Chapter Thirteen

DYNAMIC
CONSERVATISM

R onald Reagan enjoyed his years in the White House. He paid little at-
tention to the work of government, took frequent vacations, and was
known by insiders to be intellectually as well as physically lazy. One
crisis, said a wag, “was causing president Reagan a lot of sleepless after-
noons.” A troika of aides—Michael Deaver, Edwin Meese, and James Baker—
made many decisions in the president’s name. Alexander M. Haig, Reagan’s
first secretary of state, said later, “You couldn’t serve in his administration
without knowing that Reagan was a cipher and that these men were run-
ning the government.” The president’s already low energy level was affected
adversely by a near-fatal assassination attempt on March 30, 1981.
But Reagan was firm about his conservative principles, and he often em-
ployed his exceptional powers of persuasion on their behalf. His idol was
Calvin Coolidge, whose portrait was placed in the cabinet room. Reagan la-
beled his formula for rescuing the country “dynamic conservatism.”
Presidential appointees to the cabinet and federal regulatory agencies
shared Reagan’s desire to maximize personal freedom and private enterprise
and minimize the role of government. Secretary of the Interior James Watt
and Environmental Protection head Anne Gorsuch Burford, for example,
largely opposed efforts by environmentalists. Secretary of Transportation Drew
Lewis took steps to decrease recent pollution and safety regulations imposed
on the automobile industry. David Stockman, the youthful director of the Of-
fice of Management and Budget, and Donald T. Regan, secretary of the trea-
sury, strongly favored budget and tax cuts.
The president tried to eliminate the Energy Department, but settled for cuts
in its budget. The Task Force on Regulatory Relief, chaired by Vice Presi-
dent Bush, was part of a major effort to scrap thousands of unnecessary fed-
eral regulations and save business, consumers, and state and local govern-
ments much time and billions of dollars. By 1985, federal regulatory agencies
had lost 12 percent of their personnel and funding.

235
236 Twentieth-Century America

Rea ga nom ics

Reagan could expect solid Republican support in Congress, but he often won
the votes of “boll weevils,” southern Democrats who agreed with the presi-
dent’s conservative principles. The first major target was the sagging econ-
omy. Following “supply side” economic theory, Reagan and his followers be-
lieved that prosperity would return when federal spending and taxes were
cut and government regulations slashed. The private sector, it was thought,
would expand dramatically, and that this growth would generate profits and
jobs, cut inflation, generate tax revenue, and balance the budget. From this
point of view, the liberal welfare state, in construction since the turn of the
century, had brought the country to the brink of fiscal and moral disaster.
Reaganites believed they had a mandate to reverse the course of recent Amer-
ican history.
Reagan and most of his fellow Republicans saw organized labor as part of
the problem. When the air traffic controller’s union, PATCO, conducted an
illegal strike in the summer of 1981, the president fired 11,300 strikers and
ordered Transportation Secretary Lewis to train and hire replacements. Rea-
gan resisted all efforts to reverse this action and gave people all over the
world the impression that he was tough and decisive. The destruction of
PATCO was yet another blow against Big Labor, already reeling from the
loss of manufacturing jobs and sharply declining numbers. (Total union mem-
bership dropped from 22.2 million in 1975 to 16.9 million in 1987). The only
major growth in union membership came in the public sector, the target of
many conservative legislators on the state and federal level.
David Stockman proposed some $64 billion in budget cuts and endorsed
a 30-percent tax cut. In May, Congress endorsed most of the budget cuts. In
July, despite several compromises and concessions to special interest groups,
Congress passed the largest tax reductions in American history. Still, gov-
ernment spending would increase under Reagan, even for many social pro-
grams. The budget and the tax cuts simply ensured that federal outlays would
not grow faster than the economy. The annual growth in federal spending
dropped from 17 percent in 1979 to 5 percent during 1981–84. Tax levels
dropped from 20.8 percent of gross national product to about 19 percent.
The Reagan economic policy did not bring relief in 1981, and the presi-
dent’s popularity dropped to below 50 percent by December. Moreover, ma-
jor federal deficits began to loom: by early 1982 a whopping $200 billion
was projected. That July, desperate for increased federal revenue, Congress
passed a tax hike. The president signed it, but he continued to believe that
his basic economic philosophy would eventually restore prosperity and bal-
ance the budget. There were promising signs: inflation dropped from 13 per-
cent in 1980 to 5 percent in 1982. The Dow Jones industrial average climbed
above 1000 for good.
The economy as a whole, however, continued to worsen throughout 1982.
Toward the end of the year unemployment reached 10 percent. In the No-
vember mid-term elections, Democrats added twenty-six seats in the House,
 Dyna mic Conserva tism 237

while the GOP held on to the Senate. House Speaker Thomas “Tip” O’Neill,
a veteran pol and old-fashioned liberal from Massachusetts, promised to be
a major obstacle in the furtherance of Reaganomics.
Deregulation was an integral part of the Reagan agenda. In 1982, to aid
the savings and loan industry, Congress and the administration permitted
firms to go beyond housing loans into more speculative ventures. White-
collar thieves looted many financial institutions, leaving hundreds of them
bankrupt. The problem was ignored until 1989, when President George Bush
took action. By 1996, the savings and loan bailout cost had reached $480.9
billion, a sum exceeding the cost of the entire Vietnam War. The federal
government borrowed money to cover the losses, and House banking chair-
man Jim Leach announced that taxpayer accountability due to bonds issued
would continue through the year 2030. Reagan shared the blame for the most
expensive scandal in history.

Socia l Issues

The president was more interested in economic than social issues. But he
regularly defended his conservative principles and made unusual efforts to
placate the New or Religious Right. Evangelist Billy Graham once told Rea-
gan, “I would think that you have talked about God more than any other
president since Abraham Lincoln.” At times, conservatives expressed unhap-
piness, often blaming the “pragmatists” around the president for their disap-
pointment. Historian William E. Pemberton has remarked, “Reagan’s fire-
breathing conservative rhetoric hid from many the fact that he was a very
skillful politician who placed winning above ideological purity.”
There was little enthusiasm in the administration for the demands of civil
rights leaders. Reagan had long opposed many civil rights laws and favored
a constitutional amendment to outlaw busing for the purpose of racially in-
tegrating the public schools. He had received the lowest percentage of African-
American votes of any candidate in history.
Many of Reagan’s supporters were known to be hostile to black aspira-
tions and demands. Attorney General William French Smith and William Brad-
ford Reynolds of the Justice Department opposed affirmative action and bus-
ing, cut funds for civil rights activities, filed fewer fair housing suits, and
packed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission with conservatives.
Still, Reagan showed no personal animus toward African Americans and of-
ten boasted of his efforts throughout his career to end racism.
Throughout Reagan’s terms in office, more men than women supported
him, in large part because of his opposition to abortion and ERA. The pres-
ident was said not to take women seriously. And yet Elizabeth H. Dole be-
came secretary of transportation, Jeane Kirkpatrick was named ambassador
to the United Nations, Peggy Noonan was an important speech writer, and
Sandra Day O’Connor became the first woman to be appointed to the United
States Supreme Court. Nancy Reagan was an inordinately powerful figure in
238 Twentieth-Century America

the administration, intervening in personnel matters, helping with major pol-

icy decisions, and fashioning her husband’s daily schedule in accordance
with advice given by astrologers. She also headed a major national campaign
against illegal drugs, telling young people especially to “just say no.”

Foreign Affa irs in the Ea rly Eighties

Reagan reemphasized his well-known hostility toward communism early in

his term of office, and went a step beyond, predicting the Soviet Union’s
downfall. On June 8, 1982, he declared publicly that the Soviet Union be-
longed to the “ash-heap of history.” Nine months later, in a speech before
the National Association of Evangelicals, he declared that the “evil empire”
was doomed.
On March 23, 1983, Reagan proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI),
a startlingly new and controversial defensive umbrella that would intercept
and destroy nuclear weapons headed toward the United States. The techno-
logical feasibility of what critics called “Star Wars” was uncertain, and the fi-
nancial costs were likely to be staggering. But Reagan was convinced that
this system was the best way to prevent nuclear war. He did not believe that
the United States could develop a clear and lasting nuclear superiority, and
he did not trust the reasonableness of the Soviets, who had been told
for years that a nuclear strike would mean devastation on both sides of
the Cold War.
Reagan’s ignorance about foreign affairs was a quiet scandal among in-
siders. His predictions about the Soviet Union, it was said, were based on
intuition rather than a knowledge of Russian affairs. Lack of presidential di-
rection prompted infighting and, at times, paralysis within the administration.
Struggles between Secretary of State George Schultz and Secretary of Defense
Caspar Weinberger were particularly intense. But Reagan’s convictions about
defending the free world from communism, his commitment to rebuilding
American military might, and his dreams of a world rid of nuclear fear, won
considerable support.
Reagan demanded and achieved the largest defense buildup in history. In
his first five years in office, military spending increased by over 50 percent
in real terms, totaling nearly $1.5 trillion. The military share of GNP grew
from 5.7 percent to 7.4 percent. The public, still smarting over Vietnam and
the apparent weakness of Carter, was generally supportive.
Not surprisingly, Reagan was eager to display American military strength
throughout the world. Patriotism and courage were dominant themes es-
poused by the “Great Communicator” both in public and in private. Through-
out his adult life he enjoyed having his photograph taken with an American
flag in the background.
In August 1981 Reagan authorized the use of force against Libya, widely
considered to be a source of world terrorism and now claiming the Gulf of
Sidra as Libyan waters. U.S. Air Force jets shot down two Libyan jets after
 Dyna mic Conserva tism 239

the Libyan planes fired on them. Reagan said that he wanted the world to
know “there was new management in the White House.”
Against the advice of key advisers, Reagan twice sent marines into
Lebanon as part of a larger effort to secure peace between Muslims and
Israelis. The confused effort failed, and Americans withdrew after a young
Muslim blew up a marine barracks on October 23, 1983, killing 231 troops.
Reagan later called the Lebanon venture “my greatest regret and my great-
est sorrow.”
The day after the bombing in Beirut, the president gave final approval for
an invasion of the tiny Caribbean island of Granada, ostensibly to rescue
about a thousand Americans but actually to overthrow hard-line Marxists who
had staged a coup. Although eighteen U.S. servicemen were killed during
the attack, Americans generally applauded the successful operation, which
Reagan wrapped in patriotic rhetoric.

Rea ga n Prosperity

Prosperity returned by mid-1983, launching the longest period of economic

growth in the nation’s history. The gross national product grew at an av-
erage annual rate of about 4 percent from 1982 to 1988. Some 17 to 18
million new jobs were created during Reagan’s presidency. Inflation and
interest rates were down. Good times inspired faith in the wisdom of
Reaganomics.
Critics, however, noted the growing federal deficit and pointed to the grow-
ing disparity of wealth between rich and poor. Changes in income taxes left
families earning under $10,000 with a $95 loss, while families making more
than $200,000 gained $17,403. Slashes in government social spending also
widened the gap. In 1981, more than one in three households were receiv-
ing benefits from the federal government. Reagan vowed to limit aid to the
“truly needy,” and at his urging Congress made numerous cuts, including $2
billion from the $12 billion food stamp budget and $1 billion from the $3.5
billion school lunch program. Liberal Robert B. Reich complained in early
1984, “Even if Medicare and food stamps are included in the reckoning, over
21 million Americans are still impoverished, substantially more than four years
ago.”
Still the tide was rising significantly for most Americans, and the poverty
rate was declining. Moreover, government cuts in aid were not nearly as
drastic as critics contended. Total federal payments for individuals rose
throughout the Reagan years, and so did spending on programs that bene-
fited poor families. Housing and Urban Development outlays increased from
$14.8 billion in 1981 to $28.7 billion in 1985, and the number of low-income
households receiving household subsidies rose from 3.2 million to nearly 4
million. When Reagan announced his bid for reelection in January 1984,
Richard Nixon commented, “You cannot beat an incumbent president in
peacetime if the nation is prosperous.”
240 Twentieth-Century America

Election of 1984

Some thought that Reagan, at age 73, was too old to serve a second term.
Eisenhower had left office when he was 70, to a chorus of complaints about
his mental and physical agility. Insiders knew that Reagan’s mental stamina
was minimal. But he could still deliver a written speech ably, flash his win-
ning smile, and manage to persuade millions that he was personally re-
sponsible for the renewal of American prosperity and pride. Polls showed
that Americans liked and trusted their president.
Democrats chose 56-year-old Walter F. Mondale of Minnesota to head their
1984 ticket. An articulate and well-informed liberal, Mondale had served in
the Senate for two terms before becoming Carter’s vice president. With the
encouragement of the National Organization of Women, Mondale selected a
woman to be his running mate, Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro of New
York. This was the first time a woman was nominated for vice president by
a major party. Forty-nine-year-old Ferraro’s feminism, her violations of cam-
paign spending laws, and her husband’s business and financial ties proved
controversial. Still, she revealed competence and determination in her tele-
vised debates with George Bush.
Reagan led in the polls almost from the beginning of the year, and he
used slick television commercials that stressed patriotism, optimism, and har-
mony and avoided specific issues. Speech writer Peggy Noonan provided the
president with the campaign’s best line: “America is back: it’s morning again.”
Despite careful and extensive preparation, Reagan faltered badly during the

Rona ld a nd Na ncy Rea ga n a t the White House, Ja nua ry 10, 1984. Source: Courtesy of
the Rona ld Rea ga n Libra ry
 Dyna mic Conserva tism 241

first of two television debates with Mondale. But he recovered in the second
confrontation and fended off charges that he was too old to serve another
term.
Mondale’s most effective line of attack was the growing gap between rich
and poor. But Republicans dismissed him as a typical “tax and spend lib-
eral” and linked him with the failures of the Carter years. GOP strategists
also portrayed Mondale and Ferraro, and not without reason, as advocates
of unpopular cultural changes that had swept the nation in the Vietnam War
years.
On November 6, Reagan carried every state but Minnesota, which he lost
by only a 3,761 vote margin. He won 59 percent of the popular vote to Mon-
dale’s 41 percent. His victory in the electoral college, 525 to 13, was second
only to Roosevelt’s landside in 1936. All age groups voted for the incumbent.
He swept the once solid South by a huge margin. Even half of the union
members voted for Reagan, despite the determined opposition of labor lead-
ers. Mondale’s highest vote levels were in black ghettos and university towns.
Ferraro’s largely blue-collar East River-Queens district went for Reagan. Re-
publicans gained thirteen seats in the House and retained control of the Sen-
ate by a fifty-four to forty-six majority.

Growth a nd Cha nge

The population in the 1980s grew from 226.5 million to 248.7 million. While
the number of whites increased 6.0 percent, the Asian population jumped
107.8 percent, Hispanics increased 53 percent, and blacks grew 13.2 percent.
The percentage of foreign-born residents increased from 6.2 percent to 7.9
percent during the decade. California, with a large Hispanic population, led
the nation in foreign-born residents at 21.7 percent.
Educational levels continued their long climb. By the end of the 1980s,
75.2 percent of adults had completed high school and 20.3 percent had a
bachelor’s degree or more. Median family income, adjusted for inflation,
climbed from $33,381 to $35,225.
Seeking jobs, people poured into urban areas (communities of 2,500 or
more) during the decade. The cities themselves were expanding and ab-
sorbing some 30,000 square miles of land during the 1970s and 1980s. In
1990, for the first time, fewer than one American in four lived in the coun-
tryside. The percentage of the population living in suburbs climbed from 41.6
percent to 46.3 percent. Three-fourths of Americans lived on less than 3 per-
cent of the nation’s land. Slightly more than 115 million Americans were sub-
urbanites, and 17.3 percent of households had three or more cars.
The growing disparity between rich and poor was a reality as well as a
political contention. Between 1979 and 1989, the percent of families living
in poverty increased from 9.6 percent to 10.0 percent. The number of chil-
dren living in poverty climbed from 16.0 percent to 17.9 percent. Much of
this latter statistic stemmed from the increase in births to unmarried women,
242 Twentieth-Century America

a figure that nearly doubled between 1975 and 1990 to 28 percent of all
births. This was a particular problem for blacks, for by 1990 65.2 percent of
all births to African American women occurred out of wedlock, up from 37.6
percent twenty years earlier.

Africa n Am erica n Progress

Political scientist Julia Vitullo-Martin has observed, “Racial integration is

a uniquely American, twentieth-century ideal. None of the societies that
represent our heritage so much as thought of it, much less practiced it. This
is not a Greek, Judeo-Christian or Anglo-Saxon idea. It is ours alone.”
During the 1980s, integration was well advanced, and there were many
success stories.
Job opportunities, especially in the defense industry, prompted many blacks
to head north. The black populations in the Northeast and Midwest increased
by more than 250 percent by the 1980s. By mid-decade, some 60 percent of
all black families were middle class or working class, twice the proportion
in 1947. Home ownership had doubled. The number of affluent black fam-
ilies doubled in the 1980s, increasing from 266,000 in 1967 to more than a
million in 1989.
Still, on the whole, the nation’s 30 million African Americans trailed whites
in nearly every category of economic and physical well-being. Black family
income was 61 percent that of whites in 1969, but only 56 percent as high
in 1989. The poverty rate for blacks had remained at just above 30 percent
for two decades. Infant mortality was twice as high for black babies as for
white babies. Urban ghettos continued to be a national disgrace, trapping
millions in a cycle of poverty, crime, and despair.
Hispanics and Native Americans, as well as blacks, lagged behind whites
in education. In 1989, 86 percent of whites between the ages of 25 and 29
had high-school diplomas, compared with 82.2 percent of African Americans
and 61 percent of Hispanics. Still, African Americans’ high-school completion
rate rose more than 7 percentage points during the decade.

Educa tiona l Woes

It seemed that many schoolchildren were learning less than they used to.
Scholastic Aptitude Test scores, which had peaked in 1963, were plummet-
ing by the early 1980s. This despite dramatic increases in expenditures. In
1960, the nation spent (in constant 1990 dollars) an average of $2,035 per
student. In 1990, the figure had climbed to $5,247. Conservatives often blamed
the permissive life style of the 1960s and low teacher training standards. Lib-
erals usually contended that more money would solve educational problems.
They also noted that falling SAT scores were due in part to the larger num-
ber of students taking the test, a reflection of the growing desire for higher
education.
 Dyna mic Conserva tism 243

A 1983 report by the National Commission on Excellence in Education

warned of “a rising tide of mediocrity” that threatened “our very future as a
nation and a people.” In the 1960s, most people would have turned to the
federal government for solutions. (Mondale wanted immediately to spend $11
billion more in federal funds.) But now, with Reagan in the White House,
there was widespread agreement with the commission that Washington would
only make things worse, and that the best answers to the education woes
would come at the state and local levels, from those people closest to the
students and their needs. This clamor against federal authority, which was
linked with bungling and excessive spending, was one of several examples
that the country was no longer enamored of conventional liberal thought.

Towa rd the Inform a tion Superhighwa y

The computer chip was invented in the late 1950s, and before long an as-
sortment of popular new products were on the market using it. The calcu-
lator appeared in 1967, the car-trip monitor in 1975, the speak-and-spell toy
in 1978, the compact-disc player in 1982, the digital chassis in television in
1985, and digital wireless phones in 1988.
The number of transistors that could be placed on a silicon chip (com-
monly known as a microprocessor) advanced dramatically, from 3,500 in 1972
to 1.2 million by the end of the 1980s. This propelled the development and
sale of the computer, chips being the computing engines in all personal com-
puters. Engineers, needing more power, were the first customers and cor-
porations were next, followed by the general public. The 80286 models
(named after Intel chip speed) appeared in 1982, followed by the improved
80386 in 1985. About two years after the 80486 machines came out in 1989,
the price of a personal computer dropped below the $2,500 level, and PCs
began appearing in thousands of American homes.
The Internet, a communication network between computers, was started
in 1969 when four major computers at universities were connected, for de-
fense purposes, under a contract let by the federal government. E-mail was
developed in 1972. (Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom sent an e-
mail message in 1976.) News groups, discussion groups focusing on a sin-
gle topic, appeared in 1979. In 1989, computer scientists at McGill Univer-
sity in Montreal created Archie software to index sites on the Internet. That
same year, Tim Berners-Lee and others at the European Laboratory for Par-
ticle Physics proposed a new protocol for information distribution that in
1991 became the World Wide Web. During the 1980s, the Internet was highly
complex to operate and was limited by the federal government to research,
education, and government users.

Rising Tide of Crim e

The population of the United States increased 41 percent between 1960 and
1990. But total crimes increased over 300 percent, and violent crimes in-
244 Twentieth-Century America

creased more than 500 percent. One study estimated that the aggregate cost
of crime to victims in 1984 was $92.5 billion. The fastest growing segment
of the criminal population was the nation’s children. Juvenile violent crime
arrest rates (per 100,000 population) soared from 137.0 in 1965 to 338.1 in
1980 and to 430.6 in 1990.
By 1989, prisons held 235,000 more convicts than six years earlier. One of
every 364 Americans was in prison, with another 296,000 in local jails, 362,000
on parole, and 2.4 million on probation. In short, one of every sixty-nine
Americans was currently in the purview of the corrections establishment. The
nation was in the midst of the biggest prison construction boom in history.
A great many prisoners were in jail for drug-related crimes. Millions of
Americans seemed to have an insatiable desire for illegal drugs. Untold num-
bers of people used marijuana. By the end of the decade, a million Ameri-
cans were heroin addicts, and there were between 1.5 and 2.5 million co-
caine addicts and crack cocaine users. Efforts by government, including the
Reagan administration’s much heralded “war on drugs,” proved largely un-
successful. Still, drug use reached a peak in the early 1980s and subsided
slightly during the remainder of the decade. Drug-related emergency room
visits in twenty-one cities dropped from 40,000 in 1988 to 33,000 in 1990.
The percentage of high-school seniors who had tried marijuana fell from 59.5
percent in 1981 to 36.7 in 1991. Seniors who had tried cocaine fell from 16.5
in 1981 to 7.8 percent in 1991.

The AIDS Epidem ic

In 1981, scientists recognized the spread of the HIV (human immunodefi-

ciency virus), the virus believed to cause the deadly disease of AIDS (ac-
quired immune deficiency syndrome). Public awareness mounted in 1985
when actor Rock Hudson acknowledged his illness shortly before his death.
Since in the United States the disease was associated almost exclusively with
anal sex by homosexuals and infected needles used by people on drugs,
many thought that finding a cure was not a top priority. A 1987 Gallup poll
showed that 43 percent thought AIDS a punishment for moral decline. Tele-
vision networks refused to carry announcements advocating the use of con-
doms. The Reagan White House objected on moral grounds to procondom
messages.
Under pressure from AIDS activists and concerned about the spread of the
disease among heterosexuals in Africa, federal health officials launched a
massive information program in the spring of 1988 portraying AIDS as a men-
ace to everyone. A poll soon showed that 69 percent of Americans thought
AIDS “was likely” to become an epidemic. In fact, as one study showed later,
85 percent of AIDS cases in the United States were concentrated among men
who had sex with men. Another study showed that nationally, the HIV in-
fection rate for women was 1.6 per 100,000 women.
Federal funds for AIDS-related medical research soared from $341 million
 Dyna mic Conserva tism 245

in 1987 to $655 million in 1988. By the end of the decade, however, the
hideous disease continued to baffle scientists.

The Wa r on Toba cco

Cigarettes have been part of American life since the mid-nineteenth century.
Between 1892 and 1930, thirty-seven states and territories considered legis-
lation to ban them, and sixteen states enacted such laws. The prohibition of
cigarettes, like the ban on alcohol, failed, the victim of public demand.
Cigarette smoking became truly fashionable during World War I, when
they were freely supplied to the troops at the request of the military. By
1928, sales had reached the 100-billion-a-year mark. In 1947, three of every
four adult males were regular or occasional smokers. Decades of health warn-
ings by antitobacco crusaders about “coffin nails” and “cancer sticks” had ob-
viously made little impression.
This began to change in 1952, when the public became aware of scien-
tific studies pointing to a link between smoking and lung cancer, a disease
first diagnosed in 1923. Other warnings from researchers appeared through-
out the 1950s and early 1960s. In 1964, the surgeon general of the United
States issued a report calling cigarettes a “health hazard” and strongly linked
them to lung cancer and other diseases. The first health warnings appeared
on cigarette packages in 1966. In 1971, Congress banned cigarette advertis-
ing on radio and television, and throughout the decade smoking was cur-
tailed or isolated in a variety of public places. By the end of the decade,
some 30 million Americans had kicked the habit, but many more millions
persisted.
During the 1980s, states passed antismoking laws, government agencies is-
sued restrictive regulations, and businesses routinely banned smoking on their
premises. Smoking was no longer fashionable for much of the middle class.
Historian Cassandra Tate observed, “Smokers retreated to the back of the
plane, the back stairs at the office, the back porch at the dinner party.”
In 1988, another surgeon general’s report contended that smoking was as
addictive as heroin and opium. That same year, a jury for the first time
awarded damages to a former smoker (overturned on appeal). Angry voices
in Congress talked about taxing cigarettes out of existence, and in a
few years states would begin suing Big Tobacco to compensate for medical
expenses.
Still, the tobacco industry was legal, its controversial advertising was still
tax deductible, and tobacco farmers continued to receive federal subsidies.
In 1998, some 50 million Americans smoked cigarettes.

The Soa ring Econom y

The troika responsible for much of Reagan’s legislative achievements in the

first term broke up after the election of 1984. Treasury Secretary Donald Re-
246 Twentieth-Century America

gan became chief of staff. Intelligent and hard working, but often abrasive
and at odds with the first lady, Regan was not as effective as his predeces-
sor James Baker had been.
At Regan’s suggestion, tax reform became the administration’s top prior-
ity. Because tax reduction and smaller government were central to the pres-
ident’s philosophy, he labored hard to persuade Congress and the public that
change would spur the economy and benefit all Americans. The result was
the Tax Reform Act of 1986, the first major overhaul of the modern income
tax system since its inception during World War II. The new code reduced
personal income tax rates, bringing relief to a majority of Americans, and
took nearly six million poor people off the tax rolls. It simplified the system,
closed many loopholes, and destroyed thousands of tax shelters. The some
sixty giant corporations that had largely escaped federal taxes were now re-
quired to pay more.
Noting that the maximum rate for individuals was cut from 50 percent to
28, critics called the new tax law a boon for the wealthy and predicted that
it would hurt the economy. In fact, there were more wealthy Americans than
ever before, and they did not escape the revenue collectors: in 1981 the top
1 percent paid 17.6 percent of total federal individual income taxes; in 1988,
their share had increased to 27.5 percent. And the economy continued to
soar.
Corporation profits broke records and the stock market shot upward. In-
flation fell from over 12 percent under Carter to below 10 percent. Civilian
unemployment dropped from over 7 percent to about 5 percent. From 1982
to 1989, real after-tax income per person rose by 15.5 percent, and real me-
dian income of families, before taxes, went up 12.5 percent. Mortgage rates
fell from 15.2 percent in 1981 to 9.31 percent in 1988. Charitable giving in
what critics called the “Decade of Greed” expanded in real dollars by 56 per-
cent to $121 billion in 1989.
Budget deficits climbed, however, exceeding $200 billion in 1986. The
deficits were largely the result of entitlement programs established before
1973. But federal spending was up, too, and while Reagan fumed about the
Democrats who controlled the House and Senate after 1986, not once did
he propose a balanced budget to Congress. Despite his commitment to smaller
government, the president knew the obvious truth that cutting public bene-
fits is bad politics. He was also determined to rebuild the American military,
an extremely costly undertaking. A record stock market crash in October
1987 finally convinced the president and Congress to take serious steps to
reduce the budget deficit.
The national debt, which first reached the trillion-dollar level in 1982,
reached nearly $3 trillion in 1989. Paying interest on it trailed only Social Se-
curity and defense in the federal budget. The debt as a percentage of GDP
rose from 19 percent in 1980 to 31 percent in 1989. Still, that was far lower
than what it had been in 1946 (127 percent of GNP) when postwar expan-
sion got under way. And the United States was not uniquely burdened with
debt. In 1989, the figure for the United Kingdom was 31 percent of GDP, in
 Dyna mic Conserva tism 247

France it was 25 percent, in Canada it was 40 percent, and in Italy it was 96

percent.

Im m igra tion Reform

Illegal immigrants, often from Latin America, poured into the United States
in record numbers during the 1980s. It was estimated that in 1980 alone,
some 1.5 million entered the country illegally, joining the 2 million illegal
immigrants already in the country. The country seemed unable to police its
borders. This occurred on the heels of the coming of hundreds of thousands
of Indochinese, Cubans, and Haitians who fled politically repressive gov-
ernments and were permitted by the Carter administration to enter the coun-
try legally. Many Americans worried that the nation would be overrun by
bearers of strange languages and cultures, and argued that the United States
could not accept all the poor and persecuted of the world.
After several failed attempts to grapple with the issue, Congress, with ad-
ministration support, passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.
This landmark legislation offered amnesty for illegal aliens who could prove
residence since before January 1, 1982, and created a temporary resident sta-
tus for agricultural workers. The act also imposed fines and jail terms for em-
ployers who thereafter knowingly hired illegal aliens.
The law had economic dimensions, of course; immigrants traditionally
worked hard for low wages. But there were higher motivations as well. Many
proponents, often remembering their own ethnic roots, cherished the idea
of America as a land of opportunity. More than half of all Americans, in-
cluding President Reagan, could trace at least one ancestor back to the huge
immigrations of 1840–1924. New York’s Ellis Island, the entry port of 16 mil-
lion immigrants from 1892 to 1954, was being refurbished as a museum, cel-
ebrating the immigrant in American life. (It would open in 1990, following
an eight-year, $156-million renovation.) In the census of 1992, Americans
claimed dozens of different ancestries, emphasizing the significant fact that
the United States had always been a land of immigrants.
During the 1980s, Asians became the latest wave of peoples to reach Amer-
ican shores in great numbers. From 1981 to 1989, almost 2.5 million men
and women were granted legal permanent residence. The intelligence and
hard work of many Asian Americans often produced rapid socioeconomic
advancement.

The Suprem e Court

Predictably, the president was eager to put conservatives on the Supreme

Court. Reagan infuriated many supporters on the right by naming Sandra Day
O’Connor, who was suspected of being proabortion. O’Connor, however,
turned out to be generally conservative and largely silenced her critics. In
1986, the president named Associate Justice William H. Rehnquist, a conser-
248 Twentieth-Century America

vative, to be chief justice, replacing retiring Warren Burger. He selected a

fiery conservative, Antonin Scalia, to take Rehnquist’s seat.
In 1987, Reagan failed to get another hardliner, Robert H. Bork, approved
by the Senate. Liberals, led by Ted Kennedy, waged an intensive campaign
to keep Bork off the Court, in part because he opposed Roe v.Wa de and
might help overturn the controversial abortion decision. The Senate rejected
the nomination 58 to 42. The successful tactics employed in the struggle
prompted right-wing partisans to invent a new verb, “to Bork,” which they
likened to McCarthyism.
A second Reagan nominee, Douglas Ginsburg, had to withdraw his can-
didacy after he admitted using marijuana as a student (confirming the still
basically conservative outlook of most Americans). A third nominee, judicial
conservative Anthony M. Kennedy, was unanimously confirmed in February
1988.
Reagan moved the Court toward the right, but the shift was not dramatic.
The leftist intensity of the 1960s was moderating by the late 1980s, and the
mood of the country was in general accord with Court decisions. The pres-
ident named nearly four hundred federal judges during his eight years in of-
fice, and only three of his nominees were rejected.

The Ira n-Contra Sca nda l

The Reagan administration was plagued with scandals. According to one

study, over 190 administration officials were indicted or convicted of illegal
activity. After former troika member Edwin Meese became attorney general
in the second term, the Department of Justice was wracked with charges of
corruption. While Meese was not prosecuted, the federal prosecutor publicly
labeled him a “sleaze,” and the independent counsel in the case said that
Meese had probably violated the law on four occasions. Meese resigned in
July 1988. Michael Deaver, another former troika member, tried to use his
White House connections as a lobbyist and was convicted in 1987 on per-
jury counts.
The most famous scandal, Iran-Contra, stemmed from two secret overseas
operations that the president knew about and indeed helped direct. One was
in Nicaragua and the other in Iran. When an underling merged the clandes-
tine activities, and word leaked out, the result was a political explosion that
shook public confidence in the chief executive for the first time.
The Sandinista government in Nicaragua, headed by Daniel Ortega Saave-
dra, grew militantly leftist and pro-Soviet soon after the downfall of dictator
Anastasio Somoza in July 1979. Administration officials deadlocked after
lengthy internal arguments about an appropriate response. Liberals, in the
administration, in Congress, and throughout the country, tended to believe
that the Sandinistas were mere idealists, committed to much-needed reform.
Many throughout the political spectrum warned about Vietnam-style in-
volvements in the affairs of other countries. Many conservatives, on the other
 Dyna mic Conserva tism 249

hand, clung to long-established Cold War doctrine, warning that communism

was at work in Latin America and would spread unless the United States
took action against it.
The president, not surprisingly, held the latter view. In February 1981, he
suspended aid to Nicaragua. In March and December Reagan quietly autho-
rized a covert war to bring down the government. This involved the creation
by the CIA of an anti-Sandinista force, the contras, among Nicaraguan exiles
living in Honduras. Reagan saw the contras as the best hope for the return
of freedom in Nicaragua. Many on the left in America portrayed them as
killers and drug dealers. The struggle in Nicaragua would eventually cost
hundreds of millions of dollars and kill thousands.
In the fall of 1982, following newspaper reports of the struggle, Congress
passed the Boland Amendment, limiting aid to the contras and prohibiting
the CIA and the Department of Defense from using any funds against the
government of Nicaragua. Since the vote was 411 to 0, the president had no
choice but to sign the bill. In 1984, the National Security Council largely took
over the direction of the anti-Sandinista campaign, and marine Lt. Col. Oliver
North began directing covert military actions.
North, a decorated veteran of Vietnam, was attractive (striking some as the
model of a gung-ho marine), zealous, flamboyant, and cocky. He claimed
privately to have a personal relationship with Reagan (who later denied it),
and held Congress, and liberals in general, in contempt. His superiors, Na-
tional Security advisers Robert McFarlane and John Poindexter, were military
men of similar temperament and devotion to the president.
In early 1984, with funding for CIA activities in Nicaragua running out and
Congress hostile, Reagan had to find other ways to keep aid flowing to the
contras. He told McFarlane, “I want you to do whatever you have to do to
help these people keep body and soul together.” McFarlane took this as an
order, and he and North began collecting funds from other countries and
private donors. In June, Saudi Arabia pledged a million dollars a month. (Af-
ter a visit with Reagan in February 1985, Saudi King Fahd agreed to pay $2
million per month.) The sultan of Brunei and the governments of Taiwan,
Israel, South Africa, and South Korea made contributions. Reagan personally
helped raise millions from such wealthy individuals as beer magnate Joseph
Coors.
The anti-Sandinista effort was made more difficult in 1984 when Ortega
Saavedra was elected president with more than 60 percent of the vote. In Oc-
tober, Congress passed Boland II, to close loopholes in the earlier legislation
barring aid to the contras. But North and his NSC allies continued their efforts,
believing that the legislation did not apply to them. Using the millions raised
privately, North and a network of supporters throughout the government qui-
etly set up “the Establishment,” a miniature sort of CIA headed by retired air
force Maj. Gen. Richard V. Secord and his partner, Iranian-American busi-
nessman Albert Hakim. A small military force was soon in the making.
On October 5, 1986, one of Secord’s airplanes was shot down in Nicaragua,
and the Sandinistas captured crewman Eugene Hasenfus, who talked about
250 Twentieth-Century America

his efforts. Reagan publicly denied any government connection. At about the
same time, headlines began screaming about America’s covert action in Iran.
In early 1979, followers of the Islamic fundamentalist Ayatollah Khomeini
overthrew the pro-American shah. Relations between the new government
and the United States quickly deteriorated, and the staff of the American em-
bassy was taken hostage. Even after its release, there was much bitterness
between the two nations. When Iran went to war with Iraq in 1983, the ad-
ministration launched Operation Staunch to stop international arms sales to
Iran. Secretary of State Schultz branded Iran a backer of international terror-
ism, and the president called it “Murder Inc.”
In November 1984, exiled Iranian businessman Manucher Ghorbanifar
told the administration privately that he could rally moderates within Iran
and save the country from Soviet control. He wanted to prove his worth
to the moderate faction by arranging an arms sale to Iran and win favor
with Americans by helping to gain release of four American hostages held
in battle-torn Lebanon. Israeli intelligence forces believed that a moderate
body existed in Iran. The CIA discounted the story. Ghorbanifar, in fact,
was a con man, and the so-called moderates were agents of the Khome-
ini government.
McFarlane and Poindexter accepted the Israeli account, and so did the
president. Reagan not only wanted to reach the antiCommunist moderates,
he had a passion about freeing the hostages in Lebanon, and believed that
the extremists in Lebanon could be swayed by fundamentalist Iranians.
When Israel reported that Iran wanted to purchase TOW antitank missiles,
it asked the administration for approval. The deal was to involve the re-
lease of four or more hostages. Against the wishes of several advisers, in-
cluding Schultz, Reagan quietly agreed to sell the weapons, using Israel as
the go-between.
In July 1985, Reagan gave a speech in which he called Iran part of a “con-
federation of terrorist states,” and vowed that “America will never make con-
cessions to terrorists.” In August, Israel sold ninety-six TOW missiles to Iran.
No hostages were released. In September, Israel sold 408 more, Iran mak-
ing payment through Ghorbanifar. Finally, one hostage went free. This had
become strictly an arms-for-hostages transaction with the Ayatollah, which
Schultz had predicted. It was against the law and contrary to declared Amer-
ican policy.
In November, Reagan approved another proposed trade that sent more so-
phisticated missiles to Iran. At this point, Oliver North, on his own, mingled
the Nicaraguan and Iranian activities, leaving the missile transfer details to
Robert Secord and his private CIA. No hostages were released. Administra-
tion leaders argued intensely against the entire course of action. But Reagan,
determined to free hostages in Lebanon, elected to continue.
In January 1986, the president agreed to let Israel sell four thousand anti-
tank missiles to Iran. Iran increased its demands throughout the year. Mean-
while, North was quietly siphoning off funds from the millions passing through
 Dyna mic Conserva tism 251

several hands and sending them to the contras. He stunned McFarlane by

telling him what he was doing. While several hostages were released, the
militants in Lebanon took others. When the operation finally ended, there
were more American hostages in Lebanon than when Reagan and the oth-
ers began trying to open dialogue with Iranian moderates.
The covert actions in both Nicaragua and Iran began leaking out late in
the year. On November 19, despite being warned by advisers to let the world
know what had been going on, Reagan held a press conference and denied
everything. After being confronted by an angry Schultz, the president asked
Ed Meese to investigate the full story. North was frantically shredding docu-
ments to conceal his activities. Meese found out anyway, and when Reagan
learned shortly that North had diverted funds to the contras, he was shocked,
and expressed his dismay to reporters. There were numerous resignations
within the White House, and Schultz took command of the nation’s foreign
policy.
Several formal investigations got under way, an independent counsel was
named, and reporters scurried to discover every detail of the scandal. Rea-
gan’s approval rating dropped in one poll from 67 percent to 36 percent.
Former senator John Tower, who headed a presidentially appointed Special
Review Board, learned to his dismay the extent to which the president was
passive, out of touch, and honestly unable to recall much of what he had
done. McFarlane, who acknowledged that he had not told the president about
the transfer of funds, said that Reagan had “the attention span of a fruit fly.”
(In 1994, Nancy Reagan would reveal that her husband was diagnosed as
having Alzheimer’s disease.)
Tower’s report concluded, as did three other probes, that Reagan was re-
sponsible for the scandal. The president acknowledged the blame publicly.
Independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh, following a seven-year, $48 million
probe, secured eleven convictions but sent no one to jail—in part because
President Bush later pardoned six people and two convictions were over-
turned on appeal. Televised congressional hearings, reminding many of the
Watergate debacle, battered the administration’s reputation and forced Vice
President Bush, running for the presidency, to acknowledge his minor role
in the machinations.
Many Americans, however, credited Reagan with good intentions; he was
trying to release hostages and contain communism. Few wanted to see an-
other president driven from office in disgrace.
Oliver North, who was outspoken and unrepentant during his testimony,
became something of a hero on the right, the symbol of a patriot who would
risk all to stop the Reds. (His conviction was one of those overturned.) Con-
gress soon gave generous support to the contras. Daniel Ortega fell from lib-
eral favor after losing his bid for reelection in 1990, but the Sandinistas re-
mained a powerful force in Nicaragua. Fifteen hostages were released through
1991 (one was killed, one died, and one escaped). Iran remained fervently
anti-American.
252 Twentieth-Century America

Col. Oliver North a t the Ira n-Contra tria l. Source: Archive Photos/Consolida ted News

Ending the Cold Wa r

Mikhail Gorbachev became general secretary of the Communist party of the

Soviet Union in 1985. At age 54 he was the youngest Soviet leader since
Josef Stalin came to power in the 1920s. His youth and intelligence helped
him recognize the serious economic and social problems facing his vast em-
pire. Seventy years of communism had failed to match the wealth of the West
and many Asian countries. (A secret CIA study concluded that the Soviet
Union was in an advanced state of decay.) And millions chafed at the re-
pressive government that denied them freedoms common in the more ad-
vanced nations.
Gorbachev was deeply concerned as well about the military buildup un-
der way during the Reagan administration. He lacked the financial resources
to match it. An aide noted later that Gorbachev was obsessed by the eco-
nomic cost of the arms race and realized “we had to put an end to the
Cold War.” Moreover, the SDI, “Star Wars,” threatened to give the United
States the ability to mount a counterattack in a nuclear war. Even if the
 Dyna mic Conserva tism 253

SDI proved technologically impossible, the billions being spent to develop

it might well produce innovations that would leave the Soviet Union mili-
tarily vulnerable.
Gorbachev also worried about the Reagan Doctrine, the public commit-
ment by the administration to launch an active counteroffensive throughout
the world against Soviet imperialism. In his 1985 State of the Union address,
Reagan pledged to back “those who are risking their lives—on every conti-
nent, from Afghanistan to Nicaragua—to defy Soviet-supported aggression
and secure rights which have been ours from birth.”
This was more than rhetoric. In 1982 and 1983, the president signed se-
cret National Security Decision directives pledging the United States to use
diplomatic, economic, and psychological efforts to weaken Soviet power. The
administration supported anti-Soviet efforts in Poland, and by 1985 was se-
cretly spending $8 million a year to back the Solidarity party. It extended
covert aid to the anti-Soviet forces in Afghanistan. The CIA led a successful
effort to persuade Saudi Arabia to increase oil production, a move that re-
duced Soviet hard currency income by half. Political scientist Jay Winik wrote
later, “Under Ronald Reagan, everywhere the Soviets had turned, their pres-
sure was met by U.S. counterpressure.”
The Reagan Doctrine also involved the defense of allies. In 1983, despite
intense pressure from the Soviets and an assortment of peace organizations,
the president ordered intermediate-range missiles to Western Europe to
counter similar weapons aimed at the area by the Russians.
Gorbachev tried to restructure (perestroika ) the Soviet economy with a pro-
gram of moderate and controlled reforms. To make it more appealing, the
Russian leader permitted more freedom and openness (gla snost). Turmoil
rapidly ensued, and the Communist party began to lose its grip over the
more than one hundred nationality groups under its authority. The taste of
freedom quickly proved contagious.
Reagan thought the United States was winning the Cold War, but he feared
the possibility of nuclear war and strongly desired to improve relations with
the Soviets and achieve mutual arms reductions. In the fall of 1985, the So-
viets made it clear that they had the same goals. In November, Reagan and
Gorbachev held a cordial summit meeting in Geneva. While Reagan refused
to budge on SDI, agreements included a 50-percent reduction in strategic
arms, cultural and scientific exchanges, and additional summits. A formal
statement declared that nuclear war could not be won and should not be
fought. Both leaders sensed that they could deal with each other reasonably.
Gorbachev aide Anatoly Chernyaev said later that the Geneva meeting was
the beginning of the end of the Cold War.
Plagued with a faltering economy and a restless population, Gorbachev
grew bolder. In January 1986, he proposed startling reductions in nuclear
weaponry if the United States would give up SDI. At the Soviet Union’s party
congress in February and March, Gorbachev argued that the two superpow-
ers had to learn to live in peace with each other, maintaining the lowest
254 Twentieth-Century America

possible balance of weapons and without nuclear missiles. In declaring that

capitalism and communism must coexist, the Soviet leader was conceding a
basic premise of Marxist ideology, international class warfare.
At the Soviet leader’s request, he and Reagan met at Reykjavik, Iceland,
on October 11–12. Gorbachev made sweeping disarmament offers, and
at one point the two leaders agreed in principle to eliminate all nuclear
weapons within ten years. But when Gorbachev announced that his offers
were contingent on the elimination of SDI, Reagan angrily refused and left
the meeting.
The Reykjavik summit had major consequences. Details were worked out
on missile reductions. The Soviets agreed to talk about human rights issues
in future negotiations. Above all, Gorbachev realized that SDI was not a ne-
gotiable matter. The Soviet leader then chose to take another approach: he
would wind down the Cold War in the hope that the decreasing threat would
persuade the United States to scrap SDI.
Gorbachev came to Washington in December 1987, working crowds like
a seasoned politician. The summit meeting led to the INF (Intermediate Nu-
clear Forces) Treaty, which eliminated an entire class of nuclear missiles with
ranges of 600 to 3,400 miles. It was the first time that nations agreed to de-
stroy nuclear weapons. Both sides agreed to permit on-site inspections of
missile bases.
When Reagan visited Moscow in May 1988 and was well received and al-
lowed to speak freely on television, it was clear that the Cold War was wind-
ing down. Reagan and Gorbachev embraced publicly at the site of Lenin’s tomb.
In December 1988, Gorbachev told the United Nations that the Bolshevik
Revolution was a thing of the past and that henceforth nations must free
their foreign policy of ideology. Contending that force should not be the ba-
sis of foreign policy, he announced the unilateral reduction of 500,000 troops
and the withdrawal of 50,000 troops and 5,000 tanks from Eastern Europe.
The following year, the Soviet Union collapsed. The Berlin Wall came
down, and the two Germanies were united in 1990. In 1991, the Communist
party was outlawed and most of the republics that had once been the So-
viet state joined a loose economic federation called the Commonwealth of
Independent States. The terrifying international struggle that had dominated
much of the world’s attention since 1946 was at last over.
Some observers gave Reagan credit for ending the Cold War. Conservative
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher wrote in her memoirs, “President
Reagan’s Strategic Initiative, about which the Soviets and Mr. Gorbachev were
. . . so alarmed, was to prove central to the West’s victory in the Cold War.”
Others emphasized Reagan’s belief in the fall of communism, his commit-
ment to counter Soviet aggression throughout the world, and his diplomatic
pursuits to rid the world of nuclear weapons. Columnist Bruce Chapman ar-
gued that Reagan deserved the Nobel Peace Prize. Howard Baker, Reagan’s
chief of staff after Donald Regan’s departure in early 1987, said of the pres-
ident, “He knew who he was, he knew what he believed, and he knew
where he wanted to go.”
 Dyna mic Conserva tism 255

Liberal critics have frequently disagreed, citing long-term Soviet economic

and political ills, noting Gorbachev’s boldness, and asking among other things
how a man who knew so little in other matters could have been the guid-
ing force in a highly complex military and diplomatic initiative. Washington
insider Clark Clifford called Reagan an “amiable dunce.”
In his impressive study of Reagan, historian William E. Pemberton argues
that the president must share the plaudits for the end of the Cold War with
Secretary of State George Schultz. But he does not discount the president’s
vital contribution. “The usually passive Reagan could exert great leadership
on matters central to his vision of the future.”
The distinguished historian John Lewis Gaddis is less certain, giving the
Reagan administration credit for abandoning the fixation about obtaining nu-
clear superiority but adding, “whether it did so out of ignorance or craft is
still not clear.” What we do know, Gaddis concludes, “is that the United
States began to challenge the Soviet Union during the first half of the 1980s
in a manner unprecedented since the early Cold War. That state soon ex-
hausted itself and expired—whether from unaccustomed over-exertion or
Gorbachev’s heroic efforts at resuscitation is also still not completely clear.”

SUGGESTED READING

Archie Brown, The Gorba chev Fa ctor (1996); R. McGreggor Cawley, Federa l La nd,
Western Anger: The Sa gebrush Rebellion a nd Environmenta l Politics (1993); Michael
K. Deaver and Mickey Herskowitz, Behind the Scenes (1987); John Lewis Gaddis, We
Now Know: Rethinking Cold Wa r History (1997); Mikhail Gorbachev, Memoirs (1995);
James Davison Hunter, Before the Shooting Sta rts: Sea rching for Democra cy in Amer-
ica ’s Culture Wa r (1994); Haynes Johnson, Sleepwa lking Through History: America in
the Rea ga n Yea rs (1991); William G. Mayer, The Cha nging America n Mind: How a nd
Why America n Public Opinion Cha nged Between 1960 a nd 1988 (1992); William E.
Pemberton, Exit with Honor: The Life a nd Presidency of Rona ld Rea ga n (1997); Don-
ald T. Regan, For The Record: From Wa ll Street to Wa shington (1988).
 Chapter Fourteen

INTO THE NINETIES

R onald Reagan, 78, left Washington with a 70-percent approval rating

in the polls and with the personal impression that he had been a suc-
cessful president. The Cold War was over and communism was on the
run all over the world. The nation’s military prowess had been restored. The
economy was booming. Millions had lower expectations of government and
higher respect for private enterprise and individual freedom. The disdain of
the sixties for traditional values and patriotism was waning. People told poll-
sters that the president had made them proud of America again.
Despite mounting budget deficits, the huge national debt, scandals, and
the continued growth of the federal government during the 1980s, conserv-
atives were especially loyal to Reagan. William F. Buckley, Jr., said later that
Reagan had accomplished 60 percent of the conservative agenda and that
the administration was 60 percent successful.
Those on the left, of course, were generally horrified by the Reagan ad-
ministration, condemning it for racial, sexual, and ecological insensitivity as
well as greed, aggression, and ignorance. Reagan, said Robert Hughes, “left
his country a little stupider in 1988 than it had been in 1980, and a lot more
tolerant of lies, because his style of image-presentation cut the connective
tissue of arguments between ideas and hence fostered the defeat of thought
itself.” A poll of historians put Reagan in the “below average” category. De-
mocrats eagerly awaited their chance to see the executive branch once again
in safe hands.

Election of 1988

Vice president George Bush was widely thought to be Reagan’s natural heir.
The backgrounds of the two men were vastly different. Bush, age 63, was
the son of a wealthy investment banker and United States senator. Raised in
Connecticut, he attended a prep school and went on to Yale University,
257
258 Twentieth-Century America

where he was the captain of the varsity baseball team and graduated Phi
Beta Kappa in economics. In World War II he earned his commission and
wings at age 18, the youngest pilot in the navy. He went into combat at age
19 and won the Distinguished Flying Cross and three air medals. Bush had
been a successful oil executive in Texas, a congressman, the nation’s top
United Nations delegate, head of the nation’s first liaison office in the Peo-
ple’s Republic of China, and chief of the CIA.
Bush was a moderate conservative, a skilled campaigner, and an effective
fund raiser. When he announced his candidacy in October 1987, he had al-
ready accumulated a $12 million campaign chest. In primaries, Bush defeated
such competitors as “televangelist” Pat Robertson and Senate Minority Leader
Robert Dole, sweeping the South, where Reagan’s policies were especially
popular. At the GOP convention, Bush chose 41-year-old Indiana Senator
Dan Quayle as his running mate. Party strategists thought that Quayle, hand-
some and conservative, would win the votes of women and the Reagan right.
But his inexperience and persistent verbal blunders proved embarrassing.
A large number of Democrats sought their party’s nomination, including
civil rights activist Jesse Jackson, Missouri Congressman Richard Gephardt,
Illinois Senator Paul Simon, Tennessee Senator Albert Gore, and Massachu-
setts Governor Michael Dukakis. Dukakis, whose campaign was highly or-
ganized and well-financed, emerged the winner.
Dukakis, 55, was the son of a Greek immigrant who had become a wealthy
physician. He went to Swarthmore College and Harvard Law School. He had

George Bush, August 18, 1988, promising “Rea d my lips, no new ta xes.” Source: George
Bush Presidentia l Libra ry
 Into the Nineties 259

been a state representative from 1963–70, and governor from 1975–79 and
1983–91. In sharp contrast to Bush, Dukakis lacked a military record and ex-
perience in the federal government and was a staunch liberal. At the party
convention, 67-year-old Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen was named to fill the
ticket. Bentsen had once defeated Bush in a Senate race, and it was hoped
he would appeal to the no-longer-solid South.
The campaign was less than inspiring. Bush rejoiced in the continuation
of Reagan peace and prosperity, and rejected even the thought of increas-
ing taxes: “Read my lips . . . no new taxes.” He promised to be the “educa-
tion president” and the “environmental president.” He said he had the vision
of a “kinder, gentler nation.”
At the same time, Bush portrayed his opponent as soft on crime, noting
the Democrat’s support of a Massachusetts law granting furloughs even to
prisoners serving life sentences without parole. The case of black murderer
Willie Horton, who had escaped during such a parole and committed assault
and rape, became a prominent theme in Bush television commercials. A
Dukakis cover-up of the case became widely known in a devastating Rea der’s
Digest article.
Dukakis and his backers dismissed Bush as a “wimp” and a “preppie” and
made much of his Iran-Contra involvement. They stressed an assortment of
alleged failures of the Reagan administration and dismissed the Horton cam-
paign theme as racism. At one point, Dukakis had his picture taken in a mil-
itary tank, attempting to look fierce and prove his toughness. The result was
widespread ridicule. The television debates between the candidates amounted
largely to a contrast in appearance—Bush was tall, good-looking, and self-
confident; Dukakis was short, swarthy, and edgy. The debates increased
Bush’s lead in the polls.
In November, Bush carried forty of the fifty states and won by a 54-
to 46-percent margin. The electoral margin was 426 to 112. Voter turnout
was the lowest since 1924. Dukakis scored well only with African Americans.
Still, Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and two-thirds of state
governorships.

The Bush Approa ch

Despite their wealth and Ivy League backgrounds, George Bush and his wife
Barbara (who attended Smith College for two years) sought to identify with
average Americans. They stressed devotion to the family and talked about
having good character. They enjoyed country-western music, pork rinds,
horseshoe pitching, and their dog Millie. Mrs. Bush, the mother of five (a
younger daughter had died in 1953 of leukemia), refused to dye her silver
hair and was proud of being a homemaker. She told women at Wellesley,
an elite women’s college, “What happens in your house is more important
than what happens in the White House.” The White House during the Bush
administration was more like Main Street than Camelot or Hollywood.
260 Twentieth-Century America

It was commonly said in the media that Bush was not a deep thinker and
lacked a vision for America. There was no doubt some truth to the charge.
But the new president had proposals about the environment and education
that he thought vital, and he was determined to take advantage of the col-
lapse of the Soviet Union and make the world a safer place. Bush’s initial
concerns were economic: paying for the huge savings and loan debacle and
taking action to contain the ever-growing federal deficits.
Three members of the Bush cabinet were Reagan holdovers, including Sec-
retary of Education Lauro F. Cavazos, the first Hispanic American cabinet
member. In less than a year, Bush set a record for the number of women
appointed to top federal positions. Elizabeth H. Dole was the new secretary
of labor, and Dr. Antonia Novello was named surgeon general. Long-time
Bush friend James A. Baker became secretary of state. The highly respected
environmentalist William Reilly headed the Environmental Protection Agency.

Suprem e Court Appointees

There were signs in the late 1980s that the Supreme Court was moving to
the right. Cynics said the justices were again “following the election returns.”
Decisions restricting affirmative action programs and abortions, and approv-
ing capital punishment, worried the left. The 5–4 decision of July 3, 1989,
upholding the right of states to impose sharp restrictions on abortions
prompted feminists to ponder whether Roe v. Wa de itself was in danger of
being overturned.
Bush’s initial appointment to the Supreme Court was David Souter, a cen-
trist who did not arouse much opposition. Souter was a Rhodes Scholar and
a graduate of Harvard Law School who had been on the New Hampshire
Supreme Court from 1983 to 1990. He was on the U.S. Circuit Court of Ap-
peals when named by Bush.
In 1991, civil rights champion Thurgood Marshall retired. To please the
right wing of his party and retain the “black seat” on the Court, Bush nom-
inated conservative African American Clarence Thomas. Thomas, age 43, was
a Yale Law School graduate who had won favor with the Reagan adminis-
tration because of his opposition to racial quotas and government paternal-
ism in general. In 1981 Thomas was named head of the civil rights division
of the Department of Education, and from 1982 to 1990 he headed the Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Thomas was a U.S. Court of
Appeals judge when nominated to the Supreme Court.
Liberal opposition to the confirmation mounted when black University of
Oklahoma law professor Anita Hill leveled sexual harassment charges against
the nominee. Hill claimed that the actions, which did not involve physical
contact, occurred when she worked with Thomas at the Department of Ed-
ucation and the EEOC.
Televised hearings magnified the charges and countercharges, and Amer-
icans divided sharply over the issue. Feminists and civil rights activists ve-
 Into the Nineties 261

hemently championed Ms. Hill, making the case a symbol of sexual harass-
ment in the work place. Conservatives tended to believe Thomas, who an-
grily denied the charges and claimed he was the victim of racial discrimina-
tion. When the shouting died down, the Senate approved the nomination by
the narrow margin of 52 to 48.
Thomas would prove to be as staunch a conservative on the Court as his
partisans hoped and his opponents feared. Often shunned and constantly
criticized, Thomas lashed out publicly at his detractors in 1998, calling them
racists who refused to take his ideas seriously.

Tia na nm en Squa re

During the years following Nixon’s initiative, Chinese-American relations

slowly improved. After 1979, when formal diplomatic relations were estab-
lished, tens of thousands of Chinese students poured into American colleges
and universities, and even more Americans traveled to China as tourists. Trade
between the nations mounted steadily. Some thought that the dictatorship in
Beijing might soon abandon communism and embrace free enterprise and
democracy.
But China’s rulers proved to be less willing to embrace independence and
change than many hoped. In early 1989, troops put down Tibetans who were
clamoring for more autonomy. On June 4, the army crushed prodemocracy
demonstrators, mostly young people, in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, killing
as many as two thousand. The world reacted in horror at the massacre, seen
on film and covered extensively in the press.
President Bush extended visas of Chinese students, who might have feared
to return home, and suspended the sale of military hardware to the com-
munist government. Some critics thought this response half-hearted, but Bush
was determined not to destroy a vital link with the world’s most populous
nation. The relationship with China would remain one of the most impor-
tant topics of American foreign policy for the rest of the century.

The Inva sion of Pa na m a

With the end of the Cold War, Soviet financial contributions to Cuba were
curtailed and stopped in Nicaragua. The United States appeared to be in a
dominant position in Latin America. One sore spot remaining was Panama,
ruled by military dictator Manuel Noriega. Once pro-American, Noriega had
backed the Sandinistas and become personally wealthy as a drug trafficker.
U.S. federal grand juries had indicted Noriega on several charges. In May
1989, the dictator nullified an election that a hand-picked candidate had lost
and sent thugs to beat up his opposition.
When Noriega declared a state of war with the United States and threat-
ened the lives of Americans living in his country, President Bush, on De-
cember 20, 1989, dispatched some 12,000 troops to Panama to join the 12,000
262 Twentieth-Century America

troops already there. The goal, of dubious legality, was to take over Panama
and install a pro-American government. Most Panamanians welcomed the in-
tervention. Noriega eluded capture but soon surrendered and was sent to
Florida to face trial. In 1992 he was convicted on numerous counts of drug
smuggling and racketeering and went to prison.
Only twenty-three Americans were killed in Panama, but thousands
of Panamanians, many of them citizens, were casualties. The invasion
was widely admired in the United States, and George Bush’s popularity
soared. Even his harshest critics admitted that he had shed the “wimp”
image.

The Wa r on Drugs

During his election campaign, George Bush declared that he would take bold
steps to win the so-called war on drugs. The need for such a war was ob-
vious. The link between crime and drugs, for example, was well documented.
Among jail inmates arrested in 1989, 44 percent used drugs in the month be-
fore the offense, 30 percent used drugs daily in the month before the of-
fense, and 27 percent used drugs at the time of the offense. Twenty percent
of Hispanic state prison inmates said they committed their offense to get
money for drugs, compared with 15 percent of white inmates and 17 per-
cent of black inmates.
In 1989, 1.3 million Americans were arrested by state and local police for
drug violations, up from 780,000 in 1984. Between 1975 and 1993, the fed-
eral government seized 6,605 clandestine drug laboratories. In fiscal year
1993, the U.S. Customs Service would seize 507,249 pounds of marijuana,
175,318 pounds of cocaine, and 17.9 million dosage units of drugs such as
LSD and barbiturates.
To coordinate the federal effort, Bush named William Bennett, Reagan’s
iconoclastic education secretary from 1985 to 1989. The federal drug-control
budget increased from $1.5 billion in 1981 to $9.7 billion in 1990, and would
reach $12.2 billion in 1993. During fiscal 1991, state and local governments
spent $15.9 billion on drug-control activities, a 13-percent increase over the
$14.1 billion spent the year before.
In February 1990, Bush held a summit in Cartagena, Colombia, with
the presidents of Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia, the three major illegal-drug-
producing nations. The heads of state agreed that the need to reduce the
demand for illegal drugs in the United States was as important as the
reduction of supplies from abroad.

The Persia n Gulf Wa r

In the late 1980s, the United States backed Iraq in its war with Iran, fearing
that an Iranian victory would threaten Saudi Arabia and American oil sup-
plies. The Reagan and Bush administrations approved nearly $1 billion in
 Into the Nineties 263

economic and technical aid to the government of Saddam Hussein. Some of

this aid was capable of providing Iraq with powerful weaponry.
When the war ended, Kuwait unilaterally increased its oil production, caus-
ing a drop in world prices and damaging the already precarious economy
of Iraq. This and Hussein’s anger at the refusal of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia
to forgive Iraqi debts, prompted Hussein to prepare for war. Asserting his-
torical claims to Kuwaiti territory, Hussein marched into Kuwait on August
2, 1990. This unexpected move caused grave concern in Washington because
the Iraqi leader was now in a position to disturb the flow of oil from the
Saudis, who controlled more than a fifth of the world’s proven oil supplies.
President Bush declared, “This aggression will not stand,” and rapidly forged
a thirty-nation coalition, including Arab nations, to oppose Iraq’s aggression.
The United Nations authorized a trade embargo on Iraq and sent a quarter
of a million troops, mostly Americans, to defend Saudi Arabia. Operation
Desert Shield was commanded by American army General Norman
Schwarzkopf. By late 1990, plans were being laid for a military offensive
against Hussein, and the U.N. military force grew to 550,000 troops.
The House and Senate debated the issue at length, with liberals generally
opposing military action and hoping that the economic boycott of Iraq would
prove effective, and conservatives portraying the struggle as a stand against
aggression and a fight for Kuwait’s freedom. On January 12, 1991, Congress
narrowly approved the use of American troops in the Persian Gulf. Four days
later, Operation Desert Storm began.
On February 23, following weeks of air strikes, Schwarzkopf sent 200,000
troops into Iraq. Although coverage was censured by the Pentagon (exclud-
ing the gore of actual combat and focusing on high-technology weapon sys-
tems), television carried much of the war live. Millions watched round-the-
clock programming on the Cable News Network (CNN). Within one-hundred
hours after the invasion, fire-breathing Hussein humbly accepted a cease-fire.
Iraq left Kuwait after setting its oil fields on fire and dumping huge quanti-
ties of crude oil into the Gulf. The United States lost only 148 Americans in
the six-week conflict, while some 100,000 Iraqi soldiers and citizens died.
Americans rejoiced, Schwarzkopf and his troops were celebrated as he-
roes, and Bush’s approval rating reached 91 percent, the all-time high. It now
seemed clear that America was the dominant force in the world and would
set the agenda for the post-Cold War era. The Persian Gulf War made many
Americans dismiss the defeat in Vietnam and talk again about national pride
and global duty.
Bush was later criticized for failing to pursue the war until Hussein was
killed or at least driven from power. Hussein brutally suppressed two inter-
nal rebellions following the conflict, chafed at the military inspections of Iraq
that were required after the cease-fire, and was often thought to be harbor-
ing vast poison gas reserves. But the president and the allies feared the dis-
solution of Iraq and a resurgence of Iranian authority should Hussein be
ousted. The Middle East would remain a volatile region throughout the
decade.
264 Twentieth-Century America

The Sa gging Econom y

While domestic oil prices dropped after the Persian Gulf War, the economy
slid into a recession. In the spring of 1991, Bush reluctantly agreed to demands
by congressional leaders to raise some new taxes. Breaking his iron-clad cam-
paign pledge put the president at odds with GOP conservatives and persuaded
millions that the man in the Oval Office could not be trusted. The impact of
the tax increase on the future of the Bush administration was compared by
some with the disastrous political outcome of Ford’s pardon of Nixon.
By 1992, all of the key elements in the economy were retracting, and
consumer confidence set a record low. Unemployment rose to 7.8 percent.
While the Federal Reserve Board slashed interest rates, the economy failed
to pick up.
Cutbacks in military and aerospace spending played a role in the slump,
and so did the replacing of workers by computers and computer-driven ma-
chines. Many companies laid off workers while shifting their manufacturing
to low-wage developing nations. “Staying competitive in the world market”
was a slogan often repeated by business leaders in the 1990s, and many
workers bore the brunt. Those who kept their jobs often found themselves
working longer hours and depending on income from a spouse to maintain
or improve their standard of living. In 1967 the number of dual-income fam-
ilies amounted to 33 percent of American households. By 1998 the figure
had jumped to 66 percent.
The economic slump proved to be temporary. But the eventual recovery
was too late to help George Bush, whose popularity plummeted from the
heights of the Persian Gulf War to below 30 percent.

Ra cia l Explosion

Despite the enormous and unprecedented progress in civil rights that the
country had experienced over the past several decades, racial tensions re-
mained a major part of American life. Millions of whites feared blacks, con-
vinced that they were given somehow naturally to crime, drugs, and illegit-
imate births. Nearly all-black Washington, D.C., seemed to illustrate the point:
it was the murder capital of America, inheriting the title from heavily black
Detroit. A rampage of assault—a “wilding”—by black teenage boys in New
York’s Central Park in April 1989 shocked the nation.
Millions of African Americans resented what they saw as a persistent racism
that trapped them in urban ghettoes, packed them into prisons, denied them
educational and occupational opportunities, and prevented them from the
wealth and respect that other Americans enjoyed. The often rapid social mo-
bility of Asian and Near Eastern immigrants served to intensify the frustra-
tion and anger.
On April 19, 1992, an all-white jury in suburban Los Angeles acquitted four
white policemen charged with beating a black motorist. Twenty-five-year-old
 Into the Nineties 265

parolee Rodney King had been drunk when police finally stopped him after
a high-speed, eight-mile chase. A bystander recorded on videotape what fol-
lowed: four police officers repeatedly kicking and savagely hitting King with
steel batons. The incident occurred on March 3, and the media showed the
videotape repeatedly for weeks. Many blacks and civil rights activists were
convinced that this was a typical example of white oppression. Defenders of
the police officers pointed to King’s wild and dangerous driving and his
“menacing” resistance when arrested. (King was 6 foot 4, 240 pounds, and
of arguably fearsome appearance. His initial actions when police confronted
him did not appear on the tape shown by the media.)
The jury verdict was followed by the most violent race riot in American
history. The three-day rampage of destruction and violence focused on South
Central Los Angeles and disbursed across a huge swath stretching from Long
Beach to Hollywood. Fifty-five people were killed, at least 4,000 were in-
jured, more than 12,000 were arrested, and 5,270 buildings were destroyed
or badly damaged, including some 200 liquor stores. The often confused Los
Angeles police were aided by 4,000 National Guard troops sent in by Gov-
ernor Pete Wilson and 1,200 federal law officers and armed service person-
nel supplied by President Bush. The immediate cost of the riot exceeded a
billion dollars.
When analyzed, the incident defied simple explanation. While the King
verdict triggered the outburst, the appalling violence seemed to have deeper
roots, including a complex of ethnic tensions. Stores owned by Koreans, for
example, suffered greater damage than those owned by African Americans.
Television reporters interviewed blacks who admitted harboring a grudge
against the Koreans for treating them with suspicion and condescension. Dur-
ing the riot, Hispanics attacked both blacks and whites and engaged in loot-
ing and burning of their own.
Federal authorities soon indicted the four police officers on federal charges
of violating Rodney King’s civil rights. Critics claimed this was a classic case
of double jeopardy, prompted by fear of further riots. On April 17, 1993, a
jury found two of the officers guilty. Each was sentenced to thirty months in
prison. After serving their sentences, they faced a new crisis: the Clinton ad-
ministration, which had close ties to civil rights leaders, tried to get the pair
resentenced to longer terms. This move proved unsuccessful.
Rodney King sued the City of Los Angeles and in 1994 came away with
$3.8 million. Before and after his sudden wealth, he had further run-ins with
the law, being convicted of drunk driving and hit-and-run driving.
Five years after the great riot, a third of the buildings destroyed had not
been replaced, and some two hundred vacant lots scarred the landscape of
South Central Los Angeles. Forty-four businesses had spent $400 million for
recovery, and government funneled in $1.3 billion in loans and grants. But
this was far short of the $6 billion needed to revitalize impoverished areas
of Los Angeles.
Race relations again grew tense in 1995 when a jury of nine African Amer-
icans, two whites, and one Hispanic declared the famous black football player
266 Twentieth-Century America

and actor O. J. Simpson innocent of two charges of murder. The victims were
Simpson’s ex-wife Nicole and her friend Ronald Goldman, both whites. The
case had been in the headlines for more than a year, and millions watched
the televised trial. Polls showed that African Americans and whites had very
different opinions about the case: six out of ten blacks thought Simpson in-
nocent, while three out of four whites were convinced of his guilt. Defense
attorneys had portrayed Simpson as another black victim of the white justice
system. After the swift verdict was announced, journalist Lou Cannon ob-
served, some black Americans said it was “payback for Rodney King.” Fam-
ilies of the victims soon sued Simpson, and a jury ordered him to pay $33.5
million in damages.

Interna tiona l Disa rm a m ent

Bush was keenly interested in foreign affairs, and was especially concerned
about the disintegration of the Soviet Union, which took place during his ad-
ministration. In 1990, the Berlin Wall came down and Germany was reuni-
fied. Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia declared their independence a year later.
In December 1991, The Commonwealth of Independent States was created,
dominated by Boris Yeltsin, president of Russia. Gorbachev, without a So-
viet Union to preside over, resigned.
Bush worked well with Gorbachev and his successors. He negotiated START
(Strategic Arms Reduction Talks) I (1991) and START II (1993), the first agree-
ments of the nuclear era designed to dismantle and destroy strategic weapons.

Dom estic Policy

Bush was far more pragmatic than Reagan and often took steps designed to
appeal to the broad political spectrum. The result was that to many, espe-
cially on the right, he seemed indecisive and expedient. Still, the president
could boast of considerable achievement in domestic policy. He signed the
Americans With Disabilities Act, a renewal of the Voting Rights Act, and the
Clean Air Act, often described as the most significant environmental legisla-
tion ever passed. Bush proposed sweeping educational reforms, including
national achievement examinations in core subjects. He signed the Civil Rights
Act of 1991, which made it easier for workers to sue for job discrimination.
(Employment discrimination lawsuits climbed from 12,962 in 1993 to 23,796
in 1997.) And he signed a bill greatly increasing Head Start funding.
On the other hand, Bush alienated many by vetoing an earlier civil rights
bill, which he feared mandated racial quotas, reducing several hundred so-
cial programs, and vetoing a minimum-wage bill. The war on drugs seemed
to be making little headway by the end of the term. (Things would soon get
worse. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Ad-
ministration, between 1992 and 1995 teen drug use skyrocketed 105 percent,
including a jump of 183 percent in monthly use of LSD and other hallu-
 Into the Nineties 267

cinogens and a jump of 141 percent in use of marijuana.) Environmentalists

were disturbed that Bush opposed efforts to draft stricter rules to decrease
the threat of global warming. He also refused to prevent corporations from
exploring for oil in the Alaskan wildlife preserve.
Huge deficits, which would have been even larger had Congress not placed
Social Security surpluses into the general fund, concerned many. The na-
tional debt hit $4 trillion in 1992, up from $2.8 trillion in 1989. The economic
recession and the president’s reversal on his pledge not to raise taxes left
him especially vulnerable as elections neared.

The Election of 1992

Most of the top Democrats declined to run for the presidency in 1992,
thinking that Bush, like Reagan before him, was certain to be reelected. This
paved the way for the candidacy of the little-known governor of Arkansas,
Bill Clinton.
William Jefferson Blythe IV was born in Hope, Arkansas, on August 19,
1946 (he later took the name of his stepfather). His mother was a nurse and
his stepfather was an automobile salesman. Exceptionally bright and charm-
ing, Bill starred in school as a student, musician, and athlete. In 1968 he
graduated from Georgetown University with a degree in international affairs
and was named a Rhodes Scholar. He graduated from Yale Law School in
1973, taught law at the University of Arkansas, and went into politics.
After losing a congressional race in 1974, Clinton was elected attorney gen-
eral two years later, and in 1978, at the age of 32, became governor. He
failed to win reelection in 1980, but was reelected in 1982 and altogether
served twelve years as governor.
Clinton married Hillary Rodham in 1975. A native of Chicago, she was a
graduate of Wellesley and Yale Law School. She too possessed good looks,
charm, high intelligence, and burning ambition. Her political bent was de-
cidedly to the left. Insiders knew that Ms. Clinton’s influence on her hus-
band was considerable.
Clinton ran as a centrist, opposed to both Reagan economics and “tax and
spend” liberalism. On the primary trail, he tended to avoid direct answers to
questions, stick with generalities, and tell audiences what they wanted to
hear. Clinton’s campaign was handicapped by his avoidance of military ser-
vice during the Vietnam War, by his admission that he once smoked mari-
juana but “didn’t inhale,” and by woman trouble. Gennifer Flowers of
Arkansas said that she had been Clinton’s mistress for twelve years. (Clinton
denied it, but years later, under oath, admitted having sex with Flowers once.)
This and rumors of similar activities prompted a senior Clinton aide, Betsey
Wright, to oversee a campaign operation to handle what she called “bimbo
eruptions.”
There was also evidence of dubious Clinton financial transactions in
Arkansas, dismissed by some on the grounds that politics in that state had
268 Twentieth-Century America

long been corrupt. The candidate portrayed himself as a serious Southern

Baptist of the highest integrity.
Clinton won the Democratic nomination at the party convention in New
York and named liberal 42-year-old Senator Al Gore of Tennessee as his run-
ning mate. It was the first baby-boomer presidential ticket. The Democratic
party found itself with young, attractive, and articulate candidates; unity;
plenty of money; and an early lead in the polls.
The Republicans enjoyed less harmony, for the Religious Right, disturbed
especially about abortion and the growing secularization of American life,
was less than pleased with Bush moderation. Conservative Pat Buchanan,
who had served in the Nixon administration and was a familiar figure in the
media, was especially critical of the GOP for failing to tackle directly an as-
sortment of moral issues and refusing to limit immigration.
The campaign was enlivened by the independent candidacy of eccentric
Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot. Appearing often on television with a feisty,
witty, homespun approach that employed simple arguments and folksy analo-
gies, Perot drew much applause from those who thought that politicians
avoided the real issues facing citizens in favor of slick imagery and empty
promises. In mid-July, however, Perot suddenly withdrew from the race and
backed Clinton.
Influenced by Perot and eager to contrast his youthful vigor with the ad-
ministration’s alleged torpor on domestic issues, Clinton called himself an
“agent of change” and promised to work for health care reform, lower taxes,
job creation, and college scholarships. Like his idol, JFK, Clinton made hun-
dreds of promises on the campaign trail.
Bush and Quayle blamed the Democrat-controlled Congress for the
nation’s economic ills, stressed the president’s foreign policy achievements,
and challenged Clinton’s patriotism and integrity. Democrats answered in
kind. Perot jumped back into the race during the final month of the
campaign, and the three candidates participated in three inconsequential
televised debates.
Clinton led in the polls throughout the campaign, and on election night
he collected 43.7 million votes to Bush’s 38.1 million and Perot’s 19.2 mil-
lion (the largest total ever achieved by a third-party candidate). In the elec-
toral college the margin was even larger, Clinton leading Bush 370 to 168.
Clinton scored especially well among minorities, women, and young people.
Still, he was elected by only 43 percent of the voters.
Almost 55 percent of eligible voters went to the polls in 1992, up 5 per-
cent from 1988. Democrats did well in congressional races and now had
commanding majorities in the House and Senate. Five women, all Democ-
rats, won Senate seats, and Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois became the first
African American woman to sit in the Senate. Colorado sent Native Ameri-
can Ben Nighthorse Campbell to the Senate.
Clinton had promised during the campaign to appoint many women and
minorities to the executive branch, and he followed through once elected.
Janet Reno, for example, became the first woman attorney general, Donna
 Into the Nineties 269

Shalala became secretary of health and human services, and women headed
the Council of Economic Advisers and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders was a black, as was Commerce Secretary
Ron Brown. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros was
a Hispanic. Feminist Ruth Bader Ginsberg was named to the Supreme Court
in 1993.
Ideologically, the White House staff tended to be from the left, which since
the McGovern campaign had gained supremacy in the Democratic party. This
general consensus meant that many of the attitudes and practices of the six-
ties were to be expected. A Secret Service agent told the House Government
Reform and Oversight Committee in 1996 that he had seen references to co-
caine and crack usage in the FBI files of more than forty White House aides.

Clinton Controversies

Controversy marked the new administration from its inception. In January,

the president, who was prochoice on abortion, lifted the ban on fetal tissue
research. This deeply upset the Religious Right. Late in the month he an-
nounced plans to integrate gays and lesbians into all branches of the armed
forces. This action produced a firestorm of protest. In July, a compromise
was reached between the White House and the Pentagon in which the mil-
itary would no longer ask about sexual behavior when recruiting and would
not drum people out of the military who were merely suspected of being
gays and lesbians. But gays and lesbians could not engage in homosexual
behavior on or off the military base or openly acknowledge their sexual pref-
erences. This “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy failed to satisfy many and even-
tually led to even larger numbers of gays and lesbians being expelled from
the military.
At the same time, the Clinton administration was adamant about integrat-
ing the sexes in the armed forces. This proved easier to swallow for the mil-
itary, and women were soon serving aboard ships at sea and undergoing ba-
sic training with men while living in sexually integrated barracks. Many
conservatives condemned the change, noting lower physical requirements
and contending that morale would be jeopardized in combat. Military lead-
ers, soon faced with a string of sex scandals (U.S. troops in their gender-
mixed tents in Bosnia produced roughly one pregnancy every three days),
were forced to impose a broad ban on personal relationships between su-
periors and subordinates and issue guidelines designed to curb adultery. By
1998, about 14 percent of the active-duty force of 1.4 million were women.
In September 1993, the Justice Department filed a brief with the United
States Supreme Court advocating the liberalization of child pornography laws
to make it harder to convict pedophiles. The Senate, in November, voted 100
to 0 for an amendment criticizing the administration for this proposal.
The Whitewater investigation was a probe of a real estate deal along the
White River in north central Arkansas that the Clintons had been part of from
270 Twentieth-Century America

1978 to 1992. Allegations of criminal activity swirled around the project, and
investigations eventually led to the conviction of three Clinton friends and
business associates on charges of fraud and conspiracy. White House Deputy
Counsel Vince Foster, Jr., a close friend of the Clintons involved in the White-
water project, committed suicide in July 1993. Vital documents were report-
edly taken from his office before investigators arrived.
Webster Hubbell, a personal friend and law partner of Hillary Clinton’s,
resigned as associate attorney general in March 1994, and soon pleaded guilty
to felonious mail fraud and tax evasion while in private practice. Clinton as-
sociates provided him with more than $700,000 in job payments, and there
were charges that the funds were provided to keep Hubbell from talking
about Whitewater. A deputy treasury counsel and treasury counsel resigned
in mid-August over their activities in the Whitewater case.
In August 1994, Kenneth Starr, a Texas appeals court judge who had once
been seriously considered for a seat on the Supreme Court, was appointed by
a three-judge panel to be the special prosecutor in the Whitewater matter. At-
torney General Reno and the three-judge panel later assigned Starr’s office at
least five separate probes, including Whitewater, and Starr found himself locked
in fierce legal and media battles with the Clinton administration.
In March 1994, the press discovered that Hillary Clinton had a few years
earlier made a swift and almost miraculous $100,000 coup in cattle futures.
The first lady said little about the transaction. Critics called it a well-disguised
bribe from Arkansas business interests.
And then there was the case of Paula Jones. This young Arkansas woman
sued the president for sex harassment in May 1994, charging that three years
earlier the then governor had invited her to a hotel room, dropped his pants,
and requested oral sex. Jokes about Clinton’s sexual appetite and duplicity
became routine in the media. Critics often referred to him by his Arkansas
nickname, Slick Willie. But the president denied that he had ever done any-
thing wrong, and the American people, polls showed, tended to believe him.
Jones had financial backing in the case from the conservative Rutherford In-
stitute, persuading many, including leading feminists, that the lawsuit was a
right-wing effort to smear the president.
Scandal haunted the administration. From August 1994 through May 1995,
independent counsels were named to probe the activities of Secretary of Agri-
culture Mike Espy, Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, and HUD Secretary Henry
Cisneros.
In June 1996, it was revealed that the White House had requested and ob-
tained hundreds of raw FBI records on people without their permission. Many
of the individuals were former employees of the Reagan and Bush adminis-
trations. Personnel Security Office Director Craig Livingstone of Arkansas
(whom no one could remember hiring) was allowed to resign, but that did
not resolve the issue. In June 1996, the president referred to the “Filegate”
scandal as a “completely honest bureaucratic snafu.” FBI Director Louis Freeh
told a different story, saying that he and his agency were “victimized” by the
White House.
 Into the Nineties 271

Dom estic Initia tives

Among the president’s first actions was the appointment of the first lady to
head a task force charged with designing a major reform of the nation’s
health care. Some 37 million Americans were without health insurance. The
highly complex plan, as it evolved, seemed to create a bureaucratic giant
that would curtail personal freedoms and be enormously expensive. In early
1994, the Congressional Budget Office predicted that the health plan would
increase the deficit by $74 billion. In August, the CBO estimated that the plan
would cost more than $1 trillion in its first eight years. The medical estab-
lishment fought hard to kill the proposal. Many small businessmen said they
would go bankrupt were they required to purchase health insurance for all
their employees. Many liberals were unenthusiastic about the mechanics of
the plan.
After six months of hearings, the administration conceded defeat. According
to the Government Accounting Office, it cost taxpayers $13.4 million dollars
to design the plan, and another $433,000 to defend the government against a
lawsuit that challenged the secrecy in which the initiative was assembled.
In August 1993, Congress passed a five-year economic renewal program
that raised top marginal income tax rates from 31 to 36 percent, cut taxes
on 15 million low-income families, cut spending by $255 billion over five
years, and laid out the largest deficit-cutting plan in history, saving more than
$1 trillion over seven years. Republicans, who fought the program at nearly
every step, called the $280 billion hike on the top 1.2 percent of the wealth-
iest taxpayers the largest tax increase in history.
With Republican support, Clinton successfully backed the North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which added Mexico to the free trade zone
already created for Canada and the United States during the Reagan admin-
istration. Liberal Democrats, trade union leaders, and isolationists argued that
jobs would be moved to low-wage Mexico. But NAFTA supporters, who con-
vinced Congress, said that the proposal would create new jobs by opening
the vast Mexican marketplace to more American products. Exports to Mex-
ico rose 23 percent in the first eleven months of 1994.
Clinton and the Congress supported the latest round of GATT agreements.
(The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade was created in 1947 to allevi-
ate trade problems that had contributed to the economic collapse of the
1930s; it was updated periodically.) In 1994, Congress approved the latest
changes, which reduced tariffs by a third, eliminated trade quotas, and pro-
tected intellectual property rights. Tariffs were to be lowered worldwide by
$744 billion over ten years.

The Contra ct with Am erica

All of the controversies of Clinton’s first two years contributed to the elec-
tion shock wave that hit in November 1994. The Republicans gained fifty-
272 Twentieth-Century America

two seats in the House and eight in the Senate, winning control of Congress
for the first time since 1954. In addition, the GOP gained eleven governor-
ships and nineteen new majorities in state legislatures. Not a single incum-
bent Republican governor, senator, or representative lost.
The new Speaker of the House was Congressman Newt Gingrich of Geor-
gia. Articulate, well educated, highly aggressive, and at times irascible and shifty,
Gingrich was convinced that the GOP victories were the result of a ten-point
“Contract With America” platform for “national renewal” that conservatives had
proposed and publicized. Calling himself a “genuine revolutionary,” Gingrich
promised to carry out what Reagan had begun. A group of seventy-three mostly
young conservatives, many representing the Religious Right, agreed that the vot-
ers were demanding change and that Congress had the obligation to deliver.
The 104th Congress proceeded to alter the way the House of Representa-
tives operated, overhaul the nation’s welfare system, deregulate telecommu-
nications, stop several new federal regulations, pour funds into the fight
against crime at all governmental levels, restore funds to the defense bud-
get, cut foreign aid, and give the president the line-item veto. Gingrich was
named Time magazine’s “Man of the Year” for 1995.
At first, Clinton reacted stoically to these dramatic moves by Congress. He
even appeared to have moved to the right himself, remembering that he had
been elected as a centrist Democrat. By late 1995, eager to achieve some re-
election ammunition, Clinton decided to resist Congress on balancing the fed-
eral budget and cutting Medicare benefits. The government was partially shut
down twice in the course of a bitter budget struggle that went on for months.
The president was able to persuade millions of Americans that Gingrich and
his “extremists” were to blame for the turmoil.
Republicans caved in on the budget, but they could boast of a major
achievement in welfare reform. In August 1996, the president resisted the
pleas of leading Democrats and signed into law the first major reversal of
liberal welfare state policy in sixty years. Food stamp spending was cut and
time limits and work requirements imposed, and some federal aid was trans-
ferred to the states.
Clinton’s struggles with Congress in the election year presented the agenda
of both parties fairly clearly. In April, the president, expressing his concern
for women’s rights, vetoed a ban on partial-birth abortions, a particularly
gruesome form of late-term abortion that many Republicans and their pro-
life supporters had hoped to stop. In May, he vetoed limits on product lia-
bility suits, a nod to the trial lawyers who were strong Clinton backers. Clin-
ton won a hike in the minimum wage, to $5.15 an hour, and agreed with
Congress on minor health insurance reforms.

Interna tiona l Pea cek eeping

Clinton was far more interested in domestic than foreign affairs. When he
thought at all about international relations, it was usually in connection with
 Into the Nineties 273

economic issues. Secretary of State Warren Christopher was known to be

competent and hard working, but he was of little assistance in providing the
president with a vision of America’s role in the post-Cold War era. There was
a distinctly ad hoc approach to international relations throughout the Clin-
ton administrations.
Clinton inherited a humanitarian effort in Somalia by the Bush adminis-
tration. In December 1992, American troops were sent in to end months of
anarchy and famine in the northeast African nation. Clinton turned over com-
mand of U.S. forces in Somalia to the United Nations and toyed with the
idea of attempting a nation-building effort. On October 3, 1993, army Rangers
were involved in a disastrous raid on a warlord’s headquarters. Eighteen sol-
diers were killed, seventy-eight wounded, and captives were paraded before
television cameras. At that point, Clinton called for withdrawal of all Amer-
ican forces within six months. Secretary of Defense Les Aspin was removed
as a sop to military leaders who said they had been denied necessary ar-
mored support in Somalia. Chaos in the impoverished country continued.
Early in Clinton’s term, a major breakthrough was announced in the lengthy
and bitter struggle between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization
(PLO). In September 1993, at a ceremony hosted by Clinton, Israeli Prime
Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yassir Arafat signed an accord and
shook hands. The PLO was to have self-government in the Gaza strip and
portions of the West Bank; Arafat renounced terrorism and extended diplo-
matic recognition to Israel. Incidents of violence soon continued, but some
progress had been made.
By the time Clinton arrived at the White House, civil war was raging in
Bosnia and Herzegovina, former members of the defunct Yugoslav federation.
Ethnic fighting in this region was a very old story, contributing to the outbreak
of World War I. Warfare broke out again in 1991, and by 1993 the struggle
between Serbs, Croats, and Bosnian Muslims had killed over 100,000 people
and left 3.5 million refugees. NATO bombardments and stiff resistance by Croats
and Muslims persuaded Serbia to enter into peace negotiations.
In 1995, Clinton brought leaders of the warring factions together in Day-
ton, Ohio, and in December a settlement was announced. The Dayton Ac-
cord stated that Bosnia would remain a single nation but be governed as
two republics. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was to send an inter-
national peacekeeping mission into the area. The administration prevailed
over much opposition in Congress and elsewhere, and stationed about 15,000
troops in Bosnia and roughly 5,000 support personnel in Croatia, Hungary,
and Italy. Congress approved initial funding of $2.26 billion. All NATO na-
tions contributed personnel, along with eighteen non-NATO nations, for a
total of 54,000 troops. The fighting largely ceased, and municipal elections
were held in 1997.
In 1999, between 25,000 and 30,000 American troops were still in Bosnia,
and America (without the support of NATO allies) had provided more than
$100 million in military assistance to the region. President Clinton wanted
the troops to stay indefinitely.
274 Twentieth-Century America

American troops were also part of a multinational force sent into Haiti in
1994 to “restore democracy” and the rule of an elected president, leftist Jean-
Bertrand Aristide, who had been ousted by a military junta in 1991. The mil-
itary had conducted a reign of terror on the chronically impoverished nation,
killing some five thousand and driving tens of thousands into exile. Amer-
ica was the most popular destination of those fleeing their country. The Coast
Guard rescued more than 68,000 of them off the coast of Florida between
1991 and 1994.
Clinton was a driving force behind the invasion. The United States sent
21,000 troops to Haiti at a cost of about $3 billion. Order was restored and
illegal immigration slowed to a trickle. Aristide served out his term of office
and transferred power in January 1996 to President Rene Preval.

Terrorism a t Hom e

In February 1993, Muslim terrorists used a car bomb to rock the 110-story World
Trade Center, killing six people and injuring more than a thousand. The four
men convicted said the attack was to avenge U.S. support for Israel and to
protest American Middle East policy. The tragedy prompted many Americans
to wonder about the safety of their own environment. A study by the Rand
Corporation spanning the years 1981–92 later reported 670 terrorist acts in the
United States by right- or left-wing ethnic or issue-oriented groups.
In April 1995, medal-winning veteran and right-wing extremist Timothy
McVeigh used a car bomb to blow up the federal building in Oklahoma City.
The explosion killed 168 people, including many children in a preschool
nursery housed on the second floor, and injured hundreds. McVeigh and an
accomplice were convicted. The media carried the story for months, show-
ing photos of victims and again pondering the vulnerability of American so-
ciety to the assaults of extremists. President Clinton had a portion of Penn-
sylvania Avenue sealed off to traffic in the hope of preventing a bomb-ridden
vehicle from reaching the White House.
Some on the right were just as deeply concerned about the role of the
federal government in suppressing dissent. In 1992, the FBI had attacked a
white separatist and his family living in the hills of Idaho, and a sharpshooter
killed an unarmed woman holding her baby. The Ruby Ridge case resulted
in a shakeup of the FBI and a conviction of a top Bureau official for ob-
struction of justice and destroying internal FBI reports. In April 1993, the FBI
launched an assault on the premises of a religious community, the Branch
Davidians, near Waco, Texas, and seventy-six of the occupants died, including
many women and children. Attorney General Janet Reno was widely criti-
cized for her role in the controversial incident.

Election of 1996

Following the brief slump under Bush, the economy grew at a healthy pace.
This contributed in no small way to Clinton’s reelection campaign. The Dow
 Into the Nineties 275

Jones industrial average that had been at 3168 in 1991 hit 6448 in 1996. Cor-
porate profits after taxes were $437.1 billion in 1996, up from $256.6 billion
in 1990. In 1994, real GDP growth was the highest in a decade.
Median family income was up, high enough to enable Americans in 1995
to spend $37 billion in commercial participant amusements, a Census Bureau
category that included bowling alleys, amusement parks, and the like. Un-
employment had fallen to 5.6 percent. The Federal Reserve had kept infla-
tion in check. Clinton could boast of $600 billion in deficit reduction. Wel-
fare roles had shrunk 37 percent since 1992. Persons living below the poverty
line had dropped from 15.1 percent of the population in 1993 to 13.8 per-
cent in 1995.
Republicans were unable to come up with a highly attractive alternative
to Clinton. Senator Robert Dole of Kansas, age 72, was not to be denied af-
ter three attempts at the presidential nomination. Dole had entered Congress
in 1961, was elected to the Senate in 1968, had served as chairman of the
Republican National Committee, had been Ford’s vice presidential candidate
in 1976, and was Senate Republican leader from 1985 to 1996. Considered a
moderate or pragmatic conservative, Dole did not appeal to the Religious
Right. A distinguished military record in World War II appealed to many, but
to others it merely emphasized his age. The candidate’s major strengths were
his decades of experience in Washington and his sound personal character.
At the GOP convention, Dole named conservative Congressman Jack Kemp
as his running mate. A listless campaign followed, and Clinton never lost his
lead in the polls. In November, Clinton won 49 percent of the vote to Dole’s
41 percent. Ross Perot, again running as an independent, took 9 percent. In
the electoral college, Clinton beat Dole by a margin of 70 percent to 30 per-
cent. Republicans retained control of Congress but lost ten seats in the House.
In his inaugural address in January 1997, the president spoke of the progress
evident throughout the twentieth century and vowed to continue the pursuit
of the highest ideals of humanity. At one point he expressed his specific
hope for those engaged in his own craft: “. . . in this land of new promise,
we will have reformed our politics so that the voice of the people will al-
ways speak louder than the din of narrow interest, regaining the participa-
tion and deserving the trust of all Americans.”
But even as he spoke, stories of illegal Clinton campaign fund-raising ac-
tivities were stirring interest in the media. There was soon evidence of a
conspiracy to violate campaign finance laws involving the president’s close
friend and legal adviser Bruce Lindsey. Several Asian donors were said to
have tried to purchase influence in the White House. The Lincoln bedroom
was reported to have been virtually rented out to wealthy donors. Large
AFL-CIO donations were of questionable legality. Still, Republicans enjoyed
a traditional advantage in fund raising and outspent Democrats in the elec-
tion.
The presidential election of 1996 cost about $800 million, well over dou-
ble the estimated $311 million spent just four years earlier. Another $800
million was raised for House and Senate races. Only 54.2 percent of the
voting-age population cast ballots. The Congressional Research Service said
276 Twentieth-Century America

it had not recorded such a low turnout since it began keeping records in
1948.

SUGGESTED READING

Phyllis Bennis and Michel Moushabeck (eds.), Beyond the Storm: A Gulf Crisis Rea der
(1998); Lou Cannon, Officia l Negligence: How Rodney King a nd the Riots Cha nged
Los Angeles a nd the LAPD (1998); James Carville et al., All’s Fa ir: Love, Wa r, a nd Run-
ning for President (1994); Newt Gingrich et al. (eds), Contra ct with America : The Bold
Pla n by Rep. Newt Gingrich, Rep. Dick Armey a nd the House Republica ns to Cha nge
the Na tion (1994); Peter Irons, Brenna n v. Rehnquist: The Ba ttle for the Constitution
(1994); David Maramiss, First in His Cla ss: A Biogra phy of Bill Clinton (1996); Her-
bert Parmet, George Bush: The Life of a Lone Sta r Ya nkee (1997); Sam Roberts, Who
Are We? A Portra it of America Ba sed on the La test U.S. Census (1994); James B. Stew-
art, Blood Sport: The President a nd His Administra tion (1997); James Trabor and Eu-
gene Gallagher, Why Wa co? Cults in the Ba ttle for Religious Freedom (1995).
 Chapter Fifteen

B y the late 1990s, ruminations about the meaning of the past century
began flooding newspapers, magazines, and scholarly journals. The
more popular accounts stressed “progress,” long a common word in
the national lexicon. America’s 270 million people, it was said, were more
prosperous, healthy, educated, equal, tolerant, and law abiding than their
forbears of the nineteenth century. With the conclusion of the Cold War, the
opportunities for world peace were never better. The facts substantiating this
thesis were abundant.
But a stream of pessimism was also present in this literature, especially
among scholars and the deeply religious. William Bennett, who headed the
National Commission on Civic Renewal, noted in 1998 that while the United
States led the industrialized world in wealth, power, and influence, it also
led in the rates of murder, violent crime, imprisonment, divorce, abortion,
sexually transmitted diseases, teen suicide, cocaine consumption, and pornog-
raphy production and consumption. Robert Bork, in Slouching Towa rds Go-
morra h, was convinced that “the traditional virtues of this culture are being
lost, its vices multiplied, its values degraded—in short, the culture itself is
unraveling.” Roman Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft wrote that “night is
falling” in “the worst century,” adding that “If the God of life does not re-
spond to this culture of death with judgment, God is not God.”

Prosperity

The economy in the late 1990s remained extraordinarily strong. The gross
national product in mid-1998 stood at a whopping $7.28 trillion. During the
first three months of 1999, the economy grew at a robust 5.6 percent. The
Dow Jones industrial average closed at the 11,000 mark for the first time on
May 13, with experts believing that half or substantially more of all house-

277
278 Twentieth-Century America

holds held stock. Interest rates were low, new contruction spending had
soared, real estate was selling at a record pace, unemployment was at 4.3
percent in January, and inflation was at 1.7 percent.
Companies involved with the development and production of computers
were booming. The market for PCs and related products and services grew
from $85 billion in 1992 to a projected $240 billion in 1998. Microsoft was
one of the world’s most wealthy and powerful corporations, and billionaire
Bill Gates, the company’s youthful and aggressive founder and leader, was
widely admired and hated. By mid-1998, Yahoo, an internet search engine
company, was worth more ($8.2 billion market capitalization) than the New
York Times Co. ($7.6 billion). American Online, the nation’s largest com-
mercial on-line service provider, was worth about as much ($26 billion) as
network giants ABC, CBS, and NBC combined.
As a result of the robust economy, federal and state governments enjoyed
fat budget surpluses. In January 1999, the Congressional Budget Office pro-
jected that federal surplusers would total $2.6 trillion over the next decade.
Workers were enjoying high wages and benefits. Total compensation in-
creased 3.5 percent over the twelve months ending in June 1998, the biggest
gain in more than four years and roughly double the 1.7-percent increase in
consumer prices over the period. The median household income in 1997 was
$37,005, the third consecutive annual rise.
A study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, published in 1998, showed
that factory workers’ average hourly wages bought more than ever. A re-
frigerator in 1915 cost a worker 3,162 hours of labor to purchase. In 1970,
the figure was 112 hours. In 1997, the cost was 68 hours. A color television
set in 1954 cost workers 562 hours. In 1970 it was 174 hours. In 1997 the
cost was 23 hours. Noting that a cellular phone cost just 2 percent of what
it did a decade and a half earlier, and computing power was less than 1 per-
cent of its 1984 real price, bank president W. Michael Cox declared, “Within
the space of just one generation—not two or three as in yesterday’s econ-
omy—capitalism’s delivery system now spreads the wealth.”
In the summer of 1998, consumer spending remained strong. Shopping
malls were packed. Home buying was heavy. People enjoyed travel
and vacations at a record pace. In South Dakota, attendance at the Bad-
lands and Mount Rushmore national parks was up 53 percent and 16 per-
cent respectively from a year earlier. Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Grand
Canyon national parks had major traffic problems. Walt Disney World in
Orlando, Florida, flourished despite nearby forest fire devastation earlier
in the year. Las Vegas continued to be the site of new and ever more lav-
ish casinos.
Americans devoted vast sums of money to gambling. In 1994 alone, they
spent $482 billion on it, more than they spent on movies, sports, music,
cruise ships, and theme parks combined. By 1996, ten states had casinos,
thirty-six and the District of Columbia operated lotteries; six ran video poker,
and twenty-four allowed Indian-run gambling. In 1998, gambling Web sites
on the Internet were a $2 billion industry. A Powerball lottery jackpot that
 The Close of the Century 279

year reached $250 million; people lined up all over the country to buy tick-
ets and face odds that were 80 million to 1.
There were warnings about the fragility of America’s prosperity. By the fall
of 1998, the stock market was fluctuating wildly. Financial woes in Asia and
Latin America prompted fears by many investors; Russia seemed on the verge
of economic and political collapse. Personal indebtedness was high, and per-
sonal savings fell to an all-time low by mid-1998. Between June 1996 and
June 1997, a record 1.4 million people filed for bankruptcy. Agriculture was
in a slump. The Wa ll Street Journa l pointed out in early 1998 that GDP growth
from 1950 to 1973 averaged 3.9 percent a year, and that since then it had
slowed to an annual average growth of 2.6 percent. Federal entitlement pro-
grams, such as Social Security, threatened to raise tax burdens in the next
century. In early 1999 the country was more than $5 trillion in debt. The
trade deficit with China alone had reached a billion dollars a week.
Most people chose to ignore the warnings and get on with the business
of enjoying prosperity. Emperors and kings of the past had not enjoyed the
comforts now available to millions of Americans. By mid-1998, the median
home price nationally was $131,000, up 6 percent from a year earlier. Over
65 percent of Americans owned their own homes (70.5 percent in the Mid-
west). Three quarters of the homes in 1997 had air conditioning, 77.5 per-
cent had washing machines, 53.7 percent had automatic dishwashers, 58 mil-
lion homes enjoyed warm-air furnaces. As recently as 1940, two out of five
homes had lacked a shower or bathtub, air conditioning was almost nonex-
istent, and heat often came by feeding wood or coal into a furnace; many
homes were still lighted with kerosene lamps.
In 1998, about 98 percent of American homes had television sets, and two
out of three had cable television. Personal computers found a place in about
45 percent of all homes. In 1999, PCs for under $600 were becoming pop-
ular. America Online had a membership that topped the combined reader-
ship of The New York Times, The Wa ll Street Journa l, USA Toda y, and a hand-
ful of other newspapers thrown in for good measure.
About 74 million Americans used the Internet by early 1999, about 41 per-
cent of the nation’s adults. (Some 100 million people worldwide were using
it.) By mid-1998, the World Wide Web contained at least 320 million pages,
making it one of the largest libraries in the world. Nearly 90 percent of Amer-
icans who had access to the Web sent or received e-mail. On-line retail sales
rose from $2.6 billion in 1997, to $5.8 billion in 1998, and was expected to
be $15.6 billion in 2000.
Of course, not all Americans wallowed in the unprecedented economic
growth and wealth. In 1998 the federal government’s poverty line for a
family of four was $16,400 in annual household income. More than 30 mil-
lion Americans were living in poverty, the Census Bureau reported. Still, the
poverty rate dropped to 13.3 percent, marking the fourth consecutive
decline.
Even America’s poor were wealthy by the standards of most people in the
world. In 1995, 41 percent of all poor households owned their own homes,
280 Twentieth-Century America

70 percent owned a car, 97 percent had a color television set, two-thirds had
air conditioning, 64 percent owned a microwave oven, and half had a stereo
system. Policy analyst Robert Rector observed in 1998 that “total spending
per person among the lowest-income one-fifth of households actually equals
those of the average American household in the early 1970s—after adjusting
for inflation.”

Hea lth

Never had a people enjoyed such good physical health. The fruits of med-
ical research, technology, and training were abundant. In 1996, the infant
morality rate in the United States dropped to an all-time low: 7.2 infant deaths
per 1,000 live births. That was 5 percent lower than in 1995. The life ex-
pectancy for children born in 1996 was 76.1 years, with males expected to
live 73.1 years and women 79.1 years. The long-standing gap between whites
and blacks had narrowed: 76.8 years for whites and 70.2 years for blacks.
Smallpox, once a scourge of the human race, was nearly eradicated from
the planet in 1980. By mid-1998, the syphilis rate in the United States had
plummeted 84 percent since 1990 to the lowest level on record, and scien-
tists thought themselves within striking distance of stamping out the disease.
Pneumonia, influenza, and tuberculosis, the major killers in 1900, could usu-
ally be controlled by drug therapy. From 1990 to 1996, heart disease de-
creased 1.7 percent, and deaths from cancer declined 5 percent.
Since the first discovery of a specific marker for a genetic disease in 1983,
scientists had made remarkable progress in the field. The gene responsible
for cystic fibrosis was isolated in 1989. In 1994, a team of American re-
searchers discovered the BRCA1 gene, believed to cause about 5 to 10 per-
cent of breast cancers.
People lived longer with artificial heart valves and heart, lung, and kidney
transplants. Drugs eased pain, stopped disease, and mitigated high blood
pressure. At the close of 1998, Pharmacists racked up an estimated $102.5
billion in sales, up eighty-five percent in just half a decade. (In 1998, Via-
gra, designed to help the some 30 million men who suffered from impo-
tence, became the best-selling drug in history.) Hormonal therapy radically
improved the lives of millions of menopausal and postmenopausal women.
Artificial joints enhanced physical mobility. Lasers, invented in 1960 by
Theodore Maiman, were used in surgery, dentistry, and ophthalmology. Den-
tists could stop tooth decay, and oral surgeons repaired facial deformities
and used implants to make false teeth unnecessary.
Millions of middle- and upper-middle-class Americans were greatly con-
cerned about their health. In 1996, a poll showed that 52 percent of Amer-
icans got vigorous exercise at least three days a week. Fat-free and calorie-
free foods were popular, although nutritionists claimed that Americans were
eating more calories than at any time in the century. Billions of dollars were
spent annually on vitamins, herbs, diet books, health clubs, and sports equip-
 The Close of the Century 281

ment. Close to 90 percent of Americans were covered by health insurance,

half of those belonging to a health maintenance organization (HMO).
Birthrates in the United States continued to fall in the late 1990s, reflect-
ing in large part a greater use of birth control devices and pills. Teenage
birthrates, which dropped an estimated 3 percent in 1997, continuing a six-
year trend, accounted for much of the decline. Still, nearly a million teenage
girls became pregnant each year, and more than 200,000 had abortions.
There was a quiet epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases among
teenagers. In a study published in 1998 of 3,200 Baltimore teens ages 12 to
19, mostly girls, nearly a third tested positive for chlamydia, the most com-
monly reported infectious disease in the United States. Still, the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention reported that in a 1997 survey of the nation’s
high-school students, 52 percent said they had never had sexual intercourse,
a sharp reversal of practices reported in the 1970s and 1980s. (The percent-
age of black high schoolers who said they had sex dropped 8 percentage
points to 73 percent between 1991 and 1997. The change for Hispanics was
less than 1 percentage point, to 52 percent. For whites, the decline was 6
points to 44 percent.)
The top five causes of death in the United States, according to the Na-
tional Center for Health Statistics, were heart disease, cancer, stroke, chronic
lung diseases, and accidents. AIDS, which received most of the attention in
the media, dropped to number 14 in 1997. But the disease was not to be
taken lightly. By 1996, AIDS had killed 320,000 Americans. Between 650,000
and 900,000 others were infected with HIV, although the rate of new infec-
tions, in the United States, Europe, and other wealthy parts of the world, de-
clined sharply from its peak in the mid-1980s. African Americans accounted
for about 57 percent of all new infections in this country. Powerful drug-
combination therapies provided some relief for victims by the late 1990s, but
new strains of the virus proved resistant.

Wom en a nd the Fa m ily

The Census Bureau reported in mid-1998 that the decline of the traditional
family—a married couple with children under 18—was slowing. A quarter of
American households fit that description in 1997. (In 1957, the figure had
been 50.8 percent, and in 1967, 50.1 percent.) The percentage of single-
parent families, which had doubled between 1970 and 1990, was also level-
ing off, amounting to 13 percent in 1997. The divorce rate was dropping,
from 5.0 per 1,000 people in 1985 to 4.3 percent in 1997. Ralph Monaco, a
University of Maryland researcher, said, “The wild, carefree years are over.
The average boomer is now older and wiser” and settling down with spouses
and children.
But a return to the 1950s was unlikely. In 1997, 85 percent of black fe-
males with children under 6 years of age had never been married. The same
was true of about three-quarters of Hispanic women and 56 percent of white
282 Twentieth-Century America

women. In 1998, 33 percent of women aged 25 to 29 had never married; it

was 48 percent for men in the same age group. Living together out of wed-
lock, which became popular in the sixties, was an accepted way of life for
millions.
A national survey sponsored by the Wa shington Post and published in 1998
revealed that large majorities of both men and women said it would be bet-
ter if women could stay home and take care of the house and children. But
at the same time, equally large majorities wanted equality for women in the
work place, and men approved of women working outside the home.
Sociologists Suzanne Bianchi and Daphne Spain reported that between
1970 and 1995, the percentage of women ages 25 to 54 who worked out-
side the home climbed from 50 percent to 76 percent. Seventy-five percent
of college-educated women were in the paid labor force. In 1996, women
were 29 percent of lawyers and judges, and 26 percent of all physicians. In
1998, a third of all professional athletes were women, almost double the pro-
portion in 1983. The U.S. Census Bureau reported in 1998 that the woman
working outside the home was responsible for the 154-percent increase in
married-family real median income over the past half century, from $20,620
in 1947 to $51,591 in 1997.
In 1998, Washington state could boast that 41 percent of its state legisla-
tors were women. (The national average was 22 percent.) Arizona became
the first state to have an all-female elected line of succession: governor,
secretary of state, attorney general, treasurer, and superintendent of public
instruction.

Educa tion

The quality of education being offered by the nation’s public schools was one
of the hottest topics of the late 1990s. National test scores were often woeful.
SAT combined scores plunged nearly 80 points between 1960 and 1990. In
1994, only 7 percent of 17-year-olds could solve multistep math problems and
had mastered beginning algebra; only 2 percent of eleventh graders were judged
as writing effectively. The education of teachers was often severely criticized.
Lack of discipline and incidents of violence in the schools were all too com-
mon. Perceptive observers were generally agreed that anti-intellectualism was
pervasive. Conservative Charles Sykes, in Dumbing Down Our Kids, contended
that “America’s schools are in deep trouble, not because they lack men and
women who care about children, but because they are dominated by an ide-
ology that does not care much about learning.”
Polls showed that television watching consumed much of the lives of Amer-
ica’s young people. A 1991 survey showed that 56 percent believed that tele-
vision had the greatest influence on children’s values—more than parents,
teachers, and religious leaders combined.
Many wanted a voucher system that would permit parents to send their
children to a school of their choice at public expense, even if that school
 The Close of the Century 283

was religious. Milwaukee and the State of Wisconsin led the nation in this
direction. In the late 1990s, cases challenging this approach were working
their way toward the United States Supreme Court. Others looked to charter
schools, for-profit schools, and home-schooling as alternatives. (By 1998,
about 1.5 million American children were participating in some form of home
schooling. One study showed home-schooled students outperforming their
public-school counterparts by up to 37 percent when measured by stan-
dardized tests.) Teachers’ unions and the Clinton administration, among oth-
ers, defended the public schools, emphasizing their historic value in a democ-
racy and seeking increased funding.
While an unprecedented 60 percent of high-school graduates went on to
some form of higher education, controversy also swirled around what they
might be learning in America’s colleges and universities. Academia seemed
to many critics to lack any sense of design or purpose beyond the gradua-
tion of more than a million people a year. Open admission was common,
courses were offered in almost anything (a study of fifty top schools showed
70,901 undergraduate courses offered in 1993, up from 36,968 in 1964), grad-
uation requirements were often minimal, instruction was frequently imper-
sonal, and athletics were routinely overemphasized.
Conservatives contended that “political correctness,” a term that became pop-
ular in 1990 to express a knee-jerk sympathy with all things to the left, reigned
supreme in academia. Marxism, moral relativism, and deconstructionism, the
idea that all literature is without meaning, seemed everywhere on campus. Lib-
erals, on the other hand, often complained about the persistence of racism and
sexism, the teaching of “outdated” ethics, and required reading that focused
on the works of “dead white males.” They sought “diversity” through a wide
variety of often required “multicultural” courses they said would sensitize stu-
dents to the values and customs of other races and cultures.
Many liberals and conservatives decried the lack of attention paid to the
liberal arts. Only 2 percent of colleges and universities required a single
course in history. The most popular major in college was business.

Worship a nd Mora lity

America’s churches remained in a pattern that was set in the 1960s. Leaders
of the mainline denominations such as the Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and
Methodists still clung to the standards and tastes of contemporary liberalism,
and their churches continued to shrink in size. In 1995, a researcher observed
that the Methodist church, which had flourished in America during the nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries, had lost one thousand members every
week for the last thirty years. The Episcopal church had as many active mem-
bers (1.6 million) as it enjoyed during World War II. Mainline seminaries
were often proud bastions of leftist thought and practice, echoing the pres-
tigious nondenominational institutions such as Harvard Divinity School and
Union Theological Seminary.
284 Twentieth-Century America

Conservative and fundamentalist denominations grew at a steady pace. In

1994, the 15.6 million Southern Baptists comprised the largest Protestant de-
nomination in the country. Between 1965 and 1989 the Assemblies of God
grew 121 percent. The major metropolitan areas boasted large and affluent
Bible-based nondenominational churches. The Christian Coalition, the major
expression of the Religious Right, claimed in 1994 to have 1.5 million dues-
paying members and the support of up to 20 percent of Americans.
The Roman Catholics, buoyed by Hispanic immigration, passed the 60-
million member mark. Mormons, highly active in missionary efforts, grew to
more than 4 million in 1994. The Jewish faith continued to become smaller,
largely due to intermarriage.
Gallup pollsters continued to show that about 40 percent of Americans
went to church on a given Sunday. A 1994 poll found that 70 percent be-
longed to a church or synagogue, that nine adults in ten believed in a heaven,
and that 79 percent believed in miracles. A Harris poll taken in July 1994 re-
vealed that 95 percent of those surveyed believed in God. Of the four in five
Americans who described themselves as Christians, 85 percent believed in
the virgin birth of Jesus Christ. Even 52 percent of the non-Christians sur-
veyed expressed belief in the Resurrection! A 1994 survey of 4,809 Ameri-
cans found that almost nine of ten said they had “old fashioned values about
family and marriage.”
The demand for religious literature remained strong. About half of the some
55,000 new trade books published each year were religious. Sales in 1993
were at about $2.7 billion, up from about $1 billion in 1980. Bible sales
amounted to more than $400 million a year. The Catholic sociologist Andrew
Greeley declared in 1993, “In some countries, most notably Ireland and the
United States, religious devotion may be higher than it has ever been in hu-
man history.”
And yet America had a particular kind of religiosity by the 1990s. There
was a fierce independence; polls showed that for most Americans religious
authority resided in the believer, rather than the church or the Bible. And
there was vast ignorance of the faith. Gallup referred to “a nation of bibli-
cal illiterates” and presented solid evidence: fewer than half of all adults could
name the four Gospels of the New Testament; only four in ten Americans
knew that Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount.
This resulted in what has been called “Consumer Christianity,” a religion
based on selective teachings of the historic faith that was highly permissive,
self-centered, and indistinct. This modern, convenient religion posed few if
any challenges to the public’s way of life.
It is difficult to say how much of this came from individual Americans
themselves and how much was absorbed from the very secular leadership
of the media, education, and the legal profession. American newspapers and
movies virtually ignored religion and churches, while on television and on
stage they were sometimes mocked. (A flurry of interest in angels in the late
1990s had more to do with entertainment than anything else.) Nonreligious
and state schools at all levels usually shunned even religious history. Reli-
 The Close of the Century 285

gion and morality were often treated in the classroom and on the screen as
two separate topics.
The courts, in the name of the separation of church and state, were a ma-
jor force in restricting the impact of the Christian faith. Among other things,
they outlawed prayer in the public schools and drove Christian symbols out
of public places. The highly influential New York Times and the American
Civil Liberties Union, among others, applauded these rulings. Conservative
Catholic and evangelical intellectuals were scandalized, often appealing to
American history to show the novelty of this approach. Right and left found
little or no common ground on the issue by the end of the 1990s.

Mora l Ascenda ncy?

In 1997, the nation’s crime rate fell for the sixth straight year. Murder and
robbery showed the sharpest decline. Violent crimes dropped 5 percent be-
tween 1996 and 1998, helping to push down the overall U.S. crime rate by
4 percent to its lowest level in more than a decade. The nation’s big cities
showed the steepest decline, with a 5-percent decrease. In 1998 the crime
rate declined 7 percent, continuing the remarkable streak.
In July 1998, the Justice Department noted that the incidence of work place
violence was declining. Police officers, security guards, and taxicab drivers,
the workers most likely to be attacked or threatened on the job, were safer.
Explanations included the aging of baby boomers, the relatively small pop-
ulation of teenagers and young adults, the addition of police officers, better
policing practices, and a boost in prison terms. By mid-1998, America had
the largest system of incarceration in the world, with 1.8 million people be-
hind bars. One in every 150 Americans was locked up, a rate of incarcera-
tion double that of a dozen years earlier.
Tough city officials, like Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York, were
also given credit for the drop in crime. Elected in 1993, Giuliani brought
about a renaissance in the Big Apple, lowering crime an unprecedented 44
percent in five years and reducing murder 48 percent. In 1998, New York
was the safest large city in America.
In July 1998, syndicated columnist Donald Lambro contended that the
United States was in “a moral ascendancy.” Beyond the crime figures, he
noted, “Teen-age births have fallen. So have all out-of-wedlock births. Abor-
tions are way down, too. The divorce rate has been declining. Overall drug
use has been falling. Per capital alcohol consumption is the lowest it has
been in a quarter century. Community volunteerism is up.” Lambro quoted
economist Richard McKenzie of Washington University who reported that 93
million Americans devote 20 billion hours a year to charitable causes. The
Chronicle of Phila nthropy soon reported that contributions to the nation’s
most popular charities rose 13 percent in the last year. The Salvation Army
received nearly $1.2 billion in cash and donated goods.
Conservative economist Lawrence A. Kudlow, in America n Abunda nce:
The New Economic a nd Mora l Prosperity, argued that the recent decline in
286 Twentieth-Century America

the welfare state had produced a new sense of individual responsibility and
enhanced general moral conduct. Work and prosperity, he argued, produce
positive “cultural and material change.”

Minorities a nd Progress

In America in Bla ck a nd White: One Na tion Indivisible, historians Abigail and

Stephan Thernstrom showed in 1997 that African Americans were doing in-
creasingly well in the quest for prosperity and dignity. Between 1970 and
1995, seven million blacks moved to the suburbs. During those two and
a half decades, as the white suburban population grew 63 percent, the
black suburban population increased by 193 percent. In the late 1990s,
one-third of all blacks lived in suburbia, twice the proportion of twenty-five
years earlier.
Moreover, the typical central city neighborhood had become more inte-
grated. By 1990, the typical black resident of a metropolitan area lived in a
census “block group” that was only 60-percent black. A few years later, five
out of six blacks said they had white neighbors. Contrary to the woeful de-
pictions of many civil rights leaders, the Thernstroms contended, African
Americans were more integrated and affluent in the 1990s than ever before.
Critics of the Thernstroms pointed, among other things, to the persistence
of hideous inner-city slums, the fact that in 1997 26.5 percent of blacks lived
below the poverty line, and the alleged presence of racial bigotry in all walks
of American life. The chance of going to state or federal prison during one’s
life for black men was 28.5 percent; for white men, 4.4 percent.
In 1998, black newspaper columnist William Raspberry cited data show-
ing that the percentage of black high-school graduates aged 25 to 29 nearly
equaled the percentage for whites—86 percent compared with 87 percent
for whites. In 1985, 8 percent of college-age African Americans were in
college; by 1995 the figure had jumped to over 10 percent. “That’s a rate of
increase that exceeds the rate for whites,” Raspberry wrote, “and that’s
significant.”
Also significant was the continued rise of blacks in professional sports and
the warm public reception these athletes received. By 1998, 80 percent of
the players in the National Basketball Association and two-thirds of National
Football League players were black. Baseball players as a group were 58 per-
cent white, 24 percent Hispanic, 17 percent black, and 1 percent Asian. All
three leaders in product endorsements by athletes—Michael Jordan, Tiger
Woods, and Grant Hill—were African Americans. Basketball great Jordan
brought in between $40 and $60 million a year.
In 1998, the Census Bureau reported that there were 29.7 million Hispan-
ics in America, about 11 percent of the population. Los Angeles and its en-
virons contained nearly six million Hispanic residents, a number greater than
the population of most individual states. The Hispanic rate of growth
prompted bureau officials to predict that the number of Hispanics might sur-
 The Close of the Century 287

The a thlete know on seven continents simply a s “Micha el.” Source: Reuters/Jeff Chris-
tensen/Archive Photos

pass that of African Americans (12.8 percent of the population) as early as

the year 2000.
Roberto Suro’s Stra ngers Among Us: How La tino Immigra tion Is Tra ns-
forming America noted the general success these immigrants had found in
the United States. Families were strong, the crime rate was low, wages were
rising, and the number of Hispanic-owned businesses was escalating to more
than a million in the late 1990s. Still, the Census Bureau reported that 27.1
percent of Hispanics lived below the poverty line in 1997.
“Bilingual education,” a product of the 1970s, was an emotional issue in
the late 1990s. The debate was about the proper pathway to academic achieve-
ment. Proponents contended that teaching should be carried out in a native
language while students also learned English. Opponents argued that non-
native English speaking children should be required to learn English and
learn it quickly. Under bilingual instruction, tests showed, nonnative English
speakers were emerging with poor reading skills in both English and their
native language. But the reasons for this were hotly debated.
On June 5, 1998, California voters overwhelmingly (61 percent) approved
Proposition 227, an initiative that largely eliminated bilingual education from
288 Twentieth-Century America

the state’s public schools. About a third of California’s population was His-
panic. A day after the vote, civil rights leaders went to court to challenge the
measure. Compounding the issue was the “English Only” movement, a de-
sire by many to make English the nation’s official language. (Eighty-one lan-
guages were spoken in Los Angeles.)

Affirm a tive Rea ction

Polls showed that Americans opposed racial quotas but favored affirmative
action. One 1998 poll showed 51 percent of adults favoring the programs,
including 82 percent of blacks and 55 percent of women. That affirmative
action very often involved quotas (often called “hiring goals”) made the pol-
icy all the more controversial.
To proponents, affirmative action ensured equality of opportunity in hir-
ing, college admissions, and government contracting, and was reparation for
centuries of racism. To critics, racial preferences amounted to reverse dis-
crimination and were thus immoral and unconstitutional. They were also ex-
pensive: hiring and contracting “goals” were calculated to be adding $10 mil-
lion to the cost of building Milwaukee’s new baseball stadium. In the 1990s,
the case made by critics grew increasingly popular.
In 1995, the Supreme Court in the so-called Adarand decision ruled that
federal affirmative action programs had to meet a “strict scrutiny” require-
ment, allowing narrowly tailored preferences. In March 1996, the U.S. Fifth
Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the University of Texas could not use race
as a factor when admitting students. That November, California voters ap-
proved Proposition 209, ending affirmative action in state programs and state
schools. Minority enrollment at the prestigious University of California at
Berkeley plummeted without preferences. Still, in May 1998, the House of
Representatives defeated an amendment that would have barred race- or sex-
based preferences in admissions to public colleges and universities that re-
ceived federal funds. By mid-year, African American leaders were organiz-
ing to preserve affirmative action and expand civil rights legislation.

The Role of Governm ent

Both major political parties declared their support for smaller government.
But few politicians were willing to cut programs that voters wanted. In 1998
the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Tax Analysis in the Trea-
sury Department reported that taxes took between 26 percent and 30 per-
cent of a typical family’s paycheck. The federal tax bite had remained steady
at about 20 percent for the last two decades.
Using slightly different data, Republicans claimed that the typical family
paid more than 38 percent of its income in taxes. In mid-1997, financial jour-
nalist Tam Saler said that “tax freedom day,” that point in the year when all
of a person’s taxes and attendant costs were paid, was May 23rd, the 143rd
 The Close of the Century 289

day of the year. In 1960, it had been the 106th day. In 1913, one worked
only thirty-one days to pay the entire year’s tax obligations. Saler predicted
that a continuation of the rate of increase since 1900 would mean that by
the year 2226, Americans would need to work 365 days a year just to pay
their federal, state, and local taxes.
The power of the federal government was recognized by virtually every-
one, from food stamp recipients to the titans of industry. In 1998, a study
showed that businesses, interest groups, and labor unions were spending
$100 million a month to lobby the federal government. The Washington in-
fluence game was at least a $1.2 billion-a-year business. Topping the list of
interest groups was the American Medical Association, which dispensed $8.5
million for lobbying in the first six months of 1997.

The Politica l Spectrum

A Wa ll Street Journa l/NBC News poll published in December 1997 reported

that 41 percent of all adults identified themselves with the Democratic party
and 32 percent with the Republicans. Nearly a quarter of those polled, 23
percent, declared themselves independents. Both the elderly and the younger
voters tilted toward the Democrats. Experts thought that the GOP effort to
trim Medicare benefits accounted for the disenchantment among seniors.
But these data disguised the fact that more Americans saw themselves as
conservative rather than liberal. In mid-1998, pollster Richard Wirthlin re-
ported that when respondents did not have the option of answering “mod-
erate,” they said 58 to 33 percent that they were conservative. This figure
had held steady for years, and other studies substantiated it.
Los Angeles attorney and broadcaster Hugh Hewitt published a provoca-
tive argument in May 1998, contending that the United States in fact had a
six-party system and that “Each of our major political parties is really three
smaller parties stacked in a pyramid.” The Party of Faith consisted of con-
servative Christians who normally backed the Republican party. The Party of
Race contained minorities who overwhelmingly voted for the Democrats. The
Party of Wealth historically linked itself to the GOP, but unhappiness with
the Party of Faith had driven many to the left and to the Democrats. The
Party of Government comprised the labor unions (especially the public em-
ployee and teachers’ unions), environmentalists, consumer advocates, and all
others who needed direct government support and sought expanded tax rev-
enue. The Party of Patriotism appealed to the Reagan right, including con-
servative intellectuals and members of the armed forces, who backed Re-
publicans. And the Party of License—the academic left, feminists, and the
gay community—supported Democrats.
To Hewitt, civil rights activist Jesse Jackson personified the Party of Race,
Vice President Al Gore the Party of Government, feminist Betty Friedan the
Party of License, Dr. James Dobson of “Focus on the Family” the Party of
Faith, billionaire Warren Buffet the Party of Wealth, and Senator John Mc-
290 Twentieth-Century America

Cain the Party of Patriotism. Hewitt thought that in the long run the GOP
was at a disadvantage, in part because of the internal friction surrounding
the moral demands of the Party of Faith. The rapid growth of the Party of
Race worked in the same direction.
In 1998, Congressional Democrats and Republics got into a heated row
over “statistical sampling” of the 2000 census. Census data, taken every
decade, were used to redraw House district lines and to distribute hundreds
of billions of dollars in federal spending. Republicans sought to rely upon
actual people counted, the traditional method. Democrats, arguing that too
many poor people and minorities, who usually voted Democratic, were
missed by census takers. The Census Bureau admitted that in 1990 it had
failed to count some 4 million people, or just below 2 percent. A Democra-
tic motion to use both census forms and a statistical input that would help
tally hard-to-reach Americans failed in the House 227-201, on a largely party-
line vote. Republicans filed suit to block sampling, and the initial response
from a lower court was supportive.
During the battle in the House, Minority Leader Dick Gephardt of Missouri
said, “The census is today’s great civil rights issue, and once again Republi-
cans are standing against what is right.” The number three Republican, Rep.
Tom DeLay of Texas, said an administration that had been accused of ille-
gally using FBI files could not be trusted with census statistics. He asked,
“Can we trust this president to do what’s right?”

The Second Clinton Adm inistra tion

After his reelection, Clinton moved again to the left, engaging in numerous
skirmishes with the Republican majority in Congress. He employed the line-
item veto to eliminate “pork” from legislation until the Supreme Court de-
clared the new authority unconstitutional. Although barred by the Constitu-
tion from running again, Clinton spent much time traveling about the country,
fund raising and campaigning for others. The first lady, who after the health
care battle deliberately softened her public image from ideologue to home-
maker and child advocate, also traveled extensively, sometimes accompanied
by daughter Chelsea.
From June 25 to July 3, 1998, the Clintons visited China. By this time China’s
relationship to American prosperity was obvious; people saw “made in China”
labels on much of what they purchased. But many were concerned about
reports of slave labor and political and religious persecution by the com-
munist government.
Clinton, along with many business leaders, preferred to divorce the hu-
man rights and trade issues. But at one point in his trip the president en-
gaged in a spirited debate on human rights with Chinese President Jiang
Zemin. Clinton also gave a talk in which he seemed to say that the United
States was abandoning Taiwan for the “one-China” policy that the commu-
nist government had long desired. The Senate soon voted 96 to 0 to clear
 The Close of the Century 291

the air of that false impression. Critics again raised the issue of alleged Chi-
nese campaign contributions in 1996, implying that Clinton was paying the
piper during his visit.

Monica ga te

Monica Lewinsky was an attractive, aggressive, uninhibited 22-year-old col-

lege graduate from southern California. In June 1995 she began work as an
intern in the office of Chief of Staff Leon Panetta. In December she was
moved to a paid position, and in April 1996 she was transferred to the Pen-
tagon. White House logs showed that Lewinsky was cleared to visit the White
House thirty-seven times between April 1996 and December 1997, while she
worked at the Pentagon.
In late 1997, attorneys for Paula Jones heard rumors of an affair between
Lewinsky and the president, and demanded the young woman’s testimony.
They also subpoenaed gifts allegedly given by the president to the intern.
Lewinsky signed an affidavit saying there had been no such affair.
In January 1998, Linda Tripp, a former White House employee, presented
prosecutor Starr with twenty hours of tape recordings she had secretly made
of telephone conversations with Lewinsky. The young woman told Tripp of
a romance with Clinton and said she had engaged in oral sex with him. Tripp
also took detailed stenographic notes of Lewinsky’s revelations, which she
turned over to Starr.
Tripp, a personal friend, had tape recorded the emotional story, she said
later, because she was angry at what she knew had been going on in and
around the Oval Office and did not want the president to get away with it.
Tripp also knew about crude sexual advances allegedly made by the presi-
dent toward White House aide Kathleen Willey, who went on national tele-
vision in March to describe the incident.
Starr had the FBI provide Tripp with a concealed recording device, and
Lewinsky repeated the story to her friend in person, noting that the presi-
dent had asked her to hide their relationship. Lewinsky showed Tripp a “talk-
ing points” document that detailed ways in which she could deny her in-
volvement with the president during the Paula Jones case.
On January 17, testifying under oath in the Jones suit, Clinton denied hav-
ing had an affair with Lewinsky. (The Jones suit was later settled with a pay-
ment of $850,000 by the president.) He said he did not recall ever being
alone with the young intern at the White House. Word of Tripp and Lewin-
sky soon reached the press, and the most devastating of the Clinton scan-
dals burst into the headlines.
The central issue was whether the president had lied under oath about his
relationship with Lewinsky and whether he was guilty of obstructing justice
by counseling her to commit perjury. On a deeper level, the case involved
Clinton’s personal integrity and the dignity of the office of chief executive.
With Attorney General Reno’s approval, Starr added this investigation to his
292 Twentieth-Century America

already lengthy series of Clinton probes. Starr was probing a pattern of be-
havior by the president.
In his sworn testimony and on two television appearances, Clinton em-
phatically denied ever having had “sexual relations” with Lewinsky. Several
of the president’s senior aides assured the public that Clinton was not em-
ploying a linguistic loophole to exclude oral sex and that the president had
denied any sort of intimate relationship with the young woman.
Clinton refused further public comment on the matter. White House lawyers
and “spin doctors” then began a lengthy series of attacks on Tripp, Lewin-
sky, Willey, and Starr. Numerous delaying tactics and legal challenges by the
Clinton forces were invariably followed by their complaints that Starr was
taking too long to end his investigation. The story was told that Lewinsky
was merely visiting Clinton secretary Betty Currie during her thirty-seven
White House visits. The first lady attributed the entire body of Clinton in-
vestigations to a “vast, right-wing conspiracy” and later blamed her husband’s
difficulties on anti-Arkansas bias as well.
Despite much resistance from White House lawyers, Starr succeeded
through the courts in acquiring the sworn testimony of Clinton’s Secret Ser-
vice agents and White House lawyers and top officials. In July, after months
of stalls, leaks, confusion, and media frenzy, Starr granted Lewinsky and her
mother, Marcia Lewis, full immunity for their testimony. By this time, Starr’s
four-year investigation had cost some $40 million, and Starr was under in-
vestigation for leaking information to the media.

On Ja nua ry 26, 1998, President Bill Clinton insists, “I did not ha ve sexua l rela tions
with tha t woma n, Miss Lewinsky.” Source: Reuters/Win McNa mee/Archive Photos
 The Close of the Century 293

Lewinsky testified before a federal grand jury in August, providing graphic

detail about an eighteen-month affair she had with the president. She turned
over a dress she said was stained with the president’s semen. Clinton was
also reported asking Lewinsky to deliver to his secretary gifts he had given
her, to keep them from Paula Jones’s attorneys.
Following unsuccessful legal ploys, Clinton agreed to respond to a Starr
subpoena by giving videotaped testimony to the grand jury, accompanied by
three attorneys. Clinton was the first incumbent president to give testimony
in a criminal investigation into his own conduct.
Polls showed that nearly 75 percent of Americans believed the president
was lying about a sexual relationship with Lewinsky. But Clinton’s popular-
ity was extremely high, 65 percent at the point Lewinsky won full immunity.
Starr, Lewinsky, and Tripp had consistently low approval ratings.
Journalists and historians struggled with the meaning of the polls. Much
could be said for the president’s powers of persuasion. Some thought the
polls provided further evidence of the public’s moral indifference. Others
noted that Starr had made mistakes and that Lewinsky had a tarnished rep-
utation. A common explanation was that the country was enjoying peace and
record prosperity, and that Clinton was receiving the credit. To most peo-
ple, it was said, Dow Jones was more important than Paula Jones.
The stain on Lewinsky’s dress forced Clinton to change his story.
He knew that the DNA test would link him with the young intern. (It did.)
On August 17, following more than four hours of questioning by Starr
and the grand jury, Clinton made a four-minute, nationally televised
address. It was as defiant as it was apologetic. The president admitted
that he had been lying about the Monica Lewinsky affair for seven months,
and conceded that what he had done was wrong. But he refused to ac-
knowledge the nature of the “relationship” with the young intern, he de-
nied asking anyone to lie, he denied lying under oath (which meant he
was taking refuge in the linguistic ploy that distinguished oral sex from
“sexual relations”), and he attacked independent counsel Starr for prying
into personal matters and taking too long to complete his investigation.
The speech was quickly and almost unanimously acknowledged to be a
failure.

The Sta rr Report

On September 9, Kenneth Starr issued a 445-page report to Congress, which

the House made public two days later. The report focused on the Lewinsky-
Clinton relationship and included detailed descriptions of sexual conduct, in-
cluding incidents of oral sex, in and just outside the Oval Office. Starr listed
eleven possible grounds for impeachment, including five instances of the
president lying under oath. In addition, thousands of pages of documenta-
tion were made available to the public, and more were promised as inves-
tigations of the Whitewater affair and similar matters proceeded. A videotape
294 Twentieth-Century America

of Clinton’s grand jury testimony, which Starr had turned over to Congress,
was also made public and shown on television.
While not condoning Clinton’s affair with Lewinsky, leading Democrats ar-
gued that it only involved sex by mutually consenting adults and was thus
insufficiently serious to warrant resignation or impeachment. Union leaders,
blacks, feminists, and gays, the heart of the Democratic coalition and the
beneficiaries of many administration appointments and favors, were highly
supportive. (Cabinet secretaries Rodney Slater of transportation and Alexis
Herman at labor were blacks. Madeleine Albright was the nation’s first woman
secretary of state. Elizabeth Birch, of the Human Rights Campaign for gay
and lesbian rights, said that Clinton had named more than 100 openly gay
and lesbian Americans to his administration.)
Leading Republicans declared that the overriding issue was perjury, not
sex, and contended that no one, let alone the president of the United States,
was above the law.
Given the evidence at hand and the president’s unwillingness to step aside,
GOP leaders had little choice but to proceed. On October 8, by a largely
partisan vote of 258 to 176 (31 Democrats supported the Republican-backed
resolution), the House voted to launch an impeachment inquiry against Clin-
ton for his conduct in the Lewinsky scandal. The vote marked just the third
time in American history that Congress had begun impeachment proceedings
against a president.
Democrats fared unexpectedly well in the November elections, picking up
five House seats and holding their own elsewhere. In the fallout, House
Speaker Newt Gingrich, the most visible Republican in the country, an-
nounced his decision to leave Congress. Many thought the elections a man-
date for Clinton. If so, the public had spoken, and the impeachment hear-
ings seemed likely to get nowhere.

Beyond Politics

Most Americans placed politics low on their scale of personal priorities, and
“Zippergate,” as the Clinton-Lewinsky affair was often called, failed to inter-
est many. Some Americans interviewed by pollsters even dismissed the idea
of voting. “It’s hard to get really excited,” said waitress Beth Ann Corrigan.
“What does the Clintons’ sex life have to do with me? What does the inves-
tigation have to do with me?” This sense of disengagement, said pollster
Robert Teeter, reflected the view that the “political system since Watergate
has become seedy, not very ethical and has not performed very well.”
In 1998, there were other things capturing the public’s imagination. Major
league baseball, for example. Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals hit
seventy homeruns, and Sammy Sosa of the Chicago Cubs hit sixty-six, both
breaking the hallowed single-season record of Roger Maris. Cal Ripken, Jr.,
of the Baltimore Orioles ended his record-setting pace of playing in 2,632
consecutive games. The New York Yankees won a record 114 regular-sea-
 The Close of the Century 295

son games and swept the world series, prompting some to rank them the
greatest baseball team of all time.
The movie Tita nic won the hearts of millions and the academy award in
1998 for best picture. By that fall, the film had grossed more than three times
its cost of $200 million, breaking all box-office records, and Paramount pic-
tures had shipped more than 20 million copies of the film on videotape.
Videotape sales in 1997 stood at $9.3 billion and videotape rentals
amounted to $11.2 billion. Between watching movies and videos and work-
ing and playing at computers, Americans spent much of their time staring
into screens. What they saw, of course, had a huge impact on their lives.

High Priests

Most Americans got their news primarily from television. Complaints of bias
were common and often well documented. Accounts of the bizarre, the tragic,
the deadly, and the corrupt dominated the programs. At times, stories seemed
to have lives of their own. Millions became emotionally involved in the death
of England’s jet-set Princess Diana, for example, due to accounts that lin-
gered for more than a year. (Television journalists quickly forgot saintly, No-
bel Prize-winning Mother Theresa, who died five days earlier.)
Television dominated the lives of a great many Americans. Millions
mourned the end of the popular “Seinfeld” television series. Millions watched
daily “soap operas” and talk shows that often vied with each other to pre-
sent the most controversial programming. Among the most popular was talk
show host Oprah Winfrey, and many accepted her recommendations about
the rights and wrongs of life even to the point of what books to read. (Worth
$550 million, Winfrey was the only black on the Forbes list of the 400 wealth-
iest Americans.)
Sex and violence on television and in the movies concerned a majority of
Americans, and with good reason. Before entering junior high school, a child
would witness eight thousand on-screen murders on television and in such
movies as Die Ha rd 2, which featured 264 killings.
Radio continued to attract millions daily. Right-wingers enjoyed Rush Lim-
baugh and Paul Harvey, and the left listened avidly to National Public Ra-
dio. All-news stations, such as WBBM in Chicago, had huge audiences. Enor-
mously popular rock and country music stations drove out virtually all jazz
and classical programming.
Despite the virtual disappearance of serious books from best-seller lists,
and a steady decline in newspaper readers, the print media continued to
make an impact, especially upon the educated. Giant publishers such as Ran-
dom House and Penguin Putnam, and powerful newspapers such as the New
York Times, Wa ll Street Journa l, Wa shington Post, Chica go Tribune, and Los
Angeles Times were often highly influential.
Increasingly the media were coming under the authority of fewer and fewer
people, such as billionaires Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch, and the heads
296 Twentieth-Century America

of huge conglomerates (Disney owned and operated both ABC and ESPN).
The impact of this development was uncertain, but some critics were pes-
simistic about the long-term consequences to entertainment, to culture, to
public morality, and even to democracy.
The media, more than any other institution at the close of the century, had
the power to define truth, beauty, and virtue; to determine the very confines
of reality. The authority of churches, schools, government, and often even
the family paled in comparison. Media moguls and their employees were the
high priests of the secular, consumer society.

IMPEACHMENT
On December 19, 1998, the House of Representatives impeached President
Clinton on two articles, emphasizing perjury and obstruction of justice. (Two
other counts were defeated.) This was only the second time a president was
impeached and marked the first time that an elected chief executive was so
accused. The voting was highly partisan, with Democrats overwhelmingly in
support of Clinton and Republicans, with a few defectors, backing im-
peachment. The public strongly sided with Clinton; although a CBS News
poll found that 84 percent believed him guilty of the charges raised by the
House, the great majority admired his administration of his duties and did
not want him removed from office. Republicans contended stubbornly that
principle was more important than popularity. After the vote, Democratic
pollster Mark Mellman said of Republicans, “They were digging their own
political graves.”
The president responded to the impeachment with angry defiance, blast-
ing the GOP and promising never to resign. Conservative William Bennett
called the president “a sociopathic liar” and “a malignant presence in Amer-
ican politics and culture.” It was an ugly period in the nation’s political his-
tory, reflecting a culture war between the right and left that was increasingly
tense.
The Senate impeachment trial, held behind closed doors, began on Janu-
ary 27. It was predictably partisan and passionate. After more than a month
of rancorous debate and media frenzy, the House leadership, presenting the
case against Clinton, failed to come close to the necessary two-thirds major-
ity to convict. The charge of perjury was defeated 45 in favor to 55 against.
The vote was 50 to 50 on the obstruction of justice article. Not a single De-
mocrat voted for either article of impeachment, while ten Republicans cast
their ballots against the charge of perjury and five voted against the ob-
struction of justice article. A harshly worded motion to censure the president,
written by liberal California Democrat Dianne Feinstein, died as well. While
twenty-nine Democrats signed it, sixteen did not.
The impeachment vote failed to quell the issue of Clinton’s character. In
February, a wealthy Arkansas woman, Juanita Broaddrick, asserted that Clin-
ton had raped her in 1978. No other president had been the target of such
 The Close of the Century 297

an allegation. After weighing the available facts, which were persuasive, femi-
nist leaders and others declared the charge credible. Most Clinton partisans said
little. The president’s only response was a brief denial issued by his attorney.

KOSOVO
On March 24, 1999, the United States and its NATO allies began a series of
air and cruise-missile attacks on military targets around Yugoslavia. The ef-
fort was designed to end brutal Serbian violence against tiny (half the size
of New Hampshire) Kosovo. Ethnic Albanians in the area, Muslims who made
up ninety percent of the 1.5 million population, were seeking independence
from Yugoslavia. Their rebel army, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), had
also engaged in terrorism.
Clinton, who had not prepared Americans in advanced for the sudden
strikes, blamed Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic for the turmoil, com-
paring him to Hitler. In fact, Milosevic had been persecuting neighboring
peoples since the collapse of communism in 1989. Kosovo was especially
important to the Yugoslav autocrat as it was the historic home of Serbian na-
tionalism, the Serbian people’s “holy land.”
The attacks marked the fourth time in a ten-month period that Clinton had
rained bombs on a country. Afghanistan and Sudan were hit in August 1998
to punish terrorist Osama bin Laden. Widespread attacks on Iraq occurred
in December and afterward, attempting to punish Saddam Hussein. Both bin
Laden and Hussein survived, and positive results of the attacks were diffi-
cult to find. (The Center for Strategy and Budgetary Assessments put the price
tag on U.S. military operations from 1991 to 1999, before Kosovo, at $21.4
billion.) Getting involved militarily in the Balkans, an area with an 800-year
history of ethnic fighting, was particularly controversial and dangerous.
Supporters of the attacks contended that Clinton was defending the in-
tegrity of NATO as well as attempting to end brutal aggression and “ethnic
cleansing.” Liberal newspaper columnist Sandy Grady wrote, “For a super-
power and NATO to avert their eyes from massacres in a European cockpit
would have been dishonorable.” The president claimed that America had a
“moral imperative” to act.
Some critics claimed that Clinton was attempting to bolster his image as a na-
tional leader. As bombs and missiles slammed into Yugoslavia, Serbian televi-
sion showed “Wag the Dog,” an American movie about a president who fabri-
cates a war in Albania to distract attention from a sex scandal. Others noted that
Molosevic was hardly a Hitler, and that he was not even attempting to take over
a foreign country; Kosovo had been part of Yugoslavia since the country’s cre-
ation in 1918. Critics also doubted that air power alone could stop the violence
in Kosovo. Clinton said he did not “intend” to send ground troops into the area.
Many people, including members of Congress, were simply confused by
the issue. Most Americans could not find Kosovo on a map. They wondered
about the importance of peace in Yugoslavia to the United States, and they
298 Twentieth-Century America

were deeply concerned about possible American casualties. Then there was
the question of cost: John Pike, a defense expert at the Federation of Amer-
ican Scientists, estimated that the first 24 hours of the Kosovo operation cost
taxpayers more than $100 million.
The NATO strikes were equally controversial throughout the world. Rus-
sia denounced them as “naked aggression,” and China followed suit. Greece,
a NATO member, supported the Serbs, and its air force took no direct role
in the air strikes. The German army participated, marking the first time it
had fired a shot since the end of World War II, and prompting unrest in
Germany and elsewhere. Anti-American riots broke out all over Europe.
Eastern Orthodox Christians, who shared the faith of most Serbs, were
outraged by the NATO attacks. The Islamic world showed little enthusiasm
for the warfare.
After 78 days and more than 35,000 NATO sorties, Milosevic agreed to
peace terms. Albanians, including the some 900,000 who had recently fled
Serb violence, could return to Kosovo under the protection of an interna-
tional military force. But Kosovo was to remain under Serbian authority, and
the KLA was to be disarmed. The overall agreement was more advantageous
for Serbia than prewar demands made by the U.S. Secretary of State Albright.
The victory of the 19 western nations over an economically poor country
the size of the state of Ohio was not entirely surprising. But it was the first
such victory won exclusively through the air (some 90 percent of Allied
weaponry was precision-guided), and it was achieved without a single Al-
lied casualty.
In June, 50,000 NATO troops (including 7,000 Americans) entered Kosovo,
encountering evidence of numerous Serb atrocities. Some 10,000 Kosovars
were said to have been murdered, matching the estimated number of Serbs
killed by NATO weapons. Americans and Europeans faced billions of dol-
lars in foreign aid to the region.
The move against Yugoslavia marked the first time NATO forces had at-
tacked a sovereign nation. The action was taken without a clear United Na-
tions mandate. NATO had been created a half century earlier to protect West-
ern nations from a Soviet-led invasion. Its new role, containing ethnic rivalries
and other challenges to European stability, might prove equally demanding.
It was widely acknowledged that the world’s only superpower would be the
dominant force in future NATO actions.

CONCLUSION
The twentieth century posed unprecedented challenges to the American peo-
ple. Among other things, they grappled with the Industrial Revolution, mas-
sive immigration, urbanization, reform, economic depression, two world wars,
two Red scares, the restoration of war-torn Europe, the Cold War, nuclear
power, civil rights, women’s rights, educational change, conservation efforts,
energy crises, a revolution in medical technology, massive cultural change,
 The Close of the Century 299

mounting crime, unprecedented prosperity, and the superpower status of

post-Cold War America.
Change is the most persistent theme of the century. A businessman in
downtown Boston in 1900, looking at often dilapidated wooden buildings
and streets frequently filled with debris, mud, dead horses, and ragged
children would think himself almost on another planet were he transported
to that same spot in our time. The Iowa farmer of 1900, having slaved be-
hind a mule in the hot sun all day with only a chance of making a profit,
could only dream of the security and comfort that rural Americans fre-
quently experienced a hundred years later. The black southern share-
cropper at the turn of this century, toiling in poverty and persecution,
could surely not believe predictions of the equality and economic oppor-
tunity that awaited his great-great-grandchildren. Barely literate women
who toiled with hot irons and steaming washtubs to keep huge families
clean and presentable would look with astonishment at the trim, inde-
pendent, educated, often childless stereotype of the 1990s woman. Peo-
ple who wobbled on bicycles with huge wheels might shriek as building-
size airplanes roared overhead. Those who frequented vaudeville in William
McKinley’s time might go into cardiac arrest during a modern film festival
in the Bill Clinton years.
Much of what has happened in the twentieth century is clearly progress.
The great strides in medicine, the wealth generated by industrialism and tech-
nology, the increased availability of education, and the equality brought about
by the civil rights revolution, for example, have few serious detractors today.
Not many would like to see the role of government diminished to the point
that the disadvantaged were again left to die in the county poorhouse. Few
would want the nation’s military presence again so small that we could be
threatened by virtually anyone. Hardly any Americans would like to repeal
the religious tolerance that holds sway in our largely secular era.
Critics can also make a strong case against much of the change that trans-
formed twentieth-century America. The bloody wars (more people died in
1945 than in any other single year in history), the descent of popular cul-
ture, the breakdown of the traditional family, the waning of traditional reli-
gious faith and morality, the pervasiveness of consumerism, the sharp de-
cline in good manners, the disintegration of educational standards, the
continued destruction of the environment—many books have lamented these
and other features of modern life.
A major lesson most Americans learned in this century is the truth that
they are a major part of the world. In an age of supersonic aircraft, inter-
continental ballistic missiles, and stock markets reacting to developments all
over the planet, isolationism is impossible.
And the world of which we are a part remains extremely dangerous. In
1998, the Pentagon launched a new agency to deal with threats of weapons
of mass destruction. Defense Secretary William Cohen said, “Today’s harsh
reality is too powerful to ignore—at least 25 countries have, or are in the
process of developing, nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, and the
300 Twentieth-Century America

means to deliver them.” There was considerable concern as well about the
fate of the massive arsenal of missiles in unstable Russia.
Given the unprecedented dominance of the United States at century’s end,
the American military bears much of the responsibility for keeping world
peace. The United Nations and NATO will play a role, of course, but much
of the financing and fighting in crucial situations will be carried out by Amer-
icans. In the Balkans, the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere, the planet’s most
powerful nation will be summoned in a time of crisis.
A sign of genuine progress and hope at century’s end is the fact that democ-
racy was the most widespread system in the world. Zbigniew Brzezinski,
Jimmy Carter’s chief national security advisor, observed in 1998 that “The ma-
jority of states today are elected democracies (117 out of 191), and 1.3 bil-
lion people (22 percent of the world population) live in free societies.” Thirty
nine percent lived in countries with partially democratic systems, and the re-
maining 39 percent lived in basically antidemocratic systems.
At the close of the twentieth century, the freedom and the prosperity en-
joyed by Americans were the envy of much of the world. But millions around
the globe also feared the secularism, the crime, the popular culture, the cyn-
icism, and the growing disparity of wealth that were part of American life.
The overwhelming challenge facing the United States as the year 2000
dawned was to respond to rapid change with enough intelligence, integrity,
compassion, and courage to warrant the world’s full-scale admiration as well
as respect. The globe’s leading nation had the responsibility not only to lead
militarily but to create a society that could live up to its highest ideals, which
were, in fact, the aspirations of a great many people everywhere at the dawn
of the new century.

SUGGESTED READING

Elliott Abrams (ed.), Close Ca lls: Intervention, Terrorism, Missile Defense, a nd “Just
Wa r” Toda y (1998); Richard Bernstein, Dicta torship of Virtue: Multicultura lism a nd
the Ba ttle of America ’s Future (1994); Michael Cromartie (ed.), No Longer Exiles: The
Religious New Right in America n Politics (1993); William Damon, Grea ter Expecta -
tions: Overcoming the Culture of Indulgence in America ’s Homes a nd Schools (1995);
Lawrence Kudlow, America n Abunda nce: The New Economic a nd Mora l Prosperity
(1997); Thomas C. Reeves, The Empty Church: The Suicide of Libera l Christia nity
(1996); Michael J. Sandel, Democra cy’s Discontent: America in Sea rch of a Public Phi-
losophy (1996); Charles J. Sykes, Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why America ’s Children’s
Feel Good About Themselves but Ca n’t Rea d, Write, or Add (1995); Roberto Suro,
Stra ngers Among Us: How La tino Immigra tion Is Tra nsforming America ; Stephen Th-
ernstrom and Abigail M. Thernstrom, America in Bla ck a nd White: One Na tion Indi-
visible (1997).