Allinson Ch 37/38 Vocab

Democratic Leadership Council

Nonprofit organization of centrist Democrats founded in the mid-1980s. The group attempted to push the Democratic party toward pro-growth, strong defense, and anti-crime policies. Among its most influential early members was Bill Clinton, who it held up as an example of “third way” politics.

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”

From 1993 to 2010, the policy affecting homosexuals in the military. It emerged as a compromise between the standing prohibition against homosexuals in the armed forces and President Clinton’s push to allow all citizens to serve regardless of sexual orientation. Military authorities were forbidden to ask about a service member’s orientation, and gay service personnel could be discharged if they publicly revealed their homosexuality. At President Obama’s urging, Congress repealed DADT in 2010, permitting gays to serve openly in uniform.

Oklahoma City Bombing

Truck-bomb explosion that killed 168 people in a federal office building on April 19, 1995. The attack was perpetrated by right-wing and antigovernment militant Timothy McVeigh, who was later executed by the U.S. government for the crime.

Contract with America

Multipoint program offered by Republican candidates and sitting politicians in the 1994 midterm election. The platform proposed smaller government, congressional ethics reform, term limits, greater emphasis on personal responsibility, and a general repudiation of the Democratic party. This articulation of dissent was a significant blow to the Clinton administration and led to the Republican party’s takeover of both houses of Congress for the first time in half a century.

Welfare Reform Bill

A fundamental shift in federal social policy that "ended welfare as we know it" by replacing the New Deal-era Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). The law shifted the focus from open-ended entitlement to work-based, time-limited assistance.

North American Free Trade Agreement

Free-trade zone encompassing Mexico, Canada, and the United States. A symbol of the increased reality of a globalized marketplace, the treaty passed despite opposition from protectionists and labor leaders.

World Trade Organization

An international body to promote and supervise liberal trade among nations. The successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, it marked a key world trade policy achievement of the Clinton administration.

Whitewater

A series of scandals during the Clinton administration that stemmed from a failed real estate investment from which the Clintons were alleged to have illicitly profited. The accusations prompted the appointment of a special federal prosecutor, though no indictments.

Lewinsky Affair

Political scandal that resulted in Bill Clinton’s impeachment and trial by Congress. In 1998, Clinton gave sworn testimony in a sexual harassment case that he had never engaged in sexual activity with a White House intern named _____. When prosecutors discovered evidence that the president had lied under oath about the affair, to which Clinton admitted, Republicans in Congress began impeachment proceedings. Although Clinton was ultimately not convicted by the Senate, the scandal put a lasting blemish on his presidential legacy.

Weapons of Mass Destruction

Refers to weapons—nuclear, biological, and chemical—that can kill large numbers of people and do great damage to the built and natural environment. The term was used to refer to nuclear weapons during the Cold War. The Bush administration’s claim that Saddam Hussein had developed _____ provided the rationale for the United States’ invasion of Iraq in 2003. These weapons were never found after the invasion.

Kyoto Treaty

An international agreement adopted in 1997 that aimed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to combat global warming. It was the first major global effort to set legally binding targets for industrialized nations to decrease carbon dioxide and other emissions linked to climate change.

9/11

Common shorthand for the terrorist attacks that occurred on this day, in which nineteen militant Islamist men hijacked and crashed four commercial aircraft. Two planes hit the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, causing them to collapse. One plane crashed into the Pentagon in Washington, DC, and the fourth, overtaken by passengers, crashed into a field in rural Pennsylvania. Nearly three thousand people were killed in the worst case of domestic terrorism in American history.

Al Qaeda

Arabic for “The Base,” an international alliance of anti-Western Islamic Fundamentalist terrorist organizations founded in the late 1980s by veterans of the Afghan struggle against the Soviet Union. The group was headed by Osama bin Laden and has taken responsibility for numerous terrorist attacks, especially after the late 1990s. They organized the attacks of September 11, 2001, in the United States from its headquarters in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. After the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and the launch of the “global war on terror,” the group was weakened but still poses significant threats to U.S. persons and interests around the world.

USA Patriot Act

Legislation passed shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, that granted broad surveillance and detention authority to the government.

Department of Homeland Security

Cabinet-level agency created in 2003 to unify and coordinate public safety and antiterrorism operations within the federal government.

Guantanamo Detention Camp

Controversial prison facility constructed after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Located on territory occupied by the U.S. military, but not technically part of the United States, the facility serves as an extra-legal holding area for suspected terrorists.

Abu Ghraib Prison

A detention facility near Baghdad, Iraq. Under Saddam Hussein, the prison was the site of infamous torturing and execution of political dissidents. In 2004, during the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the prison became the focal point of a prisoner-abuse and torture scandal after photographs surfaced of American soldiers mistreating, torturing, and degrading Iraqi war prisoners and suspected terrorists. The scandal was one of several dark spots on the public image of the Iraq War and led to increased criticism of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

No Child Left Behind Act

An education bill created and signed by the George W. Bush administration. Designed to increase accountability standards for primary and secondary schools, the law authorized several federal programs to monitor those standards and increased choices for parents in selecting schools for their children. The program was highly controversial, in large part because it linked results on standardized tests to federal funding for schools and school districts.

Hurricane Katrina

The costliest and one of the deadliest hurricanes in the history of the United States, which killed nearly two thousand Americans. The storm ravaged the Gulf Coast, especially the city of New Orleans, in late August 2005. In New Orleans, high winds and rain caused the city’s levees to break, leading to catastrophic flooding, particularly in the city’s most impoverished wards. A tardy and feeble response by local and federal authorities exacerbated the damage and led to widespread criticism of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Deleveraging

In times of uncertainty or credit tightening, the same businesses seek to improve their debt-to-equity ratios by shedding debt through the sale of assets purchased with borrowed money.

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

Among the earliest initiatives of the Obama administration to combat the Great Recession. It was based on the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes that called for increased government spending to offset decreased private spending in times of economic downturn. The act was controversial from the outset, passing with no Republican votes in the House and only three in the Senate, and helping to foster the “Tea Party” movement to curb government deficits, even while critics on the left argued that the act’s $787 billion appropriation was not enough to turn the economy around.

Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

Also known as “Obamacare,” the act extended health-care insurance to some 30 million Americans, marking a major step toward achieving the century-old goal of providing universal health-care coverage.

Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act

Also known as the Dodd-Frank Act, after its Democratic sponsors, Connecticut senator Christopher Dodd and Massachusetts representative Barney Frank. In an effort to avoid another financial crisis like the Great Recession, the act updated many federal regulations affecting the financial and banking systems and created some new agencies, such as the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection.

Tea Party

A grassroots conservative political movement mobilized in opposition to Barack Obama’s fiscal, economic, and health-care policies. Protesters first demonstrated in early 2009, and they grew steadily in visibility and power as a pressuring force within the Republican Party through the 2010 midterm elections and beyond.

Occupy Wall Street

Name of the original protest that launched the populist, anti-Wall Street movement in late 2010 and early 2011. Youthful radicals pitched tents and occupied Zuccotti Park in New York’s financial district beginning in September 2010 to protest inequality and corporate political power. This demonstration inspired similar occupations in many other cities.

Bill Clinton

The 42nd President and a "New Democrat" who moved the party toward the center. His presidency saw significant economic prosperity, the passage of NAFTA, and welfare reform. However, his legacy was complicated by his impeachment by the House of Representatives on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice stemming from the Lewinsky scandal.

H. Ross Perot/Perot

A Texas billionaire who ran as a third-party candidate in 1992 and 1996. His 1992 campaign, focused on the federal deficit and opposition to NAFTA, garnered nearly 19% of the popular vote, the strongest showing for a third-party candidate since Theodore Roosevelt, and likely contributed to George H.W. Bush’s defeat.

Hillary Clinton

An influential First Lady who led a failed attempt at universal healthcare reform in the 1990s. She later served as a Senator from New York, Secretary of State under Obama, and became the first woman to be nominated for president by a major political party in 2016.

Newt Gingrich/Gingrich

The Republican Speaker of the House who led the "Republican Revolution" of 1994. He authored the "Contract with America," a program of conservative reforms including tax cuts and term limits, which helped Republicans win control of both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years.

Robert Dole/Dole

The long-serving Republican Senate Majority Leader and WWII veteran who ran against Bill Clinton in the Election of 1996. Though he lost, he was a key figure in late 20th-century Republican politics, known for his pragmatism and legislative leadership.

Monica Lewinsky/Lewinsky

A White House intern whose affair with Bill Clinton led to a constitutional crisis. The investigation into the affair by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr resulted in Clinton’s impeachment, highlighting the intense partisan divisions and the increasing role of personal morality in 1990s politics.

John McCain/McCain

A Vietnam War POW and Republican Senator known as a "maverick" for his willingness to break with his party on issues like campaign finance reform. He was the Republican nominee for president in 2008, running on a platform of military experience and fiscal conservatism.

Sarah Palin/Palin

The Governor of Alaska and John McCain’s running mate in 2008. As the first woman on a Republican national ticket, she energized the conservative base and signaled the rise of the Tea Party movement and the populist shift within the Republican Party.

George W. Bush/Bush

The 43rd President whose term was defined by the September 11 Attacks. He launched the War on Terror, including the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and implemented the "Bush Doctrine" of preemptive war. Domestically, he passed the "No Child Left Behind" Act and oversaw the start of the Great Recession in 2008.

Richard Cheney/Cheney

The highly influential Vice President under George W. Bush. A former Secretary of Defense, he was a primary architect of the administration’s foreign policy and the War in Iraq, advocating for expanded executive power in matters of national security.

Nancy Pelosi/Pelosi

The first female Speaker of the House (elected 2007). A central figure in the Democratic Party, she was instrumental in passing major legislation, including the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act during the Obama administration.

Barack Obama/Obama

The 44th President and the first African American to hold the office. He took office during the Great Recession and passed the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). His presidency focused on ending the Iraq War, killing Osama bin Laden, and navigating a period of intense political polarization.

Joseph R. Biden/Biden

A long-time Senator from Delaware and the Vice President under Barack Obama. He played a key role in foreign policy and economic recovery efforts (the 2009 Stimulus) before later becoming the 46th President in 2020.