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.As David Greenberg notes in hisstudy of Nixon s image, many liberals in the 1950s thought that the Ameri-can public was vulnerable to what they regarded as Nixon s phony pop-ulism and demagoguery.After the televised debates, however, these liber-als were relieved that Americans were able to see through the scrim ofappearances that Nixon draped before them and glimpse the heavy hand ofthe petty striver pulling the strings (2003, 71).But as Greenberg alsoobserves, that account overlooks how close the 1960 presidential electionactually was.If we accept McWilliams s view, almost half the voters in that226 A MERI CAN P ROP HET election, having learned the truth about Nixon, preferred a weak, insecure,nihilistic opportunist to an excellent campaigner with a powerful organiza-tion and an attractive family.Moreover, McWilliams s prediction beforethe 1962 gubernatorial election was well off the mark.Even after his loss toPat Brown, Richard Nixon was far from through politically.Once again,McWilliams had underestimated Nixon s resourcefulness if not his ambi-tion.Following the California election, McWilliams continued to monitorthe Republican Party and its leaders, paying special attention to their risingin: uence in the sunshine belt stretching from Cape Canaveral to SanDiego.Fueled by federal contracts in the aerospace industry, business inthe Sun Belt was booming, and its leaders were becoming less reliant onthe Eastern Establishment for support.The region was prime habitat forGoldwater Republicans, and McWilliams quickly perceived the long-termsigni9 cance of the Arizona senator s 1964 presidential campaign.To many,Barry Goldwater s positions on immigration and school prayer, not to men-tion his failure to court labor, blacks, and liberal Republicans, were not cal-culated to win a general election.McWilliams, however, saw a larger strat-egy behind them.In High Noon in the Cow Palace the GOPconvention that year was held in the San Francisco arena McWilliamswrote about Goldwater.He wants the liberals out of the party the better to get the conservativeDemocrats in.On balance, he feels that he would gain by the exchange,but he also feels that undisputed control of the Republican Party wouldin any case be a tactical advantage worth the price.This swap was made easier by the civil rights legislation President Johnsonsigned after Kennedy s assassination in 1963.Johnson knew the resultingwhite backlash could hurt the Democratic Party in the South, butMcWilliams correctly observed that nondiscriminatory housing legislationwould also have signi9 cant consequences in California.McWilliams alsotook note of Goldwater s organization and the true believers within it. TheKennedy organization at Los Angeles, in 1960, was impressive, but this oneis awesome, he claimed. It will not disintegrate even if Goldwater suffersa smashing defeat. Its goal was not a victory in 1964 but party control andincreasing power as the nation s population, moving inexorably south andThe Age of Nixon 227 west, became more conservative. In one form or another, McWilliamsconcluded, the consequences of the hard turn to the Right, which theRepublican Party has taken, will be with us for a long time. That prediction would be borne out most clearly in the career of RonaldReagan, who in 1966 challenged Pat Brown s bid for a third term as Cali-fornia governor.By that time, McWilliams had known Reagan for decades.In 1946, Reagan participated in the Los Angeles fund-raiser thatMcWilliams had organized for the Nation, and the two men had fought onthe same side of the Hollywood labor battles going back to the Willie Bioffdays.Even then, Reagan was showing more than a passing interest in poli-tics, contemplating congressional runs in 1946 and 1952.In 1947, theScreen Actors Guild elected him president for the 9 rst of six times.Thesame year, he cooperated with both the FBI and HUAC in their closed-door investigations of Communism in Hollywood, and the following yearhe testi9 ed in a HUAC open hearing.For most of the 1950s, he hosted tele-vision s General Electric Theater and toured the country on General Elec-tric s behalf.During this time, he became a practiced and sought-afterspeaker, and his politics became increasingly conservative.A Truman sup-porter in 1948, Reagan supported Nixon in 1960 and offered to register as aRepublican, but GOP leaders agreed that he was more useful to them as aDemocrat.Two years later, he of9 cially became a Republican, and afterhis speech at the Republican National Convention in 1964, many consid-ered him a rising star in the party (Cannon 2003).McWilliams s piece on the 1966 California gubernatorial election, How to Succeed with the Backlash, opened with a bold claim: Califor-nia is in the throes of one of the most subtle and intensive racist politicalcampaigns ever waged in a Northern or Western state. For him, the elec-tion s key issue was nondiscriminatory housing.The state legislature hadpassed the Rumford Fair Housing Act in 1963, but California voters usedthe state s initiative process to pass Proposition 14, which disabled the hous-ing legislation and prohibited future laws to the same effect.Although thefate of Proposition 14 was later settled in the courts, the issue reverberatedthrough the 1966 gubernatorial contest.Brown referred the matter to anonpartisan commission; Reagan decried racism but declared that theright of an individual to the ownership and disposition of property is insep-arable from the right of freedom itself. Delivered to an audience of real228 A MERI CA N P ROP HET estate brokers, Reagan s declaration received a standing ovation.Brown sDemocratic challenger in the primary, Los Angeles mayor Sam Yorty,opposed Proposition 14 until it passed by a two-to-one margin.Seeking anadvantage over Brown, Yorty then predicted that the California SupremeCourt, to which Brown had appointed six of the seven justices, would inval-idate the proposition, which it did. Unless Governor Brown can 9 nd somepotent issues to outweigh this obsessive fear of open housing, McWilliamsconcluded, he is in grave danger. In any case, McWilliams added, thekey issue in the election would receive no direct examination.There won t be much plain talk from Californians about the racism thatthey know permeates the Brown-Reagan contest.Most of them won ttalk about it at all if they can escape it.They don t want the nation toknow they don t want to admit to themselves that the number-onestate may elect Ronald Reagan governor in order to keep the Negro inhis place. Two years earlier, he had predicted a white backlash in California; now hewas bracing himself and the Nation s readers for its consequences.McWilliams s piece identi9 ed a potent issue, but there was much moreto the 1966 gubernatorial election than fair housing.California s postwargrowth had created a host of problems, including congestion, pollution,and high taxes to 9 nance Governor Brown s ambitious public works andsocial programs.Facing a large de9 cit as well as a constitutional require-ment to submit a balanced budget, Brown used an accounting gimmick todelay a tax increase until after the election, and the state s reputable leg-islative analyst, A.Alan Post, publicly criticized the move as irresponsible.Another issue was law and order.In December 1964, protestors acting inthe name of the Free Speech Movement had occupied the administrationbuilding at the University of California, Berkeley
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Tematy
IndexPeter Berling Dzieci Graala 01 Dzieci Graala
Emilie Richards [Ministry is Murder 04] A Lie for a Lie (pdf)
Blatty William Peter Egzorcysta 01 Egzorcysta(1)
Hamilton Peter Œwit nocy 03 Nagi Bóg 03 Wiara
Richard Roeper Debunked! Conspiracy Theories, Urban Legends, and Evil Plots of the 21st Century (2008)
Patricia Richard Busy Hands, Images of the Family in the Northern Civil War Effort (2003)
Richard Bitner Confessions of a Subprime Lender, An Insider's Tale of Greed, Fraud, and Ignorance (2008)
Joel Fleishman The Foundation, A Great American Secret; How Private Wealth is Changing the World (2009)
Richard Davis Electing Justice, Fixing the Supreme Court Nomination Process (2006)
Hubbard, L Ron Mission Earth 07 Voyage of Vengeance