From the current issue of The Economist, in Adrian Wooldridge’s Lexington column, “Richard Milhous McCain: Americans cannot escape from the shadow of Tricky Dick” [emphasis, and link, mine]:
Modern Republicans admire no one more than Ronald Reagan, the man who, in their view, destroyed communism, rolled back welfare-state liberalism and reintroduced God into American politics. But when it comes to practising politics, particularly at election time, the Republicans have a rather different hero, a man of frowns rather than smiles: Richard Nixon.
Nixon’s great contribution to Republican politics was to master the politics of cultural resentment. Before him, populism belonged as much to the left as the right. William Jennings Bryan railed against the eastern elites who wanted to crucify common folk on a “cross of gold”. Franklin Roosevelt dismissed Republicans as “economic royalists”. Nixon’s genius was to discover that the politics of culture could trump the politics of economics—and that populism could become a tool of the right.
Read the entire column here.
In the same issue, the considered view from abroad: “America not quite at its best: The election has taken a nasty turn”
Filed under: Current Events
Nixon’s “politics of cultural resentment”? Is that a polite description of Nixon’s out-and-out racist Southern Strategy? (see Wikipedia) The article is correct: it does indeed cast a long shadow.
Margaret, that and also political and cultural elements of conservative populism. Don’t forget Pat Nixon’s good Republican cloth coat. I cut off the column right where Wooldridge went on to write,
“Nixon understood in his marrow how middle-class Americans felt about the country’s self-satisfied elites. The ’silent majority’ had been disoriented, throughout the 1960s, by the collapse of traditional moral values. And they had boiled with righteous anger at the liberal elites who extended infinite indulgence to bomb-throwing radicals while dismissing conservative views as evidence of racism and sexism. Nixon recognised that the Republicans stood to gain from ‘positive polarisation’: dividing the electorate over values. He also recognised that the media, which had always made a great pretence of objectivity while embracing a liberal social agenda, could be turned into a Republican weapon. He encouraged Spiro Agnew, his vice-president, to declare war on the ‘effete corps of impudent snobs’ in the media, with their Ivy League educations and Georgetown social values.”
Main Street vs. the nattering nabobs. According to some biographers, that resentment began to fester when Nixon had to turn down a Harvard scholarship because the family couldn’t afford the living expenses; he went to his local college, Whittier, instead.
There was also Paul Krugman’s op-ed in the Times a few weeks ago, “The Resentment Strategy”, don’t know if you had a chance to see it,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/05/opinion/05krugman.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
In my opinion, the British don’t “get” race, just as the Americans don’t “get” class. Wooldridge’s use of the cringe-worthy phrase “swivel-eyed preachers” tells me that he doesn’t get race.
I remember President Nixon very well; he oozed equal parts of resentment, paranoia, and sweat. I did read the entire article and still maintain that Nixon’s legacy is the Southern Strategy.
The attacks on Obama are not based in anti-elitism, they are based in racism. Remember what Rove said about Obama early this summer:
“Even if you never met him, you know this guy,” Rove said… “He’s the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by.”
Pretty off-the-wall, isn’t it? Almost nonsensical, even as an anti-elitism attack. It only makes sense in the context of the ugly stereotypes of the uppity Negro and the black man dating a white woman (to put it politely). (http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/201563.php)
The Republicans revisited the topic of race-mixing with the Obama – celebrity – Paris Hilton ad.
The good news is that most people just scratched their heads at both of these. Maybe you have to be above a certain age (the remembering Nixon as President age) to hear the dog whistle.
I remember him well too, Margaret : ), from the television news and also The New York Post in that last little stretch when it was still more Alexander Hamilton than Rupert Murdoch. Too young to remember, but old enough to read and heard about, Tricky Dick and Helen Gahagan Douglas, and Jerry Voorhis too. And I think that while I may be long gone from NY, that will always be one of my vantage points for national politics, and I imagine things look rather different from WV.
I think race is a great part of the current Republican campaign equation, but I don’t think it’s the only part; there’s a fairly straight line from Adlai the egghead to the anti-Howard Dean screed four years ago (“tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading/Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show”) to this year. Much as I think that in Nixon’s case, race and the Southern strategy came into play more after the Civil Rights Act, a new facet of his well-practiced wedge tactics. And then there’s the abortion wedge, which I think is enormous now since the selection of Palin.
Rove’s comments and the Hilton ad didn’t make me think about miscegenation — in fact, all I could think is, “I can’t believe that Karl Rove belongs to a country club that’s not restricted” — and considering it now it seems rather dated, much like Petula Clark touching Harry Belafonte. I suppose one shouldn’t be suprised that Rove is using the old playbook from his mentor Lee Atwater — who refined the Southern strategy for a new generation with Willie Horton, in between general smear tactics, outright lies, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and lingering public fears about mental illness — and in turn has mentored Steve Schmidt. Their supply closets are crowded with different boogie men for different audiences.
“he oozed equal parts of resentment, paranoia, and sweat”
Reminds me how Garry Wills described the old hometown in “Nixon Agonistes”– “the muggy air, heavy with moral perspiring, of Whittier”. And don’t forget the five o’clock shadow.