By Edwin Cooney
As the new President of the United States took office on Friday, January 20th, 1961, Americans believed that although “we the people” had a lot of catching up to do with the Russians and "the godless Communism" it represented, Americans were sure that under a vigorous and activist presidency, they surely would become, once again, the first among the nations of the world.
Since 1933 and even before FDR's New Deal, Americans had been well served by most of their presidents. FDR, Harry Truman, and Dwight D. Eisenhower had given them institutional relief from a terrible depression, had protected them from scheming banking and commercial practices, protected Americans from mortgage foreclosures, established Social Security, legitimized the rights of laboring men and women, won a world war, created the United Nations, established the Marshall Plan that fed Europe yet supported American enterprise, faced the Russians down during the Berlin blockade, established NATO, created the interstate highway system, and supported the United Nations in its efforts to sustain international peace. The recent stumbles in space and technology were only temporary. All of these achievements could and would be, whatever their contradictory interpretations, regarded as achievements by the office of President of the United States.
To be inaugurated as President in 1961 was to be elevated to a place of near national reverence.
Frightened of aggressive Communism under Nikita Khrushchev and Chinese leader Mao Zedong, Americans looked primarily to their president for protection from a dangerous world. Whatever his personal faults or failings may be, they generally were not regarded as the public's business. True, FDR had suffered from polio, but he was usually photographed standing. Truman often cussed, but in a “manly” way. Ike had heart trouble and frequently took golfing vacations, but that was merely recreational.
The core of public struggles that would affect public opinion began that very spring. The civil rights movement wouldn't start in earnest until the North Carolina luncheon sit-ins began in May of 1961. President Kennedy could calm the public's disappointment over the April 17th Bay of Pigs Invasion by asserting his responsibility as the Chief Executive Officer of the government for all that had happened. Only a few rabid Republicans challenged his authority once Ike and Nixon proclaimed their ongoing support for our Commander-in-Chief.
In addition, Richard Nixon, even as party leader, was accountable to long trusted GOP veterans such as Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Herbert Hoover, Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Senators Everett M. Dirksen and Prescott Bush, George Aiken, Leverett Saltonstall, and former Secretary of State Christian Herter — all high church men of conventional reputation and integrity. His cabinet was likely to include men named Nelson Rockefeller, Charles Mathias, Charles Percy, Thruston Morton, William Rogers, Robert Anderson, Herbert Brownell, and perhaps even Tom Dewey.
By the time 1968 rolled around, due to lifestyle changes as a result of the civil rights struggle, the GOP was more South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond's party than Abraham Lincoln's! Party leadership had shifted from Hugh Scott's or Nelson Rockefeller's party to the party of Barry Goldwater, Texas Senator John Tower, and Ronald Reagan, thereby drawing its energy from radical and angry conservatism rather than from traditional corporate economic conservatism.
Even more significant, the presidency had suffered a national heart rending assassination, and had dedicated itself to a costly and un-winnable war in Vietnam. I've never forgotten the observation that America awakened on November 23rd, 1963 stripped of its innocence.
Hence, Richard Nixon not only inherited a grieving national constituency, but one bedecked by doubt, and socio/political mistrust. So far from Abraham Lincoln idealism had Mr. Nixon moved that according to H. R. Haldeman's published diary, before the Watergate break-in, he was considering dropping the name Republican from his party and renaming it the Conservative Party of America.
Political idealism had replaced patriotism in American lingo. What we believed in was permanently replacing who we were and what we were all about. Americans wondered, for example, if the struggle for civil rights was really about freedom or was it a Communist "cat's paw?"
Richard Nixon was far from solely responsible for this national change, but Lincolnesque civil rights and humanitarianism were no longer Nixon’s “ticket to ride” as far back as 1964!
By the time Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew took their presidential and vice presidential oaths of office, Americans felt overtaxed, abused and misled. In 1964, Republicans advertised themselves as "a choice, not an echo.” Mr. Nixon ran in 1968 as a moderate conservative but found political security in a new "southern strategy."
Freedom, peace, and justice for all above and beyond party may well have been a genuine ideal to Vice President Nixon. However, history records that to President Richard Nixon, privileged political power and authority constituted his political and personal legacy!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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