Know Your Enemy6 Nov 2022

Nixon Agonistes

"What is best and weakest in America goes out to reciprocating strength and deficiencies in Richard Nixon." It's difficult to think of a more electric meeting of author and subject than Garry Wills and Richard Nixon, a meeting that produced what might be the best book ever written about American politics, Wills's Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man. What begins as reporting from the campaign trail during the 1968 presidential contest—where Wills introduces us to Nixon, George Wallace, Nelson Rockefeller, and more—eventually becomes a profound meditation on the fate of liberalism in the United States. Wills found in Nixon the key to unlocking the reigning—but by then faltering—myths of their country's history and self-understanding, and what they reveal about each other.

Along the way he discusses the complex psychological dance between Nixon and Dwight Eisenhower; takes us on a tour of Nixon's hometown, Whittier, California; describes the Republicans' "southern strategy"; examines the roiling anger and protests over the Vietnam War; and offers on-the-ground reportage from the 1968 conventions (the GOP's in Miami, the Democrats', infamously, in Chicago). Matt and Sam try to make sense of it all and ponder what Nixon Agonistes might say about how we got here and where we're going.

Sources:

Garry Wills, Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man (1970)

Confessions of a Conservative (1979)

Outsider Looking In: Adventures of an Observer (2010)

Kevin Phillips, The Emerging Republican Majority (1968)

Tom Wolfe, The New Journalism (1973)

KYE, "Joan Didion, Conservative, (w/ Sam Tanenhaus)" Jan 13, 2022

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(267)

Trump's Big, Beautiful Ballroom (w/ Kate Wagner) [Teaser]

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.If there's a Trump-era topic that manages to fascinate without being entirely depressing, it's probably the ongoi...

17 Nov 20254min

Zohran, the Jews, and Reckoning with Gaza (w/ Peter Beinart)

This episode isn't focused on a single topic or text, but rather just wanting to have a wide-ranging conversation with our guest, Peter Beinart, editor-at-large of Jewish Currents and author of the re...

11 Nov 20251h 14min

Break Glass in Case of Emergency

This is a different kind of episode than is typical; there's no book, no central text, not even a single, central event that guides the conversation. Instead, we begin with a few recent news items—spe...

3 Nov 20251h 31min

Command + F + Hitler [Teaser]

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.The theme of this rank punditry episode is Getting in Trouble on the Internet, and we begin with the frankly unsu...

24 Okt 20253min

How Charles Murray (Almost) Predicted the Trump Era

This episode is the second in our occasional series on important, controversial, or unusually relevant conservative texts from the recent past. Here we take up Charles Murray's 2012 book, Coming Apart...

15 Okt 20251h 32min

How To Give A Damn [Teaser]

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.Before embarking on a spirited bout of rank punditry, we take a step back and talk about the Staple Singers, Hann...

6 Okt 20253min

Death, Power, and the Charlie Kirk Memorial (w/ Pat Blanchfield)

To try to understand both the power and strangeness of the Charlie Kirk memorial—one part evangelical worship service, one part MAGA rally—we turned, of course, to our friend Pat Blanchfield. All thre...

29 Sep 20251h 26min

The Assassination of Charlie Kirk [Teaser]

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.The assassination of Turning Points USA founder Charlie Kirk on September 10, 2025, seemed to change the landscap...

19 Sep 20253min