Doing some reading about the story behind the recent film Argo - a good film, I'd definitely say go and see it - I came across an article saying that someone had apparently had the idea of expanding the operation as a part of the preliminary stages of Operation Eagle Claw. The mooted idea was that they'd pretend that they'd decided to shoot the film and move the special forces soldiers and their equipment into Iran posing as the film crew and mixed in and hidden with the film equipment. Assuming that they'd been able to pull it off what would that do for the 1980 elections? Reagan won by such a landslide I'm not even sure that would help Carter, having a quick look even if he won all the states that Reagan won with a margin of less than 5% that would still only give him just over half the electoral votes Reagan won. Now if you bumped that so that he also won the states Reagan took by a 5-10% margin then he wins, but how probable is that? Would a successful rescue operation six months before the election really sway opinion that much, or is the economy still going to be his Achilles' heel?