But there was a problem--the federal government had little authority to deal directly with street crime. If the federal government diverted funds to local authorities to deal with the problem then the local governments, not the administration, would get the credit. Having raised public expectations about their crime fighting intentions, the Nixon administration was reduced to exercising vigorous symbolic leadership through tough sounding rhetoric. Eventually a solution presented itself when the administration identified the area over which it had significant authority--narcotics control--as a means to tackle the rising crime rates to which the administration had drawn so much attention. To justify their new tactic, officials argued that drug addicts commit the majority of street crimes in order to pay for their drugs. And so the war on drugs emerged as an answer to a political and jurisdictional problem, not a criminological concern. The Nixon administration continued its war on crime and drugs until the outbreak of the Watergate scandal in 1974.

The issue lay dormant under Ford and Carter only to be picked up again shortly after Ronald Reagan became President in 1980. The new administration confronted the same difficulty its predecessor had--fewer than 10 percent of all offences fell under federal jurisdiction. But, following Nixon’s lead, the answer was at hand. According to Attorney General William French Smith the administration could secure a “strong federal law enforcement capacity” in a “highly popular” manner, by initiating a federal war on drugs (Mauer 1999:60).

In October 1981, the Justice Department announced it would cut in half the number of investigators assigned to identify and prosecute white collar crime. Instead the Attorney General’s Task Force on Violent Crime seized the initiative and began an all-out campaign, not as one might expect from its title against violent crime (domestic violence was explicitly excluded from its purview), but for the hearts and minds of blue-collar voters based on a Republican platform that called for swift and sure sanctions, increased use of the death penalty, and, especially, harsher punishments for drug pushers and smugglers (Beckett 1997).

The underlying racial message of the crime and drug discourse was not lost to Americans: those most opposed to social and racial reform proved the most receptive to the premises of the get-tough movement. In the coming years, with its racial sub-text well established, the crime/drug issue was a staple in the conservative politician’s toolkit as the assault on welfare and other social programs continued.

So when George Bush Sr. raised the spectre of Willie Horton in the 1988 presidential campaign he was treading a well-worn path to power in the footsteps of Goldwater, Nixon and Reagan. There was no need to even raise the issue of race--Horton’s mugshot flashed on the nation’s television screens, the story of his grisly crime, and the liberal permissiveness that had granted him a weekend furlough were enough for voters to complete the picture and reach the desired judgement.

Mendelberg (1997) found that the Horton advertisement provided a racial message that was very much deniable by the candidate and netted more capital than any of its predecessor appeals. It was found to mobilize whites’ racial prejudices and spark greater resistance to government efforts to address racial inequality and policies perceived as disproportionately or even illegitimately benefiting African Americans. Although ostensibly about crime, the coded message of the Horton story for white Americans was one of race. So successful was it that the tactic was repeated in gubernatorial and other contests of the period--campaigns that all included racial symbols including the rise of a supposed welfare underclass and condemnation of unfair federal quota bills. The fact that it was a presidential election was also significant since such contests can extend well beyond voters’ choices of parties to encompass citizen views of significant national issues.

By 1993 the Reagan and Bush administrations had been stunningly successful in the pursuit of its agenda: federal spending on employment and training programs had been cut in half, while corrections spending had risen by 521% (Mauer 1999).