We are often told that the Republican Party is the party of Lincoln, of Theodore Roosevelt, of Ronald Reagan. We are to view these men as the standard-bearers of true Republican values - of strength, honor, integrity, gritty, manly patriotism, and the willingness to endure in the face of overwhelming odds and against severe criticism. All these traits are indeed part of the make-up of each of these men (yes, I said something nice about Reagan). Yet our contemporary Republican Party, despite the bleating of the current presidential candidates, is not the party of Reagan. We are living in the last days not of the age of Reagan, or perhaps of Barry Goldwater-style Republicanism. No, our current Republican Party models itself after our most tragic President - Richard Milhouse Nixon.
It is necessary to understand this point, upon which I shall elaborate below, if we are to understand our current situation. I am writing so much background material here, so much historical information because we cannot move forward unless we are clear-eyed about where we've been. I apologize if this is boring, but all of this is more for my own benefit than anyone else's, and I rarely bore myself so please bear with me.
The first thing that it is important to remember about Nixon is that he never got over two defeats - first for the Presidency against John Kennedy, second for the governorship of California against Pat Brown. Despite journalistic nonsense during the 2000 campaign post-game, Nixon indeed was more than willing to go to court to challenge Illinois' election results precisely because there was more than enough evidence to show that the Daley machine threw the entire state in to the Democratic camp. I do believe that he resented his advisers refusal to move forward more swiftly and publicly. When he lost the governor's race for California two years later, it was quite clear in his bitter remarks about not having Dick Nixon to kick around any more that he viewed his defeat as a personal repudiation.
It is also important to remember that, with all his flaws of character, temperament, and intellect, Nixon was the embodiment of many of the values of post-WWII America. Indeed, his many flaws, as well as his virtues, were precisely what made him so emblematic of the United States as it struggled to redefine itself in light of the new reality of American hegemony in the world. In other words, both his rise, in 1946, and his fall, in 1974, bookended the period of American singular domination of the world scene and its eventual slow decline in the face of changing world circumstances.
With the take-over of much of the machinery of the Republican party by various right-wing groups in the run-up and aftermath of the 1964 Goldwater debacle, I believe Nixon saw his main chance to manipulate feelings over the pace of social change. The Johnson Administration's growing obsession with Vietnam only added to the possibilities for a Republican candidate in 1968. With a combination of cunning, cleverness, and ruthlessness (using unofficial campaign adviser Henry Kissinger as a plumber for information on Administration peace efforts with North Vietnam, as well as a monkey-wrencher of the worst sort was a stroke of evil genius), combined with Humphrey's refusal to repudiate Johnson (who apparently still had his VP's manhood safely in his hip pocket) until late in the campaign gave Nixon enough breathing room to eke out a victory (although, as T. H. White's The Making of the President, 1968 points out, had the election been held no more than five days later, the trend back to Humphrey and the Democrats would have given the election to Humphrey). While many saw Nixon as a moderate, and a President who was not given to partisan concerns - it was repeated over and over again by journalists who claimed to "know" Nixon that he had chosen Maryland governor Spiro Agnew to be his partisan hatchet man - he actually ran his administration upon the principle that the principle reason fro gaining power was the maintenance of power. The entire machinery that led to his eventual resignation was put in place almost immediately upon his inauguration, with only the flourishes of the plumbers being added after the leaking of the Pentagon Papers in 1971.
As a diarist over at The Daily Kos notes here, the playbook for turning the federal bureaucracy into an arm of the Republican Party is not an invention of Karl Rove. Rove, rather, is using the rules set forth a generation ago by one Fred Malek, of whom Rove is merely a protege. Malek was clever, malicious, sneaky, ruthless, and ultimately stupid. I add the last epithet because he actually put it in writing that one should never put things in writing (kind of like the bogus notion that primitive people are afraid of cameras because it might capture their soul; only in this case, putting things in writing might reveal that these people don't have souls).
Whether it's Ronald Reagan's congenial so-called eleventh commandment ("Thou shalt not speak evil of your fellow Republicans"), George H. W. Bush's use of what was called "blue smoke and mirrors" by two journalists to win the 1988 Presidential election - flag burning and Willie Horton were the precedent on the eve of the end of the Cold War and the first Gulf War were followed by the lack of any serious rationale for his re-election other than the idea that the Presidency was a Republican office are emblematic of Nixonian ideals. The harassment of President Clinton over non-existent scandals, the stealth campaign of George W. Bush in 2000 and the ruthlessness followed by self-defeating stupidity of the ensuing elections up through last years Republican debacle all show the hallmarks of the Nixonian idee fixe - both sides are corrupt, but only Republicans get in trouble for it, so why not go whole hog and corrupt the entire machinery. Power is, after all, its own reward as the Democratic Party has shown time and again (does anyone think FDR was elected four times out of selflessness?). These ideas are at the heart of much Republican whining over the media - when Democrats are caught engaged in dirty politics, it's considered all part of the game; in their eyes, the Republicans pursue no worse strategies than Democrats, but are held to a different standard by the press and the public. It all goes back, of course, to the refusal to recognize that dirty politics led to Nixon's first defeat in 1960. Whether it's Rush Limbaugh playing the victim card, or the pimping of phony voter fraud cases (aided and abetted by America's favorite past-time, racism), there is a direct line to Nixon's narrow loss to JFK that has to be remembered.
As we move forward to next year's election and consider all the changes in our country over the past few years, we have to remember the patron saint of the Republican Party isn't Abraham Lincoln or even Dwight David Eisenhower. It is the Trickster himself. With that in mind, should deciding for whom to vote be an issue?
Virtual Tin Cup
