Restless Giant, page 63
5. John White, The New Politics of Old Values (Hanover, N.H., 1989), 149.
6. Only later, after Bush had lost the election of 1992, did he acknowledge that he had in fact been kept informed about progress in the arms-for-hostages dealings. Lou Cannon, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New York, 2000), 661.
7. Michael Sherry, In the Shadow of War: The United States Since the 1930s (New Haven, 1995), 434. For Dukakis, see Garry Wills, Under God: Religion and American Politics (New York, 1990), 58–60.
8. Robert Reich, The Resurgent Liberal (New York, 1989), 69.
9. For religious issues in 1988, see Wills, Under God; and Martin, With God on Our Side, 263–66, 278–82, 294.
10. Congressional Quarterly, Guide to the Presidency (Washington, 1989), 197. There had been 201 labor PACs in 1974 and 297 in 1980.
11. Kevin Phillips, Arrogant Capital: Washington, Wall Street, and the Frustration of American Politics (Boston, 1994), 39.
12. Wills, Under God, 70–75.
13. Parmet, George Bush, 335–36, 350–53.
14. White, New Politics of Old Values, 161; Wills, Under God, 59–60; Parmet, 355.
15. See Michael McDonald and Samuel Popkin, ”The Myth of the Vanishing Voter,” American Political Science Review 95 (Dec. 2001), 963–74, and note 105, chapter 4, for a corrective to this pessimistic view of American political engagement.
16. John Judis and Ruy Teixeira, The Emerging Democratic Majority (New York, 2002), 25–6; World Almanac, 2001, 40.
17. Greene, The Presidency of George Bush, 41–43.
18. White, New Politics of Old Values, 168.
19. Bush’s first choice as defense secretary was former Texas senator John Tower, but he failed to be confirmed.
20. James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet (New York, 2004), 184; Greenstein, The Presidential Difference, 165–67. Scowcroft added to his staff a person who was to become national security adviser and secretary of state in the administration of George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice. An African American, Rice was a professor at Stanford University and an expert in Soviet affairs.
21. For Bush and the Balkans, see Halberstam, War in a Time of Peace, 24–46, 86–100, 121–42; and William Hitchcock, The Struggle for Europe: The Turbulent History of a Divided Continent, 1945–2002 (New York, 2003), 380–95.
22. Later reduced to thirty years, with eligibility for parole in 2006.
23. Greene, The Presidency of George Bush, 100–106; Parmet, George Bush, 411–19.
24. Parmet, George Bush, 398–400.
25. New York Times, Oct. 26, 2002. Cheney became vice president under George W. Bush (“Bush 43”) in 2001, and Wolfowitz became Cheney’s deputy. Both men were known to be strong advocates within this administration of war against Iraq, which was launched in early 2003.
26. Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, 209–15. The final version of this document, issued under Cheney’s name in early 1993, was reworded but reiterated the central point: The United States must maintain permanent military superiority in the world.
27. United States defense spending declined from $299 billion in 1990 to $282 billion in 1994. In constant 1996 dollars this was a decrease of roughly 16 percent, from $354 billion to $298 billion. Stat. Abst., 2002, 326.
28. New York Times, Nov. 14, 2001.
29. Frances FitzGerald, “George Bush and the World,” New York Review of Books, Sept. 26, 2002, 80–81.
30. Human rights groups in Iraq later placed the number of Iraqis killed, many of them thrown into mass graves, during Saddam Hussein’s regime at more than 300,000 between 1979 and 2002. New York Times, Dec. 23, 2003.
31. Parmet, George Bush, 453–54.
32. U.S. News & World Report, Triumph Without Victory: The Unreported History of the Persian Gulf War (New York, 1992), 141; Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, 182–97.
33. Greene, The Presidency of George Bush, 113–33.
34. The troops were more than twice the number that the United States and its allies dispatched in the next war against Iraq, in 2003. Congress estimated that the cost of the Gulf War of 1991 was $61 billion. Other estimates rise as high as $71 billion. Coalition partners, especially the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia, paid an estimated $42 billion of these costs. U.S. News & World Report, Triumph Without Victory, 413.
35. In 2003, Kerry voted to authorize President George W. Bush to go to war against Iraq.
36. Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, 184–85.
37. New York Times, March 27, 2003.
38. Ibid., April 20, 2003. For accounts of the fighting, see Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor, The Generals’ War: The Inside Story of the War in the Gulf (Boston, 1995); and Robert Divine, “The Persian Gulf War Revisited: Tactical Victory, Strategic Failure?” Diplomatic History 24 (Winter 2000), 129–38.
39. For the estimates cited here of Iraqi troop sizes, desertions, and casualties, see John Heidenrich, “The Gulf War: How Many Iraqis Died?” Foreign Policy 90 (Spring 1993), 108–25. Heidenrich rejects a range of other early estimates, most of which were higher. Generally agreed-upon statistics concerning American and coalition casualties may be found in Rick Atkinson, Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War (Boston, 1993), 491–92; U. S. News & World Report, Triumph Without Victory, vii–ix, 402–13; New York Times, April 20, 2003; and World Almanac, 2003, 209. Later, 15,000 to 20,000 U. S. soldiers reported symptoms—fatigue, aches and pains, difficulty in thinking, loss of memory—that they attributed to service in the Gulf at the time of the war. These ailments were collectively given the name of Gulf War Syndrome. New York Times, March 25, 2003.
40. Comment in 1999, reported in Providence Journal, Dec. 16, 2003.
41. David Rieff, “Were Sanctions Right?” New York Review of Books, July 27, 2003, 41–46. Though most observers believe that international sanctions against Iraq helped to prevent Hussein from developing weapons of mass destruction, it later became clear that Hussein—both before and especially after the $64 billion oil-for-food arrangements that lasted until early 2003—managed to siphon off an estimated $10.9 billion ($1.7 billion of which went into his own pockets), mainly by illegally smuggling oil to nearby countries like Jordan, Turkey, Syria, and Egypt. Illicit surcharges and kick-backs further enriched his inner circle. United Nations officials overseeing the oilfor-food program badly mismanaged it, and British and American officials charged with monitoring some of the arrangements did a poor job of preventing smuggling. Hussein also succeeded in hiding large caches of conventional arms, components, and high explosives—some of which Iraqi rebels later used with telling effect during the American-led occupation of Iraq that began in 2003. New York Times, Feb. 29, June 4, Nov. 16, Dec. 8, 2004, April 24, 2005.
42. Interview with the BBC later reported in New York Times, Dec. 16, 2003; ibid., Sept. 30, 2004.
43. Osama bin Laden, a mastermind of Muslim terrorism in later years, repeatedly emphasized the evil of America’s presence in these nations—especially in Saudi Arabia, his native land—and advocated terrorist activities as a means of driving the Americans out.
44. Parmet, George Bush, 492–93, 500.
45. See chapter 1.
46. Average SAT verbal scores were 502 in 1980, 500 in 1990. Average SAT math scores rose a little, from 492 in 1980 to 501 in 1990. Average verbal scores in 1970 had been 537, average math scores, 512. Stat. Abst., 2002, 244. For school issues, including the issue of tests, see chapter 1.
47. Greene, The Presidency of George Bush, 69–71.
48. John Jennings, Why National Standards and Tests? Politics and the Quest for Better Schools (Thousand Oaks, Calif., 1998), 17–20, 25–32.
49. Liberals also complained after 2002 that Republicans appropriated insufficient funds to support the act and that the emphasis on testing was misplaced.
50. Greene, The Presidency of George Bush, 76–77.
51. City of Richmond v. J. A. Croson Co., 488 U.S. 469 (1989), involving minority setasides in construction contracting; and Ward’s Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio, 490 U.S. 642 (1989), concerning racial discrimination in employment.
52. John Skrentny, The Minority Rights Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 2002), 332–33.
53. In 2003, this rate was seven times as high as the rate for the population at large. New York Times, Jan. 18, 2004.
54. Skrentny, The Minority Rights Revolution, 333; Terry Anderson, The Pursuit of Fairness: A History of Affirmative Action (New York, 2004), 276.
55. Anderson, The Pursuit of Fairness, 201–2.
56. Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, 492 U.S. 490 (1989).
57. New York Times, July 8, 1989; James Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy (New York, 2001), 195–97.
58. Lawrence Friedman, American Law in the Twentieth Century (New Haven, 2002), 524–25.
59. After 1992, President Bill Clinton set about to reverse this process. His efforts, like those of Bush, aroused great controversy on the Hill. When he left office, eight of the thirteen courts still had GOP majorities.
60. Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992). Justice Harry Blackmun, informed that Justice Anthony Kennedy was joining him to create a majority, was greatly relieved, scribbling, “Roe sound.” New York Times, March 4, 2004. These three Republican-appointed justices were Sandra Day O’Connor and Kennedy, named by President Reagan, and Souter. Conservatives, greatly disappointed by Souter’s liberal positions, later pleaded, “No more Souters.”
61. A total of forty-three Republicans and nine Democrats (five of them conservatives from the South) backed Thomas’s nomination on the final vote. Two liberal Republicans, Robert Packwood of Oregon and James Jeffords of Vermont (who became an independent in 2001), joined forty-six Democrats in opposition.
62. One of the women elected to the Senate was Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois, the first black woman in Senate history. Still, in 1993 women had only six seats (6 percent) in the Senate and forty-seven seats (11 percent) in the House (as compared to twenty-eight seats [6 percent] in 1991–92), and 20 percent of those in state legislatures (as compared to 18 percent in 1991–92). Moseley Braun was defeated for reelection in 1998. Stat. Abst., 2002, 247.
63. See chapter 9 for race relations in the 1990s.
64. Lou Cannon, “Official Negligence,” PBS Online Forum, April 7, 1998; Haynes Johnson, Divided We Fall: Gambling with History in the Nineties (New York, 1994), 169–208. In 1993, a racially mixed federal jury in Los Angeles found two of the policemen guilty of having violated King’s civil rights.
65. Stat. Abst., 2002, 305. For the S&L crisis and bailout, see chapter 5.
66. Greene, The Presidency of George Bush, 79–88, 183–86.
67. Garry Wills, “The Tragedy of Bill Clinton,” New York Review of Books, Aug. 12, 2004, 60–64.
68. Byron Shafer, The Two Majorities and the Puzzle of Modern American Politics (Lawrence Kans., 2003), 59–63; Greene, The Presidency of George Bush, 166–75; and Witcover, Party of the People, 642–51.
69. For Clinton and the primary, see Halberstam, War in a Time of Peace, 101–20.
70. Paul Boller, Presidential Campaigns (New York, 1996), 391.
71. Ibid., 387.
72. Halberstam, War in a Time of Peace, 143–54.
73. Robert Collins, More: The Politics of Economic Growth in Postwar America (New York, 2000), 216.
74. In May 1991, Bush was found to have Graves’ disease, a hyperthyroid condition, which some people later speculated may have sapped his energy in 1992. The evidence for such speculation was inconclusive. Greene, The Presidency of George Bush, 153.
75. David Frum, Dead Right (New York, 1994), 18.
76. The four states were Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, and Tennessee. He also carried the border states of Kentucky, Missouri, and West Virginia.
77. Some 45 percent of women were believed to have voted for Clinton, 37 percent for Bush, and 17 percent for Perot. Men divided a little more evenly: 41 percent for Clinton, 38 percent for Bush, and 21 percent for Perot. World Almanac, 2003, 40.
78. Judis and Teixeira, The Emerging Democratic Majority, 28–29.
1. Bork, Slouching Toward Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline (New York, 1996), frontispiece. Yeats closed his poem with the lines “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?”
2. Ibid., 1–5, 331.
3. (New York, 1996), 3–5.
4. Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York, 1987); Hirsch et al., Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know (Boston, 1987).
5. Some of these books, in order of publication: Bork, The Tempting of America (New York, 1990); Dinesh D’Souza, Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus (New York, 1991); William Bennett, The De-Valuing of America: The Fight for Our Culture and Our Children (New York, 1992); and Bennett, The Book of Virtues (1993). As head of the National Endowment for the Humanities under Reagan between 1981 and 1985 and then as education secretary (1985–88), the voluble Bennett had fired some early salvos in the culture wars. A more temperate and thoughtful example of conservative unease is James Wilson, The Moral Sense (New York, 1993).
6. Brzezinski, Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the Twenty-First Century (New York, 1993), x.
7. Cited in Kevin Phillips, Arrogant Capital: Washington, Wall Street, and the Frustration of American Politics (Boston, 1994), 62.
8. See Sara Diamond, Not by Politics Alone: The Enduring Influence of the Religious Right (New York, 1998), 174–76.
9. William Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America (New York, 1996), 299–303, 329–32; and Daniel Williams, “From the Pews to the Polls: The Formation of a Southern Christian Right” (PhD diss., Brown University, 2005), chapter 7.
10. Francis Fukuyama, The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstruction of Social Order (New York, 1999). Fukuyama’s book, reflecting the more optimistic mood of the late 1990s, argued that by then the worst of the disruption had passed.
11. Moynihan, “Defining Deviancy Down,” The American Scholar 62 (Winter 1993), 17–30.
12. See, for instance, David Calleo, The Bankrupting of America (New York, 1992); Edward Luttwak, The Endangered American Dream: How to Stop the United States from Becoming a Third World Country and How to Win the Geo-Economic Struggle for Industrial Supremacy (New York, 1993); Robert Hughes, Culture of Complaint: The Fraying of America (1993); Brzezinski, Out of Control; and Phillips, Arrogant Capital.
13. See Amitai Etzioni, comp., Rights and the Common Good: The Communitarian Perspective (New York, 1995).
14. Putnam, “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital,” Journal of Democracy 6 (Jan. 1995), 65–78. See also Putnam’s later book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse of American Community (New York, 2000). Communitarian writing of the time includes Amitai Etzioni, The Spirit of Community (New York, 1993); and Michael Sandel, Democracy’s Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass., 1996). Among the many reactions to Putnam are Theda Skocpol, Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life (Norman, Okla., 2003); Jeffrey Berry, The New Liberalism: The Rising Power of Citizen Groups (Washington, 1999); and Everett Ladd, The Ladd Report (New York, 1999).
15. Putnam, Bowling Alone, 277–84.
16. Marie Winn, The Plug-In Drug (New York, 1977).
17. Putnam, Bowling Alone, 100.
