The Spirit of 78, Stayin Alive

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But are we commemorating the right year? If we really want a timethat defined the way we live now, we should look back not to theromance and trauma of the '60s but to the gloriously tacky '70s, tothe year that made modern America -- 1978. Look beyond the year'sbad disco and worse clothes; if you peer deeply into the polyestersoul of 1978, you can see the beginnings of the world we live intoday.
Start with politics. Two weeks into that year, on Jan. 13, formervice president Hubert H. Humphrey died, but it took six more monthsbefore the big-government liberalism that he embodied was buried.In June, California voters backed Proposition 13, which slashedproperty taxes and capped tax increases, thereby marking the startof conservatism's rebirth -- and the beginning of the long end ofNew Deal liberalism.
People had good reason to be irked at Washington, too. Voters werefed up with rising tax rates (heavily fueled by inflation) and aninefficient government that was seen as wasting their dollars. TheYankelovich poll found that 78 percent of Americans agreed with thestatement, "Government wastes a lot of money we pay intaxes," an 18-point jump from 1968.
This anti-government sentiment propelled successful efforts tolimit taxing and spending in 13 states and prompted 23 statelegislatures to call for a constitutional convention to consider abalanced-budget amendment to the Constitution. The sour publicmood, especially after the passage of Prop 13, triggered a stampedeof elected officials to the right, and those who didn't dartquickly enough were run over -- such as Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis , who lost his party's gubernatorial primary.
In fact, it was in November 1978 that the modern Republican Party-- which had been on the verge of extinction after Watergate -- wasborn. In the midterm elections, the GOP gained three Senate seats, 12 House seats and six governorships.The anti-tax, small-government worldview of its right wing wassuddenly ascendant -- and has dominated American politics until thepresent day. (Note that, even with President Bush and his party on the ropes, neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Rodham Clinton was willing to back the sort of nationalized health care thatevery other industrialized democracy enjoys or mention raisingtaxes to get rid of the massive deficit that Bush is leavingbehind.)
Our year also set the contours of today's civil rights battles. In Regents of the University of California v. Bakke , the Supreme Court ruled that rigid race quotas for universityadmissions were unconstitutional but that affirmative actionpolicies designed to ensure a diverse student body were not.Americans have battled over the implications of this decision eversince, but we have come to accept diversity as a virtue inuniversities, corporations and throughout American life. That beganwith Bakke in 1978.
Of course, today's most contentious civil rights battles aren'tover race but over sexual orientation. Here, too, 1978 was pivotal.As the year began, a handful of communities had ordinances on thebooks banning discrimination against gays in employment andhousing. But as these measures passed, opposition mobilized, oftenled by the singer Anita Bryant. In 1978, the citizens of Eugene,Ore.; St. Paul, Minn.; and Wichita, Kan., voted overwhelmingly torepeal these gay-friendly laws. Even in liberal New York, Mayor Ed Koch 's effort to expand a ban on discrimination on the basis of sexualorientation for municipal hiring never got out of the relevant citycouncil committee.
But the most bizarre and important incident happened, perhapsunsurprisingly, in San Francisco. The city had passed its ownanti-discrimination law in March. On Nov. 27, Daniel White, thelone city supervisor to oppose the ordinance, walked into MayorGeorge Moscone's office and shot him dead, then proceeded to theoffice of Supervisor Harvey Milk -- the country's first openly gayofficial of any consequence -- and killed him, too.
More than 30,000 San Franciscans took to the streets to mourn Milkand Moscone, blaming their deaths on the anti-gay backlash. Oneperson held a sign stating: "Are you happy, Anita?" If this didn'tgalvanize the gay community, the light sentence that White receiveddid. That year, the gay community's first Washington lobbyist washired, and its long struggle for equality was underway.
Politics wasn't the only thing that began to change in 1978. Areyou reading this article on your BlackBerry ? That's only possible because, in 1978, Illinois Bell rolled outthe first cellular phone system -- a radical new technology thatpromised to break the 10-year waiting list for mobile phones. Thatsame year, the first computer bulletin-board system was created,and the first piece of e-mail spam was sent over the ARPANET, theforerunner to today's Internet, inviting users to a computercompany's product demonstration. (No word on whether it promised toenhance the attendees' virility.)
Computers were quickly becoming more pervasive, too. VisiCalc, anearly spreadsheet program, was introduced in 1978 and quicklybecame the first commercially successful piece of software, givingpersonal computers mass rather than just geek appeal."Eventually, the household computer will be as much a part ofthe home as the kitchen sink," Time magazine boldly predicted in February 1978.