Grand Expectations Quotes

“A teacher expressed the feeling of many Americans: After Watergate, it's crazy to have trust in politicians. I'm totally cynical, skeptical. Whether it's a question of power or influence, it's who you know at all levels. Nixon said he was the sovereign! Can you believe that? I was indignant. Someone should have told him that this is a democracy, not a monarchy.32”
― James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974

“The Graduate, an Oscar-winning movie that appeared in late 1967, dramatized these changes. It featured a young man (Dustin Hoffman) who was in no way a hippie, a user of drugs, or a political radical. But he seemed unconnected to traditional values. Alienated from many things, he felt no kinship with fraternity men at his university or with materialistic adults of the older generation.”
― James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974

“Truman charged that Republicans were "Wall Street reactionaries," "gluttons of privilege," "bloodsuckers," and "plunderers." GOP legislators in the 80th Congress, he said, were "tools of the most reactionary elements" who would "skim the cream from our natural resources to satisfy their own greed." Dismissing Dewey, "whose name rhymes with hooey," Truman said, "If you send another Republican Congress to Washington, you're a bigger bunch of suckers than I think you are." "Give 'em hell, Harry!" the people shouted back. "Pour it on!"59”
― James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974

“I am not going to lose Vietnam," he said. "I am not going to be the President who saw Southeast Asia go the way China went."2 For many Americans then and later the struggle in Vietnam was simply "Johnson's War."3”
― James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974

“But the sluggishness of the economy widened the gulf between grand expectations and the real limits of progress, undercutting the all-important sense that the country had the means to do almost anything, and exacerbating the contentiousness that had been rending American society since the late 1960s. This was the final irony of the exciting and extraordinarily expectant thirty years following World War II.”
― James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974

“All the structural problems that economists had warned about coalesced after 1973–74 to jolt American life. These included sagging productivity, declining competitiveness in world markets, accelerating inflation, rising unemployment, especially among minorities and the millions of baby boomers now seeking work, and a slowing down in the creation of good-paying, career-enhancing jobs outside of the increasingly dominant service sector.35”
― James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974

“Ervin's committee opened televised hearings on the matter in May, enabling the public to watch McCord accuse Dean and Mitchell of foreknowledge of the break-in, and Mitchell and Magruder of authorizing it. Testimony before the Ervin Committee that summer, especially by Dean, broke further news of the plumbers, of the Huston plan to abuse the powers of the FBI and the CIA, of presidential wiretapping, and of Nixon's authorization of hush money in order to seal the cover-up.”
― James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974

“In its broadest sense, the scandal of Watergate arose from the tumultuous and destabilizing trends of the 1960s, especially the war in Vietnam and the deviousness and power-grabbing associated with the rise of an imperial presidency.2”
― James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974

“Congress, however, stiffened, cutting off appropriations for such bombing as of August 15, 1973. In November it overrode a presidential veto to pass a War Powers Act. This required American Presidents to inform Congress within forty-eight hours of deployment of United States forces abroad and to bring the troops home within sixty days unless Congress explicitly endorsed what the President had done.56”
― James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974

“As Melvin Laird, his Defense Secretary, recalled, "Every effort was made to create an economic boom for the 1972 election. The Defense Department, for example, bought a two-year supply of toilet paper. We ordered enough trucks . . . for the next several years."48 Congress, too, propelled election-year spending by its approval of sharp hikes in Social Security benefits: some $8 billion in extra checks went out in October.”
― James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974

“The disarray of the convention seemed only to grow as the spectacle careened to a close. McGovern had trouble finding a vice-presidental nominee, finally settling on Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri, a relative unknown. But the delegates then proceeded to advance thirty-nine additional candidates for the number two slot, including Mao Tse-tung, Archie Bunker, and Martha Mitchell, the outspoken wife of Nixon's campaign manager.”
― James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974

“Although Nixon stepped up military pressure by bombing heavily and greatly expanding South Vietnamese forces, the enemy did not bend. Nor did détente with the Soviets assist the American cause: Moscow continued to send military aid to Hanoi.”
― James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974

“In February, Nixon, his way paved by secret journeys that Kissinger took in 1971 to Peking, made a lavishly televised week-long visit to the People's Republic of China, thereby dramatizing his commitment to better relations with one of America's most determined foes. That Nixon, a life-long Cold Warrior who had assailed Truman for "losing China," could and did make such a journey staggered and excited contemporaries.”
― James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974

“Moreover, Kissinger and Nixon deeply distrusted each other. Kissinger was sometimes contemptuous (behind Nixon's back) of the President. He called Nixon "our drunken friend," a "basket case," or "meatball mind." Kissinger was also given to fits of temper. After one of these tantrums Nixon confided that he might have to fire Kissinger unless he got psychological help.”
― James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974

“In January 1971 he startled the newsman Howard K. Smith by telling him, "I am now a Keynesian in economics," and in August he jolted the nation by announcing a New Economic Policy. This entailed fighting inflation by imposing a ninety-day freeze on wages and prices. Nixon also sought to lower the cost of American exports by ending the convertibility of dollars into gold, thereby allowing the dollar to float in world markets. This action transformed with dramatic suddenness an international monetary system of fixed exchange rates that had been established, with the dollar as the reserve currency, in 1946.”
― James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974

“Less apparent at the time, but in many ways more problematic, were deep-seated structural developments in the work force. By the late 1960s millions of baby boomers were already crowding the job market. Ever-higher percentages of women were also looking for employment outside the home. A rise in immigrant workers, made possible after 1968 by the immigration law of 1965, did not affect most labor markets but further intensified popular unease. These developments combined to hike the numbers seeking work by 10.1 million between 1964 and 1970, or 1.6 million per year. Many of these people landed in the service sector of the economy—as employees in fast-food chains, discount retail outlets, hospitals, and nursing homes—or as clerical or maintenance workers. Most of these jobs tended to be part-time, offering low pay and benefits.80”
― James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974

“By 1971 the United States had an unfavorable balance of international trade for the first time since 1893.”
― James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974

“The unemployment rate rose between 1968 and 1970 from 3.6 to 4.9 percent—a jump of more than 33 percent. The consumer price index increased by roughly 11 percent in the same period. Analysts of the economy coined a new and memorable term for what seemed to be happening: "stagflation.”
― James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974

“The Milliken decision was pivotal in the postwar history of race relations, for it badly hurt whatever hopes reformers still maintained of overturning de facto segregation of the schools and of slowing a dynamic that was accelerating in many American urban areas: "white flight" of familes to suburbs.69 Flight in turn eroded urban tax bases, further damaging schools and other services in the cities.”
― James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974

“In 1970 he was hailed on a Time magazine cover as the "Paul Revere of ecology." A year later he published The Closing Circle, an impassioned book that warned of the dangers of environmental pollution. In 1972 the Club of Rome, a loose association of scientists, technocrats, and politicians, produced The Limits to Growth. Employing computers to test economic models, the authors concluded that the world would self-destruct by the end of the century unless planners figured out ways to limit population and industrial growth and to expand supplies of food and energy.”
― James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974

“By the time Nixon reached office the environmental cause had grown stronger than ever, thanks in part to media attention given to Malthusian prophets of doom. Paul Ehrlich, a professor of biology at Stanford, published The Population Bomb (1968), which foresaw the starvation of hundreds of millions of people throughout the world during the 1970s and 1980s if population growth were not controlled.”
― James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974

“Environmentalists had enjoyed modest successes during the New Frontier-Great Society years: a Clean Air Act in 1963, a Wilderness Act in 1964, a Clean Water Act in 1965, and an Endangered Species Act in 1966. In 1967 movement leaders coalesced to form the Environmental Defense Fund, a key lobby thereafter.”
― James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974

“After 1970, however, many American institutions—corporations, unions, universities, others—were required to set aside what in effect were quotas, a process that engaged the federal government as never before in a wide variety of personnel decisions taken in the private sector. This dramatic and rapid transformation of congressional intent took place as a result of executive decisions—especially Nixon's—and court interpretations. Affirmative action of this sort never had the support of democratically elected representatives.41”
― James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974

“Between September 1969 and May 1970, there were at least 250 bombings linked to white-dominated radical groups in the United States. This was an average of almost one per day. (The government placed the number at six times as high.) Favorite targets were ROTC buildings, draft boards, induction centers, and other federal offices. In February 1970 bombs exploded at the New York headquarters of Socony Mobil, IBM, and General Telephone and Electronics.”
― James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974

“Experts touted confrontational "encounter," gestalt therapy, bioenergetics, "sensitivity training," meditation, massage, breathing, drugs, and even easy recreational sex. Any or all would bring out the inherent spirituality of the self, enlarge human potential, and light up the dawn of the New Age.12”
― James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974

“Resurrecting the tactics of Joe McCarthy, Agnew called Humphrey "squishy soft on communism." He observed, "If you've seen one slum, you've seen them all." The Washington Post concluded that Agnew was "perhaps the most eccentric political appointment since the Roman Emperor Caligula named his horse a consul."55”
― James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974

“The Democratic convention that took place in Chicago in late August turned out to be such a wild and bloody affair that the first-ballot nomination of Humphrey, by then foreordained, was scarcely noticed.36 Chicago Mayor Richard Daley had long anticipated some sort of confrontation.”
― James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974

“Veteran political observers were astonished and shaken by the powerful emotions that Kennedy aroused. Kennedy capped his exciting run with a close but decisive victory over McCarthy in the key California primary in early June. In his moment of triumph, however, he was fatally shot by Sirhan Sirhan, a deranged Arab nationalist,”
― James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974

“William O'Neill, another historian, observed wryly that many universities prior to the rise of student unrest had at least required hard work and discipline—training for life in the real world. In some of the post-protest universities, he lamented, "The Protestant ethic gave way to the pleasure principle in college but not in life."22 Reactions such as these reflected a widespread sense among Americans that the students were spoiled brats.23”
― James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974

“THESE MANIFESTATIONS OF BACKLASH—against family breakup, illegitimacy, welfare, crime, riots, black activists, anti-war demonstrators, long-haired hippies, government programs that favored minorities, elitists, liberals generally—exposed a major development of the mid-1960s: rapidly rising polarization along class, generational, and racial lines.”
― James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974