THE NEW NIXON

Even the ultimate insider, Richard Nixon, would try to refashion himself as an outsider in 1968

How Could Nixon Refashion himself as an outsider?

Not easy:  had been around for a long time

But:

Dems nominate Hubert Humphrey – a stalwart of the Dem establishment

Nixon had some genuine claims to being an outsider

Most Importantly, pick us themes from Wallace

Selects Spiro Agnew as a running mate – to help him with these themes

Nixon delivers on some his conservative promises

Return decisions to localities

Crime bill

But Nixon also supports a lot of progressive legislation

Environmental legislation

Family Assistance Plan

Secrecy was key to Nixon’s Success, and ultimately, the source of his downfall

 

NIXON AND SECRECY

start by making the case for secrecy

True that Nixon was secretive by nature

But there were plenty of sound structural reasons for secrecy

Very hard to accomplish a radical change in policy without it

The best case for the Success of secrecy in the Nixon administration was his opening to China

Most of the uses of secrecy were NOT so successful,

We will talk about the secret bombing of Cambodia

End the lecture with the worst abuse of secrecy Watergate

And will sum up some of the legacies of Watergate right now

Undermines confidence in government

Raises serious concerns about executive privilege

Turns journalists into the nations new heros

Sets off a wave of investigative reporting

Investigative reporting fueled by combination of distrust of government nd belief that what appears on the surface is a façade, a lie

Need to dig, probe, INVESTIGATE

Watergate served as catalyst, in conjunction with Vietnam, for Congress to ReASSERT itself

Watergate, temporarily sidetracked a growing conservative movement in the United States

that movement was built on some of the very themes that Nixon was trumpeting in 1972

local control

getting big government out of people’s lives

giving voice to the forgotten man – the silent majority

This could best be seen in the South, where these kinds of appeal were turning millions of Southern white Democrats into Republicans

But this conservative stirring would have to wait for a national leader who could communicate these ideas far better than Nixon and who could glimpse morning in America, not the gloom and ignominy that surrounded Nixon in his last year.

Final lesson of Watergate, perhaps: the importance of standing up to unconstitutional, criminal and improper actions by a president, even if she is in your own party

After everything, tapes, Supreme Court decision, etc, Nixon only resigned because Republicans stood up to him.