05-25-2010+HIST2020

Raymond Flanagan, David Hazlett, Kassie Miller HIST 2020 May 25, 2010

**How did conservatism rise up after the defeat of Barry Goldwater in 1964 and the disgrace of Nixon in 1974?**

The political landscape of the 1960’s and 1970’s was full of political scandal, economic distress, social turmoil, and ultimately change. Power transferred back and forth from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. As public confidence in their government plummeted and traditional values were challenged, our country returned to a conservative majority by the 1980’s. JFK focused first on foreign policy. His most memorable foreign policy issues included the Cold War, Vietnam, the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the Cuban missile crisis. The internal things that happened on American soil were civil rights, equal employment opportunities and segregation. When Martin Luther King, Jr. came on the scene with his “I Have a Dream” speech, Kennedy was forced to abandon his cautious tactics and come out openly in behalf of racial justice. After Kennedy was assassinated, Vice President Johnson became President. After fulfilling Kennedy's term in office, LBJ wanted to be elected as President and hoped to win by a great landslide. He found a cause of his own in the issue of poverty. He started an effort that Congress passed in August 1964 to create a new Office of Economic Opportunity which set up a wide variety of programs ranging from Head Start for preschoolers to the Job Corps for high school dropouts. Lyndon Johnson inherited the Vietnam War problem, notably a policy that had taken Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the United States deep into the Vietnam maze. Vietnam was a vital national interest and a deteriorating situation in Saigon that demanded a more active American role. The American planes pounded the Ho Chi Minh Trail that ran down through Laos and Cambodia. Despite the increase in American ground forces from 184,000 in late 1965 to more than 500,000 by early 1968 the Vietcong still controlled much of the countryside. Westmoreland’s strategy was to wage a war of attrition that would reach a point when communist losses each month would outweigh the number of new troops they could recruit. The war persisted and wore on because Johnson failed to confront the people with the stark choices the nation faced. This policy coupled with his lack of self-confidence in foreign policy and fear of domestic reaction eventually led to his undoing. Johnson beat Goldwater handily by declaring an unconditional war on poverty, and this is just what the people wanted to hear. But, it was the other war that sparked years of turmoil. The Vietnam War became the focal point of a growing movement of youthful protest. The escalation of the Vietnam War between 1965 and 1968 was the peak of the agitation, which made the 1960’s the most turbulent decade of the 20th century. One of the ironic things about the war was student draft deferments, which allowed those enrolled in college to avoid the draft. Children of wealth were more likely to attend college to escape the draft, leaving men from disadvantaged families, which included a large number of African Americans and Hispanics, to be drafted to fight the war. It was the guilt of being exempt that led to many college activists to take a stand in denouncing an unjust war. The protests started out innocent enough with informal discussions and debates at the University of Michigan in 1965. “Students for a Democratic Society” (SDS), a radical student organization, spread the protests across the nation. They gathered in Washington to listen to Joan Baez and others sing antiwar songs. As the fighting intensified, the protests grew and the slogans were more extreme. Two of the more popular slogans were “Hell, no, we won’t go!’ and “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” In October of 1967, more than a hundred thousand demonstrators gathered at the pentagon and were confronted by a cordon of military police. There was also a cultural rebellion by the youth of the 1960’s. Young people challenged the values of adults in their clothing, hair styles, sexual content, work habits and music. We were considered long-haired, hippie freaks! Blue jeans and love beads were the new uniform of protest, as well as long hair, beards, bare feet, and braless women. “Flower Power” was the big thing with communes emerging for the “flower children” of the 1960’s. It was the birth of “Woodstock” and folksingers such as Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, popular for their songs of social protest; and they led the way for rock groups like the Beatles, and then on to “acid rock” groups like the Grateful Dead. A lot of the lyrics suggested drug use. Timothy Leary, a former Harvard psychology professor, encouraged young people to join the drug scene with his invitation to “tune in, turn on, drop out” as they experimented with marijuana and LSD. The Yippie movement, led by Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, mocked the consumer culture, and capitalized on the mood of social protest to gain attention. Then there was “Black Power.” The civil rights movement raised the expectations of African Americans, who lived in poverty for the most part, but frustration set in as they experienced little economic gain. In the summer of 1964, black teens rioted in Harlem and other parts of New York. The next summer, rage and destruction swept the Watts area of Los Angeles, as they burned buildings and looted stores. The riots continued, and in 1967, the worst yet occurred in Newark and Detroit, where forty three were killed and thousands were injured. Black militants took over leadership of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). They refused help from the whites and reversed MLK’s insistence on nonviolence. Huey Newton started the militant Black Panther party. Dr. King suffered the most from this extremism, as he lost the support of the Johnson administration for his denunciation of the war, and he was alienated from more conservative groups such as the NAACP and the Urban League. Other minority ethnic groups emulated the African American phenomenon, sparking the passage of the Ethnic Heritage Studies Act of 1972. Cesar Chavez organized the Mexican Americans to form the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA). It also sparked the women’s liberation movement. Betty Friedan founded the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966, which called for equal employment opportunity and equal pay for women. NOW also championed the legalization of abortion and the passage of an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution in 1972. The Vietnam War was looking more and more like an unwinnable war for the Americans. In March, 1968, LBJ outlined his plan for peaceful resolution to the war, and declared that he would not seek reelection. The American people became disillusioned by years of inconclusive fighting and the loss of so many American lives. The people were fed up with violence and confrontation, and turned from the liberal reform impulse, to elect Richard M. Nixon as the president in 1968. Nixon’s presidency proved to be one of the most controversial in American history. Foreign policy was his pride and joy, and he was determined to improve it. He appointed Henry Kissinger as national security advisor, and the two of them pursued a policy of détente (//da-‘tant//), a French word meaning relaxation of tension, with the Soviet Union as a way to lessen the possibility of nuclear war in the 1970’s. Russia had great military strength, but its economy was weak and it had a dangerous rival in China. Nixon planned to use American trade (grain and technology) to prompt Soviet cooperation, while at the same time improving U.S. relations with China. In February 1972, Nixon met with communist leaders in China and ended more than two decades of hostility. He agreed to establish an American liaison mission in Beijing as a first step toward diplomatic recognition. The Soviets, seeing China as a dangerous adversary, responded to the mission by agreeing to an arms control pact with the U.S. In May, 1972, the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), which started in 1969, ended in a treaty limiting the deployment of antiballistic missiles (ABMs) and an agreement to freeze the number of offensive missiles for five years. Vietnam remained the one foreign policy challenge that Nixon could not overcome. His three-part plan to end the war included (1) gradual withdrawal of American troops, accompanied by training of South Vietnamese troops to take over the conflict, (2) renewed bombing, and (3) a hard line in negotiations with Hanoi. Nixon secretly ordered raids on communist supply lines in Cambodia in1969, and the following year, he ordered air and ground strikes in Cambodia, causing massive antiwar protests in the U.S. National Guard troops were sent in response to the fire-bombing of an ROTC building at Kent State. The troops were taunted and harassed by irate protesters. The guardsmen opened fire, killing four and wounding eleven more. Soon, riots and protests spread to more than four hundred campuses across the U.S. Negotiations with Hanoi eventually proved to be successful. The Vietnam problems and the formulation of détente made Nixon sensitive to the unauthorized release of information about American foreign policy, because the leaks might tip the administration’s hand in negotiations with the communists. Nixon demanded the leaks be stopped. The White House began a covert surveillance office to investigate national security breaches, which then branched out, during the 1972 presidential campaign, into spying on Democratic opponents and engaging in dirty politics. Five “plumbers”, as they were called, were arrested in June 1972 during a break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate office. Nixon personally ordered the cover-up, as he told John Mitchell “I want you to stonewall it, let them plead the Fifth Amendment, cover-up, or anything else.” The cover-up lasted long enough to ensure Nixon’s landslide reelection over George McGovern, but soon began to unravel. The Senate appointed a special committee to investigate the Watergate scandal. James McCord was the first to break silence. H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman were forced to resign, and Nixon fired John Dean, who directed the cover-up. Dean refused to become a scapegoat, so he revealed the president’s personal involvement. The committee discovered the existence of tape recordings of conversations in the Oval Office. Nixon tried to invoke executive privilege, but was ordered by the Supreme Court to release all of the tapes. The House Judiciary Committee voted three articles of impeachment, And Nixon was charged with obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress. The tapes would directly implicate Nixon in the cover-up; therefore he chose to resign on August 9, 1974. Amidst the Watergate scandal, war in the Middle East threatened the flow of oil into the United States. The Arab members of OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) reduced oil production by five percent each month, demanding that Israel return the lands taken in the 1960’s. In response to America’s assistance of Israel, Saudi Arabia completely cut off oil shipments to the United States. The price of gas rose sharply, and gas stations became lined with panicked customers who feared the supply would run out. After the embargo was lifted, the United States was forced to face a sobering truth; with only 6 percent of the world’s population using 40 percent of the world’s energy, the country’s economy was dependent on the countries of the Middle East (841). When gas prices quadrupled between 1973 and 1974, the American standard of life, which relied heavily on inexpensive energy, took a major hit. Prices for almost everything spiked with the increase in energy and transportation costs while the average family income fell (842-843). Gerald Ford took office in August of 1974, replacing Richard Nixon. He was not actually elected to office, as he was appointed to the office of Vice President after Spiro Agnew was forced to resign for accepting bribes during his term as the governor of Maryland. Less than a month after taking office, he announced that he was granting Richard Nixon a full pardon for his involvement in the Watergate scandal. Public confidence in government plummeted after the Vietnam War, Watergate, and allegations that the CIA had plotted to assassinate foreign leaders. In 1975, Ford appointed former congressman George H. W. Bush as the new Director of the Central Intelligence agency to prevent future scandal (849). The 1970’s began another period of social change in the United. The face of the American family began to change throughout the 1970’s. The traditional nuclear family gave way for more and more single parent households. Divorce rates began to rise, along with the number of children born outside of wedlock. Women were flocking to the workforce in record numbers, though often to low-paying or entry-level positions, making significantly less than a male within the same role. In 1972, Congress introduced the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which stated “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex.” Right-wing activists believed that the bill would lead to “unisex toilets, homosexual marriage, and the drafting of women.” Only thirty-four states had ratified the bill by the end of 1974 (844-846). The women’s movement shifted its focus to protecting the //Roe v. Wade// victory, which granted a women’s right to abortion. Conservatives and religious groups fought back, getting the Hyde Act passed in 1978, which disallowed the use of federal funding for abortion (846). These drastic changed were seen as a quick decline in traditional family values and became a topic of political agenda, which was especially embraced by the Republican Party (844). With the reputation of Republicans in the White House so freshly marred, the 1976 Presidential election was won by Jimmy Carter, a Democrat and former governor of Georgia. The “everyman” reputation that earned him the presidency backfired when he appeared to have no clear sense of the direction his leadership was taking the country (850). In 1978, he invited the Prime Minister of Israel (Menachem Begin) and the President of Egypt (Anwar Sadat) to Camp David negotiations. Thirteen days later, they emerged with an outline for peace known as the Camp David accords (851). This progress towards peace in the Middle East was offset by tensions between the Iranian Shah and the exiled Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini. When President Carter permitted the Shah to enter the United States in October 1979, irate mobs in Iran denounced the U.S. On November 4th, the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was overrun and 53 Americans were taken prisoner. The Iranian hostage crisis remained unresolved through the next election, due to several failed attempts to rescue those taken (852). The Republican nominees in the 1980 Presidential election, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush focused their campaign on the shortcomings of the Democratic handling of the economy, which was then in a recession, and weak foreign policy. Carter fought back, alleging that Reagan was a reckless warmonger and his election would result in years of turmoil. Reagan countered with a simple question to the American people: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” The polls indicated a resounding ‘no’. Reagan was elected to the presidency, and the Republican Party gained control of the Senate.

**Materials List** Bay of Pigs – p. 804 Cuban missile crisis – p. 804 Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) – p. 821 National Organization for Women (NOW) – p. 826 Tet offensive – p. 827 Détente – p. 836 Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) – p. 836 Watergate scandal – p. 839 Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) – p. 841 Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) – p. 845 Roe v. Wade – p. 846 Camp David accords – p. 851 Iranian hostage crisis – p. 852