Richard Nixon - Domestic Policy Flashcards
Poverty and the ‘welfare mess’
Nixon attacked LBJ’s ‘welfare mess’ - 1968 polls shown 84% of Americans believed too many people were receiving welfare money who should be working.
1/9 children, and 1/3 black children were on benefits.
*Nixon cut federal funding for housing & youth programmes and closed 59 Job Corps.
*shrank the Office of Economic Opportunity.
*Vetoed 1971 Child Development Act, providing free childcare to poor mothers - ‘smacked of communism’
*Proposed a family assistance plan to make people work, but was rejected by congress.
However, not conservative as spent more on welfare than Johnson.
Law and Order
Nixon believed violence & crime escalated because the liberals had been ‘soft’ on the court system. eg. LBJs Miranda Ruling, giving rights to accused victims.
Nixon passed the District of Columbia Crime Control Act 1970, giving the police greater search powers and making bail harder to obtain, after Secretary Woods had $7000 worth of jewellery stolen.
Extremists such as Black panthers were now arrested on smaller issues, and dealt harshly with radicals such as the Chicago Eight for anti-war riots.
- Bobby Seal and Thomas Hayden arrested.
Busing segregation - Racial Equality
8 of 9 people opposed busing, including Nixon, and he promised to slow down the pace of desegregation, appealing to those in the Sunbelt.
Nixon tasked his VP, Spiro Agnew to desegregate public schools using busing - by Sept. 1970, less than 10% of black students attended segregated schools.
Supreme Court rulings 1971 & 1973 supported busing of students from neighbourhoods to end de facto segregation in schools.
- Nixon attacked it as ‘wrenching’ children from their families, but failed to get it overturned.
Nixon appointed conservative supreme court justices. - Milliken vs Bradley ruling 1974, halted busing in the Detroit area & continuance of de facto segregation.
Affirmative Action - Racial equality
Nixon Introduced the first federal affirmative action programme in 1970, called the Philadelphia Plan.
Required government contractors to hire minority workers until targets were reached.
‘Contractors Association of Eastern Pennsylvania Vs Schultz’ in 1970 ruling rolled out the plan nationwide.
Shirley Chisholm became the first black woman elected to congress in 1968, and the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) was founded by 13 black members of congress in 1971.
Women’s Rights Achievements
*Nixon increased numbers of female appointments to the Administration and created a Presidential Task Force on Women’s Rights.
*Instructed the Labour Department to bring sex discrimination under Title VII of the CR Act.
*Instructed Labour Department to add sex discrimination to the guidelines for the Office of Federal Contract Compliance.
1969 Anti-War Protests
USA’s greatest anti-war protests took place in Oct. & Nov. 1969, with tens of thousands marching on the Whitehouse and in every city, with pro CR, pro Black Panthers and anti-capitalism protests taking place.
- Students blew up buildings at Uni of Colorado due to funds being frozen for black scholarships.
- San Diego students set fire to banks.
- Black Panthers set Yale Law Library books on fire.
Nov. 1969, Moratorium day took place. 500,000 peaceful protestors marched on Washington, with placards of dead American soldiers and destroyed Vietnamese villages and candles.
Inaugural address Protestors shouted “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, the NLF is going to win” and threw stones, beer bottles / cans at police and the presidential limousine.
Kent State & Jackson State Shootings
When Nixon intervened in Cambodia in 1970, protests erupted in more than 80% of American Universities.
After Kent Students rioted downtown and bombed the ROTC, some students held a peaceful protest in May 1970 - National Guard panicked, shooting 4 students & wounding 11 with M1 Rifles and teargas.
In the next week, 2 more students were killed and 12 wounded at Jackson State - 100,000 protestors gathered outside the Whitehouse protesting.
Some Americans believed the government purposely killed students. Nixon referred to students as ‘bums’, in which the father of a dead child said ‘my child was not a bum’, making national headlines.
Nixon’s handling of the protestors
April 1970, Tricia Nixon uninvited the leader of the YIPPIES, Abbie Hoffman from a Whitehouse meeting after threatening to put LSD in the drinks.
- Americans sympathised with the Nixons
Also won sympathy in the 1970 mid-term elections.
Demonstrators beat on building walls where Nixon spoke in San Jose - When Nixon exited, he climbed on the presidential limousine and threw Victory signs, while having eggs and stone thrown at him.
Nixon and Agnew tried to discredit protestors by failing to differentiate between the mainstream anti war protests and violent protest groups.
To decrease the number of protests, he…
* Timed US troop withdrawals to forestall protests
* Students above 20 no longer drafted for war.
* Threatened to end scholarship loans for convicted students & ordered surveillance of protesting groups.
*Took protestors to court - spring 1970, 10000 were arrested in Washington DC. Litigation and legal fees kept protestors busy and broke.
Nixonomics & the post-war boom
Nixon inherited a low unemployment rate of 3.3% but high inflation - chose to employ a policy of monetary restraint to cool an overheating economy.
Neo-liberalist policies known as ‘gradualism’ to slowly implement these policies.
However, unemployment rose to 6% and republicans lost 12 seats in the House of Representatives
Handled this by reducing government spending under $200 billion to lower inflation, and devalued ER in 1971 to make exports more price competitive.
Created tax & wage freezes leading to postal worker strikes. But, implemented NEP in August 1971, which cut taxes, imposed import tax, and linked dollar to the value of gold, which created a boom offsetting damage from the Vietnam War.
OPEC and the Arab-Israeli War
30% of America’s oil came from the Middle East.
Nixons support of Israel in the Arab-Israeli war led to OPEC imposing an embargo on the US.
- led to a 400% Spike in oil prices, increasing cost of energy and Americans spent 30% more on heating and petrol
Led to contempt for Nixonomics from Americans and the 1973 Great Inflation.
