(CNN) -- "Beware the fury of the patient man." -- John Dryden 

In January, 1956, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser was pledging to take over Palestine. In the United States, a "sensational new RCA Victor Star," just days away from cracking the music charts with his first hit, "Heartbreak Hotel," was touring with Hank Snow and the stars of Grand Old Opry. Norma Jeane Mortenson was preparing to change her name. 

Also that month, a fresh-faced U.S. senator gave Richard Nixon an autographed copy of his second book, "Profiles in Courage". 

In that best-seller, John F. Kennedy applauded leaders with the courage to represent "the actual sentiments of the silent majority of their constituents in opposition to the screams of a vocal minority." That "silent majority" was a constituency neither Nixon nor the country would forget: Fifty-six years later, Mitt Romney is counting on it to win the presidency. 

Nixon could have thanked Kennedy's hardcover for one of his many resurrections. His appeal to the "silent majority" turned around his political fortunes, driving his approval ratings from the mid-50s to more than 80%. 

Opinion: Both parties have a huge race problem 

His pivotal speech contrasted a "vocal minority" of idealistic but impractical, young, anti-Vietnam protestors, cultural elites and intellectuals with their stodgy parents, older, blue-collar, working-class Americans. Until Nixon drew the silent majority from the shadows, their simmering outrage at the left's lack of respect for time-tested American values was undetected. 

Political historian Teddy White characterized the split between "what the silent people think" and what the country's "more important thinkers think." He wrote, "Never have America's leading cultural media, its university thinkers, its influence makers been more intrigued by experiment and change; but in no election have the mute masses more completely separated themselves from such leadership and thinking." 
what?
 take over Palestine