Soundbites Over Substance
What we learned about "closing the border" from Nixon and Reagan
By the heat of the summer of 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy had been assassinated. Olympians Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fist in protest of racial tension in America. King’s murder gave way to protests in D.C., Baltimore, Chicago, Cincinnati, Louisville, Wilmington, and Kansas City. The hippies were protesting Vietnam and President Lyndon Baines Johnson had called it quits.
The race to the Oval Office was wide open.
Republican Richard Nixon took advantage of the division among Americans. To reassure horrified white middle-class voters, Nixon pledged to restore “law and order” to the streets. As the summer of 1968 faded into history and cities quieted down, Richard Nixon’s “law and order” language expanded to include drugs. It was the original seed that germinated into the War on Drugs and like any good war, it needed an enemy and a catchy name. Richard Nixon didn’t have to travel far to find both.
Operation Intercept
After winning the Presidency, Richard Nixon was forced to make good on his campaign pledge. First, he created the Special Presidential Task Force Relating to Narcotics, Marihuana and Dangerous Drugs. Then he put Attorney General John Mitchell in charge. Mitchell tapped John Erhlichman to help develop a plan for increased law enforcement on the Mexican - American border. So, yes, the people who started America’s War on Drugs also planned the clown show known as Watergate for which both Mitchell and Erhlichman went to prison.
When - in the words of G. Gordon Liddy (yup, another convicted Watergate alumni) - Mexico told the Nixon Administration to “piss up a rope” - Nixon announced the closure the Southern border. They called it Operation Intercept.
In the end, the ten-day “operation” left strained relationships with Mexico and economic hardship for Americans. Oh, and very little weed was confiscated. Operation Intercept was quietly replaced by Operation Cooperation.
Operation Intercept II
Yeah, Ronald Reagan tried it too. That only lasted a few days.
On Day One
So it’s not really any surprise that, with his June 20, 2023, announcement, Ron DeSantis is repeating history. On “day one,” he said, he would declare a national emergency, shut the border down and hold Mexico accountable.
As Nixon and Reagan found out, it won’t work. The American economy will suffer. Immigrants and asylum seekers will still come. Mexico will respond with an “absolute unwillingness to ever do anything under pressure, real or perceived, by the U.S.”
And fifty years from now, while trying to cleanse their soul before meeting God almighty, someone from the DeSantis team will admit; the entire spectacle was created to “own the libs,” terrify Latino families, and inflame frightened white voters.
“You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities,” Ehrlichman said. “We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” - John Erlichman