A. The Republican
Domestic Agenda
1. Nixon’s policies
heralded a long-term Republican effort to trim back the Great Society and shift
some federal responsibilities back to the states.
2. The 1972
revenue-sharing program distributed a portion of federal tax revenues back to
the states as block grants.
3. Nixon reduced funding
for most War on Poverty programs and dismantled the Office of Economic
4. He impounded
billions of dollars appropriated by Congress for urban renewal, pollution
control, and other environmental issues.
5. Nixon agreed to the
growth of major entitlement programs such as Medicare,Medicaid, and Social Security.
6. In 1970, Nixon
signed a bill establishing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and in
1972, he approved legislation creating the Occupational Safety and Health
Administration (OSHA).
7. Nixon demonstrated
his commitment to conservative social values most clearly with his appointments
to the Supreme Court.
8. The Court
appointees sometimes handed down decisions of which Nixon did not approve, such
as court-ordered busing and restrictions on the implementation of capital punishment.9. Roe v.Wade (1973)
struck down laws prohibiting abortion in
B. The 1972 Election
1. Disarray within the
Democratic Party over
2. Nixon’s opponent,
Senator George McGovern, ran a poorly orchestrated campaign and was far too
liberal for many traditional Democrats.
3. Nixon took
advantage of his national position; his policy of Vietnamization
had virtually eliminated American combat deaths by 1972.
4. An improving
economy also favored the Republican
Party; Nixon easily won reelection with 61 percent of the
popular vote, although Democrats maintained control of both houses of Congress.
C. Watergate
1. Watergate was a
direct result of Nixon’s ruthless political tactics, his secretive style of
governing, and his obsession with the antiwar movement.2. The Pentagon Papers was a classified
study of American involvement in
it was given to the media by Daniel
Ellsberg.
3. In an effort to
discredit Ellsberg, a former Defense Department analyst,White House underlings broke into his psychiatrist’s
office to look for damaging information.
4. The White House
established a clandestine intelligence group known as the “plumbers” to plug
government information leaks.
5. The “plumbers” used
government agencies to harass opponents of the administration; their actions
were illegally funded by Nixon’s Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP).
6. In June 1972, five
men were arrested for breaking into the headquarters of the Democratic National
Committee at the Watergate apartment complex in
7. The White House
denied any involvement in the break-in, but investigations revealed that Nixon
ordered his chief of staff to instruct the CIA to tell the FBI not to probe too
deeply into connections between the White House and the burglars.
8. When the burglars
were convicted in January 1973, Nixon approved of offering them money in return
for their continued silence and possibly even pardons.
9. The Senate voted to
establish a select committee to investigate the scandal after one of the burglars
began to “talk.”
10. In April, Nixon
accepted the resignations of several of his closest advisors, and he fired White
House Council John Dean after he offered testimony in exchange for immunity.
11. In May, the Senate
Watergate committee began nationally televised hearings; an aide revealed the
existence of a secret taping system in the Oval Office.
12. Nixon eventually
released heavily edited transcripts of the tapes; there was a suspicious eighteen-minute
gap in the tape of a crucial meeting of Nixon, Haldeman,
and Ehrlichman on June 20, 1972, three days after the
break-in.
13. On June 30, 1974,
the House of Representatives voted on three articles of impeachment against
Nixon: obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and subverting the Constitution.
14. Nixon released the
unexpurgated tapes, which contained evidence that he ordered a cover-up; facing
certain conviction in a Senate trial, Nixon became the first
15. Vice
President Gerald Ford was sworn in as president; a month later, he granted a
full pardon to Nixon.
16. In 1974, a
strengthened Freedom of Information Act gave citizens greater access to files
that federal government agencies had amassed on them.
17. The Fair Campaign
Practices Act of 1974 limited campaign contributions and provided for stricter
accountability and public financing of presidential campaigns; unfortunately,
it left a loophole for contributions from political action committees (PACs).
18. The
most significant legacy of Watergate was the wave of cynicism that swept the
country in its wake.
A. Energy Crisis
1. After twenty-five
years of world leadership, the economic dominance of the
2. By the late 1960s
the
3. The imported oil
came primarily from the Middle East; four Middle Eastern states along with
4. Between 1973 and
1975, OPEC raised the price of a barrel of oil from $3 to $12; by the end of the
decade the price was at $34 a barrel.
5. In 1973, OPEC
instituted an oil embargo against the
6. The embargo lasted
until 1974 and forced Americans to curtail their driving or spend hours in line
at the pumps.
7. As Americans turned
to more fuel-efficient foreign-made cars, the domestic auto industry slumped,
profoundly affecting the American economy and the American psyche.
B. Economic Woes
1. Due to a steadily
growing federal deficit and spiraling inflation—coupled with a reduced demand
for American goods—in 1971 the dollar fell to its lowest level on the world
market since 1949, and the
2. Nixon suspended the
1944 Bretton Woods system, which
meant the dollar would fluctuate in relation to the price of an ounce of gold.
3. Wage and price controls
were instituted to curb inflation, and $11 billion in deficit spending was
offered to boost the sluggish economy.
4. Stagnating wages
and rising unemployment produced a noticeable decline in most Americans’ standard
of living.
5. “Stagflation,” the
combination of inflation and unemployment, bedeviled presidential
administrations from Nixon to Reagan.
6. American economic
woes were most acute in the industrial sector, which entered a prolonged period
of decline, or deindustrialization.
7. By the end of the
1970s, the hundred largest multinational corporations and banks were earning
more than a third of their overall profits abroad.
8. In the Rust Belt,
huge factories were fast becoming relics; many workers moved to the Sun Belt,
where dramatic growth that began after World War II continued.
9. As foreign
competition cut into corporate profits, industry became less willing to
bargain, some companies moved their operations abroad, and the labor movement’s
power declined.
A. The New Activism:
Environmental and Consumer
Movements
1. After 1970, many
baby boomers left the counterculture behind and settled down to pursue careers
and material goods.2. In the “Me
Decade,” many Americans demanded an even higher standard of living that included
healthy lifestyles, spiritual support, and a healthy environment.
3. few baby boomers still pursued the unfinished social and political agendas of the 1960s, continuing their activism on a grassroots level.
4. The birth of
5. The Alaskan
pipeline and
6. Nuclear energy
became a subject of citizen action in the 1970s; public fears were confirmed in
1979 when a nuclear plant at
7. In 1969, Congress
passed the National Environmental Policy Act, and in 1970, Nixon established the
EPA and signed the Clean Air Act; the insecticide DDT was banned in 1972.
8. The Endangered
Species Act expanded the Endangered Animals Act of 1964, granting endangered species
protected status.
9. In a time of rising
unemployment and reindustrialization, activists clashed head-on with proponents
of economic development, full employment, and global competitiveness.
10. The rise of environmentalism
was paralleled by a growing consumer protection movement to eliminate harmful
consumer products and to curb dangerous practices by American corporations.
11. Ralph Nader’s Public
Interest Research Group became the model for other groups that later emerged to
combat the health hazards of smoking, unethical insurance and credit practices,
and other consumer problems.
12. With the
establishment of the federal Consumer Products Safety Commission in 1972, Congress
acknowledged the growing need for consumer protection.
B. Challenges to
Tradition: The Women’s Movement and Gay Rights
1. Feminism was the
most enduring movement to emerge from the 1960s; as the women’s movement grew,
it generated an array of women-oriented services and organizations.
2. Gloria Steinem’s Ms. magazine was the first aimed at the feminist market;
formerly allmale bastions such as Yale admitted women
for the first time.
3. Women’s political
mobilization with the National Organization for Women (NOW) and the National
Women’s Political Caucus resulted in significant legislative and administrative
gains.
4. Title IX of the
Educational Amendments Act of 1972 prohibited colleges and universities that
received federal funds from discriminating on the basis of sex.
5. Affirmative action
was extended to women in 1967; in 1972, Congress authorized child-care deductions
for working parents; in 1974, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act improved women’s
access to credit.
6. The Supreme Court
gave women more control over their reproductive lives by reading the right of
privacy into the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments’ concepts of personal liberty.
7. Griswold
v.
8. The Roe v.Wade (1973) decision prevented states from
outlawing abortions performed during the first trimester and fueled the
development of a powerful antiabortion movement.
9. The battlefront for
the women’s movement was the proposed Equal Rights Amendment; not enough states
ratified the amendment, and by 1982 it was dead.
10. Nonwhite and
working-class women saw the feminist movement as catering to self-seeking white
career women; the movement also faced growing social conservatism among
Americans.
11. More women joined
the workforce, many delayed getting married and having children, and the
divorce rate went up; by 1980, women accounted for 66 percent of adults living
below the poverty line.
12. The gay liberation
movement achieved greater visibility in the 1970s as gay communities gave rise
to hundreds of new gay and lesbian clubs, churches, businesses, and political
organizations.
13. Some cities passed
laws barring discrimination on the basis of sexual preference.
14. Gay rights came
under attack from conservatives who believed that protecting gay people’s rights
would encourage immoral behavior; antigay campaigns sprang up around the country.
C. Racial Minorities
1. Although the civil
rights movement was in disarray by the late 1960s, minority group protests over
the next decade continued to win social and economic gains.
2. Native Americans
realized some of the most significant changes with the 1971 Alaska Native Claims
Act and the Indian Self-Determination Act of 1974.
3. The court-mandated
busing of children to achieve school desegregation proved to be the most
disruptive social issue of the 1970s. The Supreme Court decisions of Brown v.
Board
of Education (1954) and Milliken
v.
Bradley (1974) sparked intense, sometimes violent, opposition
such as that in
5. Threatened by
court-ordered busing, many white parents transferred their children to private schools;
the resulting “white flight” increased the racial imbalance busing was intended
to redress.6. Affirmative action, which
had expanded opportunities for African Americans and Latinos, also proved
divisive.7. Bakke v.
8. Activists for the
various causes were part of a “rights revolution,” a movement in the 1960s and
1970s to bring the issues of social justice and welfare to the forefront of
public policy.
D. The Politics of
Resentment
1. Vocal opposition to
abortion, busing, affirmative action, gay rights ordinances, and the Equal
Rights Amendment constituted a broad backlash against the social changes of the
previous decade.
2. The economic
changes of the 1970s further fueled the “politics of resentment,” a grassroots revolt
against special-interest groups and the growing expenditures on social welfare.
3. Resentment
manifested itself in a wave of taxpayers’ revolts such as
4. The rising
popularity of evangelical religion also fueled the conservative resurgence of
the 1970s; many of the evangelicals spoke out on a broad range of controversial
issues.
5. The extensive media
and fund-raising networks of the Christian right became the organizational base
for a larger conservative movement known as the “New Right.”
6. The New Right’s
diverse constituents, such as the “neoconservatives,” shared hostility toward a
powerful federal government and a fear of declining social morality.
7. New Right political
groups mobilized thousands of followers and millions of dollars to support
conservative candidates and causes.
A. Ford’s Caretaker
Presidency
1. During the two
years Gerald Ford was president, he failed to establish his legitimacy; his pardon
of Nixon damaged his credibility. Yet Ford’s biggest challenge was the reeling
economy.
2. Inflation soared to
12 percent in 1974, and the economy took its deepest downturn since the Great
Depression; Ford’s failure to take more vigorous action made
him appear timid and powerless.
3. In foreign policy,
Ford maintained Nixon’s détente initiatives, increased support to the shah of
B. Jimmy Carter: The
Outsider as President
1. During the 1976 presidential
election, Jimmy Carter shared the Democratic ticket with Walter Mondale, who
had ties to the Democratic constituencies of labor, liberals, blacks, and big-city
machines.
2. Playing up his role
as a
3. Carter shied away
from established Democratic leaders, turning instead to advisors and friends
who had no national experience.
4. Inflation was
Carter’s major domestic challenge; to counter inflation, interest rates were raised
repeatedly, and they topped 20 percent in 1980.
5. Carter enlarged the
cabinet by creating the Departments of Energy and Education and approved environmental
protection measures such as a “Superfund” to clean up chemical pollution.
6. Carter reformed the
civil service system, and he deregulated the airline, trucking, and railroad industries.
7. Carter failed in
his efforts to decontrol oil and natural gas prices and failed to provide
leadership during the energy crisis.
8. In foreign affairs,
Carter made human rights the centerpiece of his policy: he criticized the suppression
of dissent in the
9. In 1977, Carter
signed a treaty that turned over control of the Panama Canal to
10. Carter curtailed
grain sales to the Soviet Union and boycotted the 1980 Olympics in
11. Carter—and later
Reagan—provided covert assistance to an Afghan group of “holy warriors”; the
CIA helped these radical Islamic fundamentalists, thereby helping to establish the
now infamous Taliban.
12. Carter brokered a “framework
for peace” between
13. In 1979 the shah of
14. In response to
allowing the shah into the
15. A failed military
rescue reinforced the public’s view of Carter as being ineffective, and the
crisis paralyzed his presidency for the next fourteen months.
C. The Reagan Revolution
1. For the 1980
presidential election, Republicans nominated former
2. Reagan won the
election with 51 percent of the popular vote; Republicans won control of the Senate
for the first time since 1954.
3. The core of the
Republican Party remained upper-middle-class whites who supported balanced budgets
and a strong national defense, disliked government activism, and feared crime
and communism.
4. New groups
gravitated toward the Republican vision: southern whites, urban ethnics, bluecollar workers, westerners, and young voters.
5. A significant
constituency in the Republican Party was the New Right, whose emphasis on traditional
values and fundamentalist Christian morality fit well with Republican ideology.
6. When Carter turned
the presidency over to Ronald Reagan on January 20, 1981, the Iranian government
released the American hostages.