The Election of 1976

Figure 1. President Gerald Ford (right) and Democratic challenger Jimmy Carter dueled in Philadelphia in 1976, during the first televised presidential debate since that between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy in 1960.

President Ford won the Republican nomination for the presidency in 1976, narrowly defeating the conservative former California governor Ronald Reagan, but he lost the election to his Democratic opponent Jimmy Carter. Carter ran on an “anti-Washington” ticket, making a virtue of his lack of experience in what was increasingly seen as the corrupt politics of the nation’s capital. Accepting his party’s nomination, the former governor of Georgia pledged to combat racism and sexism as well as overhaul the tax structure. He openly proclaimed his faith as a born-again Christian and promised to change the welfare system and provide comprehensive healthcare coverage for neglected citizens who deserved compassion. Most importantly, Jimmy Carter promised that he would “never lie.”

Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon had alienated many Republicans. The stagnant economy also cost him votes, as did his puzzling insistence that Eastern Europe was not under Soviet domination during a televized debate. Jimmy Carter, an engineer and former naval officer who portrayed himself as a humble peanut farmer, prevailed, carrying nearly every southern state, as well as traditionally Democratic areas in the Northeast and Midwest. Ford did well in the West, but Carter received 50 percent of the popular vote to Ford’s 48 percent, and 297 electoral votes to Ford’s 240.

On the Inside

Making a virtue of his lack of familiarity with Washington, Jimmy Carter took office with less practical experience in executive leadership and the workings of the national government than any president since Calvin Coolidge. His first executive act was to fulfill a campaign pledge to grant unconditional amnesty to young men who had evaded the draft during the Vietnam War.

In trying to manage the relatively high unemployment rate of 7.5 percent and inflation that had risen into the double digits by 1978, Carter was only marginally effective. His tax reform measure of 1977 was weak and failed to close the grossest of loopholes. His deregulation of major industries, such as aviation and trucking, was intended to force large companies to become more competitive. Consumers benefited in some ways: For example, airlines offered cheaper fares to beat their competitors. Carter also expanded various social programs, improved housing for the elderly, and took steps to improve workplace safety.

Because the high cost of fuel continued to hinder economic expansion, the creation of an energy program became a central focus of his administration. Carter stressed energy conservation, encouraging people to insulate their houses and rewarding them with tax credits if they did so, and pushing for the use of coal, nuclear power, and alternative energy sources such as solar power to replace oil and natural gas. To this end, Carter created the Department of Energy. He apply these changes, he tried to set a good example, putting solar panels on the White House and wearing sweaters while keeping the White House thermostat low.

Carter and a New Direction in Foreign Affairs

Figure 2. President Jimmy Carter meets with Egypt’s Anwar Sadat (left) and Israel’s Menachem Begin (right) at Camp David in 1978. Sadat was assassinated in 1981, partly because of his willingness to make peace with Israel.

Informed in part by his evangelical Christian faith, Carter believed that U.S. foreign policy should be founded upon deeply held moral principles and national values. He instead proposed “a policy based on constant decency in its values and on optimism in our historical vision.” His dedication to peace and human rights significantly changed the way that the United States conducted its foreign affairs and marked a departure from the realism and calculations that guided them under Nixon and Kissinger. Carter’s human rights policy achieved real victories: the United States either reduced or eliminated aid to American-supported right-wing dictators guilty of extreme human rights abuses in places like South Korea, Argentina, and the Philippines. In September 1977, Carter negotiated the return to Panama of the Panama Canal, which cost him enormous political capital in the United States. Most significantly of all, he bought Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat to the United States to discuss peace between their countries. Their meetings at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, led to the signing of the Camp David Accords in September 1978. Subsequently, the two rival Middle Eastern nations (Israel and Egypt) signed a historic and enduring peace treaty in 1979.

Despite achieving many successes in the area of foreign policy, Carter made a more controversial decision in response to the Soviet Union’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. In January 1980, he declared that if the USSR did not withdraw its forces, the United States would boycott the 1980 Summer Olympic Games in Moscow. The Soviets did not retreat, and the United States did not send a team to Moscow. Only about half of the American public supported this decision, and despite Carter’s call for other countries to join the boycott, very few did so.

Carter’s efforts to ease the Cold War by achieving a new nuclear arms control agreement disintegrated under domestic opposition from conservative Cold War hawks such as Ronald Reagan, who accused Carter of weakness. A month after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, a beleaguered Carter committed the United States to defending its “interests” in the Middle East against Soviet incursions, declaring that “an assault [would] be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” The Carter Doctrine not only signaled Carter’s ambivalent commitment to de-escalation and human rights, it testified to his increasingly desperate presidency.^[1] To demonstrate American resolve, the president also reactivated the selective service, requiring young men to register for the draft for the first time since the Vietnam War.

Hostages to History

Carter’s biggest foreign policy problem was the Iranian hostage crisis, whose roots lay in the 1950s. In 1953, the United States had assisted Great Britain in the overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, a rival of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the shah of Iran. Mossadegh had sought greater Iranian control over the nation’s oil wealth, which was claimed by British companies. The U.S. also feared that Mossadegh lacked the resolve to keep the communist threat out of Iran in the midst of Cold War tensions. Following the coup, the shah assumed complete control of Iran’s government. He then disposed of political enemies and eliminated dissent through the use of SAVAK, a secret police force trained by the United States. The United States also supplied the shah’s government with billions of dollars in aid. As Iran’s oil revenue grew, especially after the 1973 oil embargo against the United States, the pace of its economic development and the size of its educated middle class also increased, and the country became less dependent on U.S. aid. Its population increasingly faulted the United States for the death of Iranian democracy, a rise in decadent Western social values, and its consistent support of Israel.

Despite the shah’s unpopularity among his own people, the result of both his brutal policies and his desire to Westernize Iran, the United States supported his regime. In February 1979, the shah was overthrown when revolution broke out, and a few months later, he departed for the United States for medical treatment. The long history of U.S. support for him and its offer of refuge greatly angered Iranian revolutionaries. When the President and First Lady Rosalynn Carter visited Tehran, Iran, in January 1978, the president praised the nation’s dictatorial ruler, Shah Reza Pahlavi, and remarked on the “respect and the admiration and love” Iranians had for their leader.

On November 4, 1979, a group of Iranian students and activists, including Islamic fundamentalists who wished to end the Westernization and secularization of Iran, invaded the American embassy in Tehran and seized sixty-six embassy employees. The women and African Americans were soon released, leaving fifty-three men as hostages. Negotiations failed to free them, and in April 1980, a rescue attempt fell through when an aircraft sent to transport them crashed and caused the deaths of eight American servicemen.

Figure 3. The fifty-two American hostages return from Iran in January 1981. They had been held for 444 days.

Americans not only experienced another oil crisis as Iran’s oil fields shut down, but they also watched America’s news programs for 444 days, reminding them of the hostages and America’s new global impotence. Carter couldn’t win their release. Already beset with a punishing economy, Carter’s popularity plummeted. The fifty-two men still held in Iran were finally freed on January 20, 1981, the day Ronald Reagan took office as president.

This contributed to a growing sense of malaise, a feeling that the United States’ best days were behind it and the country had entered a period of decline. In a televised address, Carter noted that “our people are losing that faith, not only in government itself but in the ability as citizens to serve as the ultimate rulers and shapers of our democracy,” and the nation was suffering “a crisis of confidence.”^[2] His critics gleefully dubbed the address “Malaise Speech,” for its depressing quality, and the solutions he proposed—importing less oil and removing price controls on energy sources–did little to resolve the issue.

Many of the problems facing the United States during the 1970s predated Carter’s presidency and endured after he left office when he was defeated for re-election. Some blamed these problems on dishonest politicians; others blamed the problems on the Cold War obsession with fighting Communism, even in small nations like Vietnam that had little influence on American national interests. Still others faulted American materialism. In 1980, a small but growing group called the Moral Majority found Carter complicit in weakening America’s global stature and the corrosion of its moral values.