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9 books match the query '1974-1977'

cover of A Government as Good as Its People

A Government as Good as Its People

Jimmy Carter

University of Arkansas Press, 1996

A Government as Good as Its People, first published in 1977, presents sixty-two of the most notable public statements made by President Carter on his way to the White House. Formal speeches, news conferences, informal remarks made at gatherings, interviews, and excerpts from debates give a vivid glimpse into the issues of the time and the deeply held convictions of Jimmy Carter.
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cover of Barbara Jordan: Speaking the Truth with Eloquent Thunder

Barbara Jordan

Speaking the Truth with Eloquent Thunder

Edited by Max Sherman

University of Texas Press, 2007

Revered by Americans across the political spectrum, Barbara Jordan was "the most outspoken moral voice of the American political system," in the words of former President Bill Clinton, who awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994. Throughout her career as a Texas senator, U.S. congresswoman, and distinguished professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, Barbara Jordan lived by a simple creed: "Ethical behavior means being honest, telling the truth, and doing what you said you were going to do." Her strong stand for ethics in government, civil liberties, and democratic values still provides a standard around which the nation can unite in the twenty-first century.

This volume brings together several major political speeches that articulate Barbara Jordan's most deeply held values. They include:

  • "Erosion of Civil Liberties," a commencement address delivered at Howard University on May 12, 1974, in which Jordan warned that "tyranny in America is possible"
  • "The Constitutional Basis for Impeachment," Jordan's ringing defense of the U.S. Constitution before the House Judiciary Committee investigating the Watergate break-in
  • Keynote addresses to the Democratic National Conventions of 1976 and 1992, in which Jordan set forth her vision of the Democratic Party as an advocate for the common good and a catalyst of change
  • Testimony in the U.S. Congress on the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork and on immigration reform
  • Meditations on faith and politics from two National Prayer Breakfasts
  • Acceptance speech for the 1995 Sylvanus Thayer Award presented by the Association of Graduates of the United States Military Academy, in which Jordan challenged the military to uphold the values of "duty, honor, country"

Accompanying the speeches are context-setting introductions by volume editor Max Sherman. The book concludes with the eloquent eulogy that Bill Moyers delivered at Barbara Jordan's memorial service in 1996, in which he summed up Jordan's remarkable life and career by saying, "Just when we despaired of finding a hero, she showed up, to give the sign of democracy.... This is no small thing. This, my friends, this is grace. And for it we are thankful."

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cover of Gerald R. Ford: An Honorable Life

Gerald R. Ford

An Honorable Life

James Cannon

University of Michigan Press, 2013

“Not since Harry Truman succeeded Franklin D. Roosevelt twenty-nine years earlier had the American people known so little about a man who had stepped forward from obscurity to take the oath of office as President of the United States.”
—from Chapter 4

This is a comprehensive narrative account of the life of Gerald Ford written by one of his closest advisers, James Cannon. Written with unique insight and benefiting from personal interviews with President Ford in his last years, Gerald R. Ford: An Honorable Lifeis James Cannon’s final look at the simple and honest man from the Midwest.

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cover of Madam Chairman: Mary Louise Smith and the Republican Revival after Watergate

Madam Chairman

Mary Louise Smith and the Republican Revival after Watergate

Suzanne O'Dea

University of Missouri Press, 2012

For much of her career Mary Louise Smith stood alone as a woman in a world of politics run by men. After devoting over two decades of her life to politics, she eventually became the first, and only, woman chairman of the Republican National Committee. Suzanne O’Dea examines Smith’s rise and fall within the party and analyzes her strategies for gaining the support of Republican Party leaders.
Smith’s leadership skills grew from the time she worked in rural precincts. During her twenty-eight months as chairman, Smith dealt with highs and lows as she blazed not only a trail of her own but also one for the Republican Party, including assembling the team that kept the party intact following the devastation of Watergate. She was present during the party’s shift from moderate leadership, as exemplified by Ford, to the increasingly conservative leadership still seen today. Smith was an advocate for the Equal Rights Amendment, a supporter of the pro-choice movement, and a proponent of gay rights.
Though handpicked by President Ford, Smith still found herself struggling against the party and at times even against the president himself. At one point Smith lost months of fundraising opportunities as a result of a disagreement with the president. She and her staff developed innovative strategies, still used in the party today, to attract desperately needed dollars from major donors. Even so, people within the administration as well as unnamed party leaders regularly intimated that Smith’s days as chairman were numbered. Even after leaving the chairmanship, Smith remained loyal to the party from which she felt increasingly alienated.
O’Dea uses extensive personal interviews with Smith and her staff at the RNC to recount not only Smith’s and the GOP’s changing fortunes but also the challenges Republican women faced as they worked to gain a larger party presence. These behind-the-scenes perspectives show the tactics and strategies of the Republican Party’s power struggles along with Smith’s own opinions about leadership style. With relevance to today’s political strategies and conservative shift, O’Dea highlights Mary Louise Smith’s mark on Republican history.
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cover of Press and the Ford Presidency

Press and the Ford Presidency

Mark J. Rozell

University of Michigan Press, 1992

Journalists offer a daily dose of commentary sizing up the president's successes and failures, profoundly influencing the public's perceptions of presidential performance. This study shows how leading journalists developed their perceptions of Gerald Ford, the criteria they employed in evaluating his presidency, and the nature and impact of their assessments of his leadership. In The Press and the Ford Presidency, political scientist Mark J. Rozell uses a qualitative content analysis to investigate the national press coverage of the Ford administration. He explores the complicated relationship between what presidents say and do and how their words and deeds are portrayed in the elite press, demonstrating not only how press valuations vary over time, but also how certain impressions of a president take hold and resist change, even in light of conflicting evidence. Rozell shows that a president and presidential image-crafters cannot script their own press coverage and expect journalists dutifully to follow the White House plan. Journalists have identifiable expectations of presidential leadership and performance. Indeed, Gerald Ford consistently fell short of these expectations, leading the media and, consequently, the public to resort to humiliating caricature when describing the president and his programs.The Press and the Ford Presidency will be of special value to schools of the presidency mass media and politics, political communications, and political leadership. In addition, since the author's research included interviews with numerous numbers of Ford's White House staff, the book will appeal to scholars interested in oral history and to historians of the Watergate era and the Ford years.
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cover of The Ford Administration and Anglo-American Relations: Re-Valuing an Interim Presidency

The Ford Administration and Anglo-American Relations

Re-Valuing an Interim Presidency

Steve Marsh, Robert M. Hendershot and Tia Culley

University of Michigan Press, 2026

In the shadow of Watergate and the Vietnam War, Gerald Ford’s presidency has long been dismissed as little more than an interim administration. Yet the administration and its British counterparts worked to manage economic crises, Cold War tensions, and international flashpoints, while also harnessing cultural diplomacy to sustain transatlantic partnership. Drawing on newly declassified archival sources and fresh historical analysis, The Ford Administration and Anglo-American Relations shows how Ford’s years in office (1974–77) were pivotal in reshaping the US–UK special relationship at a moment of global turbulence.

Organized thematically rather than chronologically, the authors examine eight dimensions of Anglo-American relations under Ford: the inheritance of transatlantic tensions from the Nixon era; cultural and societal links beyond the state; the significance of Ford’s personal diplomacy; negotiations over defense and security; transformations in international economic relations and the birth of the G6/G7; cooperation through multilateral institutions such as NATO and the UN; joint management of crises in Cyprus and Rhodesia to the sterling currency crisis; and the cultural diplomacy of the 1976 Bicentennial, when Queen Elizabeth II’s state visit symbolized renewed unity between former adversaries. By highlighting both the challenges and the resilience of Anglo-American ties, this book recasts a neglected presidency as a crucial bridge between the crises of the Nixon years and the celebrated Reagan–Thatcher era. Accessible yet deeply researched, it is a work that will appeal to anyone interested in how two nations, facing uncertainty at home and abroad, turned to multilateral cooperation, culture, and public diplomacy to navigate the upheavals of the 1970s.

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cover of The Seventies Now: Culture as Surveillance

The Seventies Now

Culture as Surveillance

Stephen Paul Miller

Duke University Press, 1999

Most would agree that American culture changed dramatically from the 1960s to the 1980s. Yet the 1970s, the decade “in between,” is still somehow thought of as a cultural wasteland. In The Seventies Now Stephen Paul Miller debunks this notion by examining a wide range of political and cultural phenomena—from the long shadow cast by Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal to Andy Warhol and the disco scene—identifying in these phenomena a pivotal yet previously unidentified social trend, the movement from institutionalized external surveillance to the widespread internalization of such practices.
The concept of surveillance and its attendant social ramifications have been powerful agents in U.S. culture for many decades, but in describing how during the 1970s Americans learned to “survey” themselves, Miller shines surprising new light on such subjects as the women’s movement, voting rights enforcement, the Ford presidency, and environmental legislation. He illuminates the significance of what he terms “microperiods” and analyzes relevant themes in many of the decade’s major films—such as The Deer Hunter, Network, Jaws, Star Wars, and Apocalypse Now—and in the literature of writers including John Ashbery, Toni Morrison, Adrienne Rich, and Sam Shepard. In discussing the reverberations of the 1969 Stonewall riots, technological innovations, the philosophy of Michel Foucault, and a host of documents and incidents, Miller shows how the 1970s marked an important period of transition, indeed a time of many transitions, to the world we confront at the end of the millennium.
The Seventies Now will interest students and scholars of cultural studies, American history, theories of technology, film and literature, visual arts, and gay and lesbian studies.
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cover of Time and Chance: Gerald Ford's Appointment with History

Time and Chance

Gerald Ford's Appointment with History

James Cannon

University of Michigan Press, 1998

Gerald Ford came to the presidency at the time of one of our nation's greatest constitutional crises, the downfall of President Richard M. Nixon in the aftermath of the Watergate affair. His service as president concluded a distinguished career in the House of Representatives during which he served as leader of the Republican Party in the House. With unrestricted access to Gerald Ford's papers, James M. Cannon tells the story of Ford's rise and Nixon's ruin, providing new insights into this troubling period of our history and Ford's role in guiding the nation through it. Cannon tells the story of Ford's difficult early life and the beginnings of his career in politics in the period immediately after World War II. He tells the story of Ford's rise to prominence in the House of Representatives during the 1950s and 1960s, giving us a fascinating picture of the Congress. In addition, in telling us about the personal life of Gerald Ford, he gives us a sense of the price Ford paid for his success.
"James Cannon, formerly national affairs editor at Newsweek and Ford's domestic policy advisor, has written a superbly provocative and arresting biography that traces Ford's life from his July 4, 1913, birth in Omaha, Nebraska, to his September 8,1974, decision to pardon Nixon of the Watergate conspiracy." --Washington Post Book World
James M. Cannon is a journalist and was Domestic Policy Adviser to President Ford and Chief of Staff to Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker.
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cover of U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East: The Role of Lobbies and Special Interest Groups

U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East

The Role of Lobbies and Special Interest Groups

Janice J. Terry

Pluto Press, 2005

Millions of dollars are spent every year by companies and special interest groups attempting to influence government policy. They work behind the scenes, lobbying politicians to represent their interests. From tobacco companies, to energy companies, from anti-abortion campaigners to civil rights campaigners, the list is vast. And nowhere is their influence more keenly felt than on the issue of the Middle East.



Israel is America's key ally in the Middle East, and helps maintain U.S. dominance in the region. This book shows how pro-Israeli lobbyists and domestic interest groups have been hugely successful in creating government and financial support for Israel. By contrast, Arab-American groups and Arab governments have had less success putting forward their agencies.



Janice J. Terry shows how special interest groups work, and why certain lobbying techniques are more effective than others. She sets this within the wider cultural context, showing how the U.S. media -- and the general public -- view the Middle East.



To explain how lobbies work, Terry draws on case studies including the Sinai accords and Camp David under Presidents Ford and Carter, the Conflict between Green and Turkish lobbies over Cyprus, and the major campaign against the Arab boycott.



Making use of primary sources, and unpublished material from various presidential libraries, this is a fascinating exposé of the role that lobby groups really play in determining U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. It will be of interest to students of American politics and Middle East studies.

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