University of Virginia Library

Colloquium

Richard Nixon:
Harding Of The 1970s

By Stuart I. Rochester

—Ed.

"Harding is a good man, and a
man of common sense. He is in no
sense brilliant, but we have had
enough of brilliant genius in the
White House, after Roosevelt and
Wilson. Indeed, I am more and
more under the opinion that for
President we need not so much a
brilliant man as solid, mediocre
men, provided that they have good
sense, sound and careful judgment,
and good manner." So wrote Brand
Whitlock, a tired and exasperated
Progressive reformer, in his diary of
June 13, 1920. So did Max Lerner,
David Lawrence, and numerous
other commentators — both liberal
and conservative — rationalize or
justify the election of Richard
Nixon in 1968 after the excitement
and letdown of the Great Society.

Whirlwind Years

The Kennedy and Johnson
years, much like the Progressive
years which preceded Harding, were
whirlwind ones of inflated hopes,
ambitious programs and runaway
prosperity. In 1968, as in 1920, it
was tempting for the great mass of
Americans, tired reformers no less
than beleaguered conservatives, to
take a breather and adjourn the
politics of debate. The times, after
all, called for a period of cooling
off, accounting, and consolidation;
there was need of a manager, a
broker, a calm head rather than a
man of intellect or inspiration. And
Richard Nixon, like Warren Harding,
represented an uninspired but
familiar and predictable quality. To
old hands, he fit like a glove.

Return To Normalcy

Where the Harding people declared
"a return to normalcy," the
Nixon people — more sophisticated,
more cosmetic — talked in terms of
"lowered voices" and "low profiles,"
the low key and the soft sell.
Harding preferred to listen to
"bungalow minds;" Nixon conversed
with the "silent majority."
Both surrounded themselves with
unheroic types. Harding had his
Ohio gang. Nixon chose men with
dour looks, hooded eyes and stolid
bearing who mirrored the faceless,
passionless personality of his "Middle
America" constituency.

Same Retrenchment

The analogy between Nixon and
Harding is not entirely mischievous.
Nixon may not have "returned to
normalcy" with the smugness or
the thoroughness of Harding: he
has ditched neither welfare nor
(regrettably) war completely. But
there is the same retrenchment, the
same backsliding and reneging.
What has become increasingly obvious
is that the Nixon politics are
not merely the politics of equilibrium,
which could be justified
after the frantic pace of the sixties,
but rather the more extremist
politics of reaction and retrogression.
One has to go back to
Coolidge to find when silence was
last celebrated as a virtue. And to
McCarthyism to find when the
most passionate addresses of an
administration were charged with
intimidation and censure instead of
injunction. For a time the moonshots
broke the monotony and an
occasional solitary figure like Finch
or Education Commissioner Allen
interrupted the mediocrity, but in
recent months even the token
traces of progressivism have been
scuttled and we are left with the
spectacle of erstwhile liberal
Moynlhan parroting the Nixon
rhetoric like a faithful crony.

Progress Nullified

The regressive measures and
pronouncements daily issuing from
the White House are piece by piece
nullifying the progress of the past
fifteen years. It may well be sound
policy to contact the nation's
economy and diplomacy, both
over-extended in the sixties, but to
retreat from fundamental commitments
to civil rights and social
justice is something else altogether.
These are not commitments to be
inflated or deflated. They are not
subject to the changing winds of
the marketplace or the conference
table. They are basic humanistic
goals to be fulfilled, and their quest
must be constant and unflinching.
The extent to which that constant
quest has been stalled and obscured
by the Nixon Administration is a
clear indication that this is no
ordinary period of retrenchment.

Benign Neglect

What we are witnessing in 1970
is not a lull in the action where
reform-minded men are getting a
second wind and retooling for the
continued pursuit of progressive
goals. Rather it is the inauguration
of a decade likely to be every bit as
callous and expedient as the 1920's
in the postponement of pressing
issues and insensitivity to social
needs. There is the same suspension
or curtailment of vital programs,
the same ostrich posture on matters
politically agonizing or embarrassing,
the same casual air of "benign
neglect" (to use Moynlhan's unfortunate
phrase) that characterized
the politics of the twenties. Moreover,
there are the same conditions
of urgency without the corresponding
sense of urgency. And there
are the same retirements of frustrated
public servants into private life
and defections of bewildered
liberals into the ranks of conservatism.

Those innocents who opted for
relaxation and equilibrium in 1968
have gotten reaction instead. And
unless there is a miracle or a
messiah in the wings, we seem
destined for another decade of
locust years and lost opportunities.
We continue on the national treadmill.
The progress of one generation
is unravelled by the Penelopes of
the next. Our consolation may be
that by 1980 the country should
again have had its full of "solid,
mediocre men of common sense
and good manner" and be ready to
return their affairs to men of
purpose and inspiration.