Restoring American Hope: Scorched Earth or Reseeding?
At the party’s national convention in August, the nominee called for “an open world – open skies, open cities, open hearts, open minds,” part of “a new internationalism in which America enlists its allies and friends around the world in those struggles in which their interest is as great as ours.” The candidate called on Americans to “build bridges to human dignity across the gulf that separates black America from white America.” Asserting that “the time when one man or a few leaders could save America is gone,” the speaker called for a total mobilization of Americans to work together to move forward, to “restore order and respect for law.” They told the story of their life, how they learned values from their parents and how “a great teacher, a remarkable football coach, an inspirational minister encouraged” them along the way.
Kamala Harris in Chicago this week accepting the Democratic nomination for president? Nope, Richard Nixon in Miami in August, 1968, accepting the Republican nomination for president.
In a time of deep turmoil in 1968, candidate Richard Nixon found a winning message for the presidency (photo Warren Leffler, through Library of Congress).
In 1968, the country was facing something close to an existential crisis. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Sen. Robert Kennedy had both been assassinated. The Cold War was heating up: Russia had invaded Czechoslovakia; the war in Vietnam was escalating. There were anti-war and pro-civil rights protests in the streets.
The Democratic convention that year was marked by demands for dramatic changes: an end to the Vietnam War; action in implementing civil rights legislation and environmental protection. Many people across America saw chaos. Nixon’s speech, by contrast, was about stability: he tried to position himself as a uniter, not a divider, while establishing the Republican Party as defenders of the nation’s threatened institutions, the party of law and order, stability, freedom, faith and football.
This year the parties’ positions have been snow-globed. At the Republican convention, the talk was about blowing up existing foreign policy, getting rid of government employees, abolishing the Department of Education. At this week’s Democratic convention, the argument was to protect those policies and systems.
On some level, Democrats have no choice. Ben Rhodes, a former senior advisor to Barack Obama, summarized the challenge in a recent article by James Pogue in The New York Times: “How can they present themselves as the party of fundamental change when they spent the past eight years arguing that America’s institutions need to be shored up against the urgent threat of Trumpism?”
The initial approach Democrats have taken has been to try to convince people that they shouldn’t really feel bad. The stock market Is up; unemployment is down; the economy is growing; things are working, they say; why can’t folks see that? Before he dropped out, President Biden told ABC: “I don’t think America is in tough shape.”
The problem is people don’t believe it (see my previous posts on this here and here). A New York Times poll in May found that, when asked “which comes closest to your view about the political and economic system in America?” 14% of people believed the system needs “to be torn down entirely.” Another 55% said the system needs “major changes.” That’s nearly 70% of people who are ticked off.
What’s behind it? Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, told Pogue that the frustration comes after 30 years of leaders from both parties telling Americans that “barrier-free international markets, rapidly advancing communications technology and automation, decreased regulation and empowered citizen consumers would be the keys to prosperity, happiness and strong democracy.” But while that has increased profits for corporations and decreased global poverty, it hasn’t worked out as well for many Americans, who’ve lost jobs and hope. Addiction, depression, suicide and loneliness have all increased over the past 15 years (I did a four-part series on this challenge last year; here’s a link to Part 1).
The party that wins this fall’s election will be the one that does the best job of showing Americans they understand their problems — and have ideas about how to fix them.
Republicans are convinced what will resonate is a “scorched earth” policy. Foreign policy is the problem — change it; foreign imports are the problem — tax them; immigration is the problem — stop it; the Justice Department is the problem — rebuild it; the Education Department is the problems — abolish it; government in general is the problem — starve it. It is only with radical change, they argue, that can we restore America.
At this week’s convention, meanwhile, Democrats seemed to be arguing for a “reseeding” approach. Preserve the institutions, but make them work better. Spend more money on infrastructure and improve drug treatment programs, but also:
· Strengthen ties with foreign allies.
· Build new bridges across lines of divide.
· Look to teachers and football coaches for inspiration in tough times.
· Don’t look to one leader to solve all your problems.
Trying to summarize Vice President Harris’ argument during her acceptance speech, Ezra Klein put it this way: “I cannot remember a speech from a Democrat at a convention that in its promises, imagery and story was a fundamentally conservative… as this one.”
Maybe all that explains why it reminded me of the Nixon speech?
Of course there’s one other message from Nixon that Democrats might be hoping for. In his 1968 speech, Nixon imagined that were a group of Americans who weren’t being heard. He called them “the quiet voice in the tumult and the shouting,” who “know that this country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless it is a good place for all of us to live in.” And he thought that, come November, they would show up at the polls and respond to his message.
This year's Democratic convention was a flag, freedom and football forward event, with echoes of the 1968 Republican convention. It's not clear the majority will choose that "conservative" message or the more radical change ideas Republicans are offering (screenshot from ABC news coverage).
There are many differences between 1968 and 2024 and between Democratic and Republican policies, and many reasons Richard Nixon shouldn’t be anybody’s role model, but let’s acknowledge this: as much as people seemed to want radical change in 1968, “preserve and defend” beat “blow up and reinvent” that year. Democrats are hoping it works for them this year.
Notes:
Nixon 1968 nomination acceptance speech:
Rhodes and Murphy on acknowledging American’s need for change: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/19/opinion/chris-murphy-democrats.html
May 2024 polling data on need for system to change: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/13/us/politics/biden-trump-battleground-poll.html
1968 election results: https://www.270towin.com/1968_Election/#google_vignette
“Kamala Harris Wants to Win,” Ezra Klein Show August 23, 2024: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/23/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-dnc-recap.html