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

by James T. Patterson

CRITICAL FEELINGS SUCH AS THESE remained powerful in the United States after 1974. Together with abiding popular resentments about other domestic issues—busing, affirmative action, abortion, crime, welfare dependency—they sharpened social divisions and stymied liberal reformers. Conservatives maintained the initiative in Washington for much of the next two decades. While grand expectations about "rights" at home, as well as grand designs for America's role in the world, did not disappear after 1974—these were lasting legacies of the postwar era—many people seemed anxious and contentious. This was not because they were worse off absolutely—most people managed as well or a little better economically, especially in the mid- and late 1980s—but because their very high expectations became frustrated. The United States, so powerful for much of the postwar period, seemed adrift, unable to reconcile the races (or the classes or the sexes) at home or to perform as effectively on the world stage. A woman exclaimed, "Sometimes you get the feeling nothing has gone right since John Kennedy died. We've had the Vietnam War, all the rioting. . . . Before then you were used to America winning everything, but now you sometimes think our day may be over.