jan 1, 1976 - Jimmy Carter Elected

Description:

deregulation: The limiting of regulation by federal agencies. In the 1970s, the lifting of price controls and other government mandates on airline, trucking, and railroad industries stimulated competition and cut prices, but also drove firms out of business and hurt unionized workers.


When James Earl Carter Jr. told his mother that he intended to run for president, she had asked, “President of what?” Carter’s mother was not the only person skeptical of his ambition, but the naval officer, peanut farmer, and former governor of Georgia emerged from the pack to win the Democratic nomination in 1976. Trading on Watergate and his down-home image, Carter pledged to restore morality to the White House. “I will never lie to you,” he promised voters. The Georgian played up his credentials as a Washington outsider, although he selected Senator Walter F. Mondale of Minnesota, a seasoned liberal with decades of experience in Washington, as his running mate to ensure his ties to traditional Democratic voting blocs. In the general election, President Ford’s pardon of Nixon cost him votes in key states, and Carter won with 50 percent of the popular vote to Ford’s 48 percent.

A black-and-white photo shows Jimmy Carter sitting on a couch in a relaxed pose. He wears jeans, a shirt, and no shoes.
Jimmy Carter

President Jimmy Carter is seen here at his home in Plains, Georgia, in 1975, soon after he’d declared himself a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. Carter was content to portray himself as a political outsider, an ordinary American who could restore trust to Washington after the Watergate scandal. A thoughtful man and a born-again Christian, Carter nonetheless proved unable to solve the complex economic problems, especially high inflation, and international challenges of the late 1970s.


Carter’s outsider approach was initially effective and proved popular. He walked to the White House after the inauguration and delivered fireside chats in a cardigan sweater. His born-again Christian faith also resonated with religious Americans. But inexperience began to tell. He responded to feminists, an important Democratic constituency, by establishing a women’s commission in his administration, only to dismiss that commission’s concerns and engage in a public fight with prominent women’s advocates. Most consequentially, his outsider strategy chilled relations with congressional leaders. Disdainful of the Democratic establishment, Carter relied heavily on inexperienced advisors from Georgia. As a detail-oriented micromanager, he exhausted himself over the fine points of policy better left to his aides.

On the domestic front, Carter’s big challenge was the economy, with stagflation the most confounding fiscal problem. If the government focused on inflation — forcing prices down by raising interest rates — unemployment would rise. If the government tried to stimulate employment, inflation would worsen. None of the regular policy levers seemed to work. Carter toyed with the idea of an “industrial policy” to bail out the ailing manufacturing sector, but at heart he was an economic conservative. He moved instead in a free-market direction by lifting the New Deal–era regulation of the airline, trucking, and railroad industries. This deregulation, which lifted price controls and other government mandates, stimulated competition and cut prices, though it also drove firms out of business and hurt unionized workers.

The president’s efforts failed to reignite economic growth. In 1979, the Iranian Revolution (see “The Carter Presidency” in Chapter 29) curtailed oil supplies, and gas prices jumped again. In a major TV address in April, Carter lectured Americans about the nation’s “crisis of the spirit.” Citing the country’s growing dependence on expensive foreign petroleum, he laid out ten broad principles for energy conservation. To emphasize the seriousness of conservation, he called it “the moral equivalent of war.” The media reduced that phrase to a joke — using “MEOW” as shorthand, in order to mock the president — which aptly captured the public’s opinion of the president seeming to lecture and scold, which further damaged his popularity. By then, Carter’s approval rating had fallen below 30 percent. It was no wonder, given an inflation rate over 13 percent, failing industries, and long lines at the pumps. The Democrats found themselves in a political trap — Watergate had helped them regain power but also saddled them with responsibility for the economic quagmire.

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