Jack Kemp understands that the old GOP model needs an overhaul, with more emphasis on creative conservative solutions and less on stale cultural recriminations. Last week he was in Memphis hitting Clinton for ““abandoning the cities’’–the same forsaken neighborhoods that once led Agnew to say ““if you’ve seen one ghetto, you’ve seen them all.’’ But Kemp’s talking 2000. For now, the GOP is stuck with a presidential nominee still working from the 1968 playbook.
The name Spiro Agnew is little known to younger Americans, and that’s a pity. He was more than the only vice president ever to resign in disgrace. Agnew gave voice to the resentments of the first generation of suburban homeowners, and the buttons he pushed have powered American politics for more than two decades. Even his gaffes–using phrases like ““fat Jap’’ or ““Polack’’–reflected the real views of millions. If the U.S. Attorney in Baltimore hadn’t suddenly found overwhelming evidence that Agnew took bribes from local contractors–including cash envelopes in the White House–Agnew would have succeeded Richard Nixon as president. Instead, he was forced out in 1973 and spent the rest of his days hanging with Frank Sinatra and brokering shady international deals like the one that gave spiffy new army uniforms to Nicolae Ceausescu and Saddam Hussein. After returning the money he had evaded in state taxes, Agnew had the chutzpah to try to get a deduction on it.
The son of a naturalized Greek, Agnew represented Nixon’s dream of having the suburban children of turn-of-the-century immigrants travel across the political spectrum into the GOP. In a life pattern repeated a million times over, ““Ted’’ Agnew, born in 1918, served in World War II, attended school at night, moved to the suburbs and became a Lawrence Welk-loving Republican. He joined the VFW, the Kiwanis Club and the Episcopal Church.
Agnew’s personal political evolution presaged the national GOP’s. As Baltimore County executive, he strongly supported Nelson Rockefeller over Barry Goldwater in 1964 and pushed what would now be considered fanatically liberal legislation, including urban renewal and a bill to require permits for all gun purchases. In 1966 he beat a racist Democrat for governor, winning a large share of black votes. By mid-1968, only a year and a half after holding lowly county office, Agnew was on the ticket with Nixon, who was impressed by how he talked tough with civil-rights leaders amid a Maryland riot.
Nixon believed that the best way to build his ““Silent Majority’’ was to exploit middle-class bitterness against poor blacks, snotty college kids and the Eastern media establishment. His instrument was Agnew, who lambasted antiwar critics in the presss as ““nattering nabobs of negativism… They have formed their own 4-H Club–the hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.’’ (Then speechwriter William Safire’s amok alliteration.)
Editors justifiably believed that Nixon was trying to use the power of the government to intimidate them; he even threatened to withdraw TV licenses from hostile media companies. But Agnew’s nasty rhetoric obscured the essential accuracy of his attack on the media’s overemphasis on conflict and criticism. Agnew’s complaint about ““more and more power over public opinion in fewer and fewer hands’’ anticipated a similar critique on the left. By inflaming the media, Agnew’s attacks may have hastened Nixon’s demise; for many years they also delayed the press’s coming to terms with its own faults.
His real legacy, of course, was to help Nixon sully the White House and breed cynicism about the integrity of all politicians. After Agnew resigned and pleaded no contest to income-tax evasion, Nixon cut him loose, and Agnew later said he felt ““totaally abandoned.’’ Nixon tried to reach him several times over the years, but Agnew refused to take the calls. But he did show up at Nixon’s funeral in 1994.
All of that nattering about ““law and order’’ rang hollow after Nixon and Agnew turned out to be crooks. Even so, portraying liberals as soft-on-crime pansies worked for two more decades, thanks in no small part to liberals themselves. The Democrats may yet revert to the excesses that cost them the Congress in 1994. But for now, anyway, Clinton has dulled the wedges, cracked the GOP code words. He manages to talk tough on crime without racial overtones, which is unprecedented in the post-Agnew years. The Silent Majority of 1969 is either dead or worried about Medicare, and ads calling Clinton a permissive liberal won’t change that. Good night, Spiro. Your spell’s been broken.
