The changing political environment

Woodrow Wilson

Wilson

Warren G. Harding

Calvin Coolidge

Herbert Hoover

• Democratics focused their campaign on the League of Nations

• Voters were more concerned about rising prices

• Presented a return to ‘normalcy’

61%

There was corruption within his administration, with several men imprisoned for misappropriating funds or accepting bribes

Laissez-faire

Traditional values which were threatened by the forces of change

1929- Wall Street Crash —> the Great Depression

1920-1933

The belief that government intervention in the economy should be kept to a minimum

Big business'- ‘We want less government in business and more business in government’

Wilson hoped that it would maintain peace, however many Americans were against US involvement internationally, resulting in the Senate refusing to ratify the Versailles Treaty.

• Unhappy that they had entered WW1

• Preoccupied with the economic consequences of the Great Depression

Franklin D. Roosevelt

1933- passed in his first 100 days

• Alphabet agencies- AAA (paid farmers to produce less), FERA (helped those who were homeless and on the brink of starvation)

• Programmes aimed at providing economic relief to workers and farmers

• Regulated the stock market

Fireside chats- used more casual language to discuss key political matters

Roosevelt wanted to create a more structural, long-term approach to solve the issues created by the Great Depression

• Works progress Administration (WPA)- set up schemes to create jobs in public building projects

  • The WPA became the country’s biggest employer, employing more than 8 million Americans over eight years

• Highest rate of tax raised to 75% for over $5 million

• Workers allowed to join trade unions

• Minimum wage enforced and child labour ended

• Provided pensions benefits for the elderly as well as small payments to groups including disabled people, the unemployed, widows and orphans

  • Nothing for famers or domestic service though

• Intervened in the economy during the Great Depression

• Set up the Federal Farm Board to bolster farm prices

• 1932- federal budget ended up being $2.7 billion in the red- largest peacetime deficit in US history

Attempted to ‘court-pack’ the Supreme Court, which resulted in a split in the Democrats and a storm of protest from his opposition. They believed he had dictatorial ambitions.

1941- Pearl Harbour

A semi-welfare state

1935- required the President to have an impartial arms embargo on all belligerents

• Gave 40 destroyers in return for bases in the Caribbean

• Roosevelt introduced lend-lease, where he has the authority to aid any nation whose defense he believed vital to the United States and to accept any repayment

Harry Truman

Dwight D. Eisenhower

John F. Kennedy

Lyndon B. Johnson

Richard Nixon

Dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945

1919

• Palmer Raids- 9,000 people arrested, 500 deported

• 32 states banned unions

• Anarchist bomb killed 38 people on Wall Street

1917 Russian Revolution and emergence of American Communist movement (largely foreign born membership)

Fear of Communism during Cold War

• Established a Loyalty Review Board to investigate all federal employees

• Allowed the FBI to investigate subversives

1950- McCarthy claimed he had evidence that 205 Communists had infiltrated the State Department, placing himself art the centre of the anti-Communist movement.

GI Bill of rights 1944- included unemployment benefits and low-interest mortgage

1945- 45% meaning it prospered during the war

• Suffered the lowest loss of lives- 292,000 deaths

• Avoided being bombed or invaded

• Benefitted economically

• 1947

• USA didn’t return to isolationism

• $400 million to Greece and Türkiye to help ensure they didn’t fall to Communism

• 1947

• Economic assistance to European countries struggling from poverty and chaos

• Aimed to promote Europe economically so Europeans would buy American goods

• Prevented poverty-struck Europe from adopting Communism

CIA

Blockaded West Berlin, so Truman organised a massive air lift with 13,000 tons of goods per day

1950-1953

1915- Birth of a nation, KKK portrayed as a heroic force

Eisenhower

Communism, Korea and corruption

• Civil Rights

• Opposed Vietnam

• Wanted the government to help poor Americans

• Alternative lifestyles

• Supported civil rights

• Wanted to create a Great Society

• Vietnam war

• Had little sympathy for counter-cultural movements

• Rejected society’s emphasis on competitiveness, individualism and materialism

• Woodstock rock festival 1969- 400,000 people attended

1960

1962- the Soviet Union began to secretly install missiles in Cuba to launch attacks on U.S. cities. The confrontation that followed, known as the Cuban missile crisis, brought the two superpowers to the brink of war before an agreement was reached to withdraw the missiles.

Kennedy

Middle America- ‘silent majority’

Those who protested against the dominant culture- feminists, anti-war activists and hippies

• 1969-70- anti-war

• pro-civil rights protests

• withdrew troops from Vietnam

• ordered FBI surveillance of disruptive groups

• threatened to end federal scholarships and loans for student trouble-makers

Against: abortion, feminism, divorce, drugs, pre-marital sex and homosexuality

538,000- required the birthday draft —> 40,000

220

1963-73

Nixon sent men to the Democrat Party headquarters in 1972 to try discover their plans

• Led to a decline in America’s international standing

• Seen as the end of the imperial presidency

• Contributed to the decline in confidence in the presidency

Johnson (Vietnam, continued divisions and economic problems)

Ford

• Pardoned Nixon

• Easy to make fun of in the media- fell over a lot

75% felt they lacked presidential quality

Only 54% of eligible voters voted

Carter

USSR

Iran Hostage crisis