Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (109 page)

Nixon, although thwarted in this effort, persisted in his overall political strategy: to portray his enemies in as violent and unpatriotic a guise as possible. In so doing he raised the level of public acrimony to new highs in 1970. Worried about losing strength in Congress in the off-year elections, Nixon pumped money into close races. In October he took to the road himself to defend "law and order" and to assail his enemies as purveyors of "violence, lawlessness, and permissiveness." He went out of his way to anger demonstrators in the expectation that they would resort to extremes of vulgarity and violence. When they did—in San Jose, protestors stoned his armored car—he seized the chance to denounce what he called "the viciousness of the lawless elements in our society."
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The partisan efforts of Nixon and Agnew in 1970 were among the most aggressive and divisive in the history of postwar political campaigning.
Times
Washington bureau chief, Hugh Sidey, observed that "Nixon's campaign was an appeal to narrowness and selfishness and an insult to the American intelligence. He diminished the presidency."
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The effort, however, did not work. Democratic candidates for the House received 4.1 million votes more than their Republican challengers, a margin that was 3.4 million higher than in 1968. They widened their majority in the lower chamber by nine seats. Republicans increased their numbers by two seats in the Senate but remained a minority. Democrats also gained eleven governorships (but lost in New York and California, where Rockefeller and Reagan were re-elected). The results of the election did not bode well for the GOP in 1972.
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There were a number of explanations for these results, including popular revulsion at GOP tactics as well as the normal mid-term reaction against incumbents. The uncertain state of the economy, however, may also have played a role. Although overall economic growth seemed healthy, signs of economic instability that had become apparent in 1968 grew more worrisome in the next two years. The unemployment rate rose between 1968 and 1970 from 3.6 to 4.9 percent—a jump of more than 33 percent. The consumer price index increased by roughly 11 percent in the same period. Analysts of the economy coined a new and memorable term for what seemed to be happening: "stagflation." Larry O'Brien, John F. Kennedy's former campaign manager who headed the Democratic National Committee, popularized another new term, "Nixonomics." "All the things that should go up," O'Brien maintained, "—the stock market, corporate profits, real spending income, productivity—go down, and all the things that should go down—unemployment, prices, interest rates—go up."
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Like most partisan explanations of economic change, O'Brien's was simplistic. The causes of instability were considerably more complex and structural. Much of the inflation stemmed from the build-up of federal spending under the Johnson administration, a good deal of which went to support the war after 1965. The huge federal deficit of 1968 ($25.1 billion) exceeded the total of all deficits between 1963 and 1967 and combined with high levels of consumer spending to heat up the economy. Some of the unemployment stemmed from weaknesses in manufacturing and chemical companies, which proved less competitive than in the past against technologically superior overseas rivals, especially from the revived and booming economies of Germany and Japan.
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By 1971 the United States had an unfavorable balance of international trade for the first time since 1893. A leveling off in defense spending further threatened jobs and added to popular anxieties about the future.

Less apparent at the time, but in many ways more problematic, were deep-seated structural developments in the work force. By the late 1960s millions of baby boomers were already crowding the job market. Ever-higher percentages of women were also looking for employment outside the home. A rise in immigrant workers, made possible after 1968 by the immigration law of 1965, did not affect most labor markets but further intensified popular unease. These developments combined to hike the numbers seeking work by 10.1 million between 1964 and 1970, or 1.6 million per year. Many of these people landed in the service sector of the economy—as employees in fast-food chains, discount retail outlets, hospitals, and nursing homes—or as clerical or maintenance workers. Most of these jobs tended to be part-time, offering low pay and benefits.
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Americans who found more promising employment also seemed edgy and uncertain. Millions of workers, eager to take advantage of the consumer culture, complained of long hours that created high levels of stress and left little time for leisure.
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Young people confessed to feeling "crowded." Products of rapidly growing schools and colleges, they were keenly aware of the baby boom bulge that was sharpening competition for work and careers. They were troubled above all by what they sensed was the decline in their prospects compared to those of people who were just above them—those who had entered the work force in the 1950s and Golden 1960s. Having grown up in an age of enormous expectations, they found themselves in a world where the future seemed less auspicious than it had been. They put off marriage, child-bearing, and home-buying. Some of the extraordinary optimism that had accompanied the unprecedented economic boom of the mid-1960s—and that had given such a special spirit to that dynamic era—was abating.
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Labor-management relations, too, seemed to deteriorate by the early 1970s. Increasing numbers of younger blue-collar workers, expecting high levels of personal satisfaction, chafed under the routine of assembly line labor.
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Others dared to disrupt public services: a strike of 180,000 postal workers in the summer of 1970 caused the calling out of the National Guard, which struggled for a while to deliver the mail.
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Many unionized workers, moreover, felt increasingly insecure. For some time their unions had had trouble mobilizing new members, especially in the service industries and in the South and West, the fastest-growing areas of employment. Unions also failed to proselytize aggressively among women, high percentages of whom worked only part-time.

For these reasons the union movement continued to falter. While the total number of unionized workers had risen a little in the 1960s, the percentage of employees who belonged to unions maintained its long-range downhill slide. George Meany, still heading the AFL-CIO, had grown increasingly conservative and non-confrontational over the years, as had many leaders of constituent unions: they had become haves rather than have-nots. As the power of unions fell off, employers became bolder in their demands. Rank-and-file workers, many of them agitated already about court-ordered busing, affirmative action, and other divisive social issues, grew visibly more restless.
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An enormously popular television sitcom, "All in the Family," highlighted the feelings of many of these working-class Americans when it first invaded the nation's living rooms in January 1971. The rise of the show, indeed, exemplified an important trend of the era: the omnipresence of the mass media, especially TV, and the blurring of the line between "news," current events, and popular entertainment. Archie Bunker, protagonist of the series, was a middle-aged, blue-collar father. He was blunt, bigoted, and xenophobic—much more openly so than any television character to that time. Most liberals who watched the series thought that it satirized the world-view of bigots such as Archie. That it did, but gently. Many working-class people told interviewers that they identified with him. As one worker told
Life
, "You think it, but ole Archie he says it, by damn."
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By this time the worrisome economic trends were jolting Nixon into new and unorthodox approaches. In January 1971 he startled the newsman Howard K. Smith by telling him, "I am now a Keynesian in economics," and in August he jolted the nation by announcing a New Economic Policy. This entailed fighting inflation by imposing a ninety-day freeze on wages and prices. Nixon also sought to lower the cost of American exports by ending the convertibility of dollars into gold, thereby allowing the dollar to float in world markets. This action transformed with dramatic suddenness an international monetary system of fixed exchange rates that had been established, with the dollar as the reserve currency, in 1946. Seeking further to aid American producers, Nixon placed a temporary 10 percent surcharge on imports. Four months later, the dollar having fallen, he accepted a 13.5 percent devaluation of the dollar against the West German mark and a 16.9 percent devaluation against the Japanese yen. The surcharge on imports was then discontinued.
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That Nixon, who had fiercely opposed controls throughout his political life, would resort to such moves indicated his flexibility (foes said his inconsistency) as well as his alarm at what was happening to the economy. Smith quipped that Nixon's conversion to Keynesianism was "a little like a Christian crusader saying, 'All things considered, I think Mohammed was right.'"
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In the long run the New Economic Policy did not help much.
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In 1972, however, it papered over a few cracks in the economy. Ending fixed convertibility gave a short-run boost to United States companies selling abroad. America's balance of payments deficit dropped by the end of 1972. The wage and price controls put a lid of sorts for the time being on inflation at home. By election time, as Nixon had hoped, the economic picture was a little rosier than it had seemed in 1971, and in January 1973 he temporarily relaxed the controls.

T
HREE CHARACTERISTICS DOMINATED
President Nixon's handling of domestic matters. The first was flexibility. A Republican centrist for all of his political life, he had none of the ideological fervor of a reactionary like Goldwater or of a principled conservative such as Taft or Eisenhower. Although highly partisan when it came to his own political survival, he did not waste energy trying to stop every liberal idea that came from the Democratic majorities in the Congress. Some of their proposals, such as changes in policy affecting Native Americans, struck him as worthwhile; in any event they did not cost much. Others, such as environmental reforms, enjoyed popularity among the people: it was not worth it, Nixon thought, to oppose them. Still other policies, such as increasing spending for social insurance, had the support of influential lobbies, such as the elderly. Having no strong feelings about issues such as these, Nixon went along with many of them.

The second characteristic was Nixon's especially keen instinct for political survival. In this sense he was one of the greatest politicians of the postwar era. Those who counted him out, as many had following his 1960 and 1962 campaigns, were rudely surprised. In his handling of domestic policies as President he managed most of the time to do what it took—no matter how inconsistent he had to be—to assure himself of re-election in 1972. His support of the elderly, his Southern Strategy, and his New Economic Policy were all in differing ways political at the core. A healthy concern for political consequences, of course, is necessary among those who hope to hold high office. Still, Nixon calculated with special persistence, regularly exhibiting a readiness—as in his appeals to class and racial feelings—to do whatever it might take, regardless of its cost in national divisiveness, to advance his interests. Political maneuvering was the great game of Richard Nixon's life. He played it grimly and with pride in his expertise at it. He had no other hobbies.

The third characteristic exposed a special abrasiveness, ruthlessness, and win-at-all-costs mentality. Nixon had always been shy and somewhat awkward, especially for a politician, and he remained as President a lonely, unhappy, often beleaguered man. He was so uncomfortable giving orders to people, even his top aides, that he communicated increasingly via memoranda. Many of these were in the form of marginalia on daily News Summaries, as they were called, that conservative aides such as Patrick Buchanan prepared for him. Some of the Summaries were forty or fifty pages long, but Nixon, isolated in the Oval Office or in private quarters, read them carefully. His comments on them revealed revengeful, aggressive, and violent feelings about people who seemed threatening. "Get someone to hit him," he would write of an opponent. "Fire him," "cut him," "freeze him," "dump him," "fight him," "don't back off."

Outbursts such as these, penned day after day, may have been therapeutic in some ways, but they did not help him relax: unlike all other postwar Presidents, Nixon never seemed to enjoy the job. His jottings exposed the emotions of a self-pitying, humorless, confrontational, and deeply suspicious public official. Nixon had a siege mentality that was contagious, encouraging aides to develop a "Freeze List" and an "Opponents List" of people who were never to be invited to the White House and then a long "Enemies List" of reporters, politicians, and entertainers. From the start of his administration he thought that only he could protect the "silent majority" of patriotic and hard-working Americans from the conspiratorial clutches of liberals and leftists who wielded unwarranted power in the press and the universities. His excess in trying to expand his power ultimately brought him down.
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