I've listened to a number of interviews with the author of the new book The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon & the Rise of Reagan, Rick Perlstein. They have been most interesting. At the time of Watergate, it was wondered by the political class if the Republicans were finished as a party, at least at a national level. And it could have been if Reagan hadn't come along. He understood that the fears of white Republicans -- and the fears of many white Democrats, too -- could be harnessed with a "positive spin." Call it hate and fear masquerading as "Morning in America," Barry Goldwater dressed as Shirley Temple. Watergate and its welling of distrust in the government actually made Reagan's job easier. And Reagan wasn't a phony. He actually believed the bullshit he was selling, to the point where he may very well have believed the biography that he'd written for himself that was in many respects simply untrue. It is fascinating, horrifying stuff.
What is most relevant today is that the seeds planted by Reagan all the way back in the 1960s and watered by him in the 1970s and 1980s, are still growing weeds today. The playbook has been updated for today's Republican party but now completely omits "Morning in America." It is the book of Reagan distilled through the paranoid delusions of Nixon. And it is playing because the now fully-Republican white base sees time has having passed them by. And nothing sells like fear to those already afraid. The saving grace today may be that while a very significant part of the country felt this sense of fear in the 1960s and these tactics could thus work nationally, that may no longer be the case. Regionally, we've seen the power of these tactics over the past decade. Nationally, we can hope that time has moved the dial enough to combat this fear of change.
I plan on picking up the book, but you can read an excerpt at TPM.
6 August 2014
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