be almost automatic. However, nothing can be taken for granted and we believe that it would be a good move to have in the National Committee two or three "travelling salesmen" who are clear headed people looking out for this type of candidate and able to get the local people to carry out the necessary measures.
There were, of course, a number of other related subjects discussed between the Vice President and myself.6 A later conversation with Meade Alcorn was almost identical.
Alcorn is, at this moment, December sixth, in San Francisco or Hawaii. He will be back in a few days and he and the Vice President will start this work at once.
* * * * *
There was nothing significant in my conversation with Bill Knowland, except to note that he talked more objectively and sensibly after his defeat than he did before.7
