Jimmy Carter’s problems mirror those faced by Biden

44 years passed between the time Jimmy Carter left the presidency and the day he died.

Four decades seems like a long time – a record for a former US president – but many of the challenges America will face in 2024 are not so different from those that Carter faced, and at times succumbed to, in the late 1970s.

The USA faced a crisis of confidence during the Carter years. Americans struggled with economic turmoil at home and a series of challenges to US power abroad. Fast forward four decades and the players and issues are surprisingly familiar – the economy and the environment, Russia, Afghanistan and the Middle East. Years have passed, managers have changed, but problems remain.

Carter celebrated the power of American diplomacy by brokering the Camp David Peace Accords between Egypt and Israel in 1978, but the glimmer of success was fleeting. The limits of American power were painfully obvious during the Iran hostage crisis a year later, after US embassy staff in Tehran were taken prisoner.

It took more than 12 months of intense diplomatic and military efforts to free them. A sense of American helplessness contributed to Carter’s resounding election defeat to Ronald Reagan in 1980, and the eventual release of the prisoners came just hours after Carter left office.

The inability to shape global events even from the world’s most powerful office continues to haunt American leaders. Current President Joe Biden got his first taste of this cold reality during the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, which brought the curtain down on two decades of futile US nation-building and saw the Taliban return to power.

Most recently, Biden and his diplomatic team found themselves unable to prevent the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel, which turned into a regional conflagration and a devastating humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Both Carter and Biden, humbled by seemingly superior regional powers in Iran and Afghanistan, also faced the territorial ambitions of world powers. Carter was criticized for his inadequate response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and then widely condemned for the step he did take — ordering a boycott by American athletes of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.

Earlier, Biden had more success in opposing the invasion of Ukraine, rallying allies to support and supply Kiev’s forces against the Russian offensive. But as the war dragged on, America’s resolve was tested. The extended bloody conflict turned Afghanistan into a cauldron of instability that eventually spawned al-Qaeda and global jihad.

The lasting impact of the war in Ukraine could have its own unexpected and deadly consequences – all of which could be laid at the feet of this president.

In the Middle East, Carter’s triumph at Camp David proved to be an incomplete achievement, securing peace between Israel and Egypt but failing to resolve the Palestinian issue, which, along with the Gaza war, has once again become a pressing global issue. For more than a year, the war has become a constant reminder of the limitations of America’s and Biden’s power.

The US was unable to prevent the conflict from spreading to Lebanon and involving, for the first time, direct military action between Iran and Israel. The latter, America’s closest ally in the region, has time and again seemingly ignored Biden’s advice and pursued a more aggressive path on its own.

Biden also had to deal with strained relations with a rising China, whose current place in the world is due in no small part to Carter’s decision to normalize US relations with the country in 1979.

That turning point set the course for the country to become a major economic and military power – ultimately creating a geopolitical rivalry with the US that Mr Biden had to contend with.

Foreign crises tend to spill over into domestic affairs as well, and four decades ago Carter faced environmental and energy problems, partly caused by turmoil abroad.

While the current threat of global climate change is different from the Middle East oil embargo Carter faced, many of his policy approaches — conservation, renewable energy, and public investment — have formed the basis of the environmental agenda Biden is helping to push through Congress in 2022. .

The specter of runaway inflation that the US has recently faced also dates back to the Carter years. Double-digit spikes in consumer prices in the first two years of Biden’s presidency, buffeted by the shock of the global Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine, were a reminder of the darkest days of the late 1970s.

One key difference was that, unlike the Carter situation, job growth remained strong and the US economy, except for one quarter, continued to grow. However, the fact may comfort Biden, whose popularity has yet to recover from public anger over inflation.

Carter was also one of the first modern US presidents to confront a problem that has become an undeniable political reality for each of his successors – the American public’s often debilitating distrust of US government and institutions.

Carter in his July 1979 speech. called it a “crisis of confidence”.

“Our people are losing that faith not only in the government itself, but also in the ability as citizens to serve as the ultimate rulers and creators of our democracy,” he said.

Public confidence that his government is doing the right thing at least “most of the time” was 34% at the start of his presidency and fell to 27% in March 1980, according to the Pew Research Center. That figure has risen above 50% only once since Carter, in the month after the September 11, 2001, attacks.

For a while, it may have seemed like the low public approval ratings during the Carter years were a consequence of the immediate aftermath of Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal, when those net approval numbers first dipped into the red.

The reality, however, is that lack of faith in government is now a fact of life in American politics. During Donald Trump’s presidency, the percentage of people who believed the government would do the right thing regularly hit the low-teens. Biden has failed to reverse this trend during his tenure — a fact that Trump has managed to turn against the man who defeated him in his inexorable march back to the White House.

Comparisons between Carter and Biden, the last one-term president, are hard to avoid.

This is something that two-time winner Trump often invites. His political views crystallized in the 1970s and 1980s, and he sometimes cites Carter as a way to galvanize Democrats.

“I see everyone comparing Joe Biden to Jimmy Carter,” Trump wrote in one of his tweet-like press releases in 2021. – It seems to me that it is very unfair to Jimmy Carter. Jimmy has handled crisis after crisis poorly, but Biden has created crisis after crisis.”

Carter himself has not been silent about the 45th president, telling the Washington Post that Trump has been a disaster “in terms of human rights and caring for people and treating them equally.”

At least the two make for an interesting contrast. Both were political upstarts who won their presidential terms against great odds. Both struggled with the insider politics of Washington.

Carter sought to serve in the White House with humility. He wore cardigans, carried his own luggage on Air Force One, and banned the presidential anthem “Hail the Boss” from playing when he entered the room. Trump seemed to enjoy the spectacle and trappings of power, from lavish Fourth of July celebrations to using Air Force One as a backdrop for his re-election rallies.

Then there’s the post-presidency — or, in Trump’s case, the presidential interregnum. After losing the election, Carter returned to his two-bedroom home in Plains, Georgia. He moved away from domestic politics and worked for charities such as Habitat for Humanity. He founded the Carter Center, which works to fight global diseases, promote human rights and act as an independent observer of democratic elections. In 2002, he won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Trump has spent his immediate post-presidency focused on challenging his 2020 election loss and setting the stage for his 2024 presidential campaign. His election victory and inevitable return to the White House was a plot twist that Carter never publicly contemplated as he resolutely closed the door behind him when he left office.

Carter was only 56 when he left the White House, and his obituaries reflect his accomplishments both after and during his tenure. And they’re also a reflection of how America has changed in four decades — and how much it hasn’t changed.