Flamm Continues to Participate in National Election Discussions
Professor Michael W. Flamm continues to participate in national discussions about the upcoming presidential election. He shares thoughts with Associated Press writers Russell Contreras and Jesse J. Holland in the July 22 article, “Critics: Trump speech signals shift to coded race language,” and in the July 25 op-ed published by Reuters, “Can Roger Ailes help Trump win as he did with Nixon in 1968?”
Originally published July 15, 2016
Fear Factor Could Trump Other Campaign Issues
Ohio Wesleyan Professor Weighs in on Presidential Election Strategy
In a new article in The Hill, Ohio Wesleyan University history professor Michael W. Flamm says Donald Trump’s focus on issues of security and law and order likely represent the GOP candidate’s “best chance to take the election.”
In an interview with writer Mike Lillis, Flamm, an expert in modern American political history, compares the current presidential election with the 1968 contest between Republican Richard Nixon and Democrat Hubert Humphrey.
“The fear factor was acute,” says Flamm, Ph.D., author of the book “Law and Order: Street Crime, Civil Unrest, and the Crisis of Liberalism in the 1960s,” with the nation experiencing Vietnam War protests, a wave of crime, and race riots in areas such as Baltimore, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.
“The question for Trump in 2016 is whether the fear factor will be enough,” Flamm says in the article, “Trump’s ‘law-and-order’ gamble,” noting that people are becoming more and more desensitized to the seemingly endless incidents of violence occurring today.
Following the publication of The Hill article, Flamm was interviewed live July 18 on NPR's "Press Play with Madeleine Brand," where he continued to discuss "Trump, the ‘law and order’ candidate."
Flamm, a member of Ohio Wesleyan’s Department of History since 1998, also is the author or co-author of numerous other articles and six books examining U.S. history, including “Debating the 1960s: Liberal, Conservative, and Radical Perspectives” and “Debating the Reagan Presidency.” His forthcoming book is “In the Heat of the Summer: The New York Riots of 1964 and the War on Crime.”
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