Who Shot FAP? The Nixon Welfare Plan and the Transformation of American Politics
The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 125-150, December 2008
Posted: 8 May 2013
Date Written: December 1, 2008
Abstract
This essay takes the battle over President Nixon's proposals for welfare reform as a lens through which to understand political change at the end of the 1960s. In explaining the rise and fall of the Family Assistance Plan -- which has often been treated as proof of Nixon's "liberalism," even in contrast to later Democratic or self-described liberal politicians -- it argues that scholars should take their attention away from President Nixon and place it instead on the times during which he governed. They should focus especially upon grassroots social movements such as the movement for welfare rights, the responses to them, and the multiple political tendencies (rarely noted) within the Republican Party during the 1960s and 1970s. Liberal Republicans, in particular, have been under-studied and their role was a pivotal one in the fate of domestic public policies under Nixon. The essay argues as well for connections between foreign and domestic policy, noting in particular the ways in which political controversy over the war in Vietnam set the stage for the political tensions between the White House and Congress over FAP and other "liberal Nixon" proposals.
Keywords: Nixon, Welfare, 1960s, 1970s, Domestic policy
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