"Cold War Liberalism" is a term that is used to describe the domestic and international policies of Democratic Presidents after World War II, including Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson. Their policies involved expanding the role of the federal government in fighting for Civil Rights and fighting poverty, and they also supported labor unions. Internationally, they opposed Communism and framed their liberal agenda as a battle against Communism.
Truman, who favored a policy of Containment, or stopping...
"Cold War Liberalism" is a term that is used to describe the domestic and international policies of Democratic Presidents after World War II, including Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson. Their policies involved expanding the role of the federal government in fighting for Civil Rights and fighting poverty, and they also supported labor unions. Internationally, they opposed Communism and framed their liberal agenda as a battle against Communism.
Truman, who favored a policy of Containment, or stopping the spread of communism abroad, supported several liberal domestic policies, including expanding social security, public housing, and civil rights. Truman turned to an increasingly liberal agenda in the 1948 presidential election. He called for national health insurance and supported the Housing Act of 1949, which provided for an increased role of the federal government in building public housing. The act also provided for federal financing to clear slums and renew urban areas. Truman was a supporter of civil rights, but his policy was stymied by the opposition of southern Democrats, or Dixiecrats, who opposed an end to segregation.
After the relatively conservative presidency of Eisenhower, Kennedy came to office in 1961 with a youthful optimism that made him a beloved figure. He was the figurehead of Cold War Liberalism. While fighting Communism abroad, he was a proponent of a liberal domestic program called the New Frontier. He supported increasing the minimum wage, expanding Social Security, and passing the Equal Pay Act (supporting equal pay for women). He and his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, also supported Civil Rights, including the integration of the University of Mississippi during a tense standoff with Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett in 1962 and the integration of the University of Alabama in 1963.
Kennedy was in the midst of gathering congressional support for a civil rights bill when he was tragically shot in November of 1963. Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society continued the liberal agenda, with the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act and the expansion of federal entitlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. His War on Poverty aimed to reduce the national poverty rate through the expansion of federal programs in education and health care.
However, economic woes and a backlash against the growing size of the federal government had made "liberalism" a dirty word by the 1970s. Many Americans resented the government interfering in what they felt were their private affairs, and they did not want an expansion in government spending. Therefore, Carter eschewed the label in his 1976 campaign for the presidency.
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