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Home > Chapter 41 - The Resurgence of Conservatism 1980-2000
Chapter 40 - The Resurgence of Conservatism 1980-2000
Outline
The Election of Ronald Reagan, 1980
· Conservatism was picking up new strength, headed by religious groups
· Most were less concerned about economy, and more about social issues
o Abortion, homosexuality, feminism, affirmative action, prayer in schools, tougher punishments for crimes
· This was titled the "New Right" party
· Reagan was a great choice for this "New Right" presidency
o Was agianst activist government, and tried to be like FDR
o Fought for the common man
o FDR thought big business was bad, but Reagan blamed big gov't
· Reagan had a group of thinkers called the "neoconservatives"
o Norman Podhoretz (magazine editor) and Irving Kristol (magazine editor) wanted free-market capitalism and were very anti-Soviet. Didn't like welfare programs or affirmative action. Supported individualism and family.
· Reagan started as an actor, then became a politician (kind of like the current Gov. of Cali...)
o He was governor of CA also
o Republican Presidential nomination went to Reagan
· Many Americans viewed Carter's administration as confusing, and many hated the "double-digit" inflation
o Democrats began to dislike Carter, too
o They tried to nominate Edward Kennedy (last Kennedy brother), but he was too liberal (and there was some shady stuff in his past)
o Carter was the Democratic candidate
· Democrats:
o 41% popular vote, 49 electoral votes
o The only insult Carter could use against Reagan was that he might start a nuclear war, but might not
· Republicans:
o 51% popular vote, 489 electoral votes
o Due to Reagan's acting skills, he was very popular, especially on TV
· Independent:
o 7% popular vote, no electoral votes
o John Anderson
· Republicans got control of Senate, too
The Reagan Revolutiuon
· Reagan's inauguration was made triumphant w/ the release of the Iranian hostages
· Assembled a cabinet of the "best and the brightest" and he put important decisions into their hands
o included controvercial James Watt
§ He was a result of the "Sagebrush Rebellion"
§ an anti-Washington movement that protested federal control of natural resources in the West
§ He wanted to limit the EPA and drill for oil (stopped by environmentalists)
o Watt resigned after making a public ethnic joke
· according to Reagan, gov't was the problem and sought to limit it by limiting it's spending
o message found a receptive audience
o fed spending had increased from 18% of the GNP to 23%
o shifting from defence to entitlement programs such as social security
§ counter-"new deal" people finally popped up
§ People were tired of paying to give money to others
§ California did a tax strike that lowered property taxes, and made the government pay more
· Reagan proposed cuts of $35 billion
o mostly from social programs
o wooed southern conservative democrats ("boll weevils") to his support
· shot on March 6, 1981
o recovered quickly and 12 days later was back on the job w/ huge support
The Battle of the Budget
· Congress was caught up in Reagan's popularity, too, so they approved his budget plans
o $695 billion of expenditures, with about $38 billion defecit...
o To get this money, Congress cut up some of the Great Society programs
· Reagan wanted to take down the welfare idea, and to reverse the political policies of recent times
o He took serious power of the presidency, kind of like LBJ did
· Part II of the budget was tax cuts
o 25% reductions in 3 years
o He used his acting skills in asking for Congress to pass the tax-cut bill, and won
o Congress lowered individual taxes, reduced fed. estate taxes, and made tax-free savings plans for small investors
o "Supply-side" economics
o Budget discipline + tax cuts = stimulated new investment, boosted productivity, dramatic economic growth, less federal defecit
· This was kind of shot down when the country entered the greatest recession since the Great Depression
o 11% unemployment, closed businesses, bank failures
o Importing Japanese cars hurt our automobile industry
o People (democrats) said that Reagan's tax cuts hurt the lesser man, and favored the rich
o Reagan just let the recession go and waited for the supply-side economics (Reaganomics) to kick in
§ It did get better in 1983, but:
o Gaps widened between rich and poor
o Yuppies emerged (young urban professionals)
§ They became a symbol of the 1980s
Regan Renews the Cold War
· Regan saw no reason to soften up toward the Soviet Union when he entered the White House
· The Soviets continued their war in Afghanistan and Regan continued to condemn the Kremlin
· Regan believed in negotiating with the Soviet Union only from a position of overwhelming strength.
· His strategy for dealing with them was by enormously expanding U.S. military capabilities.
o he could threaten the Soviets with an expensive new round of the arms race.
o The American economy could better bear this new financial vurden the the Soviet system could.
o Desperate to avoid economic ruin Kremlin leaders would come to the bargaining table
· The strategy wagered the enormous sum of Reagans defense budgets on the hope that the other side would not call Washingtons bluff and start a new cycle of arms race competition.
· In March 1983 he announced his intention to pursue a high-technology missile-defense system called the Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly known as Star Wars.
· His plan called for orbiting battle stations in space that could fire laser beams or other forms of concentrated energy to vaporize intercontinental missiles on liftoff.
· Most scientists considered this an impossible goal
· The deeper logic of SDI lay in its fit with Reagans overall Soviet Strategy. By pitching the arms contest onto a stratospheric plane of high technology and astronomical expense it would further force the Kremlin's hand.
· Experts who did not dismiss SDI as ludicrous feared that Star Wars research might be ruinously costly, ultimately unworkable, and fatally destabilizing to the distasteful but effective "balance of terror" that had kept the nuclear peace.
· Scientific and strategic doubts combined to constrain congressional funding for SDI through the remainder of Reagan's term
· Relations with the Soviets worsened further in late 1981 when the gov't of Poland clamped martial law on the troubled country/
· Reagan saw the heavy fist of the Kremlin inside this Polish iron glove and he imposed economic sanctions on Poland and the USSR alike.
· Relations with Soviets grew even more tense in Sep. 1983 when they blasted a Korean passenger airliner from the skies that had inexplicably violated Soviet airspace, hundreds of civilians including Americans died.
· By the end of 1983 all armscontrol negotiations with the soviets were broken off.
Troubles Abroad
· Israel badly strainded its bonds of friendship w/ U.S. by continuing to allow new settlements to be established in the occupied territory of the Jordan River's West Bank.
· Israel futher risked the stakes in the Middle East in June 1982 when it invaded neighboring Lebanon, seeking to suppress once and for all the guerrilla bases from which Palestinian fighters harassed beleaguered Israel.
· The Palestinians were subdued but Lebanon was plunged into armed chaos.
· President Reagan was obliged to send American troops to Beanon in 1983 as part of an international peace-keeping force, but their presence did not bring peace.
· A suicide bomber crashed an explosives-laden truck into a U.S. Marine barracks on Oct. 23,1983 killing more than two hundred marines.
· President Reagan soon after withdrew the remaining troops, while suffering no political damage from this horrifying and humiliating attack.
· A leftist dictator of Nicaragua had deposed the long-time dictator of Nicaragua in 1979, President Carter had tried to ignore the hotly anit-American rhetoric of the revolutionaries but Reagan took their rhetoric at face value and hurled back at them some hot language of his own.
· He accused the Sandinistas of turning their country into a forward base for Soviet and Cuban military penetration of all of Central America.
· Brandishing photos taken from spy planes, administration spokespeople claimed that Nicaraguan leftists were shipping weapons to revolutionary forces in El Salvador, torn by violence since coup in 1979.
· Reagan sent military "advisers" to prop up the pro-American gov't of El Salvador
· In Oct. 1983 Reagan dispatched a heavy-firepower invasion force to the island of Grenada where a military coup had killed the prime minister and brought Marxists to power.
Round Two for Reagan
· Democrats:
o Walter Mondale
o Named VP as GeraldINE (as in woman) Ferraro
o Mondale lost partly because was VP for Carter
o 13 electoral voets, 36,459,613 popular
· Republicans:
o Obviously Reagan
o 525 electoral votes, 52,609,797 popular
· Foreign policy dominated his second term in office
o Gorbachev, the soviet leader was also in the world news for glasnost ("openess") and perestroika("restructuring") of the Soviet Union
§ both policies called for the shrinking of their military machine and sending the money from their into the civilian economy
§ ceased to deploy intermediate-range forces aimed at the West on April 1985
§ friendlyness towards the West
§ Started to turn the Communist country into a little bit more Democratic (allowed more free speech)
o several meetings between G and R
§ came up w/ the INF treaty which was a victory for the world
o both ended the Cold War pretty much
· other moves in foreign policy included attacks against dictators and terrorists
The Iran-Contra Imbroglio
· 2 foreign-policy probs seemed impossible to solve to Reagan:
o continuing # of capturing of Am. hostages, seized by Muslim extremeist groups in Lebanon
o continuing grip on power of left-wing Sandinista gov't in Nicaragua
· Reagan repeatedly requested for military aid to the contra rebels fighting against the Sandinista regime but they repeatedly refused
· unknown to Am. public, Washington officials saw a link btwn the probs of the Middle Eastern hostages & the Central American Sandinistas
o 1985, Am. diplomats secretly arranged arms sales to the under attack Iranians in return for Iranian aid in obtaining the release of Am. hostages held by Middle Eastern terrorists
o atleast 1 hostage was set free while $ from the payment for the arms was diverted to the contras [$$ was given from us to the contras]
o this violated a Congressional ban on military aid to the Nicaraguan rebels as well as Reagan's vow to never negotiate w. terrorists
· November 1986, new broke out of the secret dealings which caused some major controversy
o Reagan claimed he was innocent & ignorant of the activities but a congressional committee condemned the "secrecy, deception, and disdain of the law" shown by the administration officials & concluded that "if the president did not know what his national security advisers were doing, he should have."
o criminal indictments were later brought against several prominent individuals including Oliver North [marine colonel], John Poindexter [North's boss & Admiral @ the National Security Council], and Caspar Weinberger [Secretary of Defense]
o North & Poindexter were found guilty of criminal behavior, but convictions were eventually reversed on appeal and Weingberger received a presidential pardon before he was formally tried
· the Iran-contra affair cast a dark shadow over the Reagan record in foreign policy, which tends to obscure the pres.'s outstanding achievement in est.ing a new relationship w/ the Soviets
· Reagan was now seen as lazy, senile, and unattentive to details of policy
· critics called the actor-turned-president who acted the role of the presidency w/o really understanding the script
· yet Reagan still remained one of the most popular & beloved presidents in modern American history
Regan's Economic Legacy
· Reagan took office w. the promise to invigorate the Am. economy by rolling back gov't regulations, lowering taxes, & balancing the budget
o he eased by regulatory rules, he pushed major tax reform bills thu Congress in 1981 & 1986
o but a balanced budget was WAAAAAAY out of reach
· the promised supply-sided economic theory: lower taxes would acutlaly INcrease gov't revenue b/c they would so stimulate the ecomony as a whole
o tax reduction + huge increases in military spending = "revenue hole" of $200 billion annual deficits
o adding $2 trillion to the nat'l debt [more than all of Reagan's predecessors combined , including pres.'s of WWI&WWII
· The Reagan years constituted great ecomonic failure
o due to the fact that our debt was fincanced by foreign leaders [esp. Japanese] the deficits basically guaranteed that future generations would have to either work harder than their parents , lower their standard of living, or both to pay their foreign creditors when the bills came due
· yawning deficits encouraged Congress in 1986 to pass legislation commanding a balanced budget by 1991
o this drastic measure wasn't enough to close the gap btwn the fed. gov't's income & expenditures, & the continuously growing nat'l debt
· If the deficits represented an economic failure, strangely, they also formed a kind of political triumph
o Reagan had wanted to slow the growth of gov't & esp. to block or even repeal the social programs launched in the era a of LBJ's Great Society
o by appearing to make new social spending both practically & politically impossible for the future, the deficits served exactly that purpose
o this achieved Reagan's hights political objective: the containment of the welfare state
· Regan therefore guaranteed the long-term up-keep of his dearest political valued to a degree that few presidents have managed to achieve
o "Reaganomics" would be large & durable
· Another legacy of 1980s: the sharp reversal of a long-tem tred toward a more fair distribution of income & an increasing squeeze on the middle class
o early 1990s, median household income acutally declined from $33,500 [1989] to about $31,000 [1993]