Transcript File - AP United States History

Chapter 26
The Triumph of Conservatism,
1969–1988
The 1960s saw contesting ideals of freedom, most notably between civil rights
and the burgeoning conservative movement. Republican Senator Barry
Goldwater’s 1964 campaign for the presidency helped spread ideas that later
defined conservatism, such as opposition to the welfare state and a reduction
in taxes and government regulations. Goldwater showed that whenever
liberals controlled Washington, conservatives could portray themselves as antigovernment populists, broadening their base and ending their image as upperclass elitists.
The late 1960s and the 1970s saw developments that transformed American
politics—the disintegration of the New Deal coalition forged by Franklin D.
Roosevelt (FDR); an economic crisis that liberal policies could not end; a shift
of population and economic resources to conservative bastions in the South
and West; the growth of an activist, conservative Christianity more and more
aligned with the Republican Party; and a series of US defeats overseas.
Together, these events expanded the influence of conservatives’ ideas,
including their definition of freedom.
President Nixon
•
Nixon’s Domestic Policies
In the post–World War II era, conservatism seemed marginal in a very liberal environment. Conservatism
was seen as outdated and associated with conspiracy theories, anti-Semitism, and preferences for social
hierarchy over equality. Liberals believed conservatives were simply alienated or psychologically
disturbed. In the 1950s and 1960s, conservatism was reborn. In 1968, a backlash of formerly Democratic
voters against black protest and the anti-war movement helped Richard Nixon win the White House. But
conservatives were dissatisfied with Nixon. Nixon adopted conservative language but actually expanded
the welfare state and improved relations with the Soviets and China.
Nixon, who won by a thin margin, moved to the center, trying to solidify Republican support and win
disaffected Democrats. Nixon, mostly interested in foreign policy and wanting to avoid fights with the
Democratic Congress over domestic policy, actually accepted and expanded much of the Great Society
and welfare state. Nixon established new federal regulatory agencies, such as the Environmental
Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the National Transportation
Safety Board, all of which limited entrepreneurial freedoms. Nixon spent liberally on social services and
environmental initiatives. He abolished the Office of Economic Opportunity, which had coordinated the
War on Poverty, but he also expanded food stamps and tied Social Security benefits to inflation. The
Endangered Species and Clean Air acts regulated businesses in order to limit pollution and protect
animals threatened with extinction.
Map 26.1 Center of Population, 1790-2000
Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition
Copyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company
President Nixon
•
Nixon and Welfare
Nixon’s great surprise was his proposal for a Family Assistance Plan to replace Aid to Families with
Dependent Children (AFDC). Under his plan, the federal government would guarantee a minimum
income for all Americans. AFDC, known as “welfare,” gave aid, usually quite limited, to poor families who
met local eligibility requirements. Originally a New Deal program that helped mostly the white poor,
welfare came to be associated with blacks, who by 1970 were half of all welfare recipients. AFDC rolls
expanded in the 1960s, partly because of relaxed federal eligibility standards. Conservative politicians
now attacked welfare recipients as people who wanted to live off honest taxpayers rather than work.
But Nixon’s plan for a guaranteed annual income, too radical for conservatives and not enough for
liberals, did not pass Congress.
•
Nixon and Race
Nixon’s racial policy was ambiguous. He nominated conservative southern jurists who favored
segregation to the Supreme Court to win over the white South, but the Senate rejected them. The
courts lost patience with southern delays in enforcing civil rights laws and finally forced southern schools
to desegregate. Briefly, Nixon also embraced “affirmative action” programs to raise minority
employment. Nixon expanded Johnson’s efforts to require federal contractors to hire minorities. But
Nixon wanted the affirmative action program as a way to fight inflation by weakening the power of
building trades unions (he believed their control over the labor market hiked wages to unreasonable
levels and increased construction costs). He hoped the plan would cause tensions between blacks and
labor unions and that Republicans would benefit. Indeed, this is what happened. Trade unions of skilled
construction workers, with few black members, strongly opposed Nixon’s plan. Nixon hoped to win bluecollar workers over for the 1972 elections, and he quickly replaced his affirmative action plan with a
program that did not require federal contractors to hire minorities.
President Nixon
•
The Burger Court
When Earl Warren retired as chief justice of the Supreme Court in 1969, Nixon replaced him with
Warren Burger, an opponent of the Warren Court’s “judicial activism.” Burger was expected to lead the
court in a conservative direction. But he surprised Nixon and others by initially expanding much of the
Warren Court’s jurisprudence. In 1971, the Court approved plans to integrate southern schools through
busing, in which students were transported to other schools to make an integrated student body. Judges
everywhere began to order busing, angering many white parents who wanted to keep their children in
majority-white neighborhood schools. Particularly bitter and violent protests broke out in Boston. In
only a few years, the Court reversed itself, and abandoned efforts to wrest control of local schools or bus
students at great distances to achieve integration. Rulings absolved suburban districts of the
responsibility of enrolling non-white, and often poor, students from non-suburban neighborhoods. By
the 1990s, northern public schools were more segregated than southern schools.
•
The Court and Affirmative Action
Efforts to gain more job opportunities for minorities also sparked bitter legal battles and white
resentments. Many whites came to see affirmative action programs as “reverse discrimination” that
violated the Fourteenth Amendment by giving non-whites special advantages over whites. As affirmative
action spread from blacks to include women, Latinos, Asian- and Native Americans, conservatives
demanded that the Supreme Court ban such programs. The Supreme Court refused but offered no
consistent position. But the Court proved more and more hostile to government affirmative action
programs. In 1978, the Court shot down a University of California admissions program that set aside a
quota of places for non-white medical students. The majority rejected the ideas of quotas while ruling
that race could be one factor among many in college admissions. In the 1990s, affirmative action was
ambiguously employed in higher education, although in 2003 the court reaffirmed that race could be a
factor in college admissions.
•
President Nixon
The Continuing Sexual Revolution
Alarming conservatives, the sexual revolution became mainstream in the 1970s. Premarital
sex was more widely accepted, the number of divorces and age of marriage rose, and by
1975, more divorces occurred than first-time marriages. American birthrates dropped
dramatically, the result of women’s changing lives and the availability of birth control and
legal abortion.
In the Nixon years, sexual equality advanced in law and policy. In 1972, Congress approved
Title IX, banning gender discrimination in higher education, and the Equal Credit
Opportunity Act, requiring that married women have access to their own credit. Huge sexual
discrimination suits against large employers worth millions of dollars were won in courts.
The number of working women continued to rise. By 1980, 40 percent of women with
children worked; in 1990, 55 percent. Working women had various motivations, from being
a professional in careers traditionally limited to men to bolstering family income as the
economy faltered.
The gay and lesbian movement also expanded in the 1970s. By 1979, there were thousands
of local gay rights groups through the country. They elected officials, pressed states to
decriminalize homosexuality, and passed anti-discrimination laws in major cities. They urged
gay men and lesbians to “come out of the closet” and forced the American Psychiatric
Association to remove homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses. By the 1970s, the
counterculture’s emphasis on personal freedom and individuality had become mainstream.
Americans became obsessed with self-improvement in fitness, diets, and psychological
therapies.
Figure 26.1 Median Age at First Marriage, 1947–1981
Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition
Copyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company
•
President Nixon
Nixon and Détente
Conservatives also believed Nixon was “soft” in foreign policy. Certainly, Nixon and Henry
Kissinger, his national security advisor, continued their predecessor’s policies of trying to
undermine governments that seemed to endanger U.S. strategic or economic interests.
Nixon sent arms to pro-American dictators in Iran, the Philippines, and South Africa. When
Chileans elected the socialist Salvador Allende president, the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) helped his domestic opponents launch a coup on September 11, 1973, that overthrew
and killed Allende and installed a bloody regime ruled by General Augusto Pinochet.
Thousands of Allende’s supporters, including some Americans, were tortured and murdered,
while others fled the country.
In relations with major communist countries, however, Nixon decreased Cold War tensions.
Nixon launched his political career as a militant anti-communist, but he and Kissinger were
“realists.” They were more interested in power than ideology and preferred stability to
endless conflict. Nixon hoped that better relations with the Soviets would pressure North
Vietnam to end the Vietnam War on terms acceptable to America. Nixon also realized that
China had its own interests, separate from those of the Soviets, and would soon be a major
world power. In early 1972, Nixon made a highly publicized trip to Beijing, which led to China
finally occupying its seat in the United Nations. Although full diplomatic relations with China
were not established until 1979, Nixon’s visit sparked a vast trade increase between the
United States and China. Three months after his China trip, Nixon became the first president
to visit the Soviet Union, where he negotiated with Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev. The
talks led to increased trade and two landmark arms control treaties: the Strategic Arms
Limitation Talks, which capped each country’s arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles
with nuclear warheads, and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which banned the development
of systems for intercepting income missiles. Nixon and Brezhnev declared a new age of
Vietnam and Watergate
• Nixon and Vietnam
In his 1968 campaign, Nixon pledged that he had a “secret plan” to end the
Vietnam War. Once in office, he declared a new policy, Vietnamization, in which
U.S. troops would gradually be withdrawn while South Vietnamese troops, backed
by U.S .bombing, would take up combat. But Vietnamization did not limit the war
or end the anti-war movement. In early 1970, Nixon ordered U.S. troops into
neutral Cambodia, in order to disrupt supply lines to the South. But the invasion did
not achieve its military goals, and it destabilized the Cambodian government,
starting a chain of events that brought the Khmer Rouge to power (who forced
most Cambodians to migrate into the countryside and massacred millions), and
sparked the largest student protests in U.S. history. In protests at Kent State
University, the Ohio National Guard killed four anti-war protests; at Jackson State
University, two students were killed by police. More than 350 colleges and
universities had student strikes and 21 campuses were occupied by troops.
Simultaneously, troop morale dropped. Although all young men were subject to the
draft, most college students received deferments. The army was mostly composed
of working-class whites and poor racial minorities. Blacks complained of having
disproportionately higher casualty rates than white soldiers. And the military was
not immune from domestic social and cultural changes. More and more soldiers
wore peace and black power symbols, used drugs, refused orders, deserted, and
assaulted and killed unpopular officers. The erosion in discipline convinced many
high-ranking officers that the United States had to pull out from Vietnam.
Vietnam and Watergate
•
The End of the Vietnam War
At the same time, public support for the war declined. Revelations in 1969 that U.S. forces
had committed a massacre of some 350 civilians at My Lai the year before shocked the
nation. In 1971, the New York Times published the Pentagon Papers, a classified government
report that traced U.S. involvement in Vietnam back to World War II and showed how
multiple presidents had misled the American public about it. The Supreme Court rejected
Nixon’s effort to suppress the papers’ publication. In 1973, Congress passed the War Powers
Act, which limited presidential authority by requiring congressional approval for troop
commitments overseas.
In 1973, Nixon sealed the Paris peace agreement and started to withdraw U.S. troops. The
compromise left South Vietnam’s government intact, but it also left North Vietnamese and
Viet Cong troops in control of parts of the South. U.S. bombing stopped and the draft
ceased. But the North Vietnamese launched a final offensive in 1975 that toppled South
Vietnam’s government. The United States evacuated its embassy, and Vietnam was reunified
under communist rule. The Vietnam War was a military, political, and social disaster, in
which 58,000 Americans were killed, along with 3 to 4 million Vietnamese. The war cost the
United States $100 billion, but the higher cost was to Americans’ confidence in their own
institutions and their nation’s ideals and purposes. Policymakers behind the war, such as
former defense secretary Robert McNamara, have since said the war was a terrible mistake.
Vietnam and Watergate
•
Watergate
Nixon’ s domestic and foreign policy successes secured his re-election in 1972. He won a
landslide victory over liberal Democrat George McGovern and gained more support in
Democratic strongholds in the South and among northern working-class whites. But
triumph was succeeded by disaster. Nixon was obsessed with secrecy and did not tolerate
differences of opinion. He viewed critics as national security threats and created an
“enemies list” of unfriendly reporters, politicians, and celebrities. When the Pentagon
Papers were published, Nixon established a special investigative unit in the White House
known as the “plumbers” to get information about Daniel Ellsberg, the former government
official who had leaked the papers to the press. The plumbers raided Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s
office to discredit him. In June 1972, five former employees of Nixon’s re-election committee
were caught breaking into the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate apartment
complex in Washington, D.C., and were arrested.
The arrests did not affect the 1972 presidential campaign. But in 1973, the judge presiding
over the prosecution of the Watergate five tried to find out who was behind the break-in.
Washington Post journalists revealed that persons close to Nixon had ordered the Watergate
operation and tried to “cover up” Nixon’s involvement. Congressional hearings soon
revealed a wider pattern of wiretapping, break-ins, and attempts to sabotage political
opponents. A special prosecutor appointed reluctantly by Nixon demanded copies of tapes
that the president had made of his conservations. The Supreme Court ordered Nixon to
provide them, reaffirming that presidents are not above the law.
•
Vietnam and Watergate
Nixon’s Fall
The scandal unfolded for weeks, and by mid-1974, it was obvious that Nixon had at least
ordered the cover-up of the Watergate break-in (it was unclear whether he had ordered the
break-in itself). In August 1974, the House Judiciary Committee voted to recommend that
Nixon be impeached for conspiracy to obstruct justice. Nixon soon became the only
president to resign. His presidency is the classic example of the abuse of political power. In
1973, Nixon’s vice-president, Spiro Agnew, resigned after it was revealed he took bribes from
construction firms. Nixon’s attorney general and two aides were convicted of obstructing
justice in the Watergate affair and went to jail. Nixon insisted he did nothing wrong, and that
previous presidents also lied and conducted illegal activities. While not excusing Nixon,
subsequent Senate hearings held by Frank Church of Idaho revealed a history of abusive
actions by every Cold War–era president, including Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
spying on millions of Americans and disruptions of civil rights groups, and CIA covert
operations to overthrow foreign governments, assassinate foreign leaders, and organize a
secret army in Laos, bordering Vietnam.
The Church Committee revelations, along with Watergate, the Pentagon Papers, and the
Vietnam War, seriously eroded Americans’ confidence in their government. Congress soon
placed restrictions on the FBI and Central Intelligence (CIA), which banned spying on
American citizens and overseas covert operations without congressional knowledge. While
liberals celebrated Nixon’s downfall, they did not realize that liberalism itself—the idea that
government can be trusted to take positive action to solve social problems and promote the
public good and individual freedom—was damaged by these events. These events
contributed greatly to a growing public belief that a powerful central government could not
be trusted, and it distracted Americans from the looming economic crisis that shook America
The End of the Golden Age
•
The Decline of Manufacturing
In the 1970s, postwar economic expansion and consumer prosperity ended, followed by slow growth and high
inflation. The end of capitalism’s “golden age” was caused by many factors. With a booming economy driven in part by
a military-industrial complex, administrations had not realized how the Cold War might have less positive economic
consequences. To check the Soviets, the United States had promoted the economic reconstruction of Germany and
Japan and supported new manufacturing in places like South Korea and Taiwan. It encouraged American companies to
invest overseas and didn’t complain when allies protected their own industries while seeking unrestricted access to
U.S. markets. Steel imports, for example, devastated the American steel industry. And the strong dollar, tied to gold by
the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement, made it harder to sell goods overseas. In 1971, for the first time in the twentieth
century, the United States had a trade deficit (importing more goods than exporting). By 1980, almost all goods
produced in the United States were competing with foreign-made products and the number of manufacturing workers
had declined to 28 percent (it had been 38 percent in 1960). The Vietnam War produced higher federal deficits and
rising inflation.
In 1971, Nixon announced a radical departure in economic policy. He took the United States off the gold standard,
ending the Bretton Woods agreement which fixed the value of the dollar and currencies in gold. From now on, world
currencies “floated” in relation to one another, their worth determined not by treaty but international currency
markets. Nixon hoped this would promote U.S. exports, but the end of fixed currency rates destabilized the world
economy. Nixon also froze wages and prices for ninety days to stabilize the economy. These policies briefly stopped
inflation and reduced imports, but a war between Israel and its neighbors Egypt and Syria led Middle Eastern
governments to hike the price of oil and suspend oil exports to the US for several months. By this point, the United
States imported one-third of its oil. Congress lowered the speed limit and urged conservation to save fuel. The energy
crisis focused public attention on domestic energy sources like oil, coal, and natural gas. Oil exploration increased in the
American West. And the high oil prices set by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) benefited
western energy companies.
•
Stagflation
But rising oil prices affected the global economy and contributed to the combination of stagnant economic growth and
high inflation known as “stagflation.” Between 1973 and 1981, the inflation rate in developed nations was 10 percent
per year, while economic growth was down from the 1960s to 2.4 percent per year. The so-called misery index—the
sum of unemployment and inflation rates—stood at 10.8 in 1970; by 1980, it was near 22. With higher oil prices,
Americans bought more fuel-efficient foreign cars, hurting the domestic auto industry.
Table 26.2 The Misery Index, 1970–1980
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Copyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company
The End of the Golden Age
•
•
The Beleaguered Social Compact
The economic crisis helped erode the postwar social compact. Facing lower profits
and more global competition, corporations eliminated more high-paying
manufacturing jobs through automation and moving jobs overseas. Older
industrial cities and areas were devastated, while smaller industrial cities suffered
even more, and as their tax bases disappeared, so did public services. The higher
flows of population, jobs, and investment to the non-union, low-wage Sunbelt
states increased the political influence of this conservative region.
Labor on the Defensive
Always a junior partner in the Democratic coalition, labor found itself on the
defensive in this era, and has been so ever since. The declining power of unions
and the continuing economic shift from manufacturing to service jobs adversely
impacted ordinary Americans. While median family income had doubled between
1953 and 1973, real wages between 1973 and 1993 did no rise at all. The 1970s
was one of only two decades in the twentieth century when Americans were
poorer than when it began.
The End of the Golden Age
•
Ford as President
The economic crisis troubled Nixon’s successors. Gerald Ford, appointed to replace vice-president Agnew, assumed the
presidency when Nixon resigned. Ford named Nelson Rockefeller of New York as his vice-president. For the first time in
U.S. history, both offices were occupied by persons for whom no one had voted. One of Ford’s first acts was to pardon
Nixon, which prevented his prosecution for obstruction of justice. This was a deeply unpopular decision. Ford had no
significant accomplishments in domestic policy. Ford and his economic advisor, Alan Greenspan, wanted Americans to
spend less and save more to build money for investment, and they called for tax cuts and less government economic
regulation. The Democratic majority in Congress did not approve. To fight inflation, Ford urged Americans to shop
wisely, reduce spending, and wear “WIN” buttons (for “Whip Inflation Now”). Though inflation fell, unemployment
rose in 1975 to the highest level since the depression. But Ford continued Nixon’s policy of détente, and the United
States signed an agreement with the Soviets at Helsinki, Finland, that recognized the permanence of the division of
Europe. The Helsinki Accords inspired movements for more freedom in Eastern Europe’s communist countries.
•
The Carter Administration
In 1976, Jimmy Carter, a former Georgia governor unknown outside that state, ran as a Democratic candidate untainted
by a highly unpopular federal government. He won with a comfortable margin over Ford. A devout evangelical Baptist,
Carter promised a disillusioned American electorate that he would be virtuous and honest. He wanted to make
government more efficient, protect the environment, and morally improve politics. He also supported black
aspirations, and he appointed unprecedented numbers of African-Americans to federal office. Even though the
Democrats controlled Congress, however, Carter and the Congress rarely cooperated. Seeing inflation and not
unemployment as the main economic problem, proposed cuts in domestic programs; viewing competition as a way to
reduce prices, he deregulated the trucking and airline industries; and supporting the Federal Reserve Bank’s policy of
raising interest rates to reduce economic activity and thus wages and prices, he hoped to stop inflation, but higher oil
prices kept inflation alive. Carter also embraced nuclear power as a way to reduce dependence on foreign oil, but a
near-fatal accident in 1979 at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania released radiation and sparked public
fears about nuclear power and stopped the industry’s expansion. Carter even repudiated his party’s legacy as the party
of affluence and economic growth when he gave a speech in 1979 about the nation’s “crisis of confidence,” seeming to
blame it on Americans themselves and their bankrupt definition of freedom as “self-indulgence and consumption.”
Map 26.2 The Presidential Election of 1976
Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition
Copyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company
The End of the Golden Age
•
The Emergence of Human Rights Politics
Under Carter, a commitment to human rights defined U.S. foreign policy for the first time.
Human rights groups in the 1970s that influenced Carter began to identify human rights
violations not only by communist nations but by U.S. allies as well, especially Latin American
dictatorships that used death squads to kill political opponents. In 1978, Carter cut off aid to
the military dictatorship in Argentina which, in the name of anti-communism, had launched
a “dirty war” against its own citizens, kidnapping and murdering 10,000 to 30,000 persons.
As Argentina was an important U.S. ally, this shocked Latin American regimes dependent on
American aid. By his presidency’s end, Carter had made human rights central to American
policy. He believed that in the post-Vietnam era, U.S. policy should move away from Cold
War assumptions and instead combat Third World poverty, prevent the spread of nuclear
weapons, and promote human rights. Carter also pardoned Vietnam-era draft resisters.
Carter’s emphasis on peaceful solutions to international problems brought some important
results. In 1979, he brokered the Camp David accords between Egypt and Israel. He
improved Latin American affairs by promising to transfer control of the Panama Canal in
2000. He resisted calls to intervene against a left-wing revolution fighting Somoza,
Nicaragua’s dictator. He also cut military aid to the right-wing government of El Salvador,
which sponsored death squads. But despite criticisms from “realists” that his focus on
human rights was damaging U.S. power in the world, Carter continued to pour billions into
defense and the United States continued to support allies with records of human rights
violations, such as Guatemala, the Philippines, South Korea, and Iran.
•
The End of the Golden Age
The Iran Crisis and Afghanistan
U.S. support for Iran undid Carter’s policies and administration. Iran, strategically located on
the Soviet Union’s southern border, was a major supplier of oil and importer of U.S. military
equipment. Carter’s 1977 visit in support of the Shah, Iran’s ruler, inspired a more militant
opposition, and in 1979, a popular revolution led by the Muslim cleric Ayatollah Khomeini
overthrew the Shah and declared Iran an Islamic republic. The Iranian revolution marked a
shift in opposition movements in the Middle East from socialism and Arab nationalism to
religious fundamentalism. This had long-term consequences for America. When Carter
allowed the deposed Shah to come to America, Khomeini’s followers invaded the US
embassy and seized dozens of hostages. They regained their freedom only in January 1981,
the day Carter’s term ended, and the hostage crisis deeply hurt Carter’s popularity.
The invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 by the Soviets, who sought to reinforce a friendly
government fighting an Islamic rebellion, also confronted Carter with a crisis. Over time, the
Soviet war in Afghanistan proved to be its own Vietnam, with high casualties, costs, and
mounting domestic dissatisfaction. At first, however, it seemed to indicate a decline in U.S.
power. In response, President Carter announced the Carter doctrine, declaring the United
States would use military force, if necessary, to protect its interest in the Persian Gulf. He
retaliated against the Soviets with boycotts and withdrawal from nuclear arms treaties. The
United States also began to give arms and money to Islamic fundamentalist rebels in
Afghanistan, giving rise to the Taliban.
The Rising Tide of Conservatism
•
The Religious Right
Domestic and international troubles in the 1970s made Americans anxious and emboldened
conservatives. Economic crisis made lower taxes, less government regulation, and social spending cuts
to spur business investment seem appealing. Fears about declining U.S. world power led to calls for
renewing the Cold War. The civil rights and sexual revolutions produced fears and resentments that
eroded the Democratic coalition, and rising urban crime created calls for law and order. In the 1970s,
conservatives abandoned overt opposition to blacks’ struggle for racial justice, as the confrontations of
George Wallace where replaced by demands for local control and resistance to the federal government.
The language of individual freedom especially appealed to growing numbers of mostly white
suburbanites leaving the cities and urban problems. The suburbs became the base of the modern
conservatism. But conservatives also organized at the grass roots level, and organized to win local
elections and take local government, even school boards. One set of conservatives, the “neoconservatives,” turned against the federal government and liberalism, citing a decline in moral standards
and respect for authority. They wanted to end welfare, decrease taxes and regulations, and return to
fighting the Cold War.
The rise of religious fundamentalism in the 1970s expanded conservatism’s base. More and more
Americans embraced traditional religious values. While membership in mainstream Protestant
denominations declined, evangelical churches flourished. Evangelical Christians seemed alienated from a
culture that seemed to discount religion and promote immorality. They demanded the reversal of
Supreme Court decisions that banned prayer in public schools, protected pornography as free speech,
and legalized abortion. In 1979, Virginia minister Jerry Falwell created a group, the Moral Majority, to
wage “war against sin” and elect “pro-life, pro-family, pro-America” candidates. Falwell labeled
supporters of abortion rights, easy divorce, and reduced defense budgets as agents of Satan trying to
undermine God’s plans for America. But Christian conservatives seemed most angered by the sexual
revolution, which they saw as an immoral threat to traditional families. They thought the 1960s had
turned freedom into moral anarchy.
The Rising Tide of Conservatism
•
The Battle over the Equal Rights Amendment
In the 1970s, “family values” became central to conservative politics, most prominently in the fight over
the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). First proposed in the 1920s, the ERA was revived by second-wave
feminists. Its affirmation that “equality of rights under the law” could not be abridged “on account of
sex” seemed uncontroversial, and Congress approved it in 1972 with little controversy and sent it to the
states for ratification. But it sparked protest from those who believed it would discredit the role of wife
and homemaker. The ERA revealed divisions among women, as well. To its supporters, the ERA
guaranteed women’s freedom in the public sphere. To its opponents, freedom for women was in their
roles as wife and mother. Opponents claimed that the amendment would erode male breadwinners’
support for wives. Though polls showed that most male and female Americans supported the ERA, it did
not achieve the required ratification of thirty-eight states in order to become law.
•
The Abortion Controversy
Far more bitter was the battle over abortion rights, which conservatives saw as liberals spreading sexual
immorality at the cost of moral values. A movement to reverse Roe v. Wade started among Roman
Catholics, but soon included evangelical Protestants and social conservatives. The movement insisted
that life began at conception, and that abortion was murder. Feminists argued that women’s right to
control her own body includes the right to safe, legal abortions. Both sides showed how the rights
revolution had reshaped political language, as opponents of abortion appealed for the “right to life,”
while supporters celebrated the “right to choose.” The anti-abortion movement successfully pressured
Congress, over President Ford’s veto, to end federal funding for abortions for poor women in the
Medicaid program, and by the 1990s, some extreme anti-abortion activists were bombing medical clinics
and assassinating doctors who terminated pregnancies.
The Rising Tide of Conservatism
•
The Tax Revolt
With liberals unable to check deindustrialization and declining real wages, economic anxiety also
fostered conservatism in economics. Unlike during the Great Depression, economic crisis inspired a
critique of government, rather than of business. New environmental regulations sparked calls for less
government regulation of the economy, especially in the West, where the “Sagebrush Rebellion” sought
to reduce federal bureaucracies’ control over and conservation of precious land, water, and minerals.
But everywhere the end of affluence and the rise of stagflation created support for conservatives who
claimed that government regulations raised business costs and eliminated jobs. Economic crisis in
particular spread support for lower taxes. Conservatives welcomed tax cuts as a way to both enhance
profits and reduce resources for government, thus preventing new social programs and reducing existing
ones. Many Americans found taxes more burdensome, as wage increases were cancelled by inflation
and pushed families into higher federal tax brackets. In 1978, conservatives ran a successful campaign to
ban further increases in property taxes, and demonstrated the power of anti-tax politics. The new law
benefited business and homeowners, but cut funds for schools, libraries, and other public services. Antitax sentiment flourished throughout the nation, and other states passed similar laws.
•
The Election of 1980
By 1980. Carter was deeply unpopular. Conservatism seemed on the rise everywhere. In England,
Margaret Thatcher became prime minister, promising to sell state-owned industries to private firms,
shrink the welfare state, and reduce taxes and the power of unions. In the United States, Ronald
Reagan’s campaign for the presidency united conservatives around promises to end stagflation and
restore America’s confidence and its role in the world. Reagan also appealed to white backlash against
civil rights, voicing support for states’ rights, vilifying welfare recipients, and condemning busing and
affirmative action. Although not devout and a divorcee, Reagan won the support of “family values”
The Reagan Revolution
• Reagan and American Freedom
Reagan’s path to the presidency was unusual. Originally a New Deal Democrat and head of
the Screen Actors Guild, he became the spokesman for General Electric in the 1950s,
preaching the virtues of unregulated capitalism. His nominating speech for Barry Goldwater
at the 1964 Republican convention brought him national renown. In 1966, he was elected
California’s governor, and in 1976 challenged Ford for the Republican nomination, almost
winning it. His victory in the 1980 election brought together old and new conservatives:
Sunbelt suburbanites and urban working-class ethnics; anti-government crusaders and
aggressive Cold Warriors; and libertarians and the Christian Right.
Although Reagan, the oldest men ever to hold political office, was often underestimated by
his opponents, he was politically experienced and a gifted public speaker whose optimism
and good humor appealed to many Americans. Reagan made conservatism seem progressive,
and he reiterated themes of America’s mission to be an example of freedom in the world that
had their origins in the American Revolution. Freedom became the watchword of the Reagan
Revolution, and Reagan used the word more than any other president before him.
Reagan reshaped the nation’s agenda and political language more effectively than any
president since Franklin D. Roosevelt. Reagan promised to free government from “special
interests,” which he defined not as business groups but as unions, minorities, and others who
wanted to use Washington’s powers to attack social inequalities. His Justice Department
wanted to make the Constitution “color-blind” and gutted civil rights enforcement. Reagan
seized the terms of debate and put Democrats on the defensive.
The Reagan Revolution
• Reaganonomics
While Reagan, like his predecessors, invoked “economic freedom,” he defined it as reducing union power,
dismantling regulations, and radically reducing taxes. In 1981 and 1986, Reagan won tax reforms from Congress
which dramatically reduced taxes for the wealthy and moved America away from the ideal of progressive,
graduated income taxes. Reagan also appointed conservatives to lead regulatory agencies, who reduced
environmental and workplace safety opposed by business.
Liberals since the New Deal had tried to fuel economic growth by using government power to raise Americans’
purchasing power. Reagan, using “supply-side economics” (called “trickle-down economics” by opponents),
relied on high interest rates to curb inflation and lower tax rates for business and the wealthy to stimulate
private investment. This policy assumed that cutting taxes would make Americans at all income levels work
harder, because they would keep more of what they earned, and that everyone would benefit from increased
business profits and a growing economy, which would raise government revenues despite lower tax rates.
• Reagan and Labor
Reagan also began an era of hostility between government and labor unions. In 1981, when members of the
Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO), the air traffic controllers’ union, went on strike in
defiance of federal law, Reagan fired them all and used the military to supervise air traffic until new controllers
were trained. Reagan inspired many employers to launch anti-union offensives, and more businesses now hired
workers to permanently replace workers who had gone on strike. Manufacturing employment continued its
long-term decline, further reducing union strength. When Reagan left office, both the service and retail sectors
employed more Americans than manufacturing, and only 11 percent of non-government workers were union
members.
“Reaganomics,” as critics called the administration’s policies, initially created the most severe recession since
the 1930s. But a long period of economic expansion followed the recession of 1981–1982. As employers
reduced their workforces, shifted production overseas, and used new technologies, they became more
profitable. Simultaneously, inflation dropped dramatically, in part because of greater oil production. The stock
market rose, and despite a sharp drop in 1987, the stock market continued to climb upward.
The Reagan Revolution
• The Problem of Inequality
Reagan’s policies, deindustrialization, and rising stock prices contributed to increasing economic inequality. By
the mid-1990s, the richest 1 percent of Americans owned 40 percent of America’s wealth, twice their share of
20 years earlier. Most spent their income, not on productive investments and charity, as supply-side economists
predicted, but on luxury goods, real-estate speculation, and corporate buyouts that often led to plant-closings.
Middle-class income stagnated, especially for families with stay-at-home wives, while the income of the
poorest declined. With less investment in public housing, the release of mental patients from state hospitals,
and cuts to welfare, more and more Americans became homeless.
Deindustrialization and the decline of unions particularly devastated minority workers, who only recently had
won skilled work in union jobs. While affirmative action expanded the black middle class by offering more
educational opportunities, black workers suffered. Though Jim Crow ended in many workplaces in the 1970s,
black workers lost their jobs as manufacturing declined. By 1981, the black unemployment rate was higher than
20 percent, more than double that of whites.
• The Second Gilded Age
The 1980s are now seen as a decade ruled by misplaced values. Buying out companies generated more profits
than running them, and making deals, not products, was the way to get rich. Corporate mergers produced
billions in fees for lawyers, economic advisers, and stockbrokers. Wall Street financiers praised “greed” as
“healthy.” Taxpayers paid for some of the consequences. The deregulation of savings and loans associations
allowed these institutions to invest in risky real-estate ventures and mergers. When loses pushed the Federal
Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation, which insured depositors’ accounts, toward bankruptcy, the federal
government bailed out the savings and loans institutions, at a cost of $20 billion. Though supply-side advocates
argued that lower taxes would increase government revenues by stimulating economic activity, federal
spending on the military in particular created enormous budget deficits. The national debt under Reagan
tripled to $2.7 trillion. But Reagan remained very popular and easily defeated the Democratic candidate Walter
Mondale in the 1984 election.
Figure 26.3 Changes in Families’ Real Income,
1980–1990
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The Reagan Revolution
• Conservatives and Reagan
Reagan in some ways disappointed conservatives. While his administration sharply reduced programs such as
food stamps and school lunches, it left intact core elements of the welfare state, such as Social Security,
Medicare, and Medicaid. Reagan also did little for the Christian Right. Abortion stayed legal, women continued
to enter the labor force, and Reagan appointed the first female member of the Supreme Court, Sandra Day
O’Connor. Reagan voiced support for a constitutional amendment that would allow prayer in public schools, but
the effort went nowhere. The administration launched a “Just Say No” campaign against illegal drug use, but
failed to stop the spread of crack, a cheap form of cocaine, in urban areas. And Reagan did little to halt
affirmative action.
• Reagan and the Cold War
Yet Reagan revived the Cold War. He vigorously denounced the Soviet Union as an “evil empire” and started the
largest military buildup in U.S. history, including long-range bombers and missiles. In 1983, he proposed a
Strategic Defense Initiative to develop a space-based system to intercept and destroy enemy missiles. The ideas
was not technologically feasible, and if deployed, would have violated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. But
Reagan wanted to reassert America’s world power. He pressed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
into deploying short-range nuclear weapons in Europe. The renewed arms race and Reagan’s talk of wining a
nuclear war spread alarm and fear around the world. In the early 1980s, a mass movement in the United States
and Europe called for a nuclear freeze—an end to nuclear arms development.
Reagan also wanted to end American’s reluctance to commit U.S. forces overseas, the result of Vietnam. He
sent troops to invade Grenada, a tiny Caribbean island, to remove a pro-Castro government; he bombed Libya
to retaliate against that government’s alleged involvement in a terrorist attack in West Berlin; and in 1982, he
sent U.S. marines to Lebanon to keep the peace in a civil war, but quickly withdrew them after a bomb
exploded at a U.S. barracks, killing 241 Americans. But Reagan preferred to achieve his objectives through
military aid, not US troops. He abandoned Carter’s emphasis on human rights and affirmed that the United
States should support authoritarian anti-communist regimes. Under Reagan, the country became closer to anticommunist dictatorships in Chile and South Africa. His administration also sent money and arms to the
governments of El Salvador and Guatemala, whose armies and associated death squads committed atrocities
against civilian opponents.
The Reagan Revolution
• The Iran-Contra Affair
U.S. involvement in Central America created the great scandal of Reagan’s presidency, the Iran-Contra
affair. In 1984, Congress banned military aid to the Contras, those in Nicaragua fighting the Sandinistas
who in 1979 had ousted the U.S.-backed dictator, Anastasio Somoza. In 1985, Reagan secretly authorized
the sale of arms to Iran (then engaged in a war with Iraq) in order to get the release of American
hostages held by Islamic groups in the Middle East. But the director of the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) and Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North of the National Security Council diverted funds from the arms
sales to buy military supplies for the Contras, in defiance of Congress. In 1986, the scheme was exposed
in the media, and Congress held televised hearings which showed lying and violations of the law that
recalled the Nixon era. Eleven members of Reagan’s administration were convicted of perjury or
destroying documents or plead guilty before they were tried. Reagan denied knowledge of the scheme,
but the affair undermined the public’s confidence in him.
• Reagan and Gorbachev
Surprisingly, Reagan in his second term softened his anti-communism and established good relations
with Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev had come to power in 1985 and wanted to reform
the Soviet Union’s political system (glasnost) and reinvigorate its economy (perestroika). The USSR had
fallen far behind the United States in producing and distributing consumer goods and relied more and
more on food imports to feed itself. Gorbachev realized the reforms he wanted required cuts in military
costs. Reagan was ready to negotiate, and they held a series of talks on arms control which concluded
agreements to reduce nuclear weapons stockpiles. In 1988, Gorbachev started to withdraw Soviet
troops from Afghanistan. Reagan, despite starting his presidency as a Cold Warrior, left office repudiating
his earlier, militant anti-Soviet stance.
Insert map, p. 1116
•
The Reagan Revolution
Reagan’s Legacy
Reagan’s presidency showed the contradictions of modern conservatism. Though he wanted
to appeal to the religious right, the Reagan Revolution undermined traditional and
conservative values by inspiring speculation, business mergers, and investors to pursue
profits at the cost of plant closings, job losses, and devastated communities.
Deindustrialization, unemployment, and downward pressure on wages all threatened local
traditions and family stability and undermined a common sense of national purpose by
expanding income and wealth inequality.
Because of Iran-Contra and huge deficits, Reagan left office with a tarnished reputation. But
few figures have so decisively reshaped American politics. Reagan’s vice-president, George
H. W. Bush, defeated Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis, governor of Massachusetts in
the 1988 election in part because Dukakis could not deny that he was a “liberal,” now a term
of political abuse. Conservative ideas about the virtues of free markets and the evils of “big
government” dominated the media and debates. Those receiving public aid were now seen
not as unfortunate, but as a burden on taxpayers. The Democratic president of the 1990s,
Bill Clinton, embraced many of these ideas.
•
The Election of 1988
The 1988 election saw politics at new lows. The Democratic frontrunner dropped out of the
race after a sexual affair was revealed. Both parties ran negative campaigns. The lowest
point of the campaign were Republican television ads that said Dukakis as governor of
Massachusetts had released from jail Willie Horton, a black murderer and rapist. Bush
achieved a substantial victory, winning 54 percent of the popular vote, but the Democrats
retained control of Congress.
Additional Art for Chapter 26
Ronald Reagan addressing the Republican national
convention
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Richard Nixon (on the right) and former
Alabama governor George
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Table 26.1 Rate of Divorce: Divorces of Existing
Marriages Per 1,000 New Marriages, 1950–1980
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Daryl Koehn, of Kansas,
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Richard Nixon at a banquet
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A distraught young woman kneels beside one of
the four Kent
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Dramatic demonstrations
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Buttons and flags for sale
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Herbert Block’s 1973 cartoon
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The oil crisis of 1973
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The World Trade Center under construction
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Figure 26.2 Real Average Weekly Wages, 1955–1990
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President Gerald Ford
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The deregulation of the airline industry
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The 1979 accident
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Celebrating the signing of the 1979 peace
treaty between Israel and Egypt
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Television gave extensive coverage
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The Reverend Jerry Falwell
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DougMarlette’s cartoon
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A 1979 anti-abortion rally
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Women demonstrating in support for abortion rights.
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Phyllis Schlafly Campaigning against the Equal
Rights Amendment
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Map 26.3 The Presidential Election of 1980
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A delegate to the Republican national convention
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Sprague Electric Company in North Adams
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A homeless Los Angeles family
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A family of affluent “yuppies”
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The drug crack being openly sold
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Hollywood joined enthusiastically in the revived
ColdWar.
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Map 26.4 The United States in the Caribbean and
Central America, 1954-2004
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President Reagan visited Moscow
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The inauguration of George H.W. Bush, January 1989
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Norton Lecture Slides
Independent and Employee-Owned
This concludes the Norton Lecture Slides
Slide Set for Chapter 26
Give Me Liberty!
AN AMERICAN HISTORY
THIRD EDITION
by
Eric Foner