Harry Truman entered the White House on April 12, 1945 with the nation mourning Franklin Roosevelt’s death. Expectations for him were not terribly high, but within a few months of taking office, he won over the public. His approval rating¹ soared to more than 90% following the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Einstein, Szilard, and other like-minded physicists might have been shocked by the horror of the nuclear weapons they had created, but average American citizens did not share their fears. The war was over: that was all that mattered.

The public’s peace celebration ended less than 5 years later when hostilities broke out on the Korean peninsula in June 1950. With the nation mired in another conflict so soon, Truman’s popularity sank dramatically. Corruption within his administration helped drive his numbers down even further, and when he saw his public approval continuing to hover well below 30% in the summer of 1951, he decided it was time to quit. On March 29 of the following year, he made it official, announcing his intention not to run at the annual Jefferson-Jackson black-tie dinner in Washington.² True to his down-home Missouri manner, he spoke simply and without equivocation: “I shall not be a candidate for re-election. I have served my country long, and I think efficiently and honestly. I shall not accept a re-nomination. I do not feel that it is my duty to spend another four years in the White House.” End of story—well almost.

Truman had worried what would happen to the domestic programs and the internationalist foreign policies he and Roosevelt had forged if Republicans captured the presidency. He was particularly concerned about Robert A. Taft, the isolationist Ohio senator with whom he had a particularly testy relationship.³ In early November of 1951, he had lunched with Dwight Eisenhower, still arguably the most popular public figure in the United States, and urged him to run for president as a Democrat,⁴ even offering to be his number two on the ticket if Ike wanted him.⁵ Later that day, Ike reminded Truman he had been a life-long Republican and was not about to change his party affiliation simply to run for office. He was also quite content living in Paris as Supreme Commander of NATO, a position he had accepted at Truman’s request in 1950. He was on an extended leave from his presidency of Columbia University and could still return if he chose to. Running for the presidency of the United States wasn’t on his bucket list.

His attitude would soon change. In the early part of 1952, he received an urgent phone call from three Republican honchos. Lucius Clay, who had been Ike’s deputy when he was General of the Army and had become Commander in Chief of the U.S. forces in Europe after the war ended, was one of them. Eisenhower knew him extremely well and held him in high regard. Herbert Brownell, Jr., who had been chairman of the Republican National Committee from 1944 to 1946, and Tom Dewey, who had been the 1948 GOP standard bearer, rounded out the trio. They were globalists who supported the multinational structures the Truman Administration had championed. And they feared what an isolationist Taft presidency would do to unravel them.

Science and technology were undoubtedly as far from the trio’s minds as anything could be. But the way the story eventually played out again illustrates how important serendipity is in developing and executing the policies that have shaped America and the world.

Clay, Brownell, and Dewey knew Eisenhower shared their views about internationalism and, as arguably the most popular person in America, they believed he would be a shoo-in for president. They also knew he had shown little interest in running. But they had one card to play they thought might do the trick. They were aware there was one person whom Ike feared would do the nation far greater harm than Taft—General Douglas MacArthur, the five-star general who had prosecuted the Korean War until Truman fired him for insubordination in April 1951.⁶

The public adored MacArthur, a war hero who cut an imposing figure and was a mesmerizing speaker. But Eisenhower, who had observed his extraordinary egotism close up, didn’t trust him at all as a guardian of American democracy. MacArthur was scheduled to deliver the keynote address at the Republican Convention in Chicago on July 7, 1952, Brownell, Dewey, and Clay reminded Eisenhower on the phone call, warning him that MacArthur would likely be greeted with such zeal, the convention could easily turn to him as the GOP presidential nominee and upend Taft’s candidacy. The only way to stop MacArthur, they said, was for Eisenhower, himself, to run.⁷

They made their point, and not long afterward, Ike agreed to toss his hat into the presidential ring. He made it official on June 4, 1952, declaring his candidacy from his home town of Abilene, Kansas. Not all Republicans were thrilled with Eisenhower’s entry into the nominating fray. That became obvious following MacArthur’s rousing speech,⁸ when rancor over Eisenhower’s nomination broke out on the convention floor.⁹ It took two ballots, but when the dust from the dust-ups finally settled, Ike had soundly defeated Taft by a three to one margin.

In his short acceptance speech, Eisenhower expressed sentiments that would be almost inconceivable at a Republican Convention today. But 1952 was a different era. Although he did not mention science—and there is no reason to think he would have—his words captured his optimistic view of the future, and his subsequent policies reflected his trust in science to help achieve his goals. At the convention, he said,¹⁰

Eisenhower had little difficulty defeating Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic candidate, carrying 39 of the 48 states, securing 442 out of 531 electoral votes and capturing 55% of the popular vote. Eisenhower had a mandate. Ending hostilities on the Korean Peninsula was his first goal. Keeping the United States out of future conflicts, avoiding a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union, and sharing nuclear information and nuclear material for peaceful purposes were also on his list.

While he had a great respect for what science could do, he worried about what it could destroy. He also fretted about the undue influence of the military-industrial complex and its technological underpinnings, and he was concerned about the growth of a scientific elite. But none of his fears prevented him from having a close relationship with scientists and supporting their research activities. Isadore Rabi, a physics Nobel Laureate who was a member of the Columbia faculty during Eisenhower’s tenure there, was especially close to him, advising him on scientific and technical matters from 1956 to 1957 and in his official capacity, also chairing the Science Advisory Committee (SAC). America’s scientific enterprise grew steadily during Eisenhower’s first term, and with his strong support for academic research, the National Science Foundation saw its budget grow fivefold.¹¹

August 6, 1945 ushered in a new scientific era, the “Nuclear Age,” the day the Enola Gay dropped Little Boy on Hiroshima. October 4, 1957 ushered in another scientific era, the “Space Age” when the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite. By almost any scientific standard, it was extremely primitive. About the size of a beach ball, all it could do was emit two simple radio signals.

Sputnik, itself, posed no military threat, but that didn’t deter the media from milking the story for all they could get out of it. In its Late City Edition, the day of the launch, under the banner headline, “SOVIET FIRES EARTH SATELLITE INTO SPACE; IT IS CIRCLING THE GLOBE AT 18,000 M.P.H.; SPHERE TRACKED IN 4 CROSSINGS OVER U.S.,” The New York Times ran four front-page stories describing the Soviet feat.¹² There is no evidence the public panicked at all, but politicians reacted reflexively, taking the Soviet accomplishment as a dangerous challenge to American technological superiority. The result was a boon to science.

In truth, the United States barely lagged the Soviets in satellite capability. It’s just that Eisenhower, in spite of his military background, had emphasized civilian, rather than defense, applications. Despite intelligence reports to the contrary—they were later proved false—American missile development for space or ballistic use was on a virtual par with the Soviet program. Eisenhower had seen to both, but he couldn’t reveal how far advanced the American programs were because the information was still classified. Just over a year later, on January 31, 1958, a Juno rocket launched America’s first satellite, Explorer I, into Earth orbit. And on July 28, 1959, the Atlas program, which began at the end of World War II, achieved success with the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Moving rapidly, the Defense Department deployed four Atlas missiles at the Vandenburg Air Force Base in California three months later.

In the first lap of the space race, the Soviet Union had bested the United States, but only barely. It could rightfully claim bragging rights to the first ICBM, as well as the first satellite, having used its intercontinental R-7 missile rocket to launch Sputnik and establishing its first operational ICBM base on February 9, 1959. But by the beginning of the 1960 election year, the two nations were on fairly equal footing. Despite evidence to the contrary, John F. Kennedy, the Democratic presidential candidate, featured the illusory “missile gap” in his winning campaign against Richard M. Nixon, who had served as Eisenhower’s vice-president for 8 years.

Eisenhower understood the military exigency in challenging the Soviet Union’s quest for domination in space, but he also had long harbored the dream of space exploration for research purposes. On July 29, 1958, he signed legislation creating the National Aeronautics and Space Act,¹³ creating NASA as the successor to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, with a mandate to reclaim American superiority in space for both military and scientific purposes.

Earlier in 1958, he had authorized the creation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA now called DARPA)¹⁴ in the Department of Defense to accelerate the development of emerging technologies, and on September 2, 1958, he signed the National Defense Education Act¹⁵ to improve science education at all levels. Sputnik was unquestionably a catalyst for a ramp up in federal science spending, but its impact aligned well with Eisenhower’s predisposition toward federal support of research. Whether a Taft, a MacArthur, or a Stevenson would have taken such a broad view is hard to know, but Eisenhower was the right man in the right place at the right time to assure the nation that it could deter any foreign aggression, and that it had the capability to compete technologically with the Soviet Union or any other nation in the world.

Eisenhower also understood the importance of science and technology policy within the White House, and in November 1957, as already noted, he took two steps to make sure he got the advice he needed. He gave the Science Advisory Committee a higher profile, renaming it the President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC), and he converted the presidential science advisor’s position into a full-time post, naming James Killian Special Assistant to the President and chairman of PSAC. Both remained White House constructs until President Richard Nixon abolished them in 1973. [Acted after his science advisor, Edward E. David, Jr., and PSAC, which David chaired, came out openly against his plans for an antiballistic missile defense system and a supersonic transport, basing their opposition on scientific, technical, and, in the latter case, environmental grounds.¹⁶]

It’s a pretty good bet that few members of the general public are aware of Eisenhower’s commitment to science and space exploration and the steps he took to elevate science and technology policymaking within the White House. It’s probably a good bet for members of the science and technology community, as well. Apart from his devotion to golf, Ike is far better known for his enduring mark on the American landscape—the interstate highway system.

Eisenhower’s interest in highways was longstanding. As a member of the 1919 Army Convoy,¹⁷ he had traveled across the country on America’s first transcontinental road, the Lincoln Highway. Several decades later, as Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe, he had an opportunity to see what civil engineering could achieve with sufficient resources. The contrast between the modern German autobahn network and the antiquated American highway system could not have been starker. For Eisenhower, four-lane limited-access highways would be more than a boon to commerce. As he saw it, they were a necessity for America’s defense in the Cold War Era, when troops and materiel might have to be moved rapidly and at short notice.

With Eisenhower’s strong backing, Congress passed the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act (officially known as the Federal-Aid Highway Act¹⁸) on June 26, 1956, and the president signed it into law three days later. Paid for with new taxes on gasoline and diesel fuel, which fed the coffers of the newly established Highway Trust Fund,¹⁹ it was to become the largest public works project in the history of the country. And it would transform American life in ways that were practically unimaginable.²⁰

Cars and trucks would replace long-distance trains, leading to bankruptcies and mergers of some of the most iconic railroads. Suburbs and exurbs would grow dramatically. Long-haul trucking would give containerized shipping a boost, ultimately leading to greater globalization. And carbon emissions would soar, as more vehicles took to the new highways and traveled longer distances. Of course, climate change was not yet on anybody’s mind.

Eisenhower’s first inaugural speech and his farewell speech bookend the way he viewed science: embodying hope for the future, but tempered with great concern about its misuse and the influence of both the “military-industrial complex” and the “scientific and technological elite.” After taking the oath of office on January 20, 1953, he spoke for 20 minutes from the east portico of the Capitol. Here are some of his words:²¹

Eight years later, on the evening of January 17, 1961, as he prepared to leave the presidency Ike expressed these thoughts from the Oval Office:²²

There is one scientific blight on Eisenhower’s 8 years in office, and it’s significant. It came early on, during the “McCarthy Era,” when the nation was seized by an all-consuming fear of Communism. In 1953, as Eisenhower was taking the oath of office, a second-term senator from Wisconsin gained the gavel of the Senate Committee on Government Operations.

Joseph R. McCarthy, who had used his first 6 years in the Senate to hunt for the “Red menace” wherever his leads took him, began an unrelenting search for Communist infiltration of the federal bureaucracy. Eisenhower hated him for his bullying tactics and said so, but he shared McCarthy’s concern about leaks of classified information to the Soviet Union—as did the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). McCarthy used his muscle without regard for the lives his investigations upended. Eventually, he overreached when he turned his fire on the military. The infamous Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954, which his intimidation provoked, riveted the nation for three months and culminated with McCarthy’s censure by the Senate in December 1954. Thus defanged, McCarthy’s investigative career came to an abrupt end, but not before it had tarnished the reputations of hundreds of prominent and not so prominent Americans, many scientists among them. The House committee, HUAC, might not have had the high profile of McCarthy’s committee, but it was no less aggressive in its anti-Communist fervor, and probably eviscerated more Americans than its Senate counterpart.

J. Robert Oppenheimer was not a priority for McCarthy or HUAC. He didn’t have to be, because the FBI had swept him up in its own search for Communist collaborators. The case, which FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover built, never demonstrated that the “Father of the Atomic Bomb” had divulged any state secrets. But Oppenheimer’s association with known Communists, including his younger brother Frank—who had been a member of the party in prewar days—as well as the checkered past of his wife, Kitty, raised suspicions about his loyalty. Oppenheimer had other liabilities. He opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb—the “super,” as it was called by members of the bomb-building inner circle—which Lawrence and Teller loudly touted. He was wary of peaceful uses of atomic energy, which he thought could lead to nuclear proliferation. Both of those positions clashed with Eisenhower’s, and, just as significantly, with those of Lewis Strauss, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, whom Oppenheimer typically treated with disdain. In short, Oppenheimer gave his enemies plenty of ammunition, and they were happy to use it.^{23, 24}

In November of 1953, Hoover found a letter²⁵ waiting for him from William Borden, who had been the congressional Joint Atomic Energy Committee’s staff director from 1949 until 1953. In it, Borden laid out his case against Oppenheimer, stating that, in his “own exhaustively considered opinion, based upon years of study of the available classified evidence that more probably than not J. Robert Oppenheimer is an agent of the Soviet Union.” Hoover passed the letter on to Eisenhower, who immediately cordoned off all classified information from Oppenheimer and ordered Strauss to ask for Oppenheimer’s resignation from the AEC General Advisory Committee. Oppenheimer, who didn’t appreciate the depth of the distrust he had engendered, labeled Borden’s charges as having no merit, and following the advice of his lawyers, requested a hearing to challenge them. On May 27, 1954, after 27 hours of Oppenheimer’s testimony, the three-member hearing panel by a vote of two to one, recommended that his security clearance be revoked. The AEC acted on June 29, and Oppenheimer lost his clearance that day, just 32 hours before his consulting contract with the commission was due to expire.

Oppenheimer was suddenly barred from the work he cherished, and the life he had known for a dozen years was little more than a memory. The majority of the science community condemned the AEC decision, calling Oppenheimer’s treatment a sacrifice to McCarthyism. Eisenhower could have intervened, but he chose not to, leaving it to his successor, John F. Kennedy to rehabilitate the reputation of one of America’s extraordinary public servants.

The Oppenheimer saga ended with several ironic twists. In 1963, Edward Teller, who had helped sink him before the AEC panel, nominated him for the prestigious Enrico Fermi Award, which the AEC supported unanimously. President Kennedy applauded the decision, committing to presenting the award personally. The White House made the announcement on the morning of November 22, 1963. Tragically, just a few hours later, Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas Texas. It was Lyndon Johnson who presented Oppenheimer with the medal and a $50,000 check in a White House ceremony on December 2, speaking these words:²⁶

By the time Eisenhower left office, most of the modern federal science and technology policy machinery was in place. It would be up to future presidents to grease the wheels and pull the levers to get it to run smoothly and efficiently. It would also be up to scientists, technologists, business leaders, entrepreneurs, financiers and the public in general to learn how to navigate the maze that had developed over the course of two centuries. The remaining pages of the book will highlight the most significant policy changes implemented from 1960 to the present, as well as the motivations for the changes and the impact the new policies had on American science and technology.

Eleven presidents held office between 1960 and 2018, and all but one of them held science and technology in high esteem. Donald Trump, elected in 2016, is the only exception. By word and deed he showed disdain for science-based and evidenced-based policymaking during his first year in office, and there are few signs—at the time this book is being completed—that he plans to modify his thinking during his remaining years in office.

In the Epilogue, we will take a brief look at how science and technology might have affected the election outcome and how the Trump presidency might affect America’s science and technology enterprise and its standing in the world. We will also see what three Washington insiders have to say about the Trump Administration’s disruptive approach to policymaking and its disregard for norms. But first, a rapid journey through ten presidencies and a set of pointers on navigating the science and technology maze in the 21st century.

It had snowed heavily the night before, and a nine-inch white blanket had already covered Washington the morning of January 20, 1961, as the 35th president of the United States strode to the rostrum at the east portico of the Capitol. Despite the 22-degree temperature, John F. Kennedy disdained a coat, wearing only sweater under his suit jacket as he spoke to a shivering crowd of admirers. Theodore Sorensen, one of Kennedy’s closest advisors, had collaborated with him on the speech, and the soaring rhetoric that captivated audiences around the world was a signature of his extraordinary turn of phrase.

Kennedy’s soaring language might easily win an oratory contest with Eisenhower’s less poetic wording, but where science is concerned, both conveyed a similar message. They captured the essence of the Cold War zeitgeist: science had given humanity the ability to destroy itself, as well as the possibility of creating a nobler, more hopeful world. The following excerpt from Kennedy’s inaugural speech²⁷ illustrates the dueling world outlooks:

Four months after delivering his inaugural speech, Kennedy announced plans for landing a man on the Moon within a decade. His purpose was twofold: to rebuild American confidence and to preempt any military objectives the Soviet Union might harbor in space. Space science was not on his agenda. His conversation with James Webb, NASA’s administrator at the time, revealed his deeply held convictions.²⁸ Webb argued that NASA’s expanded program should have broader goals than just a Moon landing, prompting Kennedy to respond, “This is, whether we like it or not a race. Everything we do [in space] ought to be tied into getting to the moon ahead of the Russians.” Winning the moon race, Kennedy continued “is the top priority of the agency and except for defense, the top priority of the United States government. Otherwise, we shouldn’t be spending this kind of money, because I’m not that interested in space.”

Kennedy was not in any way antiscience intellectually or philosophically. Quite the contrary. As his inaugural address illustrated, he viewed science as the embodiment of hope for the future. But, as had been the case throughout American history, military exigencies for him at that moment trumped any pure science predilections he might have had.

Kennedy surrounded himself with “whiz kids”—some of the most intellectually gifted policy wonks in the country. Jerome Wiesner, an electrical engineer, with University of Michigan and Massachusetts Institute of Technology pedigrees, was one of them. As Kennedy’s science advisor and chairman of PSAC (the President’s Science Advisory Committee), Wiesner advocated for arms control, fought against DDT usage, opposed manned space exploration, and supported basic research staunchly. In the early summer of 1962, to give Wiesner the policy assistance he might need, Kennedy established the Office of Science and Technology²⁹ (OST) within the Executive Office of the President. Having an in-house staff is one thing, influencing the presidential thinking is another. Wiesner’s scientific sway is apparent in Kennedy’s National Academy of Sciences policy address on Oct. 22, 1963. The following excerpts from his remarks are among the most noteworthy:³⁰

Kennedy’s National Academy’s Address encapsulated practically all of the lessons learned from almost two centuries of American science and technology policy. How his agenda would have unfolded, we will never know. Exactly one month to the day after he celebrated the Academy’s centennial, Kennedy was assassinated.

Eisenhower began the space program, Kennedy set the nation’s sights on the Moon, and Johnson was president when the Apollo 1 fire killed astronauts Roger Chaffee, Gus Grissom, and Ed White II on the Cape Kennedy launch pad on January 26, 1967. By the time Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed the lunar module Eagle on the Moon at 20:18 UTC³¹ on July 21, 1969, Richard M. Nixon was president. Four presidents, Republicans and Democrats, and more than a decade of political will: The Apollo lunar program epitomizes the enduring and nonpartisan nature of science and technology policy that characterized much of the final four decades of the 20th century.

For science, the Johnson and Nixon years were affected dramatically by the fallout from the Vietnam War, and in Nixon’s case, by his tragic flaws, which the Watergate scandal exposed. The bloody Vietnam conflict, in which American military technology was on prominent display, opened fissures on university campuses. Antiwar activists waged verbal—and in some cases physical—assaults on scientists³² and mathematicians³³ who received research support from defense agencies, such as the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR). The ONR and AFOSR money that made its way into university laboratories almost exclusively funded long-term, unclassified basic research that had no military applications. The two agencies, it should be remembered, were products of the Post-World-War-II era and policies of that time, which sought to guarantee the United States would have the necessary scientific workforce for any future military conflict, as well as the fundamental science on which future military technologies might rely.

University scientists were more than content to receive the money, so long as it came with no strings attached. They saw no hypocrisy in accepting the funding, even if they were opposed to the Vietnam War, as most of them were. Critics of the war had a different view. Scientists, they contended, were being corrupted by the very “military-industrial complex” Eisenhower had warned about in his farewell address.³⁴ The antiwar, antiscience contingent had two powerful allies in the United States Senate: Arkansas Democrat J. William Fulbright, who chaired the Foreign Relations Committee, and Montana Democrat Mike Mansfield, who was majority leader of the upper body.

In 1969, with Fulbright’s backing, Mansfield muscled through an amendment to the Military Authorization Act prohibiting the Department of Defense (DOD)—as the War Department had been known since 1949—from funding university research that did not have any direct military application.³⁵ The consequences, though unintended, were profound. University research programs suffered severe disruptions. Many young scientists lost their jobs. For the first time in memory, the unemployment rate among scientists became a measurable statistic. And pessimism descended on students contemplating a scientific career, many of them opting for other professions.

Even though the Mansfield language did not appear in future legislation, the damage it did took a decade to repair. Fulbright³⁶ and Mansfield harbored no hostility toward science—quite the contrary, they held it in extremely high esteem—but their antiwar passions trumped their science passions and led them to formulate a policy that proved to be a destructive blow to America’s science and technology enterprise. Science and technology thrive on certitude and continuity; they falter in the face of ambiguity and disruption.

Richard Nixon is remembered most for the Watergate break-in and his subsequent resignation as he was confronting certain impeachment for obstructing justice. But Watergate, in truth, was a short chapter in the annals of American history, and its impact did not prevent the nation from moving beyond it post haste. Not so for Nixon’s impact on science and technology. During his second year in office, he bypassed Congress and used an executive order in December 1970 to create the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), naming William Ruckelshaus as its first administrator. On the final day of the year, Congress passed the Clean Air Act Extension of 1970,³⁷ greatly expanding the federal government’s mandate and authorizing the EPA to set national standards for air quality and auto emissions. It was probably Nixon’s science policy high point. His final days in the White House were a mad dash to the bottom.

But in the history of environmental policy, there are few legislative actions of greater significance than the Clean Air Act. The sweeping standards for lead, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, ozone, nitrogen oxides, and particulate emissions, which the EPA established under the mandate of the 1970 act and in accordance with its 1977 and 1990 amendments, have led to extraordinary improvements in public health, saving hundreds of thousands of lives and millions of dollars in medical expenditures. But its reach has been far greater than Nixon or Congress could have imagined.

Although a small group of scientists had begun to pay attention to global warming before 1972, policymakers were not only oblivious to the existential threat it posed, they undoubtedly were unaware it was even occurring. Scroll forward a quarter of a century. In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that emissions of carbon dioxide—a critical greenhouse gas associated with global warming and climate change—constitute a pollutant under the definition of the Clean Air Act, granting the EPA the authority to regulate it. The legislation’s historical arc illustrates important points: Policymaking should always be based on sound science, but sound policies should be broad enough to accommodate new scientific knowledge as it becomes available.

Health and climate impacts aside, the Clean Air Act of 1970 had two other significant consequences. It spurred innovation, quickly leading to the development of catalytic converters for cars and trucks, internal combustion engines that run on unleaded gasoline, and smokestack “scrubbers” that remove a host of pollutants on the EPA’s list of undesirables. But it also led to an unforeseen deleterious result a few years later.

In 1970, American manufacturing companies competed on a fairly level domestic playing field. Regulations that affected one company largely affected all of its rivals. They were all American. But over the course of the next two decades, advances in transportation and communication technologies ushered in a globalization revolution.

The world, as Thomas Friedman described it in his 2005 best seller,³⁸ was becoming increasingly flat. And on the flattened globe, the playing field was becoming increasingly tilted in favor of other countries. In the 1970s and 1980s, companies in the developing world were not saddled with the costs of environmental regulations. The result, as University of Chicago economist Michael Greenstone has shown,³⁹ was a measurable decline in American manufacturing capacity and manufacturing jobs over a 15-year period beginning in 1972, both directly related to the costs imposed by the Clean Air Acts of 1970 and 1977.

There is little doubt the Clean Air Act has had a dramatic and enduring beneficial impact on the health of Americans, but, as in the case of the Mansfield Amendment, the policies it produced had unexpected consequences. If policymakers had known what was in store, they might have been able to plan for a future in which American manufacturing would no longer be king. But they didn’t, and the rusting of American manufacturing stranded tens of thousands of workers in the following decades.

The Clean Water Act of 1972⁴⁰ was much more clear-cut. On June 22, 1969, six months after Richard Nixon took the oath of office, The Cleveland Plain Dealer ran the following headline: “Oil Slick Fire Ruins Flats Shipyard.” The accompanying photograph said it all: Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River was on fire. It was a stunning, unforgettable sight and it focused public attention on the state of the nation’s waterways, lakes, and sources of drinking water in a way that nothing had previously; although twice before, once in 1956 and again in 1961, Congress had sent legislation to the White House to address the issue. The first time, President Eisenhower vetoed the bill, declaring that it was not a federal issue. The second time, President Kennedy signed the bill, but as evidence would demonstrate over the next decade, the legislation was far from all-encompassing.

Cuyahoga was a game changer. On Aug. 1, 1969, Time ran an article calling attention to the policy deficiencies in the starkest terms. “America’s Sewage System and the Price of Optimism,”⁴¹ began with these words:

Congress got the message, but it took two more years and a veto override before the Clean Water Act became law.⁴² The delay in drafting the legislation, followed by ten months of House-Senate haggling over dueling versions of the bill, presidential opposition to the price tag,⁴³ and the final congressional override illuminate the difficulties in passing legislation even when it has strong popular support. As long as it lacks the urgency of an epidemic or a war, it can be a long slog.

Three upheavals marked Nixon’s final years in office. One of them—the Arab oil embargo—came from abroad. The other two were of his own making. His attempt to cover up the role he played in the Watergate break-in is common knowledge. Less well known, perhaps, were his testy reactions to science and technology assessments he didn’t like.

On October 6, 1973, as Jews were attending Yom Kippur synagogue services in Israel, Egypt and Syria attacked Israeli held territories in the Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights. So began the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, the fourth conflict in the 25 years of the Jewish state’s existence. The United States, on the heels of Soviet support for the Arabs, began an airlift of supplies and weapons to Israel, along with $2.2 billion in aid. In response, 2 weeks into the war, Arab oil-producing nations followed through on their prior plans and imposed an embargo on oil exports to the United States. The war came to an end a week later, twenty days after it had begun. But the embargo continued for another five months—finally ending on March 17, 1974—and the Arab states cut oil production by 25%.

The embargo and the disruption in oil markets had a major and long-lasting impact on U.S. energy policy. The Nixon Administration took several immediate actions. It imposed price controls to limit gouging, began “odd-even” gasoline rationing to maintain supplies at the pump, and mandated a 55 mile-per-hour speed limit to improve vehicle efficiency.⁴⁴ Nixon urged Congress to codify energy efficiency and conservation standards with new legislation. Separately, he proposed reorganizing federal energy activities by creating one new department and two new agencies. A Department of Energy and Natural Resources would oversee all major energy policy programs, and in place of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), an Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA) would manage all forms of energy research, while a Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) would focus on nuclear power licensing and regulation.⁴⁵

His grand plans did not materialize until after he departed the White House in August 1974 under the gathering clouds of impeachment. Two months later, Congress passed the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974.⁴⁶ The legislation abolished the AEC, replacing it with ERDA and the NRC, in line with Nixon’s plan. It consolidated energy programs housed in the National Science Foundation and the Environmental Protection Agency under the ERDA umbrella. But it did not create a new energy department, as Nixon had urged, leaving such an option open to a future presidential request. The act also established the NRC as an independent regulatory and licensing body, separating government oversight of nuclear power from federal nuclear energy research and development programs.

The 1974 Energy Reorganization Act was a sweeping piece of legislation that fundamentally altered the landscape of energy policy in the federal bureaucracy. Nixon left Washington in disgrace, but his influence on energy issues continued with the passage of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act⁴⁷ in late 1975. It was the first comprehensive bill of its kind. It created a Strategic Petroleum Reserve to “diminish the vulnerability of the United States to the effects of a severe energy supply interruption, and provide limited protection from the short-term consequences of interruptions in supplies of petroleum product.” It also established standards for energy efficiency, among them the first fuel economy requirements for cars and light trucks. Known today by its acronym CAFE for “Corporate Average Fuel Economy,” the miles-per-gallon fleet standards reduced average gasoline consumption dramatically over the next few decades. In 1972, 14 miles per gallon typified average fleet performance. But by 1985, it had met the legislative target, almost doubling to 27.5 miles per gallon.

The result confirms an essential American science and technology proposition: set standards and let the free market of ideas generate the needed innovations. What happened in the decades after 1985, during which the CAFE standards remained unchanged, illustrates the flip side of the proposition. Absent mandated standards, an untethered market will seek to maximize corporate profits, not always in the best interest of the public. Between 1985 and 2010, for example, auto manufacturers used new technologies to build bigger and faster cars, as well as larger SUVs and light trucks. They opted to maximize their corporate bottom line rather than continue to improve the fuel efficiency of the vehicles they manufactured.⁴⁸

By establishing the EPA in 1970, Nixon left an indelible mark on America’s environmental policy legacy. A year later, he added biomedicine to his scientific footprint, when he successfully pressed Congress to pass the National Cancer Act.⁴⁹ The disease had become the second leading cause of death in the United States, and Nixon made his appeal for legislation calling for a “war on cancer.”⁵⁰ His rhetoric combined the two most potent drivers of science and technology policy: disease and war. As Republican communications strategist Frank Luntz has repeatedly drummed into the political psyche, the tactical use of words is key to success.⁵¹ And Nixon’s phrasing struck a chord with the public. Congress marched ahead in lockstep, boosting funding for research in the 1971 act and creating a National Cancer Advisory Board that reported directly to the president.

Unfortunately, Nixon’s interest in science was limited to the issues that had immediate social impact: energy, the environment, and cancer. His first science advisor, Lee DuBridge, a physicist and former president of Cal Tech, who had counseled both Truman and Eisenhower on science policy, resigned from his White House post in 1970, after serving only 2 years. Unable to secure Nixon’s support for sustained federal research funding, facing criticism from the science community for failing to do so, and seeing much of his other science and technology advice go unheeded, he found himself in an untenable situation. An effective science advisor needs to have the trust of both the president and the science community. DuBridge found he didn’t have the former and was rapidly losing the latter. Getting out was his best recourse, and he took it.

His successor, Edward David, Jr., an electrical engineer who was executive director of research at Bell Laboratories at the time Nixon tapped him as DuBridge’s replacement, didn’t fare any better. David joined the White House staff in the middle of September 1970, and by January 1973, he had concluded he was wasting his time. Nixon didn’t seem to value his assistance or the work of PSAC—the President’s Science Advisory Committee—which David, like his predecessors, chaired. The supersonic transport (SST) and anti-ballistic missile (ABM) defense system⁵² underscored the disconnect. Both were high on Nixon’s priority list. But some key members of PSAC found them wanting in the extreme, the SST on damage to the environment, and the ABM concept on lack of technological feasibility. And those scientific critics weren’t shy about expressing their opposition publicly.⁵³ At the very least, Nixon found their behavior indecorous. More than likely he saw them as enemies of his administration.

It’s not too surprising, then, that even before David showed himself out, Nixon had already decided he was pretty much done with having a science advisor and a science advisory committee. He had concluded that the federal science agencies had enough talent to provide him with advice if and when he might need it. Shortly after he began his second term, with David gone, he abolished PSAC and the Office of Science and Technology (OST), giving his former science advisor’s staff their walking papers. H. Guyford Stever, already the director of the National Science Foundation, took on the added role of presidential science advisor on civilian issues, but there is scant evidence the president ever consulted him.⁵⁴ If there was a technological matter involving security, Nixon believed he could rely on the National Security Council for assistance, although the members of the NSC hadn’t been chosen for their science and technology pedigrees.

Whether Nixon would have continued to chip away at the science policy edifice is hard to know, because the Watergate scandal⁵⁵ enveloped the White House for the next eighteen months. Facing almost certain impeachment for obstructing the investigation of the 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee Headquarters in the Watergate complex, he resigned his presidency on August 9, 1974.

While Nixon was banishing his science and technology gurus, Congress was bolstering its own advisory apparatus. The initiator was Emilio Daddario, a Democratic House member from Connecticut. First elected in 1958, “Mim,” as he was known to his colleagues, friends, and constituents, represented his state’s 1st Congressional District for 12 years. During his tenure, he chaired two subcommittees of the House Science Committee: Science Research and Development, and Patents and Science Inventions. Although his professional science credentials were minimal, his commitment to research was exceptional, so much so that after he left office, two august bodies recognized him for his unswerving devotion. The National Academy of Sciences awarded him its Public Welfare Medal in 1976, and members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) elected him president of the scholarly society a year later.

For more than a century, technology and Connecticut had been synonymous. Waterbury was known as the “Brass Capitol of the World in the 19^th century;” the towns around Hartford were home to clockmakers; and across the state, the firearms industry, most conspicuously, had an outsized footprint—Eli Whitney, Samuel Colt, John Marlin, Richard Gatling, Oliver Winchester, and Daniel Wesson were among Connecticut’s celebrated gun makers. By the end of World War II, the state had added submarine building and aircraft manufacturing to its technology portfolio. And the 1970s saw two corporate giants, Xerox and General Electric,⁵⁶ relocate their headquarters there.

Science and technology might not have been in Mim Daddario’s DNA, but as a savvy politician, he knew how much they meant to his state. He also understood the importance of evidenced-based policymaking, and the combination of the two led him to conclude that Congress would be well served by having its own technology assessment capability. He made the case to his colleagues, but his inspiration didn’t gain sufficient traction before he left the House for an unsuccessful gubernatorial run in 1970. Finally, 2 years later, over opposition from business leaders who worried that the new entity might generate burdensome regulation, stifling innovation,⁵⁷ Congress passed legislation establishing the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA).⁵⁸

The act stipulated that a twelve-member bipartisan, bicameral board would oversee the office’s activities, which were supposed to be apolitical and free from advocacy. Daddario became OTA’s first director in 1972, but early on, some members of Congress began to question whether he could deliver on OTA’s impartiality requirement. After all, he had been a Democratic member of the House, and he was a close friend of a high-profile Democratic senator, Edward “Ted” Kennedy of Massachusetts, who chaired OTA’s oversight board.

In 1977, Daddario elected to step aside and was replaced by Russell Peterson, a former governor of Delaware. Peterson, unlike Daddario, had scientific bona fides, having earned a Ph.D. in physical chemistry. And as a liberal Republican outside the Washington establishment, he didn’t carry around the political baggage that had weighed on Daddario. Two years later, though, Peterson left to become president of the National Audubon Society to pursue his primary interest—ecology. In 1979, John H. Gibbons, a nuclear physicist from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, took over the reins, and for 12 years, OTA was relatively stable. Under Gibbons’s leadership, OTA worked hard to maintain its credibility for unbiased scientific analysis,⁵⁹ but its critics never really disappeared. Providing sound scientific assessments in the political arena, as OTA’s history demonstrates, is far more difficult than students of policy generally recognize. Facts and evidence matter hugely, but politics can muddy the waters significantly, to the point where science is barely visible.

Gibbons tried to steer a steady course, but the seas almost proved to be too turbulent during Ronald Reagan’s years in the White House. Trouble began in 1983 when Reagan proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) centered on a space-based missile defense network. Until then, OTA had been largely successful in producing reports that were policy neutral, as well as politically neutral. If anything, its approach was too bland, leaving members of Congress to figure out for themselves what policy steps made sense and leading some to wonder what benefit OTA actually delivered. But Gibbons persevered with his approach, explaining in one interview, “Most congressional members welcome scientifically solid information. So that's what we offer them. We have to remember that we can never go one step further, however, and give opinions on what to do.”⁶⁰ Then came “Star Wars,” as SDI was known colloquially.

The Office of Technology Assessment conducted most of its work with the assistance of outside experts, because the topics it covered were so far ranging, its limited permanent staff could never provide the breadth and depth of knowledge required. In 1984, OTA released a background paper prepared by one of its contractors that took sharp issue with Reagan’s missile defense proposal. In the analyst’s words,⁶¹

Suddenly, OTA was in the cross hairs of the White House, and mostly all of Reagan’s supporters in Congress. [Ironically, the author of the OTA background paper was Ashton B. Carter, a well-respected nuclear physicist, who would serve as President Barack Obama’s Secretary of Defense from 2015 to 2017.] Gibbons eventually managed to right the OTA ship, but less than a decade later, the Star Wars episode would cause it to sink, although Gibbons was no longer on board when it happened.

In 1993, President Bill Clinton tapped Jack Gibbons as his science advisor, and Roger Herdman, who had been OTA’s assistant director, took over. His position and OTA’s place on Capitol Hill seemed secure, but its equilibrium would shortly prove unstable. The 1994 election was the turning point. After the votes were counted, Republicans found themselves in control of Congress for the first time in 40 years. “The Contract with America,” the Republican policy prescriptions that framed the last six weeks of the GOP mid-term campaign, called for shrinking the size of the federal government, cutting spending, balancing the budget, reducing the number of congressional committees, and closing a raft of federal agencies and offices.

Newt Gingrich, who was the Contract’s architect, became Speaker of the House. He was a science geek, but he had little use for OTA, which he saw as irrelevant and a bastion of biased liberal thinking. Curiously, however, it was not the House that turned off OTA’s funding stream in the fall of 1995. There were still enough establishment Republicans around who valued its work. Not so in the Senate, which voted 54–45 on September 29 to eliminate funding for Mim Daddario’s creation. [The Senate’s 1995 action removed OTA’s funding, but did not actually abolish the office. Several times since then, some members of Congress—among them, former Rep. Rush Holt Jr., a Democrat from New Jersey and the son of the West Virginia senator whom Harley Kilgore defeated in 1940—have tried to restore OTA’s budget. But none have succeeded.]

In hindsight, it’s not hard to understand why OTA drew the ire of conservative Republicans. There were three bases for their opposition. One was political, one was philosophical, and one was fundamental.

First, in line with Gingrich’s thinking, they saw OTA as a Democratic think tank. Ted Kennedy’s outsized role in OTA’s operation at its inception fed their narrative. And when a chunk of OTA’s staff accompanied Gibbons to the Clinton White House, Republicans were convinced they had proof positive.

Second, they saw OTA as the posterchild for bloated government. The House and Senate already had the Congressional Research Service (CRS) at their disposal, as well as the Government Accounting Office (now called the Government Accountability Office, but with the same acronym, GAO) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Even though OTA brought a much higher level of scientific and technological sophistication to the table, in line with Daddari’s vision, small government aficionados viewed the office as a luxury, not a necessity. In a crunch, they thought Congress could always turn to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS)—now the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine—for technical assistance, although, as our historical tour has shown, the NAS often fell short in that capacity.

Third, although they might not have parsed it as such, they saw an inherent contradiction in OTA’s operation. During its 21-year run, OTA had generated more than 750 technical analyses, each endeavoring to separate fact-based findings from the appearance of policy recommendations. But as Ash Carter’s background paper on Reagan’s “Star Wars” initiative showed, it’s very difficult to toe that line. Scientific and technical analysis does not ipso facto produce science and technology policy, but evidence-based studies very often leave no room for debate. It was true in Carter’s work for OTA, and it is the conundrum that faces science and technology policymakers who base their positions on evidence, but must function in an often-contentious political arena.