WEBVTT - The Great American Story: Rise and Fall 0:00:09.520 --> 0:00:13.320 Welcome to the Hillsdale College Online Courses podcast. I'm Jeremiah Regan. 0:00:13.320 --> 0:00:15.480 And I'm Juan Davalos. We are back with the great 0:00:15.480 --> 0:00:18.520 American story, land of Hope. We're looking at lectures 22 0:00:18.520 --> 0:00:20.480 and 23, Rise and Fall. 0:00:20.480 --> 0:00:24.160 Parts one and two. So we get in in sequence 0:00:24.280 --> 0:00:28.480 the presidencies of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, with the 0:00:28.480 --> 0:00:33.240 domestic domestic issues, including the Great Society and foreign policy, 0:00:33.240 --> 0:00:34.640 most notably Vietnam. 0:00:34.840 --> 0:00:38.720 Yeah, this is a very tumultuous time in American history. 0:00:38.760 --> 0:00:41.479 A lot of violence. This is the period in which 0:00:41.520 --> 0:00:48.239 MLK is killed. Robert Kennedy, then the Watergate problem, the problems, stagflation, 0:00:48.280 --> 0:00:51.360 a lot of problems in American history that will be 0:00:51.360 --> 0:00:53.840 covered by Doctor McClay in these two lectures. 0:00:53.840 --> 0:00:57.880 We also come to the probably furthest reach of the 0:00:57.880 --> 0:01:01.720 grand progressive vision with Johnson's Great Society, which followed up 0:01:01.720 --> 0:01:05.679 the New Deal and creates an inflection point in which 0:01:05.720 --> 0:01:07.920 Americans are going to test whether they wish to continue 0:01:07.920 --> 0:01:12.720 moving towards these grand government projects or look to reset 0:01:12.720 --> 0:01:15.120 and move in either a new direction or back towards 0:01:15.120 --> 0:01:16.440 the principles of the founding. 0:01:16.560 --> 0:01:18.720 If you're enjoying this course, I encourage you to go 0:01:18.720 --> 0:01:26.240 to hillsdale.edu/course. That's hillsdale.edu/course and enroll. You'll be able to 0:01:26.280 --> 0:01:29.479 watch the video lectures, as well as access all of 0:01:29.480 --> 0:01:33.000 the additional resources that we have, including study guides and 0:01:33.000 --> 0:01:36.360 additional readings, as well as Doctor McClain's book that follows 0:01:36.360 --> 0:01:37.240 the course as well. 0:01:37.280 --> 0:01:40.119 Now let's turn to Doctor McClay for lectures 22 and 0:01:40.120 --> 0:01:42.640 23 of the Great American Story A land of Hope, 0:01:42.760 --> 0:01:45.000 rise and Fall, parts one and two. 0:01:50.560 --> 0:01:55.920 Hello and welcome back to this lecture entitled Rise and Fall. 0:01:58.090 --> 0:02:06.370 Lyndon Johnson was a peculiar, complicated man and a complicated follower. 0:02:06.410 --> 0:02:10.130 After Kennedy's administration. But one of the things that clearly 0:02:10.130 --> 0:02:14.130 motivated him was that he wanted to succeed Kennedy. He 0:02:14.130 --> 0:02:17.210 wanted to be even more of a reformer. He wanted 0:02:17.210 --> 0:02:21.010 to have an even more ambitious program, both of domestic 0:02:21.010 --> 0:02:28.170 policy and foreign policy. So he gave a speech at 0:02:28.210 --> 0:02:31.929 Ohio University and then later the University of Michigan, announcing 0:02:32.090 --> 0:02:36.769 his plans for what he called the Great Society a society, 0:02:36.770 --> 0:02:39.650 as he said, well, where no child will go unfed, 0:02:39.850 --> 0:02:44.089 no youngster will go unschooled society that would remake the cities, 0:02:44.530 --> 0:02:50.609 preserve the nation's natural beauty and countless other things. How 0:02:50.610 --> 0:02:55.210 was he going to do all of these things at once? Well, 0:02:55.450 --> 0:02:57.090 one of the things he had to do first was 0:02:57.090 --> 0:03:01.450 to get himself elected in his own right. And this 0:03:01.450 --> 0:03:06.370 he managed to do by a walloping margin, the popular 0:03:06.370 --> 0:03:10.730 vote margin that was actually the widest in American history 0:03:10.730 --> 0:03:15.890 to this point, 61.1% of the vote running against the 0:03:16.570 --> 0:03:22.090 hapless Republican candidate, Barry Goldwater. The results of the Electoral 0:03:22.090 --> 0:03:24.690 College were a little less overwhelming. And there's actually an 0:03:24.690 --> 0:03:28.570 interesting point about that Electoral College total that I want 0:03:28.610 --> 0:03:33.050 to make in a moment. Um, but Johnson felt he 0:03:33.050 --> 0:03:36.570 had an enormous mandate and intended to make use of 0:03:36.610 --> 0:03:42.370 that mandate by introducing to the 89th Congress an overwhelming 0:03:42.410 --> 0:03:46.210 agenda of legislation. And he, as a master of the 0:03:46.210 --> 0:03:50.450 legislative process process, having been majority leader in the Senate 0:03:51.130 --> 0:03:54.650 for some time, was just the man to oversee that. 0:03:55.450 --> 0:03:57.490 the point I wanted to make about the Electoral College 0:03:57.490 --> 0:04:02.210 is that, in fact, Goldwater got 47 of the 52 0:04:02.210 --> 0:04:07.090 electoral votes that Goldwater received came from the Deep South. 0:04:07.730 --> 0:04:10.570 Why is that important? Because the Deep South had never 0:04:10.570 --> 0:04:15.530 given its electoral votes to a Republican before. The South 0:04:15.530 --> 0:04:20.650 had been the solid South since the Civil War, solidly Democratic. 0:04:21.490 --> 0:04:25.529 So this was an indicative of. And in fact, Johnson 0:04:25.529 --> 0:04:29.330 was running for office as a Southerner. So it makes 0:04:29.330 --> 0:04:32.570 it all the more surprising. And this is indicative of 0:04:32.570 --> 0:04:35.770 the fact that the South was in the process of 0:04:35.770 --> 0:04:41.969 changing its electoral partisan affiliation, or at least a suggestion 0:04:41.970 --> 0:04:44.810 that that might be happening and that there might be 0:04:44.810 --> 0:04:48.930 good news ahead for Republicans coming out of the South, 0:04:49.050 --> 0:04:52.490 which had shut them out for the entire history of 0:04:52.490 --> 0:04:55.970 the Republican Party. And there were other constellations of this 0:04:57.330 --> 0:05:01.290 otherwise humiliating defeat. One thing that came out of it 0:05:01.290 --> 0:05:06.490 was a clear conservative movement within the Republican Party that 0:05:06.490 --> 0:05:10.130 had never been as strong and then didn't dissipate just 0:05:10.130 --> 0:05:14.250 because of Goldwater's electoral defeat. And in fact, it would 0:05:14.250 --> 0:05:19.730 soon produce a conservative star in the person of Ronald 0:05:19.730 --> 0:05:24.210 Reagan and more on him in a little while. So 0:05:24.210 --> 0:05:28.650 the 89th Congress settles in, and Johnson has a whole 0:05:28.650 --> 0:05:34.650 quiver of proposals to bring forward. It's an endless list, seemingly. 0:05:34.650 --> 0:05:36.690 I'll read some of it to you. The expansion of 0:05:36.690 --> 0:05:40.370 the federal food stamp program, creation of the National Endowment 0:05:40.370 --> 0:05:44.370 for the Humanities and National Endowment for the Arts, Medicare, 0:05:44.410 --> 0:05:48.450 health insurance for the elderly. That's the big one. Medicaid 0:05:48.450 --> 0:05:53.460 funding for the poor, the elementary and Secondary Education Act. 0:05:53.820 --> 0:05:57.620 The Higher Education Act. This is the federal government moving 0:05:57.740 --> 0:06:02.140 briskly into the area of education, which had been formerly 0:06:02.460 --> 0:06:07.980 a state and local responsibility. The Immigration Act, which abandoned 0:06:08.140 --> 0:06:12.940 discriminatory quotas based on national origins. The Child Nutrition Act. 0:06:13.500 --> 0:06:18.739 Funding for mass transit. Public housing. Rent subsidies. Two new 0:06:18.779 --> 0:06:23.580 cabinet departments. Transportation and housing. And for good measure, the 0:06:23.580 --> 0:06:29.739 Highway Beautification Act. And very importantly, there was the Voting 0:06:29.740 --> 0:06:34.339 Rights Act of 1965, which followed upon the Civil Rights Act, 0:06:34.380 --> 0:06:39.180 passed in 1964 before the election, and removing obstacles to 0:06:39.220 --> 0:06:44.300 African Americans ability to register and vote in southern elections, 0:06:44.300 --> 0:06:50.540 where they'd been effectively disfranchised. More than 250,000 new voters 0:06:50.540 --> 0:06:56.540 had been registered on the list by the end of 1965, 0:06:56.540 --> 0:07:01.779 so the effect was immediate and profound. But what about 0:07:01.779 --> 0:07:06.940 these other programs? How effective was the Great Society? The 0:07:06.940 --> 0:07:09.020 jury is still out on this. This is actually a 0:07:09.020 --> 0:07:12.140 point where you could get almost any gathering of, of 0:07:12.140 --> 0:07:16.900 political junkies to, to argue about. I'll present a few 0:07:16.940 --> 0:07:20.540 data points in its favor in the favor of the 0:07:20.540 --> 0:07:24.060 Great Society. The fact that the nation's poverty rate dropped 0:07:24.060 --> 0:07:32.220 from 22% to 13% between 1963 and 1970. That's somewhat 0:07:32.220 --> 0:07:36.020 overlaps the period in question, but it's a reasonable and 0:07:36.020 --> 0:07:40.180 useful measure. The drop in the African-American poverty rate was 0:07:40.180 --> 0:07:43.420 even greater. On the other side of the ledger, the 0:07:43.460 --> 0:07:50.300 war on poverty in general was not very successful. Medicare 0:07:51.380 --> 0:07:54.620 was a program that addressed the health needs of the elderly, 0:07:54.620 --> 0:07:58.700 but enormous costs. It did not contain costs. It greatly 0:07:58.940 --> 0:08:04.020 expanded them and were living with the results of that today. 0:08:04.460 --> 0:08:08.220 Welfare programs address the needs of the poor, but did 0:08:08.220 --> 0:08:14.340 so in ways that foster dependency and promoted dependence on 0:08:14.340 --> 0:08:19.140 cash supports, and not on moving people into productive work 0:08:19.500 --> 0:08:23.860 or moving them back into the economy. Indeed, in some cases, 0:08:23.860 --> 0:08:27.300 the program of aid for families with dependent children. The 0:08:27.300 --> 0:08:32.620 net effect was to weaken families by Disincentivizing marriage and 0:08:32.620 --> 0:08:36.220 family intactness. That was a development that would have especially 0:08:36.220 --> 0:08:42.380 disastrous effects in minority families in inner city settings. So 0:08:42.420 --> 0:08:46.500 in general, the gap between the great society's promises and 0:08:46.500 --> 0:08:51.350 its results was considerable. And that was a gap that 0:08:51.350 --> 0:08:58.109 fueled skepticism, particularly among conservatives and Republicans, about the efficacy 0:08:58.110 --> 0:09:04.910 of the whole. The Great Society also suffered from unfortunate timing, 0:09:05.750 --> 0:09:10.069 and in two respects, it came at precisely the moment 0:09:10.070 --> 0:09:15.390 when the civil rights movement, which had enjoyed a period 0:09:15.390 --> 0:09:22.270 of extraordinary dignity and respectfulness of national institutions and of 0:09:22.270 --> 0:09:27.550 the national heritage and the the precepts of the great 0:09:27.550 --> 0:09:32.630 national documents, changing its tone, losing its unity as well 0:09:32.630 --> 0:09:39.309 as its commitment to dignified nonviolence. In August of 1965, 0:09:39.790 --> 0:09:43.829 riots broke out in the Watts section of Los Angeles, 0:09:44.790 --> 0:09:51.110 lasting for six days of highly destructive rioting in that 0:09:51.110 --> 0:09:57.230 predominantly African American neighborhood and other similar urban riots followed 0:09:57.550 --> 0:10:08.670 in many northern cities Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, Omaha, Newark, Washington, D.C., Baltimore. Uh, 0:10:09.470 --> 0:10:15.110 this epidemic of riots, of urban riots represented, among many 0:10:15.110 --> 0:10:19.470 other things, a repudiation of Martin Luther King's strategy of 0:10:19.470 --> 0:10:27.110 emphasizing nonviolence and weakened the cause of nonviolent resistance, weakened 0:10:27.150 --> 0:10:29.470 the cause of civil rights more generally in the minds 0:10:29.670 --> 0:10:33.470 of some Americans. The other impediment to the success of 0:10:33.470 --> 0:10:38.670 the Great Society was the steadily escalating American commitment in 0:10:38.670 --> 0:10:45.830 Southeast Asia and a steadily deteriorating Situation again. We don't 0:10:45.830 --> 0:10:48.710 have time to go into all the details, except to 0:10:48.710 --> 0:10:52.910 say that long standing support for the South Vietnamese government 0:10:52.910 --> 0:10:58.470 from the United States was seeming increasingly an investment that 0:10:58.470 --> 0:11:03.949 was ill placed. Uh, um, finally, uh, an incident in 0:11:03.950 --> 0:11:08.829 the Gulf of Tonkin where, uh, a three Vietnamese, North 0:11:08.830 --> 0:11:14.230 Vietnamese torpedo boats had fired on an American destroyer. Um, 0:11:14.309 --> 0:11:18.870 Johnson used this incident as a as a as a pretext, 0:11:18.870 --> 0:11:23.590 as a basis for receiving a open ended authorization from 0:11:23.590 --> 0:11:28.630 Congress to use whatever measures he deemed necessary to guard 0:11:28.670 --> 0:11:33.270 American interests and, uh, to take all necessary steps, including 0:11:33.270 --> 0:11:39.230 that of armed force, to assist the non-Communist states of 0:11:39.230 --> 0:11:43.670 Southeast Asia. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was regarded by 0:11:43.670 --> 0:11:48.710 critics as a blank check and not without reason a 0:11:48.750 --> 0:11:53.030 blank check to prosecute a war in Vietnam without limit. 0:11:53.550 --> 0:11:57.750 And that is what Johnson went on to do, again, 0:11:58.030 --> 0:12:00.630 more than more detail in the book. But by the 0:12:00.630 --> 0:12:06.590 end of 1965, there were already almost 200,000 American troops 0:12:06.590 --> 0:12:10.110 in Vietnam. This is just a little less than a 0:12:10.110 --> 0:12:16.510 year into Johnson's second, his first full term in office. Um, 0:12:17.550 --> 0:12:25.710 and by 1969, that number would reach an astonishing 542,000 troops. 0:12:26.070 --> 0:12:30.030 1 in 4 of those serving in Vietnam had been drafted. 0:12:30.070 --> 0:12:34.030 Often young men barely out of high school, lifted out 0:12:34.070 --> 0:12:36.990 of their hometowns to fight in a war that many 0:12:37.230 --> 0:12:42.400 Americans could not understand. Why did Johnson put such value 0:12:42.400 --> 0:12:46.760 on this tiny nation? This tiny nation that was that 0:12:46.760 --> 0:12:52.480 was marked by instability and corruption in its governance. Well, 0:12:52.480 --> 0:12:55.199 the thinking of Johnson had been shaped by the doctrine 0:12:55.240 --> 0:13:00.040 of containment that had been developed since the late 40s, um, 0:13:00.440 --> 0:13:03.120 since the United States had pledged to resist the expansion 0:13:03.120 --> 0:13:09.280 of communism everywhere. Uh, certainly Vietnam should be included in that. 0:13:09.320 --> 0:13:12.800 That the view was that the fall of Vietnam, of 0:13:12.800 --> 0:13:17.840 South Vietnam would be the first step in a communization 0:13:17.840 --> 0:13:22.240 of all of Southeast Asia, uh, that, uh, countries like 0:13:22.280 --> 0:13:27.120 Thailand and Burma would, quote, fall like dominoes one after 0:13:27.120 --> 0:13:32.239 the other. Um, but the same problem with the containment 0:13:32.280 --> 0:13:37.440 theory that arose in the McCarthy era, uh, the one 0:13:37.440 --> 0:13:44.760 that MacArthur had identified um, in arguing unpopularly with his, uh, 0:13:44.760 --> 0:13:48.080 his commander in chief, that there was no substitute for 0:13:48.080 --> 0:13:53.400 victory also applied in the case of Vietnam. Despite the 0:13:53.400 --> 0:13:59.560 overwhelming superiority of American forces in men and materiel, political 0:13:59.559 --> 0:14:03.080 considerations dictated the war had to be fought in a 0:14:03.080 --> 0:14:07.400 highly limited way, not an all out war, because it 0:14:07.400 --> 0:14:11.320 was essential to keep the Soviets and Chinese from intervening. 0:14:12.640 --> 0:14:18.280 So the doctrine of limited war became the regnant doctrine 0:14:18.280 --> 0:14:22.720 in the conduct of the Vietnam War. The problems with 0:14:22.720 --> 0:14:26.280 such an approach approach are, I think, fairly obvious. They 0:14:26.280 --> 0:14:30.440 should have been obvious at the time. When one telegraphs 0:14:30.440 --> 0:14:34.160 to the enemy that there always are limits beyond which 0:14:34.160 --> 0:14:38.960 one will not go. The determination of a combatant who 0:14:38.960 --> 0:14:42.640 lacked the will to win, could always be overcome by 0:14:42.640 --> 0:14:47.440 the determination of an enemy who lacked the will to surrender. 0:14:48.640 --> 0:14:51.360 And this is particularly true in a democratic society like 0:14:51.360 --> 0:14:56.360 the United States, where popular support for the actions of government, 0:14:56.360 --> 0:15:01.760 particularly in wartime, is indispensable. It can only be sustained 0:15:01.760 --> 0:15:06.640 without that popular support for a very finite length of time, 0:15:07.040 --> 0:15:09.520 and in this case, really, for the first time in 0:15:09.560 --> 0:15:13.560 American history, the carnage of the war, of the conflict 0:15:14.000 --> 0:15:17.960 and the the cost in human lives and human woundings 0:15:17.960 --> 0:15:23.680 and bleeding was visible on television in real time, up 0:15:23.680 --> 0:15:27.760 close and personal. And many viewers were appalled by what 0:15:27.760 --> 0:15:32.320 they saw. Um, a steady diet of these images started 0:15:32.320 --> 0:15:37.050 to wear away at the American commitment to continue on 0:15:37.050 --> 0:15:40.370 in the fight. And it didn't help that many of 0:15:40.370 --> 0:15:45.370 the administration's claims of progress in the war were often 0:15:45.650 --> 0:15:49.410 found to be exaggerated or even false, certainly based on 0:15:49.410 --> 0:15:54.890 faulty data. So there's a growing anti-war sentiment in the country. 0:15:54.930 --> 0:16:00.490 An anti-war sentiment that, along with the unhappiness about the 0:16:00.530 --> 0:16:06.210 difficulty of addressing racial inequalities, led to a more general 0:16:06.210 --> 0:16:11.050 disaffection with the country, to the rise of radical movements 0:16:11.050 --> 0:16:14.570 like the students for a Democratic Society on college campuses 0:16:15.530 --> 0:16:20.370 and and other such forms of opposition to the establishment. 0:16:20.410 --> 0:16:24.890 The emergence of a counterculture, which was an apolitical form 0:16:25.090 --> 0:16:30.410 of resistance that showed itself in a variety of ways, 0:16:30.410 --> 0:16:37.210 including alternative lifestyles, alternative approaches to sexuality, long hair, rock music, 0:16:37.770 --> 0:16:40.690 the use of mind altering drugs, and so on and 0:16:40.690 --> 0:16:47.530 so forth. Um uh. Interestingly, although a product of American affluence, 0:16:47.570 --> 0:16:52.770 it was critical of American materialism and of pinched middle 0:16:52.770 --> 0:16:58.130 class life and middle class ambitions. Um, in a strange way, 0:16:58.690 --> 0:17:02.730 it had a spiritual side to it too, that, that, um, 0:17:02.810 --> 0:17:07.690 strangely recalled some of the remarks that Eisenhower made in 0:17:07.730 --> 0:17:12.130 his farewell address. This notion that, uh, of, uh, the 0:17:12.210 --> 0:17:18.129 devotion to innovation and progress and change and the accumulation 0:17:18.130 --> 0:17:23.050 of wealth was not a sufficient and adequate end for 0:17:23.050 --> 0:17:29.410 human life. The concerns about Johnson, uh, and the war 0:17:29.410 --> 0:17:33.650 crystallized finally into political opposition in the form of of 0:17:33.650 --> 0:17:37.810 opposition to his renomination for the for the presidency. Eugene McCarthy, 0:17:37.850 --> 0:17:44.570 senator from Minnesota, ran against Johnson and astonishingly shockingly in 0:17:44.570 --> 0:17:50.770 the New Hampshire primary. Early in 1968, very nearly beat him. 0:17:50.930 --> 0:17:55.810 The margin of the vote was 48% for Johnson to 42% 0:17:55.810 --> 0:18:00.730 for McCarthy, which was far, far too much for an 0:18:00.730 --> 0:18:04.729 incumbent president in his own running for renomination in his 0:18:04.730 --> 0:18:11.050 own party. President who had an unparalleled record of legislative accomplishments, 0:18:11.050 --> 0:18:14.729 including all of the legislation I listed that went to 0:18:14.770 --> 0:18:20.530 make up the Great Society, something had gone terribly, terribly wrong. 0:18:23.810 --> 0:18:27.770 Johnson was so rattled by this and by other forms 0:18:27.770 --> 0:18:31.689 of opposition that he made the choice in March of 0:18:31.690 --> 0:18:36.490 1968 that he would not run for re-election. Uh, how 0:18:36.490 --> 0:18:39.690 the mighty had fallen. He'd gone from the largest electoral 0:18:39.690 --> 0:18:46.610 margin in American history in the popular vote to deciding 0:18:46.609 --> 0:18:50.970 that he could not even contend for the renomination of 0:18:50.970 --> 0:18:55.410 his own party. And as if that weren't enough, there 0:18:55.410 --> 0:19:00.450 was another wave of violence and assassinations. Martin Luther King 0:19:00.609 --> 0:19:05.090 was assassinated in Memphis, where he'd come to organize a 0:19:05.090 --> 0:19:09.330 sanitary workers strike. This was shocking. So, too, was the 0:19:09.330 --> 0:19:13.450 shocking effect of a few months later, the assassination of 0:19:13.450 --> 0:19:18.490 Robert Kennedy, who had announced his candidacy for the Democratic 0:19:18.490 --> 0:19:22.050 nomination and seemed very likely in the end to to 0:19:22.090 --> 0:19:26.010 have gotten it. Had he lived. Uh, to to contend 0:19:26.010 --> 0:19:30.740 for it. Uh, so this wave of assassinations, of violence. 0:19:30.980 --> 0:19:36.540 The urban violence and all leading up to a real 0:19:36.540 --> 0:19:40.540 calamity for the Democratic Party. Their national convention in Chicago 0:19:40.540 --> 0:19:47.460 in 1968, in which Hubert Humphrey Johnson's vice president, was nominated, uh, 0:19:47.460 --> 0:19:51.820 for the the Office of Presidency. But his nomination was 0:19:51.820 --> 0:19:57.300 contested by youthful protesters who swarmed the streets of Chicago 0:19:57.300 --> 0:20:02.260 and created a riot, uh, clashing often with the Chicago police. 0:20:02.500 --> 0:20:05.460 And all of that, of course, was televised as well. 0:20:05.900 --> 0:20:12.340 And the chair declares that Vice President Hubert Humphrey is 0:20:12.340 --> 0:20:16.660 the Democratic president candidate of the United States. 0:20:55.420 --> 0:20:59.500 A debacle for the Democratic Party. It would have taken 0:20:59.500 --> 0:21:03.619 a miracle for Humphrey to be elected. Meanwhile, the Republicans 0:21:03.619 --> 0:21:08.740 had turned back to Richard Nixon. A new and improved 0:21:09.220 --> 0:21:13.500 Richard Nixon, tanned, rested and ready, as they said, uh, 0:21:13.940 --> 0:21:17.660 who had a fresh image and also offered something the 0:21:17.660 --> 0:21:22.820 nation very badly wanted, which was a honorable peace and 0:21:22.820 --> 0:21:27.660 withdrawal from Vietnam. He didn't want to present himself as 0:21:27.660 --> 0:21:31.220 a candidate who would turn tail and run. Peace with 0:21:31.220 --> 0:21:34.820 honor was his slogan, and it was a winning slogan 0:21:34.820 --> 0:21:38.659 for him. Um, he didn't win by an overwhelming margin, 0:21:38.660 --> 0:21:43.940 but he won the election easily. Um, and, uh, the, 0:21:44.500 --> 0:21:46.620 a certain portion of the vote went to the third 0:21:46.619 --> 0:21:50.899 party candidacy of George Wallace, who had attracted Democratic and 0:21:50.900 --> 0:21:55.780 Republican voters who were upset with the positions of the 0:21:55.780 --> 0:22:00.139 mainstream parties. So most of those voters would have almost 0:22:00.140 --> 0:22:02.580 certainly gone to Nixon if they had not had the 0:22:02.580 --> 0:22:09.460 Wallace alternative. So Richard Nixon becomes president after a time 0:22:09.460 --> 0:22:18.060 in the wilderness. All the presidents of the 20th century, 0:22:18.060 --> 0:22:21.820 Richard Nixon, is probably the hardest to assess, and the 0:22:21.820 --> 0:22:26.990 one about which opinion is still most unsettled. Uh, Nixon 0:22:26.990 --> 0:22:30.710 himself predicted that that would be the case. He is 0:22:30.750 --> 0:22:34.629 a lot like Truman in the sense that he left 0:22:34.630 --> 0:22:40.790 office reviled by many with very low approval ratings. Um, 0:22:41.270 --> 0:22:43.510 he's unlike Truman in other respects that I'll come to 0:22:43.550 --> 0:22:47.030 in a moment. Uh, like Johnson, he didn't have any 0:22:47.030 --> 0:22:51.550 of the charm or charisma of a figure like John 0:22:51.550 --> 0:22:56.270 Kennedy or FDR. Uh, and he suffered from it. He 0:22:56.270 --> 0:23:01.550 was an unloved leader who seemed almost uncomfortable in his 0:23:01.550 --> 0:23:05.149 own skin, uh, and who was made fun of for 0:23:05.150 --> 0:23:11.030 his rather odd lurching gestures, uh, and his awkwardness in the, 0:23:11.510 --> 0:23:17.110 in his speech patterns. But with the fullness of time, uh, 0:23:17.109 --> 0:23:19.590 we're able to see ways in which Nixon actually was 0:23:19.590 --> 0:23:23.350 a very effective president who, um, who deserves a A 0:23:23.350 --> 0:23:30.510 significant reappraisal. He was born in a lower class, lower 0:23:30.510 --> 0:23:35.550 middle class Quaker family in California, Southern California. His father 0:23:35.550 --> 0:23:40.629 was a grocer, struggled economically. Nixon had to work very 0:23:40.630 --> 0:23:44.310 hard as a young man, both going to school and 0:23:44.310 --> 0:23:46.350 getting up early in the morning to work in his 0:23:46.350 --> 0:23:51.750 father's grocery. And this hard school of experience for him 0:23:51.990 --> 0:23:56.909 fueled his ambition, his drive, and, truth to be told, 0:23:56.910 --> 0:24:00.310 his sense of resentment towards those who had it easier, 0:24:00.470 --> 0:24:05.709 who were more entitled. Conrad Black as his biographer, I 0:24:05.710 --> 0:24:09.869 think his best biographer says, even when he achieved positions 0:24:09.869 --> 0:24:13.990 too exalted for general attention to the less fortunate, his 0:24:13.990 --> 0:24:17.670 heart and his thoughts were always for those who had little, 0:24:17.790 --> 0:24:21.870 who struggled, who had been short changed, he identified with them. 0:24:22.390 --> 0:24:26.150 It's a little bit of Lyndon Johnson in that statement, too. 0:24:27.030 --> 0:24:31.310 Nixon went to law school at Duke, practiced law, served 0:24:31.310 --> 0:24:34.110 in the Navy during the Second World War, came back 0:24:34.109 --> 0:24:37.750 to California and got involved in politics, made a name 0:24:37.750 --> 0:24:44.189 for himself as a hardball anti-communist politician, rose through the 0:24:44.190 --> 0:24:47.710 ranks of the party. Eventually, of course, became the vice 0:24:47.710 --> 0:24:52.870 president under Eisenhower's two terms, but had a disappointing defeat 0:24:52.869 --> 0:24:55.870 in 1960 to Kennedy and then an even more disappointing 0:24:55.869 --> 0:25:01.590 defeat running for governor of California. It seemed after that defeat, 0:25:01.590 --> 0:25:04.510 that latter defeat, that his career was over. But in 0:25:04.510 --> 0:25:09.230 1968 he had come back. He had risen from the 0:25:09.230 --> 0:25:13.830 ashes and become the president of the United States, reached 0:25:13.830 --> 0:25:17.310 the pinnacle of his political ambition, but he had a 0:25:17.310 --> 0:25:21.840 very hard road ahead of him. He had to figure 0:25:21.840 --> 0:25:24.320 out a way to wind down the Vietnam War in 0:25:24.320 --> 0:25:29.360 an honorable way. He. The solution that he settled upon 0:25:29.359 --> 0:25:33.679 was the policy he called Vietnamization, which was to draw 0:25:33.720 --> 0:25:38.280 down forces in the same proportion that the United States 0:25:38.280 --> 0:25:42.920 was able to train South Vietnamese army members to take 0:25:42.920 --> 0:25:46.919 their places and. And it worked to that end. He. 0:25:47.560 --> 0:25:51.840 The the. There was a a systematic drawdown to the 0:25:51.840 --> 0:25:56.359 point that by the end of 1972, you know, just 0:25:56.359 --> 0:25:59.320 as he's finishing his first term, about to begin his 0:25:59.320 --> 0:26:03.000 second term, the total number of American personnel in Vietnam 0:26:03.000 --> 0:26:13.240 was fewer than 25,000. That's beginning with approximately 550,000 soldiers 0:26:13.240 --> 0:26:17.520 in Vietnam. So that's pretty, pretty amazing feat. And meanwhile, 0:26:17.520 --> 0:26:21.760 he achieved a settlement on the diplomatic front, which he 0:26:22.000 --> 0:26:25.960 addressed himself to with equal energy, with and with the 0:26:25.960 --> 0:26:33.440 help of his brilliant and suave German born secretary of State, 0:26:33.440 --> 0:26:36.560 started out as national security adviser, eventually became Secretary of 0:26:36.560 --> 0:26:45.280 State Henry Kissinger. Kissinger conducted secret meetings with the North Vietnamese. Eventually, 0:26:45.320 --> 0:26:51.480 these meetings became public. The Paris Peace Accords of 1973 0:26:52.920 --> 0:26:56.440 allowed the United States finally to withdraw its troops and 0:26:56.440 --> 0:27:00.760 to get back prisoners of war. It had some flaws, 0:27:00.800 --> 0:27:03.040 which I talk about a little in the book, but 0:27:03.040 --> 0:27:08.760 still it was. It represented Nixon's fundamental goal, the achievement 0:27:08.760 --> 0:27:13.040 of his fundamental goal. The last American combat troops left 0:27:13.040 --> 0:27:19.240 Vietnam in on March 29th, 1973. Kissinger and Le Duc 0:27:19.240 --> 0:27:23.760 to the North Vietnamese negotiator were awarded the 1973 Nobel 0:27:23.800 --> 0:27:28.920 Peace Prize for their efforts. The ceasefire, as I explained 0:27:28.920 --> 0:27:32.520 in the book, seemed unlikely to hold. But that was 0:27:32.520 --> 0:27:35.840 a problem for another day. But that was not all 0:27:35.880 --> 0:27:40.360 that Nixon was able to achieve diplomatically. He was a 0:27:41.000 --> 0:27:45.960 master diplomatist. He made a breakthrough that almost nobody else 0:27:45.960 --> 0:27:50.480 could have made, and that has been the consensus of 0:27:50.480 --> 0:27:54.520 even his most bitter enemies. He capitalized on the growing 0:27:54.560 --> 0:27:58.679 rift between the Soviet Union and China. The Sino-Soviet split, 0:27:58.680 --> 0:28:02.440 as it was called, and used that split to play 0:28:02.760 --> 0:28:08.880 his communist opposition off against one another. Nixon opened secret 0:28:08.920 --> 0:28:13.800 talks with the Chinese and then in 1971 made the 0:28:13.800 --> 0:28:18.720 stunning announcement that he would go to China himself and 0:28:18.720 --> 0:28:23.439 meet with Chinese officials. In the following February, this was 0:28:23.760 --> 0:28:27.760 a stunning announcement. Nixon was known to be and despised 0:28:27.760 --> 0:28:32.160 by many to be an ardent cold warrior, an ardent 0:28:32.160 --> 0:28:36.920 opponent of communism for Nixon of all people, to open 0:28:37.359 --> 0:28:41.800 relations with the Red Chinese, as the Chinese Communists were called, 0:28:41.840 --> 0:28:45.640 was was a stunning gesture, and he brought a whole 0:28:46.200 --> 0:28:50.520 battalion of press with him to record this highly choreographed 0:28:50.520 --> 0:28:56.640 but nevertheless very effective, path breaking event. And Nixon followed 0:28:56.640 --> 0:29:01.080 up by a similar visit to Moscow. Uh, having gotten 0:29:01.080 --> 0:29:05.800 the attention of the Russians, uh, about his improving relations 0:29:05.800 --> 0:29:10.680 with China, he used that as leverage to, to improve 0:29:10.720 --> 0:29:15.810 relations with the Russians. This grand playing off of communist 0:29:15.810 --> 0:29:20.930 enemies worked. Uh, it's rightly been said that only a 0:29:20.930 --> 0:29:26.170 president with Nixon's conservative credentials could have managed this. Uh, 0:29:26.410 --> 0:29:28.930 but there's more to it than that. There was a 0:29:28.970 --> 0:29:33.850 kind of diplomatic philosophy involved. Nixon and Kissinger were exponents 0:29:33.850 --> 0:29:39.050 of what's called realism in, uh, in political theory, foreign 0:29:39.050 --> 0:29:45.170 policy theory. And their position was involved some moving away 0:29:45.170 --> 0:29:50.210 from the containment doctrine and a reversal of Kennedy's exuberant, 0:29:50.490 --> 0:29:55.290 world spanning ambition, uh, in which he promised to pay 0:29:55.290 --> 0:30:00.010 any price, bear any burden, etc.. Nixon disagreed with that. 0:30:00.010 --> 0:30:03.370 The United States could not be the world's policeman. It 0:30:03.370 --> 0:30:06.370 could not, to quote him, undertake all the defense of 0:30:06.370 --> 0:30:11.530 the free nations of the world, the Nixon doctrine, which 0:30:11.570 --> 0:30:17.330 undertook a philosophy that explained Vietnamization and other aspects of 0:30:17.330 --> 0:30:21.370 his foreign policy, said the United States would continue to 0:30:21.370 --> 0:30:25.050 assist in the support of allied nations, but not to 0:30:25.090 --> 0:30:29.810 the extent of committing its own military forces. The deciding 0:30:29.810 --> 0:30:34.730 factor in any foreign policy decision was what was in 0:30:34.730 --> 0:30:39.450 the national interest of the United States. Our interests, he said, 0:30:39.490 --> 0:30:43.250 must shape our commitments rather than the other way around. 0:30:43.690 --> 0:30:46.650 So the effort to improve relations with the Soviet Union 0:30:46.650 --> 0:30:51.890 and China was not occasioned by an idealistic effort to 0:30:51.930 --> 0:30:55.890 achieve universal brotherhood. It flowed from that view, from a 0:30:55.890 --> 0:30:58.690 view of what was in the national interest. On the 0:30:58.690 --> 0:31:02.850 domestic front, Nixon was not nearly as effective. He had 0:31:02.850 --> 0:31:07.410 less of a settled philosophy. He often lurched from left 0:31:07.410 --> 0:31:12.450 to right in economic policy and in a period in which, 0:31:12.450 --> 0:31:17.450 because of oil shocks and other disturbances to the. The 0:31:17.490 --> 0:31:22.010 price system and the economy. He was founded very difficult 0:31:22.010 --> 0:31:27.130 to control inflation. Finally, in 1971, in an act of 0:31:27.130 --> 0:31:31.370 utter desperation, he abandoned the free market entirely and imposed 0:31:31.530 --> 0:31:34.610 wage and price controls on the economy, something he had 0:31:34.610 --> 0:31:37.290 previously vowed he would never do. And that was certainly 0:31:37.610 --> 0:31:42.170 beyond the pale for any conservative or any Republican for 0:31:42.210 --> 0:31:45.770 that matter. It didn't work. It didn't have the effect 0:31:46.250 --> 0:31:51.890 long term of of, of curbing inflation. In fact, the 0:31:51.890 --> 0:31:57.290 economy sank into what became known as stagflation, an ugly 0:31:57.290 --> 0:32:04.010 term for an ugly phenomenon. Economic stagnation accompanied by inflation. 0:32:04.050 --> 0:32:07.330 It had been thought by economists that you couldn't have 0:32:07.330 --> 0:32:11.100 the two things at once that that low economic growth 0:32:11.380 --> 0:32:15.620 and inflation were mutually inconsistent with one another. Well, Nixon 0:32:15.980 --> 0:32:18.820 showed them that it wasn't, and not that he meant to. 0:32:19.660 --> 0:32:25.260 So economic conditions were very poor in Nixon's administration. Um, 0:32:25.460 --> 0:32:27.980 and they didn't enjoy the same success on the domestic 0:32:27.980 --> 0:32:31.100 front that he did in foreign policy. However, when he 0:32:31.140 --> 0:32:37.540 came up for re-election in 1972, he won a resounding 0:32:37.580 --> 0:32:45.740 victory over George McGovern, the anti-war Democratic candidate, uh, gaining 60.8% 0:32:45.740 --> 0:32:50.740 of the popular vote, very nearly johnsonian margins. And in fact, 0:32:50.780 --> 0:32:54.020 he won by more in the Electoral College than Johnson 0:32:54.020 --> 0:32:58.900 had won by McGovern only got 17 electoral votes, compared 0:32:58.900 --> 0:33:04.940 to 520 for Nixon. Um, and the party realignment that 0:33:04.940 --> 0:33:09.260 I described a moment ago, uh, Clearly seem to be 0:33:09.260 --> 0:33:14.740 taking shape that the Sunbelt states, the southern states, deep 0:33:14.740 --> 0:33:19.860 South states that had gone for Goldwater were continuing in 0:33:19.860 --> 0:33:23.660 a Republican vein. So that that shift seemed to be 0:33:23.660 --> 0:33:28.860 becoming more permanent. Unfortunately for Nixon and for the country, 0:33:29.180 --> 0:33:33.580 his penchant for hardball politics got the better of him. 0:33:33.900 --> 0:33:39.380 And during the campaign, it was intimated by McGovern and 0:33:39.380 --> 0:33:44.180 others that Nixon's campaign had used dirty tricks, that is, 0:33:44.180 --> 0:33:49.620 planting a forged documents, allegations of adulteries and things like 0:33:49.620 --> 0:33:54.780 that to attributed to opponents as a way of discrediting them. 0:33:55.060 --> 0:33:58.500 This was mostly brushed off, but there was one incident 0:33:58.500 --> 0:34:03.020 that didn't go away. There was a break in at 0:34:03.020 --> 0:34:07.460 the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate office complex 0:34:07.460 --> 0:34:12.980 in Washington, and five men were caught using bugging devices 0:34:12.980 --> 0:34:18.340 to try to gain information from the Democratic National Committee headquarters. 0:34:18.620 --> 0:34:20.460 And it turned out that one of the men, one 0:34:20.460 --> 0:34:25.660 of the burglars, James McCord, had ties to Nixon's re-election campaign. 0:34:26.100 --> 0:34:29.500 And this led to a lengthy investigation that details of 0:34:29.500 --> 0:34:33.980 which we don't have time to go into, but revealing 0:34:34.219 --> 0:34:38.940 not just the very real possibility that high up people 0:34:38.940 --> 0:34:43.100 in the Nixon campaign were aware of these activities and 0:34:43.140 --> 0:34:46.900 were willing to pay hush money to cover up that knowledge, 0:34:46.940 --> 0:34:50.660 that that information, but that there might have been other, 0:34:50.660 --> 0:34:54.500 more disturbing abuses of power within the white House, including 0:34:54.500 --> 0:34:58.500 the use of federal agencies like the FBI, the CIA 0:34:58.540 --> 0:35:02.460 and so on, or the Internal Revenue Service to harass 0:35:02.460 --> 0:35:10.020 or derail political Opponents. In the course of the investigations, 0:35:10.020 --> 0:35:12.660 it came to light that the white House had used 0:35:12.660 --> 0:35:19.940 a taping system in which all the president's conversations, uh, with, uh, 0:35:19.940 --> 0:35:25.940 both in person communications and telephone communications had been recorded. 0:35:25.940 --> 0:35:31.300 And that the taping of this, these conversations was available. Um, 0:35:32.219 --> 0:35:36.219 a fight ensued in which the white House fought bitterly, uh, 0:35:36.219 --> 0:35:40.340 having to turn over the tapes eventually lost that fight. 0:35:40.340 --> 0:35:44.980 And rather than endure the humiliation of impeachment and removal 0:35:44.980 --> 0:35:49.460 from office, that seemed very likely to come. Nixon chose 0:35:49.460 --> 0:35:52.900 instead the path of resignation and resigned the office of 0:35:52.900 --> 0:35:58.460 the presidency on August 9th, 1974, the only American president 0:35:58.460 --> 0:36:00.219 so far to have done this. 0:36:00.660 --> 0:36:06.270 America needs a full time president and a full time Congress, 0:36:07.270 --> 0:36:10.549 particularly at this time with problems we face at home 0:36:10.550 --> 0:36:16.270 and abroad to continue to fight through the months ahead, 0:36:16.270 --> 0:36:21.830 for my personal vindication would almost totally absorb the time 0:36:21.830 --> 0:36:26.870 and attention of both the president and the Congress in 0:36:26.870 --> 0:36:31.150 a period when our entire focus should be on the 0:36:31.150 --> 0:36:37.989 great issues of peace abroad and prosperity without inflation at home. Therefore, 0:36:39.430 --> 0:36:44.390 I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow. Vice 0:36:44.390 --> 0:36:48.910 President Ford will be sworn in as president at that 0:36:48.910 --> 0:36:51.030 hour in this office. 0:36:52.710 --> 0:36:58.150 It was a very sad ending for a promising presidency. 0:36:58.510 --> 0:37:04.230 Nixon certainly had his detractors of the much of the press, 0:37:04.230 --> 0:37:08.310 the Washington Post and other major newspapers felt this way 0:37:08.310 --> 0:37:13.390 about him. Um, and, uh, it was occasion for reflection 0:37:13.390 --> 0:37:18.750 about what had become of the American presidency. Um, Arthur 0:37:18.750 --> 0:37:21.669 Schlesinger Jr, who had been an adviser to, to John 0:37:21.670 --> 0:37:25.589 F Kennedy and was hardly a neutral party, uh, nevertheless 0:37:25.590 --> 0:37:29.549 wrote a thoughtful book called The Imperial Presidency in which 0:37:29.550 --> 0:37:33.470 he argued this was actually published in 1973, before Nixon 0:37:33.469 --> 0:37:38.310 left office. But he argued the American presidency had exceeded 0:37:38.750 --> 0:37:41.910 the mandate that was set for it by the Constitution, 0:37:41.910 --> 0:37:45.310 by the framers of the Constitution. It was, uh, like 0:37:45.350 --> 0:37:50.549 a metastasizing cancer. And that, uh, it was important to 0:37:50.590 --> 0:37:58.550 rein in the presidency, restore the structure of constitutional democracy, and, um, uh, 0:37:58.670 --> 0:38:05.430 remove from, American presidents, the temptation to engage in global interventions, 0:38:05.430 --> 0:38:09.270 or what he called messianic globalism. This was, I think, 0:38:09.310 --> 0:38:12.150 in many ways a valid point, one that spoke to 0:38:12.190 --> 0:38:16.990 concerns of the moment. It actually spoke as much to 0:38:17.030 --> 0:38:20.110 the rhetoric of John F Kennedy, John F Kennedy's inaugural 0:38:20.110 --> 0:38:23.630 address as it did to Lyndon Johnson, and maybe less 0:38:23.630 --> 0:38:27.509 to Richard Nixon. But still, the point about the growth 0:38:27.510 --> 0:38:31.430 in the presidency was a a valid one. There was 0:38:31.430 --> 0:38:35.950 another school of thought that arose, not unrelated, but different. 0:38:36.950 --> 0:38:41.670 And that was that perhaps the presidency had become too 0:38:42.430 --> 0:38:48.310 daunting a task for any one man. Other observers worried 0:38:48.310 --> 0:38:55.710 that Nixon's resignation might have left the presidency permanently diminished 0:38:55.910 --> 0:38:59.920 in something like the way that the Andrew Johnson presidency 0:39:00.120 --> 0:39:04.680 had done so. There were worries on all sides about 0:39:04.680 --> 0:39:09.000 the future of the American presidency. Fortunately for the nation, 0:39:09.000 --> 0:39:13.560 his successor, his vice president, Gerald Ford, a former congressman 0:39:13.560 --> 0:39:16.920 from Michigan who had not been elected to the vice presidency, 0:39:18.480 --> 0:39:24.000 was a modest, humble, unassuming man, he said. I'm a Ford, 0:39:24.000 --> 0:39:30.160 not a Lincoln. And his demeanor did much to heal 0:39:30.200 --> 0:39:35.799 the country, to settle it down and to regain a 0:39:35.800 --> 0:39:39.719 sense of composure and optimism. However, there were things going 0:39:39.719 --> 0:39:47.000 on all around him that were grievous and depressing. With 0:39:47.000 --> 0:39:49.720 regard to their portents for the future of the country. 0:39:49.719 --> 0:39:53.320 Therefore, I feel it is my first duty to make 0:39:53.320 --> 0:40:00.520 an unprecedented compact with my countrymen. Not at an inaugural address. 0:40:01.160 --> 0:40:07.000 Not a fireside chat. Not a campaign speech. Just a 0:40:07.000 --> 0:40:11.960 little straight talk among friends. And I intended to be 0:40:11.960 --> 0:40:17.040 the first of many. I am acutely aware that you 0:40:17.040 --> 0:40:21.959 have not elected me as your president by your ballots. 0:40:23.680 --> 0:40:29.400 So I ask you to confirm me as your president 0:40:30.120 --> 0:40:34.400 with your prayers. And I hope that such prayers. 0:40:34.440 --> 0:40:38.280 One way that the price of Watergate ended up being 0:40:38.280 --> 0:40:42.919 paid was in the loss of South Vietnam. They. The 0:40:42.920 --> 0:40:48.880 Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress had swelled in 0:40:48.880 --> 0:40:53.400 response to the Watergate mess and. And to the continued 0:40:53.400 --> 0:40:58.840 stagflation Um. In the by elections of 1974, the Democrats 0:40:58.840 --> 0:41:02.960 picked up a whopping 49 seats, and they were in 0:41:03.040 --> 0:41:06.240 no mood to accommodate Republicans in the white House. Even 0:41:06.239 --> 0:41:10.920 nice guys like Gerald Ford and 1974, the South Vietnamese 0:41:10.920 --> 0:41:15.839 government was under intense attack from Communist forces desperately in 0:41:15.840 --> 0:41:19.799 need of American aid. But Congress refused to give the 0:41:19.800 --> 0:41:25.140 requested aid a request of 2.8 billion in fiscal 73 0:41:25.140 --> 0:41:31.040 to 300 million in 75. Once the aid had been cut, 0:41:31.360 --> 0:41:35.760 it took the North Vietnamese only 55 days to finish 0:41:35.760 --> 0:41:40.799 off the South Vietnamese and reunify the country under Communist rule. 0:41:40.800 --> 0:41:45.160 In other words, the Vietnam effort had failed completely and miserably, 0:41:45.160 --> 0:41:48.200 and at the same time, the US supported government in 0:41:48.200 --> 0:41:54.840 Cambodia was overthrown by communists and a particularly virulent Maoist 0:41:54.840 --> 0:42:00.040 influenced faction led by Pol Pot, which proceeded to massacre 0:42:00.080 --> 0:42:03.000 a million of its people in an effort to eliminate 0:42:03.000 --> 0:42:09.200 Western influences. The result was a a flood of refugees, 0:42:09.200 --> 0:42:14.120 many coming to the United States, leaving these devastated lands. 0:42:15.160 --> 0:42:18.560 It was a dark time for America's standing in the world, 0:42:18.560 --> 0:42:22.920 and American morale at home was at rock bottom. Um. 0:42:23.920 --> 0:42:30.120 The fall election of 1976 presented a somewhat more hopeful 0:42:31.200 --> 0:42:37.319 aspect coming out of these bitter disappointments. Uh, one candidate 0:42:37.320 --> 0:42:40.600 that caught the eye of many Americans and received the 0:42:40.600 --> 0:42:46.399 Democratic nomination was the former governor of Georgia, peanut farmer 0:42:46.800 --> 0:42:52.400 naval officer Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter was a man of simplicity. 0:42:52.930 --> 0:42:58.250 of evangelical faith, which he avowed quite openly. He was 0:42:58.250 --> 0:43:02.650 probably the most openly religious candidate since William Jennings Bryan, 0:43:03.730 --> 0:43:07.529 and he was a moderate, a liberal, really, on race, 0:43:07.850 --> 0:43:11.770 so that he could attract both white and black southern 0:43:11.770 --> 0:43:16.650 votes and maybe get those states back from the Republicans. 0:43:18.770 --> 0:43:23.290 Carter won the election. It was a close election, probably 0:43:23.290 --> 0:43:27.330 closer than Ford had any right to hope that it 0:43:27.330 --> 0:43:32.530 would be so. But a narrow victory for Carter and Carter, um, 0:43:32.650 --> 0:43:37.609 set out very self-consciously to repeal the Imperial presidency. He'd 0:43:37.650 --> 0:43:42.770 been affected by Schlesinger's book, although Schlesinger was a supporter 0:43:42.770 --> 0:43:46.569 of Carter, to put it mildly. Um Carter insisted on 0:43:46.570 --> 0:43:51.250 carrying his own luggage. He mimicked Thomas Jefferson, who walked 0:43:51.250 --> 0:43:54.930 up Pennsylvania Avenue after his inauguration to the white House. 0:43:54.930 --> 0:43:58.290 So did Carter. Holding hands with his wife, Rosalynn Carter. 0:43:59.330 --> 0:44:04.170 It was an immensely affecting gesture at the time, but 0:44:04.170 --> 0:44:08.410 over a period of time, Carter's penchant for gestures began 0:44:08.410 --> 0:44:12.969 to wear on the public, and large scale initiatives that 0:44:12.969 --> 0:44:18.690 weren't amenable to gesturing seemed to escape him. He took 0:44:18.690 --> 0:44:23.130 on the problem of energy policy, which was in the 70s. 0:44:23.250 --> 0:44:26.730 Job one on the domestic front for any American president. 0:44:27.010 --> 0:44:31.570 But he failed completely by trying to marshal the public 0:44:31.570 --> 0:44:35.810 to believe that his energy policy was, as he put it, 0:44:35.810 --> 0:44:40.169 the moral equivalent of war, a very tried and true 0:44:40.210 --> 0:44:47.810 Democratic Party trope. Um. Carter had failed utterly, in fact 0:44:47.930 --> 0:44:51.970 failed far worse than Nixon and Ford had in controlling inflation, 0:44:52.250 --> 0:44:56.770 which rose from an already high 5.2% when he took 0:44:56.770 --> 0:45:04.410 office to a terrifying 14.76% in March of 1980, the 0:45:04.410 --> 0:45:09.170 year he had to run for re-election. Unemployment was around 8%, 0:45:09.370 --> 0:45:14.530 but stayed stuck there without improving the combination of the two. 0:45:14.570 --> 0:45:20.650 Sometimes called the Misery Index, was at an all time high. Um, Carter. Uh, 0:45:20.770 --> 0:45:25.250 but Carter's final undoing came in foreign policy from Iran. 0:45:26.489 --> 0:45:33.450 The Iranians had resented American meddling in Iranian affairs, going 0:45:33.450 --> 0:45:37.770 all the way back to the 1950s. And when Jimmy 0:45:37.770 --> 0:45:41.850 Carter allowed the cancer ridden Shah of Iran, who was 0:45:41.969 --> 0:45:45.969 very much an ally of the United States, but, uh, 0:45:45.969 --> 0:45:49.540 roundly disliked by his people when he allowed him to 0:45:49.540 --> 0:45:54.660 come to the United States for medical treatment. This produced 0:45:54.700 --> 0:45:58.060 a galvanic reaction. The shock had already been deposed by 0:45:58.060 --> 0:46:05.180 a revolution led by Shiite Muslim clerics, and they orchestrated 0:46:05.380 --> 0:46:09.380 a response to this action of letting the Shah into 0:46:09.380 --> 0:46:12.859 the United States for medical treatment. The seizure of the 0:46:12.860 --> 0:46:17.299 United States Embassy. That was a gesture to. And it 0:46:17.300 --> 0:46:21.900 proved to be a gesture of long standing and hemorrhaging 0:46:22.260 --> 0:46:28.620 of impact on Carter. Day after day for 444 days, 0:46:29.580 --> 0:46:35.580 television crews filmed the American hostages in the embassy in 0:46:35.580 --> 0:46:42.060 Iran and harped on it. And with every Nightline television show, 0:46:43.340 --> 0:46:47.940 Carter's image. Carter's standing with the public dropped a little 0:46:47.980 --> 0:46:52.940 bit more, uh, a steady erosion of his credibility as 0:46:52.940 --> 0:46:56.020 a leader. He tried a number of things to turn 0:46:56.020 --> 0:47:00.580 the situation around. He tried economic sanctions. He tried, uh, 0:47:01.260 --> 0:47:06.460 military action, a commando raid, which failed miserably. Um, nothing 0:47:06.460 --> 0:47:08.940 seemed to work. And then, on top of everything else, 0:47:08.940 --> 0:47:15.940 in 1979, December, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Um, which 0:47:15.940 --> 0:47:21.380 was a slap in the face to Carter's accommodationist policies 0:47:21.380 --> 0:47:25.020 toward the Soviet Union. He had come into his administration 0:47:25.020 --> 0:47:30.060 indicating he would be much more soft and generous and 0:47:30.060 --> 0:47:34.180 dove like with the Soviets. And for this he gets 0:47:34.219 --> 0:47:38.779 the thanks of a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. So, um, 0:47:39.100 --> 0:47:45.060 all of these things led to a, well, a last 0:47:45.060 --> 0:47:49.700 minute turned toward hawkish policy on Carter's part, but it 0:47:49.700 --> 0:47:55.980 came too late. Speculation began to rise that maybe Carter 0:47:55.980 --> 0:47:59.420 was not up to the job. Maybe somebody else needed 0:47:59.420 --> 0:48:03.899 to be found. And political science began to think, well, 0:48:03.940 --> 0:48:06.540 maybe the problem was not Carter. Maybe the problem was 0:48:06.540 --> 0:48:12.140 the presidency itself. Maybe the presidency was an impossible office, 0:48:12.420 --> 0:48:15.299 or maybe we just had the wrong kinds of leaders. 0:48:15.780 --> 0:48:20.300 James MacGregor Burns, political scientist, wrote a book called leadership, 0:48:20.300 --> 0:48:24.340 which was clearly directed at the moment, at that moment 0:48:24.340 --> 0:48:29.860 of the 1970s and the flailing of American leadership as 0:48:30.140 --> 0:48:33.020 several successive leaders. Really, you could go all the way 0:48:33.020 --> 0:48:36.980 back to Kennedy. But certainly Johnson left office as a failure. 0:48:37.860 --> 0:48:41.140 Nixon left office as a failure. Ford left office as 0:48:41.140 --> 0:48:44.380 a failure. Carter was about to leave office as a failure. 0:48:44.780 --> 0:48:47.060 What had gone wrong that we had this series of 0:48:47.060 --> 0:48:52.060 failed presidencies, Burns said. The problem is we need a 0:48:52.340 --> 0:48:55.500 transformational leader. There are two kinds of presidents. There are 0:48:55.500 --> 0:48:59.540 transactional ones who work within the system, within the bounds 0:48:59.540 --> 0:49:05.420 of the available options, and transforming ones who create new options, 0:49:05.420 --> 0:49:10.140 who boldly go where no policy, at least recently, has 0:49:10.140 --> 0:49:13.500 gone before us. And he said it was time for 0:49:13.500 --> 0:49:17.299 transforming leader rather than another transactional leader. It was a 0:49:17.300 --> 0:49:23.020 call for a different kind of democratic politician, perhaps one 0:49:23.020 --> 0:49:26.819 in the vein of Franklin Roosevelt or the late Robert Kennedy. 0:49:27.540 --> 0:49:32.100 Burns actually got his wish, except that the the candidate 0:49:32.100 --> 0:49:36.339 in question was not a Democratic candidate. It would be 0:49:36.340 --> 0:49:41.259 the Republican Ronald Reagan. More about that in our next lecture. 0:49:41.260 --> 0:49:41.910 Thank you. 0:49:45.230 --> 0:49:47.870 Thank you for listening to this episode of the Hillsdale 0:49:47.870 --> 0:49:51.509 College Online Courses Podcast. If you want to continue learning, 0:49:51.510 --> 0:49:56.669 please visit hillsdale.edu/course. There you will find over 40 free 0:49:56.670 --> 0:50:01.910 online courses, including Ancient Christianity, the Genesis story, classic children's literature, 0:50:01.910 --> 0:50:05.950 and many more. The courses include additional readings, study guides, 0:50:05.950 --> 0:50:08.710 fully produced videos, and you can chat with your fellow 0:50:08.710 --> 0:50:11.989 students on a dedicated forum. Upon completing a course, you 0:50:11.989 --> 0:50:14.870 will also get a certificate. 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