The Administration of President Jimmy Carter

Foreign and Domestic Setbacks Hurt Popular Support

Apr 15, 2009

Winning the presidency during the bicentennial year, Jimmy Carter introduced new directions in foreign policy that would ultimately contribute to his political demise.

1976 gave Americans a major birthday to celebrate after many years of division over Vietnam and political apathy following the Watergate scandal. The bicentennial of the nation’s independence captivated Americans and reminded them that the system under the Constitution worked. A president, caught in a cover-up, had resigned for the first time in our history; the United States was forced to withdraw from Southeast Asia, perhaps another first. 1976 was also an election year and most Americans would support a political “outsider” from Georgia who seemed to portray values and morality.

The Election of 1976 and James Earl Carter

By 1976 many Americans had lost confidence in their political institutions. The nation was still divided over the Vietnam War which had significantly eroded patriotism and trust, especially among young voters. President Gerald Ford, an eminently qualified political veteran, further incurred the ire of Americans by pardoning former President Richard Nixon. All of these reasons help to explain the Carter victory in 1976, albeit by a very close margin.

A “born again” Sunday school teacher, Jimmy Carter represented a very different kind of leadership. Keenly aware of human rights as an adjunct to American foreign policy, Carter rejected the status quo that supported dictators like Somoza in Nicaragua and the Shah in Iran. Carter won the election with only 1,680,974 popular votes out of a total of 79,976,200 ballots cast. 56 elector votes separated Carter from Gerald Ford.

The Agony of the Carter Administration

The first year of the Carter administration produced legislation returning the Panama Canal and Canal Zone to sovereign Panamanian control. Motivated by altruism and a spirit of egalitarianism, Jimmy Carter roused the scorn of many Americans that questioned the administrations grasp of Realpolitik and rejected the interjection of human rights concerns in foreign policy considerations affecting the security of the nation.

The Carter years witnessed a dramatic increase in foreign auto imports, notably from Japan, and the near collapse of Chrysler Corporation in 1979. Congress guaranteed 1.5 billion dollars in loans, cobbled together through a consortium of international banks, including the Bank of Teheran at the very time Iranians were still holding American embassy personnel as hostages.

The storming of the American embassy, resulting in the “hostage crisis” involving fifty-three Americans, occurred in the same year the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. It was an action the Carter administration was unprepared for. Some scholars of the time state that President Carter took the Soviet actions personally, having been reassured by the Kremlin that the Soviet Union had no interests in Afghanistan. The invasion threatened the stability of the Middle East as well as the precarious flow of oil from that region, compromised in 1973 by the OPEC oil embargo.

United States’ response was to authorize covert assistance to Afghan freedom fighters through the CIA. Among them was a young idealist named Osama bin Laden. At the same time, President Carter took the highly unpopular step of boycotting the 1980 Moscow Olympics. To this day, Russians that are old enough to recall those years surge with anger over the boycott.

President Carter’s greatest achievement was the road to peace in the Middle East with the Camp David Accords. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat provided a framework for negotiations that would lead toward a decrease in regional tensions and the return of the Sinai to Egypt. Both Sadat and Begin received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978. Jimmy Carter was awarded the prize in 2002.

Americans React to the Carter Administration

In 1980, Americans turned to Ronald Reagan as an alternative to the perceived malaise of the Carter years. Jimmy Carter was challenged for his own party’s nomination by Senator Ted Kennedy. In 1980 American voters overwhelmingly elected Ronald Reagan on the basis of both domestic and foreign policy considerations.

Sources:

Stephen Ambrose and Douglas G. Brinkley, Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy Since 1938, 8th Revised Edition (Penguin Books, 1997)

Paul E. Boller, Jr. Presidential Campaigns From George Washington to George W. Bush (Oxford University Press, 2004)

The copyright of the article The Administration of President Jimmy Carter in Modern US History is owned by Michael Streich. Permission to republish The Administration of President Jimmy Carter in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Apr 16, 2009 11:06 AM

Guest :

"The first year of the Carter administration produced legislation returning the Panama Canal and Canal Zone to sovereign Panamanian control."

Please correct the above sentence. You cannot return something you never had. The Panama Canal & Canal Zone (as those entities) were never the property of the Republic of Panama until the treaties were enacted & the land & real property were TRANSFERRED to Panama. Panama had never renounced its sovereignty as a casual reading of the 1904 treaties (& amendments) will validate. Historians are careless with that information in their zeal to show Uncle Sam as the bad guy. The US did many good things for Panama & needs to be favorably recognized for them.

Apr 16, 2009 1:35 PM

Michael Streich :

Article II and Article III seem very clear in terms of what Panama granted to the United States "in perpetuity." The statement in the article was not meant to paint the United States as a "bad guy."