Munoz - 1

Eric D Munoz12/10/12HIST 6013

The Historiography of Twentieth Century U.S. Politics

The United States has ideologically evolved over the last two hundred years.

Concerning governance, these ideologies have been consistently used to demonize the two

dominant parties in America. Among the Founding Fathers, two camps emerged when the

U.S. Constitution was being drafted and sought to establish one of two ideas: a republican

government that would have financial credibility, or a federal system that gave states the

ability to regulate themselves in nearly every aspect. These two platforms have been pitted

against each other for the last two hundred years with little interruption.

The actual evolution of the two platforms has changed them into the two modern

parties that dominate politics in the United States today: the Republican and Democratic

parties. The relationship between these two parties was most strongly divided during the

Civil War because of the issue of slavery. In the late nineteenth century, the Democratic

Party sought purpose while the Republican Party made its debut with the loud

proclamation of ending slavery and stayed dominant for decades.

The twentieth century begins and ends with very different looking parties and a

very different American society. Documenting this century has not been a problem; a

wealth of information that has detailed nearly every word and action of nearly every

politician. The amount of documentation can be explained by technological advancements

and data collection. This wealth of documentation has allowed historians to compile

narratives and monographs of the changes in the American political system.

The historical documentation of politics in the twentieth century has given the

public insight into the parties and their differing visions for America. The original camps

Munoz - 2

that have evolved into the two dominant parties and as the times and priorities have

changed, so to have their causes. A number of twentieth century historians have

documented political changes and all have given the public works that represent some

form of a specified agenda and vary as much as the politicians they write about.

Ian S. Lustick, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, states the

historiography of politics has given “…attention to the diversity of accounts from which

background narratives must be constructed can help prevent serious theoretical and

evidentiary errors” (Lustick 605). Biases require a review of the major political parties and

events in the twentieth century. Methodology of the century varied and went through

dramatic changes. The historiography of twentieth century U.S. politics is mostly

progressive and optimistic in that historians have looked for positive, societal change

through legislative agendas.

1900s

Policies in the first decade of the twentieth century were that of empirical ambition

from Republicans and the McKinley/Roosevelt ticket. Soon after McKinley’s assassination,

Roosevelt became the standard bearer of the empirical state, with strong Republican

support in Congress. This was evidence by the construction of the Panama Canal. As

Progressivism swept the political landscape, big business was regulated and tariffs were

cut to encourage trade. From the regulation and uncovering of working conditions,

legislation was passed to protect the poor and middle class.

Charles Beard wrote about this period through an economic interpretation of

history. Beard believed that the United States was founded on economic beliefs instead of

altruistic, philosophical ideas and wrote An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of

Munoz - 3

the United States to prove his point. In History of the United States, Beard saw economic

policies of the first decade as a shift from the, “old idea of the government as nothing but a

great policeman keeping order among the people in a struggle over the distribution of the

nation’s wealth and resources” (Beard 519). Noted as a positive change, Beard documents

this period with a progressive tone in the way that Republican policies shaped commerce

at the time. This is an indicator that his method of historicizing was done by looking at the

events of the past to explain the purpose of an event and the economic benefits of it

During this first decade, a middle class emerged that embraced social unity and

shunned the monopolistic and galvanizing effects of individualism. In A Fierce Discontent:

The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, Michael McGerr highlights the

needs of the people at the time and how reformers sought the state for changes. McGerr

points this out this when advocating his thoughts of the time and states, “progressives were

radical in their conviction that other social classes must be transformed in their boldness in

going about the business of transformation” (McGerr xv). This “transformation” lead to

reformers not having pure motives when McGerr points out that progressives used “…

segregation as a way to halt dangerous social conflict that could not otherwise be stopped”

(McGerr 183). In the Conclusion of the book, McGerr suggests that subsequent attempts at

reform follow some of the same actions that progressives took in this first decade, but none

meet the legislative change that progressives produced.

McGerr creates a narrative that indicates causal change in this first decade that

effects other movements in the twentieth century. The lens which McGerr saw the period

was one that seeks some meaning from history. In a sense, McGerr attempts to

retroactively predict or link past events with more recent events and movements. In this

Munoz - 4

example, a goal-oriented historicizing seems to seek a connection between events and

explain the actors’ motives. As a progressive historian, McGerr finds this first decade to be

moving toward the decades ahead toward the massive governmental change, without

really knowing the thoughts of the people at the time.

Politicians live infamously in this period as the historians discuss the changes of the

decade are attributed to the officials. Everett Walters points to historian Frank L. McVey

when discussing the credit that is owed to society for political change. When looking at how

the Socialist and Populist movements began, and subsequently made into traditional

political parties, McVey saw “paternalism as [their] principle” (Walters 218). According to

McVey, both parties were driven toward economic change, but missed the mark of creating

change for the long term.

Walters looked at Frederick Jackson Turners for more understanding of the Populist

Party. Turner saw the Populist movement as a “manifestation of the old pioneer ideals of

the nation American, with the added element of increasing readiness to utilize the national

government to affect its ends.” Turner saw the socialist and populist movements towards

legitimate parties as a way to preserve the tradition of “progress” and a movement to

preserve a democratic society (Walters 219). With the closing of the “Old West”, Turner

saw these two short-lived parties as an extension of the prior decades’ purpose, not an

expansion movement.

The first decade of the 1900s brought out the Progressive platform and the

beginning of great change for the average person in America. The people are missed in the

accounts of these historians. All three historians, Beard, McGerr, and Walters, saw the

changes happening on a political level that led to definitive goals and changes. The people

Munoz - 5

may have initiated the legislative change for society, but politicians took the credit to be the

movers and shakers of the decade.

1910s

With the second decade of the twentieth century dominated by Woodrow Wilson at

the reigns of the country, a Democratically controlled Congress pushed an optimistic faith

in progress toward democracy and capitalism. Historian David Steigerwald saw Wilsonian

idealism as hypocritical for the universalism and democracy promoted by the Wilson

administration, but failed to include any person other than mostly white, Anglo-Saxon,

Protestant men (Steigerwald xi). This ironic push for innovation that liberals sought at this

time, created a greater gap between intentions and reality, eventually contributing to the

country being brought into a war that many opposed. Steigerwald’s portrayal of Wilson

argues that Wilson’s intentions were pure, but war was brought on not by his choosing.

John Milton Cooper Jr. gives a piece, The Vanity of Power: American Isolationism and

the First World War, on the time period, but focused on isolationists and their efforts in

keeping the United States out of war. Cooper created a model for evaluating the movement

based on the rhetoric and behavior that, at the time, gave isolationists firm ground (Cooper

Jr.). This is complex as it reduces a very complicated time period into two trivial modes of

communication. Cooper’s method classifies the movement of isolationists into categories of

message and action. This allows the author and reader to easily reduce the time period to

an understanding of communication, but fails to account for so many other factors of the

time, such as religion, economics, and opposing arguments.

Both Steigerwald and Cooper look at the 1910s as an area of idealism that revolved

around one man and one party that could not resist the realities of war. The idealism of the

Munoz - 6

1910s led these two historians to revolve their stories around one man (Wilson) and one

war (World War I). There is little evidence in a progressive understanding history here and

the historians presented, superficially, offer little toward a progress history.

They do, however, give understanding of how a time period can show evidence of

how movements like isolationism and nationalism can push the people of time toward

some type of better or altruistic thought. Steigerwald and Cooper did not focus on the

progress of the decade, but the meaning of the idealism sought to develop a still young

industrial/commercial economy are the meat of their monographs. This is where the

progress and positivist view of a political machine pushes forward toward the goal of

American ideal of liberty and freedom.

1920s

After a frustrating world war that propelled America onto an international stage of

industrial production, a Republican monopoly during the third decade of the twentieth

century gave the country time to work on creating its own multicultural identity in a

society that lacked provision. Lizabeth Cohen highlights this decade through the lives of

workers in thriving, industrial Chicago. With multiple nationalities represented in urban

developments around industrial complexes, Cohen highlights the struggles of minorities

and their movements up the ladder of success as new collections of immigrants settle in the

area. Cohen explains that employers saw the need to give benefits to trained workers to

prevent inevitable uprisings in the form of unions (Cohen 209). Through agreements made

with unions, a form of corporate welfare developed that workers soon began to depend on

(Cohen 341).

Munoz - 7

All of this creates the new dependency and a common culture for the workers.

Europeans, who made up the first wave, and, eventually, African Americans created a

“culture of unity” by unionizing, thus, creating a cultural hub in Chicago that gave an

opening for this working class to economically progress class (Cohen 324). Cohen’s efforts

are to point toward the decline of these opportunities for these workers as the Great

Depression nears which gave reason for workers to turn the government for these benefits.

This is when Cohen describes this end of “corporate welfare” and cynically describes the

workers as looking “to Washington to deliver the American dream” (Cohen 289).

Cohen’s description of the period is in the confines of the decade: starting with the

end of a military war and ending with the beginning of an economic “war”. The politics of

the period aren’t a serious focus of the book, but her explanation of the decade from the

lives of the working class and their experience in a period where there was little influence

from the government. This is a definitive attribute of a period in which government

abstained from participating in the everyday life of the employers and employees.

Another political example from the time is represented in Mae Ngai’s book,

Impossible Subjects, in which she discusses immigration history in the United States from

the very early parts of the century to 1965 when the Hart-Celler Act was passed. The

portion of the book on the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act applies to the history of the Twenties

and how the legislation crafted the ethnic makeup of the Western states. Ngai recognizes

this act as restrictive and created the country’s first numerical limits on legal entrants and

created a hierarchy of “national origins” for Europeans and “colored races”. (Ngai 37)

For this time period, Ngai focuses on Mexican immigrants who the government

identified as a race, not a nationality, but did face interrogation, taxation, indiscriminate

Munoz - 8

arrests and deportation by a new border patrol. As Mexican immigrants entered and exited

the United States illegally by walking through deserted areas or wading across rivers,

Southwestern states, like Texas, created discriminatory laws. Agribusiness took part in

directing legislation as they would benefit from the cheap labor that Mexicans would

provide. Ngai says that this created a “a kind of imported colonialism” that was a market for

business to thrive on, yet allowed the United States to regulate Mexican immigrants at its

discretion (Ngai 95).

The two examples of workers from Cohen and Ngai not only show where the

people and workers were, but also the progressive tone of historicizing the period. Both

monographs discuss the plight of the worker and the push for some type of labor reform

and look to the future for some legislative or political goal. The 1920s may have been a

period of economic boom, but it appears to be on the backs of those at the bottom.

According to the authors highlighted here, the workers look toward the future and see an

end to their predicaments.

1930s

The 1930s is most looked at as a period of loss for the American people and a huge

gain for liberal politicians. As they espoused promises of government intervention, liberals

were elected to fix the economic problems of the 1930s. An author that looks at how

liberals gained control during the Thirties is Alan Brinkley. In his book, “The End of Reform:

New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War”, Brinkley contends that there is a “missing

chapter” in the shift between the “reform liberalism of the first third of the twentieth

century and the rights-based liberalism that succeeded it” (Brinkley 14). His argument is

Munoz - 9

not from the period that so many see reforms taking place (1933-1937), but the period in

the late 1930s and through World War II.

Brinkley points to the confidence of the Roosevelt administration and their favor

toward centralized planning for an “ordered economic world” which attacked monopoly

power (Brinkley 31). Toward the end of the 1930s, liberal economic policies waned, a shift

by liberal leaders point legislature and government action to a “consumer-driven economy”

(Brinkley 174). This does not eliminate the “welfare state” created by the Roosevelt

administration, but does help the push toward a different, more rights-driven Democratic

party that is most notable in the 1960s.

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. wrote a three volume epic on the Roosevelt administration

and its legislation of solutions to the economic blunders of the Hoover administration. In

the first volume, “The Crisis of the Old Order”, which chronicles 1919-1933, Schlesinger

paints a landscape of economic and politically inept disparity that can only be secured by a

savior, Roosevelt. The older order of Republican policies had failed and Schlesinger simply

gives Roosevelt and his “Brain Trust” the agency to implement liberal policies as they

please (Schlesinger 420). The second volume, “The Coming of the New Deal”, Schlesinger

writes about Roosevelt’s flexibility as a tactile politician. Here, Schlesinger writes about

Roosevelt as an honorable administrator and states that, “His greatest resource lay not in

charm of manner or skill at persuasion. It lay in his ability to stir idealism in people’s souls”

(Schlesinger Jr., The Coming of the New Deal 533). In the last volume, “The Politics of

Upheaval”, discusses the policy shift from the first to the second New Deal. In this book, the

focus is on how Roosevelt’s push for a free market shaped his legacy and a warrior for

Munoz - 10

democracy, thus setting up an effective wartime President (Schlesinger Jr., The Politics of

Upheaval 391).

Schlesinger’s books on Roosevelt are massive in content and hispoints are

thoroughly researched. The utopian presentation of Roosevelt, his policies, and liberal

politicians that dominated the 1930s create a narrative of a nation needing a messiah to

deliver it out of hopelessness. This agrees with the progress sought out in American politics

to see itself in a better place than it began. Schlesinger states that Roosevelt’s experiments

“…could best combine personal freedom with economic growth,” thus leading a progressive

mode for historicizing or characterizing the period as a model for development

(Schlesinger 648).

Another historian who reviewed the 1930s was Samuel P. Huntington. A political

scientist, Huntington looked at the relationship between political ideals and the reality of

divisive politics (Huntington 3). Huntington categorizes the political responsibilities of the

citizen as complacency, hypocrisy, cynicism, or moralism in pursuit of reforming society to

meet bridge a gap between political ideals and political reality (Huntington 64). While

focusing on an honest “American creed”, Huntington saw that American’s periodically see a

gap between the idealistic and the realistic. He condensed his theory to test when

historicizing called the “IvI”, which tests the gap between the ideas and the institutions that

Americans experience in politics.

Huntington looked at the New Deal and the extensive amount of legislation passed

at the time posed a serious problem to his test, as the “characteristic” opposition to

“bigness” was not evident and therefore does not qualify as a creedal period (Huntington

90). This is a serious flaw as he discounts one particular period as not worthy of his test

Munoz - 11

because of the large amount of support received by the Roosevelt administration. The

purpose of Huntington’s test is to see the lack of progress that political parties make

throughout history. The flaw in this test is that not every moment in history can be tested

or canned the way Huntington suggests. Huntington’s test cannot explain the apparent

progress made during the 1930s and Roosevelt’s reign.

The 1930s was a decade dominated by one party and the legislative success that

they created. Brinkley saw this era in the form of how politics can affect the future.

Schlesinger saw this era in the form of how one person can seemingly direct the nation

toward success. Huntington saw this era as an untestable period by the massive amount of

political action. All of the many political developments that took place all led to the

progress and growth toward a goal set by politicians of the time: improve the quality of life

for Americans. The debate over the government being successful in achieving this goal is in

the view of the historians cited here.

1940s

The 1940s began with America drawn into war, first politically, then literally. The

continuation of the Roosevelt’s policies and the nation’s involvement in foreign affairs

promoted democracy throughout the world. Thomas Borstelmann’s “The Cold War and the

Color Line”, outlines America’s foreign and domestic affairs in the years after World War II

and how the two met racial politics. Borstelmann argues that Roosevelt confronted

European and American colonialism as he had with racial discrimination during the 1930s

as a distraction from his duties of economist in chief. Borstelmann also highlights a

segregated army as an example of this hypocritical racism (Borstelmann, The Cold War and

Munoz - 12

the Color Line 29, 32). As news and accounts of the Holocaust hit America’s shores, the

realization of America’s own racism had become a political issue.

With the creation of the United Nations, Borstelmann states that tensions rose for

Americans having an international, peacekeeping, tolerant body in the nation’s largest city,

but keep a very real distinction between black and white Americans. The Truman Doctrine,

the Marshall Plan, the North American Treaty Organization, and the National Security

Council, all emerge “…against a background of mounting demands for racial equality and

national autonomy” around the world and not just for former dictatorial states

(Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line 47). During the second half of the decade,

Truman began to promote disassembling Dutch colonization, but seemed in agreement

with the “Southern leadership” in the U.S. Senate that desegregation should be on the

backburner of his administration (Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line 52).

These actions that Borstelmann points out are in an effort to show how slow American

politicians were to act on behalf of their own country, but quick to shame those around the

world who continued racist practices.

M.J. Heale’s work on anticommunist sentiment, McCarthy’s Americans, looks at the

30 year period of the movement’s rise from 1935 to 1965. In it, he discusses how the issue

became difficult to navigate for politicians as they did not want to seem disloyal or

unpatriotic. Heale points that the issue did not discriminate from any position as President

Truman adapted a loyalty program in 1948 by congressional Republicans in hopes to quell

harassment on the Democratic administration and their cohorts (Heale 104). Here, Heale

argues that the movement could be elitist, populist, or spurred on by religion (Heale 278-

280).

Munoz - 13

Over the30 years he documents, Heale suggests that movement was conducted in

“cyclical microcosms”. This coincides with a shift from the political left to the right between

the 1930s and 1950s that was led by foreign affairs, which strengthened the movement, no

matter the cause (Heale 288-299). This may be a different view in this paper in that the

anticommunist movement was not progressive or positivist in the line of historians

presented in this paper. Regardless, the Heale does note that the resulting push for sensible

politicking.

The 1940s is shifting period in American history. Political historians note the

changes are reactionary from the major military and political changes overseas.

Borstelmann saw slow liberal change and Heale saw rapid conservative thought. This

pivotal time in American history may not fit neatly with the previous political historians

and their identifying of a progressive history in the twentieth century, but the decade still

pushed toward a positivist direction by the giving a view of politicians who continually

pursued a better society based off of legislative agendas.

1950s

A historian that documented the political scene of the 1950s is Ellen Schrecker. In

her book, “The Age of McCarthyism”, she took firsthand accounts to create a collection of

documents that look at the era’s anti-Communistic attitude throughout congress. The

anticommunist era may have started before the 1950s, but Senator Joseph McCarthy did

not enter officially enter the political arena until 1950. She defines the anticommunists

movement as a failure in that “…social reforms were never adopted, the diplomatic

initiatives that were not pursued, the workers who were not organized into unions, the

workers who were not organized into union, the books that were not written, and the

Munoz - 14

movies that were filmed” (Schrecker 105). Schrecker’s point is that even though the era

was dominated by McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover and President Truman played a much larger

role in executing the expository discussion that McCarthy and others pushed in congress.

By using primary sources, Schrecker directs the reader into the direction of how

history’s traditional narrative isn’t always true. She doesn’t lessen the condemnation for

McCarthy and his charges against possible communist, but shows how the Executive

branch’s role extended the movement. As in the case with M.J. Heale, there isn’t much of a

direction that Schrecker points to, but gives the reader the opportunity to evaluate the era

on their own.

Thomas Borstelmann’s The Cold War and the Color Line, the 1950s is a continuation

of the 1940s in the context of decolonization and the expansion of liberties. Borstelmann

discusses Eisenhower’s disdain for the Supreme Court’s decision on Brown vs. Board of

Education in 1954 and his disregard for the murder of Emmett Till in 1955. Borstelmann

states that Eisenhower “…believed that neither personal nor political benefit would accrue

from his becoming involved in civil rights.” He continues by discussing how the Eisenhower

administration took almost seven years to achieve desegregation of 6.4 percent of black

schoolchildren in the South integrated with white schools. Borstelmann concludes this

portion of his book by quoting the director of the NAACP at the time, Roy Wilkins, saying

that the President was “...a fine general and a decent man, but if he had fought World War II

the way he fought for civil rights, we would all be speaking German today” (Borstelmann,

The Cold War and the Color Line 89-90).

Borstelmann’s contempt is obvious and his argument is shape in a manner to

suggest that during the 1950s, civil rights lacked recognition from politicians. He states that

Munoz - 15

politicians, in general, “…seemed more sure of what they wanted the world to think of the

Brown case than of what they thought of themselves” (Borstelmann, The Cold War and the

Color Line 94). This is characterized in Eisenhower’s explanation of his actions in Little

Rock and the forced desegregation of a high school as a “…matter of preserving domestic

order, not promoting racial justice” (Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line 104).

This evidence of politicians’ hypocrisy (even the leader of the “free world”) of freedom and

liberty for others around the world, failed to give full equality in our own country.

In his book, A People’s History of the Supreme Court, Peter Irons is another historian

that saw racial lines being drawn during the 1950s. Iron’s looks at the Brown v. Board

decision as a political one, as he views the Supreme Court a political board. As Southern

Senators reacted saying that the case was a legislative decision by a political court, Irons

concurs as he explains that multiple decisions by the court, including Brown v. Board, were

“legislative decisions” (Irons 396).

Iron’s cites Marbury v. Madison, Dred Scott, Lochner v. New York, and Brown v. Board

as being decisions that made new law to replace the old (Irons 400). Iron’s says, “The

Constitution the justices ‘interpreted’ in Brown was drafted by politicians, and the Court’s

decisions were made with frank recognition of their political impact” (Irons 401). To say

that the Court interprets the Constitution rejects the truth of its role in the political process.

Wills saw the actions of the highest court in the land as they made progressive for society,

even if they seemed unpopular at the time.

At a time when the United States is the leader establishing political and societal

agendas all over the world, the growing pains that were experienced by Americans fail

their own test and create a political atmosphere that will dealt with in the near future. As

Munoz - 16

politicians and leaders of the United States begin to see the duplicity of what America was

promoting and how they were living, historians have explained how the old and new met

without conflict, which was much more obvious in the 1960s. The historians used to

highlight this decade seem to lose a bit of their luster for a positivist history, but they seem

to see progress manifested in the prospect of a social revolution in the future. Seeing the

1950s through these historians’ accounts explain how differences found in American

society are mirrored in American politics.

1960s

The turbulent 1960s that led to a massive change in society is examined by Steven F.

Lawson’s and Charles Payne’s book, Debating the Civil Rights Movement, 1945-1968. Their

thesis is that there are two perspectives in understanding the Civil Rights Era: the “top-

down” or the “bottom-up” views. As the book is split into two parts, Lawson writes that he

saw the federal government “…played an indispensable role in shaping the fortunes of the

civil rights revolution” (Lawson and Payne 3). Lawson argues that the legislation by

lawmakers made reform possible, but “…blacks in the South made it necessary” (Lawson

and Payne 42).

Payne’s explanation for the success of reform in the 1960s started with the social

leaders, not politicians. He states that the problem with Lawson’s “top-down” approach is

that the leaders in the government take the credit, thus leaving individuals like Martin

Luther King and Malcolm X as a fringe collection of “ingrates” (Lawson and Payne 133).

Payne’s understanding of the smaller, briefer events, such as students marching in

Birmingham, saw them as more critical in pushing through legislation than President

Johnson’s reactions to these events (Lawson and Payne 125).

Munoz - 17

Both of the arguments concerning the era discuss the level of legislative success and

who should be taking the credit for civil rights reform. Lawson paints a portrait of

President Johnson and a Democratically controlled Congress vying for helpless African

Americans. Payne discusses the power of a movement of the people, without the support of

the system. Payne is the skeptic when considering politicians, but the skepticism stops

there where the positive outlook continues for the American people.

Another historian who documents the change political scene of the 1960s is Lisa

McGirr. In her book, Suburban Warriors, McGirr discusses how the modern Republican

Party gained its power as the liberal 1960s ran its course. She begins with the grassroots

movement of a more socially minded, Evangelical group of activists in Orange County

California and documents their successes in the late 1950s and early 1960s. While gaining

members, they made making little headway in electing conservative politicians (McGirr

53). The most notable figure was Barry Goldwater was nominated for president, but failed

to be elected due to his “…extremist and apocalyptic rhetoric” (McGirr 16).

According to McGirr, Goldwater’s nomination is the catalyst for future successes of

the conservative movement. Specifically, Ronald Reagan’s election to the California

governorship was a success because “…Reagan embraced conservatives’ ideology, their

politics, and their agenda” (McGirr 210). McGirr points to their message of “antistatist

libertarianism and a normative conservatism” would defeat the “liberal Leviathan” that

was the 1960s (McGirr 149).

As McGirr has dissected the 1960s’ conservative movement, she has marked the

decade as a period of change, in which, not only has society been changed, but the views of

historians on this time period has changed. McGirr’s scathing description of the right wing

Munoz - 18

of the Republican Party and the creation of an America that they envisioned is a change in

the way that historians have discussed the 1960s. There is little positive or progressive

portions of McGirr’s book that fit the argument presented thus far in this book.

In 1968, Charles Gati, wrote a critique on politicians and historians in the context of

American foreign policy. In Another Grand Debate?: The Limitationist Critique of American

Foreign Policy, Gati looks at three scholars, George Keenan, Walter Lippmann, and Hans

Morgenthua, and defines them as “isolationists” or “neo-isolationists”. The “neo-

isolationists” are defined by the Kennedy administration explanation as being “neither

omnipotent nor omniscient” in world affairs” (Gati 141). He concludes this portion of the

article by Lippmann and Morgenthua were more overt, than Kennan, in their opposition to

foreign policy goals.

Gati then reviews four authors that were, if not politicians, political historians: J.

William Fulbright, Eugene J. McCarthy, Arthur M. Schlesinger, and Ronald Steel. He

examines each author’s arguments through the lens of foreign policy and involvement. Gati

states that none of them know how the United States should present itself in foreign affairs,

limit CIA activity, and expand the Senate’s role in foreign involvement (Gati 147-150). He

concludes these powerful statements and suggestions by expressing his frustration with

the reviewed opinions by stating, “Above all, the limitationists neglect to consider that in

the American political system general concepts do not and cannot perform the same

function as they might well perform in the military or in nondemocratic systems” (Gati

151). As Gati wrote this in the period that he is evaluating, his frustration with practical,

“effective” results seems to be reflective of the times as historians began to critique

America in the late 1960s.

Munoz - 19

The 1960s seems to bring a different, more critical tone to American historians. As

the politicians of the decade attempted to extended American influence around the world,

the American people looked to extend rights to all. The historians note both sides and seem

to be critical of the politicians. Lawson and Payne argue who can really take credit for the

success of the passing of a civil rights reform act: the government or the people. Lisa

McGirr looks at how the push from conservatives to create a new type of Republican Party

that encompassed social and political agenda of a religious movement. Lastly, Charles Gati

looks at foreign policy in the 1960s through the thoughts of politicians and historians of the

time.

All three examples are critical of the choices politicians made during the 1960s.

Whether it was foreign endeavors, the credit for passing civil rights legislation, or the rise

of a conservative Republican Party, these historians view the decade with little optimism.

This is a differing outlook from political historians in the past that have assessed their

choices in a much more positive light, expecting a much more altruistic future. Even with

progress achieved in certain social and legislative areas, politicians seemed to have

disappointed these historians.

1970s

In the 1970s, politicians produced legislation that gave more individual legal rights,

yet lost the ability to stay economically independent was lost. In another critique of an era,

Thomas Borstelmann looks at this contradiction in, The 1970s. Borstelmann explains that

the 1970s were smashed between the “revolutionary Sixties” and “conservative Eighties”.

He establishes the theory that as a backlash to the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal,

Munoz - 20

and a deepening economic crisis, Americans sought push government out of their

individual and cultural lives (Borstelmann, The 1970s 313).

A simple example of this “pushback” was when pornography went mainstream,

which can be seen as “a growing inclination to let individuals do what they wanted to do

and buy what they wanted to buy, as long as it did not obviously hurt other people”

(Borstelmann, The 1970s 168). This shift from the dependence on the “Welfare State” to

more market-based results in society reflects the political scene of the times. Women

sought more rights as “…sex appeared to be just one of several important variables.” This is

during a time when politicians choose to ignore social issues as they try to “save face” from

Presidential flops (Borstelmann, The 1970s 38). Americans saw the corruption and lack of

concern problematic and largely turned their backs on the government.

Judith Stein looks at the 1970s in her book, Pivotal Decade. With a focus on

economics, Stein looks at the policies of President Nixon and Ford, their impacts on the

nation, and the President Carter’s tragic failure in cleaning up the mess. She says that the

Nixon and Ford administrations allowed foreign manufacturers to sell their goods in the

U.S. “The new policies were taken from the old playbook.” Economic interests had once

again “trumped . . . domestic ones” (Stein 100). This created a slow, steady decline in

manufacturing, production, and eventually, investing in American companies.

President Carter concluded that stagnation in the American economy of the late

1970s was suffering an ordinary economic slump. Stein insists, the problem was structural,

not cyclical, and the “medicine” Carter gave only produced a severe recession and hurt the

working class (Stein 226). Critically, Stein looks at Carter’s decisions not to reduce inflation

as an economic loss saying, “If monetarism had been graded at the end of 1980, it would

Munoz - 21

have received an ‘F’ ” (Stein 227). This eventually led a discontent with Democratic Party

and the reversal of the 1960s liberal agenda toward the conservatism that was the 1980s.

Jefferson Cowie’s Stayin’ Alive is about young baby boomers as they entered the

work place and began to see their economic opportunities take a turn for the worse. The

focus on the first part of the book, Cowie looks at the pro-labor movements of the early

1970s through the lens of the McGovern campaign. Cowies says that “…despite his

commitment to real material concerns of working people, a long-standing intellectual

interest in labor issues, and an exceptional pro-labor voting record, McGovern’s candidacy

created an enduring, if distorted, political template for what the white, male American

working class was not: radical, effete, movement-based, anti-war, and, perhaps most

profoundly, Democratic” (Cowie 122). The working-class of the 1970s was not just

demographically diverse, but culturally dissimilar than that of the 1960s with an emphasis

on a consumer society.

Cowie shows how politicians of the 1970s saw economics and culture. The move

toward creating the opportunity for economic upward mobility was failing for liberal

politicians. Cowie highlights this by stating that the labor market was an introduction to a

“…pattern of escalating wages and prices that necessitated the undoing of those earlier

remedies. The confusion opened up for the space for a new argument: the New Deal would

have to go” (Cowie 363). Again, Cowie is another historian with a critical look at the

decisions of politicians made that indirectly affected the people they governed.

As the 1970s ended with disdain for politicians, these historians have noted the

problematic decisions that the presidents and politicians made. All three focused on the

poor economic choices that furthered an economic recession and inflation. This was after

Munoz - 22

the Watergate scandal, which all three historians nearly disregard President Nixon as a

viable leader. Even with the negative assessments of the decade, all three seem to push a

wisdom learned by the mistakes of politicians.

This quasi-optimistic take that historians have on the 1970s does not give it the

same positive interpretation that previous decades maintained. The view of poor decision

making on the government’s part from the 1960s was extended by these historians citing

the liberties that politicians took. The difference between the two decades is that the

historians extend grace to President Carter for being a thoughtful leader who meant well,

but, in the end, failed due to the harms created by the two previous leaders and lack of

insight to the seriousness of the economic problems of the country.

1980s

The 1980s was dominated by one political figure: Ronald Reagan. As time has gone

on, this figure from the not so distant past has taken on a differing place in American

political history. One historian that chronicled Reagan’s presidency is Gil Troy in his book

Morning in America: How Ronald Reagan Invented the 1980s. Troy creates a storyline of

“decay and renaissance” by ordering his book in the decay of the 1960s and 1970s, Reagan

“riding in to save the day”, and the rise of “good American greed” with the destruction of

communism (Troy 12-13). Such as positive view of Reagan by Troy gives the decade the

successful spin that so many of Reagan’s followers have been hoping for.

Troy assumes that Reagan was not a master politician, but rather the right man at

the right time for the Republican Party. Examining the times, Troy says, “…The Great

Society was bogged down in bureaucracy, generating taxes and regulations rather than

guaranteeing social justice” (Troy 28). As a “charming optimist”, Reagan won the 1980

Munoz - 23

Presidential Election by fascinating the media as an enigmatic figure for them. When

discussing Reagan’s response to the radicalism of the 1960s counter youth culture, Reagan

referred to them as student radicals that “…act like Tarzan, look like Jane, and smell like

Cheetah” (Troy 36). Along with this was the appearance of Nancy and him as a “mastery of

image projection” in the public eye (Troy 296). All of this points to the positive and

optimistic view of the leading politician of the 1980s by rebranding the “city upon a hill”

façade.

Robert M. Collins looked at the cultures wars that took place in American during the

1980s in his book, Transforming America. Collins’s focus is on popular cultures and the

relationship with politics. He views a “progressivist ethic on the rise” with targets toward

liberals in popular culture, like photography Robert Mapplethorpe the rap group 2 Live

Crew (Collins 198). Collins’s focus on popular culture gives insight into the power that

Reagan had over society and not just politics.

Even with the light tone of culture in his book, Collins did tackle serious matters like

Reagan’s foreign policy in Central America. He views policies towards countries like El

Salvador and Nicaragua as an undertaking “into uncomfortably murky moral waters where

the choices were often between a highly imperfect anticommunist status quo or change in

the direction of a predictably worse revolutionary and communist alternative, between, as

it were, bad thugs and worse thugs” (Collins 231-232). This distance between “us” and

“them” is evidence of the “realist” thought that Reagan and the Republican Party used to

justify their actions. Collins’s view of this foreign policy ignores the cruelty of Reagan

toward the lives lost in South America during this decade. Again, this is a view of Reagan

that is ignores that faults and glorifies only one, optimistic side of the story.

Munoz - 24

Continuing with the Reagan presidency, John Ehrman wrote The Eighties, in which

he examines foreign affairs. Specifically, Ehrman critiques the administration’s handling of

the Iran-contra affair in which he states that Reagan gave false and “contradictory

accounts”. Reagan is not alone in this, as Ehrman implicates Attorney General Edwin

Meese’s investigatory methods scrupulous and started off to a “slow, fumbling start that

gave [Oliver] North time to destroy crucial documents” (Ehrman 140). Ehrman goes on to

discuss how other officials did their best to reveal that Reagan was pulling strings behind

the curtain. He goes on further to blame Donald Regan, Reagan’s chief of staff, that “by

ensuring that Reagan’s orders were carried out without discussion, Regan abandoned a

primary responsibility of the chief of staff – to tell his boss when he was making a mistake

and try to steer him in another direction” (Ehrman 129). This implication describes Reagan

as an inept, careless old man with little support around him.

In an odd shift, Ehrman tampered down his harsh rhetoric when discussing

economic policies of the 1980s. Ehrman describes that Keynesian predictions “caused the

recovery and boom of the 1980s” (Ehrman 63). He goes on to further praise Reagan

because “…the increased competition of the 1980s brought renewed innovation, rising

productivity, and, most important, an adjustment in how people were rewarded for the

labors. That some benefited more than others should not obscure the major result, which

for most people was greater fairness, more choices, and an improved standard of living”

(Ehrman 127). This tonal change in Reagan’s economic policies voices the positive,

championing of Reagan that seems to run through the other two books.

Here is a major change from the darker, pessimistic tone from the 1970s to

the 1980s. One reason may be the conversely liberally Democratic decade of the 1990s.

Munoz - 25

After swing to the left in the 1960s, attempts in the 1970s to fix the economy failed, Ronald

Reagan stepped onto the scene at the right time, took the right measure, and created an

America that these historians are proud of. Reagan’s standing in American history is

lasting and deserves the attention that he received in the three books discussed.

Among the three author’s, Erhman attempts to differentiate himself from the others.

The lack of deep critical thought about the 1980s and President Reagan is a change when

compared to the previous two decades. The tone, again, aims upward toward the positivist

and progressive thought that was seen in previous decades. This comes after the social and

economic strife of the 1960s and 1970s which turns the negative back to the optimistic.

1990s

The 1980s ended and the 1990s started with George W.H. Bush as President, but

most associate the 1990s with President Bill Clinton and his Democratic, two term reign.

One of the most notable historians of the lead politician is Joe Klein. In his book The

Natural: The Misunderstood Presidency of Bill Clinton, Klein argues that the Clinton

presidency was “disciplined” and “responsible” with “gaudy personal failings” (Klein 11).

Klein seemed to encapsulate the Clinton motif of being loved and flawed by stating, “There

was a physical, almost carnal quality to his public appearances. He embraced audiences and

was aroused by them in turn. His sonar was remarkable in retail political situations. He

seemed able to sense what audiences needed and deliver it to them - trimming his pitch

here, emphasizing different priorities there, always aiming to please” (Klein 40). By

presenting success with harms, Klein looks for the agency to critique Clinton without

convicting him for his mistakes.

Munoz - 26

Klein does address the rough spots of Clinton’s presidency, such as the Lewinsky

scandal and exchanges with Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, but puts much of the

buildup on a “pompous” media (Klein 166). His understanding of the “more distressing

aspects” of the Clinton presidency, the Lewinsky scandal was in 1998, “he had just begun to

master the presidency” (Klein 8). Klein frames Clinton’s lack of international affairs and

health-care reform failures as part of the job as president and with little punitive response

(Klein 119). The portrayal of Clinton is an odd critique of a flawed leader, leading the

reader to understand the former President as one of the most honest player in a dirty game

of politics.

Edward Ashbee looked at the 1990s through the lens of an outsider from Denmark.

In his work, ‘Remoralization’: American Society and Politics in the 1990s, he argues that the

moral, conservation push against the liberal, Democratic Clinton administration was

unnecessary and ineffective. Ashbee cites conservatives like William J. Bennett, Charles

Murray, and Francis Fukuyama saw a moral and civic decline in the 1990s. Ashbee argues

the contrary citing statistics of declining crime rates, abortion rates, divorce rates, and drug

use during the Clinton presidency (Ashbee 192-195). Furthermore, Ashebee found church

attendance up, marriage a viable institution, homosexuals were less discriminated against,

and premarital sex decreased (Ashbee 196-198). He cites conservatives explained the

ethos that survived through the 1990s apparent only because of the information revolution

and the ability to disseminate conservative norms. The ability to push a progressive

explanation for conservatives justified these counterintuitive results at a time when the

opposition might have been leading the charge in these changes.

Munoz - 27

Ashbee cites the economy of the 1990s as being the reason for the positive progress,

but doesn’t account for it all. He recalls some of President Clinton’s possibly social

conservative actions, such as backing the “V-chip”, supported curfews for youth, stressed

adoption, and discouraged the legalization of same-sex marriage, in understanding these

changes (Ashbee 199). At the end of the piece, Ashbee attributes much of the progress to

previous conservative politicians and administrations prior to the Clinton administration

(Ashbee 200). Ashbee’s argument is seemingly rock-solid and backed by a massive amount

of facts that point to a better America in the 1990s. This is all with an outsider view, which

should place him out of the realm of the other American political historians.

Another presentation understanding the politics of the 1990s is from Molly W.

Sonner and Clyde Wilcox in their analysis of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal in Forgiving and

Forgetting. In their research, they sought to understand why and how President Clinton’s

popularity soared during one of the most notable sex scandals in American political history.

Once new broke of the affairs and lewd conduct in the White House, Clinton’s popularity

ratings took a slight dive. Republicans and analysts argued that the public would confront

Clinton’s guilt after admitting his mistakes (Sonner and Wilcox 555).

The explanation of the consistently high ratings that Sonner and Wilcox provide

starts with the state of the strong economy at the time. They say that “By 1999, the public

was much more optimistic about the future”. This only explains part of the reasoning for

high popularity ratings of the scandal, leaving the other piece to the puzzle to the

opposition: the Republican Party. Sonner and Wilcox explain that the American public

“disapproved of [Kenneth] Starr’s methods” when investigating. They say that public polls

suggested that the Starr was perceived as a “mean-spirited” investigator more interested in

Munoz - 28

“removing the president than in finding truth”. Along with this, the public found the

accusers not “driven by patriotism”, but by “financial gain” (Sonner and Wilcox 556).

Sonner and Wilcox’s argument is again a view found in nearly every other example of the

view of the writers being progress and positive. Politics in America sustained to be led in

the right direction, even in the middle of a scandal.

The 1990s was led by a wave of innovation and progressive initiatives from a liberal

Democrat in the Presidency. The examples given are filled with the excitement of a nation

continuing to move to a more positive place in history. Joe Klein, in his journalistic sense,

explained how the natural flaws in a human being do not diminish the leadership. Edward

Ashbee looks at how society reacted to the accusations of the party not in power and how

behavioral shifts are not necessarily attributed to agendas. Molly W. Sonner and Clyde

Wilcox looked at how the public has ignored a serious scandal which may be due to they

were in a period of economic wealth.

All of these historians point toward the progress of a nation intended to be “upon a

hill”. The politics of the decade were divisive and filled with conflict, but it fails to move the

aim of historians from progress. The positive tone from each of the examples coincides

with the general optimism found in the previous decades from previous historians. Even

with scandals, politicians of all stripes contributed to the story that was the successful and

progress 1990s.

Munoz - 29

With the United States leading much of the progress, the century was filled with

atrocities, technological triumphs, and the advancement of newly freed people all over the

world. With women gaining the right to vote, government support to the masses,

promotion of a free world, and expansion of civil rights, the legislators and leaders in the

United States progressed with the people and has continued to address their needs. It is

clear that that United State went from one of the main players on the world stage to the

leader in nearly every area.

Within the confines of this historiography, the executive leadership of the United

States has expanded greatly. The thought that the executive is on the same footing as the

legislative, is an afterthought for the American people as the role of the President has

grown to a point near kingship. Over the 100 years discussed, the Presidency has given way

to being the position that the American look to for guidance and leadership.

The pivot point for the position of President may be seen during Franklin D.

Roosevelt’s four term reign. Taking the most liberties as leader of the country, Roosevelt

took control after an extensive Republican run in which deregulation contributed to the

collapse of the American economy. In their time of need, Americans looked toward the

most visible figure of our nation as a savior. Roosevelt pushed policy through that even he

knew might be challenged. Even so, a small portion was withdrawn after the judiciary

reviewed it.

From this point forward, historians have focused on the role of the President more

than leaders in Congress. As the role of the President expanded, so did the view by

historians, still giving recognition to the multitude of congressional leader, but not near

that given to the executive. Much of this historical review lacks the material needed to call

Munoz - 30

itself a true historiography of political in the United States. What is written on

congressional leaders evaluating their actions pales in comparison to that written about

the President, the choices, and their personal lives.

When looking at the methodology or theory of historicizing American politics during

the twentieth century, there is an obvious progressive trend. As the presented historians

have chronicled the politics, politicians, or decades, each seems to find meaning in their

monographs or accounts that point to progress and hope for the United States. Mae Ngai

finds hope for those who seek a better life in the United State after navigating the legal path

that is immigration. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.’s account of the Roosevelt administration’s

success in pushing through regulatory and social support legislation in the 1930s gives as

much positive, hopeful, and progress to citizens as it does the reader. Joe Klein’s

representation of President Clinton not only gives hope for the reader in understanding

politicians, but also about themselves, no matter how flawed they might be.

There is a caveat to the thesis of optimism and progress which is found in the

historians that begins in the 1950s and ends in the 1970s. Thomas Borstelmann’s Cold War

and the Color Line took a very critical look at the Republican administrations after World

War II and saw their apprehension to enact or execute legislation that would have

progressed society sooner than it actually played out. Lisa McGirr’s Suburban Warriors is a

very critical piece of how the Republican agenda of the 1960s and 1970s that sought thrust

a belief and political system on all, not matter their own principles. Jefferson Cowie saw the

changes in the 1970s reflective of society’s disenchantment with economic and foreign

policy decisions by politicians in the 1960s and 1970s.

Munoz - 31

The critical look at these three decades and the lack of progress seen by historians

during this period is an indication that the environment of the period and their own

understanding of what American ideas and principles are, did not match what reality was

at the time. The time after the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, the optimism seen prior, came

back. The implication of external forces encouraging or limiting does merit review, but,

more importantly, the consciousness of American historians seems to constantly turn

toward a positivist and progressive tone. The implication of internal forces point toward

progress might be the result of the United States seen as a state of unprecedented levels of

opportunity, freedom, and success.

The understanding of politicians and politics in American history coincides with the

approach discussed in Karl Löwith’s Meaning in History. Löwith’s argument contends that

history is dependent on Hebrew and Christian theology and mirrors the eschaton related to

both religions. Specifically, Löwith says that the "…philosophy of history originates with the

Hebrew and Christian faith in a fulfillment and ... ends with the secularization of its

eschatological pattern" (Löwith 2). American historians seem to find political history

projecting forward toward some future goal which coincides with Löwith’s theory.

The theory that American political historians are positive or optimistic is

problematic in the sense that Löwith has identified this being unrepresentative of truth in

history. As the Enlightened period has given historians a multitude of methods for

historicizing, its true offerings might be that of an eternal debate on the merit of either a

progressive, absolute history or a more unresponsive, relative account of events. Looking

at politics during the twentieth century in the United States, historians have given a

positive and progressive view.

Munoz - 32

In attempting to discover what internal and external forces may exist to explain this

progressive and positivist position, Americans and American historians do not seem to

concern themselves with the progress of European historians have made in understanding

that history may not be progressive. One external explanation may be the shorter period

that the United States has existed as it has been given the time to go through the

intellectual growing pains that Europe has thoroughly experienced nearly 100 years ago.

An internal explanation might be that Americans still might be wrapped in the Judeo-

Christian thought and have not looked out of their own borders for any true self-

realization. Both reasons might be the reason that American historians are so optimistic

and progressive.

In an attempt to explain the positivist and progress tone of the aforementioned

historians, this author attempted to give objective examples of how the thesis may ring

true. The historiography of twentieth century U.S. politics is mostly progressive and

optimistic in that historians have looked for positive, societal change through legislative

agendas.

Munoz - 33

Works CitedAshbee, Edward. "'Remoralization': American Society and Politics of the 1990s." The

Political Quarterly 71.2 (2000): 192-201. Print. <http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-923X.00294/abstract>.

Beard, Charles A. History of the United States. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1923. Print.

Borstelmann, Thomas. The 1970s: A New Global History from Civil Rights. Princeton, NJ: PU, 2011. Print.

—. The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2001.

Brinkley, Alan. The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War. New York: Knopf, 1995. Print.

Cohen, Lizabeth. Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990. Print.

Collins, Robert M. Transforming America: Politics and Culture in the Reagan Years. New York: Columbia Unversity Press, 2007. Print.

Cooper Jr., John Milton. The Vanity of Power: American Isolationism and the First World War. Westport: Greenwood Publishing, 1969. Print.

Cowie, Jefferson. Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class. New York: New Press, 2010. Print.

Ehrman, John. The Eighties: America in the Age of Reagan. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. Print.

Gati, Charles. "Another Grand Debate?: The Limitationist Critique of American Foreign Policy." World Politics 21.1 (1968): 133-151. Internet. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/2009749>.

Heale, M.J. McCarthy's America: Red Scare Politics in State and Nation. Athens: UGP, 1998. Print.

Huntington, Samuel P. American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1981. Print.

Irons, Peter. A People's History of the Supreme Court. New York: Penguin Group, 1999. Print.

Munoz - 34

Klein, Joe. The Natural: The Misunderstood Presidency of Bill Clinton. New York: Doubleday, 2002. Print.

Lawson, Steven F. and Charles Payne. Debating the Civil Rights Movement, 1945-1968. Landham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1998. Print.

Löwith, Karl. Meaning in History. Chicago: The University of Chicago, 1949. Print.

Lustick, Ian S. "History, Historiography, and Political Science: Multiple Historical Records and the Problem of Selection Bias." The American Political Science Review 90.3 (1996): 605-618. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/2082612>.

McGerr, Michael. A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America. . New York: Free Press, 2003. Print.

McGirr, Lisa. Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right. Princeton, NJ: PU, 2001. Print.

Ngai, Mae M. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2004. Print.

Schlesinger Jr., Arthur M. The Coming of the New Deal. Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 1958. Print.

—. The Politics of Upheaval . Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960. Print.

Schlesinger, Jr., Arthur M. The Crisis of the Old Order. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957. Print.

Schrecker, Ellen. The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History With Documents. New York: Bedford/St. Martins, 2002. Print.

Sonner, Molly W. and Clyde Wilcox. "Forgiving and Forgetting: Public Support for Bill Clinton during the Lewinsky Scandal." PS: Political Science and Politics 32.3 (1999): 554-557. Print. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/420644>.

Steigerwald, David. Wilsonian Idealism in America. Ithica: Cornell UP, 1994. Print.

Stein, Judith. Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies. New Haven: YUP, 2010. Print.

Troy, Gil. Morning in America: How Ronald Reagan Invented the 1980s. Princeton: PUP, 2007. Print.

Walters, Everett. Essays in American Historiography; Papers Presented in Honor of Allan Nevins. New York: Columbia UP, 1960. Print.

Munoz - 35