Note:  Again, the Sage American History website/text, like most history texts, devotes most of it’s discussion of the post WWII era to discussions of politics and foreign affairs, especially wars. We are more interested in economic developments and so I have skipped some of the material and excerpted the following.

Post-World War II Domestic Issues
The Truman-Eisenhower-Kennedy Years

Post World War II America saw changes in everyday life scarcely imaginable in the 1930s. The military requirements of war had generated enormous advances in technology, medicine, communications and the implements of war. Medicines such as penicillin, antibiotics and techniques for the treating of injuries and diseases were greatly stimulated by the demands of warfare and its impact upon civilian populations. The research that went into the development of the atomic bomb also produced information about the phenomenon of radiation and how it applied to such things as x-ray technology. The first jet aircraft were developed by Germany during the Second World War, and all-purpose vehicles such as the famous Jeep (general purpose vehicle) fostered advances in automotive design. Radar and other sophisticated technology devices had uses that would later be applicable in the civilian arena for civil air control. Methods developed by companies such as Kaiser advanced the technology necessary for building ships of all sorts. The Kaiser-Permanente health plan was created by that corporation in the World War Two era.

The Legacy of World War II

As typified by the mythical figure of Rosie the Riveter, the roles of American women had changed dramatically during the world war. Approximately 800,000 women served in the Armed Forces in a variety of capacities. For the 13 million men who served, the military experience was also eye opening: farm boys, city dwellers, college students, businessmen, teachers, musicians, artists, laborers and skilled technicians serving together—not to mention an unparalleled mixing of racial and ethnic groups, and men from different geographic areas—brought new perspectives to the men who served in the armed forces during the World War II era.

The difficulty was that when those men returned, they had changed, often drastically, and so had the women they had left behind. The younger soldiers and sailors had gone off as boys of 18 and returned as old men of 21. The girls had gone to work in factories, businesses, USOs and Red Cross or other patriotic agencies and were now independent-minded women, not necessarily ready to resume the status quo. The end of the war was indeed a time for celebration, and the returning GIs were treated as heroes. But getting back to a “normal” life was difficult. Many men and women who had married during whirlwind courtships of weeks or even days before the men left discovered that their spouses were strangers; the person they remembered had changed. The result of all these changes was that marriage, birth and divorce rates all rose dramatically in the postwar years.

Domestic Issues and the Cold War. Nothing happens in a vacuum in the real world. In post-World War II America, Cold War issues and domestic issues overlapped significantly. As citizens of the most powerful nation in the world, the people of the United States were not ready to reembrace the posture of prewar isolationism; indeed, most Americans probably felt that the United States had a responsibility to help order things in the rest of the world. Programs like the Marshall Plan, which provided massive economic aid to the recovery of the devastated nations of Europe, was a measure of that sense of responsibility. The development of the interstate highway system, a project that had an enormous effects on the domestic lives of Americans, was nevertheless justified in part by national security needs. The space race, which began with the launching of the Soviet satellite Sputnik, might be viewed as a domestic initiative. Yet part of the motivation for the massive effort to conquer space was clearly the fact that, as one political figure put it, “I do not want to sleep at night under the light of a Russian moon.”

The civil rights movement was perhaps the most significant and important domestic development in post-World War II America, at least until the end of the 20th century. Yet even that issue was propelled to a certain extent by concerns about how segregation in American society might be used against us in the competition among nations. It was difficult for Amerficans to point fingers at nations that ruled their citizens with an iron fist while millions of Americans lacked full freedom at home.

Economic issues certainly resonated with respect to the international position of America. President Eisenhower’s warning in his farewell address of the “military-industrial complex” illustrated the fact that our industries, and the research being down in our universities, were focused heavily on the development of weapons and tools for the waging of war. American movies and television, created primarily for domestic consumption, nevertheless provided a window on American society to the rest of the world, and that view did not always portray America in a favorable light. Indeed, one recent Secretary of Defense pointed out that a certain American international spy drama might well have unfortunate propaganda uses for America’s enemies.

The treatment of Cold War issues and domestic issues will, therefore, require some back-and-forth. Where appropriate, links will be provided to issues that straddle historic events in both the international and domestic arenas.

The Postwar Economy. Another thing that was obviously true after the war was that the Depression was over. Massive government spending during the war—twice as much as in all of America’s prior history combined—had ended unemployment and created tens of thousands of new jobs for men and women. Dust bowl farmers who had arrived in California destitute in the 1930s had found jobs in aircraft and ship building plants and were well off by 1943. Soldiers with families sent their paychecks home; there was little to spend them on in many places where they were stationed. Instead those paychecks went into savings accounts because their wives were working and also had little on which to spend the extra income: no appliances, no new cars, and very few luxury items, for industry had devoted its full attention to the war effort.

The post-war era was a time of economic boom. Soldiers returned with hundreds of dollars in back pay, and wives who had been working had been able to save because there were few luxuries on which to spend income. Many consumer products had been mostly unavailable; companies that had made appliances had been building the implements of war. American labor had prospered; by 1945 union membership was at almost 15 million, over 35% of the nonagricultural labor force, an all-time high. In 1946 President Truman recommended measures to Congress designed to help the economy recover. With the huge demand for consumer goods and new homes, anti-inflation measures were instituted to keep the overheating economy under control. Life did not return to what it had been in 1940—it took off in exciting and often confusing new directions.

Fears that the returning GIs would cause economic hardships did not materialize, for the need to shift the economy back to peacetime production demanded a lot of labor. Although local conflicts occurred over hiring priorities and preferences for veterans, there was plenty of work to go around. Americans spent, but not wildly, for memories of the Depression returned as those of the war began to fade. Though the economy boomed, it did not get out of control, and fear of another depression gradually waned. The postwar agonies historically faced by many nations—rampant inflation, rioting, labor disorders—were not completely absent in the U.S. from 1945-1955, but they did not rise above manageable proportions. For one thing, the demands of the Cold War and other factors kept government spending at high levels, and the demand for consumer goods and new homes kept the economy moving upward. Americans had never had it so good. They knew it and were proud, feeling they had earned it.

The Truman Years, 1945-1950

One of the great American films of all time, “The Best Years of Our Lives” (1947), explores the readjustments that had to be made by returning veterans. The ex-Army master sergeant who goes back to his position as a banker views loan applications from his fellow ex-servicemen very differently from the bank officials who had stayed behind. The sailor who returns with metal hooks instead of the hands he lost in a shipboard fire discovers that his family has even more trouble adjusting to his injury than he had in adjusting to the mechanical devices. The former Army Air Corps bomber pilot discovers that the skills required in leading 10 men in a complex machine over enemy territory do not translate readily into the postwar workplace. He also discovers that his bride, whom he had known for only days before his departure, is a total stranger; he can’t wait to get out of uniform, but she wants to parade him around in it to show him off to her friends.

The Best Years of Our Lives, directed by William Wyler, starred Fredric March, Myrna Loy, and Dana Andrews. Harold Russell played the part of a sailor who had lost his hands. The film won 7 Academy Awards, including a special Oscar for Harold Russell, whose handicap was real.

I was nine years old when the war ended, but the memories remain vivid. My best friend and I each lost a brother. In the village of Pleasantville, New York, where I lived, every year on Memorial Day a parade began and ended at the village plaza near the railroad station. A scroll of honor had been erected there with the names of all the young men from Pleasantville who had served in the war. Next to the name of each one killed was a gold star. As part of the ceremony ending the parade, the names of all those who had died were read over a loudspeaker. While I do not recall the names or numbers, I remember vividly the weeping of many of the people in the crowd, for everyone in the village knew at least one person who had been killed.

Looking back, it is hard to imagine how many things we now take for granted were different in 1945. To mail a first-class letter cost three cents; air mail was extra. Practically no homes had a television set; even by 1949 less than 3% of residences had one. There were no pushbutton or dial telephones; you would pick up the receiver and wait until an operator, inevitably female, said, “Number, please?”—and you gave her the number. You had to ask for a special operator for long-distance. A significant percentage of farm homes were still without electricity or indoor plumbing; appliances such as refrigerators and washing machines and dryers were luxuries which many working-class families could not yet afford.

As virtually no automobiles had been manufactured from 1943 to 1945 because the auto companies were busy building tanks, jeeps, 5-ton trucks and military aircraft, the old 1940 and 41 models were brought out again until designs could be revamped. The Singer company went back to making sewing machines instead of machine guns, and silk was once again used for stockings instead of parachutes. Butter, sugar, meat and gasoline were no longer rationed. People took their old cars down off the blocks where they had sat during the war because of tire and gasoline rationing, and the top half of headlights no longer had to be painted black for air defense.

The Housing Boom. The critical need for the returning men starting families was housing. University campuses provide an interesting glimpse of how different effects of the war came together. The GI Bill of Rights, which included provisions for college tuition assistance, as well as job training and help with home loans, helped create a new phenomenon. Veterans who might never have thought about going to college decided that it was worth a try, since Uncle Sam was footing part of the bill. Men who chose to attend college on the GI Bill did not necessarily delay marriage, as they had postponed their lives long enough while at war. They often delayed having children so that their wives could work, but they were still families, and around the fringes of college campuses makeshift structures such as tin Quonset huts, old military barracks or other temporary buildings were converted into cheap apartments. The married college student—until 1945 an oddity for the most part—was now a fixture on the campus.

Elsewhere the demand for housing was equally strong, and thousands of young families were willing to move into new suburban communities such as Levittown, Long Island, (left) where prefabricated houses were constructed from one set of plans in row after row, even to the placing of a single tree in the same place in every yard. Some social critics found such communities appalling in their sameness. But the occupants, who perhaps remembered growing up in the Depression 1930s, found that paint, do-it-yourself landscaping and other improvements could create some sense of personal identity. All the same, cartoonists and song writers had fun with this “ticky-tacky” life style.

The Age of the Automobile.

One extra that did not come with suburban houses but which was often indispensable to this new suburban way of life was the automobile. In the immediate postwar years, Ford, GM, Chrysler, Kaiser, Studebaker, Hudson, Packard and the other manufacturers retooled their plants from making trucks, tanks and jeeps. They dusted off prewar designs and began producing cars that looked very much like 1939 and 1940 models. But within two or three years newer, sleeker, more streamlined and modern designs appeared, and the automobile age took off. Cars and gasoline were cheap—in fact the gas war became a roadside feature in the 1950s, as did the drive-in restaurant with curbside service, the drive-in movie theater, and a new form of temporary lodging, the motel. At first few new cars had air-conditioning, fancy radios or automatic transmissions, which through the 1950s were often expensive extras. But they were bright, shiny and colorful, and when the interstate highway system was begun under President Eisenhower in the 1950s, they would take you almost anywhere in unprecedented comfort and speed.

American labor had also prospered during World War II. By 1945 union membership was at almost 15 million, over 35% of the nonagricultural labor force, an all-time high. In 1946 President Truman recommended measures to Congress designed to help the economy recover. With the huge demand for consumer goods and new homes, anti-inflation measures were instituted to keep the overheating economy under control. This attempt was made despite the fact that the Office of Price Administration, which had kept a lid on inflation during the war, was abolished in 1947. Life did not return to what it had been in 1940, it took off in exciting and often confusing new directions.

As Franklin Roosevelt’s successor, President Harry Truman faced enormous challenges. Truman had not even wanted to be vice president, and when he received the shocking news of the president’s death from Eleanor Roosevelt at the White House, his first words were, “Mrs. Roosevelt what can we do for you?” Maintaining her composure, the president’s widow answered, “No, Harry, what can we do for you? For you are the one in trouble now.”

Truman initially promised to carry on with Franklin Roosevelt’s policies, but he eventually designed his own legislative program. Although President Truman did succeed in overseeing a reasonably orderly transition to a healthy peacetime economy, his ambitious political program ran into difficulty with the Republican Congress elected in 1946. Opponents of Roosevelt’s New Deal had used the war to get rid of many of Roosevelt’s measures, and conservative Democrats and Republicans were not prepared for a second new deal.

By 1947 the Armed Forces had been reduced to a size of 1.5 million, and the discharged veterans were eager to take advantage of the GI Bill. Veterans were entitled to financial support for education and vocational training, medical treatment, unemployment and loans for building houses or starting businesses. They were eager to marry and start families, and by 1946 the well-known baby-boom was underway; the birth rate in 1946 was 20% higher than in 1940 and continued at a high rate until the 1960s.

President Truman made significant advances in the area of civil rights. Because Congress was not prepared for major civil rights legislation, President Truman used the power of his office to desegregate the Armed Forces and forbid racial segregation in government employment. (See Executive Order 9981, Appendix.)

With a strong labor flexing its muscle, and with the huge demand for consumer goods, the American economy was vibrant. But workers were in a position to make demands, and they did. President Truman was at the center of the struggle between labor and management, and in order to strengthen his position with labor, a natural Democratic constituency, he vetoed the controversial Taft-Hartley Act of 1947. It was called by some the “slave labor act” because it was seen as unfriendly to labor and unions. Truman’s veto was overridden, and the act banned the closed shop (union only shop.) It also prohibited union contributions to political campaigns, required union leaders to swear that they were not Communists, and included other stern measures.

Despite conflict between President Truman and the Republican Congress, much was accomplished in the postwar years. The National Security Act of 1947 revised the Armed Forces, creating the Department of Defense, a separate United States Air Force and the new National Security Council. In addition the law made the Joint Chiefs of Staff a permanent entity and established the Central Intelligence Agency, an outgrowth of the wartime Office of Strategic Services, or OSS, to coordinate intelligence gathering activity. In 1951, in a reaction against the extended term of Franklin Roosevelt, Congress passed and the states ratified the 22nd Amendment, which limited all presidents after Truman to two terms.

The 1948 Election. The 1948 presidential election was one of the most memorable in American history. The Republican candidate, Governor Thomas Dewey of New York, had gained fame for his anti-crime work and had run against Roosevelt in 1944. Because of Harry Truman’s support for civil rights, including the integration of the Armed Forces and the United States Civil Service, a number of Southern Democrats left the Democratic Party. They nominated South Carolina Governor J. Strom Thurmond on a States’ Rights Democratic ticket; they were called the “Dixiecrats.” Meanwhile the left wing of the Democratic Party nominated Henry A. Wallace on a Progressive Party ticket. Those two defections from the Democratic ranks seemed to doom President Truman’s chances for reelection.

By mid-September the polls were predicting a sure victory for Governor Dewey, and taking the polls seriously Dewey conducted a lethargic campaign, assuming that he had the election in hand. President Truman, however, went on a whistle-stop campaign by train in which he covered 31,000 miles and made speeches all along the way. He criticized the “do-nothing Congress,” and people in the audience yelled, “Give ’em hell, Harry!” The President responded, “I don’t give them hell—I just tell the truth and they think it’s hell!” His supporters would roar with laughter and applause. Post-election analyses later showed that Truman was closing the gap rapidly in the last few days before the election. Without the assistance of modern computers, however, the pollsters were unable to keep up with the changes. Thus on election night everyone still assumed that Governor Dewey could rest easy.

In one of the most famous journalistic gaffes in American political history, the Chicago Tribune came out with its famous headline, “Dewey defeats Truman.” The next morning a victorious Harry Truman held up the paper grinning broadly—he had won 49% of the vote and had achieved a 303 to 189 margin in the Electoral College. Harry Truman had won his second term and was president in his own right. The blunt, plain-spoken Missourian, who had a famous sign on his desk—“The Buck Stops Here”—would serve four more years.

In 1949, President Truman, inspired by his stunning upset victory in the election, introduced a new legislative agenda, which he called the “Fair Deal.” It sought to take up where the New Deal had left off and included repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act, raising the minimum wage and expanding social security. Conservatives, however, feeling that they had seen government programs advance more than far enough under Roosevelt, gave lukewarm support at best to Truman’s ideas, although some bills were passed. Congress had also passed the 22nd Amendment, which was ratified in 1951. Although it did not apply to President Truman, his election in 1948 was the fifth straight Democratic victory. Had he chosen to run again in 1952, he probably would have met the same fate as Adlai Stevenson, who lost in a landslide to World War II hero General Dwight Eisenhower.

For more on the political career of Harry Truman see David McCullough, Truman (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992) and Harry S Truman, Memoirs of Harry S. Truman: 1945 Year of Decisions (New York: Doubleday, 1955) &  Years of Trial and Hope, 1946-1952 (New York: Doubleday, 1956). See alsoTruman (1995), starring Gary Sinise & Diana Scarwid, directed by Frank Pierson, based on McCullough’s book.

The 1950s: The Eisenhower Years

The 1950s were a decade of both stability and change. Inflation was tamed even as the economy continued to grow; for example government workers and military personnel received no pay raises from 1955 to 1963 because inflation remained at near zero. The civil rights revolution in the South got started in 1954 and 55 with the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka and the Montgomery bus boycott begun by the courageous Rosa Parks. For most of middle America, however, the 1950s were a time of flashier cars, the expansion of television, the rise of rock ‘n roll, mass production, the accelerated movement to suburbia, and a rising but strangely dissatisfied middle class. Underneath the somewhat tranquil exterior of American society the beat generation brought a foretaste of the rebellious 1960s.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected president in 1952. He was nominated over conservative Senator Robert Taft of Ohio following a lively contest at the Republican convention. He selected as his vice president Senator Richard Nixon of California. By election day it was clear that everyone liked Ike, and he was elected in a landslide. Eisenhower was better prepared for the Presidency than many imagined, for in his job as Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during the war he had had to deal with both political and military matters. But that experience did not quite prepare him for all the political machinations of Washington. (See Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe, New York: Doubleday, 1949.)

Along with the civil rights turmoil in the South that increased during the 1950s, an undercurrent of fear and anxiety persisted because of the nuclear arms race. With the growing threat from the Soviet Union, the military was enlarged, and military spending helped stimulate the economy. One project begun by President Eisenhower as a national defense measure was the creation of the interstate highway system. Within a decade Americans could drive almost literally from coast to coast without encountering a stop light. American life became ever more focused on the automobile. Although a significant number of families still did not own a car, and few families had two cars, the automobile had become a necessity rather than a luxury for most Americans.

By the mid 1950s the Depression years seemed far away. Most Americans were enjoying a standard of living that was unprecedented. Not all of the economic news was good, however. Americans had benefited in the immediate postwar years because their industrial facilities had been untouched by the war. But as the European nations built new factories to replace the ones that had been bombed out, American industries faced obsolescence. As farming methods continued to improve, farmers were able to produce more and more, driving the prices of agricultural goods down. The federal government initiated various price supports to prop up farm commodities. The struggles of American farmers never seemed to cease, from the Populist era through the twenties and the Depression and into the late 20th century.

Suburban life centered around the family, and most Americans felt that life was pretty good. However, an undercurrent of frustration persisted. One tale about the apparent sameness of the suburbs had a man getting off his commuter train, walking absently toward his home, accidentally walking a block too far, entering a house that seemed to be just like his own, to be greeted by a wife who seemed familiar. Only after the couple had sat down to dinner and started to talk did everyone realize that the man had arrived at the wrong house. Sloan Wilson’s novel, The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit, and the film of the same name starring Gregory Peck reveal the pressures of 1950s conformity and the haunting memories of the Second World War. Although the modern feminist movement had not yet begun, its seeds were being planted among bright, educated women who were finding that being a housewife and mother were not always fulfilling. (The recent AMC TV series Mad Men covers the same era and has won awards for historic authenticity.)

Although he had suffered a heart attack in 1955, President Eisenhower felt fit and competent to run for reelection in 1956, and he won by another landslide. Recognizing that that many people still “liked Ike,” the Democrats decided to stay with their 1952 candidate, Governor Adlai Stevenson. The rather dull Democratic convention suddenly came to life when Stevenson announced that he would not designate his own candidate for vice president, but opened the nomination to the convention. A lively contest ensued, pitting Senator Estes Kefauver and others against the young Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts. Although Kefauver won, Kennedy made a very graceful concession speech, which Democrats in 1960 obviously remembered.

For all the subliminal discontent, Americans were generally self-assured and confident in their ability to meet life challenges, both domestic and international. That certitude was ruptured, however, with the startling announcement in 1957 that the Soviet Union had launched the first orbital satellite. It was called Sputnik. While fascinating to scientists, the Russian satellite struck fear in the hearts of many who believed that the Soviets would convert their successes in outer space into military advantage. Before the United States could get its first satellite aloft, the Russians had sent a cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, into orbit. While Soviet rockets seemed capable of sending large payloads into space, American rockets often blew up on the launch pad. It was not until President Kennedy announced a national goal of landing an astronaut on the moon and returning him safely to Earth before the end of the decade of the 1960s that America began closing the gap in the space race.

In reaction to the launching of Sputnik Congress passed a bill creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and another, the National Defense Education Act, to improve American education by beefing up programs in mathematics and science. While Americans continued to like and respect President Eisenhower, he seemed like a grandfather figure to many. By the time of the election of 1960, Americans sought a younger more vigorous president, whom they got in John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

Life in the 1950s in America had about it rather glaring inconsistencies. On the surface, much seemed well. People were making more money than ever before; men and women were going to college in far greater numbers than ever before; television was a new form of entertainment, which by the mid-1950s was a feature of a majority of households, though most households had only one small black-and-white set (left). Sports were more popular than ever, popular music was going off in new directions with the emergence of Elvis Presley and rock and roll, and industries like aircraft changed people’s transportation habits almost as much as the train or automobile. The St. Lawrence Seaway connecting the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean was also opened in 1959. Ceremonies in Chicago and elsewhere were attended by President Eisenhower and Queen Elizabeth II. Nostalgic films have shown the 1950s to be good, comfortable, at least, and free from turmoil, although some might say they were bland and often uninteresting, maybe even boring. But overall, the “nifty fifties” were still good.

But there were dark sides. In the South, and in parts of the North as well, racial tensions that had been smoldering since Reconstruction began to emerge with the birth of the modern civil rights movement. And while the world was relatively at peace, various crises in Europe, Asia and the Middle East kept tensions high. And above all-there was the bomb. Until 1949 the U.S. was the only nation that had produced (and used) atomic weapons. When Soviet Union scientists, whom many believe were aided by secrets stolen from the U.S., exploded its first atomic device, the atomic (later nuclear) arms race was on.

The two superpowers established what became known as the balance of terror as more and more powerful weapons were produced and tested. School children were drilled on what to do in case of a nuclear attack, subterranean bomb shelters were built (sometimes in people’s back yards), and for a long time the assumption was that sooner or later World War III—more horrible than World Wars I and II put together—was bound to start. One did not have to be a pessimist to think the unthinkable, that it was not a matter of “if,” but “when.” It was for understandable reasons that the Cold War was also known as the balance of terror.

The Kennedy Years

The 1960 election was a milestone in terms of the impact of television on electoral politics. Richard Nixon, who had been vice president under President Eisenhower for eight years, and who had a number of notable achievements on his record, was a formidable, intelligent candidate with broad experience and a sophisticated understanding of foreign affairs. Although he received only lukewarm support from the outgoing president, Richard Nixon was not to be taken lightly.

Senator Kennedy of Massachusetts, on the other hand, had many visible assets, including a charming young wife and family, a Harvard education, a record of heroism in World War II, and the backing of a wealthy and powerful family. Yet his years in Congress and the Senate had been undistinguished, and when Adlai Stevenson opened the nomination for vice president during the 1956 Democratic convention, Kennedy lost his bid to Estes Kefauver. Kennedy also had to reckon with the fact that he was attempting to become the first elected Irish Catholic president in American history. If he won, he would also be the youngest man ever elected president of the United States.

In retrospect the outcome of the election and seems to have turned on the first televised debate between Senator Kennedy and Vice President Nixon. Kennedy’s movie star good looks and smooth performance overshadowed the haggard, pale appearance of Richard Nixon, who had recently been hospitalized, and who looked far less appealing to the television audience, having declined to use makeup. Those who heard the debate on the radio and did not see it divided their sentiments regarding the winner 50-50 between the two candidates. For those who saw the debate on television, Kennedy came out ahead by a substantial margin. The vote was one of the closest in American history; Kennedy’s margin was 118,000 votes out of 68 million cast.

The 1960 election was also notable in that for the first time, citizens in Hawaii and Alaska were able to vote in a presidential election; both had become states in 1959.

JFK Inaugural address.

Probably because of his assassination and the nonstop television coverage of all of events during the weekend leading up to the funeral, including the heroic performance by Jacqueline Kennedy and the tragic image of the her two young children saying farewell to their father on camera, Kennedy’s popularity was probably even greater after his death than during his administration, and people without a deep knowledge of politics considered him to have been a great president. In fact, Kennedy’s domestic record was quite modest. He was unable to persuade Congress to follow his lead in a number of his initiatives, and most of his proposals, especially in the civil rights area, were finally realized under the powerful Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy after his death. Congress did support Kennedy’s creation of the Peace Corps and passed economic programs for urban renewal, raising the minimum wage, and increasing Social Security benefits. Critics have claimed that Kennedy’s performance in office had more style than substance, but there is no question that the White House seemed a far more glamorous place with the Kennedy family in residence. There is also little doubt that his handling of the Cuban missile crisis was his finest hour.

See also Cold War.

The question still discussed about President Kennedy’s foreign policy—one for which there is no satisfactory answer—is: “What would Kennedy have done in Vietnam if he had not been assassinated?” Some believe that he was prepared to end what he saw as a misguided venture; however, advisers close to the Kennedy administration have indicated that if his intent was to begin a full withdrawal from Vietnam, they had seen little evidence that he would carry it further. True, he had drawn down the number of advisers in Vietnam slightly during the last months of his presidency, but some believe that that was just preparation for the election of 1964.

In the end, Kennedy followed the path of Presidents Truman and Eisenhower as a leader determined to prevent the further spread of Communism in the world and to use all reasonable means to keep the Soviet Union from taking advantage of any perceived American weakness. He had campaigned on the issue of a missile gap between United States and the Soviet Union, and even his plan to place a man on the moon in the decade of the 1960s was, to a large extent, aimed at defeating the Russians in space. The military implications were obvious. It was, of course, during Kennedy’s administration that the most dangerous point in the Cold War was reached: the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962.

The Space Race. During the mid 1950s most Americans were aware that the government was doing research on the exploration of space and that one day, probably in the far distant future, men would go to the moon and beyond. But when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, an artificial satellite, into Earth orbit in 1957, Americans were stunned. Russian scientists had been portrayed as less capable than their American counterparts, and Soviet successes were supposedly based on borrowing of western ideas. But when the Soviets leaped out in front in space exploration, even with a primitive vehicle, Americans reacted with a combination of disbelief and panic. Articles with titles like “Why Johnny Can’t read-And Why Ivan Can” began to appear, and the entire U.S. educational system was hauled into court and placed under scrutiny. Reflecting people’s attitudes, Congress passed legislation that created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and passed additional laws meant to improve American science and math curricula. The space race was seen as part of the cold war, and Americans felt they had to win.

No one played this theme more strongly than President Kennedy. Early in his administration he dedicated that nation to putting a man on the moon and returning him safely by the end of the decade, defined as January 1, 1970. The seven Mercury astronauts made flights in the early 1960s, and then the Gemini and Apollo programs began to prepare for an eventual lunar landing. With the assistance of former German V-weapon rocket scientists and an aviation industry with much talent, the Americans caught up with and passed the Soviets and reached Kennedy’s goal: Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon in July, 1969.

NASA eventually oversaw six landings on the moon, the last one on December 11, 1972. Since then all space flights have been limited to low orbits. The Space Shuttle program, which followed Apollo, accomplished much but was plagued by accidents, as the Challenger shuttle was destroyed during a launch in 1986, and the Columbia was destroyed during re-entry to the Earth’s atmosphere in 2003. NASA plans to retire the remaining shuttle craft in 2010 and replace them with a new vehicle, the Orion, designed to take astronauts back to the moon and perhaps beyond.

See Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff and the film of the same title; Norman Mailer, Of A Fire on the Moon; Also dramatic and historically sound are the Tom Hanks film Apollo 13 and his HBO series, From the Earth to the Moon. The NASA web site is one of the most popular and frequently visited on the World Wide Web.

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Post-World War II Domestic Part 2
The Johnson and Nixon Years

The Johnson Years: America in Turmoil

Lyndon Baines Johnson was one of the most fascinating and controversial figures in American political history. He was a man of extraordinary talents, appetites and ambition. He first came Washington from Texas in 1931 as secretary to a Texas congressman, where he caught the attention of Franklin Roosevelt and was appointed as Director of the Texas National Youth Administration. He was elected to a full term in the House of Representatives in 1938 and served there until 1948, when he was elected to the United States Senate.

In 1951 Johnson was elected majority whip of the Democratic Party in the Senate, and in 1955 he became the Senate Majority Leader, a position he held until being elected vice president under John F. Kennedy in 1960. Johnson was an extraordinarily persuasive man, and in dealing with his fellow legislators, his methods were so direct and forceful that his political dealings became known as the “Johnson treatment.” He could be both charming and heavy-handed, but when he was determined to get votes for a bill he favored, he could exert relentless pressure in persuading colleagues to follow his lead.

Although the negotiations were carried out in private, considerable evidence exists that John Kennedy did not really want Johnson as his vice president, but since Johnson, as majority leader of the Senate, was the most powerful man in Washington in 1960, Kennedy and his aides felt that Johnson should be offered the job. They also counted on Johnson to deliver the electoral votes of his native Texas as well as other Southern states. The Kennedy team was apparently shocked when Johnson decided to accept the position. The vice presidency of the United States has been described in less than glowing terms by more than one occupant of the office, and there is no question that Lyndon Johnson was frustrated over his lack of meaningful responsibilities. President Kennedy made him overseer of the American space program, but that did not really satisfy Johnson’s longing to be in the center of political action in Washington.

The vice president accompanied President Kennedy on his fateful trip to Texas in 1963. Shortly after Kennedy was pronounced dead at Dallas’s Parkland Hospital following his assassination, Johnson was sworn in aboard Air Force One, as President Kennedy’s widow, Jacqueline, stood by in her bloodied pink suit.

The transition from the Kennedy to the Johnson administration was understandably wrenching, first of all because Kennedy’s cabinet and staff were in a state of shock following the sudden death of their leader. In addition, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson were about as far apart as two politicians of the same party could get in style and personality. Kennedy, the wealthy scion of an old Boston political family and Harvard graduate, epitomized everything glamorous and attractive about Washington politics. Mrs. Kennedy conducted herself with enormous dignity during the ceremonies following her husband’s death. Pictures of her standing side-by-side with her two young children, her son John being too young to comprehend what was happening, deeply touched the American people.

Lyndon Johnson, by contrast, had come from humble beginnings, He attended Southwest Texas State Teachers College and, after teaching for a year, worked his way up through the political ranks by his own means. Whereas the Kennedys suggested candlelit tables with fine glassware and china, Lyndon Johnson and his family conveyed the image of a rousing Texas barbecue. Johnson moved slowly and carefully during the weeks and months following Kennedy’s death, looking forward to the election of 1964 as he renewed contacts with political colleagues in Congress and elsewhere. As president, with the full apparatus of the White House at his disposal, he commanded attention and demanded loyalty.

Johnson’s forte was not foreign affairs, but the Cold War was a continuing reality, and the situation in Vietnam following the assassination of Premier Diem was murky at best; he could not afford to ignore the realities of international events. Johnson’s interests, however, lay in his dreams for domestic programs, as he planned an all-out assault on what he saw as America’s social skills: racism, poverty, lack of opportunity, and a host of other issues first addressed by Franklin Roosevelt during the New Deal. Johnson later told biographers that his goal had been to dance with the lady he called the “Great Society,” but instead he was distracted by what he called that “bitch goddess of Vietnam.” Although his legislative achievements in pursuing his goals for domestic improvements were stunning, in the end his legacy was determined by the Vietnam War. (See separate section on Vietnam.)

High on President Johnson’s agenda was progress in the area of civil rights, something which President Kennedy had started, but which was still far from completion upon his death. As a Southerner Johnson was in a strong position to push civil rights legislation. Though it took all his powers of persuasion, Johnson’s achievements in civil rights were of major significance.

Lyndon Johnson was one of the most powerful politicians in the nation’s history. He could be cajoling, pleading, bargaining, threatening, or promising, sometimes, it seemed, all in the course of the same conversation. He was famous for what was known as the “Johnson Treatment.” He was a man not to be crossed with impunity. Although he was unfailingly gracious to Jacqueline Kennedy following JFK’s assassination, the “Kennedy crowd,”or “Irish Mafia,” often left him feeling frustrated and angry. While he kept major Kennedy advisors such as Defense Secretary McNamara and Secretary of State Dean Rusk, he often clashed with JFK’s brother Robert, especially when the former attorney general began to challenge his Vietnam policy.

The first task President Johnson faced in the civil rights arena was getting passage of the civil rights bill introduced by President Kennedy in 1963. Johnson spent most of his time early in 1964 working to get Congress to pass the bill. The House passed the bill by a comfortable margin, but it faced an uphill fight in the Senate. Johnson was aware that Southern Senators would lead a filibuster against the bill, and a vote of two thirds of the Senate was required to end it. Johnson kept a list of where every member of the Senate stood on the issue, and pulled out all the stops in an effort to persuade his former Senate colleagues to come around. The filibuster lasted three months, the longest one in Senate history, but eventually the bill passed.

As discussed in the Civil Rights section, above, two more major civil rights bills were passed during Johnson’s term: the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1968. All three acts reflect Lyndon Johnson’s sincere commitment to racial equality. As a Texan, he had seen racial discrimination up close and detested its effects on blacks and Mexicans. As a Congressman and Senator, he had worked hard to see that minorities were fairly treated under federal economic policies. His achievements in this area provide a stark contrast to his unfortunate policy in Vietnam. (See Civil Rights section.)

Additional Achievements of Lyndon Johnson included bills to establish the Medicare and Medicaid programs; the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964; creation of the Job Corps, a sort of domestic Peace Corps; the Elementary and Secondary Education Act; and the Head Start program. Johnson also sponsored legislation that revised immigration policies, toughened anti-crime systems, and sought to improve public housing and clean up urban slums and the environment at large. Although many of these programs failed to meet their objectives, it was the greatest reform movement since the early days of FDR’s New Deal. Lyndon Johnson presided over much of the “the sixties,” however, and the times were indeed a-changing.

America Goes to the Moon. Having launched the country on a quest to put an American on the moon by 1970, President Kennedy committed the nation to exploration of the heavens. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration mobilized the American scientific and engineering communities in a remarkable program to realize Kennedy’s vision. The seven Mercury astronauts made flights in the early 1960s, and then the Gemini and Apollo programs began to prepare for an eventual lunar landing. With the assistance of former German V-weapon rocket scientists and an aviation industry with much talent, the Apollo program moved forward smartly as NASA administrators kept a close eye on Soviet  developments. In July 1969 the U.S. space program reached Kennedy’s goal: Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon. With millions listening, Neil Armstrong announced, “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”

The Apollo achievement was remarkable in that virtually every piece of equipment used for the flight had to be created from scratch. The challenges were large; three astronauts died in a fire early in the program, and three more nearly perished when the Apollo 13 spacecraft was damaged in an internal explosion. NASA eventually oversaw six landings on the moon, the last of which took place on December 11, 1972. Since then all space flights have been limited to low orbits. The Space Shuttle program, which followed Apollo, accomplished much but was plagued by accidents. The Challenger shuttle was destroyed during a launch in 1986, and the Columbia was destroyed during re-entry to the Earth’s atmosphere in 2003.

NASA eventually oversaw six landings on the moon, the last one on December 11, 1972. Since then all space flights have been limited to low orbits. The Space Shuttle program, which followed Apollo, accomplished much but was plagued by accidents, as the Challenger shuttle was destroyed during a launch in 1986, and the Columbia was destroyed during re-entry to the Earth’s atmosphere in 2003. NASA plans to retire the remaining shuttle craft in 2010 and replace them with a new vehicle, the Orion, designed to take astronauts back to the moon and perhaps beyond by the year 2020.

Although the manned spaceflight programs have received most of the public attention, unmanned satellites have made enormous strides in advancing communications, meteorology and discoveries about the origins and nature of the universe. Many products now in use in everyday life and in fields such as medicine are products of the space program. Everything from Velcro to heart monitors had its origins in the quest to explore the heavens. The Hubbell telescope has provided scientists with detailed pictures of distant galaxies and start systems.

See Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff and the film of the same title; Norman Mailer, Of A Fire on the Moon; Also dramatic and historically sound are the Tom Hanks film Apollo 13 and his HBO series, From the Earth to the Moon. The NASA site is one of the most popular and frequently visited on the World Wide Web.

The 1960s: America in Revolt

The decade of the 1960s began chronologically in January 1961, a month that saw John F. Kennedy inaugurated as president of the United States. Kennedy’s inaugural address was highlighted by the memorable call to arms, “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” In those early days of the Kennedy administration the world seemed relatively calm. Still, the shooting down of the U-2 aircraft over Russia, the continuing threat of nuclear war, and the Cold War environment kept people on edge. The Bay of Pigs fiasco, the erection of the Berlin wall, the Cuban missile crisis and Kennedy’s confrontations with Khrushchev added to the tension that people felt, but the storm had not yet struck. Issues in French Indochina, rioting in the streets, and all the turmoil that has come to characterize the 60s was hardly a whisper on the horizon.

The sixties really began on November 22, 1963, when President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, by Lee Harvey Oswald. Young and vibrant, with a lovely wife and two small children, the President was extremely popular among young Americans. With his untimely death the nation began a descent into one of the most chaotic decades in American history. Lyndon Johnson, Kennedy’s successor, was a powerful President who achieved a great deal of what Kennedy had intended, and much more. His “Great Society” even went a step or two beyond the New Deal in terms of fundamental reform, but lingering doubts over Kennedy’s death remained alive.

While the fifties were a “laid back” decade, the 1960s were in many ways the opposite. Whereas in the 1950s a popular television program proclaimed that “Father Knows Best,” by the end of the 1960s young people had convinced themselves that father did not know much of anything. Beginning with the “free speech” movement at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1964, a series of rebellions spread from campus to campus. The issues included such matters as women’s rights, the Vietnam War, and the nature of the university itself. Although in retrospect people think of those rebellions in terms of the “anti-war” movement, the student protests were much wider in their scope. In fact, Vietnam protests comprised only a minority of campus disturbances, many of which were directed at societal problems in general.

The more strongly the police reacted, the more rebellious the students became, and the larger their numbers grew. Across the nation, at hundreds of campuses, buildings were damaged or even destroyed, offices were ransacked, and professors unsympathetic to the students demands were driven from classrooms. In many cases the university was obliged simply to shut down. Following the invasion of Cambodia in 1970, hundreds of campuses were shut down because of student protests.

While cynics may have noted that the level of student protest seemed to rise the closer it got to exam time, the students were often addressing serious issues in a thoughtful manner. On the other hand, many leaders of the student movement—men and women whose names became well known beyond their own campuses—had fairly obvious political agendas; they sometimes seemed to be exploiting the rebellious conditions for their own purposes. The Students for a Democratic Society, SDS, had chapters on many campuses and often orchestrated demonstrations and other disruptive activities. (The organization still exists.)

While often high-minded, the student demonstrations were frequently violent, and they triggered responses from university officials that ranged from acquiescence, to forcible resistance, to what many students perceived as outright oppression. When college police forces proved inadequate to handle the growing level of disruption, local police forces and even national guard troops were called in, with predictable results. Taunted by what they viewed as foul-mouthed, “spoiled brats” of the upper classes who shouted epithets such as “pigs,” and worse, at them, the police often reacted with violence of their own, and the riots often turned bloody, even deadly.

In the best sense, the students and their sympathizers were trying to bring about positive change in American society. They saw themselves as friends of the working classes, a voice for the oppressed, and many of them made positive contributions to the civil rights movement. In the South, black students led the sit-ins and freedom marches and were on the front line when things got rough, as they usually did. For most white students the Vietnam War, while not the only issue, was the biggest issue. Their feelings were probably complicated by the fact that as college students they were deferred from the draft. Draft eligible young man had to remain in good standing, however, and professors often went out of their way to see to it that they did by guaranteeing males with low draft number an A grade. The Vietnam protests also called attention to what many saw as an unholy alliance between universities and government—more particularly the military establishment. Weapons research, for example, was attacked by students who felt that such work was morally objectionable in a university setting. (President Eisenhower’s warning about the military-industrial complex was cited often by sixties students.)

President Johnson marked time until his overwhelming reelection over Barry Goldwater in 1964, and then all hell began to break loose. As American troops were sent to Vietnam in ever-increasing numbers, as the civil rights demonstrations grew ever more bloody and violent, and as protests seem to erupt almost on a daily basis, mostly on college campuses, the 60s turned into a time of turmoil and trouble. Although a few early campus rallies were held to support the troops, their days were numbered.

The focus of much unrest on the campuses often dealt with civil rights. For example, in the spring of 1968, Columbia University in New York City erupted in part over plans by the University to build a facility in a housing area in neighboring Harlem. Although the design had been hailed as progressive, it was later judged to be discriminatory, as local residents were o be permitted to use only part of the building. Students soon took over the college, occupied administration offices, and eventually caused the university authorities to call for the assistance of the New York City police. Although today, in the aftermath of September 11, policemen and firemen are generally viewed favorably by most Americans of all generations, during the 60s student protesters saw cops, whom the called “pigs,” as the enemy. During an uproar at Boston University, the Boston tactical police were called in and blood was shed as the students resisted the police. At the University of Maryland in College Park, a campus generally not known for political activism, students shut down the main traffic artery of U.S. Highway 1 during rush hour. Fire bombs directed at ROTC buildings, mass protests, break-ins at draft boards, and marches on the Pentagon became part of the culture of the 60s.

The year 1968 was the peak of the turmoil as violence broke out in Chicago during the Democratic national convention. The Chicago police under Mayor Daley carried out what came to be known as a “police riot.” Protesters threw rocks, chunks of concrete and bags of urine at police, and the police responded with force. Blood was shed by demonstrators and occasional innocent bystanders. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy were both assassinated in 1968; it seemed to many that the country had not only lost its moral compass, but was rapidly running amok. The year 1969 saw the inauguration of President Richard Nixon, and as he seemed to be working to try to end the war, the turmoil also seemed to abate for a year.

In 1970 President Nixon authorized an invasion of Cambodia in 1970 to attack communist sanctuaries, four students were shot by National Guard troops at Kent State University in Ohio, and the protests erupted anew. Then came the confusing and frustrating end of the American involvement in Vietnam, followed closely by the growing Watergate scandal, and it seemed that once again, things were as bad as ever. (See The Nixon Years section.)

In 1973 the American POWs came back from Vietnam, Senator John McCain among them, and the escalating Watergate crisis led to Richard Nixon’s resignation in August of 1974. Although South Vietnam fell to the Communists in 1975, and the city of Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City, most Americans viewed it from a distance. In 1976 the country rallied from its despondency in order to celebrate the bicentennial of American independence, and it seemed that by then the 60s were well over. But the nation did not go back to the way it had been in the 1950s—too much had changed. Civil rights legislation opened doors that had been closed for a century. Women had begun to assert themselves and move into areas previously unheard of for the “gentle sex.” Coed dormitories were common on college campuses, thus indicating that the sexual revolution had been, in effect, rubber stamped by university authorities. If parents were distressed, there wasn’t much they could do about it; and, in fact, they had lived through the 60s themselves and had been changed by the experience, as had all Americans.

The outcomes are hard to assess. The Vietnam War did come to an end, and substantial progress was made in civil rights and other areas. Perhaps those changes would have come about anyway, maybe more slowly, but maybe without arousing as much resentment. One outcome is certain: the university was changed forever. In the 1950s the university stood in loco parentis—in the place of the parent, knowingly accepting the responsibility not only for students’ education, but for their moral behavior as well. Dormitories were segregated by sex, use of alcohol and drugs was at least officially frowned upon, and male students were allowed to visit females in their dormitories only under controlled conditions. Students were expected to behave in class, obey the college rules and the law, and generally to conduct themselves as ladies and gentlemen.

By 1966 or 1967 all that had begun to change. Although the memory of the student protests seems retroactively to have centered on the Vietnam War, the students were angry about many more things. The university was now obliged to recognize that its students were adults, that they had rights, and that it was not proper for college officials to dictate student lifestyles, no matter how well intentioned such guidance might have been.

Events:

• The Port Huron Statement: Students for a Democratic Society create an agenda.
• The 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago
• The Shootings at Kent State University
• Wikipedia Kent State Pages

The Women’s Rights Movement

College students were not the only ones who rebelled in the 1960s. The civil rights movement raised the consciousness of women as well. When one views the long history of relationships between males and females in various cultures, it becomes immediately apparent that only in recent years has anything like true equality between men and women begun to emerge. Though advances for women in American society have been notable, many other cultures still lag behind. The history of women in Western society has provided innumerable examples of women who have achieved remarkable things, up to and including the running of entire nations, as was done by Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen Elizabeth the Great of Great Britain, Catherine the Great of Russia, and many others. Those women are exceptional by almost any definition.

Many of you recall from early American history the Seneca Falls Convention organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and others in 1848. They stated in their declaration that “all men and women are created equal,” a radical notion in its time. From that juncture it took 70 years before women were granted the right to vote in the United States, although some states such as Wyoming, Utah and others afforded women the franchise well before the 19th amendment was passed.

	Left: Alice Paul, President of the National Women’s Party, salutes the suffrage flag at the 75th Anniversary of the seneca Falls Convention in 1923. She wrote the text of the first Equal Rights Amendment and read it at that meeting.
	HBO Iron Jawed Angels Site. Alice Paul’s story is portrayed in the film Iron Jawed Angels, with Hillary Swank as Alice Paul. Link to Video Clip of Trailer (apologies for the commercial.) Link to the Women’s Rights National Historical Park, Seneca Falls, New York.
	Right: A statue of Esther Hobart Morris graces the front of the Wyoming State Capitol in Cheyenne. The inscription proudly procaims that Wyoming was “the first government in the world to grant women equal rights.”

Alice Paul, pictured above left, was instrumental in the women’s suffrage movement. She and her colleagues worked tirelessly and courageously, even to enduring harsh treatment in prison, to get the 19th (Women’s Suffrage) Amendment passed. Part of her story is portrayed in the film Iron Jawed Angels, with Hillary Swank as Alice Paul.

Giving the women the right to vote, however, did not nearly make women equal in other respects. As late as the 1950s, as one can judge from old television programs, commercials, and newspaper and magazine advertising, women’s roles were decidedly different from those of men in the judgment of a majority of Americans. The appearance of Betty Friedan’s book, The Feminine Mystique, in 1963 began to change those perceptions, however. A few years after the book was published a group of women that included Catherine East (an alumna of Northern Virginia Community College) got together and formed the National Organization for Women. The modern feminist movement was underway.

The majority of Americans probably felt that opportunities for women ought to be expanded, and few could quarrel with the notion of equal pay for equal work, but the feminists had an uphill fight in achieving full equality. The best example of their difficulty is the fact that a constitutional women’s rights amendment, the Equal Rights Amendment, or ERA, although passed by Congress in 1972, was ratified by only 35 states, 3 short of the requisite 38.

Some objections to the equal rights amendment could were unconvincing. For example, some were concerned that privacy issues such as separate public restrooms might be negated by an equal rights amendment. Others argued that the Fourteenth Amendment, although it did not include women at the time it was passed, rendered the necessity of an equal rights amendment extraneous. Article 1 of the Amendment states:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Opponents of the equal rights amendment argued that women were indeed persons and citizens and therefore were fully protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. The National Organization for Women argued, on the other hand, that women’s equality needed to be made explicit. The most outspoken opponent of the ERA was conservative lawyer Phyllis Schafly. She argued that ratification of the amendment would mean that women would have to register for the military draft, and that they might lose Social Security benefits for wives and widows. Schafly has been credited with defeating the amendment.

The women’s rights movement has in any case had an enormous impact on opportunities for women. For example, in 1980 approximately 8% of practicing attorneys were women. Today the figure is close to 30%, but almost half of all students in law schools are women. A similar situation exists for women in medicine, where less than 30% of practicing physicians are female, but about half of all medical students are female. Women’s opportunities in the armed forces have expanded enormously, and women comprise well over half of all students in enrolled in colleges and universities. With the exception of the Roman Catholic Church, major religious denominations now regularly ordain women as priests or ministers.

The debate over the proper roles and functions of women is by no means over, however. Attempts to reintroduce an equal rights amendment have occurred, although the issue is clouded by recent debates over the issue of same sex marriages. Both men and women will continue to discuss and argue over the proper roles for females. Social relations between males and females are the product of thousands of years of evolution, and inborn genetic tendencies cannot be wiped out by social action or legislation. When I was teaching a course in Women in American History several years ago (100% of the students in the class were women) I asked the question, “If a boy and girl child were raised in a totally gender neutral environment, would they still gravitate towards traditional male and female roles?” The unanimous response of the class was that they would. Anecdotal evidence, to be sure, but nevertheless interesting.

Although the history of the women’s movement continues, one thing is clear: women in the year 2006 have far more to look forward to in terms of professional and other opportunities than women did in 1960. At that time most Ivy League colleges and the American service academies, Annapolis, West Point, and the Air Force Academy, were still male only. Women have indeed come a long way, but full equality remains to be achieved. They still face the dilemma of the necessity of dual incomes for a family to prosper, even as most women remain the primary caregivers to family members.

The Nixon Years

Richard Milhous Nixon was elected to Congress from California in 1946 and to the United States Senate in 1950. Selected as General Eisenhower’s vice presidential running mate in 1952, Nixon served eight years in that office and was narrowly defeated by John F. Kennedy for President in 1960. Nixon then ran for governor of California in 1962 and was defeated once again. In a bitter farewell to the media he proclaimed that, “You won’t have Richard Nixon to kick around anymore.” Nixon’s comeback, however, began when he made a rousing nomination speech for Barry Goldwater for president at the Republican National Convention in 1964.

Following Goldwater’s landslide defeat, Nixon worked quietly within the Republican Party and in 1968 was able to secure the nomination for president, running against incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Humphrey was saddled with Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam War legacy, but the election was nevertheless very close. Former Governor George Wallace of Alabama created a diversion for frustrated Southern conservatives and carried five states in the Electoral College as he ran on the American Independent Party.

Richard Nixon campaigned on what he called a secret plan to end the Vietnam War, which was in fact nothing more than turning the conduct of the war over to the Vietnamese, in other words “Vietnamization.” He eventually got the United States out of Vietnam and achieved what he called “peace with honor.” (See Vietnam Section.) He and his national security adviser Henry Kissinger, who later became his Secretary of State, saw the Vietnam War as something of a sideshow to the larger issue of the Cold War tension between the United States and Russia and China.

Pursuing a policy which they called “détente,” Kissinger and Nixon sought to reduce tensions among the three major powers. Nixon made a famous visit to Communist China in 1972, the first step in establishing formal diplomatic relations between the two nations. He also had a summit conference with Soviet Premier Aleksey Kosygin in 1972, at which various diplomatic agreements were reached. During his meeting with the Soviet Premier, President Nixon said in a toast, “We should recognize that great nuclear powers have a solemn responsibility to exercise restraint in any crisis, and to take positive action to avert direct confrontation.”
The U.S. entered several treaties with the two Communist nations during Nixon’s first term and supported China’s admission to the United Nations. A Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty was also signed in Moscow. Better relations between the U.S. and China and the Soviets may also have facilitated the end to America’s participation in the Vietnam War. Just after 1972 presidential election Kissinger signed a peace agreement with Le Duc Tho, the North Vietnamese negotiator. Whatever flaws Richard Nixon may have had, his foreign policy achievements have been considered notable. Although tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union remained high, neither side wanted a nuclear war. The consensus among both the American and Russian people was that Nixon’s policies had made the world safer.

Watergate. Like his predecessor, Richard Nixon was distracted by the Vietnam War. Well versed in foreign policy matters, Nixon made considerable progress in that area. He also streamlined many Great Society programs and attempted to shift the burden of and responsibility for much government action from the federal government to the states. As the Vietnam War seemed to be winding down in 1972, and Nixon’s “Vietnamization” program was bringing American fighting men home, Nixon was a strong bet for reelection, which he won by a huge landslide.

In June, 1972, a group of overzealous Republican underlings broke into the Democratic National Committee Headquarters in the Watergate office building in Washington in order to bug the phones and were caught and arrested. The actual events of the burglary had little if any impact on the election results, and if the incident had been handled swiftly and properly, the story almost surely would have gone away. Nixon’s staff, however, panicked and began what eventually became a massive cover-up of the “Watergate” events and their aftermath, and the President himself became deeply involved, even though he apparently had nothing to do with the break-in beforehand.

Two Washington Post reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who had covered the original break-in, stayed with the story even after it stopped being interesting. Following President Nixon’s landslide reelection and inauguration on January 20, 1973, the break-in offenders were found guilty and sentenced to jail terms. It was obvious to many, however, that the story did not end there. As additional White House staff members were found to have been involved in the process, the story began to grow. By June, 1973, the Senate had convened a special committee under the leadership of Senator Sam Ervin to investigate the Watergate charges and the White House involvement.

The hearings were broadcast live on television and widely watched. Top Nixon officials were called to testify, many were forced to resign, and a number of them eventually served jail terms for obstruction of justice or related offenses. Following the lengthy Senate hearings and subsequent debates in the House, it became clear that President Nixon would be impeached and perhaps convicted of various “high crimes and misdemeanors.” In order to avoid the embarrassment and distraction of a House impeachment and Senate trial, President Nixon resigned in August, 1974. Thus Vice President Gerald Ford became president of the United States. Washington Post reporters Woodward and Bernstein were widely praised for their dogged persistence in following the story, the Post won a Pulitzer Prize, and many young Americans came to see investigative journalism as a career that they hoped to pursue. (See Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, All the President’s Men (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1974) and the 1976 film of the same name starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford, directed by Alan J. Pakula.)

Beyond Watergate: The Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton Years
America 1974-2001

President Gerald Ford

Upon President Nixon’s resignation, former Congressman Gerald Ford became the first unelected president of the United States. A decent and honest man, Ford had been the respected Republican minority leader in the House of Representatives. In accordance with the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, President Nixon had named Ford as vice president when Vice President Spiro T. Agnew resigned over corruption charges. President Ford soon named political veteran and former Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York as his vice president. Thus from late 1974 through January 20, 1977, neither the president nor vice president of the United States had been elected to those offices.

Not wishing to see the ugly spectacle of Watergate drawn out any further, President Ford decided to issue a blanket pardon to President Nixon, feeling that a trial would serve no useful purpose. A substantial public outcry greeted President Ford’s announcement. Despite the fact that the pardon cost Ford significantly in popularity, he testified before Congress that he had made “no deal, period,” in being appointed vice president and subsequently pardoning President Nixon.

The end of the Vietnam War, the resignation of Richard Nixon in August, 1974, and with students back in the classrooms rather than on the streets the period known as “The Sixties” was finally over. The country settled in to await the celebration of its 200th anniversary on July 4, 1976. Some felt that the celebration became rather excessive, and a New Yorker cartoon showed an automobile on a highway as the driver and passenger looked at a sign saying, “Bicentennial-free Zone Ahead!” But the fireworks celebrations were nevertheless spectacular, and the country celebrated its 200th birthday with enthusiasm. The last quarter of the turbulent 20th century had begun.

Despite the Paris Accords, fighting continued in Vietnam, and on April 30, 1975, the Saigon government announced its unconditional surrender to the forces of North Vietnam. The capital of Saigon was soon renamed Ho Chi Minh City, and a long, painful period of readjustment began throughout the war-torn country. During the last days before the fall of Saigon, President Ford ordered American helicopters to evacuate all remaining American personnel along with several thousand Vietnamese who had been supporters of the Americans. Tens of thousands of additional Vietnamese fled the nation following the fall to the Communists, and many of them eventually made their way to the United States.

President Ford apparently intended to continue the foreign policy of President Nixon since he kept Henry Kissinger on as Secretary of State. Ford met with Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev in 1974 at Vladivostok and signed an arms control agreement designed to facilitate an arms control agreement, SALT II (Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty.) Secretary Kissinger continued to work toward a peaceful resolution of the tensions in the Middle East and helped to bring about an agreement between Egypt and Israel, who pledged not to settle future disputes through the use of force. In 1975 the United States and the Western European nations adopted what became known as the Helsinki Accords. In return for recognition of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union agreed to a policy recognizing human rights. Whether the people living under Soviet domination in Eastern Europe actually enjoyed an improvement in their human rights was never clearly demonstrated. Soviet leaders treated the accords as a diplomatic triumph.

During President Ford’s tenure a campaign finance law was passed which placed ceilings on contributions to presidential elections and required full disclosure of campaign contributions and expenditures. (The amount of money spent on presidential campaigns has nevertheless continued to increase; in the 2008 presidential election it is estimated that the parties spent approximately $1 billion in the campaign.) In the 1974 congressional elections the Democrats made significant gains in the aftermath of Watergate in both the House and Senate.

Although President Ford took steps to improve the nation’s economy, unemployment continued to rise during 1974, and the economy experienced a negative growth of -2%. In a further attempt to stimulate the economy, a tax reduction act was passed in 1975. Later in that year federal loans of over $2 billion were required to help New York City avoid bankruptcy. The national economy remained weak throughout 1976.

Although President Ford had never given any indication of a desire to run for the office of president before being appointed vice president by Richard Nixon, once in the White House he decided to seek reelection, a decision reminiscent of that of President Harry Truman. In 1976 President Ford held off a vigorous campaign for the nomination by California Governor Ronald Reagan. Former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter emerged as the Democratic nominee from the field of seven candidates and chose Senator Walter F. Mondale of Minnesota as his running mate. Carter was elected in a very close election, winning 50.1% of the popular vote and 297 electoral votes to President Ford’s 240 votes. Democrats retained control of the Senate and the House of Representatives.

The Carter Years

President Jimmy Carter was born in Plains, Georgia, in 1924. A graduate of the United States Naval Academy, Carter entered the Navy’s nuclear submarine program under Admiral Hyman Rickover and studied nuclear physics and engineering. Carter left the Navy after seven years to take over the family business upon his father’s death. He served in the Georgia State Senate and was elected governor of the state in 1970. During his campaign for president, he ran as an outsider to the political system in Washington and promised to bring a new approach to the office of president. He promised that he would never lie to the American people.

President Carter’s record as a progressive followed him to the White House. The festivities surrounding Carter’s inauguration were less formal than usual, as he and his wife Rosalynn walked along Pennsylvania Avenue following his inauguration at the Capitol. In response to a pledge made to the National Education Association, President Carter oversaw the creation of a Cabinet level Department of Education. President Carter also took initiatives to reduce domestic oil consumption and the creation of a new Department of Energy. Steps were also taken by the Carter administration to slow the rise in prices.

Recalling the efforts of President Woodrow Wilson, President Carter led teams to monitor elections in Latin America. He also negotiated a controversial agreement with Panama leader General Omar Torrijos. The result of the Neutrality Treaty was that all lands in the Panama Canal Zone were turned over to the nation of Panama. United States retained the permanent right to defend the canal and guaranteed that use of the canal would be open to all nations.

President Carter’s most significant foreign policy achievement, however, took place when discussions between Egypt and Israel reached an impasse. The president invited Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to Camp David, Maryland, where he persuaded them to stay for two weeks while disputes between the two nations were being discussed. As negotiations moved forward over the ensuing months, the president was eventually able to entertain Begin and Sadat in the White House to sign a formal peace treaty between Israel and Egypt known as the Camp David Accords.

President Carter also continued working to improve relations with China and the Soviet Union. In 1978 the United States established formal diplomatic relations with China for the first time. Shortly thereafter President Carter met with Leonid Brezhnev in Vienna to complete a new SALT II (Strategic Arms Limitation) agreement.

The presidency of Jimmy Carter was not as an effective as it might have been had the president not believed some of his own campaign rhetoric. Having promised that he would not follow the old Washington ways, he installed in the White House a number of aides from his years as governor of Georgia, the so-called “Georgia mafia.” When the president proved ineffective at dealing with Congress, House Speaker Tip O’Neill offered to assist him in working with the powerful political forces on the Hill. The president replied that as governor he had known how to work with the legislature, and if Congress was uncooperative, he would simply go over their heads to the people. He failed to realize that the interests of various sections of the country are far more diverse than those within the state of Georgia; Speaker O’Neill was surprised that the president didn’t seem to understand that basic political fact. For much of his presidency Carter’s popularity with the American people, measured by approval ratings, remained at or below 50%.

As the decade of the 1970s drew to a close the world remained an uncertain place. In 1979 Shah Mohammad Reza Palavi of Iran fled his country, and the nation was taken over by religious leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, whose anti-Americanism was sharply defined. The United States had supported the Shah for decades, but his regime was deemed oppressive of the Iranian people, which led to his overthrow. The Shah spent several months in exile, and when it was discovered that he had cancer, he requested permission to come to the United States for treatment. President Carter eventually allowed the Shah to come to New York, but the Islamic revolutionaries in Iran demanded the Shah’s return. In addition, they made demands for the return of all the Shah’s assets supposedly hidden in the United States. The Shah eventually died in Egypt, and in protest against the United States a group of students attacked the American Embassy in Iran, captured and held 52 hostages for over a year, finally releasing them in January, 1981, on the day of President Ronald Reagan’s inauguration.

In 1979, the Soviet entered the nation of Afghanistan with a force that eventually numbered over 100,000, which President Carter denounced as a threat to world peace. The president canceled American participation in the 1980 Summer Olympic games scheduled to be held in Moscow. This struggle in Afghanistan between the Soviet army and the Afghan resistance movement, known as the mujahideen, lasted almost a decade and was considered by some to be the greatest threat to world peace since the end of the Second World War. A recent film, Charlie Wilson’s War, tells the story of a covert C.I.A. operation to provide weapons and funding to the mujahideen. Congressman Wilson of Texas traveled to Pakistan, where he was enlightened on the struggles of the Afghans against the powerful Soviet army. With the assistance of a street-wise C.I.A. operative, Wilson eventually funneled millions of dollars in aid to the mujahideen, enabling them to wear down the Soviets and drive them out of the country.

Charlie Wilson’s War, starring Tom Hanks Julia Roberts, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, was directed by Mike Nichols and written by Aaron Sorkin based on George Crile’s book, Charlie Wilson’s War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2003.)

The Rise of Conservatism. The election of Ronald Reagan as president of the United States in 1980 was the culmination of a process that had begun in the 1950s. Following 20 years of Democratic rule in the White House under Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, conservatives were prepared in 1952 to recapture the presidency. Their motto in that year was, “Time for a change.” The change, however, did not quite take the direction foreseen by conservatives, for instead of nominating Senator Robert Taft of Ohio, known at the time as “Mr. Republican,” the GOP instead nominated war hero General Dwight David Eisenhower, a moderate Republican. General Eisenhower, in fact, was so moderate that the Democrats had thought of nominating him for president in 1948 before incumbent President Truman decided to run for reelection.

Two more events in the 1950s heralded what became known as the “Reagan Revolution.” In 1955 William F. Buckley, Jr., founded the National Review, a biweekly magazine that became the mouthpiece of American conservatism. This second event, also literary, was the publication of Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative, a highly influential book among conservatives ghostwritten by Brent Bozell, brother-in-law of William F. Buckley. The book made Goldwater a star of the Republican Party and led to his nomination for president in 1964.

The motto of the 1964 Goldwater campaign was, “In your heart you know he’s right.” Goldwater’s problem was twofold, however; for many Americans Goldwater was just too far right. On top of that, the tragic death by assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963 certainly generated a huge sympathy vote for his successor, the powerful Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas. The result was the largest political landslide in modern history, an overwhelming victory for President Johnson.

An unintended beneficiary of that campaign, however, was former Vice President Richard Nixon. He had been defeated for president in 1960 in a very close election to John F. Kennedy, and he also lost his bid for governor of California in 1962. Although Nixon had retired from the political scene, bitterly telling the press that, “you won’t have Richard Nixon to kick around anymore,” his inspiring nomination speech for Senator Goldwater in the 1964 Republican national convention gave him new political life. Nixon won the Republican nomination in 1968 and defeated Vice President Hubert Humphrey in the election.

President Nixon’s tenure in office was remarkable for a number of features. His presidency is best known for the Watergate affair, which led to his resignation in disgrace in 1974. However, President Nixon did bring America’s involvement in the Vietnam war to an end, albeit far too late for many opponents of that war. More important, perhaps, in the long run were the overtures made by President Nixon and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to Communist China and Soviet Russia, a process known as “détente.” On the occasion of Richard Nixon’s death in 1994, a Soviet visitor to the United States told a group of American historians that Richard Nixon was a hero in the Soviet Union because he had, in the opinion of the Russian people, made the world a safer place. The full legacy of President Nixon’s time in office has yet to be fully appreciated, though he will certainly be remembered as the only American president to have resigned the office.

President Nixon’s successor, the unelected Gerald Ford, did his best to lift the country from the political doldrums created by the Watergate scandal, but he was nevertheless defeated for the presidency by Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter in 1976. Jimmy Carter’s presidency, discussed above, was less than fully successful, and conservative former Governor Ronald Reagan of California was on hand to resurrect the conservative mantle conceived by William F. Buckley and first carried by Barry Goldwater in 1964. Thus the stage was set for what became known as the Reagan Revolution, as the conservative former governor of California took over the White House, while the nation seemed to be moving in a conservative direction.

The Reagan Years

Ronald Reagan, a successful movie actor, had begun his political career as a New Deal Democrat and admirer of Franklin Roosevelt. His movie career began in the 1950s, and he first became interested in politics during his term as president of the Screen Actors Guild. He switched to the Republican Party in 1962 and vigorously supported the Goldwater campaign in 1964. He was elected governor of California in 1966 and reelected in 1970. His tenure as governor was controversial, partly because of his tough handling of participants in the antiwar movement centered around the University of California at Berkeley. The policies he followed as governor helped to solidify his conservative views and shaped the path that he would follow when he was elected president, highlights of which were welfare reform and reduction of the influence and size of government.

The 1980 Election. For a variety of reasons, such as President Carter’s fiscal conservatism, which upset liberals, he was challenged for the Democratic nomination by Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts. Although the senator showed some strength in the early primaries, he suffered from the memory of his accident at Chappaquiddick, in which a young woman in his company was drowned when his car ran off the road. Although President Carter won the nomination handily, because of the American hostage crisis in Iran he chose to campaign only in the White House Rose Garden and did not go on the stump.

Ronald Reagan had campaigned for the Republican nomination for president in 1976. He made a strong concession speech emphasizing the need for the United States to stand strong against the Soviet Union. During his 1980 campaign against Jimmy Carter he promised to follow the conservative principles of lower taxes and less government control over people’s lives. He also promised a strong national defense. With former Congressman George H. W. Bush as his running mate, the former actor and TV personality did well in television debates against the president. He won over 50% of the popular vote and carried 44 states in the Electoral College. On his inauguration day, January 20, 1981, the American hostages were released in Iran.

Reagan as President. The Chinese have a saying: “May you live in interesting times.” The phrase is often used in an ironic sense, meaning, may you find the times in which you live challenging; may you live in times of conflict and perhaps confusion; in other words, be careful what you wish for, or you might get it. The Reagan years—the 1980s—were indeed interesting. Throughout his presidency Reagan remained positive and optimistic about American society. His long years in front of television cameras made him what people called the “Great Communicator.”

Exactly where President Ronald Reagan will wind up in the evaluation of future historians remains to be seen. One thing is clear: the fact that he presided over the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union, and therefore of the end of the Cold War, will dominate whatever is remembered about him in the past. He will no doubt be paired by some with Richard Nixon, whose presidency ended in the scandal of Watergate, but whose overtures to the Soviet Union and China undoubtedly helped make the world a safer place.

The nature of modern politics is such that public perceptions of high officeholders are shaped by the extensive media coverage that is part of our daily lives. In the early days of the republic, the vast majority of the American people never laid eyes on their political leaders. By the dawn of the 20th century, the age of automobiles and railroads was well under way, and daily or weekly newspapers were readily available to the average citizen, all of which increased contact between the president and the people. President Franklin Roosevelt was the first president to communicate with the American people on a regular basis through the use of his radio fireside chats. Television brought the public an even closer view of public figures, and as a former television figure himself, President Reagan took full advantage of the medium.

Television, however, is not the only means by which the public gains insight into the character and personality of a political leader. Radio and television talk shows as well as print columnists often provide intimate details of the inner workings of government. While President Reagan generally came across on television as competent and amiable, reports surfaced from time to time that he was not fully in touch with the issues of the day. People suggested that he invented stories and made himself a part of them, even though they had never really occurred except in his imagination. People said that as an actor, that was a natural thing for him to do. They also claimed that he was not particularly attentive in cabinet meetings, and occasionally seem to doze off even while important matters were being discussed in his presence. It was said that he merely rubber-stamped ideas and policies that were actually created by others.

President Reagan’s defenders claimed that he had a full grasp of the important issues with which he dealt and that he received too little credit for many of the original ideas that he espoused. His domestic policies were in line with the positions on which he had campaigned. In foreign policy, especially with respect to the Soviet Union, he was firm in his dedication to preserving American liberty, but he was open to negotiation and discussion with the Soviet Union and China, as well as with other nations.

Reagan’s Foreign Policy. President Reagan’s policy with regard to the Soviet Union was guided by what he called peace through strength. He continued President Carter’s policy of building up American defenses and placed intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe. In 1983 he announced that the United States would develop a new high-tech defense system against intercontinental ballistic missiles. The controversial Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), known as “Star Wars,” was a plan to use space-based weapons to intercept incoming missiles. Critics felt that the program would be excessively expensive and doubted that it would be technologically feasible. Supporters argued that Reagan’s hard-nosed approach to defense strengthened his position vis-à-vis the Soviet Union.

In fact, American defense spending placed a strain on an already struggling Soviet economy. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was therefore amenable to discussions regarding reductions in strategic arms and other agreements between the two superpowers. During his second term Reagan agreed to two treaties with the Soviets that significantly reduced nuclear armaments and rendered the Soviet Union less threatening to the United States. With his motto of “trust but verify,” President Reagan promised to be fair but firm in his dealings with the Soviets. He developed friendly personal relations with Chairman Gorbachev, whose visits to the United States resulted in very favorable coverage by the media.

President Reagan’s policies toward Latin America, while not as prominent as those of U.S.—Soviet relations, still played a significant role during the 1980s. When the government of the island of Grenada in the Caribbean was taken over by a leftist political party, neighboring countries requested intervention by the U.S. President Reagan sent United States forces to Grenada to protect American citizens and students threatened by the disturbances. They soon discovered large amounts of Soviet-made Cuban weapons and remained in Grenada for about two months. Democratic elections were held a few months later. The United States also intervened in El Salvador to assist of the democratic government, though violence continued in that country for some time.

In Nicaragua the United States supported the Contras—opponents of the left-wing Sandinista government. Although Congress officially ceased providing funds to the Contras in 1984, members of the administration continued sending arms to the Contras in secret. Although a congressional investigation led to the resignation or firing of administration officials, Congress found no reason to begin impeachment hearings against the president. The investigation determined that the United States government had secretly sold arms to Iran and used part of the funds from the arms sales to support the Nicaraguan Contras. The Iran-Contra scandal kept Americans glued to the television for a number of weeks.

In 1983 a terrorist bombing in Beirut, Lebanon, killed over 200 US Marines who had been sent to the country to help support a pro-western government. In 1986 American air forces bombed targets in Libya in response to a Libyan supported series of terrorist attacks against American military personnel stationed in Europe. In the Persian Gulf U.S. naval vessels helped keep shipping lanes open by protecting convoys in the region. In Asia, the democratic government Corazón Aquino replaced the dictatorship of Philippine Ferdinand Marcos. Under American pressure, South Africa began to end its policy of apartheid.

Reagan’s Domestic Policies. Ronald Reagan will also be remembered for other things besides his highly visible interactions with Soviet leaders. His first controversial act involved his standoff with the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) who walked off the job in 1981 in an attempt to force the federal government to meet its demands for higher wages, shorter working hours and other benefits. The president responded bluntly: the strikers must return to work within 48 hours or be fired. Union members and their supporters predicted dire consequences from the President’s action—a huge slowdown in air traffic coupled with increased accidents and diminished air safety. But the air controllers’ wages were already above the national average, and the president guided a reorganization that involved reallocation of air controller resources, supplemented by the use of military air controllers. The air traffic control system was soon operating under near-normal conditions.

President Reagan was a strong advocate of supply-side economics. He believed that government stimulation of the economy through lower taxes would result in corporations increasing their investments, with resulting growth in their earnings. The increased earnings would in turn provide greater tax revenues even at lower rates. Early in his presidency he was able to achieve many of his goals, including a 25% decrease in individual tax rates. Increased defense spending in the face of the Soviet threat also stimulated the economy. Paul Volcker’s higher interest rates contributed to the reduction of the rampant inflation of the 1970s.

Nevertheless, the American economy continue to be depressed to 1982. The gross domestic product fell, and unemployment rose to nearly 10%. The early 1980s were also rough for farmers because of high costs of oil and a reduced international demand for farm goods. Conditions were especially difficult for small farmers. For a variety of reasons, however, the American economy began to recover strongly in time to contribute to President Reagan’s reelection. The economy continued its healthy growth through most of Reagan’s second term.

The 1984 Election. President Reagan defeated former Vice President Walter Mondale by a large landslide. He won every state except Mondale’s home state of Minnesota and the District of Columbia. After a tough Democratic primary fight, Mondale selected for his running mate U.S. Representative Geraldine Ferraro of New York. It was the first time a woman appeared on the ballot as a nominee of a major political party. Although Ferraro scored points in her debate with Republican vice presidential candidate George H.W. Bush, it is not clear whether she helped Mondale’s cause.

In October, 1987, the stock market took a sudden plunge, dropping almost 23% in one day. The fact that the stimulation of the economy was financed in part by deficit spending was one factor. A negative balance in American international trade and high levels of personal and public debt also were factors. Unlike the experience of the Great Depression, however, there was little permanent damage from the record single day drop in the stock market. Toward the end of President Reagan’s second term unemployment had dropped to just over 5%.

Growth of the Christian Right. Even a cursory glance at the history of religion in the Western world (and not only the Western world) will reveal that religion has always been tangled up with politics. Connections between the Holy Roman Emperors and the Pope were part of the political landscape through the Middle Ages. The division of the European world into Protestant and Catholic Christianity from the time of Martin Luther’s reformation has also been played out on the political stage. In our own immediate past, the English Reformation had a profound impact on British politics and the politics and social structure of the colonies and the emerging American nation.

Although religious issues do not seem to have been a major issue during the American Revolution, except for the fact that many patriots were bothered by the role of the Anglican Church in trying to control the colonial population, following the revolution religious issues came to the surface very soon. For example, a protracted struggle over the functioning of the United States Post Office, in particular mail deliveries on Sunday, was driven by religious factors. The social implications of the Darwinian revolution in biology in the late 19th century touched on political matters in significant ways. The 1925 Tennessee Scopes trial was but one example. The failure of New York Governor Al Smith to be elected president in 1928 was at least partially due to his Roman Catholic faith. John F. Kennedy dealt with the same issue in 1960, and although he was elected, his religion was again a factor during the campaign.

The intensity of religious feelings has tended to rise and fall in cycles over the course of American history. The late 1970s and early 1980s saw a rise in religion because many fundamentalist Christians began working to restore religion to what they saw as its rightful place within the American political structure. Baptist minister Jerry Falwell created what he called the Moral Majority, and Reverend Pat Robertson organized a group known as the Christian Coalition that was for all practical purposes an adjunct of the Republican Party.

While few people objected to the goals of reducing such things as drug abuse, prostitution and crime, critics of the religious movement objected to what they saw as infringements on First Amendment guarantees of the separation of church and state. The conflict focused over such matters as prayer in the schools and the teaching of the biblical account of creation as opposed to Darwinian evolution in science classes. Although the Supreme Court in a variety of cases struck down laws that required the teaching of creationism, or its later incarnation known as intelligent design, in science classes, the issue kept resurfacing in various parts of the country.

The Election of 1988. Prior to 1988 the last incumbent vice president to succeed to the nation’s highest office was Martin Van Buren in 1836. Vice President Bush hoped to duplicate Van Buren’s feat. The Democratic nomination seemed wide open in the early going, as eight candidates vied for the top spot on the ballot. Representative Patricia Schroeder of Colorado was an early candidate, but she dropped out before the primaries began. Other candidates included future vice presidents Al Gore and Joe Biden. The Democratic nomination went to Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts. Vice President Bush selected Indiana Senator Dan Quayle as his running mate, a choice many felt did not strengthen the ticket. Nevertheless Bush won the election by a comfortable margin, taking 426 electoral votes to 111 for Dukakis.

George H.W. Bush as President. During the 1980 campaign for president George Bush had referred to Reagan’s supply-side economics as “voodoo economics.” The phrase came back to haunt him when he promised to continue the Reagan economic program. In particular, he had specifically promised during his campaign that there would be “no new taxes.” But early in his administration he ran into difficulties because of large budget deficits and a desire to introduce new legislation that would cost money. He signed legislation that strengthened environmental policies and encouraged volunteerism with the phrase “a thousand points of light.”

A crisis in the savings and loan industry saddled the government with huge costs as hundreds of institutions had to be shut down for insolvency. When Democrats suggested that President Bush’s 1990 budget proposal would conflict with a deficit reduction law, President Bush was finally persuaded to agree to a tax increase. Nevertheless rising expenditures for such things as healthcare kept the budget deficit growing and was a factor in the election of 1992.

President Bush’s Foreign Policy. With the experiences of being director of the Central intelligence agency and vice president behind him, President Bush was well-prepared to continue overseeing progress toward the end of the Cold War. Premier Mikhail Gorbachev’s struggles with the Soviet economy revealed the weakness inherent in the Soviet system. As communist governments in the Soviet bloc broke down Gorbachev found himself challenged by hard-line Communists. Nevertheless he continued to advance his policies of economic reform called perestroika (restructuring) and increasing openness, called glasnost, to include things as freedom of the press.

President Bush met with Premier Gorbachev and helped oversee the end of the Cold War. The Berlin wall was torn down and East and West Germany were reunited in September 1990. The US and Russia—the Soviet Union no longer existed—also agreed to a reduction in nuclear weapons. The lowering of tension and the end of the period known as the “balance of terror” was offset by the fact that thousands of us who warheads existed and the threat of nuclear proliferation remained a concern to all nations. By 1991 Boris Yeltsin had gained control of the government and dissolved the Soviet Union.

The euphoria accompanying the tearing down of the Berlin wall brought to mind two famous speeches of American presidents. In 1963 President Kennedy stood before the people of Berlin and gave his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech. In 1987, President Reagan, standing on practically the same spot, said, “General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

The end of the Cold War was not greeted with the same sort of public display of enthusiasm that accompanied the end of the Second World War. On the other hand, there was none of the bitterness that accompanied the end of America’s involvement in Vietnam, the only real high point of which had been the return of America’s prisoners of war from Hanoi. True, there was much excitement as German citizens and others smashed the Berlin wall to pieces, and certainly there were great feelings of relief among those who were now free to travel unimpeded into places that had been closed to them for decades.

Some American commentators were bothered by the fact that too few Americans seemed to know what had really been achieved. Having come through the time when the “balance of terror” never burst into a nuclear holocaust, Americans should have been on their knees thanking God or good fortune that the feared balloon had never gone up. Instead of celebrations, there was much somber reflection. As one historian wrote, “It is not certain that the United States won the Cold War. … It was Gorbachev and the East Europeans themselves, not the Americans, who rolled back the iron curtain and ended the cold war.”

Another commentator was skeptical on the unalloyed joy over the end of the Cold War. He claimed that the America foreign policy establishment was “stupefied by the pace of events … clinging to the remains of an obsolete strategy and incapable of defining a new one.” The End of the Cold War did call for a reevaluation of America’s role in the world. Soon enough, it would become apparent that forces still existed in the world capable to inflicting terrible casualties on other nations, whether or not they possessed “weapons of mass destruction,” a term that would emerge later in our history. The essential truth of the end of the Cold War remains the fact that thousands of nuclear weapons still exist, and it will require the most diligent application of the intelligence resources of the international community to prevent an act of nuclear terrorism.

Steps on the Road to the End of the Cold War Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was “civis Romanus sum.” Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is “Ich bin ein Berliner.” There are many people in the world who really don’t understand, or say they don’t, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin. There are some who say — There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin. And there are some who say, in Europe and elsewhere, we can work with the Communists.Let them come to Berlin. And there are even a few who say that it is true that communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress. Lass’ sie nach Berlin kommen–Let them come to Berlin President von Weizsacker has said, “The German question is open as long as the Brandenburg Gate is closed.” Today I say: As long as the gate is closed, as long as this scar of a wall is permitted to stand, it is not the German question alone that remains open, but the question of freedom for all mankind. Yet I do not come here to lament. For I find in Berlin a message of hope, even in the shadow of this wall, a message of triumph. … In the 1950s, Khrushchev predicted: ‘We will bury you.’ But in the West today, we see a free world that has achieved a level of prosperity and well-being unprecedented in all human history. In the Communist world, we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards of health, even want of the most basic kind—too little food. … After these four decades, then, there stands before the entire world one great and inescapable conclusion: Freedom leads to prosperity. Freedom replaces the ancient hatreds among the nations with comity and peace. Freedom is the victor. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. “General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Top: John F. Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech. “Civis Romanus sum”: “I am a Roman citizen” Bottom: Ronald Reagan’s “Tear down this wall” speech. Hear JFK “Ich bin ein Berliner.” | Hear Reagan “Tear Down this Wall”

Desert Storm. Focus on the end of the Cold War was diverted by the invasion of Kuwait conducted by Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi army in August, 1990. Iran and Iraq had been at war with each other throughout much of the 1980s, and the United States had generally maintained favorable relations with Iraq. The invasion of Kuwait, which was seen as a threat to Saudi Arabia, change the situation. A special session of the United Nations resulted in a series of resolutions condemning the Iraqi action and authorizing military responses.

President Bush called upon other nations to join in a coalition in preparation for driving in Iraq out of Kuwait. The president began dispatching thousands of American troops to Saudi Arabia in an operation called Desert Shield. The presence of American troops on Arabian soil raised issues with historic roots. When asked by an American news man how the Saudi government was dealing with the thousands of Americans in his nation, he responded that his government was trying to convince the Saudi people that the Americans were not crusaders. The significance of his reference to an event that had happened centuries earlier was lost on most Americans.

The issue of the deployment of American troops in combat was vigorously debated in Congress. Early in 1991 they passed a resolution authorizing President Bush to use armed force to restore Kuwaiti independence. American commanders skillfully planned an operation that resulted in the swift destruction of Iraqi forces, driving them out of Kuwait. Within a few days of the opening battles, President Bush declared that the objective of the war, to free Kuwait, had been achieved, and the fighting was halted. Saddam Hussein, however, was still in power, a fact that the next President George Bush would have to deal with. His repression of the Kurds in Northern Iraq and Shiites in the South and his defiance of the United Nations would lead to another confrontation a decade later.

President Bush also worked to reduce tension in the Middle East, overseeing the signing of an agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization at the White House in September, 1993. He also ordered the invasion of Panama and the seizure of General Manuel Noriega as part of his war on drugs. Noriega was later tried and convicted of drug trafficking in a U.S. Federal Court in Florida.

President Bush also negotiated the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Mexico and Canada, later ratified during the Clinton Administration.

The 1992 Election. President Bush’s promise not to raise taxes, a pledge he was unable to keep, hurt him with conservatives, who supported columnist Pat Buchanan, but he was nevertheless re-nominated for a second term. Once again the Democratic Party primary field produced a number of candidates, including Senators Tom Harkin, Paul Tsongas, and Bob Kerrey and former California Governor Jerry Brown. Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas, a persuasive speaker who was little known outside the South before the primaries began, started slowly. But he won almost all the primaries on “Super Tuesday” in March, and continued winning through the New York and California primaries, ensuring his nomination before the Democratic National Convention met in New York City. He selected Senator Albert Gore of Tennessee as his running mate.

An interesting third party candidate appeared in the form of billionaire Texan Ross Perot, Campaigning strongly on economic issues, he showed surprising strength early, outpolling the major party candidates at times. For obscure reasons, however, he dropped out of the race, and when he reentered he had lost considerable ground. Interestingly, when it looked as though Perot might be a significant factor in the race, perhaps winning electoral votes in his home state of Texas, and in Florida, where he was popular with seniors, attention became focused on the Electoral College.

If Perot had won enough votes to deny any candidate a majority in the Electoral College, the election would have been thrown into the House of Representatives. Under the Constitution, each state would then have received one vote, which obviously could have distorted the results almost beyond recognition. Congressman, not restricted by the popular vote in their home states, would have been free to vote for the candidate of their choice, presumably members of their own party. Before Perot dropped out, two senators introduced a resolution calling for revision or even abolishment of the Electoral College, but after Perot dropped out, the issue faded.

Governor Clinton had never seen military service and had participated in protests against the Vietnam War, but he patterned his campaign after that of President John Kennedy. His policies appealed to liberal voters, and his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, also an effective public figure, was deemed an asset to the governor. He claimed that by voting for him, the American people would get “two for one,” meaning the president and his wife. Although Governor Clinton received only 43% of the popular vote he won a clear majority in the Electoral College, taking 370 votes to Bush’s 168. Candidate Perot took no electoral votes, although he won 19% of the popular vote, the best showing since Theodore Roosevelt in 1912.

President Clinton’s term in the White House had a rough start. His first act was to change the policy of dismissing known gays in the military service. Republicans, the military establishment, and large numbers of Americans issued sharp criticisms of the move. His next move was to appoint his wife Hillary Clinton as chair of the task force to develop a national health care plan. Members of the task force provided a variety of views, which resulted in a complex plan that generated considerable debate in Congress. Because it was seen as unduly complicated, the plan never reached the floor of either house of Congress and died quietly.

President Clinton was far more effective in getting Congress to ratify the NAFTA treaty. He also pushed policies fostering more liberal international trading conditions, to be overseen by the World Trade Organization. He also supported a tax bill that called for a moderate general rise in taxes and higher tax rates on people with larger incomes. The bill narrowly passed in the House of Representatives. Reactions to the president’s policies, however, invigorated Republicans, who took control of the House of Representatives in the off year elections of 1994. For the first time since 1952 Republicans controlled both houses of Congress.

The Election of 1996. America’s economy turned strong as the 1996 election neared, with unemployment dropping below 4%. Senate Republican leader Robert Dole and his running mate Jack Kemp failed to generate much enthusiasm, and President Clinton easily won reelection. Like many presidents before him, however, President Clinton would find his second term to be a rockier ride than his first.
(The Electoral College was still under discussion in 1996. If slightly more then one percent of the popular vote had been shifted to various states with larger number of electoral votes, Robert Dole could have won the election with 42% of the popular vote compared with 48% for President Clinton. Al Gore apparently won more popular votes in the 2000 election than George W. Bush, but the margin was so small as to be statistically insignificant.)

Clinton’s Foreign Policy. Much of President Clinton’s second administration was involved with foreign policy. In the post-Cold War era, the country of Yugoslavia had broken up into separate political entities: Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Slovenia. Ethnically, linguistically and religiously diverse, the region had a history of internal conflict. Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic had risen to power and promised to protect the Serbian population in the Serbian region of Kosovo. Milosevic attempted to unify the entire region under Serbian dominance, which led to resistance among different ethnic groups. United States involvement included the placement of peacekeeping forces on the ground in Bosnia, as well as bombing campaign supported by NATO to end Serbian ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. Despite continuing tension between Muslim and Christian groups of varying ethnicities, a fragile peace has persisted.

During the waning days of the Bush administration American troops were sent in to Somalia as part of a peacekeeping force that would allow United Nations units to bring food to a population that was suffering starvation. While attempting to capture a warlord an American helicopter was shot down and 18 American soldiers were killed. The Americans pulled out of Somalia, but it later became apparent that an organization named Al Qaeda had supported the warlord, whose leader, Osama bin Laden, came to believe that Americans would not fight if attacked.

Other terrorist activities included an attack on a military housing area in Saudi Arabia and an explosion in the World Trade Center in New York City. Also in 1993 a federal building in Oklahoma City was bombed by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, two former military men who were radical extremists. In 1998 American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed, and hundreds more people were killed and injured. A U.S. Navy destroyer was attacked in Yemen in October, 2000, killing 17 sailors. The terrorist actions were all omens of bolder attacks to follow, but American responses to these events was limited to airstrikes.

The Economy of the 1990s. Despite disturbing events in the international arena, Americans in the 1990s enjoyed a time of economic prosperity. The economically troubled period of the 1970s led to reforms in the way American business was conducted. Companies adopted new technology and worked to reduce labor costs. Some companies took advantage of cheaper labor costs outside the United States. The growth of computers and communications devices generated new jobs in these high technology industries. From the 1980s to the year 2000 the overall economic production of the United States increased between 300 and 400%. Inflation remained low, and the stock market rose approximately 1000% between 1980 and 2000. In 1998 the federal budget achieved its highest surplus in 30 years.

Although President Clinton’s popularity remained high, he nevertheless became embroiled in a controversy over his relationship with a young intern named Monica Lewinsky. The inappropriate relationship, about which the president lied to the American people, led to his impeachment, the first time an American president was required to stand trial since President Johnson in 1968. There was little question, however, that the president would be convicted by the Senate and removed from office. Although Americans did not approve of his actions, the general feeling among the people was that while inappropriate, President Clinton’s behavior was a private matter. As long as he retained the support of his wife, people were willing to let it pass. Bill Clinton ended his presidency with his public approval ratings as high as they had been throughout his term of office.

The Election of 2000. The vast network of public and personal computers upon which millions of people relied, along with the complicated communication and transportation systems that depended on those computers, the approach of the turn from the year 1999 to the year 2000 filled many with anxiety. A great deal of energy was expended in preparation for the advance of Y2K, as the millennial change was called. In the event, the new year of 2000 was rung in with no significant setbacks from the change of date.

The election of 2000 was another matter. Vice president Al Gore won the Democratic nomination and selected as his running mate Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. The Republican candidate was Texas Governor George W. Bush, son of the former president. His vice presidential running mate was former Congressmen Dick Cheney. The election turned out to be one of the most controversial in American history.
The trouble began on election night when television stations erroneously reported that Governor Bush had won the state of Florida, thereby giving him victory in the election. For about an hour very early in the morning following election day, many thought the election was over and turned off their television sets. It soon developed, however, that the vote in Florida was too close to call, and the results of the election remained in limbo. The entire focus remained on the state of Florida, whose complicated ballots had caused problems for thousands of voters.

Over the course of the next few weeks political leaders, campaign workers, and judges attempted to untangle the mess and determine the rightful winner of Florida’s electoral votes. Eventually the case reached the Supreme Court which, in a controversial decision, declared Bush the winner, the votes coming along strict party lines.  A Florida newspaper later conducted a separate investigation and concluded that President Bush had indeed won Florida, but charges of a stolen election continued to hang in the air.

As President Bush settled in to his administration, the evidence of terrorist activity over the previous decade did not prepare the administration nor the American people for the shock that was about to come. On September 11, 2001, the world was shocked when four airliners commandeered by terrorists were directed against targets in the United States. Two planes struck and destroyed the World Trade Center towers in New York City. A third airliner crashed into the Pentagon in Washington, and a fourth crashed in Pennsylvania when the passengers overpowered the terrorist pilots and brought the plane down.

The experience of 9/11, as it came to be known, changed the country permanently. Transportation and communication security became the focal point of means designed to prevent further attacks. Believing that the country of Iraq was connected with the terrorist acts, President Bush ordered an invasion of the country and the removal of Saddam Hussein. When Afghanistan was determined to be the source of the Al Qaeda attacks on the United States, American troops were also introduced into that country. Both wars continue, and the threat of terrorism remains the most vital topic of consideration for most Americans.

The 1960s and 70s: Decades of Turmoil
Copyright © 2005-7, Henry J. Sage

The Kennedy Years
	The 1960 election was a milestone in terms of the impact of television on electoral politics. Richard Nixon, who had been vice president under President Eisenhower for eight years, and who had a number of notable achievements on his record, was a formidable, intelligent candidate with broad experience and a sophisticated understanding of foreign affairs. Although he received only lukewarm support from the outgoing president, Richard Nixon was not to be taken lightly.
JFK and Richard Nixon		Kennedy and Nixon Debate on Television
The TV Debate—where appearances matter—was considered decisive in the 1960 election.

Senator Kennedy of Massachusetts, on the other hand, had many visible assets, including a charming young wife and family, a Harvard education, a record of heroism in World War II, and the backing of a wealthy and powerful family. Yet his years in Congress and the Senate had been undistinguished, and when Adlai Stevenson opened the nomination for vice president during the 1956 Democratic convention, Kennedy lost his bid to Estes Kefauver. Kennedy also had to reckon with the fact that he was attempting to become the first elected Irish Catholic president in American history. If he won, he would also be the youngest man ever elected president of the United States.

In retrospect the outcome of the election and seems to have turned on the first televised debate between Senator Kennedy and Vice President Nixon. Kennedy’s movie star good looks and smooth performance overshadowed the haggard, pale appearance of Richard Nixon, who had recently been hosptialized, and who looked far less appealing to the television audience, having declined to use makeup. Those who heard the debate on the radio and did not see it divided their sentiments regarding the winner 50-50 between the two candidates. For those who saw the debate on television, Kennedy came out ahead by a substantial margin. The vote was one of the closest in American history; Kennedy’s margin was 118,000 votes out of 68 million cast.

JFK Inaugural address.

Probably because of his assassination and the nonstop television coverage of all of events during the weekend leading up to the funeral, including the heroic performance by Jacqueline Kennedy and the tragic image of the her two young children saying farewell to their father on camera, Kennedy’s popularity was probably even greater after his death than during his administration, and people without a deep knowledge of politics considered him to have been a great president. In fact, Kennedy’s domestic record was quite modest. He was unable to persuade Congress to follow his lead in a number of his initiatives, and most of his proposals, especially in the civil rights area, were finally realized under the powerful Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy after his death. Congress did support Kennedy’s creation of the Peace Corps and passed economic programs for urban renewal, raising the minimum wage, and increasing Social Security benefits. Critics have claimed that Kennedy’s performance in office had more style than substance, but there is no question that the White House seemed a far more glamorous place with the Kennedy family in residence.

See also Cold War.

The question still discussed about President Kennedy’s foreign policy—one for which there is no satisfactory answer—is: “What would Kennedy have done in Vietnam if he had not been assassinated?” Some believe that he was prepared to end what he saw as a misguided venture; however, advisers close to the Kennedy administration have indicated that if his intent was to begin a full withdrawal from Vietnam, they had seen little evidence that he would carry it further. True, he had drawn down the number of advisers in Vietnam slightly during the last months of his presidency, but some believe that that was just preparation for the election of 1964.

In the end, Kennedy followed the path of Presidents Truman and Eisenhower as a leader determined to prevent the further spread of Communism in the world and to use all reasonable means to keep the Soviet Union from taking advantage of any perceived American weakness. He had campaigned on the issue of a missile gap between United States and the Soviet Union, and even his plan to place a man on the moon in the decade of the 1960s was, to a large extent, aimed at defeating the Russians in space. The military implications were obvious. It was, of course, during Kennedy’s administration that the most dangerous point in the Cold War was reached: the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962.

The Space Race. During the mid 1950s most Americans were aware that the government was doing research on the exploration of space and that one day, probably in the far distant future, men would go to the moon and beyond. But when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, an artificial satellite, into Earth orbit in 1957, Americans were stunned. Russian scientists had been portrayed as less capable than their American counterparts, and Soviet successes were supposedly based on borrowing of western ideas. But when the Soviets leaped out in front in space exploration, even with a primitive vehicle, Americans reacted with a combination of disbelief and panic. Articles with titles like “Why Johnny Can’t read-And Why Ivan Can” began to appear, and the entire U.S. educational system was hauled into court and placed under scrutiny. Reflecting people’s attitudes, Congress passed legislation that created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and passed additional laws meant to improve American science and math curricula. The space race was seen as part of the cold war, and Americans felt they had to win.

No one played this theme more strongly than President Kennedy. Early in his administration he dedicated that nation to putting a man on the moon and returning him safely by the end of the decade, defined as January 1, 1970. The seven Mercury astronauts made flights in the early 1960s, and then the Gemini and Apollo programs began to prepare for an eventual lunar landing. With the assistance of former German V-weapon rocket scientists and an aviation industry with much talent, the Americans caught up with and passed the Soviets and reached Kennedy’s goal: Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon in July, 1969.

NASA eventually oversaw six landings on the moon, the last one on December 11, 1972. Since then all space flights have been limited to low orbits. The Space Shuttle program, which followed Apollo, accomplished much but was plagued by accidents, as the Challenger shuttle was destroyed during a launch in 1986, and the Columbia was destroyed during re-entry to the Earth’s atmosphere in 2003. NASA plans to retire the remaining shuttle craft in 2010 and replace them with a new vehicle, the Orion, designed to take astronauts back to the moon and perhaps beyond.

See Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff and the film of the same title; Norman Mailer, Of A Fire on the Moon; Also dramatic and historically sound are the Tom Hanks film Apollo 13 and his HBO series, From the Earth to the Moon. The NASA web site is one of the most popular and frequently visited on the World Wide Web.

The Johnson Years: America in Turmoil

Lyndon Baines Johnson was one of the most fascinating and controversial figures in American political history. He was a man of extraordinary talents, appetites and ambition. He first came Washington from Texas in 1931 as secretary to a Texas congressman, where he caught the attention of Franklin Roosevelt and was appointed as Director of the Texas National Youth Administration. He was elected to a full term in the House of Representatives in 1938 and served there until 1948, when he was elected to the United States Senate.

In 1951 Johnson was elected majority whip of the Democratic Party in the Senate, and in 1955 he became the Senate Majority Leader, a position he held until being elected vice president under John F. Kennedy in 1960. Johnson was an extraordinarily persuasive man, and in dealing with his fellow legislators, his methods were so direct and forceful that his political dealings became known as the “Johnson treatment.” He could be both charming and heavy-handed, but when he was determined to get votes for a bill he favored, he could exert relentless pressure in persuading colleagues to follow his lead.

Although the negotiations were carried out in private, considerable evidence exists that John Kennedy did not really want Johnson as his vice president, but since Johnson, as majority leader of the Senate, was the most powerful man in Washington in 1960, Kennedy and his aides felt that Johnson should be offered the job. They also counted on Johnson to deliver the electoral votes of his native Texas as well as other Southern states. The Kennedy team was apparently shocked when Johnson decided to accept the position. The vice presidency of the United States has been described in less than glowing terms by more than one occupant of the office, and there is no question that Lyndon Johnson was frustrated over his lack of meaningful responsibilities. President Kennedy made him overseer of the American space program, but that did not really satisfy Johnson’s longing to be in the center of political action in Washington.

The vice president accompanied President Kennedy on his fateful trip to Texas in 1963. Shortly after Kennedy was pronounced dead at Dallas’s Parkland Hospital following his assassination, Johnson was sworn in aboard Air Force One, as President Kennedy’s widow, Jacqueline, stood by in her bloodied pink suit.

The transition from the Kennedy to the Johnson administration was understandably wrenching, first of all because Kennedy’s cabinet and staff were in a state of shock following the sudden death of their leader. In addition, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson were about as far apart as two politicians of the same party could get in style and personality. Kennedy, the wealthy scion of an old Boston political family and Harvard graduate, epitomized everything glamorous and attractive about Washington politics. Mrs. Kennedy conducted herself with enormous dignity during the ceremonies following her husband’s death, and pictures of her standing side-by-side with her two young children, her son John being too young to comprehend what was happening, deeply touched the American people.

Lyndon Johnson, by contrast, had come from humble beginnings, attended Southwest Texas State Teachers College and, after teaching for a year, worked his way up through the political ranks by his own means. Whereas the Kennedys suggested candlelit tables with fine glassware and china, Lyndon Johnson and his family conveyed the image of a rousing Texas barbecue. Johnson moved slowly and carefully during the weeks and months following Kennedy’s death, looking forward to the election of 1964 as he renewed contacts with political colleagues in Congress and elsewhere. As president, with the full apparatus of the White House at his disposal, he commanded attention and demanded loyalty.

Johnson’s forte was not foreign affairs, but the Cold War was a continuing reality, and the situation in Vietnam following the assassination of Premier Diem was murky at best; he could not afford to ignore the realities of international events. Johnson’s interests, however, lay in his dreams for domestic programs, as he planned an all-out assault on what he saw as America’s social skills: racism, poverty, lack of opportunity, and a host of other issues first addressed by Franklin Roosevelt during the New Deal. Johnson later told biographers that his goal had been to dance with the lady he called the “Great Society,” but instead he was distracted by what he called that “bitch goddess of Vietnam.” Although his legislative achievements in pursuing his goals for domestic improvements were stunning, in the end his legacy was determined by the Vietnam War. (See separate section on Vietnam.)

Lyndon Johnson was one of the most powerful politicians in the nation’s history. He could be cajoling, pleading, bargaining, threatening, or promising, sometimes, it seemed, all in the course of the same conversation. He was famous for what was known as the “Johnson Treatment.” He was a man not to be crossed with impunity. Although he was unfailingly gracious to Jacqueline Kennedy following JFK’s assassination, the “Kennedy crowd,”or “Irish Mafia,” often left him feeling frustrated and angry. While he kept major Kennedy advisors such as Defense Secretary McNamara and Secretary of State Dean Rusk, he often clashed with JFK’s brother Robert, especially when the former attorney general began to challenge his Vietnam policy.

High on President Johnson’s agenda was progress in the area of civil rights, something which President Kennedy had started, but which was still far from completion upon his death. As a Southerner Johnson was in a strong position to push civil rights legislation. Though it took all his powers of persuasion, Johnson’s achievements in civil rights were of major significance. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were two of his major achievements. (See Civil Rights section.)

Additional Achievements of Lyndon Johnson included bills to establish the Medicare and Medicaid programs; the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964; creation of the Job Corps, a sort of domestic Peace Corps; the Elementary and Secondary Education Act; and the Head Start program. Johnson also sponsored legislation that revised immigration policies, toughened anti-crime systems, and sought to improve public housing and clean up urban slums and the environment at large. Although many of these programs failed to meet their objectives, it was the greatest reform movement since the early days of FDR’s New Deal. Lyndon Johnson presided over much the “the sixties,” however, and the times were indeed a-changing.

The 1960s: America in Revolt

The decade of the 1960s began chronologically in January 1961, a month that saw John F. Kennedy inaugurated as president of the United States. Kennedy’s inaugural address was highlighted by the memorable call to arms, “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” In those early days of the Kennedy administration the world seemed relatively calm, although the shooting down of the U-2 aircraft over Russia, the continuing threat of nuclear war, and the Cold War environment that saw the United States, Russia, and Communist China, along with their allies, balanced against each other, kept people on edge. But French Indochina, a portion of which was the nation of Vietnam, rioting in the streets, and all the turmoil that has come to characterize the 60s was hardly a whisper on the horizon. The Bay of Pigs, the Berlin Wall, the Cuban missile crisis, and Kennedy’s confrontations with Premier Khrushchev kept people nervous, but the storm had not yet struck.

The sixties really began on November 22, 1963, when President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, by Lee Harvey Oswald. Young and vibrant, with a lovely wife and two small children, the President was extremely popular among young Americans. With his untimely death the nation began a descent into one of the most chaotic decades in American history. Lyndon Johnson, Kennedy’s successor, was a powerful President who achieved a great deal of what Kennedy had intended, and much more. His “Great Society” even went a step or two beyond the New Deal in terms of fundamental reform, but lingering doubts over Kennedy’s death remained alive. To this day, many believe a Kennedy’s murder was part of a conspiracy, one in which the government itself may even have been involved.

Student Protests. While the fifties were a “laid back” decade, the 1960s were in many ways the opposite. Whereas in the 1950s a popular television program proclaimed that “Father Knows Best,” by the end of the 1960s young people had convinced themselves that father did not know much of anything. Beginning with the “free speech” movement at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1964, a series of rebellions spread from campus to campus and dealt with an ever-widening variety of issues, from women’s rights, to the Vietnam War, to the nature of the university itself. Although in retrospect people think of those rebellions in terms of the “anti-war” movement, the student protests were much wider in their scope. In fact, Vietnam protests comprised only a minority of campus disturbances, many of which were directed at societal problems in general.

The more strongly the police reacted, the more rebellious the students became, and the larger their numbers grew. Across the nation, at hundreds of campuses, buildings were damaged or even destroyed, offices were ransacked, and professors unsympathetic to the students demands were driven from classrooms. In many cases the university was obliged simply to shut down. While cynics may have noted that the level of student protest seemed to rise the closer it got to exam time, the students were often addressing serious issues in thoughtful manner. On the other hand, many leaders of the student movement—men and women whose names became well known beyond their own campuses—had fairly obvious political agendas and sometimes seemed to be exploiting the rebellious conditions for their own purposes. The Students for a Democratic Society, SDS, had chapters on many campuses and often orchestrated demonstrations and other disruptive activities. (The organization still exists.)

While often high-minded, the student demonstrations were frequently violent, and they triggered responses from university officials that ranged from acquiescence to forcible resistance to what many students perceived as outright oppression. When college police forces proved inadequate to handle the growing level of disruption, local police forces and even national guard troops were called in, with predictable results. Taunted by what they viewed as foul-mouthed, “spoiled brats” of the upper classes who shouted epithets such as “pigs,” and worse, at them, the police often reacted with violence of their own, and the riots often turned bloody, even deadly.

In the best sense, the students and their sympathizers were trying to bring about positive change in American society. They saw themselves as friends of the working classes, a voice for the oppressed, and many of them made positive contributions to the civil rights movement. In the South, Black students led the sit-ins and freedom marches and were on the front line when things got rough, as they usually did. For most white students the Vietnam War, while not the only issue, was the biggest issue, and their feelings were probably complicated by the fact that as college students they were deferred from the draft. Draft eligible young man had to remain in good standing, however, and professors often went out of their way to see to it that they did. The Vietnam protests also called attention to what many saw as an unholy alliance between universities and government—more particularly the military establishment. Weapons research, for example, was attacked by students who felt that such work was morally objectionable in a university setting. (President Eisenhower’s warning about the military-industrial complex was cited often by sixties students.)

President Johnson marked time until his overwhelming reelection over Barry Goldwater in 1964, and then all hell began to break loose. As American troops were sent to Vietnam in ever-increasing numbers, as the civil rights demonstrations grew ever more bloody and violent, and as protests seem to erupt almost on a daily basis, mostly on college campuses, the 60s turned into a time of turmoil and trouble. Although a few early campus rallies were held to support the troops, their days were numbered.

The focus of much unrest on the campuses often dealt with civil rights. For example, in the spring of 1968, Columbia University in New York City erupted over plans by the University to build a facility in a housing area in neighboring Harlem. The students soon took over the college, occupying administration offices, and eventually causing the university authorities to call for the assistance of the New York City police. Although today, in the aftermath of September 11, policemen and firemen are generally viewed favorably by most Americans of all generations, during the 60s student protesters saw cops as the enemy. During an uproar at Boston University, the Boston tactical police were called in and blood was shed as the students resisted the police and the police reacted strongly, even excessively, as some claimed. At the University of Maryland in College Park, a campus generally not known for political activism, students shut down the main traffic artery of US Highway 1 during rush hour. Fire bombs directed at ROTC buildings, break-ins at draft boards, and marches on the Pentagon became part of the culture of the 60s.

The year 1968 was the peak of the turmoil as violence broke out in Chicago during the Democratic national convention. The Chicago police under Mayor Daley carried out what came to be known as a “police riot,” and more blood was shed by demonstrators and occasional innocent bystanders. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy were both assassinated in 1968, and it seemed to many that the country had not only lost its moral compass, but was rapidly running amok. The year 1969 saw the inauguration of President Richard Nixon, and as he seemed to be working to try to end the war, the turmoil also seemed to abate for a year. But then, with the invasion of Cambodia in 1970, the shootings at Kent State University in Ohio, and then a confusing and frustrating end of the American involvement in Vietnam, followed closely by the growing Watergate scandal, it seemed that things were as bad as ever. (See The Nixon Years section.)

In 1973 the American POWs came back from Vietnam, Senator John McCain among them, and the escalating Watergate crisis led to Richard Nixon’s resignation in August of 1974. Although South Vietnam fell to the Communists in 1975, and the city of Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City, most Americans viewed it from a distance. In 1976 the country rallied from its despondency in order to celebrate the bicentennial of American independence, and it seemed that by then the 60s were well over. But the nation did not go back to the way it had been in the 1950s—too much had changed. Civil rights legislation opened doors that had been closed for a century. Women had begun to assert themselves and move into areas previously unheard of for the “gentle sex.” Coed dormitories were common on college campuses, thus indicating that the sexual revolution had been, in effect, rubber stamped by university authorities. If parents were distressed, there wasn’t much they could do about it; and, in fact, they had lived through the 60s themselves and had been changed by the experience, as had all Americans.

The outcomes are hard to assess. The Vietnam War did come to an end, and substantial progress was made in civil rights and other areas. Perhaps those changes would have come about anyway, maybe more slowly, but maybe without arousing as much resentment. One outcome is certain: the university was changed forever. In the 1950s the university stood in loco parentis—in the place of the parent, knowingly accepting the responsibility not only for students’ education, but for their moral behavior as well. Dormitories were segregated by sex, use of alcohol and drugs was at least officially frowned upon, and male students were allowed to visit females in their dormitories only under controlled conditions. Students were expected to behave in class, obey the college rules as well as the laws of the city and state where they were located, and generally to conduct themselves as ladies and gentlemen.

By 1966 or 1967 all that had begun to change. Although the memory of the student protests seems retroactively to have centered around the Vietnam War, the students were angry about many more things. The university was now obliged to recognize that its students were adults, that they had rights, and that it was not proper for college officials to rule their charges with too heavy a hand, no matter how well intentioned such guidance might have been.

 

 

 

Based on a work at www.sageamericanhistory.net.
Sage American History by Henry J Sage is licensed under a
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