American Experiment

by James Macgregor Burns

  [Logsdon on ends and means]: Logsdon, “Space Shuttle Program,” p. 1105. [Soviet space progress]: Larry Martz, “America Grounded,” Newsweek, vol. 110, no. 7 (August 17, 1987), pp. 37, 40-41, Nicholas Johnson quoted on “evolution of man into space” at p. 37, Glenn quoted at p. 37; Easterbrook, pp. 46, 60; see also William H. Schauer, The Politics of Space: A Comparison of the Soviet and American Space Programs (Holmes & Meier, 1976); Roald Sagdeev, “Soviet Space Science,” Physics Today, vol. 41, no. 5 (May 1988), pp. 30-38; Louis J. Lanzerotti and Jeffrey D. Rosendhal, “Policy Challenges Facing the US Space Research Program,” ibid., pp. 78-83.

  [“Advance the technology”]: quoted in Easterbrook, p. 52.

  586-7 [Hubble telescope]: Newsweek, vol. 110, no. 7 (August 17, 1987), pp. 52-53.

  587 [“Out of the blue”]: Young, “Hey Hey, My My,” quoted in McDougall, p. 450, Copyright 1979, Silver Fiddle Music.

  14. The Kaleidoscope of Thought

  591 [Carter’s retreat]: Newsweek, vol. 94, no. 3 (July 16, 1979), pp. 19-21; ibid., vol. 24, no. 4 (July 23, 1979), pp. 21-26; Jimmy Carter, Keeping Faith (Bantam, 1982), pp. 114-20; Godfrey Hodgson, All Things to All Men: The False Promise of the Modern American Presidency (Simon and Schuster, 1980), pp. 162-63 and passim; Betty Glad, Jimmy Carter: In Search of the Great White House (Norton, 1980), pp. 444-46.

  591 [Advice to Carter]: Energy and National Goals, July 15, 1979, in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Jimmy Carter (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1977-82), vol. 3, part 2, pp. 1235-41, quoted at p. 1236.

  [Carter’s address]: ibid.; see also Jeffrey K. Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency (Princeton University Press, 1987), pp. 3, 136, 141.

  592 [Carter’s firings and public response]. Newsweek, vol. 94, no. 5 (July 30, 1979), pp. 22-28, anecdote of the king told at p. 27.

  Habits of Individualism

  594 [Census family statistics]: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1987 (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1986), p. 45 (Table 61).

  [Numbers of religious bodies and membership]: ibid., pp. 51-52 (Table 74); Leo Rosten, ed., Religions in America (Simon and Schuster, 1963), esp. pp. 220-48, 318-24.

  595 [Church attendance, 1940s-1970s]: Hadley Cantril, ed., Public Opinion 1935-1946 (Princeton University Press, 1951), pp. 699-701 (early polling data may be only approximations); Theodore Caplow et al., All Faithful People: Change and Continuity in Middletown’s Religion (University of Minnesota Press, 1983), p. 27.

  [Polls on religious influence]: Gallup Opinion Index Question quoted in Caplow et al., p. 28.

  [Ratio of church membership to population]: ibid., pp. 28-29,

  [Declining membership of “mainline” Protestant churches]: Newsweek, vol. 108, no. 25 (December 22, 1986), pp. 54-56.

  [“Language genuinely able”]: Robert N. Bellah et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (University of California Press, 1985), p. 237; see also Bellah, The Broken Covenant: American Civil Religion in Time of Trial (Seabury Press, 1975).

  595-6 [Thoreau on telegraph between Maine and Texas]: Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers; Walden; The Maine Woods; Cape Cod, Robert F. Sayre, ed. (Library of America, 1985), p. 364.

  596 [Projected enrollments early 1990s]: Statistical Abstract, p. 117 (Table 189).

  [Enrollment in private secondary schools after Brown]: Jeffrey A. Raffel, The Politics of School Desegregation: The Metropolitan Remedy in Delaware (Temple University Press, 1980), pp. 175-88, esp. pp. 178-80.

  [Public education in modern America]: Robert B. Everhart, ed., The Public School Monopoly: A Critical Analysis of Education and the State in American Society (Ballinger Publishing, 1982), part 3; Benjamin D. Stickney and Laurence R. Marcus, The Great Education Debate: Washington and the Schools (Charles C. Thomas, 1984), chs. 1, 5, and passim.

  596-7 [Typical public school classroom]: Kenneth A. Sirotnik, “What You See Is What You Get—Consistency, Persistency, and Mediocrity in Classrooms,” Harvard Educational Review, vol. 53, no. 1 (February 1983), pp. 16-31.

  597 [Toffler on learning]: quoted in ibid., p. 29.

  [Merelman on education]: Merelman, Making Something of Ourselves (University of California Press, 1984), pp. 195-99.

  [Schools as supermarkets]: Arthur G. Powell, Eleanor Tartar, and David K. Cohen, The Shopping Mall High School: Winners and Losers in the Educational Marketplace (Houghton Mifflin, 1985), esp. ch. 1.

  [Higher education in modern America]: Ernest L. Boyer and Fred M. Hechinger, Higher Learning in the Nation’s Service (Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1981); Barry M. Richman and Richard N. Farmer, Leadership, Goals, and Power in Higher Education (Jossey-Bass, 1974); Derek Bok, Beyond the Ivory Tower: Social Responsibilities of the Modern University (Harvard University Press, 1982). [Institutions, teachers, students in higher education]: Statistical Abstract, p. 138 (Table 233).

  [Bowen on missing ingredient]: Bowen, The State of the Nation and the Agenda for Higher Education (Jossey-Bass, 1982), pp. 76-78; see also Philip E. Jacob, Changing Values in College: An Exploratory Study of the Impact of College Teaching (Harper, 1957); Richard L. Morrill, Teaching Values in College: Facilitating Development of Ethical, Moral, and Value Awareness in Students (Jossey-Bass, 1980).

  [Boyer and Hechinger on higher education]: Boyer and Hechinger, esp. p. 3.

  598 [“American liberal approach”]: Walzer, “Teaching Morality,” New Republic, vol. 178, no. 23 (June 10, 1978), pp. 12-14, quoted at p. 13; see also Roger L. Shinn, “Education in Values: Acculturation and Exploration,” in Douglas Sloan, ed., Education and Values (Teachers College Press, 1980), pp. 111-22.

  [Debates over values]: James MacGregor Burns, Leadership (Harper, 1978), pp. 74-75; see also Milton Rokeach, Beliefs, Altitudes, and Values: A Theory of Organization and Change (Jossey-Bass, 1969); Burns, Uncommon Sense (Harper, 1972), ch. 6.

  [“The most resonant”]: Bellah et al., Habits, p. 23.

  598-9 [“Decline of church”]: Merelman, pp. 1-2.

  599 [“May have grown cancerous”]: Bellah et al., Habits, p. viii.

  [Yuppies]: “The Year of the Yuppie,” Newsweek, vol. 104, no. 28 (December 31, 1984), pp. 14-20; “Life of a Yuppie Takes a Psychic Toll,” U.S. News & World Report, vol. 98, no. 16 (April 29, 1985), pp.73-74; “That Word,” New Yorker, vol.61. no.10 (April 29, 1985), pp. 30-31.

  [Sheila]: Bellah et al., Habits, pp. 220-21, quoted at p. 221.

  [“Management of personal impressions”]: Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (Norton, 1978), p. 44; see also Lasch, The Minimal Self: Psychic Survival in Troubled Times (Norton, 1984).

  600 [Individualism]: Crawford B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (Oxford University Press, 1962): A. D. Lindsay, “Individualism,” in Edwin R. A. Seligman, ed., Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (Macmillan, 1930-34), vol. 7, pp. 674-80; Steven Lukes, Individualism (Basil Blackwell, 1973); Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” in Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 118-72; Karl R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (Princeton University Press, 1950); Bellah et al., Habits, esp. chs. 2, 6.

  601 “Nation that was proud”]: Carter Public Papers, vol. 3, part 2, p. 1237.

  Kinesis: The Southern Californians

  [Hollywood’s beginnings]: Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land (Peregrine Smith, 1979), ch. 16; Lary Linden May, “Reforming Leisure: The Birth of Mass Culture and the Motion Picture Industry, 1896-1920,” (doctoral dissertation; University of California, Los Angeles, 1977); Robert Sklar, Movie-Made America: A Social History of the American Movies (Random House, 1975), chs. 2-3; W. H. Hutchinson, California: The Golden Shore by the Sundown Sea (Star Publishing, 1980), pp. 247-54; see also Hortense Powdermaker, Hollywood, the Dream Factory (Little, Brown, 1950), chs. 1, 15.

  [Selznick’s wire to the Czar]: Walto
n Bean, California: An Interpretive History, 2nd ed. (McGraw-Hill, 1973), p. 384.

  602 [“Monopolistic non-seasonal industry”]: McWilliams, Southern California, pp. 339-40, quoted at p. 340.

  [Southern California’s migrants]: McWilliams, Southern California, chs. 3, 5, 7-9, 15 passim; see also Robert F. Heifer and Alan F. Almquist, The Other Californians (University of California Press, 1971).

  [Birth of a Nation]: McWilliams, Southern California, pp. 332-33; Michael Paul Rogin, Ronald Reagan, the Movie, and Other Episodes in Political Demonology (University of California Press, 1987), pp. 190-235; Sklar, ch. 4: Charles Higham, The Art of the American film, 1900-1971 (Doubleday, 1973), pp. 10-12.

  [Labor strife in Los Angeles]: Andrew F. Rolle, California (Crowell,1964), ch. 31. 602-3 [“Kiss-Kiss” and “bang-bang”]: Powdermaker, p. 14.

  603 [Priestley on Los Angeles]: quoted in McWilliams, Southern California, p. 328; see also Robert Kirsch, “The Cultural Scene,” in Carey McWilliams, ed., The California Revolution (Grossman, 1968), p. 205.

  [Esoteric religions in southern California]: Carey McWilliams, “California: Mecca of the Miraculous,” in Dennis Hale and Jonathan Eisen, eds., The California Dream (Collier Books, 1968), pp. 279-92; Michael Davie, California: The Vanishing Dream (Dodd, Mead, 1972), ch. 8; McWilliams, Southern California, ch. 13; Lately Thomas, Storming Heaven (Morrow, 1970).

  603-4 [Left-wing California politics]: Dorothy Healey, “Tradition’s Chains Have Bound Us” (1982), Oral History, Research Library, University of California at Los Angeles; Carey McWilliams, “The Economics of Extremism,” in Hale and Eisen, pp. 83-95.

  604 [Olson]: Robert E. Burke, Olson’s New Deal for California (University of Califomia Press, 1953), esp. chs. 3, 5.

  [California political culture]: Luther Whiteman and Samuel L. Lewis, “EPIC, or Politics for Use,” in Hale and Eisen, pp. 63-71; McWilliams, Southern California, ch. 14; Gladwin Hill, “California Politics,” in McWilliams, California Revolution, pp. 172-84; Davie, chs. 6-7; James Q. Wilson, “The Political Culture of Southern California,” in Hale and Eisen, pp. 215-33.

  [Young Nixon]: Fawn M. Brodie, Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character (Norton, 1981), chs. 2-8; Garry Wills, Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man (Houghton Mifflin, 1970), pp. 150-86; Davie, pp. 88-90.

  [Wills on Nixon]: Wills, Nixon Agonistes, p. 184.

  [“Old-fashioned kind of lawyer”]: quoted in Bruce Mazlish, In Search of Nixon (Basic Books, 1972), p. 28.

  [Hollywood in 1930s and 1940s]: Otto Friedrich, City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940’s (Harper, 1986); Higham, parts 2-3 passim; Tino Balio, ed., The American Film Industry, rev. ed. (University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), part 3; Charles Higham and Joel Greenberg, Hollywood in the Forties (Tantivy Press, 1968); Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund, The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930-1960 (University of California Press, 1983).

  605 [Writers in Hollywood]: Walter Goodman, “Why Some Novelists Cast Hollywood as the Heavy,” New York Times, August 17, 1986, sect. 2, pp. 19-20; Friedrich, pp. 228-46, esp. pp. 237-40; Harry M. Geduld, ed., Authors on Film (Indiana University Press, 1972), esp. parts 3-4; Morris Beja, Film and Literature (Longman, 1979), part 1.

  [“Puke-green phantasmagoria”]: quoted in Goodman, “Why Some Novelists,” p. 20.

  [Gable-Faulkner exchange]: quoted in Friedrich, p. 240.

  [Hollywood and television]: Tino Balio, “Retrenchment, Reappraisal, and Reorganization, 1948,” in Balio, pp. 422-38; David J. Londoner, “The Changing Economics of Entertainment,” in ibid., pp. 603-30; Andrew Dowdy, The Films of the Fifties: The American State of Mind (Morrow, 1973), ch. 1 passim; Douglas Gomery, “Brian’s Song: Television, Hollywood, and the Evolution of the Movie Made for Television,” in John E. O’Connor, ed., American History of American Television (Frederick Ungar, 1983), ch. 9. [Movie admissions]: Douglas Gomery, “Hollywood’s Business,” Wilson Quarterly, vol. 10, no. 3 (Summer 1986), p. 53.

  606 [Reagan’s youth): Ronald Reagan and Richard G. Hubler, Where’s the Rest of Me? The Autobiography of Ronald Reagan (Karz Publishers, 1981), chs. 1-4; Anne Edwards, Early Reagan: The Rise to Power (Morrow, 1987), chs. 2-7; Garry Wills, Reagan’s America: Innocents at Home (Doubleday, 1987), parts 1-3.

  [Reagan in Hollywood]: Reagan and Hubler, pp. 71-243; Edwards, chs. 8-21; Wills, Reagan’s America, part 4; Rogin, ch. 1.

  [Powdermaker on Hollywood escapism]: Powdermaker, pp. 12-14, quoted at pp. 12-13.

  [Production Code Administration and censorship]: Powdermaker, ch. 3 passim; see also Richard S. Randall, Censorship of the Movies: The Social and Political Control of a Mass Medium (University of Wisconsin Press, 1968).

  607 [“A scoop for you!”]: quoted in Wills, Reagan’s America, p. 159.

  [“So much that is right”]: ibid., p. 161,

  [Reagan, SAG, and MCA]: ibid., chs. 23-29, esp. pp. 249-50, 272-74; Edwards, chs. 14-17, 21 passim; Reagan and Hubler, pp. 222-30, 275-88.

  [Reagan’s movement across political spectrum]: Wills, Reagan’s America, esp. pp. 257-58, 283-84; Robert Dallek, Ronald Reagan: The Politics of Symbolism (Harvard University Press, 1984), pp. 23-28; Lou Cannon, Reagan (Putnam, 1982), chs. 7-8 passim.

  [Cannon on income tax and Reagan’s new conservatism]: Cannon, p. 91.

  607-8 [Hollywood in the 1960s-1980s]: Gomery, pp. 56-57; Robin Wood, Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan (Columbia University Press, 1986); Balio, “Retrenchment.”

  608 [Development of southern California]: Charles Lockwood and Christopher B. Leinberger, “Los Angeles Comes of Age,” Atlantic, vol. 261, no. 1 (January 1988), pp. 31-56; B. Marchand, The Emergence of Los Angeles: Population and Homing in the City of Dreams, 1940-1970 (Pion Limited, 1986); McWilliams, California Revolution; Davie, chs. 3-4.

  608 [The auto in southern California]: Los Angeles Times, April 19, 1987, part 1, pp. 1, 20-22, and part 6, pp. 1, 6; Richard G. Lillard, “Revolution by Internal Combustion,” in McWilliams, California Revolution, pp. 84-99; Samuel E. Wood, “The Freeway Revolt and What It Means,” in ibid., pp. 100-9; New York Times, August 21, 1987, p. A8; Davie, pp. 53-62.

  [“A movable home”]: quoted in Los Angeles Times, April 19, 1987, part 6, p. 6.

  Superspectatorship

  [Hagler-Leonard]: Sports Illustrated, vol. 66, no. 13 (March 30, 1987), pp. 58-78; ibid., vol. 66, no. 16 (April 13, 1987), pp. 18-25; New York Times, April 6, 1987, pp. C1, C6.

  610 [Sportswatching]: Statistical Abstract, p. 216 (Table 375); see also Allen Guttmann, Sports Spectators (Columbia University Press, 1986]: passim; Dick Schaap, “Sports and Television: The Perfect Marriage,” in Marvin Barrett, ed., The Politics of Broadcasting (Crowell, 1973), pp. 197-202.

  [Podell on sportswatching]: Podell, “Preface,” in Podell, ed., Sports in America (H. W. Wilson Co., 1986), pp. 5-6, quoted at p. 5.

  [“Wholly intelligible”]: Larry Gerlach, “Telecommunications and Sports,” in Podell, pp. 66-74, quoted at p. 73.

  [Lipsky on sports]: Lipsky, How We Play the Game: Why Sports Dominate American Life (Beacon Press, 1981), p. 63.

  611 [“Agitate a bag of wind”]: quoted in Gerlach, p. 72.

  [Advertising rate for 1988 football championship]: New York Times, January 25, 1988, p. C7.

  [Football and baseball TV contracts]: Robert Kilborn. Jr., “Trying to Limit Out-of-the-Ballpark Salaries in Professional Sports,” in Podell, pp. 74-77, esp. p. 75. [1984 Olympics’ economic impact]: Roger Rosenblatt, “Why We Play These Games,” in ibid, pp. 135-43, esp. p. 35.

  [Bird’s worth]: Kilborn, p. 76.

  [TV advertising]: W. Russell Neuman, The Paradox of Mass Politics (Harvard University Press, 1986), p. 145; see Todd Gitlin, “Car Commercials and Miami Vice: ‘We Build Excitement,’“ in Gitlin, ed., Watching Television (Pantheon, 1986), pp. 136-61; Statistical Abstract, pp. 538 (Table 926), 539 (Tables 928-30).

  [“Economics of television”]: Neuman, p. 135.

  612 [Wall Street Journal circulat
ion]: James MacGregor Burns, J. W. Peltason, and Thomas E. Cronin, Government By the People, 13th ed. (Prentice-Hall, 1987), p. 244 (table).

  [USA Today]: Peter Prichard, The Making of McPaper: The Inside Story of USA Today (Andrews, McMeel & Parker, 1987).

  [Media concentration]: Michael Parenti, Inventing Reality: The Politics of the Mass Media (St. Martin’s Press, 1986), pp. 27-32, esp. p. 27; see also Ben H. Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly (Beacon Press, 1983).

  [Broder on the press]: Broder, Behind the Front Page: A Candid Look at How the News Is Made (Simon and Schuster, 1987), p. 12.

  [Television watching]: Morris Janowitz, The Last Half-Century: Societal Change and Politics in America (University of Chicago Press, 1978), pp. 337-38, quoted at p. 337; Statistical Abstract, p. 531 (Table 907); see also Benjamin Stein, “This Is Not Your Life: Television as the Third Parent,” Public Opinion, vol. 9, no. 4 (November-December 1986), pp. 4 1-42; Joshua Meyrowitz, “The 19-Inch Neighborhood,” Newsweek, vol. 106, no. 4 (July 22, 1985), p. 8.

  [TV in the workplace]: Newsweek, vol. 111, no. 1 (January 4, 1988), pp. 34-35.

  613 [Politicians and the electronic media]: Edwin Diamond and Stephen Bates, The Spot: The Rise of Political Advertising on Television (MIT Press, 1984); Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Packaging the Presidency (Oxford University Press, 1984); Austin Ranney, Channels of Power: The Impact of Television on American Politics (Basic Books, 1983); Ronald Berkman and Laura W. Kilch, Politics in the Media Age (McGraw-Hill, 1986); Timothy E. Cook, “Marketing the Members: Evolving Media Strategies in the House of Representatives,” unpublished typescript, presented at the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, April 18-20, 1985; Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (Viking, 1985), ch. 9; Broder, passim; Keith Blume, The Presidential Election Show (Bergin & Garvey, 1985); Anne Haskell, “Congress Exploits the New Media,” Proceedings (Institute of Politics, John F. Kennedy School of Government, 1981-82), pp. 56-59.