"We had a lot of success with that in 1972"

— Nixon to George Walker Bush on why he should never have ended the Iraq war before the 1992 election.

"What Nixon left behind was the very terms of our national self identity: a notion that there are two kinds of Americans. On the one side, that 'silent majority.' The 'non-shouters.' The middle-class, middle-American, suburban, exurban, and rural coalition who call themselves 'values voters', 'people of faith', 'patriots' or even simply 'Republicans' — and who feel themselves condescended to by snobby, opinion-making elites and who rage about un-Americans, anti-Christians, amoralists, aliens. On the other side are the 'liberals', the 'cosmopolitans', the 'intellectuals', the 'professionals' — 'Democrats.' Who say they see shouting in opposition to injustice as a higher form of patriotism... and both have learned to consider the other not quite American at all" — Nixonland, Rick Perlstein (Scribner)