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At a recent Nixon Center seminar, renowned political analyst Michael Barone argued that the time has come for former President Richard Nixon to be ushered "out of partisan politics and into history." Barone, a Senior Writer with US News & World Report, visited the Center to discuss his September 20, 1999 cover story "Nixon's America." Nixon Center Advisory Council Chairman James Schlesinger chaired the meeting

Barone began by confessing that in his early life as a "Nixon-hater," he was determined to prove the former president to be a "right-wing, nazi, fascist, and crusher of civil liberties." However, in evaluating Nixon's presidency for his book, Our Country: the Shaping of America from Roosevelt to Reagan, Barone reexamined his views of Nixon's achievements. "If we're going to understand our past intelligently...we've got to get beyond the partisan assessments of Nixon and look at [his record] more clearly," he said. In fact, Barone suggested, with the passage of time it is clear that the results of the Nixon presidency were better than those produced by "the best and the brightest" during the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations.

Assessing the still controversial 1946 Congressional campaign which liberals often cite to argue that Nixon was a "red-baiter" who used anti-Communist hysteria to defeat Democratic incumbent Jerry Voorhis, Barone maintained that Nixon's campaign was in fact founded on legitimate political issues. Reviewing historical record, he said, it is clear Nixon based his charges on facts and that Voorhis was truly supported by pro-Communist unions. Thus, Nixon's statements were not "smear tactics" as enemies said then and later; rather, Barone emphasized, they were "justified" by the facts. Moreover, he concluded, polling data from the period suggests that Nixon would have won anyway.

Similarly, Barone continued, history has vindicated Nixon in the Alger Hiss case. Looking back, Hiss was "obviously guilty," he said. Nevertheless, Nixon’s pursuit of Hiss earned him many enemies who would endure throughout his political career and beyond.

Although Richard Nixon's role in the Hiss case led many to brand him a hard-line conservative, Barone argued that Nixon's record in the House

and Senate shows him to have been more moderate than conservative. As a matter of fact, Barone pointed out, Nixon's 1960 campaign rhetoric was generally similar to that of Kennedy and Rockefeller. For example, Barone quoted Nixon from one of the campaign debates: "Senator Kennedy and I agree on all the ends that we are seeking, we just disagree about the means -- I just want to spend a little less money." Further, Barone commented, some of Nixon’s domestic policy initiates, such as the Family Assistance Program, makes it possible to argue that he was among America’s more liberal presidents.

Nixon's "wilderness" period -- after his losses to Kennedy in the 1960 presidential election and to Pat Brown in California's 1962 gubernatorial election -- ended in 1968 when he was called upon to lead a nation in serious trouble, Barone said. "People forget how bad [things were in] the United States in 1968," he continued. The Kennedy and Johnson Administrations "produced policies which led to riots in the streets of major cities," he said, "and the country had a war the incumbent administration could not win and could not end. Nixon was running at one of the most difficult times in American history, for anybody." In fact, taking into account these problems, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy and the Tet Offensive, 1968 could be perhaps considered the "most disastrous year for America in the 20th century." Thus Barone suggested that when Nixon became president in 1969, he was faced with a situation more difficult than that faced by any president except Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt.

America was deeply divided. The elite was moving left and the electorate was moving right, Barone stated. The Washington elite "suddenly turned against America, turned against the Vietnam War, a war that they themselves made...and started to concentrate on errors, often errors they themselves committed." The post-war consensus was in tatters.

Nixon responded to the crisis with policies tailored to a large extent toward the left-wing elite, but rhetorically geared toward the right-wing electorate, such as the Vietnamization policy of gradually reducing the number of troops and American involvement in the war. Though trying to establish a Republican majority in Congress, Nixon moved significantly left on a number of public policy issues, creating the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, instituting racial quotas and preferences through the Labor Department's "Philadelphia Plan," and supporting the National Endowment for the Arts. He also developed a policy toward Native Americans that is still in place today, proposed a Family Assistance Program to provide a guaranteed income to welfare recipients, and, after the 1972 election, implemented wage and price controls. Finally, Nixon cut a deal with House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Wilbur Mills to increase Social Security payments and index them to inflation, which Barone called a "tremendous piece of public policy" that lifted elderly people out of poverty. Unfortunately, Barone added, it also contributed significantly to the budget deficits of the 1980s.

Although he criticized Nixon for the errors of Watergate, Barone argued that the period should be understood in the context of changing political rules. The old rules of post-war politics no longer existed. In particular, the press, which had overlooked seamy and corrupt tactics of political leaders from the Depression through postwar years, ignoring Roosevelt's misuse of the Internal Revenue Service and the FBI, and Kennedy's wiretapping of Martin Luther King, and FDR's and Kennedy's womanizing, no longer felt an obligation to protect public confidence in the nation and its leaders. On the contrary, the media sought to expose politicians' faults and misdeeds. Barone suggested that Nixon failed to understand this crucial shift as Watergate unfolded.

Moreover, public attitudes toward the war in Vietnam were also changing. Democratic politicians "fiercely and unfairly attacked Nixon on his Vietnam and other policies," Barone said, though many of them supported the war for years during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Criticism of the president intensified as a result of the poor state of the economy; by 1974, the nation was beset by both inflation and recession.

Barone concluded his remarks by noting that former President Nixon's successes and failures must be evaluated within the context of the times. Many participants agreed with this view and gave particular emphasis to the political and international environment created by the Cold War and the war in Vietnam. In Barone's view, a reexamination of the Nixon legacy on these terms sheds new light on Nixon's many achievements. As Barone emphasized, Richard Nixon had a profound impact on today's America and "it cannot be imagined without him."

This Program Brief was prepared by Nixon Center Intern Jean E. Siskovic and Paul Saunders.