chapter 39 - bethel social studies · the stalemated seventies, 1968–1980. i. sources of...

Chapter 39The Stalemated Seventies, 1968–1980

I. Sources of Stagnation

• Causes of the slump in productivity:• The increase of women and teenagers in the work force

• The declining investment in new machinery

• The heavy costs of compliance with government-imposed safety and heath regulations

• The general shift of the American economy from manufacturing to services

• The Vietnam War precipitated painful economy distortions

• It drained tax dollars from needed improvements in education; deflected scientific skill and manufacturing capacity from the civilian sector

I. Sources of Stagnation(cont.)

• Inflation causes:• Rising oil prices in the 1970s

• Deepest roots lay in deficit spending in the 1960s

• Especially Lyndon Johnson’s insistence on simultaneously fighting the war in Vietnam, funding of the Great Society programs at home

• Military spending and welfare spending are inherently inflationary:

• Because they put money into people’s hands without adding to the supply of goods that those dollars can buy.

I. Sources of Stagnation(cont.)

• Inflation effects:• Prices increased astonishingly throughout the 1970s

• The cost of living tripled in the decades after Nixon’s inauguration—in the longest and steepest inflationary cycle in American history

• The nation’s economy was laid bare by the abrupt reversal of America’s financial fortunes

• Companies had small incentives to modernize plants and seek more efficient methods of production

• Now a stalemated, unpopular war and a stagnant unresponsive economy heralded the end of the self-confident postwar era

Figure 39-1 p916

II. Nixon “Vietnamizes” the War• Inaugurated on January 20, 1969, Richard Nixon was:

• An unlikely conciliator of the clashing forces ripping apart American society

• Solitary and suspicious by nature, he could be brittle and testy in the face of opposition

• Harbored bitter resentments against the “liberal establishment”

• Yet, he brought one huge valuable asset to the White House:

• His broad knowledge and thoughtful expertise in foreign affairs

• Applied himself to put America’s foreign-policy in order.

II. Nixon “Vietnamizes” the War(cont.)

• Vietnamization policy:• Was to withdraw the 540,000 U.S. troops in South Vietnam over an extended

period

• The South Vietnamese—with American money, weapons, training, and advice—could then gradually take over the burden of fighting their own war

• Nixon Doctrine thus evolved:• Proclaimed that the United States would honor its existing defense

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

• He sought not to end the war, but to win it by other means

• Without the spilling of American blood

• Antiwar protesters staged a massive national Vietnam moratorium in October 1969

• Nixon launched a counteroffensive by appealing to the silent majority who presumably supported the war

• His appeal was in fact deeply divisive

• Became clear when Agnew attacked the “nattering nabobs of negativism” who demanded a quick end to the war


• Nixon himself in 1970 sneered at the student antiwar demonstrators as “bums”

• By January 1970 the Vietnam conflict:• Had become the longest in American history

• With 40,000 killed and over 250,000 wounded

• The third most costly foreign war in the nation’s experience

• Became grotesquely unpopular, even among the troops in the field

• The armed forces in Vietnam were largely composed of the least privileged young Americans


• African Americans were disproportionately represented in the army and accounted for the highest share of combat fatalities

• The soldiers:• Black and white fought the Vietnamese

• But also the booby-trapped swamps and steaming jungles

• Drug abuse, mutiny, and sabotage dulled the army’s fighting edge

• Morale plummeted, with rumors that soldiers were “fragging” their own officers—murdering them with fragmentation grenades.


• My Lai Massacre:• American troops had murdered innocent women and children in the village

of My Lai

• Caused domestic disgust with the war

• Call for a quick end to the demoralizing conflict

• Nixon widened the war in 1970 by ordering an attack on Vietnam’s neighbor, Cambodia.

III. Cambodianizing the Vietnam War

• On April 29, 1970 Nixon, without consulting Congress, ordered • American troops to join with the South Vietnamese

• To clean out the enemy sanctuaries in officially neutral Cambodia

• There were a lot of campus riots over this move• At Kent State University in Ohio, jumpy National Guard fired into a noisy crowd, killing

four and wounding many more

• At historically black Jackson State College, Mississippi, the highway patrol discharged volleys, killing 2 students

III. Cambodianizing the Vietnam War (cont.)

• The nation fell prey to turmoil as rioters and arsonists convulsed the land.

• Nixon withdrew the American troops from Cam-bodia on June 29, 1970, after only two months

• Results of the Cambodian invasion:• Deepened the bitterness between “hawks” and “doves”

• Disillusionment with “whitey’s war” increased among African Americans in the armed forces

• The Senate (but not the House) overwhelmingly repealed the Gulf of Tonkin blank check that Congress gave to Johnson in 1964

III. Cambodianizing the Vietnam(cont.)

• American youth were only slightly mollified when the government reduced the draft calls

• And shortened the period of draftability, on a lottery basis, from eight years to one year

• They were pleased, though not pacified, when the Twenty-sixth Amendment in 1971 lowered the voting age to eighteen (see the Appendix)

• New combustibles fueled the fires of antiwar discontent in June, 1971:

• When a former Pentagon official leaked to the New York Times the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study that documented the blunders and deceptions of the war, especially the provoking of the 1964 North Vietnamese attack in the Gulf of Tonkin.

IV. Nixon’s Détente with Beijing (Peking) and Moscow

• Nixon—the road out of Vietnam ran through Beijing and Moscow:• The two great Communist powers, the Soviet Union and China, were clashing with each

other over their rival interpretation of Marxism

• Nixon perceived that the Chinese-Soviet tension afforded the United States an opportunity to play off one antagonist against the other

• And to enlist the aid of both in pressuring North Vietnam into peace

• Henry Kissinger had been meeting secretly with the North Vietnamese officials in Paris to negotiate an end to the war in Vietnam

IV. Nixon’s Détente with Beijing (Peking) and Moscow (cont.)

• He was meanwhile preparing the president’s path to Beijing and Moscow

• In July 1971 Nixon announced to the nation that he had accepted an invitation to visit Communist China the following year

• He made his historic journey in February 1972

• He capped his visit with the Shanghai Communiqué:

• In which the two nations agreed to “normalize” their relationship

• Important part of the accord was America’s acceptance of a “one-China” policy

• Implying a lessened American commitment to the independence of Taiwan.


• Nixon next traveled to Moscow in May 1972:

• To play his “China card” in a game of high-stakes diplomacy in the Kremlin

• The Soviets were ready to deal with the United States.

• Nixon’s visit ushered in an era of détente:

• Relaxed tension—with the two communist powers

• And produced several significant agreements in 1972

• Including a three year arrangement with the United States to sell the Soviets at least $750 million worth of wheat, corn, and other cereals

• Most important, the United States and the USSR agreed to an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty

• Which limited each nation to two clusters of defensive missiles


• And to a series of arms-reduction negotiations known as SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks)

• Aimed at freezing the numbers of long-range missiles for five years.

• The ABM and SALT accords were a first step toward slowing down the arms race

• The United States forged ahead with the development of “MIRVs” (multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles)

• Designed to overcome any defense by “saturating” it with large numbers of warheads.

• The Soviets proceeded to “MIRV” their missiles

• And the arms race sped up to a perilous plateau, with over 16,000 nuclear warheads deployed.


• Nixon’s détente diplomacy did, to some extent, deice the Cold War:• Nixon continued to remain staunchly anticom- munist

• He opposed the election of the outspoken Marxist Salvador Allende to the presidency of Chile in 1970

• Allende died from an army attack on his headquarters in 1973

• Washington warmly embraced Allende’s successor, military dictator General Augusto Pinochet

• Nixon’s actions set the stage for the United States exit from Vietnam.

V. A New Team on the Supreme Bench

• Nixon and the Supreme Court• Nixon lashed out against the “permissiveness” and “judicial activism” of the Warren

Court

• The court’s decisions reflected its deep concern for the individual, no matter how lowly

• In Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) the Court struck down a state law that prohibited the use of contraceptives, even among married couples

• In 1963 the Court held (Gideon v. Wainwright) that all criminal defendants were entitled to legal counsel, even if they were too poor to afford it

V. A New Term on the Supreme Bench (cont.)

• Escobedo (1964) and Miranda (1966) ensured the right of the accused to remain silent and enjoy protections

• Miranda warning –police officers must read to suspects

• These rulings sought to prevent abusive police tactics, but seemed to conservatives to coddle criminals and subvert law and order.

V. A New Term on the SupremeBench (cont.)

• Conservatives objected to the Court’s views on religion:• Engel v. Vitale (1962) and School District of Abingdon Township v. Schempp (1963)

• Justices argued that the First Amendment’s separation of church and state meant that public schools could not require prayer or Bible reading

• Social conservatives raised anew the battle cry “Impeach Earl Warren” (see p. 868)

• From 1954 the Court came under relentless criticism, the bitterest since New Deal days.


• Fulfilling campaign promises, Nixon under- took to change the Court’s philosophical complexion:

• He sought appointees who would strictly interpret the Constitution:

– Cease “meddling” in social and political questions

– Not coddle radicals or criminals

• He appointed Warren E. Burger to succeed Earl Warren on his retirement

• Before the end of 1971, Nixon had appointed four conservatives out of the nine members.


• Nixon’s lesson to be learned:• Once seated on the high bench,

• The justices are fully free to think and decide according to their own beliefs, not according to the president’s expectations

• The Burger Court:• Proved reluctant to dismantle the “liberal” rulings of the Warren Court

• It produced the most controversial judicial opinion, the momentous Roe v. Wade decision in 1973

• Which legalized abortion (see. 932)

VI. Nixon on the Home Front

• Nixon presided over significant expansion of the welfare programs that conservative Republicans routinely denounced:

• He approved increased appropriations for entitlements like Food Stamps, Medicaid, and Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC)

• Adding a new program: Supplemental Security Income (SSI) to assist the indigent, aged, blind, and disabled

• He signed legislation in 1972 for automatic Social Security cost-of-living increases.

• In 1969 he implemented his so-called Philadelphia Plan:

• Requiring trade unions to establish “goals and time- tables” for hiring of black apprentices.

VI. Nixon on the Home Front(cont.)

• The Philadelphia Plan: • Required thousands of employers to meet hiring quotas or to establish “set-asides” for

minority subcontractors

• Dramatically altered the meaning of “affirmative action” to protect individuals against discrimination

• Nixon now transformed and escalated affirmative action into a program that conferred privileges on certain groups

• The Supreme Court went along with Nixon’s approach

• In Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971) the Court prohibited intelligence tests or other devices that had the effect of excluding minorities or women from certain jobs.


• The only sure protection against charges of discrim-ination was to hire minority workers

• Or admit minority students—in proportion to their presence in the population

• Critics saw this as “reverse discrimination.”

• Nixon’s legacies:• The creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): concern for the

environment

• Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (1962); piece of muck- raking that exposed the poisonous effects of pesticides


• On April 22, 1970, millions of environmentalists around the world celebrated the first Earth Day:

• To raise awareness and to encourage leaders to act

• The Congress passed the Clean Air Act (1970)

• The Endangered Species Act (1973)

• EPA on the frontline of the battle for ecological sanity

• And made notable progress in reducing automobile emissions and cleaning up befouledwaterways and toxic waste sites.

• The federal government expanded its regulatory reach on behalf of workers and consumers

• 1970 Nixon signed the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) into law


• Creating an agency dedicated

• To improving working conditions

• Preventing work-related accidents and death

• Issuing safety standards

• The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC):

• Holding companies accountable for selling dangerous products

• In 1971 Nixon imposed a ninety-day wage and price

• He took the United States off the gold standard and devalued the dollar

• These two rules ended the “Bretton Woods” system of international currency stabilization that had functioned for a quarter of a century after World War II (see p. 841).


• Elected as a minority president:• With only 43% of the vote in 1968

• He devised a clever but cynical plan—called the southern strategy—

• To achieve a solid majority in 1972

• Appointing conservative Supreme Court justices

• Soft-pedaling civil rights

• Opposing school busing to achieve racial balance.

VII. The Nixon Landslide of 1972

• Election of 1972:• Foreign policy dominated the presidential campaign

• Vietnam continued to be the burning issue

• Nixon promised to end the war and “win” the peace

• When the North Vietnamese burst through the demilitarized zone separating the two Vietnams, Nixon reacted promptly by launching massive bombing attacks

• He also ordered the dropping of contact mines to blockade the principal harbors of North Vietnam

• The continuing Vietnam conflict spurred the rise of South Dakota senator George McGovern to the 1972 Democratic nomination.

VII. The Nixon Landslide of 1972(cont.)

• George McGovern:• Promised to pull the remaining American troops out of Vietnam in ninety

days:• Earned him the backing of a large antiwar element in the party

• His appeal to racial minorities , feminists, leftists, and youth alienated the traditional working-class of his party

• Richard Nixon:• Emphasized that he had wound down the “Democratic war” in Vietnam from 540,000 to

about 30,000.

VII. The Nixon Landslide of 1972(cont.)

• His candidacy received an added boost 12 days before the election from Henry Kissinger announcing that “peace is at hand” in Vietnam and that an agreement would be reached in a few days

• Nixon won the election in a landslide:

• Won all states except Massachusetts and the nonstate District of Columbia (see Appendix)

• He received 520 electoral votes to 17 for McGovern

• Popular majority of 47,169,911 to 29,170,383 votes.

• McGovern counted on the young people’s vote, but less than half the 18-20 age group even bothered to register to vote.

VII. The Nixon Landslide of 1972 (cont.)

• The dove of peace, “at hand” in Vietnam just before the balloting, took flight after the election• Fighting escalated in Vietnam

• Nixon launched a furious two-week bombing

• North Vietnamese negotiators agreed to a cease-fire in the Treaty of Paris on January 23, 1973, nearly three months after peace was prematurely proclaimed.

• Nixon hailed it as “peace with honor”

• The United States was to withdraw its remaining 27,000 troops, and reclaim 560 American prisoners of war.

VIII. The Secret Bombing of Cambodia and the War Powers Act

• Continual warfare in Cambodia:– In July 1973 it was learned that the U.S. Air Force had secretly conducted

3,500 bombings• While these forays were going on, American officials, including the president, had sworn

that Cambodian neutrality was being respected

• Defiance followed secretiveness:

– In January 1973 Nixon brazenly continued large-scale bombing

– He repeated vetoed congressional efforts to stop him.

VIII. The Secret Bombing of Cambodia and the War Powers

– The years of bombing inflicted grisly wounds on Cambodia• Blasting its people

• Shredding its economy

• Revolutionizing its politics.

– The long-suffering Cambodians groaned under the sadistic heel of Pol Pot:• 2 million of his people were dispatched to their graves

• He was eventually forced from office.

VIII. The Secret Bombings of Cambodia and the War Powers

• War Powers Act in November 1973:• Passed over Nixon’s veto

• It required the president to report to Congress within forty-eight hours after committing troops to a foreign conflict or “substantially” enlarging combat units

• Such a limited authorization would have to end within sixty days unless extended by Congress for 30 days

• The War Powers Act was one manifestation of what came to be called “New Isolationism,” a mood of caution and restraint

• The draft ended in January 1973

• Future members of armed forces were volunteers

IX. The Arab Oil Embargo and the Energy Crisis

• Yom Kippur War:• The Middle East erupted in October 1973

• Syria and Egypt attacked Israel to regain land lost during the Six-Day War, 1967

• Kissinger flew to Moscow in an effort to restrain the Soviets, who were arming the attackers

• Nixon placed America’s nuclear forces on alert and ordered a gigantic airlift of $2 billion in war materials to the Israelis

• The Israelis aggressively turned the tide and threat-ened Cairo itself.

IX. The Arab Oil Embargo and the Energy Crisis (cont.)

• America’s policy of backing Israel against its oil-rich neighbors exacted a heavy penalty:• In October 1973, OPEC nations announced an embargo of the United States and several

European allies supporting Israel, especially the Netherlands

• The oil-rich Arab states cut their oil production

• The shortage triggered a major economic recession, not only in the United States, but France and Britain

• The “energy crisis” energized long-deferred projects:• Congress approved a costly Alaska pipeline

• National speed limit of 55 miles per hour to cut costs

IX. The Arab Oil Embargo and the Energy Crisis (cont.)

• Agitation movement of heavier use of coal and nuclear power

– The 5 months of the Arab “blackmail” embargo in 1974 signaled the end of an era• The era of cheap and abundant energy

• Since 1948 the United States had been a net importer

– American oil production peaked in 1970, than declined

– Americans had tripled their usage since World War II

– Automobiles increased 250% between 1949-1972

– By 1974 America was oil-addicted and extremely vulnerable to any interruption in supplies.

XI. The Arab Oil Embargo and the Energy Crisis (cont.)

• OPEC quadrupled its price for crude oil after lifting the embargo in 1974• Results:

• Huge new oil bills disrupted the U.S. balance of international trade

• Added further fuel to the raging fire of inflation

• U.S. took the lead to form the International Energy Agency in 1974:

• Counterweight to OPEC

• And various sectors of the economy

• Dawning age of energy dependency

X. Watergate and the Unmaking of a President

• Watergate scandal:• On June 17, 1972, 5 men were arrested in the Watergate apartment-office complex in

Washington:

• Planning to plant electronic “bugs” in the Democratic party’s headquarters

• Soon revealed they were working for the Republican Committee to Re-Elect the President, “CREEP”

• Nixon administration’s “dirty tricks”

• Watergate break-in one of them

• Forging documents to discredit Democrats

• Using the Internal Revenue Service to harass innocent citizens named on a White House “enemies list”

X. Watergate and the Unmaking of a President (cont.)

• Burglarizing the office of the psychiatrist who had treated the leaker of the Pentagon Papers

• Perverting the FBI and the CIA to cover the tricksters’ tracks.

• Vice-President Agnew was forced to resign October 1973 for taking bribes about the Watergate Affair in 1973-1974

• Nixon denied any prior knowledge of the break-in

• And any involvement in the legal proceedings against the burglars

• John Dean III, former White House lawyer, accused top White House officials, including the president:

• Of obstructing justice by trying to cover up Watergate and silence its perpetrators.


• Another White House aide revealed a secret taping system had recorded most of Nixon’s Oval Office conversations

• Nixon, citing his “executive privilege,” refused to hand over the tapes

• On October 20, 1973 he ordered the “Saturday Night Massacre” firing of his own special prosecutor appointed to investigate the Watergate scandal and other White House officials

• Responding to the House Judiciary Committee’s demand for the tapes, Nixon agreed in spring 1974 to release “relevant” portions of the tapes

• On July 24, 1974 the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that “executive privilege” gave him no right to withhold evidence

• Nixon reluctantly complied.


• Nixon made public three subpoenaed tapes of conversations with his chief aide on June 23, 1972

• The notorious “smoking gun” tape (see p. 927) revealed the president giving orders, six days before the Watergate break-in, to use the CIA to hold back an inquiry by the FBI.

• Nixon’s own tape-recorded words convicted him of being involved

• House Judiciary Committee drew up articles of impeachment based on:

• Obstruction of justice

• Abuse of presidential power

• Contempt of Congress.


• The public wrath proved to be overwhelming:• Republican leaders in Congress concluding he was guilty

• They informed him that his impeachment by the full House and removal by the Senate were foregone conclusions and that he would do best to resign:

• He announced his resignation in a dramatic television appearance on August 8, 1974

• The nation had survived a wrenching constitutional crisis

• Proved the Founding Fathers’ impeachment machinery could work


• The principles that no person is above the law, and that presidents must be held to strict accountability for their acts, were strengthened

• The United States of America had cleaned its own sullied house

• Giving an impressive demonstration of self-discipline and self-government to the rest of the world.

XI. The First Unelected President

• Gerald Randolph Ford• The first man to be made president solely by a vote of Congress:

• Entered the White House on August 1974 with serious handicaps:• He had been selected as vice president, following Spiro Agnew’s resignation in disgrace

• The sour odor of illegitimacy hung about this president without precedent

• Ford granted a complete pardon to Nixon for any crimes he may have committed as president, discovered or undiscovered.

XI. The First Unelected President(cont.)

• Ford as president:• First sought to enhance the so-called détente with the Soviet Union that

Nixon had crafted

• 1973 he joined 30 world leaders at Helsinki, Finland, to sign several historic accords• One wrote an end to World War II by legitimizing Soviet boundaries of Poland and

Eastern European nations

• In return the Soviet signed a “third basket” agreement:

XI. The First Unelected President(cont.)

• Guaranteeing more liberal exchanges of people and information between East and West

• Promote certain “basic human rights.”

• Reactions to the Helsinki accords:

• Small dissident movements in Eastern Europe and some in the USSR

• West Germany cheered it as a milestone of détente

• American grain and technology flowed to the USSR, little of importance flowed back

• Moscow continued its human rights violations, including restrictions on Jewish emigration—prompted Congress to add punitive restrictions to a U.S. Soviet trade bill

• Ford clung stubbornly to détente.

XI. The First Unelected President (cont.)

• But the American fury over Moscow’s double-dealing

• Steadily mounted so that by the end of his term the president was refusing even to pronounce the word détente in public

• The thaw in the Cold War was threatening to prove chillingly brief.

XII. Defeat in Vietnam

• Early in 1975 the North Vietnamese gave full throttle to their long-expected drive southward• Without U.S. aid, the South Vietnamese quickly and ingloriously collapsed

• Last Americans evacuated on April 29, 1975

• Also rescued were 140,000 South Vietnamese:

• Ford compassionately admitted these people to the United States, where they added further seasoning to the melting pot

• Eventually some 500,000 arrived (see pp. 930-931)

• America’s longest, most frustrating war ended not with a bang but with a whimper.

XII. Defeat in Vietnam(cont.)

– Technically America did not lose the war; their client nation had

– The cost of the war:• 118 billion in current outlays

• 56,000 dead and 300,000 wounded

– The people of the United States had in fact provided just about everything, except the will to win—and that could not be injected by outsiders

– America had lost more than a war:– Lost face in the eyes of foreigners

– Lost its own self-esteem

– Lost confidence in its military prowess

– Lost much of the economic muscle–global leadership.

XIII. Feminist Victories and Defeats

• American feminists:• Although they had their differences, showed vitality and momentum:

• They won legislative and judicial victories

• Provoked an intense rethinking of gender roles (see pp. 934-935)

• Thousands marched in the Women’s Stride for Equality on the fiftieth anniversary of woman suffrage in 1970

• In 1972 Congress passed Title IX of the Education Amend-ments

• Prohibiting sex discrimination in any federally assisted educational program or activity

XIII. Feminist Victories and Defeats (cont.)

• It created opportunities for girls’ and women’s athletics at schools and colleges:

• Giving birth to a new “Title IX generation” that would mature in the 1980s and 1990s

• It helped professionalize women’s sports.

• The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the Constitution won congressional approval 1972:• 28 of the necessary 38 states quickly ratified the amendment, first proposed by

suffragists in 1923

• Hope rose that the ERA might soon become the law of the land.


• Even the Supreme Court seemed to be on the movement’s side:• In Reed v. Reed (1971) and Frontiero v. Richardson (1973) the Court challenged sex

discrimination in legislation and employment

• Landmark case of Roe v. Wade (1973)

• The Court struck down laws prohibiting abortion, arguing that a woman’s decision to terminate a pregnancy was protected by the constitutional rights of privacy.


• The feminist movement faced a formidable backlash• 1972 Nixon vetoed a proposal to set up national public day centers

• It would weaken the American family

• Antifeminists blamed the women’s movement for the rising divorce rate, which tripled between 1960-1970

• The Catholic Church and the religious right organized a powerful grassroots movement to oppose the legalization of abortion.

XIII. Feminist Victories andDefeats (cont.)

• For many feminists the most bitter defeat was the death of the ERA:• Led by Phyllis Schlafly:

• Argued that the ERA would remove traditional protections that women enjoyed by forcing the law to see them as men’s equals

• Further believed that the amendment would threaten the basic family structure

• In 1979 Congress extended the deadline for ratifi-cation, but opponents dug in their heels

• The ERA died in 1982, three states short of success.

XIV. The Seventies in Black and White• Race remained an explosive issue in the 1970s:

• The Supreme Court in Milliken v. Bradley (1974) blindsided school integrationists:• When it ruled that desegregation plans could not require students to move across school-

district lines

• Effectively exempted suburban districts from shouldering any part of the burden of desegregating inner-city schools:

• Reinforcing “white flight” from cities to suburbs

• It pitted the poorest, most disadvantaged elements of the white and black communities against one another

XIV. The Seventies in Black and White (cont.)

• Affirmative-action programs remained highly controversial:• Whites charged “reverse discrimination,” charging their rights had been

violated:• Allan Bakke: Supreme Court upheld his claim that his application to medical school had been

turned down because of an admissions program that favored minority applicants.

• University of California at Davis medical school had to admit Bakke

• Yet the Court ruled that racial factors might be taken into account in admissions policy.

XIV. The Seventies in Black and White (cont.)

• Native Americans:• Used the courts and well-planned acts of civil disobe-dience

• They wanted to assert their status as separate semi-sovereign peoples

• They seized the island of Alcatraz in1970 and the village of Wounded Knee, South Dakota in 1972

• In United States v. Wheeler (1978) the Supreme Court declared that Indian tribes possessed a “unique and limited” sovereignty, subject to the will of Congress but not to individual states.

XV. The Bicentennial Campaign

• America’s 200th birthday, in 1976, fell during a presidential election year• Gerald Ford, Republican nomination in his own right, defeated Ronald

Reagan, who ran as a conservative candidate

• Democratic James Earl (“Jimmy”) Carter, Jr., a dark horse candidate• He ran against the memory of Nixon and Watergate as much as against Ford.

XV. The Bicentennial Campaign(cont.)

• Election results:• Carter 51% of the popular vote; electoral count at 297 to 240

• He won all states except Virginia in his native South

• 97% of the African American vote was Carter’s

• Had hefty Democratic majorities in both houses

• Carter as president:• Enjoyed notable success as Congress granted his request to create the Department of

Energy

• And to cut taxes

XV. The Bicentennial Campaign(cont.)

• Popularity remained high:

• Even though he pardoned some ten thousand draft evaders of the Vietnam War era:

• Didn’t last long:

• Campaigned against the Washington “establishment”

• Never quite made the transition to being an insider himself

• Repeatedly rubbed congressional fur the wrong way

• He isolated himself in a shallow pool of fellow Georgians

• Whose ignorance of the ways of Washington compounded the problems of their greenhorn chief.

XVI. Carter’s Humanitarian Diplomacy

• Carter displayed an overriding concern for “human rights” as the guiding principle of his foreign policy• In Rhodesia and South Africa he and his U.N. ambassador, Andrew Young,

championed black majority

• His most spectacular foreign policy achievement: September 1978 when he invited President Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Prime Minister Menachem Began of Israel to a summit conference at Camp David

XVI. Carter’s Humanitarian Diplomacy (cont.)

• Persuaded them to sign an accord (September 27, 1978) that held considerable promise of peace:

• Israel agreed in principle to withdraw from territory conquered in the 1967 war

• And Egypt promised to respect Israel’s borders

• Both parties pledged themselves to sign a formal peace treaty within three months.

• Carter resumed full diplomacy relations with China in early 1979 after a nearly thirty-year interruption.

• He successfully pushed through two treaties to turn over the Panama Canal to the Panamanians

• The United States gave up control of the canal on December 31, 1999.

XVI. Carter’s Humanitarian Diplomacy (cont.)

• Trouble stalked Carter’s foreign policy– The reheating of the Cold War with the Soviets:

• Détente fell into disrepute as thousands of Cuban troops, assisted by Soviet advisers, appeared in Angola, Ethiopia, and elsewhere in Africa

– To support revolutionary factions

– Arms-control negotiations with Moscow stalled in the face of this Soviet military meddling.

XVII. Economic and Energy Woes

• Carter’s economic troubles• Stinging recession in Ford’s administration

• Brought inflation rate down slightly to under 6%

• When Carter took over:

• Prices resumed dizzying ascent,

• Driving the inflation rate above 13% by 1980 (see Figure 39.2)

• Bill for imported oil plunged America’s balance of payments deeply into the red (an unprecedented $40 billion 1978)

• The “oil shocks” of the 1970s taught Americans that they could never again seriously consider a policy of economic isolation, as they had tried to do between the two world wars.

XVII. Economic and Energy Woes(cont.)

• America’s economic disease• Deficits in the federal budget of $60 billion, 1980:

• The “prime rate” vaulted to a 20% rate in 1980s

• Carter blamed it on the nation’s costly dependence on foreign oil

• Mohammed Reza Pahlevi had long ruled oil-rich Iran with a will of steel:

• Overthrown in January 1979

• Violent revolution by Muslim fundamentalists who fiercely resented the shah’s campaign to westernize and secularize his country


• They denounced the United States as the “Great Satan”

• The crippling upheavals spread to Iran’s oil fields

• Oil stopped flowing, shortages appeared, and OPEC hiked petroleum prices

• Americans again were caught in the oil crisis

• Carter retreated to Camp David, remaining out of public view for ten days

• Carter called in over a hundred leaders to give their views, while the nation waited for the results of these extraordinary deliberations


• When Carter came down from his mountaintop on July 15, 1979, he stunned a perplexed nation with his malaise speech.

• The malaise speech:

• Chided his fellow citizens for falling to a “moral and spiritual crisis”

• And for being too concerned with “material goods”

• Later he fired four cabinet secretaries and circled the wagons of his Georgia advisers more tightly about the White House,

• By reorganizing and expanding the power of his personal staff.

Figure 39-2 p937

XVIII. Foreign Affairs and the Iranian Imbroglio

• SALT II agreements• June 1979 Carter and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev met in Vienna to sign

SALT II:• Limiting the levels of lethal strategic weapons in the Soviet and American arsenals

• Conservative critics tried to carve up the SALT II treaty when it came to the Senate for debate in the summer of 1979

• Political earthquakes in the petroleum-rich Persian Gulf region buried all hopes of ratifying the SALT II.

XVIII. Foreign Affairs and the Iranian Imbroglio (cont.)

• November 4, 1979 anti-American Muslim militants stormed the United States embassy in Tehran, Iran

• Took all of its occupants hostage

• They demanded that the United States ship back to Iran the exiled shah

• Americans agonized over the fate of the hostages

• And the stability of the entire Persian Gulf region

• December 27, 1979, the Soviet army blitzed into Afghanistan and poised for a thrust at the oil jugular of the gulf

• President Carter reacted vigorously to these alarming events


• He slapped an embargo on the export of grain and high-technology machinery to the USSR

• Called for a boycott of the upcoming Olympic Games in Moscow

• Proposed the creation of a “Rapid Deployment Force” to respond to suddenly developed crises in faraway places

• And requested that young people (including women) be made to register for a possible military draft

• Proclaimed that the United States 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 became a dead letter in the Senate.


• The Iranian hostage crisis • Carter’s and America’s bed of nails

• The captured Americans languished in cruel captivity

• Carter tried to apply economic sanctions

• The political turmoil in Iran rumbled on endlessly

• Carter at last ordered a daring rescue mission

• The mission failed when some members failed to reach the destination

• Then two of their aircraft collided, killing 8 of the would-be rescuers.

• The disastrous failure of the rescue raid proved anguishing for Americans.

chapter 39 - bethel social studies · the stalemated seventies, 1968–1980. i. sources of...

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