The Cold War had an enormous impact on the United States politically, socially, and economically. In addition to spawning fear-induced Red hunts and McCarthyism in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Cold War also shaped U.S. presidents’ political agendas. Eisenhower, for example, sought to reduce government spending at home in order to halt what he called “creeping socialism” and to save money for more urgent needs such as defense. Kennedy’s New Frontier inspired patriotic fervor and visions of new hope in American youth. Even Eisenhower’s farewell warning of a growing military-industrial complex within the United States, which would come to dominate American political thinking, proved to be eerily accurate during the Vietnam War era the following decade. At the same time, federal dollars feeding this complex helped produce one of the greatest economic booms in world history.