Unit 12 Review

Question 1

Nixon’s experience with foreign affairs up to 1969.

Answer 1

Nixon brought one hugely valuable asset with him to the White House - his broad knowledge and thoughtful expertise in foreign affairs.

Question 2

Detente policy of Nixon.

Answer 2

Nixon’s visits ushered in an era of detente, or relaxed tension, with the two communist powers (Soviet Union and China).

Question 3

Components of Nixon’s southern strategy.

Answer 3

Nixon devised a clever but cynical plan - called the southern strategy - to achieve a solid majority in 1972. Appointing conservative Supreme Court justices, soft-pedaling civil rights, and opposing school busing to achieve racial balance were all parts of the strategy.

Question 4

Nixon’s refusal to give up his taped conversations…why? (It is constitutional)

Answer 4

But Nixon, stubbornly citing his “executive privilege”, refused to hand over the tapes.

Question 5

How did Gerald Ford end up President?

Answer 5

Gerald Rudolph Ford, the first man to be made president solely by a vote of Congress. Ford had been selected, not elected, vice president following Spiro Agnew’s resignation in disgrace.

Question 6

Ford’s most controversial act as President?

Answer 6

Ford granted a complete pardon to Nixon for any crimes he may have committed as president discovered or undiscovered. Democrats were outraged, and lingering suspicions about the circumstances of the pardon cast a dark shadow over Ford’s prospects of being elected president in his own right in 1976.

Question 7

Components of Ford’s economic policy - WIN?

Answer 7

Ford went on a war against inflation, “Whip Inflation Now” - WIN. Ford encouraged personal savings, but inflation remained a threat to the economy.

Question 8

Which of the social movements from the Civil Rights era gained momentum in the 1970s?

Answer 8

One major exception to this pattern stood out: American Feminists.

Question 9

Title IX Components?

Answer 9

In 1972 Congress passed Title IX of the Education Amendments, prohibiting sex discrimination in any federally assisted educational program or activity. Biggest impact was to create opportunities for girls’ and women’s athletics at schools and colleges.

Question 10

Why did Americans like (and vote) for Jimmy Carter?

Answer 10

This born-again Baptist touched many people with his down-home sincerity. He ran against the memory of Nixon and Watergate as much as he ran against Ford. His most effective campaign pitch was his promise “I’ll never lie to you.” He attracted voters as an outsider who would clean the disorderly house of “big government”.

Question 11

President Carter’s foreign policy was guided by his interest in…?

Answer 11

As a committed Christian, President Carter displayed from the outset an overriding concern for “Human Rights” as the guiding principle of his foreign policy.

Question 12

Camp David Agreement - what is it?

Answer 12

September 1978, President Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel met at Camp David. Carter persuaded the two visitors to sign an accord that held considerable promise of peace. Israel withdrew, had to sign formal peace treaty within 3 months.

Question 13

Oil shocks of the 1970s - what did it tell us about our economy?

Answer 13

The “oil shocks” of the 1970s taught Americans a painful but necessary lesson: that they could never again seriously consider a policy of economic isolation, as they had tried to do in the decades between the two World Wars.

Question 14

Operation Eagle Claw - why a problem for Carter?

Answer 14

The Iranian hostage crisis caused Carter to apply economic sanctions. When that did not work, he sent in a daring rescue mission (Operation Eagle Claw). Two aircraft collided, killing eight. This failure proved anguishing for Americans and provided an embarrassing backdrop to the president’s struggle for reelection.

Question 15

The New Right of the 1980s - most concern about?

Answer 15

Many New Right activists were far less agitated about economic questions than about cultural concerns - the so-called social issues.

Question 16

The New Right - source of influence (power)?

Answer 16

The “old Right” where many residents harbored suspicions of federal power. The conservative cause drew added strength from the emergence of a “New Right” movement, partly in response to the counterculture protests of the 1960s.

Question 17

President Carter was most well-known after his Presidency for his work in what?

Answer 17

Though unsuccessful in the White House, Carter earned much admiration in later years for his humanitarian and human rights activities. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

Question 18

President Reagan’s domestic goals…?

Answer 18

He sought nothing less than the dismantling of the welfare state and the reversal of the political evolution of the preceding half-century.

Question 19

President Reagan’s economic policies? Results?

Answer 19

In late 1981, Congress approved a set of far-reaching tax reforms that lowered individual tax rates, reduced federal estate taxes, and created new tax-free savings for small investors. Reagan’s supply-side economics advisers assured him that the combination of budgetary discipline and tax reduction would stimulate new investment, boost productivity, foster dramatic economic growth, and eventually even reduce the federal deficit. The economy slid into its deepest recession since the 1930s, causing the supply-side economics to wait.

Question 20

Reagan’s tax cuts? Impact?

Answer 20

Fuming and frustrated Democrats angrily charged that the president’s budget cuts slashed especially cruelly at the poor and the handicapped and that his tax cuts favored the well-to-do. In reality, the anti-inflationary “tight money” policies led to the so-called “Reagan recession” were started on Carter’s watch.

Question 21

Income gap in the 1980s?

Answer 21

The supply-siders seemed to be vindicated when a healthy economic recovery finally got under way in 1983. Yet the economy of the 1980s was not uniformly sound. For the first time in the twentieth century, income gaps widened between the richest and the poorest Americans. The poor got poorer and the very rich grew fabulously richer, while the middle-class incomes largely stagnated.

Question 22

“The focus of evil in the modern world” according to Reagan?

Answer 22

He claimed that the Soviets were “prepared to commit any crime, to lie, to cheat,” in pursuit of their goals of world conquest. He denounced the Soviet Union as the “focus of evil in the modern world.”

Question 23

Glasnost and Perestroika - contributing to end what?

Answer 23

Gorbachev announced two policies with remarkable, even revolutionary, implications. Glasnost, or “openness”, aimed to ventilate the secretive, repressive stuffiness of Soviet society by introducing free speech and a measure of political liberty. Perestroika, or “restructuring”, was intended to revive the moribund Soviet economy by adopting many of the free-market practices - such as the profit motive and an end to subsidized prices. This brought an end to the Cold War.

Question 24

Iran-Contra Affair - components? Impact?

Answer 24

Trade between money back to Contras in Nicaragua. The Iran-Contra affair cast a dark shadow over the Reagan record on foreign policy, tending to obscure the president’s outstanding achievement in establishing a new relationship with the Soviets. Out of the several Iran-Contra investigations, a picture emerged of Reagan as a lazy president.

Question 25

Reagan’s relationship with Mikhail Gorbachev - assess it.

Answer 25

A second summit meeting, in Reykjavik, Iceland, in October 1986, broke down when a furious Reagan stormed out, convinced that Gorbachev had come to end plans for the beloved SDI. But at a third summit, in Washington, D. C., in December 1987, the two leaders at last signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, banning all of these missiles from Eurpoe. Reagan and Gorbachev capped their new friendship in May 1988 at the final summit in Moscow. There Reagan, who had entered office condemning the “evil empire” of Soviet communism, warmly praised Gorbachev.

Question 26

Webster v. Reproductive Health Services - components of the ruling?

Answer 26

For nearly two decades, that decision had been the bedrock principle on which “pro-choice” advocates built their case for abortion rights. It had also provoked bitter criticism from Roman Catholics and various “right-to-life” groups, who wanted a virtually absolute ban on all abortions. In Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, the Court in 1989 did not entirely overturn Roe, but it seriously compromised Roe’s protection of abortion rights. By approving abortion rights. By approving a Missouri law that imposed certain restrictions on abortion, the Court signaled that it was inviting the states to legislate in an area in which Roe had previously forbidden them to legislate.

Question 27

Planned Parenthood v. Casey - components of the ruling?

Answer 27

The Court renewed that invitation in Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992, when it ruled that states could restrict access to abortion as long as they did not place an “undue burden” on the woman. Using this standard, the Court held that Pennsylvania could not compel a wife to notify her husband about an abortion but could require a minor child to notify parents, as well as other restrictions.

Question 28

Savings and Loans Banks (controversial)?

Answer 28

Falling oil prices blighted the economy of the Southwest, slashing real estate values and undermining hundreds of savings and loan (S and L) institutions. The damage to the S and Ls was so massive that a federal rescue operation was eventually estimated to carry a price tag of $500 billion. Meanwhile many American banks found themselves holding near-worthless loans that they had unwisely foisted upon Third World countries, especially in Latin America.

Question 29

Consequences of the fall of the Soviet Union - Soviet Union and Eastern Europe?

Answer 29

Due to the fall of the Soviet Union, ethnic warfare flared in other disintegrating communist countries as well, notably in misery-drenched Yugoslavia, racked by vicious “ethnic cleansing” campaigns against various minorities. most spectacularly, the demise of the Soviet Union wrote a definitive finish to the Cold War era, Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies of Glasnost and Perestroika had sent in motion a groundswell that surged out of his control.

Question 30

Impact of the Fall of Berlin Wall in 1989?

Answer 30

In December 1989, jubilant Germans danced atop the hated Berlin Wall, the symbol of the division of Germany and all of Europe into two hostile camps. The wall itself came came down heralding the imminent end of the 45 year long Cold War. Chunks of the wall’s concrete became instant collector’s items - gray souvenirs of a grim episode in Europe’s history. With the approval of the victorious Allied powers of World War II, the two Germanys, divided since 1945, were at last reunited in October 1990.

Question 31

What were the neoconservative intellectuals of the 1980s? What did they believe?

Answer 31

They believed in free-market capitalism, a return to traditional values and the centrality of the family, fewer government regulations on business and the economy, and curbing social-welfare programs and reasserting traditional values of individualism.

Question 32

George H. W. Bush’s “new world order” - what is it?

Answer 32

With the Soviet Union swept into the dustbin of history and communism all but extinct, Bush spoke hopefully of a “new world order”, where democracy would reign and diplomacy would supersede weaponry.

Question 33

Persian Gulf War and our involvement in it?

Answer 33

Iraq needed Kuwait’s oil to pay its huge war bills. Saddam’s larger design was ironfisted control over the entire Persian Gulf region. On August 2, 1990, Saddam’s army roared into Kuwait. The United States and its UN allies unleashed a hellish air attack against Iraq.

Question 34

Results of Persian Gulf War.

Answer 34

Operation Desert Storm, it lasted only 4 days. On February 27, Saddam accepted a cease-fire, and Kuwait was liberated. The perpetually troubled Middle East knew scarcely less trouble after Desert Storm had ceased to thunder, and the United States, for better or worse, found itself even more deeply ensnared in the region’s web of mortal hatreds and intractable conflicts.

Question 35

Controversial nomination and confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas - what issue came up?

Answer 35

Most provocatively, in 1991, Bush nominated for the Supreme Court the conservative African American jurist Clarence Thomas, a stern critic of affirmative action. Thomas’s nomination was loudly opposed by liberal groups, including organized labor, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the National Organization for Women (NOW). Then just days before the Senate was was scheduled to vote in early October 1991, a press leak revealed that Anita Hill, a law professor at the University of Oklahoma, had accused Thomas of sexual harassment. The favor over Thomas’s confirmation suggested that the social issues that had helped produce three Republican presidential victories in the 1980s were losing some of their electoral appeal.

Question 36

Importance of the Americans with Disabilities Act?

Answer 36

George H. W. Bush partly redeemed his pledge to work for a “kinder, gentler America: when he signed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990, a landmark law prohibiting discrimination against the 43 million US citizens with physical or mental disabilities.

Question 37

Reasons for Bill Clinton (new Democrat) winning the 1992 Presidential election?

Answer 37

Clinton claimed to be a “new” Democrat, chastened by the party’s long exile in the political wilderness. He wanted to point the party away from its traditional anti-business, dovish, champion-of-the-underdog orientation and toward pro-growth, strong defense, and anti-crime policies. Clinton campaigned especially vigorously on promises to stimulate the economy, reform the welfare system, and overhaul the nation’s health-care apparatus, which had grown into a scandalously expensive contraption that failed to provide medical coverage to nearly 40 million Americans. Bill Clinton was born in the baby boomer generation. His principal campaign theme: “it’s the economy stupid”.

Question 38

Why Bill Clinton had problems with liberal Democrats?

Answer 38

Badly overestimating his electoral mandate for liberal reform, the young president made a series of costly blunders upon entering the White House. IN one of his first initiatives on taking office, he stirred a hornet’s nest of controversy by advocating an end to the ban on gays and lesbians in the armed services, “don’t ask, don’t tell”. Even more damaging to Clinton’s political standing, and to his hopes for lasting liberal achievement, was the fiasco of his attempt to reform the nation’s health-care system.

Question 39

Personal and political traits that helped Bill Clinton during his two terms?

Answer 39

During his first term, he had displayed political courage by supporting the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), creating in 1993 a free-trade zone encompassing Mexico, Canada, and the United States. In his final year as President, Clinton stepped up his efforts to leave a legacy as an international peacemaker.

Question 40

Bill Clinton impeachment trial - why? Articles? Results?

Answer 40

Scandal had dogged Bill Clinton from the beginning of his presidency. Critics brought charges of everything from philandering to illegal financial transactions. Allegations of corruption stemming from a real estate deal called Whitewater while he was governor of Arkansas triggered an investigation by a special prosecutor, but no indictment ever materialized. January 1998, Clinton had engaged in a sexual affair with a young White House intern, Monica Lewinsky, and then blatantly lied about it when testifying under oath in another woman’s civil suit accusing him of sexual harassment. The prosecutor in Whitewater put together a report against him. That report presented 11 possible grounds for impeachment, all related to lying about the Lewinsky affair. The trial went through in front of senators, and the trial’s outcome was a foregone conclusion. On the key obstruction of justice charge, five northeastern Republicans joined all 45 Democratic senators in voting not guilty.

Question 41

President Clinton’s primary political legacy was…?

Answer 41

His sound economic policies encouraged growth and trade in a rapidly globalizing post-Cold War world. Further, by setting such a low standard in his personal conduct, he replenished the sad reservoir of cynicism about politics that Vietnam and Watergate had created a generation before.

Question 42

Examples of terrorism on US soil between 1989 and 2001.

Answer 42

A huge explosion destroyed a federal office building in Oklahoma City in 1995, taking 168 lives, in retribution for a 1993 student standoff in Waco, Texas, between federal agents and a fundamentalist sect known as the Branch Davidians. Two people found to commit crime, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nicols.
On an April morning in 1999, two students at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, killed twelve fellow students and a teacher.
On September 11, 2001, the long era of America’s impregnable national security violently ended. On a balmy, late-summer morning, suicidal terrorists slammed two hijacked airlines, loaded with passengers and jet fuel, into the twin towers of New York City’w World Trade Center. This terrorist attack was performed by Al Qaeda.