The Sixties & Seventies
Key Themes
- Active Presidency
- Active Government
1960 Election
Nixon vs. Kennedy
Kennedy Theme: “Ask not, what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country”
The New Frontier
7 issues:
- Peace Corps
- Space Program
- Federal aid to education
- Civil Rights
- Health Care for the elderly
- Aggressive stand against Communism
- tax cuts
Result: Limited success
Foreign Policy: flexible response
April 1961: Bay of Pigs
June 1961: Geneva Conference Nikita Khrushchev + Kennedy
Dec. 1961: 16,000 troops in Vietnam
1962: Operation Mongoose (CIA plot to kill Castro)
Oct. 1962: Cuban Missile Crisis Hot Line Salt Talks
Nov. 1963: Diem assassinated/U.S. 16,000 military advisors in Vietnam
Lyndon Johnson (background)
Key to success
- Johnson massage
- Kennedy assassination
- Landslide 1964 election victory
Johnson Agenda
Medicare/Medicaid Dept. of Housing & Urban Development
The Great Society Vista National Endowment for the Arts & Humanities
Key legislation Voting Rights Act 1965 Immigration Act 1965
Civil Rights Act 1964 Motor Vehicle Safety Ac t 1966
Warren Court
Thurgood Marshall Felix Frankfurter
Hugo Black Byron White
William O. Douglas Abe Fortas
Chief Justice Earl Warren
Civil Rights Reapportionment
Brown v Board of Education Baker v Carr
Wesberry v Sanders
Loving v. Virginia
Warren Court continued
Rights of the Accused Abortion
Gideon v Wainwright Roe v Wade
Escobedo v Illinois Griswold v. Connecticut
Miranda v Arizona Right to privacy
Mapp v Ohio
Country turns on the liberal agenda: Why?
war, riots, assassinations
1965: Watts Riots (LA)
Malcolm X assassinated
1966: Black Power
Stokley Carmichael
1967:Eldridge Cleaver Soul on Ice
Summer riots (Cleveland, Harlem, Chicago)
1968: Tet Offensive
Martin Luther King assassinated
Robert Kennedy assassinated
Democratic Convention at Chicago erupts in violence
1968 Election
Nixon vs. Humphrey
Issues: law and order
Nixon Years
New Federalism
Key themes Détente/Vietnam War
Watergate
SALT 1 –freeze on ballistic missiles
Watergate
“Follow the money”
Special advisors
Nixon =H.R. Haldeman John Mitchell Howard Hunt
John Erlichman CREEP G. Gordon Liddy
James McCord
John Dean Burglars
Presidential Attorney
Tapes
FBI Investigation
Special Prosecutor Congress
Archibald Cox Senator Sam Ervin Federal Court Hearing
Judge John Sirica
Nixon v. U.S.
1974
Nixon resigns August 1974
Gerald Ford Administrations
1974-1977
Nixon pardon
CIA abuses: Salvadore Allende (Chile)
George Bush appointed to reform the agency
April 1975: Saigon falls
Khmer Rouge gain control of Cambodia
Mayaguez captured (Cambodia)
WIN buttons (Whip Inflation Now) 1975: 9% unemployment
Jimmy Carter’s Presidency
Foreign Policy Prime Minister Menachem Begin
President Anwar Sadat
Human Rights initiative Ayatollah Khomeini
1978 Camp David Accords US Embassy Tehran
1978 Panama Canal Treaty
1979 Iranian Hostage Crisis
1979 SALT II Treaty –limits nuclear delivery system
1980 Olympic Boycott + grain embargo/USSR invades Afghanistan
1980 Election
Ronald Reagan v Jimmy Carter
“Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”