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Even so, a Harris poll the following
year found that most Americans —
especially the low-income whites who
had formed the backbone of the New
Deal coalition — blamed the violence
on blacks and the all-too-indulgent
"longhairs" ruling the country
In stepped Nixon — himself a life-
long "serial collector of resentments," as
Perlstein calls him — who knew how
to ride the reactionary swell. He had
watched Ronald Reagan get elected gov-
ernor of California by railing nonstop
against Berkeley lefties. And he saw that
the GOP could benefit from white rage
over busing and open-housing poli-
cies, and that the one-third of AFL-CIO
members who quietly supported Gov.
George Wallace's race-baiting candidacy
could be his instead. (Nixon's 1968 vic-
tory was assured when South Carolina's
Sen. Strom Thurmond agreed to steer
Southerners away from Wallace and
toward the GOP; as president, Nixon
repaid the favor by appointing right-
wing judges and bogging down integra-
tion efforts.)
Liberal elites and the press thought
Nixon tacky and uncouth. But, as the old
William Blake aphorism has it, the tigers
of wrath were wiser than the horses of
instruction. Behind the scenes, Kevin
Phillips, a young Nixon strategist, con-
vinced the boss that Republicans could
piggyback on popular resentment of
cultural elites to create a new electoral
majority. It was perfect: Nixon, after all,
couldn't veer left on economics to win
over the white working class — his
corporate paymasters wouldn't hear
of it. But he could woo them on social
issues. Noted one aide: "Patriotic themes
to counter depression will get response
from unemployed."
Perlstein points to a New York Times
photo of a stockbroker and pipe fit-
ter joining forces to clobber a hippie
at an anti-war rally with — yes — an
American flag. That was Nixon's vision
for an emerging Republican majority
(Indeed, Nixon would surely approve of
modern-day Republicans who prefer
to harp on flag pins and Sen. Barack
Obama's former pastor than to dwell on
economic affairs.)
But Nixonland also provides evidence
that this strategy doesn't always work,
that coalitions built purely on resent-
ment have their limits. In the 1970
elections, Nixon waged an all-out anti-
hippie campaign that, he hoped, would
finally allow the GOP to retake Congress.
Vice President Spiro Agnew toured the
country foaming over the "parasites of
passion" in the antiwar movement. But
it failed miserably, as voters were much
too worried about economic issues to
care. The New York Times interviewed
a Teamster who thought the National
Guard was "100 percent right in Kent
State" but was still voting Democratic
because of the slowdown in the con-
struction industry.
Nixon, of course, had better luck in
1972. But here, too, it's hard to sort out
how much his victory owed to the cul-
tural rift he created, as opposed to other
factors. Part of what makes Nixonland
so compelling is that it offers support
for any number of readings. Yes, Nixon
won over AFL-CIO leader George Meany,
who despised the peaceniks, post-grads
and feminists within the Democratic
Party. But McGovern himself was also a
mind-bogglingly inept candidate, who,
as Perlstein reminds us, once cut an ad
in which he actually berated a black
worker worried about layoffs in the
defense industry. And McGovern was
the Democratic nominee partly because
Nixon's stream of dirty tricks had
flushed stronger candidates like Sen.
Edward Muskie out of the race.
Nixon, moreover, benefited mas-
sively from his ability to lie through his
teeth without reprisal — as when he
claimed he was ending the war even as
he ramped up his bombing campaign
against Cambodia and North Vietnam.
For their part, mainstream liberals
in the '70s were often absurdly high-
minded in response, believing voters
would surely see through Nixon's
falsehoods. The press, meanwhile,
was cowed: When news anchor Walter
Cronkite tried to do a segment on the
Watergate scandal, his bosses at CBS
dialed it down after getting intimi-
dated by Nixon's goons.
All told, Perlstein has written an
endlessly illuminating account of how,
exactly, Nixon teased out a cultural
divide in American life that persists to
this day — a wound that Republicans
keep jabbing in order to win. But elec-
tions are always multifaceted affairs, and
observers can rarely agree on just why
this or that party prevailed. The rise of
conservatism in the United States owed
to any number of factors: labor's decline,
business' growing ability to act as a uni-
fied class, the birth of right-wing media,
the fact that Republicans promised solu-
tions for problems like crime and stag-
flation that had left Democrats helpless.
It's a messy story.
Still, even if Nixonland tells only
part of that tale, it's a crucial part, and
Perlstein tells it so well = and so vividly
— that his book is utterly essential for
understanding the modern American
political landscape. ❑
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