When Franklin D Roosevelt died in April 1945, Vice-President Harry Truman inherited the presidency — and the job of turning a wartime economy back into a peacetime one. Truman wanted to extend Roosevelt's New Deal with his own programme, the Fair Deal.
- Full Employment Act (1946) — committed the federal government to promoting maximum employment, though it was weaker than Truman first wanted
- Minimum wage raised — from 40 cents to 75 cents an hour in 1949, helping the lowest-paid workers
- Housing Act (1949) — funded slum clearance and public housing in cities
- Social Security extended — coverage widened to more workers in 1950
- Civil rights steps — Truman desegregated the armed forces by executive order in 1948, angering southern Democrats
Why the Fair Deal stalled: Truman asked Congress for national health insurance, federal aid to education, and a permanent civil rights commission — all failed. A coalition of Republicans and conservative southern Democrats (Dixiecrats) in Congress blocked the more ambitious parts. This split inside Truman's own party is a preview of the bigger Democratic conflicts you'll meet later in this topic.
Dwight D Eisenhower, a former general, won the presidency in 1952 and 1956. His approach is often called modern Republicanism — he did not try to dismantle Social Security or the minimum wage, but he was cautious about expanding the federal government further.
- Interstate Highway Act (1956) — funded 41,000 miles of highways, justified as a Cold War defence measure but transforming everyday American life
- Social Security extended again — coverage grew to include more self-employed and farm workers
- Balanced budgets — Eisenhower kept government spending and taxes relatively low, satisfying fiscal conservatives
- Limited civil rights action — sent federal troops to enforce school desegregation at Little Rock (1957) only when a state governor defied a federal court order
Compare, don't just list: Examiners reward comparison. Truman pushed for an ambitious Fair Deal and mostly failed in Congress; Eisenhower deliberately kept ambitions modest and mostly succeeded in what he tried. Both, though, preserved and even extended New Deal foundations rather than reversing them.
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John F Kennedy won the 1960 election by a razor-thin margin over Richard Nixon. He branded his domestic programme the New Frontier, promising to "get America moving again" after what he called years of drift under Eisenhower.
| Policy area | What Kennedy proposed | What actually happened |
|---|---|---|
| Economy | Tax cuts to stimulate growth; higher minimum wage | Minimum wage raised in 1961; tax cut passed only after his death in 1964 |
| Health care for the elderly | Federal health insurance ("Medicare") | Blocked in Congress — later achieved by Johnson |
| Civil rights | A federal civil rights bill banning discrimination | Introduced in June 1963 but stuck in Congress when Kennedy was killed |
| Space race | Land a man on the Moon by the end of the decade | NASA funding massively increased; goal achieved in 1969 |
Kennedy's real record was modest: It's tempting to remember Kennedy through the myth of youthful promise, but his actual legislative record was thin — most of the New Frontier was blocked by the same conservative coalition of Republicans and southern Democrats that had frustrated Truman. A strong Paper 3 answer explains why Congress blocked him: his party held Congress but conservative southern Democrats voted with Republicans on many bills.
Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on 22 November 1963. Vice-President Lyndon B Johnson — a former Senate majority leader who knew Congress intimately — took over and used the shock of the assassination, plus his own legislative skill, to push through the stalled New Frontier bills and much more.
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Lyndon B Johnson won a landslide election in 1964 and used his huge congressional majority to launch the Great Society — the most ambitious wave of domestic reform since the New Deal.
War on Poverty (1964)
Economic Opportunity Act created Job Corps, Head Start, and community action programmes to help the roughly one in five Americans living in poverty.
Civil Rights Act (1964)
Banned discrimination in employment and public places on the basis of race, colour, religion, sex, or national origin — Kennedy's stalled bill, finally passed.
Voting Rights Act (1965)
Outlawed literacy tests and other devices used to stop African Americans voting in the South; federal officials could register voters directly.
Medicare and Medicaid (1965)
Medicare gave health insurance to the elderly; Medicaid gave health coverage to low-income Americans — the health reform Truman and Kennedy had failed to pass.
Immigration Act (1965)
Ended the old quota system that favoured northern Europeans, opening the door to much greater immigration from Asia and Latin America.
Poverty, Prejudice, Polls, Pills, People — the five pillars of Johnson's Great Society.
Why Johnson succeeded where Kennedy failed: Johnson had a much larger Democratic majority after the 1964 landslide, decades of experience managing Congress, and used Kennedy's assassination to build public and political pressure ("let us continue"). Timing, majority size, and personal skill all mattered — not just the content of the policies.
The cost of Vietnam: By the late 1960s the Vietnam War was consuming money and political attention Johnson needed for the Great Society. Rising inflation and war spending weakened support for his domestic programme, and Johnson chose not to run for re-election in 1968.