Transcript The 1960s: The Charms and Challenges

The 1960s:
The
Charms and
Challenges
Ask not what your country
can do for you, ask what you
can do for your country.
-John F. Kennedy
"Turn on,
tune in,
drop out"
-Timothy Leary
Main Ideas
• Politics of the 1960s
• Domestic and Foreign Policies of Kennedy’s
and Johnson’s presidencies
• Important Events: Cuban Missile Crisis, Berlin
Wall, Assassination of JFK,
• The Vietnam War
• The Election of Richard Nixon
The 1960s
The peace sign, designed and
first used in the United
Kingdom in the Campaign for
Nuclear Disarmament, became a
major symbol of the 1960s
counterculture. In the United
States and Canada, it became
synonymous with opposition to
the Vietnam War.
• The 1960s were in many ways both the
best and the worst of times
• On the one hand, the postwar economic
prosperity peaked in the 1960s
• At the same time, racial strife, a
controversial war in Vietnam, and student
radicalism started to tear the nation apart
• The proud American superpower began to
learn its limits both in the jungles of
Vietnam and on the streets at home
The Election of 1960
John F. Kennedy
Richard Nixon
• President Eisenhower did not transfer his
popularity to other Republicans, and the
Democrats retained control of Congress
through the last two years of his term
• The Republicans nominated at their
convention Richard Nixon who was
popular for his diplomatic experience
(kitchen debate with Khrushchev over the
merits of communism and capitalism)
• The Democrats nominated John F.
Kennedy over Lyndon B. Johnson and
Adlai Stevenson
• Both Nixon and Kennedy were young, 47
and 43 respectively
Campaign
The Kennedy/Nixon Debate
• The new medium of television was
perhaps the most decisive factor in
the close race between the two
youthful campaigners
• In the first of four televised debates,
Kennedy appeared more vigorous and
comfortable than Nixon
• Kennedy attacked Eisenhower’s
administration for allowing a
perceived “missile gap” that the
Soviets were ahead in
• Kennedy’s Catholic background also
became an issue with Protestants in
rural settings voting for Nixon and
the urban voters voting for Kennedy
Results
Presidential election results map. Blue
denotes states won by Kennedy/Johnson, Red
denotes those won by Nixon/Lodge. Orange
denotes the electoral votes for Harry F. Byrd
by Alabama and Mississippi unpledged
electors, and an Oklahoma "faithless elector".
Numbers indicate the number of electoral
votes allotted to each state
• In one of the closest elections in
U.S. history, Kennedy defeated
Nixon by a little over 100,000
popular votes and by a slightly
wider margin of 303 to 219 in the
electoral college
• Many Republicans, including
Nixon, felt the election was stolen
by Democratic political machines
in states like Illinois and Texas by
stuffing ballot boxes with votes of
the deceased
Domestic
Policy
John F. Kennedy takes the oath
of office administered by Chief
Justice Earl Warren on January
20, 1961, at the Capitol.
• At 43, Kennedy was the youngest candidate
ever to be elected president
• In his inaugural address, Kennedy spoke of
“the torch being passed to a new generation”
and promised to lead the nation into a New
Frontier
• Kennedy surrounded himself with both toughminded pragmatists like Secretary of Defense
Robert McNamara and liberal academics like
economist John Kenneth Galbraith
• For Attorney General, Kennedy selected his
brother Robert
• With “Jackie” at his side, JFK brought style,
glamour, and an appreciation of the arts to the
White House (the press dubbed his
administration “Camelot” and the “court of
King Arthur”
New Frontier Programs
• The promises of the New Frontier proved difficult to keep
• Kennedy called for the following:
(1) Aid to education
(2) Federal support of health care
(3) Urban renewal
(4) Civil rights
• On economic issues, Kennedy experienced more success
(1) He faced down big steel executives over inflationary price
increases and achieved a price rollback
(2) The economy was stimulated by increased spending on defense
and space exploration (man on the moon by the end of the
decade)
Foreign Affairs
• With his domestic affairs often blocked, Kennedy increasingly
turned his attention to foreign policy issues
• In 1961, he established the Peace Corps- an organization that
recruited American youth to volunteer or give technical aid to
developing countries
• Also in 1961, another foreign aid program, the Alliance for
Progress, was organized to promote land reform and economic
development in Latin America
• Congress was also persuaded to pass the Trade Expansion Act
of 1962 which authorized tariff reductions with the recently
formed European Economic Community of Western European
nations
Bay of Pigs Invasion (1961)
Che Guevara (left) and
Castro, photographed
by Alberto Korda in
1961.
• JFK made a huge blunder shortly after he took
office-he approved a CIA operation to use Cuban
exiles to overthrown Castro’s regime in Cuba
(arranged during Eisenhower)
• In April of 1961, the CIA trained force of Cubans
landed at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba but failed to set
off a general popular uprising as planned
• Trapped on the beach, the anti-Castro Cubans
surrendered after JFK rejected the use of U.S.
troops to save them
• Castro used the failed invasion to get more aid
from the Soviet Union and to strengthen his grip
on power
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall
being built 1961
• Meeting with US President John F. Kennedy
in the Vienna Summit on June 4, 1961,
Premier Khrushchev caused a new crisis
when he reissued his threat to sign a
separate peace treaty with East Germany
• However, this time he did so by issuing an
ultimatum-Get out of Berlin-with a deadline
of December 31, 1961.
• The three powers (British, French,
Americans) replied that no unilateral treaty
could abrogate their responsibilities and
rights in West Berlin, including the right of
unobstructed access to the city.
• The Berlin Wall was erected topped with
barbed wire to separate the two sides of the
city (Fell in 1989)
The Cuban •
Missile Crisis
The U-2 spy plane and
photo of missile
placement
The thirteen days referred to as the Cuban
Missile Crisis was a confrontation between
the Soviet Union/Cuba and the United States
in October 1962
• In August 1962, after some unsuccessful
operations by the US to overthrow the
Cuban regime (Bay of Pigs, Operation
Mongoose), the Cuban and Soviet
governments secretly began to build bases in
Cuba for a number of medium-range and
intermediate-range ballistic nuclear missiles
• This action followed the 1958 deployment
of Thor IRBMs in the UK and Jupiter
IRBMs to Italy and Turkey in 1961 – more
than 100 US-built missiles having the
capability to strike Moscow with nuclear
warheads
The Cuban
Missile Crisis
continued…
Naval quarantine of Cuba
• On October 14, 1962, a United States
Air Force U-2 plane on a
photoreconnaissance mission captured
photographic proof of Soviet missile
bases under construction in Cuba.
• The United States considered
attacking Cuba via air and sea, but
decided on a military blockade
instead, calling it a "quarantine"
• The US announced that it would not
permit offensive weapons to be
delivered to Cuba and demanded that
the Soviets dismantle the missile bases
already under construction or
completed in Cuba
The
Crisis
Ends
• The Kennedy administration held only a slim hope
that the Kremlin would agree to their demands, and
expected a military confrontation.
• The Soviets publicly balked at the US demands, but
in secret back-channel communications initiated a
proposal to resolve the crisis
• The confrontation ended on October 28, 1962,
when President John F. Kennedy reached a public
and secret agreement with Khrushchev
• Publicly, the Soviets would dismantle their
offensive weapons in Cuba and return them to the
Soviet Union
• In exchange for a US public declaration and
agreement never to invade Cuba.
• Secretly, the US agreed that it would dismantle all
US-built Jupiter IRBMs deployed in Turkey and
Italy.
Kennedy Issues a New Policy
Flexible Response:
-moving away from Dulles’ idea of massive retaliation and
reliance on nuclear weapons, Kennedy and McNamara decided
to increase spending on conventional arms and mobile military
forces
-while the flexible-response policy reduced the risk of using
nuclear weapons, it also increased the temptation to send elite
special forces into combat in third world countries like
Vietnam
-this change allowed Kennedy to target “brush-fire wars” (Africa
and Southeast Asia) using conventional and unconventional
forces to combat Soviet aided insurgencies
The President is Assassinated
Lee Harvey Oswald
• On the morning of November 22, 1963
President Kennedy and the First Lady
flew to Dallas to meet with state
democratic leaders
• In route after passing the Texas School
Book Depository, rifle shots rang out and
President Kennedy was shot in the head
• Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in hours
later on Air Force One
• Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested and
charged with the murder of the President
In Retrospect
“JFK”
• At the time, JFK’s presidency inspired
many idealistic young Americans to take
seriously his inaugural address message
and to “ask not what your country can do
for you-ask what you can do for your
country”
• Some historians have criticized
Kennedy’s belligerent Cold War rhetoric,
nonetheless, Kennedy endured for years
and cast a spell on American politics
through the 60s and 70s
Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society
LBJ
• Two hours after the Kennedy assassination,
Johnson took the oath of office aboard an
airplane at the Dallas airport
• As a new president, Johnson was determined
to expand the social reforms of the New Deal
• Having spent nearly 30 years in Congress, he
know how to get things done and persuaded
Congress to:
(1) Pass an expanded version of Kennedy’s civil
rights bill
(2) Pass Kennedy’s proposal for an income tax
cut
• The later sparked an increase in jobs,
consumer spending, and a long period of
economic expansion (1960s)
The War
on Poverty
Michael Harrington
• Michael Harrington’s best selling book on
poverty, The Other America (1962), helped
focus the national attention on the 40 million
Americans still living in poverty
• LBJ responded by declaring in 1964 an
“unconditional war on poverty”
• The Democratic Congress gave the president
almost everything that he asked for by creating
the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) and
providing this antipoverty agency with a billion
dollar budget
• The OEO sponsored:
(1) self-help programs for the poor (Head
Start/preschoolers)
(2) Job Corps for vocational education
(3) Literacy programs and legal services
(4) Community Action Program (allowed the poor
to run the antipoverty programs)
The
Election
of 1964
Presidential election results map.
Red denotes states won by
Goldwater/Miller, Blue denotes
those won by Johnson/Humphrey.
Numbers indicate the number of
electoral votes allotted to each state
• LBJ and running mate Senator Hubert
Humphrey went into the 1964 election with a
liberal agenda
• In contrast, the Republicans nominated a
staunch conservative Senator Barry
Goldwater who advocated for the end of state
welfare that included the TVA and Social
Security
• A TV ad by the Democrats painted
Goldwater as a dangerous extremist who
would push the U.S. into a nuclear war
• LBJ won the election by a landslide, taking
61% of the popular vote (The Congress was
also Democrat by a 2/3 margin)
• The President and Congress were in a
position to pass the economic and social
reforms originally proposed by Truman
Great Society Reforms
• The list of LBJ’s legislative achievements in 1965 and 1966 is
long and includes new programs that would have lasting
effects on U.S. society:
(1) Medicare-a health insurance program for those 65 and older
(2) Medicaid-government-paid health care for the poor and
disabled
(3) The Elementary and Secondary Education Act-provided
aid to poor school districts
(4) A new immigration law-abolished the discriminatory quotas
based on national origin
Great Society Reforms continued…
(5)The National Foundation on the Arts and Humanitiesprovided funding for creative and scholarly projects
(6)Two new cabinet departments-the Department of
Transportation (DOT) and the Department of Housing and
Urban Development (HUD)
(7)Increased funding for higher education, public housing and
crime intervention
(8)Congress also passed programs to regulate the automobile
industry in response to Ralph Nader’s book Unsafe at Any
Speed (1965)
(9) Clean air and water laws were enacted in part to Rachel
Carson’s expose of pesticides in Silent Spring (1962)
Evaluating the Great Society
A sample Medicare card.
There are separate lines for Part A and
Part B, each with its own date.
There are no lines for Part C or D, as a
separate card is issued for those benefits
by the private insurance company.
• LBJ’s Great Society has been criticized
for its unrealistic promises to eliminate
poverty and for creating a centralized
welfare state
• Defenders of the Great Society program
point out that it gave needed assistance
to millions of Americans who were
poor, disabled, or elderly
• LBJ would hurt his peaceful War on
Poverty by escalating a real war in
Vietnam-a war that resulted in higher
taxes and inflation
The Vietnam War-to 1969
A Bell UH-1D helicopter piloted by
Major Bruce P. Crandall climbs
skyward after discharging a load of
U.S. infantrymen on a search and
destroy mission
• There were many divisive issues in the
1960s, but none was more tragic than the
war in Vietnam
• Some 2.7 million Americans served in
the conflict and 58,000 died in an
increasingly costly and hopeless effort to
prevent South Vietnam from falling to
communism
Early Stages:
-when the decade began, Vietnam was
hardly mentioned in the election debates
of 1960
-but every year after, it loomed larger and
eventually dominated the presidency of
LBJ and the thoughts of the nation
Buildup
Under
Kennedy
U.S. President Dwight D.
Eisenhower and Secretary of
State John Foster Dulles
greet president Ngo Dinh
Diem of South Vietnam in
Washington, 8 May 1957
• President Kennedy adopted Eisenhower’s
domino theory that, if Communist forces
overthrew South Vietnam’s government,
they would quickly overrun other nations in
Southeast Asia
• Kennedy therefore continued military aid by
increasing the number of military advisors to
train South Vietnamese forces
• By 1963, there were more than 16,000 U.S.
troops in South Vietnam (support role, not
combat)
• They provided training and supplies for
South Vietnam’s armed forces and helped
create “strategic hamlets”
• Unfortunately, South Vietnam’s government
under Ngo Dinh Diem was far from popular
Buildup Under Kennedy continued…
Buddhist Monk
Ngo Dinh Diem after being shot
and killed in the 1963 coup
• South Vietnam’s government
continued to lose support of peasants
in the countryside, while in the capital
of Saigon, Buddhists set themselves
on fire in the streets as acts of protest
• Kennedy questioned the U.S.’s role in
the conflict but was cut down by an
assassin in Dallas, Texas
• Two weeks later, Diem was
overthrown and killed by South
Vietnamese generals (Kennedy’s
administration was aware of the
assassination)
Tonkin Gulf Resolution
Conspiracy Theory: The 1964
'imaginary' Gulf of Tonkin incident
allowed President Johnson to expand
the Vietnam War through the Gulf of
Tonkin Resolution without a
Congressional Declaration of War.
• LBJ became president just as things were de
in South Vietnam:
(1) South Vietnam had seven different
governments in 1964
(2) Republican candidate Barry Goldwater
attacked LBJ’s administration for giving
weak support to the South Vietnam’s fight
against the Vietcong (Communist
guerrillas)
• LBJ, sensing a chance to show strength,
used a naval incident in the Gulf of Tonkin
to secure congressional authorization to
send U.S. troops into combat
Tonkin Gulf Resolution
continued…
• Critics later called the full-scale use of U.S. forces in Vietnam
an illegal war because the war was not declared by Congress
• Until 1968, most Americans supported the effort to contain
communism in Southeast Asia
• LBJ was caught in a political dilemma:
How could he stop the defeat of a weak and unpopular
government in South Vietnam without making it into an
American war-a war whose cost would doom his Great
Society programs? If he pulled out, he would be seen as weak
and lose public support.
Escalating
the War
B-52 dropping payload
• In 1965, the U.S. military as well as most of the
president’s foreign policy advisers recommended
expanding operations in Vietnam to save the
Saigon government
• After a Vietcong attack on the U.S. base at Pleiku,
LBJ ordered Operation Rolling Thunder-a
prolonged air attack using B-52 bombers against
targets in North Vietnam
• By the end of 1965, there were over 184,000 U.S.
troops in South Vietnam
• LBJ continued the escalation of U.S. involvement
when troops were ordered to conduct “search-anddestroy” tactics
• By the end of 1967, the U.S. had over 485,000
troops in Vietnam (peaked at 540,000 by 1969)
• Nevertheless, General William Westmoreland,
commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, assured the
American people that the war’s conclusion was
within sight
Controversy
Robert McNamara
• Misinformation from military and
civilian leaders combined with LBJ’s
reluctance to address Vietnam with the
American people was dubbed by the
media a “credibility gap”
• LBJ hoped that more military pressure
would bring North Vietnam to the peace
table
• Years later, Robert McNamara reflected
on the controversy and concluded that
leaders in Washington had failed to
understand either the enemy or the nature
of war
Hawks versus Doves
• Supporters of the war, the “hawks,” believed that the war was
justified to stop Soviet-backed Communist aggression
• Opponents of the war, the “doves,” viewed the conflict as a civil
war fought by Vietnamese nationalists and some Communists
who wanted to united their country by overthrowing a corrupt
Saigon government
• Some Americans opposed the war because of its costs in lives
and money-by far the greatest opposition came from college
campuses (students who graduated or dropped out faced the
draft)
• In November of 1967, the antiwar movement was politically led
by Senator Eugene F. McCarthy (challenged LBJ for the 1968
Democratic presidential nomination)
Tet
Offensive
Eddie Adams's Pulitzer Prize-winning
photo taken on the streets of Saigon
during the Tet Offensive sent shock
waves through America
• On the occasion of their Lunar New Year
(Tet) in January 1968, the Vietcong launched
an all-out surprise attack on almost every
provincial capital and American base in
South Vietnam
• Although the attack took a fearful toll in the
cities, the U.S. counterattack inflicted much
heavier losses on the Vietcong
• Even so, in political terms, the American
military victory proved irrelevant to the way
the Tet offensive was interpreted at home
• The Tet offensive, although militarily a
defeat, was a political success for the
Vietcong and North Vietnamese
• The American people disapproved of LBJ’s
policies and public opinion turned against
the war dramatically
LBJ
Withdraws
On March 31, 1968, LBJ
addressed the nation on TV
• The Joints Chief of Staff responded to
the Tet offensive by requesting 200,000
more troops
• By this time, LBJ and his advisors
turned against further escalation of the
war
• On March 31, 1968, LBJ addressed the
nation on TV and announced the
limitation of bombing and the hope of
diplomatic negotiations
• He also surprised the nation by
announcing that he would not run again
for president
• In May 1968 peace talks between the
U.S., North Vietnam, and South Vietnam
in Paris stalled over minor issues-the war
continued
Coming Apart at Home-1968
• Few years in U.S. history were as troubled or violent as 1968consider the following:
(1) Tet offensive
(2) LBJ withdrawal from presidential election
(3) Murder of Martin Luther King Jr.
(4) Destructive riots in cities across the U.S.
(5) Robert Kennedy’s assassination after California primary
victory
• As the year unfolded, many Americans questioned whether or
not the nation was coming apart from internal issues (war,
race, and generation gap of baby boomers and parents)
The Election of 1968
• After Robert Kennedy’s death, the election turned into a
three-way race between two conservatives-George Wallace
and Richard Nixon-and one liberal, Vice President Hubert
Humphrey
Democratic convention at Chicago:
-When the Democrats met in Chicago it was clear that
Humphrey had enough delegates to win the nomination
-antiwar demonstrators were determined to voice their concerns
-Chicago’s mayor Richard Daley had police out in mass, and
the resulting violence went out on TV across the nation as a
“police riot”
-Humphrey left the convention as the nominee of a divided
Democratic party-early polls showed he was losing
White Backlash and George Wallace
• The growing hostility of many whites
to federal desegregation, antiwar
protests, and race riots was tapped by
Governor Wallace of Alabama
• He ran for president as the selfnominated candidate of the American
Independent party hoping to win
enough electoral votes to throw the
election into the House of
Representatives
Governor Wallace of Alabama
Return of Richard Nixon
Nixon campaign button
• Many observers thought Nixon’s
political career ended in 1962 after his
unsuccessful run for governor of
California
• In 1968, however, a new, more
confident, and less negative Nixon
announced his intentions for president
• Nixon easily won the Republican
nomination and selected Governor Spiro
Agnew of Maryland
• Nixon was a “hawk” on the Vietnam War
and ran on the slogans of “peace with
honor” and “law and order”
Results and
Significance
Presidential election results map. Red
denotes states won by Nixon/Agnew, Blue
denotes those won by Humphrey/Muskie.
Orange denotes states won by
Wallace/LeMay, as well as a faithless
elector from North Carolina who cast his
electoral vote for Wallace/LeMay instead
of Nixon/Agnew. Numbers indicate the
number of electoral votes allotted to each
state.
• Wallace and Nixon started out strong,
however, as Humphrey preached to the
faithful in urban centers of the North, the
Democrats caught up
• On election night, Nixon defeated
Humphrey by a close popular vote and a
substantial electoral count of 301 to 191
• The significance of the 1968 election is
clear in the combined total of Nixon’s
and Wallace’s popular vote of almost
57%
• Most Americans wanted time out to heal
the wounds inflicted on the national
psyche by the upheavals of the sixties
• Elections in the 1970s and 80s confirmed
that New Deal liberalism was losing in
favor of the conservatives
Timeline
•
•
•
•
•
1960 - John F. Kennedy elected thirty-fifth president
- U-2 incident
1961 - Berlin Crisis
- Bay of Pigs
- First man in space
- Advisory group sent to South Vietnam
- Peace Corps formed
- Twenty-third Amendment (District of Columbia voting rights)
1962 - Cuban Missile Crisis
1963 President Kennedy assassinated; Lyndon Johnson becomes thirty-sixth president
- Supreme Court (Warren Court) declares prayer in public schools unconstitutional and
supports rights of criminal suspects
- Civil Rights March on Washington
- Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique published
1964 - Civil Rights Act passed
- War on Poverty begins; Economic Opportunity Act
- Warren Commission report on Kennedy assassination
- Twenty-fourth Amendment (No Poll Tax)
Timeline
•
•
•
•
1965- U.S. Troops engage in combat in South Vietnam
- Voting Rights Act
- Great Society programs: Elementary and Secondary School Act; Medicare;
Water Quality Act: Omnibus Housing Act; Higher Education Act
- Assassination of Malcolm X
- Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, Civil Rights March
1966 - NOW (National Organization for Women) founded
- Freedom of Information Act
- Miranda v. Arizona
1967 - Urban riots (Detroit, Newark, Rochester, Milwaukee, Washington)
- twenty-fifth Amendment (presidential succession)
1968- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., assassinated
- Robert Kennedy assassinated
- Riots at Democratic Convention in Chicago
- Richard M. Nixon elected thirty-seventh president
- Columbia University students seize the campus (SDS)
- Non-Proliferation Nuclear Treaty passed by United Nations
- Anti-Vietnam War protests
Key Names, Events, and Terms
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
John F. Kennedy (JFK)
Jacqueline Kennedy
New Frontier
Peace Corps
Alliance for Progress
Trade Expansion Act 1962
Bay of Pigs
Berlin Wall
Cuban Missile Crisis
Flexible response
Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
Warren Commission
Lyndon Johnson (LBJ)
Great Society
• War on Poverty
• Michael Harrington; The Other
America
• Barry Goldwater
• Medicare; Medicaid
• Elementary and Secondary
Education Act 1965
• Ralph Nader, Unsafe at Any Speed
• Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
• Lady Bird Johnson
• Vietnam War
• Tonkin Gulf Resolution
• Tet Offensive
• Hawks and doves
Key Names, Events, and Terms
•
•
•
•
•
Eugene McCarthy
Robert Kennedy
George Wallace
Hubert Humphrey
Richard Nixon
Question
Which of the following resulted in the greatest threat of
nuclear war during the Kennedy Administration?
(a) reaction to the Alliance for Progress in Latin
America
(b) U.S. military aid to South Vietnam
(c) the outbreak of a war in the Middle East
(d) a U.S. naval blockade of Cuba
(e) civil Wars in the Congo and Laos
Answer
D: a U.S. naval blockade of Cuba
Question
Which phrase best describes President Johnson’s policy
in Vietnam?
(a) gradual withdrawal of U.S. forces
(b) gradual military escalation to force North Vietnam
to negotiate
(c) total unwillingness to discuss peace terms
(d) placing strict limitations on U.S. military
involvement
(e) threatening the use of nuclear weapons
Answer
B: gradual military escalation to force North
Vietnam to negotiate