Civil Rights and Republican Principles: a Reply to the Graham Incoherence Thesis

Professor Sallyanne Payton began her academic career at Michigan in 1976. She formerly served on the White House Domestic Council staff and was chief counsel to the Urban Mass Transportation Administration in the U.S. Department of Transportation. I am grateful for an opportunity to respond to Professor Graham\u27s very stimulating and informative paper. Professor Graham\u27s central insight, as I understand it, is that the Nixon administration\u27s civil rights policy. was characterized by theoretical inconsistency and some political opportunism. The policy\u27\u27 included a federal commitment to enforcing affirmative action, at the same time that it included the encouragement of a constitutional amendment against busing. It included both a vigorous effort to help Sou them school districts dismantle their dual schools systems and opposition to legislation that would have vested cease-and-desist enforcement powers in the EEOC. The Nixon administration created the Office of Minority Business Enterprise while attempting to weaken the Voting Rights Act. There was the Philadelphia Plan, but at the same time President Nixon made two attempts to place a Southern conservative on the Supreme Court of the United States. On balance, the record cannot be characterized as liberal, but neither can it be thought of as \u27\u27conservative, certainly not in the sense in which the nation has experienced a purer conservatism under the Reagan administration. Professor Graham argues that the Nixon record is, taken as a whole, incoherent/\u27 and that what Nixon administration officials lacked was an enunciation of Republican principles to guide their policies