Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (Oxford History of the United States Book 10)

by James T. Patterson

the squalid business of Watergate had significant partisan results, at least in the short run. Democrats scored major triumphs in the 1974 elections and sent Jimmy Carter to the White House in 1976. Conservatives in the GOP, leaping into the vacuum left by Nixon and his centrist allies, gradually established control of the party and blocked whatever hopes may have remained for serious consideration of such unresolved issues as welfare reform and health insurance. In 1980 they elected Reagan to the presidency. But policy-making from 1974 through 1976 did not differ much from what it would likely have been with Nixon in command. President Ford, after pardoning his predecessor, avoided new frontiers. Instead, he struggled much of the time to deal with already existing problems: tensions over court-mandated busing and affirmative action, highly emotional debates over abortion, and above all the stagnation of the economy.