Richard Nixon, former U.S. president during the late 60’s and early 70’s, is a historically controversial figure in American politics. Many people look back at him as a corrupt politician who made a fatal political blunder. Many view him as a sneaky president who attempted to do anything to stay in power. Nixonland, a book by author Rick Perlstein, takes a good look into the American society in which Nixon grew up politically and the way Nixon handled his career. Perlstein goes in-depth into the dysfunctional society of the mid-20th century and how they related to Nixon’s political ambitions. Furthermore, the tumultuous civil state, caused by declining race relations, political instability, a generational conflict that was threatening to rip apart the U.S. during the 1960s, as well as Nixon’s political craftiness led to the rise of a Nixonian presidency.
To understand how Nixon rose to become president of the United States, a deep look must be taken into the great disturbances that gripped the society of the time. Race relations in the United States could be found at its nadir. During the 1950s through the 1970s, many race riots and marches took place in states all across the U.S. A hotbed of racial unrest found roots in Chicago. Years of anti-housing practices used to restrict blacks from living in white communities and overall white hostility against blacks in Chicago caused problems in the city. Overall racial injustice in the city also led to many incidents that pitted whites against blacks. Another of these riots, which took place in Watts, California, in 1965 exploded onto the national scene. In that town, “the worst urban violence in American history ended up being shown live on TV for four straight days, virtually non-stop.” This riot seemed to tear apart that part of Los Angeles. Racial unrest in Watts had risen to the point of widespread damage being done to the area, including lootings and burning fires. Rioting happened to be a way for black people to fight what they viewed as a corrupted system. This type of rioting ended up causing lots of deaths for many people, innocent or guilty. It also became a main catalyst for the country’s overall decay.
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Another catalyst that caused much racial tension in the United States during the 1960s involved the minister, Martin Luther King. Many African Americans loved him for being a peaceful fighter for their rights, some did not like him for the same reason. A good percentage of whites railed against him because they believed he was threatening their ways of segregated life. They did not like his heavy push for civil rights. In Chicago, King led a march against the anti-housing practices. Many people showed up including “six hundred open-housing activists. ten thousand counter-demonstrators. Some wore Nazi helmets. Others waved confederate battle flags, carried George Wallace banners, and swastika placards that helpfully explained THE SYMBOL OF WHITE POWER.” The protest ended up physically harming King and causing violent behavior from the angry white mob against the police officers who had been trying to protect the marchers. Anytime King decided to go fight racial injustice in a white town, the citizens got scared and would denounce him. Many whites saw King as one of their primary enemies and needed to be stopped. This would eventually lead to his assassination later on in 1968. Martin Luther King comprised just one factor in the grander scheme of the declining race relations that everyone experienced during this time and a great divisor in the country’s ideology for or against racial harmony.
Police brutality also fed into the decaying racial relationship between blacks and whites. Many blacks did not trust the police as they felt that they were primarily against them. To them, police seemed to be working to further the white cause. In the South, police brutality towards blacks happened all of the time. In one case, “in Orangeburg, South Carolina, black students had gathered to picket a segregated bowling alley. Police responded by firing into the crowd, killing three.” That had been just a minor incident. The police overreacted to many situations which did not need to be handled in such a manner. One of their biggest overreactions that stirred up the nation took place in Newark, New Jersey. A riot started by blacks had taken place after, “police had manhandled a [black] cab driver during an arrest” and, “a false report got around that he had died in police custody.” Because of the inability to quell this riot, the police director, “Spina announced over every police radio, ‘If you have a gun, whether it is a shoulder weapon or whether it is a handgun, use it.’” Police killed people for the smallest reasons such as when, “a boy…called the guardsmen names, and they opened fire.” Law enforcement even shot at innocent people who were living their regular lives on their porches for absolutely no reason. The Police ended up taking the lives of too many civilians who had not even been rioting and even seemed to be enjoying their ability to put blacks in their place, essentially. In the end, the police officers got off scot-free and were barely chastised by the press. Some of the press such as CBS and Life magazine tried to expose what had happened, but in the end, it was to no avail. Police brutality created a lot of angry sentiment that continued to divide this country and could not go without backlash.
Race relations had become so bad in this country that many armed conflicts between the militant blacks and police officers took place. Like all of the other racially motivated protests and riots, these conflicts shocked many people around the country. Most notably, the Black Panthers had many altercations with law enforcement that made national news. The Black Panthers, a militant African-American group, believed in arming and protecting themselves if the law could not. For example, Huey Newton, a leader of the Black Panthers, “would step out of his car and snap a live round into his chamber” in front of police officers because “California law only outlawed the carrying of loaded weapons inside the vehicle.” This could have been a risky move for anyone of color at that time, but the Black Panthers were gutsy and tried showing the police that they would not be the weaklings that they could pick on. This type of self-protection succeeded in causing many to whites fear them. These types of encounters also built up friction between the Panthers and the police. In Oakland, California had one encounter that proved fatal for one Black Panther. Police had been trying to stop, “Eldridge Cleaver and eighteen-year-old Bobby Hutton” who, “were pinned down in a basement.” Trying to make them come out, “dozens of police fired on the house for thirty-nine straight minutes.” In the end, only one came out alive after surrendering and Bobby Hutton “was turned into a block of Swiss cheese” and effectively killed. These types of violent run-ins with the police bred up a lot of angry sentiment between blacks and whites and divided the nation further.
Aside from the racial violence and tensions that it had been gripped by, this country also found itself clashing with each other on many different political things such as the Vietnam War. This war strongly divided the nation into practically two opposites. On one side stood the pro-war people (Hawks), who believed that America must stay in Vietnam to contain communism and not surrender. On the other side stood the anti-war people (Doves) who believed that America had no business in sacrificing young men to fight another nation’s war in which many atrocities against the Vietnamese people were committed. One such atrocity happened in the village of My Lai where U.S soldiers shot men, women, and kids. Hawks and doves fought and bickered against each other. At the beginning of the war, more people identified themselves as pro-war than anti-war. As the war progressed and neared its conclusion, there became more anti-war mentalities than pro-war. Through the times, these two schools of thought would create a lot of division between Americans.
Furthermore, the incumbent president, Lyndon Johnson, held strong in his stance on not leaving even though “the Democratic Party was splitting right down the middle over Vietnam.” People would even mock LBJ for this as evidenced when “Anti-War protesters” started “chanting a new slogan: ‘Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” Many democrats did not agree with their own party’s president, while some did. For example, the ADA (Americans for Democratic Action), debated over whether being in Vietnam was truly necessary. In that group “one bloc said Vietnam betrayed everything that ADA was supposed to stand for” while “another bloc saw holding the line in Vietnam as honoring the ADA’s founding principle: liberal anticommunism.” This small debate showcased the overall mood of Democrats all around the nation. The war in Vietnam could be looked at in two ways for many democrats: as a necessary evil to prevent communism from getting its grimy hands over other nations or a war that the U.S. should have minded its own business on. This foreign war in a foreign country had created lots of political tension which pitted many people against each other and further divided the already fragile state the country was in.
Another area of political volatility that divided America during this time was over the passing of civil rights bills. Many white Americans viewed Lyndon Johnson as a president who tried to force civil rights reform, as his predecessor, JFK, had done, in their lives. Black Americans and many civil rights proponents praised Johnson for pursuing the rights of all Americans. Just like in the case of the Vietnam War, many democrats did not agree with Johnson on his civil rights measures. These measures especially roused up Southern democrats who were in no way going to support civil rights laws, because they went against the segregated ways of life that they had been trying to keep. For example, “in 1965,” when the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, “demanded statistical proof of ‘significant progress’” in the integration of schools, Southern democrats went up in an uproar about this. They were so angry that “eighteen of them [southern senators] signed a letter to the president calling the revised guidelines an ‘unfair and unrealistic abuse of bureaucratic power.’” George Wallace, former Governor of Alabama, had claimed that it went against his state’s right to segregate schools if they wanted to. This was the way it went regarding civil rights. Southern democrats would try anything to stop civil rights measures from actually taking effect, while progressive Democrats would continue to push measures through. Civil rights proved to be very divisive in America, especially in its politics.
Alongside the racial tensions and political volatility, the generational divide in the country further contributed to the crumbling society. Universities took a lot of the blame from the older Americans during this time. They viewed the country’s universities as liberal schools of thought that encouraged, either through the college environment or through supposed radical professors, the students who attended it to do things that they viewed as immoral and unpatriotic. Things that included using drugs such as Marijuana and LSD or being opposed to the Vietnam War. The younger generations disagreed with the older generation. They viewed the U.S. involvement in the war as being immoral and despicable. They campaigned in their universities against the atrocities committed and urged the U.S. to return home. It was very clear to many people that the place of university was where the younger generation was pitted against the old.
As the 60s progressed, many Americans' perceptions of the U.S. university system continued to deteriorate as report after report of anti-war riots and protests by peaceniks and hippies happened. To many these events seemed as though the youth of the United States, through colleges, were becoming too rowdy and had no regard for respecting the law. For instance,
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