Nixon's Appeal to the Great Silent Majority

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"So tonight, to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans, I ask for your support. I pledged in my campaign for the presidency to end the war in a way that we could win the peace. I have initiated a plan of action which will enable me to keep that pledge. The more support I can have from the American people, the sooner that pledge can be redeemed. For the more divided we are at home, the less likely the enemy is to negotiate at Paris."

Richard Nixon
Nov. 3, 1969

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If it hadn't been for the speeches and statements he made during the Watergate scandal, the speech that Richard Nixon gave 45 years ago tonight might have been remembered as his most significant presidential address.

The American people were divided over the war in Vietnam, a division that came to be perceived along all sorts of other (mostly irrelevant) lines — by race, by age, by gender, by region, by economic status — that weren't entirely irrelevant.

On this night in 1969, Richard Nixon introduced the concept of the mythical "great silent majority" into the American dialogue — suggesting that, in spite of themselves, most middle class Americans agreed with each other but were too polite to say so, and implying that he was one of them — a true–blue patriotic American who had remained silent too long. He contrasted his strategy of political realism with the vocal minority and its unrealistic idealism.

He tried to strike a somewhat defiant note. "If I conclude that increased enemy action jeopardizes our remaining forces in Vietnam," Nixon declared, "I shall not hesitate to take strong and effective measures to deal with that situation." He assured his listeners that was not a threat but a promise.

Nixon appealed for their support — and urged them (again by implication) not to participate in demonstrations against the war or to side with the counterculture — on this night 45 years ago. He had been elected president a year earlier by an extremely narrow margin, and he wanted to build a consensus.

He did better than that, at least initially. Before the speech, Gallup reported that his approval rating was 56%; after the speech, his approval was up 11 points to 67%, nearly the highest of his presidency.

And, in reality, it may well have laid the foundation for his 49–state landslide re–election in 1972.

In many ways, though, I have believed that the speech was a logical extension of the "Southern strategy" Nixon used to win the 1968 presidential campaign. At that time, Democrats still dominated Southern politics, but by using subtle and not–so–subtle appeals to racism, Republicans began chipping away at the Democrats' grip on politics in the South.

The most immediate effect was to siphon off votes upon which the Democrats' presidential nominee could always depend in the past — with the most direct recipient being independent candidate George Wallace. The Republicans hoped to pick off a few Southern states with Wallace and Hubert Humphrey dividing a vote that almost certainly would have defeated Nixon if it had remained united. At least, that is how Nixon saw it.

Nixon learned that divide and conquer works. Wallace still won nearly half a dozen Southern states, but Nixon managed to carry Florida, Virginia, Tennessee and the Carolinas — and, in so doing, won the election. But the Southern strategy was regionally confining. "Silent majority" transcended regional boundaries.

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After his speech 45 years ago tonight, Nixon used appeals to patriotism to define Republicans — and to divide groups of Americans — having already begun a process that would fulfill Lyndon Johnson's prophecy that his advocacy of civil rights legislation had handed the South to the Republicans for a generation.

In hindsight, I would say the ongoing shift from Democrat to Republican in the South truly began in that 1968 election. What other conclusion can one draw? The Democrats swept the nation and many Southern states in 1964, when Johnson faced Barry Goldwater. But, in the 1964 election results, there were clues to be found, hints about the direction the South was traveling.

It happened quietly and gradually. It certainly was not achieved overnight. But little by little, one by one, Southern states voted for Republicans on the federal level, then they began to do it on the state and local levels as well. And, one by one, Republicans picked off each state.

Tomorrow, it is quite likely that my home state of Arkansas will be the last Southern domino to completely fall when Sen. Mark Pryor appears poised to lose his bid for a third term — perhaps the last time that Nixon's political legacy will be felt in America.

The Southern strategy has seen some backsliding in recent elections, though, with Virginia and North Carolina voting for a Democrat for president for the first time in decades and Florida voting Democratic as well — and Democrats representing states like Louisiana and North Carolina in the Senate — but much of that can be attributed to the arrivals of Democrats whose jobs have brought them there from Northern and coastal cities. So the Southern strategy may be around for a few more elections. There may still be some work to be done in some place.

But, by and large, that transition is nearly complete now.

That shift in party preference may have been the most remarkable domestic political development I have witnessed in my lifetime — the transformation of an entire region, the South, from reliably Democrat to reliably Republican. I grew up in the South; it simply went without saying that just about everyone there was a Democrat, and political squabbles came down to the liberal, conservative and moderate wings of the party. Winning the primary in the spring or early summer was tantamount to election; beating the Republican in November was a formality.

Some people would say that Republicans have always been right–wingers, but the truth is that there really was no rightward shift in Republican ideology, in the South or elsewhere, until 1980, when the Reagan campaign and the emergence of the Moral Majority combined to coax conservative Christians into politics. There were pockets of Republican support throughout the South before then. Up until that time, I saw no real political involvement on the part of the churches — but I sure saw it after that.

Nearly all of the Republicans who were nominated in the decades before Reagan — including both Nixon himself and the man Nixon served as vice president, Dwight Eisenhower — are increasingly viewed as too moderate for the modern Republican Party.

It was only after Reagan won the nomination that the momentum for Republicans in the South really became noticeable.

All that was still many years away when Nixon spoke to the "great silent majority" 45 years ago tonight. Nixon drew the lines in the dirt that night.

"Let historians not record that, when America was the most powerful nation in the world, we passed on the other side of the road and allowed the last hopes for peace and freedom of millions of people to be suffocated by the forces of totalitarianism," Nixon said.

Something to think about when you watch the election returns tomorrow night.

Why We Can't Have a Serious Talk

Last night, I read an article in the Washington Post about the recent electoral embarrassments that have been handed to Barack Obama in Democratic primaries in West Virginia, Arkansas and Kentucky.

Obama, of course, is the incumbent, and he has drawn no serious opposition for the Democrats' nomination. Consequently, some people apparently believe, the Democrats in the primaries that are being held late in the process should line up like good Democrats and vote for the incumbent.

Even if they have objections.

But the voters in West Virginia, Arkansas and Kentucky have thrown Obama an off–speed pitch when he was looking for a fastball. About two–fifths of the Democratic voters voted for token opposition — in West Virginia, that meant voting for an inmate who is presently incarcerated here in Texas — rather than for the president, who long ago secured his nomination.

The Post's Chris Cillizza writes that many Democrats have a ready excuse for the political resistance they have encountered within their own party — they "ascribe the underperformance by the incumbent to a very simple thing: racism."

Most Democrats speak disparagingly of George W. Bush. And I have no fondness for him, either.

But this is a tactic those Democrats share with Bush and his supporters — and they have been every bit as gleeful in its use and in anticipation of its power to squelch serious discussions.

Sure, it was disguised differently when Bush was president. In those not–so–distant days, anyone who disagreed with Bush on anything was labeled unpatriotic.

End of discussion. Once you have been tarred with that brush, you might as well stop trying.

No matter how strongly you may feel about the issue, no matter how many legitimate concerns you may have, no matter how many hours you may have spent arguing with yourself about it, if the other side has labeled you a racist or unpatriotic, there is nothing you can say to reverse that conclusion, no logic you can offer, no facts you can provide.

But that doesn't mean the allegation is true.

Oh, to be sure, there are people today who do permit race (or religion or gender or sexual preference or anything else) to determine how they will vote, just as there have always been people who were racist (or sexist or homophobic or whatever). And there are people among us who are not patriotic Americans — they have always been with us, too.

That's one of the drawbacks of living in a free society.

But it's not so easy to know who the racists and unpatriotic citizens are. In my experience, they usually don't advertise the fact or leave tell–tale clues behind. They might share their views with like–minded individuals, but they don't usually tend to share them with strangers.

"The problem with that theory," Cillizza writes, "is that it's almost entirely unprovable because it relies on assuming knowledge about voter motivations that — without being a mindreader — no one can know."

It's true that Obama lost all three of those states in 2008, and it is quite likely that he will lose all three in 2012. I don't see a racial backlash in these votes. I see a repeat of a phenomenon I have seen many times in the past — when a candidate locks up his party's nomination, disgruntled voters in the late primaries are emboldened to vote for any alternative on the ballot.

It's an electoral protest, and it should be taken seriously. My experience tells me Democrats shouldn't be dismissive about it.

In 1980 (when another Democrat president was running for re–election), I was living in Arkansas. Gov. Bill Clinton was seeking his second two–year term as governor. He looked like a sure thing. He was young and charismatic, and his only opponent in the party primary was a 77–year–old retired turkey farmer who barely scraped up enough money to pay the filing fee.

Clinton's opponent had no campaign staff or finances to speak of, but he received more than 30% of the vote when the Democrats held their primary.

The governor's staff and supporters insisted that it didn't mean a thing, and, in Arkansas, it was generally accepted that it really didn't mean much. Arkansans, after all, had elected only one Republican governor since Reconstruction.

But they elected another one that November — narrowly.

Both political extremes use the term fascism almost casually in their references to each other, which I find to be alarming — as well as an appalling display of an absence of knowledge.

Neither side is truly fascist — at least, not yet. But, with their blatant use of what Adolf Hitler called "the big lie," it is clear that it probably wouldn't take much to push either one over the edge.

"Make the lie big," Hitler said, "make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it."

It was a lie when Bush's supporters accused his detractors of being unpatriotic. It's a lie when Obama's supporters accuse his detractors of being racist.

It has a chilling effect on dissent, and that makes it one of the most anti–democratic (that's democrat with a lowercase d) assertions imaginable.

The Patriotism of Robert E. Lee

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He has been called the greatest general ever produced in America, even though he was on the losing side in the greatest military conflict of his life.

Today is the 203rd birthday of Robert E. Lee. And, while history does remember him as the commander of the losing side in the Civil War, he easily could have led the winning forces. He was approached about being the general of the Union troops, but he would not fight against Virginia, his home state, after it seceded.

So he commanded the Army of Northern Virginia. But did you know that he never wore the insignia of a Confederate general? He only wore the three stars worn by a Confederate colonel, which was equal to the last rank he had achieved in the U.S. Army.

Lee was a patriot, and, like Abraham Lincoln, he wished to keep the Union intact. "I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than a dissolution of the Union," he wrote in a letter to his son.

Yes, Lee was a patriot. But he was somewhat soft–spoken by today's standards. Much of what he said was expressed in letters, like one he wrote to one of his generals several months after Lee surrendered. "True patriotism sometimes requires of men to act exactly contrary, at one period, to that which it does at another, and the motive which impels them — the desire to do right — is precisely the same."

Lee's desire to do right led him to say, "We must forgive our enemies. I can truly say that not a day has passed since the war began that I have not prayed for them."

When the war was over, a woman spoke to him of her hatred of the North. He replied, "Madam, don't bring up your sons to detest the United States government. Recollect that we form one country now. Abandon all these local animosities, and make your sons Americans."

And, on one occasion several years after the war, Lee responded, after hearing Ulysses S. Grant insulted by a faculty member at what is now Washington & Lee University, "Sir, if you ever presume again to speak disrespectfully of General Grant in my presence, either you or I will sever his connection with this university."

There are people who believe his love for and devotion to his home state trumped his instincts about slavery. Some attempt to apply 20th and 21st century standards to a 19th century man.

It is true that, before the war began, Lee had freed the slaves his wife had inherited. But a letter he wrote to his wife five years before the outbreak of the war can be interpreted in several ways:

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"In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral and political evil in any country. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it however a greater evil to the white man than to the black race, and while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially and physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, and I hope will prepare and lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known and ordered by a wise merciful Providence."

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Journalist Douglas Freeman wrote, in 1934, that Southerners of faith in the 19th century, like Lee, "believed that slavery existed because God willed it and they thought it would end when God so ruled. The time and the means were not theirs to decide, conscious though they were of the ill–effects of Negro slavery on both races."

Nevertheless, it is true that, after the war, Lee spoke of his "willingness that blacks should be educated." It would, he said, "be better for the blacks and for the whites," but it was nearly a century before Southern schools were integrated.

It is beyond dispute, as far as I can see, that Lee believed in education. "The education of a man is never completed," he said, "until he dies."

It would hardly be fair to expect anyone from the 19th century to live up to the standards that prevailed a century or two later. Even so, some have applied those standards to Lee's contemporaries, like Abraham Lincoln, as I observed nearly a year ago on the eve of the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth.

Presumably, through the application of similar logic, some people who have never lived in the South have harbored a prejudice against all white Southerners — because of slavery, because of the Civil War, because of the Ku Klux Klan, because of racist politicians, because of racism in general.

But not all white Alabamians were George Wallace, not all white Arkansans were Orval Faubus, not all white Georgians were Lester Maddox. The Wallaces, Faubuses and Maddoxes made it harder for progressive Southerners to be visible, but they were there. I know because I saw them.

It is important to remember — the day after Martin Luther King Day, the day of Massachusetts' special election to choose Ted Kennedy's Senate successor — that no region of this country has a monopoly on racism. School busing, as a means to achieve school desegregation, is maybe the best example.

When I was growing up, my hometown in Arkansas was much smaller than it is today. In those days, it was a rural community with many families, including mine, living outside the city limits. The likelihood of any family living outside the city limits had little to do with race. It was more of an economic thing, in both a positive and negative sense. There were places where lower–income families lived, and there were areas where middle– and higher–income families, in which the parents were better educated and had better jobs, bought land and built homes.

School segregation existed in my hometown before I enrolled in first grade, but integration was in effect by the time I did so I have no first–hand memory of segregated schools. There was never a time when there were no blacks in school with me. And there was never a time — at least that I can recall — when anyone, white or black, resisted school integration in my hometown.

But I do have a first–hand memory of riding school buses. As far–flung as the families were in my hometown, everyone except those who lived a short distance from school rode the bus. It was a normal, everyday experience for me.

It was, therefore, stunning for me — and, I presume, others my age, although I don't remember speaking at length with any of my friends about it — when places like Boston erupted in race riots over school busing. I couldn't really comprehend the issues that were involved. All I could see was adults getting into fights over something that I saw as a fact of life.

Well, it's tough enough to do the right thing in your own time. Never mind what the folks 100 or 150 years from now will think.

Lee himself seemed to comprehend that simple fact.

"After it is all over, as stupid a fellow as I am can see that mistakes were made," he said. "I notice, however, that my mistakes are never told me until it is too late."

Does Military Service = Patriotism?

Here’s my question of the day.

If a person spent part of his/her life wearing a military uniform, is that person automatically more patriotic than someone who didn’t wear the uniform?

Military service in the United States has changed over the years. Today, we have an all-volunteer army, but through most of the 20th century, service in the military was compulsory. We’ve always had volunteers, but we’ve also drafted millions of young Americans who did not want to fight — whether the foe was North Vietnam, North Korea, Imperial Japan or Nazi Germany.

And that led to cases of soldiers deserting their outfits under fire — and draftees fleeing the country to avoid service.

Under the right circumstances, an all-volunteer army is probably the best way to defend a country. Its members want to be there, and they are unburdened by the presence of unhappy draftees.

In the case of America’s all-volunteer armed forces who participated in the Gulf War in the early 1990s, they had the assistance of millions of servicemen from all over the world. Thus, they were able to whip Iraq’s overwhelmed army and drive it from Kuwait in a few weeks.

But even an all-volunteer army is not without its flaws.

With the nation essentially engaged in a two-front war that has seemed to stretch the existing armed forces beyond their capabilities, many people — including myself — have been astonished that a draft has not been necessary.

Stress on America's military is even greater because there is no massive international effort in Afghanistan and Iraq — only the United States and George W. Bush's loosely cobbled "coalition of the willing."

The pressure on America's fighting men and women has led to cases of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression that has led to alcoholism, drug addiction and suicide, and fear that has led to desertion under fire.

People who serve in combat — whether they are compelled to do so or are there because they want to be there — are vulnerable to pain and pressure, the horrors of war. There are heroes, and there are those who lose their nerve in the service. Sometimes it takes the brutality of a battle to identify which is which.

It seems to me that, if anything, military service should mean that the veteran of such service learned something valuable from the experience that can be utilized in future endeavors.

Clearly, that can be an asset in a president.

In the case of John McCain, I have seen glimpses of the wisdom that was imparted to him in Vietnam in the form of his unflagging opposition to torture. That's a position worthy of a president who was shaped by his service in war — and a clear improvement over the current occupant of the White House.

Joe Conason writes, in Salon.com, that ”[t] he most pertinent issue is not what McCain did or didn't do during the war in Vietnam, but what he learned from that searing, incredibly bloody and wholly unnecessary failure of U.S. policy.” He contends that what is vital to McCain's approach to governing is not what he learned in Vietnam but what he didn't learn.

And, while Conason applauds McCain for his ”moral authority” on the issue of torture, he chastises McCain for what his experience in Vietnam did not teach him. He ”seems not to have learned why that war itself was a tragic mistake — and why we needed to leave Vietnam long before we did.”

Conason rejects McCain’s ”bitter analysis” that ”suggests that a ground invasion and an even more destructive bombing campaign, with an unimaginable cost in human life, would have achieved an American victory.”

Somehow, ”military service” has become synonymous with ”patriotism.” More than a mere synonym, it has become a blanket synonym, a ”one size fits all” designation of infallibility.

If one is called a military veteran, it immediately implies that person is a patriot. In the post-9/11 world, ”military service” is code wording for ”patriotism.”

It also implies an almost slavish devotion to an aggressive military approach to foreign affairs.

The point, it seems to me, is not whether one should be aggressive when engaged in combat.

The point is that one should show restraint until the decision has been made to engage in such combat.

And, with the Bush-Cheney administration, I believe such a decision was made about Iraq before many things had even been tried. It was not the "last resort" that George W. Bush said it would be.

I don't believe a person is a patriot simply because he/she wore a uniform. In many cases (unless the person in question was dishonorably discharged), it proves is that he/she was good at taking orders.

And, after America's five-year presence in Iraq, it appears to me that the phrase "military service" isn't quite as magical as it was recently — although it still retains some of its muscle.

Margaret Talev, writing for McClatchy Newspapers, asks, ”How important is military service in this presidential election?”

McCain would like for the voters to believe in the aura of infallibility that surrounds the veteran status in the popular myth, but it remains to be seen if it will benefit him in this campaign. As Talev points out, ”History shows that whether a candidate has military experience rarely determines who'll win election to the nation's highest office.”

It’s true that military service hasn’t prevented some men from becoming president. The nation’s first president, George Washington, was a general during the Revolutionary War. Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower all served in the military — as did a few other chief executives in the 19th and 20th centuries.

But the last two presidents never served in combat and were elected and re-elected against opponents who served overseas during wartime. Ronald Reagan qualified for limited service during World War II because of his nearsightedness, meaning that three of the last four presidents never served overseas — but nevertheless were elected to two terms each as commander in chief.

Surveys have suggested that, while Congress and the president have continued to lose ground in terms of public approval in recent years, the military retains its high approval in the public’s eyes.

So military service, like wearing an American flag on your lapel, is seen (unjustifiably) as proof of patriotism — when, in fact, they are code words and symbols.

Well, OK, some words really are code words for something else.

And some words have acquired that status over time — usually without total justification — but not without at least a kernel of truth behind it, which is usually how it is with stereotypes.

Like the phrase ”states’ rights” — which I used in this blog in a reference to my reaction to the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on guns.

”States’ rights” came to be associated with resistance to integration.

In my mind, it means that certain rights have always been reserved for the states and, in those areas, the federal government oversteps its authority if it interferes — or attempts to interfere — in state business.

The concept of the rights of the states has always been crucial in American history, and it is legitimate to defend states’ rights. But the phrase was hijacked by the racists and used to shield the terrorist activities of groups like the Ku Klux Klan.

That doesn’t make the concept of states’ rights any less legitimate — it was part of the original Bill of Rights, the Tenth Amendment, to be precise.

The Confederates used the concept to justify the continuation of slavery — which was based more on economics than racism.

And in the years since the Civil War, particularly since the advent of the modern civil rights era, ”states’ rights” has come to be viewed as code wording that implies support for segregation and opposition to civil rights.

By the way, one of the last practitioners of the politics of states’ rights, Jesse Helms of North Carolina, died yesterday at the age of 86.

If there’s anyone left from that generation who participated in the hijacking of that phrase in order to promote the idea of racial segregation as a way to build political power, I don’t know who it is.

Is Patriotism Fair Game?

As we approach the nation's 232nd birthday this Friday, Vincent Carroll asserts, in the Rocky Mountain News, that it's "fair game" to discuss an opponent's patriotism.

He quotes Barack Obama as saying, earlier this week, that "I will never question the patriotism of others in this campaign" — a noble sentiment but one about which Carroll expresses doubts.

"Obama is right, to be sure, that some Americans have been far too quick to question others' patriotism," Carroll writes. And Carroll agrees with Obama's assertion that "[m]ost Americans understood that dissent does not make one unpatriotic" when the Congress was discussing whether to authorize George W. Bush to go to war with Iraq.

"[M]ost probably also understand that not all 300 million Americans are patriots, and that it's not impolite or jingoistic to say so," Carroll says. "If everyone were a patriot, the word would have no meaning."

That's true. And, in my mind, patriotism in the presidential sense is synonymous with commitment to the job of being national leader. In that sense, I think it's legit to talk about your opponent's patriotism.

Even if the opponent was a P.O.W. for several years and endured frequent beatings at the hands of his captors.

But no matter what one thinks of the conflict in which the individual may have fought, it's not a good idea to speak ill of your opponent's patriotism in a way that implies more than a mere lack of full commitment to the job.

For example, you don't want to question someone's willingness to make sacrifices for the country. It isn't wise to attack the patriotism of someone who was injured or maimed in service to our nation.

Of course, that sort of thing doesn't happen in America. Does it?

Former Sen. Max Cleland of Georgia might disagree. He was elected to the Senate in 1996 but he was defeated for re-election in 2002 when his Republican opponent ran advertisements that linked Cleland to Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

The ads implied a lack of patriotism or commitment to homeland security — even though Cleland (who lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam) voted in favor of the resolution authorizing Bush to go to war.

That campaign was a disgraceful chapter in American political history.

Patriotism is fair game when choosing a president. Let's try to remain civil, shall we?

And a happy Fourth of July to everyone!