Moynihan: "Capitalism is in the gravest trouble"

One of the most interesting documents recently released by the Nixon archives is this 1970 memo from Nixon adviser Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

In it, Moynihan notes accurately that the legitimacy crisis that Nixon faced was not just his own, but one that the entire political establishment faced. Lies about the conduct of the Vietnam war by Democrats and Republicans seemed to have completely discredited government among everyday people.

After cynnically suggesting that Nixon take credit for the decline in black urban rebellions, Moynihan gets to the heart of the matter: the collapse of establishment legitimacy has produced a revolutionary situation in the United States the likes of which it had not experienced since the 1930s. The questioning of U.S. Cold War policy has in effect opened a pandora's box. "Capitalism," Moynihan tells Nixon, "is in the gravest trouble, simply because it seemingly cannot produce persons who will defend it in terms that have to be respected."

Moynihan thus frames Nixon's cultural politics as extremely important. He describes as Nixon's principle task the articulation of an aggressive centrism of the socalled "silent majority"-- people who are scared of revolutionary upheaval but lack the language with which to counter leftists' devastating critiques of the U.S. Cold War culture of bureaucracy, conformity, and bigotry.

Nixon hardly took his marching orders from Moynihan. But Moynihan's think piece is interesting, partly because of its sophistication, partly because of passages Nixon underlined, but most importantly because it documents the profound fear that establishment liberals had-- especially in the wake of the student strikes of May, 1970-- that liberal capitalism was on the ropes.

We tend to forget that fear these days-- how pervasive it was, how deep it went, and the kinds of changes that fear informed. The language of dismissing the New Left as hypocritical and self-aggrandizing college students persists. But we more often forget the sense of threat that the establishment felt about the New Left-- the real concern that failure of the U.S. in Vietnam was precipitating an even more profound, potentially revolutionary crisis at home.

Moynihan believed that "the only persons with any vigor on their arguments [for capitalism instead of socialism] are the real right wingers." But this gave him little hope. He, like Chuck Colson and Richard Nixon, were not admirers of Barry Goldwater. They were admirers of Harry Truman: the embattled, tough-talking centrist re-elected by a slim margin in a 4 way race in a divided country who still took his election as a mandate to guide the U.S. head on into the Cold War.

Little could Moynihan foresee that American capitalism would survive its socialist critics, and the Cold War would be reactivated-- not by a revitalized liberal centrism, but by an insurgent hard right. To Moynihan, these people lacked "class." They were too angry, would obviously turn off too many people.

As he remained an advocate of welfare til his death, Moynihan failed to forsee that the sense of crisis in the establishment would inspire business leaders to not just rebel against the New Left, but against the New Deal itself. He overlooked the hard right business leaders Kim Phillips-Fein has documented in her new book, the Top Down Revolution. But perhaps most importantly, he failed to see the meanness and lack of "class" at the heart of the "silent majority": the resentment that ran so deep, and the sense of masculinity and whiteness so ingrained, that it could one day be mobilized to dismantle the very New Deal state that Moynihan spent the rest of his life defending in vain.

Nixon and Title IX: Aides "minimize these changes to the extent the law permits us"

Here's something we learn from the latest release of documents by the Nixon library: The Nixon administration watered down Title IX in response to "NCAA objections... to an earlier leaked draft."

Casper Weinberger's "proposed regulation," which he described in this recently released memo, "has been drafted in such a way... so as to minimize the impact on existing competitive athletic programs." Most importantly, Weinberger added language to say that "Nothing in this section shall be interpreted to require equal aggregate expenditures for athletics for members of each sex." That way, unequal spending in college athletics would not be seen as discriminatory, and remedies for discrimination could be fashioned that fell far short of requiring public institutions to fund men's and women's athletic programs equally. While complying with anti-discrimination law, these new rules allowed Nixon's staff to "minimize these changes to the extent the law permits us to do so."

Instead of framing this change as a capitulation to the NCAA, Nixon's aides described the watering down of Title IX as a feminist act. Or, at least, a kind of paternalism meant to prevent "serious backlash against women's rights."

No doubt there would have been a backlash against women's rights if the government had required equal or even comparable funding for women's athletic programs. And no doubt Title IX still proved important. It empowered women across the country to demand that the law be enforced.

But the Title IX that became law limited government support for women, and thus let a number of discriminatory practices go unchallenged unless large enough groups of grassroots activists organized themselves in opposition. Like he had on racial politics, Nixon thus deferred enforcement of anti-discrimination laws to the courts, which had wide latitude to issue decrees but almost no administrative apparatus to oversee them. The upside from this is that it provided women's rights activists with greater tools to organize for change. The downside is that it put the burden of change on them, not on those who practice discrimination-- thus leaving discriminatory practices and attitudes in place that Title IX was never intended to eliminate.

Did Nixon Secretly Provide Support to La Raza Unida Party?

Good question. This document* doesn't answer the question, but it does raise it.

The obvious motive: split the Democratic Party vote in 1972. But having a motive isn't proof, even if Chuck Colson requested that this document be kept from the public, thereby preventing its release for decades. Has research been done on this topic before? I don't know. Just something I stumbled upon in the archive that raised an eyebrow.



*Box 3, folder 42, Contested Materials: White House Special Files, Nixon Library-Yorba Linda, National Archives and Records Administration

Why Did Nixon Pardon Hoffa?: New Information

On December 24, 1971, President Richard Nixon pardoned James "Jimmy" Hoffa, former Teamsters President, on the condition that he no longer participate in Teamsters union activities. The deal set in motion large, clandestine cash payments from Teamsters President Frank Fitzsimmons to the Nixon reelection campaign in 1972, and a later payment that some speculate went to help pay for Nixon's failed coverup of the Watergate break-in. It also helped Nixon gain the Teamsters endorsement at a time when most labor unions considered it impossible to endorse a Republican even if individual labor leaders were willing to do so.

Speculation about why Nixon pardoned Hoffa has persisted for decades, partly as a result of conspiracy theories about Nixon's ties to organized crime. No doubt it was in exchange for Teamster support for his reelection-- whether that support came in the form of endorsements, money, and even "dirty tricks" (Nixon tapes suggest that Nixon used Teamsters "thugs" and "murderers" to assualt anti-war protesters, and biographer Anthony Summers has speculated that the Teamsters had a role in assaulting Abbie Hoffman at Nixon's request).

Now, a new document* that I found in the Nixon archives suggests one additional reason: Charles Colson, Nixon's aide, needed a way to get the Teamsters to not re-join the AFL-CIO before the 1972 election. Colson worried that if the Teamsters, which had split from the AFL-CIO in 1968, re-joined the labor federation, that it would not be able to "quietly work very hard for us, with money and organizational support... it is in our interest to see that the merger does not take place." In another document**, Colson called a potential merger "very much against our interests politically." Colson was the main person in the Nixon administration who facilitated Hoffa's pardon. After being pushed out of the White House for being too close to the Watergate break-in conspirators, Colson went on the Teamsters payroll through his DC law firm. He then went to jail for his role in the Watergate scandal, where he was "born again" as an evangelical Christian.

Hoffa was killed when he tried to get back in union politics, which would have violated the terms of his pardon. Fitzsimmons didn't resign until 1981, and the Teamsters didn't re-affiliate with the AFL-CIO until 1987.

*Box 4, Folder 28, Contested Materials: White House Special Files, Nixon Library-Yorba Linda, National Archives and Records Administration

**Box 3, Folder 12, Contested Materials: White House Special Files, Nixon Library-Yorba Linda, National Archives and Records Administration

Nixon 1972 Campaign: Appealing to Voter Racism through the Busing Issue

Here is a document* from Chuck Colson, Nixon aide, suggesting that Nixon's 1972 campaign spread false information in the South that could generate a "word of mouth campaign" saying that McGovern supports white flight. The irony being, of course, that it was Nixon who pursued a Southern strategy that brought southern segregationists into the Republican Party en masse.

In addition, Nixon staff were well aware that playing to anti-busing sentiment meant playing to voters' racism. Dick Scammon, author of The Real Majority, advised as much through his clandestine support for the Nixon administration (see document** here). Any belief that Nixon was pro-civil rights but anti-busing should be dispelled by that document, in which Colson tells the President that busing "is only a code word for the real issue, which is black/ white relations."

*Box 3, Folder 33, Contested Materials: White House Special Files, Nixon Library-Yorba Linda, National Archives and Records Administration

**Box 2, Folder 1, Contested Materials: White House Special Files, Nixon Library-Yorba Linda, National Archives and Records Administration

Pat Buchanan: For Affirmative Action Before He Was Against It

Pat Buchanan was for affirmative action before he was against it.

President Richard Nixon, a Republican, became the first president to impose affirmative action when his Department of Labor imposed the Philadelphia Plan upon that city's construction industry in 1969. The Plan was soon followed by affirmative action rules (Order No. 4) for all federal government agencies and contractors, setting in motion profound changes in the American workplace.

Buchanan, a Catholic, was hired by Nixon as a speechwriter, but later was drafted to help organize the "Catholic vote" to get behind Nixon in 1972. This was part of Nixon's attempt to create a "new majority" for the Republican Party.

Here is a 1971 document* from the Nixon Archives, written by Pat Buchanan, showing Buchanan proposing a strategy for Nixon's outreach to Catholics.

In it, he suggested that Nixon "instead of sending the orders out to all our other agencies-- hire blacks and women-- the order should go out-- hire ethnic Catholics preferable [sic] women, for visible posts. One example: Italian Americans, unlike blacks, have never had a Supreme Court member-- they are deeply concerned with their 'criminal' image; they do not dislike the President. Give those fellows the 'Jewish seat' or the 'black seat' on the Court when it becomes available."

So when Buchanan criticizes affirmative action, or criticizes Judge Sotomayor as "Miss Affirmative Action", he's being a hypocrite. That's because he's also criticizing his own path to political prominence (not treating all Americans the same) and the policies of preferential hiring that Nixon created and that he himself recommended that Nixon employ. He even suggested that the President appoint someone to the Supreme Court not based on merit alone, but also based on the person being an "Italian American."

*Box 3, Folder 52, Contested Materials: White House Special Files, Nixon Library-Yorba Linda, National Archives and Records Administration