Deadlock and Disillusionment

Gary W. Reichard is Provost / Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Professor of History at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York. In addition to teaching post-World War II United States history at the college level, Reichard has taught the history of American political parties and the history of American immigration and ethnicity. He is the author of The Reaffirmation of Republicanism: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Eighty-third Congress and Politics as Usual: The Age of Truman and Eisenhower (2nd Ed.), and is a former member of the Executive Board of the Organization of American Historians.

• List of Illustrations viiPreface ixIntroduction: 1968—The End of an Era 11 The Politics of Cynicism, 1968–1974 5The Shaping of a New Majority 7Conservatism as Reform 16The Politics of War and Détente 19Watergate and Its Aftermath 302 The Futility of Moderation, 1974–1976 43The Politics of Forgiveness 44President as Political Prisoner 48Détente Derailed 533 Dashed Hopes, 1976–1980 60Fractured Majority 61Threading the Needle 73The Abandonment of Idealism 784 Dogma and (More) Disappointment, 1980–1988 89The Rise of the Right 90Reaganomics 96Culture Wars and Party Politics 107Reagan's World 1175 Squandering the Inheritance, 1988–1992 136Succession by Hardball 137The Bills Come Due 144New World (Dis)Order 1536 The Deepening Divide, 1992–2000 171The Illusion of Liberal Revival 172The Politics of Triangulation 187Quest for a Post-Cold War Foreign Policy 200Crises of the Clinton Presidency 2127 The Politics of Polarization, 2000–2008 221Ultimate Deadlock: Bush v. Gore 222The Politics of Anti-terrorism 233Imagined Mandate 248The Politics of Certitude 2628 The Politics of Red and Blue, since 2008 277The Politics of Hope 279Government by Dysfunction 296The Politics of Trench Warfare 315Conclusion: Deadlock and Disillusionment 328Bibliographical Essay 335Index 355