Donald Trump’s surge is being fueled by a huge “silent majority,” the same group of influential voters that swept Richard M. Nixon to reelection in the biggest blowout win in U.S. history, according to the author of a remarkable new biography.
Democratic strategist Douglas E. Schoen’s “The Nixon Effect,” which makes the case that the disgraced former president was “the most important American politician of the postwar era,” declares that Trump could ride the 1972 Nixon model to the Oval Office.
“He is the living expression of the silent majority,” Schoen wrote. “He’s a political force. He has upended our politics. If you don’t believe me, ask Jeb Bush,” penned Schoen.
In an interview, he said that the “silent majority” today “is different, they’re angrier now.” And he said that Trump, more than challenger Sen. Ted Cruz, has figured them out. “Trump has managed to operate in a way to mobilize a constituency that I think is more more reminiscent of Richard Nixon…than Cruz who is a hard-nosed ideologue,” said Schoen.
“The Nixon Effect,” published by Encounter Books, stands apart from others not just because it looks through the muck of Watergate and the Vietnam War to uncover Nixon’s influence on presidential politics, but because Schoen also claims that the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama failed because they didn’t follow the Nixon model of governing from the center and giving voters what they wanted.
“Who would have dreamed that America, desperate for leadership after two failed presidencies, would one day be nostalgic for an old campaign theme — ‘Richard Nixon: Now more than ever!'” he wrote.
Schoen charts Nixon’s divisive history, the so-called “southern strategy” and “silent majority.” He gives Nixon credit for planting the seed to what is now a blue-red national divide on politics.
But Nixon also tracked to the middle when needed, proving he wasn’t an ideologue, and fostered liberal issues like civil rights and the environment. In fact, Schoen calls Nixon “America’s last liberal.”
Ironic? “Few presidents have run more provocative, polarizing campaigns, yet few presidents have achieved more centrist, mainstream policy goals. It is a paradox worthy of Nixon himself,” Schoen wrote in the book provided in advance to the Examiner.
White House photo
Schoen has been mulling the book since the 1970s, and his research on Nixon came in handy when he was a White House advisor to former President Bill Clinton, who famously met with Nixon early in his first year. At the time, Clinton had given up his centrist campaign to become a liberal president, and after meeting with Nixon, moved back to the center.
Schoen said it saved Clinton and he gives Nixon some credit, calling Clinton “Nixon’s political heir.”
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
