Free The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate by James Rosen

Mitchell’s view of Nixon but in his conception of self. He had always aspired to be—and became—the lawyer’s lawyer, the consummate professional. To testify against Nixon, to trade evidence, real or fabricated, in exchange for a lighter criminal sentence and a fat book deal, like many of the other Watergate conspirators, was abhorrent to Mitchell
as a lawyer
. “Why John never told it all,” an intimate remarked after his death, “can only be attributed to the fact that Richard Nixon was his client. And good lawyer that he was, he protected the president to his grave.” 11

    For all Nixon’s talk of the New York “fast track,” the practice of law bored him, just as it had two decades earlier in Whittier. The former vice president found that while ambition, doggedness, and resilience had taken him far in politics—a heartbeat away from the presidency by age thirty-nine—those attributes had done little to prepare him for the prospect of life outside the realm of campaigns and elections. In 1964, and in the midterm elections two years later, he campaigned tirelessly for Barry Goldwater and GOP congressional candidates, piling up political debts to be repaid when his own time came again. If he kept practicing law, Nixon would half jest, he’d be mentally dead in two years, physically dead in four.
    Nixon knew earlier than anyone else, of course, that he would return to the game—but remained circumspect. In his memoirs, he admitted he began to “think seriously” about the White House as early as New Year’s Day 1965. “I had finally come to the realization that there was no other life for me but politics and public service,” Nixon wrote. “I did not reveal to my family or anyone else that this was what I had in mind. I knew that Pat and the girls would again be disappointed.” Asked years later how early he learned Nixon would seek the 1968 Republican nomination, H. R. Haldeman, who was as close to Nixon as any political operative, replied “not til ’67.
Late
’67, actually, for sure.” It is thus doubtful that Mitchell, at the time of the merger, knew his partner would again seek public office. Surely it was clear to all that if Nixon chose to run again, he could do worse for a base of operations than a major New York law firm. 12
    Mitchell’s nationwide network of political contacts had attracted Nixon’s eye. Asked in December 1968 how he wound up managing the campaign, Mitchell suggested, with a smile, that he had been a reluctant bride: “It was an evolution. I got sucked in gradually. I guess somebody had to do it. I was blithely practicing law, and calling up friends around the states to get some Nixon organizations formed.” 13 It was in the summer of 1967 that Nixon began to realize his imperturbable law partner could, in addition to salving psychic wounds, also fill a political void. Mitchell accompanied California GOP chairman Gaylord Parkinson on a trip to Wisconsin. Mitchell’s legal contacts in the Badger State were unmatched; but from a Wall Street lawyer with no campaign experience Parkinson was unwilling to take direction. He rejected Mitchell’s idea to organize the state for Nixon by delegating responsibility to a private sector group: “Parky said no and stuck with it.” 14 Ignoring Parkinson’s objections, by July Mitchell had organized a team of forty-two campaign professionals—including a chairman for each of Wisconsin’s seventy-two counties, its ten congressional districts, and its fifteen to twenty largest cities. Nixon reconvened his own group. Given a choice between Mitchell and Parkinson, the group chose Mitchell to run the campaign, with Nixon’s acquiescence. 15
    The pros were impressed. “Mitchell in his first outing,” reported the
Los Angeles Times
’ Jules Witcover, “managed to tie up the key Republicans in Wisconsin. In the succeeding months, he was to launch similar operations in most other states, drawing in almost always the influential and