America Confronts the Post-Cold War Era

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America Confronts the Post-Cold War Era

• Part-1

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• Theme Elected as the first baby-boom president,
  Bill Clinton tried to turn the Democratic party
  in a more centrist direction. Ideological
  conflicts and sharp partisan battles in the 1990s
  were partly overshadowed by a booming economy, a
  balanced federal budget, and Americas search to
  define its role in the increasingly global
  economy and system of international relations.
  The 2000 election and the subsequent events that
  followed it would deeply divide the nation and
  alienate the United States from traditional
  allies in the world community.

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• chapter summary
• The dynamic young baby-boomer Bill Clinton
  defeated Bush in 1992, and promoted an ambitious
  reform agenda within the context of his centrist
  new Democrat ideology. Clintons stumbles over
  health care reform and foreign policy opened the
  door to aggressive conservative Republicans, who
  gained control of Congress in 1994 for the first
  time in fifty years advocating a contract with
  America. But the Newt Gingrich-led Republicans
  over-reaching enabled Clinton to revive and win a
  second term in 1996.

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• In his second term, Clinton downplayed reform and
  successfully claimed the political middle ground
  on issues like welfare reform, affirmative
  action, smoking, and gun control. A booming
  economy created budget surpluses, and encouraged
  Clintons efforts toward ending international
  trade barriers. Conflicts in the Middle East and
  the Balkans led to American diplomatic and
  military involvements, with mixed results. A
  series of scandals, culminating in the Monica
  Lewinsky affair, led to Clintons impeachment and
  acquittal in 1999.

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• Texas Governor George Walker Bush defeated
  Clintons vice president, Al Gore, in a contested
  cliffhanging election in 2000 that was finally
  decided by a Supreme Court decision. As the
  fourth president elected in American history to
  lose the popular vote, George W. Bush entered the
  oval office promising to bring to Washington the
  conciliatory skills he had fine tuned as
  Republican governor of Texas, where he had worked
  well with the Democratic majority in the states
  legislature. But as president, Bush proved to be
  more of a divider than a uniter, focusing on
  social issues like abortion, a constitutional
  amendment to ban same-sex marriages, embryonic
  stem cell research, the environment, and add to
  that an increasing budget deficit these
  polarizing policies both reflected and deepened
  the cultural chasm that divided American society.

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• On September 11, 2001 suicidal terrorists slammed
  two hijacked airliners into the twin towers of
  New York Citys World Trade Center, a third plane
  crashed into the Pentagon and a fourth plane was
  forced down by its heroic passengers in rural
  Pennsylvania. Osama bin Laden had been
  identified as the mastermind behind the World
  Trade Center attack, and when the Taliban refused
  to turn over bin Laden to American officials,
  Bush ordered a massive military campaign against
  Afghanistan. Within three months, American and
  Afghani rebel forces had overthrown the Taliban
  but failed to find bin Laden.

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• The fear of future threats lead American
  officials to take aggressive and controversial
  actions following the events of September 11
  congressional passage of the USA-Patriot Act,
  creation of the Department of Homeland Security,
  rounding up and trying suspected terrorists in
  military tribunals (where the usual rules and
  procedures do not apply), and the controversial
  invasion and occupation of Iraq.

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Bill Clinton the First Baby-Boomer President

• In 1992, the Democrats chose Bill Clinton as
  their candidate (despite accusations of
  womanizing, drug use, and draft evasion) and
  Albert Gore, Jr. as his running mate.
• The Democrats tried a new approach, promoting
  growth, strong defense, and anticrime policies,
  while campaigning to stimulate the economy.
• The Republicans dwelt on family values and
  selected Bush for another round and Dan Quayle as
  his running mate. They claimed that character
  matters, obviously implying that Clinton and his
  baggage should not be elected.

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• Yet, largely due to the economy and Bushs failed
  promise of no new taxes, the young Clinton
  ultimately defeated Bush, 370 to 168 in the
  Electoral College.
• Third party Texas billionaire candidate Ross
  Perot added color to the election by gathering
  19,742,267 popular votes.

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• Democrats also gained control of both the House
  and the Senate, and now women held more
  congressional seats than ever before in US
  history.
• Clinton immediately took liberal action by vowing
  to shape a government that looked like America
  by appointing more women (as well as more
  minorities) to important positions than any other
  president before him, including the first female
  attorney general ever, Janet Reno, Secretary of
  Health and Human Services, Donna Shalala, and
  Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Supreme Court.

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A False Start for Reform

• Upon entering office, Clinton called for
  accepting homosexuals in the armed forces, but
  finally had to settle for a dont ask, dont
  tell policy that unofficially accepted gays and
  lesbians.
• Clinton also appointed his wife, Hillary Rodham
  Clinton, to revamp the nations health and
  medical care system, and when it was revealed in
  October 1993, critics blasted it as cumbersome,
  confusing, and unpractical.
• Interestingly, a similar proposal was passed in
  2010 by President Obamas administration with
  Hillary Clinton now as Secretary of State.
• In 1993, he passed a gun-control law called the
  Brady Bill, named after presidential aide James
  Brady who had been wounded in President Reagans
  attempted assassination.
• In July 1994, Clinton persuaded Congress to pass
  a 30 billion anticrime bill.
• By 1996, the economy had truly begun to turn
  around under Clinton as the federal deficit
  shrunk to its lowest level in a decade.

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• During the decade, terrorism emerged as the new
  evil to replace communism
• a radical Muslim group bombed the World Trade
  Center in New York, killing six.
• An American terrorist, Timothy McVeigh, bombed
  the federal building in Oklahoma in 1995, taking
  169 lives.
• And a fiery standoff at Waco, Texas, between the
  government and the Branch Davidian religious cult
  ended in a huge fire that killed men, women, and
  children. By this time, few Americans trusted
  the government, the reverse of the WWII
  generation.

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The Politics of Distrust

• In 1994, Newt Gingrich led Republicans on a
  sweeping attack of Clintons liberal failures
  with a conservative Contract with America, and
  that year, Republicans won all incumbent seats as
  well as eight more seats in the Senate and 53
  more seats in the House. Gingrich became the new
  Speaker of the House and seemed to be the rising
  star of the Republican party.
• However, if Clinton had gone too far to the left,
  the Republicans now went too far to the right,
  imposing federal laws that put new obligations on
  state and local governments without providing new
  revenues and compelling Clinton to sign a
  welfare-reform bill that made deep cuts in
  welfare grants.
• Gradually, the American public grew tired of
  Republican conservatism, such as Gingrichs
  suggestion of sending children of welfare
  families to orphanages, and of its incompetence,
  such as the 1995 shut down of Congress due to a
  lack of a sufficient budget package.
• These outlandishly partisan antics bred a
  backlash that helped President Clinton rebound
  from his political near-death experience.

Newt Gingrich
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Bill Hillary

• Hippies!

• Yuppies!