©2005 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights reserved.

McGraw-Hill

Chapter 30: The Vietnam EraPreview: “Presidents from Truman to Nixon argued that communism in Southeast Asia threatened vital American interests. But it was Lyndon Johnson who began a massive bombing campaign and sent half a million American troops to intervene in Vietnam’s civil war.”The Highlights: The Road to Vietnam Social Consequences of the War The Unraveling Nixon’s War The New Identity Politics The End of an Era

©2005 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights reserved.

McGraw-Hill

The Road to Vietnam Lyndon Johnson’s War

– The domino theory– Tonkin Gulf incident, 1964

Rolling Thunder– Escalation– Air strikes

30-2

©2005 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights reserved.

McGraw-Hill

30-3

©2005 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights reserved.

McGraw-Hill

The Soldiers’ War– Body counts– Technology and its limits

The War at Home– Hawks and doves– McNamara loses faith– Inflation

Social Consequences of the War

30-4

©2005 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights reserved.

McGraw-Hill

Tet Offensive– One of the great American intelligence

failures– Stalemate– My Lai– “Clean for Gene”– LBJ withdraws

The Shocks of 1968– The King and Kennedy assassinations– Both men exemplified the liberal

tradition

The Unraveling30-5

©2005 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights reserved.

McGraw-Hill

30-6

©2005 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights reserved.

McGraw-Hill

Chicago– Hubert Humphrey– Revolutionary clashes worldwide

Whose Silent Majority?– Governor George Wallace– Nixon’s “silent majority”– The election of 1968

“The clashes in Chicago seemed homegrown, but they reflected a growing willingness among students worldwide to use violence to press their revolutionary causes”(1022).

30-7

©2005 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights reserved.

McGraw-Hill

30-8

©2005 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights reserved.

McGraw-Hill

Nixon’s War Vietnamization-and Cambodia

– “Peace with honor”– Nixon launched a series of bombing

attacks against North Vietnamese supply depots

– Invading Cambodia Fighting a No-Win War

– Morale became a serious problem for American soldiers

– As the troops became restive, domestic opposition to the war grew

30-9

©2005 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights reserved.

McGraw-Hill

The Move toward Detente– Nixon Doctrine– SALT I (1972)

“Despite Nixon’s insistence on ‘peace with honor,’ Vietnam was not a war he had chosen to fight. Both Kissinger and Nixon recognized that the United States no longer had the strength to exercise unchallenged dominance across the globe”(1026).

30-10

©2005 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights reserved.

McGraw-Hill

Watergate and the Politics of Resentment Nixon’s New Federalism

– Revenue sharing– Family Assistance Plan– Nixon reforms

Stagflation– A stagnant economy combined with

rising prices– Nixon advocated federal wage and

price controls

31-3

©2005 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights reserved.

McGraw-Hill

Social Policies and the Court– School busing– Nixon and the Court

Us versus Them– Nixon administration blurred the

lines between honest dissent and radical criminals

– “Nattering nabobs of negativism”

31-4

©2005 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights reserved.

McGraw-Hill

Triumph– George McGovern– Nixon received almost 61 percent of the

popular vote The President’s Enemies

– The plumbers– Impoundment: refusal to spend the

appropriated money for a program

31-5

©2005 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights reserved.

McGraw-Hill

Break-In– June 1972: Democratic National

Committee headquarters in Watergate apartment complex burglarized

– Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein To the Oval Office

– Senate hearings– Agnew resigns– Saturday Night Massacre

31-6

©2005 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights reserved.

McGraw-Hill

Resignation– The smoking gun– Fair Campaign Practices Act (1974)

“Gerald Ford inherited a presidential office almost crippled by the Watergate scandals. As the first unelected president, he had no popular mandate….By all instincts a conservative, he was determined to continue Nixon’s foreign policy of cautious détente and a domestic program of social and fiscal conservatism”(1054-55).

31-7

©2005 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights reserved.

McGraw-Hill

The New Identity Politics Latino Activism

– Puerto Ricans and Cubans– Cesar Chavez and the UFW– Chicano activists– La Raza Unida

The Choices of American Indians– Termination: reduction of federal

services, selling off land– American Indian Movement– Wounded Knee

30-11

©2005 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights reserved.

McGraw-Hill

Feminism– The Feminine Mystique– National Organization for Women

Equal Rights and Abortion– Roe v. Wade (1973)– Women divided

The Legacy of Identity Politics– Political and social activism had

brought a sense of empowerment to minority groups

– Identity politics forced the nation to see itself as a multicultural society

30-13

©2005 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights reserved.

McGraw-Hill

Asian Americans– “Model minorities”– “Third world revolution”

Gay Rights– Growing political activism placed

them among minorities demanding equal rights

– Stonewall incident (1969)

30-12

©2005 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights reserved.

McGraw-Hill

30-14

©2005 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights reserved.

McGraw-Hill

The Limits of Reform Consumerism

– Ralph Nader attacks GM– Consumer organizations

Environmentalism– Conservation versus preservation– Barry Commoner and ecology– EPA established (1970)– Earth Day

31-2

©2005 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights reserved.

McGraw-Hill

The End of an Era

“The war in Southeast Asia shattered the optimism of the early 1960s: the belief that the world could be remade with the help of enough brilliant intellectuals or enough federal programs”(1038).

30-15