Chapter 33: A Conservative Realignment: 1977-1990

The Carter Presidency

More African American Women
Amnesty to men who flawed the country to avoid serving in the war
Department of Energy and Department of Education
Environmental initiatives → coal mining, $1.6 billion “Superfund” to clean toxic chemical waste sites
A proposal to protect over 100 million acres of Alaskan land from development

Political Naiveté
Energy Program
Foreign policy
Cut off to aid to countries who violated basic human rights
Turning over the Panama Canal
Camp David Accords → Egypt’s Anwar el-Sadat and Israel’s Menachem Begin at Tel Aviv ⇒ extremist assassinated Sadat cause they called him a traitor
Tax cuts and increase in public spending
Strategic Arms Limitation Talks with the Soviets (SALT II) → moot after Soviets invade Afghanistan
4 November 1979 → Iranian mouths storm the U.S. embassy in Tehran → endorsed by Ruhollah Khomeini → Carter freezes assets in Iran
Failed commando raid
(20 January 1981) Carter pays several billion for the hostages

The Reagan Revolution

Sunbelt states gain population that are mostly republican
Hostility to “big government”
Tax revolts
(June 1978) Proportion 13 on ballot to help tax problem
New York Times called the tax revolts a “modern Boston Tea Party”
Reverend Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority (Liberty Alliance) → religious and social goals, economy shouldn’t have government influence, Roe v Wade (1973)
Darwinism → creation
Prayer in public schools, women’s roles of submission to their husbands, communism is pagan totalitarianism
Phyllis Schlafly and the Anti-feminists
Women were bitter and didn’t want family or kids, but wanted abortion, and saw home = prison
Schlafly’s STOP (Stop Taking Our Privileges) ERA
Pro-life movement
Women who Want to be Women or Females Opposed to Equality
The National Right to Life Committee supported by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops
Business Roundtable to promote business interests in congress
Joseph Coors’s Heritage Foundation

Reagan’s First Term

Lower taxes
Adept to tactical compromises
Inspiration
Reaganomics → government = problem
(1 August 1981) Economic Recovery Tax Act → income taxes to 25%, lowered maximum rate → 70% to 50%, capital tax gains ↓, tax concessions
Safely net for the needy
Reagan’s failure → recession in 1981
David Stockman budget advisor
$11.4 billion → $100 billion in new tax bills
Anti-Unions
He fired members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization who participated in illegal strikes
American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) → power broken in the 1980 and 1984 elections
Opposed the ERA
Sandra Day O’Connor → 1st woman supreme court justice
Cut support for civil rights organizations and didn’t support the Voting Rights Act of 1965
Moscow = “evil empire”
Wanted to make Russia broke
Nuclear arms ↑
Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) - things in space to intercept missiles
Polish independence (solidarity movement)
El Savador ⇒ becomes communist → President José Napoleón Duarte
Nicaragua → Contras fight/attack on Sandinista bases
Grenada → 1,900 marines invade and evacuate the communist government

Reagan’s Second Term

Removed government price controls on oil and less pressure on Saudi Arabia
Reporters called it the Reagan Revolution
Slogan → “America is back and standing taller”
Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferrano (Democratic Nominees)
(1986) Tax Reform Act → cut tax bracket 14 to 2 and the max 50% to 15% and 28%
Iran-Contra Affairs → Oliver North was selling supplies to Iran and using the money to fund the contras
National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane, his successor Admiral John Poindexter, and CIA William Lasey
The Tower Commission (John Tower is lead) investigated the affair
John Poindexter is sentenced to jail for six months

The Changing Social Landscape

More manufacturing moved over seas
Computers
(1946) team of engineers at U Penn created ENIAC (Electronic numerical integrator and computer)
(1971) the microprocessor - a silicon chip
(1975) Ed Roberts develops a prototype of a personal computer → Altair 8800
Harvard Sophomore Bill Gates - dropout, Microsoft
Internet, email, and cell phone allows instantaneous communication
Stock market crashes due to people spending more than they have
(19 October 1987) Black Monday
Wall Street (1987 film) → Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) “Greed is good, greed is right”
Homelessness due to medical prices, drug and alcohol abuse, etc
AIDs and HIV (more contagious)
Patrick Buchanan “homosexuals have declared war on nature, and now nature is extracting an awful retribution”
Michail Gorbachev and the treaty to eliminate intermediate-range nuclear missiles

The Bush Administration

Biggest problem was the national debt of $2.6 trillion
Negotiated with the Democratic majority
Tax ↑ budget ↓
Beijing’s Tiananmen square
Gorbachev’s perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness)
(1989) Soviet troops leave Afghanistan
Communist Party ends in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslavakia, and Bulgaria
Romania → revolution → blood bath, Nicolae Ceausescu (his wife and him are killed Christmas Day)
Berlin Wall down (9 November 1989)
Coup in Prussia from Communist Party
Boris Yeltsin - most popular political figure in Russia
Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia ⇒ independent
“The soviet disunion”
Soviets and U.S. to reduce nuclear stockpile
General Manuel Noriega and drug activities → Bush sends troops to invade Panama
Saddam Hussein (dictator of Iraq) invades Kuwait because of oil (Kuwait's oil production ↑ ⇒ against OPEC)
U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Soviet Foreign Minister condemns Hussein
Resolution 661 → embargo on trade with Iraq
Operation Desert Shield (ODS) → Operation Desert Storm (ODS with Missles) → “the mother of all battles” ~Hussein

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