The Nixon Effect: How His Presidency Has Changed American Politics examines the
37th president's political legacy in broad-ranging ways that make clear, for the
first time, the breadth and duration of his influence on American political lif
e. The book argues that Nixon is the key political figure in postwar American po
litics in multiple ways, some barely acknowledged until now. His legacy includes
a generational shift in the ideological orientations of both the Republican and
Democratic parties; the Nixon influence, both intentional and unintentional, wa
s to push both parties further out to their ideological poles. So stark was Nixo
n's influence on party identities that it shaped the hardened partisan polarizat
ion in Washington today and the evolution of what has come to be called Red and
Blue America. Stemming in part from this, and also from Nixon's scorched-earth p
olitical warfare and eventually his Watergate scandal, we have also seen the evo
lution of politics as war, where adversaries and ideological opponents are seen
as evil or unpatriotic.
