CHAPTER 26 The Conservative Turn, 1969–1988
This chapter considers American history from the Nixon administration to the Reagan years, when conservatism prevailed in Ameri-
can politics and society. Introduced by the 1964 presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater as a reminder of the conservative tides of
the 1960s, the chapter begins with Richard Nixon’s presidency, revealing that his domestic policies were not reflective of a staunch
conservative agenda. Nixon’s expansion of the welfare state and commitment to the environment surprised many conservatives. Like-
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Introduction: Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan
II. President Nixon
A. Nixon’s Domestic Policies
2. The Nixon administration created a host of new federal agencies.
3. Nixon spent lavishly on social services and environmental initiatives.
B. Nixon and Welfare
1. Perhaps Nixon’s most startling initiative was his proposal for a Family Assistance Plan.
C. Nixon and Race
1. To consolidate support in the white South, Nixon nominated to the Supreme Court conservative southern jurists with
2. The Nixon administration also pursued affirmative action programs to upgrade minority employment.
3. Trade unions of skilled workers strongly opposed the Philadelphia Plan.
D. The Burger Court
2. In Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, busing was used as a tool to achieve integration.
a. Boston
E. The Court and Affirmative Action
1. Many whites came to view affirmative action programs as a form of reverse discrimination.
F. The Rights of the Disabled
2. Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990.
G. The Continuing Sexual Revolution
1. To the alarm of conservatives, during the 1970s the sexual revolution passed from the counterculture into the social
mainstream.
2. The number of divorces in 1975 exceeded the number of first-time marriages.
3. Women made inroads into areas from which they had long been excluded in the 1970s.
4. The gay and lesbian movement expanded greatly during the 1970s and became a major concern of the right.
H. Nixon and Détente
2. Nixon and Henry Kissinger continued their predecessors’ policy of attempting to undermine governments deemed
3. In his relations with the major communist powers, however, Nixon fundamentally altered Cold War policies.
5. Nixon then went to Moscow, signing the treaties associated with the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT).
III. Vietnam and Watergate
A. Nixon and Vietnam
1. Nixon ran for president in 1968, declaring that he had a secret plan to end the war.
2. Anti-war protests climaxed in 1970.
3. Public support for the war was rapidly waning.
a. My Lai Massacre
B. The End of the Vietnam War
2. Vietnam was a military, political, and social disaster.
C. The 1972 Election
2. In the primaries, Shirley Chisholm, a Brooklyn congresswoman, became the first black woman to seek the presidency.
4. McGovern carried only Massachusetts and Nixon won in a landslide.
D. Watergate
1. Nixon was obsessed with secrecy and could not accept honest difference of opinion.
2. The Watergate break-in was covered up by the White House.
E. Nixon’s Fall
1. In August 1974, the House Judiciary Committee voted to recommend that Nixon be impeached for conspiracy to obstruct
justice.
a. Nixon resigned.
2. Nixon’s presidency remains a classic example of the abuse of political power.
IV. The End of the Golden Age
A. The Decline of Manufacturing
1. During the 1970s, the long period of postwar economic expansion and consumer prosperity came to an end and was
succeeded by slow growth and high inflation.
B. Stagflation
1. The United States experienced two oil shocks in the 1970s.
2. By 1973, the United States imported one-third of its oil.
3. America experienced stagflation.
4. Voices of Freedom (Primary Source document feature) highlights part of environmentalist Barry Commoner’s The
Closing Circle, a warning against environmental pollution.
C. The Beleaguered Social Compact
1. Faced with declining profits and rising overseas competition, corporations eliminated well-paid manufacturing jobs.
D. Labor on the Defensive
E. The Ford and Carter Administrations
1. Among his first acts as president, Ford pardoned Nixon.
3. The Helsinki Accords were signed in 1975.
5. Carter had more in common with Progressives of the early twentieth century than with more recent liberals.
F. Carter and the Economic Crisis
2. Carter also believed that expanded use of nuclear energy could help reduce dependence on imported oil.
a. Three Mile Island
G. The Emergence of Human Rights Politics
1. Under Carter, promoting human rights became a centerpiece of American foreign policy for the first time.
3. Carter cut off aid to the brutal military dictatorship governing Argentina.
5. Carter’s emphasis on pursuing peaceful solutions to international problems and his willingness to think outside the Cold
War framework yielded important results.
6. Both conservative Cold Warriors and foreign policy realists severely criticized Carter’s emphasis on human rights.
H. The Iran Crisis and Afghanistan
2. The president announced the Carter Doctrine in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
V. The Rising Tide of Conservatism
A. The Religious Right
1. The rise of religious fundamentalism during the 1970s expanded conservatism’s popular base.
B. The Battle over the Equal Rights Amendment
1. The ERA aroused unexpected protest from those who claimed it would discredit the role of wife and homemaker.
a. To its supporters, the amendment offered a guarantee of women’s freedom in the public sphere.
C. The Abortion Controversy
1. Pro-life advocates believe that life begins at conception and abortion is nothing less than murder.
D. The Tax Revolt
1. Economic anxieties also created a growing constituency for conservative economics.
E. Conservatism in the West
1. In 1978, conservatives sponsored and California voters approved Proposition 13, a ban on further increases in property
taxes.
2. The Sagebrush Rebellion in Nevada argued that certain decision-making power should be given over to the states.
F. The Election of 1980
2. Riding a wave of dissatisfaction with the country’s condition, Reagan swept into the White House.
3. Jimmy Carter’s reputation improved after he left the White House.
VI. The Reagan Revolution
A. Reagan and American Freedom
1. An excellent public speaker, his optimism and affability appealed to large numbers of Americans.
2. Reagan reshaped the nation’s agenda and political language more effectively than any president since Franklin Roosevelt.
B. Reagan’s Economic Policies
1. Economic freedom for Reagan meant curtailing the power of unions, dismantling regulations, and radically reducing
taxes.
C. Reagan and Labor
1. Reagan’s firing of air traffic controllers inspired many private employers to launch anti-union offensives.
D. The Problem of Inequality
1. Reagan’s policies, rising stock prices, and deindustrialization resulted in a considerable rise in economic inequality.
3. When the national unemployment rate reached 8.9 percent at the end of 1981, the figure for blacks exceeded 20 percent.
E. The Second Gilded Age
2. Taxpayers footed the bill for some of the consequences.
a. Savings and Loan (S&L) scandal
F. Reagan and Immigration Reform
1. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.
a. The act, the most significant reform of immigration policy since 1965, aimed to reduce the number of undocumented
G. Conservatives and Reagan
1. Reagan left intact core elements of the welfare state and did little to advance the social agenda of the Christian Right.
H. The War on Crime and Drugs
2. Reagan built on initiatives begun during the Nixon administration.
a. Nixon had called for increased spending on policing and law enforcement, and an expansion of the nation’s prisons.
4. Reagan expanded on Nixon’s “tough on crime” approach.
a. The Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 reinstated the federal death penalty, abolished the federal parole
I. Reagan and the Cold War
1. In foreign policy, Reagan breathed new life into the rhetorical division of the world into a free West and unfree East.
J. The Iran-Contra Affair
1. Reagan denied knowledge of the illegal proceedings, but the Iran-Contra affair undermined confidence that he controlled
1. In his second term, Reagan softened his anticommunist rhetoric and established good relations with Soviet premier
Mikhail Gorbachev.
L. Reagan’s Legacy
1. Reagan’s presidency revealed the contradictions at the heart of modern conservatism.
M. The Election of 1988
1. The 1988 election seemed to show politics sinking to new lows.
SUGGESTED DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
• Discuss the Supreme Court under Warren Burger. Was it a liberal or conservative court? How significant were its major rulings?
• Discuss why conservatives were disappointed with Richard Nixon’s domestic policy and with his foreign policy.
• Discuss the historical significance of Watergate.
• What caused capitalism’s golden age to end?
• Debate the advantages and disadvantages of the Equal Rights Amendment.
• Identify and analyze the key groups that combined to create the new conservative coalition.
SUPPLEMENTAL WEB AND VISUAL RESOURCES
Christian Right
Energy Crisis
Iran-Contra Affair
Jimmy Carter
Ronald Reagan
Vietnam War Massacre and Pullout
Watergate
SUPPLEMENTAL PRINT RESOURCES
Battista, Andrew. “Unions and Cold War Foreign Policy in the 1980s: The National Labor Committee, the AFL-CIO, and Central America.” Diplo-
matic History 26, no. 3 (2002): 419–452.
Berman, William. America’s Right Turn: From Nixon to Bush. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.
Bernardoni, James. The New Hollywood: What the Movies Did with the Freedoms of the Seventies. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2001.
Buckley, William F., Jr. God and Man at Yale. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 1977.
Clymer, Kenton. “Jimmy Carter, Human Rights, and Cambodia.” Diplomatic History 27, no. 2 (2003): 245–278.
Crespino, Joseph. In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2009.
Critchlow, Donald. Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman’s Crusade. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.
Herr, Lois Kathryn. Women, Power, and AT&T: Winning Rights in the Workplace. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2003.
Kruse, Kevin. White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007.
INTERACTIVE INSTRUCTOR ACTIVITIES
1. Group Activity: The Controversy over Busing—Pasadena, 1970
In the 1970s, federal courts began to prescribe ways to achieve the desegregation that the United States Supreme Court had mandated in 1954, and
most asked school districts to mix students from different neighborhoods by transporting them to schools in other parts of town. This practice of
busing raised objections from the very beginning and escalated into riot–like confrontations in some of the nation’s allegedly most liberal cities,
such as Boston.
The video in this Instructor’s Guide activity is a September 14, 1970, news report on what was the largest busing program outside the South at
the time, as well as a bill signed into law by Governor Ronald Reagan banning busing in the state of California.
Early Controversy over Busing
Discussion Activities:
1. What objections did Ronald Reagan raise to the busing of students? How did he characterize the order of the federal judge?
2. For what reasons did the Pasadena residents interviewed in the report object to busing? Do these arguments resonate with what you have
Research Activities:
1. Let students research the broader history of busing, with a special emphasis on the events in Boston. What differences do they note, and
how can they explain them?
Group Activities:
1. The resistance to the busing initiative in Pasadena was far less violent than in Charlotte or Boston. Divide students into groups of five to eight
and ask them to discuss possible reasons for this. If they are reluctant to speculate, help them see the difference between the multiethnic di-
versity apparent in the Pasadena footage and the historical black-white divisions in cities like Boston. Urge them to recall the results of their
research on the socioeconomic data of Pasadena, which was quite prosperous. By contrast, what did their research reveal about the conditions
2. Class Debate: Watergate Hearings