How did the energy crisis change American politics and society?
Brands, Chapter 8: Days of Malaise, 1974-79
- Dirty Laundry and Family Jewels (pp. 187-92)
- Running on Empty (pp. 192-97)
- A Ford, Not a Lincoln; A Carter, Not a Ford (pp. 197-99)
- Beyond Containment (pp. 199-202)
- Neither Confidence… (pp. 202-04)
- … Nor Decisiveness (pp. 204-07)
- Trapped in Tehran (pp. 207-09)
- The Bad News Gets Worse (pp. 209-212)
From Wallace to Carter –Politics in the South
The Nixon campaign was not the only one playing to the fears and resentments of American voters in 1968. Independent candidate and Alabama governor George Wallace offered his own version of right-wing populism (“law and order”) to help stoke support.
George Wallace, (Ind) “Law and Order” (1968)
Read Clara Blackwell’s oral history of life in post-segregation Mississippi
Rise of Jimmy Carter
Crisis of Confidence
“It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation. The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and political fabric of America.” –President Jimmy Carter, July 1979
Iranian Hostage Crisis (1979)
Iranian Hostage Crisis, Tehran, 1979
Gender Politics and Resistance in the 1970s
Discussion Questions
- Why was 1973 such a pivotal year for what the American Yawp describes as the “Politics of Love, Sex, and Gender”?