The past is another country, and it’s hard to understand Jimmy Carter (who died yesterday at age 100) without understanding the very weird decade that thrust him into prominence.
The cultural milieu of the 1970s usually gets squeezed down to “disco” and “cocaine,” but there was an awful lot more (both good and bad) going on then. It was one of the greatest decades for movies ever, but with a focus on unlikable antiheroes, urban decay and downer endings (Dog Day Afternoon, Taxi Driver). The reaction to that extreme brought us Rocky and Star Wars (and, speaking of cocaine, The Star Wars Holiday Special). There was a tremendous ferment in music, from progressive to punk rock, very little of which was getting played on the radio, while things like “Muskrat Love” and “Disco Duck” topped the charts.
Traditional religious belief was in decline, but people flocked to see Satan in movie theaters and it was a golden age for all sorts of crackpot cults and pseudoscience.
Politically, the unpopular (though not as unpopular as depicted in the movies) Vietnam War had come to an end with America pulling out, South Vietnam collapsing, and the genocidal Khmer Rouge coming to power in Cambodia. Democrats had controlled both the House and Senate for all but four years since FDR’s election. Watergate had taken out Nixon, but not before he had carried 49 states in crushing George McGovern.
The 1976 Democratic Presidential Primary was a different kettle of fish. Scoop Jackson was considered an early favorite, but faded. Carter, seen as moderate centrist in contrast to McGovern’s far left “acid, amnesty and abortion” vibes, won a plurality at the Iowa caucuses. George Wallace, still a segregationist (don’t let Democrats get away with their “the parties switched places/southern strategy” myth) dominated the Mississippi caucuses. From then on out, Carter dominated the primaries, distancing himself from Wallace, Jackson, Arizona Rep. Mo Udall and California’s Jerry “Governor Moonbeam” Brown. Then he beat Gerald R. Ford, the first un-elected Vice President to ascend to the Oval Office, after he survived a brutal primary challenge from Ronald Reagan, who hadn’t jumped into the race until September of 1975.
Once in office, Carter, a nasty piece of work masquerading as a plaster saint, proved unequal to the multiple challenges besetting the nation. Post-Bretton Woods inflation resisted all attempts to tame it, and was soon joined by high unemployment rates, hitting ordinary Americans with a one-two punch of stagflation that Keynesian economists assured us was impossible.
In foreign policy, Carter’s supine weakness encouraged the fall of the Shah and the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Republic in Iran, which led to Iranian hostage crisis, all of which encouraged the Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan.
Even beyond policy, Carter seemed snakebit. “Lust in my heart,” Billy beer, the jogging collapse, the “malaise” speech. And, let’s not forget, the killer rabbit. Even nature seemed to have it in for Carter.
All of that combined to make Carter vulnerable enough to lose soundly to Ronald Reagan in 1980.
It must be said that late in his term, Carter would finally embrace some policies that would pave the way for Reagan’s success: Rebuilding the military, deregulating significant segments of the economy, and appointing Paul Volcker to the federal reserve.
I suppose I’m supposed to talk about his charitable work in his retirement, but Carter’s primary traits seemed to be that he got both crankier and more leftwing as time went on, and seemingly more bitter over how America had rejected him in 1980.
Carter’s longest lasting legacies will probably be the Camp David Accords (which cost the American taxpayer billions in subsidies to Egypt and Israel every year), and the USS Jimmy Carter (SSN-23), a nuclear powered fast attack/electronic warfare submarine (Carter served in a submarine prior to his political career).
100 is a good, long run, especially given that the last year was spent in hospice care. Many a wag online has suggested that God kept Carter alive long enough to see Trump win a second term.
Sic Transit Gloria.