Obama Defeats . . . Nixon?

Can Barack Obama succeed in laying Richard Nixon's ghost to rest? As Obama pledges bipartisanship and reaches across the aisle to John McCain, many of us can't help but hope that we've seen the end of the politics of denigration.

For five decades, the Republican party has taken its lessons from the master of divide and conquer politics. By the time of the 1968 presidential election, Nixon had already demonstrated that votes could be won by questioning not just the patriotism but the loyalty of the opposition. During the 1952 national election, Republican vice presidential candidate Nixon, in one sentence, slurred the reputations of the sitting president, Harry Truman, and the Democrat's presidential nominee by calling them "traitors to the high principles in which many of the nation's Democrats believe." Forever after, Nixon would piously declare that he had never called either man a traitor--a defense that was literally true, but also wholly false. He didn't earn the name "Tricky Dick" for nothing.

As he entered his second race for the White House, Nixon had established the axiom that going negative was the path to victory. In the 1968 campaign, when Nixon spoke about the need for law and order and for the recognition "that the first civil right of every American is to be free from domestic violence," the white southerners and northern blue collar workers of Nixon's "forgotten" America knew he was speaking only to them. Once in office, Nixon stirred simmering resentments against school busing and nominated Southerners with racist pasts to the Supreme Court. In his handling of the Vietnam war, Nixon famously sent his chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, on NBC's Today show to tar the anti-war movement as traitorous for its "aiding and abetting" the North Vietnamese.

Roger Ailes, Lee Atwater, Karl Rove and others well-schooled in the Richard Nixon brand of politics created the modern presidential electoral playbook. And what we got was race-baiting law and order pitches like the infamous Willie Horton furlough ads used against Michael Dukakis and the jujitsu negativity of the swift boat captain spots. And though he himself had been the victim of this kind of politics during the 2000 Republican primaries, John McCain embraced the Nixonian model on his failed road to the White House. Turning his vice presidential candidate loose to a good share of the dirtiest work, a strategy that Nixon participated in on both ends of the Republican ticket, McCain relied on Palin, who cast herself as voice of the "pro-American" sections of the United States, to accuse Obama of "palling around with terrorists." In the election's final days, the McCain campaign, desperate for a game-changer, threw most of its money and energy into warnings that a "socialist" Barack Obama would raise taxes on "us" while re-distributing wealth to those who refused to work.

For the first time in recent memory, these tired old tricks didn't work. In 1968, Richard Nixon promised to bring us together. But he never really meant it. Obama rejected the Nixonian game plan: divide the nation and pick up the biggest piece. By constructing an electoral victory that relied on blacks, whites, Latinos, women, and men, on north, south, east and west, and by acting now on his promise to speak to all of us, Barack Obama has positioned himself to re-shape American politics in ways even more historic than we realize.

Daniel Frick is the author of Reinventing Richard Nixon: A Cultural History of an American Obsession (University Press of Kansas, 2008). He directs the Writing Center at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Comments

[ilovepolitics]

This article hits on an interesting point: the idea that historical mudslinging is no longer the key to a landslide election victory. Obama has effectively reversed many of the preconceived notions that Nixon set in place, most importantly the notion that in politics, you have to be mean to win. I, for one, am extremely glad that this is the case. Nixon's political strategy was founded on deflecting attention away from serious issues and towards nit-picky flaws in his opponent. I'm glad that Obama did not buy into this, and in turn paved the way for a strategy that advocates unity over division and focuses national attention on issues rather than pregnant teenaged daughters and other personal "political liabilities" that Tricky Dick would have exploited.

[Autodactyl]

I'm not sure whether we'll ever be over using minorities as scapegoats. It's just too easy a political road to take. The results of the recent election are interesting to be sure, but the question must be asked--why did going negative not work this time, when it has been so effective for so many years? Was Obama just that effective a campaigner? Did the economy cast such a pall over the entire election that we just couldn't pay attention to anything else? If so, can we really say that we, as an electorate, 'got over' the petty squabbling and fear mongering that has characterized elections since Nixon?

[JustinBHopkins]

I am hopeful—maybe even optimistic—that Obama can—maybe even will—indeed change the bitter bickering that so sadly characterizes our national politics. Obama’s comparatively clean campaign does demonstrate his desire to unify rather than divide. His victory suggests people are ready to be brought together. Maybe we are on the brink of some genuine cooperation between left and right. We certainly need more creative, constructive thinking than destructive baiting at this moment in history. There’s nothing wrong with honest and thoughtful disagreement regarding the best course of action, but the seemingly never-ending mudslinging in Washington must stop. Enough of the Nixonian/Palinian finger-pointing approach—let’s please concentrate together on fixing our economy and redefining our position in the global community.

[SethBLiNK]

In discussing Obama's campaign and his appeal to end useless bipartisanship, I always wavered between whether to date the divide back to 1980 or '68. Nixon definitely got the ball rolling with his lowest common-denominator appeals and his divisive Supreme Court nominations. He started the trend of choosing mediocre legal minds based primarily on their appeal to extremist views.

He cynically capitalized on LBJ's signing of the civil rights act. Johnson predicted it would lose the south the the democrats for a generation and Nixon went out of his way to make that happen by appealing to those voters' basest instincts. He proudly "brought the working class into the Republican party" but again did it by appealing to their worst fears rather than their best angels.

Reagan sealed the deal by bringing the Religious Right into the fold.

It would be wonderful if Obama helped put an end to that, and I for one would even welcome a newly strengthened Republican Party that fought the opposition based on ideals of governing rather than petty small issues designed to divide.

[lvdragonlady]

We can only hope that this is true.
There has not been any honesty in politics for a very very long time.......it is about time that things changed.