PresidentNixon's Broken Promise to “Bring theAmerican People Together”

Abstract

To secure his reelection, President Richard Nixon tried to dismantle the New Deal coalition and form a new Republican majority; to do so, he attacked the monopoly Democrats had on racial and ethnic votes. Nixon's racial and ethnic politicking represented a rupture with past Republican ignorance of minorities; it was going to be one of his key legacies to his party. This article shows that, driven by consecutively defined electoral goals, his administration systematically favored group-specific measures over universalistic policies addressing common ethnic claims, and that these measures were accompanied by a divisive rhetoric and implemented in an antagonistic fashion. It argues that Nixon broke his promise to reunite the country, and used racial and ethnic politics as an instrument of electoral engineering rather than as a way to correct legacies of past discriminations.