Nixonland Revisited: a History of Populist Communication
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Nixonland Revisited: A History of Populist Communication by Tyler J. Fischer A thesis presented to the University of Waterloo in fulfillment of the thesis requirement for the degree of Master of Arts in History Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, 2009 Tyler J. Fischer 2009 AUTHOR‟S DECLARATION I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. This is a true copy of the thesis, including any required final revisions, as accepted by my examiners. I understand that my thesis may be made electronically available to the public. ii ABSTRACT The goal of this thesis was to validate journalist Rick Perlstein‟s assertion in Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (2008) that the foundational dialectic of the 1960s “has not yet ended.” With Nixon as the principal cultural architect of modern American political discourse, Perlstein defined Nixonland as “the America where two separate and irreconcilable sets of apocalyptic fears coexist in the minds of two separate and irreconcilable groups of Americans.” Perlstein‟s grand narrative for the inherited socio-political landscape of the 1960s has conceptually synthesized the nature of the “culture wars” of the 1960s based on Nixon‟s imposed hegemonic framework for political discourse through the theatre of television. The central argument of this thesis is shaped by the dialogue in the historiography in that Richard Nixon and Barack Obama appear to be “bookend presidents” of the limits of the modern American kulturkampf- the ongoing conflict between religious and secular elements in American society. While Nixon confined political discourse within the hegemonic framework of the images and rhetoric of modern American conservatism imbibed in the 1960s, Obama expanded the limits of political discourse through the motives and motifs of New Left rationalism established in the 1960s. Within this interpretative framework, this thesis illustrates the foundational dynamic of campaigning and governance within modern American political discourse by demonstrating how presidential elections are structured according to the Republican style of conservative “populist aggression” against the liberal Democratic substance of “fairness issues.” iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor Andrew E. Hunt for granting me the academic and intellectual freedom to construct a metanarrative against the trend of the profession in order to effectively delve into the mythical foundations of modern American conservatism and our present consciousness. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE…………………………………………………………………………………….…...1 Chapter 1: THE MODERN AMERICAN KULTURKAMPF, As Seen on Television………………………………………………………………………………….…….26 Chapter 2: NIXONLAND: The American Cold War Cultural Revolution………………..44 2.1 The McLuhan Culture of the Television Age………………………………………………63 Chapter 3: THE REAGAN REVOLUTION: The Modern American Revolution…………77 3.1 Reagan‟s Public Relations Apparatus………………………………………………………84 3.2 Reagan‟s Public Image……………………………………………………………………..95 3.3 Restoration and Reconciliation: The Reagan Revolution and the Cult of Personality……100 Chapter 4: CONCLUSION…………………….……………………………………...……...111 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………130 v PREFACE While modern American conservatism first entered political discourse through the rhetorical theatrics of the 1964 Republican National Convention, American postwar liberalism visibly witnessed its decline on television during the 1968 presidential election, isolating the New Left, and making it “blindingly clear that New Left universalism was fragile from the outset, that the category of citizen, or even human being, had long felt like a weightless abstraction.”1 The 2008 Presidential election inaugurated the interjection of New Left rationalism , or liberal constructivism, into the modern American political discourse of conservative “populist aggression” since 1968 based on Barack Obama‟s New Left cult of personality mass movement. Journalist Rick Perlstein‟s Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (2008) has provided a definitive and illuminating piece to the puzzle of modern American culture by illustrating the formation of the socio-political dialectic for America‟s modern political economy, with Nixon as the populist personification of modern American conservatism. Perlstein‟s grand narrative for the inherited socio-political landscape of the 1960s has conceptually synthesized the nature of the “culture wars” of the 1960s based on Nixon‟s imposed hegemonic framework for political discourse through the theatre of television. With Nixon as the principal cultural architect of modern American political discourse, Perlstein defined Nixonland as “the America where two separate and irreconcilable sets of apocalyptic fears coexist in the minds of two separate and irreconcilable groups of Americans.”2 This thesis will illustrate Perlstein‟s narrative for the institutionalization of Nixonland in the 1968 presidential election by demonstrating Nixon‟s inauguration of the “populist communication” of modern American conservatism, found in the duality and polarization 1 Todd Gitlin, The Twilight of Common Dreams (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1995), 100. The New Left student movement, or antiwar movement, including civil rights hero Martin Luther King Jr. and liberals such as Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was imbibed in the late 1960s in opposition to liberal paternalism and imperialism. While liberals believed in the power of the vote to give a voice to individualism, New Leftists promoted the rational extension of New Deal liberalism for the empowerment of the disenfranchised as the principal means to reform society. 2 Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (New York: Scribner, 2008), 46. 1 of Nixon‟s cultural images of conservative “Cold War Manichaeism”3 and liberal, or moderate, paternalism (conservatism). The postwar “generation gap” in modern American culture - institutionalized within modern American political discourse during the 1968 presidential election - became inverted during the 2008 presidential election, marking a significant change in American political history. New Left sociologist Todd Gitlin identified the “generation gap” as a contest in which “the young insisted that their life situation was unprecedented (and therefore they had no one to follow); the older, that they did understand, so well, and with so many years‟ advantage, that they knew better (and therefore they should be followed).”4 While Nixon‟s personification of the alienated paternal majority enabled him to win the 1968 presidential election, Barack Obama‟s embodiment of the alienated liberal majority enabled him to win the 2008 presidential election. Time‟s “Man and Woman of the Year” in 1967 were the forgotten middle- Americans who Nixon consciously personified during the 1968 Presidential election. Nixon became Time‟s and popular culture‟s “Man of the Year” in 1971 and 1972, resentfully sharing the honor the second time with his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger. In 2008, Time‟s “Person of the Year”5 symbolized the remaining forgotten Americans - or what Senator Hillary Clinton attempted to rhetorically appropriate as “invisible Americans”6 - Barack Obama. While the Nixon presidency was the first time a president was met by organized opposition during his inauguration, the Bush II presidency was the first time a president was met by organized opposition during his inauguration and spontaneous opposition outside of the White House Gates the night the new President-elect won the election. The 2008 American presidential election symbolized the liberal democratic appropriation of the conservative movement‟s hegemony over American political discourse since 1968. The election personified the generational culture war of the conservative postwar generation and the liberal baby-boomer generation, between the “old” and “new” politics; the younger generation‟s black liberal Democrat against the older generation‟s white 3 Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1987), 339. 4 Ibid., 19. 5 Time, January 5, 1968, pg. 10-17, “Man and Woman of the Year: The Middle Americans”; Time, “Person of the Year”, December 29, 2008, 38-51. 6 New Hampshire Democratic Primary Acceptance Speech, January 8, 2008. 2 liberal Republican who still had to publicly play by the party‟s old rules; a minority individual who opposed America‟s new international conflagration against a POW patriot from the country‟s old international conflagration. The historic nature of the 2008 Presidential election presents visible allusions to the foundational socio-political dynamic of modern American culture imbibed in the 1960s. While the social effects or cultural resonance of the 1960s appear inescapable within modern American culture, there is not yet a consensus of the socio-political inheritance of the 1960s. This thesis contends that Nixon‟s politicization of the medium of television during the 1968 presidential election inaugurated America‟s modern political discourse founded on a McLuhan culture, with Reagan inaugurating the postmodern presidency within Nixon‟s paradigm of the “culture wars” of the 1960s: Nixonland. The aggregate media realities of Nixonland are premised upon Nixon‟s emulation of JFK‟s inauguration of America‟s modern basis of socio-political mobilization of the American electorate - “populist communication” - involving the marketing of substantive