Carpetbaggers, Confederates, and Richard Nixon: The 1960 Presidential Election, Historical Memory, and the Republican Southern Strategy

Playing Politics with Disaster

Playing Politics with Natural Disaster ◽

10.7591/cornell/9781501748530.003.0005 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 59-71

Author(s):

Timothy W. Kneeland

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

American History ◽

Presidential Election ◽

Strong Correlation ◽

Disaster Relief ◽

White House ◽

Richard Nixon ◽

Disaster Declarations ◽

Disaster Aid ◽

The Relationship

This chapter examines how Richard Nixon mixed politics and policy in his response to Hurricane Agnes. To aid in winning his reelection bid in 1972, Nixon was determined to play politics with disaster relief legislation, mainly as it applied to New York and Pennsylvania. In order to gain Nixon as many votes as possible from the disaster, the Nixon White House wrote, and Congress enacted, the most generous disaster aid package in American history to that time: the Agnes Recovery Act of 1972. The relationship between disasters and elections has generated a body of research that shows a strong correlation between when and where presidents issue a disaster declaration. Disaster declarations are more frequent in highly competitive swing states during presidential election years, and presidents favor those states that may benefit them or their party in the election, as Nixon did in response to Hurricane Agnes.

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Rabin and the Nixon Jews

Worldview ◽

10.1017/s0084255900017447 ◽

1973 ◽

Vol 16 (5) ◽

pp. 41-42

Author(s):

Fred Lazin

Keyword(s):

Presidential Election ◽

White House ◽

Richard Nixon ◽

Best Friend

Last summer in Israel Yitzhak Rabin, Israeli I Ambassador to Washington, suggested that Richard Nixon was the best friend Israel ever had in the White House. Upon his return to Washington before the November election the Ambassador explained that he had not endorsed Richard Nixon's candidacy, and he reaffirmed his country's neutrality in the Presidential election. Despite such assertions, many Americans, both Jews and non-Jews, interpreted Rabin's earlier statement as a Nixon endorsement by Israel. Six months later it is possible to assess the controversy with greater care.

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National Memory and Divisive Narrative Building in Poland’s 2010 Presidential Election

Polish Political Science Review ◽

10.1515/ppsr-2015-0039 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 5 (1) ◽

pp. 5-21

Author(s):

Miranda Lupion

Keyword(s):

Presidential Election ◽

Historical Memory ◽

Process Tracing ◽

Social Scientists ◽

Memory Politics ◽

National Memory ◽

Contemporary Politics ◽

The Media ◽

Law And Justice

Abstract This paper employs the 2010 Polish presidential election as a case study to explore the implications of memory politics, examining the Law and Justice party’s (PiS) use of national memory ahead of the June election. Through process tracing, this paper finds that the Smolensk Air Crash became the central theme of this race, which pitted Civic Platform (PO) candidate Bronisław Komorowski against the late President Lech Kaczynski’s twin brother, PiS’s Jarosław Kaczynski. Amplified by the media, PiS selectively drew on easily recognisable events and figures from Polish history to construct an “Us versus Them” conflict of “true Polish patriots” - those who supported the party and its anti-Russian stance - and “Others” - those who, although sympathetic to the crash victims, favoured Tusk and his push for renewed Polish-Russian relations. The primary goal of this paper is to demonstrate how a historical memory approach can inform the study of contemporary politics - a subject which is too oft en left solely to social scientists.

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Every Way Out

US Presidential Elections and Foreign Policy ◽

10.5810/kentucky/9780813169057.003.0009 ◽

2017 ◽

pp. 177-202

Author(s):

Sandra Scanlon

Keyword(s):

Foreign Policy ◽

Vietnam War ◽

Presidential Election ◽

Law And Order ◽

Presidential Candidates ◽

Richard Nixon ◽

Foreign Policies ◽

American National Identity ◽

Positive Polarization ◽

The Vietnam War

The prominence of foreign policy—specifically the Vietnam War—during the 1968 presidential election has long been recognized by scholars. This chapter examines the campaigns of the three presidential candidates and argues that Richard Nixon framed his foreign policies in terms of widely shared concepts of American national identity. Unlike Hubert Humphrey, Nixon actively utilized positive polarization and framed the Vietnam War as an American domestic struggle rather than as an international one. During the final weeks of the campaign, Nixon’s message on foreign policy and his championing of law and order were thereby reconciled. This campaigning style redefined the function of foreign policy during presidential elections and presented Nixon with a far greater ideological triumph than his narrow victory would suggest.

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Explaining the Burger Court's Support for Civil Liberties

Political Science and Politics ◽

10.1017/s1049096500025622 ◽

1987 ◽

Vol 20 (01) ◽

pp. 21-28

Author(s):

Lawrence Baum

Keyword(s):

Supreme Court ◽

Presidential Election ◽

Civil Liberties ◽

Strong Support ◽

The Other ◽

Previous Period ◽

Richard Nixon ◽

Burger Court ◽

The Supreme Court ◽

The 1960S

For eighteen years, Supreme Court watchers have been waiting for the other shoe to drop. Under Chief Justice Earl Warren in the 1960s, the Court expanded legal protections for civil liberties far more than it had in any previous period. After Richard Nixon was elected president in 1968, many observers expected that his appointments would move the Court away from its commitment to civil liberties. When Nixon was able to appoint four new justices in his first three years in office, that expectation was strengthened. Since that time, each presidential election victory and each Supreme Court appointment by a conservative Republican has led to new hopes and fears that the Cout would abandon its strong support for civil liberties.To a degree, these expectations already have been realized. Without doubt, the Supreme Court under Warren Burger was less supportive of civil liberties than it had been under Earl Warren. But it did not take the clear conservative position that many Court watchers had anticipated. Reflecting their surprise, a 1983 book about the Burger Court was subtitled, “The Counter-Revolution That Wasn't” (Blasi, 1983).

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