Ch. 27 Sect. 3
Domestic Politics And Policy
Objectives:
1.  Describe Truman’s domestic policies as
outlined in his Fair Deal.
2.  Describe how Truman won the election of
1948.
3.  Explain the highlights of Dwight
Eisenhower’s Republican presidency.
Main Idea:
Presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D.
Eisenhower used two very different styles of
leadership to meet the challenges they faced
during the postwar period.
Truman’s Domestic Policies
• President Truman had several issues to deal
with after World War II: return to a
peacetime economy, end price controls,
increase worker wages, and limit strikes.
• Consumers demanded goods that they had
gone without for the entire war, but prices of
these goods rose faster than worker wages.
• Truman agreed workers deserved high
wages, but he believed wages that were too
high would drive consumer prices up even
higher.
1948 Presidential Election
Wrong results – Chicago Daily Tribune
1948 Presidential Election
Truman Continued
•  In 1946, 4.6 million workers went on strike.
•  In 1947, Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act
allowed the president to declare an 8-day cooling
off period, where workers had to return to work
while the government studied the situation in
industries of national interest.
•  Truman wanted to continue the New Deal and
called it the Fair Deal.
•  In 1948, Truman pulled off one of the biggest
upsets in U.S. presidential election history.
Unfortunately, Truman’s Fair Deal had very little
success during his second term.
1952 Presidential Election
Modern Republicanism
• Dwight D. Eisenhower used his World War II
popularity to win the 1952 president election.
• Eisenhower promised to pull the U.S. out the
Korean War, stay tough on communism, to end
government corruption, to cut spending,
reduce taxes, and balance the budget.
• Eisenhower wanted to limit the president’s
power and raise the power of the legislature
and courts. He called his approach modern
republicanism.
Eisenhower’s Domestic Policies
• Eisenhower’s plan to balance the budget
actually backfired; less government
spending led to less tax revenue
increasing the budget.
• Not all economic news was bad; 10
million new workers qualified for Social
Security, the minimum wage increased
from 75 cents to $1 an hour, and 42,000
miles of Interstate Highways were built.
1956 Presidential Election
The Space Race
• In 1957, the Soviet Union increased
nuclear war fears by putting the world’s
first satellite into orbit called Sputnik.
• Sputnik caused millions of Americans to
build bomb shelters and started the space
race.
• In 1958, Congress drastically changed
American education by passing the
National Defense Education Act, which
would teach more science and math in
public schools.
Sputnik Changes
American Education