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For a host of reasons, this tape wasn't released until about two weeks ago, and the results were published on the Atlantic site today.
Nixon for his part couldn't seem to shake Reagan's phone call from his head. Discussing it repeatedly over the coming days. Maybe he saw Reagan as a sounding board for his southern strategy of appealing to racists without saying things that were overtly racist. Or maybe it just reinforced his ideas about black intelligence:
I already despised Nixon, but I think the effect on Reagan is much more severe. By today's standards, he was positively bipartisan and he always seemed likable even if you hated his policies. While a private conversation like this always seemed plausible, I didn't actually suspect Reagan of feeling that way. It's shocking to read it word for word.
The article goes on to talk about Reagan's support of South Africa during Apartheid.The day after the United Nations voted to recognize the People’s Republic of China, then–California Governor Ronald Reagan phoned President Richard Nixon at the White House and vented his frustration at the delegates who had sided against the United States. “Last night, I tell you, to watch that thing on television as I did,” Reagan said. “Yeah,” Nixon interjected. Reagan forged ahead with his complaint: “To see those, those monkeys from those African countries—damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!” Nixon gave a huge laugh.
Nixon for his part couldn't seem to shake Reagan's phone call from his head. Discussing it repeatedly over the coming days. Maybe he saw Reagan as a sounding board for his southern strategy of appealing to racists without saying things that were overtly racist. Or maybe it just reinforced his ideas about black intelligence:
Nixon was attracted to the theories of Richard Herrnstein and Arthur Jensen, which linked IQ to race, and wondered what Moynihan thought.
“I have reluctantly concluded, based at least on the evidence presently before me … that what Herrnstein says, and what was said earlier by Jensen, is probably … very close to the truth,” Nixon explained to a quiet Moynihan. Nixon believed in a hierarchy of races, with whites and Asians much higher up than people of African descent and Latinos. And he had convinced himself that it wasn’t racist to think black people, as a group, were inferior to whites, so long as he held them in paternalistic regard.
I already despised Nixon, but I think the effect on Reagan is much more severe. By today's standards, he was positively bipartisan and he always seemed likable even if you hated his policies. While a private conversation like this always seemed plausible, I didn't actually suspect Reagan of feeling that way. It's shocking to read it word for word.