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Abstract

Spiro Agnew, Richard Nixon’s often-mocked Vice President, played a critical role in building the right-wing, populist base of white working- and middle-class supporters for the Republican party. Early in his vice presidency, Agnew used his access to media to cultivate mistrust of the same media, focusing especially on television political analysis, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. In speech after speech he used the same criticisms of the media to attack other parts of American society the administration viewed as the opposition. Rather than persuading these voters on policy positions, Agnew went straight for the heart. Much to everyone’s surprise, a large bloc of fervent Agnew supporters emerged. Thousands wrote letters that expressed feelings of anger and resentment of the media and the left generally, and that also spoke of their love, loyalty, and admiration for this largely forgotten figure. In interpreting the powerful outpouring of feelings for such an unlikely figure, and the role played by the media in this development, the research here takes a different approach than the usual focus on political history or the history of journalism. Rather, it follows Barbara Rosenwein’s lead in studying what she calls “emotional communities.” The relevance of examining the formation and durability of emotional communities seems all too clear today.

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