Steven S. Eich

During the era of the Cold War, Americans looked to the federal government to deal with national security concerns. The trust that was placed in the leadership in Washington D.C. to protect the vital interests of the nation was also extended during this period to domestic matters, such as education, civil rights and health care. This confidence that the public had in our national government to resolve foreign policy conflicts with the Soviet Union, its Eastern European satellites and other Communist regimes throughout Asia and Central America was transfered to domestic policy, justifying the passage of liberal legislation that had been unthinkable in previous periods of our history. Had it not been for the Cold War, which was a unique and unprecedented anomaly in United States history, the natural reluctance of Americans to entrust their national government with domestic meddling would have been preserved. This is essentially the thesis postulated in H. W. Brand's The Strange Death of American Liberalism.

In order to defeat what Ronald Reagan would later dub "the evil empire," the United States needed to set an example to the world of a society that offered hope, opportunity and justice to its own people. America needed to demonstrate to a skeptical world, in which many of its people were under the yoke of oppressive communist regimes, that indeed it was "the city on the hill" that would serve as a beacon and light to others seeking freedom.

American distrust of federal authority had its beginnings with the very formation of the country. This "nation of skeptics" began by creating a Bill of Rights to offset their mistrust of the federal government. Jefferson believed that a wise government "shall leave them (its citizens) otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement" (4). Even during the Great Depression, Roosevelt recognized that voters weren't clamoring for bigger government; rather, they simply wanted an end to the depression.

Only in the name of national defense have Americans been willing to accept an expansion of governmental authority, and this most likely during wartime. As its name implies, the Cold War was just that a war. But from the American Revolution to the Civil War to World War I to World War II, it was these times of national crisis that expanded the role of the federal government and led to activism on domestic agendas. And what typically made such wartime governmental expansion tolerable for Americans was the fact that it was a temporary condition.

One surprising liberal turned out to be Dwight D. Eisenhower, who came to view the Cold War as a threat to the American way of life, which led him to respond by supporting an interstate highway system, initiating funding for space exploration, signing the Defense Education Act, and acting against his own personal inclinations to enforce the Supreme Court ruling to desegregate the public schools. John F. Kennedy's contribution during his brief tenure as president consisted largely of his rhetoric linking liberalism with the Cold War. The U.S., he proclaimed, would if assist free men and free governments in casting off the chains of poverty " (82). He even couched his attack on the steel industry, his proposed tax cut and his commitment to the space program in terms of national security. But the most dramatic expansion of the federal government since the New Deal took place on Lyndon B. Johnson's watch. The Great Society, the "woman he truly loved," was the culmination of American liberalism. And although many of these measures had nothing to do with foreign affairs or national defense, LBJ never forgot the linkage between foreign and domestic affairs. He was also acutely aware that "that bitch," Vietnam, was the cost he would have to pay to accomplish his domestic reforms, and Johnson would pay the ultimate price his presidency.

Richard Nixon was the one who first saw the end of the Cold War coming, though he took extraordinary measures of deception to sustain it. His policy of detente was his response to this reality. After four more years of fighting in Vietnam, and 25,000 deaths, the Cold War consensus finally collapsed. The surprising paradox about Nixon was that in order to reduce federal power, it was necessary to first increase presidential power. Thus Nixon endorsed a number of liberal policies, including signing the Clean Air Act, establishing the Environmental Protection Agency, pushing affirmative action through the "Philadelphia plan," increasing the staff of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and a devising a plan to restructure the welfare system. It was only in defining his opponents as threats to national security that finally led to Watergate and the disintegration of the Nixon Administration. Nixon's "imperial presidency" exacerbated the distrust Americans had with their federal government, as did the revelation of dirty dealing, cynical manipulation and calculated deception in previous administrations. And the liberals contributed to their own demise by heaping abuse on Nixon and trying to disown their own role in the Cold War.

The choice of George McGovern, who was tagged as the candidate of "acid, amnesty, and abortion" made liberalism appear hopeless. Even the return of a Democrat to the White House in 1977, Jimmy Carter, was more a vote against incumbency and unethical behavior than a vote for liberal domestic activism. And though the next occupant of the White House, Ronald Reagan, declared that "Government is the problem," he revived Cold War talk by declaring the Soviet Union to be "an evil empire" which enabled him to not only re arm America, but also gave him the mandate to advance his domestic agenda of tax cuts and deregulation while assailing entitlement programs. And finally, the purported "peace dividend" that was to follow failed to materialize during both the Bush and Clinton years. The post Cold War world proved to still be a dangerous place, Americans continued to hold their distrust for federal programs, a recession hit the country in the early 1990s and, as demonstrated after a failed attempt to reorganize the health care system, Americans conspicuously revealed that they believed that Washington could do little good in their lives. Clearly the Cold War was dead, and so Americans once again returned to their historic skepticism of big government.

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