 In this lecture, we're going to be talking about the years that followed 1989, the two decades that follow, and we're going to focus on this as, in many ways, a conversation about many of the economic and political and social policies that were put in place during the decade of the 1980s under Ronald Reagan, and that continued to be part of the conversation that continues in the two decades that follow. So that's why I've turned this lecture, the Reagan legacy, because the conversation that begins during the 1980s continues to be very influential within American politics, American society, and the American economy in the two decades that follow. In this lecture, we're going to talk about the presidencies of George H. W. Bush, who follows Ronald Reagan, talk about the presidency of Bill Clinton, the presidency of George W. Bush, and then briefly about the election of Barack Obama as president in 2008, and sort of the broader, sort of sum up with the broader impact of the last, of the policies of really the last 70 years or so on America's relationship with the broader global community. Reagan's legacy, certainly we have to talk about, and we mentioned this in the previous lecture, there are a number of conversations, there are a number of sort of political and economic ideas that he and his supporters really promote that continue to be a part of the conversation long after Reagan leaves office. One of these is his critique of big government. This idea that government was too big, it needed to be smaller, taxes were too high, they needed to be lower, the government shouldn't be everything to everyone. And so in the two decades that follow Reagan's time in office, the issues of tax cuts, big government as I already mentioned, here, and kind of pro-business government policies become very, very important, become something that almost pretty much every politician is engaged with, either agreeing with these or disagreeing with these. During Reagan's time in office, we begin to see a transformation of the New Deal state. In other words, the welfare state, as some people kind of derisively call it, and this continues certainly under the administrations of the presidents that follow Ronald Reagan, this concern about welfare, concern about government spending on things like education and social issues, this becomes a major source of conversation within American politics and society. The last issue which Reagan had said was certainly one of the negatives, one of the things he was least happy about with his presidency was the issue of the national debt. And this again becomes an issue of great conversation in the United States in the two decades that follow his time in office. So really these main issues that I've just marked down and highlighted here, big government tax cuts, should government be pro-business or not, in other words regulate business or not, what was the role of the New Deal state of the welfare state, quote unquote, and the national debt, what was the role of the national debt within American politics and the American economy. All these are legacies that come about as sort of conversations as things to be discussed during Reagan's administration continue to be major points of discussion in the two decades that follow and we'll touch on all these in our lecture today. Well, Reagan leaves office in 1989 and his vice president George H.W. Bush sort of rides Reagan's coattails into office. In some ways, you could almost argue that Bush's presidency is very much a continuation of Reagan's presidency. Bush certainly has some independent ideas, but by and large a lot of the policies that he promoted, a lot of the things that happened during his presidency were direct outcomes of Ronald Reagan's eight years in office. Bush is elected in 1988, he takes office in January of 1989 and his first year in office is this one of monumental change around the world. It's really truly a year of change. 1989 is up there with years like 1917 when the Russian Revolution happens or for instance 1789 when the French Revolution happens or even 1776 when the American Revolution as a truly, truly revolutionary year in world history. In 1989, we see a number of important things happen. Beginning in the spring, pro-democracy demonstrations begin to break out throughout Eastern Europe and these communist states that have been under very, very tight communist control since the end of World War II in places like Eastern Europe and East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland begin to see increasing demonstrations in terms of pro-democracy taking place. In China, Chinese students and others gather in Tiananmen Square and protest against the kind of authoritarian policies of the Chinese communist state that happens between April and June. In Tiananmen Square, of course, the protests are eventually crushed by the Chinese military and many of the people are killed or are arrested and driven or in some cases just driven off. But in Eastern Europe, the protests continue until finally in November, the states begin to respond. In November of 1989, the eastern half of Germany, East Germany protests continue, some of East Germany's neighbors eventually just say that they're not going to restrict passage of East Germans between the East and the West and suddenly in a way sort of the wall start coming down that the iron curtain had put into place in the 1940s because of Stalin and other communist policies and suddenly Eastern Europe's looking a lot less like the iron curtain and suddenly looking like it's more open. And so finally on November 9th of 1989, when the East German officials announced they will no longer restrict passage between East Berlin and West Berlin and since the Berlin Wall comes tumbling down and this monumental change, it's hard to under emphasize how important that is because suddenly this kind of powerful two-party system worldwide, in other words, capitalism versus communism starts developing major cracks and within the span of less than two years, this kind of powerful monumental force of communism collapses in Eastern Europe and collapses in the Soviet Union and the Cold War that had been going on since the late 1940s suddenly ends and the U.S. is the only power left standing in a sense the only superpower left standing as a result of this. So 1989 was when the first major cracks begin to appear, quite literally the cracks begin to appear in the Berlin Wall. Within less than a year, communist governments begin to collapse throughout Eastern Europe, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary. We begin to see the Soviet Union itself or the Soviet Russia itself developing kind of cracks in a way. In 1991, the communist government collapses in Russia after an attempted coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, who was the head of the Russian state. Ultimately, a democratic election takes place. Boris Yeltsin here is elected as the new president of a now non-communist state of Russia and all these other affiliated states in Western Asia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Kyrgyzstan and so forth become independent states. And ultimately, it represents this dramatic dramatic change after the 60s, almost 70 years of Cold War. And in the case of the Soviet Union, since 1917, essentially the communists had been in control of the government. So it's just a dramatic dramatic period of a couple years when you see these massive changes taking place. It's not the only change that takes place. We also see the end, for instance, in 1990, Nelson Mandela, a freedom fighter in South Africa, is released from prison after serving many years for his revolutionary activities against the apartheid state in South Africa. Four years later, he's elected president of South Africa and helps oversee the end of the apartheid regime, this racially segregated regime that confined black Africans to these impoverished townships that had privileged white people living in South Africa. And again, it's a monumental shift that takes place in this nation. We also see changes taking place in Latin and South America. Many of these military governments that had taken control in the 70s and early 80s accept democracy and they allow free elections to take place. And we have democratically elected officials taking over in nations like Chile, Brazil, Argentina, places like Nicaragua. And it's just a dramatic, dramatic boost for democracy in these few short years of the early 1990s. Now, of course, change doesn't happen without conflict. And in 1990, 1991, the US, for really the first time since the Vietnam War, becomes involved in a major military conflict overseas. And the so-called Gulf War of 1990, 1991. And really the first major post-Cold War military crisis that the United States would face. Of course, this war came about mainly out of US interest in maintaining a supply of oil coming out of the Middle East when Saddam Hussein, the president of Iraq, invaded his neighbor of Kuwait, which had a huge amount of oil reserved. And it also put Saudi Arabia with its huge oil reserves under threat. And the United States responds by going before the United Nations and organizing a United Nations effort to defend Saudi Arabia and ultimately to order Saddam Hussein to leave Kuwait. And this takes place as part of two efforts organized by the United States, the initial effort to defend Saudi Arabia known as Desert Shield. And then the war against Iraq, Ghee troops in Kuwait that then becomes known as Desert Storm. And for the United States, it's almost the perfect war in a way. It's a war that really helps dispel many of the anxieties that had followed Vietnam, this Vietnam syndrome that I talked about in a previous lecture, this idea that the US should never commit itself to military conflict overseas because it would end badly. Well, in Desert Storm, this literally 100-hour war, last barely 100 hours, the advanced US military troops or military equipment and military troops with very good training and our allies in Great Britain and elsewhere in the Middle East launched this lightning-fast strike that isolates Kuwait and ultimately utterly destroys and defeats the Iraqi occupation troops in Kuwait. And the US, it chooses to stop the war at that point and not continue into Iraq as many advocated. And it really does, as the war wraps up very quickly in the spring of 2001, reposits this huge dramatic victory and kind of morale boost for the United States that American troops had gone in, had done their job at Clean House and had very quickly ended a military threat overseas. Now, had the election taken place right after the end of the Gulf War, it's almost certain that George H. W. Bush would have won re-election. But unfortunately, after the end of the Gulf War, the US enters a period of economic recession. And this kind of short, painful economic recession really hurts Bush's re-election efforts. Bush is not very successful at sort of responding to this economic crisis. And as a result of 1992, when the presidential election does take place, his opponent, William Jefferson Clinton, better known as Bill Clinton, is very successful on capitalizing on Bush's kind of inability to deal with the economy. One of Clinton's catchphrases that becomes very popular in the election is that it's the economy stupid. In other words, he says, Bush is ignoring the economy and that's what's hurting the United States. So in the election of 92, Bill Clinton runs against George Bush. The wild card in this race is that there's an independent, independent businessman, Ross Perot, who runs his kind of a conservative businessman, runs as an independent, very wealthy, so he finances his own campaign. Well, Perot hurts Bush's re-election efforts because he really kind of splits off enough conservative voters that it helps give Clinton the edge. Clinton campaigns is sort of a very different Democrat than previous Democrats, the last Democrat in office being Jimmy Carter. Clinton campaigns as a more moderate Democrat and argues that he's economically conservative, that he in fact agrees in some cases with a lot of the Republican economic policies that had been sort of initiated under Ronald Reagan, but at the same time he was socially liberal, that he believed in a welfare state, he believed in liberal social policies and liberal government policies. Well, he does a very good job of painting George H.W. Bush's being out of touch with the average Americans, and as a result he wins the election in 1992. And again, first Democratic president to be elected in more than a decade in 12 years. Clinton serves two terms in office. His first term is far more liberal than his second term. Early on in his first term, Clinton pushes for universal healthcare, the idea that the government should provide universal healthcare from birth until death and this becomes a huge political debate in the United States. Ultimately, Clinton's universal healthcare effort fails. Clinton's also involved in efforts to initiate an assault weapons ban. The Democrats in Congress pass it, Clinton signs it, and this becomes a hugely controversial measure among conservatives in the United States. On the other hand, Clinton does push some fairly moderate economic policies. NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Association, which is actually very popular among businesses, Clinton promotes as part of his sort of economic conservative strategy. But ultimately, in his first few years in office as a result of the universal healthcare efforts, the assault weapons ban efforts, there's an increasing sense of frustration among very conservative Republicans against Clinton's presidency. And as a result in the midterm election in 94, the Republicans, led by people like Newt Gingrich with his contract with America, managed to take over the House and Senate and it's a huge repudiation of the Democrats and of really Democrats and Bill Clinton's policies. And as a result, the Republicans who control the House and Senate for Clinton's six years in office, following 94, create a challenge for him and he's forced to govern kind of a split administration. Although he actually is arguably very successful governing with a Republican House and Senate, in many cases probably some of his most significant achievements as president in terms of legislative success is really do happen during the six years that the Republicans are in control of the House and the Senate. Well, Clinton is successful enough that he manages to engineer a reelection. The economy, which had struggled a little bit during his first term in office rebounds, he kind of is successful at painting these Republicans in Congress as being really radical and he argues that he's a much more conservative moderating influence and he's able to win successful reelection despite kind of a rough first term in office. During his second term, he does indeed become more moderate, more conservative in his political ambitions, argues for more in terms of small government, argues for fiscal responsibility that the U.S. has to reduce its national debt and U.S. needs to do more to run a budget surplus, in other words to not run a deficit every year. In 1996, Clinton is very successful working with Congress to pass a very significant Welfare Reform Act, which abolishes a number of great society-era programs including the Aid to Family with Defended Children, which was a sort of a food stamps-like program for young mothers with children. It also changes how welfare organizations are running rather than the federal government giving welfare directly to citizens. Federal government would issue block grants to states and states could administer those welfare block grants however they chose to. So it really was gonna devolving power from the federal government to the state level. It's also during his second term that Clinton deals with the crisis in Somalia, where the humanitarian crisis in Somalia, where U.S. troops are stationed there and then eventually pulled out following kind of the events that are depicted in the movie Black Hawk Down, where troops are killed, and also in Yugoslavia, the humanitarian crisis in Yugoslavia that the United States and NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization becomes involved with dealing with the crisis in Bosnia during this era. And so many respects as Clinton's second term in office is quite a very event-filled term. Of course, probably the most notorious aspect of his time in office is his last couple of years in office when the Monica Lewinsky scandal breaks, the sex scandal that he's involved in, and then ultimately leads to the U.S. Congress initiating an impeachment hearing against him and attempting to essentially impeach Clinton from office, which of course is not successful, but it does harm kind of his last year and a half or so in office because he begins to sort of really a lot of Americans, many Americans, of course, are frustrated with this. They see the impeachment effort as sort of politically motivated, but at the same time, it sort of leads to certain dissatisfaction with Clinton's kind of influence, his personal life influencing his policy and his political decisions. And it's partly as a result of sort of dissatisfaction with Clinton's sort of personal failings that the 2000 election becomes a very, very tight election between George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton's vice president, Al Gore. The elections themselves, of course, are very, very tight and they ultimately hinge on the state of Florida where the vote count is really disputed. Ultimately, the decision has to go, the decision on how the votes in Florida are to be counted goes up to the U.S. Supreme Court, who makes a very controversial ruling along largely conservative liberal lines and hand Bush the election as president. And Bush comes into office in many cases, as I said, sort of arguing in some ways against sort of the social attitudes of Bill Clinton. Bush comes into office arguing very strongly as sort of a social conservative as a Christian, painting Bill Clinton and his supporters as kind of perhaps immoral or at least amoral. He argues very strongly in terms of sort of being a domestic president. He wants to focus mostly on domestic affairs, which is sort of where he's seen as being a strong point and arguing for things like tax cuts for the middle and upper classes, continuing these sort of Reagan era policies of deregulation that are also in some ways continued under the Clinton presidency and argue ultimately in sort of incoming into office, Bush arguing for very sort of this kind of conservative small government approach to American politics and American society. Well, when he is elected in 2000, he does indeed implement a number of these programs, including his tax relief policies, the so-called Bush era tax cuts that ultimately lower middle and upper class tax is quite significantly. His no child left behind policy that really changes how educational funding is administered and how educational policy is administered by the Department of Education. But shortly into the Bush presidency, we have September 11th and the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And this really does kind of change the focus of the Bush presidency to being one of international policies as much as it is a matter of domestic policies. It really initiates a number of important events. And internationally, we enter the so-called war on terrorism period. Domestically, we have things like the Patriot Act that are passed that many people see as very as sort of government creating in some ways a police state or at least attempting to restrict privacy in some cases for many Americans. We eventually end up being in two military wars, the war in Afghanistan against the Taliban who were supporting Osama bin Laden and then ultimately the war in Iraq against Saddam Hussein based on the argument that he had weapons of mass destruction, which are, of course, never located. So ultimately for the Bush presidency, which starts off intending to be mainly focused on domestic issues, it becomes largely focused on these international military conflicts, which become extremely costly for the United States because the Bush tax cut significantly reduces revenue for the government. At the end of the Clinton years, there had actually been a slight surplus in the American, in the budget and as a result of Bush era tax cuts and then these two major wars, the deficit starts climbing just exponentially and then towards the end of Bush's presidency beginning in December of 2007, the world economy begins to slow down, which ultimately starts to contribute to a massive, massive increase by the end of 2008 in the U.S. national debt and starts climbing into the multiple trillions of dollars. Here we have 200 billion, or 2,000 billion, which is actually two trillion dollars and so by the end of 2009, the national debt has grown to about 1.8 trillion dollars, which is just an unbelievable figure. And of course the economic crisis that begins in 2007, December of 2007 and continues well through the 2009, 2010, we begin to see here, we can look at this as international trade and all of a sudden you can see here, during 2008, there's just a massive collapse in international trade reflecting this broader economic crisis. This is of course the crisis that also brings about the collapse of a number of Wall Street banks, forces the U.S. government to be involved in bailing out a number of other U.S. businesses in order to prevent arguably what's seen as the entire collapse of the U.S. and perhaps even the world economic system. And so it's ultimately, as a result, by the fall of 2008, many American voters had turned increasingly against Bush's actions and office, his policies, this economic crisis that many saw as partly being, you know, attributable to some of his policies. And as a result, we see a great shift in voter support against Republicans and in favor of a Democrat, in this case, President Barack Obama who wins the election of 2008 and takes office in the spring and January of 2009. And in many ways has to deal with the legacy of the Bush era, much as Ronald Reagan had to deal with the legacy of the Carter era and office, Barack Obama has to deal with many of the legacies of the Bush era, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including the economic crisis, the so-called great recession and a number of other actions. And so ultimately for him dealing with this legacy, but at the same time, going back to what I said at the very beginning of the lecture, also looking at it in terms that were largely framed by Ronald Reagan, this conversation about small government versus big government, this conversation about whether government should exist to provide a handout or provide social support for people or whether government should largely let people do things on their own, conversation about taxes, conversation about debt, these are all matters that Obama inherits and are all conversations that become a part of his administration be it getting in 2009. In conclusion, I wanna wrap up by addressing kind of an issue that really touches on the last really seven or eight lectures in this series. And this ultimately comes down to the question that was originally framed, or kind of a statement that was originally framed by an American publisher named Henry Luce in 1941, right before the United States becomes involved in World War II. Henry Luce published Time Magazine, was involved in Life Magazine as well, and he predicted in 1941 that the 20th century would be the American century. This would be the century where the United States would emerge as the most powerful, most influential nation on the face of the earth, predicted that America would become a dominant world power politically and militarily. He argued that America would achieve a sense of cultural hegemony, remember hegemony means kind of influence and control because it would be the center of manufacturing, it would make the products that people around the world would want to buy, and ultimately predicted that America would establish itself as a great, as this would be America's moment in the sun, this would be its great century. And so the question kind of is, well, did we really achieve that? It was indeed the 20th century, or the second half of the 20th century America's century, will America's century continue or not? Certainly, if we look at the decades that follow World War II, America was extremely successful at exporting its powerful economic, political, and social ideas to the rest of the world. American businesses became incredibly powerful after World War II, American military became incredibly powerful after World War II, and American culture became incredibly influential after the war. Let's compare, if we look at before World War II, in 1900 the United States overtook Great Britain in terms of being the world's largest manufacturer. And the U.S. had begun to slowly start exporting cultural products, things like movies, consumer goods, American lifestyle choices. But by and large, the U.S. was fairly limited in its kind of cultural influences. America was isolationist. It didn't want to be a part of the world community. The Great Depression also helped limit America's kind of broader international involvement. And of course, the U.S. government itself was largely indifferent to sort of how America was perceived on the world stage and was much more focused on domestic issues. After World War II, however, the entire world economy, and in many ways the entire kind of Western non-communist society, becomes reoriented around the U.S. and its desires or its decisions. And a lot of that has to do with political matters, of course. We talked about Bretton Woods, how all the Western currencies were based on the U.S. dollar. In other words, when the dollar became sort of the de facto world currency and all the other currencies were pegged based against the dollar, the U.S. government set up a number of organizations, including of course the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, all organizations strongly influenced by the United States to deal with international economic matters and international kind of political and diplomatic matters. During the course of fighting in Europe and Asia during World War II, many American products followed the troops. Coca-Cola, Marlboro cigarettes, all sorts of American-made products were supplied to troops in the field and of course many of those products made their way to civilian populations. So people in Europe developed interest in drinking Coca-Cola and smoking Marlboro cigarettes. Asia as well. And as a result, by the end of the war, the U.S. had become both powerful economically, had become very much in charge of the world economy, had become very influential in terms of cultural things, in terms of food products and other things like that. And as a result, became very influential within world society as being the country that not only controlled the world economy, but also produced the things that the world wanted to buy. Following World War II, America was also of course very involved in development policy as well. We were helping rebuild nations that had been destroyed during the war and in some cases for countries that had been colonies and that gained their independence, we were involved in helping to build those countries up as well. So in a way, the U.S. had been instrumental in rebuilding the Western world economy and the Asian economies following the Second World War. Beyond the 1970s though, we began to see some contradictions develop and this is really the era that we're in now. In that, as we've talked about, beyond 1970 the U.S. economy begins to decline. The U.S. role in role trade begins to decline. The U.S. becomes a net importer as opposed to a net exporter of products. So as the U.S. becomes less influential economically, in a sense, on the world stage, at the same time, ironically, U.S. culture becomes far more influential. American products become highly in demand worldwide. Things as simple as Coca-Cola, Levi's jeans, American companies like McDonald's or The Gap that you can go around the world and find all of these things and it's because people around the world want them and they want these American products. They want to identify with America and they want to identify with American lifestyle and American personality and things like that. So ironically, as the U.S. becomes less, perhaps influential, it's certainly less able to exert power economically on the world stage. At the same time, American culture remains very strong and remains very hegemonic overall world culture. English remains a very powerful language on the world scene, especially in business. And so in a way, as America's kind of hard power, in other words, it's economic, political, military power declines in the 21st century. At the same time, our soft power, our products, our movies, our books, our ideas, continue to be very powerful in the world community. And so it really raises this sense of like what exactly will the 21st century bring for the United States? Will America continue to have a great deal of soft power in terms of cultural products and cultural hegemony as its economic power declines? Or will America's cultural hegemony begin to slip as well as new nations, powerful new economies like China and India, begin to increasingly export their cultural products in addition to exporting their commercial products. The basic things that we import in the United States from China and India and other countries on a daily basis. So coming back to the initial question, the American century was the 20th century or the second half of the 20th century, America's century? Well, arguably, yes. It arguably was a time period in which America was the most dominant, the most influential country in the world community. Will the 21st century continue to be America's century? That question is largely open to interpretation. I would hesitate to make an argument, but certainly I think it's fair to say that America's cultural influence on the world community will be strong for the near future, whether its economic influence continues is very much an open question. So with that, I'm gonna wrap up this series of lectures in order to sort of talk about the history of the United States from the Civil War era to the present day.