Reaction: The 40-year exile

Ronald Reagan may have delivered the eulogy of the liberal majority in 1980, but the collapse of the New Deal coalition began 12 years earlier. The end of the "liberal moment," as The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne calls it, came in 1968. The harbinger of the fall was Richard Nixon and the tolling of the bell could be heard in the gunshots that struck down Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy.

In his "Southern Strategy," Nixon mortally wounded the New Deal coalition that dominated American politics since 1932. After stunning liberal victories in the Great Society, Dixie bolted the party and poor whites became the base of the conservative ascendency that is with us today. Recalling two milestones from this week may be instructive of how the upheaval came to be.

Friday was the anniversary of King's death. Forty years and one day after the assassination, this past Saturday, Charlton Heston died. Their stories are more connected than you might think.

Heston was very much an American icon. An an actor, he will be remembered for epic roles as Moses, Ben-Hur and a man trapped on the Planet of the Apes. His legacy as a political activist will be harder to sum up.

His later years were dominated by his outspoken support for the Second Amendment, including his presidency of the National Rifle Association. He was also vocal about his opposition to affirmative action and President Clinton. Earlier, he was a staunch opponent of Communism.

Yet Heston also lent his fame to social justice. In 1961, he joined a picket line at a segregated theater premiering one of his movies. He marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in Washington in 1963, wearing a sign that read "all men are created equal." Heston also opposed the Vietnam War and supported the presidential ambitions of Democrats Adlai Stevenson and John F. Kennedy.

So why did Heston become a right-wing icon? Did Heston's politics even change all that much? Perhaps his political evolution is not too different from that of the southern whites who have handed Republicans the White House seven times from 1968 on.

The late 1960s were plagued by increasing crime and violence in the form of riots. Even though many of these race riots were in fact the acts of whites angered by the Civil Rights Movement, there was violence on both sides. The Republicans exploited white fears of social disorder -- which were both real and imagined -- dislodging the law and order vote from Democrats.

With the deaths of both Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy in the cataclysmic year of 1968, a peaceful resolution of the racial strife seemed nigh impossible.

Some voices on the radical left became the loudest after the assassinations. Militants like the Black Panthers and Malcolm X further alienated the white blue-collar votes the Democrats needed. Other anti-war and anti-capitalist groups became the face of the "New Left" in the mind of many average voters. This of course, was neither fair nor terribly accurate, but it was a powerful image.

The 1968 Democratic convention was chaotic and violent. It is now known that much of the violence on the streets began by way of "police riots." The fighting was started by plainclothes cops in the crowd to give uniformed officers an excuse to crack down on the demonstration. On television, however, all America saw was lawlessness, racial strife and radical left-wing politics.

By 1972, Nixon was able to credibly call the Democratic candidate for president the candidate of "acid, amnesty, and abortion." If only!

Can you see even a principled, fair man like Heston supporting the Democratic party for too long in that state? Though committed to racial justice, he was also strongly for law and order and had no sympathy for the socialist-leaning groups on the left. How could he not be disgusted by "Hanoi Jane"?

As long as Democrats allowed themselves to appear weak and even silly, they had no hope of ever winning back Heston or southern whites. Democrats were bludgeoned as being weak on crime, then Communism, then morals and lately, terrorism. Throw in embarrassments like Dukakis in the tank, Bill Clinton's impeachment and turn-offs like political correctness and you see why, in some ways, it is still 1968.

Forty years out, the GOP is still scoring with Nixon's playbook. Democrats still seem to dither about on the fears of the day, fears that men like Heston want openly confronted. And, aside from acting ability, there are a lot of men like Heston.

Motorists from the 1990s may recall bumper stickers that read "Charlton Heston is my president," referring to his leadership of the NRA. Democrats should remember that the same man was once a liberal icon. As the nation approaches what may be the end of the conservative ascendency, liberals need to reflect on how they lost men like Heston, and think of how they can get them back.