One America?

Nathan Angelo

Description

Despite major advancements in civil rights in the United States since the 1960s, racial inequality continues to persist in American society. While it may appear that presidents do not address the topic of race, it lurks in the background of presidential political speech across a range of issues, including welfare, crime, and American identity. Using a thorough approach that places textual analysis in a historical context, One America? asks what presidents say about race, how often they say it, and to whom they say it. Nathan Angelo demonstrates how presidents attempt to use rhetoric to compose a message that will resonate with the many groups that comprise the modern party system, but ultimately those alliances cause presidents to direct most of their speeches about race to an archetypical white, Middle-American swing voter, thereby restricting the issues and solutions that they discuss. While the American demographic profile is changing, rhetoric that links American identity with racially coded concepts and appeals to white voters' racial resentments has become ubiquitous. Angelo warns us about the possible repercussions of such tactics, noting that, while they may allow presidents to craft winning coalitions, their use continues to legitimate a system that ignores racial inequality.
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments

1. How Have Presidents Addressed Race since 1964?

2. We’re One America: Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 Campaign and Richard Nixon’s 1972 Campaign

3. Back to Basic Values: Ronald Reagan’s 1984 Campaign and George H. W. Bush’s 1988 Campaign

4. One America Redux: Clinton’s 1996 Campaign

5. New Strategies for The Right? George W. Bush’s 2004 Campaign

6. An Old Message to Reach New Groups: Obama’s 2012 Campaign

7. Strategy, Rhetoric, and the Future: Does it Matter What Presidents Say About Race and Ethnicity?

Epilogue Trump
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• National
• États-Unis
• The
• Central
• History of the Americas
• Central government
• English articles
• United States of America
• USA

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 02 mai 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438471532
• Langue: English

Extrait

ONE AMERICA?
ONE AMERICA?
Presidential Appeals to Racial Resentment from LBJ to Trump
NATHAN ANGELO
Cover art by iStock by Getty Images.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2019 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Angelo, Nathan, 1980– author.
Title: One America? : presidential appeals to racial resentment from LBJ to Trump / Nathan Angelo.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017056056 | ISBN 9781438471518 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438471532 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Presidents—United States—Racial attitudes. | United States—Race relations—Political aspects—History—20th century. | United States—Race relations—Political aspects—History—21st century. | Presidents—United States—Election—History—20th century. | Presidents—United States—Election—History—21st century. | Communication in politics—Social aspects—United States. | Rhetoric—Political aspects—United States. | Political oratory—United States. | United States—Politics and government—1945–1989. | United States—Politics and government—1989-
Classification: LCC E839.5 .A74 2018 | DDC 305.800973—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017056056
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1 How Have Presidents Addressed Race since 1964?
Chapter 2 We’re One America: Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 Campaign and Richard Nixon’s 1972 Campaign
Chapter 3 Back to Basic Values: Ronald Reagan’s 1984 Campaign and George H. W. Bush’s 1988 Campaign
Chapter 4 One America Redux: Clinton’s 1996 Campaign
Chapter 5 New Strategies for The Right? George W. Bush’s 2004 Campaign
Chapter 6 An Old Message to Reach New Groups: Obama’s 2012 Campaign
Chapter 7 Strategy, Rhetoric, and the Future: Does it Matter What Presidents Say About Race and Ethnicity?
Epilogue Trump
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Illustrations
Figures
1.1. Instances of Racial Language, Ethnic Language, and the Word Minority in the Public Papers of the Presidents during Reelection Years, 1964–2012
1.2. Instances of Racial Language in the Public Papers of the Presidents during Reelection Years, 1964–2012
1.3. Number of Speeches with the Word Ethnic or Ethnicity by Year, 1964–2014
1.4. Instances of Ethnic Language in the Public Papers of the Presidents during Reelection Years, 1964–2012
1.5. Instances of the Word Race per Instance of Word Ethnicity in the Public Papers of the Presidents during Reelection Years, 1964–2012
1.6. Instances of Racial and Ethnic Rhetoric in the Public Papers of the Presidents during Reelection Years, 1964–2012
1.7. Instances of African American and Ethnic in the Public Papers of the Presidents during Reelection Years, 1964–2012
1.8. Instances of Black, African American and Ethnic in the Public Papers of the Presidents during Reelection Years, 1964–2012
Table
1.1. Instances of “Dash-Americans” in the Public Papers of the Presidents during Reelection Years, 1964–2012
Preface
Having spent the past several years reading and thinking about racial and ethnic politics in the United States, there was a part of me that watched Donald Trump’s various speeches and debates, would pick out the many racial messages that were only sometimes concealed, and saw how his strategy might work. And yet, there was another part of me that was in disbelief when Trump won. I’ll admit that like many Americans, I watched the news on Trump-the-candidate day after day, talked with colleagues, friends, and family members about the latest comments of the soon-to-be president. I had left-leaning friends ask me for my opinion as someone who studies American presidential campaigns. “What’s going to happen? Trump can’t win can he?” Like many of us, I was rather seduced by the polls, even though I was aware that Trump’s victory was well within the margin of error. My general answer was the same: I don’t think he’ll win, but it’s possible. During the primaries, I found several reasons why he shouldn’t win that were supported by political science. He didn’t have the support of the party and the party establishment will send cues to voters which let them know who they should support instead. But, we now know that we were listening to different people in the establishment, and that the anti-Trump establishment was not uniform in their message of whom to support. He didn’t have enough money and money is an important part of winning the primaries, but we also know that money doesn’t always win elections. He didn’t have the support of the majority so even if he was able to galvanize a small base of radical voters within the GOP, he certainly couldn’t win the general election because he was too far to the right. Voters tend to vote for the most centrist option or the one that most closely matches their overall viewpoints. Many of these conclusions were logical, but he still won.
Sure, I was using research selectively and probably could’ve been more careful in my own analysis of the election, but that’s a good lesson that every researcher has to constantly relearn. We have our own intellectual biases and often those biases cloud our interpretation of the data. Sometimes our analysis leads us to choose examples and cases that prove the point we want to prove. My error was in my ability to think critically about the work that I had spent the better part of ten years thinking about. I had made the case over and over that presidential candidates shape their appeals to galvanize support from White Middle Americans. While the conclusion was never that presidents win because they do that, I had seen the pattern over and over. The strategy worked in the past. I know it worked. I have examples: Richard Nixon used it to capture Democratic voters in 1968 who harbored racial resentments and were disappointed by what they perceived as a rabidly pro-civil rights posture taken by the Democrats. Bill Clinton used it when he tried to appeal to those same folks by suggesting that we had all reached agreement on issues like welfare reform and law and order. So why was it a surprise that a candidate tried to gain support from White Middle Americans after the largest economic downturn in recent history, the first Black president, increased globalization that many likely linked to the exportation of jobs, and a widespread fear of terrorism? It wasn’t. Or it shouldn’t have been.
My research suggested that the approach was more viable than many in the media had suggested. Editorials appeared in The Nation , The Guardian , and several other newspapers telling us why Trump couldn’t win. To be clear, those articles did not tell us why he might not win or should not win, but why he could not win. But he did. And White Middle Americans were a key to the Trump coalition. In that way, the Trump victory fits nicely into my research. There are competing efforts to control American discourse on racial politics. One welcomes a diversifying population while the other is more skeptical. And, there are people in both parties who view the pro-diversity, pro-immigration approach as the most strategic for the long term, even if that approach still retains those power relations that I find in this book. But, there are other folks who take an even more extreme preservationist approach. They want to see immigration cease to prevent, what they see as, the decline of White American identity.
This approach has persisted for years and has become a key part of how American presidents have defined American identity. It has been most evident in the rhetoric of the Right, but has been present in Left rhetoric as well. While many politicians claimed to be stunned by Trump’s rise to power within the GOP, the astute analyst would have noticed that the GOP had been sowing the seeds of this strategy for years. Trump’s strategy is not new and it’s not a revolutionary concept. His strategy is a logical progression of what has been happening in presidential elections since 1964. Though there have been notable attempts by some GOP insiders to change this approach, it has always been there. That is what this book tries to explain: the history of presidential rhetoric that has led us to the Trump election. How did we get here?
Acknowledgments
The writing of this book has been a long process that drew on the help of many. While I could only reach the conclusions that I reached in this book with the generous help of many around me, my mistakes are all my own. Through casual conversations, structured conference panels, and anonymous reviews, there have been several people who have offered their support and there are sim