Chapter 32: Making New Choices, 1992-1999

1. An Anxious Society Grows More Confident
   1. The Revitalized Economy
      1. By the 1970s, the American economy was still growing but at a slower rate.
         1. The causes were varied and most were beyond the direct control of the people and the government.
      2. The end of the Cold War and the shift toward an informational industry had significant economic and social impact for many areas of the country.
         1. Regions that depended on industry saw the closing and moving of plants, loss of jobs, and an economic crunch.
      3. Since the early 1990s, however, workers have been the beneficiaries of a largely successful transition to an information and service economy.
         1. The economy grew at an annual rate of about 3 percent between 1992 and 1998.
      4. During the 1990s, the American economy became the envy of the world, combining low interest, unemployment, and inflation rates.
         1. Rising wages reflected the trend toward full employment.
      5. The stock market brought unprecedented returns to investors in the 1990s.
         1. A broad spectrum of the American public benefited.
         2. One distressing outcome of this trend, however, was a decline in the savings rate.
   2. The Familiar Face of Poverty
      1. For those at the bottom of America’s economic ladder, the slowing and restructuring of the economy deepened existing problems.
         1. Minorities faced problems resulting from a stagnant and shifting economy, which deepened poverty and heightened racial and ethnic tensions during the 1970s and 1980s.
      2. Also noticeable among the statistics of impoverished Americans was the number of households headed by women and the number of single mothers.
         1. Contributing to what some have described as the "feminization of poverty" was the continuing gap between men’s income and women’s income.
   3. The Urban Crisis and Racial Tensions
      1. For some urban youths, one way to escape poverty and a feeling of isolation and to quickly gain riches and power was to join a gang and turn to crime, especially drug selling.
         1. Frustrated by shrinking resources, policy and community groups became less and less effective against the growing crime and violence.
      2. One-fourth of all urban school districts had installed metal detectors by 1991.
      3. The 1991 Rodney King affair and the 1994-1995 O.J. Simpson trial illustrated these racial tensions.
         1. Despite these events, urban environments improved substantially during the 1990s.
         2. Safer cities reflected more opportunities, increased presence of policy and tougher crime legislation.
2. The Politics of Morality
   1. Changing Values
      1. At the center of the value dispute were long-standing issues, such as the place in American society of women and racial and ethnic minorities, and newer concerns about the structure and nature of personal relationships.
      2. The sexual revolution had been brought about by the baby boomers as they reached college age and young adulthood in the 1960s.
         1. Marriage, though still the norm, had lost some of its importance as many people chose to remain single well into their twenties and tended to have fewer children.
         2. By the 1970s, divorce rates were increasing, and, by the end of the 1980s, 50 percent of all those who married eventually divorced.
         3. Keeping pace with society’s openness about sex, industry and advertising agencies found new and more explicit ways to use sexuality in their products and ads, especially those aimed at singles and "liberated" people.
         4. By the 1980s, sexual content and eroticism had become standard fare in movies and television; the two appeared in combination in the new medium of cable television.
         5. During the day, sex and sex-related issues became more daring and numerous on the soaps, and talk show hosts probed their guests for intimate details about their sex lives.
         6. By the 1990s, records, movies, and television all offered rating systems indicating the level of sex and violence in their content.
         7. In 1997, however, the Supreme Court ruled in Reno v. ACLUthat efforts to ban sexually offensive material from the Internet were unconstitutional
   2. Women and Changing Values
      1. For many women, especially upper-middle-class women, Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystiquehad opened the door to a new self-awareness, and this eventually turned into a full attack on sexism in American society and culture.
         1. Unprecedented numbers of women were working, and many were angered by the gap between their abilities and earnings and by the treatment they received on the job.
         2. Responding to the experiences and demands of women both at home and at work, the women’s movement began to emphasize not only equality of jobs, wages, and opportunities, but also modifications in the culture of gender throughout American society.
         3. Many states responded to the changing social values and to pressure from women’s groups and modified laws to reduce or eliminate gender discrimination within the law and the marketplace.
         4. Some states even liberalized their abortion laws to allow women to seek legal abortions.
      2. In 1972, the Equal Rights Amendment was proposed, but it was still three votes short of ratification in 1982.
         1. Instrumental in defeating the amendment were over 130 conservative organizations that blamed the philosophy behind the ERA for destroying American values and the family.
      3. In 1973, in a 5-to-2 decision, the Supreme Court invalidated a Texas law that prevented abortions in Roe v. Wade.
         1. Justice Harry Blackmun, writing for the majority, held that the "right to privacy" gave women the freedom to choose to have an abortion during the first three months of pregnancy.
         2. A "Right to Life" campaign emerged to oppose abortion rights on legal and moral grounds and easily merged with the conservative critique of American society and liberalism.
      4. Clarence Thomas, a conservative and African American, was nominated to fill the Supreme Court seat vacated by Thurgood Marshall in 1991.
         1. Liberals disliked Thomas’s conservative views and objected to his low American Bar Association ratings, but otherwise found little to reject his candidacy until Anita Hill privately accused him of sexual harassment.
         2. Thomas denied her allegations and called the televised hearings "a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks."
         3. The Senate confirmed Thomas in a close vote, but the hearings focused national attention on the issue of sexual harassment and the lack of women in government at all levels, especially Congress.
      5. In response to growing concerns about sexual abuse, Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act in 1994.
   3. Gay Rights: Progress and Resistance
      1. Homosexuals too were demanding equality, and, since the 1950s, organizations had worked quietly to promote new attitudes toward homosexuality.
         1. The spark for the gay rights movement was a police raid in June 1968 on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City.
         2. The gay rights movement borrowed tactics from the women’s and civil rights movement, and, because visibility was a major tool and goal of the movement, gays and lesbians demonstrated in support of their lifestyles.
         3. Success came slowly, but the growing toleration of gays in the United States did not end local or political discrimination or physical attacks.
   4. The AIDS Controversy
      1. Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) was a disease that spread through a portion of the gay community and was at first regarded primarily as a "gay disease."
         1. AIDS was first discovered in the United States in 1981, and, within ten years, almost 200,000 cases had been reported.
         2. By 1991, over 97,000 Americans had died of the fatal disease, and 1.5 million were estimated to be infected by HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), the virus that causes AIDS.
         3. Initially, because the majority of those with the illness were either homosexuals or intravenous drug users, official and public response to the disease was restrained, but as the number of victims increased, research and educational efforts were expanded and given national media coverage.
      2. By the mid-1990s, some advances had been made in research toward controlling AIDS.
         1. But there was still no certain cure and by 1996 AIDS had claimed more than 280,000 American lives and had infected 20 million people around the world.
   5. Federal Intervention and the Courts
      1. By the 1980s, many Americans who had initially supported civil rights were rejecting calls for continuing programs.
         1. Multiculturalism and federal intervention in support of minority rights, conservatives argued, were weakening American society.
         2. Considered among the most disastrous examples were forced busing and affirmative action.
      2. Busing for integration had become a national issue in the early 1970s, when state and federal courts began to order non-Southern school districts to adopt busing to achieve more equally balanced schools.
         1. In the 1980s, the Reagan and Bush administrations backed away from court-ordered busing.
         2. They also heartened conservatives by reconfiguring the federal courts.
      3. Affirmative action had already come under increasing attack by the time Reagan took office.
         1. Believing himself a victim of reverse discrimination, Bakke sued the University of California system.
         2. Bakke claimed that the School of Medicine at the University of California at Davis had accepted black students less qualified than he and had denied him admission because of his color.
         3. The Bakkedecision did not totally reject color and gender as considerations for hiring but led to a weakening of many affirmative action programs.
         4. Racial and gender preference systems were effectively limited in the Rehnquist Court’s 1989 Crosondecision, which declared to be illegal state and local government efforts to set aside jobs and contracts for minorities.
         5. In 1997, California voters approved a measure forbidding any consideration of racial or gender preferences in hiring, college admissions, or contracting.
3. Calls for Change
   1. Clinton, Congress, and Change
      1. Responding to substantial opposition, Clinton retreated from recognizing homosexuals in the military.
         1. The new policy failed to please either those who advocated exclusion of gays or those gay rights activists who wanted total equality.
      2. Clinton fared no better in creating a national healthcare plan for the roughly 35 million who were not covered.
      3. Congress passed the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Brady Bill, and a major anti-crime bill.
      4. Clinton gave highest priority to the nation’s economy and improving trade.
         1. On the budget, Clinton’s plan was based on his conviction that reducing the deficit was necessary to end the recession and promote future growth.
      5. The 1994 congressional election, however, appeared to repudiate liberalism, multiculturalism, and Democratic leadership.
         1. Republicans were returned to Congress in record numbers.
         2. With solid Republican support, Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich successfully pushed to enact most of the Contract with America.
      6. Welfare reform seemed to typify the gap between liberals and conservatives.
         1. Conservatives argued that welfare programs created a class of welfare-dependent people, with little integrity or work ethic.
         2. Liberals countered that Republican welfare programs were mean-spirited and ignored the reality of those on welfare.
      7. In April 1995, Americans were shocked by the Oklahoma City bombing.
         1. This act of "home-grown terrorism" seemed to symbolize the depth of division in the nation and the potential for irrational extremist responses.
   2. The 1996 Campaign
      1. As the 1996 election approached, Clinton had consolidated his hold on the center of the American political spectrum.
      2. Republican opponent Bob Dole was a moderate Republican who failed to inspire the conservative activists who had energized Reagan’s campaigns.
      3. The Whitewater scandal was a cloud hanging over Clinton’s re-election campaign
      4. Neither Dole’s attempt to question Clinton’s character nor the former senator’s call for a 15 percent across-the-board cut in income taxes made much of an impression on the electorate.
      5. Clinton garnered 49 percent of the popular vote and 379 electoral votes.
         1. Voter turnout was the lightest since the 1924 election.
   3. Clinton’s Foreign Policy
      1. When Clinton assumed control, it still was not clear what general policy would replace that of the Cold War.
         1. Americans wanted to maintain their power and influence as a superpower but were divided over what warranted American intervention.
         2. Inexperienced in foreign affairs, Clinton proceeded cautiously and followed the general outline set by President Bush.
      2. In economy foreign policy, Clinton completed Bush’s effort to pass the NAFTA and GAT agreements, to improve trade with China, and to encourage Japan to buy more American goods.
      3. During the 1992 campaign, Clinton had chided Bush for not promoting peace in Bosnia more assertively.
         1. As the carnage increased, the Clinton administration agreed to allow American forces to participate in a UN campaign to establish and protect "safe areas" for refugees.
         2. The resulting Dayton Agreement partitioned the country into a Bosnian-Croat federation and Serbian republic, with UN forces to police the peace.
      4. The Balkans continued to remain a hot spot.
         1. Ethnic cleansing caused major concerns around the world.
      5. Iraq remained a problem area as Saddam Hussein obstructed UN efforts to allow UN inspection of possible chemical and biological weapons sites.
         1. Tired of Saddam’s delaying tactics, Clinton ordered U.S. warplanes to bomb Baghdad in December 1998 and Saddam soon relented.
   4. Bridge to the Twenty-First Century
      1. It remained to be seen how questions about the president’s ethics would affect the impact of his second term.
      2. The Monica Lewinsky scandal prompted some to suggest that Clinton should resign or be impeached.
         1. The Republican majority in the House of Representatives launched impeachment proceedings against the president in October 1998 - only the third time in US history this has happened.
         2. The Senate proceeded with a six-week trial that ended on Clinton’s acquittal in early 1999.
      3. As Americans neared the new millennium, they appeared to have all but forgotten the high drama and low tragedy of the Clinton impeachment trial.