ABSTRACT
Johnson’s “Great Society” represented the culmination of the domestic response to the postwar generation, just as his Vietnam venture represented the climax of America’s foreign interventionism. The generation’s culminating events began in 1973 with the Arab oil embargo and the Watergate scandal. One of the most prominent features of American constitutionalism is the idea that constitutions are designed by the people they serve, who exercise a special kind of political decision making in the process. In the interim, the cities of the prairie have coped with the generational rhythm, each in its own way in light of its geohistorical location. The most visible constitutional changes in the cities of the prairie were formal changes in government structure that were introduced in the first half of the postwar generation as part of the adjustment of local government to the metropolitan frontier. The struggle over the form of the city’s government remained a dominant issue in Peoria throughout the generation.
