The 1960s and early 1970s were a distinctive and
decisive period in American history. They were
years of rapidly growing prosperity, but they were
also the years of the Vietnam War, disillusionment
and protest.
The post-war economic boom passed all
expectations. The standard of living of most
Americans increased nearly every year. Was this
not a vindication of American free enterprise?
Americans had become citizens of an affluent
society – at least most of them had – and had dis-
covered the wonders of credit. Millions moved to
a better life in the sunbelt from Texas to
California. Florida became a haven for an older
generation. But in 1962 one in four Americans,
over 42 million, were still living in dire poverty.
That included nearly half the Afro-American pop-
ulation, single parents and children, the old and
sick, and the poor, who lacked education and
skills. From poverty-stricken Mexico, immigrants
entered California and Texas illegally to work for
low wages which Americans would not accept.
From Puerto Rico and Latin America the poor,
seeking a better life, finished up in the deprived
housing of the inner cities. Here they joined the
native Americans, who had left their own barren
reservations. But the lot of the poor improved
dramatically.
President Johnson in his first State of the
Union address in 1964 declared ‘unconditional
war on poverty’. The federal government pumped
billions of dollars into welfare and ambitious anti-poverty projects. Johnson’s Great Society pro-
grammes worked. By 1973, the number of poor
had more than halved to 11 per cent. The anti-
liberal Nixon, though faced with increasing
federal deficits when he became president in
1969, did not retrench seriously on welfare.
Positive anti-poverty measures taken by his
administration included increased social security
benefits and greater expenditure on education;
federal housing subsidies were also continued.
Nevertheless, the US was still a deeply divided
society; the liberal 1960s of welfare, of protest,
of student revolt and anti-Vietnam draft boycotts
was creating a backlash by construction workers
and outraged Middle America, which attributed
the rising crime rates and the disrespect shown
by youth to excessive licence and softness. The
Americans who turned to Nixon saw in him a
president who would uphold America’s traditional
virtues.
After his narrow defeat by Kennedy in 1960
and, two years later, his devastating drubbing in
the contest for governor of California, Nixon’s
controversial political career seemed to have
ended. At what he thought would be his last press
conference, he hit back at the newsmen, who he
felt had never treated him fairly: ‘You won’t have
Nixon to kick around any more.’ A few days later,
ABC Television broadcast a special, The Political
Obituary of Richard Nixon. Nixon left his
California base and joined a law firm in New York,
though in 1964 he supported the presidential(^1) Chapter 68
THE UNITED STATES
FROM GREAT ASPIRATIONS TO DISILLUSION