would counteract Eisenhower’s 62 years; his home state of California would balance out Eisenhower’s New York residency (and the impression of Dewey’s influence); and he was both a conservative and an internationalist who had the respect of the Old Guard and the Taft camp while not being beholden to them. He had also developed a reputation—appalling to some, thrilling to others—as an avid Red hunter, the man who unmasked Alger Hiss, the dapper State Department official who had passed secret documents to a communist spy. “Nixon seemed an almost ideal candidate for vice-president,” Brownell
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