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Chapter 33 - From "The Age of Limits" to The Age of Reagan

Politics and Diplomacy After Watergate
The Ford Custodianship
·Gerald Ford had to try to rebuild confidence in government in the face of the widespread
cynicism the Watergate scandals had produced.
·He had to try to restore prosperity in the face of major domestic and international
challenges to the American economy.
·Ford explained that he was attempting to spare the nation the ordeal of years of litigation
and to spare Nixon himself any further suffering.
·The Ford administration enjoyed less success in its effort to solve the problems of the
American economy.
·In the aftermath of the Arab oil embargo of 1973, the OPEC cartel began to raise thr
price of oil-by 400 percent in 1974 alone.
·Ford retained Henry Kissinger as secretary of state and continued the general policies of
the Nixon years.
·Late in 1974, Ford met with Leonid Brezhnev at Vladivostok in Siberia and signed an
arms control accord that was to serve as the basis for SALT II, thus achieving a
goal the Nixon administration had long sought.
In the republican primary campaign Ford faced a powerful challenge from former
California governor Ronald Reagan, leader of the party’s conservative wing, who
spoke for many on the right who were unhappy with any conciliation of
communists.
The Trials of Jimmy Carter
·Jimmy Carter assumed the presidency at a moment when the nation faced problems of
staggering complexity and difficulty.
·He left office in 1981 one of the least popular presidents of the country.
·He surrounded himself in the White House with group of close-knit associates from
Georgia; and in the beginning, at least, he seemed deliberately to spurn assistance
from more experienced political figures.
·He moved first to reduce unemployment by raising public spending and cutting federal
taxes.
He appointed G. William Miller and then Paul Volcker, both conservative economists, to
head the Federal Reserve Board, thus ensuring a policy of high interest rates and
reduced currency supplies.
Human Rights and National Interests
·Among Jimmy Carter’s most frequent campaign promises was a pledge to build a new
basis for American foreign policy, one in which the defense of “human rights”
would replace the pursuit of “selfish interest.
·Domestic opposition to the treaties was intense, especially among conservatives who
viewed the new arrangements as part of a general American retreat from
international power.
·Middle East negotiations had seemed hopelessly stalled when a dramatic breakthrough
occurred in Nove mber 1977.
·In Tel Aviv, he announced that Egypt was now willing to accept the state of Israel as a
legitimate political entity.
·On September 17, Carter escorted the two leaders into the White House to announce
agreement on a “framework” for an Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.
·On December 15, 1978, Washington and Beijing announced the resumption of formal
diplomatic relations between the two nations.
·The treaty set limits on the number of long-range missiles, bombers, and nuclear
warheads on each side.
By the fall of 1979, with the Senate scheduled to begin debate over the treaty shortly,
ratification was already in jeopardy.
The Year of the Hostages
·By 1979, the Shah of Iran, hoping to make his nation a bulwark against Soviet
expansion in the Middle East.
·In January 1979, the Shah fled the country.
·By late 1979, revolutionary chaos in Iran was making any normal relations impossible.
·In late October 1979, the deposed Shah arrived in New York to be treated for cancer.
Days later, on November 4, an armed mob invaded the American embassy in
Teheran, seized the diplomats and military personnel inside, and demanded the
return of the Shah to Iran in exchange for their freedom.
·53 Americans remained hostages in the embassy for over a year.
·Only weeks after the hostage seizure, on December 27, 1979, Soviet troops invaded
Afghanistan, the mountaino us Islamic nation lying between the USSR and Iran.
·The combination of domestic economic troubles and international crises created
widespread anxiety, frustration, and anger in the United States-damaging
President Carter already low stranding with the public, and giving added strength
to an alternative political force that had already made great strides.
The Rise of the New American Right
The Sunbelt and Its Politics
·The most widely discusses demographic phenomenon of the 1970s was the rise of what
became known as the “Sunbelt”- a term coined by the political analyst Kevin
Phillips to describe a collection of regions that emerged together in the postwar
era to become the most dynamically growing parts of the country.
·By 1980, the population of the Sunbelt had risen to exceed that of the older industrial
regions of the North and the East.
·White southerners equated the federal government’s effort to change racial norms in the
region with what they believed was tyranny of Reconstruction.
·In the 1970s and early 1980s, the boom mentality of some of these rapidly growing
areas conflicted sharply with the concerns of the older industrial states of the
Northeast and Midwest.
·The so-called Sagebrush Rebellion, which emerged in parts of the West in the late
1970s, mobilized conservative opposition to environmental laws and restrictions
on development.
Suburbanization also fueled the rise of the right.
Religious Revivalism
·In the 1960s, may critics had predicted the virtual extinction of religious influence in
American life.
·By early 1980s, it was no longer possible to ignore them.
·More than 70 million Americans now described themselves as “born-again” Christiansmen
and women who had established a “direct personal relationship with Jesus”.
·For Jimmy Carter and for some others, evangelical Christianity had formed the basis for
a commitment to racial and economic justice and to world peace.
The Moral Majority, the Christian Coalition, and other organizations of similar
inclination opposed federal interference in local affairs; denounced abortion,
divorce, enterprise; and supported a strong American posture in the world.
The Emergnece of the New Right
·Evangelical Christians were an important part, but only a part, of what became known
as the new right- a diverse but powerful movement that enjoyed rapid growth in
the 1970s and early 1980s.
·Conservative campaigns had for many years been less well funded and organized than
those of their rivals.
·By the late 1970s, there were right-wing think tanks, consulting forms, lobbyists,
foundations, and scholarly centers.
·In the early 1950s Roosevelt became a corporate spokesman for General Electric and
won a wide following on the right with his smooth, eloquent speeches in defense
of individual freedom and private enterprise.
In 1966, with the support of a group of a group of wealthy conservatives, he won the first
of two terms as governor of California-which gave him a much more visible
platform for promoting himself and his ideas. [Ronald Reagan]
The Tax Revolt
·At least equally important to the success of the new right was a new and potent
conservative issue: the tax revolt.
·The biggest and most expensive programs-Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and
others-had the broadest support.
In Proposition 13 and similar initiatives, members of the right found a better way to
discredit government than by attacking specific programs: attacking taxes.
The Campaign of 1980
·Jimmy Carter's standing in popularity polls were lower than that of any
president.
·On election day 1980, Reagan(R) won 51% of the vote to 41% for
Jimmy Carter(D) and 7% for John Anderson(I)
1. Electoral botes: Reagan 489, Carter 49.
·The Republican Party won control of the Senate for the first time since
1952.
The "Reagan Revolution"
The Reagan Coalition
·Reagan owed his election to widespread disillusionment with Carter and to the crises
and disappointments that many voters, perhaps unfairly, associated with him.
·The Reagan coalition included a relatively small but highly influential group of wealthy
Americans associated with the corporate and financial world-the kind of people
who had dominated American politics and government through much of the
nations history until the New Deal began to challenge their preeminence.
·A second element of the Reagan coalition was even smaller, but also disproportionately
influential: a group of intellectuals commonly known as “neo-conservatives,” who
gave to the right something it had not had in may years-a firm base among
“opinion leaders”, people with access to the most influential public forums for
ideas.
Neo-conservatives were sympathetic to the complaints and demands of capitalists, but
their principal concern was to reassert legitimate authority and reaffirm Western
democratic, anticommunists values and commitments.
Reagan in the White House
·Reagan was the master of television, a gifted public speaker, and -in public at leastrugged,
fearless, and seemingly impervious to danger or misfortune.
·He spent his many vacations on a California ranch, where he chopped wood and rode
horses.
At times, the president revealed a startling ignorance about the nature of his own policies
or the actions of his subordinates.
"Supply-Side" Economics
·Reagan’s 1980 campaign for the presidency had promised, among other things, to
restore the economy to health by a bold experiment that became known as
“supply-side” economics or, to some, “Reaganomics”.
·In its first months in office, accordingly , the new administration hastily assembled a
legislative program based on the supply-side idea.
·The recession convinced many people, including some conservatives, that the Reagan
economic program failed.
·The gross national product had grown 3.6 percent in a year, the largest increase since the
-1970s.
·The economy continued to grow, a nd both inflation and unemployment remained low
through most of the decade.
A worldwide “energy glut” and the virtual collapse of the OPEC cartel had produced at
least a temporary end to the inflationary pressures of spiraling fuel costs.
The Fiscal Crisis
·By the mid-1980s, this growing fiscal crisis had become one of the central issues in
American politics.
·Throughout the 1980s, the annual budget deficit consistently exceeded $100 billion.
·The 1981 tax cuts, the largest in American history, contributed to the deficit.
·There were reductions in funding for food stamps; a major cut in federal subsidies for
low-income housing; strict new limitations on Medicare and Medicaid payments;
reductions in student loans, school lunches, and other educational programs; and
an end to many forms of federal assistance to the states and cities-which helped
precipitate years of local fiscal crises as well.
By the late 1980s, may fiscal conservatives were calling for a constitutional amendment
mandating a balanced budget-a provision the president himself claimed to
support.
Reagan and the World
·Determined to restore American pride and prestige in the world, he argued that the
United States should once again become active and assertive in opposing
communism and in supporting friendly governments whatever their internal
policies.
·The president spoke harshly of Soviet regime accusing it of sponsori ng world terrorism
and declaring that any armaments negotiations must be linked to negotiations on
Soviet behavior in other areas.
·Although the president had long denounced the SALT II arms control treaty as
unfavorable to the United States, he continued to honor it provisions.
·The Soviet Union claimed that the new program would elevate the arms race to new and
more dangerous levels and insisted that any arms control agreement begin with an
American abandonment of SDI.
·The New Policy became known as the Reagan Doctrine, and it meant, above all, a new
American activism came in Latin America.
The Reagan administration spoke bravely about its resolve to punish terrorism; and at one
point in 1986, the president ordered American planes to bomb site in Tripoli, the
capital of Libya, whose controversial leader was widely believed to be a leading
sponsor of terrorism.
The Election of 1984
·Reagan was victorious in the election winning 59% of the vote,
carrying every state but Mondale's native Minnesota and the
District of Columbia.
·The election of 1984 was the first campaign of the Cold War.
America and the Waning of the Cold War
The Fall of the Soviet Union
·The first he called glasnost (openness): the dismantling many of the repressive
mechanisms that had been conspicuous features of Soviet life for over half a
century.
·The Communists Parties of Eastern Europe collapsed or redefined themselves into more
conventional left-leaning social democratic parties.
Among other things, it legalized the chief black party in the nation, the African National
Congress, which had been banned for dec ades; and on February 11, 1990, it
released from prison the leader of the ANC, and a revered hero too black south
Africans, Nelson Mandela, who had been in jail for 27 years.
Reagan and Gorbachev
·At a summit meeting with Reagan in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1986, Gorbachev proposed
reducing the nuclear arsenals of both sides by 50 percent or more, although
continuing disputes over Reagan’s commitment to the SDI program prevented
agreements.
The Fading of the Reagan Revolution
·There were revelations of illegality, corruption, and ethical lapses in the Environmental
Protection Agency, the CIA, the Department of Defense, the Department of Labor,
the Department of Justice, and the Department of Housing and Urban
Development.
The most politically damaging scandal of the Reagan years came to light in November
1986, when the White House conceded that it had sold weapons to the
revolutionary government of Iran as part of a largely unsuccessful effort to secure
the release of several Americans being held hostage by radical Islamic groups in
the Middle East.
The Election of 1988
·The Bush campaign was almost the most negative of the 20th
century, with Bush attacking Dukakis by tying him to all the
unpopular social and cultural stances Americans had come to
identify with "liberals."
·It was also one of the most effective, although the listless, indecisive
character of the Dukakis effort contributed to the Republican
cause as well.
·Bush won the election with 54% of the popular vote to Dukakis' 46%,
and 426 electoral votes to Dukakis' 112.
The Bush Presidency
·The Bush presidency was notable for the dramatic developments in international affairs
with which it coincided and at times helped to advance, and for the absence of
important initiatives or ideas on domestic issues.
·The broad popularity Bush enjoyed during his first three years in office was partly a res
ult of his subdued, unthreading public image.
·On domestic issues, the Bush administration was less successful-partly because the
president himself seemed to have little interest in promoting a domestic agenda
and partly because he faced serious obstacles.
In 1990, the president bowed to congressional pressure and agreed to a significant tax
increase as part of a multiyear “budget package” designed to reduce the deficit.
The Gulf War
·The events of 1989-1991 ad left the United States in the unanticipated position of being
the only real superpower in the world.
·The United States would reduce its military strength dramatically and concentrate its
energies and resources on pressing domestic problems.
·America would continue to use its power actively, not to fight communism but to defend
its regional and economic interests.
·In 1989, that led the administration to order an invasion of Panama.
·On August 2, 1990, the armed forces of Iraq invaded and quickly overwhelmed their
small, oil-rich neighbor, the emirate of Kuwait.
On February 28 Iraq announced its acceptance of allied terms for a cease-fire, and the
brief Persian Gulf War came to an end.
 
 

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