Winning While Losing: Civil Rights, The Conservative Movement and the Presidency from Nixon to Obama

1. Zigs and Zags: Richard Nixon and the New Politics of Race

1 ZIGS AND ZAGS Richard Nixon and the New Politics of Race John D. Skrentny In the fall of 1970, Richard Nixon’s top domestic policy advisor, John Ehrlichman, found himself frozen out of the Oval Office. Nixon accepted no appointments and offered no responses to his memoranda. After ten days of silence, the president finally gave an indication of the nature of the problem: insufficient conservatism in key areas of domestic policy. Nixon gave to Ehrlichman a newspaper column by Kevin Phillips arguing that Nixon had veered too far to the Left on crucial aspects of the “social issue,” or what we now might call the “culture wars.”1 Specifically, Phillips argued that Nixon’s support for affirmative action, integration of the suburbs, and welfare and his Presidential Commission on Campus Unrest had revealed excessive liberalism that alienated working-class whites—whites who were needed for an election victory in 1972. Nixon told his domestic policy chief that Phillips offered “a correct view”—and Ehrlichman should “take action to correct this.” Ehrlichman was able to return to Nixon’s good graces only by penning a long memo that offered an ideological rationale for these seemingly wayward policy moves. He argued that a totally conservative line on the social issue was misguided and that a “centerist strategy” was best. But since “very few initiatives will be truly in the center,” Nixon had to find balance by mixing in with his “conservative zags” some good liberal “zigs.” In the matter of race issues, Ehrlichman argued that Nixon’s affirmative action, targeted at labor unions, was a good wedge issue to divide blacks and labor unions, two key constituents of the Democratic Party. But he also admitted that suburban integration had to be stopped.· 26 · Zigs and Zags: Richard Nixon and the New Politics of Race · 27 The memo worked. Nixon invited his adviser in for a ninety-minute meeting, and the ten-day freeze was never mentioned again. The larger message from the domestic-policy advisor freeze-out, however, remained : partisan politics after the civil rights movement were a minefield . What was conservative and what was liberal regarding civil rights (that is, regulatory efforts to prevent discrimination and promote equality ) were unknown. And as unclear as were the politics of black civil rights, the politics of women’s rights and rights for the emerging minority group of Latinos were even less clear. Enter into this context of political ambiguity the enigmatic Richard M. Nixon. Scholars have tried to understand this complex man for decades .2 On civil rights in particular, Nixon confounded his supporters and his critics.3 Nixon’s civil rights record before his presidency was one of moderation. Notably, he headed Eisenhower’s President’s Committee on Government Contracts, which made some progress on equal employment opportunities in employment among government contractors. He was also a longtime supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment, which would have ended discrimination on the basis of sex.4 But his positions were neither firm nor elaborate. They offer little guidance for his positions during his presidency. Understanding Nixon’s civil rights politics requires understanding the context of his policymaking. Nixon was the first president to enter the completely remade civil rights landscape. Lyndon Johnson has presided over the passage of the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964, remaking racial patterns in education, employment, and public accommodations. Legal scholars have noted the revolutionary impact of this act. William Eskridge calls it a “super-statute,”5 and Bruce Ackerman describes it as a “landmark statute” that affects interpretation of the constitution itself .6 But there were other important civil rights initiatives as well in the 1960s. There was the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (ending decades of disenfranchisement) and the less effective but nevertheless pioneering Civil Rights Act of 1968 (ending segregation in housing), and Johnson also issued in 1965 the Executive Order 11246, requiring government contractors to cease discrimination on the basis of race, religion, and national origin as well as to take some undefined affirmative action to ensure nondiscrimination. Even by 1969, it was still not clear how these policies would affect American politics. The meanings of Left and Right were muddled during 28 · John D. Skrentny the passage of these acts in Congress, as they passed with bipartisan support. Making overtly racist statements in public was, of course, no longer legitimate in American politics. Liberal Democrats, it appeared, would support...