The Resurgence of Conservatism HONORS HISTORY CHAPTER 20 1980 1996
The Triumph of Conservatism By 1980, many Americans were frustrated by Jimmy Carter s mismanagement. (1) Inflation was in double-digits, (2) Interest rates had sky-rocketed and (3) the Iranians held America hostage.
The Democratic Primary The ABC movement (Anybody But Carter) was looking to find a liberal Democrat to challenge the increasingly conservative Carter.
They found their champion in Teddy Kennedy, the last surviving Kennedy brother.
The Kennedy challenge was hampered by suspicions from the 1969 automobile accident at Chappaquidick.
Reagan Republicans Ronald Reagan, former governor of California and darling of the New Right and Moral Majority won the Republican nomination.
Reagan was able to bring together the old fiscal conservatives and the new social conservatives that championed Family Values over the promiscuity of the counterculture.
School Busing The issue of desegregation exploded in the late 1970s.
The Supreme Court ruled in Milliken v. Bradley that school desegregation plans could not require children to be moved across school district boundaries. This increased the white flight to the suburbs.
It also left the burden of school desegregation on the poorer inner city school districts. Areas like south Boston were racked by racial violence.
Affirmative Action White workers and students began to complain about reverse discrimination. In Bakke v. The University of California the Supreme Court ruled that preference for admission could not be given for racial or ethnic identity alone.
Moral Majority Pro-Life School Prayer Anti-Evolution Evangelical Politics = Christian Coalition Ralph Reed
The Election of Ronald Reagan Reagan tapped into the growing resentment against big government and the social engineering of the New Deal and Great Society.
He became the new champion of the forgotten man and preached a populist crusade against the evils of federal intervention in local affairs.
Neo-Conservatives Reagan was influenced by the writings of the a group of conservatives from Commentary and The Public Interest that attacked government bureaucracy and the evils of the Soviet Union.
Ronald Reagan the Actor Reagan would be known as The Great Communicator and he used his acting skills and movie idol good looks to political advantage.
Reagan Wins Big With Chappaquiddick killing Kennedy s challenge and Carter s colorless performance and weak record, Reagan with only 51% of the popular vote but 489 to 49 electoral votes. Independent John Anderson was able to win 7% of the vote.
Carter was the first elected president to be unseated in an election since Herbert Hoover in 1932.
And the Republicans were able to gain control of the Senate for the first time in 25 years.
In the last days of his term Carter signed a bill preserving 100 million acres of Alaskan wilderness.
The Reagan Revolution Reagan s inauguration was made even more triumphant by the announcement that the American hostages had been released in Iran.
The Best and the Rightest Reagan s cabinet was very conservative and often controversial.
James Watt, the Secretary of the Interior, was accused of being in cahoots with the sagebrush rebellion and oil industry. "I have a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple. And we have talent." He will be forced to resign after telling a racist joke in public.
"If the troubles from environmentalists cannot be solved in the jury box or at the ballot box, perhaps the cartridge box should be used."
The government is the problem Reagan s message of smaller government found a receptive audience in American s who had watched federal spending increase from 18 to 23% of GNP. People began to balk at spending tax dollars for social welfare entitlements.
Proposition 13 Californians fired the first shot in the tax revolt with the passage of Prop 13 that slashed property taxes and forced government cutbacks.
Reagan Cuts Reagan worked with the Republican Senate and wooed the southern conservative Boll Weevil conservative Democrats to cut $35 billion in federal social programs.
Reagan Shot March 30, 1981, John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan as he emerged from a Washington hotel.
12 days later sixty nine year old Reagan walked out of the hospital and received enormous public support and sympathy.
Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity in the shooting of Reagan, Press Secretary James Brady and two law enforcement officers. Hinckley said the shooting was an attempt to impress actress Jodie Foster.
The Brady Bill gun control
The Reagan Budget Reagan was able to get Congress to agree to a $695 billion dollar budget that would increase defense spending and make drastic cuts in welfare, while creating a $38 billion deficit.
Reagan Tax Cut Reagan then announced that he wanted a 25% across-the-board reduction of taxes to be phased in over three years. New Sheriff in Town
Supply Side Economics Reagan s financial advisers were convinced that cuts in capital gains, IRAs for small investors and budget cuts would stimulate the economy and lead to increased federal revenue.
The Reagan Recession In 1982 unemployment hit 11 percent, businesses folded and banks went under. The automobile industry hit rock bottom and Democrats charged the Reagan cuts had hit the poorest Americans the hardest.
In reality, the recession forces felt in the early 1980s were caused by the tight money policies of the Federal Reserve under Carter.
Reaganomics and Recovery By 1983 the economy began to turn around and the supply-siders seemed to be vindicated. But the 1980s also saw the first increases in the gap between rich and poor during the 20 th century.
Supply-Side Economics is a school of macroeconomics that argues that economic growth can be most effectively created by lowering barriers for people to produce (supply) goods and services as well as invest in capital
YUPPIES Symbolic of the increasing wealth of the upper classes were the Young Urban Professionals or Yuppies with their Rolex watches and BMWs.
Defense Spending Most economists believe that the growth in GNP was stimulated by the nearly 2 trillion dollars of defense spending in the 1980s. To pay for the massive military build-up, budget deficits ran nearly $200 billion every year in the 1980s.
Rising Interest Rates Government borrowing kept interest rates high which elevated the value of the US dollar. High dollar values helped US tourists and kept foreign cars cheap, but crippled American exporters. The US trade deficit reached a record $152 billion in 1987.
Reagan and the Cold War Reagan condemned the USSR which he called a evil empire and believed in negotiating from a position of strength.
Bankrupting the Soviets Reagan believed that by increasing defense spending the Soviets would have to play catch up and while our economy could withstand the strain, theirs could not.
Star Wars Reagan called for the creation of a space based missile shield and laser defense system called the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)
Many physicists said the program was impossible at the current level of technology The cost and concerns over the viability of the program limited Congressional funding.
Solidarity When Soviets and their allied Polish Communists clamped down on the rising labor movement in Poland, called Solidarity, Reagan imposed embargos on both nations.
Korean Airlines Flight 007 On September 1, 1983, KAL Flight 007 was shot down by the Soviets with all 269 civilians perishing in this crash, including a United States Congressman.
By the end of 1983, all arms control negotiations had broken off and in 1984 the Soviet bloc nations boycotted the Los Angeles Olympics.
Troubles in the Middle East In 1982, Israel invaded southern Lebanon to suppress Palestinian guerillas operating from refugee camps on the border.
Lebanon collapsed into chaos and Reagan sent troops into Beirut as part of an international peacekeeping force.
On October 23, 1983 a suicide bomber drove an explosiveladen truck into the Marine barracks building, killing more than 200 marines.
Reagan withdrew all American forces.
The Teflon President Reagan stayed remarkably popular and Democratic opponents began calling him the Teflon president because nothing stuck to him.
The Sandinistas Reagan began calling for the elimination of the leftist government of Nicaragua, accusing them of acting as a forward base for Cuban/Soviet aggression in Central America.
The Contras Reagan began funding the right wing government of El Salvador and giving training arms to the Anti-Sandinista Contras operating out of Honduras.
The Grenada Invasion When Marxists took over the Caribbean island of Grenada, Reagan sent in US troops to quickly eliminate the insurgents.
1984 Election Reagan easily defeats Democratic candidate Walter Mondale and his running mate Geraldine Ferraro the first woman ever to appear on a major party ticket.
Foreign Policy Reagan s second term will be dominated by foreign policy concerns especially concerning the Soviet Union.
Mikhail Gorbachev In March 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev Soviet Premier and began to institute radical reforms in the USSR.
Glasnost, or openness, allowed freedom of speech, political liberty and ended the secretiveness of the Soviet bureaucracy. Perestroika or restructuring, was to reorganize the soviet economy to allow free-market practices.
The End of the Cold War In order to bring about these changes in the USSR, Gorbachev needed to shrink the enormous Soviet military budget.
Gorbachev, announced in April 1985 that the USSR would cease to deploy Intermediate Range Nuclear forces (INF) in Europe.
The Summits Four summit meetings culminated in the signing of the INF treaty and the warming of US and USSR relations.
Revolution in the Philippines Reagan gave strong backing to Corazon Aquino s peaceful revolution against of dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
Attacking Libya Following Libyan threats against American naval ships in the Gulf of Sidra and the bombing of German Disco that killed a US serviceman, Reagan ordered the bombing of Mohammar Qaddafi s headquarters in Libya.
The Persian Gulf War between Iran and Iraq lead the US to use naval vessels to escort oil tankers through the Persian Gulf. In 1988, the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian passenger plane killing all 290 on board the Navy claimed they thought the plane was an F-14 fighter.
The Iran Contra Affair In 1985, a team of national security and intelligence operatives began selling arms to Iran in order to pressure the Iranians to aid in the release of American hostages being held in Lebanon.
The money from the arms deal was then used to fund the Contras ongoing struggle against the Sandinistas funding which Congress had refused to provide.
Senate Investigation A series of televised hearings condemned the presidents actions and questioned his denial of any knowledge of the affair.
Oliver North and Admiral John Poindexter of the National Security Agency and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger will all be indicted and convicted.
Reagan the Actor A new image of Reagan emerged from the hearings that he was lazy, perhaps suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer s and was a mental lightweight with little or no understanding of the details of foreign policy. I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency, even if I'm in a cabinet meeting.
Reaganomics in Review The massive debts of the 1980s were a major economic failure in the eyes of liberals. Much of the national debt was held by foreign creditors, especially the Japanese, and this virtually guaranteed that future generations would have lower standard of living in order to pay off the debt.
The Death of Big Government But the debt also caused Congress to mandate a balanced budget by 1991 and this guaranteed the curtailment of federal welfare state. This insured the number one political priority of Reagan the end of big government.
The Income Gap Another legacy of Reaganomics was the increasing gap between the rich and the poor and decrease in the median household income. Homelessness and poverty increased in the inner city and crack cocaine became a scourge in the eighties.
Black Monday The United States suffered an economic setback on October 19, 1987, so-called "Black Monday," when the value of stocks tumbled 22 percent -- immediately bringing back memories of the fabled stock market crash of 1929, which had been followed by the Great Depression of the 1930s.
The causes of the crash included: anxiety about U.S. international trade and federal-budget deficits, concern about the high level of corporate and personal debt, and a new stock market innovation known as "program trading" in which computers automatically ordered the buying or selling of a large volume of shares when certain circumstances occurred.
The fear of recession was unwarranted and the economy recovered quickly.
The S & L Debacle The deregulation of the banking industry and subsequent questionable investments led to the collapse of the nation s savings and loan industry.
The federal government eventually bailed out the industry at a cost of $500 billion.
The Election of 1988 President Reagan enjoyed unusually high popularity at the end of his second term in office, but under the terms of the U.S. Constitution he could not run again in 1988.
His political heir, the vice president during all eight years of his presidency, George Bush, benefited greatly from Reagan's popularity and easily gained the Republican nomination.
Bush campaigned by promising voters a continuation of the prosperity Reagan had brought; he also argued that his expertise could better support a strong defense for the United States.
"It's no exaggeration to say the undecideds could go one way or another." - George Bush Sr., in 1988
Dan Quayle Republican VP "You re close, but you left a little something off. The e on the end. If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure." "Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child." "What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.
The Seven Dwarfs Michael Dukakis won the Democratic nomination after defeating six other candidates including Gary Hart (who quit in a sex scandal) and the Reverend Jesse Jackson s Rainbow Coalition. Gary Hart
Dukakis, the governor of Massachusetts, claimed that less fortunate Americans were hurting economically and that the government had to help those people while simultaneously bringing the federal debt and defense spending under control.
Read my lips The public was much more engaged, however, by Bush's economic message: a promise of no new taxes and turned off by Dukakis robot-like demeanor.
Bush finished with a 54 to 46 percent popular vote margin.
"I believe the job of a president is to understand and explain the time in which he serves, to set forth a vision of where we need to go and a strategy of how to get there, and then to pursue it with all his mind and heart, - Bill Clinton