1976: Reagan vs. Carter

Your Vote for U.S. President, 1976

  • Ronald Reagan and Howard Baker (R)

    Votes: 47 45.2%
  • Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale (D)

    Votes: 53 51.0%
  • Other

    Votes: 4 3.8%

  • Total voters
    104
  • Poll closed .
I love these America Votes things. Reagan/Baker sounds like a great team.
Maybe you could make a TL out of a Reagan/Baker win.
 
Reagan/Baker all the war. Iran Hostage will not happened under his watch. Jimmy Carter is a naive President, his political skill is not conform for federal politics. He's just a state politician who accidentally take the presidency due to Watergate's excesses and Ford's mistakes earlier in his term.
 
Yes, because being a liberal automatically disqualifies you from making negative comments about St. Ronnie. :rolleyes:

I'm no conservative, but were I, I'd not be a big fan of Ronald "Make the national debt hit a trillion dollars for the first time in American history" Reagan.

Reagan had a Democrat controlled House. Since spending bills come from that body, blame Tip O'Neill for unbalanced budgets. Judging from how the Cold War ended I'll take Reagan every time. Old Jimmuh would have stuck us with Brezhnev types roughly forever. Economically Carter had no clue. double digit inflation did more to hurt the middle class than anything Reagan ever did.
 
Reagan had a Democrat controlled House. Since spending bills come from that body, blame Tip O'Neill for unbalanced budgets. Judging from how the Cold War ended I'll take Reagan every time. Old Jimmuh would have stuck us with Brezhnev types roughly forever. Economically Carter had no clue. double digit inflation did more to hurt the middle class than anything Reagan ever did.

A few points...

(1) Reagan's tax cuts and massive military spending increases are what unbalanced the budget. While Reagan was in office, the national debt went from being ~$800 billion to $2 trillion. Bush the Elder increased it by another trillion. May I note that Carter had a Democratic Congress as well, and that his Republican predecessors, Ford and Nixon, did as well, and yet did not see this sort of rapid debt growth?

(2) Jimmy Carter's policies re:Soviet Union weren't all of that different from Reagan. Which President was it that started the defense build-up again? Oh, that's right it, it was Jimmy Carter. Oh, and who put Volcker at the Fed, enabling the end to that crippling inflation? Oh, right. Jimmy Carter.
 
There wouldn't have been an end to the Cold War without Reagan's military build up. Gorby was forced to end the Cold War on Reagan's terms by the sheer massiveness of what Reagan did. I notice you don't deny Carter's abysmal economic record. If I recall correctly, he tried at least three different policies in four years. None worked, which was why voters gave Reagan a chance. Reagan's tax cuts were what made possible the economic expansion that persisted into the 90's possible. Unfortunately the current Administration is taking the same path as Carter did. I expect we will revisit the hyper-inflationary 70's if it is not prevented by the new House regime holding the line on and reducing expenditures
 
It always makes me chuckle seeing the rah-rah-rah Reagan-won-the-Cold-War type stuff. To elaborate: the Soviet economy was well, well on it's way to collapse before Reagan took office, I'm sure spending those billions of dollars on pie in the sky weapons programs instead of cities and infrastructure and/ or health care helped but I don't think it was anywhere near as crucial as is generally believed, at least IMO. Anyways, Thanks to me Carter wins! muhwahahaha.... :D
 
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Sure I can. Cutting US support to the junta in Argentina, or to Pinochet, or to other nasty dictatorships, was a good thing, and improved our image in Latin America and elsewhere. Criticizing the Soviet Union's human rights record was a good thing, and made détenté more palatable to domestic audiences (by showing that we were still perfectly capable of criticizing them); further, it helped encourage the dissidents whose efforts helped lead to the fall of the Soviet Union. The boycott of the Moscow Olympics was a good way of showing American disapproval of Soviet action in Afghanistan.

I'm impressed: you said all of that, especially the first sentence, with a straight face. LATIN AMERICA? Are you serious? That's a sure-fire eyes-glaze-over topic that doesn't move the American interest meter off zero except for a few policy geeks inside the Beltway.

"…improving our image in Latin America…" Yeah, that's a mortal lock for having a fifth face blasted out of Mt. Rushmore. :rolleyes: In any event, TR's quote concerning John Tyler ("...a man of monumental littleness...") could apply equally well to Carter--and he would have had about as much time for Carter as he did for Wilson.
 
I'm impressed: you said all of that, especially the first sentence, with a straight face. LATIN AMERICA? Are you serious? That's a sure-fire eyes-glaze-over topic that doesn't move the American interest meter off zero except for a few policy geeks inside the Beltway.

"…improving our image in Latin America…" Yeah, that's a mortal lock for having a fifth face blasted out of Mt. Rushmore. :rolleyes:

The question was - could I be more specific about the practical effect of Carter's moralizing, which I took to mean his injecting human rights into foreign policy. Thus, Latin America comes up. American interest doesn't matter in this case; practical effect does, and emphasizing human rights and morality won America more support abroad than a hard-line anti-Communist stance would have. Latin America would've been one region in particular where a hard-line stance would've hurt and where emphasizing human rights won us support in the region; Europe may have been another - Spain and Portugal, at least, could've pulled out of NATO under an earlier Reagan presidency.

I've never suggested Carter was a great president, just that I think he was better-suited for the presidency in 1976, based on Reagan being a worse fit. Carter brought in Volcker, began deregulation, and began the arms build-up, while keeping America's image abroad reasonably good (with the exception of Iran, which Reagan is unlikely to be able to avert), negotiating a successful Arab-Israeli peace treaty, and putting pressure on the Soviets on human rights while still maintaining détenté. Reagan wouldn't have been able to have the domestic policy successes he had in the early '80s, and his foreign policy would've hurt us.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
It always makes me chuckle seeing the rah-rah-rah Reagan-won-the-Cold-War type stuff. To elaborate: the Soviet economy was well, well on it's way to collapse before Reagan took office, I'm sure spending those billions of dollars on pie in the sky weapons programs instead of cities and infrastructure and/ or health care helped but I don't think it was anywhere near as crucial as is generally believed, at least IMO. Anyways, Thanks to me Carter wins! muhwahahaha.... :D

I also chuckle at the whole "Iran would have been so much better with Reagan" - yes, clearly, after all Beirut was a huge success.
 
I've long thought that it would have been much better for liberals(of the American kind) had a Republican, Ford or Reagan, won in '76. I think many of the problems of the late '70s Carter got blamed for would have fallen on whoever was in the WH at the time.

Plus, Reagan would've been much less able to get a conservative agenda through in the late '70s, without either chamber of Congress. Since the election of Reagan would've meant 12 years of unbroken GOP rule, there would've been the possibility of a liberal resurgence in '80, perhaps under Ted Kennedy.


Consider that even with the myriad problems the country faced in '80, Reagan and Carter were still going neck-and-neck until the Oct. 28 "are you better off" debate. Hardly a sign of conservative inevitability.
 

loughery111

Banned
I've long thought that it would have been much better for liberals(of the American kind) had a Republican, Ford or Reagan, won in '76. I think many of the problems of the late '70s Carter got blamed for would have fallen on whoever was in the WH at the time.

Plus, Reagan would've been much less able to get a conservative agenda through in the late '70s, without either chamber of Congress. Since the election of Reagan would've meant 12 years of unbroken GOP rule, there would've been the possibility of a liberal resurgence in '80, perhaps under Ted Kennedy.

When you put it this way, it reminds me that the President couldn't possibly have solved most of the problems facing the US in the late 70's and would be blamed for it. Can I change my vote to Carter? I'd sooner kill myself than live under a Ted Kennedy presidency. Can you say "socialism with American characteristics?"
 

Penelope

Banned
When you put it this way, it reminds me that the President couldn't possibly have solved most of the problems facing the US in the late 70's and would be blamed for it. Can I change my vote to Carter? I'd sooner kill myself than live under a Ted Kennedy presidency. Can you say "socialism with American characteristics?"

Have fun with that. And despite what conservatives would have you believe, socialism is actually not a synonym for Stalinist Dictatorship.
 

loughery111

Banned
Have fun with that. And despite what conservatives would have you believe, socialism is actually not a synonym for Stalinist Dictatorship.

Nope. I'm well aware. I do, however, believe that the creeping variety America is gradually inflicting upon itself is going to slowly start to undermine our economy. I'm no market fundamentalist, but one can only allow people to escape the consequences of idiocy and greed (individuals and corporations alike) for so long before people start to think they can do whatever they want economically speaking and the government will come roaring in at the last moment to fix it. Thus we get consumers taking loans they can't afford, banks giving loans they know are idiotic, people failing to save for retirement because the government will do it for them, etc.

I exaggerated perhaps a bit (just a bit :p), but I'm no fan of Ted Kennedy and never will be, regardless of whatever fancy title he's given by those who share his politics. I do apologize for the line, and it does make me sound like a conservative extremist, which I am not (or would like to think so anyway), but a Presidency of his will rapidly push up the schedule on the creeping process I mentioned above.
 
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I've long thought that it would have been much better for liberals(of the American kind) had a Republican, Ford or Reagan, won in '76. I think many of the problems of the late '70s Carter got blamed for would have fallen on whoever was in the WH at the time.

Plus, Reagan would've been much less able to get a conservative agenda through in the late '70s, without either chamber of Congress. Since the election of Reagan would've meant 12 years of unbroken GOP rule, there would've been the possibility of a liberal resurgence in '80, perhaps under Ted Kennedy.

I follow you're logic until you mention the name of the hero of Chappaquidik. That made him practically unelectable nationally.
 
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