Freeing Hostages Wouldn’t Have Got Jimmy Carter Re-Elected

RRecent media reports indicate that Republican mediators—including former Treasury Secretary and Texas Governor John Connally— intervened in the Iran hostage crisis to benefit Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign.

The reporting has reignited one of the major “what if” questions in recent American political history: Would Jimmy Carter, who died on Sunday, December 29, 2024, at the age of 100, have been re-elected if he had secured the release of the hostages ? As always, historical counterfactuals are impossible to prove or disprove. But in this case, while it’s tempting to think that freeing the hostages would turn the race around, a closer look at history reveals that Carter’s political problems ran much deeper than the Iran crisis.

One of the best contemporary storytellers of Carter’s political struggles has turned out to be Peter Jay, British ambassador to the United States for two years of the 39th president’s term. Jay – a journalist by training – was a keen observer, so his secret messages back to London skilfully shed light on Carter’s political rise and fall.

Jay’s initial dispatches from Washington in 1977 describe the unique historical conditions that allowed an unknown southern governor to win the presidency. More than a decade, since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963a steady stream of blows—from race riots to assassinations to Vietnam and Watergate “deeply shook” what Jay called “the pillars of American self-esteem—morality, invincibility, stability, and growth.”

In Jay’s mind, Carter’s election expressed “more clearly than anything else the longing of the American people for a new beginning.” After years of unrelenting unhappiness, Americans were ready for something new and different.

Read more: Jimmy Carter was more successful than he is given credit for

Jay recognized that the new president brought a unique combination of personal attributes to the White House: impeccable ethics, a “subtle, penetrating and ice-cold mind” and a commitment to tackling tough problems head-on – all in stark contrast to the failings of his immediate predecessors on both sides of the aisle. . Carter’s main virtue was “his boldness” in identifying major political problems and proposing solutions guided mainly by “his view of the national interest, with little regard for short-term or narrow political considerations.” When presented with the conventional wisdom to avoid political pain, Carter’s standard retort to those around him was, in effect, “Don’t be afraid.”

Jay praised Carter’s assessment of “the bankruptcy of pressure group politics … and his laudable determination to take the high road of national leadership.” If presented with a range of options ranging from “most unpopular but, on merits, right” to “most popular, but, on merits, wrong,” one can safely count on Carter to choose the former.

Perhaps the best manifestation of this trait came in September 1977, when Carter’s aggressive lobbying secured the ratification of the Panama Canal Treaty. The president was convinced that the national interest was best served by transferring control of the canal to Panama—despite strong opposition to what conservative critics called a “handover.” His opponents, according to Carter’s lights, were either ill-informed or ill-intentioned. Although he felt their arguments were politically powerful, any price he had to pay at the polls was an acceptable consequence of doing the right thing.

Just two months later, however, Jay began to reveal significant discomfort with the president’s singular approach. In a classified cable to London titled “Is Mr. Carter in Trouble?”, the ambassador noted growing doubts about the president’s ability to turn his grand aspirations into political reality.

This dispatch noted how Carter, as president, was quickly beset by problems that, ironically, stemmed from the same forces that had brought him to office. He came to the position of president at a time when it was a damaged institution. “Vietnam War Abuses, Scandal Watergateand the changing structure and attitudes of Congress” all combined to “hinder the work of a future active president”.

The vast class of independent legislators elected in 1974—the “Watergate babies”—intended to reassert Congress’s authority to govern the nation. This wave of legislative independence included members of the president’s own party, who seemed more comfortable antagonizing the White House than carrying out Carter’s orders on Capitol Hill. According to Jay, some of Carter’s aides privately admitted that when they came to the White House, they “had no idea … how deep [institution of the] The presidency is damaged.”

But Jay also subsequently acknowledged that Carter’s problems were not just structural. Instead, there was “some subdued and uncertain quality” about how he dealt with “people and problems”, which left “even those most sympathetic to him confused, disappointed and occasionally irritated”.

The president lacked “the imagination to see how things would affect others and appear to others” who did not share Carter’s habit of considering “all sides of every issue.”

Carter compounded this lack of observation with what Jay called a “dangerous tendency” to see the truth as “its own messenger.” Instead of explaining himself or selling his policies, Carter thought that “having a good reason is enough [for policy].” In short, Carter “proved [to be] a better statesman and a worse politician than might have been expected.”

These observations came as Americans endured a steady parade of negative news, particularly about the economy. Significant successes for Carter, capped by the Camp David Accords in September 1978, at best only interrupted this steady flow. What Reagan began calling the “misery index”—the sum of inflation and unemployment—reached an all-time high under Carter. The president seemed increasingly powerless to reverse the misery.

In July 1979, Carter’s most famous speech confirmed Jay’s lukewarm assessment of his political instincts. While the president’s main focus should have been energy policy, he chose to simultaneously dive into a deeper “crisis of confidence” among the American people (later dubbed the national “deficit”). Although the speech was far better received than history remembers, Carter, in his own words, “gambled” any advantage he could get out of it by immediately insisting that his entire cabinet resign, which betrayed instability. Once again, he miscalculated the political optics in such a way that he undermined his policy.

Read more: Rosalynn Carter hired a wrongfully convicted murderer to serve as a nanny in the White House. They remained lifelong friends

Jay’s outlook for the rest of his ambassadorship darkened considerably. Carter “wasn’t very popular in America,” Jay admitted. “Nor has he yet commanded the full confidence of other world leaders, friendly or not.” Carter’s aloof, “very unconventional governing style,” plus his lack of sensitivity to politics, were at the root of these problems. In the more than two years he was president, he failed to “obtain a sufficiently wide understanding of the virtue and necessity of this radical departure.”

When Jay made this last telecast, Carter’s approval rating was at 29%. The important thing is that it was five months ago hostages were taken in Tehran. Carter’s poll numbers remained in that rough neighborhood for the rest of his presidency — except for a temporary spike, just after the hostages were taken, when Americans rallied around the flag.

Massive interest rates (the Federal Reserve’s painful antidote to inflation), rising gas prices and a primary challenge from Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) also hurt Carter in 1980. But, as Jay noted, the president was plagued by growing doubts about his unconventionality. leadership and his ability to combat any of these problems in a way that would satisfy the public.

So would returning the hostages make a difference? Evidence suggests probably not. A more persuasive case could be made that if Republican attempts to interfere were made public, they would generate enough outrage to hurt Reagan’s chances. But whatever happened in those secret conversations, the Reagan campaign made every effort, successfully, to preserve denial.

On his way out, having been replaced by the new Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, Jay predicted that, even if Carter lost, the United States would “certainly not disappear… Just give them a visible enemy and a fast horse, and you’ll still see all that the old American ‘can’.” This prediction turned out to be prescient. Carter lost in 1980 to a man who specialized in fast horses and visible enemies.

Russell L. Riley is the White Burkett Miller Center Professor of Ethics and Institutions at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center for Public Affairs and co-chair of the President’s Oral History Program. Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here.