Word: humphreyism
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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There is hardly a single big city in which the individual feels completely safe on the streets at night. The fear of violence permeates the entire nation, wafted by television and newspaper headlines into areas that only vicariously experience serious trouble. In western Nevada, Ormsby County Sheriff Robert Humphrey warns: "What I'm afraid of is that the public will demand that we take too much authority. That is the real danger. But the alternative might be some kind of vigilantes...
Essentially, Nixon is trying to steer between the crass appeals to animosity of Wallace and the orthodox liberal approach of Humphrey. Eschewing concrete proposals, Wallace aims at his listeners' gut feeling that crime must be quashed by any means available. Nixon attempts to sound both alarmed and controlled at the same time, but the element of alarm seems to be winning out. He cites the FBI figures without qualification: "If the present rate of new crime continues, the number of rapes and robberies and assaults and thefts in the U.S. today will double...
Nixon belabors the Supreme Court for "hamstringing the peace forces in our society and strengthening the criminal forces." The court has borne the imprint of a Republican Chief Justice appointed by Dwight Eisenhower. Nixon has nonetheless succeeded in putting Humphrey on the defensive. Humphrey supports the Supreme Court. He lauds the Kerner commission report, which Nixon accuses of blaming everyone except the rioters and which Wallace terms "asinine and ludicrous." To underscore the truism that neither party has a monopoly on crime, Humphrey points out that Wallace's Alabama leads the nation in the number of murders, and that...
...position papers issued so far, both Humphrey and Nixon propose large-scale federal assistance to local law-enforcement, judicial and correction agencies. Both emphasize the need for a major attack on organized crime and an enlarged role for the Justice Department. However, Humphrey's proposals are considerably more detailed. He recommends, for instance, the establishment of "regional crime institutes" to do research and provide training and technical services for local law-enforcement agencies. And it is Humphrey who envisions the more prominent role for the Federal Government. To this, the Vice President adds strong and constant stress...
...Humphrey is in trouble on the issue partly because his stand is not responsive to many whites' fears of the Negro; but more importantly because even well-meaning whites have become deeply skeptical about the liberal proposition that social and economic improvements necessarily diminish crime...