The malaise of the Jimmy Carter years

Former US president James Earl ‘Jimmy’ Carter died this week at the age of 100, the oldest that any US president has ever reached. Today, he is most fondly remembered for his more than five decades of energetic campaigning since leaving office in 1980. In 2002, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for successfully mediating peace negotiations between Israel and Egypt, and for his post-presidential campaigns for human rights and social welfare. However, his one-term presidency, between 1976 and 1980, represented a nadir for America’s self-confidence.

The late president was born in 1924 to Earl and Lillian Carter in Archery, Georgia. The Carters were the only white family in town. Most of the population of 200 consisted of Earl’s black tenants. After a naval career from 1946 to 1953, Jimmy returned to the family peanut farm. He first took political office in 1963, as a Democratic state senator in Georgia, before becoming governor of Georgia in 1971.

Carter saw an opportunity in national politics after the Watergate scandal, which led to Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974. A true political outsider, he ran for president in 1976 with the explicit intent of restoring moral leadership to the White House. The born-again Christian promised the US electorate: ‘I will never lie to you.’ One of his first acts as president in 1977 was to issue a blanket pardon to Vietnam War draft-dodgers.

Carter came to office during what was then called the ‘energy crisis’ – a period of high oil prices and fuel shortages in the West. He quickly created a new federal Department of Energy. He was the first US president to emphasise renewable energy and, in a symbolic act, he had solar panels installed on the roof of the White House. He also turned down the heating, hoping to lead by setting an austere example. However, his plan to address the energy crisis by introducing petrol rationing was roundly defeated by congress.

The crisis caused the US economy to stall during the Carter years. When he took office, the inflation rate was at 4.9 per cent. By 1980, it had risen to 12.6 per cent.

Carter’s strained relations with other politicians hampered the effectiveness of his presidency. He developed antagonistic relationships with Republicans and Democrats alike, including powerbrokers like Democratic House speaker Tip O’Neill and Carter’s own Democratic rival, Ted Kennedy.

He would soon come to alienate the public, too. His notorious ‘malaise speech’ of July 1979 was a truly astounding cri de coeur, but it was also an implicit attack on the American people themselves. He stared down the television camera at his fellow Americans and said: ‘As you know, there is a growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools, the news media and other institutions. This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning.’ He warned that the ‘erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America… All the legislation in the world can’t fix what’s wrong with America.’ This problem could be solved only by confronting ‘the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives’, he said.

This was not the message of reassurance that Americans wanted to hear. For many, it suggested that Carter belonged in the pulpit, rather than the White House.

What truly sealed Carter’s fate, dooming him to serve just one term in office, was the Iran hostage crisis. On 4 November 1979, Iranian students, just after the successful ousting of the Shah of Iran, seized the US embassy in Tehran and took 53 Americans as hostages. The hostages were held for 444 days. Carter appeared hesitant and uncertain in his response. He then initiated Operation Eagle Claw to rescue the hostages with military helicopters – a debacle that led to the deaths of eight American servicemen and the resignation of secretary of state Cyrus Vance. It heaped yet more humiliation on the US military, which was already in disarray following the withdrawal from Vietnam.

Such events became emblematic of Carter’s presidency. Voters’ impression of him was as a weak and vacillating leader, a pessimist who was more a handwringer than a leader. The 39th president left office in 1981 as one of America’s least popular presidents of modern times. Following his bruising defeat to Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election, he seemed doomed to be remembered by posterity as a failed president.

But when Carter lost, he did not retire. He established the Carter Center to fight for human rights and the alleviation of human suffering, including the eradication of infectious diseases. He built his presidential library, taught at Emory University in Atlanta and wrote numerous books. He helped build houses throughout the world and taught Sunday School.

His reputation has improved thanks to his charitable works and campaigning post-presidency, but also because Americans have become increasingly disillusioned about politics. Some look back at Carter as a prescient figure for his diagnosis of America’s current distrust in institutions. Some see him as a more honest broker than modern politicians. Others see the 1970s as halcyon years before the Reagan revolution and the neoliberal era.

Jimmy Carter was not the worst president in American history, by any means. But it was perhaps inevitable that he would join that less-than-illustrious group of just 10 one-term presidents (if we don’t count those who died in office). That some now look on the Carter years with nostalgia says more about today’s crisis of trust in politics than it does about his troubled presidency.

Kevin Yuill teaches American studies at the University of Sunderland. His book, Assisted Suicide: The Liberal, Humanist Case Against Legalisation, is published by Palgrave Macmillan. (Buy this book from Amazon (UK).)