A People’s History of the United States: Chapter 20 Summary & Analysis

In the early 1970s, the “system seemed out of control.” Americans of all backgrounds were coming together against the government and large corporations, and voters were increasingly refusing to identify with either the Republican or Democratic party.

One of the major factors that encouraged people’s disillusionment with the status quo was the growing scandal surrounding President Richard Nixon. In 1972, five burglars were caught trying to break into the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate apartment complex in Washington, D.C. Some of these burglars appeared to be closely connected to Nixon officials, including the Attorney General. In the following months, the arrest of the Watergate burglars prompted a “chain reaction,” in which low-ranking Nixon officials informed on higher-ranking officials. In the end, it was revealed that top Nixon officials had accepted illegal donations from large corporations, allocated funds for interfering with the Democratic party, attempted to sabotage the reputations of Nixon’s critics, and approved of a secret, illegal bombing of Cambodia.

The fallout from the Watergate scandal was immense. The public turned against Nixon, suspecting that he was involved in many of the illicit actions his officials had told the grand jury about. At the same time, corporations and other social institutions began to turn against Nixon, too, reasoning that he was an unstable, vindictive politician. In 1974, Nixon resigned from the White House rather than face impeachment by Congress.

When Nixon resigned, Gerald Ford, his Vice President, became President, and proclaimed, “Our long national nightmare is over.” Despite Ford’s words, the resignation of Nixon left intact “all the mechanisms and all the false values which permitted the Watergate scandal.” Furthermore, Nixon’s foreign policy continued, and the American government continued to cooperate with the business establishment. In short, Watergate allowed the Establishment to “cleanse itself” of rule-breakers without making any fundamental changes to the system. It is telling that, during the Watergate scandal, journalists focused mostly on Nixon’s small-scale, local misdeeds, such as his bribes and threats, while mostly ignoring his illegal corporate connections and foreign policy decisions.

Under the Ford Administration, America ended its involvement in Vietnam amid widespread opposition to the war. American politicians and policy advisers at the time noted the necessity of recovering from this blow to America’s reputation as a major military power. In 1975, Henry Kissinger, the Secretary of State under Nixon and Ford, wrote that America “must carry out some act somewhere … which shows its determination to continue to be a world power.” Only one month later, a Cambodian ship apprehended an American cargo ship. In response, President Ford ordered the Cambodian government to release the ship’s crew; when the Cambodian government gave no reply, Ford ordered the bombing of Cambodian ships, and then sent in American troops. Later, it was revealed that Ford had received word that Chinese diplomats were using their influence to release the American sailors. On the very day that Cambodia released the Americans, Ford’s troops arrived in Cambodia and attacked the mainland. In the end, forty-one Americans died in the attack. Why did Ford order the attack on Cambodia so quickly? Because, Zinn answers, Ford wanted to show the world that “giant America … was still powerful.”

During the mid seventies, the American establishment faced a crisis in the public’s knowledge of the FBI and the CIA. During the course of the Watergate scandal, it was revealed that the CIA had worked to create a military coup in Chile, where the people had elected a leader democratically. Meanwhile, it was disclosed that the FBI had waged an invisible war against radical and left-wing groups throughout the sixties, forging letters, engaging in burglaries, and, “in the case of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, [seeming] to have conspired in murder.” The exposure of “bad deeds by the FBI and CIA” drastically increased the public’s distrust of the government.

In response to widespread dislike for government, intellectuals researched how the 1960s had facilitated the decline in enthusiasm for the American Establishment. In a famous paper, “The Democratic Distemper,” Samuel Huntington, a government policy consultant, made a series of surprisingly honest remarks about politics. The goal of the president, he wrote, was to cooperate with “key individuals and groups” in business, law, media, and government—in short, the “Establishment.” Zinn writes, “This was probably the frankest statement ever made by an Establishment adviser.” Huntington presented his paper in 1973 to the Trilateral Commission, a meeting of political leaders from Japan, the U.S., and Western Europe, and advised the Commission to find ways to prevent the “excess of democracy” in their own countries.

Another issue facing the Trilateral Commission—and, for that matter, the powerful elite of all countries—was the growth of a truly international economy. By the mid-seventies, the largest corporations in the world had largely ceased to be national entities: the largest banks, businesses, and media companies had offices and employees around the world. In 1976, Zinn notes, the American Establishment invested a huge amount of money in celebrating the Bicentennial, perhaps to distract people from the mood of paranoia and disillusionment. But in Boston, people chose to celebrate the “People’s Bi-Centennial” instead, dumping packages marked, “Exxon” in the ocean, symbolizing the popular opposition to corporate power.