Shades of FDR? JFK? Actually more RMN.
22 January 2009
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Richard Nixon being sworn in Jan. 20, 1969
A lot of ink has been spilled about Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address. Was it soaring enough? Did he sound more like Roosevelt or Kennedy? Did he miss the chance to inspire? Was he too mean to George Bush and therefore petty and small? Did he betray his base? It goes on and on.
But what about this: Did his speech draw from Richard Nixon’s first Inaugural Address and does it suggest the two may have something in common in the way they govern? Stick with me on this one.
On January 20, 1969 Richard Nixon stood on the East Portico of the Capitol and spoke to a nation enjoying unprecedented economic growth coupled with historic social disruption. The Vietnam War was still raging and public opinion had shifted solidly against US involvement. The Civil Rights battles had shifted from the Deep South into America’s urban centers with riots in most major Northern cities. Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were both killed by assassin’s bullets.
The split in the nation was not Republican and Democratic. It was south versus north, black versus white, old versus young, hawk versus dove. Richard Nixon stepped to the microphones that cloudy January day with the task, should he choose it, of
healing a deeply conflicted and divided nation. Sound familiar?
In some ways Barack Obama’s task is far simpler since the economy and George Bush have healed the political divide that,
many would argue, began with Nixon’s election. Yet read these words and compare them with those of Richard Nixon in 1969:
Obama
On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord. On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics.
Nixon
In these difficult years, America has suffered from a fever of words; from inflated rhetoric that promises more than it can deliver; from angry rhetoric that fans discontents into hatreds; from bombastic rhetoric that postures instead of persuading. We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another.
And there’s more. It’s a bit hard to remember that Nixon made a pitch as a peacemaker, having promised to end the war in his first term (it didn’t work out). Like Obama he was elected on the promise of ending an unpopular war. Like Obama he pledged to work with the rest of the world — even our adversaries — in a process of rebuilding American credibility.
Obama
To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict or blame their society’s ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.
Nixon
After a period of confrontation, we are entering an era of negotiation. Let all nations know that during this administration our lines of communication will be open. We seek an open world—open to ideas, open to the exchange of goods and people—a world in which no people, great or small, will live in angry isolation. We cannot expect to make everyone our friend, but we can try to make no one our enemy.
To be sure Obama’s speech had similar echoes to those of FDR, JFK, and Abraham Lincoln. But those are the obvious ones. What does it say about Obama and how he will govern that such key passages echo a President who was politically opposite but perhaps historically similar?
Nixon made no friends among liberals during his first term but he brought the huge swath of middle America to his side and help begin the process of turning them into Republicans. He did that in part by putting ideology aside for political expedience. Wage and price controls? Yes sir. Go to China? Absolutely. Consider (but reject) national health insurance? Can do. Create the Environmental Protection Agency and support new environmental laws? Yes.
Obama seems to have that political expediency gene as well. Rick Warren may be anathema to liberals (and lots of other non-Christians if they read more of what he’s said about Nazi Germany) but he sold about a trillion books and middle America likes him. Liberals may be upset that Obama is not getting out of Iraq nor closing down Gitmo fast enough but he knows middle America is okay with his timetables and his “steadiness.”
In fact more than FDR, JFK, or Lincoln, Obama may end up governing most like Nixon in his first term, building a new political majority that will accept some “edge policies” — in Obama’s case meaning those that his more liberal base wants — as long as he governs in general in a somewhat non-partisan way.
The analogy is certainly limited in many ways — Obama and Nixon could not be more different in their temperment and personalities — but it does at this very early stage seem to have some historical resonance.
