Before Trump: The Origins of American Nationalism in the Nixon White House

• In Event: Presidential Rhetoric and Public Policy

Abstract

For anyone interested in explaining the rise of Donald Trump as a presidential candidate in the 2016 election cycle, it is important to analyze not only the specific strategies employed during his campaign but the origins of the nationalist and populist rhetoric associated with Trump as well. To do so, it is important to consider the messaging and strategies from Richard Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign as well as the Nixon White House years. Several Nixon advisors, most prominently Patrick J. Buchanan, represented a distinct conservative and nationalist/populist view in advising Nixon that helped to shape the eventual policies and political strategies employed by the President and his administration. Buchanan was the most reliable and trusted “conservative” within the White House inner circle at a time when the more moderate and conservative factions within the Republican party were battling for control of the party’s platform and direction.

In this paper, I assess Buchanan’s White House memos during the Nixon years to show the origins of many of the political and cultural trends that Trump rode to office in 2016. This paper serves as the starting point for a book-length manuscript on the similarities between the current political environment and that during the Nixon years regarding political narrative, messaging, and public opinion. Buchanan’s memos serve as an important and essential case study as part of the broad re-evaluation ongoing and underway in the United States over the origins of the present moment.

Author

• Lori Cox Han, Chapman University