Nixon longed to be known for his expertise in foreign policy. Although occupied with the Vietnam War, Nixon also initiated several new trends in American diplomatic relations. Nixon contended that the communist world consisted of two rival powers — the Soviet Union and China. Given the long history of animosity between those two nations, Nixon and his adviser Henry Kissinger, decided to exploit that rivalry to win advantages for the United States. That policy became known as triangular diplomacy.

The United States had much to offer China. Since Mao Zedong's takeover in 1949, the United States had refused recognition to the communist government. Instead, the Americans pledged support to the Chinese Nationalist government in Taiwan. China was blocked from admission to the United Nations by the American veto, and Taiwan held China's seat on the Security Council.

In June 1971 Kissinger traveled secretly to China to make preparations for a Presidential visit. After Kissinger's return, Nixon surprised everyone by announcing that he would travel to China and meet with Mao Zedong. In February 1972, Nixon toured the Great Wall and drank toasts with Chinese leaders. Soon after, the United States dropped its opposition to Chinese entry in the United Nations and groundwork was laid for the eventual establishment of diplomatic relations.

President and Mrs Nixon on the Great

Wall, 1972

Henry Kissenger

As expected, this maneuver caused concern in the Soviet Union. Nixon hoped to establish a détente, or an easing of tensions, with the USSR. In May 1972, Nixon made an equally significant trip to Moscow to support a nuclear arms agreement. The product of this visit was the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I). The United States and the Soviet Union pledged to limit the number of intercontinental ballistic missiles each side would build, and to prevent the development of anti-ballistic missile systems.

Nixon and his Soviet counterpart, Leonid Brezhnev also agreed to a trade deal involving American wheat being shipped to the USSR. The two nations entered into a joint venture in space exploration known as Apollo-Soyuz.

As part of the Cold War's temporary thaw during the

1970s, Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev agreed to import American wheat into the Soviet Union. The two countries would also agree to a joint space exploration

program dubbed Apollo-Soyuz.

Arguably, Nixon may have been the only president who could have accomplished this arrangement. Anticommunism was raging in the United States. Americans would view with great suspicion any attempts to make peace with either the Soviet Union or China. No one would challenge Nixon's anticommunist credentials, given his reputation as a staunch red-baiter in his early career. His overtures were chiefly accepted by the American public. Although the Cold War still burned hotly across the globe, the efforts of Nixon and Kissinger led to a temporary thaw.

The situation inherited by Richard Nixon was no less a "mess" than it was in November 1963 when Lyndon Johnson rose to the presidency. In fact, it was much worse. Over 500,000 troops were stationed in Vietnam; Americans killed in action averaged 1200 a month. And domestic opinion about the war was divided (no consensus on a course of action in Vietnam), negative (a majority felt that the war was a mistake), and pessimistic (people saw little progress at the peace talks and believed the fighting would go on for at least 2 more years). Added to the mix were the racial divisions in the country, the skepticism toward within the anti-war movement, and a long standing antipathy toward Nixon among Democratic loyalists.

Nixon and Kissinger quickly agreed upon two premises about American policy in Vietnam. First, the war in Vietnam was not "winnable" in any conventional sense of the term. Public opinion would tolerate neither an escalation nor the continuation of a status quo that included over 1,000 killed per month. Second, a unilateral withdrawal was not feasible because the political costs, both domestic and international, were unacceptable. Withdrawal would dissolve Nixon's political base at home and, as Kissinger continually emphasized, undermine American credibility abroad. [2] Apart from the military situation in Vietnam, the political problem confronting President Nixon was complex. How could Nixon "buy time" to achieve his understanding of "peace with honor" without succumbing to Lyndon Johnson's fate of eroding public support?

The history of his first administration reveals that Nixon's strategy consisted of four components:

1. Vietnamization2. The "Politics of

Polarization" 3. The "Madman"

scenario4. Triangular

Diplomacy

(1) Vietnamization

(2) First, it was necessary to reduce American casualty rates and the number of combat troops in Vietnam. To this end, Nixon defined his policy as "Vietnamization" -- the idea that South Vietnamese would gradually assume a greater combat role and ultimately eliminate the need for American ground forces. Because the US would not withdraw abrubtly, the policy of Vietnamization would require time. The domestic political objective was to convince the public that the Army of South Vietnam could eventually handle the war on their own.

The "Politics of Polarization"

To buy time, Nixon had to build a larger and more reliable base of support within the American public. His popular vote margin in the 1968 election was razor thin. However, to his advantage, the Democratic coalition was shattered in 1968 and there were political opportunities. To exploit these opportunities, the administration would pursue a "politics of polarization" in which it would, at one and the same time, appeal to a "silent majority" and attempt to isolate opponents and paint them, in one manner or another, as extreme.

The "Politics of Polarization"

To buy time, Nixon had to build a larger and more reliable base of support within the American public. His popular vote margin in the 1968 election was razor thin. However, to his advantage, the Democratic coalition was shattered in 1968 and there were political opportunities. To exploit these opportunities, the administration would pursue a "politics of polarization" in which it would, at one and the same time, appeal to a "silent majority" and attempt to isolate opponents and paint them, in one manner or another, as extreme.

The polarizing effect of Vice President Agnew's attacks were intentional and

part of the political strategy of the administration. As Agnew noted, "I say it is time for a positive polarization. It is time to rip away the rhetoric and to divide on authentic lines." [9] President Nixon and his political advisors were strongly influenced by The Emerging Republican Majority, published by Kevin Phillips in 1969 and called "The Political Bible of the Nixon Era" by Newsweek magazine. In the book, Phillips argued that the once potent New Deal coalition of the Democrats was in shambles. Nixon could, Phillips contended, build a permanent national majority for the Republicans by holding his traditional Republican base while augmenting that base with southern Democrats (many of whom voted for George Wallace in 1968) and other conservative elements in the Democratic Party.

At 9:30 PM on November 3, President Nixon addressed a national television audience from the White House. This speech, whose date was announced just two days before the first moratorium, was designed to buy time in Vietnam and to reach out to dissident Democrats along with Nixon's core constituency. In the speech, the president traced the history of American involvement in Vietnam, highlighted the negotiating efforts of administration since taking office, outlined his policy of Vietnamization, and placed the blame for the continuation of war on the government of North Vietnam. The speech reached its crescendo when he appealed to the public for support:

And so tonight-- to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans-- I ask for your support. I pledged in my campaign for the Presidency to end the war in a way that we could win the peace. I have initiated a plan of action which will enable me to keep that pledge. The more support I can have from the American people, the sooner that pledge can be redeemed; forthe more divided we are at home, the less likely, the enemy is to negotiate at Paris. Let us be united for peace. Let us also beunited against defeat. Because let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.

- Nixon’s “Silent Majority” Speech Nov. 3, 1969

The public reaction to the president's speech was most favorable. Among those who watched the address, 77% approved of how Nixon was handling the situation in Vietnam and only 6% disapproved. In the wake of the speech, Nixon's overall approval rating climbed from 56% to 67%. Although Nixon had increased his personal support, other indicators suggested that the public remained divided on policy in Vietnam. 55% of public now classified themselves as "doves" with only 31% using the "hawk" label (down from 41% after the TET offensive).

The "Madman" scenario

A "madman theory" was devised for negotiating with the government of North Vietnam. In this gambit, Henry Kissinger would emphasize, in his meetings with representatives of North Vietnam, the volatility of President Nixon's personality. He would warn the North Vietnamese that Nixon was unpredictable, that he could fly into a rage, and that this could happen in response to either North Vietnamese military action or intransigence in the peace talks. A similar theme was sounded by Kissinger in his dealing with the American press. Over the course of the term, Nixon provided a number of examples to give credence to Kissinger's claims: secretly bombing Cambodia, bombing Hanoi and Haiphong, invading Cambodia and mining Haiphong harbor.

Triangular Diplomacy Finally, Nixon pursued a "geopolitical" approach to the

war as well. During the first years of his term, Nixon discovered reason to believe that both the Soviet Union and People's Republic of China were interested in what became known as detente -- an easing of Cold War tensions and expanding trade relations. This interest, plus the suspicions between USSR and the PRC, would provide Nixon with leverage for pressing the Soviets and Chinese to "do business" with the U.S. and to pressure the North Vietnamese to settle the war.

When we examine the history or chronology of the first Nixon administration, each component is evident as is the manner in which the components "meshed" into both a political strategy for getting America out of Vietnam and reelecting Nixon in 1972.

On April 20, 1970, President Nixon addressed a national television audience. In his speech, he reviewed the progress of his Vietnamization policy and announced that 150,000 American troops would be withdrawn from Vietnam in the following year. This was the third and largest announcement of troop withdrawals since Nixon took office. And, unlike the troop increases of the Johnson years, the announcements by Nixon were well publicized.

Ten days later, Nixon took to the airwaves again. The news this time was more controversial as the president announced that American and South Vietnamese forces were launching an invasion of Cambodia. The object of the offensive was to wipe out sanctuaries within Cambodia that were used by the North Vietnamese infiltrating the south.

In his speech, Nixon emphasized not only the strategic value of the operation but also American credibility. "If, when the chips are down," the president argued, "the world's most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world." In order to persuade the public, the speech exaggerated the strategic value of the operation and contained a number of "whoppers." [13] The address concluded with a classic Nixonian flourish as the president asserted that "I would rather be a one-term President and do what is right than to be a two-term President at the cost of seeing America become a second-rate power and to see this Nation accept the first defeat in its proud 190-year history."

The response of public opinion to the military action was peculiar. The public approved of the way Nixon was handling the situation in Cambodia by a margin of 50% to 35%; in response to the question of whether U.S. troops should be sent to Cambodia, only 25% responded affirmatively while 59% said troops should not be sent.

Despite the nature of the polls, the "Cambodian decision" triggered a firestorm of protest. The most publicized occurred on the campus of Kent State University in northeast Ohio. On the evening of May 1, 1970, antiwar protests turned violent when the ROTC (Reserve Officers' Training Corp) building was torched. In response, the Governor of Ohio, James Rhodes, dispatched the National Guard to Kent. During another demonstration on Monday, May 4th, members of the National Guard began firing at demonstrators. Four students were killed and eight injured.

In the wake of Kent State, all hell broke loose. Two students were killed when Mississippi State police fired on a crowd of students at Jackson State University. 450 colleges and universities went on strike; Governor Ronald Reagan closed the entire college and university system in California; within a week, the National Guard had been deployed in sixteen different states and on 21 different campuses. A number of universities simply closed down for the year.

In the weeks after Kent State, "hard hats" --- the slang for workers in construction and the building trades --- staged a series of demonstrations in support of Nixon. In one New York city demonstration the "hardhats" attacked a group of antiwar demonstrators with "fists, boots, and hammers, chanting 'Love It or Leave It.' " These blue collar workers, traditionally Democratic voters, were one of the groups Nixon hoped to attract with the politics of polarization.

The remainder of 1970 saw a continuation of the Vietnamization policy. By the end of the 1970, there were 335,000 American troops in Vietnam (down from 537,000 at the end of Johnson's term) with an average monthly casualty rate of 344 (down from an average of 1,200 during 1968).

In early February, 1971,the South Vietnamese army, backed by the US air and tactical support, launched an incursion into Laos with the intent of cutting off the Ho Chi Minh trail. Initially, the operation was successful with South Vietnamese forces moving twenty miles deep into Laos. On February 20th, the North Vietnamese launched a counteroffensive and, during nearly a month of fighting, captured the territory initially occupied by South Vietnamese forces. On March 19th, the U.S. began an airlift to remove South Vietnamese from Laos and on March 24th, the operation was officially declared at an end

The Laotian incursion was seen as the first "test" of Nixon's Vietnamization policy in the sense of revealing whether the army of South Vietnam could sustain an offensive. The results were, at best, mixed. As Stephen Ambrose notes, "the offensive designed to prove that Vietnamization was working had turned into a rout, made painfully visible to American television viewers by footage showing ARVN troops fighting among themselves for a place on American helicopters extracting them from Laos."

The coming of spring brought more anti-war protests to Washington D.C. There were sizable demonstrations in March, April, and May. The April demonstrations were led by the organization known as Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). The most dramatic moment of the April protests occurred near the Capitol Building where numerous combat veterans threw back their medals to protest Nixon's continuation of the war.

Another round of demonstrations began on May 3, 1971.

The events of early 1971 registered an impact on the polls. The Harris Poll records that positive evaluations of Nixon's handling of Vietnam dropped from 44% to 34% in the wake of the Laotian incursion . In the Gallup Poll, approval of Nixon's overall job performance dropped to 48% in June, the lowest level recorded during his first term.

President Nixon was far from a passive observer of unfolding events. The removal of U.S. forces associated with Vietnamization continued. On April 7, 1971, Nixon announced, in a nationally televised speech, that 100,000 troops would be withdrawn by the end of the year. In an impromptu news conference on November 11th, he reported that another 45,000 would be withdrawn by February 1st, 1972. By the end of 1971, the number of U.S. troops in Vietnam would stand at 157,000; the average number of casualties per month would fall to 123.

The administration also made three "blockbuster" policy announcements in 1971. On May 20th, Nixon announced before a national television audience that the United States and Soviet Union had reached tentative agreements on limiting anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems and strategic arms (SALT). Next came relations with the People's Republic of China. In a nationally broadcast address on the evening of July 15, President Nixon announced that, after a series of secret meetings, the government of the PRC had extended an invitation --- which he accepted --- for the president to visit the country. Finally, on August 15th, the president informed the public of his "New Economic Policy." The policy included a 90 day freeze of wages and prices along with abandoning the gold standard for the U.S. dollar.

The failure to bring negotiations in Vietnam to a close had little impact on the outcome of the 1972 presidential election. Nixon thoroughly defeated his Democratic opponent, Senator George McGovern of South Dakota. The president won 60.7% of the popular vote to McGovern's 37.5%; Nixon carried 49 of the 50 states to win 520 electoral votes while McGovern carried only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia for a total of 17 electoral votes.

On October 10, 1973, following months of pressure and scandal, Vice President Spiro Agnew turned in his letter of resignation to President Nixon (who was soon to follow him) becoming only the second vice president to resign.* Michigan representative Gerald R. Ford took his place as vice president on December 6, 1973.

The 1973 oil crisis started in October 1973, when the members of Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries or the OAPEC (consisting of the Arab members of OPEC, plus Egypt, Syria and Tunisia) proclaimed an oil embargo "in response to the U.S. decision to re-supply the Israeli military" during the Yom Kippur war; it lasted until March 1974. . With the US actions seen as initiating the oil embargo and the long term possibility of high oil prices, disrupted supply and recession, a strong rift was created within NATO. Additionally, some European nations and Japan sought to disassociate themselves from the US Middle East policy. Arab oil producers had also linked the end of the embargo with successful US efforts to create peace in the Middle East, which complicated the situation. To address these developments, the Nixon Administration began parallel negotiations with both Arab oil producers to end the embargo, and with Egypt, Syria, and Israel to arrange an Israeli pull back from the Sinai and the Golan Heights after the fighting stopped. By January 18, 1974, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had negotiated an Israeli troop withdrawal from parts of the Sinai. The promise of a negotiated settlement between Israel and Syria was sufficient to convince Arab oil producers to lift the embargo in March 1974. By May, Israel agreed to withdraw from the Golan Heights.

The Watergate, which gave the scandal its name, was a hotel and office complex in Washington. In 1972, the Democratic National Committee had its headquarters there. (The Watergate is still around, and is still a part of public life -- Monica Lewinsky took refuge there at the height of the scandal about her affair with President Clinton.)

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Without Frank Wills, the scandal never would have happened. On June 17, 1972, Wills, then 24, was a security guard at the Watergate. While doing his rounds, he found that a door lock had been covered with electrical tape to keep it from locking. He called police, who found five men burglarizing the offices of the Democratic National Committee. The burglars had equipment for bugging the phones at the DNC. Wills quit his job because he didn't get a raise for discovering the burglary.

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Among those arrested was James W. McCord, security director for the Committee To Re-Elect the President (CREEP). John Mitchell, head of the Nixon re-election campaign (pictured) denied any ties between the campaign and the burglary.

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The burglars were later revealed to be "plumbers" -- members of a clandestine unit of the CRP, led by John Mitchell. One of the plumbers' previous jobs was a 1971 burglary at the office of a psychiatrist who was treating Daniel Ellsberg (pictured). Ellsberg had leaked the Pentagon Papers -- the Defense Department's secret history of the Vietnam War – to The New York Times. They were published by the Times, The Boston Globe, and The Washington Post.

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One of those arrested in the burglary, Bernard Barker, was carrying an address book with an entry for "HH" (Howard Hunt, pictured) at "WH" (White House). Hunt was a spy novelist and White House consultant who had previously worked for the CIA, and was revealed as one of the planners of the burglary.

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On Aug. 1, two Washington Post reporters, Bob Woodward (right) and Carl Bernstein, reported that a $25,000 cashier's check, apparently earmarked for the Nixon campaign, wound up in the bank account of one of the accused burglars. Woodward and Bernstein would follow the story for more than a year, eventually writing a book, "All the President's Men," about what they discovered.

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On Sept. 29, 1972, Woodward and Bernstein reported that John Dean (pictured), former attorney general turned White House counsel, controlled a Republican slush fund used to finance intelligence-gathering operations against the Democratic Party.

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Ken Clawson, a former reporter who joined the White House communications staff under Nixon, was named in an Oct. 10, 1972, story as the writer of an anonymous letter to a New Hampshire newspaper that helped torpedo the career of Democratic vice-presidential candidate Edmund Muskie. The letteralleged that Muskie had used the slur when describing French-Canadians, a large part of his Maine constituency. The Post described this "Canuck letter" as part of a "massive campaign of political spying and sabotage" on Nixon's behalf.

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On Nov. 7, 1972, Nixon was re-elected by a landslide over Sen. George W. McGovern of South Dakota.

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On Jan. 30, 1973, G. Gordon Liddy (pictured) and James W. McCord were convicted of conspiracy, burglary, and wiretapping in the Watergate break-in. Liddy, a former FBI agent, was not among those first arrested, but was convicted of planning the burglary.

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In February 1973, the Senate established the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities to investigate the Watergate break-in and rumors of other operations. Sam Ervin, a North Carolina Democrat who cultivated a folksy "country lawyer" persona, is chairman; Howard Baker, a Republican from Tennessee, is his deputy.

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On March 19, days before his sentencing in the original Watergate burglary, James W. McCord sent a letter to Judge John Sirica, describing how other suspects had withheld information and charging that payments were made by high White House officials to persuade them to lie and plead guilty. Sirica made the letter public.

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Presidential Counsel John Dean was fired at the end of April for cooperating with the Watergate Committee. His testimony the following summer would be key to the investigation, and his description of the cover-up as "a cancer on the presidency" would become one of the best-remembered remarks from the scandal.

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Also at the end of April, Nixon's top aides, Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman (left) and domestic-affairs assistant John Ehrlichman (center), resigned over their roles in the widening scandal. Also resigning was the attorney general, Richard Kleindienst. Elliot Richardson of Massachusetts is named to replace Kleindienst.

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On May 18, 1973, the Senate Select Committee (later known simply as the "Watergate Committee") began its hearings, which were nationally televised. The same day Richardson, about to take office as attorney general, appointed Archibald Cox as a special prosecutor for Watergate.

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Alexander Butterfield, a former presidential appointments secretary, testifed before the Senate committee in July, confirming that Nixon had a system in place for taping all conversations and phone calls in his office. The committee and Nixon began a battle over the tapes.

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Nixon, increasingly embattled in his refusal to hand over any tapes, began a series of events known as the "Saturday Night Massacre" by ordering Richardson to fire Cox (pictured). Richardson refused and resigned. Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus was also ordered to fire Cox, refused and resigned. Robert Bork, then solicitor general (and later, briefly, a Supreme Court nominee), finally fired Cox.

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Nixon finally released some of the tapes. In December 1973, investigators discovered an 18 1/2-minute gap in one of them. Chief of Staff Alexander Haig (pictured) said one theory was that "some sinister force" erased the segment.

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Rosemary Woods, Nixon's secretary, took the blame for the gap, demonstrating in this photo how she could have accidentally erased the segment of the tape.

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Nixon, who had been named an "unindicted co-conspirator" when charges were filed against seven of his aides, had also been the subject of impeachment hearings by the House Judiciary Committee, which began considering the matter in February 1974.

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By April 30, 1974, the Senate committee still hadn't gotten all the tapes it had asked for. Instead of handing them over, Nixon released 1,200 pages of edited transcripts. The transcripts were notable for the frequent use of the delicate "expletive deleted" to replace saltier language. (Rolling Stone ran a quiz suggesting a range of profanities that might have filled a few Important gaps.) That summer, the Supreme Court affirmed a lower court order that Nixon turn over all the tapes.

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Late in July, the House Judiciary Committee passed the first of three articles of Impeachment against Nixon. On August 5, under increasing pressure, he released transcripts of three conversation he had with Haldeman six days after the Watergate break-in. The June 23 tape became known as "the smoking gun" because it revealed that Nixon ordered the FBI to abandon its investigation of the break-in. Under increasing threat of impeachment, Nixon resigned three days later.

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Nixon knew he was in a loosing battle, when, in U.S. v. Nixon, the Supreme Court declared that executive privilege did not apply, and Nixon was ordered to give the evidence to the Congress.

By this time, the House Judiciary Committee had already drawn up articles of impeachment, and Nixon knew he did not have the votes in the Senate to save his Presidency.

On August 8, 1974, Nixon resigned the office, becoming the first President to do so.

Vice President Gerald Ford assumed the presidency to fill out Nixon's term. One of his early acts in office was to issue a full pardon for Nixon for all charges related to the Watergate case.

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One of the lasting impacts of Watergate was a change in the relationship between government and the media. Reporters Woodward and Bernstein -- and their editor, Ben Bradlee, and publisher Katharine Graham (pictured) -- are credited with moving past the Nixon administration's attempts at a cover-up to bring the web of misdeeds to light. Other journalists joined the chase, and more than 50 journalists appeared on Nixon's "enemies list.“

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Watergate made its way into popular culture with the publication of Woodward and Bernstein's book, "All the President's Men," and the movie based on it, starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford as the two reporters. Phrases like "expletive deleted" and "credibility gap" entered the language during the height of the story, and subsequent scandals – Monicagate, Irangate -- had "-gate" appended to their names.

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The presidents who came after Nixon found greater restrictions on their activities, including a ban on "slush funds" and a law requiring them to report financial statements. They also faced more public cynicism and deeper questioning of the facts behind their actions. Ultimately, many believe that the system of checks and balances worked, and that the result was a stronger democracy.

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By April 25th, 1975, after the NVA captured Phuoc Long city, Quang Tri, Hue, Da Nang and Hue, the South Vietnamese Army had lost its best units, more than a third of its men, and nearly half its weapons. The NVA were closing in on Saigon, which forced President Ford to order an immediate evacuation of American civilians and South Vietnamese refugees in Operation Frequent Wind.

The operation was put into effect by secret code. Remaining citizens, refugees, and officials were to stand by until the code was released. "White Christmas" was the code, which was broadcast on the morning of April 29th. Refugees and Americans then "high-tailed" it to designated landing zones.

U.S. Marine and Air Force helicopters, flying from offshore carriers, performed a massive airlift. In 18 hours, more than 1,000 American civilians and nearly 7,000 South Vietnamese refugees were flown out of Saigon.

South Vietnamese pilots also were permitted to participate in the evacuation, and they landed on U.S. carriers. More than 100 of those American-supplied helicopters (more than $250,000 each) were then pushed off carrier decks to make room for more evacuees.

At 4:03 a.m., April 30th, 1975, two U.S. Marines were killed in a rocket attack at Saigon's Tan Son Nhut airport. They were the last Americans to die in the Vietnam War. At dawn, the remaining marines of the force guarding the U.S. Embassy lifted off.

Only hours later, South Vietnamese looters ransacked the embassy as Soviet-supplied tanks, operated by North Vietnamese, rolled south on National Highway 1. On the morning of April 30th, Communist forces captured the presidential palace in Saigon, which ended the Second Indochina War.

Disco is a genre of dance music whose popularity peaked during the middle to late 1970s. It had its roots in clubs that catered to African American, gay, psychedelic and other communities in New York City and Philadelphia during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Disco was a reaction by New York City's gays as well as black and Latino heterosexuals against both the domination of rock music and the demonetization of dance music by the counterculture during this period. Women embraced disco as well, and the music eventually expanded to several other popular groups of the time

Well-known late 1970s disco performers included Donna Summer, Amanda Lear, The Bee Gees, KC and the Sunshine Band, Chic, and The Jacksons. Summer would become the first well-known and most popular disco artist, giving her the title 'The Queen of Disco', and also played a part in pioneering the electronic sound that later became a part of disco (see below). While performers and singers garnered the lion's share of public attention, the behind-the-scenes producers played an equal, if not more important role in disco, since they often usually wrote the songs and created the innovative sounds and production techniques that were part of the "disco sound".[23] Many non-disco artists recorded disco songs at the height of disco's popularity, and films such as Saturday Night Fever and Thank God It's Friday contributed to disco's rise in mainstream popularity.

The Hues Corporation's 1974 "Rock The Boat", a U.S. #1 single and million-seller, was one of the early disco songs to hit #1. Other chart-topping songs "Love's Theme" by Barry White's Love Unlimited Orchestra, Gloria Gaynor ‘s "Never Can Say Goodbye" and "Reach Out (I'll Be There)". KC and the Sunshine Band’s "Get Down Tonight", "That's the Way (I Like It)", "(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty", "I'm Your Boogie Man" and "Keep It Comin' Love". The Bee Gees "You Should Be Dancing", "Stayin' Alive", and "More Than A Woman". In 1975, hits such as Van McCoy's "The Hustle" and Donna Summer's "Love to Love You Baby" and "Could It Be Magic" brought disco further into the mainstream. Other notable early disco hits include The Jacksons’s "Dancing Machine" (1974), Barry White’s "You're the First, the Last, My Everything" (1974), LaBelle’s "Lady Marmalade" (1975) and Chic's "Le Freak" (1978) became a classic and is heard almost everywhere disco is mentioned.

Festivities included elaborate fireworks displays in the skies above major American cities. Those in Washington, D.C. were presided over by President Ford and televised nationally. A large international fleet of tall-masted sailing ships gathered first in New York City on the Fourth of July and then in Boston about one week later. These nautical parades, witnessed by several million observers, were named Operation Sail (Op Sail). The vessels docked and allowed the general public to board the ships in both cities, while their sailors were entertained on shore at various ethnic celebrations and parties.

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Year Song Artist

1970 I'll Be There Jackson Five

1971 You've Got A Friend James Taylor

1972 Rock and Roll part II Gary Glitter

1972 American Pie Don McLean

1973 Let's Get It On Marvin Gaye

1974 Sweet Home Alabama Lynyrd Skynrd

1975 Get Down Tonight KC & The Sunshine Band

1976 Play That Funky Music Wild Cherry

1977 Dancing Queen Abba

1978 Last Dance Donna Summer

1978 Disco Inferno Trammps

1979 Y.M.C.A. Village People

Most requested songs of the 1970’s

Year Title

1970 Patton

1971 The French Connection

1972 The Godfather

1973 The Sting

1974 The Godfather Part II

1975 One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

1976 Rocky

1977 Annie Hall

1978 The Deer Hunter

1979 Kramer vs. Kramer

Year Title

1970 M*A*S*H

1971 Dirty Harry

1971 A Clockwork Orange

1971 The Last Picture Show

1972 Deliverance

1973 Serpico

1973 American Graffiti

1974 Monty Python and the Holy Grail

1974 Chinatown

1976 All The President's Men

1976 The Outlaw Josey Wales

1976 Taxi Driver

1977 Star Wars

1977 Close Encounters of the Third Kind

1979 The China Syndrome

1979 Hair

1979 Apocalypse Now

TV In The 1970’s

Season

Show Network Theme

1970-71

Marcus Welby, M.D. ABC

1971-76

All in the Family CBS

1976-77

Happy Days ABC

1977-79

Laverne & Shirley ABC

1979-80

60 Minutes CBS

#1 Shows of the 1970’s

TV In The 1970’sType Show Networ

kTheme

Police Drama Adam-12 NBC

Police Drama Ironside NBC

Police Drama The Mod Squad ABC

Police Drama Cannon CBS

Police Drama Barnaby Jones CBS

Police Drama Kojak CBS

Police Drama The Rockford Files NBC

Police Drama Starsky and Hutch ABC

Police Drama Baretta ABC

Police Drama Barney Miller ABC

Police Drama Charlie's Angles NBC

Police Drama The Six Million Dollar Man ABC

Family Drama Little House on the Prairie NBC

Family Drama The Waltons CBS

Family Drama The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams

NBC

Variety Hee Haw CBS

Other Popular

TV Shows of the 1970’s

TV In The 1970’sType Show Network

Theme

Comedy The Flip Wilson Show NBC

Comedy The Partridge Family ABC

Comedy The Mary Tyler Moore Show

CBS

Comedy Sanford and Son NBC

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TV Shows of the 1970’s

Democratic Party CandidateJames Earl (Jimmy) Carter from Georgia

Republican Party CandidateGerald R. Ford from Michigan

The United States presidential election of 1976 followed the resignation of President Richard Nixon in the wake of the Watergate scandal. It pitted incumbent President Gerald Ford, the Republican candidate, against the relatively unknown former governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter, the Democratic candidate. Ford was saddled with a slow economy and paid a political price for his pardon of Nixon. Carter ran as a Washington outsider and reformer and won a narrow victory. He was the first president elected from the Deep South since Zachary Taylor in 1848. Eugene McCarthy, a former Democratic Senator from Minnesota, ran as an independent candidate.

Democratic Party CandidateJames Earl (Jimmy) Carter from Georgia

Republican Party CandidateGerald R. Ford from Michigan

One of the advantages Ford held over Carter as the general election campaign began was that, as President, he was privileged to preside over events dealing with the United States Bicentennial; this often resulted in favorable publicity for Ford. The Washington, D.C. fireworks display on the Fourth of July was presided over by the President and televised nationally. On July 7, 1976, the President and First Lady served as hosts at a White House state dinner for Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip of the United Kingdom, which was televised on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) network. These events were part of Ford's "Rose Garden" strategy to win the election; instead of appearing as a typical politician, Ford presented himself as a "tested leader" who was busily fulfilling the role of national leader and Chief Executive. Not until October did Ford leave the White House to actively campaign across the nation.

Democratic Party CandidateJames Earl (Jimmy) Carter from Georgia

Republican Party CandidateGerald R. Ford from Michigan

Jimmy Carter ran as a reformer who was "untainted" by Washington political scandals, which many voters found attractive in the wake of the Watergate scandal, which had led to President Richard Nixon's resignation. Ford, although personally unconnected with Watergate, was seen by many as too close to the discredited Nixon administration, especially after Ford granted Nixon a presidential pardon for any crimes he may have committed during his term of office. Ford's pardon of Nixon caused his popularity, as measured by public-opinion polls, to plummet. Ford's refusal to publicly explain his reasons for pardoning also hurt his image. His son, Jack Ford, gave an interview in 1976 in which he stated that his father felt that he "(doesn't) have to prove anything" regarding the pardon of Nixon, and thus did not feel compelled to talk about it.

Despite his campaign's blunders, Ford managed to close the remaining gap in the polls and by election day the race was judged to be even. Election day was November 2, and it took most of that night and the following morning to determine the winner. It wasn't until 3:30 am (EST), that the NBC television network was able to pronounce that Carter had carried Mississippi, and had thus accumulated more than the 270 electoral votes needed to win (seconds later, ABC News also declared Carter the winner based on projections for Carter in Wisconsin and Hawaii; CBS News announced Carter's victory at 3:45 am). Carter defeated Ford by two percentage points in the national popular vote.

James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. (born October 1, 1924) served as the 39th President of the United States from 1977 to 1981 and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office. Before he became President, Carter served two terms as a Georgia State Senator and one as Governor of Georgia, from 1971 to 1975, and was a peanut farmer and naval officer.

As president, Carter created two new cabinet-level departments: the Department of Energy and the Department of Education. He established a national energy policy that included conservation, price control, and new technology. In foreign affairs, Carter pursued the Camp David Accords, the Panama Canal Treaties and the second round of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II). Throughout his career, Carter strongly emphasized human rights. He returned the Panama Canal Zone to Panama and faced criticism at home for what was widely seen as yet another signal of US weakness. He took office during a period of international stagflation which persisted throughout his term and eroded his popularity. The final year of his presidential tenure was marked by several major crises, including the 1979 takeover of the American embassy in Iran and holding of hostages by Iranian students, an unsuccessful rescue attempt of the hostages, serious fuel shortages, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. By 1980, Carter had become so unpopular that Ted Kennedy challenged him for the Democratic Party nomination in the 1980 election. Carter survived the primary challenge, but lost the election to Republican Ronald Reagan in a 44 state landslide.

Stagflation occurs when a country's inflation rate is high and unemployment rate is high. It is an economic condition in which inflation and economic stagnation are occurring simultaneously and have remained unchecked for a significant period of time. The concept is notable partly because, in postwar macroeconomic theory, inflation and recession were regarded as mutually exclusive, and also because stagflation has generally proven to be difficult and, in human terms as well as budget deficits, very costly to eradicate once it gets started. In the political arena a simple measure of Stagflation termed the Misery Index (derived by the simple addition of the inflation rate to the unemployment rate) was used to swing Presidential elections in the United States in 1976 and 1980.

Richard Nixon had imposed price controls on domestic oil, which had helped cause shortages that led to gasoline lines during the 1973 Oil Crisis. Gasoline controls were repealed, but controls on domestic US oil remained. The Jimmy Carter administration began a phased deregulation of oil prices on April 5, 1979, when the average price of crude oil was US$15.85 per barrel (42 US gallons). Over the next 12 months the price of crude oil rose to $39.50 per barrel (its all time highest real price until March 7, 2008.)[6] Deregulating domestic oil price controls allowed domestic U.S. oil output to rise sharply from the large Prudhoe Bay fields, while oil imports fell sharply. Hence, long lines appeared at gas stations, as they had six years earlier during the 1973 oil crisis.

As the average vehicle of the time consumed between two to three liters (about 0.5-0.8 gallons) of gasoline (petrol) an hour while idling, it was estimated that Americans wasted up to 150,000 barrels (24,000 m3) of oil per day idling their engines in the lines at gas stations.

Many politicians proposed gas rationing; one such proponent was Harry Hughes, Governor of Maryland, who proposed odd-even rationing (only people with an odd-numbered license plate could purchase gas on an odd-numbered day), as was used during the 1973 Oil Crisis. Several states actually implemented odd-even gas rationing, including Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Texas. Coupons for gasoline rationing were printed but were never actually used during the 1979 crisis.

"Equality of rights under the law shall not be abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."

This simple sentence comprised Section 1 of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which was first proposed in Congress by the National Women's Party in 1923. Feminists of the late 1960s and early 1970s saw ratification of the amendment as the only clear-cut way to eliminate all legal gender-based discrimination in the United States.

Amending the Constitution is a two-step process. First, the Congress must propose the amendment by a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate. After proposal, it must be ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures. Organizations like the National Organization of Women (NOW) began a hard push for the ERA in 1970.

Leaders such as Gloria Steinem addressed the legislature and provided argument after argument in support of the ERA. The House approved the measure in 1970, and the Senate did likewise in 1972. The fight was then taken to the states. ERA-supporters had the early momentum. Public opinion polls showed strong favorable support. Thirty of the necessary thirty-eight states ratified the amendment by 1973.

But then the tide turned. From nowhere came a highly organized, determined opposition that suggested that ratification of the ERA would lead to the complete unraveling of traditional American society.

Stop-ERA advocates baked apple pies for the Illinois legislature while they debated the amendment. They hung "Don't draft me" signs on baby girls. The strategy worked. After 1973, the number of ratifying states slowed to a trickle. By 1982, the year of expiration, only 35 states had voted in favor of the ERA — three states shy of the necessary total.

Feminist groups maintained that a serious blow was struck toward the idea of gender equity in the United States. They also saw women divided against other women. Despite early gains by the feminist movement, the rise in social conservatism led Americans of both genders to draw limits on a constitutionally mandated equality between the sexes.

The Iran hostage crisis was a diplomatic crisis between Iran and the United States. 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days from November 4, 1979 to January 20, 1981, after a group of Islamist students and militants took over the American Embassy in support of the Iranian Revolution.

Sixty-six Americans were taken captive when Iranian militants seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979, including three who were at the Iranian Foreign Ministry. Six more Americans escaped and of the 66 who were taken hostage, 13 were released on Nov. 19 and 20, 1979; one was released on July 11, 1980, and the remaining 52 were released on Jan. 20, 1981.

The episode reached a climax when, after failed attempts to negotiate a release, the United States military attempted a rescue operation, Operation Eagle Claw, on April 24, 1980, which resulted in a failed mission, the destruction of two aircraft and the deaths of eight American servicemen and one Iranian civilian. It ended with the signing of the Algiers Accords in Algeria on January 19, 1981. The hostages were formally released into United States custody the following day, just minutes after the new American president Ronald Reagan was sworn in.

The crisis has been described as an entanglement of "vengeance and mutual incomprehension". In Iran, despite freezing of all Iranian assets held in the United States (Executive Order 12170), the hostage taking was widely seen as a blow against the U.S, and its influence in Iran, its perceived attempts to undermine the Iranian Revolution, and its long-standing support of the recently overthrown government of the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The Shah had been restored to power in a 1953 coup against a democratically-elected nationalist Iranian government organized by the CIA at the American Embassy and had recently been allowed into the United States for medical treatment. In the United States, the hostage-taking was seen as an outrage violating a centuries-old principle of international law granting diplomats immunity from arrest and diplomatic compounds sovereignty in their embassies.

The crisis has also been described as the "pivotal episode" in the history of Iran – United States relations. In the U.S., some political analysts believe the crisis was a major reason for U.S. President Jimmy Carter's defeat in the November 1980 presidential election. In Iran, the crisis strengthened the prestige of the Ayatollah Khomeini and the political power of those who supported theocracy and opposed any normalization of relations with the West. The crisis also marked the beginning of U.S. legal action, or economic sanctions against Iran, that further weakened economic ties between Iran and the United States.