Revision Doc - Conservative Resurgence 1968-1992 PDF

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Revision document on the Conservative Resurgence 1968-1992...

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Conservative Resurgence, 1968-1992 Past Paper Questions Explain the outbreak of the ‘culture wars’ of the 1980s and 1990s. (2011) How important was race in the rise of modern American conservatism? (2012) How revolutionary was the Reagan Revolution? (2013) ‘Franklin Delano Reagan’ [New York Times]. Discuss this view of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. (2014) ‘Ronald Reagan was the most important president of the twentieth century.’ Discuss. (2015) Who won the culture wars? (2015) Why did conservatism prove such a powerful force in the 1980s and beyond? (2016) ‘I think we’ve hit the jackpot’ [RONALD REAGAN, 1982, after signing a bill to deregulate savings and loans]. Did the policies of the Reagan years lead to the financial windfall that Reagan described? (2016)

Subtext - The presidency of Richard Nixon as the climax of American liberalism, thereafter we can only identify the triumph of conservativism on the political scene → The roots of conservatism and its rise to dominate the politics of America in the late 1970s, through to the early 1990s – why did it achieve this dominance? - Ronald Reagan as the harbinger of conservatism and ‘revolutionary’ policies which reinvigorated the morale of America, making the United States ‘great again’ i.e. economic revival, foreign policy achievements - The comparisons between Reagan and other great presidents of the 20th century, such as FDR, JFK, and Wilson - The nature of the ‘culture wars’ is multidimensional but, essentially, there is only a bipolar battle at heart between conservatism/ orthodoxy and liberalism/ progressivism – can a ‘winner’ be identified?

Historiographical debate - Bill Clinton’s administration claimed that the Reagan era witnessed the ‘end of big government’ - David Farber, Barry Goldwater was a man of the people – or at least some of the people. He helped invent a modern, populist conservatism; not least, Goldwater brought millions of southern whites to the conservative cause and unified and nationalised a grassroots right-wing movement by seeking out the support of the fiercest and most apocalyptic anti-communists such as the John Birch Society - Otis L. Graham, Nixon personally began to preside over a more rapid evolution toward planning than any other President since FDR - Joan Hoff, On women’s questions other than abortion, Nixon proved much more liberal than expected e.g. Congress passed the Equal Employment Opportunity Act;

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approved Title IX of the Education Amendments Act; and prohibited sex discrimination by educational institutions receiving federal aid. Nixon personally insisted that Congress broaden the US Civil Rights Commission mandate to include sex discrimination and amend the 1971 Revenue Act, making child care expenses tax-deductible when both parents worked. In addition, Congress attached a number of anti-sex discrimination provisions to such federally supported programs as health training, revenue sharing, Appalachian redevelopment, and environmental protection Michael Kazin, The evangelical Right brought a mushrooming number of new constituents eager to battle the perceived allies of abortionists, drug pushers, and nuclear disarmers Ronald Formisano, One of the key insurgencies that generated grass-roots resentment against a liberal elite was the anti-busing movement Merle and Earl Black, The Great White Switch in partisan identification: Not until Reagan’s presidency did more southern whites begin to think of themselves as Republicans than as Democrats. Reagan had mastered attracting substantial majorities from conservative and moderate whites, while implicitly conceding the votes of blacks and liberal whites. His optimistic conservatism and successful performance in office made the Republican party respectable and useful for millions of southern whites David Farber, Reagan’s was an ideological administration, though pragmatism often warred with purity of principle William E. Leuchtenburg, Reagan suggested that there was continuity between his policies and FDR’s because, he contended, both were hostile to the emergence of a powerful national government. His distorted parallels drawn with Roosevelt hid the fact that FDR expanded the national state, made Wall Street answerable to Washington, placed a host of industries under federal regulation, and introduced the welfare state Hedrick Smith, Reagan set out in 1980 to achieve a ‘1932’ in reverse David Farber, At the beginning of the 1980s, when a majority of Americans feared that the country’s greatest days were a thing of the past, Reagan promised them economic recovery and global leadership in the war on communism. During an era in which the federal government had become the guarantor of equal opportunity, provider for the poor, protector of the environment, and regulator of the marketplace, Reagan insisted that big government – what liberals offered the American people – was the enemy of the citizenry Robert M. Collins, Reagan’s commitment to the regimen of tax cuts and spending constraints, tight money, and deregulation reflected, in large part, his own emotional and experimental view of economics. He abhorred big government and had a primordial dislike of high taxes rooted in his own experiences in the film industry (i.e. the confiscatory level of taxation and the ultimate economic impact of such disincentives to work), thus was predisposed to favour the supply-side approach to economic policy Steven M. Teles, The Federalist Society has played a critical part in building the support structure of the conservative legal network. It was founded to dislodge what it saw as the ‘hegemony’ of liberalism in the key institutions of the legal profession, and as such has been a critical component in the larger conservative mission of scaling back liberal successes in the courts

- Robert M. Collins, Reagan’s personal actions and decisions at crucial points determined the course of both policy and affairs. Moreover, the president personally worked hard to mobilise the popular and political support he needed to prevail - Stephen Skowronek, Reagan stands out as a president of the reconstructive sort, historically the most consequential of all presidential types. He appeared on the scene when the previous political regime had been thoroughly discredited by an inability to respond relevantly and successfully to the pressing problems of the day and appears exhausted (i.e. Jimmy Carter and the malaise of the 1970s). That background of failure opened up the opportunity for Reagan to remake the government wholesale and rest the very terms and conditions of constitutional government. He reformulated the nation’s political agenda altogether, to galvanise support for the release of governmental power on new terms, and to move the nation past the old problems, eyeing a different set of possibilities altogether → Reagan orchestrated the most consequential presidency since that of the 20 th century’s other reconstructive leader, young Reagan’s early political idol, FDR. George H. W. Bush’s single presidential term illustrated just how difficult it could be to play the role of the faithful son following in the footsteps of a reconstructive leader - James Davison Hunter, The Culture War was a multifaceted struggle between different systems of moral understanding. The contending worldviews were: the orthodox and the progressive. The orthodox impulse (political and cultural conservatives) entailed commitment to an external, definable, and transcendent authority e.g. cultural tradition, religion, or conceptions of natural law. The progressive impulse (liberal or radical politicians and socialists) denied such authority and relied instead on subjective values derived from the contemporary zeitgeist - Andrew Hartmann, In their reaction to the New Left (the sexual revolution, Black Power, Mexican American consciousness, women’s liberation movement, the Gay Liberation Front etc.), in their spirited defence of traditional American institutions, neoconservatives drew up the very terms of the culture wars The rise of conservatism and the reasons for its triumph - Conservatives believed that USA’s problems were not the result of any inherent limitations of a capitalist economy or inequalities in US life, but rather were due to liberal tampering with an otherwise harmonious, self-sustaining system i.e. New Deal policies, ‘big government’ in WWII, Johnson’s Great Society programs - David Farber, Goldwater added to his conservative reputation with his ferocious attacks on organised labour’s most articulate and politically aggressive champion, United Auto Workers leader Walter Reuther. Fighting labour unions was, in the late 1950s, still at the heart of the conservative cause, and Goldwater was among the Senate’s most dedicated anti-unionists, arguing that industrywide bargaining was an evil to be eliminated - David Farber, The Conscience of a Conservative (1960), written by Brent Bozell, and authorised by Barry Goldwater, was a best seller and a kind of bible to the growing cadres of conservative rank-and-file due to its winning combination of hard-nosed policy language (Goldwater) and high-minded justification (Bozell) for such toughness

- Lisa McGirr, The political career of Barry Goldwater, prospective presidential candidate for the Republican Party in 1962-4 evinced a deep hostility to liberals’ concerns with equality → Goldwater’s position in California regarding states’ rights and his vote against the 1964 Civil Rights Act found favour in a region where sentiment against ‘government centralization’ and ‘collectivism’ ran strong. Above all, his support of ‘property rights’ over civil rights as the ultimate test of freedom resounded among white middle-class property holders in a state whose Democrats had recently passed fair housing legislation - Lisa McGirr, The 1962 primary campaign showed, for the first time, the emergence of the new conservative grassroots movement within electoral politics. Nixon was too formidable a figure to defeat outright – particularly given his spotty but undeniably conservative record and his extensive national experience. Yet the zealous crop of right-wing activists were not easily deterred - Kevin M. Kruse, The rise of southern Republicanism, in the person of Bo Calloway and others like him, was largely due to the white backlash against the 1964 Civil Rights Act. This became clear in Johnson’s reelection campaign, when he was pitted against Republican Senator Barry Goldwater, who had voted against the Civil Rights Act. Assumptions about the parties’ racial policies (that the Democrats were more liberal and ‘softer’ on racial issues, whilst the Republicans were more conservative) led segregationist whites to rally around the Republican banner for the first time in a century. Not surprisingly, Barry Goldwater won every state in the Deep South. Although Goldwater failed to win the White House that year, his campaign had a transformative effect on southern Republicanism - Lisa McGirr, Nixon courted his conservative backers in 1968 by taking a hard line on ‘law and order,’ warning against the decline of national prestige and military might, attacking federal bureaucracy and ‘runaway government,’ and criticising busing and affirmative action - Joan Hoff, Nixon campaigned on the promise to decentralise policymaking authority and to restore cabinet members to their status as ‘Deputy Presidents’, the prime policy managers and the president’s principal counsel in developing major administration policy options. During the 1968 presidential campaign Nixon coined the term and advocated ‘cabinet government’ in order to criticise the centralisation of power within the executive office of the president during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations - Dan T. Carter, Liberalism survives: Nixon announced the Family Assistance Plan in 1969, a nationalised welfare program that would offer a minimum standard of living in return for a work commitment, but was scuttled in 1972! → To further deal with the problem of black poverty, Nixon created the Office of Minority Enterprises to promote black capitalism and backed set-aside programs, which required that a fixed percentage of government contracts be guaranteed to minority businesses. And through the Department of Labor, the Nixon administration instituted the Philadelphia Plan, which required companies doing business with the federal government to establish goals and timetables for hiring and promotion - James T. Patterson, (Racial) policies such as busing convinced many Americans that ‘big government’ and ‘liberalism’ had to be challenged - James T. Patterson, The Supreme Court advanced the trend toward protection of minority interests, ruling in 1971 that employers could be found guilty of racial discrimination in hiring even if there was no evidence that they had intended it

- Richard Jensen, Nixon made reorganisation a high priority, giving extensive power to his Office of Management and Budget. Had it not been for Watergate, he would have succeeded in radically restructuring the executive departments, especially by reducing the policymaking powers of the bureaucracy - Joan Hoff, Under his New Federalism, Nixon addressed national problems by spending more and redistributing power away from Congress and the federal bureaucracy, toward local, state, and presidential centres of control. As a result, Nixon is currently credited or criticised for taking significant steps toward centralised planning and structural decentralisation in domestic affairs. - Dan T. Carter, The great legacy of the election of 1972 was the successful identification of the Republican Party with the values of an increasingly conservative America. Richard Nixon promised law and order at home and a foreign policy based upon a strong military defence - Joan Hoff, In contrast to Reagan, Nixon supported an expansive and generally successful revenue-sharing program, while Reagan urged the elimination of this program in 1986, relying instead on free-market, supply-side efforts to satisfy state and local funding needs - Joan Hoff, Funding for social welfare services under Nixon grew from $55 billion in 1970 to almost $132 billion in 1975, making him the ‘last of the big spenders’ on domestic programs - James T. Patterson, Liberal Democrats still active: Reformers embedded a final stone in the edifice that they were erecting against abuse of power: the 1978 Ethics in Government Act - James T. Patterson, More of a traditional free-market conservative than Nixon, President Ford hoped to reduce the role of government in the nation’s affairs. Ford yearned to cut discretionary spending on social services, notably in health and education, to reduce the growing federal deficit and curb the rate of inflation - James T. Patterson, Carter’s presidency: Liberals, still especially strong in the House, pressed successfully for enlargement of other social policies, such as the 1977 Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). In the late 1970s, Congress also expanded the means-tested food stamp program. Programs, like SSI for the indigent blind, aged, and disabled, Social Security and Medicare for the elderly, and Medicaid for poor people who were disabled or elderly, continued to expand slowly in real dollars in many later years of the century, partially patching up holes in the nation’s social safety net - James T. Patterson, Carter refused to back an expensive national health insurance bill and a large hike in the federal minimum wage. He also did little to promote the Humphrey-Hawkins bill; by the time it finally passed in October 1978, it had become so watered down as to be of only symbolic significance - James T. Patterson, Carter signed a number of important measures into law in the late 1970s. The Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 abolished the Civil Aeronautics Board and permitted airlines greater leeway in scheduling and related matters. Other laws cut back federal oversight of trucking and communications. The deregulatory wave of the era exposed a widespread feeling that the still sluggish US economy needed to be ‘unshackled’ from public restraints so that the ‘liberating forces of market competition’ could come into play - David Farber, In the 1970s, when American feminists and their supporters attempted to mandate women’s right to full equality under the Constitutions,

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Phyllis Schlafly stood in their way. She said that a moral order based on family values, not on feminists’ demands for full equality, is what America needed to keep women and their children safe, secure, and spiritually strong. Schlafly helped conservative Americans see that subversion had a new name i.e. feminism, not communism In making her attack on the ERA and feminism, Schlafly turned the logic of the women’s movement completely on its head. Schlafly mocked the very ideas of female inferiority, insisting that the American Judeo-Christian civilisation had developed the law and custom that men must be required to bear the non-physical consequences of the sex and pay in other ways – in the form of physical protection and financial support of his children and of the woman who bears his children → The ERA, Schlafly continued, was just the first step in liberal’s crusade to extend legally mandated equality not just to women but to homosexuals Schlafly argued that the ERA would cost women far more than they would gain: (1) the ERA would make women equally subject to be drafted into the military (2) the ERA would end women’s right to financial support from their husbands, making it possible for a husband to demand that his wife go to work (3) it would end women’s near-automatic right to custody of their children in the event of a divorce David Farber, In October 1972, Schlafly launched a new organisation: STOP ERA (Stop Taking Our Privileges) and was joined by conservative men and women, most of them deeply religious, who feared that the ERA would destroy traditional gender roles. They linked the fight against ERA to related issues, most important the battle over abortion rights and the status of homosexuals. Schlafly instructed her supporters on how to keep the heat on, creating a powerful, well-trained activist base for the larger conservative movement David M. O’Brien, From the 1970s through the 1990s, the direction of the Court’s policymaking gradually changed, reflecting the more conservative views of the appointees of Nixon, Reagan, and Bush. Although not always outright reversing Warren Court rulings, the Court refused further extensions and achieved retrenchment in some areas David M. O’Brien, The Reagan administration’s combined strategies of packing the federal bench and enacting regulatory reforms enabled the President to both achieve what he failed to persuade Congress to do and move the Court and constitutional law in the direction of his legal-policy goals Michael Kazin, By 1990, there were no fixed beliefs that characterised conservatives but, instead, disharmony. Soon after the American Right did assume national power, however, its grassroots image began to fade, and fissures began to show

The ‘revolutionary’ policies of Reagan and the character of his presidency i.e. parallels to FDR - Reagan had been a New Dealer during the presidency of FDR and then California Governor between 1966-74 - David Farber, In 1964 Reagan was co-chair of Barry Goldwater’s campaign in California. He spoke out frequently in support of Goldwater’s brand of conservative Republicanism. Then, in his 1966 campaign and throughout his subsequent two terms as California governor, he brought to the conservative cause a new moral appeal against the political and cultural dissidents of the 1960s

- Lisa McGirr, By 1965, Reagan was a prominent figure in California conservative circles; he worked to spread the conservative free-enterprise message in speeches throughout the land. He railed against ‘Big Brother’ and called for a return to local control and individual liberty. For eight years, he served as a spokesperson for General Electric on ‘government encroachment’ and made speeches for the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and other ...