The Nixon legacy has lessons for Biden and today’s GOP

In his second inaugural, a triumphant president claimed a mandate and sought a legacy. He had won a true landslide — 60 percent of the popular vote. He won all but one state in the Electoral College. Only George Washington and James Monroe had done better, with unanimous Electoral College reelections.

That reelected president was Richard Nixon, re-inaugurated 50 years ago in January 1973. After his second inaugural address, his popularity stood at 67 percent. 

Nixon had campaigned in 1972 on prosperity and world leadership, and on the promise of peace. The economy was booming, with a real growth rate of 6.4 percent, falling unemployment (5.1 percent at the end of 1972), and 3 percent inflation. He did this, despite being the first president elected in 120 years without his party controlling either house in Congress.

And yet, within nine months, Nixon’s presidency was consumed by the Watergate scandal and economic turmoil, and his popularity had fallen to 30 percent.

Joe Biden was also sworn-in in January 1973 — as a freshman senator. Five decades later, as President Biden prepares for his State of the Union before a deeply divided Congress, what — if anything — can both branches learn from Nixon’s reelection success and second-term failure?

In 1973, division had come to define American culture on issues of race, justice, the environment, and war and peace. Romantic portrayals of small-town life in “The Andy Griffith Show” and “The Waltons” were competing with “All in the Family,” “Sanford and Son” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” The protest music of the 1960s had given voice to a rising generation. By the early 1970s, that righteous voice was beginning to fade and fracture.

Nixon — like Biden — assumed the presidency already having served as both vice president (and, therefore, president of the Senate) for eight years, and before that as a member of Congress; in Nixon’s case, two terms in the House and two years in the Senate. 

He also had just won re-election by successfully framing his opponent as a radical, out of touch with mainstream values. The failed George McGovern campaign, beset by self-inflicted wounds, had also dented the House Democratic majority, costing them 11 seats in the House. Though Democrats held a 50-vote majority, Nixon’s legislative affairs team estimated there were 45 conservative and 40 “swing” Democrats in the House.

Nixon had put Democrats on the defensive for being soft in foreign affairs, as they protested his vicious bombing campaigns in North Vietnam and neighboring Cambodia and Laos. And yet, Nixon also conducted breakthrough diplomacy — beginning normalization with communist China, negotiating arms control with the Soviet Union, and promising peace talks in Vietnam. 

“We stand on the threshold of a new era of peace in the world,” he claimed in his second inaugural address. “How shall we use that peace?”

Nixon used his second inaugural to build on his first-term record of working with Democrats in Congress. His top priority had been “restoring law and order,” which he pursued with the support of many Democrats. Facing a first-term recession in 1971, Nixon abandoned conservative orthodoxy to pursue a series of domestic policy efforts popular with Democrats — a wage-and-price freeze, tax cuts, a 10 percent import tax, and even the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. His legislative affairs director, William Timmons, chronicled that Nixon held 448 meetings with individual members of Congress, in addition to 344 individual phone conversations in his first two years alone.

Nixon’s speech embraced progressive goals: “to ensure better education, better health, better housing, better transportation, a cleaner environment — to restore respect for law, to make our communities more livable — and to insure the God-given right of every American to full and equal opportunity.” 

But in acknowledging those goals, Nixon would prioritize individual responsibility, not government action. “America was built not by government, but by people — not by welfare, but by work — not by shirking responsibility, but by seeking responsibility.”

Nixon warned of radicalism, complaining that “our children have been taught to be ashamed of their country, ashamed of their parents, ashamed of America’s record at home and of its role in the world.”

Although calling out extremists was popular, Nixon perhaps took it too far. He misjudged where the middle of the country lay. He clumsily inverted John F. Kennedy’s inaugural call to public service: “In our own lives, let each of us ask — not just what will government do for me, but what can I do for myself?” His vice president, Spiro Agnew, would go further, calling Democrats radical liberals (“radiclibs”) and targeting the media as “nattering nabobs of negativism.” 

Nixon weeded out moderates from his first-term Cabinet — such as former Michigan Gov. George Romney, who served as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Romney caught Nixon’s ire by seeking to desegregate suburbs, through a series of “open housing” initiatives. 

Most jarring was Nixon’s expansive use of presidential power. He would secretly investigate his political rivals, before and after the Watergate break-in, and then cover up his various abuses of power. “When the president does it,” he famously told David Frost in 1977, “that means it’s not illegal.”

The Watergate scandal would combine with a crumbling economy to alienate moderates in both parties. Nixon’s popularity would fall below 50 percent by April, below 40 percent by July, and to 30 percent in October. With the release of the damning Watergate tape recordings in the summer of 1974, many Republicans would abandon him, too, and his popularity would fall into the 20 percent.

What should Biden and today’s Republican Party take away from the Nixon legacy? 

Biden will have to work with a Republican majority in the House of Representatives — not to mention a Congress that is more deeply divided than in Nixon’s era, and parties that are more polarized than any time since the Civil War. He should not hold back from calling out extremists. But he should also regularly demonstrate that he’s more concerned about what unites us, rather than what divides us.

Progressive goals have great staying power, and the GOP has misjudged the middle by ridiculing those goals as extreme. Since Nixon’s time, presidents from both parties have seen education, housing, transportation and protecting the environment as worthy endeavors — with individual choice and responsibility built into regular reforms.

And what if Republicans in Congress refuse to work with Biden on those challenges? The president can take a page out of Nixon’s New Federalism and work with the many Republican governors and mayors who might like to implement recently passed legislation on infrastructure, technology, clean energy, and health care delivery passed in the past two years.

Americans of both parties want America to remain engaged in world affairs, even if they worry about the costs. They remain united in support of Ukraine’s battle for freedom from Russian aggression and in standing guard against China as our greatest global adversary.

Most importantly, Americans want a president who seeks to promote unity, civility and mutual respect. They want a president who is not above the law. And they want a government that seeks to earn public trust. 

William Antholis is CEO and director of the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, which specializes in presidential scholarship, public policy and political history.