Chapter 40 – The Stalemated Seventies – 1968-1980
AP Outline Notes page 946-984
Chapter 40 – The Stalemated Seventies – 1968-1980
A sense of limits struck America with the 1970s, after a quarter century of prosperity after World War II.
A. Sources of Stagnation
1) Some possible sources for the slump in productivity –
a) increasing presence of women and teenagers in the workforce, who had fewer skills than adult male workers, and who were less likely to work full time
b) investment in new machinery
c) the heavy cost of compliance with government safety regulations
d) the general shift of the American economy from manufacturing to services
e) the Vietnam War certainly caused some problems with the economy
f) Johnson’s insistence on ‘guns and butter’ at the same time, causing inflation
g) Overseas competitors had gained advantages over U.S. producers
B. Nixon ‘Vietnamizes’ the War
1) Nixon’s policy of Vietnamization – to train more South Vietnamese troops to take over the burden of the Americans in fighting the war.
2) There were 540,000 American troops in Vietnam when he took office, and thus he called for their withdrawal over a gradual period of time.
3) The Nixon Doctrine – the U.S. would honor its existing troop commitments but in the future, Asians and others would have to fight their own wars without the support of large bodies of American ground troops.
4) Nixon sought to with the war by means other than killing American sons and daughters – American doves were even opposed to this.
5) October, 1969 – National Vietnam moratorium called in protest of the War.
6) Nixon responded in November, 1969 with a dramatic televised appeal to the great ‘silent majority,’ who presumably supported the War.
7) He unleashed vice president Spiro Agnew to criticize the ‘impudent snobs.’
8) By 1970, Vietnam had become the longest in American history.
9) Because of the draft, and disproportionate number of African Americans and poor were killed on the front lines of Vietnam.
10) The My Lai Massacre, in which American troops killed unarmed civilians and soldiers sickened the Americans at home.
C. Cambodianizing of the Vietnam War
1) For many years, the North Vietnames and Viet Cong had been using Cambodia as a springboard for troops – the Ho Chi Minh Trail – a supply line of North Vietnamese into the South – ran from the North through Cambodia, and then into South Vietnam.
2) On April 29, 1970, Nixon, without consulting Congress, ordered American forces into Cambodia to clean out enemy sanctuaries in Cambodia.
3) The revelation of this, by Nixon, prompted increased protests at home.
a) Kent State – 1970 – At Kent State University in Ohio, National Guard troops opened fire on unarmed student demonstrator, killing four students and wounding several others.
b) Jackson State – two black students are killed during student protests by highway patrol officers.
c) Nixon withdrew American troops from Cambodia after two months presence there.
d) The Senate repealed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.
e) The draft switched to a lottery system.
f) 1971 – the 26th Amendment is ratified, guaranteeing 18 year olds the right to vote.
g) 1971 – The New York Times published a top-secret Pentagon study of America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. They were leaked to the Times by former Pentagon official Daniel Ellsberg.
1) These papers showed that our government had been deceiving the American people during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, and that the Gulf of Tonkin incident did not happen in the manner that was originally represented to the American people.
D. Nixon’s Détente with Beijing (Peking) and Moscow
1) Nixon, one of the very best foreign policy experts to ever occupy the White House, attempted to drive a wedge between the Soviet Union and China – and in 1972, took an important step in that direction by visiting China.
2) Nixon’s plan to visit China was backed by his national security advisor, Dr. Henry Kissinger.
3) Nixon’s trip paved the way to better relations with Communist China.
4) Later that year Nixon visited the Soviet Union, ushering an era of détente – relaxed tension between the two superpowers.
a) Détente resulted in several significant agreements –
1) the grain deal of 1972, where U.S. agrees to sell massive amount of wheat and corn to the Soviet Union
2) 1972 - ABM (anti-ballistic missile) treaty, which limited the Soviets and the U.S. to two clusters of defensive missiles.
3) 1972 - SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks), designed to freeze the number of long-range missiles for five years.
4) Both of these constituted a first-step toward slowing down the arms race.
5) The U.S. though went ahead with development of ‘MIRVs’ – missiles that contained several warheads on each rocket.
6) The Soviets proceeded to ‘MIRV’ their own missiles, and the arms race again ratcheted up again.
7) Nixon’s courting of China cleverly set the stage to allow the U.S. to begin its exit from Vietnam.
E. A New Team of the Supreme Court
1) Nixon had complained about the ‘permissiveness’ and the ‘judicial activism’ of the Supreme Court that Chief Justice Earl Warren had presided over.
2) The Warren Court had made decisions that drastically affected sexual freedom, the rights of criminals, the practice of religion, civil rights, and the structure of political representation (legislative apportionment and redistricting).
3) The decisions of the Warren Court reflected its deep concern for the individual. Some of its notable cases were
a) Griswold vs. Connecticut (1965) - The Supreme Court struck down a state law that prohibited the use of contraceptives, even among married people. In this case, the Court carved out a right of privacy from the Fourth Amendment – the right of privacy would become the basis for protecting women’s abortion rights.
b) Gideon vs. Wainwright (1963) – all defendants in serious criminal cases were entitled to an attorney, even if they could not afford one.
c) Escobedo (1964) and Miranda (1966), both of which ensured the right of the accused to remain silent and enjoy certain other protections when accused of a crime.
d) New York Times vs. Sullivan (1964), which held public figures could not prevail in a libel suit unless they could prove that ‘malice’ (knowing falsity of the statement, or reckless disregard for the truth of the matter),
e) Engel vs. Vitale (1962) and School District of Abington Township vs. Schempp (1963), struck down required prayers and Bible reading in public schools. Both cases were based on the establishment clause of the First Amendment (requiring separation of church and state).
f) The Court made several rulings that held that states could not deny blacks the rights that whites enjoyed.
g) Many conservatives attacked the court for making decisions that were at the expense of states’ rights. They argued that the Supreme Court was acting more like a legislature than a court.
h) In Reynolds vs. Sims (1964), the Court ruled that both chambers of state legislatures had to follow the one-person one vote rule. From 1954 on, the Supreme Court came under bitter attack.
i) Nixon undertook to appoint conservative strict constructionists to the Supreme Court bench. He had successfully nominated four such members to the Court before the end of 1971, including new Chief Justice Warren Burger.
j) But, as often happens in history, because these Justices are appointed for life and good behavior, they often make decisions that do not meet the favor of the President who nominated them. This happened to some degree with Nixon, as was reflected in the Court’s decision in Roe vs. Wade (1973), which upheld a woman’s ‘right to choose.’
F. Nixon on the Home Front
1) Nixon presided over significant expansion of welfare programs that typically were denounced by Republicans.
a) He approved increased appropriations for entitlements such as Food Stamps and Medicaid, as well as the biggest federal program – Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), which targeted single mothers of young children.
b) Nixon brought about a new federal program – Supplemental Security Income (SSI), which gave large benefits to the indigent aged, blind, and disabled.
c) 1972 – He signed a bill that raised Social Security old-age pensions and that provided automatic cost of living adjustments.
d) Nixon’s expansion of Great Society Programs, along with continued economic growth, helped shrink the poverty rate to 11 percent in 1973 – the lowest that it has been in modern history.
e) Nixon also waged war against racial discrimination, with his Philadelphia Plan of 1969, which required construction trade unions working on federal contracts in Philadelphia, to establish ‘goals and timetables’ for hiring black apprentices.
1) The Philadelphia plan was soon extended to all federal contracts, and in effect required thousands of employers to meet hiring quotas or to establish ‘set-asides’ for minority subcontractors.
2) The Philadelphia Plan drastically changed the meaning of ‘affirmative action’,
a) Johnson had intended affirmative action to protect individuals against discrimination.
b) Nixon transformed and escalated affirmative action into a program that conferred privileges on certain groups.
c) Griggs vs. Duke Power Co. (1971) – Supreme Court held that intelligence tests or other devices that had the effect of excluding minorities or women from certain jobs were prohibited.
d) The effect of the Griggs was to suggest that the only sure way to protect against charges of discrimination was to hire minority workers, or admit minority students, in proportion to their presence in society.
e) Thus the actions of the Supreme Court and Nixon opened extensive new opportunities in employment and educational opportunities for minorities and women.
f) Critics of these policies claimed that affirmative action was ‘reverse discrimination.’
2) Other major legacies of Nixon were –
a) 1970 – the creation of the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), and the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA)
b) The establishment of these two agencies capped the 20 preceding years of heightened concerned about the environment.
1) In 1950, the Air Pollution Control Office was established.
2) 1962 – Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, which was a muck-raking work that exposed the toxic effects of pesticides.
3) The Clean Air Act of 1970 and the Endangered Species Act of 1973, along with EPA and OSHA, were important tools in the protection of the environment.
a) They made notable progress in decades to follow by reducing auto emissions and cleaning up dirty waterways and toxic waste sites.
b) Congress refused after 1972 to fund any more of the huge irrigation projects that provided water to much of the dry (arid) West over the previous 50 years.
3) 1971 – Nixon imposed a 90 day wage and price freeze to try to control inflation, though he did not like economic controls.
4) 1971 - To try to stimulate U.S. exports, Nixon took the U.S. off the Gold Standard and devalued the dollar.
a) This effectively ended the ‘Bretton Woods’ system of international currency stabilization that had been in effect for more than 25 years after WWII.
5) Nixon had a plan – the ‘southern strategy,’ which emphasized an appeal to white voters, by going slowly on civil rights and openly opposing school busing as a means of achieving racial balance. This strategy became superfluous because foreign policy would come to dominate presidential campaign of 1972.
G. Nixon Wins Reelection in a Landslide.
1) Nixon had promised to end the war when he ran for president in 1968.
2) Spring, 1972 – fighting in Vietnam escalates to alarming levels when the North Vietnamese, heavily equipped with foreign tanks, broke through the demilitarized zone (DMZ) which separated North and South Vietnam.
a) Nixon responded with massive bombing attacks on North Vietnam, including Hanoi,
b) Gambling that neither the Soviet Union nor China would enter the war, he mined the principle harbors of North Vietnam.
c) Nixon’s strategy with the Soviet Union and China paid off brilliantly, as neither of them entered the war.
d) The North Vietnamese offensive ground to a halt.
e) As the war continued, the Democrats selected South Dakota Senator George McGovern, a liberal and a dove, as their nominee for president in 1972.
f) McGovern pledged that if elected, he would withdraw all American troops from Vietnam within 90 days of taking office.
g) Nixon emphasized that he had reduced the number of American troops in Vietnam from about 540,000 to about 30,000.
h) Nixon won the election in a landslide, with the help of Henry Kissinger announcing right before the election that ‘peace is at hand..’
i) Though Nixon had a huge victory, his coattails were non-existent, as Republicans lost seats in both the Senate and the House.
H. Bombing North Vietnam to back to the peace table
1) After fighting on both sides had escalated again, Nixon ordered the ‘Christmas bombings’ of 1972, pummeling North Vietnam for a two-week period in an effort to force them back to the peace table.
2) This attack was the heaviest of the war, and had the intended effect of driving the North Vietnamese back to the peace table, and to agree to cease-fire arrangements on January 23, 1973.
3) Nixon referred to this peace as ‘peace with honor,’ though there were problems with it, including the fact that the U.S. did not require the North Vietnamese to evacuate their military form South Vietnam.
I. Watergate
1) June, 1972 – A botched burglary took place at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. The burglary was perpetrated by people who were working for CREEP – the Committee to Reelect the President.
2) CREEP had also raised engaged in a ‘dirty tricks’ campaign that included spying and sabotage, including falsified documents, directed against Democratic candidates in the 1972 campaign.
3) The Watergate break-in was only a small part of the corruption that was taking place, and many Nixon aides and advisors were forced to resign. Many had been involved in criminal obstruction of justice, in an attempt to cover-up the break in and other criminal activities.
4) Nixon had an ‘enemies list’ that targeted innocent citizens who were prosecuted or hounded in various ways.
5) Nixon aides authorized a burglary of the files of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, in an attempt to destroy Ellsberg after he had ‘leaked’ the Pentagon Papers. This was one of the enterprises of the White House ‘plumbers’, who were created to stop leaks of confidential White House information.
6) 1973-1974 - A Senate Select Committee was convened, headed by Sen Sam Irvin, to investigate the Watergate scandal. Before a nationally televised audience, witnesses appeared and told their stories. John Dean III, a former White House counsel (lawyer), testified at great length, implicated the highest levels of the White House, including the President, in the cover-up. Nixon denied Dean’s charges.
J. The Great Tape Controversy
1) July, 1973 – the existence of a taping system having been at work in Nixon’s oval office is presented to the Senate Select Committee
2) Tape recorded conversation between Nixon and his aides are thus within the possession of the President.
3) Nixon refuses to hand over the tapes to the Committee, claiming executive privilege (confidentiality) and separation of powers.
4) October, 1973 – problems for the White House become worse when Vice President Spiro Agnew is forced to resign for taking bribes or ‘kickbacks’ from Maryland contractors while governor of Maryland and also as vice president.
a) The 25th Amendment was invoked, and Gerald Ford became vice president.
b) A well respected Congressmen (House Minority Leader), Ford’s character was above reproach.
5) Ten days after Agnew resigned, came the ‘Saturday Night Massacre’ – Nixon ordered the Attorney General to fire Archibald Cox, the Watergate ‘special prosecutor’, who had issued a subpoena to Nixon demanding that he turn over relevant tapes and other documents from the White House. Both the Attorney General, and an Assistant Attorney General, resigned rather than comply with Nixon’s order to fire Cox. Cox was finally fired by the successor Attorney General Robert Bork.
K. The Secret Bombing of Cambodia and the War Powers Act
1) July, 1973 – Americans are shocked to learn that the U.S. had been secretly conducting some 3500 bombing raids against North Vietnamese positions in Cambodia, from March, 1969 to May, 1970, prior to the open American incursion into Cambodia. Of particular concern was that these bombing raids were taking place while the president was claiming that the U.S. was honoring Cambodian neutrality.
2) After the Vietnam cease fire in 1973, Nixon carried on large-scale bombing of communist forces in an effort to help the rightist Cambodian government.
a) Many in the nation were outraged, and Nixon, with funding running out for the bombing raids, compromised with Congress: he would end the Cambodian bombing after six weeks and seek approval from Congress fo any future action in Cambodia.
b) The bombings of Cambodia had taken a terrible toll, and a despotic leader in Cambodia, Pol Pot, killed as many as 2 million of his own people (the ‘Killing Fields’)
3) November, 1973 – The War Powers Act – required the President to report to Congress within 48 hours after committing troops into a foreign conflict or ‘substantially’ enlarging American combat units in a foreign nation. If Congress did not extend the President’s limited authorization, it would last only 60 days, unless Congress extended it for 30 more days.
4) Compelling Nixon to stop the bombing of Cambodia in 1973 was just one manifestation of what came to be called the ‘New Isolationism’
a) January, 1973 – The draft ends, but is retained on a standby basis.
L. The Arab Oil Embargo and the Energy Crisis
1) October, 1973 – Syria and Egypt launched surprise attacks on Israel in an attempt to regain the territory they had lost in the Six-Day War of 1967.
2) Kissinger, who had become Secretary of State in September, quickly went to Moscow to try to restrain the Soviets, who were supply the attacker with arms.
a) Nixon, believed that the Soviets were ready to send combat troops into the Suez area, placed U.S. nuclear forces on alert and ordered an airlift of $2 billion in war materials to the Israelis.
b) The American aid made the difference in turning the tide in favor of Israel. A cease-fire was soon declared.
c) Late in October, 1973, the Arab nations placed an embargo on oil for the U.S. and for other nations supporting Israel.
d) The result of the embargos was an ‘energy crisis’ in the U.S., with a deepening business recession and lots of long gas lines at gas stations.
e) Congress responded by approving the expensive Alaska pipeline and imposing a 55 mph national speed limit.
f) The five month long Arab oil embargo signaled the end of an era of cheap and abundant energy.
g) Since 1948, the U.S. had been a net importer of oil. After 1970, American production of oil has been on the decline. Since WWII, Americans more than tripled their oil consumption.
h) By 1974, the U.S. was extremely vulnerable to any interruption of oil supplies. This fact would influence the diplomatic and economic history of the 1980s and 1990s.
i) The Middle East became more and more important to America’s strategic interest. This fact would lead America into a war with Iraq in the 1990s in order to protect its oil supplies.
j) OPEC approximately quadrupled the price for crude oil after lifting the embargo in 1974 – this would make inflation worse, and add to America’s trade deficit.
k) 1974 – The U.S. took the lead in forming the International Energy Agency as a counterbalance to OPEC. The age of adjusting to America’s position as an oil dependent nation had begun.
M. The Unmaking of a President
1) The continuing impeachment inquiry cast doubts about Nixon’s integrity.
2) Nixon responded to the last of the House Judiciary Committee’s demand for the Watergate tapes, by agreeing in the Spring of 1974 to hand over ‘relevant’ portions of the tapes, while declaring that these would vindicate them.
a) Substantial sections of the requested tapes were missing, and Nixon’s frequent obscenities were excised as ‘expletive deleted.’
b) When the rest of the tapes were demanded, Nixon refused.
c) July, 1974 – The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that ‘executive privilege’ gave him no right to withhold from the special prosecutor portions of tapes that were relevant criminal activity.
d) Nixon complied with the unanimous Supreme Court decision, and turned over the tapes.
e) The House Judiciary Committee went ahead with its Articles of Impeachment.
f) The Committee adopted the first article, charging obstruction of justice.
g) Two other articles were approved, accusing Nixon of having abused the powers of his office and of showing contempt of Congress by ignoring lawful subpoenas.
h) Nixon made three of the tapes public, one of which showed that six days after the Watergate break-in, Nixon had given an order to use the CIA to hold back the FBI in its investigation of the Watergate matter. Thus the tapes showed that Nixon had obstruction of justice. He had also previously told the American people that he had known nothing about the Watergate cover-up until 9 months after the break-in.
i) Republican support of Nixon disappeared in Congress. With impeachment a foregone conclusion, and conviction in the Senate apparently a foregone conclusion, Nixon announced his resignation on August 8, 1974.
j) The Constitution had prevailed.
N. The First President Never to be Elected either President of Vice President
1) Though a man of personal integrity, Ford had to deal with the issue of his legitimacy as a President, in the sense that he had never been elected.
2) A myth existed that Ford was stupid – his Yale law diploma would indicate otherwise.
3) Ford surprised many when he issued a full pardon to Nixon for any crimes that he might have committed while president.
4) While many of Nixon’s opponents believed that Nixon had struck a deal with Ford, in which Ford had agreed to pardon Nixon after Nixon would resign. Ford and Nixon denied these rumors. Ford said that he had pardoned Nixon because to end Nixon’s agony, and to promote the healing of the nation after the “nightmare” of Watergate.
a) The pardon would have a negative effect on Ford’s prospects in the 1976 presidential election.
b) Ford sought to expand détente with the Soviets – in July, 1975, President Ford and representatives from 34 other nations met in Helsinki, Finland, to sign what would become known as the Helsinki accords.
1) One of the agreements provided an official end to WWII by legitimizing the Soviet-dictated boundaries of Poland and other Eastern European nations.
2) In return, the Soviets singed agreements guaranteeing more liberal exchanges of people and information between East and West and protecting certain basic ‘human rights.’
3) Critics of the Helsinki agreements in the U.S. claimed that American technology and grain was flowing to the USSR and of comparable importance was flowing back.
4) Détente was beginning to fall out of vogue in the U.S. because of this.
O. Defeat in Vietnam
1) 1975 – The North Vietnamese re-invade South Vietnam.
a) Ford urged Congress to authorize more weapons for the South Vietnamese, but they Congress refused to do so.
b) As a result, South Vietnam quickly collapsed – the pictures of Americans and refugees trying to flea Saigon before the North Vietnamese arrived, trying to board a helicopter atop the roof of the American embassy, is a sad final memory of the Vietnam experience.
c) America had lost approximately 58,000 lives in Vietnam, and had spent in the neighborhood of $118 billion.
d) The cost to America also could be measured in loss of self-esteem, and loss of confidence in its military prowess, and much of its economic power that made it post WWII global leadership possible.
P. Feminist Victories and Defeats
1) Women won legislative and judicial victories, which helped provoke new attitudes about the role of women.
2) 1972 – Congress passed Title IX of Education Amendments, prohibiting sex discrimination in any federally assisted education program or activity.
3) Maybe the biggest impact was to create opportunities for women’s and girl’s athletics.
4) 1972 - The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was proposed by Congress. It never was ratified, though several states approved it.
5) In Reed vs. Reed (1971), and in Frontiero vs. Richardson (1973), the Court attacked sex discrimination in legislation and employment.
6) In Roe vs. Wade (1973) the Court struck down laws that prohibited abortion, and established a women’s right to choose during the first trimester of pregnancy. The decision was based on the right of privacy.
7) For many feminists, their most bitter defeat was the states failure to ratify the ERA, which by the 1982 deadline had fallen three states short of the required 38 for ratification.
Q. The Seventies in Black and White
1) 1974 – Milliken vs. Bradley – The Supreme Court ruled that school desegregation plans could not require students to move across school district lines.
a) The effect of the decision was to exempt suburban school districts from assuming any part of the burden for desegregating inner-city schools, thereby reinforcing ‘white flight’ from cities to suburbs.
b) Thus the districts in the inner cities, which had a high percentage of minority population, had to accomplish most of the desegregating, because they were within the boundaries of one school district.
2) Affirmative action programs remained highly controversial.
a) White workers who were denied advancement and white students who were refused admission to college continued to claim ‘reverse discrimination.’
b) Bakke vs. California (1978) held that preference in admissions could not be given to members of any group, majority or minority, on the basis of racial or ethnic identity alone. This means that quotas can be used in the admission and hiring process, but can only be used as one of several factors considered in the admission or hiring.
3) Indians enjoyed a remarkable resurgence of political power in the 1970s.
a) Indians, made good use of the courts and demonstrations of civil disobedience to advance their goals.
b) Indians, in contrast to many blacks, fought for attempted to assert their status as separate semisovereign peoples.
c) 1970 – Indians seized the island of Alcatraz
d) 1972 – Indians seized the village of Wounded Knee, South Dakota.
e) 1978 – U.S. vs. Wheeler – Supreme Court declared that Indian tribes possessed a ‘unique and limited’ sovereignty, subject to the will of Congress, but not subject to regulation by the states.
R. The Bicentennial Campaign and the Carter Victory
1) Gerald Ford was nominated by the Republicans in 1976.
2) James Earl ‘Jimmy’ Carter, former governor of Ga, was nominated by the Democrats.
3) Carter, who ran on the promise ‘I’ll never lie to you’, ran against the image of Republican corruption from the Nixon years, while pledging to clean up ‘big government.’ He campaigned against the establishment.
4) Carter won a narrow victory over Ford.
5) Carter enjoyed comfortable majorities in both chambers of Congress.
6) Hopes ran high as there was no longer divided government (executive branch controlled by one party and legislative branch controlled by the other party.)
7) Congress granted Carter’s request and created a new cabinet-level Department of Energy.
8) Carter called for tax reform and reduction, and in 1978, there was a large tax cut.
9) He granted amnesty to about 10,000 draft evaders from the Vietnam War era.
10) He offended legislative leaders by failing to adequately consult with them. His critics charged that he isolated himself with fellow Georgians whose ignorance of Washington’s ways compounded his own.
S. Carter’s Humanitarian Diplomacy
1) Carter, a born-again Christian, had from the outset of his presidency an overriding concern for ‘human rights’ in his foreign policy strategy.
2) 1978 – Camp David Accords – the greatest foreign-policy achievement for Carter – he invited Egyptian Prime Minister Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Begin to Camp David, and worked out the following historic agreement: Egypt would honor Israel’s borders, and Israel would surrender territories that it conquered in the 1967 Six Day War.
3) 1979 – Carter resumed diplomatic relations with China.
4) Détente suffered a decline as thousands of Cuban troops, helped by Soviet advisers, appeared in Angola, Ethiopia, and other places in Africa to support revolutionary factions.
5) Arms controlled talks stalled between Moscow and the U.S. in the face of Soviet military meddling.
T. Economic and Energy Woes
1) Carter had to deal with an economy that was getting worse.
a) ‘double-digit’ inflation was a big problem
b) 1974 - crippling oil-price hikes from OPEC dealt the economy a bad blow.
c) A recession during Ford’s administration brought the inflation rate down temporarily.
d) But, from the moment Carter became president, the inflation rate was high.
e) The cost of foreign oil made the U.S. balance of payments plummet.
f) The ‘oil shocks’ of the 1970s taught the U.S. an important lesson – they could never again consider a policy of economic isolation.
g) For the most part, U.S. foreign trade accounted for no more than 10 percent of GNP. By the end of the century, about 27 percent of GNP depended on foreign trade.
h) America’s economic interdependence meant that the U.S. could not dominate international finance and trade as easily as it had in post-WWII decades – the economy was globalizing.
i) From the start, Carter identified one of the leading ills of the economy to be expense of foreign imported oil.
j) Carter went on an energy crusade that he described as ‘the moral equivalent of war.’ The American people did not respond to this with the degree of concern that Carter hoped that they would, and generally did not support legislation to limit gas guzzling cars and to improve energy conservaton.
2) 1979 – The Iranian oil problem
1) Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, installed as shah of Iran with the assistance of the CIA in 1953.
2) The shah was a repressive ruler, but was friendly with the U.S.
3) He was overthrown in 1979 by Muslim fundamentalists who disliked the shah’s attempt campaign westernize and secularize the nation.
4) Denouncing the U.S. as the Great Satan, extremists drove Iran into chaos, making Iranian oil stop flowing into world commerce.
5) Opec took advantage this circumstance and raised oil prices.
6) Once again, Americans had to face the gas lines like they did in 1973 and 1974.
7) In 1979, Carter went to Camp David where he remained mostly out of pubic view for 10 days, calling in experts from several different disciplines, to receive input regarding how he could improve the economy.
8) July, 1979 – Carter gave a speech to the nation, criticizing Americans for falling into a ‘moral and spiritual’ crisis, and for being too concerned with material goods.
9) A few days later, Carter fired four cabinet members.
10) He then reorganized and expanded the power of his personal staff.
11) People began to wonder whether the ‘man of the people’ Carter had lost touch with the people.
U. Foreign Affairs and the Iranian Imbroglio
1) June, 1979 – Carter met with Soviet Premier Brezhnev to execute the SALT II treaty, which was designed to limit lethal strategic weapons in the Soviet Union and the U.S.
2) The Senate failed to ratify the treaty.
3) November 4, 1979 – anti-American Muslim militants stormed the American embassy in Iran, taking all of its occupants hostage.
a) the captors demanded that the U.S. send the exiled shah back to Iran – he had been allowed into the U.S. to receive medical treatment for cancer.
b) The Iranian government refused to intervene in behalf of the hostages or the U.S.
c) Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a Muslim holy man inspired the revolutionaries.
d) World opinion condemned the taking of the hostages, as the U.S. worried about the fate of the hostages and the stability of the entire Persian Gulf region – so dangerously close to the Soviet Union.
e) December, 1979 – The Soviets invaded Afghanistan, which was next to Iran, and appeared to be poised for a move for the Middle Eastern oil.
f) Carter placed an embargo on U.S. export of grain and high technology to the Soviet Union, and called for a boycott of the Olympic Games in Moscow. Carter proclaimed that the U.S. would ‘use any means necessary, including force,’ to protect the Persian Gulf against Soviet incursions. He conceded that he had misjudged the Soviets and the SALT II treaty died in the Senate.
g) The Soviet army became bogged down in Afghanistan and bogged down in a tough, 10 year war that became the Soviet’s Vietnam.
h) The Iranian hostage crisis was a political catastrophe for Carter. The American hostages were kept in cruel circumstances, as Americans saw the U.S. being vilified by the Iranian extremists on a nightly basis on television.
i) Carter attempted economic sanctions and the pressure of world opinion against the Iranians, while waiting for a stable government with which to negotiate – the political turmoil persisted in Iran, and Carter grew increasingly frustrated.
j) Carter ordered a daring commando rescue attempt of the hostages – it failed, and the mission had to be scrapped. It was an embarrassment to the U.S., and equipment failed, and an helicopter crashed in the desert.
k) The hostage crisis would remain throughout Carter’s one-term presidency – When Reagan took office in 1981, the hostages were released one minute after Carter left office.
Chapter 41 – The Resurgence of Conservatism – 1980-2004
The nation had become more conservative in the 1980. The 1980 census revealed that Americans had become more conservative, and were more likely to live in the South and the West – the Sun Belt. A ‘New Right’ movement had emerged. Evangelical Christian groups such as the Moral Majority, who also were great political fundraisers and organizers. They opposed abortion, pornography, homosexuality, feminism, and affirmative action. They supported prayer in school and tougher penalties for criminals. The Old Right – people who had been living in the South and West and who were suspicious of federal power, aligned with the New Right, and were a powerful political force, dedicated to changing the very character of American society.
A. The Election of Ronald Reagan, 1980
1) Ronald Reagan was well suited to lead the growing conservative movement. He was a “B” movie actor, and had served two terms as governor of California.
2) Republican Reagan defeated Carter for the presidency in 1980.
B. The Reagan Revolution
1) Reagan was 69 years old when he became president. He assembled a conservative cabinet.
2) One of Reagan’s goals was to reduce the size of government.
3) He set out to balance cut federal spending, balance the budget, and to cut taxes.
4) He also sought to increase military spending.
5) He was shot in March, 1981, but recovered, and was back at work after 12 days of hospitalization.
C. The Battle of the Budget
1) Congress made huge budget cuts, cutting spending on Great Society type social programs.
2) He proceeded to cut taxes.
3) Reagan’s ‘supply-side’ economic advisors assured him that the combination of cutting the budget and cutting taxes would stimulate new investment, boost productivity, and create dramatic growth, reducing the federal deficit.
4) ‘Supply-side’ economics, also called “Reagonomics” did not seem to work at first.
a) In 1982, there was almost 11 percent unemployment, businesses folded, and there were several bank failures.
b) The economy picked up in 1983, which seemed to give some vindication to the suppy-siders.
c) The gap though between the wealthy and the poor grew in the 1980s.
d) Some economists feel that what really picked the economy up in the 1980s was increased military spending.
D. Reagan Renews the Cold War
1) Reagan increased military spending, and most notably with his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) – also known as Star Wars.
2) SDI was tremendously expensive, and many criticized the program as unrealistic.
3) Relations with the Soviet Union became worse in 1981, when the Polish government, pressured for over a year by ‘Solidarity’ – a massive labor union – declared marital law. Reagan believed that the Soviet Union was behind the heavy handed tactics of Poland.
a) Reagan imposed economic sanctions on Poland and the USSR.
b) Three Soviet leaders took power and died between late 1982 and early 1985.
c) Relations between the U.S. and the Soviets grew even worse when a Korean jetliner was shot-down by the Soviets in 1983 in Soviet airspace.
d) By 1983, all arms talks with the Soviets had broken off.
e) 1984 – USSR boycotts the summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
E. Troubles Abroad
1) Troubles grew in the Middle East as Israel continued to allow new settlements to be established in the occupied territory of the West Bank (of the Jordan River).
2) June, 1982 – Israel invaded Lebanon, seeking to suppress the guerilla bases from which Palestinian fighters harassed Israel.
3) Lebanon plunged into armed chaos in 1983. Reagan ordered American troops as part of an international peacekeeping force, but their presence did not bring peace.
a) A suicide bomber crashed into the U.S. Marine barracks – October, 1983, killing more than two hundred marines.
b) Reagan withdrew the remaining American troops.
c) Reagan did not suffer political damage in the U.S. for this humiliating attack, and his Democratic opponents began to refer to him as the ‘Teflon president’.
4) 1979 – the leftist dictator of Nicaragua was deposed.
a) Reagan accused the ‘Sandinistas’ of turning Nicaragua into a forward base for Soviet and Cuban military penetration of all of Central America.
b) The U.S. claimed that Nicaragua was shipping weapons to revolutionary forces in El Salvador, which had experienced a coup in 1979.
c) Reagan sent military advisors to prop up the pro-American government of El Salvador. He also provided covert aid to the ‘contra’ rebels in Nicaragua.
d) 1983 – U.S. invaded Grenada in the Caribbean, where a military coup had killed the prime minister and installed Marxists in power. The American forces quickly overran the island and the government.
e) Reagan thus was acting much like Teddy Roosevelt had in the Caribbean.
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