Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America

by Kurt Andersen

Paradoxically, the other big reason President Nixon got reelected by such an enormous margin in 1972 was because on policy he did not swim against the lingering, dominant leftward ideological tide. Unlike Goldwater, he wasn’t committed to a superaggressive global anti-Communist crusade but instead oversaw the slow-motion U.S. surrender in Vietnam (“peace with honor”) and the remarkable U.S. diplomatic opening to Communist China and détente with the Soviet Union. Unlike the Goldwater right (as I’ll discuss in the next chapter), he definitely did not try to roll back Johnson’s Great Society social welfare programs, let alone FDR’s New Deal. His administration actually built upon them. He wasn’t a liberal, just a canny, stone-cold cynic going with the liberal flow.