When Nixon took office, Democrats had controlled both houses of Congress for all but four years going back to FDR and the New Deal. LBJ’s Great Society had ushered in a raft of programs to help the poor and the middle class. Americans might grumble about government, but they had become accustomed to its benefits and wanted more. Although the country had veered slightly right in 1968, partly in reaction to the over-promising of the Great Society, the body politic was actually tilting leftward again in 1970.33 Social scientists were still in the ascendancy and dominated federal agencies; the
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