1. The Stalemated Seventies
Chapter 39
The Stalemated Seventies

2. Sources of Stagnation
The prosperity of the previous 25 years came to a grinding halt in the 70s.
The baby boom generation faced the prospect of having a lower standard of living than their parents.
Reasons for slow economy: women and young men entering the workforce, decline in investment, heavy cost in compliance with govt rules and regulations, Vietnam War, Great Society spending without raising taxes, and rising oil prices.
Inflation was a major problem during the 70’s. The cost of living tripled.
American industry failed to modernize and countries like Japan and Germany began to dominate the steel, automobile, and technology industries.
The Vietnam War and the stagnant economy ended the liberal dream of the 60’s to solve social problems by spending money.

3. Median Household Income, 1970–2005
During the long post–World War II economic boom (from about 1950 to 1970), family incomes increased dramatically, but after 1970 “real,” or inflation-adjusted, incomes stagnated. Prosperity in the late 1990s led to a slight upward trend, though adjusted median family income began to decline in the early years of the twenty-first century.
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, Historical Income Tables—Households, 2007; U.S. Census Bureau, “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2005”; Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2007.

4. “Vietnamizing” the War
Nixon had knowledge and expertise when it came to foreign policy.
Nixon’s policy “Vietnamization” was to withdraw American soldiers over time and train the South Vietnamese to gradually take over and fight their own war.
Nixon Doctrine: US would honor existing defense commitments but in the future, Asians and others would have to fight their own wars without the support of large bodies of American troops.
Anti-war protests continued. Nixon appealed to the “silent majority” of conservatives who he felt like supported the war.
Drug abuse, mutiny, sabotage, and an unfair draft slowed the progress of the army.
Details of the My Lai Massacre came to light in American troops had murdered innocent women and children at the village of My Lai.

5. The Nixon Wave
During Richard Nixon’s presidency, Americans experienced the first serious inflation since the immediate post–World War II years. The inflationary surge grew to tidal-wave proportions by the late 1970s, when the consumer price index rose at an annual rate of more than 10 percent.

6. President Richard M. Nixon
Reversing Kennedy’s inaugural plea to “bear any burden,” Nixon told Congress in February 1970, “America cannot—and will not—conceive all the plans, design all the programs, execute all the decisions and undertake all the defense of the free nations of the world.”

7. Cambodianizing the War
North Vietnam had been using Cambodia as a spring board for transporting troops, weapons, and supplies into South Vietnam.
April 29, 1970 Nixon ordered attacks on Viet Cong strongholds in Cambodia without the consent of Congress.
Protests erupted nationwide. At Kent State University students began protesting violently and 4 were killed after the National Guard began firing into a crowd of students.
Nixon withdrew the troops from Cambodia two months later.
Congress tried to repeal the “blank check” they had given Johnson and tried to restrain Nixon.
Draft was reduced and the 26th Amendment lowered the voting age to 18 in 1971.
Pentagon Papers were released in 1971 and described the many mistakes of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.
Also described how the US provoked the Gulf of Tonkin attack.

8. Cold War? Not for Some

9. The War at Home, Spring 1970
President Nixon’s order to invade Cambodia sparked angry protests on American campuses. At Kent State University in Ohio, the nation watched in horror as four student demonstrators were shot by jittery National Guardsmen.

10. “Détente”
Soviet Union and China were clashing over their different interpretations of Marxism.
Nixon wanted to play them against each other and use them to pressure the North Vietnamese into peace.
Dr. Henry Kissinger was Nixon’s National Security Advisor.
Nixon made the historic journey to China in Feb 1971.
Nixon visited Moscow in May The Soviets were ready to work with the US now that they had “normalized” their relationship with the Chinese.
These trips ushered in the era of “détente” or relaxed tensions.
The Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty and the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) sought to slow the arms race.
By the 1980s, both the US and Soviets still had over 16,000 nuclear weapons deployed.

11. Some Chicken, Some Egg, 1975
This cartoon pokes fun at Henry Kissinger as a global statesman. Serving first as President Nixon’s national security adviser and then as secretary of state in the Nixon and Ford administrations, the German-born Kissinger brought with him to Washington a sophisticated—some said cynical—view of the world honed during his nearly two decades as a political science professor at Harvard.

12. Balancing Act
Nixon treads delicately between the two communist superpowers in 1973, holding some of the wheat with which he enticed both into détente.

13. Warren Court
Chief Justice Earl Warren led a court that focused on the rights of the individual.
Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) struck down a state law that prohibited contraceptives, even among married couples.
Gideon v. Wainwright (1963) criminal defendants were entitled to legal counsel.
Escobedo (1964) and Miranda (1966) ensured the right of the accused to remain silent. Created the Miranda Warning.
Engel v. Vitale (1962) and School District of Abington Township v. Schempp (1963) ruled that schools could not require prayer or Bible reading.
Nixon appointed 4 conservatives to the court after Warren retired but that court issued the most controversial decision of modern times.
Roe v. Wade (1973) legalized abortion.

14. The Embattled Warren Court
The United States Supreme Court, presided over by Chief Justice Earl Warren, made historic, progressive decisions in areas ranging from civil rights to political representation. Its achievements were not appreciated every where, however, as evidenced by this billboard in New Mexico.

15. Nixon on the Home Front
Nixon expanded the welfare and Social Security programs, much to the dismay of other Conservative Republicans.
Philadelphia Plan required thousands of employers to meet hiring quotas or to establish “set asides” for minorities.
This took affirmative action from protecting individuals to groups and was very controversial.
Many minorities and women took advantage of these new employment opportunities.
1970 Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency.
Rachel Carson’s Silent Springs exposed the poisonous effects of pesticides, especially on birds.
April 22, 1970 the first Earth Day was celebrated. Laws were created to clean up and regulate pollution.
Nixon also signed the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) into law.

16. Author Rachel Carson (1907–1964
Some call her the mother of the modern conservation movement because of the impact of her 1962 book, Silent Spring.

17. Election of 1972
Nixon ran against Democratic George McGovern.
Nixon used the “southern strategy” to win over southern voters. He appointed conservative supreme court justices, did not push civil rights, and opposed school busing to achieve racial balance.
Nixon highlighted how he had scaled down the war and 12 days before the election, Henry Kissinger announced peace was at hand in Vietnam.
Nixon won every state except MA and DC.
Cease fire was agreed to in the Treaty of Paris on January 23, 1973.
The US would withdraw its 27,000 remaining troops and reclaim 560 prisoners of war.
“Peace” was a thinly disguised American retreat.
Bombing in Cambodia continued and Congress passed the War Power Act which limited the president when it came to foreign war.

18. European Attacks on the Vietnam War
The prolonged American involvement in Vietnam became increasingly unpopular abroad, including among U.S. allies. This German cartoon from 1972 decried how much tiny Vietnam had suffered under an endless string of so-called liberators.

19. Oil Embargo and Energy Crisis
US and other Europeans backed Israel in the Yom Kippur War against Egypt.
In October 1973, the OPEC nations announced an embargo on oil shipments to the US and other European countries.
These OPEC countries also cut oil production which drove up the price and caused severe shortages.
Triggered a major economic recession and prompted the US to fund the Alaska pipeline project, push for nuclear energy, and enforce a national speed limit of 55mph to conserve fuel.
The age of cheap and abundant oil was over.

20. Uncle Sam’s Bed of Nails
The oil crises of the 1970s tortured the American economy.

21. Oil Shock
When OPEC dramatically jacked up oil prices in the 1970s, many Americans—as represented by the Henry Kissinger figure in this cartoon—were slow to realize that an era of low energy prices had ended forever.

22. Watergate Scandal
June 17, men were arrested for breaking into the Democratic national headquarters located in the Watergate complex. These men worked for the Committee to Re-Elect the President (popularly known as CREEP) and were trying to plant bugs.
VP Spiro Agnew had to resign after taking bribes and was replaced by Gerald Ford (appointed).
Nixon denied having any prior knowledge about the Watergate break-in.
Former White House lawyer John Dean accused the White House of not only knowing about the break-in but trying to cover it up.
Another aide revealed that Nixon had a secret taping system that recorded all conversations in the Oval Office.

23. Watergate Scandal Continued…
Nixon refused to hand over the tapes, citing “executive privilege”.
Nixon finally agreed to hand over “relevant” portions of the tapes many of which had missing sections.
The Supreme Court unanimously agreed that Nixon had no right to withhold evidence.
A tape known as the “smoking gun tape” revealed the president giving orders to the CIA to hold back an investigation by the FBI only 6 days after the break-in.
August 8, 1974 Nixon resigned to avoid certain impeachment.
Gerald Ford would become the first non-elected president and quickly pardoned Nixon for any crimes he may have committed as president.

24. Nixon, the “Law-and-Order-Man”

25. Smoking Pistol Exhibit A
The tape-recorded conversations between President Nixon and his top aide on June 23, 1972, proved mortally damaging to Nixon’s claim that he had played no role in the Watergate cover-up.

26. The “Smoking Gun” Tape, June 23, 1972, 10:04–11:39 a.m.

27. Defeat in Vietnam
Early in 1975 North Vietnam began its long expected push into South Vietnam.
Ford tried urge Congress to vote to send more weapons but they refused.
The remaining Americans had to be evacuated on April 29, 1975.
140,000 South Vietnamese were also rescued.
The cost of the war was $118 billion and left 56,000 Americans dead and 300,000 wounded.
The US had supplied South Vietnam with everything except the will to win.

28. Passing the Buck
A satirical view of where responsibility for the Vietnam debacle should be laid.

29. The Last Days of Saigon
Violence often attended the frantic American evacuation from Vietnam in 1975.

30. Civil Rights in the 1970s
Milliken v. Bradley (1974) ruled that desegregation plans could not require students to move across school district lines.
Bakke v. University of California (1978) ruled that preference in admission could not be given to members of any group, minority or majority, on the basis of ethnic or racial identity alone.
United States v. Wheeler (1978) declared that Indian tribes possessed a “unique and limited” sovereignty, subject to the will of Congress but not to individual states.

31. The Abortion Wars
Pro-choice and prolife demonstrators brandish their beliefs. By the end of the twentieth century, the debate over abortion had become the most morally charged and divisive issue in American society since the struggle over slavery in the nineteenth century.

32. Antifeminist Phyllis Schlafly (b. 1924)
Schlafly traveled the country promoting her “STOP ERA” campaign. She argued that ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment would undermine the American family by violating “the right of a wife to be supported by her husband,” requiring women to serve in combat, and legalizing homosexual marriage.

33. Jimmy Carter
Carter defeated Ford in 1976 with the slogan “I’ll never lie to you”.
He was an outsider that never really figured out how to be an insider in Washington and surrounded himself with other inexperienced Georgians.
Human rights was the guiding principle of his foreign policy.
Camp David Accords (1978) required Israel to withdraw from certain areas and Egypt promised to recognize their borders.
Carter resumed full diplomatic relations with China and begin working on treaties that would turn over the Panama Canal to the Panamanians.
Détente was beginning to fall apart as Soviet and Cuban troops beginning appearing all around the world.

34. Celebrating the Camp David Agreement, September 1978
Anwar Sadat of Egypt (left) and Menachem Begin of Israel (right) join U.S. president Jimmy Carter in confirming the historic accord that brought the hope of peace to the war-torn Middle East.

35. Historical Double Take
Many Americans who looked back reverently to Theodore Roosevelt’s “Rough Rider” diplomacy were outraged at the Panama “giveaway.” But the Carter administration, looking to the future, argued persuasively that relinquishing control of the canal would be healthy for U.S.–Latin American relations.

36. Iran Hostage Crisis
The US backed Shah of Iran was ousted in 1979 which again drove up energy prices and left Jimmy Carter unsure of what to do.
November 4, 1979 a mob of anti-American Muslim militants took control of the American embassy in Tehran and took all of the Americans there hostage.
The Iranians demanded the US return the Shah to Iran.
The Soviet Union took advantage of the situation by invading Afghanistan on Dec 27, 1979.
Carter placed an embargo on the Soviets and called for a boycott of the upcoming Olympic games in Moscow.
Carter ordered a rescue mission but it resulted in disaster as equipment failed and 8 rescuers died after their aircraft collided.
The hostage crisis would continue through the rest of Carter’s term and would become the nail in his presidential coffin.

37. Iranians Denounce President Jimmy Carter, November 1979
Scenes like this one appeared almost nightly on American television during the 444 days of the Iranian hostage crisis, humiliating Carter and angering American citizens.