Restless Giant: The United States From Watergate to Bush v. Gore (103 page)

58
. McCraw,
American Business
, 206. See also Friedman,
The Lexus and the Olive Tree
, in which the Internet is repeatedly lauded as paving the way for the “democratization of finance.”

59
. Robert Putnam,
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
(New York, 2000), 173.

60
. Neil Howe and William Strauss,
Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation
(New York, 2000), 274.

61
. Timothy May, “Culture, Technology, and the Cult of Tech in the 1970s,” in Beth Bailey and David Farber, eds.,
America in the Seventies
(Lawrence, Kans., 2004), 208–27.

62
. Tenner,
Why Things Bite Back
, 184–209; Hodgson,
More Equal than Others
, 73–86, 103–8.

63
. Alexis de Tocqueville,
Democracy in America
(New York, 1841), book 2, 147.

64
. For many such polls, see Robert Samuelson,
The Good Life and Its Discontents: The American Dream in the Age of Entitlement, 1945–1995
(New York, 1995), 257–65.

65
. Tom Brokaw,
The Greatest Generation
(New York, 1998).

66
. Whitman,
The Optimism Gap
, 34.

67
. Stanley Lebergott,
Pursuing Happiness: American Consumers in the Twentieth Century
(Princeton, 1993), 69–71; Easterbrook,
The Progress Paradox
, 160–81.

68
.
Providence Journal
, Dec. 14, 2004;
Christian Science Monitor
, Nov. 22, 2004. The number of death sentences fell from a high of 320 in 1996 to 144 in 2003. This was a thirty-year low. The number of executions fell by 40 percent between 1999 and the end of 2004, to a total of fifty-nine in 2004. Explanations for the decline in executions varied: among them, the rising role of DNA evidence, and the increase in number of state laws authorizing life-without-parole sentences. Some states, however, continued to house large numbers of prisoners on death rows. In December 2004, California (which had executed only ten people since 1976) had 641 on its death row at San Quentin prison. Texas (which consistently led the nation in executions, with a total of 336 between 1976 and 2004) then had 444 on its death row. Many other prisoners on death row had died of AIDS or suicide in earlier years. In 2004, more than 60 percent of Americans still said that they approved of the death penalty, and thirty-eight American states still authorized it.
New York Times
, Dec. 18, 2004.

69
. Samuelson,
The Good Life and Its Discontents
, 257–59.

70
. Robert Collins,
More: The Politics of Economic Growth in Postwar America
(New York, 2000), 222–23.

71
. James Patterson,
Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy
(New York, 2001), 197–201. The decision was 515 U.S. 1139 (1995).

72
. Terry Anderson,
In Pursuit of Fairness: A History of Affirmative Action
(New York, 2004), 241–42. The case was 515 U.S. 200 (1995).

73
. Lawrence Friedman,
American Law in the Twentieth Century
(New Haven, 2002), 597–98. The decision was 514 U.S. 549 (1995).

74
. David Price, “House Democrats Under Republican Rule: Reflections on the Limits of Bipartisanship,”
Miller Center Report
(University of Virginia) 20 (Spring/Summer 2004), 21–28.

75
. During the eight years of Clinton’s presidency Congress refused by various procedures to approve 114 such nominees.
New York Times
, Jan. 17, 2004.

76
. Fred Greenstein,
The Presidential Difference: Leadership Style from FDR to Clinton
(New York, 2000), 180–81.

77
. For political battles in 1995–96, see William Berman,
From the Center to the Edge: The Politics and Policies of the Clinton Presidency
(Lanham, Md., 2001), 45–72; and Joe Klein,
The Natural: The Misunderstood Presidency of Bill Clinton
(New York, 2002), 142–49. For affirmative action, see Anderson,
In Pursuit of Fairness
, 243–44.

78
. For these and later developments in the Balkans, see David Halberstam,
War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals
(New York, 2001), 283–359; and William Hitchcock,
The Struggle for Europe: The Turbulent History of a Divided Continent, 1945–2002
(New York, 2003), 392–403.

79
. Richard Holbrooke, “Why Are We in Bosnia?”
New Yorker
, May 18, 1998, 39–45; Klein,
The Natural
, 73–74. The terms of the Dayton Accords were similar to those in a brokered peace plan that Clinton had disdained in early 1993, after which two and a half more years of ethnic blood-letting had taken place. The Dayton Accords did not resolve tensions in Bosnia. Although a million refugees were enabled to return to their homes over the next nine years, hundreds of thousands more dared not go back. Key Serbian leaders who were widely believed to be war criminals remained at large as of 2005. In December 2004, forces from nations of the European Union took the place of the 7,000 NATO peacekeepers (including 900 Americans) that had still been there.
New York Times
, Dec. 2, 2004.

80
. Berman,
From the Center to the Edge
, 54–55.

81
. Jules Witcover,
Party of the People: A History of the Democrats
(New York, 2003), 676–80.

82
. Berman,
From the Center to the Edge
, 47.

83
. Witcover,
Party of the People
, 678–80.

84
. In 2000, the Federal Communications Commission required all new television sets thirteen inches or larger to contain V-chips.

85
. Berman,
From the Center to the Edge
, 60. The law was in response to a decision by the Hawaii Supreme Court in 1993 that seemed to require that same-sex couples be allowed to marry. One senator who voted against the bill was John Kerry of Massachusetts.

86
. The program was initially titled Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) but was later expanded to provide additional aid and renamed AFDC.

87
.
Stat. Abst., 2002
, 340, 354.

88
. Ibid., 340, 345, 346.

89
. James Patterson,
America’s Struggle Against Poverty in the Twentieth Century
(Cambridge, Mass., 2000), 234–39.

90
. Katz,
The Price of Citizenship
, 359.

91
. Gertrude Himmelfarb,
One Nation, Two Cultures
(New York, 1999), 71–73.

92
.
New York Times
, March 22, 2004. For a guardedly favorable assessment of TANF eight years after passage, see Jason DeParle,
American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation’s Drive to End Welfare
(New York, 2004).

93
.
New York Times
, Nov. 2, 2003.

94
. Ibid., March 1, 1998; Lewis Gould,
The Modern American Presidency
(Lawrence, Kans., 2003), 223–24.

95
. Berman,
From the Center to the Edge
, 67–70.

96
. In 1996, as in earlier campaigns, the money raised by the major candidates was penny ante compared to the amounts that corporations regularly spent for advertising. It was estimated that Clinton spent $169 million in 1996. In the same year, Procter & Gamble spent $8 billion marketing shampoos and other products. Gil Troy, “Money and Politics: The Oldest Connection,”
Wilson Quarterly
(Summer 1997), 14–32.

97
.
World Almanac, 2001
, 40.

98
. Klein,
The Natural
, 158–60; Berman,
From the Center to the Edge
, 81, 85–86.

99
. Berman,
From the Center to the Edge
, 106.

100
. Eckes and Zeiler,
Globalization and the American Century
, 213–14. In late 2004, Russia agreed to the protocol, enabling it to take effect in February 2005. At that time, the United States and Australia were the only major industrialized nations that had not agreed to it.
New York Times
, Dec. 28, 2004.

101
. Concerning the so-called Agreed Framework with North Korea, see Joel Wit et al.,
Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis
(Washington, 2004).

102
. Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit,
Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies
(New York, 2004).

103
. Melvyn Leffler, “9/11 and the Past and the Future of American Foreign Policy,”
International Affairs
79, no. 8 (Oct. 2003), 1045–63. For Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, see Jonathan Raban, “The Truth About Terrorism,”
New York Review of Books
, Jan. 15, 2005, 22–26.

104
.
New York Times
, March 29, 2003.

105
. Ibid., July 26, 2004.

106
. Ibid., April 4, Aug. 3, 2004. Estimates of federal spending for American intelligence in the 1990s—normally classified—vary widely. For later debates about the size of funding in the late 1990s, see ibid., Jan. 7, 2005.

107
. Brian Urquhart, “A Matter of Truth,”
New York Review of Books
, May 13, 2004, 8–12; Michael Ignatieff, “Lesser Evils,”
New York Times Magazine
, May 2, 2004, 46–51, 86–88.

108
. This ban dated to the 1970s, following revelations at the time of CIA efforts to assassinate Castro and others. See
chapter 3
. The late 1990s were “peacetime” years, though Osama bin Laden called for killings of Americans in 1998.

109
. Richard Powers, “A Bomb with a Long Fuse: 9/11 and the FBI ‘Reforms’ of the 1970s,”
American History
39 (Dec. 2004), 43–47.

110
.
New York Times
, Aug. 3, 2004.

111
. For a best-selling and highly critical account of American efforts against terrorism in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, see Richard Clarke,
Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror
(New York, 2004). Clarke had been head of counter-terrorism at the National Security Council in both administrations. Ignatieff, in “Lesser Evils,” was one of a number of Americans, including some liberals, who later called for the United States to develop some sort of national ID card using the latest biometric identifiers. At least seven of the nineteen hijackers who succeeded in taking over planes and blowing up the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, used Virginia ID cards or drivers’ licenses that enabled them to board the planes.

112
.
New York Times
, June 4, 2004. Later, in 2001, the CIA concluded—apparently wrongly—that Iraq then possessed weapons of mass destruction.