American History Hit - Richard Nixon: Rise from Poverty

Episode Date: April 24, 2025

To understand Watergate, to understand the fall of Nixon, you need to look first at the rise. How the turbulence of his sky rocketing career left bruises and bitternesses that lingered. Don's guest today is Professor Nicole Hemmer whose latest book is "Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s". She takes Don on a journey into the psychology and politics of the most fascinating President of them all.Produced by Freddy Chick. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.American History Hit is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries, with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. It's the 27th of April 1994 in Yorba Linda, California, deep in Orange County. President Bill Clinton speaks at the memorial services of his predecessor, late President Richard M. Nixon.

He addresses an invited gathering of dignitaries, honored guests, and media, outside the modest home where Richard Nixon and his brothers were raised. A small, white, wooden kit house, ordered by mail from a catalog, built by his father, who assembled it piece by piece on their lemon farm. One can imagine the scene, Richard Nixon as a young boy, his face gazing out of the tiny window of the attic loft bedroom he shared with his brothers, now a short distance from where his casket rests today, draped with an American flag. Clinton, the house, the casket, all shaded by a mighty oak tree that reminds those present of the enormous journey of that boy in the window. What would happen to Richard Nixon those many years, as the leaves on this tree? tree budded and fell and budded again. The many seasons as he came of age, then served in war,

campaigned for Congress, traveled the world, and then rose to the highest office in the land, only to fall in disgrace. What do we make of the man that boy became now that he's gone? Who was, after all, the real Richard Nixon? Hello all, I'm Don Wildman, and you're listening to American History Hit. Welcome back to our president series, as we today reach, Number 37, Richard Milhouse Nixon of California, who was elected to the office twice, serving from 1969 to 1974, when he infamously resigned, handing the White House over to his vice president, Gerald Ford. These were the late 60s, early 70s, heady times in America,

NASA landing on the moon, hippies tuning in and dropping out in Hate Ashbury, Vietnam and Woodstock and Charles Manson, draft cards being burned along with women's brassiers as soldiers marched on Kent State University firing real bullets. In New York, the twin towers of the World Trade Center rose up as the city teetered toward financial collapse. Marvin Gay crooned what's going on while Walt Disney conjured a new fantasy land in Florida, and the Supreme Court decided in favor of a woman's right to choose, if only temporarily. This was the age of the movie blockbusters at once sublime, terrifying, and absurd. The godfather, the exorcist, Texas chainsaw massacre. And against this boggling backdrop was the Nixon

presidency. Those of us alive at the time have very personal feelings about the man, given the length and breadth of his very public career. The arms jutted up in victory, his consternation under duress, the famously sweaty upper lip. His love of country, his sense of duty, was so clear, yet at the same time, it seemed obscured by behavior that was grandiose and sometimes paranoid. Who was Richard Nixon as a question? We'll attempt to answer today with Professor Nicole Hemmer, political historian at Vanderbilt University, host of the This Day podcast, whose latest book is Partisans, the conservative revolutionaries who remade American politics in the 1990s. Greetings, Nikki, welcome to American History Hit.

Thank you so much for having me, Don. So you have gone with a flow here. We're going to do this Nixon podcast in two parts. We're doing the rise and then his presidency and the fall in a separate episode. My call entirely because there's so much about Nixon that is so important and relevant to today's politics, certainly in the presidency. Is that true? Absolutely. And he was such a major figure in U.S. politics for so long from the early 1950s all the way through to the mid-1970s.

it really was, you know, Richard Nixon's quarter century. Exactly. They talk about the American century. It was a lot of Richard Nixon was the American century. That's right. He loomed large. He was a defining figure both to those who supported him and those who opposed him, which is the case with all great figures of history.

In Los Angeles one day, I used to live out there, I went to the Nixon homestead in Yorba Linda, drove myself down there to come to terms with the guy because I grew up with this man. I remember walking through that impossibly modest kit house. that he was born in. I mean, it's tiny, a postage stamp house. And then you come out and there's the plot with Pat Nixon right there. And the helicopter that carried him out of the White House at the end.

It's hard to conceive that such a life and career could possibly sprout from such simple roots. And that arc, right, from that tiny little place in Yorba Linda to the final ignominy of his resignation from office. He grew up in poverty. He was raised by his two parents, his mom was a stay-at-home mom. He was raised as a Quaker and was deeply steeped in religion when he was growing up. But he was somebody who was scrapping from the very beginning. Yes. Right?

Who believed that he was destined for bigger things and who couldn't necessarily immediately see a path out. And so he was intent on making a path out of Yorba Linda onto a bigger stage. He grows up in a, we say Yoriby Linda, in those. days, this is Orange County for a reason. This is citrus country in those days. His dad was a lemon farmer to start with ends up only a gas station and all of that. But this was very much a rural countryside place that he grows up in and how he identifies himself. Whittier is right nearby. It's the Quaker College down the road. He goes there. And then he goes on to Duke. And that's when his life starts to grow up. But it's really important to register the fact that he comes from this modesty.

Very much so. And that's the thing that he's always struggling against. When he enters that East Coast world, when he starts to become part of that East Coast elite, he thinks about Whittier and where he came from and how much he has to prove himself. And that sort of metastasizes into something more than just a drive. For sure. It definitely gains some edges of paranoia and vengeance by the time he becomes president. But Whittier is always with him. We're going to touch on this many times, so we might as well get it right out of the way. There's this moment in his life at various stages when he feels excluded from things. That's a theme. He wants in to an inner circle, but he's outside of it. And that's why I make the point of saying he's in this rural countryside, looking east to the northeast

intelligentsia, you know, which is going to come forward in the relationships with the press, with the Kennedys, all of these major, major moments in his career will have some of the something to do with this theme of trying to get into this group that he's outside of it. It's in the fraternity world of Whittier, which is weird because it's a Quaker college. They don't usually have fraternities. But he couldn't get into the one he wanted to. So he goes and creates his own. Which is a very Nixonian thing to do, right?

If I can't be accepted, I'm going to make my own way. And you'll see that throughout his career. But even as he's making his own way, because the thing is, you look at his career and he's inordinately successful. I know, exactly. This is the irony. When we get to the end of these two episodes, I promise you, you'll say, how would a guy with that resume feel any sense of bitterness or exclusion for that matter? He did everything he wanted to do.

He absolutely did. And that's why it's so important to keep in mind throughout not just all of the successes that he's having along the way, but that that bitterness and that resentment is carried with him as he rises. He, like so many of his age, serves in the U.S. Navy, or in World War II, in his case, the U.S. Navy, returns home and he enters politics because a local businessman had recognized him. He'd gone to Duke and got his law degree. He was an up-and-coming kid in the area. People knew him as, you know, one of the smart guys. He is recommended to run for the U.S. House of Representatives, 1946. He gets in, kicks out the Democrat, which is interesting, sort of the end of that FDR period in Orange County, for sure. Not even two terms in the House before he's elected Senator from California in 1950. And then it's two years before he's the vice presidential pick for Eisenhower. I mean, this is a rocket ship the guys on. He's the J.D. Vance of the Times. Very much so.

Very much so. That's a great way of putting it. And he's able to ascend so quickly because he enters the House at the very moment that the major issue of the day is the Cold War. Yeah. and this mounting fear of communism. And Nixon sees the lay of the land. And he positions himself to be one of the top red hunters in the Congress. And in doing so, he stages this very dramatic moment.

So it was the Pumpkin Papers incident where one of the suspected communists reaches into a pumpkin in a vegetable garden and pulls out microfilm that shows the spying that was going on. And Nixon is part of that process and becomes a household name because of all of the coverage of these hearings about potential communist spies in the United States. I want to drill down a bit with this whole period of time because this is pre-McCarthy. Nixon is Cold War 1.0 versus McCarthy who comes along later on and kind of picks that and takes the baton in a way. How did he become such a fervent anti-communist? What triggered all that off? being an anti-communist, even a fervent anti-communist, was not that unusual by the time you get to the late 1940s, in part because the United States already had this history of being fervently anti-communist.

There had already been a red scare in 1990 and 1920. And up until the point that the U.S. allies with the Soviet Union, the United States approach to what was turning into World War II was that there were two major evils, Nazism and communism. that kind of takes a break because of the exigencies of the war. But as soon as the war is over and the Soviet Union begins to expand, there is a very easy return to anti-communism. And Nixon, you know, specifically grows up in a home where his father is very anti-communist. And he imbibes those politics and brings them with him when he goes to the house. I guess my question is that he is so, you know, when you're not,

you look back on Nixon so opportunistic, he so understands the lay of the land, he so sniffs these things out, that I always wondered if he saw this as a way of finding a fast track with the Republican Party. He saw this whole developing wave coming. And I always wondered if there was one person that he, a relationship that was his mentor in all of this. I don't know if there was one particular relationship, but it is something that he figures out very early on, right? He figures out how to sort of ink scare. against his opponent when he's running for office. And there is, I think, a sense that there are opportunities to be made if you join something like the House on American Committee. Right.

So I think it's both in his case, both a sincere commitment to anti-communism and an understanding that this small House committee could actually be a place where a junior member of Congress could really begin to make his name. Yeah, remember, this all happens in the first term of his, of his, you know, he doesn't even serve this full second term in his first term with the House of Representatives, he becomes quite famous. And this isn't with the, this is without the advantage of television news and all that sort of thing. He's just coming through the papers this way as a big voice against communism. And he really shoves himself out there vis-a-vis the hearings that you mentioned, the Alger Hiss hearings. Alger Hiss was one of those intelligentsia, one of those

guys in the State Department who was that inside Washington crowd that, that, you know, existed as somebody like Nixon saw as a cabal, part of a cabal. He had these questionable aspects to his resume for sure. But was he actually a communist? His was actually somebody who was working with the Soviet Union during his time in office. And he had that sort of impeccable pedigree that both made him somebody that Nixon was very eager to take down and also somebody who was able to glide by a lot of suspicion in the 1930s and 1940s. It's actually Whitaker Chambers, who is somebody who had been a communist and who had worked with the Soviet Union, who outs Alger Hiss and provides evidence to the committee. You know, at the time, there was still some uncertainty, and a lot of that was down to Alger Hiss's reputation, his closeness to Franklin Roosevelt.

But in subsequent years, it was revealed that he did have these close ties to the Soviet Union. Yeah, a weird guy. Whitaker Chambers was a spooky man in many ways. A fascinating personality and would become part of the post-World War II Cold War conservative movement. Somebody who worked very closely with National Review and just a character. There's a great biography of him if people are interested by Sam Tannenhouse that gets into all of his little weirdsies. Right. And as you mentioned before, there are these very scandalous moments, the most famous of which is the pumpkin papers where he hid this microfilm, right? It was something that was kept in a pumpkin in a patch so no one could find it, but he outs it and it's a big deal. There's a very famous Nixon quote regarding the Hiss case, which has echoes into the future.

If you're going to cover up, he says, you're going to get caught, and if you lie, you're going to be guilty of perjury. Basically, that's the whole story of the his case. It's not the issue that will harm you. It's the cover up that will be damaging, which is so much the case with Nixon's career that things resonate forward, don't they? It's definitely a case of intense foreshadowing. Yeah, right. That would, of course, the cover-up become a big part of Nixon's story when he's president.

But at the time, like, again, it's that opportunism. It is being able to look at his and draw out all of the different ways that he is culpable in this investigation. So when Nixon is saying it at the time, he's not necessarily thinking forward, you know, 20 years or so to his own fate. But it's one of those grace notes that historians love to find because it ties everything together so neatly. Right, these transparencies. I'll be back with more American history after this short break. I'm going to keep repeating this throughout this conversation. Nixon is so much a part of bigger themes that we are still experiencing today.

He is part of the famous resurgence of conservatives in the 1950s. After decades of FDR New Dealism has been in charge through. the war and all the rest of it. Now in the 1952 election, famously, the conservatives come forward. They have both houses and the White House after that 52 election. It changes after 54. But this is a very important point that this begins this thing that we're really still part of, which is kind of part two of the 20th century that has spilled over into 21st century. That's why it's important to understand Nixon. Absolutely. And if you trace Nixon's path, as we'll be doing, you'll see how Cold War conservatism, which was still in 1952, kind of an outside movement. So much of Cold War conservative movement would be opposed to Eisenhower because they felt like he didn't go far enough. But by the time you get to Nixon in office, you see a much more powerful, much more deeply rooted in the Republican Party conservative movement. And Nixon is responsive to that. He's chosen.

in many ways in 1952 because of his red-baiting credentials, because he's seen as somebody who's more to the right than Eisenhower is. And over the course of his career, he's going to chart a path through a more conservative Republican Party and arguably by the 1970s a more conservative country. Yeah, right. So he's chosen as Eisenhower's vice presidential candidate. In those days, it was less of a side-by-side thing as it is today. You know, it wasn't really a reflection of the president. It was just this guy that they needed. And nonetheless, he becomes a little drama within that campaign because of a slush fund. They called it a slush fund.

Because of this account that was used for expenses, he suddenly has to defend himself and thus maintain his candidacy. And this is the famous Checkers speech, which people may or may not have heard of. It's an early moment of television politics. It's quite dramatic, in my opinion. He sits down in his living room. and maybe it was a set, I don't know, but his living room with his wife, Pat, and his dog named Checkers. And he proves himself quite adept at using television politically and persuasively. Can you describe what happened there? Sure. So Nixon had this slush fund, had this fund. He's being called to account for it. And it's one of those things that the Eisenhower campaign was sailing along so smoothly. And here comes Nixon mucking things up. And Eisenhower looks around. He's like,

I don't need this. Like, I can just replace this guy. And Nixon is aware that he is at real risk of being thrown off this ticket. And if he's thrown off this ticket, his political career is basically done at that point. And so he does something very savvy, which is he goes around Eisenhower and goes directly to the American people to make his case. And it is fascinating that he's using television. It's 1952. Not that many Americans have a television at this point in time. It's also carried on radio. But it is fascinating. a set that he's sitting on and his wife, Pat, is there. And he sits there and he just starts going through his finances. And you could imagine, even today, somebody's sitting there going through their finances. It's a little uncomfortable in the 1950s. Like, this is not something that you talked about. But he talks about it. And he's like, you know, we're not rich. We don't spend a lot of money on things. Look at my wife, Pat. She doesn't wear a mink coat. She wears a respectable Republican cloth coat. And then he tells this story about the one thing that he did get that he didn't report,

which is that a supporter while they were traveling on the campaign trail had given him a little black and white dog. And his daughters had named it checkers. And he says, no matter what they say about me, I'm going to keep him. Oh, the whole country goes, aw, he's not so bad. It's a dog. It's a puppy. And his daughters. Like, it's one of those things.

things that really, even though it doesn't actually put to bed the issue of the slush fund, it distracts from it. And it gets the public on his side. And suddenly the Eisenhower campaign is flooded with thousands of telegrams insisting that Nixon be kept on the ticket. And it boxes Eisenhower in. Eisenhower can't get rid of him at that point. And so it was a particularly savvy political move. Sure. And using the press to his advantage in this case, really interesting. He serves faithfully under Ike. He becomes known as the first modern U.S. Vice President, really. He's much more active versus certainly all those that came before him. But most notably, he becomes the president's ambassador overseas. He's very involved with

foreign dignitaries and visiting foreign lands, including Saigon and very important places along the way. Of course, the big one is he has the kitchen debate with Khrushchev. This is late in, this is in the second term of Eisenhower's administration, which I will tell you is episode 84, Nixon in Moscow, early days for our podcast, but you should definitely listen to that conversation. It's very interesting. Tell me how his vice presidency affected his larger career. What did he learn as a VP? One of the things, as you've mentioned, was his extensive foreign travels. Foreign policy really was the bread and butter of Nixon's political career. It was the thing he cared about. It was the thing he spent all of his time reading about. He understood international

politics, like probably better than any president in the 20th century, and that includes somebody like Eisenhower, who had been, you know, the Allied Supreme Commander in Europe. Yeah. He was somebody who understood world politics, but Nixon understood it philosophically and on a much deeper level. So that is always, that's going to shape his career. But the other thing that shapes his career is, again, that antagonism between Eisenhower and the World War conservative movement because it functionally tars Nixon as what the right called a me too Republican, somebody who was just going to go along with the New Deal and with liberal ideas and wasn't actually going to be a staunch defender of the conservative philosophy.

And so that puts him at odds pretty early on with the right. And that is a relationship he is going to have to then pay lots of attention to for the next 15 years. Sure. He is an internationalist. He's a globalist by today's definition. Very much so. He believes in our role and our place because he was a big Marshall Plan guy. He voted for it, just like everybody else did in those days. He saw the responsibility of the United States post-World War II as being, you know, straightening things out. And we were going to have to trust ourselves into that world stage to do it. He saw U.S. international power, whether it was soft power, whether it was money, whether it was the military, as absolutely essential to fighting communism. And so he is going

to be insistent that the U.S. is fully involved on the world stage, and that too will be a big part of his presidency. But you said the key point, fighting communism. It wasn't a good, you know, he wouldn't want to sidle up with people until he does. That's what's going to be weird about it. He's going to sit down and have tea with Mao. And it's going to be weird in 1972. But anyway, Backing up. So he runs against Kennedy in 1960. This is a good moment to discuss his psychology. How it has evolved. I mentioned the outsider. And the grievance as he's refused entry. If there is an icon of this world, it would be John Kennedy. And he's learned that certainly on the floor of the House and in the Senate. This guy is everything that Nixon probably secretly wants. I'm totally projecting. But that's the suspicion, isn't it? Absolutely. The two were actually friends in the Senate, and they were the young upcoming stars, but there couldn't be a greater contrast. If Richard Nixon fought for every single thing he got in life and pushed against closed doors, and often those closed doors did not open for him. Jack Kennedy sailed through life. He had every opportunity that he could possibly imagine. The world was sort of built for somebody like Jack Kennedy. He came from a wealthy. He came from a wealthy. family, a well-connected family. His father really had these connections that made opportunities possible for Kennedy. He was Ivy League educated, and then he sails into the Senate. He's very

handsome and charming, and he gets all the women. And there really is this sense that Jack Kennedy is a star, and he's coming from a star family. And when Nixon looks at him, It looks like everything just comes so easily. And he's not wrong. His Navy experience, Nixon's Navy experience was very administrative. He ran around, which is nothing to say, bad to say about it. He did a good job doing a lot of administration running around the South Pacific. Meanwhile, Jack Kennedy becomes a war hero.

And not by his own doing. He happens to his boat gets sliced in half. They make a movie about the guy. I mean, he has to save his, you know, we've done a whole piece on this. He has to save his men and all this sort of thing. And that's the kind of comparison that Nixon has to be making in his mind all the way along. Like, how does this guy do it? Absolutely.

And Nixon is also a writer. Like, he's somebody who really cares about the written word he would become a prolific author later in his life. Jack Kennedy has a ghostwritten book called Profiles and Courage that becomes a New York Times bestseller. And you have to imagine Nixon just seething when he sees this book. Yeah, exactly. And they do close ranks on him. I mean, this is the, this is the moment when that group says no to Nixon. And over the next couple of years, we're going to go through a number of events right now that really seal the deal on his feeling like this will ever change in his lifetime. If he made it, I mean, this is a very close election. He loses against Kennedy, thanks to other reasons, but he could have very easily been the president in 1960. And you wonder what would have happened at that point for Nixon. It's a counterfactual we'd can't go into it. But I mean, it was, it's a remarkable moment of pivot for this guy. Because up until this point, even though he had worked very hard for everything he got, he got a lot at a very young age. And this, in some ways, is his first big public failure. He narrowly loses the election. He is convinced of two things. One, that Eisenhower did not support him enough. And that cost him support. And he's also kind of convinced that he didn't actually lose that this. There were shenanigans in states like Illinois and Hawaii where Joe Kennedy, Jack Kennedy's father had gotten involved and stolen the election.

So you want to talk about grievance. Nixon comes out of that election convinced that not just that he lost, but that something was taken from him. And that idea that something was taken from him, that somebody else is responsible for his failures is going to be a strong through line over the next few years of his life. Well, it's only reinforced by the fact that he runs for the governorship of his own state. and loses there, you know, to another sort of cabal, the Browns, all of that world. And that's when he makes his famous declaration. You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference. He says after this California defeat, November 11th, 1962, I remember my parents talking about this. That's when people kind of got, this guy's just bitter.

Like, he's got a whole dark quality to his personality that's a little weird. It was a weird moment. he had lost the night before. Of course, it was humiliating for someone who had been vice president of the United States, but he hadn't really slept and he didn't shave. And so he's kind of disheveled and he's walking down to talk to the news media. And there is that kind of sense of fine. If people aren't going to elect me, I'm taking my ball and going home. And also, by the way, news media, you're responsible for all of my failures. And so it is both this kind of entitlement, but it is mixed. with real grievance. And it's not a good look. I'll be back with more American history after this short break. He enters into the wilderness years

of his career, 62 to 67-ish, during which time he travels more. He goes to Europe, Asia, Latin America, Middle East. He's got to be playing chess here. This is a fascinating period I don't know much about because it's just not publicly discussed

very often. What happened to him between 62 and 67? A big moment is going to go course, Goldwater, you know, and the election or the non-election of Barry Goldwater, which had to have been a school until itself. It's a huge moment. And if you want to get a sense of whether Nixon was already aiming for a comeback, the 1964 election is a pretty good moment to look for. Because, you know, Goldwater, who's an Arizona senator, is nominated by the Republicans, the furthest right candidate they had ever nominated, backed by this new Cold War conservative movement. And when Goldwater gives his speech accepting the nomination, he is seen as so extreme that even Nixon watching the speech later writes that he felt a little sick because he was like, not only is he going to lose this election, but he is tarnishing the Republican Party. And at that moment, most of the slick establishment types within the Republican Party abandoned Goldwater entirely. they say, I am not going to go out on the campaign trail for Goldwater.

In part, they're sort of positioning themselves as like, that's too extreme for me. In part, they're like, maybe I'll get the nomination in 1968. But Nixon goes on the campaign trail. Oh, for Goldwater. For Goldwater. He goes out there and he starts stumping for him. He does the work that needs to be done by the party. He proves himself to be a loyal Republican.

And then even, you know, Goldwater loses in a landslide. But Nixon will continue to go out and he will campaign for in the 1966 midterms for all of the Republicans across all of the House races and Senate races. He's putting in the work for the party. And the reason he's doing that is because he can imagine a comeback. And he is racking up a lot of IOUs from all of these politicians who he's out there. stumping for. But at that point, he would be imagining himself going against Lyndon Johnson, who's kind of another Senate buddy, you know, but he would be doing it in the anti-government stance, which is the part of Goldwater that he adhered to, right? Yeah, it's something that he

leans into by the time you get to the buildup to the 1968 run. He says that he learns from the Goldwater campaign that you can't win with just conservative votes, but you also can't win without them. Yes. And as he takes that lesson and he folds it into his political approach as he is eyeing, potentially running against Lyndon Johnson. He is a chess player. I mean, let's get it straight. Richard Nick is a very smart man. I mean, really smart guy. And so he can see things other people can't. And he's a chess player at this point in American politics because of all the different movements that are happening here. And I just really want to point out the fact that he sees the importance of the center more than, say, today's conservatives do.

I mean, you can see such an opposition between the two approaches. Nixon understands that electorally, he has to win some of that, it turns out to be the Southern vote. He has to grab from the Democrats what they have alienated in his mind. A lot of that, sadly, comes from the Republican's anti-civil rights stance. They're going to disaffect that whole crowd. It is such a pivotal moment in the history of the two American parties, because the Republican Party had thrown an enormous amount of support behind the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. The Democratic Party was split down the line because it had so many Southern Democrats who were opposed to black civil rights. But in the 1964 election, Lyndon Johnson, the Democrat, was the champion of the Civil Rights Act and Barry Goldwater opposed it. And that really created a kind of opening for the Republican Party to woo disaffected white racist voters in the South. Because Barry Goldwater only wins a handful of states.

He wins his home state of Arizona and then those deep south states. So Nixon is looking at that map. And the Republican Party, which had not been competitive in the South since the Civil War. Yes. He looks at that and he says, there's a real opportunity here. And so he develops what becomes known as a Southern strategy to try to figure out a way to woo those white voters in a way that is clear to them that he is going to support them in the realm of civil rights. but is not so obnoxiously racist that it is going to drive away voters in other parts of the country. And that is sort of the line he toes.

Strom Thurman from South Carolina will figure centrally in all this, who was a Democrat, switches to Republican. He's part of that whole switchover. And that begins really a base of support that continues to this day. Through Reagan, all the way to Trump, starts with Nixon, starts with Goldwater, really. And then Nixon takes that mantle and adopts it for himself, which is ironic. for a Quaker, I must say, you know, this guy who has these social justice values that he's raised with suddenly is going to turn against that particular avenue in life politically. I mean, that's how it was seen. Very much so. And, you know, Nixon coming from California could, in a way, sort of exempt himself from the battles over black civil rights and race in the South to kind of position himself as someone who didn't have to navigate.

those dynamics. And he never engages in like segregationist politics. When he does do race baiting, it's always deeply coded in the language of law and order. Exactly. In the language of state's rights. And that's the cleverness of the Nixon campaign is coming up with that new way of talking about racism. So Nikki, as we approach 68, the election of 68, he's decided to run either privately or publicly. How does he have to reshape himself? It's called the new. Nixon, isn't it? Yeah, he has to sort of represent himself to the nation because remember the last time that he was a big national figure, he wasn't doing so hot when it came to politics. But Nixon also faces a very different political environment by the time you get to 1968.

He's being challenged by these liberal and moderate Republicans, people like George Romney and Nelson Rockefeller. He wants to make it clear that he's more conservative than them. He hires Pat Buchanan, who would later go on to be this major conservative figure, but he hires him as one of his speechwriters and advisors to help him reach out to conservatives. And he also has to be less overtly segregationist than George Wallace, who is the former Alabama governor, who is also running for president as a third-party candidate,

and it's not only doing well in the South, but is also picking up disaffected white working-class voters in the North. And so Nixon really has to, like, carve a path between those two. Yeah, there had obviously been many third-party candidates in the past in American politics, obviously. But this was a new and very specific challenge to the Republicans, wasn't it? Yeah. In part because it was signaling like a big change that was happening in the Democratic Party, which had been dealing with the so-called Dixiecrats since 1948, those disaffected white Southerners who oppose Black civil rights.

But Wallace was also putting himself in the way of that new Southern strategy. those voters that Wallace was appealing to, Richard Nixon wanted those voters. So that's when he's really honing his language and his outreach to people in the South. And people like Strom Thurman become very important for vouching for Nixon and making it clear that he's still your guy. Well, he has the advantage also. He was the former vice president. Ike loved him. It's all good.

You know, he definitely appeals to the wider American spectrum. So he frames his campaign, as he said, on law and order in a society which was coping with a lot of unrest, you know, through certainly into 68. And as he's campaigning, things are happening that are only reinforcing the fact for many people that things need to calm down. We need to get a handle on this. He also is starting to shape his message about Vietnam, which will become peace with honor later on in the peace talks. But his ideas, I can get you out of this war and we're still going to have our reputation intact. Very much, so. I mean, Vietnam had become this pivotal issue because in early 1968, just as the campaign is getting underway, the TED Offensive happens.

And the TED Offensive is this moment when, despite all of the generals' promises that the United States was winning this war, despite all of those promises, it became so clear that the U.S. wasn't winning, that the war was going to be going on for quite some time. And Nixon swoops in and he says, well, put me in charge and I will be able to negotiate a settlement for this war. Johnson's in too deep. He can't see it clearly. And Nixon is being very clear that if he comes in, he can offer something new to the American people and a fresh start. And then all of the anti-war protests will end and all the cops beating kids in the street that will end. The campuses will go back to normal. There's a real sense that there can be a return to normalcy if you vote for Richard Nixon.

Yes, exactly. He represents that, which the Eisenhower days carried for so many people who were, you know, in their second and third presidential. campaign or voting at that point. It's a very close election. He wins over LBJ's vice president, Hubert Humphrey. Wallace plays a big factor, as we heard. I mean, it's a definite electoral win, but it's a very close election in the polls, which brings us to his presidency, the presidency of Richard Nixon, which is what we meant to do this episode about, but it was so important to cover the early phase, more so than most every other president. I mean, of course they all have big resumes, but Richard Nixon is really important, not only politically, but psychologically.

That's right. And you can't understand his psychology without knowing about the checker speech and without knowing about the last press conference and all of those resentments that he had stockpiled by the time he got into the Oval Office. Boy, is that going to play a big factor in the early 1970s. But there's a lot before that, certainly in the 60s, and there's a lot about his presidency that's really important and very inclusive of lots of people that surprise a lot of people, including the creation of the EPA. We'll talk about all of that in our next episode about the presidency and the fall of Richard Nixon. Professor Nicole Hemmer is political historian at Vanderbilt University and host, I recommend it heartily, the This Day podcast. Her latest book is Partisans,

The Conservative Revolutionaries, who remade American politics in the 1990s. And we're going to be hearing a lot more from her in the near future. Thank you so much, Nikki, it was a pleasure. It was a real joy. Looking forward to chatting with you more soon. I hope you enjoyed this episode of American History Hit. Please remember to like, review, and subscribe. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts.

And I'll see you next time.