Politics of Resentment (2 of 2)

The cultural turmoil of the 1960s resurrected Nixon’s political career. His strong activation of the politics of resentment keyed his success in 1968 and 1969. Nixon developed two rhetorical tropes which he powerfully used. He combined into one group (1) the angry minorities rioting and taking welfare in the cities and (2) the anti-authority college youth with their antiwar campus activism. Nixon argued that both groups victimized everyday Americans with their disobedience, drugs, and violence. When he spoke of one group, he was simultaneously capturing popular resentment against the other.

During his 1968 campaign Nixon said, “our first commitment as a nation in this time of crisis and questioning must be a commitment to order.” Nixon initially blamed students for the violent deaths at Kent State University (the National Guard fired on student protesters in May 1970, killing four students and wounding nine), a position favored by many in the population. Nixon remarked that “this should remind us all once again that when dissent runs to violence, it invites tragedy.”

Four days after Kent State over 200 construction workers in New York City beat with their hard hats students who were protesting the Kent State shooting and the bombing of Cambodia. Nixon praised the construction workers: “Thank God for the hard hats.” A Nixon campaign commercial showed flashing images of demonstrations, riots, police, and violence with the voice-over saying, “let us recognize that the first right of every American is to be free from domestic violence. So, I pledge to you, we shall have order in the United States,” with a following caption stating, “This time…. Vote like your whole world depended on it …Nixon.”

One trope of resentment that Nixon used was the term “the Silent Majority” – although at times he used “the forgotten Americans” or “Middle Americans.” The other trope Nixon used was “tyranny of the minority.” Nixon encouraged white middle-class Americans to see moral validation in their status as victims of liberal social engineering, especially forced busing to obtain integrated education. He became skilled at dividing the electorate to strengthen and consolidate his political base.

Essentially, Nixon continued to use a campaign rhetoric of either-or choices, a rhetoric that seeks defeat of the enemy and victory of the candidate. Nearly all candidates who use a polarizing campaign rhetoric usually switch to a governing rhetoric once elected. The governing rhetoric stresses decorum in which confrontation almost always provides an opening for compromise. Nixon announced in campaign commercials and campaign speeches that Americans were in a two-sided war: the majority position was that of the Republicans and the minority position, the Democrats.

Nixon realized from the very start of his campaign for nomination of the Republican Party that the problem most dividing American was the Vietnam War. Operating on this realization Nixon believed the Paris peace talks between the United States and North Vietnam could make the war issue unimportant. Unknown to nearly all, Nixon sabotaged the Paris peace talks.

In October 1968, a month before the election, President Johnson announced the cessation of bombing. This was the first step in what was expected to be a peace announcement. But at the last minute the South Vietnamese withheld their support for the peace agreement. Johnson found out in late October through wiretaps and intercepts that South Vietnam pulled out of the peace agreement when Nixon had promised them more than what they were getting from Johnson. Johnson decided not to disclose the information for fear of making public the means (wiretaps and intercepts) used to obtain the information. He also thought it would be too explosive to release the information just days before the election. A decision that may have cost Humphrey the election win.

In November 1969, Nixon addressed the nation about his plans for ending the Vietnam War. In the speech, he said that the war has caused deep division among the country but that he would not end the war by immediately withdrawing the military. The speech covered in some detail Nixon’s perspective on the history of the war, the difficulty of peace negotiations, and his plans for ending the war. It became known, however, as the Silent Majority speech for these comments: “And 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 that 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 in Paris. Let us be united for peace. Let us also be united against defeat. Because let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.”

Nixon directed resentment against the war to resentment toward the protestors by developing a rhetoric used many times since. He encouraged Americans to “support our troops.” Calling upon all to “support our troops” can quickly shut down what may be democratically valuable, if not necessary, dialogue about military activities and events.

In other words, the enemy was amongst us, not outside. The enemy was the dangerous protestors, the people who questioned authority of the president, those relatively unkempt young people who sided with the Black Panthers, and others who protested racial biases of the majority. These were the people who gave comfort to the enemy and were the real danger to the country. America was divided, in Nixon’s rhetoric, between war protestors who wanted to bring defeat and humiliation to the country and the good people who silently trusted the president.

Nixon proclaimed that the silent majority was justified in its resentment toward its obnoxious and basically undemocratic enemies. Minorities had disregarded the democratic process, committing rhetorical violence against the silent majority. In Nixon’s narrative, the violent rhetoric protestors used ignored the most basic rule of democracy – refusing to defer to the majority’s rule. Thus, the complaints of the protestors, whether that of an immediate end to the Vietnam War, or social justice, were those of a minority which even if justified could be overruled by the majority. In Nixon’s view, the majority were the victims of the minority.

Why is this significant?

Nixon was probably the first modern American president who used the rhetoric of division and resentment as a governing strategy. But Donald Trump has gone even further in using this rhetoric. His televised campaign rallies, his tweets, and his symbiotic relationship with Fox News far more powerfully communicate this rhetoric thandid Nixon’s speeches from the White House.

Another difference, I believe, between Nixon and Trump deals with the targets of resentment. With Nixon, and to a much lesser degree with Reagan, the targets of resentment were highly salient and public. TV news and newspaperscontinually bombarded the nation with material about urban riots/civil disorders, the dangerous Black Panthers, marches and university sit-ins against authority and the Vietnam War, drug use and drug culture (especially marijuana and LSD), shocking changes in sexual mores, feminism, and the hippie culture. Neither Nixon nor Reagan stirred up these subjects of resentments from below the surface. They were always present and highly visible for years. Trump, however, took something that was not simmering or simmering only below the surface and made it into a target of resentment, especially true of Latino immigration across the southern border.

Casting a longer look back, presidents have made good use of security fears. The security fears targeted an outside enemy, generally communism but more specifically military engagements to protect Americans from communism: the Korean War, Bay of Pigs, Cuban missile crisis, and the Vietnam War. Senator Joe McCarthy and the John Birch Society brought this fear inside with rhetoric about communists inside the government.

In the 1960s the security fear shaded into fear of other Americans. Nixon conjoined the security fear of communism to continue support for the Vietnam War while simultaneously using the fear and resentment of insiders to reinforce his political base. Again, Donald Trump has joined fear of the outsider (Muslims and incoming Latino immigrants) with the resentment of insiders (recent immigrants, especially those who not have full legal status as citizens). Like Nixon, he also uses these fears to divide the country politically, especially by labeling Democrats as those who want open borders.

By the end of the 1960s it was clear that most white Southern Democrats were leaving the party to vote Republican. Pollsters suggested that social issues divided the Democratic base and that the Democratic Party was perceived as a pro-black national party. Kevin Phillips, in his book The Emerging Republican Majority, saw that racial resentment was generating a historical realignment that would keep Republicans in the majority for decades. Beginning in 1970, Phillips’ perspective took hold on Nixon who embraced the politics of racial division of through the use of “dog whistles.” This Republican majority would be largely white and middle class and geographically centered in the South, West, and suburbia. This approach to the electorate gave Nixon 67% of the white vote in 1972.

Phillips recognized the growing importance of the culture wars. At this time, the definition “liberal” was seen less as an embrace of good government and the dangers of concentrated wealth and more as an embrace of moral permissiveness regarding sex, crime, and religion. Republicans worked hard to substitute this new version of liberal for the older version. Race became the key stroking point in the culture wars, although it was often a way to promote benefits to people who were better off than most. In other words, minorities and not wealth became the pressing enemy of the white middle class.