1. TRUMAN
The ‘Fair Deal’ as a continuation of the legacy of the New Deal
21 Point Program
Full Employment
Expand Social Security:
improve unemployment insurance
create health insurance plan
Increase hourly minimum wage to 75 cents
Slum clearance & public housing
Aid to education
Expand public works projects
G.I. Bill – assistance to veterans
Desegregation of the armed forces

2. EISENHOWER Moderate Republican
‘What’s good for the country is good for general Motors and vice versa.’
Maintained social welfare policies of the New Deal:
Federal aid to housing & education & the disabled
Minimum wage increased to $1
Civil Rights: 1957 Little Rock Central High School
Civil Rights Commission
Interstate Highway Act $25 billion in federal spending
NASA 1958
Removed wage & price controls
Opposed national health insurance program
Reduced federal spending: $1 billion budget surplus

3. KENNEDY ‘NEW FRONTIER’ Lacks leadership on Civil Rights
Apollo space program
Peace Corps
Limited expansion of unemployment benefits
Raised minimum wage to $1.25
Proposed medical insurance for the poor & elderly,
Federal aid to education & housing
Blocked by Republicans & conservative/southern Democrats
Lacks leadership on Civil Rights
Cold War issues – Berlin & Cuba (Bay of Pigs & Missile Crisis)
preoccupy presidency

4. JOHNSON ‘GREAT SOCIETY’ War on Poverty Civil Rights
Office of Economic Opportunity
Education
Employment
Housing
Health Care
Community Action
Civil Rights Act 1964
Voting Rights Act 1965
Preoccupation with escalating
Vietnam War
Social Security expanded
Medicare (old)
Medicaid (poor)
$11 billion tax cut
Federal budget deficit

5. NIXON ‘law and order’ The ‘Silent Majority’ ‘New Federalism’ WATERGATE
Reduced spending on
anti-poverty programs
Abolished OEO
‘New Federalism’
‘law and order’
The ‘Silent Majority’
WATERGATE
Wage & Price Freeze in
Response to ‘stagflation’
(inflation & recession)
Nixon resigns & pardoned by Ford
Opposed Supreme Court decisions
outlawing school prayer and
legalizing abortion
EPA Environmental Protection Agency
OSHA Occupational Safety & Health
Civil Rights: Affirmative Action
programs expanded

6. CARTER
Washington ‘outsider’ – former governor of Georgia

7. Carter in Kentucky in 1979

9. Carter’s Energy Policy
Carter focused on economy (recession & unemployment)
But policies to cut taxes, increase spending and raise interest rates
led to inflation due to high energy prices
(1974 & 1979 OPEC raises oil prices)
Carter’s Energy Policy --
Reduce the annual growth rate in energy demand to less than two percent.
--Reduce gasoline consumption by ten percent below its current level.
--Cut in half the portion of United States oil which is imported, from a potential level of 16 million barrels to 6 million barrels a day.
--Establish a strategic petroleum reserve of one billion barrels, more than six months' supply.
--Increase our coal production by about two thirds to more than 1 billion tons a year.
--Insulate 90 percent of American homes and all new buildings.
--Use solar energy in more than two and one-half million houses.

11. Social Trends in the 1970s and 80s
Conservative shift
Rise of New Right/Growth of the Sunbelt
1978 California Proposition 13 tax revolt
Attack on New Deal – style programs
The Moral Majority
Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson

12. REAGAN Free-market supply-side economics
Tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations
Deregulation of environmental laws
Neo-conservatives
populism & ‘culture wars’
war on drugs
‘Government isn’t the solution; it’s the problem’
Economic & Fiscal problems:
First term: high unemployment & inflation
Huge budget deficits due to 40% increase in
military spending and 25% in tax revenue
Huge cuts in domestic social welfare programs

13. BUSH *Only one term of office 1988-92
*Former US ambassador to the UN and
*Director of the CIA in the 1970s
*Reagan’s Vice-President
*Conservative domestic policies:
Supreme Court appointments
increased military spending
Economic problems: national debt, budget deficit, recession
rising unemployment, spending cuts & gov’t layoffs & tax rise
In spite of « no new taxes, read my lips » campaign promise
Preoccupied with Foreign Policy:
End of the Cold War/ »New World Order »
Reunification of Germany
Invasion of Panama Dec Jan 1990
Middle East: Persian Gulf War

14. CLINTON
Centrist New Democrat
« era of big
government is over »
Reduction of federal budget deficits by $500 billion
(mid 1990s economic boom – 1993 NAFTA)
1994 Republicans gain majority in Congress
« Contract with America »
A conservative agenda to resume Reagan revolution:
Balanced budget Amendment to Constitution
Tax cuuts
Reduce welfare & other social programs
Reduce gov’t regulations of industry, stock market, environment
Tough on crime
1998 Monica Lewinsky sex scandal leads to impeachment