CHAPTER 26 The Age of Fracture: The 1970s C H R I S T I A N , M A After reading this chapter, you should be able to do the following: R 26-1 Evaluate Richard Nixon as president, focusing on Khis policies in ­Learning Outcomes the United States and abroad. 6 26-2 Describe the events of Watergate and its ramifications for the country. 5 3 26-3 Describe the economic conditions of the 1970s, including stagflation and the end of the post–World War II5economic boom, and describe how Presidents Ford and Carter B attempted to confront the problem. U 26-4 Describe the perpetuation of 1960s-style activism and how it transformed into a politics of identity in the 1970s. 26-5 Evaluate the reaction to the 1960s social movements and describe the rise of the New Right. 474 C h apte r 21 The Continued Move West 9781305178526, HIST: US History Since 1865, Volume 2, Third Edition, Schultz - © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization. “ Without a magnetic social vision to unify the populace, the 1970s came to be characterized as a time of turning inward. ” The social activism of the late 1960s continued into the 1970s, but during the 1970s that activism ran into roadblocks. A variety of minority movements Americans’ inability to buy gas whenever they wanted to seemed poised to fracture any was the first sign that the country’s position as most pownational unity that had been erful nation in the world was faltering. C created in the struggle for Strongly Disagree Strongly Agree Hrights, African American civil 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 and the postwar economic                                            R boom came to a startling end I and unemployment as contentious and serious issues. American in 1973, raising poverty politicians learned theS limits of politics’ ability to create change, and they simultaneously learned that they could not publicly discuss these limits and expect to be reelected. This widespread T awareness of American limits had many sources. The war in Vietnam ended in 1975, I but only after it had increased friction and schisms between Americans and diminished American expectations of imperial power. In addition, the countless fabricationsA that Johnson and Nixon had fed the public about the progress of the war made many Americans suspicious of their country’s leaders. Meanwhile, the civil N rights movement had succeeded in winning political rights for African Americans, but it , then faced social and economic limits that tested the reality of America’s commitment to racial equality. And a series of new social movements—by women, Chicanos, American Indians, and others—that followed in the wake of the civil rights movement seemed to M cast African Americans as just another minority group vying for institutional recogniA has been historically and uniquely wronged. Interest in other tion rather than one that causes, such as environmentalism, also exploded during the 1970s. All this turmoil and R diverse social action provoked a backlash from voters, who, by 1980, were willing to overK look one Republican president’s shady dealings in order to elect another conservative to the nation’s highest office. Many Americans had tired of calls for social justice, and this sheer exhaustion led many to turn inward, contributing to what one writer called the 6 rights anthem “We Shall Overcome” seemed to lose its collec“me generation.” The civil tive meaning in the 1970s. 5 Few knew who “we” were. At the same time, while the economy had remained healthy during the 1960s, it 3 1970s, officially ending the long post–World War II boom. The soured badly during the economic decline lasted 5 the entire decade, casting a pall over the other events of the era. While the causes of the downturn are complex, a significant part was played by B manufacturing. Companies moved out of the Northeast and the demise of American Midwest, heading to U the South or the West in order to find better weather, cheaper labor, and fewer unions. This demographic and economic shift created “the Sunbelt,” a region stretching from Florida to California. As more companies moved to the Sunbelt,  What do you think? One of the first visible signs that the post-World War II prosperity was over were gas lines that appeared dur> Cold War, Nixon became the first president to visit China, meeting with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai in 1972. With regard to Chinese-Soviet relations, Nixon confided to Zhou that if Moscow marched either east or west, he was ready to “turn like a cobra on the Russians.” The Age of Fracture: The 1970s 9781305178526, HIST: US History Since 1865, Volume 2, Third Edition, Schultz - © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization. Nixon also made overtures to the Soviet Union. Just months after going to China, Nixon went to Moscow to meet with Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev. In this meeting he agreed to sell excess American wheat to the Soviets. The fact that their country needed wheat was an early sign that Soviet-style communism was not performing well economically, even though the Soviets attempted to hide this fact. Under the auspices of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), the two leaders also agreed to freeze the number of long-range missile launchers and build certain new missiles only after they had destroyed the same number of older missiles. This did not signify an end to the Cold War, but it did demonstrate that the nations’ leaders were beginning to recognize the problems inherent in an unchecked arms race. Thus, within four years, Nixon, perceived as C had a hard-nosed anticommunist Republican, removed the American presence in Vietnam, Hceding it to communists, and made overtures to both China Rtoward and the Soviet Union. This softened approach America’s supposed enemies was executed I largely by Nixon’s assistant for national security affairs and, S later, his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger. These more relaxed relations are labeled détente (a T French term meaning “a relaxing” or “an easing”). I Latin America and Africa A As the Cold War cooled with China and the Soviet N Union, it heated up in Latin America and Africa. , Each time a nation in one of these regions elected a leftist—potentially communist—regime, the United States actively supported coups and the installation M interof new governments that would support U.S. ests. These new right-wing regimes routinely A punished political opponents. For instance, the United States supported the ousting of Chile’s R Salvador Allende in 1973, opting instead to provide assistance K to the authoritarian regime Read a State of General Augusto Pinochet. Department In Africa, the United 6 States briefing on the tolerated the racist regime of status of Chile, 1970. 5 South Africa and sided with anticommunists in the Angolan civil war. 3 But, taking a lesson from Vietnam, Nixon was leery of using 5 American troops in these situations. B U 26-1b Nixon the Accidental Liberal While Nixon’s foreign policies often represented significant breakthroughs, his domestic policies were even more transformative, although not always in the way Nixon’s supporters had hoped. Upon entering office, Nixon claimed to be a typical small- Strategic Arms government Republican. In Limitation Talks reality, Nixon’s relentless (SALT) preoccupation with and fear Sessions held between of being defeated for reelecPresident Nixon and Soviet premier Leonid tion led him to advocate Brezhnev, in which the many goals of the left and of two leaders agreed to the Democratic Party. Cagily, freeze the number of longrange missile launchers however, while Nixon sought and build certain new misto increase budgets for libsiles only after they had eral causes, he made these destroyed the same number of older missiles increases contingent upon greater local control. This détente French term meaning “a put Democrats in a tough relaxing” or “an easing”; political position, because refers to more relaxed they could not reject funds relations with America’s supposed enemies, China for causes they had long and the Soviet Union advocated, but they could not control how those funds were spent locally. In this way, Nixon became an advocate of many liberal causes, but he did so while weakening the supposed Eastern Establishment he despised. Increasing the Size of Government For instance, Nixon signed into law the National Environmental Policy Act (1970), which established the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). He endorsed the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which sought to make workplaces safer. He doubled the budgets of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Nixon also became the first president to embrace affirmative action, as discussed later in the chapter. But each of these progressive developments came at a cost to the liberals who had long advocated them. For instance, Nixon’s increases to the National Endowment for the Humanities were earmarked for popular artists in Middle America or for local museums, instead of the large museums in New York and Boston, which championed abstract art that was appreciated mostly by the well educated and affluent. Politically, Democrats could not reject his proposal to increase funding for the arts. It was a stroke of political genius: Nixon got credit for being a proponent of the arts, at the same time draining support from his nemesis, the eastern liberal elite. 26-2 Watergate Before Nixon could do more, he became mired in scandal. During his successful reelection bid in 1972, five men were arrested breaking into the Democratic Watergate 477 9781305178526, HIST: US History Since 1865, Volume 2, Third Edition, Schultz - © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization. I have never been a “ quitter. To leave office before public trust and a dangerNational Committee offices ous attempt to use the power at the Watergate Hotel in of the federal government Washington, D.C. One of the to illegally stifle his political burglars worked directly for opposition. It was potentially Nixon’s Committee to Re-Elect a threat to the very nature of the President (CREEP), a fact democracy. that did not impede Nixon’s The televised testimony landslide victory in the eleccaptivated millions, and, tion. But print journalists, although the testimony never spurred by the investigative revealed whether or not reporting of the Washington Nixon himself had ordered Post’s Bob Woodward and Carl —Richard M. Nixon, resignation the break-in, what did Bernstein, continued to follow speech, 1974 emerge were Nixon’s susthe story and discovered that picious nature and other orders for the break-in had attempts to spy illegally on been issued from high up in Americans. Watergate became an investigation the Nixon White House. The Senate convened hearabout much more than a simple break-in; it became ings, which were televised nationally. It seemed toC a portentous glimpse inside the mind of the presimany Americans that Nixon had possibly orderedH dent. The Senate learned that the president had a break-in of his opponent’s Washington offices. traded favors, spoken offensively about many of If proven, this would be a tremendous breach ofR my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as President, I must put the interest of America first. ” I S A scandal surrounding a break-in of the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate Hotel during the 1972 presidential >> T election led to numerous revelations of presidential abuse. Before Nixon was indicted in 1974, he resigned from office; a month later, President Gerald Ford pardoned him for any crimes he may have committed I in the matter. Many in the nation were stunned. A N , M A R K © Owen Franklin/Corbis 6 5 3 5 B U 478 C h apte r 2 6 The Age of Fracture: The 1970s 9781305178526, HIST: US History Since 1865, Volume 2, Third Edition, Schultz - © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization. the nation’s minority groups, and, most damningly, taped nearly every conversation that had happened in the White House. When the Senate demanded to see the tapes, Nixon fired the special prosecutor leading the Senate’s investigation, prompting a series of sympathy resignations from members of his own administration. As the scandal mushroomed, Nixon’s vice president, Spiro Agnew, admitted to tax evasion and bribery. He resigned and was replaced by Gerald Ford. The credibility of the entire administration was under attack. Americans watched the scandal with alarm. It seemed to confirm many people’s Hear Nixon’s beliefs that American leadresignation speech. ers were untrustworthy. After the Supreme Court C over View a collection ordered Nixon to turn of Bob Woodthe White House tapes, H it was ward and Carl evident he was going to be Bernstein’s papers. impeached. Nixon Rinstead chose to resign from I office, Learn more which he did after a draS about matic televised speech to the Watergate. nation on August 9, T 1974. His new vice president, Gerald Ford, became president. I To understand the reasons why Watergate was so A reapivotal to the 1970s political culture, see “The sons why . . .” box. { N , 26-3 The Troubled Economy and Politics Adrift The backdrop for all this political commotion was an economic recession that officially ended the great post–World War II economic boom. The conditions that had made the American economy the most powerful in the world after World War II vanished quickly in the 1970s. The two presidents that succeeded Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, had little success in solving this large structural problem. 26-3a Economic Woes In the late 1960s, Vietnam, the Great Society, and the costs of the arms race had diverted a lot of money from federal coffers, and Johnson had refused to raise taxes to pay for these expensive ventures. Furthermore, by the early 1970s, America’s industrial sector was weakening due to the rise of foreign competition and decreasing demand for American goods. The economy was cooling off after its long period of post–World War II growth. With the United States having to maintain its tremendous expenditures during a time of declining tax receipts, it had to borrow tremendous amounts of money to balance its budget. This led the value of the dollar M The reasons why . . . } A There were at least four reasons whyRthe Watergate scandal was so pivotal in American life: K The death of political idealism. The disclosures of Watergate put had been advocating a smaller role for government. The disaffecthe nail in the coffin of the political idealism of the early 1960s. During that earlier period, social movements like the civil rights movement 6 of law to turned to the federal government and the American system advocate change. After the frustrations of the civil rights movements 5 and a decade of lies about the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal validated many Americans’ darkest suspicions that a politician’s 3 first priority was not to serve the public, but simply to get reelected. 5 Americans turn inward. These suspicions led many Americans to B to large turn away from politics, often choosing to search for answers social problems through the individual groups that gave them U their identity. This, in turn, helped lead to the rise of identity politics, an effort to create social change not through politics but instead by changing American culture and society. America’s politics seemed corrupt. The irony. One major irony of the Watergate scandal was that it served Republican ends. Since at least the New Deal, Republicans tion toward politics inspired by Nixon, a Republican, was a longterm boon to the Republican Party. After Watergate, many people began to see government as part of the problem rather than part of the solution, and thus they too began advocating for smaller government. New political scrutiny. Meanwhile, before Watergate, presidents were usually given a wide berth by the media and forgiven their personal flaws, which frequently went unreported. After Watergate, every dimension of a politician’s life was deemed newsworthy. President Ford, who became president after Nixon resigned, was a talented athlete and former college football star at the University of Michigan, but he was widely portrayed as a goof and a bumbling klutz because every stumble he made was televised and reported on. Where there once had been deference and respect, now there was cynicism and ire. The Troubled Economy and Politics Adrift 479 9781305178526, HIST: US History Since 1865, Volume 2, Third Edition, Schultz - © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization. stagflation to decrease, meaning it took more dollars to pay for the same goods. This condition is called inflation. Nixon did not really know what to do to control the problem. First, he made it more difficult to borrow money, which, he hoped, would lower the amount of investments and keep dollars spare. However, all this did was constrict the economy even more, leading to an economic recession. In 1971, facing reelection, Nixon initiated the first-ever peacetime wage and price freeze. He also accepted large federal deficits. These initiatives reversed the direction of the economy long enough for him to win reelection in 1972, but his economic plan was erratic and short term, confidence remained low, and the American industrial sectorC was beginning to decline in the face of cheaperH prices on imported foreign goods. Economic cycle in which prices keep going up (inflation) while the economy is losing jobs (or stagnating) R I The whole problem was compounded by matters in S the Middle East. The establishment of Israel in 1948 as a haven for the world’s Jews after the atrocities ofT the Holocaust was perpetually contested by many of I the Islamic nations of the Middle East, whose religious differences with the Jews were compoundedA by the imposition of a political state on land they N claimed as their own. Egypt, Syria, and other nations of the Middle East fought numerous battles against, Oil Embargo Israel in the 1950s and 1960s, and Israel won each of them with the help of the United States and several countries of Europe. After yet another confrontation,M the Yom Kippur War of 1973, the oil-rich nations ofA the Middle East sought to punish the United States for supporting Israel by placing an embargo on oilR sold to the United States. The result was that oilK prices in the United States quadrupled. Gas became hard to find, and long lines of drivers were seen waiting at filling stations. Other sources of energy6 were not immediately available. Beyond the daily 5 frustrations of expensive gas at the pump, the oil embargo raised the cost of making goods and mov-3 ing them from one place to another. Prices of all con5 sumer goods went up. Thus, the American economy entered a complicated cycle in which prices keptB going up (inflation) but the economy began losingU jobs (or stagnating). Economists called this unique condition stagflation. Stagflation is notoriously difficult to fight, because most of the tools the government has to control the economy—such as regulating the interest it charges banks to borrow money from the Federal 480 C h apte r 2 6 Reserve banks—are primarily designed to either slow growth and end inflation, or increase growth and boost inflation. Tools to lower inflation while growing the economy do not exist. The economy would continue to perform badly throughout the 1970s, bringing to an abrupt halt the consistent economic growth the country had enjoyed since 1946. The Decline of Cities Another force compounded these economic pressures. Since the Second World War, Americans had been leaving cities at alarming rates, heading to the suburbs, where good schools, bigger homes, and larger spaces beckoned. Stagflation slowed the American economy down, especially the manufacturing sector that was overwhelmingly based in large Northeastern and Midwestern cities like Chicago and Philadelphia. As these sectors declined in productivity, many Americans lost their jobs and left the industrial cities of the North in search of work in the South or Southwest. As businesses left, the tax base left with them, making the 1970s the roughest time in the history of most American cities. During the 1970s, more than 1 million residents left New York City and the city tottered on the brink of bankruptcy; it took the city nearly two decades to make up that population loss. 26-3b President Ford After Watergate and the Vietnam War had discredited the role that government might play in solving deep social problems, the two presidents who followed Nixon appeared to be rudderless and without confidence that the American people would listen to, much less enact, their attempts to solve the country’s problems. For his part, President Ford was the first president never subjected to a national election, having assumed the vice presidency when Spiro Agnew resigned, and risen to the presidency after Nixon’s decline. A good-natured, well-liked man who self-effacingly admitted he was “a Ford, not a Lincoln,” Gerald Ford weathered the wrath of the American public in the aftermath of Watergate. And one of his first acts as president did not generate widespread goodwill: Ford offered Nixon a full presidential pardon. This action ended the possibility of criminal proceedings and, perhaps, of finding out whether or not Nixon had ordered the Watergate break-in. But the pardon did allow the nation to move beyond political scandal in order to focus on the dire problems of the economy and the Cold War. Unfortunately, Ford was unable to take complete control of either. The Age of Fracture: The 1970s 9781305178526, HIST: US History Since 1865, Volume 2, Third Edition, Schultz - © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization. Domestic Policy Ford’s chief domestic problem was stagflation, but, like Nixon, Ford had little luck tackling it. At first, he encouraged Americans to Read a Saturday save rather than spend their Night Live money. Then he offered a transcript of Chevy Chase’s impression large tax cut. Neither measure worked to improve the of Gerald Ford sagging economy. With little national support, Ford regularly vetoed congressional bills, only to have his vetoes overridden. Ford had better luck overseas. He laid the basis of another arms agreement with the Soviets, which was finalized as SALT II a few years later, under President Carter. Ford’s secretary of state Henry Kissinger C negotiated between Israel and Egypt, leading to a short-term break in hostilities in the MiddleH East. R I In 1976, Ford stood little chance of reelection. Affable Sfaced a and open as he was, even within his party he strong challenge from California’s former governor, T Ronald Reagan, a symbol of the new Sunbelt conservatism that would dominate the 1980s and I1990s. A The Election of 1976 N won. The Democrats, for their part, took a chance and They nominated a little-known, one-term, Georgia 26-3c President Carter 1976 WA 8* OR 6 MT 4 ID 4 NV 3 CA 45 ND 3 WY 3 UT 4 AZ 6 WI 11 IA 8 NE 5 CO 7 energy. MN 10 SD 4 KS 7 IL 26 IN 13 AR 6 OH 25 KY 9 TN 10 M A R K ME 4 VT 3 NH MA NY 4 14 41 RI PA NJ CT 4 27 17 8 MI 21 MO 12 OK 8 WV 6 VA 12 NC 13 Candidate (Party) Electoral Vote Carter (Democrat) 297 55.2% Ford (Republican) 240* 44.6% 39,147,793 LA 10 TX 26 MS 7 AL 9 GA 12 DE 3 MD 10 SC 8 6 5 3 5 B Popular Vote 40,830,763 U NM 4 DC 3 FL 17 AK 3 HI 4 50.1% 48.0% Election of 1976 SINGLE COLUMN MAP Cengage Learning Election 1976Learning 2014 . Cengage Ms00495 20p6 x 19p0 Final: 4/07/08 Rev. 11/12/09—cm: reduce width to 20p6; standard vote tally layout No bleeds governor named Jimmy Carter. Carter struck a note with the electorate because he appeared to be honest, was a “born again” Christian, was progressive on issues of poverty and treatment of minorities, and was a southerner capable of talking to the demographically growing southern half of the nation (Map 26.1). Carter won the election, in which he competed against the ghost of Nixon as much as against Ford. Domestic Policy *One Ford elector in Washington voted for Republican Ronald Reagan of California. Map 26.1. President Jimmy Carter, wearing the kind of sweater he >> urged all Americans to wear in order to reduce their consumption of Dirck Halstead/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images Foreign Policy Domestically, Carter faced the same economic conditions that Nixon and Ford had: stagflation. Carter could not manage it either, and when he proposed to increase government spending to create jobs (à la the New Deal), inflation skyrocketed. He then made the ultimate political blunder when he asked the nation to sacrifice on behalf of the “common purpose” and offered a list of small and specific proposals as to how that might be done. These modest proposals did not capture the public’s imagination, The Troubled Economy and Politics Adrift 481 Rev. 11/14/09—cm: eliminate OR state boundaries @ shoreline 9781305178526, HIST: US History Since 1865, Volume 2, Third Edition, Schultz - © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization. Three Mile Island and his political inexperience in Washington, D.C., contributed to his making several gaffes, which repeatedly made him look weak Camp David Accord and ineffectual. 1978 peace agreement between Israel Carter was further burand Egypt, brokered by dened by the nationwide President Carter energy crisis, which had surged after the Yom Kippur War of 1973 and had not subsided since. By 1977, elementary and high schools were forced to close because there was not enough energy to heat them. Carter’s ambitious plan to remedy the crisis combined higher taxes and a vigorous search for alternative fuels. This plan was met with general disapproval by Congress and did not pass. Making matters worse, the meltdown of a nuclearC reactor at Three Mile Island,H Watch Carter’s Pennsylvania, in 1979 dis“crisis of conficredited nuclear power, aR dence” speech. potentially viable alternativeI to oil. With an economy this troubled, Carter could S not advocate any of the plans he had for expanding American social justice. T Nuclear reactor in Pennsylvania that suffered a meltdown in 1979 I Carter made more progress abroad. His longest-last-A ing achievement in foreign policy was in establishing N human rights as an element of American policy. Doing so energized him to (1) call for the end of apartheid in, Foreign Policy South Africa, (2) give up control of the Panama Canal, and (3) cite human rights considerations as a factor in the granting of American aid. In the Middle East,M Carter oversaw a peace agreement between Israel andA Egypt, called the Camp David Accord, in late 1978. But this accomplishment was overshadowedR just six months later when Islamic militants tookK fifty-two hostages from the American Embassy in Tehran, the capital of Iran. The militants were part of a coup in which fundamentalist Islamists seized6 power from the American-supported dictatorship, 5 in place since 1953. The terrorists held the American hostages for more than a year. Each day that went3 by, Carter seemed more and more unable to handle 5 the problem. But the inability to bring together the B nation was not Carter’s doing alone. U 26-4 The Rise of Identity Politics One historian has described the social movements of the 1960s as a “coming together” of sorts, when 482 C h apte r 2 6 large gestures—the civil rights movement, the War on Poverty—were intended to create a more unified and inclusive nation. The 1970s, however, served as a spin cycle, scattering the social energy of the sixties in a thousand different directions. Without a magnetic social vision to unify the populace, the 1970s came to be characterized as a time of turning inward or, to use a term from the era, a celebration of the culture of narcissism. People’s interest in pet causes flourished, as did a variety of new faiths, most of which prioritized personal renewal or an individual relationship with God. Many of these themes were manifested in the southern tilt of American culture that began in the 1970s, and many of these melded seamlessly into the political New Right, which prioritized, above all, individual rights. 26-4a Identifying with a Group One of the most contentious and transformative sociopolitical events of the decade was the codification and resurgence of identity politics. In other words, people increasingly practiced politics and voted based on their identification with a particular group rather than with the nation as a whole. Identity politics had been made both politically potent and divisive by African Americans, Mexican Americans, Native Americans, and others following the civil rights movement, especially in the militancy that emerged in the late 1960s. African American Activism America’s black population was the first to embrace this brand of politics, which intended to change the culture as well as public policy. Despite the federal laws passed in the 1960s, racism against America’s black people persisted. For the most part, racism was no longer legally codified or socially acceptable at the broad institutional level, but it remained entrenched in the personal-level institutions of society and culture. Thus, many African American activists broadened their focus from just politics to politics and culture, hoping to change the way Americans thought about their nation. Cultural acceptance was different from political acceptance. Political acceptance concerned the enforcement of color-blind laws, while social acceptance depended on an awareness of differences and a conscious decision to ignore them. In response to this heightened awareness, “Black is beautiful” became a widespread call in the black community. Africa became a destination for many Americans seeking to understand their cultural past, a sentiment epitomized in and popularized by The Age of Fracture: The 1970s 9781305178526, HIST: US History Since 1865, Volume 2, Third Edition, Schultz - © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization. Alex Haley’s 1976 bestseller, Roots. Attending historically black colleges acquired cultural cachet. Black Studies writers and professors established this field as an accepted academic discipline within America’s colleges. The cultural politics of the Black Freedom Movement surpassed attempts to create protective legal structures to ensure equal access. Social and economic acceptance required different methods. Affirmative Action and Busing Amid this transition toward greater interest in changing American culture, federal and state governments attempted to rectify the continuing effects of racism. Because many white Americans were afraid of dropping property values if their neighborhoods became racially integrated, and because of deeply entrenched fears of interracial mingling, schools generally remained segregated. ToCremedy this persistent problem, cities such as Boston H and Los Angeles began busing students from one school district to another in order to desegregateR schools. I S T I A N , The Advertising Archives M A R K 6 5 3 5 B U See a slide show about the awardwinning photo from the Boston busing crisis. affirmative action Program meant to ensure that a certain percentage of a company’s employees are minorities or that a certain percentage of government contracts are given to minority-owned businesses This action provoked much ire from parents, black and white, who had their children bused far from home. Riots erupted in Boston, and the level of suspicion increased between the groups on either side of the color line. Meanwhile, the federal government developed programs of affirmative action, in which employers were supposed to ensure that a certain percentage of employees were minorities, or that a certain percentage of government contracts were given to minority-owned businesses. In another example of Nixon’s ruthless politics, affirmative action’s federal origins can be traced to his proclaimed free-market administration. He did this to cause political rifts between white and black laborers, which would, and did, break up a Democratic political coalition that was first formed by President Roosevelt in the 1930s. Affirmative action also became policy in many of the nation’s universities. In 1978, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of some elements of affirmative action, but disallowed the use of exact quotas, in a case that emerged when a white student Read the Bakke claimed he was decision. denied entrance to medical school because of the color of his skin. The case, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, not only codified affirmative action in American education but also dramatically displayed the overwhelming backlash against affirmative action brought forward by many white Americans. Some members of this furious group were children of turn-of-the-century immigrants who, ignoring the centuries of racism and favoritism inherent in America’s institutions, claimed to have never wronged America’s racial minority groups during the time of slavery and conquest. They Ebony, a monthly magazine targeting African >> American readers since 1945, used this 1971 cover to demonstrate the long road African Americans had traveled since slavery, now celebrating natural hairstyles like the Afro and the Black Power symbol of the raised fist. The Rise of Identity Politics 483 9781305178526, HIST: US History Since 1865, Volume 2, Third Edition, Schultz - © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization. The Chicano Movement After the variety of successes won by labor leaders César Chávez and Dolores Huerta in the lateM 1960s, in 1970 a more radical aspect of the ChicanoA movement emerged and was embodied by the organization La Raza. This term literally means “theR Race,” although colloquially it is synonymous withK “the People.” La Raza explicitly focused on electing Mexican American politicians to office in the West and Southwest. Demonstrating their frustra-6 tion with the persistent racism that they had con5 fronted throughout their history, members of La Raza rejected the name “Mexican American” in favor3 of the more particular “Chicano,” a term derived 5 from barrio slang. Red Power B U Heartened by African American and Chicano efforts toward social, cultural, and economic equality, many American Indians sought political redress as well. Many Indians lived at the poverty level, and most Indian reservations had no industry of any kind. The crushing poverty inspired protests. Holding 484 C h apte r 2 6 Ralph Crane/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images C H R I S In 1969, a group of activists called “Indians of All Tribes” >> occupied Alcatraz Island in California, demanding the land be returned toT the tribes that had once occupied it. The occupation lasted 19 months. I claimed that they were not responsible for payingA the debt for America’s offenses during the preN colonial and colonial eras. , several sit-ins of their own, in 1969 a group of activists called “Indians of All Tribes” occupied Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. Demanding the land be returned to the tribes that had once occupied it, they intended to make an Indian cultural center out of the former prison. The occupation lasted nineteen months; the protesters were finally removed by the federal government, but only after sparking numerous copycat occupations and bringing the plight of American Indians to the attention of the nation. The protest recalled the pan-Indian resistance of the early 1800s, although in 1970s language. Indeed, the activists boldly declared “Red Power!” echoing Stokely Carmichael’s Black Power campaign of the late 1960s. In 1968, a group of Native Americans coordinated the American Indian Movement and began a series of audacious political protests, including occupying the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs building, Mount Rushmore, and Wounded Knee, South Dakota. As with the occupation of Alcatraz, these protests provoked headlines and benefited several moderate groups helping to craft laws in Washington, D.C. They wrote a dozen new laws and steered more than $100 million to educational and health programs on Indian reservations. Furthermore, the number of Americans who identified as Indians more than doubled between 1970 and 1990. 26-4b The Women’s Movement The politics of identity moved beyond racial groups too. Throughout the 1970s, American women continued to press for increased political and economic rights. ERA and Equal Rights Throughout the 1970s, women fought against sexual harassment in the workplace and for greater awareness of women’s health issues. They also secured congressional approval of the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which would have made it illegal to discriminate based on sex. Furthermore, in 1972, Congress passed Title IX of the The Age of Fracture: The 1970s 9781305178526, HIST: US History Since 1865, Volume 2, Third Edition, Schultz - © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization. Higher Education Act, which obligated universities to spend the same amount of money on women’s athletics that they spent on men’s athletics. Roe v. Wade The most controversial milestone of the women’s movement was a landmark legal case. In 1973, the Supreme Court handed down a decision in Roe v. Wade that struck down laws in forty-six states that limited a woman’s access to a safe, legal abortion. The decision, which referenced a woman’s right to privacy, extending that right Read the text of to her reproductive system, Roe v. Wade. stunned the opposition, who generally felt abortion was morally equivalent to murder. The debate about abortion has increased the polarization between the C left and the right ever since. H R the In a change perhaps more profound than debates about laws that delineated women’sI place in American society, in the 1970s women began to play S a more active role in the economy and in forming T I A N , Social and Economic Participation M A R K Roe v. Wade the parameters of American Supreme Court decision social life. Like other minorof 1973 that struck down ity groups, they fomented laws in forty-six states that limited a woman’s access a social movement that to a safe, legal abortion existed outside of normal Stonewall Inn politics. For instance, conSite in New York City of sistently struggling against the riots that ignited the a “glass ceiling” that limited Gay Liberation movement their ability to rise beyond a in the late 1960s and 1970s; at the time of the certain corporate level, in the riots, all fifty states had 1970s women fought for and antisodomy laws, and sometimes won the right police busts of gay bars were routine to earn pay equal to that of men. Some companies opened day-care centers and job-training programs specifically for working mothers. Beyond economics, the 1970s saw a rise in the use of gender-neutral terms (for instance, using the terms firefighter and flight attendant in place of fireman and stewardess). The Sexual Revolution Some women also embraced their own sexuality in what was called the sexual revolution. There was a new cultural atmosphere in which women more openly discussed their sexual needs and desires, while sometimes flouting conventional arrangements, such as maintaining a single partner in a traditionally identifiable relationship. Divorce became more common. Breaking such long-standing taboos began a fundamental transformation in American gender relations. The image of the ideal man transitioned from the masculine if inarticulate swashbuckler of the 1940s to the man who was more “in touch with his feelings.” Women forthrightly demanded equality in their private as well as their public lives, although in the 1970s, women were not always in agreement as to what exactly that meant. Image courtesy of The Advertising Archives 26-4c The Gay Liberation Movement 6 5 3 5 B U The image of the ideal man transitioned from the mascu>> line if inarticulate swashbuckler of the 1940s to the man who was more “in touch with his feelings.” Also in the 1970s, gay men and lesbians began to demand equality as people living outside what had been perceived as the heterosexual norm. As barriers against racial and religious minorities collapsed, as women advocated and sometimes won equality, gay men and women still faced considerable legal discrimination. For example, consensual sex between two people of the same sex was illegal in nearly every state. In 1969, a police raid on the bar at the Stonewall Inn in New York City sparked the Gay Liberation Movement. Gay men fought back against the police raid, proclaiming “Gay Power.” The riot propelled many gay men and lesbians into politics and political activism, advocating for legal The Rise of Identity Politics 485 9781305178526, HIST: US History Since 1865, Volume 2, Third Edition, Schultz - © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization. In 1977, Harvey Milk became the first openly gay politi>> cian elected to public office in the United States. His sign, “I’m from C H R I equality such as marriage rights. In 1977, Harvey S Milk, on being elected to the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco, became the first openly gay person toT win a major political campaign. He was assassinated I shortly thereafter and continues to be an iconic A martyr of the gay rights movement. N 26-4d High Tide of Environmentalism, Woodmere, NY,” suggests that anyone from anywhere can be gay, challenging the notion that only freaks from radical locales are homosexuals. Demanding respect for the environment was another facet of 1970s social activism. Launched in 1962 by Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, the environmen-M tal movement grew through the 1960s. In 1970, theA United States celebrated the first “Earth Day,” which stimulated greater awareness of humans’ treatmentR of the land, sea, and air. Vital to 1970s environ-K mentalism was advocacy of preserving unspoiled lands and promoting ecologically sound practices in industry, manufacturing, and automobile use. 6 Beyond creating valuable awareness, the politi5 cal record of the environmental movement is mixed. Environmentalists cheered when Richard Nixon3 established the Environmental Protection Agency in 5 1970 and when Congress passed eighteen environmental laws throughout the decade. They rued theB construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline in 1973,U however. Other defeats loomed as well. Most damning was the sense that, in an era when Americans were searching for belonging, the cause of environmentalism asserted a species-wide identity, something too diffuse and broad to command much allegiance. 486 C h apte r 2 6 American popular culture also reflected the broader, inward-focused trend of the 1970s, often in increasingly flashy ways that demonstrated a more complicated morality, where one might feel like cheering for the traditional bad guy. The music of the 1960s icons Sly and the Family Stone, for example, transitioned from celebrating American unity and possibility in the 1960s to being more introspective and aware of the limits of broad social change in the 1970s. In one poignant instance, Sly changed the lyrics of one of his most popular 1960s songs from “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)” to, in 1971, “Thank You for Talkin’ to Me Africa.” In addition to demonstrating the decline of hope for broad social change, the changed lyrics also capture the rise of identity politics, with Sly looking for his roots in Africa rather than the United States. In the later 1970s, disco music throbbed in America’s cities. The 1979 film Saturday Night Fever Topham/The Image Works Terry Schmitt/San Francisco Chronicle/Corbis 26-4e Popular Culture John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever (1979) does most of >> his dancing by himself. The Age of Fracture: The 1970s 9781305178526, HIST: US History Since 1865, Volume 2, Third Edition, Schultz - © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization. enshrined disco music as a typical “seventies” cultural form, but the film also displayed as its depressing backdrop the decline and plight of American cities of the Northeast. Recently, historians have begun to debate the meaning of disco. Some see it as a reflection of the narcissistic and individualized culture of the 1970s, as people danced largely by themselves and for their own glorification. Others, meanwhile, see disco as a last gasp of the “coming together” attitude of the 1960s, as African American music propelled a Latino dance culture that was open to homosexuals and white ethnics, all in an arena of respect and fulfillment. If the meaning of disco remains open to interpretation, similarly conflicted emotions were reflected in the landmark films of the era, such as The Godfather, The Godfather, Part II, and Bonnie and Clyde, in which viewers were C of viocompelled to root for the success and freedom lent criminals who defy traditional American Hmorals. Thus the moral complexity of the period, with its R backdramatically changing social and economic ground, inspired many vibrant contributions I to the popular culture that also reflected the era’s malaise. S T 26-5 The Rise of I the New Right A All these calls for change led to a combative conservative reaction. This movement, collectivelyNdubbed the “New Right” by the press, utilized the , elite intellectual conservatism symbolized by William F. Buckley’s National Review magazine, which was founded in the 1950s, and took conservatism M to the grassroots. The New Right was largely composed of A two groups, social conservatives and economic conservatives. Social conservatives opposed R abortion and what they saw as the moral decline of society, K while economic conservatives urged tax cuts to limit the size and reach of government. Both types of conservatives continued to urge an aggressive 6 stance against the Soviet Union. Both also strove to 5 lives. diminish government intervention in people’s The expansion of the federal state during the 3 Great Society of the 1960s and what conservatives saw as the loosening of laws regarding morality5spurred this new coalition to work together, and B it would continue to do so for the remainder of the century. U 26-5a Economic and Political Conservatism A key dimension of 1970s conservatism arose in opposition to what were viewed as excessive tax Moral Majority policies in an era of inflation. Conservative political If government was deemed organization begun by corrupt, went the refrain, Rev. Jerry Falwell in 1979 and consisting of evangeliwhy should a significant percal Christians who overcentage of our income go to whelmingly supported the taxes? This sentiment was Republican Party most evident in California, where skyrocketing house prices meant dramatic increases in property taxes. When homeowners could not pay these higher property taxes, they revolted and passed Proposition 13, which limited all further increases on property taxes to 2 percent a year. Within months, nearly threequarters of other states passed similar laws. The Republican Party capitalized on this populist anger, positioning itself as the antigovernment party. The state of California had a large economic surplus, so the decline in property taxes there did not limit services. In many other places, however, states could not afford to pay for public schools, road maintenance, or effective fire and police departments. In a familiar theme of the 1970s and 1980s, Americans would have to turn inward—to their communities—to solve these institutional problems. Those cities and towns that could afford a good level of local control thrived; those that could not faced dire straits. 26-5b The Religious Right Some of the shock troops of the New Right were evangelical Christians, a growing force in the 1970s. These Protestant evangelicals poured their efforts into three things: (1) forming an intense personal relationship with Jesus; (2) gathering converts, usually former mainline or liberal Protestants; and (3) advancing a political agenda that stressed traditional “family values” that countered the women’s rights movement and the Gay Liberation movement. This new crop of evangelicals especially targeted feminism and was visibly enraged by the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, which has since served as a rallying cry for the entrance of the fundamentalist movement into American politics. In 1979, conservative Christians led by Rev. Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority political lobbying group, which, alongside tax-revolting economic conservatives, formed the other arm of the Republican Party. Evangelicals became increasingly visible in popular music and fiction. Diminished were the paramount religious divisions between mainline Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, which had defined American religious life in the 1950s; surging were new divisions between conservatives and The Rise of the New Right 487 9781305178526, HIST: US History Since 1865, Volume 2, Third Edition, Schultz - © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization. liberals of all faiths, but especially Protestants. Not only did the appearance of a more public aspect of faith reflect the “southernization” of American culture, but it also demonstrated the inward turn that took place in the 1970s, as religion became a realm of division and exclusion rather than one of inclusion and community building. “Family Values” Predictably, the women’s movement served as a touchstone for strong opposition. While many women sought to take advantage of the new opportunities open to them, a substantial percentage wanted to preserve the traditional roles of American womanhood. If securing the right to low-wage work was what the women’s movement was about, some of these women thought the cost of equality too high. Others cited biblical passages about a woman’sC obligation to submit to her husband. Still others sawH the women’s movement and the sexual revolution as putting traditional families in jeopardy, by encourag-R ing women to focus on themselves rather than theirI children. Phyllis Schlafly, a conservative activist, S headed the opposition by founding STOP-ERA to block the Equal Rights Amendment, claiming thatT the women in NOW were using politics to remedy I their personal problems. She also asserted that the women in the women’s movement were all lesbi-A ans, a mischaracterization intended to capitalize on N America’s homophobia. But Schlafly’s tactics were effective. When she began STOP-ERA in 1972, thirty, of the necessary thirty-eight states had approved the amendment. After she began her organization, the amendment languished, finally expiring withoutM passage in 1982. A Looking Ahead . . . R K At the end of the 1970s, the dominant news story seemed to come from nowhere, even if it was a 6 perfect symbol of the weaknesses felt by much of the American population. During the final year5 of Carter’s presidency, Islamic militants took con- trol of the American Embassy in Tehran, taking 52 hostages and starting what came to be called the Iranian hostage crisis. The crisis, which lasted 444 days and sparked numerous poorly executed rescue missions, would help propel into office a president who projected a more positive image of the United States and who promised to return America to a perceived greatness of old. But rather than serving as a definitive transition, the election of Ronald Reagan solidified many of the changes that had taken place during the 1970s. Perhaps most importantly, Reagan symbolized the political conservatism that had gathered strength in the 1970s, and also its libertarian ethos. While projecting the Sunbelt image of a tough individual leader, he argued that government was more of a problem than a solution to society’s problems. He paid homage (if usually only that) to minorities whose concerns had come to the forefront of 1970s identity politics, by, for instance, appointing Sandra Day O’Connor as the first female associate justice to the U.S. Supreme Court. Thus, despite Reagan’s rhetoric of a new America, the legacy of the 1970s influenced developments for the remainder of the twentieth century. And it is to those decades that we turn next. What else was happening . . . 1970 The Beatles split up. 1971 London Bridge is purchased by an American and shipped to Lake Havasu City, Arizona, to be displayed as a tourist attraction. 1974 Art Fry invents Post-it-® Notes by using a colleague’s “failed” adhesive while working at 3M. 1975 Popular Electronics announces Altair, the first “personal computer.” Visit the CourseMate website at www.cengagebrain.com for additional study tools and review materials for this chapter. 3 5 B U 488 C h apte r 2 6 The Age of Fracture: The 1970s 9781305178526, HIST: US History Since 1865, Volume 2, Third Edition, Schultz - © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization. CHAPTER 27 Reagan’s America C H R I S T I A N , ­Learning Outcomes M A R K After reading this chapter, you should be able to do the following: 27-1 27-2 6 Evaluate the domestic policies of Ronald Reagan5as president, including the economic challenges the country faced in the 3 1980s. 5 Describe the divisions and “culture wars” that plagued the B nation during the 1980s. U 27-3 Discuss the problems Reagan’s successor faced in paying for the “Reagan Revolution.” 27-4 Describe the conditions for, and aftermath of, the end of the Cold War. 490 C h apte r 21 The Continued Move West 9781305178526, HIST: US History Since 1865, Volume 2, Third Edition, Schultz - © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization. “ Reagan defined the confident America of the 1980s—a stark contrast to the uneasy malaise of 1970s America. ” The growing conservative movement, with its anti–New Deal and -Great Society fiscal policies and its desire to restore what it defined as traWith the end of the Cold War, the world became a more ditional family values, was open, accessible place. given an optimistic face by Strongly Disagree Strongly Agree C the actor-turned-politician 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Ronald Reagan. Born H in 1911,  Reagan had been a New R Deal Democrat and supporter of FDR, but his staunch anticommunism and his sense that the I too large pushed him in a conservative direction beginning in government was growing the 1950s and 1960s. A Sformer actor, Reagan never claimed to be a deep thinker, but he was an astute judge of the public mood and an incredibly personable man, with endless T anecdotes and a mannerism that made even his political enemies often smile. Thus, Reagan combined hisI conservative beliefs with the ability to bring those ideas to the public in a nonthreatening way. This allowed him to take advantage of his broad appeal A to put conservative theories into practice. By advocating tax and budget cuts, he wooed economic conservatives, N while his Supreme Court appointees usually made decisions that favored social conservatives. In foreign policy, he adopted strong anticommunist , rhetoric and dramatically increased the military budget, even as changes in the Soviet Union diminished the communist threat. He also sought to reinstitute school prayer in public schools and to ban abortions, smilingly harkening America back to what he saw as M its more innocent days. More than anybody else, Reagan defined the confident America A of the 1980s. This was a stark contrast to the uneasy malaise of 1970s America and to Carter’s R moralistic quests for American austerity. As opposed to Carter requesting Americans to Kand live within their means, Reagan promised it was “morning remember to be thrifty in America” again, and the way to maintain American greatness was to boost the institutions of capitalism and invest heavily in the nation’s defense. In some ways, Reagan symbolized the end of6the communal spirit of the 1960s by emphasizing the power and talent of American individuals. 5 But Reagan’s policies came with a cost: his insistence on defending traditional “fam3 to ignore the growing AIDS crisis that emerged in the 1980s, seeily values” allowed him ing it as disease that 5 affected only the gay community. Equally damningly, he ignored growing disparities in wealth throughout the decade, as the rich got richer and the poor B eye to these kinds of problems led to a growing and contengot poorer. Turning a blind tious divide between U America’s social conservatives and its social liberals. During the 1980s, the Democrats aligned more with social liberalism, while the Republicans established themselves as advocates for social conservatism, and the debates between the two David Paul Morris/Getty Images  What do you think? Reagan depicted in his favorite snack food, jellybeans. Throughout the 1980s, Reagan came to symbolize a > presidency with smiling ease, leading some to see confidence and others to see aloofness. 492 C h apte r 27 Reagan’s America 9781305178526, HIST: US History Since 1865, Volume 2, Third Edition, Schultz - © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization. the administration proposed a massive increase in military spending, equaling $1.2 trillion over a five-year period. Despite using the rhetoric of shrinking the size of the government, Reagan’s investment in defense actually caused a tremendous growth in government spending. This, combined with a cut in taxes, led to a dramatic rise in the nation’s already growing debt. Economically, the Reagan Rev­ olution failed at first, then succeeded, then failed again. In 1982, Reagan’s cuts initially produced an economic recession; the supposed trickle-down of wealth did not trickle down and the cuts to welfare programs limited the amount of consumer C dollars entering the market. By 1984, however, some of the policies, H especially the large defense expenR ditures, sparked an economic recovery, allowing Reagan to coast to an easy I reelection in 1984 against Democrats S Walter Mondale and his running mate Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman to run on a major T party’s ticket (and another symbol of the success of the womI en’s movement). By the late 1980s, however, Reagan’s Abudget policies had produced the largest peacetime deficit in American history, which even conservaN tives agreed was bad for the economy. The annual , and deficits had created a ballooning national debt, it appeared increasingly unlikely that supply-side economics would be successful for the economy as M a whole. A R Reagan also advocated limiting government involveK 27-1b Deregulation ment in business. Following this policy, he deregulated several industries from government control, including airlines (which led to strikes by air-traffic 6 controllers) and savings and loan institutions (which 5 in this led to a mammoth scandal, discussed later chapter). He also loosened regulations on air 3 pollution and motor vehicles, actions that allowed corpo5 air rations to continue polluting and delay installing bags in cars for several years. He was worried B that such regulation would slow economic development. U 27-1c Judicial and Administrative Appointments While Reagan’s fiscal policies reflected free-market conservatism, his judicial and administrative >> The supposed trickle-down of wealth did not trickle down. iStockphoto.com/ Andrew Dernie appointments appealed to social conservatives. He encouraged conservative positions on issues like abortion, school busing, affirmative action, and prayer in schools. Reagan appointed three conservatives to the Supreme Court, Sandra Day O’Connor (1981), Antonin Scalia (1986), and Anthony Kennedy (1988); he also named William Rehnquist (a Nixon appointee) as chief justice. These appointments did not Read or listen to ensure a conservative a collection of victory in every case, as interviews with some justices supported Reagan’s closest advisors. more liberal positions than others (especially, it turned out, O’Connor), but they were valuable bricks in the conservative fortress. 27-2 America in the 1980s: Polarization of the American Public The American public has always been divided by wealth, politics, and religion. But in the 1980s these divisions figured more prominently in American society and in American politics. There were logical reasons for this. Throughout the decade the wealthier amassed increased wealth, and the poor slipped further into trouble. Also during the decade, and perhaps more importantly, the New Right emerged as an organized right-wing lobbying group. Their stress on “family values,” moral issues, and popular culture challenged those who had supported the new direction of social justice advocated in the 1960s and 1970s. Many cite the rise of the New Right as a reaction to the social liberalization and the identity politics of the previous decades, and it seems clear that the rise of conservative ideology in politics (as symbolized by Ronald Reagan) led to a similar transformation in broader society and culture. Throughout the 1980s, conservatives mounted protests against the liberalization of family life, gender roles, and sexuality. They protested the transformation of the literary canon of accepted authors, which had dropped several famous “dead white men” from the roster of significant Western literature in favor of a more inclusive collection, America in the 1980s: Polarization of the American Public 493 9781305178526, HIST: US History Since 1865, Volume 2, Third Edition, Schultz - © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization. Inequality in trade whereby one country’s exports to another outweigh the second country’s exports to the first country including women and racial minorities. Most sought to make these social and cultural arguments while defending Reagan’s vision of free-market capitalism. 27-2a Divisions in Wealth Reagan’s tax cuts and his cuts to social welfare programs affected different groups of Americans differently. The policies clearly favored the wealthy. Their taxes dropped, and they benefited the most from Reagan’s business-friendly policies, including deregulation of big industries. The number of American billionaires grew from just one in 1978 to forty-nine in 1987. The number of Americans earning more than $500,000 increased by a factor of ten.C On the other side of the scale, the poor wereH becoming poorer. The percentage of Americans living below the poverty line increased dramatically duringR Reagan’s first term. More transformative, however,I were the effects on the middle class, which during S the 1980s began to capture an increasingly smaller percentage of the nation’s wealth. During Reagan’sT years in office, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans I earned more than 40 percent of the nation’s wealth, a threefold increase over the previous two decades.A The bottom 90 percent of earners, meanwhile, earned N slightly more than 20 percent of the nation’s wealth in the 1980s, nearly a threefold decrease from the, 1960s. Reagan’s social welfare cuts and the decline of middle-class industrial jobs had taken their toll. It became increasingly apparent that thisM inequality was afflicting various racial groups dif-A ferently. While the black middle class was in fact growing, and while the majority of impoverishedR Americans were white, the proportion of poor peo-K ple as a percentage of their race indicated that people of color were vastly overrepresented below the poverty line. The African Americans, Puerto Ricans,6 and Latinos who had moved to the northern cities 5 after World War II had been hurt by the departure of large3 Read an article discuss- manufacturers. These manu5 ing income facturers had moved either disparities. to the South or the West,B where labor unions were less powerful or, increas-U ingly during the 1980s, abroad, where businesses could find cheap labor and pay fewer taxes. While 1950s America was characterized by a robust and growing population of middle-class Americans, the 1980s highlighted a reemergence of economic disparities that had been absent since the 1920s. 494 C h apte r 27 Decline of the Middle Class Share of income captured 70% Top 1% Bottom 90% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0 1923 –1929 1960 –1969 1976 –1979 1982 –1989 1992 –2000 2002 –2007 Source: CBPP calculations based on data from Piketty and Saez Deregulation, new tax policies, and deindustrialization have >> all contributed to the decline of the middle class since the 1960s. The Rise of Japan and the American Trade Deficit These economic problems were compounded by the rise of Japan as an economic power. Partly as a result of a deliberate American policy to build up a major East Asian ally after China became a communist country in 1949, Japan became the world’s first fully modernized non-Western country during the second half of the twentieth century. Japan’s economic “arrival” became plainly evident during a time when the American economy was showing signs of weakness following the end of the postwar boom. The United States developed a growing trade deficit with Japan, which meant that Japan was now successfully exporting products such as cars, steel, and The economic rise of Japan in the 1980s led many Americans >> to wonder if their nation’s days as a superpower were numbered. Paramount Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection trade deficit Hollywood picked up this theme in the 1986 film Gung Ho, which portrayed the Japanese takeover of a failed American auto plant. Reagan’s America 9781305178526, HIST: US History Since 1865, Volume 2, Third Edition, Schultz - © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization. consumer electronics to the United States, while the Japanese were buying fewer and fewer American goods. As a result, American congressmen began to press for an increase in import tariffs on Japanese goods, but these efforts hardly stemmed the flood. Just as the economic muscle of oil-exporting countries had humbled the United States in the 1970s, the rise of Japan led many Americans to wonder if their nation’s days as an economic superpower were numbered. 27-2b Continued Crisis in the Cities These economic crises, combined with the demise of many social welfare programs, led to the continued breakdown of many American cities. While cities had always been portrayed as dangerous places, by C the 1980s the growth of the suburbs, the departure of social organizations and industries, and H the subsequent decline in tax revenues had solidified that image. Many major cities became symbols R of decay, poverty, and racial disparity. Accelerating the I decay, a cheaper form of cocaine called “crack” appeared in S the mid-1980s. This drug was highly addictive, and its use spread rapidly throughout many inner T cities. Meanwhile, inner-city youth seeking identity and I security increasingly turned to gangs. Gang violence escalated throughout the decade, leading A in some cities to an average of one gang murder per day. N Perhaps due to racism, perhaps due to fear, lawmakers instituted harsh penalties for, crimes committed in the inner cities. Possession of small amounts of crack cocaine, for instance, merited a M larger punishment equal to that for owning much amounts of cocaine, the more expensiveAversion iStockphoto.com/John Anderson R K 6 5 3 5 B U of the same drug. As these penalties increased, so did the American prison system, which was disproportionately populated by racial minorities from cities. In addition to building prisons, the Reagan administration addressed the growing drug problem with a public relations Read Reagan’s campaign entitled “Just Say address on No.” Nancy Reagan, the First the campaign Lady, spearheaded the camagainst drug abuse. paign, and she got many celebrities to join in. Critics claimed that the campaign was nothing more than hollow rhetoric that missed the underlying provocations that drove drug use. The causes of the urban crisis are complex and were decades in the making, but politicians seemed both uneager, and unable, to rectify the most central problems. 27-2c Culture Wars While a transformation in the distribution of wealth led to one significant division in American life, another emerged in the realm of culture. As the New Right had developed at the grassroots throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, the movement increased its political leverage and sought to reshape the nation in its idealized image. With leaders like Pat Robertson, James Dobson, and Jerry Falwell, evangelical Christians made up the bulk of the proponents of the New Right, while conservative radio personalities like Rush Limbaugh fueled the movement and stoked the belief that the United States had become unmoored from its Christian principles. With some success, they protested what they saw as the sexual licentiousness on television, the general permissiveness of American secular society, the emphasis on relativism and pluralism in America’s educational system, and the liberties with which the courts had interpreted the privacy clause of the Constitution, especially regarding a woman’s right to have an abortion. Although Reagan only tacitly endorsed the New Right, he did make appearances with its leaders, giving the movement mainstream leverage. They made headlines when they fought to have “I was making close to $2,000 a >> week selling weed when I decided to join the Unknown Vice Lords. Doing so allowed me to expand my drug-selling territory. Life seemed great.”—Jeremiah, teen gang member America in the 1980s: Polarization of the American Public 495 9781305178526, HIST: US History Since 1865, Volume 2, Third Edition, Schultz - © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization. H R 27-2d AIDS Along with increasing divisions in wealth and theI culture wars, a third social crisis emerged in the S 1980s, this one deadly. Autoimmune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) is a deadly disease that attacks aT person’s immune system, the system that powers a I A Jerry >> N Falwell founded the Moral , Majority in 1979, using it to lobby for conservative social change and provoking what has come to be called “a culture war.” M A R K Cynthia Johnson/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images 6 5 3 5 B U 496 C h apte r 27 During the eighties, state departments of public health >> wielded the power of advertising in a massive effort to educate the Image courtesy of The Advertising Archives textbooks remove evolutionary theory from their pages, arguing that evolution contradicted a biblical explanation for the origins of the world. They similarly struggled to remove sex education from public schools, as well as works of literature that they perceived to be overly sexual in nature. Because many of these battles were fought at the level of local school boards, the so-called “culture wars” were felt deeply in the heart of America. The rise of the New Right stimulated the formation of a left-wing opposition. Political liberals founded organizations like People for the American Way (1981) and older groups like the American Civil Liberties Union revamped and actively lobbied against the policies of the New Right. They presented a full agenda based on separation of church and state, individual privacy laws, and expanded C systems of social welfare. public and prevent the spread of AIDS. The federal government opted not to, with Reagan himself ordering his surgeon general to refrain from discussing the disease publicly. person’s body to fight other diseases. AIDS is spread through transmission of bodily fluids, most especially by blood or semen. Because it compromises the immune system, it leaves the body vulnerable to other diseases. When undiagnosed or untreated, AIDS is deadly. AIDS was first detected in the United States in 1981, and by 1988 more than 57,000 cases had been diagnosed. But throughout the 1980s, no one knew quite what it was; its etiology remained a mystery. More troubling, because in America the disease was initially detected in homosexual men, many Americans were leery to respond, thinking it was simply a disease contained within one American community. Demonstrating the levels of homophobia that existed in the 1980s, politicians were incredibly slow to respond to the epidemic because it affected people they felt they could safely ignore without political ramifications. Reagan himself ordered his surgeon general, the leading spokesperson of matters of public health in the federal government, to refrain from discussing the AIDS crisis publicly, dismissing it as only a gay disease and thereby limiting federal funds for research on the disease and aid to those who suffered from it. But it quickly became apparent that, in places like Haiti and Africa, AIDS had spread beyond the gay community and was a disease that had little to do with one’s sexual preference. When basketball star Earvin “Magic” Johnson announced in 1991 that he had contracted AIDS despite being heterosexual, Reagan’s America 9781305178526, HIST: US History Since 1865, Volume 2, Third Edition, Schultz - © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization. “Read my lips: no new taxes.” he helped transform the The S&L Crisis perception of the disease Unbridled from governbeyond one that simply ment oversight, large num—George H. W. Bush, 1988 Republican impacts the gay commubers of savings and loans National Convention, uttering a sentence that nity. Safe-sex education and (S&Ls) emerged to compete would come back to haunt him during his heightened awareness of with banks as depositories of 1992 bid for reelection the disease have curbed the people’s money. But instead runaway epidemic of AIDS of securing that money, S&Ls in the United States, but it is still a key concern of invested people’s deposits in shady real estate deals, American society, and it certainly roiled the veneer bonds of dubious reliability, and other high-risk of confidence and prosperity in Reagan’s America, investments. Some of these high-risk investments while at the same time putting on dramatic display were successful: large companies used the money the nation’s continued homophobia. to buy up weaker competiSee a timeline of tors, using their debt as a events about the tax write-off and downsizS&L crisis. ing the weaker companies to make them profitable or eliminating them altoC gether. In the business world, this forced companies Despite Reagan’s upbeat image, his “revolution” H had to streamline production and remain competitive. immense costs that were borne by his successors. Some S&L investors, however, were less successR ful in their investments, leading to waves of layoffs, I companies burdened with huge debt, and overly 27-3a The 1988 Election consolidated industries. When several of these highS Reagan’s vice president, George H. W. Bush, empharisk deals went sour, millions of Americans lost their sized Reagan-style conservatism as he campaigned T savings in the S&Ls. President Bush orchestrated a for president in 1988. In the campaign, he portrayed program to allow depositors to recoup their lost savI Democratic candidate Massachusetts Governor ings, but this plan came with a price tag of nearly A who Michael Dukakis as a big-government liberal $500 million for Americans. American taxpayers supported high taxes and who was too soft on were paying the price of bank deregulation. N crime. Bush ran ads describing an African American , Horton No New Taxes? Massachusetts prison inmate named Willie who, released by Dukakis on a temporary furlough, The combination of Reagan’s increased military kidnapped a Maryland couple and raped the woman. spending, his tax cuts, and the payouts to rectify his Whereas liberals in the 1960s had been ableM to scare deregulation created a huge national debt. During the public with ads playing on fears of nuclear war, his election campaign, Bush tried to maintain A Bush turned liberal into a derogatory term that Reagan’s optimistic demeanor and promised the implied a connection between DemocraticRpolicies American people that he would not raise taxes. It and social disorder. was, he argued, still morning in America. This promK Elected by a comfortable margin, Bush continise became untenable by 1990. That year, Bush and ued many of Reagan’s social and economic policies. Congress produced a budget that raised taxes and In appointing a very conservative justice, 6 Clarence cut defense spending, because maintaining high Thomas, to the Supreme Court, Bush increased the outlays without recouping the money via taxes was 5 conservative majority on the Court. But his ecodeemed dangerous federal policy. Politically, how3 nomic policies were not as successful. Indeed, in ever, the move did not work out for Bush. Reneging both domestic and international affairs, Bush strugon his word about raising taxes would, in 1992, cost 5 gled to manage several of the long-term problems him his bid for reelection. Even worse, raising taxes B stuck that Reagan’s policies had created. He was and cutting defense spending did little to forestall a paying for the Reagan Revolution. serious recession. It was too little, too late. U 27-3 Paying for the Reagan Revolution 27-3b Bush’s Domestic Policies Bush’s first hurdle was cleaning up a savings and loan scandal produced by Reagan’s attempt to deregulate that industry. Recession By 1990, unemployment had risen to 7 percent, and companies were regularly downsizing. The number of impoverished Americans rose by 2 million, and the cost of operating with a huge national debt Paying for the Reagan Revolution 497 9781305178526, HIST: US History Since 1865, Volume 2, Third Edition, Schultz - © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization. When he first entered office, Reagan took a hard line C with the Soviet Union, provocatively portraying it as an “evil empire.” His efforts, along with the increas-H ingly obvious economic collapse of the Soviet Union, R helped initiate the end of the Cold War. Hear Reagan’s its own in Europe. Reagan “Evil Empire” also proposed to build new speech. defensive weapons capable of “rendering . . . nuclear weapons impotent” by zapping them from space. This “Strategic Defense Initiative” or SDI (denigrated by critics as “star wars”) violated the 1972 ABM Treaty, which forbade defensive systems capable of covering either the entire United States or the Soviet Union. Andropov and other Soviet leaders saw SDI as a rejection of arms control overtures in favor of a new quest for global military supremacy. Reagan may have been betting that the Soviet Union could not afford to keep up with a revamped arms race against the United States. After all, in August 1980, shipworkers in Poland staged a series of strikes that led to the formation of the first independent labor union in a communist-controlled country, Solidarity. The union’s launch sparked a wave of sympathy strikes and indicated that the Soviet Union was having problems maintaining its empire. Star Wars Perestroika was becoming apparent. Incredibly, Bush failed to respond immediately. He eventually proposed tax credits and a middle-class tax cut, but these proposals came much too late to stem a recession. 27-4 Foreign Relations Under Reagan-Bush Meanwhile, both Reagan and Bush supported an active, interventionist foreign policy. This was disastrous for balancing America’s budget, but it did help end the Cold War. 27-4a The End of the Cold War Era I S Among the many facets of Reagan’s actions, the bluntest was to increase the number of AmericanT weapons, reigniting the arms race that had slowedI through the 1970s. Reagan revived military programs that Carter had cut. He dismissed overturesA from the Soviet leader, Yuri Andropov, to cut backN certain missiles if the United States would refrain , from deploying intermediate-range missiles of M A R K Courtesy Ronald Reagan Library 6 5 3 5 B U 498 C h apte r 27 Relations between Reagan and the Soviets softened during Reagan’s second term. The chief impetus for change was the arrival of a new Soviet premier, Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev was a reformer eager to restructure the Soviet economy (the Russian word for “restructuring” is perestroika, a catchphrase of the 1980s and 1990s). He was also in favor of softening the opposition between the West and the East (the President >> Reagan developed a solid partnership with the Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, leading to several breakthrough summits and the opening of the Soviet nations to some Western goods. It wasn’t all good will, though: the Soviet Union was in fact going broke. Reagan’s America 9781305178526, HIST: US History Since 1865, Volume 2, Third Edition, Schultz - © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization. The end of the Cold War shifted >> the focus of American diplomatic interests, Russian word for “openness” is glasnost, another catchphrase of the era). Gorbachev was keenly aware of the exceptional costs of Reagan’s burgeoning arms race, and he sought to rectify the Soviet Union’s financial problems by slowing the nuclear buildup. In 1987, the two leaders—Reagan and Gorbachev— agreed to eliminate thousands C of intermediate-range missiles in the Intermediate Nuclear H Forces (INF) Treaty. Gorbachev then removed troops from Afghanistan,Rsignaling Russia’s willingness (and financial need) to I stop actively promoting the spread of communism S around the world, one of the key fears coloring the American understanding of the Cold War. T With the Soviet Union’s removal from Afghanistan, the I American-supported Mujahideen took control, and A warthe Mujahideen’s inability to control the ravaged nation led to the rise of the Taliban, someN thing that would have deadly ramifications for the , United States in 2001. The Middle East M While relations with the Soviet Union simmered down in the 1980s, America experiencedA complicated new foreign policy problems. Its most complex international relations involved theRMiddle East. There, an attack in Lebanon, the K country immediately north of Israel, was the initial flashpoint. Lebanon had been torn apart since 1975 by a civil war between Muslims and Christians, 6 and the small country had been turned into a battle5 field by the foreign armies of Syria, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and Israel. Fearing 3 the presence of troops from Soviet-friendly Syria so close to 5 Israel, the United States sent peacekeeping forces to Lebanon in August 1982. The HezbollahB terrorist organization viewed U.S. peacekeepers asUtargets and kidnapped a number of American educators and missionaries. The worst blow came in October 1983, when Hezbollah terrorists attacked the barracks of U.S. peacekeepers in Beirut; a single suicide bomber driving a truck filled with explosives killed 241 Marines. © Patrick Durand/Sygma/Corbis with no area deemed more important than the Middle East. Here, the American flag flies next to a sign for Kuwait City, which American troops had just liberated from Iraq. Of course, much of the U.S. interest in the Middle East centered on oil. Americans had become increasingly dependent on the energy source during the second half of the twentieth century. When America’s oil supplies were repeatedly threatened throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the United States took military or diplomatic action. In 1980, for instance, Iraq, a militarily powerful oil-producing Arab state at the head of the Persian Gulf, attacked its neighbor Iran in an attempt to secure control of local waterways. The United States, the Soviet Union, and other Arab states in the region supported Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in his fight against Iran’s militant Islamic republic. When Iran struck back against Iraq and its allies by firing missiles at their oil tankers, the United States responded by reflagging Kuwaiti tankers with American colors, bringing them under the defensive umbrella of the U.S. Navy. The threat of direct American military force reinforced the idea that the free passage of oil traffic was a key national interest. It also signaled deeper American involvement in the Middle East. The Iran-Contra Affair Reagan’s Cold War focus on keeping left-wing governments out of Latin America and his desire to guard American interests in the Middle East converged in the Iran-Contra affair. In 1985, at the urging of Israel, the United States sold weapons to Iran for use in its war with Iraq, which Israel viewed as its most dangerous enemy in the region. Reagan did this despite an embargo against Iran (imposed after the 1979 hostage crisis) and the fact that Iran was an avowed enemy; indeed, the United States was at the Foreign Relations Under Reagan-Bush 499 9781305178526, HIST: US History Since 1865, Volume 2, Third Edition, Schultz - © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization. 60 0° °N 20°E 40°E Arctic Communist regimes overthrown since 1989 Circle SWEDEN Soviet Union, dissolved in 1991 NORWAY AT L A N T I C OCEAN IRELAND DENMARK UNITED KINGDOM NETH. Berlin Wall opened, Nov. 1989 German reunification, 1990 40 UG RT Berlin AUSTRIA SLOVAKIA HUNGARY BELARUS U K R AI NE Black Se a TUNISIA GEORGIA GR EECE CYPRUS KYRGYZSTAN CHINA TAJIKISTAN T U R K MENI ST AN AZERBAIJAN PAKISTAN N SYR I A AFGHANISTAN I R AN Ad LEBANON ri IRAQ at ISRAEL ic JORDAN Se a Sea same time offering support to Iran’s enemy, Iraq. It soldM weapons to Iran becauseA top officials in the Reagan administration hoped thatR doing so would ease relations between the UnitedK States and that oil-rich nation. More damning, however, was the discovery that members of Reagan’s administration took the prof-6 its from the sale of arms to Iran and sent the money 5 to a right-wing guerrilla group in Nicaragua called the contras, who were battling the left-wing govern-3 ment. It was never proven that Reagan was aware 5 that the Iran arms sale funds had been diverted to the contras, but the nationally televised testimony ofB Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North demonstrated thatU Reagan had not sufficiently controlled members of his own administration. Final proof: 10/8/08 Right-wing Nicaraguan guerrilla group during the 1980s The Collapse of the Soviet Union By the late 1980s, the perestroika and glasnost initiated by Soviet premier Gorbachev had begun to C h apte r 27 0 250 KUWAIT 500 Km. 250 500 Mi. ia rs Red Trim 45p0 x 31p0 contras SAU D I AR AB I A 0 Pe KOSOVO 500 U ZB EK I ST AN ARMENIA TURKEY C SLOVENIA CROATIA H BOSNIANATO airwar against R HERZEGOVINA Serbia to protect SERBIA Kosovo, 1994 I MONTENEGRO EGYPT U.S. troops join NATO S F.Y.R. peacekeeping forces, MACEDONIA Dec. 1995 T I A Map 27.1. The End of the Cold War N . Cengage Learning 2014 Cengage Learning Ms00504 , The End of the Cold War Changes the Map of Europe CHECHNYA Sea MALTA a ian Se BULGARIA sp ALGERIA ALBANIA Aral Sea Ca n KAZAKHSTAN Chechnya declares independence 1991; Russia attacks, 1994 MOLDOVA nea Gorbachev in power, 1985 –1991 Moscow coup fails; Boris Yeltsin declared president of Russia, 1990 Czechoslovakia broke into Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993 ROMANIA Mediterra RUSSIA Moscow 80°E Largest and most influential of the former Soviet republics after 1991 LATVIA LITHUANIA POLAND CZECH REP. ITALY SPAIN PO LUX. SWITZ. FRANCE AL °N RUSSIA GERMANY 60°E ESTONIA Elections, 1989 BELG. Yugoslavia, dissolved in civil war, 1991–1992 F I NL AND North Sea n Gu lf TYPE BLOCK MAP Bleeds top, right Position top map trim at top page trim Align leftbymap trimexposure on type block blossom. Inspired their to capitalism, Western popular culture, and the loosened Soviet controls allowed by Gorbachev, in 1989, Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, then followed by Bulgaria and Romania, all overthrew their communist regimes. In November 1989, the Berlin Wall came down. In 1990, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia all declared their independence. In 1991, the oncemighty Soviet Union petered out, collapsing into a number of independent states—Russia, Ukraine, and many others (see Map 27.1). The USSR was no longer. This meant that the United States had won the Cold War. Or, more realistically, that the Soviet Union had lost it. In the early 1990s, it quickly became apparent that Gorbachev’s motives for perestroika were financial: the Soviet Union simply could not afford to maintain the huge military presence needed to keep its buffer states under disciplined communist control. Historians still debate the role of the United States in the demise of the USSR, with some saying America’s sometime hardline approach actually prolonged the Reagan’s America 9781305178526, HIST: US History Since 1865, Volume 2, Third Edition, Schultz - © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization. In November >> 1989, the Berlin Wall Tom Stoddart/Getty Images came down. The event became a key symbol of the fall of communism and, ever since, has continued to be a touchstone in the struggle for increased freedoms around the world. C H R over Soviet-style communism. Regardless, the end Cold War by giving political cover to Soviet leaders of the Cold War led to a reduction of nuclear who would rather talk about the evils of the I United weapons by both the United States and the former States than poverty and hunger at home. Others S Soviet Union, although many weapons still exist. argue that the policy of containment, first articuT It also allowed the United States to station fewer lated in 1946 and lasting through the presidency troops in Europe. To understand why the Soviet of George H. W. Bush, had succeeded in keeping I Union collapsed, see “The reasons why . . .” box communism from conquering and dominating the A below. world and that capitalism had cle...
Purchase answer to see full attachment