AMSCO 8.14 Society in Transition

Overview

AMSCO Topic 8.14, "Society in Transition," covers the turbulent 1970s: the Nixon presidency and the Watergate scandal, the short presidencies of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, the Burger Court's landmark rulings, and the conservative resurgence that set up the Reagan era. The big APUSH thread here is declining trust in the federal government after economic troubles, political scandal, and foreign policy failures, plus growing clashes between liberals and conservatives over the government's role, race, religion, and individual rights. This chapter closes out Period 8 (1945-1980) and explains why the country shifted from Democratic liberal dominance toward a new Republican conservative majority.

America in the 1970s: A Decade in Transition

The 1970s piled up crises that left Americans wanting to forget the decade: losses in Vietnam and Cambodia, the Kent State shootings, the OPEC oil embargo, Watergate, high unemployment, stagnant wages, hyperinflation, and tax revolts. Politics polarized and religion became politicized.

Major social shifts were happening underneath the political chaos:

• By the end of the decade, half of all Americans lived in the fastest-growing regions, the South and the West (the Sun Belt).
• The fastest-growing age group was senior citizens (over 65). After a decade defined by youth revolt, Americans realized the population was aging.
• By 1990, minority groups made up 25 percent of the population, and the Census Bureau predicted that by 2050 as much as half the population would be Hispanic American, African American, or Asian American.
• Cultural pluralism replaced the melting pot as the model for U.S. society. Ethnic and cultural groups worked to end discrimination AND celebrate their distinct traditions, rather than blend into one culture.

Nixon, the Silent Majority, and the Southern Strategy

Richard Nixon (1969-1974) won in 1968 with only 43 percent of the popular vote, so he built a strategy to turn that minority into a Republican majority. He appealed to the "silent majority," conservative Americans, many of them Democrats (southern Whites, northern Catholic blue-collar workers, new suburbanites), who were turned off by civil rights rulings, antiwar protests, school busing, and the counterculture.

His Southern strategy targeted southern White voters specifically:

• He asked federal courts in the South to delay integration plans and busing orders.
• He nominated two Southern conservatives, Clement Haynsworth and G. Harold Carswell, to the Supreme Court. The Senate rejected both, but the gesture played well in the South.

The strategy worked long-term. The Republican Party became more socially conservative, political power shifted to the Sun Belt and rural America, and prospects for further civil rights legislation dimmed for decades. You saw the seeds of this realignment back in the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

The Election of 1972

Nixon's reelection was nearly guaranteed by three things: his foreign policy wins in China and the Soviet Union, the removal of populist George Wallace from the race after an assassination attempt left him paralyzed, and the Democrats nominating a very liberal antiwar candidate, Senator George McGovern of South Dakota. Nixon won every state except Massachusetts and took 61 percent of the popular vote. Democrats kept both houses of Congress, but the voting patterns showed Sun Belt and suburban voters forming a new Republican majority.

The Watergate Scandal

In June 1972, men hired by Nixon's reelection committee (CREEP, the Committee to Re-Elect the President) were caught breaking into Democratic national headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. The break-in was just one piece of a pattern of illegal activities and "dirty tricks":

• Wiretaps on government employees and reporters to stop news leaks (like the one exposing the secret bombing of Cambodia)
• The "plumbers," a White House group created to plug leaks and discredit opponents, who had earlier burglarized the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist after Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers
• An "enemies list" of prominent Nixon critics who got investigated by agencies like the IRS

The Investigation Unravels Nixon

No solid proof ever showed Nixon ordered the break-in, but the investigation made clear he ran an illegal cover-up. Key moments:

• Judge John Sirica's tough sentencing of the burglars exposed White House hush money and pardon promises.
• Senator Sam Ervin's televised Senate hearings brought the abuses to the public. White House lawyer John Dean testified that the president was linked to the cover-up.
• Top aides H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman resigned and were later indicted for obstructing justice.
• The discovery of an Oval Office taping system triggered a year-long fight. Nixon claimed executive privilege; investigators wanted the tapes.
• In October 1973, Nixon fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox, and the attorney general resigned in protest.
• Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned in fall 1973 over corruption charges (he had accepted bribes as governor of Maryland and as vice president). Gerald Ford replaced him.

In July 1974, the Supreme Court forced Nixon to hand over the tapes (one had a suspicious 18 1/2-minute erased gap). The House Judiciary Committee voted three articles of impeachment: obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress. One tape clearly implicated Nixon in the cover-up just days after the break-in. Facing certain impeachment and a Senate trial, Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974. Ford became the first unelected president in U.S. history.

Why Watergate Matters

In all, 26 White House officials and aides were convicted and jailed. Some saw Nixon's forced exit as proof that checks and balances worked. Others saw it as evidence of a dangerous "imperial presidency" that had been growing since FDR and the Cold War. Either way, Watergate fueled a lasting loss of faith in the federal government, which is exactly the trend the AP exam wants you to be able to explain.

Ford and Carter: Presidencies in Watergate's Shadow

Gerald Ford (1974-1977)

Ford, a longtime Michigan congressman and House Republican minority leader, was likable but untested. In his first month, he granted Nixon a full and unconditional pardon before any formal charges were filed. Ford said it would end the "national nightmare," but critics accused him of a "corrupt bargain" and were angry the full truth never came out. During Ford's term, the Democratic Congress investigated CIA abuses, including alleged assassination plots against foreign leaders like Chile's Marxist president Salvador Allende. Ford appointed George H. W. Bush to reform the agency. The 1976 Bicentennial celebration helped Americans take some pride in their history after Vietnam and Watergate.

The Election of 1976

Ronald Reagan, the conservative ex-governor of California, challenged Ford for the Republican nomination and hurt him in the polls even though Ford won it. Jimmy Carter, a little-known former governor of Georgia, ran as a Washington outsider against corruption, a winning pitch with Watergate fresh in voters' minds. Carter won a close election, 287 electoral votes to 241, by carrying most of the South and winning an estimated 97 percent of the African American vote. Democrats also won strong majorities in both houses of Congress.

Jimmy Carter, the Outsider

Carter deliberately rejected the imperial presidency. He walked down Pennsylvania Avenue on inauguration day instead of riding in the limousine and carried his own luggage. But veteran members of Congress saw him as an outsider too dependent on inexperienced Georgia advisers, and his obsession with detail earned him the jab that he was a "leaf man" who couldn't see the forest for the trees. The Iranian hostage crisis and a worsening economy tanked his popularity. His 1979 "national malaise" speech blamed America's problems on a "moral and spiritual crisis," but voters blamed his weak leadership instead. By 1980 his approval rating sat at just 23 percent.

The Burger Court

After Chief Justice Earl Warren resigned in 1969, Nixon appointed Warren E. Burger of Minnesota. The Burger Court was more conservative than the Warren Court, but it repeatedly angered conservatives:

• In 1971 it ordered busing to achieve racial balance in schools.
• In 1972 it issued strict guidelines making the death penalty harder to carry out.
• In United States v. Nixon (1974), it rejected Nixon's executive privilege claims and ordered him to turn over the Watergate tapes.

The Court's most controversial ruling was Roe v. Wade (1973), a 7-2 decision striking down many state laws prohibiting abortion as violations of a woman's right to privacy. Roe became a primary target of the conservative movement, and over time opposing abortion became a virtual political requirement for Republican candidates.

The Conservative Resurgence

By the late 1970s, a conservative reaction against the liberal policies of the New Deal and the Great Society was gathering strength. Protest movements seemed to fragment society, and a slowing economy left many Americans angry. Four threads drove the movement:

• Religious revival. Televangelists like Pat Robertson, Oral Roberts, and Jim Baker preached against moral decay to a combined weekly audience of 60 to 100 million by 1980. Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority, which financed campaigns to unseat liberal members of Congress. Religious fundamentalists attacked "secular humanism" in public schools and pushed for school prayer and teaching the Biblical account of creation. Roe v. Wade sparked the right-to-life movement, uniting Catholics and fundamentalist Protestants.
• Business deregulation. Starting in the 1970s, business interests campaigned to cut regulations, lower taxes, and weaken unions. Donors funded free-market "think tanks" like the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Cato Institute, while the U.S. Chamber of Commerce lobbied for pro-business laws.
• Backlash against affirmative action. Many Whites suffering through recession and stagflation blamed affirmative action, calling it "reverse discrimination." In Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), the Supreme Court ruled race could be considered in admissions but that strict racial quotas were unconstitutional. Conservatives used Bakke to campaign against all race-based preferences.
• Taxpayers' revolt. California voters passed Proposition 13 in 1978, sharply cutting property taxes. Economist Arthur Laffer argued tax cuts would actually increase government revenue, and Republicans Jack Kemp and William Roth proposed a 30 percent federal tax cut that became the basis for Reagan's tax cuts.

This rising conservatism, combined with the end of the Cold War, globalization, and growing inequality, made American politics far more divided in the decades after 1980.

Key Terms to Know

Practice and Next Steps

Pair these notes with Fiveable's 8.14 Society in Transition course-topic study guide for the College Board-aligned version of this material. For context on how the 1970s fit the bigger Period 8 story, revisit AMSCO 8.1 Contextualizing Period 8 and the Vietnam War chapter, since Vietnam and Watergate together drove the era's loss of faith in government.

Then test yourself with APUSH guided practice questions, try a writing prompt with FRQ practice and instant scoring, or sit a full-length APUSH practice exam when you're ready to put Period 8 together.