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President and vice-President.” Now, I was so anxious to get somebody to love me I said okay, because I also had so much confidence in the idea that I thought once they did it for president they would do it for governor, and ultimately do it for dog-catcher, because it just was a natural. In fact, the more I talked about it the more people said, “Why haven't we had debates?” Well, I had a good answer, and that was that the law wouldn't allow it, because in the campaign of '52, there were sixteen valid candidates for President. There's no way you could give free time to all those candidates. So, I yielded on that immediately, and Magnuson said -- Did you know Maggie? Did you ever know anything about him at all?

Not at all.

Oh, he was a fantastic senator from the state of Washington, had a heart as big as all get out. He was a wonderful person, a little heavy on the alcohol but a very shrewd and good guy, a man you could really say was a good senator, in the best sense of the word. Maggie said to me, across the table in the Senate dining room there, “Well, Frank, how do you know the candidates will want to debate?” I said, “I just can't believe that they won't.” He said, “Well, gee, we'd be pretty silly getting the legislation, and then having one of the candidates getting up and saying, ‘I don't want these debates.’” Recalling, I guess, what Pastore had just said, because Pastore said, “I don't want some Harvard Law School kid coming down into Providence and debating me!” He made it very precise what he didn't want, and Maggie had picked that up. Well, at any rate, I devoted the next week to going around seeing prospective candidates, and also lining up votes.

Even after the Eisenhower experience, you thought these particular candidates would