1. Mr. Porter APUSH POWERPOINT CHAPTER 40
The 1980s and the Move Towards Conservatism

2. KEYS TO THE CHAPTER Supply Side Economics
Military Build-up (restart cold war / stars wars)
Reaganomics (contain gov’t welfare state)
Iran Contra Scandal
Mikhail Gorbachev (glasnost / perestrokia/ Yelstin)
Moral Majority
China (Tiananmen Square)
Bush 1 (Operation Desert Storm)

3. Reagan Denounced activist government
Championed “common man”
Worked to win over lower-middle-class whites Democrats by appealing to their sense of loss
Argued for free-market capitalism, less government regulation, and hard-line anti-Soviet position on foreign policy
Reassertion of traditional family values

4. Ronald Reagan

5. Carter: Gracious in defeat; Working for Habitat for Humanity and Nobel Prize

6. Changes in govt spending (1960 –80)
Federal budget went from primarily national defense to entitlement programs
Reagan is devoted to fiscal discipline and leaner federal government: end entitlement growth and spending
“Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.”

7. The Aftermath of Reagan’s Assassination 3/30/1981

8. Reagan’s tax cuts (supply side economics)
25% across-the-board reductions in 3 years
Reagan wins because of his skill on TV and the continued defection of the “boll weevils” (Southern Democrats)
1981 – Congress passed tax reforms
Lowered individual tax rates
Keeping budget under control and tax reduction would stimulate new investment

9. Theory of Supply-Side Economics

10. The Laffer Curve

11. 1981 – 1982 – deepest recession since 1930s but later in the 1980s economy will pick up
Unemployment reached 11% by 1982
Businesses folded; bank failures occurred
Automobile industry pummeled by Japanese
Democrats argue Reagan’s tax and spending cuts hurt poor and favored the rich

12. Reason for the economic upturn late 1980s was not tax cuts but large military spending
Put US deeply into debt
Massive government borrowing led to high interest rates
US transformed from world’s largest creditor to world’s largest debtor nation

13. Results of Increasing income inequality during the 1980s
Reversal of long-term trend toward more equitable distribution of income
Increasing squeeze on poor and middle class
Large deficits make future expansion of social welfare programs almost impossible (forced to shrink gov’t programs)

14. The National Debt

15. Trickle-Down Theory in Reality

16. Reagan Renews the Cold War
Reagan’s hard-line stance toward USSR
Expansion of military spending
Force USSR to spend lots of money to counter USA
Reagan believed in negotiating with USSR from position of overwhelming strength
SDI {Strategic Defense Initiative aka “Star Wars”}

17. Problems in Central America
1979 – Sandinistas overthrew dictator of Nicaragua
Reagan accused Sandinistas of allowing Soviet base to attack US & claimed Nicaragua shipping arms to revolutionaries in El Salvador
Secret aid (including the CIA mining harbors) to Nicaragua’s “contra” rebels (fighting the Sandinistas)
October 1983 – US forces sent to Grenada, where communist coup had taken over country

18. A Group of U.S. supported Contra Special Forces on Patrol In a Remote Area of Northern Nicaragua, 1983

19. Bringing Democracy to Nicaragua

20. The 1984 election Reagan easily won the Republican nomination
Riding high on prosperity and strong foreign policy
Walter Mondale won Democratic nomination
Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro (NY) – first woman to run for vice president on national ticket
Results
Reagan won big

21. March 1985 – USSR installed new chairman of Communist party, Mikhail Gorbachev
Announced 2 policies-lead to revolutionary changes
“Glasnost” – “openness”, introduction of free speech and political liberties in USSR
“Perestroika” – “restructuring” of economy by adopting some practices of capitalist West - like profit motive

22. Mikhail Gorbachev Summits with Reagan Changes USSR away from Communist doctrine

23. 2 major foreign policy problems – and Reagan finds a way to link them together
Continuing capture of US hostages by Muslim extremist groups in Lebanon
Continuing power of Sandinistas in Nicaragua
Reagan requested aid for contras, but US Congress refused

24. Linkage between hostages and Sandinistas
1985 – US secretly arranged arms sales to Iran
In return, Iran would help get US hostages held by terrorists
Money from payment of the arms was diverted to the contras
Violation of law banning on military aid to contras
Violation of Reagan’s repeated promise that he would never negotiate with terrorists
November 1986 – news of the secret Iran-contra deal broke (Reagan initially denies knowledge)

25. Reagan Admits on T.V. That Staff Traded Arms for Hostages with Iran and Funneled Profits to the Contras, March 1987

26. Religion and politics combined in favor of Republicans in 1980s
1979 – Reverend Jerry Falwell from Virginia founded the Moral Majority
Against sexual permissiveness, abortion, feminism, gay rights
“televangelists” used radio, direct-mail marketing, cable TV to reach huge audiences and raise millions
Swaggert; Robertson; Jim and Tammy Baker

28. Protest at the Capitol in Favor of School Prayer Organized by the Moral Majority, 1984

29. Courts were Reagan’s chief weapon in “culture wars”
Appointed almost 1/2 of all sitting judges
Named 3 Supreme Court justices including Sandra Day O’Conner
Court reduces impact of affirmative action
1992 – Planned Parenthood v. Casey
States could restrict access to abortion as long as it did not place an “undue burden” on the woman
But Bork nomination will fail in 1987

30. George H. Bush ----------- Defeats Dukakis in 1988 on Reagan’s record

31. Communism falls and democracy begins in former communist block nations
China
Spring 1989 – pro-democracy demonstrators marched into Tiananmen Square in Beijing
June 1989
Tanks rolled over demonstrators, machine-gunners killed hundreds
US and world condemned the attack
Bush insisted on keeping normal relations

32. A Sea of Student Protesters Gathers in Tiananmen Square on May 4, 1989, Demanding Greater Freedom of Speech and Democracy

33. Tank Man Blocks the Path of a Convoy Near Tiananmen Square

34. Former communist-controlled Eastern Europe falls in just a few months in 1989
August – Solidarity movement in Poland overthrew the communist government
Communist governments then fell in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and Romania
December 1989 – Berlin Wall torn down
October 1990 – 2 Germanys reunited

35. Changes in the USSR:
August 1991 – hard-line communists attempted coup of Gorbachev but failed
USSR dissolved into separate republics
Russia itself, led by Boris Yeltsin
Governments ended communism and began democratic and free-market reforms
December 1991 – Gorbachev resigned

36. Destruction in Panama after the US Invasion, 1989, to arrest President Manuel Noriega

37. The Persian Gulf Crisis
August 2, 1990 – Iraq invaded Kuwait
Needed Kuwait’s oil to pay its war bills (after fighting an 8-year war with Iran)
Larger plan was control over entire Middle East, to control world’s oil supply
US supplied Hussein with weapons and money during 1980s
US knew he was a brutal dictator but he also opposed Iran so we helped him

38. Feb.1991 – “Operation Desert Storm”
Land war in Iraq led by coalition forces through UN
Lasted 4 days – the “hundred hour war”
February 27, 1991 – Hussein accepted cease-fire and Kuwait was liberated
Saddam Hussein remained in power
Allies had agreed only to remove Iraq from Kuwait, not regime change

39. Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf Commander of Operation Desert Storm 1991

40. Bush and the “social issues”
Had promised “Kindler and Gentler Nation” but:
1990 – Bush’s Department of Education challenged scholarships targeted to minorities
promised to veto law that would make it easier to prove discrimination in hiring
nominated Clarence Thomas to Supreme Court & hearing will lead to Anita Hill revelations.

41. Problems for Bush lead to Clinton victory
“gender gap”
Women more critical of Republicans and joined Democrats
Economy
Weak performance and relatively high (7%) unemployment
Tax increase
1990 – Bush agreed to $133 billion in new taxes
Violated his 1988 campaign pledge: “Read my lips—no new taxes.”