$39.95 cloth
ISBN 0-8078-2905-6

Published: Fall 2004

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Copyright (c) 2004 by the University of North Carolina Press. All rights reserved.




Introduction

Richard Nixon and the Quest for a New Majority is the study of an effort to shift the mass politics of the United States at a potentially crucial moment in recent history. The late 1960s and early 1970s represented a period of upheaval in American society, when opportunities for political change seemed more substantial than at any time since the Great Depression. This is the story of bold political ambition in response to the perception of a great political possibility.

For a generation, Democrats had dominated national politics. This era of Democratic dominance began with the economic crisis that took hold under Herbert Hoover, a crisis that discredited the Republican Party in the eyes of many Americans. Franklin Roosevelt then mobilized an electoral majority for the Democratic Party in support of his administration's New Deal. This majority included many of America's less privileged people, and the Roosevelt coalition had remarkable endurance. In the years that followed, Republicans won no more than passing success in elections for the presidency and for Congress. Their moments of triumph were few and brief. In both 1946 and 1952, they took control of Congress, but in each case for two years only; Dwight Eisenhower won the two presidential elections of the 1950s but did so because of his public standing as a great leader rather than because of his Republican identity. As a political entity designed to win elections, the Republican Party was a disaster. More Americans consistently preferred the Democratic Party. Following Hoover came a generation that rarely offered Republicans anything but frustration.

Decades after Roosevelt's defeat of Hoover in 1932, prospects at last looked brighter for the Republican Party. At the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, many people believed that this record of disappointment was about to change, that the country stood on the verge of a conservative realignment that would completely transform American politics. A new generation of Republican success might replace the generation of Democratic dominance. Richard Nixon and the Quest for a New Majority looks at the reasons that these beliefs became widespread, investigating how a Republican administration responded to this perception of a truly significant political opportunity.

Richard Nixon, the figure at the center of this work, became president at this time of opportunity and developed a plan to exploit it. Because of his achievements and his failings, Nixon was one of the most important politicians of his century. Achieving national prominence not long after his election to the House of Representatives in 1946, he remained on the political stage for the rest of his life and played a key role in many of the principal events and developments of post-World War II American history. When Nixon died in 1994, Senator Robert J. Dole, a Republican from Kansas, exaggerated perhaps only slightly when he commented that "the second half of the twentieth century [would] be known as the age of Nixon."[1]

Nixon's idiosyncrasies as a politician would influence his handling of what he saw as a historic opportunity for Republicans. Some of these quirks equipped him well for the task, which was to disrupt the Democratic coalition by reaching out to a larger constituency. Although as a Republican he represented the party of privilege, he harbored a sense of exclusion from privilege and instead felt a sense of identity with ordinary Americans. This identity was absolutely at odds with the dominant image of his party and represented an asset in seeking to improve its fortunes. Ray Price, a longtime aide and Nixon sympathizer, later observed to journalist Tom Wicker that "Nixon's pretense was to be less than he was—less thoughtful, less introverted, less skeptical and analytical, less cerebral—to present himself deliberately as an Average American: patriotic, conventionally religious and responsible, gregarious, sports-loving, hardworking and hard-nosed." According to Wicker, this pretense often succeeded, investing Nixon with a "remarkable appeal to American voters." But there was a darker edge to this connection between politician and people, Wicker noted; it was clouded by a "condescending and contemptuous attitude toward the commonality of the American people." Nixon did not believe that the high ground was the place to succeed in politics. Among the more ubiquitous politicians of his generation, he was unarguably the most controversial. To his opponents, he was "Tricky Dick" almost from the start.[2]

Nixon rarely strayed far from the campaign trail, where he learned lessons that he remembered when president. He started to master electoral politics when campaigning for the House in 1946 and then for the Senate in 1950. In these races, he learned the value of aggressive partisan attacks, identifying his popular opponents with damagingly unpopular policies. Nixon's anticommunism defeated first Jerry Voorhis and then Helen Gahagan Douglas. In achieving these victories, Nixon also learned the importance of reaching out to Democratic and independent voters, an essential tactic in his home state of California, where, as in the nation as a whole at the time, Republican supporters constituted a minority within the electorate. Both of these lessons proved important when Nixon looked for a new majority as president.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Nixon was a standard-bearer for Republican candidates, further amassing political skills and frequently attracting criticism for his hard-line partisan aggression. Still, Nixon could not manage to secure election in his own right either for the presidency in 1960 or for the governorship of California in 1962. Those defeats provided a reminder of still another lesson, rather obvious to politicians, that their aim is electoral victory. In Nixon's case, his urgent desire to secure a huge majority when facing reelection in 1972 would have two paradoxically counterproductive implications. First, to some extent, this personal goal distracted his attention from the greater partisan goal of a new majority. Second, his interest in popularity encouraged him to countenance illegality during the campaign; crimes committed in pursuit of victory eventually brought the greatest defeat of all, resignation from the presidency.

In seeking a new majority, Nixon attempted to foster an electoral realignment that would benefit conservative politics. The paradigm of realignment was widespread among scholars of this period, originating in the 1950s as an effort among political scientists to explain electoral patterns across time. Its innovator was V. O. Key Jr., and a team of researchers at the University of Michigan subsequently further developed the theory. These writers investigated and documented the remarkable stability of U.S. electoral behavior. Throughout the history of the two-party system, in any particular period, one of the two parties enjoyed a continuing advantage in winning elections and in maintaining the support of a majority within the electorate. Individuals possessed astonishing levels of loyalty to their favored parties. Once a Democrat or a Republican, people tended to retain this party identification. But from time to time, this stability was disrupted. Larger numbers of Americans suddenly reassessed their party loyalty; people changed their minds about politics. Others, previously apathetic about politics, started to vote on one side or another. What precipitated this upheaval was the arrival of some great crisis that caused two significant problems for incumbent politicians: first, they could not convince voters that they had the right answer to deal with this crisis; second, they often could not agree with each other about how to do so, bringing party disunity. The result was decline for the dominant party and resurgence for the minority party. This electoral transition, driven by significant new issues that divided politicians and voters alike, was a realignment.[3]

The most recent of these turning points took place during the 1930s. The Republicans' fall from grace at that time was part of a realignment driven by the Great Depression. The key question facing the United States was the federal government's level of involvement in regulating the economy and in offering the people welfare protections. A majority preferred the Democratic answer that the government should play such a role to the dominant Republican position that although some activism was necessary, it should take place on a smaller scale.

During the 1960s, arguments based on the concept of an electoral realignment edged into discussions about current electoral politics.[4] This achievement was remarkable for an idea driven by theory and by academic investigation. The achievement resulted from the persuasiveness of the way in which the idea captured the essence of continuity and change in American politics. Still, toward the end of the Johnson administration, it was not at all necessary to read political science to understand that apparently insurmountable problems plagued the nation and caused disarray among the incumbent Democrats. The Democrats' travails created an opportunity for the Republicans to seek the support of "forgotten Americans." Richard Nixon and the Quest for a New Majority begins by looking for the origins of this potential turning point in American politics within the changes of the 1960s. The period was one of upheaval so great that Democratic discontent had many roots, including frustration (both hawkish and dovish) with the progress of the war in Vietnam, alarm (both sympathetic and hostile) at the continuing problems of race, and dissatisfaction (both conservative and radical) with the Great Society's socioeconomic goals.