The 1980 election is discussed a lot here. But not much is discussion centers on what a second term for Jimmy Carter would have looked like. Reagan won a landslide in the electoral college. But he only won 50.8% of the popular vote and 20 states Reagan won by less than 10%. So if Carter had won a second term, what would it have looked like? He likely would have gotten one Supreme Court retirement (Potter Stewart) and would have likely nominated Shirley Hufstedler to the bench. Does Justice Marshall retire during his second term to ensure a Democrat nominates his replacement? Would the economy start to rebound in 1983? Does his relationship with congress improve? How does the Iran hostage crisis end with Carter in the White House for 4 more years? Does Hinkley try to assassinate him (like he planned to do in 1980)? If the economy starts to improve does that improve Mondale's chances in 1984? Who will be the Republican nominee in 1984 (Bush, Dole, someone else)? What is his relationship with Margaret Thatcher like? Is anything about his post presidency different? Is early 80s pop culture any different with Carter still in the White House?
WI: Jimmy Carter's second term
- Thread starter CCK
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GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
He realizes he can't oversell energy policy. It has to be merely one of a dozen or so domestic policy initiatives where he's open to real progress, if he gets Congress and the Anerican people, if the timing is right, etc. In this way, Jimmy lightens up, which is hard for him.
He also realizes he can't lead from three miles down the road.
He also realizes he can't lead from three miles down the road.
The economic progress was mostly due to the Fed (and Carter's decisions there), but ITTL Carter gets the credit as a guy willing to speak the hard truths and make the hard decisions, and is seen more favorably after the boom starts.
There's a conspiracy theory supported by a lot of big mainstream figures (e.g. former Israeli PM Yitzhak Shamir, former Iranian president Banisadr, etc.) that Reagan conspired with Iran to delay the hostage releases, selling weapons to them in exchange (Iran-contra.) If so, then you'd likely see Iran negotiate a deal immediately after the election after their leverage is lost.
There's a conspiracy theory supported by a lot of big mainstream figures (e.g. former Israeli PM Yitzhak Shamir, former Iranian president Banisadr, etc.) that Reagan conspired with Iran to delay the hostage releases, selling weapons to them in exchange (Iran-contra.) If so, then you'd likely see Iran negotiate a deal immediately after the election after their leverage is lost.
Deconstructing the hagiography of Ronnie Raygun's a popular sport here on AH and speculating about Carter getting a second term's also pretty popular.
Two things would assure Carter's re-election with about what Reagan got in electoral votes:
[*]Reagan's back-door diplomacy with the ayatollahs undermining official efforts gets enough press, he's toast and looks like a traitor to boot.
[*] Eagle Claw or the Canadian shuffle getting Embassy hostages away are more successful.
Carter was a DC outsider and stayed one resolutely throughout his term. He never got how much he needed Congress aboard with his proposals to really make things work and as far as domestic policy went was his fatal flaw.
Stagflation needed to be dealt with, and Carter, being the techie was, would've done another fireside chat exhorting Americans to sacrifice for the greater good.
Whether it would've been well-received (maybe) or gotten a lot of Repub Congresscritters elected in the mid-terms in 1982 is to me a coin flip.
Carter started a defense buildup in 1978 and resolutely wanted to keep it up if he got re-elected, so that may've helped some of the economic dislocations due to stagflation and increadse in foreign competition but there needed a total rethink of American business that doling out the pork in defense would've enabled a lot of wishful thinking on both labor and management's sides for a decade more.
If John Hinckley takes a shot but misses at whoever's President in 1980, it MIGHT get a Brady bill emphasizing the need for mental health care as well as some measure of gun control. We can dream, can't we?
I could easily see Carter pleasing absolutely nobody staying neutral in the Falklands Conflict. Special relationship with US/UK is if not a dead letter, really really strained.
Argentina had a horrible human rights record and was engaged in its own dirty war against dissent and it was clear scrapping over the Malvinas was a PR stunt to distract Argentines from revolting aganist the junta due to a bad economy and their vicious bungling.
Thatcher was her usual imperious self treating the Irish like naughty schoolchildren wouldn't have gone over well with Carter's view of human rights and playing fair. Carter'd have told the Brits they made their bed, lie in it.
What the US looks like in 1984 after Carter's second term-- tepid economic recovery, possible trade embargoes of Japanese autos and fractious relationships with the EC about trade disputes.
US goes toward autarky instead of free trade partially to appease labor.
The US hanging on to anything whether the Mariainas or the Panama Canal
is pretty much a dead letter to Carter.
YMMDV.
Two things would assure Carter's re-election with about what Reagan got in electoral votes:
[*]Reagan's back-door diplomacy with the ayatollahs undermining official efforts gets enough press, he's toast and looks like a traitor to boot.
[*] Eagle Claw or the Canadian shuffle getting Embassy hostages away are more successful.
Carter was a DC outsider and stayed one resolutely throughout his term. He never got how much he needed Congress aboard with his proposals to really make things work and as far as domestic policy went was his fatal flaw.
Stagflation needed to be dealt with, and Carter, being the techie was, would've done another fireside chat exhorting Americans to sacrifice for the greater good.
Whether it would've been well-received (maybe) or gotten a lot of Repub Congresscritters elected in the mid-terms in 1982 is to me a coin flip.
Carter started a defense buildup in 1978 and resolutely wanted to keep it up if he got re-elected, so that may've helped some of the economic dislocations due to stagflation and increadse in foreign competition but there needed a total rethink of American business that doling out the pork in defense would've enabled a lot of wishful thinking on both labor and management's sides for a decade more.
If John Hinckley takes a shot but misses at whoever's President in 1980, it MIGHT get a Brady bill emphasizing the need for mental health care as well as some measure of gun control. We can dream, can't we?
I could easily see Carter pleasing absolutely nobody staying neutral in the Falklands Conflict. Special relationship with US/UK is if not a dead letter, really really strained.
Argentina had a horrible human rights record and was engaged in its own dirty war against dissent and it was clear scrapping over the Malvinas was a PR stunt to distract Argentines from revolting aganist the junta due to a bad economy and their vicious bungling.
Thatcher was her usual imperious self treating the Irish like naughty schoolchildren wouldn't have gone over well with Carter's view of human rights and playing fair. Carter'd have told the Brits they made their bed, lie in it.
What the US looks like in 1984 after Carter's second term-- tepid economic recovery, possible trade embargoes of Japanese autos and fractious relationships with the EC about trade disputes.
US goes toward autarky instead of free trade partially to appease labor.
The US hanging on to anything whether the Mariainas or the Panama Canal
is pretty much a dead letter to Carter.
YMMDV.
Paul V McNutt
Banned
I believe in economic cycles. Therefore I see Vice President Mondale winning in1984 and reelected in 1988. He appoints the replacements for Marshall. White. Brennan and Blackmun. The 1991- 1992 recession still happens. So the Democrat, possibly Vice President Dukakis, loses.
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Paul V McNutt
Banned
I see two PODs here . First a successful Operation Eagleclaw then Reagan over studies for his 1980 debate like he did for his first 1984 debate.
usertron2020
Donor
Less budget-busting mega-deficits without Reagan's tax cuts.
Its hardly a conspiracy theory. The timing is just too perfect. Having the hostages cross out of Iranian airspace on the very moment of Reagan's inauguration speech?
It would require a republican defector with tape recordings to get the media to listen about what Reagan's people were doing, and Reagan could always shove said emissaries under the bus. Could still do him in though.
Eagle Claw working was never in the cards. It was something out of the Three Stooges, with M-16s and non-desert capable helicopters.
The hostages getting away would require the mullahs having less control of things on the ground at the start and Carter not trusting a US State Department that was drowning in the Denial River.
Carter was elected on the grounds of being a Washington outsider, which is what the American People wanted after Tricky Dick and the Fall of Saigon.
At least he wasn't as bad on inflation as Ford. WIN buttons!?
It would've been a Sixth Year Election. I know a lot of people around the forum have their collective heads in the sand on that subject, but just do the math. Save for the 1998 Impeachment, no Sixth Year has been good for the incumbent since the Era of Good Feelings.
For which he gets no credit whatsoever. Mainly because he started out with such plowshares into swords defence policies before reversing himself, and because his buildup was dwarved by Reagan's.
Interesting.
Would you mind extrapolating/enhancing/elucidating on these opinions?1981
...it MIGHT get a Brady bill emphasizing the need for mental health care as well as some measure of gun control. We can dream, can't we?
Possibly, depending on whether Carter has any coattails in 1980, and he gets it done by the end of 1982.
Did Carter come out in favor of Jeane Kirkpatrick's stance?
ANY SecState, SecDef, and SecNav would resign in the face of leaving Britain in the lurch, and US public opinion at the time would have left Carter with no choice regardless of whatever his opinions were over Northern Ireland. Thatcher wasn't pushing Provos out of C-130s into the Irish Sea, and Carter would have kept up the sanctions that were devestating Argentina's military. The Junta would have known that Carter WOULD NEVER have supported their actions, or even turned a blind eye. It would have meant the end of NATO.OK so far...
Yes, as far as the US offering no role in mediating any peace in Northern Ireland, a role that was important as long as you had Provos traipsing about Boston raising $$$ for NOR-AID.
Why no robust economic recovery by 1984? Do you have that much confidence in supply side economics, or do you see trade wars because you believe Carter is beholden to labor unions? He is a Southern Democrat, not a creation of Northern city machines, not Teamster/UMWA/UAW/AFL-CIO union politics.
Autarky!?
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Deconstructing the hagiography of Ronnie Raygun's a popular sport here on AH and speculating about Carter getting a second term's also pretty popular.
Two things would assure Carter's re-election with about what Reagan got in electoral votes:
[*]Reagan's back-door diplomacy with the ayatollahs undermining official efforts gets enough press, he's toast and looks like a traitor to boot.
[*] Eagle Claw or the Canadian shuffle getting Embassy hostages away are more successful.
Carter was a DC outsider and stayed one resolutely throughout his term. He never got how much he needed Congress aboard with his proposals to really make things work and as far as domestic policy went was his fatal flaw.
Stagflation needed to be dealt with, and Carter, being the techie was, would've done another fireside chat exhorting Americans to sacrifice for the greater good.
Whether it would've been well-received (maybe) or gotten a lot of Repub Congresscritters elected in the mid-terms in 1982 is to me a coin flip.
Carter started a defense buildup in 1978 and resolutely wanted to keep it up if he got re-elected, so that may've helped some of the economic dislocations due to stagflation and increadse in foreign competition but there needed a total rethink of American business that doling out the pork in defense would've enabled a lot of wishful thinking on both labor and management's sides for a decade more.
If John Hinckley takes a shot but misses at whoever's President in 1980, it MIGHT get a Brady bill emphasizing the need for mental health care as well as some measure of gun control. We can dream, can't we?
I could easily see Carter pleasing absolutely nobody staying neutral in the Falklands Conflict. Special relationship with US/UK is if not a dead letter, really really strained.
Argentina had a horrible human rights record and was engaged in its own dirty war against dissent and it was clear scrapping over the Malvinas was a PR stunt to distract Argentines from revolting aganist the junta due to a bad economy and their vicious bungling.
Thatcher was her usual imperious self treating the Irish like naughty schoolchildren wouldn't have gone over well with Carter's view of human rights and playing fair. Carter'd have told the Brits they made their bed, lie in it.
What the US looks like in 1984 after Carter's second term-- tepid economic recovery, possible trade embargoes of Japanese autos and fractious relationships with the EC about trade disputes.
US goes toward autarky instead of free trade partially to appease labor.
The US hanging on to anything whether the Mariainas or the Panama Canal
is pretty much a dead letter to Carter.
YMMDV.
Except that Carter was a free-trader and had extremely hostile relations with organized labor.
Carter himself would also likely have pushed for lower tax rates too, as part of a larger tax reform effort, and in fact pre-Reagan many centrist Democrats were pushing supply-side economics (i.e. a softer form that what Reagan pushed). Granted, it wouldn't have been quite as far-reaching as with Reagan.
You might not get mass incarceration though. Instead, perhaps movement towards decriminalization.
Overall, though, Carter will exit with an economic boom (as Reagan did), and while his approvals will probably be fairly poor throughout his second term, they'll improve as he leaves and he'll likely be more fondly remembered.
usertron2020
Donor
NOT Dukakis. Veeps are usually decided by EC math (like Nixon, LBJ, and Agnew), or personal chemistry with the candidate (like Gore and Biden), or both (Mondale and Quayle), none of which would apply with an uncharismatic Massachusetts governor whose success was determined by an OTL SDI pigout. As Garry Trudeau once said, Reagan's buildup saved the Duke's ass, and if his own party had won in 1980/84 he'd be selling shoes in South Boston.
Besides, there's no electoral sense in picking a Veep with no influence over what is already a sapphire blue state. The EC votes the Duke MIGHT draw from NH aren't worth it.Agreed.
@usertron
Part of me's tickled you reacted so harshly to a few of my points but let me explain myself...
For one thing, 1976, people wanted an outsider and to a large extent, sane Republican or not with Ford, the GOP were in a bad spot.
In 1980, folks wanted whatever they thought would work b/c nothing was going the USA's way in 1979.
Carter may've been more naive than Dorothy straight from wheatfields of Kansas, but he wasn't stupid.
He needed to rethink his strategy and I'm positing a bit of populism would be just the trick to get the blue-collar white vote. Who says they have to be Reagan Democrats? Can't they be Carter's boys?
For Carter to have any shot in 1980, he needed to get labor onside, however mich it made him gag.
As for Ronnie's trick-bag op with the ayatollahs, it just needs to hit the press by October and he's crispier than Popeye's chicken.
Ronnie'll be so toxic he makes Lyndon LaRouche look loved IF that got out at the right time.
OTOH getting impeached on Inauaguration Day's Such a bummer!
I heartily agree with you on how Eagle Claw OTL was a platinum-standard CF but just positing that a better-planned and run Eagle Claw that rescued some hostages would be quite beneficial to Carter's re-election chances.
Carter wanted to play small ball that didn't involve going to war with Iran.
As you said, he kept hoping the saner revolutionaries could get things under control and let the hostages go free.
He, the CIA, State Dept and Pentagon had zero idea who or what was in charge of Iran.
Ironically, all that US pressure on the Shah to put a leash on SAVAK and the Iranian military allowed things to spiral out of control in 1978.
With 20/20 hindsight I'd have blockaded Kharg island/Bandar Abbas and made sure no tanker left Iran until the hostages came home. Shoot hostages and Abadan goes boom with B-52 flights carpet-bombing those complexes until it's nothing but scrap and ash.
You think we're the Great Satan? Wait til we crash your economy and make it clear abusing diplomats is a really BAD way to get our attention!
Re: rethinking the economic status quo from the 1970's to the 1980's...
I hear you re: how conservative Carter was, and I'd have to do a LOT more research on his positions then and now re free trade to make it more than SWAG or WMG but NAFTA or anything like it was a lot later.
Reagan crushing PATCO and ensuring the irrelevance of unions, not to mention the deregulation push made NAFTA possible.
My point was that pork barrel spending on defense goodies would keep a lot of folks employed, but meant that the civilian industries get ignored and fall further behind the rest of the world.
Tariffs and quotas and so forth distort the picture of competition, as does dumping and restricting imports.
I think TheMann's idea of Business/Labor partnership in The Land of Milk and Honey's a neat idea and would've butterflied the Rust Belt, kept American firms and products comeptitive. Whether Carter could have gotten that process going in a second term is very tough to call.
Interesting you brought up the butterflying of mass incarceration for crack and dope possessio. I've had a tough time locating the proponent of decriminalzation of pot on Carter's cabinet getting busted for coke possession in 1978. Butterfly that and pot's decriminalized federally ca 1980 or 1982.
War on Drugs as we know it falls apart. Federal and state prison systems don't metastasize but that's twenty years later.
Part of me's tickled you reacted so harshly to a few of my points but let me explain myself...
For one thing, 1976, people wanted an outsider and to a large extent, sane Republican or not with Ford, the GOP were in a bad spot.
In 1980, folks wanted whatever they thought would work b/c nothing was going the USA's way in 1979.
Carter may've been more naive than Dorothy straight from wheatfields of Kansas, but he wasn't stupid.
He needed to rethink his strategy and I'm positing a bit of populism would be just the trick to get the blue-collar white vote. Who says they have to be Reagan Democrats? Can't they be Carter's boys?
For Carter to have any shot in 1980, he needed to get labor onside, however mich it made him gag.
As for Ronnie's trick-bag op with the ayatollahs, it just needs to hit the press by October and he's crispier than Popeye's chicken.
Ronnie'll be so toxic he makes Lyndon LaRouche look loved IF that got out at the right time.
OTOH getting impeached on Inauaguration Day's Such a bummer!
I heartily agree with you on how Eagle Claw OTL was a platinum-standard CF but just positing that a better-planned and run Eagle Claw that rescued some hostages would be quite beneficial to Carter's re-election chances.
Carter wanted to play small ball that didn't involve going to war with Iran.
As you said, he kept hoping the saner revolutionaries could get things under control and let the hostages go free.
He, the CIA, State Dept and Pentagon had zero idea who or what was in charge of Iran.
Ironically, all that US pressure on the Shah to put a leash on SAVAK and the Iranian military allowed things to spiral out of control in 1978.
With 20/20 hindsight I'd have blockaded Kharg island/Bandar Abbas and made sure no tanker left Iran until the hostages came home. Shoot hostages and Abadan goes boom with B-52 flights carpet-bombing those complexes until it's nothing but scrap and ash.
You think we're the Great Satan? Wait til we crash your economy and make it clear abusing diplomats is a really BAD way to get our attention!
Re: rethinking the economic status quo from the 1970's to the 1980's...
I hear you re: how conservative Carter was, and I'd have to do a LOT more research on his positions then and now re free trade to make it more than SWAG or WMG but NAFTA or anything like it was a lot later.
Reagan crushing PATCO and ensuring the irrelevance of unions, not to mention the deregulation push made NAFTA possible.
My point was that pork barrel spending on defense goodies would keep a lot of folks employed, but meant that the civilian industries get ignored and fall further behind the rest of the world.
Tariffs and quotas and so forth distort the picture of competition, as does dumping and restricting imports.
I think TheMann's idea of Business/Labor partnership in The Land of Milk and Honey's a neat idea and would've butterflied the Rust Belt, kept American firms and products comeptitive. Whether Carter could have gotten that process going in a second term is very tough to call.
Interesting you brought up the butterflying of mass incarceration for crack and dope possessio. I've had a tough time locating the proponent of decriminalzation of pot on Carter's cabinet getting busted for coke possession in 1978. Butterfly that and pot's decriminalized federally ca 1980 or 1982.
War on Drugs as we know it falls apart. Federal and state prison systems don't metastasize but that's twenty years later.
usertron2020
Donor
Did Carter come out in favor of Jeane Kirkpatrick's stance?
Yes, as far as the US offering no role in mediating any peace in Northern Ireland, a role that was important as long as you had Provos traipsing about Boston raising $$$ for NOR-AID.
Autarky!?
1] Nothing to say on Ireland and the Falklands?
2] Autarky!!??
I have a special place in my heart for Jimmy Carter. I was in the very first group that had to sign up for the new Selective Service Act (born October 1st, 1960). His courage in choosing NOT to go to war with Iran to get himself re-elected (sound familiar W?) is the reason I didn't die in a ditch in the US-Iran War of 1980.
And since 1997 I've heard it (mostly from Fixed News' Sean Manatee) that Jimmy Carter is our Worst. President. Ever. Meaning he must be a really big fan of the three Civil War midwives Fillmore, Pierce, and Buchanan (our real worst president ever), as well as our four election thieves John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B. Hayes, Benjamin Harrison, and of course Manatee's total man crush W.Agreed. He who wins in 1976 LOSES in 1980. There are few maxims in politics, but that is one of them.
The problem for him was that in swinging to the right he overcompensated and just kept right on going, with micro-management consuming his every waking moment. Micro-management wasn't the four letter word then that it is today.
I like Popeye's chicken, but yeah.
President George H.W. Bush in 1981. Sweet!
Eagle Claw was a recipe for getting ALL of the hostages killed as well as their "rescuers".
Khomenei knew just how far he could push things with Carter without a war. Can't imagine WHAT would have happened with W.
All those Farsi-speakers in the CIA and State Department who couldn't believe their skills had just become useless.
If only they'd talked to fleeing refugees about what the crowds were chanting: Khomenei-Khomenei-Khomenei. They had six supreme ayatollahs. Five were under house arrest, while Khomenei had it all. Because as in all violent revolutions, the Mob was following the most bloody minded faction. If I knew that, what does that say of the CIA?
Not really. SAVAK wasn't that far removed from the CIA in terms of technical ability as an intelligence organization. Terror organization tho...
Once the Shah's pancreatic cancer started, the Fear was gone. So many dictatorships have fallen once The Evil One was seen to be frail and mortal. Think Zaire. And the Shah's Son was/is worse than useless.
That's exactly what will happen. Problem: IIRC, Diego Garcia wasn't set up for B-52 flights yet, we had no ALCMs yet, and little in the way of smart bombs. So some of those B-52s could be lost if the Iranians have been able to keep their air defenses (if any) operational. The rallying effect of the Iranian People towards the mullahs would be enormous, and depending on the timing it could risk making us allies of Saddam.
The loss of B-52s to the mullahs would be a humiliation worse than Eagle Claw.Khomenei sent a million of Iran's sons, some of them as young as 7 or 8, into the trenches as human wave cannon fodder to absorb Iraqi attentions while the Iranian Army and Revolutionary Guard launched "real attacks" against weakly defended areas. Do you really think this creature will CARE about damages to Iran's economy?
Ask me if you know the REAL reason why Khomenei agreed to make peace with Saddam, and how it killed him...
Doing in PATCO was popular. There was ZERO sense in a union blessed with binding arbitration (just ask the Major League Baseball Players Association) to walk off and strike when they were contractually obligated NOT to strike. But thats NOT a good example. PATCO was the Frankenstein of unions. And the growing-growing-growing wealth distribution gap in this country since 1980 shows the penalty of losing union power to the explosive power of capital.
Unfortunately they didn't have 2014 hindsight to see what was going on in the USSR internally, only the unprecedented military buildup that defied all common sense (short of a planned conventional WWIII!?
) in the face of a degenerating Western military. Despite Reagan's OTL buildup, our allies at best made only token improvements on their defense postures compared to Moscow's madcap buildup, and their politics (and their military's seemingly increasingly dominant role in Soviet politics-see KAL 007).I remember quite well late 70s-early 80s WWIII novels set "in the near-future" that involved NATO-Warsaw Pact conflicts in which the US Army fought fighting retreats while the rest of NATO got steam-rollered. This was in people's minds at the time. Reagan's (and even a second term Carter's) military buildup didn't occur in a vacuum. They just made things easier for one Mikhail Gorbachev to face down his rival Nicolai Romanov (the hawk) and rise to power himself.
Now if only Europe and Japan could join along...oh wait...THEIR labor unions.
Uh, I didn't say anything about drugs
Who are you talking to on this subject?
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With Carter in a 2nd term, would we see the Aircraft Carrier (Medium) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_Carrier_(Medium) actually come into service?
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
In response to stagflation, I'd rather a president talk about entrepreneurship and give some avuncular encouragement about starting a side business if you feel it's right for you and especially hiring someone else if you can, even if only on a part-time basis.
80% of new businesses fail. And that part needs to be talked about, too.
*More entrepreneurship in '79 and 80 is not going to do enough good, just like Paul Krugman talked about infrastructure spending early in 2009 (I think) was not going to really do enough to boost the economy. But, if people want to do something to help and it's right for their circumstances, at least this is moving in the right direction.
** I'm aware that most people probably want to prioritize addressing the inflation component of stagflation. I'm perhaps in the minority of wanting to first and most directly address the unemployment component. And some of this is deeply personal because I was eighteen and just graduated from high school in 1981 and looking for a job.
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I'm thinking not . Several times in the past five decades the USN has tested the idea,and come up negative each time. Even if such tests were not valid they have convinced folks for the big decks.
@ GeographyDude-
There's a couple of things in your post I really like- cultivating entrepreneurship and mentioning how 80% of new businesses fail and exploring why and how they do.
For everyone who's seen flyers for Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and other "gospel of wealth" seminars, making your own business work is often a LOT of work and to not be afraid of failure w/o completely abandoning all judgment is a very tricky balance.
The point of all this rambling is that there's very little Carter could do directly to make any of this better directly.
Trying to make things better for smaller businesses is a tricky business in and of itself for governments, businesses, and customers.
As to addressing stagflation- it makes it difficult to know how much customers will buy and how many folks you can employ when everything spirals up 20% a year and you need to make a profit.
One of the interesting bits was the rise of ESOP's and workers taking over running their firms.
Flux is part of business though but folks typically like to have some idea what to do, and nobody had any idea what to do in a stagflating environment for a while.
Zero-Based Budgeting became the new flavor of management about cutting costs, working lean and mean and all that, meaning lots of workers got cut in the 1970's and later.
When workers are losing their jobs left and right, a union threatening to strike is basically cutting their own throat.
@usertron
I was reacting to your post below
You might not get mass incarceration though. Instead, perhaps movement towards decriminalization.
Carter wanted federal decriminlization of pot and I think that'd have been a great start if he did.
I'm hardly a NORML devotee, despite living in Colorado, but to me, the whole drug war (1970-present) has destroyed millions of lives, wasted nearly a trillion dollars and encouraged the worst instincts of cops and criminals in the US and elsewhere.
There's a couple of things in your post I really like- cultivating entrepreneurship and mentioning how 80% of new businesses fail and exploring why and how they do.
For everyone who's seen flyers for Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and other "gospel of wealth" seminars, making your own business work is often a LOT of work and to not be afraid of failure w/o completely abandoning all judgment is a very tricky balance.
The point of all this rambling is that there's very little Carter could do directly to make any of this better directly.
Trying to make things better for smaller businesses is a tricky business in and of itself for governments, businesses, and customers.
As to addressing stagflation- it makes it difficult to know how much customers will buy and how many folks you can employ when everything spirals up 20% a year and you need to make a profit.
One of the interesting bits was the rise of ESOP's and workers taking over running their firms.
Flux is part of business though but folks typically like to have some idea what to do, and nobody had any idea what to do in a stagflating environment for a while.
Zero-Based Budgeting became the new flavor of management about cutting costs, working lean and mean and all that, meaning lots of workers got cut in the 1970's and later.
When workers are losing their jobs left and right, a union threatening to strike is basically cutting their own throat.
@usertron
I was reacting to your post below
You might not get mass incarceration though. Instead, perhaps movement towards decriminalization.
Carter wanted federal decriminlization of pot and I think that'd have been a great start if he did.
I'm hardly a NORML devotee, despite living in Colorado, but to me, the whole drug war (1970-present) has destroyed millions of lives, wasted nearly a trillion dollars and encouraged the worst instincts of cops and criminals in the US and elsewhere.
usertron2020
Donor
CVVs are basically modern-type slightly larger Essex-class carriers. Its the argument of carrier vulnerability to submarines and aircraft. CVVs would involve too much effort duplication, while CVNs concentrate defensive and offensive firepower. CVVs might also lead to their being risked more than CVNs. The design, in essence, was obsolete for the Cold War and post-1960s fighters and strike aircraft.
CVNs have proven themselves, its when you were talking about the nuclear environment or sending them to the North Sea against the teeth of Soviet land-based mid-ranged air power that things would have quickly turned to poo.
usertron2020
Donor
TxCoatl1970
I HAVE PERSONALLY RE-READ EVERYTHING I'VE WRITTEN ON THIS THREAD AND HAVEN'T FOUND "this post" ANYWHERE! Are you quoting from an old post I made on another thread? Are you SURE about this?
BTW, you are right as rain about the War On Drugs.
EDIT: TxCoatl1970
You have credited me with a post (#9) by SlideAway
I am awaiting compensation. Preferably several bags filled with tens and twenties.
EDIT2: I guess you've started celebrating Labor Day weekend. Never Post while Drinking.
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Complete conspiracy theory with zero evidence and the timing does not work.
It makes complete sense that, after vilifying Carter as the Great Satan that Khomeini would use a change in President to get out of a bad situation, ie holding hostages.
Iran/Contra was a completely different issue that arose years later.
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
I tend to think conspiracy theory doesn't really get us anywhere, as most of the problems we face in the modern age are institutional, not conspiratorial.
There's a book by Gary Slick called October Surprise in which he contends that one or several people in the 1980 Reagan election campaign asked the Iranians to continue to hold the hostages. There was a one-hour PBS show around 1991.
But there really is an element of Percival Lowell and the canals of Mars. If you stare at something long enough, likely is, you will see a pattern. That's what we human beings do. We have pattern-recognition intelligence almost to a fault.
There's a book by Gary Slick called October Surprise in which he contends that one or several people in the 1980 Reagan election campaign asked the Iranians to continue to hold the hostages. There was a one-hour PBS show around 1991.
But there really is an element of Percival Lowell and the canals of Mars. If you stare at something long enough, likely is, you will see a pattern. That's what we human beings do. We have pattern-recognition intelligence almost to a fault.