W. Clement Stone (1902–2002)
BY Patrick J. Kiger
Insurance executive, self-help author, publisher
Chicago, Illinois
W. Clement Stone, who contributed millions of dollars that helped underwrite Richard Nixon’s campaign skullduggery, may have done more than anyone else to drive home the need for tougher campaign finance laws.
Stone was just too difficult to ignore. A portly man with a pencil moustache who favored bright-hued bowties and matching pocket handkerchiefs to go with his double-breasted suits, his relentlessly optimistic personality was even more outlandish than his foppish appearance. The high school dropout and author of such paperback self-help titles as Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude and The Success System That Never Fails, made billions in the insurance industry, much of it by cajoling shopkeepers and office clerks into putting down $30 a year on $1,200 face-value life-insurance policies. Stone’s army of door-to-door salesmen memorized his patented sales pitch — down to his standard joke, “Why, we even pay off if your heart is broken” — and were drilled incessantly on the importance of positive thinking. “Am I happy? Yes, I’m happy!” they chanted at meetings. Between puffs on his illegally obtained Havana cigars, Stone spouted similarly cheery aphorisms. As he once greeted a reporter for the Chicago Tribune: “I am riding on permanent, continuous wave of good fortune. How are you?”
Perversely, Stone’s sunny worldview filtered out President Richard M. Nixon’s darkly paranoid, conspiratorial tendencies and led the insurance mogul to mistake him for a fellow paragon of optimism. “Richard Nixon has a positive mental attitude — what I call P.M.A.,” Stone once wrote, explaining why he contributed so heavily to Nixon’s political campaigns. He told a reporter for The New York Times in 1972 that he considered Nixon’s rise to be one of the most “thrilling, exciting, inspirational stories of all time.” Thus, from 1968 to 1973, Stone pumped $5 million into Nixon’s political coffers, dutifully making donations to the literally hundreds of front organizations — with names such as the Citizen Issue Committee for Good Government and the Independent Research Committee — that Nixon’s campaigns set up to avoid legal limits on fundraising. (The multiplicity also helped Stone and other donors avoid paying gift taxes then required by the Internal Revenue Service on donations exceeding $3,000.) Unlike some of Nixon’s other donors, Stone needed no arm-twisting to get him to contribute. Stone had decided that, in his own words, “no power on earth would prevent [Nixon] from being elected if all it took was money.” As he once told Nixon fundraising chief Maurice Stans: “Maury, you’re not aiming high enough. Ask for $50,000, $100,000, $250,000.”
In addition to his millions in campaign contributions, Stone cheerfully offered other sorts of help to Nixon’s crew. When Vice President Spiro Agnew faced federal criminal charges of tax evasion and money laundering, for example, Stone formed a fund to provide him with “the best possible legal counsel to defend himself.” (Agnew eventually pleaded no contest to the charges and resigned from the vice presidency to avoid jail time.) And when the IRS dunned Nixon for $460,000 in unpaid taxes, Stone offered to start a fundraising campaign to pay the money for him. Nixon declined the offer.
Nixon was notorious for rewarding big donors with ambassadorships, and after his reelection in 1972, Stone reportedly showed an interest in being appointed to the top post in London. But the Watergate scandal and Nixon’s subsequent downfall prevented Stone from inflicting P.M.A. upon the unsuspecting Brits. Instead, he made a cameo appearance as a witness in the 1974 criminal conspiracy trial of Stans and John Mitchell, Nixon’s campaign manager (and attorney general), as the defendants’ attorneys tried unsuccessfully to persuade a judge to admit Stone’s not-quite-believable testimony that he had expected no favors from Nixon in return for his contributions.
Ever the positive thinker, Stone years later described Watergate as “a wonderful thing,” adding, “Without it, an attorney general wouldn’t have the guts today to make charges against a senator or a president.” He hired Nixon’s appointment secretary, convicted perjurer Dwight Chapin, to serve as the president and publisher of his Success magazine.
Stone continued to make political donations after Watergate, but in lesser amounts. In 1980, he contributed to the unsuccessful presidential campaigns of John Connally and George H.W. Bush. Between 1993 and his death at age 100 in 2002, Stone gave at least $88,000 in contributions to Republican candidates and committees, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. That included $1,000 contributions to the presidential campaigns of Bob Dole and George W. Bush.
SOURCES: Martin Arnold, “Judge Restricts Mitchell Defense,” The New York Times, April 10, 1974; “Nixons Greet Republicans by the Hundreds,” The New York Times, April 14, 1969; “An American Original,” Time, February 7, 1969; Jon Anderson, “Am I Happy? Yes, I’m Happy!” Chicago Tribune, February 8, 1987; W. Clement Stone, “Nixon’s P.M.A. – Or Lack of It,” The New York Times, November 2, 1972; Walter Rugaber, “Study Finds 15 Gave Over $50,000 Each to Political Parties in ’68,” The New York Times, January 31, 1971; Walter Pincus, “Gift Taxes Sought From Big Donors to ’68, ’72 Races,” The Washington Post, December 16, 1977; Garry Abrams, “W. Clement Stone: Riches From the Land of Dreams,” Los Angeles Times, May 20, 1987; Tom Butson, “The ’72 Accounts Contain an $8 Million Surprise,” The New York Times, September 30, 1973; U.S. Senate Historical Office, “Spiro T. Agnew, 39th Vice President (1969–1973)”; John Herbers, “Aides Say Nixon’s Tax Bill Will Force Him To Borrow,” The New York Times, April 5, 1974; “Payola on Embassy Row,” Time, April 16, 1973; T.R. Reid and Fred Barbash, “Carter Has Raised $1.5 Million in Three Months for 1980 Drive,” The Washington Post, July 13, 1979.
Next donor: Haim Saban