all right in this lecture we're going to keep looking at unit 14. and um in this lecture we're going to look at the beginning of the politics of the 1970s I will get into the second half of politics and another lecture it's too long for just one but this lecture will mostly look at the politics involving the Nixon Administration so with Nixon regards to Nixon um he had some serious frustrations I've tried to end the war in Vietnam we talked about that in unit 13. but despite these frustrations Nixon like JFK really preferred foreign policy over domestic policy which by the way he compared domestic policy to quote building sewer projects his greatest successes were in international relations Nixon was an expert in foreign affairs and had actually trialed extensively as Eisenhower's vice president he also benefited greatly from the expertise and strategic vision of Henry Kissinger that's the man on the on your right right here of his National Security advisor and later becomes his secretary of state their grand design or their grand plan for U.S foreign policy centered on developing friendly relations with the Soviet Union and communist China this would enable all three powerful countries the U.S Soviet Union and China to reduce the cost of the arms race while minimizing the possibility of nuclear war so it's definitely a win-win in 1969 Nixon announced a new foreign policy that's going to become known as the Nixon Doctrine the Nixon Doctrine has two main points he said first the U.S would continue to support allies facing military threats with economic and military aid rather than ground troops so basically what he's saying with this one is we're happy to help other countries fight the threat of Communism but they need to do their own fighting you know we'll send money we'll send supplies we're not sending troops anymore he stated Nixon stated that the U.S could no longer afford to defend its allies fully not in that way the second part of the Nixon Doctrine is he said that the U.S would continue to uphold all its treaty obligations so if there's existing treaty on the books we're going to uphold all our obligations to that treaty it was a policy shift away from a bilateral view meaning shifting away from the sole focus of the U.S Soviet struggle for power um this constant one up in each other constantly trying to keep the other one down between the U.S and the Soviet um Soviet Union Nixon wants to get away from that Nixon and Kissinger Envision a world where the U.S would not be the sole defender of Freedom not the policemen of the world but would share that responsibility with its most powerful allies they hoped that one day the U.S the Soviet Union Western Europe China and Japan could co-exist peacefully and trade together for mutual benefits and to put all this all this aside this is determined to be the Soviet Union stuff aside and let's just all work together and trade for everyone's benefit at the same time Nixon was reducing the likelihood of U.S military interventions he announced that the U.S would pursue Partnerships with communist countries in Aries areas of mutual interest this became known as the policy of daytime which is actually a French word is a French word meaning easing of relations and again what Daytona is Nixon says that the U.S is going to pursue Partnerships with communist countries in areas of mutual interest so basically we're going to work with communist countries if it's going to work to our advantage and this was a shocking stance for a republican with a history of rabid anti-communism and he absolutely had that history I don't know if you all remember back in Unit 10 when we were talking about the Cold War but Nixon initially made a name for himself by um sort of being a part of all that McCarthyism and part of the hearings um to try to to try to find and eradicate communism so he has a reputation of being very anti-communist and now as president he's saying yeah we're going to work with them if it works for our benefit so he begins normalizing relations with China in 1971 Nixon sends Kissinger on a secret trip to Beijing to explore the possibility of the U.S recognition of communist China now I know this might be hard to believe but since 1941 when the communist movement the Revolutionary communist movement took control of China since 1949 the U.S has refused to recognize the People's Republic of China as a legitimate country they preferred to regard Chiang kai-shek's exiled regime Governor regime government based in Taiwan as the legitimate Chinese government so even though they've been in power over 20 years the U.S will not recognize the communist government of China 22 years of refusing to recognize them as a country and basically ignoring that they exist in July of 1971 Nixon shocked the world when he announced that Kissinger had just returned from Beijing and that he himself Nixon was going to be going there early next year no president in the last 22 years had done that because it was a country we weren't even recognizing in October 1971 the UN United Nations voted to admit the People's Republic of China to the U.N and they expelled the national nationalist Chinese government based in Taiwan so they kicked them out and recognized the People's Republic of China and let them join the U.N now naturally the Nationalist Chinese government that was based out of Taiwan felt betrayed but this is sort of a moving forward point for our two countries then in February of 1972 during uh quote the week that changed the world Americans were stunned to see their president on television shaking hands and drinking toasts with the Chinese Prime Minister and the Communist Party chairman during the president's week-long visit to China the two Nations agreed to Scientific and cultural exchanges a step towards a resumption of trade so we weren't trading at all with China like we didn't recognize them as existing so we weren't trading with them and an eventual reunification of Taiwan with the mainland as a conservative anti-communist Nixon was able to accomplish this great diplomatic feat that his Democratic predecessors could not have attempted for fear of being labeled soft on communism um LBJ JFK uh they couldn't do this because they would have been labeled oh he's they're being soft on communism they'll just let the Communists walk all over them they would have been labeled weak but because Nixon was a known anti-communist nobody was going to accuse him of that and so he was able to um make these great steps forward in terms of diplomacy Nixon and Kissinger's bold move in China had the added benefit of giving them leverage with the Soviet Union who were understandably nervous about a U.S and Chinese Alliance and again this is this is all part of recognizing communist China sorry that's the heading render we're under a here so by Nixon going to visit them it legitimizes the communist government within the United States and again have the added benefit of now the Soviet Union's nervous because they can't have a U.S Chinese Alliance that would be leaving them out of the loop and they don't trust they don't trust it and so that's making them really nervous and so that in turn helps Nixon to be able to make some breakthroughs with the Soviet Union as well and that's where we're headed now with number three embracing the Soviet Union so China welcomed this breakthrough in relations with the U.S um because the Chinese and the Soviets relationships were becoming increasingly straight as well so the Chinese and the Soviets aren't getting along very well and they feared uh China feared the Soviet Union more than they did the Americans so they're thinking this is a great thing that they can start to Cozy up and become friendly with the us because things are starting to really not go well with the Soviets the Soviet leader leaders in turn were concerned about the Chinese agreement with the U.S and were also eager to ease tensions with the Americans so everybody's ready for things to settle down Nixon once again shocks the World by announcing he's going to visit Moscow in 1972 and meet with the Soviet Premier sorry Soviet premiere while there Nixon attended similar social engagements as the ones he went to in Beijing and signed the path-breaking treaty the Strategic arms limitation treaty it's called salt one for short again the Strategic arms limitation treaty the salt agreement did not end the nuclear arms race but it did limit the number of missiles with nuclear warheads and it prohibited the construction of missile defense systems so this is a really this is a big deal um again it's not it's not huge it didn't it didn't stop the arms race but it was the first um important kind of Step Back From the arms race that we've seen in a while the Moscow Summit also produced new trade agreements including an arrangement where the U.S sold almost a quarter or 25 percent of its wheat crop to the Soviets for a very good price so now we're starting to trade with the Soviets we have a limit in the number of arms and now we're starting to trade with the Soviets the Moscow Summit resulted in a dramatic easing of tensions between these two Cold War So Cold War superpowers between the Soviets and the U.S the significance of Nixon's foreign policy for Nixon and Kissinger the agreements with China and the Soviet Union represented Monumental changes in the global order that would have lasting consequences the daytime policy with the Soviet Union would help to end the Cold War altogether it did this by actually lowering Soviet hostility to Western influence so Soviets were suddenly less hostile to Western influences that they had been fighting for so long and it allowed Western influences to penetrate their closed society which in turn slowly eroded communist rule from the inside so that's what's gonna happen down the road and um Nixon's Dane taught policy was a huge part of this let's look at Nixon and domestic policy and specifically new federalism as President Nixon was less of a rigid conservative than he was a crafty politician forced to deal with a Congress that was controlled by democrats he therefore chose his battles very carefully and showed a surprising amount of flexibility Nixon's Focus during his first term as president was on developing policies and programs that would gain him re-election in 1972 just like a politician to please conservative Republicans and to recruit conservative Democrats he touted his program new federalism in a new federalism he sent Federal money to States and local governments for them to spend however they saw fit so that's a that's a pretty good deal for the state and local governments you know there's no strings attached it's here have some money you know do what you think you need to do with it and he also disbanded and cut funding to many programs from lbj's Great Society so there there's a little bit of lbj's Legacy going down the tubes um of course Nixon doesn't want them to think of the potential great things that his predecessor did so he's going to disband and dismantle as many of those things as he can in terms of Nixon and civil rights Nixon followed through on his campaign promises to conservative white Southerners to blunt or to slow the momentum of the Civil Rights Movement he said quote we've had enough social programs forced integration education and housing end quote that's what he told his chief of staff the democrat-controlled Congress had other ideas though and they extended the Voting Rights Act of 1965 over Nixon's veto so it came up for renewal in 1970 and he vetoed it and they went ahead and renewed it anyway the Supreme Court also thwarted Nixon's efforts to slow desegregation despite the Court's new leadership under chief justice Warren Berger was actually a Justice appointed by Nixon despite him being the new chief justice more schools were desegregated under court orders during Nixon's first term than in all the Kennedy and Johnson years combined so he's wanting to slow down desegregation but the Court and Congress are not going along with him he also had a severe economic problems the major domestic development during the Nixon Administration was a floundering economy the accumulated expense of the Vietnam War and lbj's Great Society programs had led to a dramatic rise in inflation with the inflation rate increasing from 3 percent in 1967 to 12 by 1974. meanwhile unemployment was a low three percent when Nixon took office and had nearly doubled to six percent by the end of 1970. so in just two years economists coined the term stagflation to describe the unprecedented situation that they found themselves in um stagflation has three parts we have stalled economic growth which is stagnation just kind of where it got its name the other half of it is rising inflation so you combine stagnation with inflation you get stagnation and the third key element of stagflation is high unemployment occurring all the same time these three main economic things don't usually happen at the same time usually you get two but not the third so this is sort of a new thing that the country finds itself in and it's not a good thing you can imagine stalled economic growth Rising inflation and high unemployment is a triple whammy and there is no easy way to fight this unusual combination of recession and inflation at the same time stagflation had three main causes number one the Vietnam War and the Great Society were both financed they're both expensive and they were both financed without a major increase in taxes so if you don't tax more where you gain the money for these things well they created a deficit they all the money was going out extra money was not coming in so it created a large deficit a larger deficit making the deficit worse and an expansion of the money supply and price inflation so the Vietnam Warner the Great Society resulted in a larger deficit an expansion of the money supply and price inflation second cause is that U.S companies were now facing stiff International competition from new industrial Powers all around the world so they were having a harder time making their sales and the third cause of stagflation was oil and gasoline had become scarcer harder to find and more expensive no other country in the world was more dependent on the automobile car and no other nation in the world was more wasteful of its fossil fuels than the U.S so we have a double problem we're dependent on cars and we're extremely wasteful with our fossil fuels the Nixon Administration responded erratically and ineffectively to stagflation trying old remedies for a new problem first the president tried to reduce the deficit by raising taxes and cutting the budget but the Democrats in Congress because remember he needs their approval to do these things refuse to cooperate then he encouraged the Federal Reserve board also called the FED to reduce the nation's money supply by raising interest rates so they raised the interest rates and then the stock market immediately nosedived and the economy plunged into what they called was the Nixon recession we also um at the same time we're having these major economic problems we also have a major energy crisis in November of 1973 Nixon appears on television to inform Americans that energy had become quote a serious National problem and that the United States was heading towards quote the most acute shortages of energy since World War II so just as a frame of reference that's in almost 30 years just as domestic domestic petroleum reserves began to dwindle um U.S dependency on foreign oil increases right that makes perfect sense we have less of it here so we need to become we become more dependent on foreign oil just as all of that is happening Arab members of the organization of petroleum exporting countries also known as OPEC right here organization of the petroleum exporting countries which was a cartel of the world's leading oil producers so just as our domestic reserves are dwindling our independence on foreign oil is increasing opaque embargoed oil exports to United States in retaliation for American intervention in the Middle East so we got involved over there and they said no more oil for you uh how we got involved the U.S had actually sent massive Aid to Israel after a coalition of Arab states led by Syria and Egypt attacked on Yom Kippur so that's just a little sort of a Side Story what you really need to know is OPEC embargoed oil oil exports to the U.S OPEC announced that they would not sell oil to Nations supporting Israel and that it would raise oil prices by 400 percent now this launches the first U.S energy crisis by the end of 1973 the Go Global price of oil had quadrupled so just think about that if oil it wasn't but let's just use a flat number to make it easier to understand if oil was a dollar um by the end of 1973 it was four dollars a gallon that is a serious price increase drivers waited in line for hours to fill up their cars because we have a huge shortage individual gas stations ran out of gas American motorists worried that oil could run out at any moment like just wake up one day be like that's it no more oil now OPEC eventually rescinded the Embargo in 1974 but the economic damage had been done the oil crisis that started here in the early 70s is going to last into the late 1970s significance of the energy crisis like the Vietnam War the oil crisis showed that small countries could still hurt the United States may hurt us in a big way with this at a time of anxiety about the nation's future um the energy crisis accelerated the Americans disenchantment with the United States role in the world in the effectiveness and quality in its leaders the energy crisis accelerated Americans disenchantment disenchantment means sort of uh free from mistaken beliefs or foolish hopes so really had their eyes opened disenchantment with the United States role in the world and with the effectiveness and quality of its leaders you know the Americans wanted to believe that they were the most powerful country in the world and their leaders could pull anything off they couldn't fix this they couldn't fix OPEC saying no more oil for you guys that we were Nixon's hands were tied they were not as powerful as they thought they were Environmental Protection because that's also an important domestic situation that went on during Nixon's term as dramatic dramatic increases in the price of oil and gas fueled a major energy crisis natural resources grew limited and increasingly precious as you can imagine Nixon had tried to stay out of environmental issues but he realized that the public mood had shifted in favor of Greater Federal Environmental Protections especially after two widely publicized events and we're going to look at those two right now the first one was the massive oil still off the coast of Santa Barbara California it started in January 1969 and within 10 days an enormous oil slick of crude oil contaminated 200 miles of beaches killing thousands of seabirds and marine animals it was the largest oil spill in U.S history up until that point and it was caused by inadequate safety precautions taken by Union oil so it was a company not taking proper safety precautions that caused the largest oil spill it resulted in an explosion of crude oil from the sea floor it cracked the sea floor and flew out flowed out of it the oiled it corrected C4 flowed out um at a rate of a thousand gallons of oil an hour for a month before they were even able to slow it down just imagine that like how intense that is this is uh the oil platform a where the cracks in the sea floor were and you can see the oil spreading out these are some of the poor animals that were casualties this company's negligence for cleanup they literally just spread hay around and hoped that the hay would soak up the oil um they did other things too but that was that was one of the immediate things to do to try to to try to get how do you get oil out of water I mean truly think about think about what a mess that is to clean up all right so that was the first um major environmental event the second one six months later in June the um Cuyahoga River which is in Ohio it's an 80 mile 80 mile long stream that cuts through the center of Cleveland Ohio spontaneously caught fire now I know this picture is not great there aren't a lot of pictures of it it was a hard thing to photograph back in the day um so yeah Rivers catching fire in Ohio that can't be an environmentally good thing um remember that this is actually where Rockefellers first Refinery was located you guys remember Rockefeller and standard oil and all of that um so yeah there's no question that that had something to do with it um the river was filled with oil and great bubbling subsurface gases and littered with debris uh the river was brown chocolate covered and it ignited and burned for five days some of the Flames leaping 50 feet into the air so obviously this is an environmental disaster we have rivers on fire in this country these two events the oil's still in Santa Barbara and the Cuyahoga River Catching Fire is going to lead us to the first Earth Day celebrated in 1970. as a direct result of these environmental disasters and so awareness about Environmental Protection and environmental issues was very much on people's minds because of these two things happening so close together Nixon knew if he vetoed legislative efforts to improve Environmental Quality that the Democratic majority in Congress was going to overrule him anyway so he just decided not to stand in the way again he was not a big friend to the environment but he knows that they're going to overrule him and that public opinion is with them so he's he's like that's fine y'all just do what you want in late 1969 he signed the endangered species preservation Act and the National Environmental Policy Act and then in 1970 Nixon created with executive order so these two were acts of Congress Nixon does this himself it was an executive order created the Environmental Protection Agency the EPA in an attempt to have a Federal Environmental agency to oversee all of these new laws that congress was passing and to try to make things more efficient that same year 1970 he signed the Clean Air Act into law to try to reduce air pollution on a national level because let's face it if you have one state working really hard to clean up pollution and keep their air clean and the next state over not caring at all I mean we all share the same air it's eventually gonna the bad air is going to bleed over into the next eight wins all that sort of thing so we needed we needed to work on air pollution at a national level two years later though so he he signed these things not wanting to fight anything but two years later in 72 um he actually vetoed a Clean Water Act the the new Clean Water Act but Congress went ahead and overrode his veto anyway so it was signed into law as well Nixon did undermine many of these new environmental laws though by refusing to spend the money appropriated by Congress to fund them so Congress passes these laws and they set aside money to help um to help fund these new laws and Nixon's refusing to spend the money to help to help these laws function so he did do that he he agreed not to stand in the way but then he refused to help so there's that so that brings us to the election of 1972. Nixon's foreign policy achievements which again they were they were impressive um allowed him to dominate the 1972 election he ran again with his vice president uh Spiro Agnew and early on in the election the main threat to his re-election was George Wallace who if you remember from unit 12 and the Civil Rights Movement he was the governor of Alabama and he had returned to the Democratic party after trying to run under a third party he's returned to the Democratic party and he had the potential to deprive the Republicans of the conservative vote in the South and throw the election to the Democrats just enough to split the Republican party and throw the election to Democrats remember he was also the guy that stood in the schoolhouse door trying to prevent the segregation that desegregation of the University of Alabama and a known big-time racist uh however the threat of Wallace to Nixon was ended when he was shot in an assassination attempt on May 15 1972. now although he survives the assassination attempt he was paralyzed below the waist and had to withdraw from the campaign to focus on his health but he did stay in politics and ultimately actually incidentally the shooting did lead him to change his racist views and beginning in 19 it took a little while but beginning in 1979 he publicly asked for forgiveness from the black community and was elected to a fourth term as Alabama's governor in 1982. so with Wallace out of the way Nixon has a free path to the White House the Democrats nominated Senator George McGovern of South Dakota who was an anti-war liberal and also incidentally a poor campaigner not very good at campaigning and was viewed by most Americans as a left-wing extremist so he never really had much of a chance of winning Nixon winds and a landslide Victory the greatest victory of any Republican president candidate in history capturing 250 electoral votes to McGovern's 17. the popular vote was also equally one-sided with Nixon getting almost 61 percent of the vote um yeah look at this route it's red it clearly is a landslide victory now Nixon had big plans for his second term but it would all be quickly overshadowed by the Watergate scandal which is going to consume the nation and that is going to be the topic of our next lecture we're going to get into Watergate um in the next lecture