FINAL EXAM STUDY GUIDE: TERMS AND FIGURES

The Fair Deal

Backed by Democratic liberals and unions, Truman in 1945 tried to revive New Deal politics with a program he eventually called the "Fair Deal." This would improve the social safety net and raise living standards. Truman pressed Congress to hike the minimum wage, create a national health insurance system, and increase public housing, Social Security, and educational aid.

George W. Bush

*For the 2000 election*, Democrats nominated vice president Al Gore to succeed Clinton. Republicans chose George W. Bush, the governor of Texas and son of Clinton's predecessor, as their candidate and former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney as his running mate. The election was one of the closest in U.S. history, and its outcome was uncertain until a month after the vote. Gore won the popular vote by a tiny margin of 540,000 of 100 million votes cast: .5 percent. Victory in the electoral college hinged on who carried Florida, and there, amid widespread confusion at polls and claims of irregularities in counting the ballots, Bush claimed a margin of a few hundred votes. Democrats demanded a recount, and the Florida Supreme Court ordered it. It fell to the Supreme Court to decide the outcome, and on December 12, 2000, by a 5-4 vote, the Court ordered a halt to the Florida recount and allowed the state's governor, Jeb Bush (George W. Bush's brother), to certify that Bush had won the state and therefore the presidency. The decision in Bush v. Gore was one of the strangest in the Supreme Court's history. In the late 1990s, the Court had reasserted the powers of states in the federal system, reinforcing their immunity from lawsuits by individuals who claimed to suffer from discrimination, and denying the power of Congress to force states to carry out federal policies. Now, the Court overturned a decision of the Florida Supreme Court that interpreted the state's election laws. Many people did not think the Supreme Court would take the case since it did not seem to raise a federal constitutional question. But the justices argued that the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause required that all ballots in a state be counted by a single standard, something impossible in Florida's patchwork election system. *Before 9/11:* Before becoming president, George W. Bush had been an oil company executive and governor of Texas. He tried to dissociate the Republican Party from anti-immigrant rhetoric of the 1990s and promoted what he called "compassionate conservatism." His narrow margin of victory did not give him a mandate to govern, as he received fewer votes than his opponent, Al Gore, and his party had only slim majorities in the House and Senate. Yet, Bush moved quickly to implement a conservative agenda. In 2001, he pressed Congress into passing the largest tax cut in U.S. history, and keeping with Reagan-era "supply-side" economics, most of the tax cuts went to the wealthy, on the assumption they would invest their new savings in productive activity. Bush also proposed oil drilling in a national wildlife refuge and timber harvesting in national forests. But Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont, a moderate Republican, abandoned his party and started to vote with Democrats, making it harder for Bush to win more legislative victories. In foreign policy, Bush emphasized the need for the United States to act free of international treaties and institutions. In the 2000 campaign, he had criticized the "nation-building" of the Clinton administration. In office, Bush announced plans to develop a national missile defense system, in violation of the ABM Treaty of 1972, and he repudiated a treaty establishing an International Criminal Court to try human rights violators. Also controversial was Bush's announcement that the United States would not abide by the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, which sought to fight global warming—the slow rise in Earth's temperature, which, scientists warned, could have disastrous effects on the world's climate. Evidence of global warming first was discovered in the 1990s, as Arctic glaciers and ice started to recede. Today, most scientists argue that global warming is a serious danger to the climate that threatens to alter agricultural patterns, raise ocean levels, and flood coastal cities. With the United States the largest burner of fossil fuels in the world, Bush's withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol infuriated much of the world. *War On Terror:* Immediately after September 11, the Bush administration declared a "war on terrorism." In the next two years, the United States launched wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It created a new Department of Homeland Security to coordinate efforts to improve domestic security, and it imposed severe limits on the civil liberties of those suspected of having ties to terrorism and Middle Eastern immigrants. The attacks also made newly prominent ideas embedded in the nation's past—that freedom was the central quality of American life and that the United States had a mission to spread freedom through the world and fight freedom's enemies September 11 transformed the international and domestic situations and Bush's presidency. Popular patriotism, not orchestrated by the government or private groups, spread through the nation. Popular trust in the government rose, and public servants like firemen and police became national heroes. After two decades of antigovernment rhetoric, the nation felt a renewed sense of common social purpose. The administration benefited from this, and Bush's popularity soared. Americans looked to the federal government, and especially the president, for reassurance, leadership, and action. Bush seized the opportunity, and like previous presidents made freedom the nation's rallying cry. In an address before a joint session of Congress only a few days after September 11, Bush said that "freedom and fear are at war" and that the nation's enemies had attacked the United States because they "hate our freedoms." At this speech, Bush declared a few foreign policy principles, soon known as the Bush Doctrine. The United States would launch a war on terrorism. But unlike previous wars, this war had a vaguely defined enemy—terrorist groups around the world that might threaten the United States or its allies—and no timetable for victory. The U.S. government would not distinguish between terrorists and the governments that harbored them, and it demanded that other nations in the world either ally with the United States or prepare for war. Bush demanded that Afghanistan, which was ruled by Islamic fundamentalists called the Taliban, surrender Osama bin Laden, who had a base in that country. When the Taliban refused, the United States, in early October 2001, launched air strikes on their strongholds. Bush called the operation in Afghanistan "Enduring Freedom." By the end of 2001, U.S. bombing and ground fighting by anti-Taliban forces drove the regime from power. A new government, friendly to and dependent on the United States, took its place, repealing Taliban laws that denied women's rights to education and banned movies, music, and other aspects of Western culture. But the new government failed to fully establish control over the country, bin Laden was not found, and Taliban supporters continued to fight the government. By early 2007, the Taliban had reasserted its power in parts of Afghanistan. *Foregin Policy:* September 11 transformed U.S. foreign policy, inspiring policymakers to reshape the world in terms of U.S. ideals and interests. To facilitate military action in the Middle East, the United States put military bases in Central Asia, including former Soviet republics. The administration sent troops to the Philippines to help troops there fight an Islamic insurgency, and announced plans for a military presence in Africa. The United States solidified ties with the governments of Indonesia and Pakistan, which faced Islamic fundamentalist rebels. Bush said the defeat of the Taliban was only the beginning of the war on terror. In early 2002, Bush accused Iraq, Iran, and North Korea of harboring terrorists and developing "weapons of mass destruction"—nuclear, chemical, and biological—which posed a potential threat to the United States. He called these three countries an "axis of evil," even though no evidence connected them with the attacks of September 11 and they had never cooperated with one another. In September 2002, the Bush administration released a document called the National Security Strategy, marking a fundamental shift in U.S. foreign policy. The document began by defining American freedom as political democracy, freedom of expression, religious toleration, free trade, and free markets. It proclaimed that these universal ideals were "right and true for every person, in every society." It committed the United States to spreading freedom and its benefits by fighting terrorists and "tyrants" everywhere. The document insisted that to protect and extend freedom, the United States must maintain an overwhelming preponderance of military power, not allowing any other country to challenge its dominance in any region of the world. To replace the Cold War doctrine of deterrence, the National Security Strategy announced a new policy of "preemptive" war—if the United States believed that a nation posed a possible future threat to its security, it had the right to attack that nation before the threat materialized. *The Bush administration's foreign policy statements shocked the world.* Immediately after September 11, much of the world sympathized with the United States and supported the U.S. invasion in Afghanistan as a legitimate response to terrorist attacks. By late 2002, however, many feared that the United States was claiming the right to act as a world policeman, in violation of international law. Some critics charged that the United States was bent on becoming a new global empire. September 11 showed, not just U.S. vulnerability, but also the nation's overwhelming strength. The United States, in economic, cultural, and military terms, was far ahead of the rest of the world. Its defense budget exceeded that of the twenty next nations combined. It maintained military bases throughout the world and had a navy on every ocean. After September 11, the word empire, once a term of abuse, came into widespread use. Some argued that the United States had to shoulder the burdens of empire, talk that worried those at home and abroad who felt the United States should not reshape the world in its image. The Bush administration's next initiative intensified these tensions. The Iraqi dictatorship of Saddam Hussein survived its defeat in the 1991 Gulf War, and his opponents charged Hussein with developing new weapons, in violation of UN resolutions. From its start, the Bush administration included a group of conservative policymakers including Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, who were determined to remove Hussein from power. They developed a military strategy to accomplish this—massive air strikes followed by a small ground invasion. They believed Iraqis would welcome the U.S. Army as liberators and quickly establish a democratic government, allowing the United States to withdraw its troops. This group seized on September 11 as an opportunity to implement this plan, and President Bush adopted their outlook. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who thought the conquest and stabilization of Iraq would require hundreds of thousands of troops and should not be attempted without allies, became marginalized. Though Hussein was not an Islamic fundamentalist and no known evidence linked him to the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration announced its intent to accomplish "regime change" in Iraq. Administration spokesmen insisted Hussein should be removed from power because he had developed an arsenal of chemical and bacterial "weapons of mass destruction" and was trying to acquire nuclear arms. U.S. newspaper and television journalists repeated these claims without investigating them. The UN Security Council agreed to step up weapons inspections, but the Bush administration argued that inspectors would never uncover Hussein's arsenal. Early in 2003, despite misgivings, Secretary of State Powell made an address to the United Nations claiming that Hussein possessed chemical weapons and was trying to acquire uranium in Africa to build nuclear weapons. (Every one of these claims turned out to be false.) Shortly after Powell's address, the president announced his intention to go to war with or without the approval of the United Nations. In response, Congress passed a resolution authorizing the president to use force. *Unable to get UN approval for attacking Iraq, the United States went to war anyway in March 2003, with Great Britain as its single significant ally. President Bush called the war "Operation Iraqi Freedom" and said its goal was to "defend our freedom" and "bring freedom to others." * Hussein's government quickly fell to U.S. military forces. Hussein, after hiding for several months, was captured and put on trial. In 2006, he was found guilty of ordering the killing of many Iraqis during his rule, sentenced to death, and executed. Soon after Baghdad's fall, President Bush appeared on an aircraft carrier beneath a banner reading "Mission Accomplished," and declared the major combat over. But after Hussein's fall, everything seemed to fall apart. Rather than welcome American liberators, Iraqis looted libraries, government offices, museums, businesses, and seized weapons. An insurgency soon developed that targeted U.S. soldiers and Iraqis cooperating with them. Sectarian violence soon swept through Iraq, with Shiite and Sunni Muslim militias attacking each other. (Under Hussein, the Sunni minority had dominated the government and army; now the Shiite majority wanted power and revenge.) Despite several elections in Iraq, the United States found it impossible to establish a government in Iraq strong enough to impose order. By 2006, U.S. intelligence agencies concluded Iraq had become what it was not before the U.S. invasion—a haven for terrorists bent on attacking Americans. Fewer than 200 U.S. troops died in the war's first phase. By the end of 2006, with Iraq on the verge of Civil War, 3,000 U.S. troops had died and 20,000 more were injured. U.S. and Iraqi scientists estimated that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, mostly civilians, had also died, and tens of thousands had fled seeking safety. The Bush administration at first argued that the war would cost $60 billion and would be paid by Iraq's own oil revenues. In 2006, the war had cost $200 billion, and the insurgency had prevented Iraq from resuming oil production. Some economists believed the war would cost the United States a total of $2 trillion. With no end in sight, the war invited some to compare it to Vietnam. Despite significant differences, both wars were started by U.S. policymakers who had little or no knowledge about the countries to which they were sending troops. The war's architects preferred to get their knowledge of Iraq from Hussein's exiled opponents, who exaggerated their own popularity and popular support for an invasion. Administration officials little considered postwar plans. *The Bush administration more and more defended the war as an attempt to bring democracy to Iraq. But by early 2007, polls showed that most Americans thought the invasion was a mistake and the war a lost cause.* *9/11 At Home Aftermath:* The war on terrorism raised the problem of balancing security and liberty. While the Bush administration discouraged anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment, at least 5,000 foreigners with Middle Eastern connections were rounded up and 1,200 were arrested. Many people with no link to terrorism were held for months, without a formal charge or public notice of their fate. The administration created a detention camp at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for persons captured in Afghanistan or otherwise accused of terrorism, and more than 700 were detained there. In November 2001, the Bush administration issued an Executive Order authorizing secret military tribunals for noncitizens deemed with assisting terrorism. In such trials, traditional constitutional protections would not apply. A few months later, the Justice Department declared that American citizens could be held indefinitely without charge and not allowed to see a lawyer, if the government deemed them to be "enemy combatants." Attorney General John Ashcroft warned that criticism of the administration's policies aided the country's terrorist enemies. When Bush left office, more than 4,000 U.S. troops had died in Iraq. In January 2009, when Bush left office, only 22 percent of Americans approved of his performance in office—the lowest figure since these polls began in the mid-twentieth century. It was difficult to see many achievements in Bush's eight years. *His foreign policy had alienated much of the world and left the United States militarily weakened and diplomatically isolated. His tax cuts for the wealthy and the costs of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had transformed budget surpluses into enormous deficits. His reforms of immigration and Social Security went nowhere, and the number of Americans living in poverty and those without health insurance rose during his term.*

Roe v. Wade

1973 Supreme Court Case All state laws prohibiting abortions were made unconstitutional based on a woman's right to privacy. A movement to reverse Roe v. Wade started among Roman Catholics, but soon included evangelical Protestants and social conservatives. The movement insisted that life began at conception, and that abortion was murder. Feminists argued that a woman's right to control her own body includes the right to safe, legal abortions. Both sides showed how the rights revolution had reshaped political language, as opponents of abortion appealed for the "right to life," while supporters celebrated the "right to choose." The anti-abortion movement successfully pressured Congress, over President Ford's veto, to end federal funding for abortions for poor women in the Medicaid program, and by the 1990s, some extreme anti-abortion activists were bombing medical clinics and assassinating doctors who terminated pregnancies.

Sputnik

First artificial Earth satellite, it was launched by Moscow in 1957 and sparked U.S. fears of Soviet dominance in technology and outer space. It led to the creation of NASA and the space race.

Sandra Day O' Connor

First female member of the Supreme Court. Appointed by Reagan in 1981. Served until 2006.

Joseph McCarthy

In 1950, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy delivered a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, in which he claimed to have a list of 205 communists employed at the State Department. The charge was baseless, he constantly changed the numbers, and he never identified anyone who was actually disloyal. But McCarthy used his senatorial position to hold hearings and allege disloyalty at the Defense Department and other government agencies. Though *many Republicans embraced McCarthy's campaign as a way to damage the Truman administration*, his attacks on government officials after Republican candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected president in 1952 alienated Republicans. *In 1954, his allegations of disloyalty in the army led to televised hearings that exposed McCarthy's tactics and led to his downfall*. The Republican Senate condemned his action, and though McCarthy died three years later, *"McCarthyism" came to refer to the abuse of power in the name of anticommunism.* *McCarthy and other anticommunist leaders seemed to criticize the legacy of Roosevelt and the New Deal more than Stalin and communism*

Jimmy Carter

In 1976, Jimmy Carter, a former Georgia governor unknown outside that state, ran as a Democratic candidate untainted by a highly unpopular federal government. He won with a comfortable margin over Ford. A devout evangelical Baptist, Carter promised a disillusioned American electorate that he would be virtuous and honest. He wanted to make government more efficient, protect the environment, and morally improve politics. He also supported black aspirations, and he appointed unprecedented numbers of African-Americans to federal office. Even though the Democrats controlled Congress, however, Carter and the Congress rarely cooperated. Seeing inflation and not unemployment as the main economic problem, proposed cuts in domestic programs; viewing competition as a way to reduce prices, he deregulated the trucking and airline industries, and supporting the Federal Reserve Bank's policy of raising interest rates to reduce economic activity and thus wages and prices, he hoped to stop inflation, but higher oil prices kept inflation alive. Carter also embraced nuclear power as a way to reduce dependence on foreign oil, but a near-fatal accident in 1979 at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania released radiation and sparked public fears about nuclear power and stopped the industry's expansion. Carter even repudiated his party's legacy as the party of affluence and economic growth when he gave a speech in 1979 about the nation's "crisis of confidence," seeming to blame it on Americans themselves and their bankrupt definition of freedom as "self-indulgence and consumption." Under Carter, a commitment to human rights defined U.S. foreign policy for the first time. Human rights groups in the 1970s that influenced Carter began to identify human rights violations not only by communist nations but by U.S. allies as well, especially Latin American dictatorships that used death squads to kill political opponents. In 1978, Carter cut off aid to the military dictatorship in Argentina which, in the name of anticommunism, had launched a "dirty war" against its own citizens, kidnapping and murdering 10,000 to 30,000 persons. As Argentina was an important U.S. ally, this shocked Latin American regimes dependent on American aid. By his presidency's end, Carter had made human rights central to American policy. He believed that in the post-Vietnam era, U.S. policy should move away from Cold War assumptions and instead combat Third World poverty, prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, and promote human rights. Carter also pardoned Vietnam-era draft resisters. Carter's emphasis on peaceful solutions to international problems brought some important results. In 1979, he brokered the Camp David accords between Egypt and Israel. He improved Latin American affairs by promising to transfer control of the Panama Canal in 2000. He resisted calls to intervene against a left-wing revolution fighting Somoza, Nicaragua's dictator. He also cut military aid to the right-wing government of El Salvador, which sponsored death squads. But despite criticisms from "realists" that his focus on human rights was damaging U.S. power in the world, Carter continued to pour billions into defense and the United States continued to support allies with records of human rights violations, such as Guatemala, the Philippines, South Korea, and Iran. U.S. support for Iran undid Carter's policies and administration. Iran, strategically located on the Soviet Union's southern border, was a major supplier of oil and importer of U.S. military equipment. Carter's 1977 visit in support of the Shah, Iran's ruler, inspired a more militant opposition, and in 1979, a popular revolution led by the Muslim cleric Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the Shah and declared Iran an Islamic republic. The Iranian revolution marked a shift in opposition movements in the Middle East from socialism and Arab nationalism to religious fundamentalism. This had long-term consequences for America. When Carter allowed the deposed Shah to come to America, Khomeini's followers invaded the U.S. embassy and seized dozens of hostages. They regained their freedom only in January 1981, the day Carter's term ended, and the hostage crisis deeply hurt Carter's popularity. The invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 by the Soviets, who sought to reinforce a friendly government fighting an Islamic rebellion, also confronted Carter with a crisis. Over time, the Soviet war in Afghanistan proved to be its own Vietnam, with high casualties, costs, and mounting domestic dissatisfaction. At first, however, it seemed to indicate a decline in U.S. power. In response, President Carter announced the Carter doctrine, declaring the United States would use military force, if necessary, to protect its interest in the Persian Gulf. He retaliated against the Soviets with boycotts and withdrawal from nuclear arms treaties. The United States also began to give arms and money to Islamic fundamentalist rebels in Afghanistan, giving rise to the Taliban. With liberals unable to check deindustrialization and declining real wages, economic anxiety also fostered conservatism in economics. Unlike during the Great Depression, economic crisis inspired a critique of government, rather than of business. New environmental regulations sparked calls for less government regulation of the economy, especially in the West, where the "Sagebrush Rebellion" sought to reduce federal bureaucracies' control over and conservation of precious land, water, and minerals. But everywhere the end of affluence and the rise of stagflation created support for conservatives who claimed that government regulations raised business costs and eliminated jobs. Economic crisis in particular spread support for lower taxes. Conservatives welcomed tax cuts as a way to both enhance profits and reduce resources for government, thus preventing new social programs and reducing existing ones. Many Americans found taxes more burdensome, as wage increases were canceled by inflation and pushed families into higher federal tax brackets. In 1978, conservatives ran a successful campaign to ban further increases in property taxes, and demonstrated the power of anti-tax politics. The new law benefited business and home owners, but cut funds for schools, libraries, and other public services. Anti-tax sentiment flourished throughout the nation, and other states passed similar laws. By 1980, Carter was deeply unpopular. Conservatism seemed on the rise everywhere. In England, Margaret Thatcher became prime minister, promising to sell state-owned industries to private firms, shrink the welfare state, and reduce taxes and the power of unions. In the United States, Ronald Reagan's campaign for the presidency united conservatives around promises to end stagflation and restore America's confidence and its role in the world. Reagan also appealed to white backlash against civil rights, voicing support for states' rights, vilifying welfare recipients, and condemning busing and affirmative action. Although not devout and a divorcee, Reagan won the support of "family values" religious conservatives. Reagan won the election, taking former Democratic bastions such as Illinois, Texas, and New York, while Carter received only 41 percent of the popular vote. While Carter went on to lead anti-poverty, human rights, and diplomatic efforts around the world, his presidency is considered by most to be a failure and his defeat launched the Reagan Revolution, which made freedom the domain of the right in American politics.

Bill Clinton

In 1991, the economy slipped into a recession. Unemployment jumped and family income stagnated. Widespread unease about America's future gripped the public, and *Bill Clinton, the former governor of Arkansas, seized the Democratic nomination the next year by advocating both social liberalism (support for gay rights, abortion rights, affirmative action) and conservatism (opposition to bureaucracy and welfare). Very charismatic, Clinton seemed interested in voters' economic fears, and he blamed rising inequalities and job loss on deindustrialization. Bush, by contrast, seemed unaware of ordinary Americans' lives and problems. Republican attacks on gays, feminists, and abortion rights also alienated voters.* A third candidate, Ross Perot, an eccentric Texas billionaire, also ran for president, attacking Bush and Clinton for not having the economic skills to combat the recession and the national debt. Enjoying much support at first, Perot's candidacy waned. But he received 19 percent of the popular vote. *Clinton won by a substantial margin, humiliating the only recently very popular Bush.* *Clinton at first seemed to repudiate the policies of Reagan and Bush. He appointed several women and blacks to his cabinet, and named supporters of abortion rights to the Supreme Court. His first budget raised taxes on the wealthy and expanded tax credits for low-income workers, which raised more than 4 million Americans out of poverty. But Clinton shared with his predecessors a passion for free trade.* Despite strong opposition from unions and environmentalists, he had Congress in 1993 pass the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which created a free-trade zone encompassing Canada, the United States, and Mexico. *The major policy initiative of Clinton's first term, however, was the attempt with his wife, Hilary, to address the rising cost of health care and the increasing number of Americans who lacked health insurance.* In Canada and western Europe, governments provided universal medical coverage. Yet, the United States, with the world's most advanced medical technology, had a very incomplete health insurance system. The Great Society had given coverage to the elderly and poor in Medicare and Medicaid, and many employers offered health insurance to their workers. But tens of millions of Americans had no coverage, and in the 1980s, businesses started to move employees from individual doctors to health maintenance organizations (HMOs), which critics charged denied procedures to patients. Clinton's plan would have provided universal coverage through large groups of HMOs, but doctors and insurance and drug companies attacked it fiercely, fearing government regulations that would limit their profits. Too complex and seeming to expand unpopular federal bureaucracy, the plan expired in 1994. By 2008, some 50 million Americans, most of whom had full-time jobs, lacked health insurance. *A slow economic recovery and few accomplishments in Clinton's first two years turned voters against him.* In the 1994 elections, Republicans won control of both houses of Congress, the first time since the 1950s. They called their victory the "Freedom Revolution." Newt Gingrich, a conservative Georgia congressman who became Speaker of the House, led the campaign. Gingrich devised a platform called the "Contract with America," promising to reduce government, taxes, and economic and environmental regulations, overhaul welfare, and end affirmative action. Republicans moved quickly to implement the contract's provisions. The House deeply cut social, educational, and environmental programs, including the popular Medicare system. But with the president and Congress unable to compromise, the government shut down all nonessential operations in late 1995. It became clear that most voters had not voted for the Republicans and Gingrich's Contract with America, but against Clinton, and Gingrich's popularity dropped. *Clinton rebuilt his popularity by campaigning against a radical Congress. He opposed the most extreme parts of the Republican program, but embraced others. In early 1996, he declared that the era of "big government" was over, repudiating Democratic Party liberalism and embracing the anti-government attitude of conservatives.* He approved acts to deregulate broadcasting and telephone companies. In 1996, over Democratic protests, he also abolished Aid to Dependent Families with Children, commonly known as "welfare." At that time, 14 million Americans, including 9 million children, received AFDC assistance. Stringent new eligibility requirements at the state level and economic growth reduced welfare rolls, but the number of children in poverty stayed the same. Clinton's strategy, called "triangulation," was to embrace the most popular Republican polices while rejecting positions unpopular among the suburban middle class. Clinton thus neutralized Republican charges that the Democrats wanted to raise taxes and assist the idle. Clinton's passion for free trade alienated many working-class Democrats but convinced middle-class voters that the Democrats were not dominated by unions. In 1996, Clinton, who had consolidated the conservative shift away from Democratic liberalism, easily defeated Republican Bob Dole in the presidential elections. Like Carter, *Clinton was most interested in domestic affairs and took steps to settle persistent international conflicts and promote human rights.* He was only partly successful. He strongly supported the 1993 Oslo Accords, in which Israel recognized the Palestine Liberation Organization and a plan for peace was outlined. But neither side fully implemented the accords. Israel continued to build Jewish settlements on Palestinian land in the West Bank, a part of Jordan that Israel had occupied since the 1967 Six-Day War. The new Palestinian Authority, which shared in governing parts of the West Bank on the way to full statehood, was corrupt, powerless, and unable to check groups that attacked Israel. At the end of his presidency, Clinton brought leaders from the two sides to Camp David to try to work out a final peace treaty, but the meeting failed and violence resumed. Like Carter, Clinton found it difficult to balance concern for human rights with U.S. strategic and economic interests and to form guidelines of humanitarian intervention overseas. The United States did nothing when tribal massacres in Rwanda killed more than 800,000 people and created 2 million refugees. *Clinton also faced crisis in Yugoslavia, a multi-ethnic state that started to disintegrate in the 1990s, after its communist government collapsed in 1989.* In a few years, five new states emerged in the country, and ethnic violence plagued several of these new nations. In 1992, Serbs in Bosnia, which was on the historic boundary between Christianity and Islam in southeastern Europe, started a war to drive out Muslims and Croats. They used mass murder and rape as military strategies, which came to be known as "ethnic cleansing"—the forcible expulsion from an area of a particular ethnic group. More than 100,000 Bosnians, mostly civilians, had been killed by the end of 1993. After long inaction, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) launched air strikes against Bosnian Serb troops, and UN troops, including 20,000 Americans, arrived as peacekeepers. In 1998, when Yugoslavian troops and local Serbs started to revive ethnic cleansing, this time against Albanians in Kosovo, a Serbian province, nearly a million Albanians fled. NATO launched a two-month war in 1999 that led to the deployment of U.S. and UN troops in Kosovo. *Human rights became more prominent in international affairs during Clinton's presidency.* They emerged as a justification for intervention in matters once considered to be the internal affairs of sovereign nations, and the United States dispatched troops around the world for humanitarian reasons to protect civilians. New institutions including courts developed to prosecute human rights violators, such as tribunals and war crimes courts regarding Rwanda and Slobodan Milosevic, Yugoslavia's president. Spanish and British courts even nearly charged Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet with murder, but he was too ill to stand trial.

Richard Nixon

In August, Richard Nixon made a striking political comeback by winning the Republican presidential nomination. He campaigned as champion of the "silent majority"—ordinary Americans who believed change had gone too far—and called for "law and order." Facing a divided Democratic Party, Nixon barely won a victory over Hubert Humphrey. Yet, George Wallace, running as an independent on a platform of resentment against civil rights, the Great Society, and the Warren Court, received 13 percent of the national vote. The Nixon and Wallace totals taken together showed that liberalism was in retreat. But 1968 did not mark the end of the "Sixties." The Great Society actually peaked under Nixon, and second-wave feminism surged in the 1970s. But Nixon's election initiated a period of conservatism in American politics. Under Republican President Richard Nixon, Congress passed a series of measures to protect the environment, including the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species Acts. In April 1970, the first Earth Day drew the participation of 20 million people. Nixon established new federal regulatory agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the National Transportation Safety Board, all of which limited entrepreneurial freedoms. Nixon spent liberally on social services and environmental initiatives. He abolished the Office of Economic Opportunity, which had coordinated the War on Poverty, but he also expanded food stamps and tied Social Security benefits to inflation. The Endangered Species and Clean Air acts regulated businesses in order to limit pollution and protect animals threatened with extinction. Nixon's great surprise was his proposal for a Family Assistance Plan to replace Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). Under his plan, the federal government would guarantee a minimum income for all Americans. AFDC, known as "welfare," gave aid, usually quite limited, to poor families who met local eligibility requirements. Originally a New Deal program that helped mostly the white poor, welfare came to be associated with blacks, who by 1970 were half of all welfare recipients. AFDC rolls expanded in the 1960s, partly because of relaxed federal eligibility standards. Conservative politicians now attacked welfare recipients as people who wanted to live off honest taxpayers rather than work. But Nixon's plan for a guaranteed annual income, too radical for conservatives and not enough for liberals, did not pass Congress. Nixon's racial policy was ambiguous. He nominated conservative southern jurists who favored segregation to the Supreme Court to win over the white South, but the Senate rejected them. The courts lost patience with southern delays in enforcing civil rights laws and finally forced southern schools to desegregate. Briefly, Nixon also embraced "affirmative action" programs to raise minority employment. Nixon expanded Johnson's efforts to require federal contractors to hire minorities. But Nixon wanted the affirmative action program as a way to fight inflation by weakening the power of building trade unions (he believed their control over the labor market hiked wages to unreasonable levels and increased construction costs). He hoped the plan would cause tensions between blacks and labor unions and that Republicans would benefit. Indeed, this is what happened. Trade unions of skilled construction workers, with few black members, strongly opposed Nixon's plan. Nixon hoped to win blue-collar workers over for the 1972 elections, and he quickly replaced his affirmative action plan with a program that did not require federal contractors to hire minorities. Conservatives also believed Nixon was "soft" in foreign policy. Certainly, Nixon and Henry Kissinger, his national security adviser, continued their predecessor's policies of trying to undermine governments that seemed to endanger U.S. strategic or economic interests. Nixon sent arms to pro-American dictators in Iran, the Philippines, and South Africa. When Chileans elected the socialist Salvador Allende president, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) helped his domestic opponents launch a coup on September 11, 1973, that overthrew and killed Allende and installed a bloody regime ruled by General Augusto Pinochet. Thousands of Allende's supporters, including some Americans, were tortured and murdered, while others fled the country. In relations with major communist countries, however, Nixon decreased Cold War tensions. Nixon launched his political career as a militant anticommunist, but he and Kissinger were "realists." They were more interested in power than ideology and preferred stability to endless conflict. Nixon hoped that better relations with the Soviets would pressure North Vietnam to end the Vietnam War on terms acceptable to America. Nixon also realized that China had its own interests, separate from those of the Soviets, and would soon be a major world power. In early 1972, Nixon made a highly publicized trip to Beijing, which led to China finally occupying its seat in the United Nations. Although full diplomatic relations with China were not established until 1979, Nixon's visit sparked a vast trade increase between the United States and China. Three months after his China trip, Nixon became the first president to visit the Soviet Union, where he negotiated with Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev. The talks led to increased trade and two landmark arms control treaties: the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, which capped each country's arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads, and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which banned the development of systems for intercepting income missiles. Nixon and Brezhnev declared a new age of "peaceful coexistence" in which "détente" (cooperation) would replace Cold War hostility. In his 1968 campaign, Nixon pledged that he had a "secret plan" to end the Vietnam War. Once in office, he declared a new policy, Vietnamization, in which U.S. troops would gradually be withdrawn while South Vietnamese troops, backed by U.S. bombing, would take up combat. But Vietnamization did not limit the war or end the antiwar movement. In early 1970, Nixon ordered U.S. troops into neutral Cambodia, in order to disrupt supply lines to the South. In 1971, Nixon announced a radical departure in economic policy. He took the United States off the gold standard, ending the Bretton Woods agreement that fixed the value of the dollar and currencies in gold. From now on, world currencies "floated" in relation to one another, their worth determined not by treaty but international currency markets. Nixon hoped this would promote U.S. exports, but the end of fixed currency rates destabilized the world economy. Nixon also froze wages and prices for ninety days to stabilize the economy. These policies briefly stopped inflation and reduced imports, but a war between Israel and its neighbors Egypt and Syria led Middle Eastern governments to hike the price of oil and suspend oil exports to the United States for several months. By this point, the United States imported one-third of its oil. Congress lowered the speed limit and urged conservation to save fuel. The energy crisis focused public attention on domestic energy sources like oil, coal, and natural gas. Oil exploration increased in the American West. And the high oil prices set by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) benefited western energy companies. Nixon's domestic and foreign policy successes secured his reelection in 1972. He won a landslide victory over liberal Democrat George McGovern and gained more support in Democratic strongholds in the South and among northern working-class whites. But triumph was succeeded by disaster. Nixon was obsessed with secrecy and did not tolerate differences of opinion. He viewed critics as national security threats and created an "enemies list" of unfriendly reporters, politicians, and celebrities. When the Pentagon Papers were published, Nixon established a special investigative unit in the White House known as the "plumbers" to get information about Daniel Ellsberg, the former government official who had leaked the papers to the press. The plumbers raided Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office to discredit him. In June 1972, five former employees of Nixon's reelection committee were caught breaking into the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate apartment complex in Washington, D.C., and were arrested. The arrests did not affect the 1972 presidential campaign. But in 1973, the judge presiding over the prosecution of the Watergate five tried to find out who was behind the break-in. Washington Post journalists revealed that persons close to Nixon had ordered the Watergate operation and tried to "cover up" Nixon's involvement. Congressional hearings soon revealed a wider pattern of wiretapping, break-ins, and attempts to sabotage political opponents. A special prosecutor appointed reluctantly by Nixon demanded copies of tapes that the president had made of his conversations. The Supreme Court ordered Nixon to provide them, reaffirming that presidents are not above the law. The scandal unfolded for weeks, and by mid-1974, it was obvious that Nixon had at least ordered the cover-up of the Watergate break-in (it was unclear whether he had ordered the break-in itself). In August 1974, the House Judiciary Committee voted to recommend that Nixon be impeached for conspiracy to obstruct justice. Nixon soon became the only president to resign. His presidency is the classic example of the abuse of political power.

Watergate Scandal

Nixon's domestic and foreign policy successes secured his reelection in 1972. He won a landslide victory over liberal Democrat George McGovern and gained more support in Democratic strongholds in the South and among northern working-class whites. But triumph was succeeded by disaster. Nixon was obsessed with secrecy and did not tolerate differences of opinion. He viewed critics as national security threats and created an "enemies list" of unfriendly reporters, politicians, and celebrities. When the Pentagon Papers were published, Nixon established a special investigative unit in the White House known as the "plumbers" to get information about Daniel Ellsberg, the former government official who had leaked the papers to the press. The plumbers raided Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office to discredit him. *In June 1972, five former employees of Nixon's reelection committee were caught breaking into the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate apartment complex in Washington, D.C., and were arrested.* The arrests did not affect the 1972 presidential campaign. But in 1973, the judge presiding over the prosecution of the Watergate five tried to find out who was behind the break-in. Washington Post journalists revealed that persons close to Nixon had ordered the Watergate operation and tried to "cover up" Nixon's involvement. Congressional hearings soon revealed a wider pattern of wiretapping, break-ins, and attempts to sabotage political opponents. A special prosecutor appointed reluctantly by Nixon demanded copies of tapes that the president had made of his conversations. The Supreme Court ordered Nixon to provide them, reaffirming that presidents are not above the law. *The scandal unfolded for weeks, and by mid-1974, it was obvious that Nixon had at least ordered the cover-up of the Watergate break-in* (it was unclear whether he had ordered the break-in itself). *In August 1974, the House Judiciary Committee voted to recommend that Nixon be impeached for conspiracy to obstruct justice. Nixon soon became the only president to resign.* His presidency is the classic *example of the abuse of political power.* In 1973, Nixon's vice president, Spiro Agnew, resigned after it was revealed he took bribes from construction firms. Nixon's attorney general and two aides were convicted of obstructing justice in the Watergate affair and went to jail. Nixon insisted he did nothing wrong, and that previous presidents also lied and conducted illegal activities. While not excusing Nixon, subsequent Senate hearings held by Frank Church of Idaho revealed a history of abusive actions by every Cold War-era president, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) spying on millions of Americans and disruptions of civil rights groups, and CIA covert operations to overthrow foreign governments, assassinate foreign leaders, and organize a secret army in Laos, bordering Vietnam.

Ronald Reagan

Reagan appealed to white backlash against civil rights, voicing support for states' rights, vilifying welfare recipients, and condemning busing and affirmative action. Although not devout and a divorcee, Reagan won the support of "family values" religious conservatives. Reagan won the election, taking former Democratic bastions such as Illinois, Texas, and New York, while Carter received only 41 percent of the popular vote. While Carter went on to lead anti-poverty, human rights, and diplomatic efforts around the world, his presidency is considered by most to be a failure and his defeat launched the Reagan Revolution, which made freedom the domain of the right in American politics. Reagan's path to the presidency was unusual. Originally a New Deal Democrat and head of the Screen Actors Guild, Reagan became the spokesman for General Electric in the 1950s, preaching the virtues of unregulated capitalism. His nominating speech for Barry Goldwater at the 1964 Republican convention brought him national renown. In 1966, he was elected California's governor, and in 1976 challenged Ford for the Republican nomination, almost winning it. His victory in the 1980 election brought together old and new conservatives: Sunbelt suburbanites and urban working-class ethnics; antigovernment crusaders and aggressive Cold Warriors; and libertarians and the Christian Right. Although Reagan, the oldest man ever to hold political office, was often underestimated by his opponents, he was politically experienced and a gifted public speaker whose optimism and good humor appealed to many Americans. Reagan made conservatism seem progressive, and he reiterated themes of America's mission to be an example of freedom in the world that had their origins in the American Revolution. Freedom became the watchword of the Reagan Revolution, and Reagan used the word more than any other president before him. Reagan reshaped the nation's agenda and political language more effectively than any president since Franklin D. Roosevelt. Reagan promised to free government from "special interests," which he defined not as business groups but as unions, minorities, and others who wanted to use Washington's powers to attack social inequalities. His Justice Department wanted to make the Constitution "color-blind" and gutted civil rights enforcement. Reagan seized the terms of debate and put Democrats on the defensive. *Reaganomics:* While Reagan, like his predecessors, invoked "economic freedom," he defined it as reducing union power, dismantling regulations, and radically reducing taxes. In 1981 and 1986, Reagan won tax reforms from Congress that dramatically reduced taxes for the wealthy and moved America away from the ideal of progressive, graduated income taxes. Reagan also appointed conservatives to lead regulatory agencies, who reduced environmental and workplace safety opposed by business. Liberals since the New Deal had tried to fuel economic growth by using government power to raise Americans' purchasing power. Reagan, using "supply-side economics" (called "trickle-down economics" by opponents), relied on high interest rates to curb inflation and lower tax rates for business and the wealthy to stimulate private investment. This policy assumed that cutting taxes would make Americans at all income levels work harder, because they would keep more of what they earned, and that everyone would benefit from increased business profits and a growing economy, which would raise government revenues despite lower tax rates. Reagan also began an era of hostility between government and labor unions. In 1981, when members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO), the air traffic controllers' union, went on strike in defiance of federal law, Reagan fired them all and used the military to supervise air traffic until new controllers were trained. Reagan inspired many employers to launch anti-union offensives, and more businesses now hired workers to permanently replace workers who had gone on strike. Manufacturing employment continued its long-term decline, further reducing union strength. When Reagan left office, both the service and retail sectors employed more Americans than manufacturing, and only 11 percent of nongovernment workers were union members. "Reaganomics," as critics called the administration's policies, initially created the most severe recession since the 1930s. But a long period of economic expansion followed the recession of 1981-1982. As employers reduced their workforces, shifted production overseas, and used new technologies, they became more profitable. Simultaneously, inflation dropped dramatically, in part because of greater oil production. The stock market rose, and despite a sharp drop in 1987, the stock market continued to climb upward. Reagan's policies, deindustrialization, and rising stock prices contributed to increasing economic inequality. The national debt under Reagan tripled to $2.7 trillion. But Reagan remained very popular and easily defeated the Democratic candidate Walter Mondale in the 1984 election. *Conservatives and Cold War:* Reagan in some ways disappointed conservatives. While his administration sharply reduced programs such as food stamps and school lunches, it left intact core elements of the welfare state, such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Reagan also did little for the Christian Right. Abortion stayed legal, women continued to enter the labor force, and Reagan appointed the first female member of the Supreme Court, Sandra Day O'Connor. Reagan voiced support for a constitutional amendment that would allow prayer in public schools, but the effort went nowhere. The administration launched a "Just Say No" campaign against illegal drug use, but failed to stop the spread of crack, a cheap form of cocaine, in urban areas. And Reagan did little to halt affirmative action. Yet, Reagan revived the Cold War. He vigorously denounced the Soviet Union as an "evil empire" and started the largest military buildup in U.S. history, including long-range bombers and missiles. In 1983, he proposed a Strategic Defense Initiative to develop a space-based system to intercept and destroy enemy missiles. The ideas was not technologically feasible, and if deployed, would have violated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. But Reagan wanted to reassert America's world power. He pressed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) into deploying short-range nuclear weapons in Europe. The renewed arms race and Reagan's talk of wining a nuclear war spread alarm and fear around the world. In the early 1980s, a mass movement in the United States and Europe called for a nuclear freeze—an end to nuclear arms development. Reagan also wanted to end American's reluctance to commit U.S. forces overseas, the result of Vietnam. He sent troops to invade Grenada, a tiny Caribbean island, to remove a pro-Castro government; he bombed Libya to retaliate against that government's alleged involvement in a terrorist attack in West Berlin; and in 1982, he sent U.S. marines to Lebanon to keep the peace in a civil war, but quickly withdrew them after a bomb exploded at a U.S. barracks, killing 241 Americans. But Reagan preferred to achieve his objectives through military aid, not U.S. troops. He abandoned Carter's emphasis on human rights and affirmed that the United States should support authoritarian anticommunist regimes. Under Reagan, the country became closer to anticommunist dictatorships in Chile and South Africa. His administration also sent money and arms to the governments of El Salvador and Guatemala, whose armies and associated death squads committed atrocities against civilian opponents. *Iran Contra Affair:* U.S. involvement in Central America created the great scandal of Reagan's presidency, the Iran-Contra affair. In 1984, Congress banned military aid to the Contras, those in Nicaragua fighting the Sandinistas who in 1979 had ousted the U.S.-backed dictator, Anastasio Somoza. In 1985, Reagan secretly authorized the sale of arms to Iran (then engaged in a war with Iraq) in order to get the release of American hostages held by Islamic groups in the Middle East. But the director of the Central Intelligence Agency and Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North of the National Security Council diverted funds from the arms sales to buy military supplies for the Contras, in defiance of Congress. In 1986, the scheme was exposed in the media, and Congress held televised hearings that showed lying and violations of the law that recalled the Nixon era. Eleven members of Reagan's administration were convicted of perjury or destroying documents or plead guilty before they were tried. Reagan denied knowledge of the scheme, but the affair undermined the public's confidence in him. Surprisingly, Reagan in his second term softened his anticommunism rhetoric and established good relations with Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev had come to power in 1985 and wanted to reform the Soviet Union's political system (glasnost) and reinvigorate its economy (perestroika). The USSR had fallen far behind the United States in producing and distributing consumer goods and relied more and more on food imports to feed itself. Gorbachev realized the reforms he wanted required cuts in military costs. Reagan was ready to negotiate, and they held a series of talks on arms control that concluded with agreements to reduce nuclear weapons stockpiles. In 1988, Gorbachev started to withdraw Soviet troops from Afghanistan. Reagan, despite starting his presidency as a Cold Warrior, left office repudiating his earlier, militant anti-Soviet stance. *Legacy:* Reagan's presidency showed the contradictions of modern conservatism. Though he wanted to appeal to the religious right, the Reagan Revolution undermined traditional and conservative values by inspiring speculation, business mergers, and investors to pursue profits at the cost of plant closings, job losses, and devastated communities. Deindustrialization, unemployment, and downward pressure on wages all threatened local traditions and family stability and undermined a common sense of national purpose by expanding income and wealth inequality. Because of Iran-Contra and huge deficits, Reagan left office with a tarnished reputation. But few figures have so decisively reshaped American politics.

The Southern Manifesto

A document written in February and March 1956, in the United States Congress, in opposition to racial integration of public places. According to the Southern Manifesto, the original constitution does not legislate education and was not intended to legislate education. Also, Plessy v. Ferguson declared segregation legal, so long as facilities are separate but equal. This is the established law of the land.

The Black Panthers

Black Power suggested everything from electing more blacks to political office to the belief that blacks were a colonized people whose freedom could be won only through revolutionary struggles for self-determination. The idea reflected the radicalization of young civil rights activists and inspired cultural pride. The word "Negro" was abandoned for "Afro-American," and African dress and hairstyles were celebrated. Previously interracial civil rights groups like SNCC and CORE also repudiated their inclusion of whites, and they soon disintegrated. *New groups sprang up, however, most prominently the Black Panther Party*, formed in Oakland, California, in 1966 to protest policy brutality. The *Black Panthers won notoriety for advocating armed self-defense, and their militant stance and actions alarmed moderate blacks and many whites*. Troubled by internal disputes and police and FBI repression, the Black Panthers disintegrated by the early 1970s.

Al Gore

For the 2000 election, *Democrats nominated vice president Al Gore to succeed Clinton*. Republicans chose George W. Bush, the governor of Texas and son of Clinton's predecessor, as their candidate and former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney as his running mate. The election was one of the closest in U.S. history, and its outcome was uncertain until a month after the vote. *Gore won the popular vote by a tiny margin* of 540,000 of 100 million votes cast: .5 percent. Victory in the electoral college hinged on who carried Florida, and there, amid widespread confusion at polls and claims of irregularities in counting the ballots, Bush claimed a margin of a few hundred votes. Democrats demanded a recount, and the Florida Supreme Court ordered it. It fell to the Supreme Court to decide the outcome, and on December 12, 2000, by a 5-4 vote, the Court ordered a halt to the Florida recount and allowed the state's governor, Jeb Bush (George W. Bush's brother), to certify that Bush had won the state and therefore the presidency. The decision in Bush v. Gore was one of the strangest in the Supreme Court's history. In the late 1990s, the Court had reasserted the powers of states in the federal system, reinforcing their immunity from lawsuits by individuals who claimed to suffer from discrimination, and denying the power of Congress to force states to carry out federal policies. Now, the Court overturned a decision of the Florida Supreme Court that interpreted the state's election laws. Many people did not think the Supreme Court would take the case since it did not seem to raise a federal constitutional question. But the justices argued that the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause required that all ballots in a state be counted by a single standard, something impossible in Florida's patchwork election system.

Anita Hill

In 1991, Senate hearings on the nomination to the Supreme Court of Clarence Thomas, a black conservative, became embroiled in dramatic charges of sexual harassment leveled against Thomas by law professor Anita Hill. To the outrage of feminists, the Senate narrowly confirmed him. Nonetheless, because of her testimony, Americans became more aware of the problem of sexual harassment in and out of the workplace, and complaints shot up across the country.

Rosa Parks

In December 1955, Rosa Parks, a black department store worker in Montgomery, Alabama, *refused to surrender her seat on a city bus to a white rider*, as local law required. Parks' arrest *provoked a year-long bus boycott*, which initiated the mass phase of the southern civil rights movement. While Parks was depicted as an ordinary woman fed up with Jim Crow, in fact she was a veteran of civil rights struggles in the 1930s and 1940s. When news of her arrest spread through Montgomery, hundreds of blacks gathered in a local church and refused to ride the bus until they received equal treatment

Lyndon B. Johnson

Kennedy's VP. Became President upon Kennedy's assassination. Lyndon B. Johnson grew up poor in the impoverished Texas hill country and struggled to achieve wealth and power. By the 1950s, he was majority leader of the U.S. Senate, but he never forgot the poor white and Mexican children he had taught in the 1930s. More than Kennedy, he was committed to New Deal social programs that assisted the less fortunate. Immediately upon taking office, Johnson called on Congress to enact the civil rights bill that Kennedy had championed. Johnson knew that many whites opposed the law, and he feared the South would turn Republican. The 1964 Democratic convention weakened blacks' faith that they could use the political system and foretold the break between Democratic liberals and the civil rights movement. But the civil rights movement rallied behind Johnson's campaign for reelection. Johnson faced Republican candidate and Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, whose 1960 book, The Conscience of a Conservative, had sold more than 3 million copies. Goldwater demanded a more aggressive Cold War stance, but mostly criticized "internal" threats to freedom, especially the New Deal welfare state. He called for private charity to replace public welfare and Social Security and the abolition of the graduated income tax. Goldwater also voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act. But Democrats' portrayal of Goldwater as an extremist who would abolish Social Security and risk nuclear war won Johnson an overwhelming victory. Democrats also took two-to-one majorities in both houses of Congress. After his 1964 election victory, Johnson outlined the greatest plan for government action to promote the general welfare since the New Deal. Johnson's programs of 1965-1967, known as the Great Society, provided health services to the poor and elderly in the new Medicaid and Medicare programs and poured federal funds into education and urban development. New cabinet-level offices, such as the Departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development, and new agencies, such as the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission and a national public broadcasting network, were established. These measures greatly expanded the federal government's powers, and completed and extended the social agenda (except national health insurance) that had stalled in Congress since 1938. Yet, the Great Society was a response to prosperity, not depression. In the mid-1960s, the economy was expanding, fueled by higher government spending and a tax cut for individuals and businesses passed in 1964. Johnson and Democratic liberals believed economic growth would fund more government programs and improve Americans' quality of life. The Johnson administration believed poverty was caused by a lack of skills and proper attitudes and work habits. The War on Poverty did not directly fight poverty, through efforts like works programs, spreading unions, or preventing businesses from moving production to the low-wage South or overseas. It did not address economic changes that reduced well-paid factory jobs and left poor rural and urban families with few opportunities. Perhaps the most successful and popular program was food stamps, a form of direct aid. But the War on Poverty sought to equip the poor with skills and motivate them. Johnson defended the Great Society in a New Deal language of freedom reinforced by the civil rights movement. Recognizing that black poverty, caused by past and present racism, was different from white poverty, he tried to redefine the relationship between freedom and equality. He argued that economic liberty was more than equal opportunity. But while Johnson's Great Society may not have achieved equality, it did reaffirm the idea of social citizenship. It was the greatest effort in American history to mobilize the powers of the federal government to aid less fortunate Americans, especially those, like blacks, who had been excluded by original New Deal entitlements like Social Security. Lyndon Johnson took office with little experience in foreign relations. While reluctant to send U.S. troops to South Vietnam and fearing interminable involvement, he felt that "losing" Vietnam would deliver electoral advantages to Republicans. In August 1964, North Vietnamese boats encountered an American ship on a spy mission off of North Vietnam's coast. When the boats fired on the U.S. vessel, Johnson claimed the United States was a victim of aggression. Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, authorizing the president to take measures to defend U.S. forces in Vietnam. Only two senators voted against the resolution, the nearest the United States came to declaring war in this conflict, and it passed without any discussion of U.S. goals or strategy. (In 2005, the National Security Agency released secret documents that made clear that no North Vietnamese attack ever occurred.) In the 1964 election campaign, Johnson said he did not intend to send U.S. troops to Vietnam. Advised to do so after the proper provocation, he launched air strikes against North Vietnam and sent U.S. ground troops to the South when the Viet Cong, in early 1965, attacked a U.S. air base. By 1968, more than half a million U.S. troops were at war in South Vietnam. U.S. forces bombed North and South Vietnam with more tonnage than was used by all sides in World War II. U.S. ground forces ruthlessly hunted the Viet Cong in "search and destroy" operations that left villages burned and many civilians killed. But the might of the U.S. military did not break the Viet Cong insurgency or its North Vietnamese support. Simultaneously, Johnson sent U.S. troops to the Dominican Republic, where military leaders tried to restore the rule of Juan Bosch, the left-wing but noncommunist president who in 1963 had been removed from power by a military coup. Johnson dispatched troops to quell unrest and ensure that Bosch would not return.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Montgomery bus boycott launched a nonviolent movement for racial justice based in the South's black churches. It was supported by northern liberals and focused unprecedented international attention on U.S. racial policies. Through the boycott, *Martin Luther King, Jr., a pastor at a local Baptist church, became the movement's symbol.* At the boycott's first protest meeting, King inspired his audience when he said that southern blacks were "tired of going through the long night of captivity" and were "reaching out for the daybreak of freedom and justice and equality." From its beginning, the language of freedom marked the black movement. Freedom meant many different things, but most of all it meant political rights and economic opportunities long denied because of skin color. King's rhetoric united ideas of freedom into a coherent whole. *His most famous speech, "I Have a Dream,"* given in 1963, began by noting the unfulfilled promise of emancipation and closed by invoking a cry from a black spiritual: "Free at last! Free at last! Thanks God Almighty, we are free at last!" *King appealed to both blacks' sense of injustice and the conscience of white America by making the case for black rights in terms that united blacks' experience with that of the nation.* A student of nonviolent civil disobedience as proposed by Henry David Thoreau and Gandhi, *King offered a philosophy of struggle in which evil was met by good, hate with Christian love, and violence with peaceful demands for change.* His Christian themes came from the black church, and they resonated in the black community and America. *He appealed to white America by emphasizing blacks' loyalty to the nation and their devotion to its redemptive values.* In early 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr., launched a *voting rights drive* in Selma, Alabama. Defying a ban by Governor Wallace, King tried to lead a march from Selma to the state capital, Montgomery. In 1967, even Martin Luther King, Jr., a onetime ally of President Johnson, *condemned the Vietnam war for its violence and its diversion of resources from America.* When local blacks protesting for more economic opportunity and the desegregation of local business had little success, Martin Luther King, Jr., came to the city. *While in jail for violating a ban on demonstrations, King wrote his eloquent, "Letter from a Birmingham Jail."* King excoriated local clergy who asked for patience, and recounted the daily abuses black southerners faced. King asked white moderates to abandon fears of disorder and commit themselves to racial justice. When King decided to have black schoolchildren join the protests, the city's police chief, Eugene "Bull" Connor, ordered brutal attacks with nightsticks, fire hoses, and attack dogs.

John F. Kennedy

Though John F. Kennedy was president for only three years and accomplished little in domestic affairs, his administration is now seen as a time of high hopes and U.S. world leadership. *In his inaugural address in 1961, Kennedy promised that a "new generation of Americans" would "pay any price, bear any burden" to "assure the survival and success of liberty," seeming to ask Americans to transcend 1950s consumerism and sacrifice for the common good.* But Kennedy *ignored the growing civil rights movement, and focused on his main interest: vigorously fighting the Cold War.* Kennedy *tried to increase U.S. influence and check communist power in the world with several programs,* including the Peace Corps, which sent young Americans to assist economic and educational work in developing nations, and a space program that would send Americans to the moon (after the Soviets first launched a satellite carrying the first man into orbit around the Earth), which happened in 1969. Kennedy also formed a new Latin America policy, the Alliance for Progress, a smaller Marshall Plan for the region that would fight poverty and challenge communism. But military regimes and local elites controlled and took most Alliance funds, and few of Latin America's poor benefited. Like Truman and Eisenhower, Kennedy saw the world through a Cold War lens, including events in Cuba. In April, 1961, *Kennedy let the CIA invade at the Bay of Pigs. The invasion was a colossal failure,* and pushed Cuba closer to the Soviet Union. Kennedy's administration tried assassinations and other tactics to get rid of Castro but failed. In 1963, *civil rights began to distract Kennedy from the Cold War. Kennedy had been reluctant to support black demands*, and he seemed to share the fears of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director J. Edgar Hoover that the movement was inspired by communism. Kennedy waited until 1962 to ban discrimination in federal housing, a 1960 campaign promise. He used force only when federal law was blatantly violated, but would not protect civil rights workers from violence, insisting that law enforcement was a local responsibility. *The Birmingham protests convinced Kennedy that the United States could not portray itself as the champion of freedom in the world while it maintained a system of racial inequality. In June, he called for a law banning discrimination in all public accommodations, a major goal of the civil rights struggle. But Kennedy died before the civil rights bill was enacted.* On November 22, 1963, while riding in a motorcade through Dallas, Texas, he was shot and killed, most likely by Lee Harvey Oswald, a troubled former marine.

Black Power Movement

*Malcolm X was the father of "Black Power,"* a slogan popularized by SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael in 1966 during a march in Mississippi. *Black Power rallied those angry with the federal government's failure to stop violence against civil rights activists, white attempts to dominate the movement, and the movement's inability to influence the economic plight of urban blacks. Black Power suggested everything from electing more blacks to political office to the belief that blacks were a colonized people whose freedom could be won only through revolutionary struggles for self-determination.* The idea reflected the radicalization of young civil rights activists and inspired cultural pride. The word "Negro" was abandoned for "Afro-American," and African dress and hairstyles were celebrated. Previously interracial civil rights groups like SNCC and CORE also repudiated their inclusion of whites, and they soon disintegrated. New groups sprang up, however, most prominently the Black Panther Party, formed in Oakland, California, in 1966 to protest policy brutality.

Ho Chi Minh

*The communist leader of Vietnam's movement to end French rule there. He modeled his 1945 declaration of nationhood on the Declaration of Independence.* In Vietnam in 1945, when the Japanese were expelled, the French moved to crush a national independence movement led by Ho Chi Minh and reassert its colonial rule. Anticommunism pulled the United States deeper into involvement in southeast Asia. Following a policy set by Truman, Eisenhower gave billions of dollars in aid for French efforts, and by the early 1950s, the United States was paying for four-fifths of the costs of France's war in Vietnam. But Eisenhower did not send U.S. troops in 1954, when French forces were on the verge of defeat. Rejecting National Security Council advice to use nuclear weapons, Eisenhower left France no choice but to concede Vietnamese independence

Vietcong

*Vietnamese Communists, the guerrilla force that, with the support of the North Vietnamese Army, fought against South Vietnam* (late 1950s-1975) and the United States (early 1960s-1973). Though beginning in the mid-1950s as a collection of various groups opposed to the government of President Diem, the Viet Cong became in 1960 the military arm of the National Liberation Front (NLF). In 1969 the NLF joined other groups in the areas of South Vietnam that were controlled by the Viet Cong to form the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG). The movement's *principal objectives were the overthrow of the South Vietnamese government and the reunification of Vietnam.* In the 1964 election campaign, Johnson said he did not intend to send U.S. troops to Vietnam. Advised to do so after the proper provocation, he launched air strikes against North Vietnam and sent U.S. ground troops to the South when *the Viet Cong, in early 1965, attacked a U.S. air base.* By 1968, more than half a million U.S. troops were at war in South Vietnam. U.S. forces bombed North and South Vietnam with more tonnage than was used by all sides in World War II. *U.S. ground forces ruthlessly hunted the Viet Cong in "search and destroy" operations that left villages burned and many civilians killed. But the might of the U.S. military did not break the Viet Cong insurgency or its North Vietnamese support.* In 1968, they launched the *Tet Offensive* (see above).

Betty Friedan

A new feminist consciousness began to emerge in 1963, with the publication of *Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. Friedan criticized the emptiness of consumer culture and emphasized middle-class discontent.* Her book portrayed talented and educated women trapped in a world in which they believed marriage and motherhood were their primary ambitions. Women's lives still revolved around the home, now a suburban home, which Friedan called a "comfortable concentration camp." The book focused attention on feminist concerns. In 1963, Congress passed the Equal Pay Act, barring sex discrimination among those holding the same job. The Civil Rights Act prohibited inequalities based on sex as well as race. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission challenged barriers to women's employment. *In 1966, the National Organization of Women was formed, with Friedan the president, as a civil rights organization to press for equal opportunity in jobs, education, and political participation.*

The Feminine Mystique

A new feminist consciousness began to emerge in 1963, with the publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. *Friedan criticized the emptiness of consumer culture and emphasized middle-class discontent.* Her book portrayed *talented and educated women trapped in a world in which they believed marriage and motherhood were their primary ambitions. Women's lives still revolved around the home, now a suburban home, which Friedan called a "comfortable concentration camp."* The book focused attention on feminist concerns.

Proposition 187

California Proposition 187 was a 1994 ballot initiative to establish a state-run citizenship screening system and prohibit illegal immigrants from using non-emergency health care, public education, and other services in the State of California. Voters passed the proposed law at a referendum on November 8, 1994.

N.O.W.

In *1966, the National Organization of Women was formed, with Friedan the president,* as a civil rights organization to press for equal opportunity in jobs, education, and political participation. Believed *status of women was declining* because 75% of women are employed in the lowest paid fields, get paid, on average, 60% of what men earn and comprise 1% of federal judges, 4% of all lawyers, 7% of all doctors and yet represent 51% of the U.S population. *Defines freedom for women as:* -A fully equal partnership of the sexes -Having the opportunity to develop their fullest human potential -including a nationwide network of childcare centers, enabling women to work -an equitable sharing of the responsibilities of home and children

SEATO

During WWII, Vietnamese nationalists led by Ho Chi Minh, established an independent Vietnamese government seated in Hanoi. They had fought hard for many years to remove the French colonizers and regain control over their country. *In 1954, the Geneva Accords, signed by delegates from France, Britain, The Soviet Union and China, set up a divided Vietnam along the 17th parallel with the French in the south and Viet Minh in the north. Elections would unify the country and determine who gained permanent control . The U.S refused to sign the agreement for fear that Ho Chi Minh would win the election and thereby create a communist Vietnam. Secretary of State Dulles responded to this development by initiating SEATO, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization that included the U.S and seven other countries.* Thailand, Pakistan, Australia, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia all signed the agreement. *The real point of this treaty was to give the U.S legal justification for the "defense" of Vietnam, if we can truthfully call it that today.* While Dulles was writing treaties, Ngo Dinh Diem, the leader of South Vietnam put in power by U.S and French leaders, was busy making enemies of the Vietnamese people. He was not distributing land fairly, suppressed or killed his opponents and refused to comply with the agreed upon elections. His tyrannical leadership increased the popularity of the communists and challenged the U.S policy of containment.

SNCC

In 1960, young black and a few white activists in Raleigh, North Carolina, formed *the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which would work to replace segregation with a "beloved community" of racial justice, and give blacks control over the decisions that affected their lives*. Direct actions of many sorts followed the sit-ins. Blacks demanded access to segregated beaches and pools. In 1961, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) launched the Freedom Rides. Integrated groups traveled on buses into the Deep South to force compliance with court orders banning segregation in interstate transportation. Violent mobs attacked them and burned the buses while police stood by. The Freedom Rides forced the federal desegregation of interstate transportation. Escalating protests saw the growing resistance by local authorities. *Late in 1961, SNCC and other groups began a nonviolent campaign against racial discrimination in Albany, Georgia. The protests lasted a year, and demonstrators' filling of jails failed to win national sympathy.* In late 1962, a court ordered the University of Mississippi to admit James Meredith, a black student. State police did nothing as a mob encouraged by the state's governor rioted. Two were killed, and President Kennedy dispatched army troops to restore order.

Malcom X

If the early civil rights movement had clear objectives and profound accomplishments, the later movement saw political fragmentation and few victories. Even during the height of integration struggles, the incendiary orator Malcolm X *insisted that blacks must control the political and economic resources of their own communities and avoid working with whites. Malcom X preached an extremist philosophy that denounced all white people and proposed a separate black nation as they only hope for full equality.* Named Malcolm Little when as a youth he committed several crimes, *Malcolm X converted in jail to the Nation of Islam, or Black Muslims, who preached a message of white evil and black discipline.* Malcolm dropped his "slave surname" in favor of "X," symbolizing blacks' separation from African ancestry. Released from prison, Malcolm X *became a spokesman for the Muslims and a vehement critic of the integrationism and nonviolence of King and the civil rights movement.* Unlike King, Malcolm X *saw nothing redemptive in American values.* *On a 1964 trip to Mecca, Islam's spiritual center, Malcolm X saw interracial harmony between Muslims and moderated his message, embracing the possibility of interracial cooperation for radical change in America. But his assassination in early 1965 left no consistent ideology or organization behind.* His calls for black independence *inspired the urban poor and younger civil rights activists,* and his 1966 autobiography became a best-seller. *Malcolm X was the father of "Black Power,"* a slogan popularized by SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael in 1966 during a march in Mississippi. Black Power rallied those angry with the federal government's failure to stop violence against civil rights activists, white attempts to dominate the movement, and the movement's inability to influence the economic plight of urban blacks. Black Power suggested everything from electing more blacks to political office to the belief that blacks were a colonized people whose freedom could be won only through revolutionary struggles for self-determination.

The Christian Coalition

Immigration was one front in what became called the Culture Wars—battles over moral values in the 1990s. *The Christian Coalition, founded by evangelical minister Pat Robertson, became a major force in Republican politics, launching crusades against gay rights, secularism in public schools, and government aid to the arts.* Sometimes it seemed the nation was refighting older conflicts between traditional religion and modern secular culture. Some local governments required the teaching of creationism as an alternative to Darwin's theory of evolution. And conservatives continued to assail the alleged effects of the 1960s, including the erosion of the nuclear family, the changing racial landscape caused by immigration, and a decline in traditional values. The 2000 census showed "family values" were indeed changing. Half of all marriages ended in divorce and over a third of all births were to unmarried women, including more professional women in their 30s and 40s. Two-thirds of married women worked outside of the home, and less than one-fourth of all households were "traditional," with a wife, husband, and their children. Yet, the pay gap between men and women persisted. In 1994, the Supreme Court reaffirmed a woman's right to obtain an abortion. But the narrow vote indicated that the legal status of abortion rights could change, given future Court appointments. By 2000, conservatives had not been able to eliminate abortion rights, restore prayer in public schools, or persuade women to stay at home. More women than ever attended college and entered professions such as law, medicine, and business. Some radical conservatives who believed the federal government was threatening American freedom started to arm themselves and form private militias. Fringe groups spread a mixture of radical Christian, racist, anti-Semitic, and antigovernment ideas. Private armies vowed to resist enforcement of federal gun control laws, and for millions of Americans, gun ownership became the highest symbol of liberty. Militia groups used the symbolism and language of the American Revolution, and warned that leaders of both political parties were conspiring to surrender U.S. sovereignty to the United Nations or another shadowy international conspiracy. Such groups gained attention when Timothy McVeigh, a member of the militant antigovernment movement, exploded a bomb at a federal office building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 persons. McVeigh was captured, convicted, and executed.

The Port Huron Statement

In 1962 and 1963, books appeared that challenged the 1950s consensus. In some ways the most influential critique came in 1962 from a small group of liberal and radical college students, *Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)*. Their Port Huron statement, composed at Port Huron, Michigan, *criticized American institutions, including political parties, corporations, unions, and the military-industrial complex.* But the *document inspired new student radicalism with its vision of social change.* The statements' authors *called for the creation of a democracy of individual participation, where the "individual shares in those social decisions determining the quality and direction of his life."* *The statement guided the spirit of the New Left and freedom, for the New Left, meant "participatory democracy."* This rather vague standard was used to judge existing social arrangements, and workplaces, schools, and government were found to be deeply flawed and undemocratic. The New Left rejected a society run by experts, the dream of the Progressive generation. SDS grew quickly, and in 1964, events at the University of California at Berkeley revealed the power of the student movement. This university, an immense and bureaucratic Cold War institution, imposed a new rule that banned political groups from using a central area of the campus to distribute ideas and literature. It sparked massive protests. Students, including conservatives, created a movement for free expression. Protest leaders likened the university to a knowledge factory, and encouraged students to break the machines. Massive protests for months caused the university to rescind its ban on free expression.

War Powers Act

In 1971, the New York Times published the Pentagon Papers, a classified government report that traced U.S. involvement in Vietnam back to World War II and showed how multiple presidents had misled the American public about it. The Supreme Court rejected Nixon's effort to suppress the papers' publication. *In 1973, Congress passed the War Powers Act, which limited presidential authority by requiring congressional approval for troop commitments overseas.*

Pentagon Papers

In 1971, the New York Times published the Pentagon Papers, a classified government report that traced U.S. involvement in Vietnam back to World War II and showed how multiple presidents had misled the American public about it. The Supreme Court rejected Nixon's effort to suppress the papers' publication. In 1973, Congress passed the War Powers Act, which limited presidential authority by requiring congressional approval for troop commitments overseas. Nixon was obsessed with secrecy and did not tolerate differences of opinion. He viewed critics as national security threats and created an "enemies list" of unfriendly reporters, politicians, and celebrities. When the Pentagon Papers were published, Nixon established a special investigative unit in the White House known as the "plumbers" to get information about Daniel Ellsberg, the former government official who had leaked the papers to the press. The plumbers raided Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office to discredit him. In June 1972, five former employees of Nixon's reelection committee were caught breaking into the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate apartment complex in Washington, D.C., and were arrested. Seriously eroded the American publics confidence in the government.

Oliver North

In 1985, Reagan secretly authorized the sale of arms to Iran (then engaged in a war with Iraq) in order to get the release of American hostages held by Islamic groups in the Middle East. But *the director of the Central Intelligence Agency and Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North of the National Security Council diverted funds from the arms sales to buy military supplies for the Contras, in defiance of Congress.* In 1986, the scheme was exposed in the media, and Congress held televised hearings that showed lying and violations of the law that recalled the Nixon era. Eleven members of Reagan's administration were convicted of perjury or destroying documents or plead guilty before they were tried. Reagan denied knowledge of the scheme, but the affair undermined the public's confidence in him.

Clarence Thomas

In 1990, President George H. W. Bush nominated Thomas for a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He served in that role for 16 months, and on July 1, 1991, was nominated by Bush to fill Marshall's seat on the United States Supreme Court. Thomas's confirmation hearings were bitter and intensely fought, centering on an accusation that he had sexually harassed attorney Anita Hill, a subordinate at the Department of Education and subsequently at the EEOC. Hill claimed that Thomas had repeatedly made sexual and romantic overtures to her, despite her repeatedly rebuffing him and telling him to stop; Thomas and his supporters claimed that Hill, witnesses who came forward on her behalf, and her supporters had fabricated the allegations to prevent a black conservative from getting a seat on the Supreme Court. The U.S. Senate ultimately confirmed Thomas by a vote of 52-48.

The Cuban Missile Crisis

In Cuba in October 1962, U.S. spy planes discovered that the Soviets were installing missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads to U.S. targets. The Russians' motives are still unclear, but the Kennedy administration refused to accept the missiles' presence. Kennedy rejected military advice to invade Cuba, which would have very likely triggered a Soviet attack in Berlin and perhaps nuclear war, and instead imposed a blockade or "quarantine" of the island, demanding the missiles' removal. Tense behind-the-scenes negotiations led Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev to withdraw the missiles in exchange for U.S. promises not to invade Cuba and secretly remove U.S. missiles from Turkey that could reach the Soviet Union. For thirteen days, the world was on the brink of total nuclear war, and the crisis diminished Kennedy's Cold War enthusiasm.

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

Lyndon Johnson took office with little experience in foreign relations. While reluctant to send U.S. troops to South Vietnam and fearing interminable involvement, he felt that "losing" Vietnam would deliver electoral advantages to Republicans. In August 1964, North Vietnamese boats encountered an American ship on a spy mission off of North Vietnam's coast. When the boats fired on the U.S. vessel, Johnson claimed the United States was a victim of aggression. *Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, authorizing the president to take measures to defend U.S. forces in Vietnam.* Only two senators voted against the resolution, the nearest the United States came to declaring war in this conflict, and it passed without any discussion of U.S. goals or strategy.

SALT

Nixon launched his political career as a militant anticommunist, but he and Kissinger were "realists." They were more interested in power than ideology and preferred stability to endless conflict. Nixon hoped that better relations with the Soviets would pressure North Vietnam to end the Vietnam War on terms acceptable to America. Nixon also realized that China had its own interests, separate from those of the Soviets, and would soon be a major world power. In early 1972, Nixon made a highly publicized trip to Beijing, which led to China finally occupying its seat in the United Nations. Although full diplomatic relations with China were not established until 1979, Nixon's visit sparked a vast trade increase between the United States and China. Three months after his China trip, Nixon became the first president to visit the Soviet Union, where he negotiated with Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev. The talks led to increased trade and *the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, which capped each country's arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads*

The Sharon Statement

The Goldwater campaign and other stirrings showed that *the 1960s had a conservative side*. In 1960, students inspired by conservative intellectual William F. Buckley gathered at his home in Sharon, Connecticut, and *formed the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF). The YAF's Sharon Statement advocated the free market as the basis of personal freedom, limited government, and the destruction of global communism in the Cold War.* YAF members became Goldwater's shock troops in his campaign. Goldwater also found support in the suburbs of California and the Southwest, where immigrants from elsewhere in the United States had come to work in defense-related industries. *These suburbanites were the base for later conservative insurgencies.* Goldwater's winning of five Deep South states also showed that Republicans might take advantage of white resentments against civil rights and move the South away from the Democrats. Although conservatives in the 1960s would abandon blatant language of racial superiority and inferiority, their calls for law and order and their stigmatization of welfare had strong racial overtones.

C. Wright Mills

Some intellectuals thought that affluence and the Cold War mentality obscured the degree to which the United States did not live up to its own ideal of freedom. In 1957, political scientist Hans Morgenthau argued that free enterprise had created "new accumulations" of power that threatened individual liberty. *Radical sociologist C. Wright Mills challenged the idea that democratic pluralism defined American life, and argued that America was ruled by a "power elite"—an interlocking directorate of corporate leaders, politicians, and military men who dominated government and society, making political democracy obsolete and denying real freedom of choice to Americans.*

The Tet Offensive

The 1960s climaxed in 1968, when profound events happened so quickly that society seemed to be disintegrating. *In January 1968, the Viet Cong launched the Tet Offensive, multiple uprisings throughout South Vietnam that took major cities* and *completely surprised U.S. military leaders. U.S. forces repulsed the attacks and inflicted heavy losses, but the intense fighting, captured on television, eroded the confidence of the public in political and military leaders who repeatedly claimed that victory was not far off.* Leading figures in politics and the press now criticized the war. Eugene McCarthy, an antiwar senator from Minnesota, announced he would seek the Democratic presidential nomination, and with the support of thousands of students, won the New Hampshire primary. Lyndon Johnson, stunned, refused to send 200,000 more troops to Vietnam, as the army suggested, and declared he would not seek reelection. Peace talks began in Paris.

AIM

The American Indian Movement, founded in 1968, staged protests demanding greater tribal sovereignty and economic resources guaranteed in treaties. In 1969, Indians seized Alcatraz Island in San Francisco, claiming it had been illegally seized from the original inhabitants. The protest, lasting until 1971, inspired the Red Power movement. In the 1970s and 1980s, many Indian tribes won more control over education and economic development on reservations, and Indian activists brought land claims and other suits demanding compensation for past dispossession.

Contras

The Contras were the various U.S.-backed and funded right-wing rebel groups that were active from 1979 to the early 1990s in opposition to the socialist Sandinista Junta of National Reconstruction Government in Nicaragua. Among the separate contra groups, the Nicaraguan Democratic Force emerged as the largest by far.

Miranda v. Arizona

The Court also pressed states to respect civil liberties enshrined in the Bill of Rights. It required states to abide by protections against illegal search and seizure, honor defendants' rights to a speedy trial, prohibit cruel and unusual punishments, and secure the right of poor defendants to receive publicly supported counsel. *Miranda v. Arizona (1966) was one of the most important of these decisions, in which individuals were supposed to be made aware of their rights on arrest, including their right to remain silent and confer with lawyers before answering any questions.*

EXCOM

The Executive Committee of the National Security Council (commonly referred to as simply the Executive Committee or ExComm) was a body of United States government officials that convened to advise President John F. Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. It was composed of the regular members of the National Security Council, along with other men whose advice the President deemed useful during the crisis. EXCOMM was formally established by National Security Action Memorandum 196 on October 22, 1962. It was made up of twelve full members in addition to the president.

The Persian Gulf War

The move from a bipolar world to one of U.S. predominance seemed to redefine America's role in the world. President George H. W. Bush talked about a "new world order." But its characteristics were unclear. Bush's first major foreign policy action seemed a return to U.S. interventionism in the Western Hemisphere. In 1989, Bush sent troops to Panama to overthrow the government of Manuel Antonio Noriega, a former U.S. ally who became involved in the international drug trade. Though it cost more than 3,000 Panamanian lives and was condemned by the United Nations as a violation of international law, Bush called it a great success. The United States installed a new government and tried Noriega in the American courts. A deeper crisis emerged in 1990 when *Iraq invaded and annexed Kuwait*, an oil-rich sheikdom on the Persian Gulf. *Afraid that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein might invade Saudi Arabia, a longtime U.S. ally that supplied more oil to the United States than any other nation, Bush sent troops to defend that country and warned Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait or face war.* The policy caused intense debate. Critics argued that diplomacy was still possible, and that neither Kuwait nor Saudi Arabia were free or democratic nations. But *Iraq's invasion so blatantly violated international law that Bush assembled a large coalition of nations to wage the war, won UN support and sent half a million U.S. troops and the navy to the region. In early 1991, U.S. forces drove the Iraqi army from Kuwait. Tens of thousands of Iraqis and 184 Americans died in the conflict.* The United Nations ordered Iraq to disarm and imposed economic sanctions that caused widespread civilian suffering for the rest of the 1990s, but Hussein retained power. A large U.S. military establishment stayed in Saudi Arabia, angering Islamic fundamentalists who thought the U.S. presence insulted Islam. But the U.S. military won quickly and avoided a Vietnam-style war. *President Bush soon defined the Gulf War as the first struggle to create a world of democracy and free trade.* General Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Dick Cheney, the secretary of defense, offered two different policy directions. Powell argued that the post-Cold War world would see conflicts in unexpected places, and that the United States, to avoid becoming the world's policeman, should not send troops without clear objectives and withdrawal plans. Cheney argued that with the end of the Soviet Union, the United States had the power to reshape the world and prevent hostile states from assuming regional power. Cheney argued that the United States had to use force, without world support, if necessary, to maintain strategic dominance.

George H. W. Bush

The move from a bipolar world to one of U.S. predominance seemed to redefine America's role in the world. President George H. W. Bush talked about a "new world order." But its characteristics were unclear. Bush's first major foreign policy action seemed a return to U.S. interventionism in the Western Hemisphere. In 1989, Bush sent troops to Panama to overthrow the government of Manuel Antonio Noriega, a former U.S. ally who became involved in the international drug trade. Though it cost more than 3,000 Panamanian lives and was condemned by the United Nations as a violation of international law, Bush called it a great success. The United States installed a new government and tried Noriega in the American courts. A deeper crisis emerged in 1990 when Iraq invaded and annexed Kuwait, an oil-rich sheikdom on the Persian Gulf. Afraid that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein might invade Saudi Arabia, a longtime U.S. ally that supplied more oil to the United States than any other nation, Bush sent troops to defend that country and warned Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait or face war. The policy caused intense debate. Critics argued that diplomacy was still possible, and that neither Kuwait nor Saudi Arabia were free or democratic nations. But Iraq's invasion so blatantly violated international law that Bush assembled a large coalition of nations to wage the war, won UN support and sent half a million U.S. troops and the navy to the region. In early 1991, U.S. forces drove the Iraqi army from Kuwait. Tens of thousands of Iraqis and 184 Americans died in the conflict. The United Nations ordered Iraq to disarm and imposed economic sanctions that caused widespread civilian suffering for the rest of the 1990s, but Hussein retained power. A large U.S. military establishment stayed in Saudi Arabia, angering Islamic fundamentalists who thought the U.S. presence insulted Islam. But the U.S. military won quickly and avoided a Vietnam-style war. President Bush soon defined the Gulf War as the first struggle to create a world of democracy and free trade. General Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Dick Cheney, the secretary of defense, offered two different policy directions. Powell argued that the post-Cold War world would see conflicts in unexpected places, and that the United States, to avoid becoming the world's policeman, should not send troops without clear objectives and withdrawal plans. Cheney argued that with the end of the Soviet Union, the United States had the power to reshape the world and prevent hostile states from assuming regional power. Cheney argued that the United States had to use force, without world support, if necessary, to maintain strategic dominance.

Iran Contra Affair

U.S. involvement in Central America created the great scandal of Reagan's presidency, the Iran-Contra affair. In 1984, Congress banned military aid to the Contras, those in Nicaragua fighting the Sandinistas who in 1979 had ousted the U.S.-backed dictator, Anastasio Somoza. In 1985, Reagan secretly authorized the sale of arms to Iran (then engaged in a war with Iraq) in order to get the release of American hostages held by Islamic groups in the Middle East. But the director of the Central Intelligence Agency and Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North of the National Security Council diverted funds from the arms sales to buy military supplies for the Contras, in defiance of Congress. In 1986, the scheme was exposed in the media, and Congress held televised hearings that showed lying and violations of the law that recalled the Nixon era. Eleven members of Reagan's administration were convicted of perjury or destroying documents or plead guilty before they were tried. Reagan denied knowledge of the scheme, but the affair undermined the public's confidence in him.

Vietnamization

Vietnamization was a policy of the Richard Nixon administration to end U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War through a program to "expand, equip, and train South Vietnamese forces and assign to them an ever-increasing combat role, at the same time steadily reducing the number of U.S. combat troops."

Reaganomics

While Reagan, like his predecessors, invoked "economic freedom," he defined it as reducing union power, dismantling regulations, and radically reducing taxes. In 1981 and 1986, Reagan won tax reforms from Congress that dramatically reduced taxes for the wealthy and moved America away from the ideal of progressive, graduated income taxes. Reagan also appointed conservatives to lead regulatory agencies, who reduced environmental and workplace safety opposed by business. Liberals since the New Deal had tried to fuel economic growth by using government power to raise Americans' purchasing power. Reagan, using "supply-side economics" (called "trickle-down economics" by opponents), relied on high interest rates to curb inflation and lower tax rates for business and the wealthy to stimulate private investment. This policy assumed that cutting taxes would make Americans at all income levels work harder, because they would keep more of what they earned, and that everyone would benefit from increased business profits and a growing economy, which would raise government revenues despite lower tax rates. Reagan also began an era of hostility between government and labor unions. In 1981, when members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO), the air traffic controllers' union, went on strike in defiance of federal law, Reagan fired them all and used the military to supervise air traffic until new controllers were trained. Reagan inspired many employers to launch anti-union offensives, and more businesses now hired workers to permanently replace workers who had gone on strike. Manufacturing employment continued its long-term decline, further reducing union strength. When Reagan left office, both the service and retail sectors employed more Americans than manufacturing, and only 11 percent of nongovernment workers were union members. "Reaganomics," as critics called the administration's policies, initially created the most severe recession since the 1930s. But a long period of economic expansion followed the recession of 1981-1982. As employers reduced their workforces, shifted production overseas, and used new technologies, they became more profitable. Simultaneously, inflation dropped dramatically, in part because of greater oil production. The stock market rose, and despite a sharp drop in 1987, the stock market continued to climb upward. Reagan's policies, deindustrialization, and rising stock prices contributed to increasing economic inequality. The national debt under Reagan tripled to $2.7 trillion. But Reagan remained very popular and easily defeated the Democratic candidate Walter Mondale in the 1984 election.

War Productoin Board

Within the United States, the war transformed the role of the federal government. Roosevelt established new wartime agencies such as the *War Production Board*, War Manpower Commission, and Office of Price Administration to *control labor distribution, shipping, manufacturing quotas, and fix wages, prices, and rents.* The number of federal workers rose from 1 million to 4 million, and unemployment, at a rate of 14 percent in 1940, virtually disappeared by 1943. The government built housing for war workers and forced civilian companies to produce material for the war effort. Auto plants now made trucks, tanks, and jeeps for the army. The gross national product more than doubled to $214 billion during the war, and federal wartime spending equaled twice the amount spent in all previous 150 years. The government sold millions in war bonds, hiked taxes, and starting taking income tax from Americans' paychecks. By 1945, the number of Americans paying taxes increased. *The purpose was to direct industrial conversion to war production.*