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23 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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"New Federalism”
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Nixon promised to bring back law and order to the United States by promoting conservatism and executive authority. The term Imperial Presidency referred to Nixon’s efforts to acquire absolute control over his Presidency.
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Committee for the Reelection of the President (CREEP)
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Nixon created this organization to ensure every vote for the election of 1972. It financed many "dirty tricks" to spread dissension within Democratic ranks and paid for a special internal espionage unit to spy on the opposition.
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Watergate
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The scandal exposed the connection between the White House and the accused Watergate burglars who had raided the Democrats’ headquarters during the 1972 campaign.
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Election of 1972
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Nixon’s reelection was assured. He relied on his diplomatic successes with China and Russia and his strategy towards the winding down of the war in Vietnam to attract moderate voters. He expected his southern strategy and law-and-order posture to attract the conservative Democrats. Nixon routed the liberal, anti-war deomcrat, Senator George McGovern, from North Dakota.
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"plumbers"
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Led by Liddy and Hunt, this Republican undercover team obtained approval by Mitchell to wire telephones at the Democractic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate apartment/office complex. The operation was thwarted on June 17, 1992 by a security guard; it would bring about the downfall of Nixon.
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Watergate Tapes
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Another Presidential rumor shocked the committee and the nation by revealing that Nixon had put in a secret taping system in the White House that recorded all the conversations between his enemies in the Oval Office. Both the Ervin committee and prosecutor Cox insisted to hear the tapes, but Nixon refused.
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George McGovern
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He rose to fame on the energetic support of antiwar activists rushing to the Democratic primaries. He was seen as inept and radical, but Nixon was insecure about his popularity; the senator contributed to Nixon’s downfall.
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Twenty-sixth Amendment
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This guaranteed the rights of those who were 18 years of age or older to vote as citizens of the United States. It gave the power to Congress to enforce and protect by appropriate legislation. This allowed the politicians to listen to the voices of younger people as voters.
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Cesar Chavez
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As a Roman Catholic and a follower of King, he worked to win rights for migrant farmers. He is famous for a strike he organized with the help of grape pickers in California in 1965. His leadership brought guarantees of rights for the farmers. He was an important figure in the Brown Power movement.
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American Indian Movement (AIM)
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Influenced by the radical factions of the Civil rights Movement, this group advocated Red Power and demanded justice for past wrongs. They seized Alcatraz Island and began an armed uprising in Wounded Knee.
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OPEC
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In the 1970s, Middle Eastern petroleum exporting countries formed a monopoly and agreed to raise the price of oil. As a result, the economy in the western world fell into inflation and unemployment; a nation-wide recession resulted which forced Jimmy Carter to seek new economic programs at the end of his term in office. However, he could only do little to dispel the effects of the rising prices of oil.
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"STAGFLATION"
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As a combination of business stagnation and inflation, this severely worsened the American economy. When the government borrowed money to offset the drastic loss of tax revenue, interest rates still increased. The federal government could not repay the loan, and it was forced to find other methods to collect revenue. There was no simple solution to this problem; to lower interest rates to prevent stagnation would worsen the ongoing inflation.
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Election of 1976
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Jimmy Carter was elected President of the United States in 1976. Climaxing a remarkable rise to national fame, Carter had been governor of Georgia from 1971 to 1975 and was little known elsewhere at the beginning of 1976. Gerald Ford, an former All-American Center at the University of Michigan, was forced to defend himself from Nixon’s crimes and his own pardon of the former president. Carter went on to defeat Ford in this election.
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Camp David Accords
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This was where the Egyptian leader Anwar el-Sadat and the Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin came together with Jimmy Carter. They discussed certain negotiations and tried to hammer out a framework for a peace treaty for the Middle East. It represented peace and harmony in the modern world.
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ELECTION OF 1980
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This election included candidates such as Republican Ronald Reagan, Democratic nominee Jimmy Carter, and John B. Anderson as the Independent candidate. The biggest issue at the time was American foreign policy, and Ronald Reagan had a greater hand in that issue. Ronald Reagan became the President of the United States with the promise of ameliorating the American economy against the forces of "stagflation."
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REAGANOMICS
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Also known as voodoo economics, it held the belief that the government should leave the economy alone. He hoped that it would run by itself. It was a return to the laissez faire theory of Adam Smith, yet the president expanded his theory by advocating supply-side economics as a method to solve the economic hardships.
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Supply side economics
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In contrast to Adam Smith’s belief in supply-and-demand, it was assumed that if the economy provided the products and services, the public would purchase them. Consequently, the president lowered income taxes to stimulate the economy by expanding the money supply.
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"MORAL MAJORITY"
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This was Jerry Falwell’s pro-Reagan followers who embraced the new evangelical revival of the late seventies. The Moral Majority was politically active in targeting such issues as abortion, homosexuality, pornography, and school prayer. They was strongly conservative, anticommunist, and influential. The Moral Majority was started in 1979 as a secular political group, and were finished as a political force by the late 1980s.
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NICARAGUA
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First, Carter backed the Sandinista revolutionaries in overthrowing dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979, who was replaced by Daniel Ortega. Reagan later reversed the policy thinking that the Sandinistas were procommunist. The CIA organized an army of "contras" to oppose the Sandinistas. Fear of another Vietnam-like war prompted Congress in 1982 to halt aid to the contras. Reagan secretly began sending illegal aid to the contras, but was never held accountable.
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SDI (STRATEGIC DEFENSE INITIATIVE)
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This was a proposed system of space based lasers and other high-tech defenses against nuclear attack, popularly dubbed "Star Wars." It was proposed by Reagan in 1983 in an effort to ward off the perceived threat of a Soviet strike as U.S.-Soviet relations worsened. Many argued it would escalate the conflict. The system carried a huge price tag, and was fiercely debated until the end of the Reagan administration. The system was never used.
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IRAN-CONTRA AFFAIR
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Caught selling arms to the anti-American government of Iran, Reagan admitted it and stated his aim had been to encourage "moderate elements" in Tehran and gain the release of American hostages. Key players included Oliver North, who sent millions of dollars from these sales to contras in Nicaragua when Congress had forbidden such aid, and John Poindexter, who hid the affair from the president. Criminal charges were filed against only North.
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Glasnost
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Mikhail Gorbachev’s soviet program of openness in government.
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Perestroika
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This was Mikhail Gorbachev’s restructuring program of economic and political reform was called perestroika or restructuring. Relations between the United States and the Soviet Union continued to improve which furthered the thaw in the Cold War.
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