You can’t pin an entire political climate on a single factor or figure … but a lot of the blame for the mess we live in falls on Richard Nixon. Just ask historian Rick Perlstein, author of four tomes about the rise of conservatism in 20th-century America (“Before The Storm,” “Nixonland,” “The Invisible Bridge,” and “Reaganland”). Perlstein’s books focus as much on the national mood and its shifts as they do on palace intrigue, which is why they’re useful historical texts.
In “Nixonland,” Perlstein documents how at Whittier College, Nixon belonged to a social club called the Orthogonians, made up of lower-class students who wouldn’t be at college without grit and luck. Their rivals were the Franklins, made up of the rich kids. Social striving resentment against “the elite” burned in Nixon’s soul until the day he died and fueled his political career. (For a dramatization, watch Robert Altman’s “Secret Honor,” featuring Philip Baker Hall as Nixon spewing a 90-minute rant of paranoia about real and imagined enemies conspiring to destroy him.)
When Nixon ran for President in 1968, he stoked the pre-existing divisions in the country, calling on the “silent majority” of average (white) Americans to support him. They believed him since he was one of them and so delivered him to the White House. And then, the Watergate scandal happened and Nixon resigned. Since he’d cultivated power based on resentment, his being tossed from office only aggrieved his supporters. It wasn’t justice, no, but a conspiracy to keep them downtrodden.