Politics and the State

Question 1

What are the conflicting standpoints on The Great Society?

Answer 1

Alan Brinkley - Limited Impact

• Gap between intentions and outcomes on the war on poverty fuelled conservative critique in later years.

Joseph Califano Jr - Significant Impact

• Poverty line fell from 22.2% to 12.6%, most dramatic decline in century
• AA poverty from 55% to 27% (1960-1968)
• Education funding - $4bil to $12bil

Question 2

Jacobs, Meg - The Democratic Experiment: New Directions in American Political History

What has been the defining barrier to change in the political structure of the US?

Answer 2

Perhaps the clearest manifestation of antistate sentiment found expression in broad opposition to taxes. As Julian Zelizer points out, only in times of emergency have politicians been able to raise direct and visible taxes with relative ease.

Question 3

Jacobs, Meg - The Democratic Experiment: New Directions in American Political History

What was the central dividing line in American politics?

Answer 3

the central dividing line in American politics was not liberalism versus conservatism but, rather, what they saw as nineteenth-century localism and parochialism versus twentieth-century nationalization and efficiency.

Question 4

Jacobs, Meg - The Democratic Experiment: New Directions in American Political History

What were the thoughts of the New Middle Class towards income tax?

Answer 4

• Became increasingly hostile during the 1960s. An integral part of the new deal coalition, this group became strained by a burgeoning income tax rate - private ventures were being subsidised by federal tax - as well as having to pay for membership to a union
• This was felt to be a double tax, and was attacked by Reagan and Nixon

Question 5

Gerstle, Gary -Liberty and Coercion / The Paradox of American Governmentfrom the Founding to the Present

Was America conceived weak?

Answer 5

• The limitation of America’s liberal central state is not to be found, then, in some inherent weakness that rendered all its initia­tives futile. To the contrary, this state enjoyed major successes in the early, critical decades of the republic: distributing land, procur­ ing settlers, protecting its territory, and projecting its sovereignty. But after 1800, the injunction to be lean and nonbureaucratic did put certain policy options out of reach. As a result, this liberal central state was both strong and weak, flexibly creative and rigid­ patterns that would reproduce themselves in other areas of gover­nance across nineteenth-century America.

Question 6

​| Carter, D | From George Wallace to Newt Gringrich |

Question: What notion did Nixon revive?

Answer 6

Answer: -

Revival of interest in the “forgotten American”, the revolt of the white lower middle class

Question 7

Fisher, Louis - The Politics of Shared Power / Congress and the Executive

Although precise measurements of expenditure are expected, how is this usually sidestepped?

Answer 7

To permit these changes, Congress allows agency officials to take funds from one program and ‘reprogram’ them to another within the same appropriation account. The latitude for reprogramming increased dramatically after 1949, when Congress began to consolidate a number of appropriation accounts. By administering larger accounts, agency officials gained new discretionary authority to reprogram funds.

Question 8

Fisher, Louis - The Politics of Shared Power / Congress and the Executive

What are the de jure and de facto positions on the delegation of power in the government?

Answer 8

Delegated authority - de jure, constitution does not permit congress to delegate power to another branch - delegata potestas non potest delegari

De facto, SC allows Congress to supply general guidelines for national policy, leaving other branches the power to fill in the details. Only on two occasions, in 1935, was the legislative authority given to the president cracked down on

Question 9

James Patterson - Restless Giant

What drove Reaganomics?

Answer 9

• The fundamental concept behind supply side-economics was simple: Cutting taxes would enable Americans, notably employers and investors, to retain more income, which would give them the incentive to make even more”

Question 10

Gerstle, Gary - States Both Strong and Weak - A Response to Novak

What distinction does Gerstle draw between the gunfighter nation and the garrison state?

Answer 10

Early years - Gunfighter nation - actively, and belligerently, expanding and defeating rival empires

Later years (CW) - garrison state - the garrison state operated globally as a defensive means to a style of economy, but was never imperialistic

Question 11

L McGirr - Suburban Warriors

How did the population of the Sunbelt grow?

Answer 11

• 1940 - 130,760 population.
• 1960 - 703,925 population.
• 1970 close to 1.5 million

Question 12

Capozzola, Christopher - Uncle Sam Wants You / World War One and the Making of the Modern American Citizen

What was the voluntaristic/duty-bound paradox which ran through WWI marketing?

Answer 12

Being a good citizen meant fulfilling your political obligations and doing so through voluntary associations. Lending a hand to the war effort thus

became not just a good deed but a duty, and serious consequences ensued for those who failed to join in. People were, therefore, obliged to volunteer in a culture of coercive voluntarism. A paradoxical notion, to be sure, but one that

President Woodrow Wilson clearly articulated when he introduced America to the Selective Sendee Act in a May 1917 proclamation. “It is a new manner of accepting and vitalizing our duty to give ourselves with thoughtful devotion to the common purpose of us all,” he noted. “It is in no sense a conscription of the unwilling; it is, rather, selection from a nation which has volunteered

mass.

Question 13

Michael Klarman - From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court Struggle for Racial Equality

What is the Dahlsian thesis on the nature of the supreme court?

Answer 13

“the Court follows the election returns”

• Judicial decisions are not self-executing - requires compliance from legislative actors in order to enforce the decisions being made.
• The justices themselves are part of the national governing coalition.

Question 14

Gerstle, Gary -Liberty and Coercion / The Paradox of American Governmentfrom the Founding to the Present

How did national security add to the state apparatus?

Answer 14

• The federal government did acquire one new tool for its state­ building arsenal after 1945: “national security.” In the 1940s and 1960s, liberals began to invoke this phrase not simply to battle Communism but also to strengthen their case for expanding the ed­ucation, welfare, and infrastructural reach of the federal state. This form of surrogacy, like those built on the postal, tax, and commerce powers of the federal government, came with costs.

Question 15

O’Brien - Storm Centre

What did Harris vs McRae determine?

Answer 15

• Harris vs McRae - justices divided five to four when upholding the so called Hyde Amendment, which forbids federal funding of non-therapeutic abortions under Medicaid programme.

Question 16

Gerstle, Gary -Liberty and Coercion / The Paradox of American Governmentfrom the Founding to the Present

Was America conceived weak?

Answer 16

• The limitation of America’s liberal central state is not to be found, then, in some inherent weakness that rendered all its initia­tives futile. To the contrary, this state enjoyed major successes in the early, critical decades of the republic: distributing land, procur­ ing settlers, protecting its territory, and projecting its sovereignty. But after 1800, the injunction to be lean and nonbureaucratic did put certain policy options out of reach. As a result, this liberal central state was both strong and weak, flexibly creative and rigid­ patterns that would reproduce themselves in other areas of gover­nance across nineteenth-century America.

Question 17

O’Brien - Storm Centre

What did Webster conclude?

Answer 17

1. Life begins from conception - unborn children have protectable interest in life, health and wellbeing
2. Physicians to test foetus “gestational age, weight and lung capacity”
3. Prohibitng public employees and facilities from being used to perform abortions
4. unlawful to use public funds employees and facilites for the purpose of encouraging an abortion

Question 18

Gerstle, Gary - Liberty and Coercion / The Paradox of American Government from the Founding to the Present

How has general suspicion of the government

Answer 18

• Many federal government pro­grams, from Medicare to Social Security, national security to in­ come tax deductions, and the Federal Reserve to disaster relief, are supported by large majorities of the population. A general sus­picion of government is not a bad thing; when it leads to careful scrutiny of government programs-examining where the money is going, and how effectively and fairly it is being used-it becomes a positive good. But suspicion of government is one thing; unremit­ting hostility to the exercise of public power at the federal level is another. Such hostility has now all but paralyzed the federal gov­ ernment, curtailing its ability to address problems confronting the country in the twenty-first century. Conservatives who have unleashed this hostility, and made it one of the most powerful forces in American politics these last forty years, have found a strong sanction in the Constitution, which was intended to limit and fragment federal power.

Question 19

O’Brien - Storm Centre

What did the timing of Brown indicate?

Answer 19

Brown was not implemented earlier, in 1952, because the SC wanted the election to pass - illustrating that despite being above politics, often operated on same timetable. This is because independently, the SC has little bearing on how society conducts itself - Dred Scott illustrative of this.

Question 20

L McGirr - Suburban Warriors

How did rights-based liberalism galvanise a new movement in the right-wing circles of OC?

Answer 20

At the same time, the ascendancy of the Democratic Party in 1960 and a blossoming rights-based liberalism, given life in Freedom Rides and sit-ins,magnified conservatives’ sense of displacement. As a result, theymobilized at the grass roots. According to a conservative directory, for example, the number of right-wing groups more thandoubled between 1957 and 1965–the largest number of whichoperated out of Southern California.’

Question 21

What is Bogdanor’s assessment of Reagan in terms of his relationship with FDR?

Answer 21

Reagan is not comparable to FDR for a shared belief in the state - he was not Franklin Delano Reagan for economic policy - however as a president of realignment, he holds some credibility. His style of politics would prove formative of a new direction which would be accepted by Clinton and his style would be emulated by George Bush Jnr.

Question 22

Jacobs, Meg - The Democratic Experiment: New Directions in American Political History

What are the two persistent threads in Zeilzer’s arguments?

Answer 22

1. a fundamental tension has existed between state building and national resistance to federal taxation
2. Fiscal restraint has not been an insurmountable barrier. This is evident with the emergence of the mass income tax and social-insurance tax systems as well as the substantial state presence achieved in all areas of life, ranging from welfare to highway construction

Question 23

Jacobs, Meg - The Democratic Experiment: New Directions in American Political History

How were thoughts on purchasing power altered by WWII?

Answer 23

• Throughout the New Deal and WWII, this policy community maintained that mass purchasing power through high wages and low prices would bring economic growth
• WWII led to an expansion of the administration’s redistributive purchasing-power agenda. The Office of Price Administration (OPA) implemented an economywide system of price controls and rationing to check inflation.

Question 24

James Patterson - Restless Giant

What was the New World Order?

Answer 24

The exhilarating trend toward democratization in the world continued during Bush’s tenure encouraged him to proclaim the arrival of a “New World Order” under American auspices. Lebanon’s long and destructive civil war, which killed more than 100,000 people, came to an end in 1990, whereupon a beleaguered democracy began to take shape there.”

Question 25

A. Hartman | The War for the Soul of America

Question: What was at the core of New Left thought?

Answer 25

• New Left- younger and affluent, raised in solidarity against Jim Crow
• New Left estrangement with America fuelled by intellectuals - like C Wright Mills, who, in the likes of the White Collar, promoted a dystopian America, and in the The Power Elite, took on Weberian outlook of political institutions
• New Left came to recognise self as countercultural

Question 26

​| Carter, D | From George Wallace to Newt Gringrich |

Question: What did the 1994 Contract with America (Republican gambit) push for?

Answer 26

Answer: -

• Less about ending welfare state, more on transferring its benefits from the undeserving poor to the deserving middle and upper classes. 50% cut in capital gains tax, $500 per child tax credit, repeal of federal income tax marriage penalty””, tax credits for the elderly.

Question 27

Fisher, Louis - The Politics of Shared Power / Congress and the Executive

What is the distinction between shared and separated power in American politics?

Answer 27

Scholars today are more likely to emphasize sharing than separation. As noted by Richard Neustadt: //The constitutional convention of 1787 is supposed to have created a government of ‘separated powers/ It did nothing of the sort. Rather, it created a government of separated institutions sharing powers.

Question 28

​| Carter, D | From George Wallace to Newt Gringrich |

Question: What was George Wallace’s platform?

Answer 28

Answer: -

“Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!”

Wallace saw blacks as “a separate race, inferior and threatening”, committing “atrocious acts of humanity, such as rape, assault and murder”

Question 29

Gerstle, Gary -Liberty and Coercion / The Paradox of American Governmentfrom the Founding to the Present

What does exemption entail?

Answer 29

• Exemption entailed turning to the courts for permission to exempt certain central state activities from con­stitutional constraints.

Question 30

Progressivism

What was an agricultural challenge in the 19th century?

Answer 30

• Can never reconcile the problem of overproduction
  
  • Caused by industrial revolution
  • Supported by laissez-faire
    
    • Farmers would drive through laissez-faire

Question 31

Progressivism

Define progressivism?

Answer 31

• A series of movements aimed at reforming the existing capitalistic democratic system so that the ills of industrialisation are minimised and its benefits maximised.

Question 32

Capozzola, Christopher - Uncle Sam Wants You / World War One and the Making of the Modern American Citizen

What gave the SSA an aura of consent?

Answer 32

By casting the registration process as a volunteer “service” by the individual to the state—which would do the “selecting” based on principles of efficiency it defined—the federal government gave the draft an aura of consent.

Question 33

Michael Klarman - From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court Struggle for Racial Equality

What does Klarman suggest about the Allwright case?

Answer 33

While most of the Court’s civil rights decisions up to 1944 had had a very limited impact on racial equality on the ground, the Allwrighr decision led to a dramatic and significant increase in black voter registration in the south.

Question 34

Fisher, Louis - The Politics of Shared Power / Congress and the Executive

When has the power to pardon been used?

Answer 34

Power of pardon - can exonerate guilt - case in point - Nixon:

On September 8, 1974, President Ford granted a full pardon //for all offenses against the United States which Richard Nixon has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969, through August 9, 1974..” Some members of Congress suspected that Nixon made a deal with Ford when nominating him to be vice president. If Nixon had conditioned the nomination on the promise of a pardon, or conditioned his own resignation on a pardon, the House might have charged Ford with accepting a bribe, which is itself an impeachable offense. To allay such concerns, Ford took the extraordinary step of appearing before the House Judiciary Committee to explain the basis for his action.

Question 35

A. Hartman | The War for the Soul of America

Question: What other challenges to time-honoured traditions emerged in the 1960s?

Answer 35

• Highly popular black activists - Malcolm X
• Sexual politics - Kate Millet - third wave feminism
• Gay Liberation Front
• Sexual revolutions - TV shows like Three’s Company, Love Boat and Leave It To Beaver presented as “veritable fleshpot”

Question 36

L McGirr - Suburban Warriors

What happened to the number of churches in the region?

Answer 36

• Mushrooming of churches:
  
  • Protestant - 6-13
  • Presbyterian - 8-14
  • Congregational 3-6
  • Methodist +7
  • Lutherans x4 - to 35.
• Jewish and Catholics also blossomed

Question 37

Fisher, Louis - The Politics of Shared Power / Congress and the Executive

Name some major executive failings

Answer 37

Watergate and the Iran-Contra scandals that executive officials have great capacity for self-inflicted injuries

Question 38

James Patterson - Restless Giant

Provide a case study of racial bias in the court?

Answer 38

• n December 1984, he found himself surrounded in a New York City subway car by four aggressive black youths who demanded money from him. Goetz, a white man, had earlier been robbed and injured by blacks. He pulled out a .38 caliber revolver and shot the four of them. One, wounded again as he lay on the floor of the train, became brain-damaged and paralyzed for life. At a trial in 1987, it became clear that all four of the young men had criminal records and that three of them had screwdrivers in their pockets. The jury (on which only two blacks served) accepted Goetz’s plea of self-defense and acquitted him of charges of attempted murder and assault. It convicted him only on charges of illegally possessing a firearm and sentenced him to eight months in prison. A local poll indicated that 90 percent of whites agreed with the verdict, as opposed to 52 percent of blacks.

Question 39

Derthick, Martha - Keeping the Compound Republic - Essays on American Federalism

What was a landmark of the New Deal?

Answer 39

The Social Security Act was a landmark of the New Deal. According to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s principal collaborator on this legislation, Secretaryof Labor Prances Perkins, Roosevelt regarded it as the cornerstone of his administration, and “took greater satisfaction from it than from anything else he achieved on the domestic front.”

Question 40

James Patterson - Restless Giant

How could Nixon’s strategy be defined?

Answer 40

• “ultimately descending into what one later study called a politics of “R.I.P.”—”Revelation, Investigation, Prosecution.”

Question 41

Kevin Kruse - White Flight - Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism

Thurgood Marshall’s response to the Milliken decision.

Answer 41

“Today’s holding, I fear, is more a reflection of a perceived public mood that we have gone far enough in enforcing the Constitution’s guarantee of equal justice than it is the product of neutral principles of law,”

Question 42

​| Black and Black | The Rise of Southern Republicanism |

Question: What altered the Southern constituency?

Answer 42

Answer: Net white in migration and net black outmigration fused with the rapid growth of cities and suburbs to transform the southern landscape. These forces uprooted millions of southerners and attracted Northerners south. In totality, demographic changes represented a socioeconomic complexity which challenged one-party south.

By 1990, the south was far more similar to the rest of the nation than ever before.

Question 43

Fisher, Louis - Presidential War Power

How did McKinley violate the ruling of 1889?

Answer 43

By dispatching 5000 troops on an international expeditionary force to the Philippines

Question 44

James Patterson - Restless Giant

Provide some statistics for changing attitudes to concepts of marriage.

Answer 44

• In 1970, 523,000 unmarried couples cohabited; in 1978, more than twice as many, 1,137,000, did. In 1979, a New York Times poll revealed that 55 percent of Americans—twice the percentage in 1969—saw nothing wrong with premarital sex

Question 45

​| Carter, D | From George Wallace to Newt Gringrich |

Question: How did Reagan go about constructing a platform?

Answer 45

Answer: -

• Reagan came to power on the basis of charisma and on the disillusionment with Carter
• Rooted in massive military build-up
• Domestic policies rooted in Goldwater Republicanism
  
  • Race - repealed Rumford Act - which prohibited an owner from declining selling property to someone on racial or religious grounds
  • Opposed the 1965 Civil Rights Act
  • Appointed William Bradford Reynolds as assistant attorney general for civil rights - someone who was zealously hostile to civil rights - view that “the government had no business trying to correct historic patterns of discrimination; his attorney functioned only to protect individuals from specific acts of discrimination

Question 46

O’Brien - Storm Centre

What could be said of Reagan’s court?

Answer 46

Reagan had left his final imprint on the Court with Justice Kennedy’s confirmation and achieved what Nixon had promised but his four appointees had failed to deliver: a sharply more conservative government.

Through Rehnquist

Question 47

L McGirr - Suburban Warriors

What did the Goldwater campaign led to the rise of?

Answer 47

Ronald Reagan - “The speech, admirably prepared and beautifully delivered,..was by far the finest thing the campaign produced.”

Question 48

​| Carter, D | From George Wallace to Newt Gringrich |

Question: What occurred between 1965 and 1968 economically?

Answer 48

Answer: -

“Between 1965 and 1968, a combination of accelerating price increases and sharp hikes in payroll and income taxes led to a near stagnation in real wages for the average blue-collar and salaried white collar worker”

Question 49

James Patterson - Restless Giant

What was the moral majority?

Answer 49

• The rise of the moral majority - “Moral Majority, he exclaimed, was “pro-life, pro-family, pro-morality, and pro-American” (Falwell)

Question 50

Kevin Kruse - White Flight - Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism

White reaction to the disbandment of municipal parks

Answer 50

The anger of working class whites over the loss of bus lines was nothing compared with their outrage over the desegregation of Atlanta’s municipal parks

Question 51

Jacob Hacker | The Divided Welfare State

What is the trend of US expenditure on welfare as a percentage of GDP?

Answer 51

17.1% - Lower than several western affluent nations

“The US has never estbalished more than a relatively inexpensive and programmatically incomplete system of public social provision.”

“The American welfare state is exceptional precisely because it is so limited in ambiiton and scope.”

Question 52

O’Brien - Storm Centre

What could be argued about the nature of the supreme court?

Answer 52

Myth of the robe - entry into SC like entering a monestary - abandoning political pretensions - rubbish. In reality, hard not to get involved in political activities

Question 53

James Patterson - Restless Giant

Evidence how Reagan attempted to court the support of Christian conservatives.

Answer 53

• “Ronald Reagan made a number of appeals, some of them politically opportunistic, to religious conservatives. Republicans, he emphasized, stood firmly against crime, pornography, and immorality. Bob Jones University, he said, should have tax-exempt status. Repudiating his earlier support for a liberalization of abortion, Reagan backed the GOP platform, which called for a constitutional amendment opposing the practice”

Question 54

Gerstle, Gary -Liberty and Coercion / The Paradox of American Governmentfrom the Founding to the Present

What does surrogacy entail?

Answer 54

• * surrogacy, involved the federal govern­ment using a power explicitly granted by the Constitution to ex­pand its authority into forbidden legislative terrain. for ex­ample, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, central state builders devised a way to police morality (an area of gover­nance the Constitution reserved for the states) by creatively applying the federal government’s power to supervise the mails and regulate interstate commerce. With the concurrence of the federal courts, Congress passed one law that forbade the post of ce from delivering “obscene” literature and another that criminalized the activities of those who were “polluting” interstate commerce by transporting female prostitutes across state lines. Neither law was as effective as blanket national bans on obscene literature or pros­titution might have been.

Question 55

​| Black and Black | The Rise of Southern Republicanism |

Question: What impact did democratic incumbency have upon the Republican south?

Answer 55

Answer: -

The power of democratic incumbency as a deterrent to Republican success and track the impact of federal intervention and expanded black participation on the voting behaviour of individual senators

Florida illustrates power of Democratic incumbency and increased Republican competitiveness.

Question 56

Fisher, Louis - Presidential War Power

What did a supreme court ruling in 1889 determine with regards to the supply of naval forces to China?

Answer 56

This power was to rest only with Congress - and included not only the process of declaring war, but any exertion of war-mongering force abroad

Question 57

James Patterson - Restless Giant

What role did Congress take after Watergate and Nixon?

Answer 57

• Following Watergate, and during the years Ford attempted to establish himself, Congress became more assertive, and championed more power over the states - “Perceiving the states as unimaginative and conservative, and states’ rights ideology as anachronistic, members of Congress took the lead in passing legislation, such as aid to handicapped children and bilingual education, that enhanced federal power via-à-vis the states”

Question 58

Jacobs, Meg - The Democratic Experiment: New Directions in American Political History

Would it be right to consider FDR a Keynsianist?

Answer 58

• While Roosevelt used Keynesian rhetoric to justify a deficit in 1938, this was not the driving force behind his policies. Rather, the deficit resulted from having to enact programs without sufficient revenue.41 This was problematic for liberals since Roosevelt and congressional leaders remained committed to fiscal conservatism, which severely restricted how much federal officials were able to spend.42 Although he did not balance a budget, Roosevelt continued to strive for that objective, promoting expenditure reduction as soon as the economy improved

Question 59

What was the contract with America?

Answer 59

Proponents say the Contract was revolutionary in its commitment to offering specific legislation for a vote, describing in detail the precise plan of the Congressional Representatives, and broadly nationalizing the Congressional election. Furthermore, its provisions represented the view of many conservative Republicans on the issues of shrinking the size of government, promoting lower taxes and greater entrepreneurial activity, and both tort reform and welfare reform. Critics of the Contract describe it as a political ploy and election tool designed to have broad appeal while masking the Republicans’ real agenda and failing to provide real legislation or governance.

Question 60

​| Black and Black | The Rise of Southern Republicanism |

Question: Kennedy stance on civil rights

Answer 60

Answer: - “We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights” he told the nation in his first presidential address “we have talked for 100 years or more. It is time to write the next chapter - and to write it in the books of law”

Question 61

Fisher, Louis - The Politics of Shared Power / Congress and the Executive

Where did the prerogatives of the president lie previously?

Answer 61

With the legislature until the Virginia plan

Question 62

Jacobs, Meg - The Democratic Experiment: New Directions in American Political History

When was the mass federal income tax introduced?

Answer 62

• It was not until World War II that the American state adopted a mass federal income tax. Policy makers mobilized during the war to expand the fiscal infrastructure of the state. Strikingly, even during the war, federal officials felt the need to market this idea to the wage-earning public. The government launched a public relations campaign to sell the idea of taxpaying to average citizens. The Department of Treasury used all sorts of messages that told Americans it was patriotic to pay their taxes. To promote the tax, the Office of War Information placed ads in magazines such as Ladies’ Home Journal, House Beautiful, and True Detective. The treasury broadcast radio jingles by Danny Kaye and Irving Berlin and released Disney animations in which Donald Duck taught citizens why they should pay taxes. The campaign worked as the government successfully expanded the income tax base to include over 40 million wage earners and implemented withholding at the source.

Question 63

Jacobs, Meg - The Democratic Experiment: New Directions in American Political History

What stances existed towards the enfranchisement of women?

Answer 63

Republicans took a hostile stance on both women’s rights and government activism, becoming more conservative in relation to government activism and simultaneously defending manhood rights. Both statists and conservatives, then—the latter including Democrats throughout the era and Republicans toward the end—drew persistent links between state building and the promotion of women’s rights. Advocates of women’s suffrage found themselves stuck with the party most vigorously engaged in state building, or sometimes the one least engaged in state dismantling.

Question 64

Jacob Hacker | The Divided Welfare State

What term does Hacker prefer to use?

Answer 64

Welfare regime - this avoids the complications of the distribution of welfare varying from public and private locations

Question 65

What Amendment rejected discrimination of the basis of race?

Answer 65

The 14th Amendment

Question 66

Fisher, Louis - The Politics of Shared Power / Congress and the Executive

What did Richard Neustadt recognise about the nature of the separation of powers in politics?

Answer 66

The constitutional convention of 1787 is supposed to have created a government of ‘separated powers’ - It did nothing of the sort. Rather, it created a government of separated institutions sharing powers.

Question 67

Kevin Kruse - White Flight - Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism

How many moved from Peyton?

Answer 67

962 Peyton panic saw 30,000 leave. 1960-1970: -60,000, 1970s: 100,000.

Question 68

​| Black and Black | The Rise of Southern Republicanism |

Question: What upset the party lines?

Answer 68

Answer: Great Depression was TP in post-Civil war party politics - national move to Democrats. FDR’s solid reconstructive, agile leadership style was conducive to maintaining mass support.

For the next six decades, the same sectional strategy that had enabled the Republican party to win Congress now condemned it to a permanent minority status.

Question 69

O’Brien - Storm Centre

What role did public opinion have on the SC?

Answer 69

“Public opinion serves to curb the Court when it threatens to go too far or too fast in its rulings”

Question 70

​| Carter, D | From George Wallace to Newt Gringrich |

Question: What do Earle and Merle suggest about the general conservatism of the Republican party?

Answer 70

Answer: -

• Earle and Merle claimed in 1987 that the general conservatism of Republican presidential candidates was much closer match for the interests and beliefs of the Souht’s growing white middle class

Question 71

O’Brien - Storm Centre

How influential was FDR in directing the SC?

Answer 71

George Washington aside, FDR most important in packing the court - 8 appointments + 1 elevation / promo.

Attempted to go further with court packing solution by increasing justices to 15 from 9

Question 72

Jacob Hacker | The Divided Welfare State

How has OECD information altered how far we can suggest that the US was exceptional in terms of welfare expenditure?

Answer 72

Adjusted for relative tax burdens, tax expenditures and publicly subsidised private benefits, the US rises to the middle of the pack- at 24.5% of GDP - above the average of 24% for OECD nations.

Question 73

​| Black and Black | The Rise of Southern Republicanism |

Question: What did Abraham Lincoln suggest as a strategy for political success?

Answer 73

Answer: if the North was sufficiently unified in favour of Republicans, the Republicans could write off the South and still control national government

Question 74

List the activities of civil rights campaigners in the 1950s?

Answer 74

• Executive Order 8802 - wartime desegregation
• Bus Boycott 1955 - Montgomery (responsive to the arrest of Rosa Parks)
• Brown II - with all deliberate speed
• 1960s - SNCC sit ins
• 1965 - Executive Order 11246 - confirmed affirmative action in government contracted work

Question 75

Progressivism

What did Lochner vs New York conclude?

Answer 75

Supreme Court invalidated NY legislation - claimed the freedom of baekrs to work as much as they liked would be invalidated by a capped number of hours per week.

Question 76

O’Brien - Storm Centre

How many supported RVW?

Answer 76

• Consistently since 1973, public opinion polls show that over 80% approve of abortions if the woman’s health is endangered

Question 77

James Patterson - Restless Giant

What did Rocky symbolise?

Answer 77

• Rocky, a very different hit movie of the previous year, conveyed a similar message. Sylvester Stallone, a rags-to-riches story in his own life, played Rocky Balboa, a bloodied boxer who at the end lost the big fight, but who showed great courage and rugged individualism and therefore prevailed (implausibly but in a heart-warming way) against almost everything else. Rocky won self-respect and the girl

Question 78

L McGirr - Suburban Warriors

What was concerning about Eisenhower?

Answer 78

• In conservatives’ eyes, Eisenhower’s middle-of-the-road Republicanism was disturbing enough, but liberal Democrats’ evenmore optimistic embrace of the federal government to solve social and economic ills posed a dire threat to individual liberties.

Question 79

L McGirr - Suburban Warriors

How did the Republicans undermine the liberal extension of the state?

Answer 79

Family, morality, and religion would be intact if liberal elites had not encouraged permissiveness and secularism.

Question 80

Gerstle, Gary -Liberty and Coercion / The Paradox of American Governmentfrom the Founding to the Present

How else did war reshape the state?

Answer 80

• On paper it looked as though the United States, in the nine­teen months that it was at war, had seized the opportunity to build an entirely new federal state. Everywhere one looked, new agen­cies were being established at an astonishing rate. The federal government launched the Selective Service to prepare millions of young men for conscription. It created the War Industries Board, National War Labor Board (NWLB), Aircraft Production Board, US Railroad Administration, Emergency Fleet Corporation, Fuel Administration, and Food Administration to direct economic ac­ tivity across a wide array of sectors. It launched the Committee on Public Information, and asked it to mold public opinion on the in the federal government’s name. Many saw them as nothing but mass vigilantism-thousands of private citizens taking the law into their own hands-and were appalled by the complete disregard for due process that had sanctioned them. Senator George Chamberlain of Oregon, chairman of the Military Affairs Committee and a strong supporter of the war, declared, “There is not a man in the Senate or in the country who despises a man who undertakes to evade his military duty as much as I do.”
• The excesses of war persisted into the postwar era. Even as the central government quickly disassembled most of the institutions it had established to ght and radically downsized the army from several million to fewer than two hundred thousand, it found it­ self enmeshed in another vast surveillance project: monitoring the drinking habits of a hundred million Americans.

Question 81

Novak, William J - The Myth of the ‘weak’ American State, American Historical Review

What is the paradox of power?

Answer 81

Concentration and disaggregation

Question 82

​| Carter, D | From George Wallace to Newt Gringrich |

Question: What was occurring in the North?

Answer 82

Answer: -

polling throughout the 1960s showed white northerners more happy with limited desegregation - but once it was 50% black population, sectional gap disappeared

Question 83

Jacobs, Meg - The Democratic Experiment: New Directions in American Political History

How did the Great Depression solidify thoughts on underconsumption and purchasing power?

Answer 83

• The Great Depression solidified the link between middle and working class interests by seemingly exposing “underconsumption” as the country’s major problem. With millions out of work, from unskilled factory workers to white-collar managers, underconsumption appeared to be everywhere conflicting agendas marked the New Deal, but purchasing-power theories informed much of the administration’s rhetoric
• NRA - raise purchasing power by giving workers the right to organise and bargain for higher wages and by priming the pump through government spending on public works.

Question 84

Fisher, Louis - Presidential War Power

What was the Roosevelt Corollary?

Answer 84

Roosevelt’s logic essentially establishes that “the United States had to intervene to protect another country’s sovereignty”

Question 85

L McGirr - Suburban Warriors

What developed in Orange County by 1960?

Answer 85

OC became the centre of defence related industries. Military-industrial complex brought impressive employment gains in other sectors too

Question 86

James Patterson - Restless Giant

Carter’s position on foreign policy?

Answer 86

• Carter was a Wilsonian internationalist and idealist in his approach to foreign affairs. He took office believing strongly that the United States should speak out against nations that violated basic rights. “

Question 87

​| Carter, D | From George Wallace to Newt Gringrich |

Question: What was the southern strategy?

Answer 87

Answer: -

Not explicitly racist - issue with liberalism was, according to Harry Dent, former aide to Strom Thurmond, that it created “an America in which the streets were “filled with radical dissenters. cities were literally burning down, crime seemed uncontrollable”

Question 88

Capozzola, Christopher - Uncle Sam Wants You / World War One and the Making of the Modern American Citizen

What was a centrepiece of wartime citizenship?

Answer 88

Selective Service Act 1917 - centrepiece of wartime citizenship and its defining obligation.

Question 89

James Patterson - Restless Giant

What was Contragate?

Answer 89

Contragate - sale of arms to Iran in order to fund Contras in Nicaragua

Question 90

James Patterson - Restless Giant

How did Patrick Buchanan respond to the AIDS crisis?

Answer 90

• “Patrick Buchanan, who was Reagan’s director of communications, had earlier (before signing on with the administration”administration) exclaimed: The poor homosexuals. They have declared war on nature and now nature is exacting an awful retribution.”

Question 91

Who introduced the term “culture wars” into modern parlence?

Answer 91

Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America - written by James Davidson Hunter in 1991.

Hunter suggests a dramatic realignment and polarisation on the lines of:

• abortion
• gun control
• global warming
• immigration
• separation of church and state
• recreational drug use
• Homosexuality
• Censorship

Question 92

Gerstle, Gary -Liberty and Coercion / The Paradox of American Governmentfrom the Founding to the Present

How did the coercive power of the state redistribute itself?

Answer 92

• At the very moment when the Su­preme Court was securing for minorities access to their rights as Americans and for women powerful new protections for reproductive freedom, it was allowing for the rise of an imperial presidency with vast, often-unchecked power. In retrospect, it appears that the coercive power that was being drained away from the states was re­ pooling in vital areas of the federal government, even as other parts of this government were championing Bill of Rights’ liberties as they had never been defended before. The United States, thus, was still burdened by the paradox of liberty and coercion commingled that had bedeviled the exercise of governmental power since the republic’s birth.

Question 93

Gerstle, Gary -Liberty and Coercion / The Paradox of American Governmentfrom the Founding to the Present

What were Johnson’s ambitions?

Answer 93

Johnson also envisioned the Great Society completing the work of the New Deal. For LBJ, for whom FDR was a lifelong hero, this meant using the power of the central government to eliminate the disfiguring effects of poverty and to enhance economic security and opportunity for all Americans.

Question 94

Sparrow, James - Warfare State / World War Two Americans and the Age of Big Government

How did WWII Lend-Lease impact the US?

Answer 94

• Impact - touched 85 million - “dwarfing New Deal” in impact
• Just one of the war programs - Lend-Lease, spent more in 6 years ($50 bil) than the New Deal entirely over 10 years
• Expansion of power of the executive to unprecedented level - Second War Powers Act 1942 - “one of the biggest grants of executive discretion in U.S. history - made for a state of emerg3ncy that did not end officially until 1952

Question 95

Jacob Hacker | The Divided Welfare State

What are most Americans unaware of?

Answer 95

1. Most Americans, it is fair to say, do not recognize the extent to which private benefits are encouraged by govern-ment, and even many policymakers admit that they have only a sketchy understanding of the subterranean political processes and public policies that shape private social provision.

Question 96

James Patterson - Restless Giant

What caused a sense of identity crisis in US politics?

Answer 96

• Modern America yearned for a return to the 1950s, painting the era as “halcyon” and the golden age with the greatest generation
• Economic decline, oil price hikes, the Vietnam war and most significantly Watergate led to widespread public disillusionment with the establishment.

Question 97

Gerstle, Gary -Liberty and Coercion / The Paradox of American Governmentfrom the Founding to the Present

What does privatisation entail?

Answer 97

• Privatization, entailed persuading private groups to do work that the central state was not authorized or willing to undertake. The US government turned again and again to the private sector for assistance on a wide range of matters, such as building railroads, dams, and other forms of infrastructure; mobi­lizing the home front, economically and ideologically, for war; put­ ting political dissenters under surveillance and sometimes in jail; staffing diplomatic missions and expanding American influence overseas; moralizing the poor and constructing welfare programs for those unable to help themselves; and contracting out a broad range of mundane government services.

Question 98

​| Carter, D | From George Wallace to Newt Gringrich |

Question: what permitted the re-emergence of Nixon?

Answer 98

Answer: -

TV - TV would allow minimum uncontrolled exposure of the candidate and an opportunity for maximum manipulation of the electorate.

Nixon wanted to emulate churchill, to exude confidence, not cockiness

Question 99

L McGirr - Suburban Warriors

Which Reagan speech “electrified the nation”?

Answer 99

“A Time for Choosing”

Reagan’s platform consisted of:

• Limiting the use of the state for purposes of more equitable economic distribution
• Reliance on private enterprise
• A return to local control
• Simultaneous reinforcement of state power as enforcer of law and order and moral traditionalism.

Question 100

Gerstle, Gary -Liberty and Coercion / The Paradox of American Governmentfrom the Founding to the Present

What three factors drove the improvisational central state building project in the US?

Answer 100

• Three strategies in particular powered the improvisational cen­tral state-building project in the United States: exemption, surro­gacy, and privatization.

Question 101

Kevin Kruse - White Flight - Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism

What followed the desegregation of public places?

Answer 101

A majority of white Atlantans recoiled at the thought of social contact between the races, which they more commonly disdained as “interracial intimacy” - accordingly, the desegregation of public spaces was followed by white abandonment of the areas

Question 102

Fisher, Louis - The Politics of Shared Power / Congress and the Executive

How did the transfer of budgetary powers to Congress in 1974 impact the president?

Answer 102

The political system, by no longer holding the president accountable for the budget, has excused the chief exec from the political leadership role that the nation needs.

Question 103

James Patterson - Restless Giant

What evidence shows that pressure groups were not the only mechanism driving change in the state?

Answer 103

• In November 1975, Congress passed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act. This law, another far-reaching civil rights initiative, did not stem from grass-roots activism by disabled Americans; in the early 1970s, the handicapped had not yet become an effective pressure group.

Question 104

Novak, William J - The Myth of the ‘weak’ American State, American Historical Review

What is the American sonderweg, how has this fused with anti-socialism?

Answer 104

• Issues with characterisation - classically interpreted weak (Tocqueville)
• Traditional beliefs of political culture, anti-statism and anti-socialism tied together
• American sonderweg - negative liberty
• CW and pCW fascination with neoliberalism furthered impetus to roll back the state
• Modern state exists as rhetorical entity without bearing on reality

Question 105

Gerstle, Gary -Liberty and Coercion / The Paradox of American Governmentfrom the Founding to the Present

Which group was vehemently opposed to the expansion of the state?

Answer 105

• A small but vigorous group op­ posing the deployment of coercive government power in any form founded the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in 1920. The campaigns led by the ACLU and its allies played a significant role in generating new respect for the rights of individuals, and in creat­ing pressure to constrain the power of the government at both the federal and state levels. The agitation that it generated was one fac­tor influencing the Supreme Court nally to discern in the Bill of Rights barriers against the abuse of individuals that no government at any level could be allowed to circumvent

Question 106

Kevin Kruse - White Flight - Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism

What happened in Atlanta?

Answer 106

Black movement from the inner city outwards led to division - fear that blacks replacing whites led to 85% flight of further whites

Question 107

L McGirr - Suburban Warriors

What had modernity proven to be incompatible with?

Answer 107

a militant religiosity, an unbending belief in the fundamental truth of the “rock of ages,” and a strident laissez-faire individualism

Question 108

​| Black and Black | The Rise of Southern Republicanism |

Question: What, arguably, was characteristic of Old South politics and institutions?

Answer 108

Answer: The Old South was transparently undemocratic and thoroughly racist

Evidence: “Southern political institutions [were deliberately constructed to subordinate] the Negro population and, externally, to block threatened interference from the outside with these local arrangements” - VO Key Jr.

Question 109

O’Brien - Storm Centre

Roe V Wade

Answer 109

• Concerning the right to regulate abortion
• Rise of the call for abortion as part of the sexual revolution of the 1960s
• Basis of the right to abort was on the right to privacy - an indirect right of the constitution
• Liberal abortion laws were ultimately seen to allow “the killing of people”

Question 110

Fisher, Louis - Presidential War Power

How did Bush Snr. avoid having to use congress?

Answer 110

Bush’s intervention in the Gulf came with no effort to seek authority from Congress - instead, he created a multinational alliance and encourage the security council to “authorise” the use of military force

Question 111

​| Carter, D | From George Wallace to Newt Gringrich |

Question:What was the lynchpin of Nixon’s strategy?

Answer 111

Answer: -

Capturing the south - the notion that Goldwater had started the southern strategy was so mcuh “bullshit”, Nixon would later insist - suggesting Eisenhower began in the region first.

Question 112

Fisher, Louis - Presidential War Power

How did Kennedy react to the Cuban Missile Crisis?

Answer 112

Eisenhower’s experiment with inter branch cooperation was short-lived- JFK acted on the Cuban Missile Crisis purely on his own Constitutional Authority

Question 113

Gender SC Cases

Answer 113

• 1908 Muller v Oregon - women should be limited in hours worked for health
• 1942 Glasser v US - single sex jury unconstitutional
• 1971 Phillips vs Martin Marietta - Employer cannot discriminate mothers as much as they cannot discriminate fathers
• 1973 Roe v Wade
• 1983 City of Akron - reconsideration of Roe
• 1989 Webster - Further restrictions on abortion
• 1992 Casey - Throws out Roe’s trimester thing

Question 114

Gerstle, Gary - Liberty and Coercion / The Paradox of American Government from the Founding to the Present

What were Johnson’s ambitions?

Answer 114

Johnson also envisioned the Great Society completing the work of the New Deal. For LBJ, for whom FDR was a lifelong hero, this meant using the power of the central government to eliminate the disfiguring effects of poverty and to enhance economic security and opportunity for all Americans.

Question 115

​| Black and Black | The Rise of Southern Republicanism |

Question: How did Reagan root his support?

Answer 115

Answer: Reagan built the firmest roots in the South by a Republican , by appealing to the Goldwater majority

Question 116

Detail some of the impacts of Reagonomics

Answer 116

Inflation fell from 13.5% to 5%

7 million new jobs were created

Question 117

Progressivism

What was Home rule?

Answer 117

• Home Rule - state governments yields some law making powers to large municipalities

Question 118

What was critical to the passage of Great Society legislation?

Answer 118

The 89th Congress - which replaced a Republican majority with a Southern Democratic stronghold. This actuated in the passage of core elements of the Great Society (Medicare and Education Aid) in 1965.

Question 119

Capozzola, Christopher - Uncle Sam Wants You / World War One and the Making of the Modern American Citizen

What was the voluntaristic/duty-bound paradox which ran through WWI marketing?

Answer 119

Self-appointed home guards operated during the war - demonstrating there was not a monopoly on violence. The war would become a struggle over this right as much as anything during the period.

Question 120

​| Carter, D | From George Wallace to Newt Gringrich |

Question: What was particularly useful to Wallace?

Answer 120

Answer: -

Red-baiting - utility of the cold war to tackle CR issues.

Question 121

​| Carter, D | From George Wallace to Newt Gringrich |

Question: What did The Bell Curve, 1994 conclude?

Answer 121

Answer: -

• Human intelligence is substantially influenced by both inherited and environmental factors and is a better predictor of many personal dynamics, including financial income, job performance, birth out of wedlock, and involvement in crime than are an individual’s parental socioeconomic status, or education level. They also argue that those with high intelligence, the “cognitive elite”, are becoming separated from those of average and below-average intelligence.

Question 122

Gerstle, Gary -Liberty and Coercion / The Paradox of American Governmentfrom the Founding to the Present

Main points

Answer 122

• Many Americans were blind to, or chose not to see, the coercion inherent in state governments that made too little provision for protecting the rights of minorities from the will of the majority.

Question 123

What is the split ticket vote?

Answer 123

A vote for candidates of different political parties on the same ballot, instead of for candidates of only one party. In the presidential elections, for example, a voter may choose a Republican candidate for president, but a Democratic candidate for senator.

this complicates the suggestion that the American mindset is straightforward

Question 124

What did Reagan say about the USSR in a speech in London, 1983?

Answer 124

Reagan compared the USSR to the crisis outlined in Marxist thought - “in an ironic sense, Karl Marx was right. We are witnessing today a great revolutionary crisis, a crisis where the demands of the economic order are conflicting directly with those of the political order… but the crisis is happening not in the free, non-Marxist West, but in the home of Marxism/Leninism, the Soviet union. It is over-centralised, with little to no incentives.

What we see “is a political structure that no longer corresponds to its economic base, a society where productive forces are hampered by political forces.”

Question 125

Progressivism

What is Skocpol’s perspective on the US welfare state?

Answer 125

• Maternal Welfare State
  
  • Europe had paternal welfare states - focused on men - unemployment insurance, working conditions amelioration
  • Often characterised as a weaker welfare state - US - Skocpol states it was actually advanced, just the maternal/ paternal imbalance thing etc.

Question 126

Progressivism

What Acts were brought in to regulate monopolies? (antitrust laws)

Answer 126

• The main statutes are the Sherman Act of 1890, the Clayton Act of 1914, and the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914.

Question 127

​| Black and Black | The Rise of Southern Republicanism |

Question: What followed the 1965 VRA?

Answer 127

Answer: -

In 1964 and 1965, the Democrats’ traditional strategy of legislative obstruction on civil rights was finally and convincingly repudiated

During 1960s, Southern Democrats dissented from national party, forming conservative democrats

These performed well straight after federal intervention

Question 128

Gerstle, Gary - Liberty and Coercion / The Paradox of American Government from the Founding to the Present

What conclusions can be drawn from Gerstle’s study?

Answer 128

• Strength AND Weakness - strength was in its ability to embed its laws, institutions and sovereignty across a vast continent. No manifest destiny in this process
• Military forces easily scalable
• Weakness - The republic’s embrace of a liberal Constitution meant to limit the size of government and orbit of its powers was the most formidable barrier to the formation of a large central state for most of its history.
• Improvisation was a source of weakness as well as strength. The government’s heavy reliance on privatization made its agencies chronicaily susceptible to the influence of private and frequently monied interests.

Question 129

Gerstle, Gary -Liberty and Coercion / The Paradox of American Governmentfrom the Founding to the Present

What fear did Eisenhower have of the military-state?

Answer 129

He intuited that this warfare state had started to reshape, in his words, “the very structure of our society.” The transformations wrought by national security were indeed momentous, and most visible in three areas: the shifting locations and foci of American industry; dra­matic improvements in the nation’s infrastructure; and high levels of federal support for research and education.

Question 130

Derthick, Martha - Keeping the Compound Republic - Essays on American Federalism

What was a landmark of the New Deal?

Answer 130

The Social Security Act was a landmark of the New Deal. According to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s principal collaborator on this legislation, Secretaryof Labor Prances Perkins, Roosevelt regarded it as the cornerstone of his administration, and “took greater satisfaction from it than from anything else he achieved on the domestic front.”

Question 131

What has been a reality of the Congressional/ Presidential split?

Answer 131

Congress has usually been controlled by the same party (post WWII) with the “odd man out” being, literally, the President. Only 16 times (32 years) since 1945 have both branches of Congress and the Presidency been controlled by the same party; the Democrats have held this advantage more often than Republicans (11 to 4).

Question 132

Michael Klarman - From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court Struggle for Racial Equality

What is one of the key contentions in Klarman’s book?

Answer 132

the Court was not protecting minorities against national majorities, it was enforcing national sentiment against local outliers. Klarman repeats this point again and again, going so far to suggest that the court reflected public opinion better than Congress did

Question 133

James Patterson - Restless Giant

How much oil did Hussein sit on?

Answer 133

There was no doubting that Hussein’s conquest threatened Western oil interests. It was estimated at the time that Iraq produced 11 percent, and Kuwait 9 percent, of world supplies”

Question 134

How successful were Johnson’s efforts?

Answer 134

Highly - 96% of legislative motions forwarded were passed. Most successful in history.

Question 135

​| Carter, D | From George Wallace to Newt Gringrich |

Question: what lay at the core of Wallace’s appeal?

Answer 135

Answer: -

Wallace skilfully pulled from the American political fabric the strands of xenophobia, racism, and a “plain folk” cultural outlook that equated the cosmopolitan currents of the 1960s with moral corruption and weakness. His genius was his ability to voice his listeners’ sense of betrayal, of victimhood.”

Question 136

O’Brien - Storm Centre

What did the City of Akron call for?

Answer 136

• City of Akron called for the reconsideration of Roe, however conservatives appalled that it did not call for outright reversal

Question 137

James Patterson - Restless Giant

How did concepts of moderation enter US discourse during the period?

Answer 137

• “The British author E. E. Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful (1973), a best seller on both sides of the Atlantic in the mid-1970s, called for a “maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption.”
• “When oil prices ballooned in 1979, denunciations of America’s gluttonous appetite for material things—and consequent dependence on other countries—became stronger than ever. The nation, critics exclaimed, must consume less and conserve more. “

Question 138

Jacobs, Meg - The Democratic Experiment: New Directions in American Political History

How did the civil war pension system transmogrify over time?

Answer 138

Theda Skocpol has argued that the Civil War pension system, America’s first federal welfare program, was designed to benefit male veterans. But the system evolved in stages, and until the post-Reconstruction years it directed a large percentage of its benefits to widows and their minor children. As late as 1875 more than half of the $28 million spent annually on pensions went to war widows and their dependents, as well as to widowed mothers who had lost the support of a son,and even to “orphan sisters.” Thus the early breadwinner state, if such it was, made a high proportion of its payments to women.

Question 139

O’Brien - Storm Centre

Why does a justice have autonomy?

Answer 139

Justices have great degree of independence - have lifetime role and cannot have salary reduced by congress

Question 140

What did the Wagner act achieve?

Answer 140

The precedent-setting Wagner Act, 1935, enshrining collective bargaining rights, was an expediency which was antithetical of Democrat responses in prior years (i.e. the response to the Pullman Strike), however provided the tooling to encourage recovery, and effectively won over support of the Congress of Industrial Workers (CIO) in 1936, leading to a significant political realignment from GOP to the Democrats.

Question 141

How did the American public react to Clinton’s sexual harassment claims?

Answer 141

Were largely not impressed by the direction adopted by the Republicans - seen as a private affair. The Paula Jones case cost the taxpayer some $60 million

Question 142

Racial Legislation and SC decisions

Answer 142

• Plessy v Ferguson 1896
• Smith v Allwright 1944
• Morgan v Virginia 1946
• Keys v Carolina Coach co. 1954
• Browder v Gayle 1956
• Milliken v Bradley 1974
• Bakke 1978 - quotas no, race yes

Question 143

Fisher, Louis - The Politics of Shared Power / Congress and the Executive

When did the President acquire his prerogatives, and what are these?

Answer 143

Prerogatives of the president were initially with the Legislative, until the Virginia plan

Presidential Exclusive Powers

1. The power to nominate
2. The power to negotiate with foreign countries
3. The power to pardon

Congressional interest and pressure groups can limit all three powers

Question 144

L McGirr - Suburban Warriors

What was the core Republican plan according to Philips?

Answer 144

A core part of the emerging Republican majority, in Phillips’s eyes, consisted of the new technocrats of Florida, Arizona, Texas, and Southern California (including Orange County), regions that had become, according to Phillips, “one of the most important voting blocs on the map.”

Question 145

What was Reagan’s intent behind the SDI?

Answer 145

Creation of an anti-nuclear ballistic defence system which would render the Soviet nuclear deterrent null and void. It would be impossible for the USSR to fund, and thus would present a sustainable method for the US to effectively win the arms race.

Overall, cost $12 billion by 1988.

Question 146

Kevin Kruse - White Flight - Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism

What did the crafting of a ‘Nixon Court’ lead to?

Answer 146

Pivotally important rulings that succeeded in sealing off white suburbanites from the city.

1973 - San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez- 5:4 ruling that affluent suburbs bore no responsibility to share their property-tax school funding with poorer districts of the city. Justice powell acknowledged the disparity, but disbarred the role of the federal government in intervening.

1974 - Miliken vs Bradley - 5:4 majority ended the movement for metropolitan school desegregation.

Question 147

Nixon and Reagan appointments

Answer 147

Nixon: REHNQUIST, POWELL, BLACKMUN, BURGER

Reagan: SCALIA, DAY OCONNOR, KENNEDY

Question 148

L McGirr - Suburban Warriors

How did the mindset of the Cold War affect the popular philosophy of the sunbelt region

Answer 148

• CW industries drove anticommunist and prosperity into one mindset.
• Older capitalism was also prominent - laissez faire, anti-Washington
• “Taken together, these forces magnified conservative strains of political culture within the region, creating a fertile ground for right-wing growth”

Question 149

A. Hartman | The War for the Soul of America

Question: What did Nixon preach in 1973, in response to the acid of modernity?

Answer 149

Above all else, the time has come for us to renew our faith in ourselves and in America. In recent years, that faith has been challenged. Our children have been taught to be ashamed of their country, ashamed of their parents, ashamed of America’s record at home and its role in the world. At every turn we have been beset by those who find everything wrong with America, and little that is right

Question 150

What four civil rights programmes were enacted under Johnson?

Answer 150

• Civil Rights Act 1964 - forbade job discrimination and separate but equal public accommodation
• Voting Rights Act 1965 - removal of discriminatory qualifications
• Immigration and Nationality Services Act 1965 - abolished national-origins quotas
• CRA 1968 - banning housing discrimination

Question 151

Gerstle, Gary -Liberty and Coercion / The Paradox of American Governmentfrom the Founding to the Present

How did the coercive power of the state redistribute itself?

Answer 151

• At the very moment when the Su­preme Court was securing for minorities access to their rights as Americans and for women powerful new protections for reproductive freedom, it was allowing for the rise of an imperial presidency with vast, often-unchecked power. In retrospect, it appears that the coercive power that was being drained away from the states was re­ pooling in vital areas of the federal government, even as other parts of this government were championing Bill of Rights’ liberties as they had never been defended before. The United States, thus, was still burdened by the paradox of liberty and coercion commingled that had bedeviled the exercise of governmental power since the republic’s birth.

Question 152

Fisher, Louis - Presidential War Power

How did the possession of the power to use force abroad change over time?

Answer 152

Presidendal use of force during the first century after the Philadelphia convention conformed closely to the expectations of the framers. The decision to go to war or to mount offensive actions remained with Congress. Presidents accepted that principle for all wars: declared or undeclared. At first narrowly confined, the scope of presidential action gradually widened. Presidential movement of troops and vessels could provoke war, as in Mexico, and Presidents began to use force abroad to “protect American lives and property.”

Question 153

​| Black and Black | The Rise of Southern Republicanism |

Question: Kennedy stance on civil rights

Answer 153

Answer: - “We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights” he told the nation in his first presidential address “we have talked for 100 years or more. It is time to write the next chapter - and to write it in the books of law”

Question 154

​| Carter, D | From George Wallace to Newt Gringrich |

Question: How did opinion change on the subject of integration?

Answer 154

Answer: -

When LBJ came to office, only 31% of adults felt integration was being pushed too fast, by 1968 ,this had become 50%

Question 155

O’Brien - Storm Centre

What could be said of Nixon’s court?

Answer 155

Nixon’s appointment of Burger, Blackmun, Powell, and Rehnquist, however, failed to turn the Court around to forge a constitutional counter revolution.

Question 156

L McGirr - Suburban Warriors

What could be said of the Southern and Western identity of the US?

Answer 156

Southern and western identity, through modern conservatism, focuses on localism and anti federalism

Question 157

James Patterson - Restless Giant

What caused a sense of identity crisis in US politics?

Answer 157

• Modern America yearned for a return to the 1950s, painting the era as “halcyon” and the golden age with the greatest generation
• Economic decline, oil price hikes, the Vietnam war and most significantly Watergate led to widespread public disillusionment with the establishment.

Question 158

Novak, William J - The Myth of the ‘weak’ American State, American Historical Review

What is the American sonderweg, how has this fused with anti-socialism?

Answer 158

• Issues with characterisation - classically interpreted weak (Tocqueville)
• Traditional beliefs of political culture, anti-statism and anti-socialism tied together
• American sonderweg - negative liberty
• CW and pCW fascination with neoliberalism furthered impetus to roll back the state
• Modern state exists as rhetorical entity without bearing on reality

Question 159

Fisher, Louis - The Politics of Shared Power / Congress and the Executive

When did the state of union address become important?

Answer 159

Transmogrification of the state of union address - originally not important, until used by Cleveland to push tariff reform, from this point, become a platform for legislative goal pursuit

Question 160

What did the election of Clinton illustrate in terms of the voting style of the American electorate?

Answer 160

Voted not on foreign policy, but the economy. Bush had record approval ratings - some 92% - however lost to Bush for appearing out-of-touch, and without a decisive economic agenda.

Question 161

​| Carter, D | From George Wallace to Newt Gringrich |

Question: What was particularly useful to Wallace?

Answer 161

Answer: -

Red-baiting - utility of the cold war to tackle CR issues.

Question 162

​| Carter, D | From George Wallace to Newt Gringrich |

Question: What did Nixon accomplish?

Answer 162

Answer: -

Richard Nixon had understood Wallace’s political role; the 1972 campaign marked a critical realignment in American politics. Nixon had successfully pulled a substantial number of traditionally Democratic ethnic and blue collar workers into the Grand Old Party. And, what was more important, he had brought most of the southern Wallace voters into the Republican column

Question 163

Fisher, Louis - Presidential War Power

How did LBJ accelerate the assumption of power, how was it put back in line?

Answer 163

LBJ represented the biggest jump with the escalation in Vietnam which much obscurity on the overall cost and implications to Congress - this was secured with the 1964 Tonkin Gulf Resolution - eventually led to the War Powers Revolution 1973

Question 164

How were Reagan’s ratings impacted by the Contra scandal?

Answer 164

Fell from 67% in 1985 to 46% in 1986.

Question 165

L McGirr - Suburban Warriors

Provide a case study of a Christian community project which was influential on the disposition of the populace

Answer 165

The Register, a regional newspaper, was implicit in the dissemination and praise of activities within the church and the community

The Register helped move Orange Countians’ thinking ontheir schools, government taxes, and foreign policy in a conservative direction.

Question 166

L McGirr - Suburban Warriors

How did Anne Moore summarise the agenda of communists?

Answer 166

As Ann Moore of Fullertonwarned in 1961, “Corrupt the young, get them away from religion. Get them interested in SEX… destroy their ruggedness .This is the first list of the official Communist Party Rules for the Revolution.’

Question 167

James Patterson - Restless Giant

ROAR

Answer 167

• ROAR - Restore Our Alienated Rights

Question 168

L McGirr - Suburban Warriors

What was significant in driving the middle class towards the Republicans in the 1960s?

Answer 168

The confluence of a middle-class economic backlash over taxes and state spending with Christian conservative hostility toward “Big Brother” stoked a fiery brew that would nourish conservative fortunes nationally.

Question 169

Michael Klarman - From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court Struggle for Racial Equality

What is one of the key contentions in Klarman’s book?

Answer 169

the Court was not protecting minorities against national majorities, it was enforcing national sentiment against local outliers. Klarman repeats this point again and again, going so far to suggest that the court reflected public opinion better than Congress did

Question 170

Fisher, Louis - The Politics of Shared Power / Congress and the Executive

Describe the implications of the Logan Act, 1799

Answer 170

The Logan Act, 1799 - attempted to protect the responsibility of the President as the mouthpiece of the people to foreign nations - prevention of foreign parties from interacting with foreigners. This is quasi-1st Amendment violation, reflected in this comment in 1979 by President Carter (the nation’s chief law enforcement officer), after Americans had traveled to the Mideast to talk to Arab and Israeli leaders: “I don’t have any authority, nor do I want to have any authority, to interrupt or to interfere with the right of American citizens to travel where they choose and to meet with whom they choose. I would not want that authority; I think it would be a violation of the basic constitutional rights that are precious to our Nation”

Question 171

What was George W Bush’s stance on foreign policy, as evidenced in his 2005 Inaugural address?

Answer 171

“It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.”

Question 172

O’Brien - Storm Centre

Between 1961-1969, how many Warren court cases supported minorities?

Answer 172

76% of Warren court rulings each term went in the direction of protecting and minorities against the government.

Question 173

​| Carter, D | From George Wallace to Newt Gringrich |

Question: What was Nixon’s freedom of choice policy?

Answer 173

Answer: -

“freedom of choice” - race neutrality and grassroots democracy was the solution to imposed desegregation - Nixon adopted Freedom of Choice to win support, claiming that mixing slum children with wealthy children would destroy the ability of the good to compete - did not put racially, but meant it so

Question 174

Vernon Bogdanor - Bill Clinton

What could be said of Bill Clinton?

Answer 174

Worked the politics of triangulation, however was every Republican in his fiscal measures - belief in “opportunity, responsibility, community”. Was essentially a third way poliitcian (before Blair!)

“Markets were possible, State where necessary”

Converted a $290bil deficit into a $75bil surplus

Question 175

James Patterson - Restless Giant

How many school districts were supporting AAs by 1979?

Answer 175

• By 1979, it was estimated that 1,505 American school districts educating more than 12 million students were operating under orders to achieve better racial balance

Question 176

Fisher, Louis - The Politics of Shared Power / Congress and the Executive

What did US vs Curtiss-Wright achieve?

Answer 176

Congress may provide the President with a special degree of discretion in external matters which would not be afforded domestically.

Question 177

Fisher, Louis - Presidential War Power

How did Bush Jnr. interact with Congress?

Answer 177

At times he acted unilaterally, such as authorizing the creation of military tribunals to try those responsible for 9/11. Congress and the courts provided few legislative and judicial checks to his military initiatives.

Question 178

Capozzola, Christopher - Uncle Sam Wants You / World War One and the Making of the Modern American Citizen

How did Rice react to the conscription bill?

Answer 178

Stanley T. Rice felt that a draft was “not in accordance with the principals [sic] of American government and is undemocratic.”

The draft smacked of coercion; as Speaker of the House Champ Clark memorably intoned during debate over the bill, “there

is precious little difference between a conscript and a convict.”

Question 179

Jacob Hacker | The Divided Welfare State

What are the two narratives on the American welfare state?

Answer 179

1. The narrative of political failure: unlike the more expansive, more generous, more ‘decommodifying’ welfare states of northern Europe, US leaders have been thwarted by America’s individualistic political culture, fragmented political institutions, weak labour unions, and enduring racial strife.
2. Distinctive American successes: the Civil War and mothers’ pensions of the late 1900s, America’s temporary status as a welfare-state leader during the New Deal, the construction of a capable fiscal state during and immediately after WWII, the GI Bill, the great society and war on poverty, the judicially promoted expansion of antipoverty programmes in the 1970s, and the burgeoning of social welfare tax expenditures.

Question 180

Jacobs, Meg - The Democratic Experiment: New Directions in American Political History

Where was laissez-faire integrated into the constitution?

Answer 180

• “Ritchie vs People” 1895 - “No female shall be employed in any factory or workshop more than eight hours in any one day, or forty-eight hours in any one week.”
• Lochner vs New York, 1905- holding that limits to working time violated the Fourteenth Amendment.

Question 181

Progressivism

What did the 18th and 19th amendment result in?

Answer 181

• 18th - Prohibition
• 19th - Female vote

Question 182

​| Carter, D | From George Wallace to Newt Gringrich |

Question: How much was diverted to the cause of anti-poverty policy?

Answer 182

Answer: -

antipoverty and social welfare legislation had seen $121 billion transferred to individuals below the poverty line - 30% to blacks - between Kennedy and Johnson

Question 183

​| Black and Black | The Rise of Southern Republicanism |

Question: What trend was observable by 1952?

Answer 183

Answer: Enclave Republicanism - 1952 - modest inroads made into the metropolitan areas from mountain strongholds

Question 184

Gerstle, Gary -Liberty and Coercion / The Paradox of American Governmentfrom the Founding to the Present

what was the crown jewel of land reform?

Answer 184

The crown jewel of agricultural reform was the 1933 Agricultural Adjustment Act, a comprehensive plan for man­ aging and stabilizing American agriculture. This program and its successors transformed a long-distressed economic sector into one of enduring prosperity and stability. They constituted one of the New Deal state’s most lasting achievements. At the same time, the freedom of New Deal agricultural reformers was severely con­ strained by a range of state and local institutions as well as by a lobbying organization of prosperous farmers. For this reason, re­ formers failed in their efforts to redistribute resources from rich to poor farmers, and from the landed to the landless.

The agricultural agenda of the 1890s was similar in many respects to the FDR plan - Populist intents therefore realised over a longer trajectory

Question 185

Beer, Samuel - To Make a Nation / The Rediscovery of American Federalism

What was the intent of the articles of confederation?

Answer 185

The framers of the constitution were not trying to weaken government but strengthen it. They were centralisers. Reacting to the sorry record of weak and illiberal government under the articles of Confederation, they sought as their principle reform to strengthen the federal government. They did this by adding to its formal powers,

by making these powers directly applicable to individuals, and, above all, by enhancing the normative force of these powers by

basing them on the sovereignty of the people at large of the whole nation

Question 186

Give an example of split ticket voting

Answer 186

A recent example of split-ticket voting in the United States is the 2004 elections in Montana, where Democratic gubernatorial candidate Brian Schweitzer was elected governor 50.4% to 46.0%, while incumbent Republican President George W. Bush simultaneously defeated Democrat John Kerry 59% to 39% in the state.

Question 187

Progressivism

What drove forward the progressive cause?

Answer 187

• Muckrakers - journalists uncoverng social ills - McClure’s Magazine - popular outlet for this.
• The Jungle - conditions in the meat-packing industry in Chicago

Question 188

A. Hartman | The War for the Soul of America

Question: How was Nixon ‘smart’ in targetting his message?

Answer 188

• The Nixon campaign was nothing if not smart about demographic trends. The Sunbelt states were becoming increasingly populous, and evangelicals were the fastest-growing population in those states.

Question 189

James Patterson - Restless Giant

What role did Congress take after Watergate and Nixon?

Answer 189

• Following Watergate, and during the years Ford attempted to establish himself, Congress became more assertive, and championed more power over the states - “Perceiving the states as unimaginative and conservative, and states’ rights ideology as anachronistic, members of Congress took the lead in passing legislation, such as aid to handicapped children and bilingual education, that enhanced federal power via-à-vis the states”

Question 190

Jacob Hacker | The Divided Welfare State

By 2000, how many Americans were covered by employment-based health plans?

Answer 190

2/3rd - 170,000,000

Question 191

Kevin Kruse - White Flight - Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism

What could be said of the phenomenon of white flight?

Answer 191

“White flight, in the end, was more than a physical relocation. It was a political revolution.”

Question 192

James Patterson - Restless Giant

Produce an example of popular TV during the period which symbolised the changing attitudes to sex

Answer 192

• “popular Mary Tyler Moore Show, which started in 1970, Mary’s mother reminds her father, “Don’t forget to take your pill.” Mary, thinking that her mother is talking to her, replies, “I won’t.” “

Question 193

What could be said of US Foreign Politics under Clinton?

Answer 193

Not directed - intervention was avoided in Rwanda, Bosnia - intervention did occur in Kosovo, but only through the pressure of Blair. Intervention in Somalia was quickly withdrawn, after facing some opposition. Was considered to highlight the lack of a clear policy stance in the post-cold war era - no defined rule.

Question 194

Fisher, Louis - The Politics of Shared Power / Congress and the Executive

What are exclusively presidential powers?

Answer 194

Presidential Exclusive Powers

1. The power to nominate
2. The power to negotiate with foreign countries
3. The power to pardon

Congressional interest and pressure groups can limit all three powers

Question 195

Progressivism

What constrained reform during the Progressive era?

Answer 195

• Decentralised political system
• Limited govt
• Laissez faire judicial philosophy - leave it alone - economic philos. Influencing the thought of SC - invisible hand etc.
• Liberty of contract idea - SC thought people should be left alone - negative liberty - free to do what they like, as long as no injury occurs. Workers have the right to dictate what wages they accept, how long they want to work

Question 196

What were the culture wars?

Answer 196

Emerging in the 1990s, the culture wars were debates over abortion, gay and lesbian rights, hate crimes and so on - usually guised in highly moralistic overtures

Question 197

What is the key check in the American system?

Answer 197

The Legislative Branch

• Checks on Exec
  
  • Impeachment power
  • Override vetoes
  • Approve appointments
  • Declare war
  • Enact taxes
• Judiciary
  
  • Impeachment power
  • Set courts inferior to the SC
  • Alter the size of the SC
• Legislature
  
  • Bicameral passage
  • Revenue bills
  • Publication of all journals

Question 198

Who stated that court decisions reflected social attitudes more than they created them?

Answer 198

Michael Klarman

Question 199

Sparrow, James - Warfare State / World War Two Americans and the Age of Big Government

How did surveillence become a reality?

Answer 199

• Ironically, the cultural politics of scapegoating the state had only given the government a firmer toehold in American life. In enlisting citizens to monitor their own speech as well as that of their neighbours, government instilled not only acceptance but also faith in its surveillance.”

Testament of support to J Edgar

Question 200

L McGirr - Suburban Warriors

Where was Reagan’s victory constructed?

Answer 200

In the organisational networks, ideas, and strategies of the conservative movement. The movement which had mobilised the middle against the communist menace had restructured itself to pursue ‘respectability’

Anti-communism faded into the background, and was replaced with Bible study groups, pro-life and pro-family organisations, along with a more organised and separate libertarian movement - shown in the Libertarian party.

Question 201

Kevin Kruse - White Flight - Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism

Thurgood Marshall’s response to the Milliken decision.

Answer 201

“Today’s holding, I fear, is more a reflection of a perceived public mood that we have gone far enough in enforcing the Constitution’s guarantee of equal justice than it is the product of neutral principles of law,”

Question 202

Progressivism

What was the Square Deal?

Answer 202

• promising the average citizen fairness, broken trusts, railroads regulations, and pure food and drugs
• Roosevelt, 1901

Question 203

Gerstle, Gary -Liberty and Coercion / The Paradox of American Governmentfrom the Founding to the Present

What are the key reform agendas of American history?

Answer 203

• Those who led these efforts, including presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin De­lano Roosevelt, and Lyndon Baines Johnson, occupy outsize roles in American history, as do the programs of comprehensive reform with which their names became associated: the Square Deal, Pro­gressivism, the New Deal, and the Great Society.

Question 204

L McGirr - Suburban Warriors

What happened concurrently with the rise of the South and West?

Answer 204

During this period, Northern manufacturing declined - the resulting demographic and economic changes would eventually help shift the balance of economic and political power in the national increasingly Southward and Westward

Question 205

L McGirr - Suburban Warriors

By how many votes did Goldwater lose?

Answer 205

15,951,220 votes

Question 206

Jacobs, Meg - The Democratic Experiment: New Directions in American Political History

How does Zeilzer compound his case concerning tax?

Answer 206

World War II enabled the institutionalization of a mass income tax but did not guarantee popular support for ever increasing rates. High taxes could erode postwar expectations of abundance and increased living standards. Moreover, antitax populism remained strong especially as Cold War fears of totalitarian regimes reinforced an American aversion to centralized power. By looking at anritax sentiment, Zelizer reminds us that support for governmental programs does not automatically generate support for a fiscal state. While the federal government has grown, it has faced limits in large part by the resistance to pay for it.

Question 207

Jacob Hacker | The Divided Welfare State

What is the common interpretation of the US welfare state, why is this the case?

Answer 207

The laggard welfare state. Less expensive and intensive welfare provision - later to develop, slow to grow.

Question 208

James Patterson - Restless Giant

What did the Supreme Court declare in 1972?

Answer 208

• “the Supreme Court in 1972 voted, six to one, to advance the right of privacy, by branding a Massachusetts law that had barred the sale of contraceptives to single people an “unwarranted governmental intrusion.” “Everyone,” the Court added, “including unmarried minors, had a right to use contraception.”

Question 209

Kevin Kruse - White Flight - Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism

What could be said of the phenomenon of white flight?

Answer 209

“White flight, in the end, was more than a physical relocation. It was a political revolution.”

Question 210

O’Brien - Storm Centre

What was Roe V Wade branded?

Answer 210

• Branded as the 20th Century’s Dred Scott Case - as it sought to “deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of the law

Question 211

Derthick, Martha - Keeping the Compound Republic - Essays on American Federalism

What are some divergent thoughts on the New Deal?

Answer 211

Scholarship on the New Deal has generally stressed the extent to which it honoured the traditional prerogatives of the states, accomnodating to the institutions of American federalism. It is true that few purely national agencies were created, and those that were created often found that the price of acceptance, if not survival, was to make adjustments at the grassroots. However, this interpretation overlooks the recasting that federal action achieved in state-local relations. Eroding slowly and steadily in any case, the bedrock of localism eroded much faster when federal grant programs came to bear.

Question 212

L McGirr - Suburban Warriors

What brought together libertarians and conservatives in the sunbelt region?

Answer 212

• Anticommunism - binding agent between libertarians and religious conservatives

Question 213

Jacobs, Meg - The Democratic Experiment: New Directions in American Political History

What secured anti-statism?

Answer 213

Anti statism has operated as a powerful force in the history of American democracy. Having a long Anglo-American tradition, anti statism has become concrete and institutionalised in the US in battles over slavery, the rise of industrialised capitalism, and the centralising and standardising impulses of the Progressive-New Deal moment.

Question 214

A. Hartman | The War for the Soul of America

Question: What did the Moynihan report conclude?

Answer 214

• Black families were on balance matriarchal, and this had to be broken by giving back men good jobs. Black families in ghettos were disintegrating, thus a solution had to be found.

Moynihan report put into national discourse the concerns of moving forward with a welfare state

Question 215

Jacob Hacker | The Divided Welfare State

What is the common interpretation of the US welfare state, why is this the case?

Answer 215

The laggard welfare state. Less expensive and intensive welfare provision - later to develop, slow to grow.

Question 216

Novak, William J - The Myth of the ‘weak’ American State, American Historical Review

What could be said about the national values of the US?

Answer 216

• National values intensely anti-statist
• Huntington - Cognitive Dissonance in reality vs fiction in America
• Idiomatic trappings
• Oxymoronic undertones of the American

Question 217

L McGirr - Suburban Warriors

What was significant in driving the middle class towards the Republicans in the 1960s?

Answer 217

The confluence of a middle-class economic backlash over taxes and state spending with Christian conservative hostility toward “Big Brother” stoked a fiery brew that would nourish conservative fortunes nationally.

Question 218

Kevin Kruse - White Flight - Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism

What could be said of integration?

Answer 218

“in practice, token integration was often just a new form of segregation. Black students sat by themselves in classes and the cafeteria. Students attacked them in halls, teachers ignored or insulted them in the classrooms, and school officials excluded them from activities.”

Question 219

A. Hartman | The War for the Soul of America

Question: How did Nicholas Podhoretz respoond to the Moynihan report?

Answer 219

• Nicholas Podhoretz - My Negro Problem - claimed that Jews managed to succeed and thrive in the face of discrimination, no reason why blacks could not - thus did not need special measures

Question 220

Fisher, Louis - The Politics of Shared Power / Congress and the Executive

How does Congress bypass funding issues?

Answer 220

It is the practice of Congress to appropriate large, lump-sum amounts

for general purposes. The defense appropriation bill for

fiscal 1997 contained the following amounts for research, development, testing, and evaluation: $5.0 billion for the Army, $8.2 billion

for the Navy, and $14.5 billion for the Air Force. Other than a few restrictions in each account, the Pentagon is legally free to spend funds

for the broad purposes described in the statute.

Question 221

​| Black and Black | The Rise of Southern Republicanism |

Question: Republican south success between 1961 and 1990 in Peripheral South

Answer 221

Answer: -

From 1961 to 1990, Republicans in the Peripheral South not only competed seriously for Senate seats but won 37% of the elections, a respectable performance compared to their unrelieved string of defeats during the first six decades of the 20th century.

Question 222

What is Elisabeth S Clemens argument?

Answer 222

Interest group politics became increasingly important during this period, emerging from the progressive era

Question 223

What does the Jimmy Carter case study contribute to the understanding of politics and the state?

Answer 223

Jimmy Carter possessed significant ambitions in terms of health reform, social security reform, energy reform, but was unable to make any legislative headway for having a poor rapport with Congress - most notably, the speaker of the house - Tip O’Neill - as a result, Carter has very few legislative gains to his name, and is generally marred by the lack of intervention in Afghanistan, and the crisis in Iran with Khomeini.

Contrastingly, Reagan was able to harness charismatic leadership and project a sense of direction which strongly resonated with the people - which proved for a more decisive presidency.

Question 224

​| Black and Black | The Rise of Southern Republicanism |

Question: What could be said of Republican opportunity in the South?

Answer 224

Answer: -

None of the Deep South states - Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina, had impressive traditions of Republicanism form the grassroots. Prior to Reagan, prospects bleak

Question 225

Fisher, Louis - Presidential War Power

What were Eisenhower’s thoughts on the Korean war under Truman

Answer 225

Although Elsenhower initially believed that Truman’s decision to intervene in Korea was “wise and necessary,” he came to realise it was a serious mistake, politically and constitutionally, to commit the nation to war in Korea without congressional approval. Elsenhower thought that national commitments would be stronger if entered into jointly by both branches and therefore asked Congress

Question 226

Gerstle, Gary -Liberty and Coercion / The Paradox of American Governmentfrom the Founding to the Present

What could be said to have been happening since the 1880s?

Answer 226

Since the 1880s, many Americans had been looking for ways to increase the reach and power of the central state. Multiple groups of plebeian Americans, including farmers and workers, came to see in an expanded central state the best chance of managing capitalism and enhancing their own economic security and opportunity

Question 227

Who were the populists, what did they hope to achieve?

Answer 227

• The Populists focused on railroads, silver coinage, crop prices, and inflation.
• The Populist Party supported Democrat William Jennings Bryan in the 1896 election.
• Frances Willard chaired the first convention of the Populist Party, also called the “People’s Party,” in 1892 in Omaha, Nebraska.
• The party’s Omaha Platform called for the end of national banks, the establishment of a progressive income tax, the direct election of senators, an eight-hour working day, and government control of all utilities, including railroads.
• By 1900, the Populist Party was in decline.

Question 228

Beer, Samuel - To Make a Nation / The Rediscovery of American Federalism

What was New Federalism?

Answer 228

Program under Ronald Reagan, which aimed to reduce intergovernmental aid.

Question 229

Kevin Kruse - White Flight - Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism

What did the loss of all white communities lead to?

Answer 229

Loss of white communities led to the defence of white neighbourhoods not being something driven by radical KKK members, but the respectable middle class.

Question 230

A. Hartman | The War for the Soul of America

Question: What helps to explain the culture wars?

Answer 230

• the paradox of American secularisation - the perplexing fact that religious authority dwindled even as the vast majority of Americans doggedly persisted in religious belief - helps explain the culture wars.”
  *

Question 231

James Patterson - Restless Giant

How did the NYT summarise the legacy of Brown 25 years on?

Answer 231

• 25th Anniversary of Brown vs Board - NYT stated: “Those supporting integration are becoming increasingly lonely as black and Hispanic parents and leaders express mounting doubt about whether the little desegregation that can be achieved in the big cities is worth the cost and the effort”

Question 232

O’Brien - Storm Centre

What does the risk of government by judiciary present?

Answer 232

Risk of government by judiciary means the SC has to be self-limiting to maintain legitimacy

Question 233

Fisher, Louis - Presidential War Power

What do the debates at the Philadelphia convention outline?

Answer 233

The debates at the Philadelphia convention reveal that the framers were determined to circumscribe the President’s authority to take unilateral military actions.