Divide and Conquer

We all know Nixon was nasty. A stunning new book argues that he was also the grandfather of today's politics of hate.

By Evan Thomas | Newsweek Web Exclusive
May 9, 2008 | Updated: 10:25 a.m. ET May 9, 2008

On Aug. 6, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, guaranteeing African-Americans the right to participate in the political process. Five nights later, Watts, the mostly black neighborhood of Los Angeles, erupted into rioting. For four days, angry young men ran wild, looting and torching buildings, shouting, "Burn, baby, burn!" LBJ was stunned by the hatred of the rioters. "How is it possible after all we accomplished?" the president cried in anguish. "How could it be? Is the world topsy-turvy?" The 1960s were supposed to be a new Age of Reason — "These are the most hopeful times since Christ was born in Bethlehem," Johnson declared as he lit the White House Christmas tree after winning in a landslide election in 1964.

But Watts was just the beginning: in dozens of cities, race riots (so severe in Detroit in 1967 that the president had to send in the 82nd Airborne); LSD-dropping college students calling cops "pigs" and taking over college-administration buildings; Yippie leader Jerry Rubin telling kids they needed to be prepared to "kill your parents." By the end of the decade Johnson was in exile, and America, it seemed, had become a strange dystopia, decadent and almost prerevolutionary in its feverish discontent.