This article is part of a series on American history. Cross-reference to chapters 20-21 of A Patriot’s History of the United States and chapters 20-24 of A People’s History of the United States.
1974 marked a nadir of America’s “can-do” spirit—a disgraced president, a first major military failure, turmoil at home (much of which led to truly impactful and positive reforms, and much of which did not). The rest of the 20th century would see some marked improvements in America’s position—but the stings of Vietnam and Watergate would remain, and still do.
We’ve covered already in this series that our authors likely differ in Henry Kissinger’s definition of history as “memory of the states”. This difference remains distinct, yet our authors find themselves in a few surprising agreements with each other. For instance, both authors point to significant polls showing a lack of trust in government in the early- and mid-seventies.
At Least He Wasn’t Corrupt?
Gerald Ford was the only president to never win an election as either president or vice president. Nixon selected him to replace the previous vice president, who resigned after being indicted for bribery. A longtime moderate Republican in Congress, Ford badly needed to end the “national nightmare” of the Watergate affair; he did this by pardoning Nixon of “any and all crimes,” partly because of the sheer “amount of legal work” that would absorb the new administration’s time and distract from other issues. Still, no Nixon associate received pardons. People’s derides the incomplete investigation that was intended to “get rid of Nixon, but keep the system.”
Watergate left a bitter taste of executive power, and Congress took steps to claw back much of the power aggrandized by the previous administrations (Patriot’s names Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon all culprits in this trend of greater executive power). At the same time, Patriot’s cites a skyrocketing proportion of unelected officials in Washington. By 1977, for each elected official in Washington, there were over 5,400 who had not been elected.
The economy was set up to fail under Ford: oil and gas prices were still elevated following the Yom Kippur War in the Middle East. These alone had an impact on GNP that Patriot’s estimates as five times greater than that caused by the Navigation Acts prior to the Revolution. Yet under Ford, “Great Society spending and layers of federal regulations made matters worse.” New agencies like the EPA and OSHA drove high legal costs by business, with corresponding declines in research and development spending. As Patriot’s put it, “there simply was not enough money to fund both lawyers and scientists.” And again: “The damage done to the American economy by almost a decade of exorbitant social spending, increasing environmental and workplace regulations, and Keynesian policies from the Johnson-Nixon administrations cannot be overstated.” As a progressive Republican, Ford found himself without the political capital to please anyone, and was left doomed by his “lack of imagination”.
Carter: Ideals & Incompetence
The poor domestic economy under Ford had ensured that foreign policy issues would remain out of history’s spotlight. But America’s rivals had taken no breaks, and it was up to Carter to reap the whirlwind. Carter beat Ford soundly, with the economy as the dominant issue in the 1976 election.
Patriot’s called Carter’s foreign policy the “most idealistic…since Woodrow Wilson.” The administration demanded that all other nations observe “basic human rights”, which alienated many American allies. Yet the administration was beset by foreign policy crises: a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, a radical revolution in Iran that took sixty-six Americans hostage, and the development of new Soviet ICBMs. Patriot’s claims the Iranian hostage crisis to be the most “humiliating” international incident that the U.S. was ever involved in—even worse than the burning of Washington, D.C. during the War of 1812.
People’s criticizes Carter’s foreign policy: “the chief motivation was practicality, not humanity”, and mentions that Carter refused to give Vietnam any aid for reconstruction following the end of the war. Zinn also details the Trilateral Commission in 1976, in which western intellectuals asserted that “an excess of democracy” in the 1960s had “produced problems for the governability of democracies”. Surely People’s includes this as an example of a ruling political class that felt very much on the defensive during the 1970s.
Foreign policy shortcomings highlight Carter’s administration, yet the economy was not much better than it had been under Ford. Yet Patriot’s claims that just at this moment, America was poised for its “greatest resurgence” since 1942.
A Genuine Conservative
No staunch conservative had even gained a major party nomination since Barry Goldwater in 1964. This changed in 1980, when Ronald Reagan took the Republican mantle. A retired actor, a former new Deal Democrat (who voted for FDR four times), and California governor, Reagan handed Carter the worst defeat for an incumbent president since Hoover in 1932.
Patriot’s labels as “Reaganophobia” the effort by “liberal textbook writers…to distort Reagan’s record.” Schweikart & Allen mount a defense by claiming that Reagan held principled policy positions, was firm and quick of mind, and employed language of “we” in celebrating American triumphs. Notably, People’s does not make any concerted effort to criticize Reagan any more than the presidents directly before and after him.
Endorsing the same supply-side economic theory that had guided Andrew Mellon’s tax cuts in the 1920s, Reagan “emphasized tax cuts to stimulate investment by making it more lucrative to build plants and start businesses.” Yet political success owes much to timing, and Patriot’s admits that many deregulation efforts that started under Carter came to fruition under Reagan—especially in overnight mail and the airline industry. Further, the information age got underway with the rise of companies like Apple and Microsoft. During Reagan’s two terms, America produced 14 million new jobs, net of jobs destroyed. For Europe, in the 18 years leading up to 1988, that same number was: zero.
Foreign policy under Reagan was decisive. People’s criticizes the frequent pattern of military interventions and American aid in places like Nicaragua, Lebanon, Libya, and Grenada. Patriot’s is less critical of this policy, but acknowledged genuine policy mistakes, like the “serious error” in Lebanon and the Iran-Contra scandal. Yet Reagan’s key foreign policy objective was regarding the Soviet Union. He introduced the “Reagan doctrine”, calling for the U.S. to “roll back” the Soviets rather than simply containing communism.
Communism was already struggling mightily in the 1980s. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan had become bogged down by U.S.-supported tribal resistance. New American missile defense systems threatened to render the Soviet nuclear arsenal obsolete. Ultimately, the Russian economy could not sustain the arms race—they spent 20% of their GNP on weapons and military research, relative to 4% for the U.S.
Reagan Wave: The First Bush
George H.W. Bush won the presidency in 1988 largely on the Reagan record. He had served as the vice president, and before that, as director of the CIA. Patriot’s calls him “the last of the Teddy Roosevelt Progressive Republicans.”
Just as Reagan reaped the political benefits of private sector innovation, Bush reaped the foreign policy successes of Reagan. As political movements for open elections swept through Soviet-dominated eastern Europe, the Soviet leader Gorbachev called for the first open elections in Russia under the communists. Gorbachev expected the people to affirm the Bolshevik’s mandate—but they overwhelming rejected the communist party.
People’s is no defender of the Soviet Union, denouncing it as “false socialism”. Our authors also seem to disagree over how it collapsed. Patriot’s citing of defense spending as a percentage of GNP suggests that the arms race with the U.S. contributed to bankrupting Russia, but People’s suggests that this arms race delayed a Soviet collapse that would have come anyway.
The country’s defining foreign policy challenge for the last four decades thus vanished overnight—but America’s history of interventions would not. With United Nations approval, the U.S. came to the aid of Kuwait against an invasion by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. People’s cites significant activism in the U.S. against both Desert Storm and other interventions during the Reagan-Bush years.
Bush’s re-election campaign in 1992 witnessed a new phenomenon: an independent candidate, billionaire Ross Perot. In a largely self-funded campaign, Perot sought to appeal to voters “who were outraged by out-of-control deficit spending”, with “simple-sounding solutions [that] on the surface had appeal.” Yet these were often “poorly grounded in political realities.” Despite a respectable showing in the popular vote, Perot fell well short of the presidency. Yet his campaign provided a blueprint that would be dusted off in 2016 by another billionaire—who would win.
A Bipartisan Consensus?
People’s espouses a narrative bordering on conspiracy, in which the two parties came to represent virtually identical platforms—both supporting capitalism, corporate influence in government, and wealth concentrated in the top 1%. Voters could only choose between “different parts of the Establishment.” Zinn cites a “distance between politics and the people,” in which Democrats and Republicans alike denounced welfare programs.
“In a two-party system, if both parties ignore public opinion, there is no place voters can turn.” People’s further cites that Americans have overwhelming favored truly progressive taxes and consistently been disappointed. As Zinn saw it, “there were millions of Americans, probably tens of millions, who refused, either actively or silently, to go along,” and the Democrats were “more responsive” to these disaffected. Yet even the Democrats’ response was “limited by its own captivity to corporate interests.”
Zinn’s critique of an unresponsive government likely resonates with voters of all political stripes. Yet just as he cites an avalanche of voter dissatisfaction polls, he also mentions low turnout in the 1980 and 1984 elections, with “half the electorate not voting”. This incongruence may be explained by feelings of disenfranchisement driving would-be voters away (as People’s probably wishes us to believe), or by ignorance and indifference—in short, voter apathy. This is certainly a critical question for any discontented American, one worth thinking about, but one we lack the hard evidence to answer here.
More of the Same? Now with Saxophone!
Our authors find themselves somewhat aligned on Bill Clinton’s presidency, who won the presidency in 1992. Zinn merely saw Clinton as more of the same, another politician who “was more interested in electoral victory than social change,” another Establishment tool with “lofty rhetoric.” People’s echoes many of the criticisms that Patriot’s makes, and does not make any clear distinction between Clinton’s administration and the ones that preceded it.
In this vein, People’s take is a model of ideological consistency (setting aside the accuracy of the ideology in question). By contrast, Schweikart & Allen criticize the policies of Ford and Carter without besmirching their characters—they pull no such punches with Bill Clinton. Whether this is a sign of bias or an indication of Clinton’s unique foibles is complex, and certainly controversial—especially given subsequent history of the Clinton family’s involvement in American politics.
A former governor of Arkansas (who also played the saxophone), Clinton had dodged the Vietnam draft. While this escaped major press coverage, his rampant infidelities could not. Patriot’s cites that Arkansas state troopers had been employed to “introduce” Clinton to women, and the Clinton campaign worked to silence any who would speak out: “The few who did speak up came under withering fire from Clinton allies, who vilified them as ‘nuts and sluts.’” Despite high voter turnout in 1992, Patriot’s claims that much of this incremental turnout went to Perot rather than Clinton, who won only 43 percent of the popular vote.
Patriot’s paints an even darker picture around Clinton’s wife, Hillary, suggesting that she had “harbored political ambitions for herself since her undergraduate days.” Hillary would “play the loyal wife” and in return, Bill would “reward her through policy appointments that did not require Senate confirmation.” As First Lady, she would advocate for a universal health care system in which doctors could be jailed for providing any health care outside the federal system.
Clinton’s cabinet “surpassed Grant’s or Harding’s cabinet in…corruption or outright criminal behavior.” Upon taking office, Clinton immediately replaced all the federal attorneys in order to dent any pending investigations of him or his administration. As a result, “Americans started to become concerned about the dark side of programs deemed beneficial by the federal government.”
A Conservative Response
Despite a booming economy (fueled in large part by internet companies), Clinton’s 1990s represented a threat to conservative Republicans who saw a public “frustrated with the inability to change things in Washington.” Republicans in Congress rallied around a “Contract with America,” a promise to bring ten items to the House floor for discussion and vote. These included welfare reform, lower capital gains taxes, a balanced budget law, and a term limits bill. Only four of these ended up becoming law (the balanced budget and term limits laws not among them), but Patriot’s touts this as an incredible referendum on the Clinton presidency and its failure to address concerns of many Americans.
With the advent of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and other “new media” sources, conservatives were breaking the liberal monopoly on the media. The mainstream left followed suit, with outlets like the Huffington Post and MSNBC—which Patriot’s labels as an “editorial channel which masquerades as a news channel.” Patriot’s does not make any effort to paint these new media forces—on either side of the political debate—as unbiased, But Schweikart & Allen do detail that “traditional” media reserved its criticism of “unprofessional and lacking ‘journalistic standards’” for the conservative media forces.
We are only scratching the surface when it comes to Patriot’s criticism for Bill Clinton—it further mentions “serious character weakness” and the claim that “Clinton committed more troops to combat situations than any peacetime president in American history.” Yet we must leave this aside for now.
Revolt of the Guards?
Even before covering the Clinton presidency, People’s devotes a chapter to summarizing its historical creed: “The Coming Revolt of the Guards.” Zinn describes the “system” as having three forces: The Establishment, the Guards, and the Prisoners. The Establishment are represented by the 1%, who control most of the nations’ wealth and power and rely on pitting Guards (the middle and professional classes) and Prisoners (poor, minorities, and dissidents) against each other to maintain their power. As he puts it, “the prisoners of the system will continue to rebel,” and that the “new fact of our era is the chance that they may be joined by the guards.” This is nothing short of a call to revolution, an appeal to the “submerged, deflected common interest” of the Prisoners and the Guards.
If democracy were to be given any meaning, if it were to go beyond the limits of capitalism and nationalism, this would not come—if history were any guide—from the top. It would come through citizens’ movements, educating, organizing, agitating, striking, boycotting, demonstrating, threatening those in power with disruption of the stability they needed.
Zinn is not ashamed of his bias: he wears it proudly, “because the mountain of history books under which we all stand leans so heavily in the other direction.” This comes back to claims that both our authors made in their introductions—each insisting that they are going against a popular grain. They cannot both be right, although they surely both believe in their own claims.
Such histories fail, Zinn writes, because “they suggest that in times of crisis we must look to someone to save us.” This in reference to the founders, Lincoln, and other monuments of American leadership. This “idea of saviors has been built in the entire culture…demeaning our own ability, obliterating our own selves.” The rejection of secular saviors in the political sense is reasonable enough—but to People’s, is not the “coming revolt of the guards” simply a savior of different stripes?
This strikes at a far more fundamental debate—whether the ills and flaws of the human condition are intrinsic to our natures or incidental to them, ringing echoes of the progressive idea of a perfectible, malleable human nature. Whether man is “born free, but everywhere in chains” or a fundamentally flawed creature is the critical philosophical point on which all modern political discussion turns. There was never debate of this question until the last 150 years—prior to then, the perfectibility of man was focused on the spiritual rather than the secular. Is this history indicative of the sheer arrogance of modern progressive thought and an indictment against the radicalism it has wrought? Or is mankind truly progressing? It is beyond our scope to answer this question objectively. But to avoid mention of it would be philosophical dereliction of duty.
In our next post, we’ll briefly cover the 21st century (so far) and wrap up this series with some concluding remarks.
