As an old guy with a particularly long interest in the career of Georgia’s Democratic President Jimmy Carter, I noted with interest some new revelations about the end-game of the 1980 elections, and wrote about it at New York:
Jimmy Carter’s slow drift toward life’s end after the longest and most impressive post-presidency in U.S. history has spawned a lot of retrospective assessments of the 39th president and his legacy. But the New York Times has brought us a look back that’s also news: Longtime Texas lieutenant governor Ben Barnes, now 85, decided to let it be known that he was part of a scheme in 1980 to make sure Carter’s reelection campaign wouldn’t benefit from an early release of the U.S. hostages in Tehran whose captivity had tormented the White House since November 1979.
Barnes’s story is indeed stunning. For decades, it was generally assumed that Iran’s revolutionary regime countenanced the hostage taking by allied students and activists and refused to negotiate a release with the Carter administration because of entrenched hostility toward Carter over his friendship with the deposed shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and/or because they had reason to expect a better deal from Carter’s general-election opponent, Ronald Reagan. (Iran released the hostages, after 444 days, on Reagan’s Inauguration Day.) But no one has really offered concrete evidence of a dirty Republican deal with Tehran until now. And the prime mover in the reported drama happens to be one of the shadier figures of the modern era, former Texas governor John Connally, a powerful career-long political fixer who was suspected of personal corruption.
Best known for being wounded in the same car that John F. Kennedy was assassinated in, Connally, a protégé of Lyndon B. Johnson, played a large role in the defection of southern Democrats to the Republican Party during Richard Nixon’s administration, during which he served as Treasury secretary. His influence was best reflected by his success in convincing Nixon to impose the heretical step of wage and price controls to (temporarily) rein in inflation. Connally was reportedly Nixon’s preferred pick to replace disgraced vice-president Spiro T. Agnew, but the hostility of Democrats toward the turncoat and his less-than-ideal reputation led the Republican president to instead choose Gerald Ford, whom Carter defeated in 1976.
Four years later, Connally launched his own presidential campaign, but despite lavish funding and enthusiastic backing from corporate leaders, he floundered in Iowa and New Hampshire, losing to Reagan. According to Barnes, a longtime political associate and business partner of his fellow Texan, Connally was determined to land a high-level Cabinet appointment in a Reagan administration, so, with Barnes in tow, he put on his globe-trotting shoes to prove his worth. Per the Times account:
“What happened next Mr. Barnes has largely kept secret for nearly 43 years. Mr. Connally, he said, took him to one Middle Eastern capital after another that summer, meeting with a host of regional leaders to deliver a blunt message to be passed to Iran: Don’t release the hostages before the election. Mr. Reagan will win and give you a better deal.”
The Iranians appear to have gotten the message, as a happy Connally later reported to Reagan’s campaign chairman and future CIA director William Casey.
So should we conclude that if Connally’s mission hadn’t take place, Carter might well have won a second presidential term, relegating Reagan (and quite possibly his running mate, George H.W. Bush. and his running mate’s son George W. Bush) to the political dustbin? Tempting as the hypothesis is, it is not terribly plausible.
First of all, the Islamic regime in Tehran didn’t trust any American politician enough to depend on indirect promises of a “better deal,” and its hatred of and desire to humiliate Carter ran deep, independent of any comparison with Reagan.
Second of all, if Connally played such a dramatic role in postponing a potential hostage release, Team Reagan was notably under-appreciative. Hoping to become Secretary of State or Defense once Reagan took office, he was instead offered the Department of Energy (which the new administration intended to abolish); Connally contemptuously rejected the gig.
More important, the Iran-hostage crisis was just one of the problems weighing down Carter’s reelection campaign heading into 1980. Far more damaging than the hostage situation or any international issue was the economy, which had produced the election-year disaster of “stagflation.” In 1980, the average unemployment rate was 7.1 percent, the average inflation rate was 12.67 percent, and average home-mortgage rates were 13.74 percent. This was a political-economic catastrophe for Carter.
And that wasn’t all. Carter had to deal with a deeply divided Democratic Party and one of the strongest primary challenges any modern incumbent president has faced from liberal legend Ted Kennedy. (Ironically, a rally-round-the-flag effect stemming from the hostage crisis undoubtedly helped Carter hold off Kennedy’s challenge.) And Carter’s reelection campaign had a big strategic problem to overcome. He had narrowly won the 1976 general election thanks to the excitement of southern and southern-inflected voters (many of them former Nixon and future Reagan voters) who were thrilled to have credible presidential candidate emerge from their region of the country. But it was extremely difficult for Carter to maintain that unique coalition, particularly against an ideological candidate like Reagan. He also lost a lot of liberal voters to third-party candidate John Anderson, who ran to Carter’s left. Under these circumstances, it was actually impressive that Carter lost to Reagan by only 9.8 percent of the popular vote (though he lost the Electoral College by a 489-to-49 margin). Well before Connally and Barnes’s Middle East tour, Carter’s job-approval rating (per Gallup) had already slipped well below 40 percent, never to recover.
As much as it might give Carter and his friends some grim sense of vindication to know that skullduggery was deployed to keep the hostages locked up as his presidency slipped away, it ultimately mattered only at the margins. But the tale does provide a bit more posthumous damage to the already spotty image of Connally.
From THE ECONOMIST:
http://www.economist.com/world/na/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2910706
“Is the recovery losing momentum?”
“PITY the Republicans. No sooner had America’s jobs figures become rosy enough to brag about in campaign ads, than the pesky statistics stopped playing ball. According to numbers released on July 2nd, only 112,000 new non-farm jobs were created in June, far fewer than in each of the previous three months and less than half what analysts were expecting. After rising for four months, jobs in the politically sensitive manufacturing sector fell. The average work-week shortened and the unemployment rate is stuck at 5.6%. ”
[…]
“the number-crunchers also revised down the jobs figures for April and May a bit. And other evidence suggests America’s economy may be cooling somewhat. Durable goods orders (admittedly yet another highly volatile indicator) fell in May for the second consecutive month. Vehicles sales were decidedly lame in June. Measured at an annual rate, only 15.4m light vehicles were sold in June, a sharp fall from the 17.8m rate in May. And, perhaps most significant, several big chain stores, including Target and Wal-Mart, warned that June would be weak.”
“It is not all bad. For instance, consumer confidence looks robust (the Conference Board’s index rose to 101.9 in June, its highest level in two years). But for Mr Bush, even conflicting signals look dangerous. For the past few months, his campaign has been frustrated by how little his poll ratings have benefited from a string of uniformly rosy economic statistics. If the economic numbers are less rosy, then the poll numbers could yet go down.”
Marcus’ observation about the National Review is interesting, because Fox did try to spin it. The bottom-of-screen headline I saw was “Bush Was Right!” That’s pretty bad even for those guys. They must be getting nervous.
How bad news for “Shrub” is this? So bad even the partisans at NATIONAL REVIEW didn’t try to spin the 112,000-new-jobs release. They merely noted that at least the statistics were released at a time (=Independence Day weekend) when comparatively few people pay attention. And they are grateful for that.
http://www.nationalreview.com/kerry/kerryspot.asp
MARCU$
When it comes to something like the economy, the public’s perception comes mostly from their actual experience. We shouldn’t worry about Bush and the press hyping it, and by the same token there is no point in trying to play it down.
Kerry can win by properly explaining why the economy went into recession without blaming the American people. He can’t win by raising taxes just to end the recession. That’s BS and the smarty-pantses who think it works also drove the Democratic Party into a massive defeat in 2002. They should be banished from any position of decision-making, they should be exiled to a desert island until next February.
Sobering. Very sobering.
I agree with Ruy’s comments.
The bad economy is particularly visible when one compares job gains to population gains.
1) The index of Aggregate hours worked fell by 0.6 percent. This June number implies that there has been essentially no change in aggregate hours worked by employees since March 2004 and since 2002. Aggregate hours worked in manufacturing rose only 0.2 percent since March 2004. Aggregate hours in manufacturing are still more than 5% below their level in 2002 (Table B-5).
2) Recent Job growth is barely keeping pace with population growth. The HH survey’s employment population ratio was above 64 percent in 1998, 1999 and 2000. It fell to 62.3 in 2003 and that is also it’s level in June 2004. The unemployment rate has been constant since January 2004. (Table A-1) Just to get back to an E/P ratio of 64%, the economy would need to add 3,780,000 jobs.
3) From May to June 2004, The seasonally adjusted Weekly earnings of non-supervisory workers fell by $2.45 or about 0.5 percent (table B-3). This decline in nominal weekly wages came on top of a 0.2 to 0.4 percent rise in the cost of living. There is no disconnect between workers perceptions and the “reality” of an improving economy. Workers real weekly earnings fell by nearly one percent in June 2004. Their pay check’s buying power is declining.
4) Hours worked per week by non-supervisory workers has declined over the last year. Combined with the decline in the inflation adjusted hourly wage, the result is a declining pay check in real terms.The stability of aggregate hours worked since March implies that the increase in employment since March was accomplished by cutting back on the weekly hours of existing workers..
5) Occupations that are most subject to foreign competition and off shoring are still suffering despite the large reduction in the value of the dollar that should have improved the competitiveness of American workers. Household survey data implies that Employment of production workers fell 4.4% from June 2003 to June 2004 and office and administrative support occupations employment fell by 0.7 percent. Fast growing occupational categories were Construction (6%), Transportation and materials moving occupations (5.4%) and Installation and maintenance and repair occupations (3.5%). These are types of work that must be performed in the US (Table A-10)
6) The occupational up skilling of the employed work force has slowed. During the last year up skilling stopped. Over the last two decades professional, technical and managerial jobs (which account for 34 percent of all jobs) have accounted for about two-thirds of job growth. During the last 12 months, these high skill occupations accounted for only 22 percent of net job growth (Table A-10). Their share of total employment fell.
6) Industry payroll data from the establishment survey are consistent with this picture. Over the past 12 months, The fast growing industries were mining (2.9%), construction (2.8%), Janitorial services (3.4%), Temporary help agencies (10.3%), education and health services (2.1%) and Hotels and restaurants (2.4%). The Declining industries were manufacturing (-1.0%) and information and communications (-0.5%).
7) College grads have suffered along with everyone else. The employment to population ratio of college graduates was above 77 percent in 2000 and the first two quarters of 2001. The seasonally adjusted Emp/Pop for college grads had fallen to 75.3% in April 2004, 75.2% in May 2004 and 75.7% in June 2004. The E/P average for the second quarter of 2004 is 3.2 percent below its level in the first quarter of 2001. If we were to return to the first quarter of 2001 college grad E/P ratio, 1,250,000 extra college graduate would be employed. That is roughly equal to the number of bachelors degrees annually awarded by the nation’s colleges and universities (Table A-4)