November 3, 1969, 50 years ago: In the face of a massive demonstration against the Vietnam War on October 15 -- during Game 4 of the World Series between the Mets and the Baltimore Orioles -- and knowing that he had both lost the election for President in 1960 and won it in 1968 by razor-thin margins, and that he needed support from wherever he could get it, President Richard Nixon delivers a speech from the Oval Office, written by William Safire, later a Pulitzer Prize-winning longtime conservative columnist for The New York Times.
In 1956, when Nixon was Vice President, Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts gave him a copy of his book Profiles In Courage, which included these words in its introduction: "Some of them may have been representing the actual sentiments of the silent majority of their constituents in opposition to the screams of a vocal minority." Nixon took note of those words, and never forgot them, even as the friendship between them was fractured when they ran against each other for President in 1960, and Kennedy won by said slim margin.
In 1967, George Meany, President of America's largest labor organization, the AFL-CIO, gave a press conference in which he said union members who supported the Vietnam War were "the vast, silent majority in the nation." Nixon heard this, and remembered Kennedy having used the phrase.
So, needing support for his his policies, especially the one he announced at the beginning of the speech, called "Vietnamization" -- steadily taking U.S. troops out, and turning responsibility for the war over to South Vietnam -- Nixon gave Safire the phrase, and this section was the result: "And so, tonight, to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans, I ask for your support."
It worked, mostly. Time magazine named "The Middle Americans" -- clearly, a synonym for "The Silent Majority" -- its People of the Year for 1969.
Despite an even bigger demonstration in Washington on November 15, the protests against Nixon's "Cambodian incursion" the following May, and the "May Day" demonstrations of May 2, 1971, those who opposed the war didn't turn up at the polls to punish pro-war Congressmen in 1970, or Nixon himself when he ran for re-election in 1972. Those who supported the war had ceased to be a majority of the people in 1968, but they remained a majority of those who actually voted.
Nixon announced an end to the war within days of his 2nd Inauguration, on January 23, 1973. And when he was forced to resign on August 9, 1974, the war had only a tangential connection to it: Trying to get information on antiwar Congressmen and activists was why the Democratic Party offices at the Watergate were broken into and bugged.
Nixon was probably not aware of this, but the day before the speech, the band Creedence Clearwater Revival released an album titled Willy and the Poor Boys. For it, bandleader John Fogerty, one of the few genuine rock stars to have served in the U.S. armed forces (U.S. Army, 1966-67, before the band hit it big, serving stateside with no combat), wrote the song "Effigy," in which he sang, "Silent majority weren't keeping quiet anymore."
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