CLEVELAND – The tough-on-crime approach has fallen out of fashion in American politics in recent years, with lawmakers to the left and right, in Washington and at the state level, seeking reform of strict sentences that have stuffed prisons and devastated poor communities.
But law-and-order is back on centre stage today.
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The theme of the first day of the Republican National Convention is, “Make America Safe Again,” and it will emphasize recent acts of violence that have the country unnerved, from terrorist attacks to the weekend’s latest ambush assault on police officers.
It will reflect the get-tough posture adopted by the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump, who has embraced the hardline label with a gusto rarely seen by prominent politicians these days.
“How many law enforcement and people have to die because of a lack of leadership in our country?” Trump wrote in a Facebook post Sunday, after the killing of three police officers in Louisiana.
“We demand law and order.”
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Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort told reporters that the first day of the four-day convention would focus on crises both domestic and international, and would touch upon the recent tragic events in Baton Rouge.
The day’s lineup of speakers includes a retired U.S. Navy Seal; a Marine Corps veteran who fought in Benghazi; the family of a border-patrol agent killed near the Mexican border; the mother of a man killed by a drunk driver in the U.S. illegally; a man whose son was shot and killed by someone in the country illegally; and tough-on-crime former new York mayor Rudy Giuliani.
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It also includes Milwaukee county sheriff David Clarke – an African-American and virulent critic of Black Lives Matter. He’s referred to the movement as, “garbage,” and suggested it might wind up aligning itself with ISIL.
A campaign adviser to President Barack Obama thought he detected a historical precedent for Trump’s campaign theme. David Axelrod tweeted in response to Trump’s Facebook post: “(He’s) wasting no time… Someone’s been studying Nixon ’68.”
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Indeed, Nixon gained power in an election year many commentators have said carried similar overtones to this one – arguably on a more violent and sweeping scale back then, however. The unrest involved two familiar themes in both eras: racial strife, and the effects of a faraway conflict.
African-American neighbourhoods back then were burned after the assassination of Martin Luther King, and anti-Vietnam war protesters converged on the Democratic national convention where they were met by baton-swinging police.
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Nixon responded to the convention chaos by staging a campaign rally at the site of the convention, Chicago, and he promised change: “We’re going to have law and order.” His TV ads declared: “We have to rebuild respect for law in this country.”
A big difference is that crime rates were rising steadily back then.
Now they’ve been mostly dropping for a generation, and political actors have turned their attention toward saving money on prison costs and sparing families from the ripple-effects of longterm incarceration.
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The country’s world-leading incarceration rates have actually dipped slightly the last few years.
But one critic of law-and-order politics notes a constant through the eras: the connection between tough-on-crime talk and race. In his book, “Dog Whistle Politics,” Ian Haney Lopez says the political theme goes as far back as the end of slavery.
Nixon picked up on it to win votes from the segregationist George Wallace. His Alabama rival was once known for using overt racial slurs and paens to racial separation, but over the course of the 1960s he modified his language – Wallace began railing against the lawlessness in the streets, which he’d mention in reference to events as disparate as civil-rights marches and inner-city riots.
“Nixon had mastered Wallace’s dark art,” he wrote.
“Forced busing, law and order, and security from unrest as the essential civil right of the majority – all of these were coded phrases that allowed Nixon to appeal to racial fears without overtly mentioning race at all. Yet race remained the indisputable, intentional subtext of the appeal.”
He pointed to statements attributed to Nixon and an aide reported after the election that the law-and-order theme was indeed designed to tap into white voters’ fears about minorities.
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In terms of Trump’s actual policies, he’s wavered on issues like marijuana legalization. But he’s cast himself as tough on crime through the years – and sometimes in the language of 1968.
One of his recent books, “Time to Get Tough,” has a subject header titled, “Obama’s Food Stamp Crime Wave.” In his 2015 book, “Crippled America,” Trump said inner-city crime was out of control and murder rates had been going “way up” – which was inaccurate.