The Sunshine Empire

Over the summer I’ve been reading Rick Perlstein’s enormous tome Nixonland: The Rise Of A President And The Fracturing Of America and it has been fascinating. The portion of the book I am on recounts the time from the landslides for LBJ and liberals in 1964 to the quick backlash that occurred around the country to civil rights legislation. I’ve always found Richard Nixon a terribly interesting historical figure, but many who like to call 1980 the beginning of the conservative revolution miss this critical period. During this backlash period Ronald Reagan was elected Governor of California and Nixon came from the political wilderness to the Oval Office by 1968. But the situation that LBJ and Congressional Democrats found themselves in in 1965 and 1966 should be a warning to not underestimate the ability to lose the public.

The situation that Democrats face today with the health care reform debate is strikingly similar to what the Democrats of 1964 faced with civil rights legislation. Now I am not wading into a debate about if health care is a right, nor am I comparing the actual issues at hand, as much as the political playing field. In the 1964 elections much like 2008, Democrats were big big winners. They controlled both houses of Congress with large majorities and had convincingly beaten a conservative Republican from Arizona for the White House. Incidentally John McCain actually succeeded Barry Goldwater when he retired from the Senate. The President had inherited a war that up until that point had the support of the American people (Vietnam-Afghanistan). But the discontent over the summers of 1966 and 2009 were very similar in their tone and confusion.

Reading the book as the health care reform debate was raging brought to mind many striking parallels to the summer of 1966. Perlstein recounts the correspondence that Senators were receiving during the debates over civil rights legislation and the resulting riots that were afflicting both north and south. Much like people assume that a public option is a government takeover of the medical industry when it is not, many took the riots that started after the passing of the 1964 civil rights act as a cause and effect reaction from blacks. But the thing that struck me was how they referred to Martin Luther King Jr. as “arrogant.” Now I can see how someone would disagree with the beliefs of MLK but I’ve never been struck by him as arrogant, but arrogant is just the same word they often use to refer to the first African American President of the United States, who is leading the debate over health care reform. Now I don’t feel that opponents of health care reform are racist per say, but the curious arrogant label does smack of calling him “uppity.” Page 122 in Nixonland also quotes one letter as referring to Martin Luther King Jr. as a “dark skinned Hitler” whose “aim (was) the same as the Soviet Union.” One needs only turn on any tea party demonstration to see references with Obama wearing a Hitler mustache with hammer and sickle to see the similarity to today’s debate.

Much like today’s debate the President’s allies in Congress that were swept in on his coattails are now backing away from his ambitious agenda as the difficulty becomes more apparent. Centrist Democrats and Blue Dogs work to eviscerate any of the meaningful features of health care reform much as they did to Johnson’s civil rights bill because it’s just too hard to have an honest discussion anymore. Now today there is no serious objection to the civil rights bills passed during the 1960′s, but real change is hard and those that wish to keep the status quo will always exist. Public opinion, conservatives told us during the Bush administration, should never be the deciding factor for when to push on with what is right. Now they are telling us public opinion is a reason to stop this process. Too bad the public actually wants change as well. It’s up to the Democrats with all the strings in their hands if they are up for what’s hard and what’s right.