Chapter 31 Annotated Outline

I. The Reagan-Bush Years, 1981–1993 A. Reaganomics 1. Distrustful of big government, both Ronald Reagan and George Bush turned away from the federal government as a source of solutions for America’s social problems.

2. The economic and tax policies that emerged under Reagan, dubbed “Reaganomics,”were based on supply-side economics theory. 3. The Economic Recovery Act of 1981 reduced income tax rates by 25 percent over three years. 4. Overall, Reaganomics widened the income gap by making the rich richer without addressing the economic needs of the poor.

5. The administration moved to abolish or reduce federal regulation in the workplace, in health care, in consumer protection, and in the environment.

6. The money saved by these cuts was put into a five-year $1.2 trillion defense buildup; Reagan’s most controversial weapons plan was the Strategic Defense Initiative (“Star Wars”). 7. In the early 1980s the inflation rate dropped from 12.4 to just 4 percent; the Federal Reserve’s tightening of the money supply also brought on the “Reagan recession” of 1981 to 1982.

8. With inflation low, the Reagan administration presided over the longest peacetime prosperity expansion in American history.

B. Reagan’s Second Term

1. Reagan won a landslide victory over Democrat Walter Mondale and his running mate, Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman to run on a major-party ticket.

2. The Iran-Contra affair marred Reagan’s second term; Congress investigated, but White House officials testified that the president knew nothing about the diversion of profits from arms sales.

3. Reagan reordered the federal government’s priorities, but he failed to reduce its size or scope.

4. Reagan’s spending cuts and antigovernment rhetoric shaped the terms of political debate for the rest of the century.

5. One of Reagan’s most significant legacies was his conservative judicial appointments; Sandra Day O’Connor was the first woman ever to serve on the Supreme Court.

6. The national debt tripled during Reagan’s tenure from the combined effects of increased military spending, tax reductions for highincome taxpayers, and Congress’s refusal to approve deep cuts in domestic programs. 7. Budget and trade deficits contributed to the U.S. shift in 1985 from a creditor to a debtor nation.

C. The Bush Presidency

1. Promising “no new taxes,” George Bush with running mate Dan Quayle defeated Democrat Michael Dukakis in the 1988 election by winning 53.4 percent of the popular vote.

2. Some significant domestic trends of the Bush era were determined by the judiciary branch:

Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989)

gave states more latitude in restricting abortions. 3. In the wake of the Clarence Thomas hearings, national polls confirmed the pervasiveness of sexual harassment of working women. 4. Although Bush promised no new taxes, when faced with the prospect of a layoff of thousands of government employees, he and Congress resorted to spending cuts and one of the largest tax increases in history.

5. Reagan’s decision to shift the cost of federal programs to state and local governments caused problems for Bush; in 1990, a recession began to erode state and local tax revenues. 6. Unemployment rose to 7 percent in 1991, and state and local governments laid off workers even as the demand for social services climbed. 7. Another drag on the economy was the collapse of the savings and loan industry, which was deregulated during the Reagan administration; it took the Resolution Trust Corporation six years to clean up the mess, at a cost of $150 billion to taxpayers.

II. Foreign Relations under Reagan and Bush A. Interventions in Developing Countries 1. Airplane hijackings and countless terrorist incidents in the Middle East led Reagan to order airstrikes against terrorist chief of state Muammar al-Qaddafi of Libya.

2. Reagan’s top priority was to overthrow the Communist-led Sandinista government in Nicaragua; in 1981, Congress passed a bill suspending aid from the United States to Nicaragua.

3. The CIA began to provide extensive covert support to Nicaragua’s opposition forces, known as the “Contras”; this situation precipitated the Iran-Contra affair.

4. Reagan’s second term brought a reduction in tensions with the Soviet Union; in 1987, Reagan and Gorbachev agreed to eliminate intermediate-range missiles in Europe.

B. The End of the Cold War

1. In 1989 the grip of communism on Eastern Europe eroded in a series of mostly nonviolent revolutions that climaxed with the destruction of the Berlin Wall.

2. A failed coup to oust Gorbachev broke the Communist Party’s dominance over the Soviet Union.

C. War in the Persian Gulf, 1990–1991 1. On August 2, 1990, Iraq invaded and quickly conquered neighboring Kuwait.

2. Bush sponsored a series of resolutions in the United Nations Security Council condemning Iraq, calling for its withdrawal, and imposing an embargo and trade sanctions.

3. When Saddam Hussein showed no signs of complying with the resolutions, Bush prompted the United Nations to create the legal framework for an international military offensive.

4. The forty-two-day war was a resounding success for the UN’s coalition forces, which were predominantly American, yet Hussein remained in power.

5. The euphoria produced at home by the success of Operation Desert Storm quickly subsided when a new recession showed that the country had serious economic problems.

III. Uncertain Times: Economic and Social Trends,

1980–2000

A. The Economy

1. The two most salient economic trends in the

1980s and 1990s were the slow growth in productivity

and the growing inequality in income

distribution.

2. From 1945 to 1973, productivity had grown

2.8 percent annually, in the next quarter century, that figure had dropped to less than 1 percent annually.

3. By 1996 the United States was the most economically

stratified industrial nation in the

world.

4. Changes in the job market led to diminished expectations among workers; the number of minimum-wage jobs grew, but the number of union-protected manufacturing jobs shrank.

5. Major corporations trimmed management positions.

6. In 1994, 58.8 percent of women were in the labor force; one out of five women held a clerical or secretarial job, and their pay lagged behind that of men.

7. The labor movement continued to decline; in

1998, unions represented only 13.9 percent of the labor force.

8. To compete internationally, American firms adopted new technologies; by the late 1990s the United States led the world in information technology and expanded productivity in manufacturing.

9. A booming stock market, energized by a flow of funds into the high-tech sector and the emergence of e-commerce, seemed to reach new highs daily.

10. By 2000 the nagging deficit was wiped out and the budget for the next ten years was projected to be an astonishing $4.6 trillion surplus.

11. Many stock market analysts feared that a steep drop in the stock market might cause a recession; others feared that consumer spending and economic growth was linked to debt.

B. Popular Culture and Popular Technology

1. Music Television (MTV) had a strong influence on popular culture with its creative choreography, flashy colors, and rapid cuts.

2. USA Today, which debuted in 1982, adopted the “MTV style”with eye-catching graphics, color photographs, and short, easy-to-read articles; other newspapers followed suit.

3. Satellite transmission and live “minicam” broadcasting reshaped the television industry; soon cable access and satellite dishes were commonplace.

4. The 1980s saw the introduction of videocassette recorders (VCRs), compact disc (CD) players, cellular phones, and inexpensive fax machines.

5. The personal computer revolutionized both the home and office; by 2000, 77 percent of American households had at least one personal computer.

6. The computer created the modern electronic office, and the very concept of the office changed as a new class of telecommuters worked at home via computer, fax, and e-mail.

7. By 2000, almost 300 million people used the Internet; the debut of the World Wide Web in 1991 enhanced the commercial possibilities of the Internet.

8. Programs to wire public schools and libraries have increased access to new technology; in 2000, 63 percent of public classrooms were connected to the Internet.

C. An Increasingly Pluralistic Society

1. Between 1981 and 1996, 13.5 million immigrants entered the United States, most of them Latinos and Asians.

2. These immigrants have had a tremendous impact on America’s social, economic, and cultural landscape, producing thriving ethnic communities, ethnic restaurants, and specialized periodicals.

3. Many Americans celebrated the nation’s ethnic pluralism, while others viewed immigrants as scapegoats for all that was wrong with the United States.

4. In the 1980s, California absorbed more immigrants than any other state; more than a third of its population growth in that decade came from foreign immigration.

5. Opponents challenged the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 187, but antiimmigrant sentiments soon spread to other parts of the country.6. In the cities, African Americans and the new immigrants were forced by economic necessity and segregation patterns to compete for space in decaying, crime-ridden ghettos.

7. The 1992 Los Angeles race riots were multiracial, which showed that the cleavages in urban neighborhoods went beyond a simple matter of black indignation and were class-based protests against the failure of the American system to address the needs of all poor people.

8. In 1995 the University of California voted to end affirmative action, and the backlash against racial preferences was intensified by Proposition 209, which banned all preference based on race or gender.

9. Lumping affirmative action together with multiculturalism, critics warned that all this counting by race, gender, sexual preference, and age would fragment American society.

D. Backlash against Women’s and Gay Rights

1. Conservative critics targeted the women’s movement and held it responsible for every ill affecting modern women, although polls showed strong support for feminist demands.

2. The deep divide over abortion, one of the main issues associated with feminism, continued to polarize the country.

3. Although only a fraction of antiabortionists supported violent acts, disruptive confrontational tactics escalating to murder and bombings made practicing their legal right dangerous for women.4. Conservatives insisted that gay rights threatened America’s traditional family values; across the nation, “gay bashing” and other forms of violence against homosexuals continued.

E. The AIDS Epidemic

1. The gay men’s struggle was made a matter of life and death by acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), first recognized by physicians in 1981 in the gay male population.

2. AIDS cases began to increase among heterosexuals and bisexuals as early as the mid-1980s.3. New drug treatments offer some hope, but they are very expensive; to date, more Americans have died from AIDS than were killed in the Korean and Vietnam Wars combined.

4. Even though AIDS deaths have declined in developed countries, approximately 95 percent of HIV-infected people live in the developing world.

F. The Environmental Movement at Twenty-five

1. By the twenty-fifth anniversary of Earth Day, the nations waterways were cleaner; air pollution had been reduced; and lead emissions from fuel had been cut by 98 percent.

2. In 1987, thirty-four nations agreed to phase out chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs); in 1992, 170 countries adopted a treaty on global warming; and in 1994, the United States and sixty-three other countries banned the export of hazardous wastes from industrialized to developing countries.

3. The Kyoto Treaty was never ratified because Congress feared that the United States would be hurt economically.

4. By the late 1990s, Americans still used too much energy and lived in areas with smog, and many poor people lived near toxic waste dumps—but changes were made to address these ills.

IV. Restructuring the Domestic Order: Public Life,

1992–2001

A. Clinton’s First Term

1. In the 1992 election campaign, Bill Clinton and Al Gore were the first baby boomers to occupy the national ticket.

2. The narrowness of Bill Clinton’s victory over George Bush and Ross Perot and the public’s perception that he did not stand for anything did not augur well for his ability to lead the country.

3. Clinton signed a Family and Medical Leave Act but backed off on the issue of gays in the military, offering a compromise policy of “Don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue.”

4. With Clinton’s support, the North American Free Trade Agreement was passed in 1993.

5. Clinton chose his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, to head a task force in order to draft legislation for universal health care; by 1994 the health-care reform initiative was dead.

6. Clinton appeared to the American public to be vacillating, indecisive, and lacking in vision, especially in his handling of foreign affairs.

7. President Clinton helped to facilitate a peace accord in 1995 that would, at least temporarily, end the fighting in Bosnia.

8. The United States established diplomatic relations with Hanoi in July 1995, two decades after the fall of Saigon.

B. “The Era of Big Government Is Over”

1. In the House of Representatives, the centerpiece of the new Republican majority was the “contract with America.”

2. Clinton, bowing to political reality, declared that the “era of big government is over.”

3. The budget that Clinton signed in April 1996 left Medicare and Social Security intact, and it met the Republican’s goal of cutting $23 billion from discretionary spending.

4. Clinton, who had campaigned on a promise of welfare reform, signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, a historic overhaul of federal entitlements.

5. The Republican takeover of Congress united the Democrats behind the president; unopposed in the 1996 primaries, Clinton was able to burnish his image as a moderate “New Democrat.”

6. In the 1996 elections, Republican Bob Dole made a 15 percent across-the-board tax cut the centerpiece of his campaign, while Clinton emphasized an improved economy.

7. A key factor in Clinton’s second term would be the necessity of pursuing bipartisan policies or be left facing a stalemate.

C. Second-Term Stalemates

1. Bill Clinton’s ability to pursue his domestic agenda was compromised by two international crises and by a scandal that would eventually lead to his impeachment trial.

2. The first crisis emerged in 1997, when Saddam Hussein ejected American members of a UN inspection team that was searching Iraqi sites for hidden “weapons of mass destruction.”

3. With limited international support, the United States began a military buildup in the Persian Gulf, and in 1998, the same issues led to an intense four-day joint United States-British bombing campaign, called “Desert Fox.”

4. The second international crisis began in March 1999 in Kosovo; there NATO, strongly influenced by the United States, intervened to protect ethnic Albanians from Serbians determined to drive them out of the region.

5. These two incidents showed that the United States was limited in its ability to achieve its foreign-policy aims.

6. Three months of bombing forced the Serbians to remove their troops from Kosovo and to accept the presence of a multinational peacekeeping force, but no long-term solutions were achieved.

7. In 1998, allegations emerged of an affair between Clinton and former White House intern Monica Lewinsky; Kenneth Starr widened his Whitewater investigation to include this scandal.

8. On December 20, 1998, the House of Representatives narrowly approved two articles of impeachment against Clinton: one for perjury and a second for obstruction of justice.

9. Clinton’s approval rating remained high throughout the trial in the Senate; Americans approved of his presidential performance even if they disapproved of his personal morality.

10. Clinton was acquitted on both charges by the Senate, but the scandal and the trial limited his ability to be an effective president.

D. An Unprecedented Election

1. In the 2000 presidential election, Democratic vice president Al Gore and Senator Joseph Leiberman ran against Republicans George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

2. It was an extremely close election: Gore won 20 states and Bush prevailed in 29, but allegations of voting irregularities in Florida tied up the final 25 electoral votes each candidate needed to win the presidency.

3. Butterfly ballots and undervotes, as well as dimpled, pregnant, and hanging chads became a hotly debated issue.

4. In December the U.S. Supreme Court cited provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment to determine that George W. Bush was the legitimate winner of Florida’s votes and hence the new president.

E. George W. Bush’s Early Presidency

1. In the last hours of his administration, Clinton granted a series of dubious pardons, further tarnishing his reputation and deepening American cynicism.

2. In his first seven months in office, Bush banned the use of foreign-aid funds for familyplanning programs abroad, appointed Colin Powell as the first black Secretary of State, and made good on his promise to cut taxes.

3. The stock market sank only months after Bush’s inauguration, and economic growth slowed, leading to fears of a recession.

4. As gasoline prices rose and power shortages occurred on the West Coast, Bush resisted calls for federal price controls and emphasized the need for power plants and oil drilling.

5. Moderate Jim Jeffers left the Republican Party to become an independent; the Republicans lost their majority status in the Senate.

6. Bush’s major initiatives called for maintaining UN sanctions against Iraq and for increased efforts to destabilize Saddam Hussein’s regime.

7. On September 11, 2001, terrorists of Osama bin Laden’s Al Queda network hijacked four airplanes and flew two of them into the World Trade Center and one into the Pentagon; the fourth crashed in Pennsylvania.