RIchard Nixon

Richard Nixon is missing from this book. Why?

Comments

[Mike Harding]

To say he's missing is not "technically" correct (check the index on 388-89). He is mentioned and does play a critical role in the New Right movement. McGirr omits his 1972 GOP convention acceptance speech which (imho) implores Democrats to come to the GOP: "Six weeks ago our opponents at their convention rejected many of the great principles of the Democratic Party. To those millions who have been driven out of their home in the Democratic Party, we say come home. We say come home not to another party, but we say come home to the great principles we Americans believe in together.

And I ask you, my fellow Americans, tonight to join us not in a coalition held together only by a desire to gain power. I ask you to join us as members of a new American majority bound together by our common ideals.

I ask everyone listening to me tonight-Democrats, Republicans, independents, to join our new majority--not on the basis of the party label you wear in your lapel, but on the basis of what you believe in your hearts." (http://www.4president.org/speeches/nixon1972acceptance.htm)

All that said, I think history has shown that Nixon was a pragmatist, maybe even an opportunist, whose actions may have upset the right-wing and, ultimately, left them feeling betrayed (wage and price controls, opening with the PRC, detente and trade with the USSR). McGirr could have said more about Nixon's role in pulling the nation to the right, but to say he was absent from the book is a stretch.

Mike

[John Henry]

Good comment - I think it directly relates to the topic of whether the movement was changed from the inside or not.

I guess what I meant to say was I did not see a lot of information talking about the Nixon influence on the "taming down" of the radical movement. I may have just missed it. From my reading it was that the kitchen activists went from supporting Goldwater to Reagan - Nixon was sort of an add on and not important.