The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, and in Vietnam as the Resistance War Against America or simply the American War, was an undeclared war in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union, China, and other communist allies; South Vietnam was supported by the United States, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, Thailand and other anti-communist allies. The war is considered a Cold War-era proxy war from some US perspectives. It lasted some 19 years with direct U.S. involvement ending in 1973 following the Paris Peace Accords, and included the Laotian Civil War and the Cambodian Civil War, resulting in all three countries becoming communist states in 1975.
The Cold War was a period of geopolitical tension between the Soviet Union with its satellite states, and the United States with its allies after World War II. A common historiography of the conflict begins between 1946, the year U.S. diplomat George F. Kennan's "Long Telegram" from Moscow cemented a U.S. foreign policy of containment of Soviet expansionism threatening strategically vital regions, and the Truman Doctrine of 1947, and ending between the Revolutions of 1989 and the 1991 collapse of the USSR, which ended communism in Eastern Europe. The term "cold" is used because there was no large-scale fighting directly between the two sides, but they each supported major regional conflicts known as proxy wars. The conflict split the temporary wartime alliance against Nazi Germany, leaving the USSR and the US as two superpowers with profound economic and political differences.
The Space Race refers to the 20th-century competition between two Cold War rivals, the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States (US), for dominance in spaceflight capability. It had its origins in the missile-based nuclear arms race between the two nations that occurred following World War II, aided by captured German missile technology and personnel from the Aggregat program. The technological superiority required for such dominance was seen as necessary for national security, and symbolic of ideological superiority. The Space Race spawned pioneering efforts to launch artificial satellites, uncrewed space probes of the Moon, Venus, and Mars, and human spaceflight in low Earth orbit and to the Moon.
The period closed with the victory of conservative Republican Ronald Reagan, opening the "Age of Reagan" with a dramatic change in national direction.[1] The Democratic Party split over the Vietnam War and other foreign policy issues, with a new strong dovish element based on younger voters. Many otherwise liberal Democratic "hawks" joined the Neoconservative movement and started supporting the Republicans—especially Reagan—based on foreign policy.[2] Meanwhile, Republicans were generally united on a hawkish and intense American nationalism, strong opposition to Communism, and strong support for Israel.[3]
American conservatism is a broad system of political beliefs in the United States that is characterized by respect for American traditions, republicanism, support for Judeo-Christian values, moral universalism, business, anti-communism, individualism, advocacy of American exceptionalism, and a defense of Western culture from the perceived threats posed by socialism, authoritarianism, and moral relativism. Liberty is a core value, as is with all major American parties. American conservatives consider individual liberty—within the bounds of American values—as the fundamental trait of democracy; this perspective contrasts with that of modern American liberals, who generally place a greater value on equality and social justice and emphasize the need for state intervention to achieve these goals. American conservatives believe in limiting government in size and scope, and in a balance between national government and states' rights. Apart from some libertarians, they tend to favor strong action in areas they believe to be within government's legitimate jurisdiction, particularly national defense and law enforcement. Social conservatives oppose abortion and favor restricting LGBT rights, while privileging traditional marriage and allowing voluntary school prayer.
Ronald Wilson Reagan was an American politician who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. Prior to his presidency, he was a Hollywood actor and union leader before serving as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 to 1975.
The Reagan Era or Age of Reagan is a periodization of recent American history used by historians and political observers to emphasize that the conservative "Reagan Revolution" led by President Ronald Reagan in domestic and foreign policy had a lasting impact. It overlaps with what political scientists call the Sixth Party System. Definitions of the Reagan Era universally include the 1980s, while more extensive definitions may also include the late 1970s, the 1990s, the 2000s (decade), and even the 2010s. In his 2008 book, The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974–2008, historian and journalist Sean Wilentz argues that Reagan dominated this stretch of American history in the same way that Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal legacy dominated the four decades that followed it.
Memories of the 1960s and the early 1970s shaped the political landscape for the next half-century. As Governor of Arkansas Bill Clinton explained in 1990, "If you look back on the Sixties and think there was more good than bad, you're probably a Democrat. If you think there was more harm than good, you're probably a Republican."[4]
William Jefferson Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Prior to the presidency, he was the governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981, and again from 1983 to 1992, and the attorney general of Arkansas from 1977 to 1979. A member of the Democratic Party, Clinton was ideologically a New Democrat, and many of his policies reflected a centrist "Third Way" political philosophy.
The Democratic Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. Tracing its heritage back to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison's Democratic-Republican Party, the modern-day Democratic Party was founded around 1828 by supporters of Andrew Jackson, making it the world's oldest active political party.
The Republican Party, also referred to as the GOP, is one of the two major political parties in the United States; the other is its historic rival, the Democratic Party.
Climax of liberalism
The climax of liberalism came in the mid-1960s with the success of President Lyndon B. Johnson (1963–69) in securing congressional passage of his Great Society programs, including civil rights, the end of segregation, Medicare, extension of welfare, federal aid to education at all levels, subsidies for the arts and humanities, environmental activism, and a series of programs designed to wipe out poverty.[5][6] As a 2005 American history textbook explains:[7]
Modern liberalism in the United States is the dominant version of liberalism in the United States. It combines ideas of civil liberty and equality with support for social justice and a mixed economy. According to Ian Adams, all American parties are "liberal and always have been. Essentially, they espouse classical liberalism—that is, a form of democratized Whig constitutionalism, plus the free market. The point of difference comes with the influence of social liberalism". Economically, modern American liberalism opposes cuts to the social safety net and supports a role for government in reducing inequality, providing education, ensuring access to healthcare, regulating economic activity and protecting the natural environment. This form of liberalism took shape in the 20th century United States as the franchise and other civil rights were extended to a larger class of citizens. Major examples include Theodore Roosevelt's New Nationalism, Woodrow Wilson's New Freedom, Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, Harry S. Truman's Fair Deal, John F. Kennedy's New Frontier and Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society.
Lyndon Baines Johnson, often referred to as LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. Formerly the 37th vice president of the United States from 1961 to 1963, he assumed the presidency following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. A Democrat from Texas, Johnson also served as a United States Representative and as the Majority Leader in the United States Senate. Johnson is one of only four people who have served in all four federal elected positions.
The Great Society was a set of domestic programs in the United States launched by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964–65. The main goal was the total elimination of poverty and racial injustice. President Johnson first used the term "Great Society" during a speech at Ohio University, then unveiled the program in greater detail at an appearance at University of Michigan.
Gradually, liberal intellectuals crafted a new vision for achieving economic and social justice. The liberalism of the early 1960s contained no hint of radicalism, little disposition to revive new deal era crusades against concentrated economic power, and no intention to redistribute wealth or restructure existing institutions. Internationally it was strongly anti-Communist. It aimed to defend the free world, to encourage economic growth at home, and to ensure that the resulting plenty was fairly distributed. Their agenda – much influenced by Keynesian economic theory – envisioned massive public expenditure that would speed economic growth, thus providing the public resources to fund larger welfare, housing, health, and educational programs.
Johnson was rewarded with an electoral landslide in 1964 against conservative Barry Goldwater, which broke the decades-long control of Congress by the conservative coalition of Republicans and Southern Democrats. But the Republicans bounced back in 1966, and Republican Richard Nixon won the presidential election in 1968. Nixon largely continued the New Deal and Great Society programs he inherited; a more radical conservative reaction would come with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.[8]
Barry Morris Goldwater was an American politician, businessman and author who was a five-term Senator from Arizona and the Republican Party nominee for President of the United States in 1964. Despite his loss of the 1964 presidential election in a landslide, Goldwater is the politician most often credited with having sparked the resurgence of the American conservative political movement in the 1960s. He also had a substantial impact on the libertarian movement.
The conservative coalition was an unofficial Congressional coalition bringing together a conservative majority of the Republican Party and the conservative wing of the Democratic Party. According to James T. Patterson: "By and large the congressional conservatives by 1939 agreed in opposing the spread of federal power and bureaucracy, in denouncing deficit spending, in criticizing industrial labor unions, and in excoriating most welfare programs. They sought to "conserve" an America which they believed to have existed before 1933."
Richard Milhous Nixon was an American politician who served as the 37th president of the United States from 1969 to 1974. He had previously served as the 36th vice president of the United States from 1953 to 1961, and prior to that as both a U.S. representative and senator from California.
Ronald Reagan in the 1970s emerged as the leader of a dramatic conservative shift in American politics, that undercut many of the domestic and foreign policies that had dominated the national agenda for decades.[9][10]
The common thread was a growing distrust of government to do the right thing on behalf of the people. While general distrust of high officials had been an American characteristic for two centuries, the Watergate scandal of 1973–1974 forced the resignation of President Richard Nixon, who faced impeachment, as well as criminal trials for many of his senior associates. The media was energized in its vigorous search for scandals, which deeply impacted both major parties at the national, state, and local levels.[11] At the same time there was a growing distrust of long-powerful institutions such as big business and labor unions. The postwar consensus regarding the value of technology in solving national problems came under attack, especially nuclear power, came under heavy attack from the New Left.[12]
Conservatives at the state and local levels increasingly emphasized the argument that the soaring crime rates indicated a faiure of liberal policy in the American cities.[13]
Meanwhile, liberalism was facing divisive issues, as the New Left challenged established liberals on such issues as the Vietnam War, and build a constituency on campuses and among younger voters. A "cultural war" was emerging as a triangular battle among conservatives, liberals, and the New Left, involving such issues as individual freedom, divorce, sexuality, and even topics such as hair length and musical taste.[14]
An unexpected new factor was the emergence of the religious right as a cohesive political force that gave strong support to conservatism.[15][16]
The triumphal issue for liberalism was the achievement of civil rights legislation in the 1960s, which won over the black population created a new black electorate in the South. However, it alienated many working-class ethnic whites, and open the door for conservative white Southerners to move into the Republican Party.[17]
In foreign policy, The war in Vietnam was a highly divisive issue in the 1970s. Nixon had introduced a policy of detente in the Cold War, but it was strongly challenged by Reagan and the conservative movement. Reagan saw the Soviet Union as an implacable enemy that had to be defeated, not compromised with. A new element emerged in Iran, with the overthrow of a pro-American government, and the emergence of the stream the hostile ayatollahs. Radical students seized the American Embassy, and held American diplomats hostage for over a year, underscoring the weaknesses of the foreign policy of Jimmy Carter.[18]
The economic scene was in doldrums, with soaring inflation undercutting the savings pattern of millions of Americans, while unemployment remained high and growth was low. Shortages of gasoline and the local pump made the energy crisis a local reality.[19]
The 1960s were marked by street protests, demonstrations, rioting, civil unrest,[20] antiwar protests, and a cultural revolution.[21]African American youth protested following victories in the courts regarding civil rights with street protests led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as well as the NAACP.[22] King skillfully used the media to record instances of brutality against non-violent African American protesters to tug at the conscience of the public. Activism brought about successful political change when there was an aggrieved group, such as African Americans or feminists or homosexuals, who felt the sting of bad policy over time, and who conducted long-range campaigns of protest together with media campaigns to change public opinion along with campaigns in the courts to change policy.[23]
The assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963 helped change the political mood of the country. The new President, Lyndon B. Johnson, capitalized on this situation, using a combination of the national mood and his own political savvy to push Kennedy's agenda; most notably, the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In addition, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 had an immediate impact on federal, state and local elections. Within months of its passage on August 6, 1965, one quarter of a million new black voters had been registered, one third by federal examiners. Within four years, voter registration in the South had more than doubled. In 1965, Mississippi had the highest black voter turnout, 74%, and had more elected black-leaders than any other state. In 1969, Tennessee had a 92.1% voter turnout, Arkansas 77.9%, and Texas 77.3%.[24]
Election of 1964
Electoral College 1964
In the election of 1964, Lyndon Johnson positioned himself as a moderate, contrasting himself against his GOP opponent, Barry Goldwater, who the campaign characterized as hardline right-wing. Most famously, the Johnson campaign ran a commercial entitled the "Daisy Girl" ad, which featured a little girl picking petals from a daisy in a field, counting the petals, which then segues into a launch countdown and a nuclear explosion. Johnson soundly defeated Goldwater in the general election, winning 64.9% of the popular vote, and losing only five states in the Deep South, where blacks were not yet allowed to vote, along with Goldwater's Arizona.
Goldwater's race energized the conservative movement, chiefly inside the Republican party. It looked for a new leader and found one in Ronald Reagan, elected governor of California in 1966 and reelected in 1970. He ran against President Ford for the 1976 GOP nomination, and narrowly lost, but the stage was set for Reagan in 1980.[25]
Two main goals of the Great Society social reforms were the elimination of poverty and racial injustice. New major spending programs that addressed education, medical care, urban problems, and transportation were launched during this period. The Great Society in scope and sweep resembled the New Deal domestic agenda of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s, but differed sharply in types of programs enacted. The largest and most enduring federal assistance programs, launched in 1965, were Medicare, which pays for many of the medical costs of the elderly, and Medicaid, which aids the impoverished.[26]
The centerpiece of the War on Poverty was the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, which created an Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) to oversee a variety of community-based antipoverty programs. The OEO reflected a fragile consensus among policymakers that the best way to deal with poverty was not simply to raise the incomes of the poor but to help them better themselves through education, job training, and community development. Central to its mission was the idea of "community action", the participation of the poor in framing and administering the programs designed to help them.[27]
As the 1960s progressed, increasing numbers of young people began to revolt against the social norms and conservatism from the 1950s and early 1960s as well as the escalation of the Vietnam War and Cold War. A social revolution swept through the country to create a more liberated society. As the Civil Rights Movement progressed, feminism and environmentalism movements soon grew in the midst of a sexual revolution with its distinctive protest forms, from long hair to rock music. The hippie culture, which emphasized peace, love and freedom, was introduced to the mainstream. In 1967, the Summer of Love, an event in San Francisco where thousands of young people loosely and freely united for a new social experience, helped introduce much of the world to the culture. In addition, the increased use of psychedelic drugs, such as LSD and marijuana, also became central to the movement. Music of the time also played a large role with the introduction of folk rock and later acid rock and psychedelia which became the voice of the generation. The Counterculture Revolution was exemplified in 1969 with the historic Woodstock Festival.[28]
Beginning with the Soviet launch of the first satellite, Sputnik 1, in 1957, the United States competed with the Soviet Union for supremacy in outer space exploration. After the Soviets placed the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, in 1961, President John F. Kennedy pushed for ways in which NASA could catch up,[29] famously urging action for a manned mission to the Moon: "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth."[30] The first manned flights produced by this effort came from Project Gemini (1965–1966) and then by the Apollo program, which despite the tragic loss of the Apollo 1 crew, achieved Kennedy's goal by landing the first astronauts on the Moon with the Apollo 11 mission in 1969.
Having lost the race to the Moon, the Soviets shifted their attention to orbital space stations, launching the first (Salyut 1) in 1971. The U.S. responded with the Skylab orbital workstation, in use from 1973 through 1974. With détente, a time of relatively improved Cold War relations between the United States and the Soviets, the two superpowers developed a cooperative space mission: the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project. This 1975 joint mission was the last manned space flight for the U.S. until the Space Shuttle flights of 1981 and has been described as the symbolic end of the Space Race. The Space Race sparked unprecedented increases in spending on education and pure research, which accelerated scientific advancements and led to beneficial spin-off technologies.[citation needed]
The Containment policy meant fighting communist expansion where ever it occurred, and the Communists aimed where the American allies were weakest. Johnson's primary commitment was to his domestic policy, so he tried to minimize public awareness and congressional oversight of the operations in the war.[31] Most of his advisers were pessimistic about the long term possibilities, and Johnson feared that if Congress took control, it would demand "Why Not Victory", as Barry Goldwater put it, rather than containment.[32] Although American involvement steadily increased, Johnson refused to allow the reserves or the National Guard to serve in Vietnam, because that would involve congressional oversight. In August 1964 Johnson secured almost unanimous support in Congress for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave the president very broad discretion to use military force as he saw fit. In February 1968 the Viet Cong launched an all-out attack on South Vietnamese forces across the country in the Tet Offensive. The ARVN (South Vietnam's army) successfully fought off the attacks and reduced the Viet Cong to a state of ineffectiveness; thereafter, it was the army of North Vietnam that was the main opponent.[33] However the Tet Offensive proved a public relations disaster for Johnson, as the public increasingly realized the United States was deeply involved in a war that few people understood. Republicans, such as California Governor Ronald Reagan, demanded victory or withdrawal, while on the left strident demands for immediate withdrawal escalated.[34] Controversially, out of the 2.5 million Americans who came to serve in Vietnam (out of 27 million Americans eligible to serve in the military) 80% came from poor and working-class backgrounds.[35]
Starting in 1964, the antiwar movement began. Some opposed the war on moral grounds, rooting for the peasant Vietnamese against the modernizing capitalistic Americans. Opposition was centered among the black activists of the civil rights movement, and college students at elite universities.[36]
The Vietnam War was unprecedented for the intensity of media coverage—it has been called the first television war—as well as for the stridency of opposition to the war by the "New Left".[citation needed]
Despite their high media profile, antiwar activists never represented more than a relative minority of the American population, and most tended to be college educated and from higher than average income brackets. Polls showed that most Americans favored carrying out the war to a victorious conclusion, although conversely, few were willing to carry out mass mobilization and expansion of the draft in the pursuit of victory. Even Republican candidates in the 1968 presidential election, including Nixon and California governor Ronald Reagan, did not call for total war and the use of nuclear weapons on North Vietnam, believing that Barry Goldwater's hawkish stance may have cost him his bid for the White House four years earlier.
The Vietnam draft did have numerous flaws in it, especially its high reliance on lower middle class Americans while exempting college students, celebrities, athletes, and sons of Congressmen, although contrary to the claims of antiwar activists, most draftees were not impoverished white and black youths who had no other job opportunity. The average Vietnam draftee was white and from a lower middle class, blue collar background. Only a tiny handful of Ivy League graduates numbered among the 58,000 US servicemen killed or wounded in the eight years between 1965 and 1973.
The Vietnam draft in fact took fewer men than the Korean War draft and the conflict on the whole caused little disruption to most Americans' lives Although a sizable portion of US manufacturing was tied up in supporting the war effort, imports of low-cost goods from Asian countries made up for the shortfall and there was no rationing or cutbacks of consumer goods as had occurred in the previous conflicts of the 20th century. The US economy during the late 1960s indeed was booming, with unemployment under 5% and real GDP growth averaging 6% a year.
1968 and the divorce of the Democratic Party
In 1968, Johnson saw his overwhelming coalition of 1964 disintegrate. Liberal and moderate Republicans returned to their party, and supported Richard Nixon for the GOP nomination. George Wallace pulled off the majority of Southern whites, for a century the core of the Solid South in the Democratic Party. Increasingly, the blacks, students, and intellectuals were fiercely opposed to Johnson's policy. With Robert Kennedy hesitant about joining the contest, Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy, jumped in on an antiwar platform, building a coalition of intellectuals and college students. McCarthy was not nationally known, but came close to Johnson in the critical primary in New Hampshire, thanks to thousands of students who took off their counter-culture garb and went "clean for Gene" to campaign for him door-to-door. Johnson no longer commanded majority support in his party, so he took the initiative and dropped out of the race, promising to begin peace talks with the enemy.[37]
Seizing the opportunity caused by Johnson's departure from the race, Robert Kennedy then joined in and ran for the nomination on an antiwar platform that drew support from ethnics and blacks. Vice PresidentHubert Humphrey was too late to enter the primaries, but he did assemble strong support from traditional factions in the Democratic Party. Humphrey, an ardent New Dealer, supported Johnson's war policy. The greatest outburst of rioting in national history came in April 1968 following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr..[citation needed]
Kennedy was on stage to claim victory over McCarthy in the California primary when he was assassinated; McCarthy was unable to overcome Humphrey's support within the party elite. The Democratic national convention in Chicago was in a continuous uproar, with police confronting antiwar demonstrators in the streets and parks, and the bitter divisions of the Democratic Party revealing themselves inside the arena. Humphrey, with a coalition of state organizations, city bosses such as Mayor Richard Daley, and labor unions, won the nomination and ran against Republican Richard Nixon and independent George Wallace in the general election. Nixon appealed to what he claimed was the "silent majority" of moderate Americans who disliked the "hippie" counterculture. Nixon also promised "peace with honor" in ending the Vietnam War. He proposed the Nixon Doctrine to establish the strategy to turn over the fighting of the war to the Vietnamese, which he called "Vietnamization." Nixon won the presidency, but the Democrats continued to control Congress. The profound splits in the Democratic Party lasted for decades.[38]
A new consciousness of the inequality of American women began sweeping the nation, starting with the 1963 publication of Betty Friedan's best-seller, The Feminine Mystique, which explained how many housewives felt trapped and unfulfilled, assaulted American culture for its creation of the notion that women could only find fulfillment through their roles as wives, mothers, and keepers of the home, and argued that women were just as able as men to do every type of job. In 1966, Friedan and others established the National Organization for Women, or NOW, to act as an NAACP for women.[39][40]
Protests began, and the new "Women's Liberation Movement" grew in size and power, gained much media attention, and, by 1968, had replaced the Civil Rights Movement as the U.S.'s main social revolution.[citation needed] Marches, parades, rallies, boycotts, and pickets brought out thousands, sometimes millions; Friedan's Women's Strike for Equality (1970) was a nationwide success. The movement was split into factions by political ideology early on, however (NOW on the left, the Women's Equity Action League (WEAL) on the right, the National Women's Political Caucus (NWPC) in the center, and more radical groups formed by younger women on the far left).[citation needed]
Along with Friedan, Gloria Steinem was an important feminist leader, co-founding the NWPC, the Women's Action Alliance, and editing the movement's magazine, Ms. The proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, passed by Congress in 1972 and favored by about seventy percent of the American public, failed to be ratified in 1982, with only three more states needed to make it law. The nation's conservative women, led by activist Phyllis Schlafly, defeated the ERA by arguing that it degraded the position of the housewife, and made young women susceptible to the military draft.[41][42] There was also a disconnect between the older, relatively conservative Betty Friedan and the younger feminists, many of whom favored left-wing politics and radical ideas such as forced redistribution of jobs and income from men to women. Friedan's primary interest was also in workplace and income inequality, and she was largely unmoved by the abortion and sexual rights activists, feeling in particular that abortion was an unimportant issue. In addition, the feminist movement remained dominated by relatively affluent white women. It failed to attract many African-American females, who tended to be of the opinion that they were victims of their race rather than their gender and that many of the feminists came from comfortable middle-class backgrounds who had seldom experienced serious hardship in their lives. The women's liberation movement can be said to have effectively ended with the failure of the ERA in 1982 along with the more conservative climate of the Reagan years.
Abortion became a highly controversial issue with the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade in 1973 that women have a constitutional right to choose an abortion, and that cannot be nullified by state laws. Feminists celebrated the decisions but Catholics, who had opposed abortion since the 1890s, formed a coalition with Evangelical Protestants to try to reverse the decision. The Republican party began taking anti-abortion positions as the Democrats announced in favor of choice (that is, allowing women the right to choose an abortion). The issue has been a contentious one ever since.[43]
After 1973, over one million abortions were performed annually for the next decade; by 1977, abortion was a more common medical procedure in the US than tonsillectomies.[44][45]
The Sexual Revolution
The counterculture movement had rapidly dismantled many existing social taboos, and there was a growing acceptance of extramarital sex, divorce, and homosexuality. Some people advocated dropping all laws against sex between consenting adults, including prostitution, and LGBT people began the struggle for gay liberation.
A series of court rulings in the 1960s had struck down most anti-pornography laws, and under pressure from homosexual activist groups, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in 1973. In 1967, the Hays Code, a censorship guideline imposed on the motion picture industry since the 1930s, was lifted and replaced by a new film content rating system, and by the 1970s, there was a surge in sexually-explicit movies and social commentary coming from Hollywood.
Notable X-rated films that were widely screened in the early 1970s (provoking much public controversy, and in some states, legal prosecution) include Deep Throat, The Devil in Miss Jones, and Last Tango in Paris, starring Marlon Brando, whose performance was nominated for an Academy Award. A new wave of raunchier adult magazines such as Hustler and Penthouse arrived, making Playboy seem dull and old-fashioned.
Due in large part to the dramatic reduction in the risk of unwanted pregnancy engendered by the introduction of the Pill in 1960, not to mention the legalization of contraception nationwide by the Supreme Court decision in Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965, along with the steadily increasing acceptance of abortion and delayed marriages for career-minded young women influenced by second-wave feminism, or the chic rejection of the responsibilities of marriage altogether in favor of living together without raising a family, U.S. birthrates fell below replacement level starting in 1965 and remained depressed for almost 20 years; thus, children born during this period became known, at least in the popular press, as "baby busters" (as opposed to the "baby boomers" of the postwar years). Birthrates hit an all-time low during the post-OPEC recession in the mid-1970s.
As the decade drew to a close, however, there was a growing disgust among many conservative Americans over the excesses of the sexual revolution and liberalism, which would culminate in a revival of conservatism during the next decade, and a backlash against the incipient gay rights movement.[citation needed]
The Nixon Administration
Although generally regarded as a conservative, President Richard Nixon adopted many liberal positions, especially regarding health care, welfare spending, environmentalism and support for the arts and humanities. He maintained the high taxes and strong economic regulations of the New Deal era and he intervened aggressively in the economy. In August 1971, he took the nation off the gold standard of the Bretton Woods system and imposed (for a while) price and wage controls (Nixon Shock). During his final year in office, Nixon also proposed a national health care system.[46]
Nixon reoriented US foreign policy away from containment and toward detente with both the Soviet Union and China, playing them against each other (→ Cold war#Confrontation through détente (1962–79)). The detente policy with China is still the basic policy in the 21st century, while the Soviet Union (SU) rejected detente and used American toleration to over-expand their operations in Latin America, Asia and Africa (→ Foreign relations of the Soviet Union#The 1970s onwards). Both SU and China tolerated American policy in Vietnam, leaving their erstwhile ally North Vietnam stranded. Nixon promoted "Vietnamization," whereby the military of South Vietnam would be greatly enhanced so that U.S. forces could withdraw. The combat troops were gone by 1971 and Nixon could announce a peace treaty (Paris Peace Accords) in January 1973. His promises to Saigon that he would intervene if North Vietnam attacked were validated in 1972, but became worthless when he resigned in August 1974.
In May 1970, the antiwar effort escalated into violence, as National Guard troops shot at student demonstrators in the Kent State shootings. The nation's higher education system, especially the elite schools, virtually shut down.
In 1972, Nixon announced the end of mandatory military service which had been in effect since the Korean War, and the final American citizen to be conscripted received his draft notice in June 1973. The president also secured the passage of the 26th Amendment, lowering the minimum age of voting from 21 to 18.
The Nixon Administration seized on student demonstrations to mobilize a conservative majority consisting of middle-class suburbanites and working-class whites critical of radical extremists. Economics also played a role in this mobilization. As a result of the Vietnam War, and Lyndon Johnson's failure to raise taxes to pay for it, inflation shot up and real incomes declined. Many lower middle-class whites were critical of federal programs targeted towards blacks and the poor, with one observer noting that their wages were often only “a notch or so above the welfare payments of liberal states,” and yet “they are excluded from social programs targeted at the disadvantaged.”[47] Numerous articles published at that time focused on the feelings of discontent that existed amongst many Americans.[48][49][50][51][52]
Although middle-income Americans benefited from Great Society initiatives that also benefited low-income Americans, such as Medicare and federal aid to education,[53] and despite the fact that statistics indicated that blacks and the poor (with the two groups often treated as one) lived an immeasurably more painful existence than lower middle-class whites, there existed a widespread feeling that slum residents and ghetto residents were now in the driver’s seat. A poll taken by Newsweek in 1969 found that a plurality of middle Americans believed that blacks had a better chance of getting adequate schooling, a decent home, and a good job. In that same poll, 85% believed that black militants were let off too easily, 84% that campus demonstrators were treated too leniently, and 79% that most people receiving welfare could help themselves. Analysts traced sentiments such as these to the economic insecurity of those dubbed the “middle Americans”, those earning between $5,000 and $15,000 a year and including many white ethnics, who were 55% of the American population. Most of these middle Americans were blue-collar workers, white-collar employees, school teachers, and lower-echelon bureaucrats. Although not poor, according to William H. Chafe they suffered from many of the tensions of marginal prosperity, such as indebtness, inflation, and the fear of losing what they had worked so hard to attain. From 1956 to 1966, income had increased by 86%, while the cost of borrowing had gone up even more, by 113.% Many families were hard pressed to hold on to their “middle-class” status, particularly at a time when rising inflation brought an end to increases in real income. Struggling to get by, many middle Americans viewed antipoverty expenditures and black demands as representing a threat to their own well-being.[47]
Irregular employment was also a problem, with 20% of workers in 1969 unemployed for some period of time, a figure that rose to 23% in 1970.[54] Many people also had little or no savings by the end of the Sixties, with a fifth of the population in 1969 having no liquid assets, and nearly half the population having less than $500.[55]
By the end of 1967, as noted by William H. Chafe,
‘the shrill attacks on “establishment” values from the left were matched by an equally vociferous defense of traditional values by those who were proud of all their society had achieved. If feminists, blacks, antiwar demonstrators, and advocates for the poor attacked the status quo with uncompromising vehemence, millions of other Americans rallied around the flag and made clear their intent to uphold the lifestyle and values to which they had devoted their lives. Significantly, pollsters Richard Scammon and Ben Watterburg pointed out, the protesters still represented only a small minority of the country. The great majority of Americans were “unyoung, unpoor, and unblack; they [are] middle-aged, middle class, and middle minded.” It was not a scenario from which dissidents could take much comfort.’[47]
Riding on high approval ratings, Nixon was re-elected in 1972, defeating the liberal, anti-war George McGovern in a landslide with all states except Massachusetts. At the same time, Nixon became a lightning rod for much public hostility regarding the war in Vietnam. The morality of conflict continued to be an issue, and incidents such as the My Lai Massacre further eroded support for the war and increased efforts of Vietnamization.[citation needed]
The growing Watergate scandal was a major disaster for Nixon, eroding his political support in public opinion and in Washington. However he did manage to secure large-scale funding for South Vietnam, much of which was wasted. The United States withdrew its troops from Vietnam before the Paris Peace Accords in 1973. However, Watergate resulted in significant Democrat gains in the 1974 midterm elections and when the new 94th Congress convened the following January, it immediately voted to terminate all aid to South Vietnam in addition to passing a bill forbidding all further US military intervention in Southeast Asia. President Ford was against this, but as Congress had a veto-proof majority, he was forced to accept. South Vietnam rapidly collapsed as the North invaded it in force, and Saigon fell to the NVA on April 30, 1975. Later nearly one million Vietnamese managed to flee to the U.S. as refugees. The impact on the U.S. was muted, with few political recriminations, but it did leave a "Vietnam Syndrome" that cautioned against further military interventions anywhere else. Nixon (and his next two successors Ford and Carter) had dropped the containment policy and were not willing to intervene anywhere.[56]
"Stagflation"
At the same time that President Johnson persuaded Congress to accept a tax cut in 1964, he was rapidly increasing spending for both domestic programs and for the war in Vietnam. The result was a major expansion of the money supply, resting largely on government deficits, which pushed prices rapidly upward. However, inflation also rested on the nation's steadily declining supremacy in international trade and, moreover, the decline in the global economic, geopolitical, commercial, technological, and cultural preponderance of the United States since the end of World War II. After 1945, the U.S. enjoyed easy access to raw materials and substantial markets for its goods abroad; the U.S. was responsible for around a third of the world's industrial output because of the devastation of postwar Europe. By the 1960s, not only were the industrialized nations now competing for increasingly scarce raw commodities, but Third World suppliers were increasingly demanding higher prices. The automobile, steel, and electronics industries were also beginning to face stiff competition in the U.S. domestic market by foreign producers who had more modern factories and higher-quality products.[57]
Inflation had been an extremely gentle 3% a year from 1949 to 1969, but as the 70s unfolded, this began to change and the cost of energy and consumer products began to steadily climb. In addition to the increased manufacturing competition from Europe and Japan, the US faced other difficulties due to the general complacency that set in during the years of prosperity. Many Americans assumed the good times would last forever and there was little attempt at investing in infrastructure and modernized manufacturing outside of the defense and aerospace sectors. The boundless optimism and belief in science and progress that characterized the 1950s–60s quickly eroded and gave way to a general cynicism and distrust of technology among Americans, fueled by growing concern over the negative effects on the environment by air and water pollution from automobiles and manufacturing, especially events such as the Cuyahoga River Fire in Cleveland, Ohio in 1969 and the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979.[58] Nixon promised to tackle sluggish growth and inflation, known as "stagflation", through higher taxes and lower spending; this met stiff resistance in Congress. As a result, Nixon changed course and opted to control the currency; his appointees to the Federal Reserve sought a contraction of the money supply through higher interest rates but to little avail; the tight money policy did little to curb inflation. The cost of living rose a cumulative 15% during Nixon's first two years in office.[citation needed]
Nixon's primary interests as president were in the world of diplomacy and foreign policy; by his own admission, domestic affairs bored him. His first Secretary of the Treasury, David M. Kennedy, was a soft-spoken Mormon businessman whom the president paid little attention to. In January 1971, Kennedy stepped down from office and was replaced by Texas governor and Lyndon Johnson confidante John Connally. By the summer of 1971, Nixon was under strong public pressure to act decisively to reverse the economic tide. On August 15, 1971, he ended the convertibility of the U.S. dollar into gold, which meant the demise of the Bretton Woods system, in place since World War II. As a result, the U.S. dollar fell in world markets. The devaluation helped stimulate American exports, but it also made the purchase of vital inputs, raw materials, and finished goods from abroad more expensive. Nixon was reluctant to perform this step as he became convinced that moving entirely to fiat currency would give the Soviet Union the idea that capitalism was crumbling. Also, on August 15, 1971, under the provisions of the Economic Stabilization Act of 1970, Nixon implemented "Phase I" of his economic plan: a ninety-day freeze on all wages and prices above their existing levels. In November, "Phase II" entailed mandatory guidelines for wage and price increases to be issued by a federal agency. Inflation subsided temporarily, but the recession continued with rising unemployment. To combat the recession, Nixon reversed course and adopted an expansionary monetary and fiscal policy. In "Phase III", the strict wage and price controls were lifted. As a result, inflation resumed its upward spiral. The administration largely remained aloof; practically all press conferences and public statements by the White House dealt with foreign policy issues despite Gallup polls showing that the state of the economy was of concern to 80% of Americans. Connally stepped down as Treasury Secretary in 1973 and Secretary of Labor George Schultz took over the post.[59]
The administration's continued preoccupation with foreign policy matters stood in stark contrast to Gallup polls showing that the economy and cost of living was the primary concert for most Americans. Virtually all White House press conferences in 1973 dealt with Vietnam, superpower relations, and Watergate while almost totally ignoring economic issues that had a far more immediate impact on Americans' lives.
Inflationary pressures led to key shifts in economic policies. Following the Great Depression of the 1930s, recessions—periods of slow economic growth and high unemployment—were viewed as the greatest of economic threats, which could be counteracted by heavy government spending or cutting taxes so that consumers would spend more. In the 1970s, major price increases, particularly for energy, created a strong fear of inflation; as a result, government leaders concentrated more on controlling inflation than on combating recession by limiting spending, resisting tax cuts, and reining in growth in the money supply. The erratic economic programs of the Nixon administration were indicative of a broader national confusion about the prospects for future American prosperity. Nixon and his advisers had a poor understanding of the complexities of the global economy (Henry Kissinger once confessed that economics were mostly a blank spot to him) and all of them belonged to the generation that came of age during the New Deal era and believed strongly in government intervention in the economy. They preferred quick, dirty, short-term fixes to complex economy issues. These underlying problems set the stage for conservative reaction, a more aggressive foreign policy, and a retreat from welfare-based solutions for minorities and the poor that would characterize the subsequent decades.[60]
Crime, riots and decay of the inner cities
The urban crisis of the 1960s continued to escalate in the 1970s, with major episodes of riots in many cities every summer. The postwar suburbanization boom had left America's inner cities neglected, as middle-class whites gradually moved out. Rundown housing was increasingly filled by an underclass, with high unemployment rates and high crime rates. Drugs became the most lucrative industry in the inner-city, with well-funded, well armed gangs fighting it out for control of their Market. While the major decline in manufacturing came later, some industries declined sharply, such as textiles in New England. After the turmoil of the late 1960s and the advent of the Great Society, the urban inner cities began to sharply deteriorate. Nationwide crime rates, which had been low during the period leading up to 1965, suddenly started going up in 1967 and would remain so for the next quarter-century, a vexing social problem that plagued American society."Law and Order" became a conservative campaign theme, using the argument that liberalism had subsidized unrest and failed to cure it.[61]
Although urban decay affected all major cities, New York City was hit especially hard by the loss of its traditional industries, in particular garment manufacturing. The city, which had once been the cultural, business, and industrial center of the nation, declined during the 1970s into a dystopian condition. Violent crime and drugs became a seemingly insurmountable problem in New York. Times Square became a Mecca for adult businesses, prostitutes, pimps, muggers, and rapists, and the subway system was in disrepair and dangerous to ride in. With the city facing bankruptcy in 1975, Mayor Abraham Beame requested a Federal bailout, but President Ford declined. In July 1977, a power blackout caused a rash of looting and destruction in mostly African-American and Hispanic neighborhoods. That year, Edward Koch was elected mayor with the promise of turning New York around; a process that gradually succeeded over the next 15 years.[62]
To make matters worse, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) began displaying its strength; oil, fueling automobiles and homes in a country increasingly dominated by suburbs (where large homes and automobile-ownership are more common), became an economic and political tool for Third World nations to begin fighting for their concerns. Following the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Arab members of OPEC announced they would no longer ship petroleum to nations supporting Israel, that is, to the United States and Western Europe. At the same time, other OPEC nations agreed to raise their prices 400%. This resulted in the 1973 world oil shock, during which U.S. motorists faced long lines at gas stations. Public and private facilities closed down to save on heating oil; and factories cut production and laid off workers. No single factor did more than the oil embargo to produce the soaring inflation of the 1970s, though this event was part of a much larger energy crisis that characterized the decade.[63]
The U.S. government response to the embargo was quick but of limited effectiveness. A national maximum speed limit of 55mph (88km/h) was imposed to help reduce consumption. President Nixon named William E. Simon as "Energy Czar", and in 1977, a cabinet-level Department of Energy was created, leading to the creation of the United States' Strategic Petroleum Reserve, not a new idea since the government in the 1970s still had a storage facility in the Midwest containing several million pounds of helium, a relic from the 1920s when military strategists envisioned airships as a major weapon of war. The National Energy Act of 1978 was also a response to this crisis. Rationing of gasoline became unpopular.[64]
Tens of thousands of local gasoline stations closed during the fuel crisis. This station at Potlatch, Washington was turned into a religious meeting hall.
The U.S. "Big Three" automakers' first order of business after Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards were enacted was to downsize existing automobile categories. By the end of the 1970s, huge 121-inch wheelbase vehicles with a 4,500 pound GVW (gross weight) were a thing of the past. Before the mass production of automatic overdrive transmissions and electronic fuel injection, the traditional front engine/rear wheel drive layout was being phased out for the more efficient and/or integrated front engine/front wheel drive, starting with compact cars. Using the Volkswagen Rabbit as the archetype, much of Detroit went to front wheel drive after 1980 in response to CAFE's 27.5 mpg mandate. The automobile industry faced a precipitous decline during the 1970s due to climbing inflation, energy prices, and complacency during the long years of prosperity in the 50s–60s. There was a loss of interest in sports and performance cars from 1972 onward, and newly mandated safety and emissions regulations caused many American cars to become heavy and suffer from drivability problems.[65]
Chrysler, the smallest of the Big Three, began suffering a growing financial crisis starting in 1976, but President Carter declined their request for a federal bailout so long as the company's existing management remained in place. In 1978, Lee Iacocca was hired as Chrysler president following his firing from Ford and inherited a company that was quickly teetering towards bankruptcy. Iacocca managed to convince a reluctant US Congress to approve Federal loan guarantees for the struggling auto manufacturer. Although Chrysler's troubles were the most well-publicized, Ford was also struggling and near bankruptcy by 1980. Only the huge General Motors managed to continue with business as usual.[66]
From 1972 to 1978, industrial productivity increased by only 1% a year (compared with an average growth rate of 3.2% from 1948 to 1955), while the standard of living in the United States fell to fifth in the world, with Denmark, West Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland surging ahead.[47]
The central goal of the Nixon administration was to radically transform relations with the two chief enemies, the Soviet Union and China, by abandoning containment and adopting a peaceful relationship called detente.[67] In 1972–1973, the superpowers sought each other's help. In February 1972, Nixon made a historic visit to Communist China. Relations with that country had been largely hostile since the Korean War, and the United States still maintained that the Nationalist regime in Taiwan was the legitimate government of China. There had been a number of diplomatic meetings with Chinese officials in Warsaw over the years, however, and President Kennedy had planned to reestablish ties in his second term, but his death, along with the Vietnam War and the Cultural Revolution, caused any chance of normalized relations to disappear for the next several years. Nixon, once a staunch supporter of Chiang Kai-shek, came increasingly to believe in restoring relations with the Communist government by the late 1960s. In August 1971, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger made a secret trip to Beijing. The official visit by the president was a nationally televised event, and the US delegation met with Chairman Mao Zedong and other Chinese leaders. Restoring relations between China and the US was also an important matter of Cold War politics. Since the Soviet Union had become bitterly hostile to China since the Cultural Revolution, both nations decided that, regardless of political and ideological differences, the saying "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" held true. After the China trip, Nixon met Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and signed the SALT Treaty in Vienna.[68]
Like most of Richard Nixon's policies, detente was opportunistic and based around short-term, immediate goals rather than a long-term strategic vision. Nixon and his advisers did not envision a world without Soviet communism as Ronald Reagan would later; to them, the superpower confrontation was a fact of life, with no reason to believe it would change in their lifetimes. Since the Soviet Union was a permanent part of the geopolitical landscape, there was no choice but to negotiate with it. Nixon's foreign policy measures had negative consequences in the long run, since the Kremlin gained an increased sense of legitimacy as a form of government that was different from the democratic, capitalist Western countries, but no less valid, instead of being considered a rogue regime and a danger to the free world. The same effect also applied to China, whose leaders also gained a sense of legitimacy on the world stage that they had not enjoyed before.
As a result of detente, numerous agreements were hammered out with Moscow for trade, scientific, and cultural exchanges. To cynics, these agreements appeared to be little more than a license for unlimited Soviet espionage and theft of military and industrial secrets. Indeed the KGB had operatives at every major US corporation, government agency, and defense contractor working around the clock to obtain any secrets they could. While this was going on, Soviet defense spending continued to climb higher and higher while the US military in the 1970s was in a poor state of preparedness with low morale, poor quality enlistees, often from criminal backgrounds, drug abuse, and racial tensions. The Soviet nuclear arsenal was formidable and getting stronger every year, with MIRV-capable ICBMs and a vast stockpile of nuclear warheads. The US military had no comparable answer, fielding only small Minuteman and Polaris missiles and a fleet of aging Titan IIs with single warheads. Soviet civil defense preparations were also vast, with all measures taken to ensure survival of government officials and key defense industries in the event of nuclear Armageddon. US civil defense preparations never came close. The NATO allies were even worse off, with the 20 member countries having a gaggle of antiquated and incompatible military hardware that could not share spare parts or ammunition types (Warsaw Pact members were uniformly armed with Soviet hardware).[69]
Watergate
Nixon to Haldeman, heard on tapes ordered released for the trial of Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Mitchell: "I don't give a shit what happens. I want you all to stonewall it, let them plead the Fifth Amendment, cover up or anything else, if it'll save it, save this plan. That's the whole point. We're going to protect our people if we can."
After a tumultuous internal battle, the Democrats nominated liberal South Dakota Senator George McGovern for president. Nixon effectively eliminated any major issue McGovern could build his platform on by ending the draft, initiating the withdrawal from Vietnam, and restoring ties with China. McGovern was ridiculed as the candidate of "acid, amnesty, and abortion" and on Election Day, Nixon carried every state except Massachusetts. However, it was a personal victory, as the Democrats retained control of Congress.[70]
Nixon was investigated for the instigation and cover-up of the burglary of the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate office complex In Washington. The House Judiciary Committee opened formal and public impeachment hearings against Nixon on May 9, 1974. Revelation after revelation astonished the nation, providing very strong evidence that Nixon had planned the cover-up of the burglary to protect his own reelection campaign. Rather than face impeachment by the House of Representatives and a possible conviction by the Senate, he resigned, effective August 9, 1974. His successor, Gerald R. Ford, a moderate Republican, issued a preemptive pardon of Nixon, ending the investigations of Nixon but eroding his own popularity.[71]
Aware that he had not been elected to either the office of president or vice-president, Gerald Ford addressed the nation immediately after he took the oath of office, pledging to be "President of all the people," and asking for their support and prayers, saying "Our long national nightmare is over."[72]
Ford's administration witnessed the final collapse of South Vietnam after the Democrat-controlled Congress voted to terminate all aid to that country. Ford's attempts to curb the growing problem of inflation met with little success, and his only solution seemed to be encouraging people to wear shirt buttons with the slogan WIN (Whip Inflation Now) on them. He also appointed a Supreme Court justice, John Paul Stevens, who retired in 2010.
During Ford's administration, the nation also celebrated its 200th birthday on July 4, 1976, widely observed with national, state, and local celebrations. The event brought some enthusiasm to an American populace that was feeling cynical and disillusioned from Vietnam, Watergate, and economic difficulties. Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon just before the 1974 midterm elections was not well received, and the Democrats made major gains, bringing to power a generation of young liberal activists, many of them suspicious of the military and the CIA. The Church Committee investigated numerous questionable activities performed by the CIA since the 1950s, including large-scale domestic surveillance, involuntary testing of psychotropic drugs on American citizens, and support for various unsavory Third World political figures. A massive six volume report on CIA actions over the last 20 years was released by Congress. As such, the amount of CIA domestic surveillance programs was dramatically cut from almost 5000 to 626 in 1976, and by the Reagan years, a mere 32 such programs were in operation. Most of the CIA agents responsible for these actions received no punishment and all served out their careers. Nonetheless, the murder of CIA agent Richard Welch by leftist militants in December 1975 provoked public outrage and Welch was given a hero's funeral and buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Welch's identity had been outed by Fifth Estate, an organization founded by writer and left-wing activist Norman Mailer, and the nature of his death merely resulted in increased public sympathy for the agency. Also by the mid-1970s, the Justice Department significantly reduced its list of subversive organizations (young hirees for government agencies in the 1970s were still being asked if they had served in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the 1930s). Other restrictions barring Communist Party members and homosexuals from government jobs were lifted. The FBI's extensive surveillance programs also became exposed to the public during the '70s. An unknown person or persons managed to steal documents from an FBI field office divulging that the bureau had since the 1960s spent $300,000 on 1000 informants to infiltrate the 2500 member Socialist Workers Party. Congress also passed an act forbidding American citizens from traveling abroad for the purpose of "assassination", although exactly what this meant was not clarified, and the act was subject to being revoked by the president at any time in the interest of national security[73][74]
The Watergate scandal was still fresh in the voters' minds when former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, a Washington, DC outsider known for his integrity, prevailed over nationally better-known politicians in the Democratic Party Presidential primaries in 1976. Faith in government was at a low ebb, and so was voter turnout. Carter became the first candidate from the Deep South to be elected President since the American Civil War. He stressed the fact that he was an outsider, not part of the Beltway political system, and that he was not a lawyer. Carter undertook various populist measures such as walking to the Capitol for his inauguration and wearing a sweater in the Oval Office to encourage energy conservation. The new president began his administration with a Democratic Congress. Democrats held a two-thirds supermajority in the House, and a filibuster-proof three-fifths supermajority in the Senate for the first time since the 89th United States Congress in 1965, and the last time until the 111th United States Congress in 2009. Carter's major accomplishments consisted of the creation of a national energy policy and the consolidation of governmental agencies, resulting in two new cabinet departments, the United States Department of Energy and the United States Department of Education. Congress successfully deregulated the trucking, airline, railway, finance, communications, and oil industries, and bolstered the social security system. In terms of representation, Carter appointed record numbers of women and minorities to significant governmental and judiciary posts, but nevertheless managed to feud with feminist leaders. Environmentalists promoted strong legislation on environmental protection, through the expansion of the National Park Service in Alaska, creating 103 million new acres of land. Carter failed to implement a national health plan or to reform the tax system, as he had promised in his campaign, and the Republicans won the House in the midterm elections.[75]
Following the post-OPEC embargo recession in 1974–75, economic growth resumed in 1976 and continued through 1978. Despite high rates of consumer spending, inflation and interest rates continued to be a persistent problem. But after the Iranian Hostage Crisis began in the spring of 1979, the US economy sunk into a deep recession, the worst since the Great Depression.
Emphasizing the energy crisis, President Carter mandated restrictions on speed limits and the heating of buildings. In 1979, Carter gave a nationally televised address in which he blamed the nation's troubles on the crisis of confidence among the American people. This "malaise speech" further damaged his reelection bid because it seemed to express a pessimistic outlook and blamed the American people for his own failed policies.[76]
Foreign affairs
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin acknowledge applause during a joint session of Congress in Washington, D.C., during which President Jimmy Carter announced the results of the Camp David Accords, 18 September 1978.
Carter's term is best known for the 444-day Iranian hostage crisis, and the move away from détente with the Soviet Union to a renewed Cold War.[75]
In foreign affairs, Carter's accomplishments consisted of the Camp David Accords, the Panama Canal Treaties, the creation of full diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China, and the negotiation of the SALT II Treaty. In addition, he championed human rights throughout the world and used human rights as the center of his administration's foreign policy.[77]
Although foreign policy remained quiet during Carter's first two years, the Soviet Union appeared to be getting stronger. It was expanding its influence into the Third World along with the help of allies such as Cuba, and the pace of Soviet military spending steadily rose. In 1979, Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan to prop up a Marxist regime there. In protest, Carter declared that the US would boycott the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. After nine years of fighting, the Soviets were unable to suppress Afghan rebels and pulled out of the country.[78][79] Soviet espionage of the US government, military, and major corporations during this period was relentless and little was done to stop it. In June 1978, Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn gave the commencement address to the graduating class of Harvard and blasted the US for its perceived failure to stand up to communist tyranny. Solzhenitsyn's speech sent shock waves through an America which was suffering from post-Vietnam syndrome and preferred to forget that the eight years of war in Southeast Asia had happened. Moscow continued to test the limits of how much they could get away with. During the mid-1970s, the Kremlin announced that it would allow a number of Russian Jews to move to the United States, however it came out too late that most of them were criminals and the entire exercise amounted to little more than a scheme by the USSR to empty their prisons of "anti-social elements". The end result was a wave of organized crime in the Northeastern US, and pointless bureaucratic feuds in Washington meant that no action was taken to combat them until the 1990s. Cuba engaged in similar trickery during the 1970s by allowing political dissidents to move to the US, all of whom proved to be criminals, homosexuals, mental patients, and other undesirables.
Meanwhile, American forces in Europe, neglected during the Vietnam War, were expected to face the increasingly powerful Warsaw Pact with 1950s-era weaponry. The US military faced a sort of psychological crisis in the aftermath of Vietnam and the ending of the draft, with low morale, racial tensions, and drug use. Entirely new methods of recruiting were attempted.[80][81]
The Carter Administration saw the sudden, violent end of the 2500 year old Iranian monarchy. After the CIA-engineered coup in 1953 restored Shah Reza Pahlavi to power, he was feted as a US ally for the next quarter century and often referred to as a "champion" of the free world despite running a police state, and one that had great extremes of wealth and poverty, a small, Westernized middle class in Tehran contrasting with entire provinces that lacked running water or electricity, and where traditional lifestyles continued much as they had for centuries.
Up to 1970, the US had limited weapons sales to its Middle Eastern allies (which consisted mainly of Iran and Israel) in the hopes of preventing a regional arms race. The Nixon Administration lifted those restrictions that year, and the Shah obliged by purchasing expensive new military items, including F-14 fighter jets over the protests of Defense Department officials that Iran had no military need for the aircraft and selling them risked the possibility of compromising sensitive information. Pahlavi argued that he needed the military hardware to defend against the Soviet-backed Baathist regime in neighboring Iraq, until 1975 when he signed a nonaggression pact with Baghdad, after which both countries joined in on military attacks against the Kurds, who had also been a US ally. Despite owing his livelihood to Washington, the Shah nonetheless did not hesitate to join in with fellow Middle Eastern states in conspiring to raise oil prices in 1973.
The 2500th anniversary of Iranian monarchy was celebrated in 1975 with an enormous, expensive series of events in an extremely poor country, and the growing populist backlash against the Shah would erupt a few years later. Up until 1979, the State Department took it as writ that if the Shah were ever ousted, it would come from the small, Soviet-backed Tudeh Party. Anyone who knew enough about Iranian society could have predicted the arrival of the Islamic Republic under Ayatollah Khomeni, but such individuals were few and far between in the US government and intelligence agencies.
The high point of Carter's foreign-policy came in 1978, when he mediated the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel, ending the state of war that had existed between those two countries since 1967.
In 1979, Carter completed the process begun by Nixon of restoring ties with China. Full diplomatic relations were established on January 1 of that year despite protests from Senator Barry Goldwater and some other conservative Republicans. Unofficial relations with Taiwan were maintained. Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping then visited the US in February 1979.
Carter also tried to place another cap on the arms race with a SALT II agreement in 1979, and faced the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the Nicaraguan Revolution, and the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan. In 1979, Carter allowed the former Iranian Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi into the United States for medical treatment. In response Iranian militants seized the American embassy in the Iranian hostage crisis, taking 52 Americans hostage and demanding the Shah's return to Iran for trial and execution. The hostage crisis continued for 444 days and dominated the last year of Carter's presidency, ruining the President's tattered reputation for competence in foreign affairs. Carter's responses to the crisis, from a "Rose Garden strategy" of staying inside the White House to the failed military attempt to rescue the hostages, did not inspire confidence in the administration by the American people.
The 1980 United States presidential election was the 49th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on November 4, 1980. Republican nominee Ronald Reagan defeated incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter. Due to the rise of conservativism following Reagan's victory, some historians consider the election to be a realigning election that marked the start of the "Reagan Era".
The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) were two rounds of bilateral conferences and corresponding international treaties involving the United States and the Soviet Union, the Cold War superpowers, on the issue of arms control. The two rounds of talks and agreements were SALT I and SALT II.
The history of the United States from 1980 until 1991 includes the last year of the Jimmy Carter presidency, eight years of the Ronald Reagan administration, and the first three years of the George H. W. Bush presidency, up to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Plagued by the Iran hostage crisis, runaway inflation, and mounting domestic opposition, Carter lost the 1980 presidential election to Republican Reagan.
Détente is the easing of strained relations, especially in a political situation, through verbal communication. The term originates in the time of the Triple Entente and Entente Cordiale in reference to an easing of tensions between England and France who, subsequent to being commingled polities under Norman rule, were warring rivals for the better part of a millennium but pursuant to a policy of détente became enduring allies.
Containment is a geopolitical strategy to stop the expansion of an enemy. It is best known as a Cold War foreign policy of the United States and its allies to prevent the spread of communism. As a component of the Cold War, this policy was a response to a series of moves by the Soviet Union to increase communist influence in Eastern Europe, China, Korea, Africa, Vietnam, and Latin America. Containment represented a middle-ground position between detente and rollback.
A United States Presidential doctrine comprises the key goals, attitudes, or stances for United States foreign affairs outlined by a President. Most presidential doctrines are related to the Cold War. Though many U.S. Presidents had themes related to their handling of foreign policy, the term doctrine generally applies to Presidents such as James Monroe, Harry S. Truman, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, all of whom had doctrines which more completely characterized their foreign policy.
The presidency of Gerald Ford began on August 9, 1974, when Gerald Ford became President of the United States upon the resignation of Richard Nixon from office, and ended on January 20, 1977, a period of 895 days. Ford had served as Vice President of the United States since December 6, 1973, following Spiro Agnew's resignation from that office. The 38th United States president, Ford has the distinction of being the first, and to date the only person to serve as president without being elected to either the presidency or the vice presidency. His presidency ended following his defeat in the 1976 presidential election by Democrat Jimmy Carter.
The presidency of Ronald Reagan began on January 20, 1981, when Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as the 40th President of the United States, and ended on January 20, 1989. Reagan, a Republican, took office following a landslide victory over Democratic incumbent President Jimmy Carter in the 1980 presidential election. Reagan was succeeded by his Vice President, George H. W. Bush, who won the 1988 presidential election with Reagan's support. Reagan's 1980 election resulted from a dramatic conservative shift to the right in American politics, including a loss of confidence in liberal, New Deal, and Great Society programs and priorities that had dominated the national agenda since the 1930s.
In political studies, surveys have been conducted in order to construct historical rankings of the success of individuals who have served as President of the United States. Ranking systems are usually based on surveys of academic historians and political scientists or popular opinion. The rankings focus on the presidential achievements, leadership qualities, failures and faults.
Diplomacy is a 1994 book written by former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. It is a sweep of the history of international relations and the art of diplomacy, largely concentrating on the 20th century and the Western World. Kissinger, as a great believer in the realist school of international relations, focuses strongly upon the concepts of the balance of power in Europe prior to World War I, raison d'État and Realpolitik throughout the ages of diplomatic relations. Kissinger also provides insightful critiques of the counter realist diplomatic tactics of collective security, developed in the Charter of the League of Nations, and self determination, also a principle of the League. Kissinger also examines the use of the sphere of influence arguments put forth by the Soviet Union in Eastern and Southern Europe after World War II; an argument that has been maintained by contemporary Russian foreign relations with regard to Ukraine, Georgia and other former Soviet satellites in Central Asia.
The Cold War (1979–1985) refers to the phase of a deterioration in relations between the Soviet Union and the West arising from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. With the election of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1979, and United States President Ronald Reagan in 1980, a corresponding change in Western foreign policy approach toward the Soviet Union was marked with the abandonment of détente in favor of the Reagan Doctrine policy of rollback, with the stated goal of dissolving Soviet influence in Soviet Bloc countries. During this time, the threat of nuclear war had reached new heights not seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The Cold War (1962–1979) refers to the phase within the Cold War that spanned the period between the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis in late October 1962, through the détente period beginning in 1969, to the end of détente in the late 1970s.
Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. was an American politician who served as the 38th president of the United States from August 1974 to January 1977. Before his accession to the presidency, Ford served as the 40th vice president of the United States from December 1973 to August 1974. Ford is the only person to have served as both vice president and president without being elected to either office by the United States Electoral College.
Liberalism in the United States is a broad political philosophy centered on what many see as the unalienable rights of the individual. The fundamental liberal ideals of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion for all belief systems and the separation of church and state, right to due process and equality under the law are widely accepted as a common foundation across the spectrum of liberal thought.
The relations between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1922–1991) succeeded the previous relations from 1776 to 1917 and predate today's relations that began in 1992. Full diplomatic relations between the two countries were established late (1933) due to mutual hostility. During World War II, the two countries were briefly allies. At the end of the war, the first signs of post-war mistrust and hostility began to appear between the two countries, escalating into the Cold War; a period of tense hostile relations, with periods of détente.
The presidency of Jimmy Carter began at noon EST on January 20, 1977, when Jimmy Carter was inaugurated as the 39th President of the United States, and ended on January 20, 1981. Carter, a Democrat, took office after defeating incumbent Republican President Gerald Ford in the 1976 presidential election. His presidency ended with his defeat in the 1980 presidential election by Republican nominee Ronald Reagan.
The presidency of Richard Nixon began on January 20, 1969, when Richard Nixon was inaugurated as the 37th President of the United States, and ended on August 9, 1974 when he resigned from office, the first U.S. president ever to do so. A Republican, Nixon took office after the 1968 presidential election, in which he defeated Hubert Humphrey, the then–incumbent Vice President. Four years later, in 1972, he won reelection in a landslide victory over U.S. Senator George McGovern.
The presidency of Gerald Ford began on August 9, 1974, when Gerald Ford became President of the United States, and ended on January 20, 1977, a span of 895 days. Ford, the 38th United States president, succeeded Richard Nixon, who had resigned from office. Prior to this he was the 40th Vice President of the United States, serving from 1973 until President Richard Nixon's resignation in 1974. He was the first person appointed to the vice presidency under the terms of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, following the resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew on October 10, 1973. Ford has the distinction of being the first, and to date the only person to have served as both vice president and president without being elected to either office.
References
↑ Steven F. Hayward, The Age of Reagan, 1964–1980: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order (2001)
↑ Colin Dueck, Hard Line: The Republican Party and U.S. Foreign Policy since World War II (2010).
↑ Quoted in M. J. Heale, "The Sixties as History: A Review of the Political Historiography", Reviews in American History v. 33#1 (2005) 133–152 at p. 132
↑ Robert Dallek, Lyndon B. Johnson: Portrait of a President (2004)
↑ Irving Bernstein, Guns or Butter: The Presidency of Lyndon Johnson (1994)
↑ David Edwin Harrell, Jr., Edwin S. Gaustad, John B. Boles, Sally Foreman Griffith, Randall M. Miller, Randall B. Woods, Unto a Good Land: A History of the American People (2005) pp 1052–53
↑ James Reichley, Conservatives in an Age of Change: The Nixon and Ford Administrations (1982)
↑ Bruce J. Schulman and Julian E. Zelizer, eds. Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s (Harvard UP, 2008) pp 1–10.
↑ Andrew Busch, Regan's victory: the presidential election of 1980 and the rise of the right (UP of Kansas, 2005).
↑ J. Lull, and S. Hinerman, "The search for scandal' in J. Lull & S. Hinerman, eds. Media scandals: Morality and desire in the popular culture marketplace (1997) pp. 1–33.
↑ Timothy E. Cook and Paul Gronke. "The skeptical American: Revisiting the meanings of trust in government and confidence in institutions." Journal of Politics 67.3 (2005): 784–803.
↑ James O. Finckenauer, "Crime as a national political issue: 1964–76: From law and order to domestic tranquility." NPPA Journal 24.1 (1978): 13–27. Abstract
↑ James Davison Hunter, Culture wars: The struggle to control the family, art, education, law, and politics in America (1992).
↑ Paul Boyer, "The Evangelical Resurgence in 1970s American Protestantism" in Schulman and Zelizer, eds. Rightward bound pp 29–51.:
↑ Katy Marquardt (August 13, 2009). "10 Places to Relive the '60s". U.S. News & World Report. Retrieved 2009-12-06. Many of the most crucial events of the 1960s—including the civil rights victories, antiwar protests, and the sweeping cultural revolution—left few physical traces.
↑ Sanford D. Horwitt (March 22, 1998). "The Children". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 2009-12-06. He notes that in the 1950s, black protests were pursued mainly through the courts and led by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In the 1960s, the emphasis was on direct action led not only by Martin Luther King Jr. but also by an unlikely array of young activists, many of them college students in Nashville, where Halberstam was a young reporter for the Tennessean at the time.
↑ Hugh Davis Graham, The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy, 1960–1972 (1990)
↑ Thomas E. Cavanagh, "Changes in American voter turnout, 1964–1976." Political Science Quarterly (1981): 53–65. in JSTOR
↑ Gregory L. Schneider, The Conservative Century: From Reaction to Revolution (2009) pp 91–118
↑ Irving Bernstein, Guns or Butter: The Presidency of Lyndon Johnson 1994 (1994)
↑ Bernstein, Guns or Butter: The Presidency of Lyndon Johnson 1994 (1994)
↑ Peter Braunstein, and Michael William Doyle, eds., Imagine nation: the American counterculture of the 1960s and '70s (2002).
↑ John C. Whitaker, "Nixon's domestic policy: Both liberal and bold in retrospect", Presidential Studies Quarterly, Winter 1996, Vol. 26 Issue 1, pp 131–53
1 2 3 4 The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II by William H. Chafe
↑ Michael W. Flamm, Law and order: Street crime, civil unrest, and the crisis of liberalism in the 1960s (2005).
↑ Martin Shefter, Political crisis/fiscal crisis: The collapse and revival of New York City (Columbia University Press, 1992).
↑ David Horowitz, Jimmy Carter and the Energy Crisis of the 1970s: The" Crisis of Confidence" Speech of July 15, 1979: a Brief History with Documents (2005).
↑ Yanek Mieczkowski, Gerald Ford and the Challenges of the 1970s (University Press of Kentucky, 2005).
↑ David Halberstam, The Reckoning (1986) excerpt compares Ford and Nissan in the 1970s.
↑ Lee Iacocca and William Novak, Iacocca: an autobiography (1986)
↑ Daniel J. Sargent, A Superpower Transformed: The Remaking of American Foreign Relations in the 1970s (2015)
↑ Kevin Mattson, "What the Heck Are You Up To, Mr. President?": Jimmy Carter, America's "Malaise," and the Speech That Should Have Changed the Country (2010)
↑ Scott Kaufman, Plans unraveled: the foreign policy of the Carter administration (2008).
↑ John Dumbrell, American foreign policy: Carter to Clinton (1997).
↑ Odd Arne Westad, ed. The Fall of Détente: Soviet-American Relations during the Carter Years (1997).
↑ Beth Bailey, "The Army in the marketplace: Recruiting an all-volunteer force." Journal of American History (2007) 94#1 pp: 47–74. in JSTOR
↑ Beth Bailey, America's Army: Making the All-Volunteer Force (2009)
Further reading
Bernstein, Irving. Guns or Butter: The Presidency of Lyndon Johnson 1994.
Black, Conrad. Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full (2007) 1150pp;
Branch, Taylor. Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963–65 (1999) excerpt and text search
Branch, Taylor. At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965–68 (2007)
Dallek, Robert. Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961–1973 (1998) online edition vol 2; also: Lyndon B. Johnson: Portrait of a President (2004). A 400-page abridged version of his 2 volume scholarly biography, online edition of short version.
Farber, David, and Beth Bailey, eds. The Columbia Guide to America in the 1960s (2001).
Frum, David. How We Got Here (2000)
Graham, Hugh Davis. The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy, 1960–1972 (1990)
Hayward, Steven F. The Age of Reagan, 1964–1980: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order (2001)
Heale, M. J. "The Sixties as History: A Review of the Political Historiography", Reviews in American History v. 33#1 (2005) 133–152
Hunt, Andrew. "When Did the Sixties Happen?" Journal of Social History 33 (Fall 1999): 147–61.
Kaufman, Burton Ira. The Presidency of James Earl Carter, Jr. (1993), the best survey of his administration
Kirkendall, Richard S. A Global Power: America Since the Age of Roosevelt (2nd ed. 1980) university textbook 1945–80 full text online free
Marwick, Arthur. The Sixties: Cultural Transformation in Britain, France, Italy and the United States, c. 1958 – c. 1974 (1998), international perspective excerpt and text search
Matusow, Allen J. The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s (1984) excerpt and text search
Paterson, Thomas G. Meeting the Communist Threat: Truman to Reagan (1988),
Patterson, James. Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974 (Oxford History of the United States) (1997)
Perlstein, Rick. Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (2001) political narrative of 1960–64
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