11.3: Politics in the Age of Dissent

The Decline of Liberalism

Ethnic power struggles, student unrest, and the VietnamWar had a profound and lasting impact on politics. Democrats were deeply divided over foreign and domestic policy. The Right, in the meantime, had formulated a new agenda that included Americans who, in the words of Richard Nixon, believed that “we live in a deeply troubled and profoundly unsettled time. Drugs, crime, campus revolts, racial discord, draft resistance—on every hand we find old standards violated, old values discarded.” At the same time, federal expenditures on the war contributed to high levels of inflation. Many Americans, alarmed over a weakening economy, rejected “spendthrift liberalism” in favor of Republican promises to “cut, squeeze, and trim” government spending and to reduce taxes. In contrast to liberals, conservatives argued that government agencies, immune from free market competition, had become inefficient, wasteful of taxpayer money, and bloated. Even worse, many of the public services that they provided undermined individual initiative and responsibility. Private industry, they maintained, would provide ample opportunities for the deserving and hard-working if freed of excessive government regulation. The new conservative agenda, a reaction to movements that challenged “traditional” values, also had a strong moral component. During the Depression and World War II, migrants from Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Texas moved to California, transplanting their fundamentalist brand of evangelical Protestantism. As early as the 1950s—and long before the emergence of the religious right on the national political stage—these moral conservatives were challenging liberal reforms on the municipal and statelevel. Then, in response to the perceived moral laxity of the ’60s counterculture, southern California-based evangelicals supported Barry Goldwater’s 1964 bid for the presidency and Reagan’s 1966 gubernatorial campaign. Gaining new converts in the 1970s, including hippies who were disenchanted with their generation’s excesses, California’s self-defined “moral majority” helped secure Reagan’s 1980 presidential victory and an enduring influence in the national Republican Party.

When Edmund “Pat” Brown announced his intention to run for a third term in the gubernatorial election of 1966, he faced serious opposition within his own party. Many anti-war Democrats, disenchanted with Brown’s moderate position on the escalating conflict, refused to back his reelection bid. Making matters worse, conservative party members rejected Brown as too liberal and backed Los Angeles mayor Samuel Yorty in the Democratic primary. Although Brown secured his party’s nomination, Yorty garnered nearly one million votes—votes that might easily be captured by the Republicans in the upcoming election.

In contrast, Ronald Reagan, who easily won the Republican nomination, enjoyed the full backing of a newly unified, well-funded party organization. He and his advisers had also crafted a campaign strategy designed to capture the support of conservative white Democrats who were alarmed over student unrest, minority demands for economic and political power, the countercultural assault on traditional morality, and government programs that benefited “cheats” and “spongers” at the taxpayer’s expense. Although Reagan denied that race was an issue in his campaign, he did, in fact, exploit the fear and resentment of white voters. His attack on government spending, for example, reinforced white suspicions that liberal social programs encouraged dependence, fraud, and a growing sense of entitlement among minority recipients. Similarly, Reagan repeatedly reminded voters that he had backed Proposition 14, an initiative supported by a majority of white voters, but recently declared unconstitutional by the state supreme court. Brown accused Reagan of exploiting the white backlash against integration, but Reagan deflected criticism by framing his position as a defense of private property rights.

In the 1966 election, Reagan won office by 993,000 votes, nearly the same number that Brown had lost to Yorty in the primary. Republicans also eroded Democratic majorities in the senate and assembly, and captured every other office with the exception of state attorney general. Two years later, another Californian, Richard Nixon, used the Reagan strategy to win the presidency.

Ronal Reagan won election as governor by pledging to clean up the "mess at Berkely," curb government spending, reduce taxes, defend freee enterprise, and provide moral leadership. How does this image make you feel about his leadership abilities? Does his body language reflect determination and self-confidence or passivity and doubt? What is the impact of the photographer's choice of background and subject's height and pose?

Reagan as Governor

During his first term, Reagan attempted to implement his policy of “cut,squeeze, and trim” with disappointing results. Only two areas—higher education and mental health—suffered cuts, and the resulting savings were overshadowed by record-level expenditures elsewhere. In higher education, he reduced funding by several million dollars and urged administrators to make up the shortfall by increasing tuition. This, he maintained, would save the taxpayersmoney and “help get rid of undesirables”—students who cared more about protesting than their studies. He also vetoed an increase in payments to old age pensioners and implemented sweeping cuts in the mental health budget. The state’s mental health system, which the Warren and Brown administrations had expanded, had become a national model of humane and enlightened treatment of the mentally ill. Reagan slashed the staff at state mental hospitals by 3,700, forcing institutions to prematurely discharge patients and reduce the scope and quality of hospital services. He also cut funding for community mental health clinics that provided outpatient treatment for those with less serious mental disabilities. While saving the state more than $17 million, these cuts had disastrous and lasting consequences for the mentally ill, their families,and local communities. Reagan also reduced funding for the state’s Medi-Calprogram, which was created during Brown’s last term in office to provide health care to low-income and indigent residents. These cuts, however, were blocked by the state supreme court.

Beyond these relatively modest cost-cutting measures, Reagan met with stiff opposition. Many of the most costly programs were protected by federal and state mandate or vigorously defended by the Democratic majority in the senate and assembly. As a consequence, Reagan’s 1967–1968 budget of just more than $5 billion was the largest in state history and exceeded the previous year’s total by $400 million. To cover the increase, he was forced to authorize arecord-breaking tax increase of $1 billion. Nevertheless, he remained popular with voters, diverting attention from his larger budgetary failures with folksy references to his smaller cost-saving measures and his “get tough” posture with “campus rioters.” His plain-dealing cowboy image, initially honed in Hollywood and ably resurrected by his public relations staff, was also a powerful political asset.

Furthermore, Reagan, like many governors before him, avoided characterization as an extremist by adopting moderate or pragmatic positions on several issues. At the risk of alienating his right-wing colleagues, he failed to support a legislative repeal of the Rumford Fair Housing Act, despite his strong position during the campaign. He also backed the Beilenson Bill, the most liberal abortion law in state history. Finally, conservationists were heartened by his veto of the Round Valley Dam project and his support for legislation that protected the middle fork of the Feather River. In his second term, Reagan improved on his environmental record, signing into law new air and water quality standards and approving legislation that required environmental impact reports for public works projects. Environmentalists, however, were alarmed by his refusal to endorse legislation to regulate development in the Lake Tahoe area, and his belated backing of a watered-down measure to create Redwoods National Park after claiming “a tree is a tree” to a cheering audience at the 1966 meeting of the Western Wood Products Association.

Nevertheless, his blend of personal appeal, pragmatism, and ideological conservatism won Reagan a second term in 1970. Again determined to reduce state spending, he focused on reforming the welfare system. In a compromise with the Democrats, Reagan obtained tougher eligibility requirements for Aid to Families With Dependent Children (AFDC), a work requirement for ablebodied recipients, and a cost reduction in the Medi-Cal program. As part of the compromise, however, the final measure included expensive cost-of-living increases for welfare recipients. Although Reagan claimed that the welfare system fostered dependence and laziness, only one percent of recipients were ablebodied males. About three-quarters were blind, aged, or disabled, and the remainder were children in single-parent, female-headed households. Welfare “reform,” which appealed to angry taxpayers, completely ignored or misrepresented the plight of the state’s most vulnerable citizens. Moreover, the savings that it generated were relatively insignificant because federal mandate protected many programs, and the work requirement was undermined by a weak economy.

Year after year, Reagan signed off on progressively larger budgets, from $6.8 billion in 1971–1972 to $10.2 billion for 1974–1975. At the same time, economic recession produced a decline in state revenue, necessitating additional tax increases. In 1971, Reagan raised $500 million in taxes by introducinga paycheck withholding system and revising capital gains and corporate tax schedules. A year later, Reagan drafted another tax bill with Democratic legislators that raised sales, bank, and corporate taxes. This measure not only generated revenue for education and social welfare programs, but also allowed the state to provide tax relief to homeowners. By the late 1960s, rising inflation had increased property valuations and local tax assessments. The new sales tax financed additional state income exemptions for property owners, and temporarily quelled what soon became a statewide campaign to limit local property tax increases—the tax revolt of 1978.

In 1973, Reagan made a final attempt to salvage his reputation as a fiscal conservative. Proposition 1, a Reagan-sponsored ballot measure, was a constitutional amendment that would have prohibited the legislature from raising taxes beyond a certain percentage of a taxpayer’s income. Opponents of the initiative argued that local governments and property owners would be forced to compensate for the resulting shortfall in state services. And Reagan admitted that even he did not fully understand the measure’s complex provisions and formulas. Voters rejected the proposition by more than 300,000 votes, but Reagan had preserved his conservative image by championing fiscal restraint and tax relief. When he left office in 1974, with his eye on a career in national politics, this would be what voters remembered. His basic philosophy of “cut, squeeze, and trim,” perfectly in tune with the declining economic fortunes of the Golden State’s electorate, was soon to carry the same weight with American voters in the presidential race of 1980. Moreover, moral conservatives, convinced that he was more in tune with their “plain folk” values than other national Republican figures, were willing to forgive his earlier support of the Beilenson Bill.