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Ford Becomes President
Gerald Ford took the presidential oath on August 9, 1974, following Richard Nixon’s forced resignation. A Michigan congressman who had been House minority leader before becoming vice president, Ford conveyed a likeable decency, if little evidence of brilliance. After the trauma of Watergate, he inspired cautious hope. -
Ford pardons Nixon
Ford’s period of grace soon ended, however, when he pardoned Richard Nixon for “any and all crimes” committed while in office, thus shielding him from prosecution for hi Watergate role. Ford said he wanted to help heal the body politic, but many Americans reacted with outrage. -
Carter elected president
Carter’s early lead eroded as voters sensed a certain vagueness in his program, but he won by a narrow margin The vote broke sharply along class lines: the well-todo went fo Ford; the poor, overwhelmingly for Carter. The Georgian swept the South and received 90 percent of the black vote. While in the long run the conservative backlash against 1960 radicalism would help the Republicans, popular revulsion against Nixon and Watergate temporarily interrupted the Republican advance. -
Panama Canal Treaty
Since 1964, when anti-American riots had rocked Panama successive administrations had been negotiating a new Panama Canal treaty that would address Panama’s grievances. The Carter administration completed negotiations on treaties transferring the Panama Canal and the Canal Zone to Panama by 1999. -
Camp David Accords
When Egyptian leader Anwar el-Sadat unexpectedly flew to Israel in 1977 to negotiate with Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, Carter saw an opening. In September 1978 Carter hosted Sadat and Begin at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland. The Camp David Accords that resulted set a timetable for granting greater autonomy to the Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, occupied by Israel since the 1967 war. -
Khomeni seizes power in Iran
Iran’s Shiite Muslims, inspired by their exiled spiritual head, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, bitterly opposed the shah’s rule. In January 1979, amid rising Shiite unrest, the shah fled Iran. Khomeini returned in triumph, imposed strict Islamic rule, and preached hatred of the United States. -
Three Mile Island incident
In the later 1970s environmentalists targeted the nuclear-power industry. Reviving protest techniques first used in the civil-rights and antiwar campaigns, activists across America staged rallies at planned nuclear-power plants. The movement crested in 1979 when a partial meltdown crippled the Three Mile Island nuclear-power plant in Pennsylvania. -
SALT Treaty signed
In a 1979 meeting in Vienna, Carter and the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev signed the SALT II treaty, limiting each side’s nuclear-weapons arsenals. When Carter sent the treaty to the Senate for ratification, however, advocates of a strong military attacked it for favoring the Soviets. Support for SALT II dissolved entirely in January 1980 when Russia invaded Afghanistan. -
Reagan elected first time
In 1980, with the conservative backlash against the 1960s in full swing, voters turned to a candidate who promised to break with the recent past: Ronald Reagan. His unabashed patriotism appealed to a nation still traumatized by Vietnam. His promise to reverse the Democrats’ “tax and spend” policies and his attacks on the social-welfare ideology of the New Deal, the Fair Deal, and the Great Society resonated with millions of white middle-class and blue-collar Americans. -
reagan survives assassination attempt
on March 30, 1981 just when President Reagan was leaving a speaking engagement at the Washington Hilton Hotel, John Hinkley Jr. fired at President Reagan and other three who were near the President. However, President Reagan survived the assassination attempt and suffered a punctured lung for which he was quickly taken to the hospital where he was provided immediate medical assistance and was saved. However, there was no apparent reason found for the motivation of this assassination. -
Sandra Day O'Connor appointed to supreme court
Reagan’s personal popularity remained high. Some dubbed him the Teflon president—nothing seemed to stick to him. Feminists welcomed his 1981 nomination of Sandra Day O’Connor as the first woman justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. -
Iran-Contra revealed
Late in 1986 a Beirut newspaper reported the shocking news that in 1985 the United States had shipped, via Israel, 508 antitank missiles to the anti-American government of Iran. Admitting the sale, Reagan claimed that the goal had been to encourage “moderate elements” in Tehran and to gain the release of U.S. hostages held in Lebanon by pro-Iranian groups. -
INF Treaty signed
Historic in themselves, the INF treaty and Reagan’s trip to Moscow proved a mere prelude to more dramatic events. They marked, in fact, nothing less than the beginning of the end of the Cold War. That one of America’s most dedicated Cold Warriors should be the president to preside over its final phase remains one of the great ironies of recent U.S. history.
