Being Nixon: A Man Divided

by Evan Thomas

The Republicans hired Chotiner to write some press releases and advise their young and green candidate for California’s 12th Congressional District. Legend, spread largely by Chotiner, held that he played a key role in the making of Richard Nixon, attack dog. Actually, he was only marginally involved in that first campaign, but the advice he gave was useful. He told Nixon to debate his opponent and sent him to see Kyle Palmer, chief political reporter of the Los Angeles Times.37 In California politics, Palmer, a dapper, cheerfully cynical man with an ingratiating manner, was known as “Mister Republican” and “the Little Governor.” An endorsement from the Los Angeles Times was worth hundreds of thousands of votes. Palmer was the one who told the Chandler family, owners of the paper, whom to endorse. He wrote speeches for politicians and instructed them on whom to hire and what bills to support. In a state that had supposedly rid itself of old-fashioned machine-style political bosses, historian David Halberstam has written, Palmer was the political boss.