{"id":6631,"date":"2014-07-11T18:39:23","date_gmt":"2014-07-11T22:39:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/buchanan.org\/blog\/?p=6631"},"modified":"2019-02-10T02:29:00","modified_gmt":"2019-02-10T07:29:00","slug":"conversation-pat-buchanan-new-book-richard-nixon-making-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buchanan.org\/blog\/conversation-pat-buchanan-new-book-richard-nixon-making-president-6631","title":{"rendered":"A Conversation With Pat Buchanan On His New Book, Richard Nixon, and the Making of a President."},"content":{"rendered":"

By Ryan James Girdusky – The American Spectator<\/a><\/p>\n

Pat Buchanan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s latest book,\u00c2\u00a0<\/em>The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority<\/strong><\/a>, chronicles the political resurrection of Richard Nixon after he suffered defeats in the presidential election of 1960 and California gubernatorial election of 1962. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a fantastic read, giving an insider’s look at Nixon’s character and the nation’s politics during the turbulent mid-to-late 1960s.<\/em><\/p>\n

I was lucky enough to sit down with Mr. Buchanan and ask him about the book, Richard Nixon, and the making of a president.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ryan Girdusky:<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0How did Richard Nixon, despite losing in 1960, put together a coalition for his 1968 comeback? And who was the New Majority?<\/p>\n

Pat Buchanan:<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0It was the political marriage of the Goldwater conservatives, Middle Americans, the Nixonian center of the party, different county chairmen, and regular Republicans. Them and the Goldwater movement were the first components we put together to block out Romney and Rockefeller.<\/p>\n

The key thing that happened between 1960 and 1968, in 1960 Nixon had gone up to Rockefeller\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s apartment, but by ’68 the center of gravity had shifted and the Goldwater movement had the power to nominate but not elect. If you had Nixon and Goldwater together you could dominate the nomination, but then to elect you had to get Democrats because Republicans were outnumbered almost two-to-one.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>My approach was the Northern Catholics, who were moving [politically] because the Democrats no longer had Kennedy on the top of the ticket. And then you had the Southern Protestants, but our problem was Wallace took a lot of their votes\u00e2\u20ac\u201dhe won seven states. Some of them left Wallace and they were going right across us and going to Humphrey.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

RG:<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0Now how did you push to win the union vote? Because Nixon won a majority of them in \u00e2\u20ac\u212272.<\/p>\n

PB:<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0Well, in \u00e2\u20ac\u212272 is when we completed the New Majority. In \u00e2\u20ac\u212272 Wallace ran in the Democratic primaries that year so he wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t running in the general, which was fine with us. One thing Nixon did that was very gracious was when Wallace was shot, Nixon was the first person to visit him in the hospital.<\/p>\n

So it didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t come together in \u00e2\u20ac\u212268 and we almost lost because Northern Catholics, many of them were in unions and went back to Humphrey. He was well-liked and liberal, but not the extreme left wing. But afterwards Nixon went for the Northern ethnic Catholics who rejected the counterculture.<\/p>\n

RG:<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0Yeah, I understand that. My grandfather, a union Italian Catholic Democrat, said the first Republican he ever voted for was Nixon.<\/p>\n

PB:<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0Well, let me tell you this: Nixon once said, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcThe Italians\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 time is coming.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 We were hoping for an Italian Supreme Court justice\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthat\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why when I was working in Reagan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s White House and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been pushing for it, when the word came to us that Reagan was going to appoint a new Supreme Court justice and it was this man named Antonin Scalia, I yelled \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcYes!\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/p>\n

RG:<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0That Scalia guy seems to have worked out in the end.<\/p>\n

PB:<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0He did work out considering how many didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t work out. That was one of our failures: we had four appointments. Of course Rehnquist was one of the great jurist of the twentieth\u00c2\u00a0century and he was a good guy too.<\/p>\n

RG:<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0You detail in your\u00c2\u00a0book<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0how Eisenhower was considering dropping Nixon from the ticket. Did that create distrust or did Nixon dislike Eisenhower?<\/p>\n

PB:<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0Nixon revered Eisenhower\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 but everyone who was close to Nixon at the time of the fund scandal thought that he was very wounded by the whole ordeal.<\/p>\n

RG:<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0The loss of the House and the Senate during the Eisenhower years and during the Goldwater election\u00e2\u20ac\u201ddid seeing those\u00c2\u00a0losses\u00c2\u00a0help inspire Nixon to\u00c2\u00a0rebuild the party??<\/p>\n

PB:<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0I think after Goldwater\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s loss, Goldwater was very grateful to Nixon for all the work he did for him and knew it wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t for selfish reasons. And despite losing he was still admired as a hero and martyr for conservatives. Clearly, Nixon could see the development in the South; he went to that South Carolina event in \u00e2\u20ac\u212266 and the idea that the Catholics were moving was something I convinced him of. I wrote him this huge memo about how the Catholics fell off by ten points without Jack Kennedy on the ticket in the midterm, and they were natural Republicans.<\/p>\n

Nixon knew they were with us morally and culturally, and Nixon\/Agnew became the rejection of the counterculture of the 1960s. One of the big events that cemented it was Nixon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u212269 Silent Majority speech and then Agnew taking on the networks. That was my baby and it worked.<\/p>\n

RG:<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0But when Nixon became president in \u00e2\u20ac\u212268, becoming the first president since Zachary Taylor to have both Houses of Congress against him, did he have any leeway with the Congress? Did he have the same executive push as Lyndon Johnson?<\/p>\n

PB:<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0Oh, no. When Reagan became president he had the Senate and enough Blue Dogs to move legislation. What Nixon had was a Congress that was so hostile to him\u00e2\u20ac\u201done time Nixon asked Congress to vote for an anti-ballistic missile system so he could negotiate with the Soviets who were building ballistic missiles around Moscow. So he went to the Senate and asked them for this vote and all he could get was a tie. They alerted the vice president that he would have to vote, so Nixon looked at Agnew and said, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcYou know how to vote on this one?\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 And Agnew said, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcMr. President, let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s talk about that family assistance program you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re in favor of.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/p>\n

RG:<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0You joined Nixon in 1965. When did Nixon start campaigning for Republicans in the midterms?<\/p>\n

PB:<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0In that fall of \u00e2\u20ac\u212266. Nixon had his six-week campaign for Republicans in the House. He said Republicans would win forty seats and they won forty-seven.<\/p>\n

RG:<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0Now despite all the press that said Nixon was finished after 1962, did any of them give him credit for the victories in 1966?<\/p>\n

PB:<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0Some did, yeah. Some papers looked at who he endorsed and saw that an enormous number of them won. He didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t make that cover of\u00c2\u00a0Time<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0magazine<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0that had the six Republicans of the future. Nixon didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t make that cover.<\/p>\n

RG:<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0Is the lesson of Nixon relevant?<\/p>\n

PB:<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0I often think the lesson of Nixon is relevant today, and the trouble is America is a changed country. There is still Nixon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Silent Majority, but their numbers have shrunken. You see that in response to this illegal immigrant invasion. Those people are still there but their numbers have diminished. A lot of the younger folks have grown up in the revolution of the \u00e2\u20ac\u212260s. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve absorbed and internalized the sexual revolution and the \u00e2\u20ac\u212260s ideas of acid, amnesty, and abortion. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re in favor of pot, amnesty, and half the country is in favor of same-sex marriage and abortion. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tremendous change in the country.<\/p>\n

RG:<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0But that same approach Nixon took of looking at crime and social decay and the need for social cohesion, could a Republican look for an issue like that which unites a majority of the country?<\/p>\n

PB:<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0Well, you know, look at Prop 8 in California. Seventy percent of black folks voted in favor of Prop 8 to ban same-sex marriage, and then McCain got 5 percent of them.<\/p>\n

RG:<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0So could the lesson of Nixon be relevant?<\/p>\n

PB:<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0If you energize cultural traditionalists and social conservatives, you could energize them, but their numbers aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t there anymore.<\/p>\n

Read more at The American Spectator<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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By Ryan James Girdusky – The American Spectator Pat Buchanan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s latest book,\u00c2\u00a0The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority, chronicles the political resurrection of Richard Nixon after he suffered defeats in the presidential election of 1960 and California gubernatorial election of 1962. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a … <\/p>\n

Read more…<\/a><\/p>\n

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