CHP 29 - THE AMERICAN CENTURY
1. More concern with the homefront (is this really so unusual?)
2. Truman – plusses and minuses
I. The Postwar Economy
1. Keynesian theory is proven, but many still fear postwar depression.
2. Conflicting objectives
3. Truman’s proposals reflect contradictions
4. A post-war boom
5. The GI Bill of 1944
6. Inflation and labor unrest aid the Republican party in regaining the Congress
7. Taft-Hartley passes over Truman’s veto (outlawing the closed shop, but permitting the union shop contract)
II. Postwar Society: The Baby Boomers
1. Early marriage and larger families – the trend continues
2. Idealizing domesticity and conformity
3. A place for women, stresses for men
4. Government policies aid the trends
5. Dr. Spock writes the bible for child rearing
III. The Containment Policy
1. Truman and Stalin have a bumpy relationship
2. Atomic potentials become fodder for discussion at the UN
3. The Soviets dismiss US plans, and visa versa
4. Are the threats exaggerated?
5. Kennan’s analysis – and his surprise at how others read it.
6. Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” and the Truman Doctrine
IV. The Marshall Plan
1. The Marshall Plan (Kennan’s idea?)
2. The OSS becomes the CIA
3. New European alliances lead to the building of the Berlin Wall
4. The Berlin airlift successfully challenges Stalin’s efforts
V. Dealing with Japan and China
1. MacArthur rebuilds Japan’s economy and government
2. Civil War returns to China
VI. The Election of 1948
1. Truman vs. Dewey
2. Truman’s problems with the Southern Democrats (those things he did that set them off), and the Dixiecrats are created.
3. Liberal Democrats create a new Progressive party
4. Truman’s campaign works up some support
5. Truman’s Fair Deal program and the role of the ADA
6. Appearing as a guns and butter program, few of his proposals become legislation
VII. Containing Communism Abroad
1. NATO
2. Every move evoked a Soviet response….. Czechoslovakia, Berlin, the Warsaw Pact
3. Mao’s success in China marks a new era for (at least) Democratic presidents
VIII. Hot War in Korea
1. Truman (and Acheson) ignore Korea until the communists become aggressive
2. The UN , with the Soviets absent, decides to act (our first undeclared war)
3. MacArthur: brilliant strategies, but his proposals face opposition by many critical civilian advisors
4. Truman sets the Yalu River as MacArthur’s “line in the sand”
5. MacArthur shows weaknesses, the Commander in Chief fires him
6. The disadvantage of containment: not victory but balance
7. Armistice
IX. The Communist Issues at Home
1. US power seems to be on the decline
2. Partisanship exploits the domestic fears
3. Truman succumbs to some pressures
4. Chambers and Hiss, Fuchs, Gold, and the Rosenbergs
X. McCarthyism
1. The Tydings Committee investigates McCarthy’s charges, and finds them unfounded
2. Service and Carter Vincent – the China Hands
3. The “big lie”
4. McCarthy manages defeat for some who dislike his methods
XI. Dwight D. Eisenhower
1. A conformist is “liked”
2. Stevenson’s greatest assets used against him – he cannot compete with Ike’s overwhelming popularity
3. Eisenhower clearly has a modern Republican platform, and is “like Washington”
4. Applying Keynesian theory while maintaining a “doctrinaire” belief in this platform
XII. The Eisenhower-Dulles Foreign Policy
1. Eisenhower forces the armistice
2. “… [T]he most successful team in history.”
3. “massive retaliation”
4. A lack of reality at the base of Dulles’s schemes
5. He finally sees the light over nuclear build-ups
XIII. McCarthy Self-destructs
1. Khruschev replaces Uncle Joe
2. “peaceful coexistence”
3. Dulles tries to outplay McCarthy at his own game
4. McCarthy takes on the wrong enemy …and is censured
XIV. Asia Policy After Korea
1. Indochina: China backs the Vietminh, the US backs the French (trying to help them hold on to a colonial possession)
2. Eisenhower recognizes the futility of air power against an enemy in the jungle
3. Two Vietnams
4. Diem’s government refuses to hold elections
5. SEATO
XV. The Middle East Cauldron
1. Oil and Israel become new focuses for pressures
2. Nasser drifts toward the communist bloc
3. The Six-Day War
4. The Eisenhower Doctrine
XVI. Eisenhower and the Soviet Union
1. The spirit of Geneva
2. Were the Soviets winning?
3. Eisenhower takes over much of Dulles’s work – a soldier who hated war.
4. Plans for a new summit – it doesn’t happen after the U-2 incident
XVII. Latin American Aroused
1. The OAS
2. Economic aid and containment
3. Nixon’s visit – American eyes are finally opened to how their neighbors see them
4. Castro’s revolution
5. Khruschev’s warning, Eisenhower breaks relations with Cuba
XVIII. The Politics of Civil Rights
1. The Smith Act and Dennis et al. V. United States
2. The McCarran Internal Security Act
3. Truman’s efforts to increase the rights of blacks (remember too that he had desegregated the armed forces)
4. Brown v. BOE of Topeka (note the role of the NAACP and Thurgood Marshall) overturns Plessy
5. Central High in Little Rock paves the way
6. The 101st Airforce enforces the Supreme Court’s decision
7. Voter registration drives and the Civil Rights Act of 1957
8. Other Supreme Court cases (know them all) show a tendency toward the protection of individual liberties by the Court
XIV. The Election of 1960
1. Nixon runs for the Republicans
2. Kennedy runs for the Democrats
3. Minority groups are victorious over the traditional white Protestant majority
CHP 30 – THE BEST OF TIMES, THE WORST OF TIMES
I. John Fitzgerald Kennedy
1. His brother at the Justice Department
2. His inaugural statement - is this statement fascist?
II. The Cuban Crisis
1. The Alliance for Progress
2. The Bay of Pigs blunder
3. Khruschev tests the new President's determination
4. Kennedy expands American global activities
5. The Cuban missile crisis
6. Banning atmospheric testing
III. Kennedy's Domestic Program
1. Kennedy fails to gain support from the
2. Congress in sufficient numbers to be able to control economic policy
IV. Tragedy in Dallas
V. Lyndon Baines Johnson
1. Pushing through Kennedy's proposals?
2. LBJ - the Civil Rights proponent
VI. "We Shall Overcome"
1. Kennedy's approach to the race question.
2. The roots of change lay elsewhere
3. Southern blacks prove their economic power: Parks, King, the Supreme Court
4. The SCLC and CORE
5. Sit-ins in North Carolina and SNCC
6. Freedom rides
7. Integration vs. segregation
8. Letter from a Birmingham jail
9. The March on Washington in '63, the Civil Rights Act of 1964
VII. The Great Society
1. Explanations for the polarization of the economic classes in the US
2. The definition of poverty, and less obvious influences on the indicators
3. The Other America - whose book from the era of the progressive muckrakers does this sound like?
4. The difference between the poor of yesteryear and the poor of the 1960's
5. The price of poverty
6. Johnson's war on poverty - objectives
7. The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964
8. Johnson vs. Goldwater - becoming president in his own right
9. Medicare and Medicaid
10. The Education Acts, Head Start,
11. The Immigration Act brings some significant changes to the laws form the 1920's
12. The legacy of the Great Society programs
VIII. War In Vietnam
1. Eisenhower's military advisors
2. Kennedy's contributions
3. The assassination of Diem - it was sponsored by the CIA
4. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
5. Advisors, defenders, assistors, then fighters. How did this thing get so out of control?
IX. Hawks and Doves
1. The Hawks - defenders of the war for several reasons
2. The Doves - and their reasons. Fulbright even changes his mind
3. Grasping the facts - these were the best and the brightest - why did it take them so long?
4. McBundy's (George) comment
X. The Election of 1968
1. Another McCarthy, but with a different message
2. The Tet offensive and the lies it brought to light
3. Robert
4. Kennedy joins the running, LBJ withdraws, Hoover replaces him as the administration man
5. How the Democratic ticket is finally formulated
6. Nixon (and Agnew) for the Republicans
7. The Democratic National Convention in Chicago in '68
8. The Republican victory
XI. Nixon as President: "Vietnamizing" the War
1. The realities of what he had promised during the campaign
2. What does Vietnamizing mean? And why wouldn't it work?
3. Vietnam Moratorium Day - and Agnew's response (he's really just Nixon's pitbull)
4. Nixon's "silent majority" - his administration (especially via Agnew's outbursts) will pit these people against the protesters
5. My Lai
XII. The Cambodian "Incursion"
1. Changes in policy (but are they paralleled by changes in reality?)
2. Tensions run higher after the bombings of Cambodia become public knowledge
3. Kent State. Jackson State U.
XIII. Détente
1. Dealing differently with the Soviets and China - their "friendship" has not evolved so well.
2. SALT I
3. The meaning of détente
4. Ho Chi Minh finally agrees to diplomatic concessions
XIV. Nixon in Triumph
1. A landslide election
2. Bombing Hanoi
3. The final removal of American forces
4. The cost of this war that was never declared
XV. The Economy Under Nixon
1. Inflationary woes lead to fiscal and monetary policy actions
2. Nixon’s price and wage freeze
3. Adopting a southern strategy
4. Checking desegregation, appointing justices of a certain ilk
5. Strengthening the executive branch while decreasing the control of the federal government over local issues – particularly in economic issues
XVI. The Watergate Break-in
1. McCord is a CREEP and breaks into the Democratic National Headquarters
2. The background of the Pentagon Papers
3. Other Watergate disclosures
4. Dean attests to Nixon’s involvement in the cover-up (this IS obstruction of justice)
5. Archibald Cox, Judge Sirica, the tapes and the Saturday Night Massacre
6. The Rodino committee begins its investigation
7. Jaworski and more tapes
XVII. More Troubles
1. The price of wheat, Agnew resigns, Ford is in
2. “I am not a crook”
XVIII. The Oil Crisis
1. More official bloodshed in the Middle East leads to an Arab oil boycott
2. Kissinger (now Secretary of State – he was National Security Advisor before) melts the ice
3. The Clean Air Act of 1965
4. OPEC and US demands for oil
5. More inflation
XIX. The Judgement: “Expletive Deleted”
1. Indictments at the top of the ladder
2. The tapes make the case against him, but a Supreme Court case become necessary
3. The deliberations go on TV
4. The Court rules, the impeachment seems imminent
5. The tapes make an even better case
XX. The Meaning of Watergate
1. Nixon resigns
2. Nixon the enigma
3. The end of one era or the beginning of another
CHP 31: SOCIETY IN FLUX
I. A Changing Society
1. Increasing population and startling shifts within the mass (Recognize that as the population moves, with a new census, so does some of the power base of the government)
2. New industries
3. Increasing geographic mobility
4. Gasoline, the Interstate highway system
5. Secondary costs of these changes
II. Television
1. Mass communication
2. A “vast wasteland”?
3. The power to influence America – do you recognize this when it’s playing on you?
4. Increasing the cost of campaigning
III. “A Nation of Sheep”
1. The middle class grows (like the old America?)
2. Decreasing immigration – increasing conformity, increasing income
3. The AFL and CIO merge – unions become more conservative
IV. Religion in Changing Times
1. Other reasons to explain the growing conformity – religion for Sunday go to church sake? Or do they really understand and believe in this thing.
2. Materially prosperous, the faithful accept the world for what it is
3. An education gap develops
4. Riesman, Whyte, and Wilson – begging someone to be different
5. Other examples of how social and political events had religious implications
6. Feminism hits a tender nerve, the sexual revolution
7. Science and technology have ramifications
8. Radio and television – increased conservatism, but the scandals of the 1980s will hurt some of these
V. Literature and Art
1. Mailer and Jones – wartime experiences again hit the public
2. Kerouac and Salinger, Heller and Bellow
3. Paperbacks increase the accessibility of books for many
4. Secondary costs of the increase in the book market
5. The artist as celebrity
6. Abstract expressionism – Pollock and others
7. Op art – and its aficionados
8. Secondary costs of art and celebrity
VI. Two Dilemmas
1. Progress as self-defeating; experience as counterproductive
2. A place for the individual in an increasingly interdependent society
3. Increased organizations
4. The obvious modern American paradox
VII. The Costs of Prosperity
1. Inflation faces a no-cure situation
2. What will we do with the wastes?
3. Technology displaces more now than ever
4. The population explosion seems central to the problems
VIII. New Racial Turmoil
1. The Great Society is supposed to prevent more problems
2. Malcolm X and segregationism enter the field of civil rights
3. Even King and SNCC change their tunes
4. Carmichael and Black Power
5. The Watts riots of ’65 set the spark – it will continue for years
6. The Kerner Commission seeks an explanation
7. Society polarized along racial lines – H. Rap Brown and Eldrige Cleaver
8. White backlash
IX. Native-born Ethnics
1. Mexican-Americans and Hispanics – historical background
2. The Chicanos
3. Cesar Chavez – organizing the migrants (the grape pickers boycott)
4. AIM and the Native American movement return to Wounded Knee
5. 1975 – the Indian Self-Determination Act
6. Ethnic pride grows again – the melting pot becomes a salad bowl
7. Individual blacks find position in white society
8. Sports integrate
X. Rethinking Public Education
1. Youth are most severely affected
2. Child-centered education – pros and cons
3. Conant’s analysis of schools
4. A Soviet success stories turns America’s thinking on education
5. The National Defense Education Act of 1958
6. The polarization of socioeconomic classes affects the school situation
7. Increased education means that everyone needs more to get ahead of the next guy
XI. Students in Revolt
1. A new type of student questions what they see around them
2. SDS
3. The Free Speech Movement, occupations and sit-ins
4. Other frustrations (I’ll tell you the Cornell story – again)
5. These folks believe they have the answers – what they are missing is a sense of tolerance for those who believe differently from them
XII. The Counterculture
1. So turned off they drop out
2. Ginsberg and Kesey
3. The yippies – Hoffman and Rubin
4. Hippies and radicals are not always the same thing
5. The Greening of America – would you love to take this guy’s course?
XIII. The Sexual Revolution
1. Causes of the revolution
2. Positive changes
3. New problems
XIV. Women’s Liberation
1. Causes for the growth of the movement
2. Oh goodie – now we can work outside as well as inside the home
3. Job discriminations
4. Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique
5. Organizing NOW
6. Splits in the movement – Millett
7. Steinem and Ms.
8. Conservatives rally around Schlafly
9. Roe v. Wade
CHP 32 – OUR TIMES
1. Ford’s initial popularity
I. Ford as President
1. The pardon diminishes some of his support
2. Inconsistency in the economy: WIN, recession, more for business, less for the poor
3. Vietnam, Cambodia
4. Reagan challenges Ford for the Republican ticket
5. Carter takes the Democratic nod with an outsider’s approach
6. A close call
II. The Carter Presidency
1. The common man returns to the White House
III. Cold War or Détente?
1. Inconsistent foreign affairs policies – Latin American nations as an example
2. Vance vs. Brzezinski
3. SALT II and Afghanistan
4. The Camp David Accord – Carter’s shining moment
IV. A Time of Troubles
1. National self-confidence at a low ebb:
2. Balance of trade
3. Decay in the inner cities
4. Crime and other urban malaise’s
V. Double-digit Inflation
1. Worse than ever – who it effects the most
2. The role of anticipation in creating the snowball effect in inflation
3. “Flight from money”
4. Minimum wage and social security
5. “bracket creep” and “taxpayer revolts”
6. Government involvement, a.k.a. Keynes, appears to be a double-edged sword
VI. The Carter Recession
1. Volcker takes the chair of the FED
2. Tight monetary policy and its effects
VII. The Iran Crisis: Oil
1. Seizing an embassy
2. Historical perspective on Iran
3. “The Great Satan”
VIII. The Iran Crisis: Carter’s Dilemma
1. Agreement on something shifts Americans out of their post-Vietnam (and Watergate) apathy
2. The fiasco
IX. The Election of 1980
1. Carter vs. Reagan
2. Anderson runs independently
3. Reagan’s platform – setting the Republican ideal in the modern era
4. Republicans regain Washington
5. Carter continues to work on the hostage crisis as a lame duck (and gets them out)
X. Reagan as President
1. “Acting” rapidly and with determination: the air traffic controllers
2. Turning something over to the states, and spending big on the military
3. Tax cuts and social welfare cuts – supply-side
4. Attempted assassination
5. The Budget Reconciliation Act – but modified by Congress
6. Eliminating regulations
7. So much for trickle-down
8. Reasons for the fact that inflation slowed
9. Insisting on the military buildup – containment at a fever pitch
10. Crisis in the Middle East again
XI. Four More Years
1. Mondale chooses a woman to run beside him for the Democratic ticket
2. Reagan’s advantages
3. Some groups shift from Democrat to Republican
4. The economy lends support
5. Mondale tells the truth – and gets the hurt for it
6. The Republicans don’t win it all
XII. “The Reagan Revolution”
1. Gorbachev, glasnost, and perestroika hinder Reagan’s attempts at military increases
2. Summit failure, summit success, Star Wars
3. Shuttles
4. Dealing with terrorists
5. The Income Tax Act of 1986 – a definite supply-side measure in most ways
6. This act changes the progressive nature of the income tax, who do you suppose is really footing the bill?
7. The dark side of Reagan’s economic policies – reversing any accomplishments of the Great Society
8. Creating a conservative Court
XIII. Change and Uncertainty
1. The Immigration Act of 1965
2. Changes in the composition of the American culture in the ‘80s
3. The 1986 amnesty law (speaking of which, what about Carter’s amnesty law?)
4. Other disturbing trends
5. Epidemic problems: drugs, disease,
6. A service economy
XIV. The Merger Movement
1. Relaxing regulations leads to BIG business
2. Milken and junk bonds
3. Oil makes price stability an issue
4. Agriculture has similar difficulties -
5. The Reagan deficits
XV. The Iran-contra Arms Deal
1. Reagan as cold warrior in South America
2. Congress initials supports, then rejects Reagan's program in Nicaragua
3. Going against American opinion as per his dealings with Iran
4. North uses Profits from the sale to Iran to buy more for the contras
5. Reagan denies knowledge (we know now that he did know), his popularity suffers
XVI. The Election of 1988
1. A race in the Democratic camp
2. Dukakis vs. Bush
XVII. The End of the Cold War
1. Bush - plusses from the start
2. Riding the shirttails of Gorbachev's changes
3. Relaxation of the tensions that had lasted for over fifty years
4. Panama
XVIII. Domestic Problems and Possibilities
1. Words for action and urging volunteerism rather than legislation
2. "Read my lips…" is going to backfire:
3. Helping new nations, the Savings and Loans fiasco
4. Trying to walk the tightrope between needed expenditures and not enough revenue
5. Economic slowdown in 1990 brings the backfire to its close
XIX. The War in the Persian Gulf
1. Saddam moves, the UN responds
2. Bush holds strong in this crisis - we seem to love the warrior
XX. Things go Wrong
1. The war wasn't really won, the economy just won’t cooperate
2. Bosnia as a example of tensions in Eastern Europe
3. The USSR is going to break up, but not before the military attempts a coup
XXI. The Election of 1992
1. Bush, Perot, Clinton presidential candidates
2. Bush's popularity discouraged Democrats from running for office.
3. A record of 100 million people voted, Clinton wins office; Perot wins no electoral votes
XXII. A New Start
1. Clinton's success: many promises of change; ex: budget deficit, health insurance etc…
2. Budget proposal: reduce deficit by 500 million in five years
3. Congress refused to accept the entire budget plan; Clinton forced to accept changes.
4. Final bill passes by a small margin; tie breaker by Gore
5. Hillary and the health insurance program.
XXIII. The Imponderable Future
1. Write this yourself!