Sample paper. NOT for quotation or reproduction. I provide this paper only as a model for students who are working on the short paper assignment in my class. The citation format used is an older version of MLA. Do not use it as a model as it is now outdated.

NIXON'S FIRST INAUGURAL: WHISPERS OF THE "SILENT MAJORITY"

Catherine Palczewski

15 February 1989

Nixon faced two conflicting requirements in his first inaugural. Like all Presidents, he needed to unify the electorate by reconstituting its members as "the people" (Campbell and Jamieson 24). Unlike most Presidents, he was not elected with a solid identifiable enthusiastic base of supporters (King and Anderson 213), and hence he also needed to define a constituency for himself. He had won the race by the "thinnest of margins" (Podell and Anzovin 660) because towards the end of the campaign, Nixon's lead began to slip dramatically as Humphrey metamorphosized from the one "who could not win a month ago" to one who "just might win now" (Wills 150). King and Anderson argue that Nixon was unable to build a constituency based on ideological similarities and instead had to rely on the politics of polarization. While they focus on his "Vietnam Plan" speech of November 1969, where he called on the "Silent Majority," more may be learned by reference to his inaugural in which, I argue, he set the terms for a policy of no-fault polarization.

Throughout his campaign, Nixon attempted to define his supporters, claiming "America needs today to hear the voice of the broad and vital center" (Nixon as quoted in Witcover 17); Witcover argued that Nixon saw himself as that voice (17). In his nomination acceptance speech, in answer to the question whether America can meet the challenge of peace and freedom, he asked us to listen to "another voice . . . a quiet voice . . . the voice of the great majority of Americans, the forgotten Americans, the non shouters, the non demonstrators . . . . the real voice of America" (Nixon, "Acceptance Speech" 674-5). In fact, a few days prior to the inauguration, columnist Tom Wicker wondered whether Nixon would be President of the forgotten Americans or of Americans generally (93).

Nixon needed to polarize the public in order to create support; however, a President should not nakedly split the public in order to build and maintain a constituency lest s/he be condemned of what Jeffrey Tulis, in The Rhetorical Presidency , labels "hard demagoguery" (Tulis 29).1 In his inaugural, Nixon attempted to guard against an accusation of demagoguery by setting the stage for the "vocal minority" to separate themselves from the rest of the public, rather than be separated from the public by him. He did this by blaming the lack of dialogue on loud voices (focusing on the symptom rather than the cause) and by then offering to engage in dialogue with those who lowered their voices. To the extent that he focused on the manner of speech rather than the ideological content, he scapegoated it instead of the speakers. He also offered the speakers a way to dissociate themselves from that which was to blame for the crisis in spirit. To the extent the protesters continued to yell, they accepted the responsibility for polarization and left Nixon the high ground. In order to understand how Nixon effected this, one must look at his use of the generic form of the inaugural.

Campbell and Jamieson argue that the generic form of the inaugural dictates that it:

1) unifies the audience by reconstituting its members as "the people" who can witness and ratify this ceremony; 2) rehearses communal values drawn from the past; 3) sets forth the political principles that will govern the new administration; 4) demonstrates that the President appreciates the requirements and limitations of his executive functions; and 5) achieves these ends through means appropriate to epideictic address, i.e., while urging contemplation not action, focusing on the present while incorporating past and future, and praising the institution of the Presidency and the values and form of the government of which it is a part. (25)

Dante Germino argues that the inaugural's primary purpose, especially in times of crisis, is to provide hope and a rearticulation of the nation's "public philosophy (2)." He notes that the philosophy has maintained continuity through inaugurals. The primary themes are the theocentrism, the exceptionalism, and the preservation of the nation; in contemporary times, preservation is translated into unification (5-7).

The need to unify the nation was perhaps the primary concern of Nixon's inaugural. The nation was split by the Vietnam war and rocked by campus protests. Civil rights for blacks was also a salient issue. In fact, the theme of Nixon's campaign had been "Bring Us Together" (NYT 19 January 1969, 1). As evidence of the prevalence of protest, and despite Nixon's promises of unification, the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam planned a peaceful counter- inaugural protest, which included the inhoguration of a pig (NYT 19 January 1969, 51); more militant groups stoned and tinfoiled Nixon's car after the ceremony (NYT 21 January 1969, 24).

In addition to wanting unity, the public felt a need to slow the pace of change. Tom Wicker described the mood of the populace, "By every available test, a substantial part of the American people have signaled that they would like to slow down the pace of things" (92). The people no longer wanted innovation; they wanted to consolidate what had been learned. According to Wicker, if riots and flag burning were the manifestations of the Great Society, then America did not want it. He concluded, "It is no wonder, then, that so many people are longing for a period of tranquility and familiarity --or restored orderliness, due process and accepted values" (92). One may see Nixon's call for quiet voices as a call for that tranquility.

Popular reaction to the inaugural was positive. The New York Times, demonstrating its lack of rhetorical sophistication, headlined with "NIXON, SWORN, DEDICATES OFFICE TO PEACE; OFFERS ROLE TO YOUNG AND DISAFFECTED AND A CHANCE TO 'BLACK AS WELL AS WHITE'" (21 January 1969, 1). The lead article went on to describe the speech as a simple statement of priorities which followed traditional appeals to unity and the normal themes of patriotism, religion and the common morality of the nation. The article continued that "there was more to this than the emotion and rhetoric of a great occasion" (21 January 1969, 1). The speech was also described as having "great eloquence" which was not hawkish, anti-Communist, or anti-Democrat (NYT 21 January 1969, 22). The paper contrasted the bitter mood of the demonstrators to the conciliatory tone of the address. Applause interrupted Nixon's appeals for reconciliation at home and abroad nine times (NYT 21 January 1969, 24). Scott, in his intrinsic criticism of the speech offers an explanation for this popular acclaim. He believes that "Only the most aberrant speech could not be warmed by the majesty of the moment" (Scott 52). Insofar as Nixon did not blunder significantly, reaction would be positive because the public was captured by the ceremony.

In his quest for unity, Nixon constituted the people in active and positive terms. He cast the audience as a people ready to answer the "summons to greatness" (660), a summons sent forth from the government. The people had also made strides in science, shared their wealth, learned to manage an economy, and "given freedom new reach" (660). The people were also possessed of a will to achieve a "just and abundant society" (660). The attributes of the public were those typically associated with the positive aspects of capitalism.

Apparently included in this group of achievers were the youth. In an attempt to include the youth in his rite of unification, Nixon claimed to know them and to be proud of their being "more passionately driven by conscience than any generation in our history" (660). Later, however, Nixon paid homage to the law, arguing that it had caught up with our conscience (662). While this was in reference to civil rights, it may be read as a call for lawfulness from all protesters, civil rights and student; in earlier discussions of his domestic agenda, Nixon had called for a clamp down on violence first and then for an attempt to redress the grievances and injustices that lay behind it (Witcover 17). By equating the law with conscience, Nixon delimited the class of youth which he claimed to know; insofar as the youth are driven by conscience, they are driven to obey the law. It then followed that any youth who would disobey the law were not truly driven by conscience. This would also be true of any civil rights agitators who violated the law.

The values rehearsed by Nixon are those of freedom, peace, goodness, decency, love, kindness, and quiet voices. The inclusion of this last value was indeed strange, in the sense that it is not on first examination a traditional value even though its underlying assumptions of decorum make it one. Here one finds Nixon shifting from a rehearsal of values to the philosophy that will guide the administration. Nixon argued that as a nation we were experiencing a crisis of spirit and as a nation we must look within ourselves and "listen to 'the better angels of our nature'" (661) to understand that those angels "celebrate the simple things, the basic things -- such as goodness, decency, love, kindness" (661). He then included in this list of simple things "to lower our voices" (661). Bad rhetoric was cast as the enemy, not the humans who employ it.

The scapegoating of loud voices was a way for Nixon to appear to be offering the possibility of including the protesters when he was actually excluding them. Robert L. Scott and Donald K. Smith in their essay ,"The Rhetoric of Confrontation," argue that calls for decorum are really calls for the maintenance of the status quo. To the extent that the protesters rejected the status quo, it was unlikely that they would don its trappings. Nixon was thus assured of blameless polarization, at least for the short term. According the Scott and Smith, "A Rhetorical theory suitable to our age must take into account the charge that civility and decorum serve as masks for the preservation of injustice, that they condemn the dispossessed to non-being, and that as transmitted in a technological society they become the instrumentalities of power for those who 'have'" (8).

Nixon argued that in "these difficult years, America has suffered from a fever of words" (661), the difficult years most likely meaning the crisis of spirit called forth by the fight in Vietnam and the fight for Civil Rights. America has suffered from a fever of words, not from the words of fevered people. In turn, it is the rhetoric which fanned discontents and postured instead of persuaded. By removing human agency from the equation, Nixon created an out for those who were using "bad" rhetoric; by lowering their voices, they may break the feverish hold of rhetoric. In what is perhaps the best line of the speech (assuming it is sincere), Nixon held out the promise of understanding, "We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another -- until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices" (661). Insofar as Nixon hinted at being willing to listen to words, he suggested that he was willing to dissociate the ideas from the manner of presentation, even though he simultaneously placed constraints on the presentation.

In turn, Nixon promised that government would listen, not only to those who lower their voices, but also listen to those who have no voices, "to the voices of quiet anguish, the voices that speak without words, the voices of the heart -- to the injured voices, the anxious voices, the voices that have despaired of being heard" (661). Here the silent majority materialized, in the guise of the disenfranchised, feeling mass. Again, rhetoric served as the definer of the group -- not its ideology or human agency. Nixon would listen to the voices, not the people. The spectre of Nixon heeding disembodied voices should have sent chills up the nation's collective spine.

The other major value emphasized was peace. One of the Bibles upon which Nixon took his oath was opened to Isaiah ii:4, which calls for us to beat our swords into plowshears and spears into pruning hooks (NYT 19 January 1969, 1). What is notable in Nixon's treatment of peace is that Vietnam was not mentioned specifically. This omission aided Nixon in his attempts to unify. By being vague, the specifics of the conflict, its impact on America, and his policies for ending it could be excluded from the speech. By appealing broadly to peace and freedom, Nixon could make it sound as though he would bring peace and freedom out of a war that was ostensibly begun in the name of freedom. Also important was his additional oath to consecrate the office to "peace among nations" (662). This elevated the cause of peace from an issue of concern to an intrinsic aspect of the presidency, particularly of his presidency.

By calling for peace, Nixon advocated a "solution" to the war against which protest was impossible. Nixon promised, "After a period of confrontation, we are entering an era of negotiation" (662). Casting the Johnson administration as a time of confrontation, Nixon defined his era as one of negotiation. This probably quelled the fears that Nixon would be hawkish and recalcitrant toward Vietnam, fears engendered by his call for "massive pressure" instead of "gradual escalation" (Witcover 76).

The fourth aspect of the inaugural, that the President understands the limitations of the office, also assisted in his setting the stage for polarization. After establishing that the government will do its part in listening to voices, Nixon moved on to the role of the people (and hence to the limits of government) with the phrase "The American dream does not come to those who fall asleep" (661). Individual initiative was necessary. In the search for peace and social progress, the United States was "approaching the limits of what government alone can do" (661). Hence, the concerned and the committed were called upon to help. Nixon argued, "What has to be done, has to be done by government and people together or it will not be done at all. The lesson of past agony is that without the people we can do nothing -- with the people we can do everything" (661). He invited the people to join him, as he represented the government, in a "high adventure" by building a "great cathedral of the spirit" (661), a poor mix of metaphors insofar as building a cathedral is planned and controlled by architects and bosses and does not leave much room for initiative or adventure on the part of the workers. Insofar as working with the government was necessary for this high adventure, those who would oppose it were cast as opposing progress. Nixon quipped that "To go forward at all is to go forward together."

The final generic condition is whether Nixon used a form which is appropriate to epideictic discourse; did he speak as President? The rhetorical problems faced by Nixon altered this condition to requiring that he speak as the President who would "bring us together." While the beginning of the address employed presidential demeanor, Nixon became himself in the conclusion. He was a freshman congressman; a visitor of nations; a knower of leaders, people, children, and America. He spoke as Nixon, not as President. He spoke from his own heart, not from the office of the executive. While assuring the country that the President does indeed have emotions is acceptable, he could have done so in a form more fitting for one who has just assumed the highest office in the land. Also, if the above analysis of decorum is correct, then the requirement of presidential demeanor in and of itself precludes unity insofar as it excluded the disenfranchised from participation in the ceremony.

The repetitive use of "I" also made Nixon appear to be telling the people rather than showing them that he was qualified. This was particularly the case with his professions "I know America." and "I speak from my own heart . . ." (662). If this was true, his earlier words would resonate within the hearts of Americans as the words of a man who speaks from his heart; professing that he knows America and speaks from his heart will not aid him if he is not doing so and will make it seem strategic if he is. Additionally, if it was true that Nixon already knew America, then he had no need to listen in order to hear what America had to say.

While Nixon fulfilled the requirements of the inaugural, he did not do so as eloquently as the New York Times would have us believe. Superficially, the speech held out the promise for unity and stability, but only if the protesters acted as Nixon would have them act. Internally, the speech provided a structure by which Nixon could condemn those who disagreed. The tension between the formal dictates of unification and the particular dictates of his need to create a constituency placed his rhetoric at cross purposes.

ENDNOTES

1 "Soft demagoguery," as opposed to hard, is more acceptable. Soft demagoguery tends to flatter one's constituents rather than factionalize them. Hard demagoguery also ran counter to Nixon's need to unify the electorate after a particularly divisive race.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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