Nixon, labels, otherism

There are no major revelations in the book Nixonland, especially if you are familiar with Nixon's career. What it does well is articulate how Nixon refined his political tactics as he moved towards the presidency in 1968. It is easy to forget how unlikely this scenario seemed after his 1962 loss in the California gubernatorial election, announcing to the press -- "You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore."

Nixon was elected to the Senate in 1950, defeating Helen Douglas. During this campaign he was able to define Douglas as someone so left and liberal that she was "pink right down to her underwear." Tactics like this were nothing new, especially in a time where genuine fear of the Soviet Union and China existed. Nixon certainly knew how to exploit that fear, coming off as less ham-handed and pugilistic then McCarthey. If Nixon had not been chosen for the Vice-Presidency, I am not sure if he ever would have developed beyond a one issue politician. While he certainly served Eisenhower as an attack dog, he did so within the cloak of the administration, which bestowed a certain statesmanship on Nixon, whether it was deserved or not.

His defeats in the elections for president in 1960 and for the governor's house in 1962 almost ended his political career. Somehow though, Nixon learned a transformative lesson in the Sixties, enabling his election in 1968. This was the fear of the other. While this is not so different from the specific fear of the communist, or the fear of the blacks that had been so successful in elections past, it was different in that Nixon was able to see that their definition of themselves revolved around their fear of the other. It did not really matter what the "other" was, it mattered that they were not it.

It is not a difficult task to convince people that their faults are actually caused by others. People in a sense became defined by what they felt that they were not. They were not hippies, black, anti-war, liberal, or even a part of the media and by proxy, the elite. The labels are interchangeable. And because people are defining themselves by what they are not, these labels do not even have to be true. They can be even more effective when they are not true.

It is remarkable how similar the campaigns in the last forty years have been. Reading Hunter Thompson's account of the 1972 election reveals the exact same tactics, if not the exact labels and scapegoating that were used in this election.

I am hoping that this election moves this country past those same tactics. I am hopeful that fear ceases to be effective after a certain amount of time. Maybe we have labeled everything and scapegoated so much, that eventually it is losing its effectiveness. Maybe when you run and rule by fear, you don't develop any good ideas to govern on and that eventually becomes apparent. I don't know. I can only hope and wish.