WI: Jimmy Carter was Re elected in 1980?
- Thread starter dw93
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Carter would have worked very hard on some of his top priorities: passing a balanced budget, creating real and sustainable energy reform, and passage of a treaty with the Soviet Union on nuclear arms reduction.
At the end of the day the first *may* have been achievable, the second the most likely facet for Carter to succeed, and the final one almost certainly impossible to pass.
As for the question of 1984: I think it's safe to say Mondale would still have been the Democratic nominee, and off the heels of a more successful Carter presidency and without being against Reagan, I think Mondale would have had a chance, but at the end of the day Democratic fatigue and Mondale's own shortcomings probably would have been enough to end his campaign before it truly began in earnest. As for the Republican candidate, I doubt seriously that George Bush would have been the nominee. His resume ITTL would have posed serious doubts about his ability to win a general election. I also think the Party would still try to win with a conservative candidate, but perhaps with a younger, fresher deliverer than the Gipper: Jack Kemp.
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The thing about Jack Kemp though is it is unlikely that a member of the House of Representative goes from the House to the Oval Office. In recent history our presidents have came to the job after being either being governors, senators, vice-presidents, or war generals.
He'd likely would have to become a senator or governor to be a truly viable candidate for president.
Other than Obama the last senator to be elected was JFK. I think most Americans know that the most important criterion for presidential success (although not sufficient in itself) is prior executive experience - which pretty well requires a candidate who's been the governor of a large state (eg. Reagan, FDR), or something analogous (like running a multinational military coalition, ie. Eisenhower). If the Bush Jr. administration had not so badly tarnished the Republican brand and had white Americans not been so eager to seek racial absolution, Senator Obama wouldn't have had a prayer.
Paul V McNutt
Banned
If Carter can learn from his mistakes, he can get a better energy package through. I could seen a balanced budget after the 1982 recession is over. Mondale wins in the good economic times of 1984 and 1988. His 84 opponent is George HW Bush and in 88 he faces Bob Dole. In the bad economic times of 1992, Vice President Dukakis loses, possibly to Jack Kemp.
Yeah. By the end of his second term, Dubya had lower approval ratings than Nixon. People were ready for pretty much anyone other than a Republican....
fred1451
Banned
And the deep base would still either stay home, or at least not vote for him. No matter who the Dem nominee was.
fred1451
Banned
umm, exactly what would Carter have done to end the rescission? The Malaise that the US economy had been suffering under since the Nixon years wasn't going to go away by itself.
Fed Chairman Volker had more to do with the recovery than Reagan did. Carter originally appointed him in 1979, and if Reagan didn't replace Volker in OTL, Carter isn't going to in his second term TTL, so the same policies that broke the back of inflation will still be in place.
Napoleonrules
Banned
Yea... that's kinda how these things go away... they are cycles and they go away on their own. The President can't do much to change the economy. Low taxes do not create jobs. Reaganomics is not a real thing that works.
The breaking of 1970s stagflation was mainly the work of Paul Volcker at the Fed. Volcker was a Carter appointee and chances are reasonably good that recovery would have come by 1984. Downside is that the '82 recession probably still happens as well. Bad news for Dems in the midterms as a result.
But, things were looking up by 1983 and it would give Mondale a fighting chance in the general. He could argue that 8 years of GOP misrule by Nixon and Ford needed 8 years to straighten out.
Carter would have had a decent chance of getting some things done. Arms control is one if the Brezhnev/Andropov/Chernenko succession fiasco problem can be overcome, energy policy is another. No balanced budget as the 1982 recession was very sharp and really cut into revenues. Hostage crisis would have ended one way or another.
Left open is exactly how Carter pulls it off in 1980 without a significant POD. It was not exactly a close election.
My research was very similar to what @Apollo20 argued. Also, in terms of a POD, it is simple: Carter rescues the hostages. Now, I altered this in my book by having the flight take off on a different day and so the helicopters aren't caught in a sandstorm. Carter himself speculated that sending another helicopter would have done it. All of these are within the realm of possibility. There is an argument to be made that Eagle Claw was doomed from the beginning, but I disagree.
Eagle Claw is significant for several reasons: 1) It undermines the main argument that Carter is weak- his biggest albatross; 2) It suffocates the campaign of Sen. Kennedy; 3) The collapse of Kennedy deflates the support for Anderson. Because Anderson picked off some votes from angry Kennedy supporters, it is conceivable that with Kennedy's supporters ditching Kennedy earlier on for Carter in the wake of Eagle Claw, those that do stick it out until the convention will stick with Carter and the number that go to Anderson will be fewer; 4) With Carter doing better in the primaries, Kennedy's behavior at the Convention is forced to be more forgiving of Carter - despite his anger - and that sign of goodwill goes along way in unifying the Democratic base against Reagan.
It's going to be close, for sure, but it's possible, in my mind, when you consider all of the dominoes it unleashes.
Eagle Claw is significant for several reasons: 1) It undermines the main argument that Carter is weak- his biggest albatross; 2) It suffocates the campaign of Sen. Kennedy; 3) The collapse of Kennedy deflates the support for Anderson. Because Anderson picked off some votes from angry Kennedy supporters, it is conceivable that with Kennedy's supporters ditching Kennedy earlier on for Carter in the wake of Eagle Claw, those that do stick it out until the convention will stick with Carter and the number that go to Anderson will be fewer; 4) With Carter doing better in the primaries, Kennedy's behavior at the Convention is forced to be more forgiving of Carter - despite his anger - and that sign of goodwill goes along way in unifying the Democratic base against Reagan.
It's going to be close, for sure, but it's possible, in my mind, when you consider all of the dominoes it unleashes.
One thing that is often neglected in "what if Operation Eagle Claw had succeeded" discussions is that the time of the attmpted rescue mission, *there were still Americans who were walking around free* in Iran. If Eagle Claw had succeeded, Iran could simply make them the new hostages.
Cyrus Vance pointed that out in objecting to the proposed rescue mission:
"I reminded the group that even if the rescue mission did free some of the embassy staff, the Iranians could simply take more hostages from among the American journalists still in Tehran. We would then be worse off than before, and the whole region would be severely inflamed by our action." http://books.google.com/books?id=RH5SZHYfMI4C&pg=PA82
Zbigniew Brzezinski, the leading advocate within the administration of a rescue mission, did pay some attention to this possibility. He argued "that we should consider taking prisoners back with us, so that we would have bargaining leverage in the event that the Iranians seized other Americans as hostages..." http://books.google.com/books?id=RH5SZHYfMI4C&pg=PA86
Asami
Banned
Or you know, the other dozens of reasons why the Republicans would've had a shitty time getting a third consecutive term in 2008 -- worsening economy, bad foreign policy record with Iraq and Afghanistan, serious fatigue, so on and so forth.
This. The GOP's chances were slim in 2008. Even if the collapse was delayed until after the election, the Democrats would've still been favored to win (although it might've been closer) on the bad foreign policy record alone. The only ways I see the GOP winning (and the best case for them is a win like Bush's in 2004) is if somehow Obama managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory (Scandal, many, many campaign flaws) or an international crisis breaks out before the election, and even in that scenario it's be 50/50.