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The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s. By Allen J. Matusow. New
York: Harper & Row, 1984. Contents, Editor’s introduction, Preface, Bibliographic note,
Notes, Index, xv and 442 pages.
John F. Hinrichs, University of Houston: 22 March 2005.
This excellent book held my interest throughout, from its beginning with a
perceptive discussion of macroeconomics-economists may learn from this historian-until the
concluding chapter on the rout of the liberals with the election of Richard M. Nixon in 1968.
Professor Allen J. Matusow, the William Gaines Twyman Professor of History at Rice
University and Associate Director for Academic Programs at Rice’s Baker Institute, covered
the 1960s from the Camelot years of President John F. Kennedy to the defeat of Senator
Hubert H. Humphrey in his bid for the presidency in 1968. The author also wrote a book
on Nixon’s presidency, and is currently working on a book concerning Ronald Reagan. He
continues to teach courses about U. S. history in the twentieth century. In his Preface, he
declared, “Above all, I have tried to answer this question: What were the concrete
consequences of liberal reforms”? (p. xiv). In answering this question, the seed is
represented by the title of this book; because each time, as emphasized herein, he used the
words “the unraveling” he had laid a solid foundation for discerning the portion of
liberalism being addressed.
Matusow explained how early on somewhat reluctant liberals like President Kennedy
were concerned with civil rights, poverty, and national economic vitality. Although the
liberals during Kennedy’s and Lyndon B. Johnson’s administrations espoused a liberal
agenda, even passing triumphal legislation, with help from the courts, they failed to execute
the plan, thereby creating a void. This void like those discussed in high school chemistry
classes was an area of low pressure, and this area were soon filled with radical agendas, like
Hippies and Black Power adherents. The author delineated the “concrete consequences” of
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the breakdown of progressive liberal leaders, allowing the conservative era beginning with
Nixon, but really flowering with the ascendance of Ronald Reagan into the White House.
Each American by reading this perceptive book will gain a broad understanding of what
happened between 1960 and 1969: it is so much more than the simple explanation that the
Vietnam War caused a radical upheaval and ushered out the liberals. My thesis derives from
the failure national leaders to focus on the domestic problems already clearly identified in the
early presidency of Kennedy, allowing imperialism to become the main show. In doing this,
Johnson’s war of poverty failed and racist militancy prevailed in the North. The current
George W. Bush administration follows the same pattern. Are not Americans headed for
economic breakdowns from surging inflation, since Republicans are not willing to curtail
military spending and increase taxes on corporations? After briefly summarizing the
contents, an analysis will ensue, hopefully partially answering why President Bush’s policies
are about to crash on the “iceberg of imperialism.”
The author’s fourteen chapters are divided into three parts. The first part covers the
Kennedy years, the second part basically reported on Johnson’s presidency, and part three
discussed the counterculture, the new left, and concludes with my favorite chapter, on the
presidential election of 1968. Some might softly criticize some overlapping of years because
of the author’s topical approach. Actually, this overlap bound the parts together, and did
not distract from my comprehension, for the parts worked together chronologically as well.
The author began with a cogent discourse on economics-covering Keynesian policies
and those of Milton Friedman. If a reader just read this beginning material, the ends will
surely justify the sticker price. Matusow pointed out the underpinning of early liberal foreign
policy by noting “liberal concern over national security after Sputnik [1957]” (p. 10).
Describing Kennedy’s promotion of business, the author developed the “alliance between
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Keynesian economists and corporate liberals” (p. 42). Later when reporting the “guns and
butter” budget of President Johnson, the author stated, “In the Keynesian version of history,
the budget, with its refusal to raise taxes, opened the floodgates to the Great Inflation” (p.
160). Persuasively and logically, the author laid out the economic tenets of Milton Friedman,
in juxtaposition to Keynesian ones, for Friedman believed the control of the nation’s money
supply was the crucial factor. “By then, even Keynesians began to concede that inflation
might be a bad thing after all,” contended Matusow (p. 177). This historical analysis on the
escalating budgets (as presently exist) preordains that history may repeat with another
virulent wave of radicalism. Old wounds in the civil rights area could be opened up.
According to the author, “A wound had opened in the relations of the Kennedys and
the white South that would never heal” (p. 74). Hopefully, twenty-first century America has
gone beyond these prejudices, but the number of Confederate flags still waving in the South
makes one question this supposition. Kennedy submitted a civil rights bill in 1963, and
Johnson followed up with the landmark laws on civil rights in 1964 and voting rights in
1965. By this time, momentum was building, Matusow acknowledged this as follows:
“Compared to past struggles, Southern opposition to the Voting Rights Act was half-hearted
and easily turned aside” (p. 187). Johnson channeled energy and money into the war 16,000
miles away. Problems for civil rights implementation floundered in the North. The author
summarized, “The failure of nerve was a reflection less on Johnson than on a hypocritical
northern public, which applied one standard of racial conduct to the South and quite a
different one to itself” (p. 199). The problems were a function in large measure of the
failure of Johnson’s war on poverty or the creation of a Great Society in the North or the
South.
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As early as 1961, Kennedy had achieved some success with his Manpower
Development and Training Act to retrain workers displaced by automation (p. 103).
Johnson came along with his Economic Opportunity Act in 1964. The mandate depended
upon involving the community beneficiaries in the policy-making processes. According to
Matusow, “the War on Poverty failed because it attempted to appease the haves while
helping the have-nots” (p. 221). These goals are exclusive: you have to subtract from the
haves and reapportion money to the have-nots. The budget straining effects of MedicareMedicaid legislation resulted from rapidly increasing fees from medical providers, with the
recipients not realizing much in the way of medical cost savings. All three areas of liberalism
stumbled, and while falling, allowed radical elements a beachhead.
The new left waded in but failed in their objectives for resurrecting a working
liberalism in America. Matusow argued, “Without an adequate ideological framework to
support its actions, the movement would become increasingly irresponsible, lose touch with
social realities, and fade away with the decade” (p. 309). The hippie and yippie movements,
with some of their ridiculous and often funny antics, showed how far liberalism had slid
because the existence of the hippies and yippies supplanted a reasonable structure for
effecting liberal issues in America. The horrendous riots in Watts and other major cities
caused sociologists to characterize a rioter as the New Ghetto Man” (p. 361). Vietnam was a
major part of the problem, but the breakdown of progressive liberal thought and action also
came about from failures to execute Kennedy’s and Johnson’s policy reforms for jobs and
civil rights. What were some of the author’s conclusions on these two presidents?
Kennedy started well in exclaiming during his election campaign, “It was time, he
proclaimed, to get the country moving again” (p. 18). Perhaps if Johnson had kept
Kennedy’s impact with corporate liberals, as the author called Kennedy “the quintessential
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corporate liberal” (p.33), then a capital support base might have helped his programs
succeed. With respect to Johnson’s tenure, Matusow contended, “What he failed to
understand was that his liberalism and theirs [liberals in his latter years as president]apparently so similar in 1964-thereafter repeatedly diverged, his [Johnson’s] remaining rooted
in the ideas of the 1950s, theirs moving far beyond” (p. 376). Johnson and his cabinet were
so enthralled with Vietnam that their well-intentioned programs for Americans fell by the
wayside.
Corporate liberalism had paid off for Johnson when he was elected in 1964. Yet by
1965, it seemed everyone in America was talking about Johnson’s credibility gap (p. 154).
The author laid out the evidence on Keynesian ideas and concluded, “Keynesian ideas
played no small role in the unraveling of both liberalism and the economy-and no small role,
therefore, in the unraveling of America” (p.179). The conflict between the poor and the
police was nationally illustrated at the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968, where
Mayor Richard J. Daley brutally used excessive police violence against Americans. Matusow
asserted that Johnson had by this time sorely slipped, not only by ostracizing his vice
president and democratic contender, Humphrey, but also by aligning with the police. “Thus
Lyndon Johnson, who had once told his staff that civil rights leaders would have to wear
sneakers to keep up with him, entered the twilight of his presidency in retreat from the
liberal hope of racial justice and ingratiating himself with the police” (p. 216). Young people
of alarming numbers were withdrawing their allegiance from the United States of America
(p. 320). Although most of the radicals harassed by the police were mutually incompatible,
“all of them tended in the late 1960s toward the same result, namely the unraveling of LBJ’s
hopes for a liberal reconstruction of America” (p. 271). This is what the author said about
the difference between liberals and radicals: “liberals acted out of guilt to help the oppressed;
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radical consciousness was ‘the perception of oneself as unfree, as oppressed-and finally it is
the discovery of oneself as one of the oppressed’” (p.323). Black nationalism failed as a radical
movement since it emphasized what divided men rather than their common humanity (p.
374). At the end of this era, “[w]ith the threads of the American fabric unraveling the
electorate would turn elsewhere for leadership” (p. 395); the liberals were routed from office
by the paranoid Richard M. Nixon.
The author answered his question, in my opinion, and each of the three times he
used the words “the unraveling” he had laid his predicates. From a legal standpoint,
additional information on the judicial involvement would have assisted, especially in the civil
rights areas. This filling of the void with radical elements, which quickly “crashed and
burned,” gave the opening for Republicans in 1968. As the author observed, full
employment meant inflation, civil rights implementation led to black power insurgency, and
the poor were rioting in the streets (p. 438). The new left had failed to materialize into a
working liberal constituency. Nixon rebounded from a huge defeat in California’s
governor’s race to gain the White House. His presidency turned out to be liberal when later
contrasted with the Reagan years. This book is a volume in the New American Nation
Series (p. xi). Each volume usually covers two presidents. This volume admirably covered
the rise and fall of domestic liberalism in the 1960s. If American leaders had focused on the
domestic issues rather than fighting a war in far off Vietnam-a country never conquered by
an imperialistic invader-then more human and monetary resources would have been
funneled into these liberal domestic policies. The reporting of the consequences of domestic
liberalism would have surely been better.