The past isn’t dead; it isn’t even past. — Faulkner
Here begins the first virtual meeting of the BJ Book Group. Today’s topic: the preface and first two chapters of Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland.
What do y’all think?
One thing: I hadn’t realized how much Nixon used the “popular media” successfully. I know everyone remembers the Checkers speech as a near-career-killer and the infamous JFK tv debate as a debacle, but Perlstein demonstrates in convincing detail that Nixon used those “failures”, as much as they stung at the time, to dog-whistle to those among his fellow grievance-huggers who would become his Silent Majority.
Another thing: The Goldwaterite wing of the Republican Party — the people now calling themselves Tea Partiers — really does come off as a cult, right from the beginning:
Experts, claiming the Republican tradition of progressivism was as much a part of its identity as the elephant, began talking about a party committing suicide. The Goldwaterites didn’t see suicide. They saw redemption. This was part and parcel of their ideology — that Lyndon Johnson’s “consensus” was their enemy in a battle for the survival of civilization. For them, the idea that calamitous liberal nonsense […] could be described as a “consensus” at all was symbol and substance of America’s moral rot. They also believed the vast majority of ordinary Americans already agreed with them […] It was their article of faith. And faith, and the uncompromising passions attending it, was key to their political makeup. (p.5)
TR
Really? I thought everyone remembered the Checkers speech as an example of how Nixon could spew bullshit with the best of them.
The events that led up to the speech — the revelations about the “slush fund” created by Nixon’s business supporters for his then-likely 1956 re-election campaign to the Senate — were certainly seen as a potential career killer, in that Eisenhower toyed with kicking Nixon off the ticket.
But the speech itself was a career saver. Nixon got viewers to call and send telegrams to the RNC asking for them to keep him on the ticket, and it worked wonderfully for him.
Nutella
Yes, all the stories about Orthogonians bitterly resenting everyone not like them (Franklins above them, brown people below) sound very very familiar.
dmsilev
My understanding was that the Checkers speech itself was a considerable success, and the response to it was strong enough to convince Ike not to drop Nixon from the ticket. Am I mis-remembering my history? Or are you using ‘Checkers speech’ as shorthand for the fundraising scandals which lead up to the speech itself?
dms
Teri
What I thought was the change from the respected opponent to the “enemy” marked a change of tone in politics. The identifying and marketing of an “enemy” to blame and vote against instead of a reason to vote for someone.
Rick Perlstein
I’m here, looking in, glad to address direct questions but don’t want to be intrusive.
MonkeyBoy
In my initial readings of NL I came to wonder how much of it is “history written as hindsight”. I.e it comes across as “how to understand today in terms of the history of Nixon and the issues and actions surrounding him”. But it equally might be considered really about using some “received” understanding of today to interpret Nixon and his milieux. Such an approach doesn’t work in other areas – for example trying to understand ancient Greek or Middle-Age science in the framework of modern science.
JGabriel
It seems ironic that we’re beginning this discussion of Nixonland on a day when the news is dominated by popular protests against another leader who may be forced soon from power.
.
Linda Featheringill
Hi, Guys.
I got the impression that the author was setting us up for Nixon as an instigator of resentment politics.
Among the Nixon supporters that I remember, there was a lot of resentment against a lot of different people. Sort of like the joke about Irish Alzheimer’s: You forget everything but your resentments. [And, no, you don’t have to be Irish to have the disease.]
The author did succeed in placing a new light on “elite”. Most of the folks who are accused today of being elite are just geekish misfits who coped with their loneliness by working and studying and so became successful. But that was not the case with the Franklins.
Rick Perlstein
The key to how I understand the Checkers speech is that to the broader public it was overwhelmingly successful–but to the liberal pundits it was such an embarrassing performance that they could not but imagine that it was a huge failure. It revealed these pundits’ arrogance. The culture was a lot more top-down then. People like Walter Lippmann, who called it “the most demeaning experience my country has ever had to bear,” expected they would be listened to. One of the stories in the book is that people stopped listening to them.
TOP123
I’m going to ‘third’ dmsilev’s second of TR’s point. I had that understanding, as well.
Slightly o/t, anyone else getting an annoying ad banner slap across the middle of this post? Is there any way to get rid of that, so as to read the whole thing?
ETA: thanks, Mr. Perlstein; that is a helpful point.
Anne Laurie
@dmsilev:
More the lazy mockery of ‘You won’t have Nixon to kick around any more !’, which followed. I grew up around people who assumed that anyone with so little self-respect as to give the Checkers speech should’ve been banished from politics. This is reason why My People lose so many elections…one
J Frank Parnell
I hate to admit that I’d never seen the entire Checkers speech before yesterday. Found it on YouTube and watched it right after finishing Ch 2. Two things struck me about it: 1) how humiliating it must’ve been for Pat Nixon to sit there and hear the details of her financial life laid bare, and 2) how easily Nixon pivoted from self-pity to what seemed like his standard Eisenhower stump speech. I can see how it would’ve been difficult for Ike to toss him off the ticket after that.
Linda Featheringill
@Rick Perlstein: Hi.
Teri
@TOP123: I cheat, I select mobile and I don’t get any ads
Mary G
My book just came yesterday so I will have to join in next week. Looks fascinating, though.
I also remember the Checkers speech as a success; my parents were impressed by Pat Nixon’s “good cloth coat,” as opposed to the elite’s (ie Jackie Kennedy) highfalutin’ furs.
Nutella
@Teri:
The other thing that looks awfully familiar is the election tactics against Helen Gahagan Douglas. Just keep on repeating popular lies and your opponent looks petty calling you on them. She was a member of the reality-based community and he showed that was a disadvantage.
Anne Laurie
@Linda Featheringill:
Actually, Nixon’s father’s people were Irish. Since my family was blue-collar Irish-American, but “liberals”, there was a lot of sniping about that.
Southern Beale
I haven’t done my homework, professor.
{hangs head in shame)
But I promise I’ll have caught up by next Sunday!
Rick Perlstein
Re: “You won’t have Nixon to kick around any more.” This was another moment in which the pundits’ perceptions crucially differed from much of the public’s. Nixon was surprised himself that he got a lot of mail praising his “Last Press Conference.” A lot of people were very, very happy to see him stick it to the liberal press–foreshadowing Spiro Agnew, Sarah Palin, and all that. But outlets like Time magazine said the speech made it impossible for him to enter politics again. That they were wrong is one of the points of the book–that Tea Party attitude that the liberal media is out to get us “normal Americans” was latent for a long time before the media understood it. IT’s one of the stories I tell in the book.
JenJen
I was so struck by this passage that I repeated it a few times:
Remind anyone of, you know, anyone?
Did Nixon “invent” this style of politics, which seems even more effective today that at any other time since the Nixon years? Or did he merely tweak it to perfection?
ETA: As an aside, I’d be interested in other Book Club members’ experiences, in the sense that, being too young (in kindergarten at the time of the Watergate hearings) to have experienced his Presidency firsthand, before reading “Nixonland” I knew nothing of Alger Hiss or Whittaker Chambers. I called my father to get some background, and he immediately exclaimed, “The pumpkin!!” Wow.
Teri
@Rick Perlstein: Wanted to ask, who did Nixon get to be his media advisor after the 1960 debate because of the effective use of visual marketing
marshstars
Thought it fascinating to see this through the lens of how one man’s paranoia could redefine the political discourse and tone of a political contest from a respectable debate between two worthy opponents morphed to the one that stays with us today: good/bad, us/them, the virtuous side/the ENEMY. And there it was and remains: Nixon’s inner psychopathology externalized and adopted by the whole country to the world’s great detriment (understatement).
Mark S.
(pp.41-2)
I found this pretty interesting: the middle class the New Deal created becoming a coalition for Republicans. I see that turning around quite soon: with the middle class shrinking, thanks to thirty years of conservative policies, a new Democratic coalition forming.
I know, it hasn’t happened yet.
Woodrowfan
and just today I saw David Frye passed away…a comedian who made a living making fun of and imitating Nixon.
Little Boots
@JenJen:
It’s like Nixon made it so much the norm that even complete morons like Palin and Bachmann can do it with ease these days. Everyone knows the role they’re supposed to play, either in supporting or despising those two.
Teri
@Nutella: there are talking points that get handed out to you when you canvas for signatures. Some are locally generated but lots come from state and national party headquarters
Rick Perlstein
@Teri Roger Ailes, for one.
frosty
I was struck by the description of the “Nixon Method” on p 28 (my version)
Once the opposition counter-attacked, Nixon played the victim, then pounded the smear home. Neither Voorhis, Douglas, or Hiss figured out what was going on.
I am now wondering if Obama’s approach, which is so frustrating to progressives, might be the only counter to this: don’t hit back, don’t get down in the mud with them.
This also appears to be what the Swiftboaters did to Kerry, and his approach of ignoring it was a failure.
freelancer
Two passages that I found specifically telling, both from a past perspective, but that also sway current political thinking:
And then this snapshot about the meaning of freedom:
Rick Perlstein
“Nixon’s inner psychopathology externalized and adopted by the whole country to the world’s great detriment.” The book I’m working on now will show the same thing for Reagan.
BethanyAnne
The link to the book has an extra http :)
Stephen1947
I paid a lot of attention in my reading of first 2 chapters to the delineation of the building of politics of resentment, since I could so easily been infected by it still. I was just coming to consciousness of wider world during 1960 election, and my father was a Birch Society wannabe. He was really pissed at my mother for neutralizing his Nixon vote with hers for Kennedy. He’s from a precious metals mining background, and she from petit bourgeois (her father a pharmacist). I still feel much animosity towards hoity-toity museum and symphony patrons, even as I keep visiting their temples. Fortunately for me, my resentments have moved me to the left rather than the right of the political spectrum
frosty
@JenJen: Heh. That’s the paragraph right after the one I quoted downthread. Great minds etc etc.
morzer
@Rickperlstein
I was very struck by the 1964 NYT headline “White Backlash Doesn’t Develop” that you cite in the first chapter. In many ways, it feels as if the last 40 years have been the Age of White Backlash, and I wondered whether anyone was studying it or had written about it in those terms as an historian. It seems to me that most of the media commentary these days at least focuses almost voyeuristically and mostly negatively on minorities and their presumed grievances and agendas, rather than confronting the ongoing and rather obvious agenda of a sizable bloc of white people. Supplementary question, following what others have said: do we live in the Age of the Nixon Media as well as White Backlash?
Full disclosure: I am so white I couldn’t get a tan if I lived on the beach in Florida.
JGabriel
@Rick Perlstein:
As someone who researched their claims pretty thoroughly for the book, how valid do you think their resentments are? How much respect or deference do you think their complaints should be accorded?
.
Anne Laurie
@BethanyAnne: Dang! Thanks for telling me, I don’t want to take the post down to edit it now but I’ll correct it later.
JenJen
@frosty: GMTA indeed!!
Also
Seems Alger Hiss would’ve been wise to take the Obama approach in hindsight, no?
Oh, and Mr. Perstein, I just feel incredibly honored to have you here in this discussion. I’m hanging on every word. Please don’t get embarrassed or anything by that. :-)
Auguste
@Rick Perlstein That is DEPRESSING.
R-Jud
As a person under 35, reading this was really depressing. Part of the reason I was excited that Obama won the Dem primary in 2008 was because I was weary of every discussion coming back to what candidates had done/said during the 1960s, rather than talking about plans for the future.
It felt like that battle– Orthogonians vs. Franklins, Hippies vs. Squares– might finally stop being the undercurrent of our political discourse if one of the candidates hadn’t been an adult during that time.
Unfortunately, when you were born doesn’t matter. Nixon and his people framed the debate, and we’re still stuck in that frame.
@Rick Perlstein:
Thanks for joining us! Do you see this starting to maybe become the case again, in the opposite direction? As in, do you think the media’s focus on the Tea Party and “Real Americans” is ignoring the actual concerns of the fairly moderate mainstream?
(Oh God, PLEASE say yes.)
Linda Featheringill
Nixon’s psychopathology: Did he inflict it on the public or did he just call forth the inner resentment and paranoia and reflect it back to the voter?
South of I-10
I am enjoying the book. Like JenJen above, I am struck by how familiar the political tactics seem. It worked then, why wouldn’t it work now?
Linnaeus
@Mark S.:
I was going to comment on this myself, because other books that cover, roughly, the same period as Nixonland sometimes mention the same phenomenon. It strikes me as the parallel (or, if you prefer, a comorbidity) to the politics of resentment: there is, along with resentment, a sense of defensiveness of and entitlement to the benefits bestowed by the New Deal order, particularly in opposition to those those who have no “legitimate” right to those benefits and whose acquisition of them is a threat to you.
This is how I try to make sense of the way in which many right-wing Americans decry “big government”, but at the same time accept and embrace the benefits of big government, i.e., Medicare, etc. They see themselves as properly “deserving” and their opponents as “undeserving”.
Jess
Since I was born in the early 60s, and grew up in Madison WI among all the protests, I was always under the impression that white resentment politics emerged in response to that era. I was surprised that RP locates the beginning of that trend so much earlier. Rick, I’m wondering why you think middle-class resentment emerged as a political force before they had such a clear-cut target?
Edit: I mean, why it did, not why you claim it did…
Little Boots
@Mary G:
I wonder what Pat thought. My mother, a Nixon fan, always resented that moment. She thought of it as a humiliating thing for a woman to sit there and watch her husband spill their family financial secrets. but I guess that was the point. the working class could relate to that.
Teri
@Rick Perlstein: What was so remarkable to me, was the similarity in visuals used to market the canidates today. It is very telling that in the late ’60s it was the hippies and negros destroying your way of life, now its the illegals and liberals
Nutella
The Orthogonians resenting the elite reminds me not only of Tea Partiers but also all the people like the infamous Todd Henderson who resent that the taxes on their $250K income might go up because they’re not really rich. Henderson resented everyone above and below him in income and felt that he was terribly oppressed by taxes and everything else.
Rick Perlstein
@morzer Could you clarify the question?
@JGabriel As a historian, I have to deal with the volume of those resentments as a FACT, and withhold my moral judgment. As an activist–another hat I wear–I use the understanding that results to figure out how best to debunk them. But you have to start with respect. Change is scary and hard. Its normal to resist it. Liberals who forget that often get into trouble. You’ll see a lot of that throughout the book–for instance on issues like sex education, where liberals were totally blindsided by the backlash; didn’t even see it coming.
frosty
@R-Jud: What I see Obama doing differently is refusing to frame politics this way:
Or at least that’s what I hope I’m seeing. Perhaps as the Tea Partiers push the same old divisive tactics further and further they’ll push them to the point of failure.
Elizabelle
Rick: OT a bit, but your summary on why Watts blew up days after the Voting Rights Act was signed on August 6, 1965?
Why then?
Teri
@Stephen1947: I have differing memories, maybe becaue ours was a very active democratic household and “Nixon” was almost a swear word
Kathryn
I don’t think Nixon was using a “new” strategy in being the agressive victim, the everyman trying to overcome — but he did it on the cusp of the video medium. How well “checkers” would have played just in the paper alone??? And even though there were few homes with TVs, I remember running over to a friend’s growing up to see what was on. And that was in the early 60s. Homes were more open, and people gathered.
It is impressive to watch him speak so seemingly off the cuff, without much reference to notes, and in control, dynamic. I think you have to look at the part of the population that is responding to 1, authority and 2, emotion/passion — and recognize what goes on there. Reagan would polish that approach.
Linda Featheringill
@Little Boots:
I have long suspected that what Pat felt or what Pat thought about a particular incident was totally beside the point.
Rick Perlstein
@Teri People think visually. I wish liberals weren’t so shy about visual marketing. It’s one of the things that made the OBama campaign so effective–but entirely abandoned when it came to governing.
Elizabelle
I ask because it vaguely reminded me of a Caribbean history class; that the plantations that blew up with slave revolts were frequently those that were more lenient in some fashion.
Maybe the chasm between the political win, the anticipation of change, and dealing with the LAPD over decades …
Little Boots
@Linda Featheringill:
suspect your right, both to Nixon and to his fans, including the women, usually.
Rick Perlstein
@Linda RN was always “promising” Pat he would quit politics after his various losses.
morzer
@Rick Perlstein:
1) Is anyone studying the last 40 years in terms of them being the Age of White Backlash?
2) Is our current media “Nixon’s media” in terms of being shaped by the forces he set in motion (according to you) as well as being pitched to the demographics he made politically active in a new way?
I hope that’s clear enough.
Stephen1947
Nixon didn’t exactly invent this brand of politicking – it was used by right wing parties against Popular Front in Europe in 1930s. Going back to classical Greece, political thinkers were kept busy trying to figure out ways to keep demagogues from stirring up the populace while still maintaining a functioning democracy.
Elizabelle
Another question, and you might handle it later in the book:
what about Nixon’s forbears in the politics of resentment?
I am so sad we are living through another dark ages aside a phenomenally talented president, with a lot of potential.
And John Birch Society gone national, and valuable for the cash it brings “news” and media outlets.
Rick Perlstein
@morzer 1) Lots of people. Endless list.
2) Utterly. See Roger Ailes–Nixon’s media adviser for the 1968 campaign, founder of Fox News.
Teri
@Linda Featheringill: If I remember correctly Pat was highly “medicated” during most of Nixon’s career with Valium and alcohol. How much did that play in her dependency problem?
Rick Perlstein
@Elizabelle see what Kathryn says about the dawn of TV–she nailed it.
J Frank Parnell
@Rick Perlstein: It seems like we hear the phrase “30 years of Republican messaging” quite often, identifying the current (way too successful) cycle with Reagan’s “Morning in America”/”City on a Hill.” Is it primarily a “positive sell” (Reagan myth-making) vs “negative sell” (Nixon resentment) difference?
James E Powell
@MonkeyBoy:
In my initial readings of NL I came to wonder how much of it is “history written as hindsight”
I got the impression that that was Perlstein’s purpose.
I don’t think the ancient Greek to medieval to modern science comparison is apt. Those eras were separated by centuries. We are still living in the time of Nixon, or at least no more than a generation removed. Some of his henchmen are still around to plague us. Nearly all of his ideas are still in play.
Teri
@Rick Perlstein: as a recently resigned republican (I quit the republican party recently cause I got fed up with banging my head against the wall of insanity) I can tell you we had dress codes for collecting signatures, staging directions for every event so the visual marketing is very strong down to the local level
Little Boots
@Rick Perlstein:
visuals, yes, but what else? I’m so curious what works against that crap. As you say in your book, Thou Shalt not Bear False Witness was a big dud for Helen Gahagan Douglas, but it’s hard to see what works against the lies. Counterlies? Do liberals just not have the hang of this thing? LBJ could lie with the best of them. But I’m not sure LBJ would do as well today, or would he just throw in the towel and be a conservative, domestically?
Linda Featheringill
@Teri:
Well, the combination of Valium and alcohol might really prevent her from making a scene at an inappropriate time.
Poor baby.
South of I-10
@Rick Perlstein: I had no idea that Roger Ailes was Nixon’s media adviser. How did I not know this?
morzer
@Rick Perlstein:
So, we have scads of people studying this as the Age of White Backlash. Why then does the media narrative persist in ignoring this? Why do Americans seem largely unaware of this? Has the academy simply failed, as usual, to communicate with more “normal” people?
Rick Perlstein
@JFP, weren’t you a member of HUAC? ;-)
Nixon had an element to uplifting mythmaking to his rhetoric–he ripped it off fro Kennedy. Throughout the book you’ll see him switching modes between the negative and positive sell, depending on the political situation.
Jess
@Rick Perlstein: Interesting that the last two successful Dem presidents (Clinton and Obama) have been quite understanding of that resentment and fear of change (and maybe Carter was too–I don’t remember). I was especially impressed with Clinton’s introductory talk at the beginning of the film “The Hunting of the President” (and was also struck by his apparent LACK of resentment towards his opponents).
Davis X. Machina
You don’t want to make book on that. Scapegoat, not chicken, is still America’s favorite white meat, and the GOP is to scapegoats what KFC is to chicken. And a taste for resentment isn’t income-determined.
Rick Perlstein
@morzer One of the most important and indelible aspects of the America character is the undying belief in our own inherent innocence. It’s hard to get this stuff through to people.
JGabriel
@Rick Perlstein:
You’re a better man than I. I often find it hard to impossible to maintain such respect, even though I know it’s necessary if we’re going to change any minds or convincingly (to the right) debunk their claims.
.
R-Jud
@South of I-10:
I would literally yell “THIS fucker, too?” every time someone came up in the book as having had a first, or first significant role with Nixon, or with a Nixon team somewhere– Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Scalia, Cheney… even Karl Rove.
Teri
@Rick Perlstein: Lot has to do with the fact we have this mythology of the American White Hat. We have to be the good guy, on the side of angels etc.
Nutella
@Rick Perlstein:
Good point. It accounts for the desperate hatred against people who point out things the US has done that are wrong or evil. We are exceptional. It’s a matter of faith.
Elizabelle
Incidentally, Rick, it’s wonderful to have you here discussing, and cool to read a book for the first time with the knowledge you can discuss it with the author in real time.
Very kind of you to make that happen.
And it’s an interesting book.
Little Boots
@R-Jud:
Karl Rove? did I miss that? Is it later?
Jess
@Teri: And I suspect that liberals do this less effectively because they have that adorable belief that a rational argument is all you need…
Rick Perlstein
@Elizabelle, it’s lonely over here on the writing couch! Great to make a connection with the reader. A blessing, in fact.
Little Boots
@Teri:
but how do we define the Angels? That’s what’s so odd. How can anyone see Nixon as an Angel?
suzanne
I have to go pick up my daughter, so I’m not going to be able to participate this week, but I will definitely be reading through the comments later on. As a (relative) young’un, born in 1980, this has been quite eye-opening. Not in a good way. Heh.
Thanks, Mr. Perlstein, for your participation. This is great.
jnfr
This discussion reminds me of the “Fables of the Reconstruction”/Civil War series of posts that have been done here at BJ (by dengre or Tom S. or maybe both of them at times), pointing out how the lines of resentment and political attack we see today were very similar all the way back to the time of Lincoln and the Civil War. Seems like Nixon (and later Reagan) was the natural heir to that Southern resentment.
R-Jud
@Little Boots: I haven’t re-read the entire book yet, but IIRC, he was singled out as “very promising” by a campaign muckety-muck for some activism he was involved in as a college Republican.
Linda Featheringill
@JGabriel:
Ah yes. The ambivalence. Being faced with pure insanity and having flashbacks of conflicts with people important to you over the same issues.
In my case, “they” carried that insanity with them to the grave. They never changed. And I loved them anyway. And I still get upset when Coulter talks like my father.
Little Boots
@James E Powell:
Writing Greek history as history would be more apt. Imagine writing a history that simply takes slavery as completely, 100% okay. And war as good. And monarchy as completely legitimate. Could an American historian do that? I doubt it. All history, it seems, is written about the present, really.
morzer
@Rick Perlstein:
That’s a terse, rather elegant formulation/explanation, but what about the institutional/structural/economic side of things? Aren’t you in danger of writing history too much in terms of personality and psychological interpretations? Also, isn’t it dangerous to just chalk things up to American exceptionalism? Most peoples in the world seem to have a fair reserve of innocence about their history. In Britain, I was taught that the Opium Wars were about free trade, for example. Chinese kids learn about Western imperialism, and never stop to worry about Tibet, or the other xiaoshu minzu being steadily crowded out by Han migration to their regions of greater China.
Teri
@Jess: I can tell you how many countless hours I have spent, treating my “respected” committee members liked the tantrum tossing 2 year olds.
JenJen
@South of I-10:
My jaw is quite literally agape. Just like you, I’m saying to myself, how did I not know this?
Nutella
Something I hadn’t known about Nixon was how fast he rose to national prominence.
Many complained that Obama was too young and inexperienced to run for president when he was in his forties with 8 years in the state senate plus two years in the US senate.
Nixon became vice-president in his thirties after 4 years in the US congress and 2 years in the senate.
That’s pretty amazing speed for a political career.
Anne Laurie
@Linda Featheringill:
Certainly to RMN, and his supporters. But resentment for Pat (and of her compliance, “Why doesn’t she just walk out of there?”) was something I remember among other young proto-feminists in the early 1970s. I think another us-v-them split in American politics has been the “helpmate” (Martha Washington) versus “partner” (Abigal Adams) role for first ladies. Pat Nixon had the misfortune (among many others) to be stuck in the “helpmate” slot at a time when a growing number of young women would start finding this unacceptable. It felt like Nancy Reagan, on the other hand, chose to pretend to be a “helpmate” when she was actually a full partner (if not a Lady Macbeth puppeteer) in Ronnie’s career. Her deliberate “retro politics” endeared her to the Media Villagers, like Sally Quinn, but even among women who supported her husband, she was resented. Pat Nixon was just… pitied. Even when I was a kid, in the early 1960s, the women in my neighborhood seemed to talk about Pat the way they talked about battered wives — “everyone” felt sorry for them, poor things, but of course if she’d had a little more self-respect she wouldn’t have put herself into that position, would she?
Elizabelle
I had a lot of sympathy for Nixon the young man with a lot of smarts, not enough social grace, and poor prospects. Unstable family.
Respect for his hard work and acumen, although not the sheer meanness of his campaign assaults against Voorhis and Douglas.
Napoleon
@South of I-10:
I read Nixonland a while ago but my recollection is Nixon met him on the set of the Mike Douglas show where Ailes was, I think, a producer.
Stephen1947
JGabriel says: I often find it hard to impossible to maintain such respect, even though I know it’s necessary if we’re going to change any minds or convincingly (to the right) debunk their claims.
I think s/he is promising self to make better effort to do this, and this is essential. We cannot convince most people that our analysis is closer to actuality if we start off by making them feel we look down on them. So, for instance, if we understand that their resentments are being used to manipulate them, we must understand the source of their resentment, and how it is fed back to them, before we can help them find ways to deal with those sources in more effective ways.
Elizabelle
I know someone who attended Pat Nixon’s funeral.
Nixon was beside himself with grief and regret. To an embarrassing extent.
Jess
Someone (can’t find it now) upthread commented on the timing of the Watts riots–that struck me as interesting (and sad) as well. I suspect it’s because LBJ validated all that anger and resentment (there’s that word again…) by signing off on the voting act, and for the first time an oppressed group felt they had the right to vent their anger–that it was legitimate and that it would be heard.
BGinCHI
Thanks to Anne for setting this up. Late to the party but it’s a really interesting thread and book club so far.
Rick, I’m almost scared to hear the thesis of the Reagan book you’re working on. Assume his “psychopathology” has been projected out and taken up by the country too (as you describe Nixon’s).
Is the last chapter on Obama’s feints/moves in that direction? Interested to hear your take in how they’ve been trying to co-opt some of the Reagan stuff.
Teri
@Little Boots:
turn of phrase, definition as an assistant to the great good
jheartney
One thing that strikes me about these Nixon-spawned SOB’s is that while they are, to a man, basic sociopaths, none is a dim bulb (much like Nixon himself). By contrast, if you look at the current crop of Tea Party celebrities (Mike Pence, Sarah, Michele Bachmann, etc.) they are all pretty much airheads.
I wonder what Nixon would have made of a figure like Palin; he would certainly have admired her ruthless low cunning, but I should think he would have had contempt for her ignorance.
marshstars
@Linda Featheringill:
Interesting. Could it be that he projected it so very powerfully that it took hold? Just as the Fear card played since then, it overrides any more benign (and less powerful) frames. Then he reinforced it at every turn, having much to play off of at the time.
@ Rick Perlstein: Great to have you and your comments here. Can’t wait to read your work on Reagan.
Napoleon
@Nutella:
Nixon was only a few years older then Kennedy.
J Frank Parnell
— Lyndon Johnson at WH Christmas tree lighting in ’64
That is an amazing quote. It’s like something from another universe.
Rick Perlstein
@morzer “but what about the institutional/structural/economic side of things? Aren’t you in danger of writing history too much in terms of personality and psychological interpretations?” I do my best to take all of that into the proper account. whether I succeed is for the reader to decide.
Anne Laurie
@R-Jud:
Y’know, after I got the front-page gig here, the Spousal Unit suggested I should tone down the repetition about how America’s biggest political mistake in my lifetime was not pursuing full criminal indictments after Watergate. (The Spousal Unit’s people were NOT Irish.) But if we’d cleaned out the nest of CREEPsters back in the early 1970s, so much of the theft / murder / waste since then could’ve been avoided!
Little Boots
@Anne Laurie:
That’s the attitude I was talking. My mother, anything but a feminist, was sort of offended that Pat was treated like an afterthought, somebody who was supposed to just sit there while her husband spilled the beans. She still voted for Nixon, but with just a bit of resentment. But she still voted for him, so from his perspective, so what?
Turgidson
@Rick Perlstein:
At the risk of sounding like a silly fanboy…
Oh hell yes. Very much looking forward to this.
on topic: Didn’t get a chance to re-read this part of the book in time, but enjoying following the insights here.
Jess
@Teri: I can’t think of any committee where I haven’t had that experience at some point…but, yes, some two-year-olds are more toxic and impossible to pull back from the brink than others.
Elizabelle
@Jess:
Yes. That is what I was wondering.
And it’s so tragic that it was so counterproductive. Caught on camera, live. If it bleeds, it leads meets “we have been waiting so long.”
Napoleon
@jheartney:
Here is a clue, I thought they had Nixon on the tapes he made basically questioning whether Reagan was a dim bulb (in so many words).
Teri
@Jess: There were other riots also that year, also there was the effect of El Nino, temperatures were high, very little was air conditioned, there are whole articles in pyschology journals about the riots and the also the effect of the televising of them.
Rick Perlstein
@marshstars THere’s a really great political theory book about how all successful leaders project aspects of their inner lives onto the public, and the public conversely recognizes the leader’s internal struggle as something they identify with. It’s by John McGregor Burns, and it’s called “Leadership.” Very tough sledding, but full of incredible insights.
Anne Laurie
@Nutella:
“Cometh the hour, cometh the man”?
Little Boots
@Turgidson:
Have to second the fanboy thing. Two very different characters, but maybe not so much?
Eric U.
I didn’t read through the comments, but I believe there are actually very few instances where Republicans haven’t used the media effectively. That’s because the media has pretty much always been owned by Republicans, or at least by people who thought their interests were best served by Republicans. The media only goes against Repbublicans when everyone knows they are on the way out, see 2008.
I know paying taxes is a pain for any business, but anyone that thinks that George Bush (lesser or less lesser) were good for business is either an idiot or in the defense industry. Or both.
Rick Perlstein
@Teri didn’t know about the El Nino angle.
Teri
@jheartney: What strikes me most about this was a comment made to me during the 2008 campaign, when I told a staffer that I wasn’t going to vote for McCain/Palin because it was a slap in the face of Republican women to nominated that person. I was told that I should just “soldier on” and “toe the party line” I didn’t, and refused to have even a yard sign, which was noticed.
TOP123
@Little Boots: By casting his opponents in the most sinister possible light–be they Southeast Asians abroad or civil rights activists at home–I suppose. I’m sure there’s a more educated explanation of it in psychological terms.
R-Jud
@Anne Laurie:
Whoa. Are you like my secret aunt or something? This was the refrain at holiday parties while my late Grandfather was alive– “They didn’t prosecute Nixon, and now we’re stuck with this idiot Reagan!”
My mother, who was then a Republican, would sit in the corner, drinking heavily.
Cheryl Rofer
@J Frank Parnell: That was really how it felt then. The early sixties were very different from the later sixties. 1964 – 65 was about the turning point.
jnfr
@Anne Laurie:
Boy, that’s so true. And I fear the next generation will have the same regrets that we didn’t clean up after Bush’s Administration either.
Elizabelle
@Eric U.:
Agree about the media ownership.
BUT: conservative Republican dogma is often simplistic.
Maybe it’s easier to purvey, and certainly easier to swallow if you are more concerned about maintaining your assets and status than what happens to anyone else. (And it’s the other’s own fault/lack that puts them in need, versus out to get me if the conservative comes up short.)
Jess
@Rick Perlstein:
Rick,
I was surprised to learn that RMN was able to tap into the politics of white resentment as early as he did, and I’m wondering why middle-class resentment emerged as a political force before there was such a clear-cut target for it (i.e. the counter-culture of the 60s)?
Elizabelle
Did anyone catch this gem:
The beloved old general Dwight D Eisenhower came out of retirement to campaign against the Kennedy-Johnson tax CUT.
page 4
Stephen1947
Rick Perlstein @112 – it’s James, not John McG B.
Jess
@Teri: Interesting–thanks for the info!
South of I-10
@R-Jud: I bet Christmas was fun!
Elizabelle
@jnfr:
YES re comment 121. Am hoping Obama’s second term (please, please, please) does not coincide with statute of limitations.
We need a Nuremburg trials cleansing.
Teri
@Rick Perlstein: Yeah, had a great prof in Abnormal Psych who was researching the effects of heat, crowding etc. Lots of stuff about neurotransmitters and receptors. Having a senior moment and can’t think of the name off the top of my head….
Little Boots
I don’t think I worded that Angel comment very well. I meant, most politicians grasp that we’re an Us-Them, We rule, they drool, culture. How such obvious villains as Nixon, Cheney, Sarah Palin, get to use that in their favor is what intrigues me. Nixon didn’t even seem to have the loves-me-some-jesus crap on his side, so he intrigues me the most.
JGabriel
@jnfr:
Not “natural”. Very manufactured. Both were from California, not the south.
.
TOP123
@J Frank Parnell: I was wowed by this one, too.
geg6
I was 6 when Kennedy was killed and my dad was still a Republican. He voted for Nixon in 60 but Goldwater and then Nixon had him voting for Dems. He saw what was happening in the GOP and was constantly muttering about the Birchers and their stealth campaign to take over the party. Reagan finally sent him over the edge and, after years of voting Dem but keeping his registration Republican, he formally changed parties. It’s fascinating to me that he went the opposite direction of most the people across the nation that were like him: a WWII vet with only a hs diploma and a blue collar job. Perhaps it was his never-to-be-achieved dream of being a historian that made him different from the other steel workers of his time and place, but it still amazes me that he didn’t have their sense of resentment and jealousy that fuels them to this day.
jheartney
Actually much of the upper echelons of the Nixon administration (Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell, Coulson, Agnew, and many others) went to prison; Nixon himself was the only one who skated. I’m not sure how prosecuting Nixon would have saved us from Cheney or Ailes.
Mark S.
I don’t know why I’ve always been struck by that line. What the hell is a Republican cloth coat? Does it have an R on the back of it?
Teri
@Elizabelle: There is a correlation between the current lack of independent newspapers and the rise of “corporate” speech and political coverage. Most locals are now owned by out of town corporations and consist of wire service stuff and USA today reprints. Very few local reporters or even state reporters are investigating or even paying attention to the locales they cover
jnfr
@JGabriel:
Good point. Manufactured very well though, since it fit each one like a glove.
J Frank Parnell
@Elizabelle:
Yes! Now there’s some “fiscal responsibility” I can get behind!
Teri
@Elizabelle: The last fiscally conservative Republican leader
NeverRepentAmarillo
It may be too easy to dismiss the real fear folks were experiencing in the early 60s. We know how things worked out, but then it did seem possible that all the cities would be up in flames and that some might get their hands on unthinkable weapons. The mood of country in the 60s reminds me of post 9/11.
Rick Perlstein
Rolling out to the grocery store. See you all next time.
jheartney
@Teri:
The GOP rank and file certainly swung in line behind the 2008 ticket, as unappealing as it was. My comment goes to the notion that while the Tea Party has roots going very far back, its leadership isn’t in the same class (or indeed, in the same qualitative universe) as the team Nixon pulled together.
Phil Perspective
@Rick Perlstein: Except we don’t have liberal media, as a lot of people would describe it. It’s corporate media. I mean Brian Williams is an admitted dittohead for pete’s sake!!
Little Boots
@Rick Perlstein:
I love that you stopped by. I hope I can get an answer to my question next time.
TOP123
@Elizabelle: I had to reread that a couple of times to make sure I was catching it correctly!
Elizabelle
I think Nixon would despise the Palins, Bachmanns, and DeMints.
Even while he tried to use and subvert them.
Question is whether he would be smart enough to see that they are instruments of destruction and nihilism and not controllable.
Are they a bridge far enough that he would protect the establishment GOP?
Teri
@Little Boots: I think a lot of that has to be with institutional mindset. Republicans are “fiscally responsible, strong on defense, pro-family” There is a great deal of emphasis on selling the message and staying within the “guidelines” of a campaign. Often times, with the influx of state or national money came a set of “talking points” that were suggested even if they didn’t apply locally.
Anne Laurie
@jheartney:
I remember being told that it drove Nixon crazy how Reagan “coasted through life on his good looks & charm” when Poor Richard got nothing but mockery for working so hard. Re the Franklins-v-Orthogonians angle, Reagans got himself accepted by the Franklins, by being willing to act as a figurehead for them — Nixon “kept his self-respect” (ha!) by “working for every penny / vote I ever got” rather than selling himself like Mr. Pretty-boy Movie-Star Ronnie.
Palin is kinda the synthesis of Nixon’s working-class resentment and Reagan’s charm-over-substance wink’n’grin politics — half trailer trash, half beauty queen. With a strong flavor of “first as tragedy, then as farce”. I think Nixon would actually have been fond of her, because her squinty-eyed resentment is sooooo much the same Achilles heel that Tricky Dick could never keep from letting show at the worst possible times. (Besides, old chauvinist that he was, he wouldn’t think it important that a ‘little woman’ was both illiterate and kinda stupid, as long as she had that low political cunning.)
Mike E
@Little Boots:
I suppose a Frank Capra strategy used in Why We Fight. Not to go all Godwin here…
I sometimes watch unscripted reality programs like The First 48 Hours, and oftentimes the victims’ families live a pretty rough existence–nevertheless, the producers seem careful to give them a fair treatment. This visual strategy leaves a positive impression and portrays their humanity with some grace; I believe this to be the way to go when dealing with the poisonous, demeaning messaging of the Right, by allowing a persons “light” to shine through. Quick-bite teevee doesn’t really have the capacity to do this.
Little Boots
@NeverRepentAmarillo:
Good point, I think we focused a lot more on the second chapter than the first.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mark S.:
Me too. I think you can draw a line from that weird remark to “Democrat values” (Gingrich on Susan Smith) and the infamous Gingrich memo (“sick vs normal”, patriotic vs cosmopolitian, etc) to “honor and dignity” to “why won’t he/they celebrate American exceptionalism?”
(I also did not do my homework, but I’m hoping to catch up by next week)
Teri
@Rick Perlstein: Thank you very much. I will try to find that psychology link for next week. Great book, the writing is very engaging.
Linda Featheringill
@geg6:
Resentment does come from misery but it causes misery, too. I long ago learned that a good way to ease the pain of resenting things I couldn’t change was to widen my knowledge base, to expand my mind as we used to say. Perhaps your father, with his attraction to history, was somewhat the same way.
Kathryn
@Little Boots: But he did have this, only it doesn’t express itself as “religion” per se. But RMN was straight up out of the Protestant work ethic, ends justify the means, work your way into heaven kind of individual. Ignore the so called “Quaker” influence. His father was a Methodist, and this part of culture shaped him. It doesn’t always come up as a theological influence as much as it does perhaps, sociologically. And this is what appeals to so called “white backlash” (a terrible term actually, way to vague and broad). But this is ingroup vs outgroup, orthodoxy. You are either with Dick Nixon or you are not.
Elizabelle
This was a wonderful experience, and it’s getting me to read a book I would have procrastinated starting. Now I want to read some affiliated books to get a fuller picture.
Thank you, Annie Laurie, for getting us together, in our pajamas or whatever.
Quackosaur
@morzer:
The simplest answer is probably that stories about white Americans’ reactions to events in this country, overtly racist or otherwise, wouldn’t sell very well to the majority-white population in this country (or perhaps, more accurately, the majority-white consumers of media). White Americans want to believe that they live in a post-racial society and that they aren’t racist even if there’s evidence to the contrary. It’s the wrong kind of controversy for the media. It’s not about the “other”; it’s about “us,” and we aren’t very good at (or willing to) shame ourselves.
As for the academy, given that the public seems to latch onto anti-intellectualism every now and again, I don’t know how much you can fault the academics for trying to not start unnecessary fires. Sure, it’s keeping things within the -tribe- profession, but I think they recognize it’s something Americans don’t really want to hear.
ETA: That, and the academics who may want to tell us what’s wrong with us are shrill and insufficiently serious.
freelancer
@Elizabelle:
Yeah, I think this book is gonna do some heavy damage to my impression of Jack and Bobby Kennedy. I already wish the Repubs of today had someone of Eisenhower’s quality.
Elizabelle
@Linda Featheringill:
Good point.
geg: your dad sounds awesome. In the old sense of the world.
Anne Laurie
@Teri:
Wow. Good for you, for standing up for yourself!
(And cue a chorus of ‘See? This is why we Democrats don’t win, we have no party discipline!’)
Teri
@jheartney: the changing of the guard went to the christians in the 80’s and 90’s and the super patriots in the 00’s. Focus became on getting in small such as school boards, town councils etc. Getting a majority was the focus.
Mike E
@Anne Laurie:
American history is littered (wallpapered, really) by the damage cause by the results of unfinished business.
Stan of the Sawgrass
Reading this book is like time-travel… and not in a good way. I just turned 57, and the 1960 election is the first one I remember. I’m from S. Fla.,but the interior, which was still Southern Feudal at the time. My Dad had switched to the Repubs, mostly out of paranoia about the Commies inciting the N#ggers (ahead of his time, unfortunately), but I remember a story he told at the time about switching a ‘yellow-dog’ friend’s vote by telling him Kennedy was Catholic. I’m sure a lot of Southern ‘new Republicans’ got recruited right there and then, but it was strictly because of Nixon ripping the scab off the working-class resentments that Mr. Perlstein dissects so well, with a double helping of racial fear (down here, anyway– or especially down here.) By ’64 this was in full swing, and whites were FOR Goldwater as much as hating Johnson. It’s tough for me not to read ahead, but I can’t wait for ’68!
Elizabelle
@Mike E:
So much of the stain comes from Lincoln’s assassination.
Dengre’s series on confederate sympathizers then and now is spot on.
JGabriel
Anne Laurie:
That was bad too, but I still think letting Bush steal the 2000 election ranks as the worst political mistake of the last 40 years.
.
kyle
@Mark S — Truman’s administration was going thru a corruption scandal that involved fur coats being given to the wives of officeholders, who were Dems, of course. Hence the idea that a cloth coat was somehow Republican
Damned at Random
I just got home and haven’t read all the comments yet, but I think the most interesting thing about Nixon was how well he understood his “base” and how effectively he could rally them when the circumstances required it. However consumed he was by his own bitterness, he was a very astute student of human nature. And highly manipulative – or was that Chotner’s (sp?)contribution?
Elizabelle
@JGabriel:
Agreed.
Saw “Casino Jack” last night, and Abramoff and cronies were crowing over their work in Florida 2000.
Director George Hickenlooper went further and had Abramoff crowing over smearing McCain in 2000 South Carolina primary. I am not sure that was ever proven.
Phoebe
@marshstars: @Rick Perlstein: Do you think [I did] that this is what Jane Mayer was saying about Dick Cheney in The Dark Side? That his personal paranoia after 9/11 infused all the policy afterwards?
@Stephen1947: This whole resentment of elites, I’m either “me too!” or “wait, what?”. Nixon really did suffer from class bias in his early career, and also a sort of social bias that all clods have to deal with. I feel instantly protective of victims of both. When, say, the latter end up on water towers shooting people with high-powered rifles my first thought is “he was excluded from joining any reindeer games”. I hate that stuff. Almost to the point of thinking we reap what we sow, and serves us right.
But. When people vote for George Bush because they think they’d rather drink a beer with him than with Al Gore or John Kerry, then triple damn these people they should have their voting cards destroyed etc. etc. I am a total elitist. And the idea that people want the obviously incompetent Sarah Palin to be running things because “she’s one of us”. Well, that’s some Lord of the Flies stuff, and the dictator in me wants to round them up and sterilize them. Which, in addition to being undemocratic, would really only make them madder.
Bush II is like a perfect control in a social experiment, though, because he came from an elite family, elite in every sense, but because he didn’t measure up in ways that they valued [like Commodus in The Gladiator], resented those values [book learning, analysis, science, etc.] and decided his “gut” method was just as good or better. Because that’s the truth that lets him be okay. Not, “Ok, I was a c-student but a really good cheerleader; I should probably host a game show!”
What are we doing wrong, society?
jheartney
@Anne Laurie:
Yes, you’re right, Nixon would have seen Palin through his generation’s notions of womanhood, thus excusing her overt ignorance.
Your comment makes me think that probably a figure like Nixon couldn’t have risen to power these days (hard work wouldn’t make up for that non-photogenic face). Or if he did rise, he’d use his considerable intelligence to master today’s power levers, which are not like those of the 50’s. But I doubt he’d be one of the front men; he doesn’t have the looks to succeed there. He’d be one of the ones pulling Bachman’s strings.
Little Boots
@Kathryn:
True, I agree with all that. I was thinking more of the whole, I love Jesus, therefore I love Bush, therefore I love Palin thing that goes on in this country today. Nixon did not seem to have that. Reagan certainly did, and that was probably the start of all this bullshit, but Nixon did not. If you were an evangelical pastor, I think you could still be out of politics altogether or even a Humphrey supporter in 1968. After 1980, no, unpossible. You were a Republican operative, almost by definition.
Correction: a white evangelical pastor.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mark S.: I have always assumed that the respectable Republican cloth coat was a nod to petit bourgeois values. Not urban, cosmopolitan, or elite with all that implies, but also not poor or hard-up with all that implies.
Little Boots
@kyle:
thanks, kyle, that is so ironic. How PETA of those Republicans to stick to cloth coats.
Nutella
@Little Boots:
Reagan certainly SAID he did, but he was not active in any religion. He was a better actor than we thought so he SEEMED to be religious.
Ruckus
@frosty:
Agreed on your take of Obama.
It’s a hard road to walk, not playing the same blame game. As Mr. Perlstein has shown it has been used for a long time and has been successful for it’s purpose, to gain power.
Anne Laurie
@Mark S.:
The important part is that it was Not-Mink. Mink coats were for (a)plutocrats’ wives; (b) gangsters’ molls; and (c) whores. Or as Team Nixon saw them, Democrats!
Specifically, I think Nixon was dog-whistling Jack Kennedy as the rich-boy son of a bootlegger who ‘bought’ a Frenchie wife to enhance his political career… three for one! And, yes, all three slurs were being thrown around at the time — my lace-curtain grandmother, a Nixon voter, would argue them with her son-in-law. Although she couldn’t quite bring herself to use the word ‘whore’ in front of us children… “What does ‘women like THAT’ mean, Daddy, and why is ‘frenchie’ a bad thing?”
Maude
Well, I’m late and I am close to the end of reading in Cold Blood. The description of Holcombe and it’s people is a good background for understanding what the pukes mean when they say I want my country back.
There was a rigid social structure and religion was very important. This was at the time when Nixon was VP.
The repukes have changed and I do think that change occurred with Raygun. He let in the religious zealots and the crazies have increased ever since.
The phrase Republican Cloth Coat was symbolic of thrift, a steady job, values based on God, family and good government.
To show wealth was gaudy and back when, people who did that were shut out of “respectable” society.
Nixon didn’t hate the middle class. Reagan did and the poor, even more.
Little Boots
Barbara Streisand is elite. The Bushes aren’t. That’s the genius of Republican propaganda, as practiced today.
Little Boots
@Nutella:
They said it for him. He didn’t have to say anything, accept throw an occasional Jesus into his speeches. The pastors did the heavy lifting on that one, for their own reasons.
Jay C
@Anne Laurie:
Richard Nixon’s “hour” “came” fairly early, I’ve always thought, for a fairly simple reason: he was a sort of bridge-figure for the old-line “respectable” Republicans who were jockeying for intra-Party influence vs. the “new” (post-1946) up-and-comers like Joe McCarthy who had made their name mainly through Red-baiting. Nixon’s being a relative newbie was considered an advantage: he could demagogue with the best of them, but with a relative lack of a record to be potentially beaten with.
And again, the “Checkers Speech” wasn’t a “career-killer” for Nixon, but a second-chance revival pulled out of the air. And IIRC, to Eisenhower’s chagrin: Ike always had a low opinion of Nixon, and was hoping he would get a running-mate more to his liking.
Mike E
@jheartney: RMN was too much of a loner to sully himself with political mentoring/sponsorship. he was a classic paranoid: non-empathetic, narcissistic, and totally given to sociopathic schemes that seemed advantageous only to himself.
Teri
This was great, have enjoyed it immensely but have to feed the hungry teenagers….they won’t wait and am afraid for the dog….I have to tell you for a bunch of “liberals” you have great insights.
Anne Laurie
@JGabriel:
If the baby CREEPsters hadn’t been running Dubya’s campaign, the vote tally wouldn’t have been close enough to make stealing ‘plausible’ (hell, that second-gen POS wouldn’t have been nominated in a less thoroughly debased political climate). And if the Heirs of the House of Nixon hadn’t packed the Supreme Court with hard-right ideologues, they wouldn’t have been able to overturn the popular vote so blithely.
Damned at Random
That is a very interesting question. I assumed Nixon was the active agent without even asking if he was just Chance the Gardener.
BGinCHI
@Teri: Damned with faint praise.
Should be a tag.
Kathryn
@Little Boots: I see your point. Although, the thirty year shift here is that the participation in structured religion of any kind was very high until the 1970s. So Northern, Eastern, Western Protestants were quite numerous and pretty sober folks. Charismatics tended to congregate South, Midwest, but had pockets everywhere. With the huge movement of those gens to “unchurched” and the virtual shutdown of old mainline Protestantism on the coasts and North, what you got left is those inheritors of charismatics. Hence the more strident “Jesus” orientation now — but only because the fall of the moderate Christian organizations left a vacuum.
JGabriel
@Little Boots:
Nixon had Billy Graham. So, the Jesus thing was there, just expressed in a manner appropriate to the late 60’s — early 70’s style evangelism, rather than in the post-Falwell style.
.
Jay C
@Anne Laurie:
Oh, and AL: While you’re quite right about the “Republican cloth coat” bit in Nixon’s “Checkers Speech”, it probably wasn’t aimed at flaming Jackie Kennedy: this was during the 1952 Presidential campaign: John Kennedy was still a fairly obscure figure, and didn’t even marry Jackie until 1953 anyway…
Linda Featheringill
@Teri:
Thank you, Ma’am.
Little Boots
@JGabriel:
I know. I still think that was different. Not to belabor this whole thing, but I really think you could be a baptist and not vote Republican in the 60’s/70’s. Now it is a huge deal if you don’t. You are expected to match your religion with your Republican politics in this country, since the 80s. I know to be liberal was to be accused of being a “godless” communist before, but the godly were not so cut and dried in their affiliations as now. Something changed with the invention of the Religious Right in the lat 70’s, early 80’s.
Elizabelle
@Jay C:
I am wondering if Helen Gahagan Douglas (Mrs. Melvyn Movie Star Douglas) wore a mink coat.
Over her “pink to her underwear” lingerie.
ETA: and, um, some other clothing in between! Although to wear just pink and mink would have nonplussed Mr. Nixon.
Little Boots
Anne, is this every week, same time? It’s a great discussion, and I hope Rick comes back.
Mark S.
@kyle:
Huh, interesting. Thanks for the tidbit.
stuckinred
I enjoyed the book when I read it last year. When we moved from Chicago to Whittier in 57 the Nixon’s Big Boy was on Whittier Blvd. I was 16 and in LA the summer of the Watts Riots, went in the Army in November of 66. Was in Vietnam when Nixon landed for his grip and grin and was in the VVAW and gave his chopper the finger when he landed on the White House lawn as we marched by. The Winter Soldier Collective used to have a picture of me in it on there site but it’s gone now.
Suzan
I can’t stop reading long enough to join the discussion. I’ll come back to see if anyone figured out Nixon. A smart Palin? I hope to find out by the end of the book!
Omnes Omnibus
@Little Boots: Super Bowl next weekend. All must stop while the Green Bay Packers, who, of course, represent all that is good and decent in the United States, do battle with the Pittsburgh Steelers, who represent the forces of darkness.
PS. I am not biased.
TOP123
@jheartney: The photogenic thing might not be as necessary as you suppose. The GOP has consistently turned up some odd ducks in the looks department as senior figures in Congress or as Presidential primary competitors… Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani… Mitch McConnell?!? And Mitt Romney hasn’t gotten any farther than the rest of them.
Little Boots
@Omnes Omnibus:
forgot. I’m such a bad Wisconsinite.
Anne Laurie
@Jay C: Duh! You’re right, I conflated two different campaigns. So I guess the real point is that Pat Nixon’s Cloth Coat had become a “meme” by 1960, enough that a non-politically-oriented woman like my Nana (who would absolutely be running her local branch of the Tea Party, were she still alive) brought it up every time Jackie Kennedy was mentioned. Most of our Irish-American neighbors were, needless to say, pro-Kennedy, but even some of the Kennedy supporters complained publicly about “that rich girl he married just to advance his career”. In my defence, I was four years old in 1960, so my memories are vivid but extremely spotty.
stuckinred
@Omnes Omnibus: I posted it earlier. We had people show up this afternoon for the Superbowl party!
Omnes Omnibus
@Little Boots: And I am probably going to get banned.
Omnes Omnibus
@stuckinred: Impromptu Pro Bowl party instead?
Little Boots
well, it seems to be dying. goodbye all, see you, well, whenever Anne decides.
stuckinred
@Omnes Omnibus: HA they showed up at 1:30 apologizing for being late! We messed around in the yard, ate their stuffed grape leaves and they went on their merry way. Wonderful folks but a zero on the sports richter scale!
geg6
@Anne Laurie:
Heh. I was 2 in 1960, but well remember the conversations among my parents, their friends, and relatives in regard to the ’64 election. My dad quit speaking to his sister’s husband, my Uncle Marcel, a guy who would certainly be a huge Teabagger today, his Frenchiness notwithstanding.
Ruckus
@Anne Laurie:
Same age as stuckinred and I remember that the personal slamming of the Kennedys and especially Jackie was petty and vicious. I remember thinking what could this woman possibly have done to deserve this? And hasn’t changed.
BGinCHI
@Omnes Omnibus: I approve the content of this message.
TOP123
@Anne Laurie: I distinctly remember my mother (whose voting patterns, I believe, marked a rather bizarre path from Goldwater Girl (too young to vote) to Humphrey, McGovern, Ford?, Anderson, Reagan, and downhill from there–unrepentant Bush/Cheney fan) using the expression ‘good Republican cloth coat’ to me years ago, as if fully expecting that I would have any idea whatsoever what that meant.
Damned at Random
Anne Laurie:
Thanks for setting his up. It is such a treat to read other people’s impressions at the same time I’m reading the book – lots of fresh perspectives. I’m going to reread the first two chapters with some themes from this thread fresh in my mind. And recommend the discussion to some friends.
I’m very excited about next week’s discussion
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Well I’m late to the party as usual and a lot of good comments above have already covered ground I was going to ask about. Let me throw out one observation that I haven’t seen yet show up in comments.
I was struck by this passage at the end of the preface (p. xiii):
Now very much like the LBJ quote about “..the most hopeful times since Christ was born in Bethlehem.”, this reads like a report from another planet, one whose political landscape looks nothing like the one we have today, even though many other things reported in the book are very familiar. And the question which grabs me reading this in 2010-11 is: where have all those people gone to?
Can you imagine a 20 point swing in presidential voting happening today, in the short span of a mere 8 years? I can’t. Today it seems to me we might be able to manage an 8-10 point swing if we really worked at it. 20 points is unimaginable.
So what happened? Have roughly half or more of the protagonists of Nixonland vanished from the electorate since back then, and if so how and why?
Are there simply fewer people left whose partisan allegiance is up for grabs? Or have undecided voters quit politics altogether? If the years covered by this book represent the ripping open of a gaping wound in the American body politic, then does our political environment today represent the result of that wound having been cauterized by the forces of cynicism and alienation, leaving behind inflexible scar tissue which is permanently deformed and incapable of extensive movement?
Damned at Random
“COmeth the hour, cometh the man”
I wonder what man will cometh in Egypt
Scott
Okay, y’all have finally convinced me to order this book. Along with some superhero prose fiction, ’cause yay, superheroes!
It’ll still have to wait ’til after I’ve read through another Pratchett and a coupla Ffordes…
JGabriel
@Omnes Omnibus:
It’s difficult to take seriously any event that sounds like it should be the name of a urinal disinfectant cake.
“Super Bowl! For that FRESH Scent! Because it’s Super!”
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ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Davis X. Machina:
One of the other things which struck me reading the early chapters of the book is how much of Nixon’s resentment, and that of the voters whom he appealed to, is based on social class and cultural power rather than on either economic issues or specific disputes over policy.
I wonder if this has something to do with the post-WW2 economic prosperity? Do people fight more over symbolic cultural issues when the lunch bucket stuff is taking care of itself? Also, how much of the seething social resentment felt by the Orthogonians vs the Franklins was a byproduct of a society which was in the middle of changing the rules about who got to dictate in matters of taste and social advancement? It seems like Nixon’s rise ran parallel with and in conjunction with the rise of the post-WW2 mass consumer society and the advertising and mass media worlds associated with it. It is hard to imagine the Checkers Speech being such a success in Teddy Roosevelt’s day, not just because of the visual aspect of TV as a medium, but also because the cultural forces enforcing social stratification were so much stronger in 1902 than they were in 1952.
I can see some parallels between the rise of Orthogonian social resentment detailed in Ch 2 and the riots in Watts reported in Ch 1. Both took place as the old rules were breaking down and being relaxed about who should be deferred to and who should do the deferring.
Omnes Omnibus
@JGabriel: Whereas World Cup sounds nothing at all like a testicle protector? Leaving aside Lord Stanley’s Cup as well.
James E Powell
@Little Boots:
Something changed with the invention of the Religious Right in the lat 70’s, early 80’s.
It was a number of things. A very large number of the groups devoted to ‘segregation forever’ started calling themselves ‘Christian’ and followed the same politics. Abortion and women’s rights, generally, had a huge impact. People forget what a big deal the anti-ERA movement was.
And we can never disregard the effects of the economic dislocations that began to occur in the 70s, most notably gas prices and Terrible Arabs burning our flag. We can look back now, see that it was the beginning of a trend that continues to this day, but back then it seemed like a temporary aberration. We just needed a president who was rough enough and tough enough to handle the Arabs, then stop giving all our money to the welfare queens.
Hucksters like Falwell and Richard Viguerie bundled all those anxieties and resentments together.
jheartney
@Mike E:
And yet to this day we have this collection of Nixonian acolytes, many still making appearances on the tube, coming back up like a bad case of heartburn. Pat Buchannan shows up on Roger Ailes’ network. Fat Tony still hurls fireballs from the SCOTUS. And troops die daily in wars started by Cheney and Rumsfeld.
kay
I love the book and all your comments are really good.
R-Jud asked the question I wanted answered.
I had real trepidation on starting the Ronald Reagan chapter, because I am just sick to death of being spoon-fed Ronald Reagan for what feels like every day of my entire adult life, but it was the “early” Reagan in that chapter, so interesting and (mostly) fresh info.
JGabriel
@Omnes Omnibus:
Heh. Can’t take that one seriously either. Just not a sports geek, I guess.
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Omnes Omnibus
@JGabriel: Baseball and basketball do nothing for me. It takes all kinds.
Elizabelle
@kay:
Bet you love this week’s cover of Time magazine.
Kay
@Elizabelle:
I won’t look. I am willing to grant Reagan’s place in history, but the hard sell just turns me off completely.
I can’t help it. I’m always wary. “If he’s so fucking GREAT, why have we been treated to a decades-long PR campaign?”
His greatness should be evident by now, I would think.
Elizabelle
For you, Kay:
http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20110207,00.html
Elizabelle
Sorry! Refreshed the page after unleashing the Obama [hearts] Reagan cover on you.
Cruel and unusual.
It’s almost as cozy as those presidents playing poker portraits (the GOP has Lincoln but no Warren G. Harding) that make you wish for dogs holding cards. On velvet.
kay
@Elizabelle:
Oh, dear God. It’s worse than I thought.
Did you ever travel somewhere and the people who live there won’t leave you alone? They keep insisting you ADMIT that the place is fabulous? That’s what listening to Reagan worship in the media is like for me. Whatever honest evaluation I had come to on my own is gone, because they will not shut up about him.
Mark S.
@Elizabelle:
I have to admit, it is excellent flame-bait. Reaganites and O-bots will both hate it for very different reasons.
Of course, who in the hell still reads Time magazine?
Elizabelle
@Mark S.:
Yesh, and Time is inflicting that cover on its international readers too.
Although it just seems there’s something else big going on in the world this week … like there’s other — well — news out there …
Samnell
I’m very late to the party, but someone previously was asking about the connection between the Watts riot and the Voting Rights Act.
Call me a heretic, but I’m not sure there was one on the part of the rioters. Perelstein describes the situation as a case of misunderstanding that rapidly went violent and viral. That’s fairly consistent with how American race riots have run, from my limited understanding.
Crowd psychology is powerful, and even in a city with decent race relations the average black American probably got a lot of being spit on metaphorically. Come on a situation where it seems the being spit on has gone from spite and a sort of static discrimination to outright violence and it wouldn’t be hard to decide that the bad guys have finally stopped with the kid gloves and are going to use outright force. After all, that was actually the rule in much of the rest of the country.
Have you ever been at an event that you did not particularly care for, but you were in a very big crowd that was very excited about it and began cheering? I’m extremely socially inept and notoriously uncaring about what other people feel (I’ll never have Perelstein’s ability to grant respect to people like the guy who pulled the lever for Nixon.) but that many cheering people is extremely hard to resist even if you’re a dysfunctional weirdo like me. That’s true of anger and resentment too. It’s even true of violence.
Put that in the context of actual awful realities and lashing out becomes a kind of norm, at least temporarily permitted and even encouraged. You’re giving back what you’ve been getting all your life. The riot becomes a self-perpetuating engine completely independent of any mitigating facts.
Having written that, it has just occurred to me how much that sounds like the GOP grassroots in general. Our forty year nightmare is their never-ending riot, violent or otherwise.
Arundel
Thrilled to see Rick Perlstein stopping by here, and thanks to Anne Laurie for starting this discussion of a fascinating and important book.
Important, because as AL’s quote at the top says, the past recurs, it’s still with us. I read Nixonland over the summer of 2008 and the mirroring of the news of the day- tactics and imagery and buttons being pushed- in the election race with that of decades ago was uncanny. Great comments here from all, I look forward to reading more of peoples’ thoughts about Nixonland.
PanurgeATL
@R-Jud:
One reason Hippies vs. Squares is still legitimate is because the Squares can simply define anyone outside as a Hippie. This is something the Punks didn’t seem to care to consider, which was OK for a long time because Punk means very little to the older Squares to begin with. (Younger Squares, OTOH, can be all over Punk, largely because so much of it has to do with Hippie-bashing, and Squares are all about some Hippie-bashing.) I’m sure lots of Squares saw (from a distance) what was happening in the Punk Wars and thought, “Hey! We must be winning!”
Point is, you don’t transcend the debate by piling on with the Hippie-bashing while making a place for largely-unreconstructed Squares in the counterculture (the Gen-X solution). That just lets the Squares take control of the counterculture, too (or at least a share of it). Then where is there to go?
If you want to transcend the debate, you have to declare a truce, which only the Hippies appear to be OK with. Then you have to make each side shape up. To their credit, the Squares did actually do some work here, or else they really would’ve become irrelevant. Hippies just keep wondering what happened without taking any steps to fix things.
Gordon, The Big Express Engine
This thread is in violation of the first and second rules of book club.
Nutella
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
A big part of the problem now is that we have separate news sources. People who watch Fox and listen to Limbaugh never hear any other perspective so they’re never going to change their minds. It’s not quite so isolated on the left since avoiding the right wing noise machine is not easy, but it’s there.
I have told many people about the terrible police actions at the Republican convention in Denver and they refuse to believe it because it wasn’t on the news anywhere.
Zelma
I enjoyed reading all the comments. They made me realize how much of a creature of television Nixon was. And how TV changed the equation of politics.
It occurred to me that Nixon’s defining contribution to American politics was to find a way to implicitly – and explicitly – appeal to the worst angels of our nature. Now, lord knows, this was nothing new in American politics. Racism was always there, right under the surface and sometimes, especially in the south, right on the surface.
But what strikes me about Nixon is that he was the first PRESIDENTIAL candidate from a major party – and then the first president – to so obviously play race card. And by doing so, he gave all the haters permission to express their feelings. He gave them validity and respectability.
He also expanded and played on the incohate resentment of the so-called “elites” that is ever present in society. That he himself felt this resentment made his attacks much more effective. And isn’t it amazing that ever since, the Republican Party, the long time home of the economic elites who have the real power in this society, has managed to make “anti-elitism” one of their causes.
But I don’t think that any of this would have been possible without the impact of television. Without TV, there never would have been a “Checker’s Speech” and Eisenhower would have thrown Nixon off the ticket. And maybe we wouldn’t have lived in “Nixonland”
Gene Popa
I’m honestly surprised that Nixon was astonished by the response his “last press conference” generated among so many voters, because in hindsight it seems so artfully calculated.
On the one hand, you had him lashing out at what was even then perceived as a liberal media, which delighted the growing conservative movement. And on the other, by seemingly cutting off his own nose to spite his face, he took himself off of the frontline of fractious Republican politics for several years, allowing Nixon to build the apparatus to run for president without being under the microscope of the press, which had convinced itself he was finished as anything other than a fundraiser and gadfly. Utterly brilliant, even if it was unintentional.
Phoebe
@PanurgeATL: for some of us, hippie bashing was ALL about music. Hence the MC5 exception.
rickstersherpa
To plug another of Mr. Perlstein’s books, if you want to read about the rise of the modern Conservative Movement after 1950, one can do worse than “Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus.”
Speaking as someone who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s in a white suburb outside Chicago, it is first a good thing to remember that we all have a fair amount of “resentment in us,” waiting for the right person and circumstances to call it forth. What did people resent in that suburb? They had an historical resentment of the big city, Chicago, going back at least 100 years. A fascinating place, but always trying to lure the kids with its corruption and sin. And take their money with taxes for the use of the crooked politicians in the city (the half-truth is so much harder to defeat than a lie.) More particular sins of recent vintage tht bred resentment were the following. The New Deal seem about working and middle class families getting a break and being rescued by the Government. People did not see Blacks benefiting because one, Roosevelt was very sotto voce on thie issue, and Blacks were as Richard Wright wrote at the time, “Invisible Men.” Most of the white working class despised Blacks, but did not identify the New Deal as helping them (except for the break during the Civil War, an alliance between the white working class and the Confederate Party had existed since Andrew Jackson). After WWII, suddenly the working class found itself middle class and middle class found itself comfortable. They couldn’t quite believe it, and all their lives thought it would be taken away (in this they were probably right, but it took about two generations). Then the Civil Rights Revolution started boiling, with lots of change in American social and religious institutions that had lasted 100 years. Although they had moved out the old neighborhoods, they hated what had become of the old neighborhoods.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@rickstersherpa:
Before the Storm also covers some ground, especially for the years 1961-1964 which Nixonland fast forwards thru to avoid duplication. If you aren’t familiar with the history of the JFK administration and the 1964 election from Before the Storm or other sources it is easy to be reading along in Nixonland and when you get to the part in 1965-66 where all sort of shit starts to hit the fan, then you think “where the hell did that come from?” and it seems like all of a sudden the country just decided to go nuts. But this didn’t arise out of a vacuum, it was a continuation of the political paranoia and extreme polarization which had been happening in the early 60s but which temporarily went into hibernation when there was a backlash against “extremism” after JFK was killed. The early Johnson administration was a period somewhat like the calm eye of a hurricane passing overhead and bringing a temporary spell of clear weather, but it didn’t last.
Rick Perlstein
@Gene He was drunk! He was just pouring out his id, unplanned. Which makes it a perfect Nixonian moment–the point being, his id ended up naturally matching that of the base he was at that very moment unconsciously assembling.
Julia Grey
I actually felt sorry for Nixon (for a while) when you were describing his situation and state of mind before the Checkers speech.
That’s some great writing.