James Lincoln Collier - The Middle Road: American Politics: 1945 - 2000

T HE D RAMA OF A MERICAN H ISTORY

The MIDDLE ROAD: AMERICAN POLITICS

19452000

Christopher Collier

James Lincoln Collier

ACKNOWLEDGMENT: The authors wish to thank James T. Patterson, Professor of History, Brown University, for his careful reading of the text of this volume of The Drama of American History and his thoughtful and useful comments. The work has been much improved by Professor Patterson's notes. The authors are deeply in his debt, but, of course, assume full responsibility for the substance of the work, including any errors that may appear.

Photo research by James Lincoln Collier

COVER PHOTO: Corbis Bettman

PICTURE CREDITS: The photographs in this book are used by permission and through the courtesy of:

Chapter I: Independence National Historic Park : Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson. Corbis/Bettman : Truman with Stalin & Churchill, Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia, coal miners on strike, "Dewey Defeats Truman," American soldier in Korea.

Chapter II: Corbis/Bettman : Vladimir Lenin, J. Parnell Thomas with Robert Taylor, Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon, women with anti-communist petition, Senator Joseph McCarthy with G. David Schine & Roy Cohn.

Chapter III: Corbis/Bettman : Jacqueline Kennedy, Kennedy/Nixon debate, Alfredo Perez San Roman, the Dallas motorcade, Lee Harvey Oswald, Lyndon Johnson, site of Martin Luther King Jr.'s murder, Eugene McCarthy, police arresting demonstrators in Chicago.

Chapter IV: Corbis/Bettman : students protesting the Vietnam War, student killed at Kent State, Spiro Agnew, John W. Dean III, Gerald and Betty Ford with the Nixons.

Chapter V: Corbis/Bettman : Jimmy Carter with Gerald Ford, helicopter crash in Iran, Ronald Reagan, Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro, soldiers arriving in Honduras, Oliver North.

Chapter VI: Corbis/Bettman : military evacuation during the Gulf War, Bill Clinton, "Paula Jones Lives," swearing-in ceremony at the Orange Bowl. Author's collection : helmets, cereal aisle.

2002 Christopher Collier and James Lincoln Collier

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the copyright holders.

First ebook edition 2012 by AudioGO. All Rights Reserved.

Trade ISBN 978-1-62064-533-8

Library ISBN 978-0-7927-9597-1

The MIDDLE ROAD: AMERICAN POLITICS

19452000

C ONTENTS

P REFACE

OVER MANY YEARS of both teaching and writing for students at all levels, from grammar school to graduate school, it has been borne in on us that many, if not most, American history textbooks suffer from trying to include everything of any moment in the history of the nation. Students become lost in a swamp of factual information, and as a consequence lose track of how those facts fit together and why they are significant and relevant to the world today.

In this series, our effort has been to strip the vast amount of available detail down to a central core. Our aim is to draw in bold strokes, providing enough information, but no more than is necessary, to bring out the basic themes of the American story, and what they mean to us now. We believe that it is surely more important for students to grasp the underlying concepts and ideas that emerge from the movement of history, than to memorize an array of facts and figures.

The difference between this series and many standard texts lies in what has been left out. We are convinced that students will better remember the important themes if they are not buried under a heap of names, dates, and places.

In this sense, our primary goal is what might be called citizenship education. We think it is critically important for America as a nation and Americans as individuals to understand the origins and workings of the public institutions that are central to American society. We have asked ourselves again and again what is most important for citizens of our democracy to know so they can most effectively make the system work for them and the nation. For this reason, we have focused on political and institutional history, leaving social and cultural history less well developed.

This series is divided into volumes that move chronologically through the American story. Each is built around a single topic, such as the Pilgrims, the Constitutional Convention, or immigration. Each volume has been written so that it can stand alone, for students who wish to research a given topic. As a consequence, in many cases material from previous volumes is repeated, usually in abbreviated form, to set the topic in its historical context. That is to say, students of the Constitutional Convention must be given some idea of relations with England, and why the Revolution was fought, even though the material was covered in detail in a previous volume. Readers should find that each volume tells an entire story that can be read with or without reference to other volumes.

Despite our belief that it is of the first importance to outline sharply basic concepts and generalizations, we have not neglected the great dramas of American history. The stories that will hold the attention of students are here, and we believe they will help the concepts they illustrate to stick in their minds. We think, for example, that knowing of Abraham Baldwin's brave and dramatic decision to vote with the small states at the Constitutional Convention will bring alive the Connecticut Compromise, out of which grew the American Senate.

Each of these volumes has been read by esteemed specialists in its particular topic; we have benefited from their comments.

C HAPTER I: A N EW P RESIDENT C ONFRONTS THE P EACE

THE UNITED STATES, ever since the presidency of George Washington, has run under a "two-party system." Although there were other parties in earlier days, for nearly a hundred and fifty years American politics have been dominated by Republicans and Democrats. This arrangement seems so natural to Americans that they sometimes forget that in dictatorships there is usually only one party, and in some other nations many parties compete for power. The two-party system is not laid out in the Constitution. It exists simply because of some basic differences between political leaders of the founding era like Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, and because third parties have never drawn many voters. As a consequence, the political history of the United States in the period we are looking at, from the end of World War II in 1945 to the year 2000, has been basically a contest between Republicans and Democrats. At times one party has prevailed, at times the other; but neither party has been able to really take command except for short periods.