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Question 1 a. President Kennedy did not launch a massive foreign aid program when he assumed office in 1961. In 1961, President Kennedy implemented the Alliance for Progress, which was a modest economic assistance and development program for Latin America that ultimately produced disappointing results for the region. b. In 1961, President Kennedy did not propose large-scale public works government spending programs to stimulate the economy. He did seek Congressional approval of moderate increases in medical assistance for the aged and enhanced federal aid to education, but these proposals were blocked in Congress. c. Correct answer. Upon entering office in 1961, President Kennedy proposed to Congress a general tax-cut to stimulate the sluggish economy. Kennedy accepted the argument of big business groups and his more conservative advisers that by slashing individual tax rates, he would be putting more money directly into the hands of individual Americans that would, in turn, be used for increased domestic consumer spending and investment in producing additional goods and services. The tax cut was ultimately passed in 1964 under President Johnson. d. President Kennedy promoted and won approval for multibillion-dollar government project to land an American on the moon and substantially expand the breadth of the American space program. In 1969, this multi-billion dollar government investment in the American space program resulted in two Americans triumphantly planting the U.S. flag and their own footprints on the moon’s surface. e. President Kennedy sought and secured Congressional passage of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 that authorized tariff cuts of up to 50 percent on imported goods from European Common Market countries. Question 2 a. President Kennedy faced daunting political challenges and cloudy re-election prospects as the 1964 presidential election approached. He feared that even the tepid steps he had taken to advance social reform and civil rights legislation in Congress would endanger his re-election prospects and those of his Democratic Congressional colleagues, particularly those representing traditionally Democratic districts in the South. b. Leaders of the civil rights movement in the early 1960s requested that Kennedy submit and make a presidential push for civil rights legislation in Congress and to secure the safety of civil rights organizers, volunteers, and leaders working in the increasingly violent South. These moderate political demands by mainstream, centrist leaders of the civil rights movement cannot reasonably be described as militant or extremist. In fact, public support for federal civil rights laws and federal police protection of civil rights organizers and volunteers increased after millions of Americans witnessed the televised violent responses of Southern white political authorities and individual white Southerners to civil rights demonstrations and activities in the South. c. Vice President Lyndon Johnson did not lobby against civil rights and social reform legislation behind President Kennedy’s back during his tenure as Kennedy’s vice president. Indeed, after assuming the presidency, following Kennedy’s assassination, Lyndon Johnson persuaded Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, government health insurance for the elderly and for the poor, and increased federal aid to education. d. Correct answer. Conservative Southern Democrats, who were generally opposed to all federal civil rights legislation, controlled key Congressional committees and leadership positions. Kennedy feared that if he confronted these influential Southern Democratic Congressional leaders over civil rights legislation, his social and economic reform legislation, particularly his medical and educational assistance bills, would never win Congressional approval. e. The Democrats controlled the Senate during Kennedy’s tenure as president. It was the obstructionist tactics and active opposition of Southern Democrats in the Senate and House that were largely responsible for blocking many of Kennedy’s legislative civil rights and social reform proposals. Question 3 a. Neither the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, nor the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, represented the first test of the Kennedy administration’s new national security strategy of flexible response. The failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba was an inherited scheme from the Eisenhower administration to launch a CIA-backed covert operation to topple Fidel Castro from power by invading Cuba with anti-communist exiles. The high-stakes nuclear and diplomatic confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1962, over the discovery of Soviet missiles in Cuba, placed the world on the brink of nuclear annihilation and left the United States without any flexible response military options if the Soviets had refused to withdraw their missiles from Cuba. b. President Kennedy confronted very limited and inflexible military options as he deliberated about the proper American response to the Laotian civil war in 1961. Kennedy’s frustration in learning that he had insufficient American military forces to extinguish this communist insurrection in Laos led to the subsequent development of the Kennedy administration strategy of flexible response—that is, producing an array of flexible military options that could be matched to address the precise severity of the current foreign crisis. c. Correct answer. President Kennedy’s decision, late in 1961, to order a sharp increase in the number of American military advisers (U.S. troops) in South Vietnam represented the first pivotal test of President Kennedy’s new national strategy of flexible response. The Kennedy administration expected that the introduction of a substantial number of American military troops would stabilize the faltering, authoritarian, corrupt, pro-American Diem government in South Vietnam and provide President Diem with the maneuverability necessary to institute needed political reforms. The Kennedy administration shortly thereafter became increasingly disenchanted with the repressive Diem regime and supported a successful military coup against Diem to try to stave off a growing communist insurrection in South Vietnam. d. The political instability and armed conflict that plagued Southeast Asia during the Kennedy administration did not include the pro-American nation of Thailand, where America enjoyed substantial support from its succession of military leaders. e. The political instability and armed conflict in Cambodia did not erupt until the Vietnam War intensified and spilled over into Cambodia during the late 1960s (following the Kennedy administration), and it continued through the 1970s with genocidal consequences for the victimized Cambodian people. Question 4 a. Correct answer. The negotiated agreement to end the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 failed to include any American agreement to abandon the American military base at Guantanamo Bay and return this property to Cuba. b. The Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was ousted from power in 1964 by hardline communist political colleagues in the Soviet Union who believed Khrushchev’s decision to remove the Soviet missiles from Cuba represented an abject political humiliation of the Soviet Union during the Cold War with the United States. c. As part of the diplomatic settlement of the Cuban missile crisis, the United States agreed not to invade Cuba. d. Following the Cuban missile crisis, the Soviet Union launched a massive military expansion program of its conventional and nuclear forces in order to increase its future military and political leverage with the United States in the event that a future geopolitical conflict deteriorated into another nuclear standoff. e. Following the withdrawal of the Soviet missiles from Cuba, the United States removed from Turkey its own missiles which had been targeted on the Soviet Union. Question 5 a. Correct answer. The Freedom Riders were groups of African American and white volunteers of the civil rights movement who, starting in 1960, organized efforts throughout the South to end segregation in interstate bus transportation. Their desegregation efforts were met with violent resistance from white Southerners throughout the South. Leaders of the civil rights movement welcomed and supported the decision of the Kennedy administration, in the summer of 1961, to send federal marshals to protect the Freedom Riders. b. Attorney General Robert Kennedy actually ordered the FBI to wiretap Martin Luther King, Jr.’s telephone in 1963 because he feared Dr. King had communist affiliations that would be politically embarrassing if they had been revealed. Robert Kennedy never ordered the wiretap to be removed during the Kennedy administration. c. The Voting Rights Act was passed by Congress in 1965 and signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson. d. Attorney General Robert Kennedy and President John F. Kennedy never traveled to the South during the Kennedy administration to demonstrate their support for the efforts of civil rights advocates to register black voters. e. President Kennedy never issued an executive order desegregating all public schools in the United States. Question 6 a. While Martin Luther King, Jr. strongly supported Congressional passage of subsequent voting rights legislation in 1965, the immediate political goal of the March on Washington in 1963 was to mobilize popular support to persuade Congress to pass the pending, stalled civil rights bill that would end segregation and eliminate racial discrimination in public facilities and employment. b. Correct answer. The political objective of the 1963 March on Washington, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., was to mobilize popular support behind the pending, stalled civil rights bill in Congress that would end legal segregation and eliminate racial discrimination in public facilities and employment. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 represented the legislative realization of this political objective by Dr. King and his supporters in the civil rights movement. c. While the Kennedy administration had increased U.S. involvement in Vietnam by the summer of 1963, American military and political involvement in Vietnam had yet to reach a level of deadly intensity and exorbitant cost to spur Dr. King to organize a massive public demonstration against it. In 1963, Dr. King’s overriding political objective was Congressional passage of the civil rights bill, and he did not want to imperil this objective by publicly confronting the Kennedy administration over its policy in Vietnam. d. The Kennedy administration did not support such a substantial governmentfinanced public works employment program, and Dr. King believed it would be politically advisable to make Congressional passage of the stalled civil rights bill the central political goal of the March on Washington in August 1963. e. The effort to mobilize popular support behind federal fair housing legislation represented the last Congressional civil rights legislative priority advanced by Dr. King and civil rights leaders during the 1960s. It culminated with passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin. Question 7 a. Correct answer. President Lyndon Johnson’s experience as the Democratic Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate provided him with masterful experience in coaxing, cajoling, and bargaining with his former Democratic Senatorial colleagues to overcome their obstructionist political strategies and gain passage of stalled civil rights and tax reform legislation. b. While Lyndon Johnson served as a young Democratic member of the House of Representatives in the late 1930s and 1940s, it was as Democratic Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate from 1954 to 1960 that he learned how to wield and exercise political power, establish useful long-term political relationships with his Senate colleagues, and effectively display his powerful abilities of political persuasion. c. Lyndon Johnson never served as Governor of Texas. d. President Johnson’s frustrating and powerless experience as Vice President of United States under President Kennedy was irrelevant to developing the political skills that enabled President Johnson to secure passage of Kennedy’s stalled civil rights and tax reform legislation. e. President Johnson never worked as a wealthy Texas businessman. He worked as a teacher early in his professional career. Question 8 a. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of 1964 was not the political equivalent of a formal Congressional declaration of war against North Vietnam. Instead, Congress provided President Johnson with unchecked, enormous discretion to respond militarily to two allegedly unprovoked North Vietnamese attacks on two U.S. naval destroyers operating in the Gulf of Tonkin. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution amounted to an abdication of Congress’s war-making powers and gave President Johnson a blank check to use unlimited future force in Southeast Asia. b. Correct answer. By passing the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964, Congress gave President Johnson unlimited and unchecked discretion to use further military force in Vietnam without having to seek a formal declaration of war from Congress. Over the next four years, President Johnson used this Congressional blank check to expand gradually and progressively American military, political, and economic participation in the Vietnam War. c. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of 1964 did not include a provision giving the U.S. military the authority to use tactical nuclear weapons in response to this dubious U.S.-North Vietnamese naval incident. d. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of 1964 amounted to an unprecedented granting of constitutional war-declaring authority by Congress to President Johnson because the open-ended Resolution permitted President Johnson to determine unilaterally the intensity, duration, and scope of American military involvement in Vietnam. Congress never declared war on North Vietnam throughout the entire duration of American military involvement in Vietnam. e. The open-ended and all-purpose text of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of 1964 left the specific long-term political goals of American military involvement in Vietnam to be determined exclusively by President Johnson and permitted the president to escalate American military involvement in Vietnam without the requirement he seek additional specific Congressional authorization. Question 9 a. In the decade following the passage of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs, the overall poverty rate declined, Medicare reduced substantially the incidence of poverty among America’s elderly, Medicaid provided health insurance coverage for the indigent, and Project Head Start significantly improved the educational achievement of underprivileged children. b. The significant reductions in poverty rates among the elderly, youths, and in minority communities, achieved over the decade after the implementation of Great Society programs, demonstrated that the Johnson administration’s massive expenditure of public funds had made a significant positive impact on poverty in America. c. Correct answer. Medicare made substantial improvements in the health and long-term quality of life of elders in America. Medicaid extended government health insurance for the poor. Project Head Start and significant increases in federal aid to education materially improved the educational performances of underprivileged children and youth. d. The above-described achievements in improving health care coverage for the elderly and the poor, upgrading educational achievement for underprivileged children youth, and reducing overall poverty rates in the ensuing decade in America can be attributed to the successful implementation of several Great Society health insurance, educational assistance, and economic development government programs. The conservative critique of rampant waste, fraud, and abuse undermining the effectiveness of all Great Society programs is overstated. e. The Great Society programs actually helped produce a statistically significant drop in the overall poverty rate over the ensuing decade. Question 10 a. Correct answer. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 included a provision that prohibited sexual discrimination in public facilities and employment that proved to be a useful legal instrument in women’s subsequent legal battles against sexual discrimination in employment, government-funded education, and public accommodations. b. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibited states and localities from instituting election devices, coercive actions, and discriminatory procedures that were designed to deny or abridge voting rights on the basis of race. The Act was targeted to halt the widespread electoral disenfranchisement of AfricanAmericans who lived in the South by states and municipalities that used ballot-denying procedures, such as the poll tax, literacy tests, and physical intimidation and violence against African American voters. c. The Violence Against Women Act was passed by Congress in 1994 and signed into law by President Clinton. d. Title IX of the Education Amendments was passed in 1972 by Congress and signed into law by President Richard Nixon. e. The educational and employment gains made by women, as a result of federal and state government-sponsored affirmative action policies, actually occurred during the 1970s, following the conclusion of the Johnson administration. Question 11 a. Immediately following the Watts riot in 1965, advocates of the revolutionary Black Power movement and proponents of black separatism and violent struggle became increasingly influential in the civil rights movement. This period of the mid-late 1960s also witnessed the outbreak of violent and destructive riots in the African-American ghettos of several U.S. cities and confrontational demands issued by more militant civil rights leaders for economic justice and the creation of jobs for unemployed African-Americans. b. The Watts riot in 1965 did signal the start of a shift of geographical and strategic focus by African-American civil rights leaders and advocates. The focus of these African American civil rights leaders and advocates evolved from concentrating their efforts on guaranteeing the political civil rights of disenfranchised African Americans in the South to addressing the economic demands and police brutality experienced by unemployed, poor, and frustrated African Americans residing in northern, Midwestern, and western cities. c. The emergence of radical Black Nationalist organizations, such as the Nation of Islam; the creation of the violent Black Panther political party; and the transformation of the Black Power movement into a black separatist movement, during the mid-late 1960s, signaled the development of a radicalized, black separatist wing of civil rights movement around the time of the Watts riot. d. Police brutality and decades of economic deprivations experienced by African-Americans living in the inner-city black neighborhood of Watts in Los Angeles precipitated the outbreak of the Watts riot in 1965. e. Correct answer. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his fellow moderate civil rights leaders never abandoned their commitment to non-violent civil disobedience, economic boycotts, and other peaceful means of political advocacy to achieve civil rights for African-Americans. Radical civil rights leaders, such as Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael, criticized Dr. King and his fellow mainstream civil rights leaders for failing to adopting violent tactics and revolutionary goals to achieve civil rights and economic opportunities for African-Americans. Question 12 a. Correct answer. The widely viewed televised hearings conducted by Senator William Fulbright before his Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 1966 and 1967 featured the testimony of many prominent critics of the Johnson Vietnam war policy. The revelations of the Fulbright Senate hearings generated increased public skepticism about the Johnson administration’s claims of political and military progress in Vietnam and helped spur growing opposition by Americans to continued U.S. military and political involvement in Vietnam. b. Vice President Hubert Humphrey refused to break publicly with President Johnson’s war policy in Vietnam during the entire second term of Johnson’s presidency, and he blocked the adoption of an antiwar platform plank at the Democratic National Convention of 1968. c. The Senate Armed Services Committee, led by Georgia Sen. Richard Russell, did not hold a series of televised Senate hearings in 1966 and 1967 designed to educate the public about the history of American involvement in Vietnam and spark public skepticism about the veracity of Johnson administration claims concerning American political and military progress in Vietnam. d. Senator Eugene McCarthy’s insurgent antiwar political campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968 capitalized on the existence of an already highly educated and fully mobilized antiwar movement, led by young men and women who drew their intellectual sustenance, in part, from the Vietnam war policy revelations of the Senate Armed Services Committee hearings held by Senator Fulbright in 1966 and 1967. e. Senator Robert Kennedy entered the Democratic contest for the presidential nomination in March 1968. By March 1968, a majority of Americans had already developed a profound skepticism and lack of confidence in the Vietnam War policies of the Johnson administration because of increasing and unsustainable American war casualties, negligible political progress towards a peace settlement in Vietnam, and the politically demoralizing and militarily shocking Tet offensive launched by the Viet Cong in January 1968. Question 13 a. Correct answer. The Tet offensive involved the launching of wave of highly coordinated, startling, and bloody armed attacks by the Viet Cong and their communist North Vietnamese allies against twenty-seven South Vietnamese cities, including the capital, Saigon, in late January 1968. While American and South Vietnamese eventually repelled the Viet Cong and their North Vietnamese allies, the Tet offensive represented an enormous political defeat for the Johnson administration because it galvanized vehement public opposition to the gradual escalation policies of President Johnson and caused American public opinion to demand a swift conclusion to the war. b. The revelation of the secret bombing of Cambodia by the Nixon administration did not occur until July 1973. c. U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had expressed private skepticism and unease within the Johnson administration about the wisdom and effectiveness of the administration’s military and political strategy in Vietnam prior to his resignation early in 1968. The quiet easing out of the agonized McNamara as Secretary of Defense by President Johnson did not contribute significantly to galvanizing public opinion against President Johnson’s Vietnam War policies because McNamara chose not to make a contemporaneous public break with President Johnson over the conduct of the war. d. The historical evidence strongly suggesting that North Vietnamese military forces had acted in self-defense in response to the first August 1964 Gulf of Tonkin attack by North Vietnamese forces on two U.S. destroyers and that the second attack never happened was not uncovered and publicized until well after the Johnson administration had left office. e. The existence of a domestic counterintelligence campaign conducted by the FBI against the element of the domestic peace movement was not revealed until the late 1970s, after the conclusion of the Vietnam War. Question 14 a. Women and men believed they had greater freedom to satisfy their sexual desires with multiple, uncommitted sexual partners because the introduction and availability of the birth control pill during the 1960s removed the inhibition of likely procreation as a restraint on the complete unleashing of male and female sexual desire during this period of cultural upheaval. b. The development of the gay and lesbian liberation movement in the 1960s can be attributed, in part, to the demand of gays and lesbians for equal rights and protection of the laws in the wake of widespread police misconduct, legal prosecutions, and employment and educational discrimination practiced against them during this period. c. The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) emerged in the early 1960s as a prominent and peaceful leftist student organization advocating economic and social policies to reduce poverty, redistribute wealth equitably in America, and immediately end the Vietnam War. By the end of the 1960s, the SDS had splintered and devolved into competing factions including the underground violent political revolutionary organization called the Weathermen. d. The Free Speech Movement that emerged at the University of California at Berkeley in 1964 marked the onset of mass student mobilizations on college campuses during the 1960s dedicated to opening up campus space for political debate, reducing the influence of corporate interests and enhancing humane values in university operations, and ending the war in Vietnam. e. Correct answer. The religious authority and cultural influence of liberal Protestant churches waned during the 1960s as conservative evangelical churches experienced a concurrent rise in religious authority and secular professionals and academic professionals replaced these liberal Protestant churches as the arbiters of cultural authority.