Beyond the Cold War: Charting a New Course, 1988-1995 (Chapter 31)

Tension gripped the gray streets of East Berlin late in 1989, amid rumors that ''Die Mauer'',
the wall that divided the city, might soon be opened. In May, Soviet Premier Mikhail
Gorbachev had announced that Moscow would no longer use its power to uphold the pro-
Soviet governments of Eastern Europe. One by one, these governments fell. On October 18,
the East German communist regime run by Erich Honecker collapsed, and a new, more liberal
government took its place.

One of the most detested features of the old regimes had been their restrictions on travel, and
as these governments disintegrated, travel barriers fell. Thousands of people poured westward
in early September, for example, when Hungary opened its border with Austria. Of all the
physical barriers preventing free travel, the most nototious was the Berlin Wall. The Russians
had built it in 1961, at a time of bitter East-West conflict. Snaking 96 miles aroung the city
and ramming through its heart, this concrete and barbed-wire barrier with 302 watchowers
and armed guards had stood for nearly 30 years as a stark emblem of Cold War oppression
and divisions.

Passage was permitted only at three closely guarded checkpoints, nicknamed Alpha, Bravo,
and Charlie by the U.S. military. Checkpoint Charlie, the most famous of the three, was the
scene of several Cold War spy exchanges between the USA and the Soviet Union. On the
West Berlin side, the Wall was covered with colorful graffiti that dified its grim expanse.

In 1963, President Kennedy had visited the Wall and uttered his memorable proclamation,
''Ich bine in Berliner'' (''I am a Berliner''). In 1987 President Reagan had made the pilgrimage,
demanding, ''Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!''

Now the end had come. One of the first acts of the new East German government was to
remove the restrictions on free movement within Berlin. At a press conference on November
9, 1989, a government official was asked when the travel ban would be lifted. He replied (in
German), ''Well, as far as I can see... , immediately.''

This was the news East Berliners had been waiting for. Thousands rushed to the Wall and
demanded that the crossing points be opened. At 10:30 P.M. the guards flung open the gates.
Pandemonium resulted. As East Berliners joyously poured through, Wers Berliners greeted
them with flowers, tears, and shouts of welcome. Giddy young people danced on the Wall
itself. Families divided for years were reunited.

The glare of TV lights, beaming the event worldwide via communications satellites added a
surreal quality to the scene. This was not only a watershed moment in world affairs, but also
one of the first truly real-time global media events. Americans sat glued to their seats as CNN
and other networks carried the story live.

The celebrations went on for days. Famed Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovitch gave an
impromptu concert at the Wall. East Berliners who visited West Berlin's giant Ka De We
department store were given 100 deutsche marks (the West German currency) as a welcoming
gift. Hundreds of Berliners whom the newspapers dubbed ''woodpeckers'' attacked the Wall
with picks, chisels, and hammers to gather chunks of concrete as souvenirs of simply to share
in its destruction.

The official demolition began in June 1990. Workers mobilizing bulldozers, cranes, and other
heavy equipment worked through the summer and fall. By November, the wall had
disappeared, except for a few sections left to commemorative purposes. A hated Cold War
symbol had faded into history.

The end of the Cold War and the global events of the immediate post-Cold War era provide
the framework; at first, the Soviet Union's shocking collapse brought an enormous sigh of
relief in the United States. An era of great danger was over, surely the future would be safer
and more tranquil. As the initial euphoria faded, however, Americans realized that the world
remained a threatening and unsettled plse. While U.S. leaders struggled to come to terms with
the new post-Cold War world order, an immediate crisis arose in the Middle East as Saddam
Hussein's Iraq invaded oil-rich Kuwait, forcing Reagan's successor, President George Bush, to
respond.

Changers were underway at home as well as abroad. When Bill Clinton replaced George Bush
in the White House in 1993, domestic policy moved front and center.

THE BUSH YEARS: GLOBAL RESOLVE, DOMESTIC DRIFT, 1988-1993

Ronald Reagan's vice president, Geroge Bush, elected president in his own right in 1988, was
a patrician in politics. The son of a Connecticut senator, he had attended Yale and fought in
WWI before entering the Texas oil business. He had served in Congress, lost a Senate race,
been U.S. ambassador to the UN, and directed the CIA before being tapped as Ronald
Reagan's running mate in 1980.

As president, Bush compiled an uneven record. Internationally, his administration responded

cautiously but positively to upheavals in the Soviet Union that signaled the end of the Cold
War. Bush also reacted decisively when Iraq invaded Kuwait, took positive steps in Latin
America, and worked to ease Israeli-Palestinian tensions.

The Election of 1988

As the 1988 election approached, Vice President Bush easily won the Republican presidential
nomination. A large group of Democratic contenders eventually narrowed to two: Jesse
Jackson and Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis. Jackson, preaching concern for the
poor and urging a full-scale war on drugs, ran well in the primaries. But Dukakis's victories in
major primary states like New York and California proved decisive. As his running mate,
Dukakis chose Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen.

Accepting the Republican nomination, Bush called for a ''kinder, gentler America'' and
pledged, ''Read my lips: no new taxes.'' As his running mate he selected Senator Dan Quayle
of Indiana. In the camapaign Bush stressed Reagan's achievements while distancing himself
from the Iran-contra scandal. Emphasizing peace and prosperity, he pointed to better Soviet
relations, low inflation, and the 14 million new jobs created during the 1980s - an
achievement unmatched by any other industrial nation.

Bush assailed Dukakis's veto of a bill requiring Massachusetts schoolchildren to recite the
Pledge of Allegiance, even though the Supreme Court had found such laws unconstitutional.

Bush visited flag factories and military plants. Dukakis proved his toughness on defense by
posing in a tank. Editorial writers grumbled about the ''junk-food'' campaign, but fleeting
visual images, catchy phrases, etc.

On November 8 Bush carried 40 states and garnered 54% of the vote. Dukakis prevailed in
only 10 states plus the District of Columbia.

The Cold War Ends

The collapse of Soviet power symbolized by the opening of the Berlin Wall proceeded with
breathtaking rapidity. Germany reunited for the first time since 1945. Estonia, Latvia and
Lithuania, the Baltic republics forcibly annexed by the Soviet Union on the eve of WWII,
declared independence. Calls for autonomy resounded within the other Soviet republics as
well.

The Cold War was over. In August 191 President Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev signed a
treaty in Moscow reducing their strategic nuclear arsenals by 25 percent. The nuclear-arms
race seemed to be over as well. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney proposed 25% reduction in
U.S. military forces over five years. With the Soviet-sponosred Warsaw Pact ended, NATO
announced plans for a 50% troop reduction.

As the Soviet Communist party's centralized control collapsed, the nation's economy sank into
crisis. Soviet reformers called for a market economy on the Western model. In August 1991
hard-line Communist leaders in Moscow tried to overthrow Gorbachev, but thousands of
Muscovites, rallied by Boris Yeltsin, president of the Russian Republic, protectively
surrounded the Russian parliament, and the coup failed.

Exuberant crowds toppled statues of Lenin and other communist leaders across the Soviet
Union. Leningrad resumed its tsarist name, St. Petersburg. As the various Soviet republics
rushed to independence, Gorbachev was overwhelmed by forces he himself had unleashed.
Late in 1991 most of the Soviet republics proclaimed the end of the U.S.S.R. Bowing to the
inevitable, Gorbachev resigned.

One issue of vital concern was the future of the Soviet arsenal of 27 thousand nuclear
weapons, based not only in Russia but in newly independent Ukraine, Belarus, and
Kazakhstan. As strategic talks with Yeltsin and other leaders went forward, Bush announced
further major reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

Poverty, ignorance and economic exploitation still plagued Latin America, however, and open
guerilla war continued in Peru. The flow of cocaine and heroin to U.S. cities from the region
posed a serious problem as well.
America's relations with the Philippines, a former colony and long-time U.S. ally, shifted as
well. In 1991 the Philippines legislature ended the agreement by which the USA had
maintained two naval bases in the islands. With the Cold War over, the Bush administartion
accepted this decision and closed the bases.

In a key development, U.S. policy helped bring and end to South Africa's policy of racial
segregation, called apartheid. In 1986, over a Reagan veto, Congress had imposed economic
sanctions against white-ruled South Africa, including a ban on U.S. corporate investment.
This action, strongly endorsed by U.S. black leaders, reflected an anti-apartheid campaign led
by South African Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu. Economic sanctions by America and other
nations hastened change in South Africa. In 1990 the government released black leader
Nelson Mandela after long imprisonment and opened negotiations with Mandela's African
National Congress.

China proved an exception to the world trend toward greater freedom. Improved relations
with China suffered a grievous setback in 1989, when the Chinese army crushed a
prodemocracy demonstration by masses of unarmed students in Beijing's Tiananmen Square,
killing several hundred young men and women. A wave of repression, arrests, and public
executions followed. The Bush administration protested, curtailed diplomatic contacts and
urged international financial institutions to postpone loans to China.

As the Cold War faded, trade issues loomed large. The U.S. trade deficit with Japan stirred
special concern. Although this gap dropped from its 1987 high, it still hovered at $43 billion
in 1991. President Bush turned a planned Asian tri pinto a trade mission. He took alon a team
of business leaders, including the heads of the ''big three'' U.S. auto companies, who tried,
with little success, to persuade the Japanese to buy more U.S. products.

Operation Desert Storm

As the Bush administration cautiously charted a course in the post-Cold War world,
unexpected crisis brought a clear-cut, forceful response. On August 2, 1990, Iraq invadd the
neighboring nation of Kuwait. Iraq's dictator, Saddam Hussein, had long dismissed Kuwait's
ruling sheiks as puppets of Western imperialists and asserted Iraq's historic claims to Kuwait's
vast oil fields.

Under Saddam, Iraq for years had threatened not only Kuwait but also other Arab nations as
well as Israel. Iraq's military program, including both chemical- and nuclear-weapons
projects, had worried many governments. During the Iran-Iraq war, however, the USA had
favored Iraq over Iran and even assisted Iraq's military buildup. But Iran's anti-Americanism
eased after the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989, removing the incentive for the USA to
tilt toward Iraq. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, Washington reacted quickly.

Avoiding Lyndon Johnson's mistakes in the Vietnam era, Bush built a consensus for a clear
military objective-Iraq's withdrawal from Kuwait-in Congress, at the UN, and among the
American people. He deployed more than 4000 troops in Saudi Arabia to achieve that goal.
The UN imposed economic sanctions against Iraq and insisted Saddam withdraw by January
15, 1991. On January 12, on divided votes, the Senate and the House endorsed military action
against Iraq.

The air war began on January 16. For sic weeks B-52 and F-16 bombers ponuded Iraqi troops,
supply depots, and command targets in Iraq's capital, Baghdad. The air forces of other nations
participated as well. In retaliaton, Saddam fired Soviet-made Scud missiles against Tel Aviv
adn other Israeli cities. As portrayed on TV, the war seemed a glorified video game.

On February 23 200 000 U.S. troops under General H. Norman Schwarkopf moved across the
desert toward Kuwait. Although rain turned the roadless sands to soup, the army pushed on.
Iraqi soldiers either fled or surrendered en masse. With Iraqi resistance crushed, President
Bush declared a cease-fire, and Kuwait's ruling family returned from various safe havens
where they had sat out the war. U.S. casualties numbered 148 dead-including 35 killed
inadvertently by U.S. firepower-and 467 wounded.

Despite some campus protests, the war enjoyed broad public support. After the victory
celebrations, however, the outcome seemed less than decisive. Saddam still held power. His
army brutally suppressed uprisings by Shiite Muslims in the south and ethnic Kurds in the
north.

Home-Front Discontents: Economic, Racial, and Environmental Problems

In the early 1990s some of the longer-term effects of the Reagan-era tax cuts, Pentagon
spending, and deregulatory fervor began to be felt. As the economy soured, the go-go climate
of the 1980s seemed remote, and discontent increased, especially among the middle class.

First came the collapse of the savings-and-loan (S&L) industry, which had long provided
home loans to borrowers and a modest but secure return to depositors. As interest rates rose in
the late 1970s because of inflation, the S&L had been forced to pay high interest to attract
deposits, even though most of their assets were in long-term, fixed-rate mortgages. In the
early 1980s money freed up by the Reagan tax cuts flowed into S&L that were offering high
rates of return. In the fever to deregulate, the rules governing S&L were eased. Caught up in
the high-flying mood of the decade, S&Ls nationwide made risky loans on speculative real-
estate ventures.

Necause the government insures savings-and-loan deposits, the Bush administration in 1989
set up a program to repay depositors and sell hundreds of fore-closed office towers and
apartment buildings in a depressed real-estate market.

The federal deficit, another problem linked to the Reagan tax cuts and military spending,
continued to mount. In 1990 Congress and Bush agreed on a five-year deficit-reduction plan
involving spending cuts and tax increases. Despite the agreement, the red ink flowed on. The
deficit reached $290 billion in 1992. The Gulf War, the S&L bailout, and sparing welfare and
Medicare/Medicaid payments combined to undercut the budget-balancing effort.

To make matters worse, recession struck in 1990. Retail sales slupmed; housing starts
declined. The U.S. auto industry, battered by Japanese imports, fared disastrously. GM cut its
work force by more than 70 000. Hard times hung on into 1992, with a jobless rate of more
than 7%. As the states' tax revenues fell, they slashed social-welfare funding. The number of
Americans below the poverty line rose by 2.1 million in 1990, to about 34 million. As the
economy stumbled, the plight of the poor roused resentment rahter than sympathy. Political
strategists diagnosed a middle-class phenomenon they called ''compassion fatigue.''

For middle-class Americans the recession was more anxiety-producing than desperate. For the
poor it could be disastrous. In April 1993 an outbreak of arson and looting erupted in a poor
black district of Los Angeles. The immediate cause was black rage and incredulity over a
jury's acquittal of four white Los Angeles police officers whose beating of a black motorits,
Rodney King, had been filmed on videotape.

The Bush administration did little to address these issues. In 1990 when Congress passes a bill
broadening federal protection against job discrimination, Bush vetoed it, claiming that it
encouraged racial quotas in hiring.

The recession also stung public-school budgets. Bush proclaimed himself the ''education
president'' but addressed the issue only fitfully. He called for national testing of
schoolchildren, supported a voucher system by which parents could enroll their children in
private schools at public expense, and urged corporate America to fund experimental schools.

One measure supported by Bush, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, did have
significant educational implications. This law, barring discrimination against disabled
persons, improved job and educational opportunities for the handicapped. Thanks in part to
the measure, the number of physically or cognitively impaired children attending public
schools rose in 1990s.

Environmental concerns surged in March 1989 when a giant oil tanker, the Exxon Valdez, ran
aground in Alaska's Prince William Sound and spilled more than 10 million gallons of crude
oil. The accident fouled coastal and marine habitats, killed thousands of sea otters and shore
birds, and jeopardized Alaska's herring and salmon industries. That summer the
Environmental Protection Agency(EPA) reported that air pollution in more than one hundred
U.S. cities exceeded federal standards. A 1991 EPA study found that pollutants were
depleting the ozone shield the layer of the atmosphere that protects human life from cancer-
causing solar radiation.

Squeezed between public worries and corporate calls for a go-slow policy, Bush compiled a
mixed environmental record. In a bipartisan effort, the White House and the Democratic
Congress passed a toughened Federal Clean Air Act in 1990.

The Supreme Court Moves Right

Like all presidents, Reagan and Bush sought to perpetuate their political ideology through
their Supreme Court choices. In addition to the Sandra Day O'Connor appointment, Reagan
named William Rehnquist as chief justice, replacing Warren Burger, and chose another
conservative, Antonin Scalia, to fill the Burger vacancy. When another vacancy opened in
1987, Reagan nominated Robert Bork, a judge and legal scholar whose rigidity and
doctrinaire opposition to judicial activism led the Senate to reject him. Reagan's next nominee
withdrew after admitting that he had smoked marijuana. Reagan's third choice, Anthony
Kennedy, a conservative California jurist, won quick confirmation.

President Bush made two Court nominations: David Souter in 1990 and Clarence Thomas in
1991. Souter, a New Hampshire judge, won easy confirmation, but Thomas proved
controversial. Bush nominated him to replace Thurgood Marshall, a black who had fought
segregation as an NAACO lawyer.

The nomination became even more contentious when a former Thomas associate at EEOC,
Anita Hill, accused him of sexual harassment. As the Senate Judiciary Committee probed
Hill's accusations, the face-off dominated the nation's TV screens and heightened awareness
of the harassment issue. In the end, Thomas narrowly won confirmation and joined the Court.

In a 5-to-4 decision in 1992, the Supreme Court upheld a Pennsylvania law further restricting
abortion rights. The majortiy, however, did affirm Roe v. Wadem the 1973 decision
upholding women's constitutional right to an abortion.

The Politics of Frustration

In the afterglow of Operation Desert Storm, George Bush's approval ratings hit an amazing
88%, only to fall below 50% as the recession hit home. In January 1992 Bush offered various
recession-fighting proposals, including tax breaks for home buyers, lower taxes on capital
gains, and tax incentives for business investment. Democrats dismissed this initiative as
politically motivated and inadequate to the problem.

Intimidated by Bush's post-Desert Storm popularity, top Democarats had satyed out of the
1992 presidential race. But Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas took the plunge and, despite
rumors of his martial infidelity, defeated other hopefuls in the primaries and won the
nomination. As his runnin mate, Clinton chose Senator Al Gore of Tennessee. In his
acceptance speech at the Democratic convention, Clinton pledged an activist government
addressing the environment, health care, and the economy. On abortion, he was stronly pro-
choice.

President Bush easily quashed a primary challenge by conservative columnist Pat Buchanan,
but the Republican right domintaed the party convention. Buchanan and evangelist Pat
Robertson gave divisive speeches urging a GOP crusade for ''family vaules'' and denouncing
abortion, sexual persmissiveness, radical feminism, and gay rights.

One gauge of voter discontent was the presidential race of political outsider H. Ross Perot.
Perot insisted on TV talk shows. As president he would conduct ''town meetings'' by which
voters would judge his proposals.

Bush attacked Clinton's character and charged that he had evaded the draft during the
Vietnam War.
In the election, 43% of the voters chose Clinton. Bush trailed with 38%, and Perot amassed
19% - the largest share for a third-party candidate since Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose
campaing in 1912.

Most incumbents in Congress won reelection. The 1992 election marked a shift of voter
attention to domestic issues as the Cold War faded. With Democrats in control of both the
legislative and executive branches, the end of the much-deplored Washington ''gridlock''
seemed possible.

THE CLINTON ERA I: DEBATING DOMESTIC POLICY, 1993-1997

George Bush was of the generation shaped by WWII. William Jefferson Clinton or Bill, as
he preferred was a baby boomer by Vietnam, JKF, and the Beatles. Born in Arkansas in
1946, he admired Elvis Presley, played the saxophone, and thought of becoming a pop
musician. After marrying his law-school classmate, Hillary Rodham, he won the Arkansas
governorship in 1979.

Shaping a Domestic Agenda

In contrast to Republican predecessors like Nixon and Bush, Clinton preferred domestic
issues to foregn policy. Of course, no modern president can wholly neglect world issues, and
Clinton and his first secretary of state, Warren Christopher, confronted an array of diplomatic
challenges: ethnic conflict in Bosnia and Somalia, trade negotiation with China, an evolving
new framework of world trade, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Clinton and Vice President Al Gore were leaders of the New Democratic Coalition, the group
of moderates who sought to shed the party's reputation for high taxes and heavy spending.
Trying to win back middle-class and blue-collar voters, Clinton's campaign stressed Middle
America's concerns: the recession, health care, and runaway welfare costs. Clinton also
embraced causes that had inspired activists of his generation, including abortion rights,
environmental concerns, and feminism.

Clinton named women to head the Departments of Justice, Energy and Health and Human
Services; the Council of Economic Advisers; the Environmental Protection Agency; the
Untion Nations delegation; and in 1994 the Bureau of the Budget. Clinton appointed his wife
Hillary Rodham to head the Task Force of National Health-Care Reform.

His effort to fulfill a campaign pledge to end the exclusion of homosexuals from military
service provoked much controversy.

Amid a recession and high budget deficits, Clinton promised to focus ''like a laser beam'' on
the economy. His economic program, offered in February 1993, proposed spending cuts and
tax increases to ease the budget deficit. Clinton also proposed new spending to stimulate job
creation and economic growth.

Clinton also endorsed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) negotiated by the
Bush administration. This pact admitted Mexico to the free-trade zone eariler created by the
USA and Canada.
An improving economy eased pressures on Clinton to devise an economic-stimulus program.
By 1994 the unemployment rate fell to the lowest point in more thab four years. Inflation
remained under control as well, owing the interest-rate increases by the Federal Reserve
Board and a weakening of the OPEC oil cartel.

Meanwhile, Hillary Rodham Clinton's health-care task force, working mainly in secret,
devised a sweeping reform plan. Providing universal coverage, the plan mandated that
employers pay 80% of workers' health-insurance costs. To cover start-up expenses, the plan
proposed new taxes on tobacco. The proposal also addressed the serious problem of spiraling
health-care costs.

Lobbyists for doctors, the insurance industry, tobacco compaines, retired persons, and hospital
associations all worked to defeat the plan. By fall 1994 health-care reform was stalled, at a
heavy cost to the Clinton presidency.

As the economy impoved, crime and welfare reform topped voter concerns. In reponse, Cliton
in 1994 proposed an anticrime bill to fund drug treatment, more prisons and police officers,
boot camps for first-time offenders, and a ban on assault weapon. After much partisan
maneuvering, Congress enacted a crime bill similar to Clinton's proposal.

Clinton's 1994 welfare-reform bill fulfilled a campaign pledge to ''end welfare as we know it.''
Under Clinton's bill, all able-bodied recipients of payments from the government's major
welfare program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), would have to go to
work after two years, in a public-service job if necessary. The bill included job training and
child-care provisions, as well as measures to force absent fathers (''deadbeat dads'') to support
their offspring. It also permitted states to deny additional payments to welfare mothers who
bore more children.

Exploiting the ''character issue'', critics publicized various questionable dealings from the
Clinton's Arkansas days, including their involvement in a shady real-estate speculation, the
Whitewater Development Company. The 1993 suicide of assistant White House counsel
Vincent Foster, the Clinton's close friend, whetted the interest of conspiracy theories. Charges
of sexual harassment, first aired during the campaign, resurfaced in 1994 when Paula Jones,
an Arkansas state employee, alleged in a lawsuit that Clinton had solicited sexual favors when
he was governor.

1994: A Sharp Right Turn

Bill Clinton had won in 1992 as a ''new Democrat'' offering fresh ideas, but by 1994 many
voters saw him as simply an old Democrat of the big-government, ''tax-and-spend'' variety.
His early call for an end to the ban on homosexuals in the military convinced some that
special-interest groups controlled the White House agenda.

Meanwhile, a movement to downsize government, reform welfare, slash taxes and spending,
and shift power to the states gained momentum among the middle class. A bubbling brew of
cultural and social issues added to the disaffection. These included such emotional topics as
abortion, pornography, school prayer, ''radical feminism'', affirmative action, and an alleged
collapse of ''family values.''
A network of conservative organizations orchestrated the rightward swing. As the Christian
Coalition mobilized evangelicals, the National Rifle Association (NRA) contributed to
candidates who opposed restrictions on firearms.

Adjusted for inflation, the actual buying power of the average worker's paycheck fell from
1986 to 1990, and remained flat through the 1990s. Automation, foreign competition, an
influx of immigrants into the labor market, and the weakness of organized labor all combined
to keep average wages down.

In a photogenic ceremony on the Capitol steps, some 300 Republican candidates signed
Gingrich's ''Contract with America'' pledging tax cuts, congressional term limits, tougher
crime laws, a balanced-budget amendment, and other popular reforms.

New Gingrich's ''Contract with America'' largely ignored foreign policy, and key Republican
legislators pushed isolationist views. Jesse Helms denounced the United Nations, criticized
environmental treaties, and saw little good in UN. Republicans refused to pay America's $1
billion in past UN dues. Yielding to Pentagon objections, Clinton rejected a multinational
treaty banning land mines.

Welfare Program

In the aftermath of the Republican sweep in 1994, welfare reform took on fresh urgency.
Newly confident conservatives challenged the underlying premises of the welfare system,
whose origins stretched back to the New Deal of the 1930s. The critics offered two principal
arguments. The first was cost. The second argument for welfare reform was ideological the
belief that the system undermined the work ethic and trapped the poor in a cycle of
dependance.

In The Poverty of Welfare Program (1995), historian Joel Handler took a skeptical view.
Dismissing the welfare-reform campaign as largely symbolic, he argued that without
fundamental changes in the labor market and the political and social climate, changes in
welfare policies would mean little.

Nevertheless, politicians of both parties jumped aboard the welfare-reform bandwagon. A

broad consensus held that the present system had failed and that welfare should be a short-
term bridge to gainful employment, not a lifelong entitlement. While Clinton favored
federally funded child-care, job-training, and work programs to ease the transition from
welfare to employment, conservative Republicans believed that the labor market and state and
local agencies could best handle these problems.

At last, in August 1996, Clinton signed a landmark welfare-reform bill. Reversing sixy years
of federal welfare policy, the law ended the largest federal program, AFDC. Instead, states
were free to develop their own welfare programs with federal block grants while following
tough federal rules limiting most welfare recipients to two years of continuous coerage, with a
lifetime total of five years. The law also granted states authority to withdraw Medicaid
coverage once welfare benefits had been terminated.

Clinton's approval of a Republican welfare bill disappointed liberals, including Senator

Edward Kennedy, and such mainstays of the Democratic coalition as women's groups,
minority organizations, and advocacy groups for children and the poor.
In the short run, the law seemed a success. By December 1998 the welfare rolls had dropped
by 38%.

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL TRENDS IN 1990s AMERICA

As the economy expanded through most of the 1990s, Americans continued to move to the
thriving South and West, and immigrants poured in from Asia and Latin America. Not all
Americans prospered. Minorities in the inner cities, including recent immigrants, struggled
under harsh conditions to make ends meet.

U.S. culture of the 1990s reflected the general prosperity, with a heavy emphasis on
consumerism, leisure pursuits, and mass-media diversions.

America in the 1990s: A People in Transition

Historically, U.S. society has been marked by rapid growth, geographic mobility and ethnic
diversity, and as the 2000 census revealed this remained true as a new century began. The
total population in 2000 stood at more than 281 million, some 33 million more than in 1990.
The historic shift of population to the South and West continued, reflecting both internal
migration and immigration patterns.

The graying of the baby-boom generation, pushed the median age.

The census also revealed changing living arrangements and family patterns. The proportion of
''traditional'' nuclear-family households headed by a married couple fell. People living alone
made up more than one-quarter of all households, while the proportion of households
maintained by unmarried partners continued to increase.

The overall crime rate fell nearly 20% between 1992 and 2000. Experts attributed the decline
to a variety of factors, including the decade's prosperity, stricter gun-control laws, a drop in
the young male population, the waning crack-cocaine epidemic, and tougher law enforcement
and sentencing rules.

Despite the falling crime rate, public fears of crime and violence remained high, fed in part by
the appalling annual toll of gun deaths, which exceeded 30 000 in 1998. Multiple shootings
drew special notice. A rash of school shootings proved particularly unsettling.

Public-health statistics, by contrast, brought encouraging news. Average life expectancy at

birth rose from 74 to 77.

The U.S. AIDS epidemic peaked at last, thanks to safer-sex practices and advances in drug
therapies.

The 2000 census underscored the nation's growing racial and ethnic diversity. The U.S.
population at century's end was about 13% Hispanic, 12% African-American, 4% Asian, and
1% American Indian. Each of these broad categories included many subgroups.

Growing immigration from Asia and Latin America reversed a long decline in the proportion
of foreign-born persons in the population.
Challenges and Opportunites in a Multiethnic Society

At century's end the African-American community continued to present diverse social,

educational, and economic characteristics. In a decade of prosperity, many African-Americans
made significant advances.

The earnings of college-educated blacks was significantly higher, while the number of black-
owned businesses, including such giants as TLC Beatrice International, a food company.

In the inner cities, chronic problems persisted. Movies such as Boyz 'N the Hood (1991), set
in LAm portrayed the grim inner-city reality. Drug-related carnage, peaking in the early
1990s, took a fearful toll.

While the crack-cocaine epidemic deminished, another dangerous hallucinogenic drug called
Ecstacy, sold in tablet form at rave clubs and house parties, gained popularity.

In the battle against urban violence, several big cities sued the major gun manufacturers in
ceses of injury or death caused by unregistered firearms. The manufacturers deliberatly
overproduced guns, the suits alleged, knowing that many of them would enter the illegal
market.

African-Americans, mostly young males convicted of drug-related crimes, comprised 41% of

prison inmates in 2000.

Inner-city black women faced risks as well, particularly drug use and ou-of-wedlock
pregnancy. Some 30% of the births were to teenagers, reducing the young mothers'
opportunities for education and employment and narrowing their children's prospects.

Among Native Americans, the reassertion of tribal pride and activism continued in the 1990s.
The growth of Indian-run businessed produced further controversy. Indian gambling casinos,
approved by Congress in 1988, stirred intense debate. As they competed fro casino licenses,
Indian tribes became major political contributors. While the casinos brought needed capital
into Indian communities, many citizens deplored the spread of gambling; states battles to
extract more tax revenues from the casinos; and some Indians lamented the internal conflicts
and erosion of traditional values the casions brought in their wake.

Despite new sources of income, alcoholism, joblessness, and poor education persisted in
Indian communities.

The Hispanic population, fueled by immigration and high natural increase, grew rapidly in the
1990s. Many Hispanics were well educated, prosperous, and upwardly mobile. As was the
case with African-Americans, however, perhpas a quarter of Hispanics lived in inner-city
neighborhoods plagued by gangs, addiction, failing schools, and teen pregnanvy. Ill-educated
and unskilled Hispanics newcomers settled in decaying neighborhoods and took the lowest-
paid jobs as gardeners, maids, day laborers, and migrant farm workers.

Hispanics, like other immigrant groups, mobilized to address problems, lobby politically, and
campaign for community betterment. The largest advocacy group, La Raza, worked to
promote Hispanic interests.
Asian newcomers also presented a highly variegated picture. Prizing education, supported by
close family networks, and often possessing needed skills and entrepreneurial talent, many
Asian immigrants moved rapidly up the economic ladder. After passage of the immigration
Reform Act of 1965, Indian doctors, engineers, and academics emigrated to America in large
numbers, often joined later by aging parents and other family members.

Chinese and other Asian immigrant groups often followed a similar pattern of assimilation
and upward mobility. Many of the newcomers worked as engineers and businesspeople.

The Hmong, the Laotian mountain people who had supported the USA in the Vietnam War,
formed a distinct Asian immigrant group. Settling mainly in Wisconsin and Minnesota, their
number reached about 100 000 by 2000.

Rethinking Citizenship in an Era of Diversity

By 2050 , demographers calculate, no single racial or ethnic group will be a majority in

America. Non-Hispanic whites, in other words, while still a plurality, will simply be another
ingredient in the ethnic mix. In a parallel development, many Americans of mixed racial and
ethnic origins, like the golfer Tiger Woods, resisted being pigeonholed. The number of the
interracial married couples in the USA rose tenfold in the years 1960-2000. Recognizing these
realities, in 2000 the Census Bureau permitted cizitens to check more than one racial
category.

Many Americans found the new diversity exhilarating and full of promise, but others did not,
and the phenomenon of ''white flight'' continued. As immigrants arrived in the cities, native-
born whites tended to move out.

Amid these swirling demographic changes, what did it mean to be an ''American'' in a

multiethnic, multicultural society? What would bind togeteher such a diverse population?
Some observers feared that Americans, at least emotionally and psychologically, would divide
into separate camps based on ethnicity, religion, national origin, or skin color.

While countertrends toward a more cosmopolitan culture could be seen, particularly among
the professional classes, racial and ethnic loyalties remained strong. This was hardly
surprising as long as income and opportunity remained linked to race and ethnicity.

Language became a major battleground. While some Anglo politicians campaigned to make
English America's ''official language'', advocates for various immigrant groups called for
school instruction in children's native tongue, or at least bilingual classes.

In his 1908 play The Melting Pot, Israle Zangwill, a Jewish immigrant from England,
foresaw the blending of different immigrant groups into a common national identity. By the
century's end, the ''melting pot'' metaphot had faded, in part because its advocates had usually
assumed that as immigratns entered the ''melting pot'' they would abandon their ethnic roots
and cultural traditions and conform to a standard ''American'' model.

The ''New Economy''

In 1973 sociologist Daniel Bell published a book called The Coming of Post-Industrial
Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting. Unlike many such works, Bell's proved
remarkably accurate. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, America's farm-based economy
had given way to an economy based on factory production and manual labor in cities. As the
20th century ended, a second major transformation was again reshaping the U.S. economy:
the decline of the industrial sector and the rise of a service-based economy. Manufacturing
continued, of coruse, but it faded as a major source of employment.

In the same period, the percentage of professional, technical, and service workers contiuned
its century-long upward trend. The precentage of women workers in the service sector was
even higher.

The service econmy was highly segmented. At one end were low-paying jobs in fast-food
outles, video rental stores, nursing homes, and chain stores such as Wal-Mart. At the other
end were lawyers and physicians; money managers and accountants; and workers in the
entertainment and telecommunications fields. The latter category expanded rapidly with the
growth of high-speed telecommunications system and the rise of the personal computer with
its Interntet-based spinoffs.

The decline of the industrial economy and the rise of the service economy had different
meanings for different groups. Young people with education, skills, and contacts to enter the
new high-tech industries often found exciting challenges and substantial economic rewards.
For less-privileged youths, supermarkets, fast-food outlets, or discount superstores could
provide entry-level work, but doubtful job security and long-term career prospects.

Affluence, Conspicuous Consumption, a Search of Heroes

The economic boom that began in 1992 and roared through the clinton years produced instant
fortunes for some and an orgy of consumption that set the tone of the decade. Wall street and
Silicon Valley spawned thousands of twenty-something millionaires. Tales circulated of
elegant restaurants offering obscenely expensive cigars and rare wines, and exclusive shops
selling $13 000 handbags.

The economic boom also encouraged what some considered a smug, hardedged ''winner take
all'' mentality like that of the Gilded Age, when those at the top turned their backs on the
larger society. In Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
(2000), political scientist Robert Putnam sharply criticizes American public life. Putnam
found diminished civic engagement and weakened interest in public issues, as evidenced by
declines in voter participation, political activism, and participation in civic organizations.

A motivational book called The Prayer of Jabez, which became a bestseller in 2000, cited a
biblical prayer by a shepherd recored in I Chronicles as a key to success.

With the stock market surging, the Col War over, and other threats only beginning to come
into focus, many Americans set out to enjoy themselves. Attendance at the Disney theme
parks in Florida and California neared 30 million in 2000. The sales of massive sport-utility
vehicles (SUVs) soared, despite environmentalists' laments about their fuel inefficiency.

As in the 1980s, the media offered escapist fare. Popular movies included historical
extravaganzas like Braveheart (1995) and Gladiator (2000). The 1997 blockbuster film
Titanic, with spectacular special effects, grossed $600 million. In the 1994 hit movie Forrest
Gump, Tom Hanks played a kindly but simple-minded young man who becomes wealthy
business tycoon by chance. The top-rated TV show of 1999-2000, Who Wants to be a
Millionaire?, unbashedly celebrated greed. So-called ''reality'' TV shows like Survivor,
popular s the decade ended, offered viewers a risk-free tase of hazards that American life
itself conspicuously lacked.

Millions avidly followed TV coverage of the 1995 trial of O. J. Simpson,a former football star
accused of murdering wife and her friend. The sex scandals that swirled around President
Clinton and ultimately led to his impeachment often seemed to be no more than another media
diversion in a sensation-hungry decade.

Again, as was true of the 1980s, other evidence from the popular culture sugests a more
complex picture. Some critics interpreted Titanic, which sided with its working-class hero in
steerage againt the rich snobs in first class, as a subtle comment on a decade when class
differences in America were blatantly on display. American Beauty (1999) explored dark
and murderous currents beneath the facade of a comofortable suburban family.

The Clint Eastwood western Unforgiven, winner of the 1993 Academy Award for best
picture, seemed to express nostalgia for an earlier era when life presented rugged challenges
and had moral choices. The same longings, some suggested, underlay the outpouring of
admiring biographies of larger-than-life heroes from the past, such as Stephen Ambrose's
Eisenhower (1991), A. Scott Berg's Lindbergh (1999), and David McCullough's Truman
(1993) and John Adams (2001).

The decade also reveled in the heroic era of WWII, featuring it in a series of TV specials,
books such as Ambrose's Citizen Soldiers (1997), and Tom Brokaw's The Greatest
Generation(1998), and movies like Saving Private Ryan (1998) and Pearl Harbor (2001).

A Truce in the Culture Wars?

Elsewhere on the cultural landscape, the 1990s also saw a continuation of the moralistic
battles that had begun in the 1970s, which some viewed as nothing less than a struggle for the
nation's soul. The Christian Coalition's attempted takeover of the Republican party was only
part of a larger campaign to reverse that conservatives saw as America's moral decay. In
earlier times, the culture wars had rahed along sectarian lines, with native-born Protestants
battling Catholic and Jewish immigrants. During the Cold War, the spurce of evil had been
clear: the global communist conspiracy, centered in Moscow.

Some viewed the sexual revolution as the great threat. As gays and lesbians grew more vocal
politically, a rash of state-level efforts sought to counter their demands for equality.

As the abortion controversy continued, a small number of ''pro-life'' advocates turned from
peaceful protest to violence.

On April 19, 1995, in the worst outburst of domestic terrorism up to that time, a bomb
demolished an Oklahoma City federal budiling, killing 168 people.

Adding to the national jitters over violence-prone loners and shadowy antigovernment groups
was a series of bombs mailed between 1978 and 1995 to individual whose business or
professional activities could be interpreted as anti-environmental.
The culture wars were fought mainly with words and symbolic gestures, not bullets and
bombs. The struggle unfolded on many fronts, from televangelists' programs and radio talk
shows to school-board protests and boycotts of TV shows deemed morally offensive.
Conservatives attacked history textbooks for promoting ''multiculturalism'', for being
insufficiently partiotic, etc.

Religious conservatives proposed a constitutional amendment permitting prayer in classrooms

and called for a renewal of traditional morality and ''family vaules.''

Pat Robertson's The New World Order (1991) saw much of U.S. and indeed world history as
a vast conspiracy that would soon end in the rule of th Antichrist. As the year 2000 neared,
popularizers of Bible prophecy intensified their warnings that history's final crisis was at
hand. (Widespread fears of massive computer failures associated with ''Y2K'', the shorthand
term for the coming to the year 2000). The charges of infidelity levied against President
clinton underscored for conservatives the moral rot they saw eating away at America.

As the 1990s ended, the cultural wars seemed to dminish. In One Nation After All (1998),
sociologist Alan Wolfe reported on his interviews with middle-class Americans, whom he
found suspicious od extremist positions and broadly accepting of diversity.