End Riff

Ed Ayers: Molly Michelmore is the author of ‘Tax and Spend: The Welfare State, Tax Politics, and the Limits of American Liberalism’.
As you guys know, I don’t really focus very much on the 20th Century, but I do remember Richard Nixon, and I’ve certainly seen him represented in popular culture very much. I’d have to say I was little surprised at some of the things we were talking about in this show. So have we misunderstood Richard Nixon?

Brian Balogh: Well certainly scholars think we have, and Nixon-

Ed Ayers: Some scholars apparently, since this one missed the memo.

Brian Balogh: No, no, no, no, no. 20th Century scholars have. Nixon, like most presidential administrations, has gone through all kinds of revisionist cycles. Certainly he was remembered as Tricky Dick. He was remembered for his impeachment, and of course he was remembered for extending the Vietnam War when he coyly suggested that he was gonna end it when he ran for president. But Nixon revisionism in many ways started by reconsidering the importance of his opening to the People’s Republic of China. It’s important to remember that really just a few years before Nixon was elected the first time in 1968, China was viewed as 10 times more irrational and threatening than even our strongest enemy the Soviet Union.
There were all kinds of ethnic and racial stereotypes about those crazy Chinese, and I think what has happened is as China’s role in the world and influences increased we’ve recognized the importance of Nixon’s opening to China, and there is literally a phrase “It took Nixon to go to China”. Meaning it took an old cold warrior like Richard Nixon to make an opening to this Communist nation.

Nathan Connolly: I have a slightly different vantage point for explaining Nixon and his revision in some ways is that we are reevaluating the 70s as a period in ways that we just didn’t in the 80s and in earlier moments. It’s really wonderful to see how the 70s have become a point in time that historians are taking very seriously. They’re using Nixon as a kind of starter for understanding all kinds of political realignments, thinking about, again, the environmental movement, thinking about law and order politics, a whole host of questions that can be traced to the early 1970s and certainly our tributaries flowing from interventions that Nixon made. Even the idea that Republicans are supposed to be reaching out to minority voters in ways that are defined in the modern era by appeals to peoples’ property rights, or appeals to their sensibility of being generally aggrieved.
All of that really does begin with the kinds of interventions that Nixon made. Again, largely for pragmatic reasons. So I think it’s important to recognize certainly that Watergate is still that starting point, that base, that root, for describing any other political scandal, but there’s a lot that can be said about other kinds of movements that began under Nixon that had a very long shelf life well after.

Ed Ayers: Why hasn’t that widespread scholarly revision penetrated to the popular realm more? We still Tricky Dick and Watergate.

Brian Balogh: David Greeenberg nailed it, the image of presidents is incredibly important, and I think it will be hard no matter what Nixon accomplished on the policy front to erase first the image of Tricky Dick, and most enduringly the only president who has resigned from the presidency. I just wanted to add to what Nathan was saying about reaching out, because it’s so important to remember this, Nixon was president before the era of hard polarization along partisan lines. When Nixon was President, he had a deal with a Democratic majority in both houses, but it’s very important to remember that the Democratic party still contained a very powerful conservative Southern wing, and there was something that has become a totally endangered species, that’s the moderate Republican.
So the Republicans had lots of liberals, and in fact in the area of Civil Rights there were some very progressive Republicans and there were some very, very reactionary Democrats. Some of the reasons that we remember Nixon as passing legislation, like all that environmental legislation, was that he was able to work with the middle from both parties in ways that is very difficult to do today regardless of who the president is. Whether it’s Donald Trump, or Barack Obama.

Ed Ayers: So, Brian and Nathan, as the voice of the silent majority here trying to understand this Nixon guy, always associated him with a Southern strategy in which he pivots to trying to appeal to those former Southern Democrats to the Republican party. No?

Nathan Connolly: Well, the country isn’t really in a position to adopt an explicit appeal to race, or even to good ole boy Southern politics. In 1970 the country is a different place, even in the five or six years that have passed since major legislation of the 1960s. So there are ways in which Nixon’s administration makes one go at trying to appeal in the midterm elections of 1970 on basically running candidates who are making overt racial references, and then moves to something far more subtle once they get trounced in those midterms in 1970. So there’s a way that Spiro Agnew and other members of the Nixon team are learning how to talk about a quote/unquote Welfare Ethic for instance, as a way of dog whistling certain kinds of racial politics. Certainly law and order becomes one of these.
Even black capitalism becomes a really effective way of reaching voters on both sides of the color line, because the idea is that you’re gonna use the free market to give African-Americans a chance of economic equality and not use government programs. Certainly many African-Americans are like, “Absolutely, we want to be good businessmen and Capitalists.” So Nixon is extraordinarily nimble in his ability to use language and wield it on the campaign trail and with his surrogates in ways that allows him to undermine what would be considered a state-funded federally orchestrated Civil Rights approach, and instead, find ways of building new inroads into ethnic white voters and in some cases conservative African-American voters on a vocabulary that is not as threatening as some who experienced 1960s might consider.

Brian Balogh: Yeah, and Nathan, remember Nixon had to use those dog whistles because there was someone in the South who was using a bullhorn, and his name was George Wallace.

Nathan Connolly: That’s right. That’s right.

Brian Balogh: And there was nothing subtle about his visceral appeal to race.

Matt Lassiter: This is very interesting to me living in another century, but what I want to know is what consequence does it have for today that we’re re-imagining Nixon as a more, you say, nuanced, or more nimble man? What difference does it make that he’s not the person that the popular perception has him to be?

Nathan Connolly: I think the first thing is to one, look at the politics of the late 60s and early 70s with new eyes, and not to just let the scandal of Watergate do what I think it wound up doing which was to simply discredit any forms of government action in general, right? I think there’s a way that the real gravity of the Watergate scandal needs to be de-centered a little bit, and say, “Yeah, you know what? The 1970s were a really phenomenal moment of really important long-term legislation.” So anything that de-centers the scandal, or state failure, and looks at some of the gains in a broad variety of realms, I think is very important way to start that conversation.

Brian Balogh: I’d second that, Nathan, and talk about taking that longer view, even when we’re in the midst of an administration. So to apply Nathan’s lesson to our current president, regardless of the kind of controversies that are swirling, and the constitutional crisis, and I mean plural, that we are facing today, the fact of the matter is Donald Trump’s appointment of two Supreme Court Justices may well change the politics and the policy of the United States for decades to come. Perhaps we should be paying a little bit more attention to that right now.

Brian Balogh: So do you want a real personal anecdote?

Nathan Connolly: Oh, he’s got something!

Brian Balogh: Heck yeah! Of course! I think you guys know that I grew up in South Florida, and my father had customers for his Jewelry store in high places, and one of those customers was good friend of Richard Nixon and Bebe Rebozo.

Ed Ayers: Oh, one of the great names of American history.

Brian Balogh: Exactly. This customer owned a steakhouse, wait for it, called the Hasta Manana. This was before the day, Nathan, when people had flashlights in their cellphones. In fact, they didn’t even have cellphones, but when you walked into the Hasta Manana, you could have used a flashlight in your cellphone. It was all dark, and my father said when we were eating there one night, “You wanna see Richard Nixon?” So he took me and we went back to literally a room that looked like a cave, and truth in advertising I never saw Richard Nixon and Bebe Rebozo because it was so dark I couldn’t see anybody, but my father insists that Richard Nixon and Bebe Rebozo were enjoying a steak there at the Hasta Manana.

Ed Ayers: What year was this?

Brian Balogh: Oh, this must have been in the late 60s or early 70s.

Ed Ayers: Wow, so he was President?

Brian Balogh: Oh yeah!

Ed Ayers: I’m not trying to poke holes in your stories, and I want to believe it, but were there not Secret Service agents around or something?

Brian Balogh: They were so good I didn’t see them that night.

Nathan Connolly: So, Brian, that’s the most Nixon story I’ve ever heard, right? It’s the president you can see, but not see.
That’s gonna do it for us today. Do get in touch. You’ll find us at backstoryradio.org, or send an email to backstory@virginia.edu. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter at Back Story Radio. Whatever you do, don’t be a stranger.

Ed Ayers: Back Story is produced at Virginia Humanities. Major support is provided by an anonymous donor, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, and the Johns Hopkins University. Additional support is provided by the Tomato Fund, cultivating fresh ideas in the arts, the humanities, and the environment.

Speaker 11: Brian Balogh is professor of History at the University of Virginia. Ed Ayers is professor of the Humanities and President Emeritus of the University of Richmond. Joanne Freeman is professor of History and American studies at Yale University. Nathan Connolly is the Herbert Baxter Adams associate professor of History at the Johns Hopkins University. Back Story was created by Andrew Wyndham for Virginia Humanities.