During the decade of the 1970s, 25 years of sustained economic growth came to an end, the United States recognized defeat in the Vietnam War, a President resigned in disgrace, the Soviet Union achieved nuclear parity, and the United States suffered from dependence on unstable suppliers of foreign oil. These and other problems forced Americans to confront the limits of their future. The chapter opens with a contrast between two events of 1969: the soaring achievement of the moon landing and the viscous reality of an oil spill in the Santa Barbara channel.

The Limits of Reform
Reform crusades did not simply disappear as the United States passed from the turbulent 1960s into the 1970s. Rather, the sense of a "movement" splintered into more varied causes with more particular agendas. The Santa Barbara oil spill was one of many issues that advertised the importance of ecology to a healthy environment. Environmentalists also fought the Alaska pipeline, the Florida Everglades jetport, and the Supersonic Transport project (the SST). At the same time, Ralph Nader sparked a consumer movement dedicated to forcing corporations to accept more responsibility for their customers, workers, and the public interest. Despite innovative use of tactics such as the "class-action suit," the broad focus of the consumer agenda for reform dissipated its impact.

Feminists more successfully initiated a movement and sustained its high visibility. Drawing on the response to Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, feminists battled gender discrimination through the 1964 Civil Rights Act and federal affirmative action programs. Increased educational opportunities translated into new career patterns, and, in 1973, the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade struck down restrictive abortion rules in 46 states. Yet behind that success lurked divisions among women over both equal rights and abortion. Moreover, after initial progress toward ratification, the Equal Rights Amendment bogged down in conservative state legislatures. Thus, while reformers pushed on during the 1970s, they discovered the limits of the political process.

Watergate and the Politics of Resentment
Richard Nixon, too, discovered the limits of the era. He fought publicly with Congress to avoid spending funds they had appropriated; privately, he used government agencies to wage war with his perceived "enemies." During the 1972 campaign, reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein discovered links between the White House and a burglary at the Democratic headquarters in the Watergate Hotel complex. During the burglary trial, Judge John Sirica finally forced from defendant James McCord a confession of White House involvement in the crime and cover-up. Key Nixon aides resigned, were fired, or hired lawyers.

The Ervin Committee, in its Senate investigation of Watergate, discovered that a taping system recorded conversations in the Oval Office, setting off a battle between Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, who sought the tapes, and the president, who refused to supply them. In the midst of this crisis, Vice President Agnew resigned under a cloud of corruption and in October 1973, Nixon fired Cox. Eventually new Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski did receive the tapes, which, despite gaps, revealed direct presidential involvement in the cover-up. Rather than face impeachment, Nixon resigned in August 1974, making Gerald Ford the first president elected by voters as neither president or as vice president. The system had worked, but not without significant conflicts and tensions.

A Ford, Not a Lincoln
Under President Ford, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger pursued a policy of realism. Kissinger quietly acknowledged the relative decline of American power under the combined pressures of the Vietnam War and rising power blocs in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Inflation and falling industrial productivity, aggravated by the OPEC oil boycott, also undermined the American economy. Kissinger sought to restore strength to the western alliance by promoting stability in the Middle East in the wake of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He also sought to strengthen key allies such as the Shah of Iran. But scandals involving the CIA's covert operations and a worsening energy crisis hampered his efforts. Attempts to ease tensions through detente with the Soviet Union at summits in Vladivostok in 1974 and Helsinki in 1975 only aroused the suspicions of Ford's conservative supporters and led him to reduce Kissinger's power.

Ford found himself more embattled on the home front. His program of amnesty for Vietnam dissenters satisfied neither conservatives nor liberals. A public relations campaign produced no reduction in inflation. Aging industrial cities faced bankruptcy. Most controversially, Ford pardoned Richard Nixon before the nation was prepared to forgive the former president. In the 1976 election, Washington outsider Jimmy Carter used the nation's frustrations with scandal and a weak economy to defeat Ford.

Jimmy Carter: Restoring the Faith
Carter sought to bring honesty, simplicity, and integrity to Washington. In foreign affairs, that strategy meant a commitment to "human rights" and efforts to reduce cold war tensions. Domestically, the idea of scaling down government ran afoul of entrenched interests and a presidency weakened by Vietnam and Watergate. Inflation and energy shortages, which led to sharp rises in the price of oil, continued to hurt the economy. Carter failed to move Congress to act, and he seemed to focus more on details than on constructing broader policies.

In foreign affairs, Carter successfully negotiated a treaty providing for an eventual transfer of the Canal Zone to Panama. He also struggled to enable the United States and Soviet Union to constructively share the world stage. Conservatives opposed the move toward nuclear parity in the SALT II agreement of 1979. Carter responded by shifting toward the hard-line policies of his National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, which led to a renewed military build-up. In dealing with the Middle East, Carter facilitated the signing of the Camp David Accords between traditional foes Egypt and Israel. However, when Iranian fundamentalists overthrew the Shah of Iran and the deposed monarch traveled to the United States for medical treatment, militants seized the American Embassy and held 53 Americans hostage during the following year. A Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1980 only underscored the region's instability. By 1980 the combination of a sick economy and a foreign policy in disarray mired the nation in what Carter himself described as "a crisis of confidence."