WATCH: Why Is Gen-Z “NixonMaxxing”? Nixon’s Speechwriter Responds
Within recent months, a growing number of young conservatives have embraced “Nixonmaxxing,” turning the 37th president into an anti-hero through memes emphasizing his distinctive style and reputation as an outsider.
In an exclusive interview, Ken Khachigian, an American political consultant and political speechwriter who worked with the Nixon and Reagan administrations, claims that the phenomenon reflects something deeper than nostalgia for the historical figure.
It reflects a distrust of centralized power among young Americans, as Nixon’s downfall represents a political and legal establishment determined to bring him down, as The Gateway Pundit previously reported.
“There’s no question that ‘Nixonmaxxing’ is based on the relative position that Nixon was a victim of lawfare going back into those days,” Khachigian said, describing him as the target of a “corrupt system, a corrupt judge, a corrupt set of prosecutors, a setup in the Senate Watergate Committee, and an elite media establishment.”
He used this to argue that “the deck was stacked against us from the outset.”
Regardless of whether that assessment is accepted, the historical narrative surrounding Nixon’s legacy is being reconsidered by a generation skeptical of the institutions that once shaped national opinion.
There is something essentially American about this distrust of government, and it explains Nixon’s appeal extending beyond Watergate.
Khachigian pointed out that Nixon’s domestic politics addressed the accumulation of federal power.
He stated that there “is a great potential for the conservative movement if they start appealing to the sense that the centralization of power is not in corporations or in business. It’s in government.”
He went further, arguing that “the government is the biggest oligarchy in America.”
“They control the levers of thought, the levers of money, the levers of power,” he said.
Khachigian connected that worldview to Nixon’s magnetism, stating “that’s the kind of thing Nixon railed against when he was out campaigning and on the stump.”
That message resonates with a generation growing suspicious of bureaucracy, the legacy media, and established authority due to perceived alienation and serving of entrenched interests.
It also depicts the parallels between the Nixon and Trump administrations.
Khachigian observed clear similarities between the two figures, explaining that both defeated establishment candidates and faced institutions that were opposed to their movements.
“They didn’t like Trump from the outset,” Khachigian said. “He defeated an establishment figure, Hillary Clinton.”
However, Khachigian pointed out the fundamental difference between them: Trump possessed an alternative infrastructure of communications.
“Trump at least has social media and at least one cable network that is supportive of him,” he said. “What Nixon never had was any support in the establishment media.”
The media is the enemy, as Nixon would say.
For Nixon, Khachigian recalled, the media environment was controlled by only a handful of major networks, newspapers, and magazines.
There was no ability on the part of Nixon’s generation to bypass hostile institutions. Those who support Trump, by contrast, can build the appropriate audiences using social media and independent outlets.
The trend also coincides with a greater generational revolt.
Khachigian noted that young Americans are growing polarized by movements seeking similar ends through different means.
Socialism, for example, is also fueled by the notion that established institutions are from the ordinary American, but place the blame on corporate power.
‘Nixonmaxxing,’ on the other hand, places the blame on the government, media, and bureaucracy.
The trend may not be about resurrecting Nixon for his performance as president.
It may instead indicate that conservatives are seriously questioning whether their institutional inheritance really deserves the level of trust it is granted.
There is not a single person who embodied that question quite like Richard Nixon did.
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You can learn more about Ken Khachigian at ReaganAndNixon.com and in his newly released book, Behind Closed Doors: In the Room with Reagan & Nixon.
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