Nelson Rockefeller

From New World Encyclopedia
Official White House photograph of Vice President Rockefeller, 1975

Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller (July 8, 1908 – January 26, 1979), of the famous American Rockefeller family, was an American politician, philanthropist and businessman. He led the moderate wing of the Republican Party as Governor of New York from 1959 to 1973 and as the 41st Vice President of the United States of America from December 19, 1974 to January 20, 1977. As Governor of New York, Rockefeller brought a New Deal quality to New York state government. Social spending in areas such as education and health care, and development increased dramatically during his terms. As Vice President under Gerald Ford,

Early years

Rockefeller (nicknamed "Rocky") was born in Bar Harbor, Maine. A member of the prominent Rockefeller family, he was the son of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and the grandson of Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller and United States Senator Nelson W. Aldrich of Rhode Island, for whom he was named. Most observers identify Nelson as the unquestioned leader amongst his brothers, John, Laurance, Winthrop, and David.

Rockefeller was a poor reader and student, often confusing words and transposing numbers.[1] If he had been born a generation later, he would have been diagnosed with dyslexia, but, at the time, his tutors did not know the cause of his scholastic difficulties. Rockefeller struggled in his studies but managed to work hard enough to gain acceptance at Dartmouth College. There, he was a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity, the Dartmouth Glee Club, and the Casque & Gauntlet Society. He graduated in 1930.

Political career

Rockefeller worked for a time in several family-run businesses and philanthropies before entering public service. He became an Assistant Secretary of State during World War II, where he was Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, an anti-Nazi alliance for Central and South America. After the war, he headed the International Development Advisory Board, part of President Harry Truman's Point Four Program.

The election of fellow Republican Dwight Eisenhower to the Presidency saw Rockefeller appointed first as chair of the President's Advisory Committee on Government Organization and later as an undersecretary in the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

Governor of New York

Rockefeller left federal service in 1956 to concentrate on New York state politics, where he served in various capacities. In 1958, he was elected Governor by over 600,000 votes, defeating incumbent and fellow multi-millionaire W. Averell Harriman, even though 1958 was a banner year for Democrats elsewhere in the nation. Rockefeller's extravagence managed to exceed even that of his predecessor:

"For his inaugural celebration, Nelson imported the New York City Ballet to Albany to perform at the inaugural ball in a state armory. As he prepared to journey to the capital to assume his prize, he bought a sleek Lincoln limousine. He ordered the license plate '1' installed on it. His chauffeur returned from the State Department of Motor Vehicles, [saying], 'Governor, Motor Vehicles says no privately owned car can have number 1.' Nelson saw no problem. He donated the Lincoln to the state, the bureaucrats promptly placed plate number 1 on it and assigned the car to the Governor."[2]

Rockefeller served as governor of New York from 1959 to 1973 (elected to four terms, he served three and a half). As governor of New York, he successfully secured the passage of strict laws against the possession and/or sale of drugs. These laws — which became known as the "Rockefeller drug laws" — took effect in 1973 and are still on the books. They ranked among the toughest in the United States. Despite his tough stance on drug-related crime, Rockefeller was still considered one of the leaders of the moderate wing of the Republican Party, and is hailed as an example of one of the chief figures of the "1960s and 1970s Republican" movement, when most state Republican organizations were dominated by social moderates. Compared to other Republicans, Rockefeller was especially liberal in areas such as spending and civil rights; Republicans sharing similar views were often referred to as "Rockefeller Republicans". In response to Rockefeller's moderate to liberal social policies, a group of conservative New York Republicans bolted from the state Republican organization and formed the Conservative Party.

On September 9, 1971, after four days of riots at the state prison in Attica, N.Y., Rockefeller gave the order for 1,000 New York State Police troopers and National Guardsmen to storm the prison. Over 40 people died, including 11 of 38 hostages (most of whom were prison guards), the largest loss of life in armed conflict between groups of Americans since the American Civil War. Most of the deaths were attributed to the gunfire of the National Guard and State Police. The prisoners had been demanding better living conditions, showers, education, and vocational training. Opponents blamed Rockefeller for these deaths, while his supporters, including many conservatives who had often vocally differed with him in the past, defended his actions as being necessary to the preservation of law and order.

Rockefeller engaged in massive building endeavors that left a profound mark on New York State, so much so that many of his detractors claimed that he had an "Oedifice Complex." He was the driving force in turning the State University of New York into the largest system of public higher education in the United States. He demanded the imposition of tuition at the New York city colleges in return for conferring university status on them. He also led in the creation and/or expansion of many major highways (such as the Long Island Expressway, the Southern Tier, the Adirondack, and Interstate 81) which vastly improved road transportation in New York State. To create more low-income housing, Rockefeller created the unprecedented-in-its-power New York State Urban Development Corporation (UDC), which could override local zoning, condemn property, and create financing schemes to carry out desired development. (UDC is now called the Empire State Development Corporation, which forms a unit, along with the formerly independent Job Development Authority, of Empire State Development.)

Rockefeller's massive construction programs — not just the aforementioned, but others, such as the US$2 billion Albany South Mall (later renamed the Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza, a vast campus of government sky-scrapers and plazas punctuated by an egg-shaped arts center, together the most expensive project that had ever been undertaken by any U.S. state government) — and his generous pension programs for many public workers in the state (firefighters, many police officers, sanitation workers, and corrections officers), and highest-in-the-nation minimum wage that he was able to push through the legislature (or carry out through some existing public-benefit authority such as the UDC), greatly drove up costs and debt in the state. Public-benefit authorities (some 230 of them, like UDC, were brought into existence by Rockefeller) were often used to issue bonds in order to avoid the requirement of a vote of the people for the issuance of a bond; such authority-issued bonds bore higher interest than if they had been issued directly by the state. The state budget went from US$2.04 billion in 1959-60 (Rockefeller's first full fiscal year in office) to US$8.8 billion in 1973-74 (at the end of Rockefeller's time in office). This occurred despite a state economy that was in significant decline in some areas; whether Rockefeller's spending practices contributed to this decline or prevented it from being far worse than it was is a subject of debate.

Rockefeller also reformed the governance of New York City's transportation system. He bankrupted the New York City Transit Authority and then created the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority in 1965, merging the New York City subway system with the publicly-owned Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority and the Long Island Rail Road and Metro North Railroad, which were purchased by the state from private owners in a massive public bailout of bankrupt railroads. In taking over control of the Triborough Authority, Rockefeller overcame Robert Moses, who controlled several of New York state's public infrastructure authorities. Under the New York MTA, toll revenue collected from the bridges and tunnels, which had previously been used to build more bridges, tunnels, and highways, were shifted to support public transport operations, thus shifting costs from general state funds to the motorist.

Presidential campaigns

Rockefeller's ambition was the Presidency; he spent millions in attempts to win the Republican nomination in 1960, 1964, and 1968. His bid in 1960 was ended early when then-Vice President Richard Nixon surged ahead in the polls; after quitting the campaign Rockefeller backed Nixon enthusiastically, and concentrated his efforts on introducing more moderate stances into Nixon's platform.

Nelson Rockefeller meeting with President Lyndon Johnson in the White House Cabinet room, 1968

Rockefeller was considered the front-runner for the 1964 campaign against the more conservative Barry Goldwater of Arizona (Nixon had declined to run after losing to Pat Brown in the 1962 California gubernatorial election). However, Rockefeller's divorce and quick remarriage to a woman (who had until then been married to someone else) nearly 20 years his junior offended many, and no major American party had ever nominated a divorced person for President to that point in history (this precedent eventually being overcome by Ronald Reagan). Polls predicted that Rockefeller would win the California primary, but he lost by a slim margin and dropped out of the race, endorsing Goldwater (but more hesitantly than he had previously supported Nixon). (Many of Rockefeller's supporters then coalesced behind an "anybody but Goldwater" movement led by Pennsylvania governor William Scranton, but this bid was defeated by the conservative tide rising in the Republican Party in 1964.)

Rockefeller lost again to a resurgent Nixon in 1968, unable to overcome Nixon's superior organization and support by most state Republican Party mechanisms outside of New York and Nixon's apparent conversion to a more moderate conservatism, making him acceptable to many of the Goldwater activists of four years earlier without making him appear to be unelectable on a national basis as Goldwater had proved to be. The 1968 race proved to be Rockefeller's last bid for national office. Even though by the time of the 1968 Republican National Convention Nixon's nomination seemed to be a foregone conclusion, some of the delegates Rockefeller had won during the campaign nonetheless voted for him. A movement in the Arkansas delegation to back Winthrop Rockefeller as a "favorite son" candidate led to their becoming the only brothers in U.S. history to receive votes for President at the same major-party convention.

Vice President of the United States

Following the resignation of President Richard Nixon, successor Gerald Ford nominated Rockefeller to serve as the 41st Vice President of the United States. Rockefeller is the last governor to date to have served as Vice President.

Rockefeller underwent a lengthy series of Congressional hearings but ultimately was confirmed, beginning his service on December 19, 1974. He became the second Vice President to be appointed to the position under the 25th Amendment, the first being Ford himself.

Less than a year later however, on November 3, 1975, he notified President Ford that he would not seek election to the Vice Presidency in 1976, saying that he "didn't come down (to Washington) to get caught up in party squabbles which only make it more difficult for the President in a very difficult time..."

While Rockefeller was Vice President, the official Vice Presidential residence was established at Number One Observatory Circle on the grounds of the United States Naval Observatory. This residence had previously been the home of the Chief of Naval Operations; prior Vice Presidents had been responsible for maintaining their homes at their own expense, but the necessity of massive full-time Secret Service security had made this custom impracticable to continue. Rockefeller, though, already had a luxurious, well-secured Washington residence and never actually lived in the home as a principal residence, although he did host several official functions there. His wealth enabled him to give millions of dollars of furnishings to the home, which he allowed to remain there after his term ended, and which have been made available to any subsequent Vice Presidential families who choose to use them.

Rockefeller's Vice Presidency is infamously known for his reaction to heckling during a public speech in Binghampton, New York. A group of hippies started to heckle him, to which he retaliated by giving the group the finger, in a widely circulated photo. Senator Robert Dole, who would be the Republican nominee to succeed Rockefeller as Vice President in the 1976 election, was on hand at the speech. When questioned by an ABC reporter as to why he didn't make a similar gesture, Dole replied "I have trouble with my right arm," referrying to his right-side paralysis, an injury he sustained in World War II.

Personal Life

On June 23, 1930, Rockefeller married Mary "Tod" Clark. He and his wife had five children. The Rockefellers, like many couples of similar age and socio-economic status, were husband and wife mostly in name only. Nelson carried out numerous affairs during their marriage, finally falling deeply in love with a married woman eighteen-years his junior named Margaretta "Happy" Murphy in the late 1950s. Early in 1961, Rockefeller decided to divorce Tod and marry Happy. He and his second wife had two children, and he remained married to her until his death in 1979. His divorce and subsequent remarriage probably harmed his attempts at obtaining the Republican nomination for President in 1964.

Art collector

Rockefeller was an avid collector of modern art throughout his entire life. He continued his mother's work at the Museum of Modern Art and turned the basement of his Kykuit mansion into a first-class museum. While he was overseeing construction of the State University of New York system, Rockefeller built, in collaboration with his lifelong friend Roy Neuberger, a museum on the campus of SUNY Purchase College. The Neuberger Museum, designed by Philip Johnson, hosted several paintings collected by Neuberger and helped to popularize several other artists as well.

Death

On January 26, 1979, Rockefeller suffered a heart attack and died. It is officially recorded that this occurred during sexual intercourse with his mistress and staff member Megan Marshak. Nelson Rockefeller was cremated at the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York, less than 48 hours after his death, and his ashes were scattered in Lower Manhattan just a few hours after the cremation was completed.

Family wealth

As of 2004, Forbes Magazine estimated that the overall Rockefeller family fortune could be worth as much as $9 billion. Nelson Rockefeller's net worth was approximately $1 billion at the time of his death.

Honors

In 1977, Rockefeller received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Further reading

  • Cobbs, Elizabeth Anne. The Rich Neighbor Policy: Rockefeller and Kaiser in Brazil. Yale U. Press, 1992.
  • Cobbs, Elizabeth A. "Entrepreneurship as Diplomacy: Nelson Rockefeller and the Development of the Brazilian Capital Market" Business History Review 1989 63(1): 88-121. Issn: 0007-6805 Examines NR's Fundo Crescinco, a mutual fund that he started in Brazil in the 1950's to continue FDR's Good Neighbor policy. It reflected both liberal assumptions about the importance of the middle class to economic development and the concerns of business people about placating Latin American nationalism.
  • Connery, Robert H. and Gerald Benjamin. Governing New York State: The Rockefeller Years (1974)
  • Bernard J. Firestone and Alexej Ugrinsky, eds. Gerald R. Ford and the Politics of Post-Watergate America. Volume: 1. Greenwood Press. 1993. pp 137-94, discussion by scholars of Vice Presidency
  • Kramer, Michael and Roberts, Sam. "I Never Wanted to Be Vice-President of Anything!": An Investigative Biography of Nelson Rockefeller. 1976.
  • Light, Paul. "Vice-presidential Influence under Rockefeller and Mondale." Political Science Quarterly 1983-1984 98(4): 617-640. Issn: 0032-3195
  • Perlstein, Rick. Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (2002) on 1964 election
  • Persico, Joseph E. The Imperial Rockefeller: A Biography of Nelson A. Rockefeller. 1982. by senior aide
  • Reich, Cary. The Life of Nelson A. Rockefeller (1996) vol 1 to 1958, the most detailed biography
  • James Reichley; Conservatives in an Age of Change: The Nixon and Ford Administrations Brookings Institution. 1981.
  • Rivas, Darlene. Missionary Capitalist: Nelson Rockefeller in Venezuela. U. of North Carolina Press 2002.
  • Straight, Michael. Nancy Hanks, an Intimate Portrait: The Creation of a National Commitment to the Arts. Duke U. Press, 1988. She was a top aide (and lover).
  • Turner, Michael. The Vice President as Policy Maker: Rockefeller in the Ford White House. Greenwood, 1982
  • Underwood, James E. and Daniels, William J. Governor Rockefeller in New York: The Apex of Pragmatic Liberalism. Greenwood, 1982

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  1. Persico, Joseph E. The Imperial Rockefeller: A Biography of Nelson A. Rockefeller. 1982. p. 25
  2. Persico, Joseph E. The Imperial Rockefeller: A Biography of Nelson A. Rockefeller. 1982. p. 39