Divide and Conquer

Profane and paranoid in his private rants, Nixon played the statesman in public, denouncing racism and intolerance. He was content to have demagogues like Alabama Gov. George Wallace rage at "pointy-headed intellectuals, swaydo-intellectual morons tellin' [regular folk] how to live their lives." Wallace's raving "made Nixon look respectable when he couched the same sentiment in four-syllable words," writes Perlstein.

Nixon's media coach during the 1968 campaign was a young TV producer named Roger Ailes. When Ailes was putting together televised panel shows, highly contrived to "meet the candidate," he hit on a clever idea for a citizen panelist: "A good, mean, Wallaceite cab driver. Wouldn't that be great?" suggested Ailes. "Some guy to sit there and say, 'Awright, Mac, what about them n----rs?' Nixon could then abhor the incivility of the words, while endorsing a 'moderate' version of the opinion." Perlstein reports that "Ailes walked up and down a nearby cab stand until he found a cabbie who fit the bill."

As president, Nixon never got over being unloved by the press and the Georgetown crowd, and he seethed if he sensed his own staff going soft. The White House taping system recorded his railing about the press: "I don't give the bastards an inch!" He complained about his staff, "Goddamn it, they're people who, they're in Washington, the Establishment's brainwashing them, they're reading the Washington Post, the weekly newsmagazines … And they get sort of discouraged and so forth, they don't realize that that is the time to get tough, to kick the guys"—he shouted at the top of his voice—"in the BALLS! That's what they won't do. That's what I always do."

So it went in Nixonland. Perlstein ends his story with Nixon's overwhelming re-election in 1972. He only begins to tell the Watergate saga, the Greek drama of how Nixon was consumed by his own envies and dreads (and brought down by some true Franklins, men like Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, Harvard '43, and Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox, Harvard '34). "How did Nixonland end? It has not ended yet," are the final words of Perlstein's 748-page book. Roger Ailes, of course, went on to create Fox News—"fair and balanced"—which routinely afflicts and outmaneuvers the old establishment press. Today's Red State-Blue State divide is a legacy of the '60s, argues Perlstein.

He is persuasive—up to a point. Voters in this election year will have a powerful sense of déjà vu when they read "Nixonland." But history never repeats itself exactly. Hillary Clinton has been exploiting white working-class fears of "the other" with subtle (and not-so-subtle) innuendoes and brandishments. But what kind of Orthogonian is a woman who went to Wellesley and Yale Law School? And Barack Obama may speak with the smooth self-assurance (and, occasionally, edge of disdain) of a Franklin. But he is black and grew up feeling like an outsider. The fact that a woman and an African-American are vying for the presidency suggests the '60s produced something more positive than riots and druggie be-ins.

One thing never changes. As Ross Douthat recently noted in The Atlantic, politicians have been scaring voters since the election of 1800, when Thomas Jefferson was painted as a secret agent of the French Revolution. If John McCain wants to, he will be able to stir up old fears and suspicions against the Democrats in the November election. Or maybe he will remember how, in the 2000 election, he was smeared by Republican operatives who learned their dirty tricks from the master.

© 2008