Yesterday’s Facebook

November 30, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Nixon Administration figures, Richard Nixon 

Just before the Thanksgiving holiday, The Wall Street Journal’s Katherine Rosman penned a profile that might come as an oddity to the fervid tweeters, youtubers, and Facebook faithful. In 1957, the late RN speechwriter William Safire formed the Wednesday 10 club, a group of influential professional men — from all walks of life – that would regularly meet over monthly breakfasts and dinners to share life experiences, exchange ideas, and help build each others’ careers.

Rosman likens it today’s juvenescence, only a bit old-fashioned and considerably more intimate and durable:

In a day when “social network” is a buzz term from colleges to board rooms, the members of Wednesday 10 show the benefits of old-fashioned networking. “We were all young kids starting out, and it is easy when you are so involved in building your career to lose touch with other people who are outside your field,” says Mr. Menschel, who has been at Goldman Sachs for 55 years. “It helped me to understand why other people do what they do—which is important in life and in business. You don’t learn anything from talking to sameness.”

The Wednesday 10 comprised, at various points, more than 20 men; the goal was a number small enough to maintain intimacy yet large enough to ensure that at least 10 members would show up for each of the monthly Wednesday-night meetings. No more than two representatives of any one industry were permitted. The idea was to combat insularity, to keep the men connected to people and events outside their own professions.

Rosman goes on to explain the advantages of the group, a list that includes the attainment of lucrative contracts, book deals, and a pertinent education on the intricacies of business-life in New York City and the powerful men who shaped it:

To begin the meetings, each man gave an update on his life. Impending marriages and expected babies were nodded to, but the thrust of the discussion centered on career development. “It was a professional support system,” says Mr. Meyer, 82. By the end of each meeting, he had a snapshot of what was going on in the realms of law, media, art, finance, real estate, public service and cancer research. “It was like reading a newspaper cover to cover,” he says.

RN, helped form something akin to a social network for newly seated members of the House of Representatives in 1949. An “informal caucus” for Republican veterans of World War II, the Chowder and Marching Society proved to be equally as intimate and durable. CMS served as then Michigan Freshman Gerald Ford’s “first stepping stone to leadership.” And the late journalist Hugh Sidey, writing after RN’s funeral, said the group “welded exuberant friendships” and set the stage for the rise of three American Presidents:

So much history, thought Ford as he listened to the eulogies on that clouded and chilly California afternoon last week when Nixon was buried beside his wife Pat at the Nixon library and birthplace in Yorba Linda. Ford was Nixon’s closest political colleague. “I treasured his friendship,” Ford said later. “When I took the oath of office in the well of the House in 1949, the very first person who came up to shake my hand was Dick Nixon.”

Ford looked stricken. In fact, all five Presidents gathered below Nixon’s casket were dramatically reminded that even the toughest actors are ultimately swept from the great stage. And with them such rich memories of the old campaigns. “I asked him to come to Grand Rapids to make a Lincoln Day speech, and he stayed at my parents’ home,” said Ford. “He slept in a four-poster bed with sideboards. Later, when he became President, my mother hung up a sign on the bed, THE PRESIDENT SLEPT HERE.”

The covey of Presidents who shivered through the Nixon rites owed their days of glory in varying degrees to Richard Nixon, either for his help or his failure. Ronald Reagan, a Democrat until the early 1960s, recalls how his growing disenchantment with the party inspired him to go talk with Nixon. “I’d grown up a Democrat, but I told Nixon I’ve got to be a Republican,” Reagan said. “But Nixon asked me to campaign for him as a Democrat, and I did until right at the end. Then I switched.”

By this time Reagan had got the political bug, and he watched Nixon and listened to him. After Nixon’s Watergate humiliation, it was Reagan who made certain Nixon was on the delegation, which also included Ford and Carter, sent to the funeral of Egypt’s Anwar Sadat in 1981.

Only 10 months ago, Reagan sat beside Nixon at the funeral for Pat. “I know how he felt about his family,” said Reagan. “I always admired him for that, and I saw at Pat’s funeral the terrible grief he felt. I thought so very much of him.”

George Bush, a decade younger, nevertheless was caught up in the Chowder and Marching retinue during his days as a member of Congress. “Nixon was on this swing through the country back in 1966 when he went out and raised money for a lot of newly running candidates,” Bush recalled. “I was one of them. Nixon came down to Houston and helped. I was kind of awestruck. He had done so many things, and he was getting ready to run for President again. I was the new boy on the political block, and I was very appreciative for what he did.”

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