Nation of Nations Concise 2/e Davidson, Gienapp, Heyrman, Lytle, & Stoff
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The chapter opens by contrasting the soaring achievements of the moon landing of 1969 with the viscous reality of oil spilled into the Santa Barbara channel during the same year. As the new decade dawned, it was the problems caused by technology and growth, not their benefits, that dominated American thinking. Americans were forced to confront the limits of what had recently seemed a future of infinite promise.

The Limits of Reform

Reform crusades did not simply disappear as the United States passed from the turbulent 1960s into the 1970s. Rather, the sense of a "movement" splintered into more varied causes with more particular agendas. Ralph Nader sparked a consumer crusade dedicated to forcing corporations to be more responsible to their customers, workers, and the public interest. Some consumer legislation resulted, but consumerism never became a mass political movement. Similarly, the Santa Barbara oil spill was one of many issues that advertised the importance of ecology to a healthy environment. Environmentalists won some environmental protection laws, but could not offset concerns about jobs.

Feminists were somewhat more successful in initiating a sustained movement. Drawing on the response to Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, feminists succeeded in inserting gender discrimination into the 1964 Civil Rights Act and federal affirmative action programs. Social trends such as increased educational opportunities translated into new life patterns for women. But women divided over the abortion issue and a Constitutional amendment on equal rights. In 1973 the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade struck down restrictive abortion rules in 46 states but more conservative women reacted with a "right to life" campaign. And after initial progress toward ratification, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) bogged down in conservative state legislatures, who were being lobbied by anti-ERA women. Thus, while reformers pushed on in the 1970s, they discovered the limits of the political process.

Political Limits: Watergate

Richard Nixon, too, discovered the limits of the era. He battled publicly with Congress to avoid spending funds they had appropriated; privately, he used government agencies to wage war against his perceived "enemies." During the 1972 campaign two reporters discovered links between the White House and a burglary at the Democratic headquarters in the Watergate Hotel complex. In the burglary trial the judge finally extracted a confession of alleged White House involvement in the crime and cover-up.

The Ervin Committee, in its Senate investigation of Watergate, discovered that a taping system recorded conversations in the Oval Office, setting off a battle between the Special Prosecutor, who sought the tapes, and the President, who refused to supply them. In the midst of this crisis, Vice President Agnew resigned under a cloud of corruption. Eventually the Supreme Court ordered release of the tapes which, despite gaps, revealed direct presidential involvement in the cover-up. The House of Representatives began to consider articles of impeachment. Rather than face impeachment, Nixon resigned in August 1974, making Gerald Ford the first president neither elected as president or as vice president by voters. The system had worked, but not without stress.

A Ford, Not a Lincoln

Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State under Presidents Nixon and Ford, pursued a policy of realism. He quietly acknowledged that American power had declined relatively, under the pressures of inflation and falling industrial productivity. These economic ills were severely aggravated by the OPEC oil boycott. Kissinger sought to restore strength to the western alliance by promoting stability in the Middle East in the wake of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. But scandals involving the CIA's covert operations and a worsening energy crisis hampered his efforts. Nevertheless, the Ford-Kissinger team was able to ease tensions through détente with the Soviet Union at summits in Vladivostok in 1974 and Helsinki in 1975.

Ford found himself more embattled on the home front. His program of amnesty for Vietnam dissenters satisfied neither conservatives nor dissenters. A public relations campaign produced no reduction in inflation. Aging industrial cities faced bankruptcy. Most controversial of all, however, Ford pardoned Richard Nixon before the nation was in a mood to forgive. In the 1976 election Washington outsider Jimmy Carter used the nation's frustrations with scandal and a weak economy to defeat Ford.

Jimmy Carter: Restoring the Faith

Carter sought to bring simplicity and directness to Washington. Yet, too often he focused on detail, and as an outsider he could bring neither new vision nor political savvy to the task of governing more efficiently and responsively. Domestically, inflation and energy shortages, provoking sharp rises in the price of oil, continued to hurt the economy. Carter's proposals couldn't budge Congress. And Americans were reluctant to embrace voluntary conservation measures.

In foreign affairs, Carter's Christian ideals initially translated into a commitment to "human rights" and some effort to reduce cold war tensions. He successfully negotiated a treaty providing for an eventual transfer of the Canal Zone to Panama. But he gradually stiffened his early search for détente, heeding the hard-line stance of his National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and supporting a renewed military build-up. In dealing with the Middle East, Carter facilitated the signing of the Camp David Accords between traditional foes Egypt and Israel. But when Iranian fundamentalists overthrew the Shah of Iran and the deposed monarch traveled to the United States for medical treatment, militants seized the American Embassy and held 53 Americans hostage during the following year. A Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1980 only underscored the region's instability. By 1980 the combination of a sick economy and a foreign policy in disarray mired the nation in what Carter himself described as "a crisis of confidence."

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