Most Americans felt perfectly safe walking in their own neighborhoods, but assumed most of their fellow citizens didn’t feel the same way. As he slogged through the primaries in early 1968, Nixon was well aware of this. People don’t have to experience crime firsthand to feel threatened by it, he wrote to his old friend and mentor, Dwight Eisenhower. “I have found great audience response to this [law-and-order] theme in all parts of the country, including areas like New Hampshire where there is virtually no race problem and relatively little crime.”
