High Crimes
July 4, 2009
“There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. [For example], when you have a black and a white…”
–Richard Nixon, in an audiotaped White House discussion concerning the Supreme Court’s legalization of abortion, January 23, 1973
Nixon’s bitter words regarding the alleged efficacy of abortion for birth-control purposes are another painful reminder (as if we needed another one) of the damage the thirty-seventh President did to the GOP’s image in the eyes of black voters. Nixon was certainly a complicated figure, and despite this incendiary, foul comment, one hesitates to label him an active bigot. However, the Nixon years only exacerbated the divide between blacks and the party of Lincoln.
Sixteen years before Nixon mused about miscegenation and abortion, he sang a different, far more pleasant tune. “”Most of us will live to see the day when American boys and girls shall sit, side by side, at any school - public or private - with no respect paid to the color of skin,” Nixon said in a speech urging the passage of the 1957 Civil Rights Act, which was intended to protect black voting rights. “Segregation, discrimination, and prejudice have no place in America.”
There’s no question that Nixon stood up for black people during those grim days. Black voters didn’t forget Nixon’s efforts; although a majority of blacks supported John F. Kennedy in the 1960 Presidential election, Nixon yielded an amazing (by modern standards) thirty-two percent of the black vote (and also received an endorsement from baseball hero Jackie Robinson).
Nixon lost that election by a razor-thin margin, and retreated from politics after losing the 1962 California gubernatorial election, only to come back six years later and win another close race against Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Alabama Governor George Wallace. However, in the 1968 contest, he only received twelve percent of the black vote.
Four years before, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater was trounced by incumbent Lyndon Johnson. Goldwater only yielded six percent of the black vote in 1964, though he won the Deep South. In essence, Goldwater conceded the black vote to Democrats by refusing to support the 1964 Civil Rights Act (even though, as conservatives often point out, a larger percentage of Republicans in Congress voted for the Act than did their Democratic counterparts). While Goldwater claimed that elements of the ’64 Civil Rights Act were unconstitutional, it seemed that he could not endorse the trailblazing law because it would prevent him from being able to (as he put it) “go hunting where the ducks are,” i.e., obtain support from large numbers of whites, some of whom opposed the civil rights movement.
Nixon could have attempted to heal the divide that Goldwater created between blacks and the GOP, but instead he chose a different direction. The left has long argued that Nixon’s 1968 “Southern Strategy” was a deliberate attempt by Nixon to cultivate support from pro-segregation whites, but that’s not exactly the case. The point of the “Southern Strategy” was to once again concede the black vote to the Democrats while establishing the GOP as the home of the white middle class and white working class. This strategy was the result of demographics, not discrimination: since middle- and working-class whites represented a numerical majority at the time, Nixon and his advisers figured that tailoring the party to the interests, needs and desires of middle- and working-class whites would be a fail-safe plan for electoral success. This explains the repeated references to “law and order” and the suggestion that Nixon would restore peace and tranquility to the major cities.
Considering the political and cultural climate of the age, Nixon and his advisers had to have known that tailoring the GOP to the interests of working- and middle-class whites would, by definition, mean that some whites with retrograde views on race would vote for the Republicans. Nixon didn’t care about that, however. He just wanted to win.
It’s often been argued that Nixon was progressive and regressive at the same time on race: while he certainly used ugly rhetoric in those audiotapes, he also expanded the definition and reach of affirmative action during his Presidency. As Linda Chavez noted in an October 7, 1997 Wall Street Journal article, “In the 1969 Philadelphia Plan, the Nixon administration ordered hiring ‘goals’ for construction unions. That program became the centerpiece of the Office for Federal Contract Compliance at the Department of Labor, serving as a model for the ‘goals and timetables’ approach that forces federal contractors to hire a specific percentage of minorities and women. What’s more, the Nixon administration turned the ineffectual Equal Employment Opportunity Commission into an aggressive prosecuting agency. It was President Nixon who proposed amendments that gave the EEOC the authority to bring class-action suits against private employers in order to win hiring and promotion quotas for minorities and women.” Of course, it can be argued that Nixon expanded questionable forms of affirmative action in order to exacerbate tensions between the races—tensions that he could exploit for political gain. As Chavez pointed out in the WSJ piece, “Historian Hugh Davis Graham notes that one of the true ironies of the 1972 campaign was that Nixon ran against the very racial quotas his administration had championed.”
Historian Dean Kotlowski once asserted that Nixon was “…the greatest school desegregator in American history,” an opinion shared by conservative writer Bruce Bartlett. However, considering his machinations regarding affirmative action, one has to wonder if Nixon’s desegregation efforts were undertaken with noble intent, or undertaken with an eye towards exploiting white anti-busing animus.
It’s impossible to know what’s in a person’s heart, though it’s certainly easy to tell what’s on a person’s tongue. Perhaps Nixon’s horrid 1973 statement was a reference to national attitudes regarding miscegenation, as opposed to his own. Perhaps Nixon was privately conflicted about his decision to maintain Goldwater’s unofficial policy of writing off the black vote. Perhaps Nixon was the most misunderstood President in US history, his Watergate crimes notwithstanding. Perhaps this is all true; perhaps none of it is.
Clearly, Nixon had a conscience regarding race at one time; there were many white politicians (including scores of Democrats) who would have been scared to stand up for black rights with the boldness Nixon exhibited in the late-1950s. What went wrong in Nixon’s mind? Why did he join Goldwater in the foolish, sad decision to write off the black vote?
Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” was not destructive in its intent, but it was pernicious in its effect. Today, de facto racial segregation pervades our political system, with few Republicans of color holding prominent elected positions. Yes, I’d like to believe that liberal Democratic propaganda is wholly responsible for this disparity, but I know that’s not entirely true. The GOP’s concession of the black vote to Democrats—a policy conceived by Goldwater and ratified by Nixon—gave rise to this racial split. It has wounded us all, politically and psychologically.
I know Nixon was a human being. Despite his crimes, despite his words, despite his political gamesmanship, I know that he had a heart, a heart that once recognized injustice. Why did that heart grow cold? Why did he, in effect, endorse political segregation in 1968? Why couldn’t he foresee the damage his actions would do to this country? Why couldn’t he understand that the “Southern Strategy” would ultimately scar the GOP?
Maybe he did answer that question—on a tape that hasn’t been released yet.
