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Jimmy Carter’s insistence on putting principle over politics may have doomed him to the ranks of one-term presidents in the U.S., but it also showcased him as one of the finest individuals to ever serve in the Oval Office.
On Nov. 4, 1980, Carter became only the second Democratic incumbent in history to be evicted from the White House at the ballot box, securing just 49 Electoral College votes to Ronald Reagan’s 489 and losing the popular vote by nearly 10 percent. Conservatives dubbed their idol’s landslide victory the “Reagan Revolution,” insisting that it represented a decisive rejection of President Carter and the status quo.
Republicans continue to argue that America was hungry for transformative change; however, in the weeks leading up to the election, the nation’s rightward new course appeared far from set. Despite a sluggish economy and soaring inflation triggered by the 1979 Iranian Revolution, just days before the vote the result was too close to call. Carter and Reagan were almost neck-and-neck in the polls.
For all his flaws, the president had two major advantages: he was an incumbent and he was a moderate who could legitimately claim the center ground as his own.
To many Americans in 1980, Reagan was a fringe figure on the right of the Republican Party who seemed a threat to the nation’s social fabric. As a candidate, Reagan’s main challenge was to assuage those fears — and he didn’t always help himself. On Labor Day, Reagan angered southerners by falsely accusing the president of opening his campaign “down in the city that gave birth to and is the parent body of the Ku Klux Klan.” Later, in Steubenville Ohio, he claimed that trees are a major source of pollution, prompting students in Claremont Colleges to welcome the visiting candidate with a sign, draped from an oak tree, declaring “Cut me down before I kill again.”
Less than 48 hours before the polls opened, internal surveys conducted by the president’s polling guru, Pat Caddell, showed that the president was effectively tied with his opponent. That day, Carter wrote in his White House diary, “Pat thinks the trend is in our direction, and CBS pollsters apparently agree. We are almost exactly even with Reagan.” Yet within 24 hours, Caddell’s survey indicated that Carter’s support had fallen through the floor, gifting Reagan an 8- to 10-point lead – one he would sustain through Election Day.
So what triggered Carter’s last-minute collapse?
The key issue of the campaign, and the wildcard in the race, was the fate of 52 hostages held in Iran since revolutionary students took them captive in November 1979. After a disastrous rescue attempt led to the deaths of eight U.S. servicemen in the Iranian desert, Carter put all his energy into securing a negotiated release. As the election approached, Republicans privately fretted that a breakthrough on the hostages could all but guarantee the president victory.
And on the morning of Nov. 2, it appeared for a brief moment as if Carter might just pull the rabbit out of the hat.
Stuart Eizenstat, Carter’s chief domestic policy adviser, was with the presidential entourage on a campaign swing through the Midwest. “I was roused from sleep at the airport hotel in Chicago at 4.21am. Iran had made another offer,” said Eizenstat. The Iranian parliament had just voted to approve terms for the release of the hostages – a four-point proposal that included the return of frozen Iranian assets and a U.S. commitment not to interfere in Iran’s internal affairs. Against the advice of many of his aides who wanted Carter to remain on the campaign trail, the president scrambled back to Washington to plot his response.
“The fate of the hostages and of the thirty-ninth president hung in the balance” recalls Eizenstat, as the president huddled with his team in the White House. “No one … failed to realize the gravity of the president’s predicament.”
On inspection, Carter and his advisers concluded that the Iranian terms were too stringent, and the offer could not be accepted in its current form. But rather than reject it outright, Carter planned to acknowledge the offer as the basis for further talks, scheduling a live television appearance to explain his response to the public.
“I … drafted a statement saying that this was a good and constructive move … but emphasizing that we would not let the calendar affect me” wrote Carter in his diary. What the president failed to mention is that, before he went on air, he clashed with his advisors over the content of his address.
Hamilton Jordan, Carter’s chief strategist and the mastermind behind his 1976 victory, press secretary Jody Powell, media adviser Gerald Rafshoon and Eizenstat felt that Carter had a trump card he could use to swing the election his way — they just needed to convince him to use it.
While many voters had grown disillusioned with the president’s handling of the hostage crisis, that frustration was nothing compared to the hostility Americans felt toward an Iranian regime that had held U.S. civilians captive for over a year. Carter’s advisers believed that the president could use the televised address to turn the situation to his political advantage, by playing the tough guy.
“Blast the hell out of the Iranians for trying to interfere with our election” urged Eizenstat and his colleagues. “This can actually help you, you can turn a lemon into lemonade.” According to Eizenstat’s memoir of Carter’s presidency, Rafshoon went even further: “I’d tell them to go [f—k] themselves,” he insisted.
The pleas fell on deaf ears. Carter had made his mind up. He was not prepared to dial up the tension with Iran.
“He was…concerned that our rhetoric would jeopardize the safety of the hostages and the hostages came first before his re-election,” recalls Rafshoon. In defiance of his aides, Carter delivered a measured but rambling three-minute address that did little but highlight Carter’s apparent impotence on the issue of the hostage crisis at the worst possible moment for the campaign. “He didn’t have the right political instinct at the right time” laments Eizenstat.
“It was actually pretty close,” says Carter biographer Julian Zelizer. “After that announcement, Carter’s support really starts to plummet”.
At a moment when the stakes could not have been higher, the president pursued the principled course of action to his own detriment. “He had core beliefs, core principles and values that he thought were what the country needed,” says Carter aide Greg Schneiders, “and he … would do it even if it meant the end of his political career.”
Many who knew Carter, including his frustrated advisers, look back fondly at his leadership. “I would like to have won the election, it would have meant a lot to the country,” says Rafshoon. “But the thing I love about President Carter, he always … put what’s right and moral above politics and you could not change that and in retrospect you wouldn’t have wanted to change it.”
In one key way, Carter was ultimately vindicated by his decision. Thanks in large part to his measured diplomacy, minutes after he left the White House, all the hostages returned home alive. Carter had set out to safeguard their release, and while losing the election, he succeeded in his loftier goal for America.
Andrew Saunders is a television documentary producer-director specializing in U.S. political history. His credits include CNN’s “American Dynasties: The Kennedys” and “Race for the White House.”
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