Nixonland: The genius of Tricky Dicky

[BurtWorm]

I just started reading Rick Pearlstein's Nixonland this weekend, and already I have to recommend it to everyone I know who cares about American politics. (And that means YOU.) What an insight into how we got where we are--or at least to where we were before Obama got elected! There's no good reason to believe, however, that we've left Nixonland yet, and we can't know that until a few more election cycles go by. But reading Nixonland makes you start to wonder about the wisdom of ever writing those ratfuckers on the right off. Their guiding principle--resentment of people perceived to have it easy--is usually unbeatable when a master like Richard Nixon is in charge of it.

To give you an example of how this works: In 1966, Nixon was in New York, recovering from the hair's breadth loss of the presidency in 1960 and a trouncing from Pat Brown in California in 1962. He wound up a partner in a white-shoe law firm of the kind he had been rejected from when he came job hunting straight out of Duke law school in 1937 and kept finding himself losing out to Harvards and Yalies. He was carefully rebuilding his image, with the help of Madmen and guys like William Safire, who got him a profile in the NY Times Magazine. He'd had a reputation along the lines of a typical OC wingnut, but in 1966, he was being groomed to look more like a moderate, establishment-consensus type.

Across the river in NJ, Eugene Genovese, an alleged communist and professor at Rutgers University, had caused a stir with a speech saying he was rooting for the reds in Vietnam. The right wing Republican candidate for governor called for Genovese's dismissal, and to the dismay of the Nixon-groomers in NY, RMN went to Jersey to stand with the wingnut, saying Genovese's academic freedom may be a right in peacetime, but in times of war, there should be no such right. He compared Geneovese to a Nazi in WWII who openly rooted for Germany.

The NY swells rolled their eyes, Geneovese kept his job and Nixon's candidate lost. But, Pearlstein notes, it wasn't really about Genovese or the other Republican. It was about Nixon and his base, the "silent majority" types who, like Nixon, hated the reds and pinkos on college campuses, resenting them for making all that noise and getting all that attention saying un-American things while folks like themselves played by the rules, respected the flag, rooted for the US in war, and worked their asses off only to have Negroes and immigrants move into their neighborhoods to lower their property values even as their tax bills grew and grew. Those were Nixon's people, and they were watching and appreciating and taking note. It was a little sign, a little red meat for the masses so they would know he hadn't gone all the way over to the Rockefeller side. And this was going to be crucial in 1968.

Makes you wonder what signs these Orthogonists, as Pearlstein calls them (for the "right-angle" club of strivers Nixon started back at Whittier College as an alternative to the old boy net Franklin Club of BMOCs and "guys who had it easy"--get it?), are picking up during the Obama years and from whom? Do these kinds of signals work any more? Is the nation becoming too diverse for the resenters to form a coherent coalition anymore?

[rateyes]

1. Nixon was a "kinder, gentler" George Wallace kind of guy.

[BurtWorm]

2. Of course he was neither kind nor gentle.

Which was where all his political skills lay. The rat bastidge!

[rateyes]

4. Of course. Just kinder and gentler than Wallace. Wallace was iron fisted

and bare knuckled. Nixon wore a velvet glove over his iron fist. Nixon knew the codewords to cover up his bigotry.

[BurtWorm]

7. I don't know quite enough about Wallace to be able to counter you

but what I do know about Nixon is that he was, not very deep under the surface, the worst kind of demagogic monster, mainly because he had no principles at all except for resentment and he had a very sharp, strategic brain. You can easily make the case for his being the architect of American politics as we know it. You know that sick feeling you get in your stomach when you think of our presidential elections? You could easily argue that Nixon masterminded that.

[rateyes]

9. George Wallace was a piece of shit bigot, and he didn't care who knew it.

Nixon was a piece of shit bigot, too. He simply knew how to soften the rhetoric to make it acceptable. Nixon played on people's fears...and, worked the "Southern Strategy" to perfection. Of course, Wallace did carry a Southern State or two in that election...running as an independent.

[BurtWorm]

10. What I have heard about Wallace (which may be revisionist history admittedly)

is that he adopted the iron-glove persona, not because he believed in it, but because he knew it would get him elected. In other words, there was more to him than met the eye, more to him than just the stereotypical bigot. In fact, I was reading somewhere that he was a New Dealer. Doesn't excuse him of course. He was definitely Nixonian in 1968. Turned my stomach even worse than TD himself did!

[Sequoia]

3. Well, now that I've read a good review I might have to read it.

I was in 8th grade in '69 and thought Nixon was an okay guy. Of course, I didn't know squat about politics and had only watched the Repub convention because it was on and kept watching Nixon's speeches to see when he'd start moving his hands around which I thought was pretty funny. Fast forward to the next election and I have a Nixon bumbersticker on my car. I picked up two hitch-hikers I noticed from being in the restuarant I worked in the night before. Cool, hippie types and found out the guy was the older brother of a classmate (better side of town). He had noticed my bumber sticker and told me all about the evils of Nixon, etc. After that I ripped off my bumper sticker. I wasn't 18 yet so I missed that election. I knew that guy was right and I was totally uninformed.

[radiclib]

5. I'm about a hundred pages in

and I can't believe how awesome Perlstein's reportage is. The depth, detail and accuracy is really impressive. I lived through this era (as a dumb teenager) and I'm embarrassed by how much I missed. And it's not just about Nixon, but provides invaluable insight into the whole era and how we got there, and to where we are now. A big thumbs up! :applause:

[BurtWorm]

8. I appreciate his subtle sense of humor and his writing skills, too.

What a pleasure this book is!

[Adelante]

6. I have it in a stack on my night table

I'll be starting it pretty soon. Thanks for the OP.

[onethatcares]

11. remember watching the Watergate hearings???

those are my earliest political rememberances. Everything was in black and white on the screen.

I'm getting flashbacks of a sort right now.

We lost a country after that, our own.

[BurtWorm]

12. I remember watching all day long on a sick day.

We watched some of them at school, too. And during vacations, instead of going outdoors, I'd be glued to the TV for hours!

[H2O Man]

13. Outstanding book.

One of the best I've read in quite a while.

[azmouse]

14. Sounds like a very interesting book.

I look forward to reading it. I wish had an extra couple hours in the day though to catch up with all the books that I want to read. DU gives me so many great recs on books I can't always keep up.

[BurtWorm]

15. kick