Nixonland
One of the last books I bought at Olsson’s was Rick Perlstein’s “Nixonland: The Rise Of A President And The Fracturing Of America”. Admittedly, I have a minor obsession with things that were happening in history around the time of my birth, but maybe as I think about it, this is just an illusion. The time of my birth is simply a convenient benchmark when trying to understand what lead us to this moment - continuous processes all, to be sure.
Richard Nixon: I’ve heard the name tossed about all my life. It was just too soon for me to think of him as history until lately. As I embark on Perlstein’s account of the man, I see that there really was somebody standing at the imaginary point so many changes appeared to pivot around. Silly me… This must be yet another illusion: identical to the cosmological problem of every point in the universe appearing to be the center from which the whole thing is expanding. But I’m not so sure. Let me tell you what I’ve got so far.
In Jonathan Chait’s “The Great Con”, which I read last summer, I discovered something about how the Conservative wing of the Republican party was ousted. John McCain is in some ways trying to reclaim that territory, but perhaps none of those voters will trust him after so many years of playing along with the neo-conservatives. It doesn’t matter how many times Sarah Palin says “Maverick”. If you dream of a time when Republicans were truly conservative, you’re also dreaming of balanced budgets and racial segregation - Eisenhower apparently thought tax cuts were irresponsible fiscal policy. Instead we get Reaganomics and the Laffer Curve - dubious in the long term, but guaranteed to rev things up in the short.
One more distant point of reference here is Jefferey Scheuer’s “The Sound Bite Society”, which seemed to say: Television favors arguments that are easier to express quickly; You’ll run out of time trying to map out the nuances of a more complicated policy. This is how we got Bill Clinton: A guy who understands all the subtle gradations will only get so far in politics without charisma. Hey - he’s the only Democrat in the White house since Carter. Maybe Obama will clinch it when McCain implodes. Not exactly an attractive trait. Hmmm… remind me that there is an important thread here for later.
Nixon came along at the right moment to pass himself off as a “regular guy”. In contrast to the establishment “eggheads”. A striver among elites. A striver suppressed by the elites. Plenty of people could identify - people who don’t want some smug bastard at the helm. The elites were correct when they complained about Nixon pandering to baser sympathies - but that just made them look even worse.
Posted by Evan Bittner Sun, 12 Oct 2008 22:22:00 GMT
