A New Nixon Enters the Arena

Fox News Channel promoted an appearance Thursday by Chris Cox, a Republican Congressional candidate for the 1st District of New York, with the banner headline: “A New Nixon in Politics.” For anyone familiar with the old Nixon, it’s remarkable how little resemblance is shared with this new incarnation; a stark contrast evincing the inherent ironies of class warfare and the politics of resentment.

Christopher Nixon Cox made the most of the opportunities borne of his forebears’ struggles and is now running for Congress at age 30 after founding his own business and a successful legal career. One of the more idealistic tenets of the American dream is the belief in each generation’s unknown capabilities to rise or fall, and those who decry the omnipotent “elites” would do well to notice Nixon’s heir. Cox’s position within the reviled establishment renders him the very sort of figure his grandfather might have railed against and run against, striking blows for the proletariat by highlighting his opponent’s privilege.

Former President Richard Milhous Nixon spent his early career harboring a lifetime of strife against the well bred “Franklins” he’d encountered at Whittier College, the predetermined inheritors of American power and treasure. Cox is a product of Princeton and New York University, attending both the latter’s Stern School of Business and School of Law. As such, he is nearly the embodiment of the coastal elites constantly perceived to have slighted his late grandfather.

This proves instructive to today’s politicians who invoke “the elites” in their efforts to inflame deeply-held resentments. As an ideal, conservatism appeals in its focus on the individual, while purported liberals play into labels of race, class and gender. To cast the political landscape as a broad range of everymen versus an oppressive upper echelon runs contrary to that, and to begrudge one citizen their privilege is to perceive a falsely immobile society. That there is a “new Nixon in politics” is proof positive of our generational volatility. As time passes, those who play the politics of class warfare risk making the most unlikely of enemies.