LBJs Great Society

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LBJs Great Society

• War on Poverty
• Lyndon Johnsons goal a new New Deal
• Job Corp (modeled after CCC)
• Focused on Healthcare / Education
• Head Start
• Medicaid / Medicare
• Elementary / Secondary Education Act
• H.U.D
• Loans into low income areas for development

• NEH (National Endowment of the Humanities)
• NEA (National Endowment of the Arts)
• Great Society
• Escalation of Vietnam
• Great Society funding cut / programs cut

2
Nixon

• Hated Establishment of northeast
• Despised those with wealth and connections
• After service in WWII, ran for office (House of
  Rep / Senator)
• Vice President under Eisenhower

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Liberal ?

• Doubled budgets NEA / NEH
• Expanded Federal Housing
• Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
• Expanded Affirmative Action for racial minorities
• Expanded regulatory government
• OSHA

4
Conservative ?

• Tricky Dick
• Undermine liberal establishment
• Intervened in School desegregation / busing
• Conservative judges to Supreme Court
• Endorsed construction of Alaskan Pipeline
• Dismantled OEO (ran War on Poverty)
• Devolution
• Transfer authority from federal government to
  state / local gov. and from public sector to
  private.

5
Nixon Strategies

• Appealed to forgotten Americans
• Silent majority
• law and order constituents
• Refrained from openly discussing race
• But courts pushed too hard, too fast
• Nixon focused on
• Middle class white voters
• Industrializing subdivisions
• peripheral south
• Rise of Sunbelt Conservatism

6
Watergate

• Simply a botched attempt at breaking into and
  bugging the Democratic National HQ located in the
  Watergate complex

7
Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, June 18,
1972 Page A01

• 5 Held in Plot to Bug Democrats' Office Here
• By Alfred E. Lewis
• Five men, one of whom said he is a former
  employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, were
  arrested at 230 a.m. yesterday in what
  authorities described as an elaborate plot to bug
  the offices of the Democratic National Committee
  here.

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Behind Watergate

• Wide range of illegal / subversive activities
• Stealing of confidential files to embarrass
  opponents
• Used IRS to harass opponents
• Covert agencies created for activities
• Wiretapping
• Infiltration of radical groups
• Burglary
• Ordered CIA to stop FBI Investigation
• Payments to Plumbers to stop leaks of corruption

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Reporters Woodward and Bernstein of The
Washington Post
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Deep Throat

• FBI official Mark Felt
• Follow the Money

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Washington Post Staff Writers Tuesday, August 1,
1972 Page A01

• Bug Suspect Got Campaign Funds
• By Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward
• A 25,000 cashier's check, apparently earmarked
  for President Nixon's re-election campaign, was
  deposited in April in a bank account of one of
  the five men arrested in the break-in at
  Democratic National Headquarters here June l7.

13
CREEP Committee to RE-Elect the President

• Dirty Tricks Squad
• Created to sabotage political opponents
• Publicize Fake Rallies
• Fake memos
• Pizza delivery scam
• Secret Oval Office tapes

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Impeachment

• Secret tapes revealed cover-up
• Nixons role in ordering break-in / cover-up
• July 1974
• House Judiciary Committee
• 3 articles of impeachment
• Charge OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE
• V.P. Spiro Agnew
• Tax evasion
• Resigned from office, 1973
• Michigan Rep. Gerald Ford took over as V.P.

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Legacy of Watergate

• Fueled widespread cynicism about politics
• Forever altered the way Americans
• Understood politics / presidency
• Reported /Discussed national politics
• Investigated governmental officials