Johnson.Īt the apex of the civil rights movement, as White voters saw the familiar social order attacked and upended, Goldwater and other conservative politicians needed a way to tap into these voters’ fears without appearing to talk about race, say political scientists and historians. The phrase was strategically lobbed into presidential politics for the first time in 1964, when candidate Barry Goldwater used it against the incumbent, Lyndon B. “We can have both.”īut what exactly do Trump and other politicians mean when they talk about law and order? What are they saying-and not saying? To answer that question, we need to look at the phrase’s origins, which tell a grim story about race and justice in American politics. “I do not believe we have to choose between law and order and racial justice in America,” Biden said in a speech this week. Instead they have tempered their support for law enforcement with a softer tone. Kamala Harris-who spent six years as California’s attorney general-have seemed reluctant to push back against their opponents’ “tough on crime” message.
Indeed, we’ve been hearing the phrase from politicians in both parties-not to mention in the ubiquitous television franchise of the same name-for decades.įormer Vice President Joe Biden and his running-mate Sen. And during Wednesday’s night’s vice presidential debate, viewers will likely hear more of the same from Pence. Trump certainly isn’t the first politician to wield “law and order” as a political cudgel against an opponent. “People of Portland, and other Democrat run cities, are disgusted,” he tweeted during ongoing unrest in August. In the months since demonstrations arose over the deaths of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Breonna Taylor in Louisville and the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, among other incidents of police violence, Trump has doubled down on this message, sending National Guard troops to Kenosha and federal agents into Portland, Oregon.
The president even tweeted while hospitalized with COVID-19 earlier this week, “LAW & ORDER. Trump August 30, 2020Īccording to a new Wall Street Journal database that tracks the candidates’ public comments on a wide range of issues, Trump and Vice President Mike Pence have mentioned “law and order” on the stump more than 90 times this year, including seven from Trump in the first presidential debate on Sept. In speeches and tweets in recent months, during historic protests against police violence toward Black Americans, President Trump has been hammering a familiar three-word phrase that he hopes will energize his base and help him win the November election: Sign up for our newsletters to receive all of our stories and analysis. The Marshall Project is a nonprofit newsroom covering the U.S.
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