Why the 1970s Changed What Americans Expected From Government

PART II — U.S. HISTORY, 1491 TO THE PRESENT · CHAPTER 33

The 1970s dismantled several assumptions Americans had carried through the postwar decades: that the economy would keep growing steadily, that the presidency deserved basic public trust, and that energy would remain cheap and abundant. Out of that disruption grew a conservative political movement that would reshape American politics for the rest of the century.

Nixon Governs More Flexibly Than His Campaign Rhetoric Suggests

Richard Nixon won the presidency in 1968 partly by promising law and order after years of urban unrest and antiwar protest. His campaigns used themes of law and order, states’ rights, and opposition to some federal civil-rights interventions to appeal to many white southern voters. Those appeals contributed to a longer partisan realignment that had roots before 1968 and continued for decades afterward. The South did not switch parties in one election or because of one strategy. Nixon’s governing record mixed conservative political appeals with pragmatic policies. His administration created the Environmental Protection Agency, used wage and price controls in 1971, and pursued détente with the Soviet Union. Nixon’s 1972 visit to the People’s Republic of China and the Shanghai Communiqué opened a major new relationship after more than two decades of hostility. Full diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic were established in 1979 under President Jimmy Carter.

Watergate Shatters Public Trust in Government

A 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters in the Watergate complex, connected to Nixon’s reelection campaign, unraveled over two years of investigative reporting and congressional hearings into a broader pattern of abuse of presidential power and obstruction of justice. Nixon resigned in August 1974 rather than face near-certain impeachment, the first American president to resign from office, leaving behind a lasting public skepticism toward government and presidential power that outlasted his own political career by decades.

Stagflation Breaks Postwar Economic Assumptions

During the 1970s the United States experienced high inflation alongside weak growth and elevated unemployment, a combination called stagflation. The pattern confounded a common postwar policy expectation that inflation and unemployment would move in opposite directions in a relatively predictable way. Oil-price shocks, productivity problems, global competition, monetary policy, and other pressures interacted, and both Republican and Democratic administrations struggled to control inflation without worsening unemployment or slowing growth further.

The Energy Crisis Exposes New Vulnerabilities

Arab oil-producing nations imposed an embargo on the United States in 1973 in retaliation for American support of Israel during the Yom Kippur War, triggering long gas lines, sharply higher fuel prices, and a stark demonstration of how dependent the American economy had become on imported oil. A second energy shock followed in 1979 amid the Iranian Revolution, reinforcing the same vulnerability and giving energy security, conservation, and domestic production renewed urgency on the national political agenda.

Environmental Politics Becomes a Major Federal Issue

Environmental concern became a mass political force before the energy crisis. Public alarm over smog, polluted waterways, pesticides, and highly visible disasters helped make the first Earth Day in 1970 a national event. Nixon’s administration established the Environmental Protection Agency that year. Congress strengthened the Clean Air Act in 1970, enacted the Clean Water Act in 1972 over Nixon’s veto, and passed the Endangered Species Act in 1973. These laws expanded federal regulation of pollution and natural-resource protection across state lines.

The movement continued during the energy crises. Congress and successive administrations promoted conservation, fuel-efficiency rules, and research into alternative energy. The Department of Energy was created in 1977 under Carter. Love Canal, where toxic chemical waste contaminated a residential area in New York, and the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear accident intensified concern about industrial and nuclear risk. Environmental policy therefore grew from both a broad conservation movement and specific accidents that made pollution and technological risk visible to the public.

Détente Reduces Tension Without Ending Rivalry

Nixon and his national security advisor Henry Kissinger pursued detente, a deliberate easing of Cold War tensions with the Soviet Union, producing the SALT I arms limitation agreement in 1972 alongside the new opening to China, a strategic triangulation that gave the United States more room to maneuver between its two major communist rivals. Detente had real limits: proxy conflicts in the developing world continued throughout the decade, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 effectively ended the detente era, returning U.S.-Soviet relations to a more openly confrontational footing.

Carter Mixes Diplomatic Success with a Crisis of Confidence

Jimmy Carter entered office in 1977 promising greater attention to human rights in foreign policy. His administration helped broker the 1978 Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel, an important diplomatic achievement. Other events damaged public confidence. The Iranian Revolution in 1979 overthrew the shah, a longtime U.S. ally. Later that year Iranian militants seized the American embassy in Tehran and held fifty-two Americans hostage for 444 days. A failed U.S. rescue attempt in 1980 deepened the sense that American power had become less reliable after Vietnam, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan later in 1979 ended the remaining detente and pushed Carter toward a harder Cold War policy.

Cultural Backlash Reshapes the Party Coalitions

The conservative movement also grew around social issues. The Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 constitutionalized a right to abortion under the framework then used by the Court and intensified a national political conflict that would last for decades. Congress approved the Equal Rights Amendment in 1972 and sent it to the states, but organized opposition led by activists including Phyllis Schlafly helped prevent ratification by the extended 1982 deadline. Disputes over school policy, affirmative action, crime, sexuality, family roles, and the pace of social change drew new voters toward conservative organizations.

Evangelical Christians became more visible in national politics during the late 1970s. Groups such as the Moral Majority, founded in 1979, linked opposition to abortion and other cultural changes with support for conservative candidates. Proposition 13 in California showed a different part of the coalition: voters angry about taxes and government growth. These groups did not share every priority, but together they gave the New Right a broad base before Reagan’s election.

A New Conservative Movement Gains Strength

Economic frustration over stagflation and energy costs, cultural backlash against social change, foreign-policy humiliation in Iran, and organized religious conservatism combined by the end of the decade into a political coalition ready to support a decisively different direction in the 1980 election.

Answer without looking back.

FOLLOW THE CONSERVATIVE TURN BACK TO ITS 1970S ROOTS

1 Explain the Southern Strategy and how it shifted southern political loyalties.

2 Why did Nixon’s resignation mark such a significant moment for public trust in government?

3 What made stagflation defy standard postwar economic assumptions?

4 How did the 1973 oil embargo expose a specific American economic vulnerability?

5 What was detente, and what specific event effectively ended it in 1979?

6 Name two developments that fed into the conservative movement’s growing strength during the 1970s.