Unit 9: America Seeks Answers (1976-1980)

Unit 9: America Seeks Answers (1976-1980)

As the 39th president of the United States, Jimmy Carter struggled to respond to formidable challenges, including a major energy crisis as well as high inflation and unemployment. In the foreign affairs arena, he reopened U.S. relations with China and made headway with efforts to broker peace in the historic Arab-Israeli conflict, but was damaged late in his term by a hostage crisis in Iran. Carter’s diagnosis of the nation’s “crisis of confidence” did little to boost his sagging popularity, and in 1980 he was soundly defeated in the general election by Ronald Reagan. Over the next decades, Carter built a distinguished career as a diplomat, humanitarian and author, pursuing conflict resolution in countries around the globe.

Carter and the Presidential Election of 1976

Carter announced his candidacy for president in 1974, just before his gubernatorial term was up. For the next two years, he traveled around the country making speeches and meeting as many people as possible. His core message was one of values: He called for a return to honesty and an elimination of secrecy in government, and repeatedly told voters, “I’ll never tell a lie.”

At a time when Americans were disillusioned with the executive branch of government in the wake of the Watergate scandal, Carter managed to build a constituency by marketing himself as an outsider to Washington politics. He won the Democratic nomination in July 1976 and chose Senator Walter F. Mondale of Minnesota as his running mate. In the general election, Carter faced Republican incumbent Gerald R. Ford, who had succeeded to the presidency after Nixon’s resignation. In November, Carter won a narrow victory, capturing 51 percent of the popular vote and 297 electoral votes (compared with Ford’s 240).

Hostage Crisis and Carter’s Defeat

In November 1979, a mob of Iranian students stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took its diplomatic staff hostage as a protest against the arrival in the United States of the deposed Iranian shah, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, in order to receive medical treatment. The students had the support of Iran’s revolutionary government, led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Carter stood firm in the tense standoff that followed, but his failure to free the hostages led his government to be perceived as inept and inefficient; this perception increased after the failure of a secret U.S. military mission in April 1980.

Despite sagging approval ratings, Carter was able to defeat a challenge by Senator Edward Kennedy to win the Democratic nomination in 1980. He was defeated by a large margin in the general election that year by Ronald Reagan, a former actor and governor of California who argued during his campaign that the problem facing the country was not a lack of public confidence, but a need for new leadership.

This unit emphasizes the social and environmental issues of the 1970s and the foreign and domestic issues of President James Earl “Jimmy” Carter’s term in office.

Unit Focus

• Social and environmental movements of 1970s
• Changes in American values
• Social, political, economic, and environmental problems during administration of President James Earl “Jimmy” Carter
• Reasons President Carter was defeated by Ronald Reagan in presidential election