Dick Tuck, the bane of Richard Nixon's political existence, has pulled his last prank. Unless, that is, the announcement of his death today at 94 is just his latest stunt.
Tuck was a serious professional Democrat who worked for Adlai Stevenson, Pat Brown, and both John and Bobby Kennedy. (He was standing just behind RFK when Kennedy was assassinated.)
But Tuck achieved political immortality as a political prankster, and his favorite target was Nixon. Tuck haunted Nixon for twenty-five years. His campaign of psychological warfare began in 1950 when Tuck, a committed Democrat and a student at UC Santa Barbara, volunteered to work for the Republicans on campus. He arranged for Nixon, who was running for the Senate, to give a speech on campus, rented the largest auditorium at the school, and did no publicity for the event. Twenty-three students up and were treated to an interminable--and deadly dull--introduction by Tuck, who finally ended his oration by announcing--much to the surprise of Nixon--that "Congressman Nixon will now speak about the international monetary crisis."
It's impossible to know for sure if all the legendary stories about Tuck's shenanigans are true. There was the time when Nixon was doing a whistlestop campaign tour by train. Nixon was in the middle of his speech to a crowd behind his train car when Tuck, dressed as a brakeman, gave a signal and the train pulled away from the station--and Nixon's bewildered crowd. The morning after the first Kennedy/Nixon television debate in 1960, Tuck hired an elderly woman wearing a Nixon button to go up to Nixon in front of the press and tell him, "It's too bad that you lost to Senator Kennedy last night, but don't worry, you'll get him next time." It was Tuck who hired a pregnant black woman to stand in front of Nixon's hotel during the 1972 Republican convention holding a "Nixon's The One" sign.
Tuck had an interesting life and career. Hunter S. Thompson was a close friend. (I remember watching Tuck and Thompson make an appearance on Tom Snyder's late-night television show. The clueless Snyder didn't even catch half their jokes.) Tuck worked for a time as an editor of the National Lampoon humor magazine. Tuck was in that job during the Watergate scandal. He somehow got his hands on copies of some of Nixon's secret Oval Office tape recordings and gave them their first public airing in a session for reporters at the bar in the Hotel Jerome in Aspen.
Those tapes must have been a career high point for Tuck, for they reveal just how completely Tuck had entered Nixon's head. Tuck is mentioned often, and the tapes make clear that the Dirty Tricks squad in the RNC was Nixon's attempt to create his own Dick Tuck.
He failed. Nixon's team quickly strayed into illegality--burgling offices, secretly bugging opponents, forging fake diplomatic cables--whereas Tuck stuck with humorous pranks.
Tuck bumped into Bob Haldeman, Nixon's chief of staff, during the height of the Watergate scandal.
"It's all your fault, Dick," said Haldeman as the two men passed each other.
"Yeah, but you guys drove it into the ground," replied Tuck.