DECADES 0F CHANGE

Political activism however, did not disappear in the 1970s - it was rechanneled into other causes. Some young people worked for the enforcement of antipollution laws or joined consumer-protection groups or campaigned against the nuclear power industry. Following the example of blacks, other minorities - Hispanics, Asians, American Indians, homosexuals - demanded a broadening of their rights.

Women had been gradually moving into the labor force since World War II, and in the 1970s a women's liberation movement pressed for legal abortion, day-care centers, equal pay and jobs for women. In 1973, the Supreme Court banned most restrictions on abortion, but that ruling only made more difficult a furious national debate: feminists defended abortion as a Constitutional right; others denounced it as the destruction of innocent life.

President Nixon achieved two major diplomatic goals: re-establishing formal relations with the People's Republic of China and negotiating the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I) with the Soviet Union.

During the election campaign, however, five men were arrested for breaking into the Democratic party headquarters at the Watergate building in Washington, D.C. Journalists investigating the incident discovered that the burglars were employed by President Nixon's reelection committee. The White House made the scandal worse by trying to cover up its connection with the break-in. In July 1973, it was revealed that President Nixon had recorded his office conversations concerning the Watergate affair. Congressional committees, special prosecutors, federal judges and the Supreme Court all demanded that the President surrender the recordings, and after prolonged resistance he finally made them public. The tapes revealed that President Nixon was directly involved in the cover up. By the summer of 1974, it was clear that Congress was likely to impeach and to convict the president. On August 9, Richard Nixon became the only American president to resign his office.

Republican Gerald Ford, who succeeded to the presidency on the resignation of Richard Nixon, was likable and conciliatory. Ford did much to restore the trust of the citizens, though some voters never forgave him for pardoning his former boss, Richard Nixon.

The 1976 election was won by Democrat Jimmy Carter, former governor of Georgia. Carter had limited political experience but many voters now preferred an "outsider" - someone who was not part of the Washington establishment. Precisely because he was an outsider, President Carter had difficulty working with Congress. He also could not control the chief economic problem of the 1970s - inflation. By 1980, inflation had soared to an annual rate of 13.5 percent, and the nation was experiencing a period of economic difficulty. Carter signed a second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT II) with the Soviet Union, but it was never ratified by the Senate after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. He also seemed ineffectual in the face of another crisis. In 1979, Iranian radicals stormed the United States embassy in Teheran and held 53 Americans hostage. Carter's greatest success was the negotiating of the Camp David Accord between Israel and Egypt, which led to an historic peace treaty between the two nations.

In the presidential race of 1980, American voters rejected Carter's bid for a second term, and elected Ronald Reagan, a conservative Republican and former governor of California. As a result of the election, the Republican party gained a majority in the Senate for the first time in 26 years. By giving Ronald Reagan an overwhelming election victory, the American public expressed a desire for change in the style and substance of the nation's leadership. Throughout his presidency, Reagan demonstrated the ability to instill in Americans pride in their country, and a sense of optimism about the future.

Reagan's domestic program was rooted in the belief that the nation would grow and prosper if the power of the private economic sector were unleashed. The administration also sought and won significant increases in defense spending.

Despite a growing federal budget deficit, by 1983 the economy as a whole had rebounded, and the United States entered into one of the longest periods of sustained economic growth since World War II.

In foreign policy, President Reagan sought a more assertive role for the nation. The United States confronted an insurgency in El Salvador, and the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. In 1983 U.S. forces landed in Grenada to safeguard American lives and to oust a regime which took power after the assassination of the country's elected Prime Minister. The U.S. also sent peace-keeping troops to Lebanon, in an effort to bolster a moderate, pro-Western government. The mission ended tragically when 241 American Marines were killed in a terrorist bombing. In 1986, U.S. military forces struck targets in Libya, in retaliation for Libyan-instigated attacks on American personnel in Europe. Additionally, the United States and other Western European nations kept the vital Persian Gulf oil-shipping lanes open during the Iran-Iraq conflict, by escorting tankers though the war zone.

U.S. relations with the Soviet Union during the Reagan years fluctuated between political confrontation and far-reaching arms control agreements. In December 1987, the U.S. and the Soviet Union signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty which provided for the elimination of a whole category of ballistic missiles. However, efforts to make major cuts in other strategic weapons systems were not concluded, in large part due to the Reagan Administration's strong desire to develop the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), commonly known as the "star wars" ballistic missile defense system.

On January 28, 1986, after 24 successful flights, the space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff, killing all on board. The Challenger tragedy was a reminder of the limits of technology at a time when another technological revolution, in computers, was rapidly transforming the way in which millions of Americans worked and lived. It was estimated that by mid-decade Americans possessed more than 30 million computers. By late 1988, however, the U.S. successfully launched a redesigned space shuttle Discovery, which deployed a satellite in the first shuttle flight since the Challenger disaster.

The Reagan Administration suffered a defeat in the November 1986 congressional elections when the Democrats regained majority control of the U.S. Senate. However, the most serious issue confronting the administration at that time was the revelation that the U.S. had secretly sold arms to Iran in an attempt to win freedom for American hostages held in Lebanon, and to finance the Nicaraguan contras during a period when Congress had prohibited such aid. During the Congressional hearings which followed, the country addressed fundamental questions about the public's right to know, and the proper balance between the executive and legislative branches of government. Despite these problems, President Reagan enjoyed unusually strong popularity at the end of his second term of office.

Reagan's successor, George Bush, benefited greatly from the popularity of the former president.

The U.S.-Soviet dialogue continued to broaden and deepen during the first year of the Bush Administration, at a time of ferment and remarkable political change in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe - symbolized most eloquently by the opening of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. In the two years following that event, the world witnessed the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of its dominating influence in Eastern Europe. The Bush Administration promoted the concept of a "new world order," based on a new set of international realities, priorities, and moral principles.

The idea of a ‘new world order’ faced its first test when Iraq invaded oil-rich Kuwait in August 1990. In January 1991, when Iraq did not comply with United Nations resolutions designed to force its withdrawal from Kuwait U.S. military forces, as part of a multinational coalition, liberated Kuwait in a swift and decisive victory. And when the Gulf War was won, in large part because of George Bush's efforts, he reaped an extraordinary political benefit. ‘I think Desert Storm lifted the morale of our country and healed some of the wounds of Vietnam’.

Bush's politics left him with the highest approval ratings of any President in the history of the Gallup polls. By most accounts, that should have given him a second term. But it didn't. And it didn't because the economy had weakened and the voters took their frustrations to the ballot box. Bush received the lowest percentage of votes of any sitting President in eighty years.

President Clinton focused on the country’s internal problems, especially the economy and health care, rather than on foreign affairs. Clinton promised in his inaugural speech “an end to the era of deadlock and drift.” He immediately signed orders overturning restrictions on abortions that had been put in place during the 12 years the Republicans occupied the White House. In little more than two weeks, he signed his first major piece of legislation, a family leave law that required companies with more than 50 workers to allow workers up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave a year to cope with family issues such as childbirth and illness.

Although the United States was no longer confronted by the Cold War, during his first term Clinton faced difficult decisions regarding bloody conflicts in Rwanda, Somalia, and Haiti, all places where the interests of the United States were not clear.

In November 1995 the Clinton administration hosted peace talks between the warring parties in Bosnia and Herzegovina. A peace agreement was reached that left the country as a single state made up of two separate areas with a central government. As part of the agreement, Clinton pledged to send American soldiers to Bosnia and Herzegovina to help NATO troops in providing humanitarian aid and policing a zone between the two factions.

In 1999 America made several bomb attacks on Serbia.

Much of Clinton's presidency was overshadowed by numerous scandals, including thre accusation of lying under oath about sexual encounters with Monica Lewinsky. Clinton was impeached on December 19, 1998 by the House of Representatives on grounds of perjury and obstruction of justice, becoming the first elected U.S. President to be impeached (and the second ever, the previous one being Andrew Johnson). The Senate, however, voted not to convict Clinton allowing Clinton to stay in office for the remainder of his second term.

Clinton presided over the period of longest steady growth of the economy in modern American history. However, his active role in this development is debatable.

Bush narrowly won the 2000 election against Democrat Al Gore, who captured a slim majority of the popular vote but lost to Bush on the state-by-state electoral race when the Supreme Court stopped Gore's bid for a recount in Florida.

After a slow start, Bush's approval ratings soared in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001,terrorist attacks and spiked again after the U.S.-led war against Iraq.

His approval ratings dropped in mid-2003, as Democrats accused his administration of stretching the truth about Iraq's attempts to build nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Bush's main justification for war was the assertion that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, but none has been found.

Indeed, Bush's approval ratings rebounded by the end of 2003 after the capture of Saddam Hussein. But even Republicans strategists say there will be trouble for Bush if postwar Iraq continues to claim the lives of American troops.

The Bush Administration has been criticized for holding several hundred individuals, the great majority captured in the combat zone in Afghanistan and accused of connections to Al-Qaeda or the Taliban at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba without trial. Critics have stated that they must be treated as prisoners of war under theGeneva Convention.

Democrats also blamed Bush for a sagging economy, high unemployment rate and loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States.

But Bush has advantages, notably personal qualities that make him likable and a fight against terrorism that has the public secure with his stewardship.

In 2009 Barack Hussein Obama became the first black president of the United States.

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 778