Sample text for The life of Nelson A. Rockefeller : worlds to conquer, 1908-1958 / Cary Reich.
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What a great President he would have been! How he would have ennobled us! What an extraordinary combination of strength and humanity, decisiveness and vision!
--Henry Kissinger, "Words of Commemoration," Memorial Service for Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, February 2, 1979
He irritated the shit out of a lot of people. It was a combination of things: all that wealth, that opportunism, that arrogance, rolled up together.... Sure, there are other arrogant politicians, there are other rich politicians, there are other opportunistic politicians. But where do you get such a gorgeous combination of them as in this one figure?
--William Rusher, conservative commentator and publisher
More than a decade and a half after his death, and two decades after he departed public life, the invocation of Nelson A. Rockefeller's name still conjures up a host of powerful, distinct images.
First, there is the image of his progressive and profligate New York governorship, with Rockefeller as a latter-day Cheops, building such monuments as the State University and the billion-dollar South Mall in the capital, introducing a multitude of far-reaching programs, and bequeathing to the state's taxpayers an awesome mountain of debt.
Then there is the storied "Rocky": garrulous, backslapping, eye-winking, offering a gravely "Hi ya, fella" to one and all and tossing any manner of ethnic treats down his cast-iron gullet. And, in vivid counterpoint to that, there is the imperial Nelson Rockefeller, commanding limitless wealth, presiding over his magnificent Georgian manor house in the very private 3,500-acre family preserve in Westchester--merely one of his five residences--and assembling one of the twentieth century's great private art collections.
And, of course, for many, the image that first comes to mind is the one engendered by his mysterious, much-gossiped-about demise: that of a lusty septuagenarian, meeting his maker while, apparently, in hysteria libidinosa with a lady almost half a century his junior.
In history, Rockefeller has left his mark as the perennial Man Who Would Be President, an object lesson in the limits of what money can buy. No politician of his era, it is commonly agreed, was better equipped, by temperament and background, for the presidency; none had as formidable a machine at hand to realize his dream. But three times he tried, and three times he failed. In the end, the closest he would come to the White House was a brief lame-duck turn at the Vice Presidency.
But probably the most enduring and pervasive view of Rockefeller is steeped in irony, for it is the one cherished by his adversaries, American conservatives, for whom it has been a precious talisman passed on from one generation of the right wing to the next: the Rockefeller of "Rockefeller Republicanism," that reviled and discredited amalgam of tax-and-spend big government liberalism and avid internationalism. It is a totem of seemingly undiminished potency, as witness its use as a conservative rallying cry against the prospective presidential candidacy of General Colin Powell, a reputed Rockefeller Republican. "If he should get the nomination," warned one conservative activist, "it would be as if Ronald Reagan had never lived and Nelson Rockefeller never died." (Another conservative spokesman saw fit to remind his audience that Rockefeller, the general's supposed ideological mentor, was "a conspicuous philanderer.")
This power, the power to fire up the most incendiary political passions at the mere mention of his name, is ample testimony to the grip that Nelson Rockefeller--vintage progressive, unabashed spender, master builder, thwarted presidential contender, "conspicuous philanderer"--continues to hold on the popular imagination. One way or another, he is still with us.
He was born into awesome wealth, a fortune so vast that his very family name was synonymous with stupendous sums. And yet, throughout his life, he exhibited the relentless drive of the self-made man: he was every bit the go-getter, a patrician Sammy Glick. Asked once by an interviewer what he would have done if he hadn't been born into fortune, Rockefeller instantly replied, "I would think of making one." Possessed of boundless reserves of energy, soaring ambition, and an unshakable will, Rockefeller would have achieved great things regardless of his material circumstances. "He was interested in accomplishing," reflects his brother David, "and he spent a lot of time in seeing where he wanted to go, and then developing a strategy to get there. In other words, things did not happen by accident in his life."
"His life was dedicated to moving ahead," says his onetime aide William Alton, who had known Rockefeller since boyhood. "There was always a mission, something to be done. He was always building, building, building."
Those associated with Rockefeller over the years tend to describe him in terms usually reserved for hustlers from the Lower East Side tenements. "He was a fighter, a real scrapper right from the start," remarks commentator Thomas Braden, who first came into Rockefeller's orbit in the late 1940s. "It's hard to believe that a guy with all the natural advantages Nelson had would be remembered as someone who overcame obstacles, but that's how I remember him. That was his strength, the thing I always admired."
Every domain he entered was a new world to conquer, every realm something to be subjugated to his will--starting with his very own family. From his earliest years he strove to dominate the Rockefeller empire. While his siblings were great strivers in their own right--one the world's preeminent commercial banker, another among America's most successful venture capitalists, another a philanthropist of global renown and the prime mover behind Lincoln Center--rarely did any of them dare to challenge his supremacy.
And as it was for the Rockefellers, so it would be, for almost a generation, for the state of New York. "Nothing stands in Rockefeller's way," his political contemporary U.S. Senator Jacob Javits would say. "Nothing. He always gets what he wants."
And so, too, would it be for the coterie of men and women--many of them illustrious figures in their own right--who would serve Nelson Rockefeller. No less a personage than Henry Kissinger--who owed much of his ascension in public life to Rockefeller's sponsorship--would complain that "the problem with Nelson was that he was such a dominant personality, and he tended to draw you into his orbit, and he tended to become all-consuming. So it was very hard to keep your identity with him."
"I think Rockefeller got interested in politics," opines his longtime conservative foe, National Review publisher William Rusher, "because it was one of the few things in the world that resisted his approach."
Surely precious little else did. In Nelson Rockefeller's world, no gratification was ever deferred for long, no whim ever went unsatisfied--be it in art, in automobiles, in real estate, or in women. Expressing admiration for a rare replication in tapestry of one of Picasso's masterworks, he thought it would be grand if the artist's other masterpieces were similarly rendered for him in cloth--with the artist himself supervising, of course. Picasso obliged. Coveting a yellow Phantom Five Rolls-Royce, and finding that the company had made only one and it wasn't for sale, he bought a gray Phantom instead and contrived to paint it yellow. When the manufacturer refused to go along, Rockefeller had his agents hire a former Royal Air Force intelligence operative to sneak into the Rolls-Royce garage and scratch a paint chip from the yellow vehicle, so that the exact shade could be analyzed and reproduced.
Flying one night over Mount Rushmore in his private plane, Rockefeller asked his traveling companion, "Have you ever seen Mount Rushmore?" When the man said no, Rockefeller said, "Just a minute," and picked up a phone on the plane. Suddenly, beneath them, the presidential likenesses were bathed in spotlights.
Then there was the time Rockefeller played host to the national conference of governors and decided to fÛte his guests at the Metropolitan Museum of Art--in the days when parties at the august institution were strictly forbidden. A Rockefeller assistant met with museum director Thomas Hoving, and, the aide recalls, "Hoving kept telling us how impossible it was, you can't possibly put chafing dishes there, and all that. Finally, I told Hoving that as far as Nelson was concerned, nothing was impossible. And he just sighed and said, 'Well, if that's what Nelson wants...'"
Having his way in all things, he seemed like a veritable King of New York. Never did he approach his private plane on the tarmac when it wasn't poised for takeoff, propeller churning. Never on a rainy day did he have to ask for his topcoat; no sooner did he raise his arms than the coat would be slipped over them. "Rockefeller was a royal presence," admits one of his political foes. "The whole aura was overwhelming." And not just for New York pols. Once, the Earl of Mountbatten, mentor of Prince Philip and Prince Charles, became embroiled in a vigorous dispute with Rockefeller at his Pocantico Hills estate. "But, Your Majesty," Mountbatten remonstrated, before he caught himself.
The grandeur of Rockefeller's surroundings--the Manhattan triplex whose fireplaces were decorated by Matisse and LÚger, the Pocantico Hills estate with its Calders, Moores, and David Smiths filling the porches and manicured lawns, the Seal Harbor, Maine, residence hovering over the granite outcroppings like a great beached schooner--added further to the regal aura. Even other Rockefellers stood in awe. On one occasion brother David was touring the private underground gallery architect Philip Johnson designed for Nelson beneath Kykuit, the main house at Pocantico, where Nelson resided. Taking in corridor upon corridor of Picassos and Chagalls, Motherwells and Warhols, David heaved a great sigh. "Only Nelson," he said, "could live like this."
Constitutionally immune to embarrassment, Rockefeller was particularly unembarrassed by his wealth. Asked once by a southern U.S. senator why so many rich politicians were liberals, he replied, "Because of a guilt complex. I have to tell you, I have no guilt complex."
"How's it feel to be rich?" a young girl asked him on the campaign trail. "Fine!" Rockefeller replied with gusto. "How's it feel to be good-looking?"
While his wealth per se never troubled him ("Being a Rockefeller never bothers me," he once remarked), taking the measure of his fortune sometimes gave him pause. On a visit to East Berlin, Rockefeller was confused and flustered when the East German guard at Checkpoint Charlie asked, "How much money do you have?" Finally, one of his aides leaned over and clarified things: "Governor, what he means is, how much money do you have on you?"
He was always keenly aware of the unique power his money commanded. Wealth, he told an interviewer in 1971, is "a tool. It can be used constructively...if you use it badly, it can cut you, like a sharp tool."
Never did he shy from wielding this power, barbed as it was. "He had none of the hang-ups about wealth or being a Rockefeller that some of his brothers had," noted his son Steven. "He rather gloried in it. He thoroughly enjoyed the power and the freedom that the money gave him."
His career is, among other things, a study in the unabashed use of a great fortune to secure influence. With his fortune, he was able to lure some of the country's best minds into his web; with his fortune, he ingratiated himself with occupants of the White House; with his fortune, he won elections.
Unhesitant about deploying his own private resources, he proved equally unhesitant about deploying the state of New York's. "If he wanted to spend money, money was no object," says Louis Lefkowitz, his attorney general and four-time running mate. "If he wanted something done, he did it. He had ideas all the time, and they were good ideas. He'd spend money, sure, but he'd give you something for your money."
Indeed he did; no governor in the Empire State's history--in fact, probably no governor in any state's history--produced as much in bricks and mortar, in blacktop and concrete, for the citizenry. In the course of its fifteen-year run, his administration gave the state 90,000 new low- and moderate-income housing units; 200 water treatment plants to curb pollution; 23 new state mental health facilities; and helped construct or expand 109 voluntary and municipal hospitals. Rockefeller boasted that the state built four and a half miles of highway for every day he was in office; among the great road-building enterprises of his regime were the Adirondack Northway, connecting the remote northeast of the state with Canada, and the completion of the Long Island Expressway.
Unquestionably, Rockefeller's proudest achievement was the vast expansion of the State University system: from 38,000 students on 28 campuses when he took over to 246,000 students on 71 campuses when he left, all brought off with typical Rockefeller panache (among the architects he recruited to design the new units were such world-class figures as I. M. Pei, Philip Johnson, and Edward Durell Stone). But the monument that made the most indelible mark on the public consciousness was not SUNY, but the South Mall in Albany, the soaring billion-dollar marble-clad government complex that gave new life to the much-maligned capital city, and, some said, new meaning to the word "megalomania."
Aside from bestowing upon the state these edifices, Rockefeller's dynamism and largesse engendered other profound changes in the Empire State. His administration midwifed the creation of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, rescuing the vital commuter railroads serving New York City from total collapse. It offered record amounts of financial aid to private and public college students. It saved the Adirondack Park from commercial and residential blight (as well as creating 55 new state parks). It set the pattern for government arts funding through the state Council on the Arts. And it oversaw the explosive growth of health care for the needy through the new federal-state Medicaid program; no state was as generous (at its peak Medicaid covered 45 percent of New York residents), and no state would be so overwhelmed by the program's skyrocketing costs.
What this all added up to, in the words of U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, was "the last great moment of expansive government in New York." The bill for this final flourish was truly staggering. On Rockefeller's watch, state spending more than quadrupled, while the state's debt grew from a mere $900 million in 1959 to $3.4 billion in 1973--and, on top of that, there was another $6.7 billion in debt undertaken through various fiscal gimmicks. Rockefeller's budgetary excesses not only triggered a state credit crisis in the middle 70s but undoubtedly set the stage for the monumental fiscal crisis that brought New York City to the brink of bankruptcy less than two years after he left office.
Rockefeller expressed not the slightest remorse about what he had wrought. "I have too much to do to wa
Library of Congress subject headings for this publication: Rockefeller, Nelson A, (Nelson Aldrich), 1908-1979, Vice-Presidents United States Biography, Governors New York (State) Biography