APAH Reading Guide Chapter 31 Name: Directions: Read pages 825 851 and answer the following questions using many details and examples from the text. 1. How did his pardon of Richard Nixon affect Gerald Ford's political standing? 2. What economic challenges did Ford face? How did he respond? 3. How did Jimmy Carter's background and personality shape the tone of his presidency and people's reaction to him? 4. What economic and energy-related problems did Carter face? 5. What general principle formed the basis of Carter's approach to foreign policy? 6. How did Carter manage to facilitate the Camp David accords, which led to peace between Egypt and Israel? 7. What led to the Iranian hostage crisis? 8. How did the Carter administration react to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan? 9. Where is the "Sunbelt"? What were the political implications of its rise? 1
10. Describe the basis of Christian evangelicalism. How did it lead to cultural conservatism, as in Jerry Falwell? 11. What were the elements of the new right movement? How did it come to have such influence in the Republican Party? Why did the new right disapprove of President Ford? 12. To what extent was the tax revolt of the 1970s and 1980s as much an attack on government programs as on taxes? How did the tax cut activists avoid specific confrontations with supporters of key programs? 13. Why did Ronald Reagan win such a decisive victory in 1980? What happened in the congressional races? 14. How did the nation react to the release of the Iranian hostages? 15. What personal factors helped make Reagan politically effective at balancing various conservative factions? 16. Explain the assumptions made by "supply-side" economists ("Reaganomics"). 17. What led to the recession of the early 1980s and the mid-decade recovery? Was the recovery due to Reaganomics or other factors? 18. What happened to the stock market from the mid 1980s through the 1990s? 2
19. Why did the federal budget experience massive deficits? How effective was the Reagan administration in countering the deficit? 20. What stance toward the Soviets and communism in general constituted the so-called Reagan Doctrine? How did the doctrine play out in Grenada and elsewhere in Latin America? 21. What did the attack on the U.S. military barracks in Beirut and other terrorist incidents against Americans and other westerners reveal about a new worldwide danger? How did Ronald Reagan react to these episodes? 22. Was the election of 1984 more a personal victory for Ronald Reagan, or the mark of a new Republican era? Explain. 23. Describe the process by which the Soviet bloc and the Soviet Union itself ceased to exist. What emerged in its place? 24. How did Ronald Reagan react to Mikhail Gorbachev? What concrete agreement resulted? 25. Describe the Iran-Contra scandal. What was its political impact? 3
26. What main campaign strategy did George Bush use to come from behind and defeat Michael Dukakis? What happened in the congressional elections? 27. What budgetary and economic problems dominated domestic concerns during the Bush presidency? How did the budget package in 1990 violate Bush's campaign pledge? 28. What precipitated the Gulf War? What were the long-term outcomes after the relatively easy victory? 29. Why did Bill Clinton win the presidency in 1992? 30. How did the presidencies of Ford and Carter fail to restore confidence in the government? 31. Did a Reagan Revolution take place? Provide historical evidence to support your answer. 32. In what ways were the foreign policy achievements and guiding principles of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan similar? In what ways were they different? 4
33. Historical Argumentation: Support or refute each of the following statements providing historical evidence to justify your answers. Carter should not have turned over the Panama Canal to the Panamanians Carter was right when he called the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the gravest threat to world peace since WWII. The Reagan administration was right to support the contras in Nicaragua. The U.S. was wrong to support apartheid in South Africa for so long. The foreign policy of the Reagan administration was largely responsible for the eventual dissolution of the Soviet Union. The US should not have invaded Kuwait in 1990. 34. Did Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon accomplish its purpose to "shut and seal the book" on Watergate? What else did Ford do to try to restore credibility to the presidency? 35. How effective was Jimmy Carter in applying the human-rights principle to American foreign policy? How did his approach differ from the actions taken by Ronald Reagan? 36. How did the nation's energy needs complicate both the foreign and domestic policies of presidents Ford Carter and Reagan? 5
37. Why was Ronald Reagan so popular despite the ineffectiveness of many of his policies-especially with regard to the budget deficit? 38. How did the shift away from a bipolar world change the very foundation of American foreign policy as it had been practiced since World War II? 6