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During Richard Nixon's extraordinary, almost half-century career in public life, he never fit the models we used to order our political universe. As a national Republican politician, he was a tireless party loyalist, yet always a loner. The subcategories of Republicanism used as shorthand by journalists never captured Nixon's restless, opportunistic quest for political advantage. Not an eastern seaboard liberal, like Nelson Rockefeller or Clifford Case, not a traditional midwestern conservative like Robert Taft or Everett Dirksen, nor a western libertarian conservative like Barry Goldwater or Ronald Reagan (or a southern social conservative, like Strom Thurmond or Jesse Helms), Nixon was sui generis, like Huey Long. Early in his presidency, Nixon forged an agenda of surprising innovations- the opening to China, detente with the Soviet Union, the Family Assistance Plan, path breaking environmental legislation, centralized wage and price controls. Late in his presidency, the Tricky Dick of the 1940s was rediscovered, building an enemies list, abusing the power of the IRS, the CIA, and the FBI, corrupting the Justice Department.
Similarly in civil rights policy, Nixon's behavior as president was inconsistent and incoherent. Elected in 1968 as the centrist in a three-way contest featuring Hubert Humphrey as the candidate of the liberal coalition and George Wallace as the protest candidate for disgruntled populists and southern segregationists, Nixon was left plenty of running room in civil rights policy. And he used most of it. In the pre-Watergate media, President Nixon was seen as a racial conservative whose "southern strategy" for re-election in 1972 led him to nominate southern conservatives to the Supreme Court and to propose a constitutional amendment to ban school busing for racial balance. Yet he signed voting rights amendments in 1970 and equal opportunity legislation in 1972 that in most ways reflected the policy preferences of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and feminist advocacy groups. More strikingly, Nixon encouraged the development of affirmative action regulations that required minority preferences in government contracts and both public and private employment. The Watergate episode pre-empted his presidency, and scholars for a generation have puzzled over the motives of the enigmatic Richard Nixon and the meaning of his legacy.
Nixon as Racial Conservative
From the beginning of his presidency Nixon was associated in the press and...