"I was a Republican until they lost their minds."
- Former basketball great (and sometime pundit) Charles Barkley
In this series of diaries, I am trying to lay out the history of exactly how the Party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt came to lose its mind and become the authoritarian, theocratric, militaristic, reckless, lawless conspiracy against the public that we are saddled with today; and how, improbably, such an anti-democratic movement came to dominate the government of the world's mightiest democracy.
Last time, I recounted how Barry Goldwater's failed, quixotic presidential run paradoxically cleared the field for the new cadre of movement conservatives (MoCons) to take over the Republican Party, setting the party on the path simultaneously to lunacy and power. Here I will lay out the next chapter, how Lyndon Johnson fractured the Democratic Party, alienated large segments of the voting public, and handed evil genius Richard Nixon the opportunity to forge the strategy that would propel the Republicans to ever-increasing power as it fell ever more under the sway of its own dark side.
Part 2: LBJ fractures the Democrats; Nixon Siezes the Path to Power, Then Self-Destructs
Having won enormous political capital in his electoral landslide victory over Goldwater, Lyndon Johnson, the former "Master of the Senate" and now President in his own right, began immediately to put this capital to work. He pushed a number of landmark bills through a compliant Democratic Congress, essentially completing the wish list of New Deal Democrats. These included the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which together effectively outlawed the infamous Jim Crow laws of the South and thus undermined the legal basis for racial segregation policies there. He passed legislation creating Medicare and Medicaid, federally subsidized health care programs, plus a grab bag of other social welfare, education, urban renewal, and public works initiatives, all of which collectively were fitted under the rubric of the "Great Society"
At the same time as he was enormously expanding the role of the federal government in multiple areas of society, Johnson was steadily and repeatedly expanding US military commitments to Viet Nam, under the authority of a Congressional resolution won after a purported attack by North Viet Nam on US Naval forces in the Gulf of Tonkin (an incident which later investigations have shown to have been rather less dramatic and clear-cut than the rhetoric of the time suggested.)
By 1966, Johnson had run through his political capital, and then some. Conservatives balked at his ambitious social programs, Southerners at his civil rights initiatives, and liberals were aghast at his war policies. Democrats lost 47 seats to the Republicans in the Congressional elections of 1966, empowering a conservative coalition of Republicans and Southern Democrats to block further social innovation. By 1968, so general was the distaste for Johnson, that he withdrew from the race for the presidency.
In the Democratic primaries of that year, Vice President Hubert Humphrey staggered to the finish line ahead of a decimated field. Eugene McCarthy, the anti-war Democrat whose strong showing in the New Hampshire primary had convinced Johnson to withdraw, faded after Robert Kennedy, brother of the slain President, entered the race. Kennedy himself was assassinated on the night of his primary victory in California. Humphrey was the last man standing, but with support so shallow that his general election campaign never caught fire. Richard Nixon, in a stunning political comeback, won the Republican nomination, largely because he was the only Establishment candidate who had campaigned vigorously for Goldwater in the 1964 debacle, and so could draw support, however grudging, from both the fading Establishment wing of the party, and the increasingly influential movement conservatives, or MoCons.
The 1968 campaign was a turning point in the political evolution of both parties, and it is perhaps not too much to say that we are still working out its consequences, with many of our political leaders still endlessly refighting the issues of that day, despite the enormous intervening changes that have occurred in the country’s (and the world’s) social, demographic, political, and economic landscapes.
For Democrats, 1968 was the year of massive anti-war demonstrations and the riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago. Martin Luther King was assassinated in April, leading to racial riots in over 60 cities. Robert Kennedy was assassinated in June after winning the California Democratic presidential primary. The Viet Cong’s Tet Offensive in January to June was successful enough to convince many Americans that, contrary to the assurances of the administration and of military leaders, we were decidely not winning the war in Viet Nam. The Democratic Party split into multiple warring factions. All of these events led to a general feeling that the country was spinning out of control under the Democrats.
Nixon’s 1968 campaign made brilliant use of all of these factors, and initiated themes and strategies that were to be mainstays of the Republican march to political dominance over the next thirty years. Nixon is credited with first articulating and then successfully implementing the Republican "Southern Strategy", which consisted of appealing to Southern Democrats on shared conservative social values, supplemented by race-baiting and pandering to segregationists. Following his lead, Republicans were able over the next two decades to progressively switch the South from the safe region for Democrats that it had been since the Civil War era, to the Republican stronghold it is today. Nixon also held up the Republican Party as the natural advocate for traditional values of family, God, and patriotism held by the "Silent Majority" of Americans, as opposed to the effete liberal snobs and the dangerously bohemian hippies of the Democratic Party.
In the end, Nixon edged past the weakened Humphrey, aided by the third-party candidacy of segregationist George Wallace, whose American Independent Party captured five states in the traditionally Democratic Old South.
In office, Nixon produced real accomplishments on both the domestic front (creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and Supplemental Security Income (SSI)) and internationally (the opening to China, détente with the Soviet Union - including the signing of the first treaty limiting nuclear weapons - and elimination of the gold standard as the basis for US currency). He also continued strong support for the US space effort: all of the US manned moon landings occurred during his first term, and in 1972 he approved development of the Space Shuttle program.
In Viet Nam, he pursued a course he called "Peace With Honor", which consisted of energetic diplomatic initiatives to come to terms with the North Vietnamese, including direct talks in Paris; a carrot-and-stick approach to prosecuting the war, whereby military operations were escalated and de-escalated in response to the actions of the other side; and a gradual disengagement of US forces, called "Vietnamization", whereby US troops were withdrawn as they trained and equipped the South Vietnamese Army (as the Vietnamese stood up, US forces stood down). By 1972 US forces in Viet Nam were down to 69,000, little more than one tenth of the half-million troops there when Nixon took office.
He filled his administration with men like himself – able, ruthless, and self-interested. The roll call of his administration reads like a who’s who of the key figures of every subsequent Republican administration down to this day. Among these men were Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Nixon also created the first modern press relations apparatus, with messages of the day geared to a 24 hour news cycle, a model that has been followed by every president since that time.
In 1972 the Democrats, still wracked with the divisions which surfaced during the 1968 campaign, chose South Dakota Senator George McGovern as their presidential nominee, among much intra-party infighting. McGovern, a war hero and by all accounts an extremely decent man, was a hapless campaigner, and no match for the well-oiled machinery of the Nixon reelection effort. McGovern campaigned on a strong anti-war platform, including unilateral US withdrawal from Viet Nam in exchange for return of our prisoners of war, amnesty for draft evaders, and a large reduction in defense spending. During the campaign it was revealed in the press that his Vice Presidential running mate, Thomas Eagleton, had been treated for depression with electroshock therapy years before, a fact which Eagleton had failed to mention in the pre-nomination vetting process. McGovern seemed indecisive in his handling of this crisis, ultimately dropping Eagleton for Sargent Shriver, after having promised to back Eagleton "1000 percent". All of this allowed the Nixon campaign to successfully paint McGovern as a fringe candidate who was weak on national security and out of step with mainstream American values. To put a final nail in McGovern’s coffin, Nixon’s National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger announced in October, 1972, that there had been a breakthrough in the Paris peace talks with North Vietnam, and "peace was at hand".
Nixon was reelected in one of the largest landslide victories in US presidential history, winning every state except Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. Although last-minute objections from South Vietnam nearly derailed the agreement between the US and North Vietnam, in January, 1973 the Paris Peace Accords were signed, ending direct US military involvement in Vietnam. For this achievement, Kissinger shared the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize with Le Duc Tho, his North Vietnamese counterpart.
As he entered his second term, Nixon could view with merited pride his numerous achievements, and no doubt looked forward to a second term of even more triumphs. Little could he know that his glittering first term would become merely the backdrop for the Greek tragedy of his second, wherein an able and accomplished man is cut down at the height of his success due to his own internal flaws.
Despite his undoubted political gifts, Nixon was also a suspicious, vindictive, and obsessively secretive man, with a thin skin and a long memory for grudges. He was given to a grandiose sense of himself as always in the right, but surrounded by devious enemies and untrustworthy friends.
Nixon’s grandiosity led him to an expansive view of the powers of the president, notions that have been termed the "Imperial Presidency". Under this conception, the president is literally above the law; or as Nixon declared in his interview with David Frost in 1977, "Well, when the President does it, that means it’s not illegal." (Frost, stunned, followed up, "By definition?" Nixon, unrelenting, replied, "Exactly.") In Nixon’s view, the only restraints on a president were Congress’ power of the purse, and the voters’ ability to vote him out of office.
Combining this lofty view of his powers with his innate suspiciousness and fetish for secrecy, Nixon directed or countenanced an ever-expanding web of illegal, extra-legal, or ethically suspect activities: secret cash payments from dubious sources, paid into hidden slush funds, used for blatantly partisan political purposes; unlawful wiretaps of journalists and others; misuse of the CIA and FBI to spy on domestic political enemies, or to block investigations into his administration’s more questionable activities; "dirty tricks" against candidates for the Democratic nomination for president; and the creation of an extra-legal "Plumbers Unit" to track down and halt leaks of information to the media. The public got its first hint of these shenanigans in June of 1972, during the reelection campaign, when five "burglars" were apprehended breaking into the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate Hotel complex in Washington, DC. The burglars were quickly found to have shadowy ties with the Nixon administration, and the scandal known as Watergate began its torturous course that led to Nixon’s eventual forced resignation in August, 1974.
As the scandal grew in scope and seriousness during 1973, it was felt by many that impeachment of the President would be unwise even if warranted, since Nixon’s Vice President Spiro Agnew was widely viewed as being possibly even worse than Nixon. Agnew had a seamy political past dating back to at least his tenure as Governor of Maryland. During his time as Vice President, he served as the administration’s rhetorical hatchet man, leading the charge in speeches against the administration’s enemies, defined as journalists, anti-war activists, and other critics. He developed a bombastic speaking style, full of sneering, alliterative critiques of his enemies. Speechwriters William Safire and Pat Buchanan fed him lines such as "nattering nabobs of negativism", "pusillanimous pussyfoots", and "effete corps of impudent snobs", which he delivered with gusto. He was a pioneer in the effort to make the label "liberal" a term of opprobium, calling his opponents "radiclibs", for radical liberals. Over a decade later, talk radio hosts would complete the rhetorical demonization of liberals he so energetically began.
In 1973, Agnew’s past caught up with him, and he was indicted on charges of tax evasion and money laundering connected to a bribery scheme during his tenure as Governor of Maryland. He resigned as Vice Presdident and pleaded nolo contendere to the charges. His resignation triggered the first-ever use of the 25th Amendment of the Constitution, passed in the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination, which clarifies several ambiguities in the process of Presidential succession. Under this Amendment, the President may nominate a candidate to fill a vacancy in the office of Vice President, to be confirmed by a majority of both Houses of Congress. Nixon, still fighting to save his Presidency, nominated the widely liked (and completely nonthreatening) Gerald Ford, then Minority Leader of the House, who was overwhelmingly confirmed as Vice President.
Nixon finally left office in August of 1974, flying off in a helicopter, still waving his trademark two-handed "Vee" signs. Gerald Ford ascended to the office of President and set about trying to bind up the nation’s wounds. Within two weeks he nominated Nelson Rockefeller as Vice President, who was speedily confirmed. Within a month he shocked the nation by giving Nixon a full pardon, a decision so controversial at the time that Ford agreed to give sworn testimony about it to Congress, the only time a sitting President has ever done so. The merits of the decision are debated to this day. Whatever the final judgement of history may be, the immediate judgement of the voters was negative, as the pardon was widely credited as a deciding factor in Ford’s loss in his reelection bid in 1976.
His successful opponent, and next President of the United States, was the little-known peanut farmer and former Governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter, who, despite his undoubted gifts and basic decency, was fated to confirm the Democrats' reputation for ineffectuality.
Update: See also
Part 1: From Lincoln to Goldwater