{"id":1908,"date":"2021-08-02T02:27:48","date_gmt":"2021-08-02T02:27:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/?post_type=chapter&#038;p=1908"},"modified":"2022-09-28T03:06:26","modified_gmt":"2022-09-28T03:06:26","slug":"conservatism-continues-with-george-h-w-bush","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/chapter\/conservatism-continues-with-george-h-w-bush\/","title":{"raw":"Conservatism Continues With George H.W. Bush","rendered":"Conservatism Continues With George H.W. Bush"},"content":{"raw":"<div class=\"textbox learning-objectives\">\r\n<h3>Learning Objectives<\/h3>\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>Explain key domestic policy issues of the Bush presidency<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<h2>Reagan's Domestic Legacy<\/h2>\r\nReagan left office in 1988 with the Cold War waning and the economy booming. Unemployment had dipped to 5 percent by 1988.\u00a0Between 1981 and 1986, gas prices fell from $1.38 per gallon to 95\u00a2.\u00a0The stock market recovered from the crash, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average\u2014which stood at 950 in 1981\u2014reached 2,239 by the end of Reagan\u2019s second term.\u00a0Yet the economic gains of the decade were unequally distributed. The top fifth of households enjoyed rising incomes while the rest stagnated or declined.\u00a0In constant dollars, annual chief executive officer (CEO) pay rose from $3 million in 1980 to roughly $12 million during Reagan\u2019s last year in the White House.\u00a0Between 1985 and 1989 the number of Americans living in poverty remained steady at thirty-three million.\u00a0Real per capita money income grew at only 2 percent per year, a rate roughly equal to the Carter years.\u00a0The American economy saw more jobs created than lost during the 1980s, but half of the jobs eliminated were in high-paying industries.\u00a0Furthermore, half of the new jobs failed to pay wages above the poverty line. The economic divide was most acute for African Americans and Latinos, one-third of whom qualified as poor.\r\n\r\nThe triumph of the right proved incomplete. The number of government employees actually increased under Reagan. With more than 80 percent of the federal budget committed to defense, entitlement programs, and interest on the national debt, the political right\u2019s goal of deficit elimination floundered for lack of substantial areas to cut.\u00a0Between 1980 and 1989 the national debt rose from $914 billion to $2.7 trillion.\u00a0Despite steep tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, the overall tax burden of the American public basically remained unchanged. Moreover, so-called regressive taxes favored by Reagan's economic advisors\u00a0actually\u00a0<em>increased<\/em>\u00a0the tax burden on low- and middle-income Americans; for example, sales tax on groceries meant that the poorest Americans were paying the same percentage of tax as the wealthy, but that extra tax more dearly impacted their struggle to feed themselves and their families.\u00a0Finally, Reagan slowed but failed to vanquish the five-decade legacy of liberal economic policies. Most New Deal and Great Society programs proved durable. The government still offered its neediest citizens a safety net, if a now continually shrinking one.\r\n<h2>Election of George H.W. Bush<\/h2>\r\nThe conservative Reagan Revolution lingered over the presidential election of 1988. At stake was the legacy of a newly empowered conservative movement, a movement that would move forward with Reagan\u2019s vice president, George H. W. Bush, who triumphed over Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis with a promise to continue the conservative work that had commenced in the 1980s.\r\n\r\nThe son of a U.S. senator from Connecticut, George H. W. Bush was a World War II veteran, president of a successful oil company, chair of the Republican National Committee, director of the CIA, and member of the House of Representatives from Texas. After failing to best Reagan in the 1980 Republican primaries, he was elected as his vice president in 1980 and again in 1984.\r\n\r\nIn 1988, Michael Dukakis, a proud liberal from Massachusetts, challenged Bush for the White House.\u00a0Dukakis ran a weak campaign. Bush, a Connecticut aristocrat who had never been fully embraced by movement conservatism, particularly the newly animated religious right, nevertheless hammered Dukakis with moral and cultural issues. Bush said Dukakis had blocked recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in Massachusetts schools and that he was a \u201ccard-carrying member\u201d of the ACLU. Bush meanwhile dispatched his eldest son, George W. Bush, as his ambassador to the religious right.\u00a0Bush won a large victory and entered the White House.\r\n\r\nBush\u2019s election signaled Americans\u2019 continued embrace of Reagan\u2019s conservative program and further evidenced the utter disarray of the Democratic Party. American liberalism, so stunningly triumphant in the 1960s, was now in full retreat. It was still, as one historian put it, the \u201cAge of Reagan.\u201d[footnote]Sean Wilentz, The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974\u20132008 (New York: HarperCollins, 2008).[\/footnote]\r\n<h3>Bush's Presidency<\/h3>\r\n<p id=\"fs-idm267359952\">Although he promised to carry on Reagan\u2019s economic legacy, the problems Bush inherited made it difficult to do so. Reagan\u2019s policies of cutting taxes and increasing defense spending had exploded the federal budget deficit, making it three times larger in 1989 than when Reagan took office in 1980. Bush was further constrained by the emphatic pledge he had made at the 1988 Republican Convention\u2014\u201cread my lips: no new taxes\u201d\u2014and found himself in the difficult position of trying to balance the budget and reduce the deficit without breaking his promise. However, he also faced a Congress controlled by the Democrats, who wanted to raise taxes on the rich, while Republicans thought the government should drastically cut domestic spending.<\/p>\r\nIn October, after a brief government shutdown when Bush vetoed the budget Congress delivered, he and Congress reached a compromise with the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990. The budget included measures to reduce the deficit by both cutting government expenditures and raising taxes, effectively reneging on the \u201cno new taxes\u201d pledge. These economic constraints are one reason why Bush supported a limited domestic agenda of education reform and anti-drug efforts, relying on private volunteers and community organizations, which he referred to as \u201ca thousand points of light,\u201d to address most social problems.\r\n<h3>Bush's Domestic Policy<\/h3>\r\n<div class=\"page\" title=\"Page 877\">\r\n<div class=\"layoutArea\">\r\n<div class=\"column\">\r\n\r\nUnlike Reagan, Bush was not a natural culture warrior. Rather, he was a moderate, Connecticut-born Episcopalian, a pragmatic politician, and a life-long civil servant. He was not adept at catering to post-Reagan conservatives as his predecessor had been. Bush was more of a pragmatic politician, open to moderate reforms.\r\n\r\nTogether with a Democratic Senate, Bush broke new ground in civil rights with his support of the <strong>Americans with Disabilities Act<\/strong>, a far-reaching law that prohibited discrimination based on disability in public accommodations and provided by employers. The ADA was monumental because it not only outlawed discrimination, it also required employees to provide reasonable accommodations and to make things accessible for those with disabilities.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<div class=\"textbox examples\">\r\n<h3>Watch It: The 1991 Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA)<\/h3>\r\nThe ADA, signed by President Bush in 1991, marked a significant milestone in Civil Rights. The Capitol Crawl was a performative highlight when disabled persons climbed the steps of the U.S. Capitol to demonstrate and symbolize the barriers faced by Americans with disabilities in their everyday lives.\r\n\r\nThe Capitol Crawl (1990)\r\n\r\n<center><iframe src=\"\/\/plugin.3playmedia.com\/show?mf=8207371&amp;p3sdk_version=1.10.1&amp;p=20361&amp;pt=375&amp;video_id=qThC79iYs1U&amp;video_target=tpm-plugin-563eut88-qThC79iYs1U\" width=\"800px\" height=\"450px\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0px\" marginheight=\"0px\"><\/iframe><\/center><center>You can view the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/course-building.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/US+history+II\/JenniferKeelanvideo.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">transcript for \u201cJennifer Keelan video\u201d here (opens in new window)<\/a>.<\/center>For more information about the historical day when the act was signed, watched\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=dFKicqqVME8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">this video showing footage from the signing of the ADA<\/a> in 1991.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<h2>Affirmative Action<\/h2>\r\n<strong><span id=\"term762\" data-type=\"term\">Affirmative action, <\/span><\/strong><span id=\"term762\" data-type=\"term\">the practice of implementing policies to correct or redress discrimination against a certain group; for example, making workplaces more diverse by requiring that efforts are made to hire women or minorities. Debate and discussion about affirmative actin has ebbed and flowed since the civil rights movements, particularly when specific quotas have been set requiring that a certain number or percentage of a group come from a specific background, or when controversies arise about affirmative action giving minority applicants an advantage over others in college admissions.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\n<span id=\"term762\" data-type=\"term\">Reagan was particularly known for his opposition to affirmative action programs. He reduced funding for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, arguing that \"reverse discrimination\" resulted from these policies. However, the courts reaffirmed affirmative action policies such as quotas during his presidency. In 1986, the Supreme Court ruled that courts could order race-based quotas to fight discrimination in worker unions in <em>Sheet Metal Workers' International Association v. EEOC.<\/em>\u00a0In 1987, in <em>Johnson v. Transportation Agency<\/em>, Santa Clara County, California, 480 U.S. 616, the Supreme Court ruled that sex or race was a factor that could be considered in a pool of qualified candidates by employers.<\/span>\r\n\r\nAffirmative action also returned as an issue due to a 1989 Supreme Court decision and subsequent discussion about another Civil Rights Act. The first Act, introduced in 1990, was criticized by Bush for pushing quotas so he did not sign it and eventually a revised Bill, the Civil Rights Act of 1991, was passed to ensure that workers' rights were protected if suing their employers for discrimination.\r\n<div class=\"textbox key-takeaways\">\r\n<h3>Affirmative Action<\/h3>\r\nAffirmative Action seeks to level the laying field to allow non-White people, especially African Americans, to receive special support in areas deemed crucial to economic success like university admissions and employment opportunities. Nevertheless, many critics see this policy as unconstitutional and a threat to the ideal of success based on merit. For information from both sides of the issue see\u00a0<a class=\"target-chapter\" href=\"https:\/\/cnx.org\/contents\/36004586-651c-4ded-af87-203aca22d946@14.5:260368a2-3954-4118-b058-4232eea0f3d7@4\" data-page=\"503\">Is Affirmative Action Justified?<\/a>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<h3>Justice Clarence Thomas<\/h3>\r\nPresident Bush\u2019s weaknesses as a culture warrior were on full display during the controversy that erupted following his nomination of a new Supreme Court judge. In 1991, Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first Black American ever to sit on the Supreme Court, opted to retire, thus opening a position on the court. Thinking he was doing the prudent thing by appealing to multiple interests, Bush nominated Clarence Thomas, another Black American but also a strong social conservative. The decision to nominate Thomas, however, proved to be anything but prudent. During Thomas\u2019 confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Anita Hill, a lawyer who had worked for Thomas when he was chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), came forward with allegations that he had sexually harassed her when he was her supervisor. Thomas denied the accusations and referred to the televised hearings as a \"high tech lynching.\" He survived the controversy and was appointed to the Supreme Court by a narrow Senate vote of fifty-two to forty- eight. Hill, also African American, noted later in frustration: \u201cI had a gender, he had a race.\u201d In the aftermath, however, sexual harassment of women in the workplace gained public attention, and harassment complaints made to the EEOC increased by 50 percent by the fall of 1992. The controversy also reflected poorly on President Bush and may have hurt him with female voters in 1992.\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-size: 1rem; text-align: initial;\">By 1992, many had come to doubt that President George H. W. Bush could solve America\u2019s problems. He had alienated conservative Republicans by breaking his pledge not to raise taxes. Furthermore, despite living much of his adult life in Texas, he could not overcome the stereotypes associated with his privileged New England and Ivy League background, which hurt him among working-class Reagan Democrats.<\/span>\r\n<div class=\"textbox tryit\">\r\n<h3>Try It<\/h3>\r\nhttps:\/\/assess.lumenlearning.com\/practice\/f770129f-ff68-4ceb-90e8-125b197961af\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<div class=\"textbox learning-objectives\">\r\n<h3>Glossary<\/h3>\r\n<strong>Americans with Disabilities Act (<\/strong><mtext>ADA<\/mtext><strong>): <\/strong>an act passed by Congress\u00a0in 1990 and signed by George Bush in 1991, the ADA. banned discrimination against people with disabilities, required employers to make reasonable accommodations, and mandated accessibility for public accommodations\r\n\r\n<strong><span id=\"term762\" data-type=\"term\">affirmative action:<\/span><\/strong> a set of policies and practices implemented by organizations, and sometimes mandated by government policy, with the intention of including specific groups based on their gender, race, sexuality, creed or nationality in areas in which they are underrepresented\r\n\r\n<\/div>","rendered":"<div class=\"textbox learning-objectives\">\n<h3>Learning Objectives<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Explain key domestic policy issues of the Bush presidency<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<h2>Reagan&#8217;s Domestic Legacy<\/h2>\n<p>Reagan left office in 1988 with the Cold War waning and the economy booming. Unemployment had dipped to 5 percent by 1988.\u00a0Between 1981 and 1986, gas prices fell from $1.38 per gallon to 95\u00a2.\u00a0The stock market recovered from the crash, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average\u2014which stood at 950 in 1981\u2014reached 2,239 by the end of Reagan\u2019s second term.\u00a0Yet the economic gains of the decade were unequally distributed. The top fifth of households enjoyed rising incomes while the rest stagnated or declined.\u00a0In constant dollars, annual chief executive officer (CEO) pay rose from $3 million in 1980 to roughly $12 million during Reagan\u2019s last year in the White House.\u00a0Between 1985 and 1989 the number of Americans living in poverty remained steady at thirty-three million.\u00a0Real per capita money income grew at only 2 percent per year, a rate roughly equal to the Carter years.\u00a0The American economy saw more jobs created than lost during the 1980s, but half of the jobs eliminated were in high-paying industries.\u00a0Furthermore, half of the new jobs failed to pay wages above the poverty line. The economic divide was most acute for African Americans and Latinos, one-third of whom qualified as poor.<\/p>\n<p>The triumph of the right proved incomplete. The number of government employees actually increased under Reagan. With more than 80 percent of the federal budget committed to defense, entitlement programs, and interest on the national debt, the political right\u2019s goal of deficit elimination floundered for lack of substantial areas to cut.\u00a0Between 1980 and 1989 the national debt rose from $914 billion to $2.7 trillion.\u00a0Despite steep tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, the overall tax burden of the American public basically remained unchanged. Moreover, so-called regressive taxes favored by Reagan&#8217;s economic advisors\u00a0actually\u00a0<em>increased<\/em>\u00a0the tax burden on low- and middle-income Americans; for example, sales tax on groceries meant that the poorest Americans were paying the same percentage of tax as the wealthy, but that extra tax more dearly impacted their struggle to feed themselves and their families.\u00a0Finally, Reagan slowed but failed to vanquish the five-decade legacy of liberal economic policies. Most New Deal and Great Society programs proved durable. The government still offered its neediest citizens a safety net, if a now continually shrinking one.<\/p>\n<h2>Election of George H.W. Bush<\/h2>\n<p>The conservative Reagan Revolution lingered over the presidential election of 1988. At stake was the legacy of a newly empowered conservative movement, a movement that would move forward with Reagan\u2019s vice president, George H. W. Bush, who triumphed over Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis with a promise to continue the conservative work that had commenced in the 1980s.<\/p>\n<p>The son of a U.S. senator from Connecticut, George H. W. Bush was a World War II veteran, president of a successful oil company, chair of the Republican National Committee, director of the CIA, and member of the House of Representatives from Texas. After failing to best Reagan in the 1980 Republican primaries, he was elected as his vice president in 1980 and again in 1984.<\/p>\n<p>In 1988, Michael Dukakis, a proud liberal from Massachusetts, challenged Bush for the White House.\u00a0Dukakis ran a weak campaign. Bush, a Connecticut aristocrat who had never been fully embraced by movement conservatism, particularly the newly animated religious right, nevertheless hammered Dukakis with moral and cultural issues. Bush said Dukakis had blocked recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in Massachusetts schools and that he was a \u201ccard-carrying member\u201d of the ACLU. Bush meanwhile dispatched his eldest son, George W. Bush, as his ambassador to the religious right.\u00a0Bush won a large victory and entered the White House.<\/p>\n<p>Bush\u2019s election signaled Americans\u2019 continued embrace of Reagan\u2019s conservative program and further evidenced the utter disarray of the Democratic Party. American liberalism, so stunningly triumphant in the 1960s, was now in full retreat. It was still, as one historian put it, the \u201cAge of Reagan.\u201d<a class=\"footnote\" title=\"Sean Wilentz, The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974\u20132008 (New York: HarperCollins, 2008).\" id=\"return-footnote-1908-1\" href=\"#footnote-1908-1\" aria-label=\"Footnote 1\"><sup class=\"footnote\">[1]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n<h3>Bush&#8217;s Presidency<\/h3>\n<p id=\"fs-idm267359952\">Although he promised to carry on Reagan\u2019s economic legacy, the problems Bush inherited made it difficult to do so. Reagan\u2019s policies of cutting taxes and increasing defense spending had exploded the federal budget deficit, making it three times larger in 1989 than when Reagan took office in 1980. Bush was further constrained by the emphatic pledge he had made at the 1988 Republican Convention\u2014\u201cread my lips: no new taxes\u201d\u2014and found himself in the difficult position of trying to balance the budget and reduce the deficit without breaking his promise. However, he also faced a Congress controlled by the Democrats, who wanted to raise taxes on the rich, while Republicans thought the government should drastically cut domestic spending.<\/p>\n<p>In October, after a brief government shutdown when Bush vetoed the budget Congress delivered, he and Congress reached a compromise with the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990. The budget included measures to reduce the deficit by both cutting government expenditures and raising taxes, effectively reneging on the \u201cno new taxes\u201d pledge. These economic constraints are one reason why Bush supported a limited domestic agenda of education reform and anti-drug efforts, relying on private volunteers and community organizations, which he referred to as \u201ca thousand points of light,\u201d to address most social problems.<\/p>\n<h3>Bush&#8217;s Domestic Policy<\/h3>\n<div class=\"page\" title=\"Page 877\">\n<div class=\"layoutArea\">\n<div class=\"column\">\n<p>Unlike Reagan, Bush was not a natural culture warrior. Rather, he was a moderate, Connecticut-born Episcopalian, a pragmatic politician, and a life-long civil servant. He was not adept at catering to post-Reagan conservatives as his predecessor had been. Bush was more of a pragmatic politician, open to moderate reforms.<\/p>\n<p>Together with a Democratic Senate, Bush broke new ground in civil rights with his support of the <strong>Americans with Disabilities Act<\/strong>, a far-reaching law that prohibited discrimination based on disability in public accommodations and provided by employers. The ADA was monumental because it not only outlawed discrimination, it also required employees to provide reasonable accommodations and to make things accessible for those with disabilities.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"textbox examples\">\n<h3>Watch It: The 1991 Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA)<\/h3>\n<p>The ADA, signed by President Bush in 1991, marked a significant milestone in Civil Rights. The Capitol Crawl was a performative highlight when disabled persons climbed the steps of the U.S. Capitol to demonstrate and symbolize the barriers faced by Americans with disabilities in their everyday lives.<\/p>\n<p>The Capitol Crawl (1990)<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/plugin.3playmedia.com\/show?mf=8207371&amp;p3sdk_version=1.10.1&amp;p=20361&amp;pt=375&amp;video_id=qThC79iYs1U&amp;video_target=tpm-plugin-563eut88-qThC79iYs1U\" width=\"800px\" height=\"450px\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0px\" marginheight=\"0px\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\">You can view the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/course-building.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/US+history+II\/JenniferKeelanvideo.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">transcript for \u201cJennifer Keelan video\u201d here (opens in new window)<\/a>.<\/div>\n<p>For more information about the historical day when the act was signed, watched\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=dFKicqqVME8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">this video showing footage from the signing of the ADA<\/a> in 1991.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<h2>Affirmative Action<\/h2>\n<p><strong><span id=\"term762\" data-type=\"term\">Affirmative action, <\/span><\/strong><span id=\"term762\" data-type=\"term\">the practice of implementing policies to correct or redress discrimination against a certain group; for example, making workplaces more diverse by requiring that efforts are made to hire women or minorities. Debate and discussion about affirmative actin has ebbed and flowed since the civil rights movements, particularly when specific quotas have been set requiring that a certain number or percentage of a group come from a specific background, or when controversies arise about affirmative action giving minority applicants an advantage over others in college admissions.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span id=\"term762\" data-type=\"term\">Reagan was particularly known for his opposition to affirmative action programs. He reduced funding for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, arguing that &#8220;reverse discrimination&#8221; resulted from these policies. However, the courts reaffirmed affirmative action policies such as quotas during his presidency. In 1986, the Supreme Court ruled that courts could order race-based quotas to fight discrimination in worker unions in <em>Sheet Metal Workers&#8217; International Association v. EEOC.<\/em>\u00a0In 1987, in <em>Johnson v. Transportation Agency<\/em>, Santa Clara County, California, 480 U.S. 616, the Supreme Court ruled that sex or race was a factor that could be considered in a pool of qualified candidates by employers.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Affirmative action also returned as an issue due to a 1989 Supreme Court decision and subsequent discussion about another Civil Rights Act. The first Act, introduced in 1990, was criticized by Bush for pushing quotas so he did not sign it and eventually a revised Bill, the Civil Rights Act of 1991, was passed to ensure that workers&#8217; rights were protected if suing their employers for discrimination.<\/p>\n<div class=\"textbox key-takeaways\">\n<h3>Affirmative Action<\/h3>\n<p>Affirmative Action seeks to level the laying field to allow non-White people, especially African Americans, to receive special support in areas deemed crucial to economic success like university admissions and employment opportunities. Nevertheless, many critics see this policy as unconstitutional and a threat to the ideal of success based on merit. For information from both sides of the issue see\u00a0<a class=\"target-chapter\" href=\"https:\/\/cnx.org\/contents\/36004586-651c-4ded-af87-203aca22d946@14.5:260368a2-3954-4118-b058-4232eea0f3d7@4\" data-page=\"503\">Is Affirmative Action Justified?<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<h3>Justice Clarence Thomas<\/h3>\n<p>President Bush\u2019s weaknesses as a culture warrior were on full display during the controversy that erupted following his nomination of a new Supreme Court judge. In 1991, Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first Black American ever to sit on the Supreme Court, opted to retire, thus opening a position on the court. Thinking he was doing the prudent thing by appealing to multiple interests, Bush nominated Clarence Thomas, another Black American but also a strong social conservative. The decision to nominate Thomas, however, proved to be anything but prudent. During Thomas\u2019 confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Anita Hill, a lawyer who had worked for Thomas when he was chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), came forward with allegations that he had sexually harassed her when he was her supervisor. Thomas denied the accusations and referred to the televised hearings as a &#8220;high tech lynching.&#8221; He survived the controversy and was appointed to the Supreme Court by a narrow Senate vote of fifty-two to forty- eight. Hill, also African American, noted later in frustration: \u201cI had a gender, he had a race.\u201d In the aftermath, however, sexual harassment of women in the workplace gained public attention, and harassment complaints made to the EEOC increased by 50 percent by the fall of 1992. The controversy also reflected poorly on President Bush and may have hurt him with female voters in 1992.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 1rem; text-align: initial;\">By 1992, many had come to doubt that President George H. W. Bush could solve America\u2019s problems. He had alienated conservative Republicans by breaking his pledge not to raise taxes. Furthermore, despite living much of his adult life in Texas, he could not overcome the stereotypes associated with his privileged New England and Ivy League background, which hurt him among working-class Reagan Democrats.<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"textbox tryit\">\n<h3>Try It<\/h3>\n<p>\t<iframe id=\"assessment_practice_f770129f-ff68-4ceb-90e8-125b197961af\" class=\"resizable\" src=\"https:\/\/assess.lumenlearning.com\/practice\/f770129f-ff68-4ceb-90e8-125b197961af?iframe_resize_id=assessment_practice_id_f770129f-ff68-4ceb-90e8-125b197961af\" frameborder=\"0\" style=\"border:none;width:100%;height:100%;min-height:300px;\"><br \/>\n\t<\/iframe><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"textbox learning-objectives\">\n<h3>Glossary<\/h3>\n<p><strong>Americans with Disabilities Act (<\/strong>ADA<strong>): <\/strong>an act passed by Congress\u00a0in 1990 and signed by George Bush in 1991, the ADA. banned discrimination against people with disabilities, required employers to make reasonable accommodations, and mandated accessibility for public accommodations<\/p>\n<p><strong><span id=\"term762\" data-type=\"term\">affirmative action:<\/span><\/strong> a set of policies and practices implemented by organizations, and sometimes mandated by government policy, with the intention of including specific groups based on their gender, race, sexuality, creed or nationality in areas in which they are underrepresented<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t <section class=\"citations-section\" role=\"contentinfo\">\n\t\t\t <h3>Candela Citations<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t <div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t <div id=\"citation-list-1908\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <div class=\"licensing\"><div class=\"license-attribution-dropdown-subheading\">CC licensed content, Original<\/div><ul class=\"citation-list\"><li>Modification, adaptation, and original content. <strong>Authored by<\/strong>: Benjamin Lawson for Lumen Learning. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: Lumen Learning. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"license\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0\/\">CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike<\/a><\/em><\/li><\/ul><div class=\"license-attribution-dropdown-subheading\">CC licensed content, Shared previously<\/div><ul class=\"citation-list\"><li>US History. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: OpenStax. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/openstaxcollege.org\/textbooks\/us-history\">http:\/\/openstaxcollege.org\/textbooks\/us-history<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"license\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/\">CC BY: Attribution<\/a><\/em>. <strong>License Terms<\/strong>: Access for free at https:\/\/openstax.org\/books\/us-history\/pages\/1-introduction<\/li><li>The Triumph of the Right. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: American Yawp. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/text\/29-the-triumph-of-the-right\/\">https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/text\/29-the-triumph-of-the-right\/<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"license\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0\/\">CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike<\/a><\/em><\/li><li>Affirmative Action in the United States. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: Wikipedia. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Affirmative_action_in_the_United_States#Reagan_administration_(1981%E2%80%931989)\">https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Affirmative_action_in_the_United_States#Reagan_administration_(1981%E2%80%931989)<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"license\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0\/\">CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike<\/a><\/em><\/li><li>Civil Rights Act of 1991. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: Wikipedia. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1991\">https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1991<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"license\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0\/\">CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike<\/a><\/em><\/li><\/ul><div class=\"license-attribution-dropdown-subheading\">All rights reserved content<\/div><ul class=\"citation-list\"><li>Jennifer Keelan video. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?time_continue=71&#038;v=qThC79iYs1U&#038;feature=emb_logo\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?time_continue=71&#038;v=qThC79iYs1U&#038;feature=emb_logo<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em>Other<\/em>. <strong>License Terms<\/strong>: Standard YouTube License<\/li><\/ul><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t\t <\/section><hr class=\"before-footnotes clear\" \/><div class=\"footnotes\"><ol><li id=\"footnote-1908-1\">Sean Wilentz, The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974\u20132008 (New York: HarperCollins, 2008). <a href=\"#return-footnote-1908-1\" class=\"return-footnote\" aria-label=\"Return to footnote 1\">&crarr;<\/a><\/li><\/ol><\/div>","protected":false},"author":529728,"menu_order":9,"template":"","meta":{"_candela_citation":"[{\"type\":\"cc\",\"description\":\"US History\",\"author\":\"\",\"organization\":\"OpenStax\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/openstaxcollege.org\/textbooks\/us-history\",\"project\":\"\",\"license\":\"cc-by\",\"license_terms\":\"Access for free at https:\/\/openstax.org\/books\/us-history\/pages\/1-introduction\"},{\"type\":\"cc\",\"description\":\"The Triumph of the Right\",\"author\":\"\",\"organization\":\"American Yawp\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/text\/29-the-triumph-of-the-right\/\",\"project\":\"\",\"license\":\"cc-by-sa\",\"license_terms\":\"\"},{\"type\":\"copyrighted_video\",\"description\":\"Jennifer Keelan 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