Nixonland: America's Second Civil War and the Divisive Legacy of Richard Nixon 1965-72

by Rick Perlstein

right-wing fringe took over the party from the ground up, nominating Barry Goldwater, the radical-right senator from Arizona, while a

helpless Eastern establishment-that-was-now-a-fringe looked on in bafflement. Experts, claiming the Republican tradition of progressivism was as much a part of its identity as the elephant, began talking about a party committing suicide.

Unadulterated political passion was judged a dangerous thing by the dominant ideologists of American consensus.

“We have achieved a unity of interest among our people that is unmatched in the history of freedom.”

Thus a more inclusive definition of Nixonland: it is the America where two separate and irreconcilable sets of apocalyptic fears coexist in the minds of two separate and irreconcilable groups of Americans.

an amazingly large segment of the population disliked and mistrusted Richard Nixon instinctively.

What they did not acknowledge was that an amazingly large segment of the population also trusted him as their savior.

“Nixonland” is what happens when these two groups try to occupy a country together. By the end of the 1960s, Nixonland came to encompass the entire political culture of the United States. It...