U.S. History II:
Chapter 30: Nixon, Ford, Carter Administrations

Nixon entered the White House in 1969 to find a nation more divided than at any time since the Civil War. For a time, the space race united the country as Americans spellbindingly watched Neil Armstrong step onto the moon on 20 July 1969. The first meal served on the moon was Holy Communion between Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin. Americans would return to the moon again 5 times, including the final moon mission (Apollo 17) in December 1972.

Back home, however, the Vietnam War continued to divide America. The anti-war movement sought an immediate withdrawal, but, like Johnson, Nixon did not want to be the first American President to lose a war.

In July 1969, Nixon first proposed the policy known as “Vietnamization.” This policy would call for American troops to be replaced by South Vietnamese (ARVN) forces as the U.S. pulled soldiers from South Vietnam. Meanwhile, Nixon intended to negotiate a peace with North Vietnam that would insure South Vietnam’s security. While the U.S. would not replace ground troops, the Air Force would continue to support the ARVN in the air.

While Nixon was pulling troops from Vietnam, he was sending troops into Cambodia to destroy North Vietnamese bases there. The anti-war factions furiously responded with demonstrations around the nation. On 4 May 1970, a demonstration on the campus of Kent State University in Ohio turned deadly. Demonstrators surrounded a group of National Guardsmen brought in after students burned the ROTC building. The trapped Guardsmen opened fire, killing 4 and wounding 9. When students revolted nationwide in protest of the killings, many Americans fed up with student protests attacked the students in return. Nixon actually met with the leader of a New York construction workers’ union and congratulated him when his men roughed up anti-war demonstrators in New York City. However, Nixon also met with protesters in secret after the killings, attending a vigil at the Lincoln Memorial accompanied only by his valet.

The news from Vietnam continued to worsen. In November 1969, an American lieutenant, William Calley, was indicted for a massacre at the Vietnamese village of Mylai in March 1968. Many Americans saw Calley as a scapegoat for a war in which it was impossible to tell friend from foe. Calley was convicted, but he was paroled in 1974.

Then, in June 1971, the New York Times broke a story about Vietnam by publishing secret documents about American involvement in Vietnam. The report was first commissioned in 1967 and dealt mainly with Johnson’s administration, but Nixon was furious at the leak. The Time printed 7,000 pages in serial form of the report. The intelligence officer who leaked the report, Daniel Ellsburg, became a hero when the White House turned to the Supreme Court to stop the publication. The Court refused on the grounds of First Amendment rights.

Nixon obsessed about leaks. He created a group of aides known as the “Plumbers” to stop leaks of classified information, especially regarding a program of secret bombings of Cambodian territory. The Plumbers began their mission by burglarizing the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist to gain information about Ellsburg. The Plumbers would become Nixon’s worst nightmare.Civil Rights beyond King

The success of the civil rights movement inspired other groups to demand “rights” as well. Feminists rallied on 26 August 1970 to mark the 50th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment. In 1969, numerous male-only colleges across the nation were forced to admit women, including many Ivy League schools. In 1972, feminists supported the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, which stated that “equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” To date, the ERA has not been ratified.

The feminist movement won a huge victory in 1973 when the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade that state laws outlawing abortion violated the “right to privacy” in the Fourteenth Amendment. Legal scholars continue to debate this “right” today, 30 years later.

Other groups also began lobbying for equal rights. Homosexuals began “coming out” after the Stonewall riot in Manhattan in 1969. Mexican Americans pushed for programs in Chicano Studies (with no idea where someone majoring in these programs would work). Indians took over Alcatraz and offered to sell it to the government for “$24 in glass beads and red cloth.”

The original civil rights struggle wasn’t quite over. By 1970, most southern schools were still segregated. The Supreme Court, now led by William Burger after Warren’s retirement, ruled in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971) that bussing children between neighborhoods to achieve racial integration was constitutional. Federal courts began implementing forced bussing across the nation, often to violent reaction in places like Boston.

Nixon cared little about domestic policy, preferring to court leaders on the world stage. He was forced to confront issues with Johnson’s Great Society, especially welfare reform. The president’s advisor, Daniel Patrick Moynihan had written a report warning that without welfare reform, black families in the U.S. threatened to lose ground economically even as they gained political rights. Unfortunately, Nixon’s reform plan faced stiff opposition from liberals worried about losing jobs and conservatives opposing guaranteed annual income for welfare recipients.

The Environment

Nixon’s presidency witnessed the birth of the modern environmental movement on 22 April 1970, the first Earth Day celebrated in the U.S. The administration supported congressional efforts to create the Environmental Protection Agency, the Clean Air Act of 1970, and the Endangered Species Act of 1973. These acts were popular with environmentalists but massively unpopular with people adversely affected in the loss of jobs as the acts were put in to place. Eventually the EPA backed off some measures in the face of labor unions and businesses.

Foreign Policy

As previously stated, Nixon preferred foreign policy to domestic issues. Nixon faced the challenge of interacting with Communist heads of state when he had been an active anti-Communist fighter in the 1950’s.

For this reason, Nixon stunned the world by visiting Communist China in February 1972. The saying, “Only Nixon could go to China” became a popular way of expressing that the unlikeliest hero could accomplish great things. Nixon met with Mao Zedong and signed the Shanghai Communique´ that began the process of establishing diplomatic relations.

Nixon nexxt met with Leionid Brezhnev of the Soviet Union. Nixon saw Russian cooperation as essential for the American pullout from Vietnam. The Moscow Summit led to the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) limiting the numbers of ICBM’s of the 2 nations. The Summit also led to the first ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) Treaty.

On the other hand, Nixon also signed economic agreements with the Soviets. Americans were unhappy as American grain went to the USSR while bread prices rose at home. Farmers, however, were elated.

The 1972 Election

Nixon entered the 1972 election season with a large measure of popularity with the nation. The Democrats, on the other hand, were in disarray as they reached out to every group clamoring for recognition. George Wallace ran again, this time as a Democrat pulling conservative voters in the Party. Wallace, however, was eliminated from the race on 15 May 1972 when he was shot by Arthur Bremer in Laurel, Maryland. Wallace survived the attack but never attempted another presidential run.

On 17 June 1972, a group of burglars broke into the Democratic National Headquarters in the Watergate Building in Washington. Four of the men had once worked for the CIA, and they were led by James McCord, the security director for Nixon’s Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP for short). Two other presidential aides, G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt, were also arrested. Nixon assured the nation he was not involved in the incident.

The Democrats went on to nominate George McGovern for president and Thomas Eagleton for vice-president. However, news broke that Eagleton had suffered mental problems, and while McGovern supported him at first, he later dropped Eagleton and replaced him with Sargent Shriver.

In the end, McGovern’s running mate was irrelevant. The Democratic platform was so far to the left due to the influence of liberal interest groups that their ticket had no chance of winning. Nixon carried every state but Massachusetts. The Democrats, however, retained control of Congress. Even worse, the percentage of eligible voters who voted in the election was only 56%.

Vietnam

Nixon continued to work to end the Vietnam crisis. In early 1972, the North Vietnamese had invaded the South with an army with more armor than the German Wehrmacht had at the battle of Kursk in 1943. The ARVN, backed with American B-52 bombers, destroyed the army. Of the 150,000 Communist troops who invaded, only 20,000 made it home and with none of their equipment. The U.S. suffered only 400 casualties that year.

Nixon’s chief foreign policy advisor, Henry Kissenger, had negotiated a temporary cease-fire in the fall of 1972. South Vietnamese president Thieu opposed the cease-fire because it allowed North Vietnamese troops still in the South to remain there.

After his election, Nixon ordered a furious bombing of North Vietnam in response to the attack. In December 1972, B-52’s dropped more bombs than all American planes had dropped on North Vietnam in the previous 2 years. However, the U.S. lost 15 planes in the bombing. The Russians did not protest, even when one of their ships was hit in Haiphong harbor. Instead, the Russians sent the Communists back to the negotiations. The superpowers were both tired of Southeast Asia.

On 27 January 1973, the U.S. and North Vietnam signed a peace treaty in Paris. North Vietnamese troops were left in place in South Vietnam, but the U.S. promised Thieu to “respond in full force” in case of a North Vietnamese attack. The U.S. had achieved, in Nixon’s words, “peace with honor.”

Note: The U.S. achieved more than “peace with honor.” While the U.S. suffered militarily and economically from the war, so did the Soviet Union. Every truck blown up in Vietnam was a truck the Soviets couldn’t use at home. The Vietnam War indirectly led to the Soviet collapse of 1991.

Watergate

Nixon’s problems with Vietnam were over, but his problems at home were only beginning. In April 1973, the Watergate burglars pleaded guilty to reduced charges. Smelling a problem, federal judge John Sirica talked the lead burglar, James McCord, into admitting how high the conspiracy went in the White House. McCord’s confession combined with stories by Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward to shock the nation at White House complicity in burglarizing the DNC headquarters.

Nixon finally appointed an independent prosecutor, Harvard professor Archibald Cox, to investigate the case. The Senate formed its own committee, chaired by Sam Ervin of North Carolina. Former White House Counsel John Dean implicated Nixon in a plan to pay the burglars in return for their silence. Nixon continued to deny involvement.

In July 1973, White House aide Alexander Butterfield revealed to the Ervin Committee that Nixon had secretly taped his conversations since 1971. Judge Sirica, Special Prosecturo Cox, and Chairman Ervin all began demanding the tapes. Nixon refused to turn them over, citing executive privilege. Cox’ insistence led Nixon to order Attorney General Elliott Richardson to fire him. Richardson refused, so Nixon fired him and ordered his deputy and replacement, William Ruckelshaus, to fire Cox. Ruckelshaus refused, so Nixon fired him and ordered his replacement, Solicitor General Robert Bork, to fire Cox. Bork complied and fired Cox. The firings of 20 October 1973 became known as the “Saturday night massacre.”

Meanwhile, Vice-President Spiro Agnew faced troubles of his own. In 1973, a grand jury in Baltimore indicted Agnew for illegal payoffs from building contractors while he was governor of Maryland. Agnew was forced to resign; he pleaded no contest to a count of income tax evasion and was sentenced to 3 years’ probation and a $10,000 fine. Nixon chose House Minority Leader Gerald Ford to replace Agnew; Ford was confirmed by the Congress.

When it seemed things couldn’t get worse for Nixon, they did. Nixon was accused by the IRS of owing more than $500,000 in back taxes. Nixon responded to a press conference, “I am not a crook.”

Nixon was desperate by this time. Public opinion had plummeted, and he had lost the confidence of the nation. Nixon released transcripts of several tapes, but the transcripts damaged Nixon as badly as the tapes would have done. The transcripts showed the nation a vulgar-talking man who used racial slurs on a regular basis. Evern worse, it seemed the transcripts hinted at a coverup of Watergate.

In July 1974, the House Judiciary Committee debated charges of impeachment against Nixon. The committee approved 3 charges: obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress. At the same time, the Supreme Court ordered Nixon to turn over the tapes to Judge Sirica. Nixon released the tapes on 5 August 1974. The tapes revealed that Nixon had not helped plan Watergate, but he certainly helped cover White House involvement.

Richard Nixon resigned on 9 August 1974. Gerald Ford, the only man never elected to the presidency, took office.

Gerald Ford

President Ford told the nation, “"I am acutely aware that you have not elected me as your President by your ballots, and so I ask you to confirm me as your President with your prayers.”

Ford faced major issues. The 1973 Arab-Israeli War had threatened to engulf the world when Nixon put the entire Armed Forces on alert in case the Soviets entered the war on the side of the Arabs. The U.S. supported Israel by sending military supplies. The Israelis beat both the Syrians and Egyptians in the war.

U.S. support of Israel led OPEC — which was dominated by Arab countries — to slap an oil embargo on the U.S. Gas prices doubled, heating oil was scarce in the winter of 1973, and gas stations were closed on Sundays.

Even though the embargo ended in April 1974, the impact continued. As energy costs rose, inflation attacked the economy. Auto makers in Detroit were stymied as Americans turned from “gas guzzlers” to smaller imported cars from Japan. The Japanese imports were smaller, but they also used less gas with greater gas efficiency.

The nation faced a huge crisis of confidence. For the first time in 30 years, average weekly earning in the U.S. stopped growing. Worker productivity dropped. New York City faced bankruptcy; Ford refused to offer federal loans to the city. The New York Daily News reported this with the headline: “Ford to City: Drop Dead.”

In 1975, Ford faced 2 assassination attempts. In the first, on 5 September, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme tried to shoot Ford with a pistol; it jammed. On 22 September, Sara Jane Moore tried to shoot Ford in San Francisco.

In the midst of all this, Ford actually held great public confidence until 8 September 1974, when he pardoned Nixon for all crimes he “may have committed” in his time in the White House. The pardon came in spite of Ford’s opposition to a pardon he had stated in his vice-presidential confirmation hearing. Ford said he wanted to end the “national nightmare” of Watergate, but the nation felt he had pardoned a criminal.

In March 1975, the North Vietnamese launched a furious assault on South Vietnam. Unlike the 1972 assault, the U.S. did not back up the ARVN; instead, Congress voted enough funds for each ARVN soldier to receive 20 rounds of ammo and 2 grenades. On 29 April, Saigon, the South Vietnamese capital, fell. On 23 April, Ford announced that the Vietnam War was “finished as far as America is concerned.”

Vietnam continues to haunt the U.S. in every conflict we face.

1976 Elections

Ford lost much of the public support he had held when he first entered the White House. (In fact, Ford had never even moved into the Vice-Presidential home before moving to the White House. There wasn’t time). The economy didn’t help the situation. Ford proposed cutting government programs to balance the budget, the Democratic-controlled Congress disagreed. Ford vetoed more than 60 bills in his tenure, but the Congress overrode the vetoes to raise the minimum wage, fund public works, and increase social security benefits.

Ford was also attacked by conservatives in the GOP for his foreign policy efforts. Ford signed the Helsinki Accords in 1975 pledging the U.S. and USSR to recognize Cold War boundaries between Eastern and Western Europe and to respect human rights in those borders. The conservatives, led by California Governor Ronald Reagan, blasted Ford for selling out Poland and other East European nations to Russian domination. Furthermore, the conservatives derided the idea of Russia recognizing human rights.

Ford’s best effort at foreign policy led to another disaster. Communists in Cambodia seized the U.S. ship Mayaguez and its crew on 12 May 1975. Ford ordered the Marines to rescue the ship. 41 Marines died and 49 were wounded, only to discover the Cambodians had already released the ship. In spite of the deaths, Ford received great applause for the attack, simply because it showed the U.S. would still fight when necessary.

As the elections drew near, Ford faced intense opposition from Reagan. Reagan especially attacked Ford for negotiating with Panama to turn the Panama Canal over to the Panamanians. As Reagan put it, “We built it, we paid for it, it’s ours, and we should tell [Panama] that we are going to keep it.”

Reagan battled Ford all the way to the convention, but Ford won the nomination. He chose Kansas senator Robert Dole as his running mate. Dole appealed to the conservative vote.

The Democrats had numerous candidates, but they chose James Carter from Georgia. Carter was an Annapolis graduate, former Navy officer, and a peanut farmer turned politician. Carter chose Minnesota Senator Walter Mondale as his running mate.

In the debates that followed, Ford made numerous gaffes. The most famous mistake was Ford’s declaration that “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration.” Ford later said he did not “believe that the Poles consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union.” (He forgot to ask the Poles).

Ford’s troubles also included physical comedy. Ford famously bumped his head on a car door, tripped getting off a plane, and hit spectators with a golf shot at least once. Comedian Chevy Chase regularly began Saturday Night Live with a skit about Ford’s latest accident.

In the end, Ford stood no chance of winning. Anti-Washington fervor propelled Jimmy Carter into the White House in a close race. Carter swept the South for the Democrats. Carter also became the first president from the Deep South since 1848.

The Carter Presidency

Carter brought a new dimension to foreign policy: The advancement of human rights. Containment had formed the cornerstone of American foreign affairs since the 1940’s. At times, the American government had supported anti-Communist regimes in spite of their miserable human rights records. Carter chose to change this.

Carter appointed several foreign policy advisors, most of which gave him conflicting advice. For his U.N. ambassador, Carter chose civil rights leader Andrew Young; for his secretary of state, Carter chose Cyrus Vance, a veteran diplomat; and for his national security advisor, Carter chose Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Polish immigrant who was virulently anti-Soviet. This team did not mesh well.

Carter ended supported for the Samoza regime in Nicaragua, allowing the Sandanista National Liberation Front to take control of the nation. The Sandanistas thanked Carter by signing military alliances with the USSR and Cuba. Carter also pushed 2 treaties through the Senate giving the Panama Canal to Panama; both passed by a single vote. Carter protested when Marxist Robert Mugabe was refused permission to run for the presidency of Zimbabwe; Mugabe later became the president and extended his term to the present day.

Carter finalized diplomatic relations with China and cut off official recognition to Taiwan in the process. Taiwan lost its seat in the UN.

Carter also negotiated a new treaty with the USSR, the SALT II treaty. Six months later, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. In response, Carter boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games, slapped a grain embargo on the Soviets (infuriating the farmers), and reinstated draft registration for American males. SALT II was never ratified by the Senate.

When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, Brzezinski initiated an insurgency program using Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan and Pakistan to fight the Soviets. The program succeeded, leading the Soviets to invest heavily in a campaign they could ill afford.

Carter’s one foreign policy success came in September 1978, when Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin met at Camp David at Carter’s invitation. For 2 weeks, Carter walked between cabins of the 2 leaders to negotiate a peace accord between the 2 nations. The Camp David Accords led to Egyptian recognition of Israel (the first Arab state to do so) and an Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula.

Domestically, the economic situation continued to deteriorate. Carter wanted to stimulate the economy much as FDR had done, with public works projects and tax cuts. Carter and the Congress also raised the minimum wage to $3.35 an hour. While unemployment dropped, the inflation rate hit 10% and continued upward.

Carter then tried to fight inflation by tightening the money supply by raising interest rates and by controlling the federal deficit. Paul Volker, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, was forced to increase the prime rate to 21.5% in December 1980. Unemployment rose as a result as businesses tightened their investments. The energy crisis continued to drag on the economy. Carter offered a plan to combat America’s energy dependence on foreign oil in 1977, but the plan rested almost solely on conservation. As one Texas oil man put it, “This country didn’t conserve its way to greatness. It produced its way to greatness.” Carter installed solar panels on the White House roof and installed a wood stove in the living quarters.

Carter tried to attack the “crisis of confidence” the nation experienced in the decade with a speech in July 1979, but the speech was long on indictment (self-indulgence and consumption) and short on fixes. The nation continued to drop.

Carter’s worst disaster came in foreign policy. In 1979, the Shah of Iran, a staunch American ally, was deposed by the Ayatollah Khomeini, an Islamic Shiite fundamentalist. Unlike Eisenhower, Carter did not intervene on the Shah’s behalf. Khomeini cut off oil exports to the “Great Satan,” the United State. The Shah sought medical treatment in the U.S. later that year. In response, Iranian students overran the U.S. embassy and took 100 Americans captive on 4 November 1979. The students demanded the return of the Shah for trial before they would free the Americans.

The nation supported Carter at first, but when he dithered about winning release of the hostages, the nation became repulsed at his inaction. Carter at first refused to consider a military option, choosing to bargain instead. The U.S. froze $8 billion in Iranian assets in U.S. banks. The nightly news carried pictures from Iran of demonstrators protesting outside our embassy. Finally, Carter approved a rescue plan, but the White House tried to run the operation from Washington. On 24-25 April 1979, in the Iranian desert, American commandos on Operation Eagleclaw were forced to call off the rescue when 2 helicopters were disabled by mechanical problems and another helicopter hit a cargo plane, killing some of the commandos. News programs showed Iranians displaying the bodies in the streets. Carter’s presidency was finished.

In 1980, Carter faced a conservative revolt in the nation. Ronald Wilson Reagan was nominated by the GOP in 1980. Reagan would win the election in a landslide.