The Sixties and Seventies
During John Denver’s formative years, the space race with the Soviet Union was in full swing. In 1963 President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, leading to his successor’s, Lyndon Baines Johnson, presidency. Under Johnson, the U.S. presence in Vietnam mushroomed, as well as government spending. Though this spending helped America in the short term, failure to raise taxes to pay for all this spending led to a downfall of the short-lived prosperity. The Vietnam war had already started when “Take Me Home, Country Roads” debuted and evidence of the lack of government responsibility started to peek through the rabbit hole; inflation was increasing, the stock market was dropping, and foreign competition was intensifying.