Why did Carter lose in 1980?

He created a ton of jobs. Did the hostage crisis cost him re-election?

...

unemployment didn't hit double digits until Reagan.

SHEESH.....

Our interest rate on our Colorado house was 15%+.

This was not so much his doing, as it was the recession.. I was not inot politics then, but seeing how the rates were manipulated to hurt Gore, there may have been some underhanded stuff going on then too..

The sneaky dealing on the Hostage crisis is what hurt him the most though..

Our old pal James Baker was involved in that mess.. just google baker+iran crisis and your eyes will open wide :(

hooked on politics and foreign affairs

after election, and it sounds as though the "rescue attempt" was purposely botched by some in the military. Typical Repub games.

I don't believe either of those two things happened.

People love conspiracies though.

Why exactly did the Iranians give them back?

I don't believe the standard story because it usually involves the Israeli-Iranian arms trade and I don't believe that the deals had anything to do with the Khomeni government but were bribes to try and secure an Iranian military coup.

the Iranians were captives of the embassy takeover as much as we were.

The Iranian government couldn't free them or they'd look like they were knucling under to pressure, but at the same time they didn't want them. What were they going to do with them?

So they took the changing of the guard as an opportunity to declare victory and send them home.

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The "Misery Index," Iran, Reagan's media machine, Kennedy's primary challenge.

I would say it was a combination of things, not just one.

and jobs are just one factor...that can't really be 'controlled' by the president

had the economy been in better shape he could have survived the hostage crisis (as it is he got them out alive).

not really...Iranians just waited until Carter was out of office as a final slap at him

it was a final slap at him, but it was a Carter negotiated deal that won the release of the hostages. They just waited until the moment Reagan was sworn in to let the hostages take off.

I think Anderson had an impact. My sister - a good Democrat - voted for him.

Bill Moyers was moderator.

Carter refused to participate. I don't remember why? Probably because he was too busy with the Iranian crisis. It may have been because Anderson was included, but Anderson was a moderate Republican who fought Reagan in the primaries and then went third party in the general.

Here's the transcript for anyone who wants a little nostalgia. "The Anderson Difference!"

http://www.debates.org/pages/trans80a.html

during the hostage crisis. He refused to campaign. I always thought that was a big mistake. I felt like he just laid down and died.
Of course now he has the respect of the world. Unlike someone else we all know.

Good 'ol boy Carter, a decent man, didn't have a chance from the outset. Reagan point blank lied, for example, about the claim he had long been calling for an end to Social Security. Carter just seemed like he was a deer in the headlights when faced with RR's lying.

The hostage situation didn't help either.

There was a lot of talk at the time that the GOP had promised big bucks to the Ayatollah if he would hold on to the hostages until after election day. I beleive they were released on Inaugeration Day and the GOP spun it to look like the mullahs were afraid of RR instead of paid off.

It was the first great GOP election.

1) The Iran hostage crisis, and failed rescue mission
2) The economy was in downward trend
3) He was perceived as ineffectual in getting things done in Congress

4) Ronald Reagan's charismatic optimistic persona.

I think it took a combination of all 4, with #4 finally sinking him.
He won every debate intellectually, but lost them at the "gut" level.
"There you go again Jimmy..."


Remember that Jimmy portrayed himself as a super technocrat, super honest, man of the people (sleepovers at common folk's homes and going to the lockerroom of the world series' winners). He was all three, but he was not effective in his political dealings with congress-- to some extent he did not respect them and there was bad feeling between them. To some extent he came across as self-righteous as well-- he just plain knew what was right. This limited his ability to get things done, which was not predicted given his good record in Georgia.

Watergate and the Nixon pardon.

Carter had large Democratic majorities in each house of congress to work with.

he was not effective in his political dealings with congress-- to some extent he did not respect them and there was bad feeling between them. To some extent he came across as self-righteous as well-- he just plain knew what was right. This limited his ability to get things done, which was not predicted given his good record in Georgia.


who said he's `make congress scurry like cockroaches?


quote the Dr,,,,why do i do things like that?

good question doc....

"Morning in America"

Bookends nicely with today's "Evening in America"

Rather than promoting energy independence Bush, thru his sock puppet Reagan made cheap oil a centerpiece of their election. We are reaping the fruits of that policy today.

NT

That was when the repugs, true to their gangster base, engineered a deal with the iranians to hold the hostages until after the election. In return the repugs gave them missles and other arms.

When raygun announced that he had prevailed upon the iran gov't to release the hostages and they would be home right after the election, it was all over for Carter.

This was one of the first acts of treason to be perpetrated by the republicans, and no one here remembers it? Come on, people. We're better than that.

Congress investigated this allegation and found nothing to back it up...Reagan never announced the hostages would be released after the election...

this is a persistent fantasy of people would can't admit their guy lost..big

to make the deal.

You are perpetrating a fantasy for facists who have a problem with truth.

...wrongdoing, but as was typical of those investigations, the Dem leadership was not inclined to go for the jugular, and without the "push" from party leaders it was marginalized and finally dropped.

Admittedly, the OS has fallen into "ConspiracyTheoryLand" and some of the wilder claims are demonstrably false, but there are also parts from more reliable sources that were ignored by that investigation.

I'm not a True Believer on the subject and I doubt it's as nice and neat as some people seem to think it is, but there is evidence that there was some sort of covert (and illegal) shennanigans going on between between members of the Reagan campaign and the Iranian government over the hostages.

In other words, don't lean on it as a reason Carter lost, but don't dismiss it out of hand either.

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That was when the repugs, true to their gangster base, engineered a deal with the iranians to hold the hostages until after the election. In return the repugs gave them missles and other arms.

When raygun announced that he had prevailed upon the iran gov't to release the hostages and they would be home right after the election, it was all over for Carter.

This was one of the first acts of treason to be perpetrated by the republicans, and no one here remembers it? Come on, people. We're better than that.

October Surprise X-Files (Part 1): Russia's Report
http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/xfile1.html

Even Reagan-Bush White House analyst Barbara Honegger agrees that the delayed release of the hostages until after the election happened.

Arms started flowing to Iran in Feb. 1981, just weeks after Reagan took office. The Iran-Contra investigation in the late 80's was specifically prohibited from investigating anything prior to 1984. Even democtrats were complicit in covering up this aspect of the scandal as well as the selling of drugs by the CIA to support the Contras.

Let's hope he can do better this time.

when the commission accepted the White House "compromise."

I read through the thread hoping someone would give the real answer. You did. Thanks.

George Bush meeting in Paris with the Iranians to hold the hostages until Reagan sworn into office in January '81 with the returned favor of illegally selling them U.S. arms.

And...just weeks after Reagan was President, the U.S. clandestinely began selling weapons to Iran.

Shameful.

1. Iranian Crisis. America looked completely weak and demoralized.
2. Economy. There may have been job creation but inflation and interest rates meant that consumers had less money to spend.
3. Congress. He couldn't get programs passed, even with his own party in charge. Somehow, he managed to create gridlock with control of the government.

Also, don't forget that Ted Kennedy challenged him in the primary and nearly won. Remember what Buchanan did to Bush, Sr in '92. It was about 1000x worse than that for Carter.

1. Iranian Crisis. America looked completely weak and demoralized.
2. Economy. There may have been job creation but inflation and interest rates meant that consumers had less money to spend.
3. Congress. He couldn't get programs passed, even with his own party in charge. Somehow, he managed to create gridlock with control of the government.

Also, don't forget that Ted Kennedy challenged him in the primary and nearly won. Remember what Buchanan did to Bush, Sr in '92. It was about 1000x worse than that for Carter.

with a 16 % mortgage interest rate?

Then he said we should not consider the Soviet Union to be automatic bad guys. Then they invaded Afghanistan and he said he misjudged them so we embargoed grain and skipped the Olympics.

Ethiopia, Angola, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Mozambique all had Soviet Union friendly governments take over. It looked like the US was retreating everywhere in the world, and Carter seemed unwilling or unable to fight it.

Then came the hostage crisis and again the US seemed powerless. Carter adopted a Rose Garden strategy where he stayed in the White House to monitor negotiations but looked like a prisoner himself.

Then there was the general pessimism. Energy crisis, hostage crisis, Carter kind of summed it up when he talked of a national "malaise,"

The time was ripe for the optimistic Reagan where the world was always sunny and the future belonged to us.

PS - I spent much of the election year as a student in Austria. The Germans would always ask me who would win the presidency, Kennedy or Carter. Most of them wanted Kennedy. I kept telling them I thought Reagan would win, and most didn't know a thing about him, or even that he was running.

were that way mostly because the U.S. had been supporting the previous right-wing dictatorships or colonial powers. (Afghanistan was never in the U.S. "orbit" to begin with.)

How'd you like to buy a house...
...with a 16 % mortgage interest rate?

We bought our house in 1978 with an 8 3/4% interest rate... and solar panels installed with only a $600. extra cost to us.

Back then, people were experimenting with building underground (bermed houses) as another way of cutting heating costs. Windmills were another way of generating your own electricity, and some folks were actually selling to the electric companies.

If this country had listened to Jimmy Carter and started figuring ways of being independent of oil back then, we wouldn't be having problems now.

Interesting that the Crawford ranch has geothermal technology and recycles waste water though, isn't it?

Reagan lied.

Carter was too honest.

People did not want to hear that they should turn down their thermostats.

Carter had too much integrity to play ball, which added to his overall ineffectiveness. Brilliant person and wonderful human, but an ineffective president.

Dems like Tip O'Neil didn't realize Carter was serious about his campaign promises. "We have to bring our own lunch?!"

I think about the Carter years when I look at the current election, too. I think a couple of our leading candidates could fall into the same trap: they be great guys, but unable to get their ideas implemented.

About halfway through Carter's term, he got the Congressional Dems to push for some legislation, I can't remember what it was. They did their best, but just before the vote, Carter reversed his position, didn't tell the Dems, and left them embarassed. They never got over that one. By the time 1980 rolled around, Carter had lost his base in Congress.

I've always been angered at the claim that inflation and interest rates were so terrible under Carter. Things were actually much worse under Nixon, who set off the high inflation/interest rates with his wage and price controls of the early 70's. Almost no one recalls them any more, although economists at the time just screamed about the controls, saying that a few years down the road inflation and interest rates would be sky high. Guess what? They were, and someone else, Carter, got the blame.

Jimmy Carter was a fundamentally decent, honest human being who was eaten alive by the conservative Republican steamroller that brought Ronald Reagan to power, and this country has been suffering ever since.

I think it was more the fact that America was facing several huge crises simultaneously and Carter looked utterly powerless to do anything about it. The Russians invade Afghanistan and we boycott the Olympics. The Iranians take our Embassy and we can only muster one disastrous rescue attempt. The economy is in shambles and he gives the "Malaise" speech.

Nobody doubts that Carter is a good and decent man. He was probably the most decent man to ever hold the office. But he was viewed as ineffective even by the stalwarts of his own party. I mean, he almost lost the PRIMARY.

with a rise in the interest rates by the fed. It got so bad that the interest rates were actually adding to inflation. My family business stopped dead in its tracks for awhile because it was tied into housing and construction. We're talking interest rates near 20%.

was also one of the most decent men to have ever been president. They don't seem to have the best records.

I remember many liberals disliked him, as well, including Ben Bradley of the WP. He was abandoned by just about everyone by November 1980.

It was partly a cultural thing: the Carter WH cut out liquor at dinners and parties; softball replaced more 'cultivated' activites at picnics. The Washington Post allowed columnists to jeer at Rosalyn when she bought dresses OFF THE RACK!! :o

Just not up to Camelot class, I guess.

... a southerner.

His brother Billy made a circus out of the whole thing, and his mother with her down home remarks. I knew at the time, it was a terrible mistake, and some of his advisers warned him to control them, but he would never listen. So he brought some of it on himself.

Not to give Nixon a pass, but I don't think anyone has directly mentioned yet that the 70's were the heyday of OPEC embargoes and skyrocketing oil prices. Since oil was (and still is) the most pervasive resource, increases in its price drove increases in prices throughout the economy, particularly during the '73 (Nixon) and '77 (Carter) embargoes.

By 1980 not only had OPEC pretty much pushed its leverage as far as it would go but several factors (outside competition from North Sea and Latin American oil; too many OPEC members cheating on their quotas for extra cash; and above all the Iranian Revolution and the fear of it speading) pulled the rug out from under OPEC and it just didn't have the same kind of leverage it did in the 70s. Adjusted for inflation, by the end of Reagan's presidency oil was just about as cheap as it had been before the price hikes and embargoes, which obviously benefitted our oil-hungry economy and allowed St. Ronald (or at least His worshippers) to claim credit for it.

He had bad luck happen to him in a lot of ways. Also, as Reagan said on TV, "are you better off than you were four years ago?" The answer to that question was no and thus the voters ejected Carter from office.

I voted for Jimmy. My very first vote. Damnit I hated Reagan with a passion

People thought Carter was a bummer. They didn't want to hear the truth. They didn't want to conserve gasoline or anything else. They wanted to drive 95 mph on the freeways and hope for the best.

Everybody's forgetting what a big impact Andersen had. He was sort of the Ralph Nader of 1980.

I still remember the day Reagan was elected. I was in college. It was my first election. I couldn't believe that this nimrod had been elected president.

And then there was Watt. Ughghghghggh. I vowed from that day forward to never vote republican again.

was a Republica member of the House of Representatives from 1961-81. He ran for president in the Republican primaries in 1980 as a moderate-liberal Republican. He came in third and hurt Bush the most by splitting the anti-Reagan vote. His support came from mostly liberal to moderate Republicans (the so called Rockefeller Republicans) that couldn't stand the thought of a cowboy nominee.

When Reagan got the nomination, he bolted the party and ran as an independent. I remember him being as high as over 10 % or so in the polls, but he ended up at 6.6 %. Reagan got 50.7 %, Carter 41.0 % and Ed Clark made the Libertarian Party's best showing with 921,000 votes or 1.1 % of the total.

Anderson got his best support from the northeast from Rockefeller Republicans and fed up Democrats. Since Reagan didn't need to win there anyway, he no doubt hurt Carter more because it made Carter defend his base. I'm pretty sure that Anderson cost Carter Massachusetts and maybe New York. Those are the only two states I think he mattered in though.

Trying to think of a current politician that would be like Anderson in 1980. Maybe Congressman Chris Shays (R) of Connecticutt?

What I remember is he was seen as ineffective.

Looking back though, he was set-up.

Bush and Kennedy

The Washington Post, for one. He just wasn't up to their standards. Admittedly, he seemed almost helpless at the end, but being deserted didn't exactly help him. You would THINK that the threat of a Reagan WH would have scared the shit out of them, but it didn't.

I remember one night, very close to the election, Herblock was guest on Tom Snyder's talk show. Tom recounted some of the fears of Ronnie's extreme RW positions, and asked Herblock if he were 'afraid of Reagan'. Herblock sneered and smirked, "No, I am NOT afraid of Ronald Reagan", and then continued to blast the crap out of Carter. I never read any more of his damned cartoons ater that. Hypocrite!!!

I campaigned for him in 1976 -- and I've still got a peanut-pendant around somewhere to prove it. But by 1980, even I'd despaired of him ever being able to accomplish anything.

He seemed to react to events negatively and defensively. The flap during the 1976 campaign when he said he'd "sinned in his heart" set a tone of self-doubt and even self-punishment for his administration. Talking about a malaise in America, wearing sweaters and turning down the White House thermostat, pulling the US out of the 1980 Olympics, and shutting himself up in Washington for the duration of the hostage crisis were all part of a common pattern.

Americans want can-do presidents, who inspire them to jump in and take hold. Reagan, for all the horrible results of his actual policies, offered that sort of invigorating image. Carter didn't.

(And Bush doesn't either, which is one reason I expect him to crash out hard at some point. Americans got scared after 9/11 and were willing to turn to reassuring authority figures, but by and large they're not at all fond of people who tell them, "Shut up and let me handle this.")

My family has always been big-time Democrats (my Grandmother has a framed Christmas card from Hubert Humphrey in her house) and they all supported Kennedy in '80. I have a Kennedy button somewhere in a junk drawer. (I would have been 8 at the time).

They all came back around for Carter by November, but they were as unenthusiastic as you could be.

I believe they doubled during the 4 years Carter was in office; from around $0.60 a gallon to $1.20.

I'm not saying it was his fault, just that if the price of gasoline doubles in any president's 4-year term, he's gone. Just think what would happen to Shrub if gasoline should peak at around $2.50-$3.00 a gallon before next November.

They have been very informative thus far.

Ted Kennedy hurt, too.

Raygun only got 50.7% of the vote.

That's a pretty high vote. It's been 39 years since a Democratic candidate has gotten 50.7 % of the vote. Carter didn't get that high even after Watergate. Neither did Clinton. Or Kennedy. Or Truman.

I think the two lowest ever were JQ Adams in 1824 with 30 % and Lincoln in 1860 with 39.8 %. I may be forgetting someone though.

That is almost a 10% difference. Very similar to the results in 1996.

I voted for Carter in 76 (my FIRST election!) but as a beer-soaked 23-y-o, I didn't feel that Jimmy had done enough to get the hostages out of Tehran, wasn't "Manly" enough("why doesn't he just go kick their asses?"), and he ran an ineffectual campaign in '80, too.

Live and learn. Within 2 years, I'd had given blood to have Jimmy back...

same that assassinated Kennedy (only Mafia & Cuban refugees were added into this).

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Let's face, when the whole country starts laughing AT you, you're toast. And the image of a President being attacked by a bunny will put you on the floor.

He rose to his level of incompetence vis a vis the demands placed on the president in that time. He was a dreadful president, but I expect he would have been a heck of a fine Secretary of State.

The primary thing he brought to the job was an insufferable self righteousness, which following Nixon was how the nation overcompensated. In less turbulant times that would have been less of a handicap. He just didn't have the skillset to deal with the times he had to face.

You can illustrate up his failure , and the reason for his rejection in 1980, by his remarks when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. Paraphrasing cause I don't have time to look up the precise quote, it opened his eyes to what Russia was. Voters will much more easily forgive a dishonest president then they will a naive one, especially one who isn't having much luck in any other part of his administration's policies.

Let go of the "October Surprise " nonsense. Carter's self made plus natural bad luck defeated him. Not phantom conspiracies.

That was a brilliant book. You are right. Carter was in over his head. He would be a great next door neighbor, unless your house was being burglarized. Then he would get the burglar a step ladder for the window so he wouldn't hurt himself and try to talk about morality to the burglar. Carter was a naive wimp in a dark alley full of slick tough guys.

You must be referring to the current occupant of the White House....

I don't think an Annapolis grad can be fairly called a "naive wimp"...

That being said the Carter presidency wasn't a particularly good time for America....

The Soviets's seemed to be ascendant..... The "ten feet tall" nonsense....

Inflation was out of control....


And there was no efective answer to the Iranian Hostage Crisis which begs the question what an ineffective response would be.....

We broke off diplomatic relations and froze their assets...

A military response could have resulted in the death of the hostages....

The Soviets's seemed to be ascendant..... The "ten feet tall" nonsense....

True. It's worth noting that just prior to Carter's administration the neocon movement scored its first big propaganda coup, the "Team B" exercise within the CIA (authorized by none other than Poppy Bush).

The "team B" assessment of Soviet strategic capabilities and intentions -- which were not objective analyses but hair'em-scare'em paranoid worst case fantasies cooked up by the neocon team, including one Dr. Paul Wolfowitz -- was leaked to American conservatives who were ready to eat such an assessment up with a spoon.

To paraphrase Sam Clemens, the truth could only get its boots on some 20 years later, after the USSR fell and we could get a look at its records. In the meantime, the neocon lie/fantasy provided the basis for the notion that liberal Democrats were unilaterally disarming while the Russian Bear was poiised to take over the world.

here's what I remember:

1) As an outsider, Carter didn't know how to handle Congress. He failed to butter up the entrenched Senators and Congresscritters in the way that they were accustomed to, so they refused to cooperate with him.

2) Stagflation. As a graduate student, I wasn't buying houses or cars, but I remember prices going up at a frightening rate. The interest rates are set by the Federal Reserve, which is independent of the president, but most people don't know that.

3) The hostages. The media played the hostage story as if it were the only thing happening in the world.

Years later, Jimmy Carter spoke at the college where I was teaching, and someone asked him why he hadn't done anything about the hostages. He replied that his cultural advisors had told him that directly confronting the Iranians in public would only make them dig in harder, so he sent word through the diplomatic channels of seven countries that if the hostages were harmed, he would order the bombing of Tehran. As you know, all the hostages got out alive, despite earlier threats to kill the, and the Iranians even released a hostage who began showing odd medical symptoms, because they didn't want him to possibly die in their custody.

Anyway, Carter said that it was very frustrating for him when people said that he should take a tougher line with the Iranians, because he was working through back channels and couldn't say anything about it.

4) A lot of Americans are immature and don't want their fantasy world spoiled. If we had followed through with Carter's energy saving policies and tried to build our future on doing things in an environmentally sound way, the world would look very different.

5) Cultural clashes. The elites didn't know what to do with a Southerner who was religious, and yet not a conservative. Being religiously illiterate, they didn't know what he was talking about when he talked about "lusting in his heart." (He was correctly interpreting the Biblican passage in which Jesus says that we shouldn't feel proud of not doing forbidden things, because we all have the potential to do them and all have moments when we want to do them.)

I remember watching the 1980 election returns with some friends in a third-floor apartment in a house in New Haven, Connecticut. We sat there repeating, "President...Ronald...Reagan" in disbelief.

Carter is a good man, not a liar and a moving force for peace. In 1979, who would have thought that someone's opponent or his running mate would be capable of making arrangements with an enemy to hold american citizens hostage through the election in order to get weapons' deals? Even keeping Watergate in mind, that type of thing was just unthinkable then, and to a lot of Reagan lovers, still is.

did him the solid of counting the days of the Iran hostage crisis. Ted Koppel's Nightline was born via this crisis, and they would start every broadcast with "Iran Hostage Crisis, Day ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN!" Those libs in the press, always leaning left.

And the economy was bad.

And Carter was THE 70's candidate, a man who was honest about his lust in a Playboy interview (okay, even the fact that he DID a Playboy interview), a runner, a grassroots kinda guy. The TIME magazine cover that seared my brain had craggy-faced Rawhide grinning vacuously with "A FRESH START" under him. I've always believe Carter also suffered from being the product of a decade everyone wanted to leave behind them.