The Fifties

by David Halberstam

Richard Nixon was assigned the job of reconciling the irreconcilable within the Republican Party. Dewey had recognized in him the ability to balance the internationalism of the Eastern wing with the anti-Communism and conservatism of the old isolationist wing. His economic policies were essentially Republican centrist leaning toward liberal. If there were occasional doubts about him in some of the old isolationist circles—a belief that he had sold out to the Eastern wing or that he was too pragmatic—then he immediately set out to silence such criticism by being a party workhorse, by going out and making endless speeches at county Republican dinners, by collecting due bills, becoming the ultimate party loyalist. In that he was successful, but the end result was that the contradictions of the Grand Old Party became his own. If there was any politician in America who reflected the Cold War and what it did to the country, it was Richard Nixon—the man and the era were made for each other. The anger and resentment that were a critical part of his temperament were not unlike the tensions running through the nation as its new anxieties grew. He himself seized on the anti-Communist issue earlier and more tenaciously than any other centrist politician in the country.