What responsibility does any president have for the events of his presidency? The truth is that presidents are driven by events much more often than they shape events and while there are some events that they can meaningfully respond to there are others over which they have no ability to effect change. This is more clearly true of the Carter presidency than most. The events that made Carter’s re-election problematic, at best, were the Iranian hostage crisis, recession and the second oil crisis of 1979.
The high interest rates that put the nation’s economy into recession were no accident, they were the result of the Federal Reserve’s aggressive response to inflation. Paul Volcker, the Federal Reserve Chairman, appointed by President Carter in 1979 knowingly devised this policy believing the long term threat of inflation to be greater than the pain of a recession that would result from high interest rates. Carter could do nothing to alter this policy. While the true cause of the nation’s bad economy was understood by anyone with economic literacy that knowledge could do little for the unemployed and inevitably the White House took the blame.
The Iranian Hostage Crisis was a political charade played out by the Khomeini regime in Iran largely for domestic purposes to humiliate America and thereby rally his political supports. Carter could do little but wait it out while attempting to negotiate it’s end. Carter took the blame again for a failed rescue attempt for which the US military was woefully unprepared. Credible evidence suggests that the Reagan campaign may have attempted to urge the Iranians to prolong the crisis, but Tehran, judging that restarting negotiations with a new US president would be pointless agreed to the hostage release on the day Carter left office. Republicans have continued to claim Reagan facilitated their release but in truth he had no role in negotiations.
The second Middle East oil crisis of 1979 was the consequence of political instability in Iran and resulted in another steep rise in oil prices that deepened the misery of the ongoing recession. Again, the US could do little to influence world oil prices in the short run and Carter was blamed.
The idea that Jimmy Carter was a terrible president,especially the idea that he was a “weak” leader, is a carefully planned and promoted narrative concocted by Republicans to elect Ronald Reagan. This narrative continues to be nurtured by Republicans as part of a larger narrative intended ultimately to deny Democrats a meaningful role in the governance of this country. The five answers previous to this one on this page, notable that of Harry Zitzelberger, are fully invested in this narrative. The fact is that Jimmy Carter was a good president with a considerable number of policy achievements that were the result of legitimate reforms by his administration and by the competent work of members of Congress who believed in bi-partisanship and were serious about their responsibilities. A review of the wikipedia page for the Carter presidency is a reminder of how much a one term president can accomplish if Washington isn’t consumed by partisan conflict.
The Federal Reserve would ease it’s policy and bring interest rates down in 1981 sparking economic growth and a reduction in unemployment. Ronald Reagan would take credit for this with as little justification as Carter had been blamed for the recession.
President Carter’s genuine failure was his disinclination to work with Congress and engage in the sort of cynical bargaining and horse trading that is often required to assemble the votes needed to pass a bill. For this reason he failed to gain his own party’s trust in Congress and this ultimately undermined his entire presidency.
