IDEOLOGICAL POLARIZATION AND
THE CRISIS OF THE ACTIVIST STATE
THE INTENSIFYING CRISIS OF THE 1960s AND 1970s
THE FALL OF LYNDON JOHNSON AND THE SHATTERING OF THE DEMOCRATIC COALITION
1976 Electoral College Results
NIXON IN IDEOLOGICAL CONFLICT WITH THE DEMOCRATIC CONGRESS
Nixon's Mixed Messages on the Role of Government
WATERGATE AS THE EXPRESSION OF IDEOLOGICAL POLARIZATION
1972 Democratic Presidential Candidate George McGovern on Economic Issues
Excerpts from the Articles of Impeachment of Richard Nixon
STAGFLATION AND FISCAL CRISIS
Average Annual Economic Performance of Key Economic Indicators
THE GROWTH OF GOVERNMENT IN THE 1960s AND 1970s
The Impact of the Great Society on Domestic Policy
Black Mayors Representing Cities with Populations over 400,000
THE IDEOLOGICAL CROSSPRESSURES ON THE CARTER ADMINISTRATION
1976 Electoral College Results
Links for the Study of Presidents Lyndon Johnson through Jimmy Carter
THE INTENSIFYING CRISIS OF THE 1960s AND 1970s
From the late 1960s through the 1970s the United States experienced an ever more serious ideological crisis. The presidency of Lyndon Johnson began with great energy and enthusiasm, with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the war on poverty, and other Great Society legislation. But it ended tragically, with the United States bogged down in a futile war in southeast Asia and the domestic policy consensus Johnson had so carefully crafted shattered by racial and social strife. The Great Society had not lived up to its billing as a solution to social problems. The political system was polarizing as newly militant political groups called for more radical change and conservatives blamed increasing racial and political tensions on the changes unleashed by liberal Democrats. In 1968 the Republicans regained the White House behind the candidacy of Richard Nixon. But the Democrats retained control of Congress. Relations between Nixon and the Democratic Congress steadily worsened, culminating in the beginning of impeachment proceedings and Nixon's resignation.
Further, in contrast with the prosperity of the Johnson years, as the country moved into the 1970s, the U.S. economy underwent a series of shocks. Inflation rose steadily, prompting Nixon to place the country temporarily under wage and price controls and to take the dollar off the gold standard. As Gerald Ford succeeded Nixon in 1974, the skyrocketing price of imported oil sent the country into what at that time was the worst recession since the Great Depression. The prosperity of the 1960s, which had been the glue of the policy consensus crafted by Johnson, was gone, and ideological conflict intensified.
THE FALL OF LYNDON JOHNSON AND THE SHATTERING OF THE DEMOCRATIC COALITION back to top
The New Politics of Social and Racial Issues
In the election of 1964, Lyndon Johnson reunited the broad Democratic coalition that had swept FDR into power and held the White House for the Democrats throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Johnson won wide support from the whites and blacks; Protestants, Catholics, and Jews; trade unionists, city machines, and liberal reformers. He won the electoral votes of every region of the country except the deep South, where racial tensions were highest. This coalition that produced the landslide in 1964 also provided the votes for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Great Society programs that passed in 1965.
But this grand coalition could not be sustained over the course of the Johnson presidency. The Johnson administration, which had begun with so many major achievements, was increasingly undermined by the heightening conflicts within society and the Democratic Party. The war in Vietnam dragged on with U.S. casualties rising but with no victory in sight. Larger and larger demonstrations against the Vietnam War mushroomed across the campuses of the land. Racial tensions erupted into riots in the Watts ghetto of Los Angeles in the summer of 1965 and spread to dozens of cities across the nation in subsequent summers. Johnson's popularity ratings began to plummet. In the midterm elections of 1966 the Democrats lost 47 seats in the House. The ideological majority that had spawned the Great Society was gone, and the period of innovation in domestic policy was over.
Chicgo riot of 1966: Many American cities experienced race riots in the mid-late 1960sNew political forces were mobilizing on both the left and the right and polarizing political life. The success of the civil rights movement led to the emergence of new political forces and new demands for change. Among blacks, a new set of leaders arose demanding not only civil rights but "Black Power." Opposition to the Vietnam War was growing among liberal intellectuals, students, and young people. And the women's movement was an increasingly powerful force to be reckoned with. Environmental activists were demanding that more be done to preserve the global ecosystem. The emergence of these new political forces represented a serious challenge to the Democratic political establishment that had dominated national politics for over 30 years. The Black Power, student, women's, and environmental movements all raised fundamental questions about the traditional roles and values of American society. Each presented fundamental challenges not only to prevailing political and economic practices but also to the very way Americans thought of their personal identities. In this sense they were all countercultural movements, movements that challenged the dominant political groups.
While the more radical elements of these countercultural movements demonstrated in the streets, the more moderate elements sought influence in the Democratic Party. But these challenges to prevailing doctrines did not go unanswered within either the Democratic Party or the larger political system.
The Black Power and women's movements ran into increasing opposition from other elements in the Democratic coalition. Blacks demanding political power in the North clashed bitterly with the Democratic machines and their ethnic supporters who had traditionally controlled city politics. Black and women's groups' demands for economic redistribution as well as political equality frequently conflicted with the narrow economic interests of white males. It was no longer without cost for a northern white politician to support the demands of black and women's groups. In foreign policy, the countercultural forces clashed with the national security state apparatus. Democrat Truman had been the architect of the national security state and the cold war system. Democrats Kennedy and Johnson had only applied the national security doctrines long accepted by the foreign policy establishment in escalating the Vietnam War.
The Democrats in the 1968 Election
As the 1968 election approached, Johnson faced growing opposition from antiwar and other dissident movements within the Democratic Party to his bid for another term. Antiwar Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota announced his candidacy. Waiting in the wings was Robert Kennedy, brother of the martyred president. In the first test of strength, the New Hampshire primary, the nationally unknown McCarthy ran almost even with Johnson, who as the incumbent president had been expected to win easily. Robert Kennedy decided Johnson was vulnerable and entered the race. Rather than face a protracted struggle for the nomination of a party that would be hopelessly divided, Johnson chose to withdraw from the race. Hubert Humphrey, Johnson's vicepresident, stepped in to lead the Democratic establishment against the new political forces. Although he never put his name directly before voters, Humphrey utilized his strength with the party leaders who still controlled the presidential selection process. Humphrey held on to a precarious lead in delegates over Kennedy going into the final test, the California primary. Kennedy won California, but was assassinated the night of his primary victory.
Conflict between various Democratic candidates deeply split the party and cost it control of the presidencyAt the Democratic convention in Chicago, the conflicts between the new political forces and the Democratic old guard boiled over. As demonstrators and police clashed in the streets, Democrats clashed on the convention floor. Humphrey won the nomination, but the historic Democratic coalition was in shambles. The beleaguered Democrats also faced defections from the right. Without the Southerner Johnson at the head of the ticket, the party that had imposed the civil rights revolution on the South had little chance of winning the support of segregationists. Governor George Wallace of Alabama bolted from the Democratic Party and ran the first major third-party campaign in 20 years. Wallace emphasized growing white opposition to activist government and to black and student demonstrators.
Nixon and Social Issues in the 1968 Election
The Republican Party was the ultimate beneficiary of the shattering of the Democratic coalition and the debacle in Chicago. The Republican strategy for dealing with the new social issues emphasized traditional values, in opposition to the new politics of the countercultural left. Nixon's southern strategy openly sought the votes of white Southerners and urban ethnics opposed to the gains blacks had won in recent years. A key element in Nixon's campaign in 1968 was the theme of law and order. It was not only Democrats who heard in Nixon's call for law and order a coded message of racism. The Nixon campaign skillfully exploited popular resentment against the growing Black Power and student peace movements. Nixon selected as his running mate Maryland Governor Spiro Agnew, whose main claim to national recognition had been a bitter confrontation with Black Power leaders in Baltimore.
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Richard Nixon won the 1968 with his Sunbelt strategy, taking traditional Republican strongholds in the Westand
Midwest while, along with Dixiecrat George Wallace, denying the Democrats their historical southern baseNixon won the White House in 1968 by the Sunbelt strategy of uniting the South and West against the eastern liberal establishment, a coalition that dominated presidential elections through the 70s and 80s. But even as they were losing the White House, the Democrats retained their hold on Congress, a factor that would loom large in the fate of the Nixon presidency.
NIXON IN IDEOLOGICAL CONFLICT WITH THE DEMOCRATIC CONGRESS back to top
Conflict and Compromise in the First Term
Conflict between the Republican executive and the Democratic legislature was the defining characteristic of the Nixon presidency. At times Nixon chose tactics of moderation, compromise, and accommodation. But the more prevailing mode was confrontation, particularly in the later years of his tenure.
The most significant early battles with Congress were over Nixon's nominees to fill Supreme Court vacancies. Reaction to the activist decisions of the Warren Court in the area of civil rights, rights of criminal defendants, and separation of church and state had been growing throughout the 1960s. Once in office, Nixon continued to work his southern strategy.
After Nixon's segregationist Supreme Court nominees were rejected by the Senate,
he chose non-segregationist conservatives like Chief Justice Warren Burger,
seen here swearing in Gerald Ford as presidentNixon's first two nominees to the court were conservative Southerners of the old traditions, Clement Haynesworth and Harold Carswell. But the Senate must approve presidential judicial nominations. Northern Democrats and moderate Republicans in Congress were not going to allow the reemergence of segregationist doctrines as legitimate. Both these nominees were defeated. For the remainder of his term Nixon chose to nominate northern and western conservatives who had no record of supporting segregation. But a message had been sent to southern conservatives about who was responsible for tough implementation of civil rights laws, and who was not.
The same pattern of mixed confrontation and compromise can be seen in Nixon's economic, social, and budgetary policies. The Great Society had opened the ideological gates for social groups to expect government responsiveness to their needs and had expanded the range of government programs. In the wake of the Great Society, and facing strongly Democratic Congresses, Nixon often tried to steal the Democrats' activist thunder.
Nixon's mixed messages between the social security state and the limited interest state can be seen in his 1970 State of the Union message. On the one hand he criticizes big government, blaming it for rising inflation. But on the other hand he accepts it and invokes it to achieve new ends.
In the same speech Nixon attacks big government yet proposes a dramatic expansion of the role of the national government in protecting the environment and in income support of the poor. Nixon's ecology proposals led to the passage of the National Environmental Protection Act, the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency, and a new era of federal involvement in the regulation of air and water pollution.
While Nixon's public rhetoric suggests an antiwelfare, antigovernment stance, his welfare reform proposal would actually have increased the number of working poor eligible for income support and the role of the national government in the welfare system. But it did not pass a skeptical Congress.Nixon's Mixed Messages on the Role of Government
For Limited Government
Economic Policy: A stark review of the fiscal facts of the 1960s clearly demonstrates where the primary blame for rising prices should be placed. In the decade of the sixties the Federal Government spent $57 billion more than it took in in taxes. . . . A balanced budget requires some hard decisions. It means rejecting spending programs which would benefit some of the people when their net effect would result in price increases for all the people.
Federalism: It is time for a New Federalism, in which, after 190 years of power flowing from the people and local and state governments to Washington, D.C., it will begin to flow back to the states and to the people.
For Activist Government
Environment: Clean air, clean water, open spaces--these should once again be the birthright of every American. If we act now they can be. . .The program I shall propose to Congress will be the most comprehensive and costly program in this field in America's history.
Welfare Reform: [W]e cannot delay longer in accomplishing a total reform of our welfare system. When a system penalizes work, breaks up homes, robs recipients of dignity, there is no alternative to abolishing that system and adopting in its place [a] program of income support, job training, and work incentives. back to top
Even Nixon's attempts to revive the role of state and local governments in the federal system bore the imprint of the Great Society. Nixon's "New Federalism" combined traditional Republican concerns with the role of states and localities with the new federal largess. The main product of the New Federalism was another set of national grants to state and local governments, this time with no troublesome national strings attached to their use. This conflict between conservative rhetoric and activist policies also can be seen in Nixon's decision to impose wage and price controls. As the 1972 election approached, Nixon worried about the effects of rising inflation on his reelection campaign. So despite his symbolic commitment to free markets and limited government, he used discretionary authority Congress had created and invoked a freeze on wage and price increases until he could win a second term.
In Nixon's second term, however, as economic and budgetary pressures mounted, political pressures shifted, and reelection concerns were eliminated, Nixon increasingly returned to a more consistent limited state stance. Now his rhetorical blasts at the "spendthrift" Congress were matched by executive refusal to spend money Congress had appropriated. Frustrated by his inability to influence congressional votes, Nixon took to the constitutionally dubious tactic of impounding, or simply refusing to spend, monies Congress had appropriated. Billions of dollars appropriated by Congress for water and sewage treatment projects and other programs were never released by the executive branch.
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Domestic Counterintelligence and the Nixon White House
In the tense times of the later Nixon years, confrontation between the president and the Democratic Party over budgetary policy and authority was overshadowed by their conflicts over war powers, executive secrecy, and administration dirty tricks against its political opposition. The systematic lawbreaking in the Nixon White House, which came to be labeled "Watergate," was based on much more than simple official venality. It reflected the mounting political conflict between the Nixon administration and the emerging countercultural forces in American society. It also was a product of the increasing ideo-logical polarization between a Republican president and a Democrat-controlled Congress as the Republican Party was moving to the right and the Democratic Party was moving to the left.
In 1968 the Johnson-Humphrey forces still controlled the Democratic Party. Despite growing skepticism about the Vietnam War, most Democratic members of Congress felt obligated to support the war effort. But once the Republicans won the presidency, Democratic leaders were freed from the bonds of party loyalty. Congressional Democrats and presidential contenders were increasingly responsive to the new countercultural forces that challenged the war, racism, sexism, environmental degradation, and the political and economic institutions that they believed were responsible for these ills.
The Nixon White House had skillfully played on the divisions within the Democratic coalition and made historic gains for the Republican Party with its southern strategy. But as the war dragged on and domestic reform slowed, the strength of the countercultural forces raising fundamental challenges to the policies in Vietnam and at home grew. The Nixon administration increasingly felt under pressure from the demonstrators in the streets and liberal opponents in Congress. Reflecting this siege mentality, the Nixon White House stepped up domestic counterintelligence operations. Although it is rarely openly admitted in established political circles, repression of dissident political groups has long been a practice in American politics. Historically, groups that raise fundamental ideological challenges to the dominant beliefs of the times have been the target of surveillance, infiltration, dirty tricks, persecution by the legal apparatus, and even political violence.
The Watergate Hotel: The failed break-in to Democratic Party Headquarters here eventually led to
the revelation of a secret White House counterintelligence operation to suppress domestic dissentIn the first half of the century, socialists and trade unionists had faced such repression, particularly during the "red scares" of the early 1920s and the McCarthy era. In the 1950s civil rights leaders were a new focus of domestic counterintelligence. Martin Luther King was under continuous FBI surveillance and the victim of vicious leaks from counterintelligence agents about his alleged sexual proclivities. In the Nixon years antiwar, Black Power, and women's groups, and eventually even Democratic Party presidential candidates, were the targets. Government agents infiltrated antiwar and Black Power groups. They spied on leaders, burglarized offices, and forged documents. Provocateurs initiated violence at political demonstrations, and in some cases incited organizations to make violent political attacks on opponents. Prominent opponents of the administration were targeted for special income tax audits. In addition to the FBI and other historic counterintelligence agencies, the White House staff increasingly developed its own dirty tricks apparatus. As 1972 approached, many of these White House operatives transferred to Nixon's reelection campaign and turned their attention to leading Democratic presidential contenders. The burglary at the Watergate complex was aimed at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, which had its offices there.
The McGovern Campaign and the New Liberalism
The Nixon administration's escalation of domestic counterintelligence operations reflected the growing ideological challenge posed by the countercultural political groups. Nixon was correct in sensing that new forces were gaining momentum across the country. The convergence of these movements in the Democratic presidential nomination process made the election of 1972 unlike anything seen in American politics since the 1930s.
As a concession to dissident forces, the Chicago Democratic convention had agreed to reform the rules of the presidential selection process. Antiwar Senator George McGovern of South Dakota chaired the committee that wrote the new rules which opened up the process, took control from party bosses, and guaranteed minorities, women, and youth representation in the process. McGovern then utilized his knowledge of the new rules to win the Democratic nomination. The 1972 McGovern campaign had elements of an insurgency against the establishment that had controlled the Democratic Party since the 1940s. The "new politics" or new liberalism of the McGovern campaign had real differences with the New Deal liberalism of FDR or LBJ.
The older liberalism had provided the philosophical impetus to U.S. internationalism. It had taken the United States into two world wars, launched the cold war, formed the national security state, and committed the nation to fight communism in Korea, Vietnam, and around the globe. The new liberalism of the McGovern campaign was less concerned about cold war objectives than about an immediate end to the Vietnam conflict. The new liberalism sought to attain peace not through military containment of communism but through negotiations with communist regimes and reduction of U.S. commitments around the world.
The new politics differed from the old liberalism on domestic policy as well. With the exception of the early days of the New Deal, the old liberalism was essentially distributive politics. It sought to expand government benefits to the politically well organized segments of society. FDR and LBJ practiced the politics of the social security state.
But the new politics was social democratic. The groups supporting McGovern sought to redistribute income to the poor and to empower groups historically excluded from positions of power. They believed that such ends could be achieved only over the opposition of corporate capitalism. So for the first time in decades, class-conscious rhetoric was reintroduced into the Democratic Party platform.
The historic Democratic coalition had been an amalgam of a wide variety of ethnic groups, a study in cultural pluralism. In contrast with the white, Protestant, conservative Republican base, the old Democratic liberalism had been supported by blacks, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Irish, Italians, Poles, and myriad other ethnic groups.Full-employment—a guaranteed job for all—is the primary economic objective of the Democratic Party. . . . We are determined to make economic security a matter of right. This means a job with decent pay and good working conditions for everyone willing and able to work and an adequate income for those unable to work.
The Democratic Party deplores the increasing concentration of economic power in fewer and fewer hands. Five per cent of the American people control 90 per cent of our productive national wealth. Less than one per cent of all manufacturers have 88 per cent of the profits. Less than two per cent of the population now owns approximately 80 per cent of the nation's personally-held corporate stock. back to top
The McGovern campaign drew its support not from this historic Democratic coalition but primarily from the newly emerging countercultural groups that were less concerned with historic identities and more interested in defining new identities for themselves. The McGovern rules for delegate selection had for the first time guaranteed women and minorities full representation in the nomination process. The McGovern strategy of trying to build a coalition of new political forces historically excluded from political power was reflected in the party platform plank on women.
Women historically have been denied a full voice in the evolution of the political and social institutions of this country and are therefore allied with all under-represented groups in a common desire to form a more humane and compassionate society.While the McGovern forces were calling for an end to the Vietnam War and experimenting with social democracy and countercultural messages, the Nixon Republicans relied on the tried-and-true themes of traditional Americanism and the limited state. Nixon won the 1972 election in a landslide. But this moment of triumph was largely illusory, for the Nixon presidency was about the enter its most severe crisis.The Watergate Scandals
Antiwar and Black Power groups had been crying foul over the violation of their political rights by domestic counterintelligence agencies for years. The McGovern campaign tried to make an election issue of the Watergate burglary and associated dirty tricks, but it could not upset the momentum of the Nixon reelection campaign. But after the election was over, the Democratic Party used its control of the investigative powers of Congress to strike back at the Nixon White House. A special committee of Congress was set up to probe the mounting charges against the Nixon presidency.
The glow of Nixon's reelection landslide was quickly dimmed as the news of 1973 was increasingly dominated by revelations of illegal activities at the White House. Day after day American citizens saw and heard television broadcasts of White House staffers admitting their involvement in dirty tricks and even asserting their right to engage in such practices.
Nixon tried to limit the damage by covering up as much of the White House involvement in the scandals as he could. He invoked the doctrine of executive privilege to try to keep White House documents from congressional investigators. Historically, many of the personal documents of presidents have been kept confidential in order to allow the White House to be able to conduct business frankly, without having the exact text of meetings readily made public. But Nixon asserted a much more global right to keep virtually every executive branch record out of the hands of congressional investigators.
Selected officials of the Nixon administration convicted of crimes: from left to right: White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman, White House Domestic Policy Advisor John Ehrlichman, Attorney General John Mitchell, White House Counsel John Dean, Deputy Campaign Director Jeb Stuart Magruder, White House staffer Howard Hunt, and key player in Watergate break-in G. Gordon LiddyMore important, just as in the earlier dirty tricks operations, the White House coverup was unbounded by any legal restraints. Witnesses were coached in how to mislead investigators and were told to lie. Hush money was paid to buy the silence of key witnesses. But this strategy backfired, as the old crimes were only compounded by Nixon's personal involvement in the obstruction of justice.
Slowly the Nixon administration unraveled under the pressure. In April 1973 Nixon fired many of his top aides, including Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman and leading domestic policy adviser John Ehrlichman. In the fall Vicepresident Agnew was forced to resign under charges of taking bribes and income tax evasion when he was governor of Maryland. In October several top members of the Nixon Justice Department resigned rather than carry out Nixon's demand to fire independent investigator Archibald Cox.
The most damaging revelation was that Nixon had secretly taped virtually all White House meetings. The tapes of these meetings were widely thought to contain the "smoking gun" that proved his personal involvement in illegal activities. Nixon tried to invoke executive privilege to keep the tapes from being released to investigators, but in the summer of 1974 the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the tapes must be turned over to Congress. They did, in fact, reveal Nixon's direct involvement in illegal actions designed to coverup the truth about the scandals. The House Judiciary Committee voted 27-10 to begin the process of impeaching Nixon. In August 1974 Nixon resigned, the first president in American history to do so.
Watergate as Domestic Counterinsurgency
The collection of crimes and scandals dubbed Watergate can be understood as a form of domestic counterinsurgency. Covert action, lying, and lawbreaking had long been accepted practice in executive counterinsurgency operations. During the Vietnam War, the Nixon administration carried these practices to new heights by conducting secret bombing of much of Cambodia for many years
Excerpts from the Articles of Impeachment of Richard Nixon
(voted by the House Judiciary Committee)Obstruction of Justice Richard M. Nixon . . . has prevented, obstructed, and impeded the administration of justice, in that:
[A]gents of the Committee for the Re-election of the President committed unlawful entry of the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee . . . for the purpose of securing political intelligence. Richard M. Nixon . . . engaged personally and through his close subordinates and agents, in a course of conduct or plan designed to delay, impede, and obstruct the investigation of such unlawful entry; to cover up, conceal and protect those responsible; and to conceal the existence and scope of other unlawful covert activities.
The means used to implement this course of conduct or plan included:
—making false or misleading statements
—withholding relevant and material evidence
—counseling witnesses with respect to the giving of false or misleading statements
?approving] the surreptitious payment of substantial sums of money for the purpose of obtaining the silence or influencing the testimony of witnesses
?causing] defendants and individuals convicted to expect favored treatment and consideration in return for their silence or false testimony.Abuse of Power [Richard Nixon] has repeatedly engaged in conduct violating the constitutional rights of citizens:
—He [caused] income tax audits . . . to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.
—He misused the FBI, the Secret Service, and other executive personnel . . . by directing or authorizing such agencies or personnel to conduct or continue electronic surveillance . . . for purposes unrelated to . . . any lawful function of his office.
—He [authorized] a secret investigative unit within the office of the President . . . unlawfully utilized the resources of the CIA [and] engaged in covert and unlawful activities. back to top
before publicly invading that country. In the wake of the Watergate investigation, another special committee created by Congress found systematic abuses of executive power in international counterinsurgency campaigns. The tactics used by the Nixon administration against domestic countercultural forces were borrowed from the methods of counterinsurgency campaigns abroad. The burglars who broke into Democratic headquarters at the Watergate were right- wing Cuban exiles who had learned their trade in operations against the Castro regime. Several of the White House staffers convicted of crimes like burglary were recruited from the international intelligence community. When it sought to strike more comprehensively at its domestic enemies, the Nixon administration tried to use the counterintelligence apparatus of the FBI, CIA, and other federal agencies.If the counterintelligence operations of the Nixon administration had been confined to fringe groups, as similar actions had been in the past, they probably would have been tolerated by the larger political system. However, this repressive apparatus' operations increasingly targeted the major opposition party, which still controlled a majority in Congress. The White House burglars not only raided antiwar groups' offices, they also broke into the national headquarters of the Democratic Party. The "dirty tricksters" not only planted provocateurs in the Black Panther Party, they also planted them in the campaigns of leading Democratic presidential candidates. Unlike the Socialist Workers, the Democrats were a party strong enough to fight back effectively. This mistake, much more than the tactics themselves, was the root of Nixon's downfall.
It fell to Gerald Ford to try to pick up the pieces of the presidency after Watergate. Ford had been appointed vicepresident by Nixon after Agnew had resigned under a cloud. Because he bore the millstone of having been chosen by his disgraced predecessor, Ford had little real chance to make his own mark on the presidency. He had to confront Democratic congressional majorities swelled by the electoral repudiation of Nixon's party in the 1974 midterm election. Immediately upon taking office Ford had to cope with the worst economic and fiscal crisis the United States had faced since the Great Depression. Any significant leadership role was denied him when he failed to win election in his own right, despite running a much closer race than might have been expected under the circumstances.
STAGFLATION AND FISCAL CRISIS back to top
Immediately on the heels of the political crisis of Watergate came the intensification of the economic crisis that had been building during the Nixon years. Table 9.1 shows the magnitude of the economic changes the nation faced in the 1970s. The 1960s had been boom times. But what goes up must come down. After the go-go 1960s, the economic cycle reasserted itself, and the economy went into recession in 1970. The expenditures in southeast Asia also put increasing pressure on the dollar.
In 1971 the Nixon administration took a series of dramatic steps to keep the resultant inflation from impairing his reelection campaign. He took the dollar off the gold standard, effectively devaluing it. In order to check this and other inflationary pressures, Nixon used the discretionary authority Congress had granted and imposed wage and price controls on the economy. Once reelected he gradually lifted the controls. The inflation that had been caged for the 1972 campaign was unleashed. Then in 1974 OPEC asserted its control over oil markets, and the price of oil skyrocketed. The resultant "oil shock" fueled the inflationary fires. Inflation climbed from 3.2 percent under the controls in 1972 to 5.9 percent in 1973 to 9.9 percent in 1974.The oil shock drained so much purchasing power from the domestic economy that the nation was thrown into what was at the time the worst recession since the Great Depression. This put heavy strain on the federal budget. During a recession, government revenues decline because individuals and businesses have less real income to tax. At the same time government expenditures climb because more individuals draw government benefits like unemployment compensation, welfare, food stamps, and Medicaid. The federal deficit, which had averaged $16.1 billion from 1971 to 1974 climbed to $43.6 billion in fiscal 1975 and $66.4 billion in 1976.
The economy recovered somewhat in 1976. But the damage had been done, and throughout the rest of the 1970s economic performance did not return to the glory days of the 1960s or even the more modest levels of the early 1970s.
THE GROWTH OF GOVERNMENT IN THE 1960s AND 1970s back to top
The Dissipation of the Momentum of the Great Society
The growth of domestic programs begun during the Great Society continued into the Nixon years. However, the momentum for program expansion generated during the Great Society slowly dissipated. By the mid-1970s the period of innovation in domestic programs had come to a halt.
The ideological majority created by the Democratic victory in the 1964 election that had launched the Great Society had only been temporary. By the midterm election of 1966 white backlash against programs perceived as primarily benefiting minorities could be seen. But even after Nixon came to power in 1969, domestic programs continued to grow. Politically popular programs like Medicaid and Medicare expanded as new benefits were added to their coverage. Increased federal aid to education and job training programs had broad public support. Food stamps, which had been only an small experimental program in the Johnson years, was expanded to a national entitlement.
The Environmental Protection Agency was one example of expanding national government under NixonIn his first term Nixon made the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and expansion of federal aid to state and local governments major components of his domestic agenda. Then as he moved to the left on foreign policy, he covered his conservative flank by stiffening his opposition to domestic program growth. However, by then Nixon had largely lost control over public policy. Government spending for human resources, or people programs, averaged 4-6 percent of GNP in the Eisenhower and Kennedy years. It rose to over 7 percent during the Johnson presidency and continued to rise through the Nixon years until it averaged between 11-12 percent in the Ford and Carter years.
The economic crisis that followed the OPEC oil price shock brought an end to any major new domestic spending programs. The economic crisis meant a government fiscal crisis, as aid to the unemployed and impoverished automatically increased at the same time government revenues were falling. Just as the boom times of the 1960s were over, so was the creation of new government programs that were characteristic of those times. Money was tight, and even more significantly, big government came to be blamed for the political turmoil of the late 1960s and the fiscal crisis of the 1970s. Even the recapturing of the White House by the Democrats in 1976 had little effect, as the budgetary status quo largely prevailed throughout the Carter years.
Perspective on the Great Society and Domestic Program Growth
Figure 9.1 uses the typology of domestic program ideologies developed in Chapter 2 can help put the expansion of government during and after the Great Society into perspective. The Great Society built upon the limited interest state that had been the residue of the New Deal. Lyndon Johnson had employed the rhetoric of social democracy and social transformation to justify the passage of new programs. But in the long run, the domestic program changes unleashed by the Great Society can be seen more as a movement toward a broader social security state than toward social democracy or real social justice.
The idea that government was ultimately responsible for taking an activist response to certain economic and social needs was firmly established in the first term of FDR. But in the nearly 30 years that followed the New Deal, activist government was still limited in the roles it was allowed to perform. There was broad consensus that government should stabilize overall economic activity and insure the income of certain politically powerful groups. But there was no suchconse nsus that other serious social problems were the responsibility of government.
Probably the most crucial issue left largely untouched by the post-FDR limited interest state was racial justice. The system of segregation that had grown up in the South after Reconstruction had relegated blacks to the margins of American society, belying all the pious Fourth of July speeches about political equality. Poverty was another social problem that escaped the sustained attention of the limited interest state. The New Deal had helped to insure the income of many workers against the fluctuations of the economic cycle and to protect them when they were too old to work. But it offered little help to the permanent underclass, those who were chronically unable to find or hold jobs.
The Mixed Record of the War on Poverty
Lyndon Johnson consciously saw his Great Society as an extension of the New Deal. The Great Society was designed to complete the liberal agenda, to address the problems of race and poverty left unresolved by the New Deal. It would fill in the gaps of the American welfare state, extending economic security and democratic rights more broadly throughout the society.
The Great Society was characterized by sweeping rhetoric about social transformation. This was not all hype. For blacks in particular, civil rights and the Great Society brought dramatic changes in their daily lives, allowing them to participate in politics and civil society where they had previously been excluded. But overall, the accomplishments of the Great Society were much more modest than its rhetoric.
Despite the increase in job training programs, unemployment began to increase in 1970 and averaged over 6 percent for the decade. Despite the extension of medical insurance to the elderly and the very poor, tens of millions of Americans remained without health insurance. Despite the expenditures on urban development, most inner cities remained racial and economic ghettos. Despite the increased expenditures on compensatory education, millions of students dropped out of school and tens of millions of adults remained functionally illiterate.
A Chicago job training program for youth with criminal records begun with a War on Poverty grantThe war on poverty had mixed results with regard to the number of Americans who lived below the official poverty line. The number of Americans whose income put them below the official poverty line declined from roughly 19 percent when Lyndon Johnson took office to hover between 11 and 13 percent during the 1970s. But the number of Americans who could earn enough income to lift themselves above the poverty line without government assistance payments remained around 20 percent throughout the 1970s.
The Expansion of the Social Security State
In many ways the expansion of government in the 1960s and 1970s can be seen less as the government acting as an agent of social transformation than as a social security state. Even in the programs aimed at the poor, well-organized interests were often the greatest beneficiaries. Medicare and Medicaid payments went not directly to the poor but to doctors and hospitals. Increased expenditures on education benefited schools and teachers as much as pupils. Aid to cities usually benefited downtown business interests much more than the local poor.
The community action aspect of the war on poverty was the most clearly social democratic element of the Great Society. It was designed to mobilize the poor so they could fight for their own interests in the democratic process. But in doing so, the community action groups quickly came into conflict with the established political machines of local government. Once this pattern became clear, Congress and the Johnson administration's enthusiasm for community action cooled rapidly. Funding and political support for community action agencies soon were quite limited. Left without the material and political resources to achieve major changes in local politics, many community action programs evolved into a very traditional form of politics. In many cases these organizations were ultimately used by emerging minority politicians to grant patronage and build their base for local election campaigns. While there were no black mayors of major cities in the 1950s, the Civil Rights Movement and the War on Poverty combined to helped create black political machines in every major urban area. By 1970 the number of black mayors around the country rose to 80. By 1990 the figure had risen to 314 black mayors and in 2000 it was 480. Still, there are no black governors and currently no black Senators.
Black Mayors Representing Cities with Populations over 400,000
Source: U.S. Census Bureau (1990 Census); Department of Commerce and the National Conference of Black Mayors back to top
Name City Population % Black Lee Brown Houston, TX 1,660,553 26.91% John Street Philadelphia, PA 1,452,300 39.90% Ron Kirk Dallas, TX 1,053,292 28.20% Dennis Archer Detroit, MI 1,027,974 63.10% Willie Brown San Francisco, CA 723,959 10.92% Michael Coleman Columbus, OH 657,100 22.60% Willie W. Herenton Memphis, TN 610,337 54.84% Anthony A. Williams Washington, DC 606,909 70.30% Michael R. White Cleveland, OH 505,616 43.80% Marc Morial New Orleans, LA 496,938 55.30% Wellington E. Webb Denver, CO 467,610 12.84% But the community action programs themselves did not survive long, revealing the the limited willingness of the Great Society to challenge the foundations of the political order. The Johnson administration and northern congressional liberals had been willing to take real risks to establish basic political rights for southern blacks. But when forced to choose between social transformation and redistribution of political power or political peace with established interests in the North and West, congressional Democrats and the Johnson administration sided with the political establishment, and eventually cut off funds to the more outspoken community activists.
However, the declining support for programs targeted to the poor and minorities did not mean the end of this period of government expansion. Once the historic barriers to the role of government broke down, many new programs were created that had little or nothing to do with poverty or social justice.
One dramatic example is in federal guarantees of investments made by private parties. These are programs where the federal government promises to step in and pick up the tab if a private party defaults on a loan or other commitment. Probably the most publicized of these loan guarantees in the 1970s was the federal bailout of a failing military contracting giant, the Lockheed Corporation. Another widely known federal loan program begun in the 1970s guaranteed student loans, with the federal government promising to pick up the tab if students defaulted on covered loans for college expenses. Government loan guarantee programs had begun in the New Deal. But the range and amount of private transactions covered by such guarantees skyrocketed in the 1970s.
Another area where the federal government expanded dramatically was in the grants it made to state and local governments. After adjusting for inflation, the amount of these grants in 1975 had grown to ten times the amount of 1960. With the minor exception of community action programs, decisions on how to spend these funds were made by existing governments and bureaucracies. While some of these funds went to poverty programs, the vast majority did not. More often the use of these funds reflected the priorities of state and local power elites. For different reasons both Democratic liberals and Republican conservatives preferred to portray the expansion of government in the 1960s and 1970s as primarily benefiting the poor and minorities. Liberal Democrats wanted to claim credit for achieving social justice and to curry support among minority and women's groups. Conservative Republicans wanted to picture big government as benefiting only a few and to capitalize on the resentments of white middle-class voters. But this image of the activist government of the 1960s and 1970s is misleading. While there were real gains for poor and minorities, the expansion of government programs in this period did more to protect the income and life-styles of the middle and upper classes than to help the poor or to achieve social justice.
THE IDEOLOGICAL CROSSPRESSURES ON THE CARTER ADMINISTRATION back to top
The Nixon scandals, the economic crisis, and the strategic nomination of a southern governor with little record on national issues allowed the Democrats temporarily to put the New Deal coalition Humpty-Dumpty back together one more time in 1976. Jimmy Carter just squeaked by Gerald Ford, the man appointed to the vicepresidency by the disgraced Nixon. With the Republican Party still tarnished by the Watergate affair, the Democrats won the largest majorities in Congress since 1964. Yet despite holding a big majority in Congress and recapturing the White House, any impulse of the Democrats toward domestic reform was squelched by budgetary squeeze, growing distrust of government, and memories of the fate of the activist Lyndon Johnson.
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Jimmy Carter in 1976 was the last Democratic presidential candidate to put together
the New Deal coalition of the South plus the Industrial North and MidwestCarter Policy Initiatives
Jimmy Carter consciously sought to avoid identification with any particular political-economic philosophy. In describing his position he recycled the Eisenhower line that he was "a liberal on social issues and a conservative on economic issues." This phrase revealed a lot. On the one hand, Carter felt the pressures of the various constituency groups in his party who expected new government programs for their members and expansion of the social security state. On the other hand, the combination of a sluggish economy and popular skepticism about government led in the direction of limiting the interest state.
Carter tried to avoid costly social program initiatives in the Johnson mold. The centerpiece of his domestic agenda was his energy package, which responded to the oil import crisis. But Carter's energy program stalled in the Senate, did not pass until nearly two years into his term, and in its final form bore little resemblance to the original proposal. Carter's welfare reform package, like Nixon's, never passed at all. Carter and his staff had little taste for the legislative process and, more significantly, not much of a programmatic agenda beyond the energy program. The choice of energy as the top-priority legislative agenda item reflected the seriousness of the crisis of the Democratic Party. As a Democrat, Carter felt pressure to produce an activist agenda, yet in the changed climate of the 1970s he wanted to avoid association with new social programs. But the strategy of focusing on energy policy proved to be a political liability. The fragile Democratic coalition was fragmented by differing regional interests. The energy-consuming Frostbelt wanted cheap energy, and new taxes and regulations on energy producers. But the energy-producing Sunbelt wanted high prices, low taxes and regulation, and protection of markets. The result was legislative stalemate and a weak final bill.
Carter gives televised speech on his energy plan in April 1977Some programs with considerable constituency support grew substantially during the Carter years. Teachers' unions had been a major force in the Carter campaign, and so aid to education grew by nearly $5 billion. CETA public jobs were supported by a coalition of unions, minorities, and local officials, and thus also grew. Social Security taxes were raised to protect the pensions of the elderly. But Carter's presidency was remarkable for a Democratic administration in that it offered few broad, expansive initiatives in social policy. Those which were submitted to Congress, like welfare reform and expanded health insurance, were defeated.
The Tactics of Symbolic Politics and Cultural Pluralism
The Carter administration was cross-pressured between its interest group constituencies and demands to limit the growth of government in the wake of the fiscal crisis. It also had to balance the competing claims of elements of its party.
Carter tried to bridge the ideological gap between the counterculture wing of the party, which had produced the McGovern campaign, and the more traditional New Deal Democrats through the strategies of cultural pluralism and symbolic politics. He gave symbolic affirmation to the causes of minorities through his close ties to the King family and his frequent references to King's legacy. For the women's movement, he endorsed the ERA and elevated his wife Rosalynn to a more visible role in selected policy issues. He appealed to the environmental movement by putting solar energy collectors on the White House. But like JFK, his symbolic appeals largely substituted for programmatic action. Presidential budgets and legislative output gave few new material resources to these causes.
Jimmy and Rossyln Carter with his U.N. ambassador Andrew Young and members of the Martin Luther King familyCarter's strategy of cultural pluralism took more substantive form in his appointment process. He was the first president to appoint two blacks to his cabinet. Andrew Young, former civil rights activist, was named U.N. ambassador, the first black to serve in a major foreign policy position. Patricia Harris was first named head of the small Housing and Urban Development Department, which has often been headed by blacks, and was later promoted to secretary of Health and Human services, the department with the largest budget. Carter's judicial appointments were also much more pluralistic than those of his predecessors. Roughly 15 percent of his appointments to the federal bench were black and 6 percent were Hispanic, contrasting with the 3 percent black and 1 percent Hispanic appointments in the Nixon-Ford years. Sixteen percent of his appointments were women, contrasting with 1 percent by Nixon and Ford.
Carter's appointments strategy worked to turn the "new" politics of countercultural groups into the "old" politics of patronage. Like LBJ's war on poverty, it tended to co-opt the outsider groups through putting selected members in office, making the rewarded groups reluctant to bite the hand that fed them. At the same time it was a practice readily understood by more traditional New Deal Democrats. And best of all, unlike Johnson's war on poverty, appointments to federal offices added no expenditures to the budget and made no immediate programmatic commitments.
But ultimately the Carter administration was not able to steer the treacherous ideological crosscurrents of the late 1970s. In the 1978 congressional elections the Democrats suffered unusually large losses for a party with a first-term president. Inflation rose steadily throughout the Carter administration, reaching dangerous double-digit levels as the 1980 election approached. In late 1979 Iranian militants seized hostages from the U.S. embassy in Tehran and the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. The Carter administration seemed increasingly weak and unable to cope with domestic and foreign crises. The mounting policy failures of the Carter presidency paved the way for Ronald Reagan.
Links for the Study of Presidents Lyndon Johnson through Jimmy Carter
back to topWeb sites marked with * provided images for this chapter. Many images also are linked to the web site from which they originated.
White House links to all former presidents' official libraries a good linking point if you want to study the official documents of several different presidents
The National Archives links to all former presidents' official libraries Another route to the presidential libraries
*NAIL Digital Images Search Search the National Archives and Records Administration for online presidential documents
*The Jimmy Carter Presidential Library
*The Gerald Ford Presidential Library
The Richard Nixon Presidential Library
*Richard Nixon Presidential Materials Official Nixon documents of the National Archives. Apparently the National Archives worries that even after Nixon's death they cannot trust the truth to Nixon and his followers, so they keep this separate site for his presidential materials, apparently detached from Nixon's own library
C-SPAN Nixon Tapes listen to tapes of actual White House conversations
Richard Nixon's White House Tapes Actual tapes Nixon made of White House conversations, many dealing with Watergate
Richard Nixon Audio Archive tapes of key Nixon speeches
*The Watergate Decade Washington Post's summary of the Nixon era
*The Kissinger Transcripts from the National Security Archive at George Washington University
The Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library
C-SPAN State of the Union files watch State of the Union messages of presidents back to 1989. Transcripts of State of the Union messages available back to 1945
History and Politics Out Loud audio files of presidents in office, with transcripts also available. Many files available for Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, and John Kennedy
Inaugural Addresses The Inaugural Address is a key speech made when presidents are sworn into office. This site has them all
Speeches of the Presidents Inaugural Addresses, State of the Union Messages, and selected nomination acceptance speeches and war messages
The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden Highly recommended. Prepared by The Center for the Study of the Presidency, a leading group of scholars who study the presidency
Presidents of the United States Links to info on all American presidents. For each president it gives a brief biography, election results, cabinet members, chronology of major events, links to other internet biographies, links to key historical documents of the era, and other related links
The American President Biographies of each president and several essays on the presidency. Links to historical documents and other web resources. Each biography includes many links, including definitions of key terms
The American Presidency links to encyclopedia articles on each president and related subjects
Biographies of the American Presidents Biographies of each president. If the music file irritates you as much as it does me, click on the upper left to stop it
The Yale Law School Avalon Project Large collection of official papers on several presidential administrations. You can also find many international and congressional documents at their Major Collections page
Presidents' Day Links to resources on several key presidencies
Leadership Links on several presidents and articles on the presidency
The Political Resources Page Provides links for each president
University of Colorado Presidents Online Page links and explanations of many presidency web sites but too many dead links
